The House That Jack Built (35 page)

    'Now, watch,' said Norman quietly, standing up. 'Watch what he does, and, like, watch his colour, too. See? It's starting to change already.'

    The cat was chasing his tail so fast that he was nothing more than a furry blur. Even so, Effie could see that something was happening to him. He appeared to be bigger, and darker, and he kept on growing darker until he was almost black.

    'What's happening?' asked Effie. 'He looks like a different cat altogether.'

    Still Houdini went on circling and scratching and growing larger. Effie took a step closer to him, to try to see what was actually happening to him, but Norman caught her arm. 'Careful, he won't know me any more. Not for a few moments, anyhow.'

    'Look at him! He's really going crazy!'

    Norman checked his watch. 'I think he's done enough… I'd better get that bow off of him.'

    He knelt down on one knee, and reached out to catch Houdini as he came circling around. His hand struck the cat just once. Houdini suddenly stopped chasing his own tail and jumped at Norman's face, spitdng in fury.

    Norman lifted his arm to protect himself and fell over sideways. But Houdini wriggled viciously under his arm and raked his claws all the way down from his eyelid to his chin. Norman shouted out, rolled over, and tried to stand up again. Houdini leaped onto his back and started tearing at his ears.

    'Get him off!' Norman screamed. 'For Christ's sake, get him off!'

    Effie wrenched off one of her sneakers, and hit the cat on the side of the head with it, and then on the back. Each blow made a horrible hollow thumping sound. She was just about to hit the cat again when it twisted around and hissed at her, a thick crackling hiss of pure hatred.

    And she saw that it wasn't Houdini at all, but a huge black tom with glaring yellow eyes and filthy, matted fur, and a wedge-shaped head that was more like a cobra's than a cat's.

    She screamed and threw her sneaker at it, and it dropped off Norman's back onto the floor. Norman scrambled to his feet and kicked it, twice. It lashed out at his foot, but then he kicked it even harder, and it fled into the next room.

    'For God's sake, what happened to him?' said Effie. 'Are you all right, Norman? Look at your face!'

    'I'm fine.' He took out a grey-looking handkerchief and dabbed at his cheek. 'Let's just get after that cat.'

    'Get after it? It could have taken your eye out!'

    'Come on,' Norman urged her, and took hold of her hand. He led her to the next room, where the black cat had run off to - taking just a quick cautionary peek through the crack in the door before he stepped inside.

    Effie warily looked around. The doors were locked. The windows were closed. The fireplace was firmly boarded up. But there was no sign of the cat at all.

    'Where did it go? It was huge, Norman. Where did it go?'

    'Back to its owners, I guess. The Brotherhood of Balam.'

    'That was their cat?'

    'Fits the description in the records. A black cat with a vicious temper that always kept watch on the porch and attacked anyone who came close.'

    Effie looked around again, because she couldn't believe it. There was no way that the cat could have found its way out of the room, and yet it had vanished. And it must have existed, because Norman's scratches bore witness to that.

    It was then that she heard a low, doleful mewing sound. She turned around, and there, back in the centre of the main room, stood Houdini. Cowed, confused, but physically unchanged.

    'He's back,' she breathed. 'He was here - then he was there - and now he's back. It's like magic.'

    Norman shook his head. 'Not magic. It's science. It's architecture. Mom knows more about it than I do. The Mayans were the first people to build floors like these. I mean, like, anybody could have done it, the Romans, the Greeks, whoever. They had the math, they had like all of the technical skills, but you had to believe that it was going to work, otherwise you wouldn't even try, would you? It's what I call the Deadwood Bicycle Syndrome.' He went over and picked up Houdini and stroked him. Houdini struggled a little, but he seemed unharmed by what had happened to him. 'A guy came out West in the 1880's with plans for a bicycle, and gave them to this blacksmith in Deadwood. The blacksmith refused to make it because he said he never put his name to anything that couldn't possibly work.'

    Effie reached out her finger and Houdini licked it with a rasping tongue.

    'The Brotherhood's cat is still here,' Norman continued. 'And so are the Brotherhood. When they disappeared, they didn't actually disappear, they just used this floor to take themselves through to another time. Maybe backward, maybe forward. More probably forward, I guess. They'll probably turn up again one day, right as rain.'

    'They took themselves forward? Into the future?'

    'I think so. I mean, like, who's an expert? But you turn clockwise for forward and anti-clockwise for backward. Haven't you ever thought why clocks go round the way they do? Like, there's no particular mechanical reason for it. It's just the way that time fits together, like this floor.'

    'So what's been happening at Valhalla, you think it's the same as this?'

    'Pretty much. Houdini got close to a cat with a strong personality, and he started to look like him and act like him. Mr. Bellman got close to Jack Belias, and Jack Belias took him over. My mom got close to this Gaby Deslys woman, and the same thing happened to her.'

    'You didn't give me this little demonstration just to prove that your mom was innocent, did you?'

    Norman looked embarrassed. 'Partly, if you want to know the truth. She said it wasn't her and even though it sure as hell looked like her, I believe her when she says that it wasn't. I want you to believe her, too; because we have to cleanse that house for good, and she's the only person I know who can do it.'

    They walked back to the car. Effie was feeling very tired now, and all she wanted was a strong cup of coffee and a few hours' rest. While Norman dropped Houdini into the back seat, she turned around and took a last long look at the Benton House. The black clouds almost completely filled the sky now, and the first few drops of summer rain were falling. The windows of the house were so dark that it was impossible to see inside; but for a moment Effie was convinced that she could make out the shadow of a man, with his back turned to her.

    

    

    Pepper snapped shut the last of the books, tossed it to one side, yawned and gave an extravagant stretch, so that an irritated Houdini almost slipped off her lap. Effie had finished reading over a half-hour ago, and she was leaning back against a huge Indian cushion with her eyes closed, listening to the tinkling of the wind-chimes in Pepper's living-room window.

    'Didn't anybody ever write anything about Jack Belias?' Pepper demanded. 'He was a millionaire, a gambler, and he deliberately ruined more of his so-called friends than you could shake a stick at. He knew the Aga Khan, the Dolly Sisters, the goddamned Duke of Westminster. Sure, they wrote about the money he won, and the hands he played. But what about him, and his wife, and his love-affairs? What about Gaby Deslys?'

    She pried open her tin and took out an anorexic joint. It flared up when she lit it and left her with only a few shreds of grass and tobacco and an evanescent smell of Woodstock. 'How's Craig?' she asked, brushing ash off Houdini's fur. Her voice was deliberately soft and diffident. Craig was still a tender topic of conversation between them, in spite of Pepper's assurances and Houdini's apparent transformation.

    'So-so,' said Effie. 'We haven't been talking too much. I wanted to discuss what happened up at Valhalla - you know, to clear the air, and to try to find out what's been happening to him. But he says he's not interested in talking about it any more, and if I don't believe him then maybe I should go back to the city.'

    'You do believe him, though?'

    'I don't have much choice, do I, if I want to stay with him? But he's acting so strange. He spent most of Sunday sleeping; and all of yesterday up at Valhalla. And I swear he's changing. He feels different, talks different. He doesn't even smell like Craig any more. To tell you the truth, I'm frightened for him. But he won't even think of giving up Valhalla. All I have to do is mention it and he flies into a rage.'

    'Doesn't he have any other friends who could talk to him?'

    'He won't speak to any of his friends any more. He says the house is all he needs. I made some diplomatic noises about him talking to his psychiatrist, Dr. Samstag, but all he did was turn his back on me and walk out of the room.'

    Pepper was silent for a while. Then she said, 'You don't think it might be a good idea if you did go away for a while?'

    And risk the possibility that he wasn't Jack Belias when he was having sex with Pepper, and that she wasn't Gaby Deslys… and leave them both alone together?

    'Of course I've thought of going away. But what's going to happen to Craig if I do? He's been violent and angry and very, very strange, but I still love him.'

    Pepper said, 'You have forgiven me, haven't you?' Her eyes like silver; like polished dimes.

    'I don't know. Is it you that I'm supposed to forgive; or this Gaby woman? And is it Craig that I'm supposed to forgive, or Jack Belias?'

    Pepper came across and sat next to her. She was wearing a loose-woven indigo shirt and skintight jeans and a jingling gold-coin headband. Effie was very aware of her sensuality; how her breasts swayed heavily under that diaphanous cotton. By comparison, she felt over-smart. She wore a pink-and-white checkered shirt from Bergdorf Goodman and a pair of expensive white canvas slacks. Pepper smelled of herbs and spices, the larder of love. Effie smelled of Fifth Avenue cosmetic counters.

    'I think this is all down to Jack Belias,' said Pepper. 'He built the house to cut himself off from the world around him, except for those gamblers he invited back for his baccarat parties. He wanted to live his life on his own terms. He wanted to rule the world, and he wanted to ruin everybody who challenged him. I'm sure that nobody could have liked him, but in none of these books does anybody actually say so. One summer he was screwing some poor guy's wife every night on top of a
chemin-de-fer
table, before she went home; but this same guy gave him a racehorse. Two of these books mention it; neither says why.'

    Effie picked up one of the books and frowned at the spine. 'Maybe they're still alive, some of these authors. Maybe we could talk to them.' She checked the inside flyleaf. 'Harry Rondo… born 1917… author of six books on gambling and gamblers… a confirmed bachelor who now lives in Pocantico Hills.'

    'Well, that's not far,' said Pepper. She stood up and tramped barefoot across the cushions to the small Indian table where she kept her telephone and her fax. She licked her thumb and noisily leafed through the local directory. 'Here we are… Harold A. Rondo, 7773 Bedford Road, Pocantico Hills. The directory's two years old, but if he's managed to survive, he could be worth talking to.'

    Effie looked at her watch. 'I have to be back by eight-thirty. Craig's taking me to dinner at the Hudson Inn.'

    'Lucky you. I love that restaurant. Here - let me give Harold A Rondo a call before you go… we might be able to fix up to see him tomorrow.'

    She punched out the number and waited while it rang. It was almost half a minute before anybody picked up, and then all she could hear was quavery breathing.

    'Hallo?' she said. 'Is this the residence of Harold A Rondo?'

    'Who wants to know?' said a thick, soft voice.

    'Well, if you're Mr. Rondo, sir, my name's Pepper Moriarty and I run the Hungry Moon health food and herbal store in Cold Spring.'

    'Are you trying to sell me something healthy? If you are, you're about thirty years too late.'

    'Mr. Rondo, I'm not calling you to sell you anything. I have some friends who have just bought Valhalla.'

    'They did what?'

    'They bought Valhalla… the house that Jack Belias built.'

    'What are they?' asked Harry Rondo dryly. 'Some kind of outpatients?'

    'Mr. Bellman is a very well-respected business lawyer, Mr. Rondo. His wife is an expert on modern art. The point is, they're going to restore Valhalla the way it was when Jack Belias first erected it. They're very keen to know more about him, because it seems like very little was written about his personal life.'

    There was a lengthy pause. Pepper could hear Harry Rondo moistening his lips, and she could almost hear him think. After a while, he said, 'Did you read my book?'

    '
Chance In A Million
, yes, I have it here. It goes into quite a lot of detail about his card-playing, sir. But it doesn't really say too much about him. I mean, not personally. You did know him personally, didn't you, sir?'

    'I was a very young man. But, yes. My father played baccarat with him. That was how my father got himself bankrupted; and that's why I'm living here at the scruffy end of Pocantico Hills, rather than Park Avenue. My father was a very wealthy man; but he had a weakness for cards; and Jack Belias gutted him like a fish.'

    'Did you ever write about Jack Belias' personal life?'

    'Thought about it, but decided not to chance it.'

    'Chance it? What do you mean? He's been dead since 1937.'

    'I just decided not to chance it, that's all. He ruined my lather in three hours flat… a whole lifetime of struggling.ind striving in the construction industry, all of it gone. And he did it in nine coups; that's all it took.'

    'Would you mind talking to me and my friend about Jack Belias?'