Reborn, page 13
“He must have had this year’s with him when the plane went down,” Jim said. “But where are the other four?”
“Beats me, man,” Gerry Becker said, coming up beside him. “We’ve combed every bookshelf in the place.”
Jim nodded. He’d pored through many of the journals. They contained summaries of Hanley’s projects, his plans for the future, and day-by-day comments and observations on his personal life. A priceless peephole into his father’s life.
But where were 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1942? The four most important years—the three years before and the year of his birth, the ones that might contain his mother’s name—were missing.
Frustrating as all hell.
“Maybe they’re in that safe,” Jim said. He looked at Carol, sitting in the big wingback chair. “What do you think, hon?”
She was staring into space. She’d been glum and withdrawn all night. Jim wondered what was bothering her.
“Carol?”
She looked up. “Hmmm?”
“You all right?”
“Oh, yes. Fine, fine.”
Jim didn’t believe a word of it, but he couldn’t go into it with Becker still hanging around. He was getting to be a fixture around here, and that was a real drag.
“Dig this,” Becker said. He’d been flipping through the 1943 volume. He shoved the book in front of Jim. “Read the second para on the right.”
Jim squinted as he deciphered Hanley’s crabbed hand:
Ed and I had a bit of a laugh over Jazzy’s pitiful attempt at blackmail. I told her last year that she had seen the last penny she would ever receive from me and to be on her way.
“Jazzy!” Jim said. “I saw a name like that in—Where was it?—1949!” He pulled the volume out and flipped through it. Where had he seen it? “Here!”
He read aloud:
Read in the paper today that Jazzy Cordeau is dead. Such a shame. What disparity between the woman she became and the woman she could have been. The world will never know.
Jim’s mind raced. Jazzy Cordeau! French…New Orleans? Could she possibly be his mother? Jazzy Cordeau was the only female name he’d found that was linked to the missing years.
He had to get into that safe.
“I think I’ll be cuttin’ out,” Becker said. “I’m bushed.”
Jim tried to hide his relief. “Yeah. Same here. Look, why don’t we give this a rest for a while. We’ve been beating this place to death.”
Becker shrugged. “Fine with me. Maybe I’ll check the morgues at a couple of papers for you, see if I can turn up anything. Buzz you in a couple of days.”
“Great. I appreciate that. You know the way out.”
When Jim heard the door slam, he turned to Carol and grinned. “Finally! He’s gone!”
She nodded absently.
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
Carol’s face twisted as tears filled her eyes. She began to cry. Jim rushed over and pulled her into his arms. She felt so small and frail against him.
“I thought I was pregnant but I’m not!” she sobbed.
He held her tight and rocked her back and forth.
“Oh, Carol, Carol, Carol, don’t take it so hard. We’ve got all the time in the world. We’ve got nothing better to do from now on than work on producing little feet to patter around this big old house.”
“But what if it never happens?”
“It will.”
He led her toward the front door. It killed him to see her so sad. All this newfound wealth didn’t mean squat if Carol was unhappy.
He kissed her.
“Come on. Let’s get back to our own bed in our own little place and do some homework.”
She smiled through her tears.
That was better!
NINE
Monday
March 4
Manhattan
1
Brother Robert knelt on the cold, rice-littered floor by the window and silently chanted the Prime. When he was through, he remained kneeling. His window faced east and he looked out at the brightening sky.
The evil was growing stronger. Every day it cast a greater pall over his spirit. And it originated there, to the east, emanating from somewhere on Long Island. Martin had driven him to Montauk and back but he’d been unable to pinpoint its source. The closer he got, the more diffuse it became until he’d been engulfed in a cacophony of evil sensations.
A sign, Lord. Show me who it is. Show me your enemy.
And then what? How would he fight Satan incarnate?
Will you teach me, Lord?
He prayed so. He had no battle plan, no strategy. He was not a plotter, not a general. He was a contemplative monk who had given up the world in order to be closer to his God.
Forgive the impertinence, Lord, but perhaps you made a mistake in choosing me to lead this flock. The burden is wide and my shoulders are so narrow.
Perhaps he hadn’t given up enough of the world. He’d fasted and prayed and worked in the fields around the monastery, but still he’d wanted to know. The lust for knowledge had driven him to petition his abbot and the Abbot General himself for permission to search out and catalog other monastic orders. Not the Benedictines and similar well-established examples, but lesser, obscure orders that might have something to offer the monastic life as a whole.
He’d been given two years, but he’d gone beyond that in his endlessly fascinating trek across the world. He’d met with some of the Orphic brotherhood and a few Pythagoreans in Greece. He’d found remnants of Therapeutae and Anchorites in the Mideast, and even a trio of Stylites, each sitting alone atop a stone pillar in the Gobi desert. In the Far East he investigated many cenobitic Buddhist sects, and in Japan he met with the last two surviving members of an order of self-mutilating monks.
He should have stopped then. His compendium of monastic orders and their ways of life was the most complete on earth. But it was not enough. He went further. He’d been tantalized by hints of dark secrets buried in ancient ruins, in forbidden books. He’d searched them out.
Digging into fabled ruins had yielded a few of the ancient, mythic tomes. He’d translated them…
And he’d been changed forever.
He no longer lusted for knowledge. All he wanted now was to retreat to his abbey, to hide himself away from the world and what he’d learned.
But that was not to be. The changes within had led him here, to these Catholic Pentecostals. Secrets were unraveling and he sensed that the Lord wanted him here when they were revealed.
But would he be able to rise to the challenge? Neither his boyhood on a farm in Remy, nor his adult life in a contemplative monastery had prepared him for anything like this.
Monroe
2
“Do you still like the Jefferson Airplane?” Carol called from the big wing chair in the Hanley library. She already had started thinking of it as her chair.
She felt better this morning—at least emotionally. Jim had made such tender love to her last night, whispering such sweet things in her ear that she no longer felt like such a miserable failure as a woman. She’d brought Laura Nyro’s first couple of albums along to the mansion today and now that wonderful voice and quirky lyrics were booming from the hidden speakers of Hanley’s stereo, making the big house feel a little bit more like home.
Physically though, she felt just as queasy, just as tired as every other morning recently. Another blood-soaked dream last night hadn’t helped either.
Something was wrong with her. She’d decided this morning to make an appointment with Dr. Albert for a good general checkup. And if he didn’t find anything, she’d see a gynecologist and really go to work on getting her periods straightened out.
But for right now, she was taking it easy. She’d made herself comfortable with the “Arts & Leisure” section of yesterday’s Times. She was only now getting around to it. Jim had made her call in sick today because she’d felt so tired this morning.
Actually, he wanted her to quit. After all, they no longer needed the money, he said, so why should she drag herself off to the hospital every morning? Good, logical reasons, but Carol didn’t want to quit. Not just yet. Not until she had kids to stay home for. Until then, there were people at MCH who needed her. People like Mr. Dodd.
Kay had called from the hospital this morning to tell her that Maureen Dodd had agreed to take her father home. She was picking him up tomorrow. The news had made her morning.
“The Airplane?” Jim said around a mouthful of food as he walked into the room. He had a well-bitten apple in one hand and one of Hanley’s journals in the other. He’d done little else but pore over those things since they’d arrived this morning. “Don’t really care for much of their new stuff. Why?”
“Oh, just wondering. Korvette’s has “After Bathing At Baxter’s” on sale for two-thirty-nine.”
Jim swallowed and laughed. “‘On sale’? Honey, we don’t have to worry about sales ever again! If we want it, we’ll buy it at list and pay the whole four-seventy-nine! We’ll never buy mono records again! Don’t you understand? We’re rich!”
Carol thought about that a second. They were spending an awful lot of time here at the Hanley place, but still slept and ate and made love in their own little house. Maybe she should stop referring to it as the Hanley place. Legally it was the Stevens place now.
“I don’t feel rich. Do you?”
“No. But I’m going to start working on it. It’s scary, though.”
“How do you mean?” She knew she was scared, but Jim?
“The wealth. I don’t want it to change us.”
“It won’t.”
“Oh, I know it won’t change you. It’s me. I don’t want to stop writing, but what if the money makes me too comfortable? What if I stop being hungry? What if I mellow out?”
Carol had to smile. Every so often he would do this—break out of his tough skeptic persona and become vulnerable. At times like these she loved him most.
“You? Mellow?”
“It could happen.”
“Never!”
He returned her smile. “I hope you’re right. But in the meantime, what say we hit Broadway this weekend?”
“A play?”
“Sure. Best seats in the house. Our penny-pinching days are over.” A new cut began on the Nyro album. “Hear that? That’s us. We’re gettin’ off the Poverty Train. You’ve got the section there. Pick a play, any play, and we’ll go.”
Carol thumbed to the front. She saw ads for I Never Sang For My Father, How Now Dow Jones, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, none of which much appealed to her. Then she came to a full-page ad quoting rave reviews for Neil Simon’s latest.
“Let’s see Plaza Suite.”
“You got it. I’ll call a ticket agent and see if he can dig us up a couple of good seats—price no object.”
Carol hesitated. “Do you think we could make it a matinee?”
“I guess so. Why?”
“Well, after last week…”
Jim gave her a reassuring smile. “Sure. We’ll be out of the city by dark. We’ll drive back here and have dinner in Memison’s. How’s that sound?”
“Absolutely wonderful!”
In a burst of warmth for Jim, she opened her arms and he fell into them. She wanted to make love to him right here and now in this big old chair. She kissed him, trailing her hand into the tangle of one of his sideburns. He pulled away for a second to place the journal he’d been reading on the table beside the chair. That was when Carol noticed the writing along its bottom edge.
“What do those mean?” she said, pointing.
Jim picked up the book again. “Never noticed them.”
He held it closer. A series of numbers and letters had been printed in a line:
33R 21L 47R 16L
“My God, Carol!” He leaped from the seat. “That’s a safe combination! And it’s written on the bottom of the 1938 journal, the one right before the gap! Got to be to the safe upstairs!”
Carol felt a sudden surge of foreboding. She grabbed at Jim’s arm.
“Why don’t we leave it locked?”
He stared at her with a puzzled expression. “Why?”
“Because if Hanley—your father—locked it away so securely, maybe it should stay that way. Maybe there’s stuff in there he didn’t want anyone to know, stuff he would have destroyed if he’d known he was going to die.”
“What ever’s in that safe is the truth. And I’ve got to know the truth—about who my mother is, or was, and about my father’s relationship with her.”
“What difference does that make? It’s not going to change who you are.”
“I need my past, Carol. I’ve got the Hanley half. Now I need the rest—my mother’s side. This Jazzy Cordeau he mentions may be her. But no matter what Becker digs up on her, I’ll only be guessing as to whether she’s the one. But I’ve got a strong feeling that after we open that safe, I’ll know.”
Carol hugged him against her. “I just hope you don’t regret it. I don’t want you hurt.”
“I can handle it. I don’t know what Hanley’s hiding. The truth may not be pretty, but it’s got to come out of that safe.” He smiled. “What’s that they say—‘The truth will set you free’? That’s the way I feel about what’s in that safe. Besides, how bad can it be?”
He stood up and held out his hand to her.
“Come on. Let’s open it together.”
Carol felt her queasiness double as she rose and followed him upstairs.
Manhattan
3
It took Becker most of the early afternoon to track down anything on the Jasmine Cordeau murder. After all, as the cops told him time and again until he was sick of hearing it, the case was nearly twenty years old.
Yeah, so what? he wanted to shout.
But he kept his cool, kept smiling in their faces. After all, his press card could only take him so far, especially with his long hair and all. Longhairs tended to call cops pigs and cops didn’t take too kindly to that.
A desk cop took him to the basement and pointed to a jumble of old cabinets and told him that if the file on that old murder was still around—and no one was saying it was—it would be in one of those.
Maybe.
More scut work.
Gerry had spent the morning in the New York Public Library’s periodical section, spinning through an endless stream of micro-filmed pages, scanning the obits and local news, determined to find Jazzy Cordeau.
Because Jazzy Cordeau was Jim Stevens’s mother.
No doubt about it. Something deep inside Becker was as sure of that as he was of his own name. And that wasn’t all. The journal’s casual mention of her “pitiful attempt at blackmail” left little doubt that there was something ugly between Hanley and the Cordeau broad. Something juicy.
But what?
That was what made this search so intriguing, what had kept his burning eyes fixed on the screen all morning, fighting vertigo as the pages whirred by.
Finally, he’d found it, buried in the lower right-hand corner of the October 14 late edition, a single paragraph:
Woman stabbed in midtown alley
The body of a young woman, who was later identified as one Jasmine Cordeau, was discovered in an alley off 41st St. between 8th and 9th Avenues early this morning. She died of multiple stab wounds. Her purse was missing.
That was it! Jasmine—Jazzy—it had to be!
Excitement still quivered through him. Stabbed to death. Why had she been killed? To shut her up? To put an end to another “pitiful attempt at blackmail”?
He rubbed his sweaty hands together as he approached the filing cabinets. Despite the drudgery ahead, the thrill of the hunt began to work its spell on him. This was going to be good! Something really rotten here. Even twenty years later, he could still catch a whiff of the stink.
After two hours of bending and kneeling and pulling and sifting until his hands were filthy and his back was killing him, Becker found a single sheet on Jazzy Cordeau. And that by accident. It was folded between two other files, as if it had dropped there by accident.
He held it up to the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling and cursed after he’d read it. This was no damn good! Just a summary face sheet from the coroner’s report saying Jasmine Cordeau had died from a deep laceration to the left carotid artery and multiple stab wounds to the anterior chest causing lacerations to the anterior wall of the myocardium.
So? She’d had her throat cut and was stabbed in the heart. That didn’t tell him anything new, other than the fact that someone seemed to have wanted Jim Stevens’s mother dead real bad. Who? That was what he wanted to know. Who was Jazzy Cordeau and who had killed her?
He took the face sheet up to the records department. The sergeant there wasn’t too surprised that the file couldn’t be found. He took one look at the sheet and said,
“When’d y’say dishappened?”
“October fourteenth, 1949. On West Forty-first.”
“Kelly might be able to help yiz. Used to walk dat beat.”
“And where do I find this Kelly?”
“Dat’s Sergeant Kelly. Right here. He’s on d’next shift. Be here’n a coupla minutes.”
Becker took a seat and wondered what kind of cop was walking a beat twenty years ago and was now only a sergeant in the records department. When the balding, overweight Kelly finally strolled in, Becker got a pretty good idea why: The whole department was suddenly redolent of cheap scotch.
He gave the shifts a chance to change, gave Sergeant Kelly a chance to settle in, then approached him. He showed him his press card and the coroner’s face sheet.
“I was told you might be able to help me find the rest of this file.”
“You was, was you?” Kelly said, eyeing him briefly, then glancing at the sheet. He started, then laughed. “Jasmine Cordeau? It’s an old one you’ve got here! I knew that one well! What’s the likes of you doing looking up the likes of Jazzy?”
