Gypsies Read online

  Michael said, “He lived here?”

  “At least for a while,” Laura said.

  “He couldn’t have been doing too well.”

  “We don’t know why he was here,” Laura said. “We don’t know anything about him, really. We all lost track of him when he left home. But he was in this room—I can feel it.”

  Karen looked sharply at her sister.

  “Things happened here,” Laura said. “He traveled from here. It leaves traces.”

  “Traveled out of the world,” Karen said.

  “Yes.”

  She tried to feel it herself. It had been years since she had even allowed herself to believe such a thing was possible. But surely there was no point denying it now? She strained at the blank, empty volume of the room, trying to find a magic in it.

  There was nothing.

  If I could ever do that, she thought, I can’t anymore.

  She said, “Do you know where he went?”

  Laura sighed.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

  Defeated, they moved silently through the lobby. Laura dropped the room key on the desk; the clerk didn’t look up. Stepping outside, Karen shaded her eyes against the light, suddenly alarmed.

  There was a man leaning up against the car.

  He was only a little taller than Karen, and too thin, but he was reasonably well dressed. A starched white shirt and a pair of fresh Levi’s. His eyes were narrow and his lips were set in a smile. Hands in his pockets. He looked up, and his face was pale in the sunlight.

  For a moment she failed to recognize him. And then the recognition, when it did dizzy.

  Laura cried out, “Tim!” The man’s smile widened. “Looking for me?” he said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  1

  They drove to Fisherman’s Wharf for lunch.

  “You should let me show you around,” Tim said. “Do the tourist thing.”

  Karen liked the restaurant. The waitress brought seafood in rich, buttery sauces; and out beyond the big windows she could see San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. The clouds lifted and a bright winter sun glanced from the tour boats lined up at the dock.

  Laura said, “But we’re not tourists. We don’t have time.”

  “Well, maybe you do,” Tim said. “Maybe things aren’t as bad as you think.” “How did you find us?”

  “I looked.” Karen heard the subtle emphasis on “looked.” He added, “And I knew you were looking.” “You can do that?” He nodded.

  But this wasn’t the place to talk about it. Karen ate methodically, not much conscious of her food, stealing glances at her brother. His clothes looked good. He was healthy enough. But then why had he been living in a Skid Row hotel less than a year ago? Something was going right for him… but Karen noticed a faint, persistent tic tugging at the corner of his right eyelid and wondered whether something might also be going wrong.

  Tim turned to Michael, who had ordered the Seafood Monterey when a thorough search of the menu failed to turn up any kind of burger. “Must be strange, discovering an uncle after all these years.”

  Michael shrugged. Michael had been quiet all morning. Quiet but attentive.

  “A little,” he said.

  Tim said, “We should get together and have a talk sometime.”

  “Sure,” Michael said.

  And Karen felt a stab of uneasiness.

  “Home,” Tim said. “That’s where I’ve been.”

  After lunch Laura drove to an extremity of parkland overlooking the bay. They sat in the car with the windows up and Karen watched a line of gulls wheeling down toward the water. It was quiet here and they were alone.

  Laura said, “I take it you don’t mean Polger Valley.”

  Tim laughed, and Karen was suddenly reminded of the old days: this derision. “Is that what you call home? Did it ever feel like home? Be honest.”

  “Mama and Daddy admitted a few things,” Laura said.

  Tim said, “Well, how about you tell me what you know.”

  So Laura told him what they had found out from Willis and Jeanne: about their natural parents, about the Gray Man. And Karen repeated the part Willis had told her—the shack on the country road outside Burleigh and the bodies he had discovered in it.

  Tim listened intently; he was frowning when Karen finished. He shook his head. “I was aware of some of that from other sources. But it fills in some gaps.”

  Laura said, “You knew?”

  “I was told.”

  “Since when?”

  “Well, recently.”

  “Who told you—the Gray Man?”

  The words seemed to hang in the cool air and for a moment Karen could hear the cry of the gulls.

  Tim said, “Obviously I should start at the beginning. You want the long or the Reader’s Digest version?”

  Laura glanced back at Michael for a fraction of a second and said, “I think the short.”

  Tim was sitting up front with Laura, and Karen could only see the back of him, his profile when he turned, but she was watching him as closely as she could, relearning the look of him and trying to pinpoint what had changed. She remembered the sullen child in Mama’s photographs. But he wasn’t sullen now. He was, if anything, too effusive. Karen thought, Sometimes he talks like a salesman.

  “I left home,” he said. “I traveled a lot. I took a lot of jobs over those years. And I did some other kinds of traveling, too. But I always ended up back here… because I was familiar here; I know how to get along. Got along well enough—most of the time. But I had the same troubles you did. The Gray Man—I would see him sometimes. And more than that. Maybe you felt it, too… like being homesick for some place you’ve never seen. I swear I never did feel like I belonged here.”

  Karen saw Michael nodding fractionally.

  “So,” Tim said, “well, eventually I started drinking. And pretty soon that became a problem. I was in hospitals a couple of times. And then I figured out what you two seem to have figured out—that this is not something you can run away from.” His lips compressed into a tight, grim smile. “We can run farther and faster than anyone, right? But not away.”

  Laura said, “So what’s the alternative?”

  “To stop running away, “Tim said, “and start running to.”

  “Meaning—?”

  He said, “I found the Gray Man and I followed him.”

  There was another silence in the car.

  “I’d done it before,” Tim went on. “When we were kids. When I didn’t know what he wanted. When I trusted him. You remember that night in the ravine —the old city on the coast?”

  “Yes,” Karen said, involuntarily.

  Tim said, “Well, that’s where he comes from.”

  But she had guessed as much.

  He added, “That’s where we come from.”

  She sat forward, wanting to deny it.

  “It makes sense,” Tim said. “Like it or not. Whatever we are, the Gray Man is one of us. You can’t get away from that. There’s this trick we can do, and no one else in the world can do it… except him. What does that suggest?”

  Laura said, impatiently, “What did you find out?”

  “We’re related,” Tim said. “We’re family. The connections are kind of strange, but the closest you can get to it is—you might think of him as an uncle.”

  2

  Michael listened to Tim’s description of the Gray Man’s world with increasing interest.

  It was where they had come from (Tim said), and it was where they had been created. In an important sense, it was the only real home they had or would ever have.

  It was not, he said, necessarily a good place. It was like this world: not distinctly good or bad but a little of both. It was not a Utopia, but who believes in Utopias? You had to take it on its own terms.

  Things were different there.

  History had happened a little differently. Rome and the Roman Church still dominated Europe; America had wo
n its independence and had become a refuge for Europe’s oppressed Protestants. It was not called the United States but the Novus Ordo, the New Order of the Americas, a major military and economic power. Rome had been jealous of the Novus Ordo for two centuries, but now there was a bigger threat: the militant Islamic nations of the Middle East and Africa.

  The Novus Ordo, a heretical nation, was able to experiment with forces the Church wouldn’t touch. Alchemy, kabalistic magic, astrology—it was all very different there, all very real. It was the Americans who first understood that the ability to walk between worlds might exist, that it might be a potent and accessible power. Maybe in the past it had occurred randomly, a wild talent in people who might never suspect they possessed it, who dreamed themselves haphazardly out of the world, or who used it to escape their families or their creditors. Now it was possible to identify those people, bring them together, take this thing to the limit.

  Not necessarily as a weapon—though that implication was there, too—but as research. A learning tool.

  That’s where we came from, Tim said … or at least, that’s where our parents came from.

  Our real parents.

  Michael said, “And the Gray Man.”

  “He’s a failed experiment,” Tim said. “He’s insane.”

  Karen said, “He’s hunting us. He’s been hunting us all our lives. And he killed our parents.”

  They walked along the sea grass on this promontory, the three adults and Michael.

  “Also the girl on the beach,” Michael said. “I saw that. He just pushed her away—like killing a bug.”

  “It was never meant to happen that way,” Tim said quietly.

  “All these years,” Karen said, “hunting us, finding us sometimes… you would think, if he meant to kill us, he would have.”

  Tim said, “I don’t understand all his motives. But we’re maybe not as easy to kill as those others. Our parents trusted him. He was a brother to them. So he could get close without suspicion. None of us ever felt that way.”

  Laura said, “Except you. You did.”

  Tim looked at her quizzically.

  “That night in the ravine,” she said, “in the alley. You talked to him like you knew him. If he had wanted to, Tim, he could have killed us all right then.”

  Tim said, “I think he wanted our trust.”

  “He seemed to have yours.”

  “I never spoke to him after that.”

  “And the things he gave us. Those toys. You know Mama and Daddy still have them stashed in a drawer? And the things he said. I always wondered about that. It was like a curse or an omen or something.”

  “Insanity,” Tim said.

  “You sound so sure of that.”

  “I talked to people,” he said.

  “People in that place—the Novus Ordo?”

  “Important people.”

  “You just waltzed in and had a chat?”

  “I established who I was.”

  “We’re talking about what, a military project of some kind?”

  “Research,” Tim said.

  “And they let you walk out again?”

  “They understood,” Tim said, “that they couldn’t stop me.”

  “And you believed what they told you?”

  “There’s no reason not to.”

  Laura shook her head. “If this is true,” she said, “then they want something. They must. Just like the Gray Man wants something.”

  “I talked to a man called Neumann,” Tim said. “A real flesh-and-blood human being—not a monster. Nothing supernatural. He’s operating what they call the Plenum Project. Sure, of course they want something from us. They need our help. So in a way I’m carrying that message. But, Christ, Laura, there’s more to it than that. It’s home. You understand? It’s a place to belong.” He looked at her intently. “Don’t you miss that? Haven’t you ever wanted that?”

  “If it’s home,” Karen said—thinking now of what Willis had told her—“why did our parents leave?”

  “They were running from Walker, not the Project.”

  “But you said they trusted him. That’s how he killed them.”

  “They were afraid of him. But he was still family. They loved him.” He scuffed a rock down this grassy incline toward the bay. “Hey, it happens, you know. People love people who want to hurt them. It’s possible.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  1

  They dropped Tim off at a BART depot and drove back to the hotel. Time enough to talk again tomorrow. In the meantime there was plenty to think over.

  Laura ordered up room service and Michael occupied the big chair by the window, ignoring a club sandwich, picking out barely audible chords on the Gibson guitar he’d carried across the country and farther. It was pretty obvious to Michael—listening to his aunt and his mother trying to sort all this out—that the appearance of Tim had thrown them for a loop. It wasn’t what they’d expected.

  Laura said, “He’s not telling the truth. Or all of the truth.”

  “It’s been a long time,” Karen said. “It’s hard to judge.”

  “Hard for you, maybe. I always could tell when Timmy was fibbing.”

  “He’s not a child anymore.” “But he’s still Tim.”

  The talk went on like this. Michael finished his sandwich and went down the hall for a Coke. When he came back his mom was saying, “It depends what he wants from us, doesn’t it?”

  “He wants us to go back there with him,” Laura said, “to that place—the Novus Ordo.”

  “He hasn’t said that.”

  “He will.”

  And Michael said, “Maybe we should listen to him.”

  The two women turned their heads as if they had forgotten he was here. Michael took another sip of the Coke and said, “The way you describe him, he sounds all right. I mean, he didn’t get along at home—but under the circumstances who would? And he didn’t give up. He had the talent and he followed it where it took him. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”

  Laura shook her head. “You don’t know him, Michael. You didn’t live with him. He hated Daddy—and maybe even the rest of us—in a way that wasn’t healthy. I don’t think that kind of hate can just evaporate.”

  “At least he wasn’t afraid.”

  “Not the way we were afraid,” Laura said. “Not the same way.”

  He wasn’t afraid of his talent, Michael thought privately, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. He wasn’t beaten into submission and he wasn’t off living in some backwater beach town all these years. Surely that counted for something?

  But he kept the thought to himself.

  2

  Timothy Fauve rode a bus back to his hotel, a good hotel close to the waterfront. He opened the room door with his key and Walker was inside, his big frame stretched out on one of the beds. One arm was crooked back of his head and the gray slouch hat was on his chest. He looked up at the sound of the door. “Hello, Tim,” he said.

  Tim eased the door shut behind him. “I didn’t know you had a key.”

  “I don’t need one.”

  Tim smiled shakily. “I guess not.”

  He switched on the lights and dropped into a chair. Walker wanted something. Or else Walker was checking up on him. He regarded Walker in the dimness of the room with a mixture of gratitude and uneasiness. He loved Walker, but Walker was very demanding.

  The Gray Man said, “You talked to them.” “Yes.”

  “Did they listen?”

  “I think so. I think they have some doubts. That was pretty obvious. But they’ll come around.”

  “And Michael?”

  “I think he’s interested.”

  “That’s what matters,” Walker said.

  “But it won’t be easy,” Tim ventured. “They’re afraid of you. They know a few things.”

  Walker sat up. “What things?”

  “How you killed Julia and William.”

  “We told you about that,” Walker reminded
him.

  “Of course. But the way Karen described it… it seemed worse.”

  Walker was standing now. He was a big presence in the room. His back was to the window and he was a shadow, looming over Tim.

  “You understand,” Walker said, “it wasn’t what I wanted to do. They had weapons … I reacted the only way I could.”

  “Karen didn’t say anything about weapons.”

  “Karen wasn’t there.” Walker looked concerned. “We talked about this. I acknowledged that it was a mistake. If I could have avoided it, I would have. But we were less experienced then.”

  “There was something else,” Tim said, wondering whether he was wise to carry on with this, but wanting an answer. “They mentioned a little girl—a beach in some California town—”

  Walker’s frown deepened. “What are you saying —that they have doubts, or that you do?”

  “I’m just reporting. I thought you should know.”

  “But it troubles you?”

  “Maybe a little. Say it raises a question.”

  “Were you on that beach?”

  “No,” Tim said hastily.

  “I won’t claim I’ve never done anything I regret. But it was a cusp, that moment on that beach. I was concentrating on Michael. And he was close … it might have been finished then, I might have brought him home. What I did was a reflex. It was instinctive.”

  “Still,” Tim said. “A child…”

  “I wonder what you would have done in the same situation.”

  Tim lowered his head.

  “I know what I am,” Walker said. “I acknowledge it. I live with it.”

  He put his big hand on Tim’s shoulder.

  “If I commit a sin,” Walker said, “I atone for it. You remember how it was when I found you?”

  But it was impossible to forget. He had been in a fleabag hotel in the Mission District—the same one his sisters had visited today—and he had weighed maybe a hundred and twenty pounds. He did day labor when he needed money and he drank Tokay and peach brandy and ate Kraft Dinners alone in his room, when he remembered to eat at all. Payday meant booze or cheap sex or maybe, very, very occasionally, a spoon of heavily cut heroin—Tim had been chipping on and off since ’74, when an unemployed Detroit shift worker showed him how. Just recently, though, he had been doing up more often than he liked, the beginning of a habit he could not afford, and he was sick more often than not; he skimped on the Kraft Dinners. His weight was very bad for somebody his size. Soon it would interfere with the labor he was able to pick up, and without that trickle of money he would be in the street —he would be sleeping on the sidewalk. And that was bad, because Tim had learned that this was, ironically, the best of all possible worlds; he had opened many doors in his time but never to a place he wanted to live. Cold, cloistered, ugly worlds mainly. To fail here was therefore to fail utterly.