Some things happen purely by coincidence. A woman whose mortgage is two months past due and whose kid's shoes are too tight because she can't afford new ones wins the New York State Lottery purely by coincidence. And, purely by coincidence, a man decides not to board a plane and learns a couple of hours later that it crashed with no survivors. Another man leaves for work two minutes later than usual, for whatever reason, and is broadsided by a runaway bus that would have been two minutes behind him had he left for work at his usual time.
All by coincidence. Chance. Which, like gravity, is a force that no one understands completely.
And so it was purely by coincidence as well that Ryerson Biergarten was passing Delaware Avenue at 2:15 that morning, after leaving the home of Dr. Craig Gibson. And it was purely by coincidence, too-along with, perhaps, a sudden shift in the direction of the psychic breeze-that he looked to his left to see a young, brown-haired, shabbily dressed girl stumbling through the glow of a streetlight one hundred and fifty feet away.
He braked hard; the Woody pulled to the right; he swung a wide left onto Delaware Avenue and floored the accelerator. Beside him on the passenger's seat, Creosote whimpered in his sleep, as if in protest. Ryerson braked hard again so the Woody came to a halt beside the streetlamp. He jumped from the wagon, looked over its roof in the direction the girl had been moving, between two darkened houses, and called, "Hello. Are you there? Are you all right?"
He heard weeping at a distance, from that direction, and he strained to see past the glow of the streetlamp and into the area between the houses, but his eyesight was pitifully poor at night and he saw little more than the vague, hulking dark shapes of the houses, and a shaft of blacker darkness in between.
The weeping grew softer, as if the girl were moving away from him. "Hello?" he called again. "Are you all right? Answer me, please!" He hesitated going after her in the darkness. Six months earlier, near the end of his investigation of the murders in Rochester, New York, he'd gone after someone else in darkness and it had nearly cost him his life. He had, then, to rely on the sight of the creature he was chasing, to see through its eyes.
"Please!" he called now. "I want to help you."
The source of the weeping seemed to steady at a point midway between the houses. Ryerson saw a light go on in the second floor of the left-hand house; he heard a dog begin to bark somewhere far down the block. Then, screwing up courage against his night blindness, he walked out of the glow of the streetlamp and into the darkness.
A porch light went on at the same house, the front door opened, and a thin woman in her fifties, dressed in a green nightgown and a man's dark suit coat, appeared in the doorway. "What's going on here?" she whispered harshly, as if afraid her own voice would wake the neighbors.
Ryerson, crossing her lawn, said, "There's someone in trouble," and nodded at the area between the houses. "There!"
"Trouble?" the woman said.
"Someone's hurt, I think," Ryerson added.
"Someone's hurt?" the woman said. "Who?"
Ryerson was parallel with the front of the house now. He said, as he vanished into the darkness at the side of the house, "I don't know."
The woman said, "I'm calling the police," and slammed her door shut. A moment later Ryerson heard it being locked and bolted. Then he heard, in front of him, "I didn't mean it." It was the voice of a young girl.
He stopped. He could see nothing ahead of him in the area between the houses. He said, in his most soothing tones, "Please, come into the light."
"No," the girl said.
"Are you hurt?" Ryerson said.
"Yes," said the girl. "I'm hurt," and it was clear from her tone that she was telling the truth.
Ryerson took a couple of steps forward. "Please," the girl said frantically, "stay where you are!"
"Yes," Ryerson said, "I will. I'm sorry." Then, for an instant, he got a picture of himself backlit by the light of the streetlamp a hundred feet behind him. He was seeing through the eyes of this young girl, he realized. A stab of pain shot through his belly; he winced. The pain dissipated. He said, "Where are you hurt? Is it your stomach?"
After a moment the girl answered, as if surprised, "Yes. It's my stomach. God, it hurts!"
Ryerson got an image of himself once again, through her eyes, and the image stayed with him long enough that he was able to gauge from it how far away he was from the girl-too far, he knew, to lunge for her, which would probably be foolish, anyway. He asked, "Are you carrying a weapon?" He wasn't sure why he'd asked it; it seemed a ludicrous question at best.
The girl said, "No. No."
He didn't believe her. As she spoke, the image of a gun settled coldly and suddenly into his head. And just as suddenly, he did not want at all to be there, in the darkness, where his eyes were useless. He said, voice quaking noticeably, "I want to help you; believe me, I want to help you. If you have …" Again a hot pain seared through his belly; again he winced and the pain was gone. He went on, voice quaking once more, as much now from sudden exhaustion as from fear-as if a kind of psychic adrenaline had pushed through him, leaving him light-headed and weak. "If you have a gun pointed at me, I would really appreciate it if you'd point it at something else."
She began to weep again.
And Ryerson realized his mistake. She did not have a gun pointed at him. "My God," he breathed, "you've been shot, haven't you?"
Then, mercifully, from behind him, on the street, he heard the wail of police sirens winding down and the screech of brakes. He glanced around. "Over here!" he called.
~ * ~
Buffalo's Tenth Precinct captain looked very skeptical. He was a balding, cigar-smoking bear of a man named Jack Lucas who was, Ryerson thought, the living amalgamation of all the hard-boiled, hard-bitten, but deep-down-soft-as-butter police captains that TV cop shows had ever produced. Ryerson thought, too, that the man had indeed developed much of his own tough but lovable persona from those same cop-show police captains. Lucas said, letting cigar smoke sift from his mouth as he spoke, "And you say that you're a psychic, Mr. Biergarten?"
Ryerson, the sleeping Creosote in his lap, nodded. "Yes, sir. Actually, I'm a psychic investigator." He was surprised, even a little disappointed, though he'd never have admitted it, that the man hadn't heard of him. He added, "As a matter of fact, I've helped a few police departments from time to time-"
Lucas cut in, "Then they're assholes, Mr. Biergarten, because I don't believe in any of that crap. Everything's got a logical explanation, everything's explainable, everything's real; if you can't touch it or smell it or taste it or fuck it, then by God it doesn't exist!"
Ryerson shrugged, "Yes, I agree, but-"
"How well do you know this girl, this"-he leaned forward, checked the police report on his desk-"this Laurie Drake, Mr. Biergarten?"
Sensing trouble, Ryerson answered, "I don't know her, Captain Lucas. That's the first time I've heard her name, in fact."
Lucas leaned back in his oak desk chair and nodded slowly. "Uh-huh," he sneered, and my granny eats horseshit for breakfast."
Ryerson found himself getting angry. He didn't want to get angry, because when he got angry his psychic ability either shut down altogether or it went haywire. Here, he guessed-in the Homicide Division of the Buffalo Police Department-it would go haywire. The potential flood of input was simply too great, the psychic atmosphere too much in turmoil; he could see himself fighting very hard to, look like something more than a madman. It had happened before, at theaters and shopping malls, and, for some strange and obscure reason, at post offices. He usually won the fight to present an appearance of normalcy, though it left him exhausted for hours. He said tightly, "If there's some charge you want to place against me-"
Again, Captain Lucas interrupted him. "What are we going to charge you with, Mr. Biergarten? Do you have anything in mind? You've been very helpful to us. She was a fugitive, you know. This"-again he checked the police report-"this Laurie Drake. She was a fugitive and you helped us catch her. My God, we should be giving you a commendation, shouldn't we? We should be giving you the key to the fucking city, shouldn't we? So tell me, why do you want us to charge you with something? And why in God's name am I so damned inclined to do it?" He stopped, clearly for effect.
But Ryerson jumped into the gap. "You damned cretin!" he snarled. "I have no more to do with that poor girl than your dung-eating granny does. Now I will repeat, unless you have a specific charge to place against me, I'll accept your thanks and go back to my motel room."
A long, slow, angry grin spread over Lucas's mouth. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his cluttered desk, and, still grinning, popped his cigar into his mouth and rolled it from one side to the other. "Why did you come to Buffalo, Mr. Biergarten?"
Ryerson answered, "That's none of your business."
"I can make it my business."
Ryerson pushed himself abruptly to his feet. "Then do it!" he hissed, and turned to go. A detective appeared at the open door. "Captain Lucas?" he said.
"Yeah," Lucas growled, "what is it, Spurling?"
Spurling said, "They dug the bullet out of that girl's stomach. It's from someone's service revolver, sir."
A name came to Ryerson. It came to him quickly, and there was pain attached to it. And, had he been thinking-had he been able to think beneath the psychic storm that was raging inside his head-he'd have stayed quiet. But, like a burp, the name "Newman" escaped him, and, sighing, he wished to heaven that he could snatch it back; he even thought for one glorious moment that neither Spurling nor Lucas had heard him.
But Spurling was looking wide-eyed at him in astonishment.
And behind him Lucas jumped to his feet and barked, "Get me Gail Newman's address and phone number. Then book this asshole!"
~ * ~
Leonard McGuire, Uniformed Officer, Buffalo Police Department
All his life, Leonard McGuire wanted only to be of service, wanted only to do what he was told to do because that made life easier for him. At home, his father-who had assured him time and again that he, Leonard, "didn't have the brains that God gave geese"-made all of Leonard's decisions for him, because, he assured Leonard, "You certainly can't make them yourself." In school, Leonard, who was not at all stupid, did precisely what he was told by his teachers and made it through twelve grades with hassles to no one. When he joined' the Marines, he was sure that most decisions would be made for him, decisions like when to get up, when and how to eat, when and how to take showers, when, even, to go and find a woman to spend time with. And for a while in boot camp it was true; all his decisions were made for him and he was as contented as a sleeping cat in a pocket of sunlight. But then boot camp ended, he was shipped off to be an electrician's mate aboard an aircraft carrier, and for the first time in his life he was required to make his own decisions. And because he never had, he couldn't. He buckled, snapped, and was discharged. Several years later he was hired by the Buffalo Police Department (thanks to the fact that his father was then a city councilman). His solemn and secret vow was this; never make waves, never seek promotion, do what you are told, do it immediately, enforce the law, be invisible. He thought he had the tools to do this. He thought his career with the Buffalo Police Department was going to be long and peaceful. But soon he found that decisions were required of him every day-Do I let this speeder go with only a warning? Do I draw my gun on this guy whose hand is so close to a knife? Do I pick up that streetwalker or wait for someone from Vice to do it? Do I look the other way when I see someone take two or three newspapers from the automatic vendor on the corner? These questions were tough questions at first. After all, hadn't he been assured over and over again that he didn't have the ability to make his own decisions? Hadn't someone always made decisions for him?
But much to his surprise, he found that he could make decisions, that his mental apparatus was in pretty good working order, in fact. When, for instance, the streetwalker sauntered up to someone's car and leaned over, he knew that all he had to do was cruise by, maybe say, "Take it somewhere else, honey," because it was a victimless crime, after all, and it was Vice's job to regulate it. And so he began to make decisions. Most of them were right; some of them weren't. And after a while the ones that weren't began to turn the tide, began to convince him yet again that, as his father had said, he didn't have the brains that God gave geese. Then each of his decisions became momentous and nerve-jarring. And he longed to have all those decisions made for him, so when he was wrong, someone else would get the blame.
~ * ~
In "The District"
He couldn't believe it, but it was true. At last he had forgotten his name. He smiled at that. It was funny forgetting his name. It was something to laugh about. But he didn't laugh; he hadn't laughed, he guessed, in ten years. He only smiled, took another slug of MD 20/20, and put the bottle on the pavement between his legs. He sensed that one of the thousands of rats that roamed this area was nosing about nearby, so he waved weakly at it, mumbled, "Go way, get outta here!" then picked up the bottle again. He turned his head in the direction of the rat, which was scurrying off into the darkness. "You'll have your chance quick enough!"
John, he thought. Sure, that was his name. Or George. Or Bill. It was something common, anyway.
To his right, he saw the headlights of a car approaching. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the glare, muttered a curse. Moments later the car pulled up on the wrong side of the road, so the driver's side was directly in front of him. The window went down. He heard: "Whatcha doin' there, buddy?"
He answered, "I'm dyin' here. What's it to ya?"
The driver chuckled. "That sounds like a hell of a way to spend an evening. Why don't you hop in, and I'll drive you down to the Salvation Army for the night."
"No thanks. I don't like it there. They make you pray."
"Nothing wrong with prayer, my friend."
"Didn't say there was."
Another chuckle, then the driver's voice grew tighter, more demanding. "Why don't you get in the car anyway?"
"An' why don'tchoo get fucked!"
The driver's door flew open. Moments later, John, or George, or Bill, found himself being thrown into the car's backseat and heading south down Peacock Street. He mumbled a few incoherent curses, vomited, then passed out.
When he awoke thirty minutes later, he had a scant three minutes to live.
They were the most pleasurable three minutes of his life.