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  As soon as she was out of sight Alicia grabbed his arm.

  “She’s changed, Jack.”

  “You should have seen her two months ago.”

  “I can imagine. But inside and out—she’s not the same.”

  Jack didn’t want to hear that.

  “She will be. She’s tough.”

  “I know she is. But get her back to the center if you can. I think it will be good therapy. Holding a newborn might be tough as hell for her at first, but once she gets past that, I think it will do her a world of good.”

  “I’ll do what I can. Nice of you to visit.”

  “After all her trips to the center, it was the least I could do. I would have come sooner but I didn’t want to intrude.”

  And then Gia was back. Jack helped Alicia into her coat and together he and Gia waved good-bye as she hurried up to the top of the block for a cab.

  Jack hitched Gia closer. “What do you think of her idea?”

  “Sounds good, but I don’t think I’m ready. I might drop one of those babies.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Got to get dinner ready.”

  As she moved away he searched the street, looking for a homburg-wearing man with a cane. But the street was empty.

  WEDNESDAY

  1

  “You were right,” Abe said as Jack approached the store’s rear counter. “A stroke. A bad one. He’s still in a coma and might not come out.”

  Jack had called Abe with the bad news yesterday.

  “How do you know?”

  “From his doctor, who else? Just now, before you came in, I was on the phone already.”

  “I thought that kind of information was supposed to be privileged.”

  “It is. But not from a worried son calling all the way from Florida.”

  “I see. No sign of injury or foul play?”

  “Because of what you told me about the missing book I asked just that, and the doctor says no. A spontaneous thing.” Abe shook his head. “A good man. A brilliant man. Such a thing shouldn’t happen to a dog.”

  “Here’s a weird thought: Do you think the book could have caused it?”

  “Your Compendium? How can a book cause a stroke?”

  “Maybe he read something that got him so upset or horrified or whatever that he stroked out.”

  “His doctor—the neurologist who’s taking care of him—said it was a brain hemorrhage.”

  “All right then: Could something in the book have pushed his blood pressure so high he blew out an artery in his head?”

  Abe shrugged. “Me? A lowly merchant? I should know?”

  Jack held up a white paper bag, darker in spots where grease from the contents had soaked through.

  “Figured you’d need some comfort food.”

  Abe’s eyes widened. “From Muller’s?”

  “Where else?”

  Abe wiggled his fingers. “Let me see. Let me see. You brought me an elephant ear? Please say you brought me an elephant ear.”

  Jack had to smile as he deposited the bag on Abe’s pile of morning newspapers. Some people are so easy to please.

  “Got two—one for you and one for me.”

  Abe’s fingers fairly trembled as he pulled the sack open and peeked. He pulled out a flat, oblong donut. Elephant ears from Muller’s weren’t the sugared fried dough usually associated with the name. These were like a flattened cruller, thick-glazed and dusted with some sulfurous yellow powder.

  Abe took a big bite. He closed his eyes and made guttural Muttley noises as he chewed. Parabellum, his parakeet, must have been conditioned to those sounds because a light blue streak swooped out of nowhere and landed on the counter, ready to catch the inevitable crumbs.

  Jack pulled out the other elephant ear and tossed a bit to the bird.

  “’Splain this to a confused old man,” Abe said around a second mouthful. “On some days, rabbit food you bring me; and others—like today—an artery plug. Why?”

  He wasn’t sure. Maybe the prof’s stroke got him thinking that life was too short and too unpredictable to keep denying yourself what you really enjoy. He might feel differently tomorrow, but today had felt like an elephant-ear-for-Abe day.

  Jack shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s a mystery. Like the whereabouts of that damn book.”

  “You keeping after the museum?”

  Jack nodded. “Yeah. Talked to one of the security guys again this morning. They haven’t found it. But one of the maintenance crew didn’t show up today—the one who’d been working on the prof’s floor yesterday. They checked his locker but no book.”

  “Probably not him. Think of all the curios and artifacts a janitor must see around the museum on a regular basis. He should risk his job and whatever else to steal a book?”

  “Not just any book—a one of a kind.”

  “And a maintenance man’s going to know that?”

  Good point, Jack thought, but…

  “The security guy said a funny thing this morning. Said they found a book in the maintenance guy’s locker, but it wasn’t mine. Then he said, ‘Looks like he’s a Kicker.’ Any idea what he was talking about?”

  “Probably means the book they found was Kick.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  Abe’s eyebrows rose. “Really? It’s something of a phenomenon. I saw an article on it in yesterday’s Post. Don’t you read the papers?”

  “Sometimes. A little—usually right here. But I don’t study them like you do.”

  Abe slid off his stool and rummaged under the counter, finally coming up with a tabloid. He thumbed through it, then folded it back and turned it toward Jack.

  “There. Big as life.”

  Jack glanced at the header—Kicking Back with Hank Thompson—and saw a photo of a guy he assumed was the author. Below that was a picture of the book’s cover—

  He snatched the paper from Abe’s hand.

  “Christ!”

  Ice water trickled down his spine as he stared: The word Kick ran across the top, the author’s name along the bottom, and between them…a chillingly familiar insectoid stick figure.

  “Nu?”

  Jack dropped the paper and dug into his back pocket. He pulled out the sheets he’d found on the prof’s desk and unfolded them, then held the figure copied from the Compendium next to the reproduction of the cover.

  The same…exactly the same.

  And again, that feeling of familiarity, of connection.

  “What the hell?”

  2

  “He’s something of a phenomenon,” Abe said as Jack skimmed through the article. “He self-published the book two years ago and sold tens of thousands of copies over the Internet. One of the New York houses picked it up and it’s become a bestseller.”

  “But what is it?”

  The article wasn’t much help. It mentioned the author’s “troubled youth” as if everyone knew about it. And Hank Thompson’s quotes about searching inside for the true inner you and then breaking down the barriers that blocked you from your real self sounded trite.

  “Aldous Huxley said to open the doors of perception.” He laughs. “I dropped out of school in the tenth grade. I know about Huxley through the Doors. Jim Morrison—the Lizard King—has always been a personal hero of mine. But I say, don’t be satisfied with just opening those doors—KICK THEM DOWN!” he shouts in the oratory style that has packed his speaking engagements across the country.

  Jim Morrison was his hero? Jack looked at the picture and figured, Yeah, he must be. With that long, unruly, wavy dark hair, Thompson could be what Morrison would have looked like if he’d survived into his late thirties. Except for the eyes. He lacked Morrison’s piercing dark eyes.

  “Of all the possible people through human history to look up to, he picks Jim Morrison?”

  Abe frowned. “Jim Morrison…who’s Jim Morrison? Is he a customer?”

  “Never mind. Is this guy for real?”

  An Abe shrug. “I should know? Apparently lots of people
think so.”

  “I tell them to KICK down those doors and let in the light—new light, new air, a new world awaits. The future is calling—ANSWER!”

  Jack looked up. “People buy this stuff?”

  “By the ton. Apparently he’s a mesmerizing speaker.”

  Jack read on and stopped at another quote.

  “It is time to separate yourselves from the herd. You know who you are. You know who I’m talking to. You don’t belong with the herd. Come out of hiding. Step away from the crowd. Let the dissimilation begin!”

  “‘Dissimilation.’ That’s a new one.”

  “You should remember it. Adopt it even. It’s what you’ve done with your life already.”

  Jack thought about that. He supposed he had. But he got the feeling Thompson wasn’t talking about living under the radar.

  When I ask him what he has to say about claims that an unusually high percentage of his followers—known as “Kickers”—have criminal records, his face darkens.

  “First off, they’re not ‘followers’ of anyone. When you’re dissimilated you follow your own path. As for the rest—half truths spread by jealous rivals who see me as a threat to their little self-help empires! But their kind of self-help really boils down to helping themselves get rich on other people’s hard-earned money. We have Kickers who are corporate CEOs, housewives and secretaries. I’m not out to accumulate a fortune or start an empire.”

  I press him about the criminal record, because it’s a subject that concerns a lot of people.

  “My message speaks to the disadvantaged as well as the advantaged. If there’s a large number of what some people like to sneer at as ‘lowlifes’ among the Kickers, it’s because I started getting the word out by going to bars and halfway houses and AA meetings and just talking. I’d say my piece, sell a few copies of the book, then move on.

  “I connected with those people. I come from where they come from, and I’ve lived through what they’ve lived through, survived what they survived. No one else speaks to them or for them. They know I care about them and won’t lie to them. And they listen to me because they know I’m a man with a mission.”

  I ask him what that would be.

  “Why, to change the world, of course.”

  Jack looked up: “Jack’s Law: Never trust anyone who wants to change the world.”

  He stared down again at the head shot of Hank Thompson. The same strange figure was either painted or hung on the wall behind him; the way it framed him, a few of its appendages seemed to be jutting from his head. Jack tapped the cover reproduction and then the figure on the Xerox sheet.

  “What is this thing? It looks like a spider.”

  “Two more legs a spider should have. To me it looks like a four-armed man—or woman.”

  “Let’s hope it’s not a woman…”

  Jack remembered the painting of a four-armed goddess—Kali—in the horror-filled hold of a freighter floating off the West Side.

  “The ‘Kicker Man,’ Thompson calls it.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s ancient.”

  Abe frowned. “How so?”

  “Despite promises to the contrary, your professor friend copied this from the Compendium.”

  Abe looked offended. “Oh? You were there when he copied it?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then how do you know?”

  Abe seemed to be taking this personally so Jack explained about their copying one of the pages together. He pointed to the squiggles accompanying the figure.

  “That’s what the original First Age writing looks like when you photocopy it—when it can’t mutate into English or whatever your native language is.”

  Abe frowned. “You’ve told me this before but how do you know it’s true?”

  “To the prof’s eyes it was written in German.”

  “A joke you’re making, right?”

  “I kid you not. The upshot is that this figure is O-L-D. You studied all kinds of ancient languages and stuff with the prof. Ever come across anything like this?”

  Abe shook his head. “Never. But Doctor Buhmann might have. That was maybe why he copied it. Or he’d seen the cover of this guy’s book and wanted to compare them, see how close they were.”

  Jack studied them. “Line for line, they’re damn near identical. Question is, where does a high school dropout come across something like this? Where else can you find it besides the Compendium of Srem?”

  “Yours is maybe not the only copy?”

  Jack gave the counter a shot with the heel of his hand.

  “Damn, I wish I had the book. I’d like to read up on this thing, get the story behind it.”

  “Nu? You care?”

  “Doesn’t it do anything to you?”

  Abe looked confused. “It should do something to me? What already? It’s just a stick figure of a four-armed man.”

  “It doesn’t make you feel…funny inside?”

  “Not at all. The only funny-inside feeling I have is the need for another elephant ear.”

  Jack took one last look at the figure, then refolded the sheets.

  “Got a phone book?”

  “Only yellow.”

  “Fine.”

  Abe reached under the counter, came up with a fat one, and dropped it with a thud on the counter.

  “You’re looking up Muller’s to order a delivery, right?”

  “They don’t deliver. I need info on a PI named Gerhard.”

  Abe shook his head as if to clear it. “He knows about the Compendium?”

  “No, this is another matter. Although, the way things have been going lately, he just might.”

  He had contact information from Christy but wanted a look himself. Under Private Investigators and Detectives he found the Gerhard Agency, and listed under that was Michael P. Gerhard. The address was a “suite 624” on West 20th here in Manhattan, but the 718 area code of the phone number was the same Brooklyn number Christy had given him.

  He pointed to the computer on the counter.

  “Do me a favor and look up Michael P. Gerhard in Brooklyn.”

  Abe’s pudgy fingers flew over the keyboard, then he adjusted his glasses and squinted at the screen.

  “Plenty of Gerhards. No Michael P. but there’s a Gerhard MP on Avenue M.”

  Avenue M ran through a number of Brooklyn neighborhoods.

  “Can we narrow that down a bit?”

  Abe pushed out his lower lip. “Can’t say for sure, but I got a feeling that’s a Flatlands address.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Old uncles I had used to live out there when it was predominantly Jewish. Now it’s predominantly not Jewish.”

  Jack pulled out his cell phone and called the number Abe gave him. After four rings he was shunted to voice mail. He listened to the standard message—“Hi, this is Mike, blah-blah-blah”—and hung up. Then he called the office number and got voice mail again. A more formal message this time: “Hello. You have reached the Gerhard Agency…”

  No question: Same voice both times.

  Jack left a message: “Mister Gerhard, this is Jack—”

  He needed a last name. He glanced around, saw Nike on a shoebox. No. Saw Prince on a racket.

  “—Prince and I wish to engage your services. Please call me as soon as possible. It’s an urgent matter.” He left his Tracfone number.

  There. All he had to do now was wait for his callback, arrange a meet, and convince him to square his accounts with Christy Pickering.

  But while he was waiting, why not check out his “office.”

  3

  Jack hopped the A train down to 23rd, then walked over to the address of the Gerhard Agency. As Christy had said, a mail drop. Jack used a number of them himself, in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, but this one was new to him.

  He peeked through the window of box 624—Gerhard’s “suite” number—and found it crammed with mail. Too bad this wasn’t the drop Jack used a few blocks from here. He was su
re he could wheedle a look at Gerhard’s mail from Kevin, the guy who ran that place. But here, knowing nobody, he wouldn’t even try.

  His cell started to ring. He smiled as he pulled it from his pocket.

  Mr. Gerhard, I presume.

  But no. Abe’s voice came through instead.

  “I just called the hospital. Doctor Buhmann is awake and speaking. Shall we pay a visit?”

  Oh, yeah. He had a few questions he wanted to ask the good professor.

  4

  “One-sixty-one.”

  Jack stared down at Doc Buhmann. He seemed to be fading into his pillowcase. The right side of his face drooped. The thin fingers of his left hand plucked absently at the bedsheet while the right lay limp at his side. Once he’d come to they’d moved him out of intensive care to this semiprivate room. Jack was glad for that. If he never saw the inside of an ICU again it would be too soon.

  “I said, it’s good to see you awake,” Abe repeated.

  The prof gave him a weak, lopsided smile. “Three-twenty-nine.” The words slurred like someone at the end of a long bender.

  Abe looked at Jack across the bed and muttered. “Three-twenty-nine? What’s with these numbers already? I ask him a question, he gives me a number.”

  “Numbers are all he’s said since he came to,” said an accented female voice.

  Jack looked toward the door and saw a heavyset nurse with coffee-colored skin approaching. She stopped at the foot of the bed.

  “Is this usual after a stroke?” Abe said.

  She shook her head. “First time I’ve seen it, but Doctor Gupta didn’t seem too surprised.”

  “That’s his neurologist, right? The one I spoke to. Where is he?”

  “Down the hall. He should be here soon.” She grabbed the small tent made by the prof’s right foot and wiggled it. “Can you feel this, Peter?”

  He gave her a watery stare. “Forty-nine.”

  “See?”

  The prof was obviously responding to questions, but why with numbers instead of words?