Montaro Caine A Novel

29





WITH THEIR PLANE SCHEDULED TO DEPART THAT NIGHT, MONTARO Caine called Herman Freich on his cell phone to ask if Kritzman Fritzbrauner might agree to one more meeting before he and Mozelle left for the airport. When Freich called back to report that Fritzbrauner was willing and ready to meet with them, Caine and Mozelle hired a car to drive them back up the mountain to the Fritzbrauner estate. Herman Freich met the car in the driveway and escorted the men to the terrace where Fritzbrauner and Colette awaited them.

“The doctor and I came a long way to seek a partnership with you to explore the issues raised by the existence of these mysterious coins,” Caine told his hosts after they were seated. “Needless to say, we are disappointed that you have decided not to join us and we still hope that one day, you will change your mind about that. But for now, we must live with your decision. We are here again only to ask one small favor. Would you allow me to just look at the coin? It would take no more than a minute.”

“Why, Montaro?” Fritzbrauner asked, looking perplexed.

“I have reason to believe it will answer some questions for me.”

But before Fritzbrauner could formulate a response, his daughter interrupted. “Show it to him,” Colette said. She turned to Caine with a smile, but he acknowledged her intervention on his behalf with only a polite nod; his mind was stuck on the theory that had occurred to him the previous night.

In Fritzbrauner’s study, Caine picked up a magnifying glass that had been lying near an open dictionary on the desk and examined the object. He took only fifteen seconds before he slid the coin across the desk back to Fritzbrauner.

“What did you see?” Colette asked him.

“I saw what I imagined I would see,” said Caine quietly, his eyes filled with wonder. He took a step back from the desk so that he could direct his attention to Fritzbrauner. “Thank you for allowing me to take another look,” he said.

Colette asked Caine what he had seen, but he demurred, unwilling to reveal more.

When they got back into the car, Mozelle looked at Caine curiously. “So now, are you ready to tell me what the heck’s going on?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Caine said. He looked more certain of himself than Mozelle had seen him; for the first time, the doctor could easily see how this man had climbed to the top of Fitzer Corporation and how, even now, he might remain there. Back at the hotel, Caine excused himself to place a call to Dr. Richard Walmeyer. When he finally returned to the suite, Mozelle was waiting at the door.

“So, tell me!” Mozelle said. “What sent you running back to look at the coin? I know you saw something when you looked at it.”

“It was something out of the past,” said Caine. He grabbed the animated hands of the excited older man and held them gently. “Listen to me, Howard. I was right. It’s alive!”

“What is?”

“The coin. It’s alive.”

Mozelle smiled in disbelief. “Explain that to me,” he said.

“Those tiny particles I set aside, the ones that Borceau was working on that disappeared, they’re back in place on the coin. Back in the very same place I dislodged them from. Each and every sliver is back where it used to be.”

“My God, that can’t be true.”

“It can’t be true, but it is,” said Caine. “Son of a bitch! It’s true.”

“My God, but how could it be?”

“I don’t know.”

Caine explained that his conversation with Professor Walmeyer had further confirmed his findings. Twenty-six years earlier at M.I.T., Walmeyer had also dislodged a small number of particles from the coin that was now in Roland Gabler’s possession. “That original coin was sent back to Dr. Chasman, who, in turn, sent it on to you,” Caine told Mozelle. “But we kept the dislodged particles in the lab for weeks until we decided that they were too small to have any further research value. Chasman put them back into his research files. When I called him today, I asked him to see if the particles were still there.”

“Were they?”

“No. They’ve disappeared, too. My hunch is that they’re back in place on the original coin that Roland Gabler has. If my hunch proves correct, we may have to pray for guidance, my friend.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because that would put us at the center of something so monumental we might wish we had never heard of the coins.”

Mozelle’s mouth hung open as if to speak, but no words came. His head bobbed back and forth in a rhythmic nod as if confirming what was in his mind. Yes, ever since he had first seen that coin in the hand of the newborn Whitney Carson, he had felt premonitions, signs of some unimaginable power lying in wait. The son shall hold the coins—he still had no idea what Matthew Perch’s words might mean. He looked up to ask for some answers to all the questions that were swirling through his mind, but Caine was already heading for the bedroom; he was making another phone call, this time to the one person upon whom he had always relied when he needed the sort of guidance that no one else, not even his wife, could provide.

“Grandpa?” Montaro said after he heard P. L. Caine pick up the phone. “I need your help.”

P. L. Caine, at nearly one hundred years old now, was living in Carmel, California, with Rosalind Twichell, a spry young woman of seventy-five. Though his mobility was severely reduced and he had lost a good deal of his hearing, his mind was still sharp and his advice was still sound. After Montaro had left home for Chicago to start college, he had maintained few contacts with his Kansas City past; now, P.L. was the only one who remained. Hearing the elderly man’s voice filled Montaro with such a flood of memories and emotions that he had to struggle to keep his attention focused on the reason he was calling.

“What do you need my help with, son?” P. L. Caine asked now.

“I need you to remember something,” Montaro said.

The old man heard the urgency in his grandson’s words. “What is it?” he asked.

“I need the name of the New York hospital Dad was returning from when his plane crashed; and the name of the doctor who invited him to observe the research he was doing there.”

A long pause ensued.

“I don’t know that, son. I don’t believe I’ll be able to help you,” P. L. Caine began, then added, “But I think I know someone who can.”

“Who?” Montaro asked.

“Your dad,” said P. L. Caine. He told his grandson that against his daughter-in-law’s wishes, he had held on to his son’s briefcase and all his tapes and his notes, suspecting that someday Montaro would want them.

Caine was stunned. “You kept them?”

“I did, my boy; I always knew this day would come,” said P. L. Caine. “Where shall I send them?”

When Caine and Mozelle got back to New York, they went straight to Roland Gabler’s apartment. Gabler was surprised to see them; he explained to them that he had a new “silent partner,” whose involvement meant that he could no longer consider a deal with Caine. But Caine interrupted him.

“Our reason for coming is unrelated to any conditions, new or old,” said Caine. “We’re here for another matter.”

“What matter might that be?” asked Gabler.

“A small favor,” said Caine.

“Which is?”

Caine repeated the same request he had made of Fritzbrauner: “To see the coin.”

“For what possible reason?” Gabler asked.

“Only to see the difference between this coin and the other,” said Caine.

At first, Gabler appeared reluctant, but he could see no reason to deny the request; he always got a special thrill out of displaying the items in his collection, particularly when he was showing them to individuals whom he had outbid or outfoxed to get them. He left the room for a moment, then returned with the coin, which Caine examined briefly with a jeweler’s loupe before handing it back to Gabler without revealing what, if anything, he had seen.

“Well?” Mozelle asked Caine once they were in the elevator heading down to the lobby.

“I was right. They’re there. Back in place.”

Mozelle shook his head. “Particles vanish in Boston and reappear in New York City. Others vanish in New York and reappear in Switzerland. What can it mean?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Caine. “But I’m hoping my grandfather was right.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m hoping my father will be able to help me.”

Back at The Carlyle hotel, Robert Caine’s briefcase was already waiting for Montaro. Mozelle sat with Montaro in the living room of his apartment as he examined its contents, but Montaro barely noticed the doctor’s presence. He seemed to be in another world, one full of painful yet reassuring memories. He took out the objects one by one, slowly, carefully, holding each as if it were even more precious than the mysterious coins that had tantalized him for more than two decades. He studied his father’s precise handwriting, both in his notebooks and on Robert Caine’s Dictaphone cassette tapes, which his father had labeled “Dr. Andrew Banks,” “Thomas Lund,” and “Luther John Doe.”

His hands trembling, Montaro placed the cassette labeled “Luther John Doe” into the Dictaphone and pressed play. P. L. Caine had put new batteries in the machine and it whirred to life. Montaro couldn’t remember the last time he had shed tears and yet he could feel them welling up in his eyes the moment he heard his father’s slightly speeded-up voice, so confident, so engaged, so young—Montaro had already lived nearly twenty years longer than Robert Caine had. As he listened to the tape of his father and Dr. Andrew Banks back at Columbia University, he could almost imagine his dad here in the room with him, speaking to him as if he had just arrived from some world beyond this one.

“I do have a son, and this is for him?”

Montaro swallowed hard as he listened to his father speak.

“That’s very nice of you. And this is very nice, too. What is it?”

And then Montaro heard a voice he did not recognize. It was the voice of a boy, and though it sounded slightly garbled, Montaro could easily make out the words the boy was saying.

“It’s a ship,” the boy said.

When Montaro got hold of Dr. Andrew Banks, the former professor was living in a retirement community outside Key Largo, Florida.

“Oh, yes. I remember your father,” Dr. Banks said over the phone. “Terrible accident that was. Loss of a good man, much too early. What can I do for you?”

“Do you remember Thomas Lund, the patient that you and your staff were studying? You had my dad and some other professors observe him.”

“Ah yes, of course. Tom Lund. What about him?”

“I would like to try to find him, if he’s still alive. And, Luther John Doe, too.”

“I have no idea if either one is alive. But I can make a few calls and see what I come up with.”

Less than an hour later, Dr. Banks reported to Caine that Tom Lund was living in a small town on the outskirts of Philadelphia and Luther John Doe was in a home for the elderly in Connecticut. When Caine was finished with the phone call, he spoke to Mozelle, who had been waiting patiently for him.

“I have to go to Connecticut to talk to somebody who might be able to help us,” he said. “Care to join me?”

“I’m up for it,” Mozelle assured Caine.

“I don’t know how many answers we’ll find,” Caine told the doctor as they left the hotel. “Maybe more than we’re ready for.”