Instead, he just got breathed at some more.
The guy was obviously trying to spook him. Fric refused to give the pervert the satisfaction of knowing that he had succeeded.
?What I forgot to ask you is how long I?ll need to hide from this Puck when he shows up.?
The longer he listened to the breathing, the more Fric realized that this had peculiar and disturbing qualities far different from the standard pervert-on-the-phone panting that he?d heard in movies.
?I looked up Moloch, too.?
This name seemed to excite the freak. The breathing grew rougher and more urgent.
Abruptly Fric became convinced that the heavy breather was not a man, but an animal. Like a bear, maybe, but worse than a bear. Like a bull, but nothing as ordinary as a bull.
Up the coiled cord, into the handset, into the ear piece, into Fric?s right ear, the breathing squirmed, a serpent of sound, seeking to coil inside his skull and set its fangs into his brain.
This didn?t seem at all like Mysterious Caller. He hung up.
Instantly, his line rang: Ooodelee-ooodelee-oo.
He didn?t answer it.
Ooodelee-ooodelee-oo.
Fric got up from the armchair. He walked away.
He passed quickly along aisles of bookshelves to the front of the library.
His personal call tone continued to mock him. He paused to stare at the phone in this main reading area, watching as the signal light burned bright with each ring.
Like all the members of the household and the staff who enjoyed dedicated phone lines, Fric had voice mail. If he didn?t pick up by the fifth ring, the call would be recorded for him.
[226] Although his voice mail was currently activated, the phone had rung fourteen times, maybe more.
He circled the Christmas tree, opened one of the two tall doors, and stepped out of the library, into the hall.
At last the phone stopped taunting him.
Fric glanced to his left, then to his right. He stood alone in the hall, yet the feeling of being watched had once more settled over him.
In the library, among the hundreds of tiny white lights strung like stars across the dark boughs of the evergreen, the angels sang silently, laughed silently, silently blew heralds? horns, glimmered, glittered, hung from their halos or harps, dangled from their pierced wings, from their hands raised in blessing, from their necks, as if they had broken all the laws of Heaven and, executed in one great throng, had been condemned forever to this hangman?s tree.
CHAPTER 34
ETHAN DRANK SCOTCH WITHOUT EFFECT, FOR his metabolism seemed to have been dramatically accelerated by the experience of his own death twice in one day.
This hotel bar, with its crowd of self-polished glitterati, was a favorite of Charming Manheim?s, a haunt from the early days of his career. In ordinary circumstances, however, Ethan would have chosen a joint without this flash, and with a comforting soaked-in-beer smell.
The few other bars familiar to him were frequented by off-duty cops. The prospect of running into an old friend from the force, on this evening of all evenings, daunted him.
During just one minute of conversation with any brother in the badge, regardless of how artfully Ethan tried to wear a happy face, he?d reveal himself to be deeply troubled. Then no self-respecting cop would be able to resist working him, either subtly or obviously, for the source of his worry.
Right now he didn?t want to talk about what had happened to him. He wanted to think about it.
Well, that wasn?t entirely true. He would have preferred denial to thought. Just forget it had happened. Turn away from it. Block the memory and get drunk.
[228] Denial wasn?t an option, however, not with the three silvery bells from the ambulance glimmering on the bar beside his glass of Scotch. He might as well try to deny the existence of Big Foot with a Sasquatch sitting on his face.
So he had no choice but to dwell on what had happened, which led him immediately into an intellectual dead end. He not only didn?t know what to think about these weird events, he also didn?t know how to think about them.
Obviously he had not been shot in the gut by Rolf Reynerd. Yet he intuitively knew the lab report would confirm that the blood under his fingernails was his own.
The experience of being run down in traffic and broken beyond repair remained so vivid, his memory of paralysis so horrifically detailed, that he could not believe he had merely imagined all of it under the influence of a drug administered without his knowledge.
Ethan asked the bartender for another round, and as the Scotch splashed over fresh ice into a clean glass, he pointed to the bells and said, ?You see these??
?I love that old song,? the bartender said.
?What song??
? ?Silver Bells.? ?
?So you see them??
The bartender cocked one eyebrow. ?Yeah. A set of three little bells. How many sets do you see??
Ethan?s mouth cracked into a smile that he hoped looked less demented than it felt. ?Just one. Don?t worry. I?m not going to be a danger on the highway.?
?Really? Then you?re unique.?
Yeah, Ethan thought, I?m nothing if not unique. I?ve died twice today, but I?m still able to handle my booze, and he wondered how quickly the bartender would snatch the drink from him if he spoke those words aloud.
[229] He sipped the Scotch, seeking clarity from inebriation, since he couldn?t find any clarity in sobriety.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, still cold sober, he caught sight of Dunny Whistler in the back-bar mirror.
Ethan spun on his stool, slopping Scotch from his glass.
Threading his way among the tables, Dunny had almost reached the door. He was not a ghost: A waitress paused to let him pass.
Ethan got to his feet, remembered the bells, snatched them off the bar, and hurried toward the exit.
Some patrons were visiting from table to table, standing in the aisles. Ethan had to resist the urge to shove them aside. His ?Excuse me? had such a sharp edge that people bristled, but the expression on his face at once made them choke on their unvoiced reprimands.
By the time Ethan stepped out of the bar, Dunny had vanished.
Hurrying into the adjacent lobby, Ethan saw guests standing at the registration desk, others at the concierge desk, people walking toward the elevator alcove. Dunny wasn?t among them.
To Ethan?s left, the marble-clad lobby opened to an enormous drawing room furnished with sofas and armchairs. There, guests could attend high tea every afternoon; and at this later hour, drinks were being served to those who preferred an atmosphere gentler than that in the bar.
At a glance, Dunny Whistler couldn?t be seen among the crowd in the drawing room.
Nearer, to Ethan?s right, the revolving door at the hotel?s main entrance was slowly turning to a stop, as though someone had recently gone in or out, but its quadrants were deserted now.
He pushed through the door, into the night chill under the roof of the porte-cochere.
Sheltering their charges with umbrellas, the doorman and a busy squad of parking valets escorted visitors to and from arriving and [230] departing vehicles. Cars, SUVs, and limousines jostled for position in the crowded hotel-service lanes.
Dunny wasn?t standing with those who were waiting for their cars. Nor did he appear to be hurrying through the downpour in the company of any of the escorts.
Several Mercedes in various dark colors idled among the other vehicles, but Ethan was pretty sure none of them was Dunny?s wheels.
The ring of his cell phone might not have been audible above the chatter of the people under the porte-cochere, the car engines, and the hiss and sizzle of the drizzling night. Set for a silent signal, however, it vibrated in a jacket pocket.
Still surveying the night for Dunny, he answered the phone.
Hazard Yancy said, ?I?ve got to see you right now, man, and it?s got to be somewhere the elite don?t meet.?