Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

No kiss, no hello, no chance to take off his coat and boots; Janice assaulted him with the information the moment he pushed open the door.

“Okay,” Bill said quietly, edging his way around her into the apartment.

“Okay?” she shrilled back.

“Take it easy, baby. Let me take off my coat and make us a drink,” he said soothingly, although the rich winy odor on her breath informed him that she hadn’t waited to be asked. “We can talk about this thing reasonably.”

“Oh, God,” she moaned softly.

“Janice!” Bill’s voice sharpened. “I don’t know what you’re building here. But I want you to know that I do not believe in spooks, ghosts, haunts, auras, Karmas, or any of that crap. There’s got to be a simple, real-life explanation to all this.”

Janice took a quick step back.

“All right, give me one !”

“Okay, off the top of my head. The guy picks his mark, finds when their child was born—the exact minute of birth—then does research on what child died at that very same time. He’s got the whole country to pick his child from. And once he matches them up, he simply steps into the character of the dead child’s father and makes the hit. Reasonable?”

Janice stared back at him without saying a word. He could tell by the softening lines in her face that his explanation had scored with her. Not entirely, but enough to permit him to take her into his arms and kiss her lost and haunted eyes.

“And that’s off the top of my head.” Bill smiled. “Believe me, Janice, we’re gonna get to the bottom of this thing and shake ourselves loose from this creep. I promise.”

He kissed her lips and felt her mouth open and her body lose most of its tension. But for Ivy upstairs, zealously packing her overnight bag for her sleep-over date with the Fed-ericos, Bill might have made love to her then and there.

Russ showed up at six twenty-five with a mountain of sound gear. Mario and Ernie helped him lug it off the elevator and down the corridor to Bill’s apartment.

For the next hour, Bill’s voice intoning, “One, two, three, four, five, six … do you read me? Do you read me? Six, five, four, three, two, one … come in, Russ, do you read me?” filled the apartment and filtered through to Janice, in the kitchen, preparing sandwiches and dressing a large salad of mixed vegetables, lettuce, and tomatoes. Ivy had left on her overnight journey a few minutes before Russ had arrived, toting a much too heavy suitcase and her favorite TV dinner under her arm.

At eight fifteen, Russ, Bill, and Janice were seated around the living room, finishing the last of the sandwiches and beer and surveying their handiwork. The wireless mike hadn’t worked, compelling them to string a wire from the microphone, concealed among the autumn leaves and flowers in the vase next to the sofa, clear across the long living room, hidden under a series of carpets and up the staircase wall to their bedroom, where Russ had set up his Nagra recording equipment. It would be up to Bill to get Hoover to sit in precisely the right spot on the sofa in order to guarantee a usable signal. Janice felt the whole thing was too complicated to work. The men were not discouraged by her skepticism and continued to work with enthusiasm, perfecting the setup, until nine twenty-five, when the phone rang.

Bill lifted the receiver gingerly and said, “Yes?” Then, after a pause; “Okay, send him right up.”

Bill signaled Janice with a quick motion of his finger. She heard Russ’ footsteps ascending the stairs to their bedroom to man his post, and she quickly moved to her own prearranged position at the far end of the sofa adjacent to the one intended for Elliot Hoover. She would be the decoy, Bill reasoned, to lure Hoover to that part of the room.

A pronounced hush settled over the apartment, a conscious, collective stillness such as one experiences in a theater, just as the houselights dim and the curtain goes up.

The doorbell rang.

Janice heard Bill and Hoover mumble something incomprehensible to each other as they walked down the long, narrow hallway toward the living room and assumed it to be some form of salutation. There was a sense of madcap, Janice thought, in the act of two men, undoubted enemies, observing the gentle amenities prescribed by a rigid upbringing—like two opposing generals shaking hands before a slaughter.

Bill’s face was stern, set, ungiving, as he preceded Hoover through the carved doorway and into the living room and attempted to guide him toward the area of the sofa with a slight wave of his arm. But Hoover stopped on the threshold and remained standing, critically surveying the room, his doleful eyes filled with great awe as they slowly took in each detail of the walls and ceiling. The soft pink light of the sconces accented the clear, unlined pallor of his face, lending it a youthful, priestlike placidity.

Bill had turned quickly when he realized that Hoover’s attention was elsewhere and now stood impatiently waiting for their guest to make a move.

“It’s exactly as he described it,” Hoover said in a small, incredulous voice. “The fireplace … the white stuccoed walls … the ceiling paintings”—his eyes found the staircase—“and the staircase, with the carved head newel post.…” He walked to the staircase and placed his fingers on the Viking’s head in a delicate, tentative gesture, as if he were seeking tactile corroboration to confirm the fact that his eyes were not deceiving him. His gaze slowly drifted up the banister to the top of the staircase, and his eyes became pinpoints of curiosity.

“The bedrooms … upstairs”—his voice was hushed with emotion—“three of them … Ivy’s to the left of the stairs.…”

Bill girded himself for action. If Hoover took one step up the stairs, he would charge across the room and tackle the son of a bitch.

But Hoover held his ground and turned his attention to Bill.

“Am I right?” he asked with a smile that Bill decided was smug.

“Umm … yeah …” Bill said, shifting about nervously. “I … er … think we’d better get this thing started, if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly,” Hoover replied, and quickly crossed the room, taking in the slipshod arrangement of carpets concealing the microphone wire. He sat on the sofa where he was meant to sit, and Bill took the seat immediately to his right.

“Uh … I wonder, Mr. Hoover,” Bill began, groping, “if you’d mind going through the … highlights again of what you told us last night? We were kind of hazy, and … you hit us with so much.…”

Hoover thought a moment. “Is there any particular part that you would like me to repeat?”

Janice was sure that Hoover knew he was being recorded.

“No, no,” Bill said. “Just a general summary of things, you know, starting, say, with the death of your wife and child.”

Elliot Hoover took a deep breath and shut his eyes. There was a sense of ritual in the gesture, a rallying of inner strengths to muster support for a time of trial. When he spoke, it was in short, well-organized, fact-filled sentences.

“My wife and child died in a car accident on August 4, 1964. About a year later, I met a woman, a psychic, who told me that my daughter had returned to life, in the body of another person, and was living in New York City. My tendency was to scoff at the notion, but I did find it intriguing. A year later I attended a lecture given by a well-known parapsychologist, and he told me substantially the same thing the woman had a year before, that my daughter was living in the body of a child named Ivy, and he went on to describe her home, which was identical to the environment I now find myself in.”

The simple, direct manner of his delivery gave Janice the chills. He really seemed to believe this.