Dean Koontz - From the Corner of His Eye

He had already reviewed twenty-four thousand names, finding no Bartholomew, putting red checks beside entries with the initial B instead of a first name. A slip of yellow paper marked his place.

Opening the directory to the marker, he found a card tucked between the pages. A joker, with BARTHOLOMEW in red block letters.

This was not the same card he'd found at his bedside, under two dimes and a nickel, on the night following Naomi's funeral. He had torn that one and had thrown it away.

No mystery here. No reason to leap to the ceiling and cling upside down like a frightened cartoon cat.

Evidently, last evening, prior to keeping a dinner date with Victoria, when the taunting detective had illegally entered Junior's house and placed another quarter on the nightstand, he had seen the directory open on the kitchen table. Deducing the meaning of the red check marks, he inserted this card and closed the book: another small assault in the psychological warfare that he'd been waging.

Junior had made a mistake when he smashed the pewter stick into Vanadium's face after the cop was already unconscious. He should have bound the bastard and attempted to revive him for interrogation.

Applying enough pain, he could have gotten cooperation even from Vanadium. The detective had said he'd heard Junior fearfully repeat Bartholomew in his sleep, which Junior believed to be true, because the name did resonate with him; however, he wasn't sure he believed the cop's claim to be ignorant of the identity of this nemesis.

Too late for interrogation now, with Vanadium bludgeoned into eternal sleep and resting under many fathoms of cold bedding.

But, ah, the heft of the candlestick, the smooth arc it made, and the crack of contact had been as hugely satisfying as any home-run swing that had ever won a baseball World Series.

Munching an Almond Joy, Junior returned to the phone book, with no choice but to find Bartholomew the hard way.

ONWARD THROUGH THIS Monday, January 17, this momentous day, when the ending of one thing is the beginning of another.

Under a sullen afternoon sky, in the winter-drab hills, the yellow-and-white station wagon was a bright arrow, drawn and fired not from a hunter's quiver but from that of a Samaritan.

Edom drove, happy to assist Agnes. He was happier still that he didn't have to make the pie deliveries alone.

He wasn't required to torture himself in search of pleasant conversation with those they visited. Agnes had virtually invented pleasant conversation.

In the passenger's seat, Barty was cushioned in his mother's arms. At times, the boy cooed or gurgled, or made a wet chording sound.

As yet, Edom had never heard him cry or even fuss.

Barty wore elfin-size, knitted blue pajamas complete with feet, white rickrack at the cuffs and neckline, and a matching cap. His white blanket was decorated with blue and yellow bunnies.

The baby had been an unqualified hit at their first four stops. His bright, smiling presence was a bridge that helped everyone cross over the dark waters of Joey's death.

Edom would have judged this a perfect day-except for the earthquake weather. He was convinced that the Big One would bring the coastal cities to ruin before twilight.

This was different earthquake weather from that of ten days ago, when he'd made the pie deliveries alone. Then: blue sky, unseasonable warmth, low humidity. Now: low gray clouds, cool air, high humidity.

One of the most unnerving aspects of life in southern California was that earthquake weather came in so many varieties. As many days as not, you got out of bed, checked the sky and the barometer, and realized with dismay that conditions were indicative of catastrophe.

With the earth still tenuously stable beneath them, they arrived at their fifth destination, a new address on Agnes's mercy list.

They were in the eastern hills, a mile from Jolene and Bill Klefton's place, where ten days ago, Edom had delivered blueberry pie along with the grisly details of the Tokyo-Yokohama quake of 1923.

This house was similar to the Kleftons'. Though stucco rather than clapboard, it had gone a long time without fresh paint. A crack in one of the front windows had been sealed with strapping tape.

Agnes added this stop to her route at the request of Reverend Tom Collins, the local Baptist minister whose folks unthinkingly gave him the name of a cocktail. She was friendly with all the clergymen in Bright Beach, and her pie deliveries favored no one creed.

Edom carried the honey-raisin pear pie, and Agnes toted Barty across the neatly cropped yard, to the front door. The bell push triggered chimes that played the first ten notes of “That Old Black Magic,” which they heard distinctly through the glass in the door.

This humble house wasn't where you expected to hear an elaborate custom doorbell-or even any doorbell at all, since knuckles on wood were the cheapest announcement of a visitor.

Edom glanced at Agnes and said uneasily, “Strange."

“No. Charming,” she disagreed. “There's a meaning to it. Everything has a meaning, dear."

An elderly Negro gentleman answered the door. His hair was such a pure white that in contrast to his plum-dark skin, it appeared to glow like a nimbus around his head. With his equally radiant goatee, his kindly features, and his compelling black eyes, he seemed to have stepped out of a movie about a jazz musician who, having died, was on earth once more as someone's angelic guardian.

“Mr. Sepharad?” Agnes asked. “Obadiah Sepharad?"

Glancing at the plump pie in Edom's hands, the gentleman replied to Agnes in a musical yet gravelly voice worthy of Louis Armstrong: “You must be the lady Reverend Collins told me about."

The voice reinforced Edom's image of a bebop celestial being.

Turning his attention to Barty, Obadiah broke into a smile, revealing a gold upper tooth. “Something here is sweeter than that lovely pie. What's the child's name?"

“Bartholomew,” said Agnes.

“Well, of course it is."

Edom observed, amazed, as Agnes chatted up their host, going from Mr. Sepharad to Obadiah, from the doorstep to the living room, the pie delivered and accepted, coffee offered and served, the two of them pleased and easy with each other, all in the time that it would have taken Edom himself to get up the nerve to cross the threshold and to think of something interesting to say about the Galveston hurricane of 1900, in which six thousand had died.

As Obadiah lowered himself into a well-worn armchair, he said to Edom, “Son, don't I know you from somewhere?"

Having settled on the sofa with Agnes and Barty, prepared to serve comfortably in the role of quiet observer, Edom was alarmed to have suddenly become the subject of conversation. He was also alarmed to be called “son,” because in his thirty-six years, the only person ever to have addressed him in that fashion had been his father, dead for a decade yet still a terror in Edom's dreams.

Shaking his head, his coffee cup rattling against the saucer, Edom said, “Uh, no, sir, no, I don't think we've ever met till now."

“Maybe. You sure do look familiar, though."

“I've got one of those faces so ordinary you see it everywhere,” said Edom, and decided to tell the story of the Tri-State Tornado of 1925.

Perhaps his sister intuited what Edom was about to say, because she didn't let him get started.

Somehow, Agnes knew that in his younger days, Obadiah had been a stage magician. Artlessly, she drew him out on the subject.

Professional magic was not a field in which many Negroes could find their way to success. Obadiah was one of a rare brotherhood.

A music tradition was deeply rooted in the Negro community. No similar tradition in magic existed.