John Katzenbach - The Analyst

Ricky felt foolish. The lawyer’s words were battering him like so many punches in a mismatched prizefight. He took a deep breath, thinking he was stupid to have come to the office, and the smart course was to get out rapidly. He was about to rise, when Merlin added:

“Hell can take many forms, Doctor Starks. Think of me as merely one of them.”

“Come again?” Ricky said. But what he recalled was what Virgil had said in their first meeting, when she told him that she was to be his guide to Hell, and that was where her name came from.

The lawyer smiled. “In Arthurian times,” he said not unpleasantly, with the confidence of a man who has sized up the opposition and found it distinctly lacking, “Hell was very real in the minds of all sorts of folks, even the educated and sophisticated. They truly believed in demons, devils, possession by evil spirits, what have you. They could smell fire and brimstone awaiting the less than pious, thought that burning pits and eternal tortures were not unreasonable outcomes for poorly led lives. Today, things are more complicated, doctor, aren’t they? We don’t really think we’re going to suffer burning tongs and eternal damnation in some fiery pit. So, what do we have instead? Lawyers. And trust me on this, doc, I can quite easily turn your life into something resembling a medieval picture etched by one of those nightmare artists. What you want is to take the easy way out, doc. The easy way. Better check that insurance policy again.”

The door to the conference room swung open right then, and two of the moving men hesitated before entering. “We’d like to get this stuff now,” one man said. “It’s pretty much all that’s left.”

Merlin rose. “No problem. I believe Doctor Starks was just getting ready to leave.”

Ricky, too, stood. He nodded. “Yes. I am.” He looked down at the lawyer’s card. “This is where my attorney should contact you?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” he said. “And you’ll be available…”

“At your convenience, doctor. I think you’d be wise to get this settled promptly. You’d hate to waste your precious vacation worrying about me, wouldn’t you?”

Ricky did not reply, although he noted that he had not mentioned his vacation plans to the lawyer. He simply nodded, then turned and exited the office, not looking back for a second.

Ricky slid into a cab and told the driver to take him to the Plaza Hotel. This was barely a dozen blocks away. For what Ricky had in mind, it seemed the best selection. The cab lurched forward, racing through midtown in that unique manner that city cabs have, accelerating quickly, surging, braking, shifting, slaloming through traffic, making no better and no worse time than a steady, contained, direct path would have. Ricky looked at the cabdriver’s identification shield, which, as expected, was another unfathomable foreign name. He sat back, thinking how hard it is sometimes to get a cab in Manhattan, and wasn’t it intriguing that one was so readily available as he emerged, shaken, from the attorney’s office. Just as if it had been waiting for him.

The cabdriver pulled sharply to the curb outside the hotel’s entrance. Ricky jammed some money through the Plexiglas partition, and exited the cab. He ignored the doorman, and jumped up the stairs and through the revolving hotel doors. The lobby was milling with guests, and he rapidly threaded his way through several parties and tour groups, dodging piles of luggage and scurrying bellhops. He launched himself to The Palm Court. On the far side of the restaurant, he paused, stared at a menu for a moment, then ducked down, hunching over slightly and headed for the corridor, moving at as quick a pace as he could muster without drawing undue attention, more like a man late for a train. He went directly to the Central Park South exit of the hotel, stepping through the doors, back onto the street.

There was a doorman flagging cabs for guests as they emerged. Ricky stepped past one family gathered at the curb. “Do you mind,” he said to a middle-aged father dressed in a Hawaiian print shirt who was riding herd on three rowdy children all between the ages of six and ten. A mousy wife stood to the side, mother-henning the entire brood. “I have a bit of an emergency. I don’t mean to be rude, but…” The father looked at Ricky crazily, as if no family trip all the way from Idaho to New York would be complete without someone stealing a cab from them, and then wordlessly gestured to the door. Ricky jumped in, slamming it behind him as he heard the wife say, “Ralph, what are you doing? That was ours…”

This cabdriver, Ricky thought, at least, wasn’t someone hired by Rumplestiltskin. He gave the driver the address of Merlin’s office.

As he suspected, the moving van was no longer parked out front. The security guard in his blue blazer had disappeared as well.

Ricky leaned forward and knocked on the cabdriver’s partition. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “Take me to this address, please.” He read the new address off the attorney’s card. “But when you get close, stop about a block away, okay? I don’t want to pull up in front.”

The cabdriver silently shrugged and nodded.

It took a quarter hour to battle through traffic. The address on Merlin’s card was near Wall Street. It reeked of prestige.

The driver did as he’d been asked, pulling to the side a block shy of the address. “Up there,” the man said. “You want me to drive?”

“No,” Ricky replied. “This is fine.” He paid and tossed himself from the tight confines of the rear seat.

As he’d half guessed, there was no sign of the moving truck outside the large office building. He looked up and down the street, but saw no sign of the attorney, nor the company, nor the office furniture. He double-checked the address on the card, making certain that he had it correct, then looked into the building and saw there was a security desk just inside the front door. A single uniformed guard, reading a paperback novel, had taken up a position behind a bank of video monitors and an electronic board that showed the elevator operations. Ricky stepped into the building and first approached an office directory printed on the wall. He quickly checked and found no listing for anyone named Merlin. Ricky walked over to the guard, who looked up as he came forward.

“Help you?” he said.

“Yes,” Ricky replied. “I seem to be confused. I have this lawyer’s card, with this address, but I can’t seem to find his listing. He should be moving in today.”

The guard checked the card, frowned, and shook his head. “That’s the right address,” he said, “but we’ve got nobody by that name.”

“Maybe an empty office? Like I said, moving in today?”

“No one told security nothing. And there aren’t any vacancies. Haven’t been for years.”

“Well, that’s strange,” Ricky said. “Must be a printer’s mistake.”

The guard handed back the card. “Could be,” he said.

Ricky pocketed the card, thinking that he’d just won his first skirmish with the man stalking him. But to what advantage, he wasn’t sure.

Ricky was still feeling slightly smug as he arrived at his own building. He was unsure who he’d met in the attorney’s office, wondering whether the man who called himself Merlin wasn’t really Rumplestiltskin himself. This was a distinct possibility, Ricky thought, because he was certain that the man at the core of the situation would want to see Ricky himself, face-to-face. He wasn’t precisely certain why he believed this, but it seemed to make some sense. It was difficult to imagine someone gaining pleasure from tormenting him, without that person wanting to get a firsthand opportunity to see his handiwork.