Джеффри Дивер - Nothing Good Happens After Midnight - A Suspense Magazine Anthology

Venn did but there wasn’t much to be seen, framed by the screen’s soft glow. “So?”

“You look different.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I’m talking about on the inside. That’s what I see. Just one more test left.”

“Where should I go?”

“Your favorite number is thirteen.”

Venn suddenly felt hot, almost feverish. “How did you know—?”

“Your mother’s name was Carol. You were with her when she died, before they came and took you away.”

Venn could feel the sweat soaking through his shirt, gluing his jeans to his legs.

“Thirteen Carol Street.”

Five miles from here via Harlem River Drive in what was commonly known as Spanish Harlem. Not the best of neighborhoods but not the worst either.

“Then what?”

“You’ll know when you get there. You’ll need to take a cab.”

And five more fresh twenties popped out of the cash dispenser, followed by his ATM card.

Cabs normally didn’t cruise this part of town much, but he was able to hail one almost immediately.

“Thirteen Carol Street,” he told the driver.

The guy behind the wheel, fat unlit cigar hanging from the side of his mouth, cocked a quizzical glance his way. “You sure?”

“Thirteen Carol Street,” Venn repeated.

The man shook his head, started the meter and drove off.

It read $31.50 when they got there, plus a $2.50 surcharge — whatever that was. Venn handed the driver two twenties and climbed out at Thirteen Carol Street on the outskirts of Spanish Harlem.

It was one of those walk-in clinics, open twenty-four hours a day, a security guard manning the entrance behind the thickest glass Venn had ever seen. The man didn’t look very formidable and held the door open for Venn’s approach.

The waiting area was packed, not a seat to be had. Venn was surprised to see parents with young children plentiful in attendance, including several infants which explained the diaper stench he caught a whiff of on his way to the reception counter. The waiting area was quiet, all voices muffled, and a pair of wall-mounted televisions muted, with the closed-captioning scroll running at the bottom of both screens.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist, a large African-American woman with basketballs for breasts, whose nametag identified her as THELMA, asked him from behind the counter.

“Actually,” Venn started, “I think I’m here to help you.”

“Come again?”

Venn swept his gaze across the waiting area, hoping whoever the ATM machine had sent him to aid this time would magically appear. “I’m here to help somebody.”

“Who?”

Venn shrugged. “I don’t know. I will,” he added, flashing back to the first two times, “but I don’t know now. Any ideas?”

“Of somebody you can help?”

He nodded.

“This is a free clinic, Sweet Cheeks. You see what it looks like now? That’s the way it is all day and all night. So you want to know if there’s somebody you can help? There’s a whole lot of somebodies, starting with yours truly because I haven’t had a break in six hours and I’ve got two aides out with the flu.” The woman leaned forward, her breasts bouncing in perfect unison. “So what are you doing for the next few hours?”

Venn finally left after three, exhausted from the non-stop chores Thelma had assigned him. He shelved supplies, counted inventory, helped patients in and out of wheelchairs, cleaned exam rooms, took down personal information on a clipboard he wore chained to his belt. It kept flapping against his hip, but at least he wouldn’t lose it. He even comforted some kids whose parent was being treated inside, got the third wall-mounted television to work, and even found two of the long-missing remotes hidden beneath or between couch cushions. The pace never let up and Venn’s head was hammering when he finally ran out of gas.

“I have to go now,” he told Thelma, feeling guilty but eager to return to the ATM machine.

“On one condition, Sweet Cheeks,” she said to him.

“What’s that?”

“You promise to come back tomorrow. Gonna be an especially busy day. You can count on that.”

“Why?”

“Because every day here’s an especially busy one.” She smiled widely. “You get yourself home safe, pretty boy, and make sure to get your ass back here tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Venn said, actually looking forward to it.

“Promise?”

“Pinky swear.”

He took another cab from East Harlem back to the ATM machine’s general address, needing to direct the driver along the final stretch since he didn’t have a street number. Another forty bucks blown would leave him twenty plus the few singles in his pocket with which he’d started the night. He had no idea what the machine had in store for him next, but he couldn’t wait to find out.

“You sure we got the right place, kid?”

“I... think so.”

Everything else looked right, but the ATM was nowhere to be seen. He tightened his focus through the flickering street lights, finally fixing on the relic of a phone booth with its spider webbed glass.

But there was no ATM machine inside.

“Let me off here,” he told the driver absently, putting two twenties into the transfer and twisting it toward him. “Keep the change.”

The cab drove off and Venn turned his attention back to the phone booth, as if the ATM might reappear now that he was alone. It didn’t.

Venn approached the phone booth, folding open the door for some sign the machine had ever been here in the first place, but there was nothing other than street refuse, old fliers and post-its that had collected inside courtesy of the wind. He walked back to the subway stop at 207th and Broadway, dog tired with twenty-two dollars to his name and a promise to return to the free clinic the next day.

The morning’s first light was showing when he dropped into the darkness of the station. He bought his ticket and boarded the train that thundered into the station just as he reached the platform. He sat down and squeezed his eyes closed, too tired to even try to make sense of the evening’s events. He massaged the lids and manually pried them open.

To find the same guy from earlier in the night seated across from him again. Same seat, same suit, same shoes. Staring right at him.

“Long night?”

Venn nodded. “I’ll say.”

“Me, too. Lots of work at night.”

“How’s that?”

“You should know,” the man said, leaving it there.

“The ATM machine...”

The man remained silent.

“You?”

The man said nothing, regarding his shoes more than Venn.

The train slid into the next station, aglow in the lights radiating from the platform. The man rose to disembark, stopping before Venn on his way to the door.

“Oh, you must have dropped this earlier,” he said, extending something that looked like a credit card toward him. “Glad I got the chance to return it to you in person.”

Venn took the card in his grasp. “What happens now?”

The man’s expression flirted with a smile. “You’ll know when you get there.”

Venn glanced down at the Columbia University student ID he was holding with his picture on it. A chill coursed through him. The world seemed to tilt one way and then the other, as the subway train doors whooshed open.

“Hey,” he called to the man in the suit. “Hey!”

But the man was already through the door, ambling along the desolate platform and gone from Venn’s sight by the time the train started moving again.

The next day at the Columbia University bursar’s office, Venn found he was fully enrolled, his education supported one hundred percent by financial aid. All the paperwork was somehow in order, the application he’d never filed for admission complete and accurate. He even had a room in a dorm and a meal plan. Nobody seemed to know who he was but he didn’t know them either. What he did know was that his closet and drawers were full of clothes that were his size and fit perfectly. First time in his life he had more than three sets, so many choices he didn’t know what to change into first.