F. Paul Wilson - Haunted Air

"No. Of course not."

Not mad... but it had stung. Maybe that was why he'd gone off about the "whitest black guy" remark.

Lyle didn't kid himself. He was a flimflam man, but he wasn't a cad. He didn't go after people who couldn't afford it-no poor widows and the like. His fish were bored heiresses, nouveau riche artists, yuppies looking for a New-Age thrill, and dowagers seeking to contact their dead poodles in the great boneyard of the Afterlife. They'd probably spend the money on a trip to Vegas or another fur coat or a diamond or the latest status toy-like so many of his clients who never eat at home but simply must have a Sub-Zero refrigerator in their kitchen.

"And why keep this licked TV a CIA secret?"

"Our business. Not his."

More than that, he didn't want to distract Jack with any of their side problems. Keep him focused on getting Madame Pomerol out of their lives, that was the most important thing.

"Take a look."

He led Charlie to the entryway of the room and stopped. He let him see the basketball game that was running on the set.

"Yo, it stopped playing the Cartoon Network. What you do?"

"Nothing. It switched on its own." He watched his brother's face. "Okay. You spotted that. What else do you see?"

His gaze lowered to the floor. "All kinda circuit boards and junk." He glanced at Lyle. "You been messin' with my stuff?"

Lyle shook his head. "That's all from inside the set."

"Inside?"

"Uh-huh. I took it apart after you left. Damn near cleaned out the box. Practically nothing but the tube left in there, but it keeps on running. Still unplugged, by the way."

He saw Charlie's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "You messin' wit' me now, ain't you."

"Wish I were."

Lyle had had most of the day to adjust to the craziness of their TV, but watching it still gave him a crawly sensation in his gut.

"Hey," Charlie said slowly, staring at the screen. "Who that playing?" He stepped closer. "That look like... it is-Magic Johnson with the Lakers."

"You finally noticed."

"What you got on-Sports Classics?"

Lyle handed him the remote. "Flip around the channels. See what you get."

Charlie did just that, and wound up on CNN where a couple of talking heads were discussing Irangate.

"Irangate? Whuzzat?"

"Something that happened when you were too young to care." Lyle barely remembered it himself. "Keep surfing."

Next stop was a close-up of a big-haired blonde crying so hard her make-up was running down her cheeks.

Charlie's eyes widened. "Ain't that...? What's her name?"

"Tammy Faye Baker," Lyle said. He'd known what to expect, but even so, his mouth was growing drier by the minute. "Keep going."

Then came a football game. "Hey, the Giants. But that look like snow on the sidelines."

"It is," Lyle said. "And check out the quarterback."

"Simms? Simms ain't played for..."

"A long time. Keep going."

He picked up speed, flashing through a news show where the Bork nomination was being discussed, then to a review of Rain Man, a Dukakis-for-President ad, and then two dreadlocked guys prancing around on MTV.

"Milli Vanilli?" Charlie cried. "Milli Vanillil This is like Trek, man. We in some kinda timewarp or somethin'?"

"No, but the TV seems to be. Everything showing on that tube comes from the late eighties."

Lyle stood with his brother and watched Milli Vanilli swing their plaits and lip-synch "Girl, You Know It's True," but he heard next to nothing. His mind was too busy rooting through everything he had learned or experienced in his thirty years to find an explanation.

Finally Charlie said, "Now do you believe me? We haunted."

Lyle refused to board that train. Had to quell this queasy, uneasy buzz in his gut and stay calm, stay rational.

"No. Crazy as all this seems, there's got to be a rational explanation."

"Will you give it up! You always laughing at the sitters who believe any fool thing we throw at them. You call them compulsive believers, but you just like them."

"Don't talk like a fool."

"It's true. Listen yo'self! You a compulsive nonbeliever! If it don't fit with how you want things, you deny it, even when it smacks you upside the head!"

"I don't deny that this TV is running without power or cable and showing stuff from the eighties. I'm just not jumping right off the bat to some supernatural explanation, is all."

"Then why don't we haul it to some scientists and have them look at it and see what they can come up with?"

Some scientists... what did that mean? Where do you find "scientists"?

"I'll look into it in the morning."

"You do that," Charlie said. "I don't wanna squab. I'm steppin' off. Gonna do some reading."

"On ghosts?"

"No. The Good Book."

As Lyle watched Charlie head for the upstairs, he almost wished he had something like that to comfort him.

But all he had was an impossible TV.

8

Jack made good time driving downtown. He wanted the car along in case Bellitto took off in a cab. He found Eli Bellitto's antique store in the western reaches of Soho. His Shurio Coppe occupied the ground floor corner of an old triple-decker ironclad that had seen better days. A couple of the cast-iron columns on the facade looked as if they were coming loose from the underlying bricks. Odd to see an ironclad here; most of them were further east.

Still in his Bob Butler outfit and mullet wig, Jack wandered up to the store's main front window. Under the elaborate gold-leaf script of "Shurio Coppe" was the phrase, "Curious Items for the Serious Collector." Holding center court in this window was a large stuffed fish, a four-foot sturgeon with hooded brown eyes, suspended on two slim wires so that it looked as if it were floating in midair. The thick down of dust on its scales said that it had been swimming in that window for a good long time.

Jack moved on to the front door and checked the hours card. Eli's brother had been right. Sunday hours were noon to six. Jack checked his watch. Five-thirty now. Why not kill the remaining half hour till closing by browsing the shop? Might find something interesting.

He stepped up to the front door and pushed it open. A bell jangled. A man in the aisle directly ahead looked up.

Here was the brother himself. Jack recognized him from the photo Edward had given him: Eli Bellitto. At six feet he looked sturdier in person, and the photo had missed his cold dark eyes. He wore a perfectly tailored three-piece charcoal gray business suit with a white shirt and a striped tie. With his sallow skin, high cheekbones, dark brown hair-dyed?-and receding hairline he reminded Jack of Angus Scrimm. Sure as hell looked nothing like his brother. Edward had said they had different mothers, but Jack wondered if they might have different fathers as well. Maybe somebody's mother had fooled around with the local peat cutter, or whoever straying Dublin wives might have fooled around with sixty years ago.

"Good evening," Eli Bellitto said. "Can I help you?"

His voice surprised Jack. A trace of an accent, but not Irish. He remembered that Edward had said they were raised apart. Maybe in different countries?

"Just browsing," Jack said.

"Go right ahead. But please be aware we close promptly at six and-" As if on cue, a number of clocks began to chime. The man pulled a pocket watch from a vest pocket and popped open the cover. He glanced at it and gave Jack a thin-lipped smile. "Exactly half an hour from now."

"I'll watch the clocks," Jack said.

On the other side of the store he saw a heavyset older woman with a loud voice and a tragic resemblance to Richard Belzer giving instructions to a younger red-haired man as she guided him through the store, pointing out price tags.

New help, Jack guessed.

He turned away and meandered among books, plaques, mirrors, dressers, desks, lamps, vases, sculptures of stone and wood, ceramic bowls, china cups, stuffed birds, fish, and animals, clocks of all shapes and vintages, and more, curios ranging from the splendid to the squalid, from Old World to New, Far East to Near, patrician to plebeian, ancient to merely old, exorbitant to bargain priced, Ming Dynasty to Depression Era.