my grandfather was right.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m hoping my father will be able to help me.”
Back at The Carlyle hotel, Robert Caine’s briefcase was already waiting for Montaro. Mozelle sat with Montaro in the living room of his apartment as he examined its contents, but Montaro barely noticed the doctor’s presence. He seemed to be in another world, one full of painful yet reassuring memories. He took out the objects one by one, slowly, carefully, holding each as if it were even more precious than the mysterious coins that had tantalized him for more than two decades. He studied his father’s precise handwriting, both in his notebooks and on Robert Caine’s Dictaphone cassette tapes, which his father had labeled “Dr. Andrew Banks,” “Thomas Lund,” and “Luther John Doe.”
His hands trembling, Montaro placed the cassette labeled “Luther John Doe” into the Dictaphone and pressed play. P. L. Caine had put new batteries in the machine and it whirred to life. Montaro couldn’t remember the last time he had shed tears and yet he could feel them welling up in his eyes the moment he heard his father’s slightly speeded-up voice, so confident, so engaged, so young—Montaro had already lived nearly twenty years longer than Robert Caine had. As he listened to the tape of his father and Dr. Andrew Banks back at Columbia University, he could almost imagine his dad here in the room with him, speaking to him as if he had just arrived from some world beyond this one.
“I do have a son, and this is for him?”
Montaro swallowed hard as he listened to his father speak.
“That’s very nice of you. And this is very nice, too. What is it?”
And then Montaro heard a voice he did not recognize. It was the voice of a boy, and though it sounded slightly garbled, Montaro could easily make out the words the boy was saying.
“It’s a ship,” the boy said.
When Montaro got hold of Dr. Andrew Banks, the former professor was living in a retirement community outside Key Largo, Florida.
“Oh, yes. I remember your father,” Dr. Banks said over the phone. “Terrible accident that was. Loss of a good man, much too early. What can I do for you?”
“Do you remember Thomas Lund, the patient that you and your staff were studying? You had my dad and some other professors observe him.”
“Ah yes, of course. Tom Lund. What about him?”
“I would like to try to find him, if he’s still alive. And, Luther John Doe, too.”
“I have no idea if either one is alive. But I can make a few calls and see what I come up with.”
Less than an hour later, Dr. Banks reported to Caine that Tom Lund was living in a small town on the outskirts of Philadelphia and Luther John Doe was in a home for the elderly in Connecticut. When Caine was finished with the phone call, he spoke to Mozelle, who had been waiting patiently for him.
“I have to go to Connecticut to talk to somebody who might be able to help us,” he said. “Care to join me?”
“I’m up for it,” Mozelle assured Caine.
“I don’t know how many answers we’ll find,” Caine told the doctor as they left the hotel. “Maybe more than we’re ready for.”
30
IT WAS QUITE LIKELY THAT THE SMALL WHITE-HAIRED MAN DID not hear them as they approached. He was a solitary figure, hunched over in his white lawn chair as he sat by an empty pine table; he seemed to be lost inside himself, somewhere between his mind’s eye and his inner ear. He had the aspect of a man preoccupied with his own thoughts, out of touch with the reality surrounding him. As Montaro Caine and Dr. Howard Mozelle strode urgently toward him on the late summer grass, the aged man signaled no awareness of their advancing presence.
The sky was overcast and the air was muggy. Swirling rain clouds were randomly rearranging themselves into threatening configurations. The outdoor recreational area of the Oakville Estates retirement facility was otherwise deserted. Even the crickets in the nearby grass remained silent and still. As Mozelle and Caine approached the man with the twisted chin and withered right leg, they shared a quick, meaningful glance. Then, Montaro’s firm voice shattered the silence.
“Hello, Luther,” he said.
Startled, the old man wheeled to look up at the faces peering down at him. He squinted, but for a moment nothing seemed to register. He frowned, puzzled. A long, cautious moment passed. Then his eyes lit up. As