of Charlie Jacobs’s secret electricity, I had no doubt), and I could see some repairs had been made, but they felt haphazard. All the lights worked and the floorboards didn’t creak, but the air of desertion was hard to miss. The Snowe Suite was at the end of the corridor, and the view from the spacious living room was almost as good as that from Skytop, but the wallpaper was waterstained in places, and in here a vague aroma of mold had replaced the lobby’s smell of floor wax and fresh paint.
“Mr. Jacobs would like you to join him for dinner in his apartment at six,” Rudy said. His voice was soft and deferential, but he looked like an inmate in a prison flick—not the guy who plans the breakout, but the death-row enforcer who kills any guards who try to stop the escapees. “Will that work for you?”
“It’s fine,” I said, and when he left, I locked the door.
• • •
I took a shower—the hot water was abundant, and came at once—then laid out fresh clothes. With that done and time to kill, I lay down on the coverlet of the queen-size bed. I hadn’t slept well the night before, and I can never sleep on planes, so a nap would have been good, but I couldn’t drift off. I kept thinking about Astrid—both as she’d been then, and as she must be now. Astrid, who was in this same building with me, three floors down.
When Rudy knocked softly on the door at two minutes to six, I was up and dressed. At my suggestion that we take the stairs, he flashed a smile that said he knew a wimp when he saw one. “The elevator is totally safe, sir. Mr. Jacobs oversaw certain repairs himself, and that old slidebox was high on the list.”
I didn’t protest. I was thinking about how my old fifth business was no longer a reverend, no longer a rev, no longer a pastor. At this end of his life, he was back to plain old mister, and getting his blood pressure taken by a guy who looked like Vin Diesel after a face-lift gone bad.
Jacobs’s apartment was on the first floor in the west wing. He had changed into a dark suit and white shirt open at the collar. He rose to greet me, smiling that one-sided smile. “Thank you, Rudy. Will you tell Norma that we’ll be ready to eat in fifteen minutes?”
Rudy nodded and left. Jacobs turned to me, still smiling and once more producing that unpleasant papery sound as he rubbed his hands together. Outside the window, a ski slope with no lights to illuminate it and no skiers to groove the spring snow descended into darkness, a highway to nowhere. “It will only be soup and salad, I’m afraid. I gave up meat two years ago. It creates fatty deposits in the brain.”
“Soup and salad is fine.”
“There’s also bread, Norma’s sourdough. It’s excellent.”
“Sounds delicious. I’d like to see Astrid, Charlie.”
“Norma will serve her and her friend Jenny Knowlton around seven. Once they’ve eaten, Miss Knowlton will give Astrid her pain medication, and help her make her evening toilet. I told Miss Knowlton that Rudy could assist with these tasks, but she won’t hear of it. Alas, Jenny Knowlton no longer seems to trust me.”
I thought back to Astrid’s letter. “Even though you cured her of her arthritis?”
“Ah, but then I was Pastor Danny. Now that I’ve eschewed all those religious trappings—I told them so, felt I had to—Miss Knowlton is suspicious. That’s what the truth does, Jamie. It makes people suspicious.”
“Is Jenny Knowlton suffering aftereffects?”
“Not at all. She’s just uncomfortable without all her miracle mumbo-jumbo to fall back on. But since you brought up the subject of aftereffects, step into my study. I want to show you something, and there’s just time before our evening repast appears.”
The study was an alcove off the suite’s parlor. His computer was on, the extra-large screen showing those endlessly galloping horses. He sat down, grimacing with discomfort, and tapped a key. The horses gave way to a plain blue desktop with only two folders on it. They were labeled A and B.
He clicked A, revealing a list of names and addresses in alphabetical order. He pressed a button, and the list began to scroll at medium speed. “Do you know what these are?”
“Cures, I’d assume.”
“Verified cures, all affected by administration of electrical current to the brain—although not the sort of current any electrician