I had breakfast, fed the dog and then took him for a walk. I had some qualms about leaving the apartment, but I had to get over my reluctance because the dog had to go out. He exhibited no such hesitation but patiently waited by the door for his collar and leash to be put on, as usual.

Outside, I noted that the truck that had been hiding in the alley last night was gone and so were the men who had helped me. In the light of day, everything that had happened seemed unreal. I wanted to go on feeling that way, to compartmentalize enough to not think about last night, but I wasn’t very successful. When I returned to my apartment, I finally tried going back to sleep for a while, doing my best to block out not only unwelcome thoughts but also the noise of a weekday morning in automobile alley. Today, in particular, it sounded like somebody was deliberately grinding the gears of a dozen rust buckets right outside my window, or crunching up cars in some evil car-killing machine.

I did feel a little better when I woke up again in the afternoon. I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, thinking about what I should do. Digitaria watched me, with his head tilted to the side.

Finally, I picked up the phone and called Jack. “So listen,” I said, “what are your plans for tonight?”

“The usual,” he said. “I have to go on the air later, so there’s stuff I need to go over. I’ve got an ex-navy fighter pilot who says he was tailed by UFOs a couple of times when he was doing bombing runs over North Vietnam.”

“Can you reschedule him? Play a tape or something?” I said. “I mean, what difference does it make? They’ve already fired you. You’ll be gone in a couple of weeks.”

On the other end of the phone, Jack was silent for a few minutes. Finally, he said, “Okay, Laurie. Why don’t you tell me what’s happened now?”

And so I did.

~XII~

“I still can’t believe he actually called you,” Jack said. “Raymond Gilmartin doesn’t talk to actual people. Supposedly the only human beings who see him live and in living color are the celebrities. The Ted Merrill types. The hoi polloi only get to see taped messages from him now and then.”

“Well, it should be an interesting visit,” I replied.

“And you’ll really bring the dog.”

“He suggested it.”

“Well, I wish someone had suggested to me that I bring some sort of weapon. Or maybe at least left a note behind—you know, the kind of thing that says, ‘If I don’t come back, look for DNA evidence at the Blue Awareness Center on Riverside Drive.’ ”

“We do have a weapon,” I said, patting the dog’s head. We were in Jack’s car, just passing over the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, and Digitaria was sitting next to me on the passenger seat. He was looking out the window, his dark eyes fixed on the passing scenery blurring into the summer twilight. “He’s already got two bad guys to his credit.”

Jack frowned. “I thought he needed some help.”

“He never stopped fighting,” I said. “It was really something to see.”

Jack and I both fell silent then. He concentrated on navigating the river of traffic and I tried to make myself as still as the dog was now, just watching the other cars rush along beside us, the lights coming on in the tall apartment buildings along the east side of Manhattan. I had no idea what was going to happen tonight but I had a feeling that cultivating an inner stillness would be helpful. Maybe that was some old hippie idea still rattling around in my head or something I’d heard recommended on some TV program about creating a better you. Either way, given the circumstances, it seemed like a useful thing to do.

It took almost as long to get crosstown from the east side to the west as it had to drive all the way from my place in Queens, where Jack had picked me up, to Manhattan. Once we reached Riverside Drive, we started looking for the address Gilmartin had given me, which turned out to be a townhouse on a quiet, curving block facing the Hudson. Miraculously, we found a place to park just a block away. Then we walked back to the townhouse, a four-story edifice of white stone with a columned portico. There was a brass plaque on the gate that barred entrance to the walkway leading to the massive front door. The plaque had no name on it, just the street address.

I pushed the button on a nearby buzzer, announced who I was, and shortly, Jack and I were let in. The front door was opened for us by a pleasant-looking young woman dressed in the kind of fashionable suit and slacks that anyone her age would have worn in any business office anywhere in the city. She led us to an elevator—an old-fashioned contraption with velvety wallpaper that barely held the three of us, plus the dog—which we exited on the top floor. As we walked down a carpeted hallway, our guide made small talk, telling us that the building had been converted from a gilded-age private home to an embassy for one of the Central American nations, which had sold it ten years ago when it had been converted yet again to serve as the New York center of the Blue Awareness; there were similar headquarters in Los Angeles and Miami. This particular building had offices, conference rooms, and a large auditorium on the first floor where seminars were sometimes held. Tonight, she said, there were no events on the schedule, but a number of staff members, like herself, were working late. And of course, she said, Raymond and his assistants were always here until all hours. There was, she continued cheerfully, always so much work to be done.

“Sure,” Jack whispered to me, when she moved a few steps ahead of us to open the door to a room at the end of hallway, “lives to be ruined, plots to be plotted . . .”

I put my hand on his arm, which I hoped he read as a signal to cut out the sarcastic remarks. I was still trying to stay in my zone of stillness; I didn’t trust myself not to have an instant reaction of hostility to anything Raymond Gilmartin had to say, but that wasn’t what I wanted. The instinct that had warned me to quiet myself in the car was now telling me to be smart about this encounter. I wasn’t at all sure what Raymond Gilmartin wanted from me, but I didn’t think I would find out by being antagonistic.

The young woman opened a door, ushered us into an office and then left us alone. Jack and I were now standing in a large room that had tall windows curtained with heavy fabric in a deep purple color. That was the only vaguely magisterial characteristic about the décor, which was otherwise very businesslike. There was a wide desk that held a computer with two screens, a leather couch, some chairs, a simple area rug on the floor bordered in the same purple as the drapes, a low coffee table that held a silver carafe on a tray along with half a dozen water glasses. Bookshelves lined one entire wall; I walked over to look at the titles and saw that several shelves were taken up by Howard Gilmartin’s novels and nonfiction writings. The majority of the other volumes focused on a host of esoteric subjects including spiritualism, mysticism, time travel, alien abduction, reincarnation, Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife and the complete works of Edgar Cayce. If these were really Raymond Gilmartin’s books, he was apparently interested in ideas that were outside the boundaries of his own religion, which I thought was somewhat surprising. In fact, the selection of books could have served as resource material for Jack’s nightly lineup of guests. I said as much to him, but he didn’t seem to like the comparison.

We were only in the office for a short time before the door opened again and Raymond Gilmartin entered the room. Another surprise—he was alone. I had expected a retinue: lawyers, bodyguards, some entourage of hangers-on. But there was no one. I also expected him to seat himself behind his imposing desk but, instead, he walked over to the couch and gestured for us to join him in this more informal part of the room.