As he suspected, the moving van was no longer parked out front. The security guard in his blue blazer had disappeared as well.
Ricky leaned forward and knocked on the cabdriver’s partition. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “Take me to this address, please.” He read the new address off the attorney’s card. “But when you get close, stop about a block away, okay? I don’t want to pull up in front.”
The cabdriver silently shrugged and nodded.
It took a quarter hour to battle through traffic. The address on Merlin’s card was near Wall Street. It reeked of prestige.
The driver did as he’d been asked, pulling to the side a block shy of the address. “Up there,” the man said. “You want me to drive?”
“No,” Ricky replied. “This is fine.” He paid and tossed himself from the tight confines of the rear seat.
As he’d half guessed, there was no sign of the moving truck outside the large office building. He looked up and down the street, but saw no sign of the attorney, nor the company, nor the office furniture. He double-checked the address on the card, making certain that he had it correct, then looked into the building and saw there was a security desk just inside the front door. A single uniformed guard, reading a paperback novel, had taken up a position behind a bank of video monitors and an electronic board that showed the elevator operations. Ricky stepped into the building and first approached an office directory printed on the wall. He quickly checked and found no listing for anyone named Merlin. Ricky walked over to the guard, who looked up as he came forward.
“Help you?” he said.
“Yes,” Ricky replied. “I seem to be confused. I have this lawyer’s card, with this address, but I can’t seem to find his listing. He should be moving in today.”
The guard checked the card, frowned, and shook his head. “That’s the right address,” he said, “but we’ve got nobody by that name.”
“Maybe an empty office? Like I said, moving in today?”
“No one told security nothing. And there aren’t any vacancies. Haven’t been for years.”
“Well, that’s strange,” Ricky said. “Must be a printer’s mistake.”
The guard handed back the card. “Could be,” he said.
Ricky pocketed the card, thinking that he’d just won his first skirmish with the man stalking him. But to what advantage, he wasn’t sure.
Ricky was still feeling slightly smug as he arrived at his own building. He was unsure who he’d met in the attorney’s office, wondering whether the man who called himself Merlin wasn’t really Rumplestiltskin himself. This was a distinct possibility, Ricky thought, because he was certain that the man at the core of the situation would want to see Ricky himself, face-to-face. He wasn’t precisely certain why he believed this, but it seemed to make some sense. It was difficult to imagine someone gaining pleasure from tormenting him, without that person wanting to get a firsthand opportunity to see his handiwork.
But this observation did not even begin to color in the portrait he knew he would have to create in order to guess that man’s name.
“What do you know about psychopaths?” he asked himself, as he walked up the steps to the brownstone building that housed his home office and four other apartments. Not much, he answered quietly to himself. What he knew about were the troubles and neuroses of the mildly to significantly crippled. He knew about the lies well-to-do people told themselves to justify their behavior. He didn’t think he knew much about someone who would create an entire world of lies in order to bring about his death. Ricky understood that this was uncharted territory for him.
In an instant, the satisfaction Ricky had felt outmaneuvering Rumplestiltskin once, fled. He reminded himself coldly: Remember what’s at stake.
He saw that the mail had been delivered, and he opened his box. One long, thin envelope bore an official seal in the upper left-hand corner from the Transit Authority of the City of New York. He opened this first.
There was a small piece of paper clipped to a larger photocopied sheet. He read the small letter first.
Dear Dr. Starks:
Our investigation uncovered the enclosed amongMr. Zimmerman’s personal effects. Because it mentionsyou, and seems to comment on your treatment, I send it along.Our file on this death, incidentally, is now closed.
Sincerely,
Detective J. Riggins
Ricky flipped the cover letter back and read the photocopy. It was brief, typed, and filled him with a distant dread.
To whom it may concern:
I talk and talk, but never get better. No one helps me. No one listens to the real me. I have made arrangements for my mother. These can be found along with will, insurance papers, and other documents inmy desk at work. Apologies to all involved, except Dr. Starks. Goodbye to the rest.
Roger Zimmerman
Even the signature had been typed. Ricky stared at the suicide note, feeling his emotions simply drain through him.
Chapter Nine
Zimmerman’s note, Ricky thought, could not be real.
Internally, he remained adamant: Zimmerman was no more likely to take his own life than Ricky was. He showed no signs of suicidal ideation, no inclinations to self-destruction, no propensity for self-violence. Zimmerman was neurotic and stubborn and only beginning to understand analytic insight; he was a man who still had to be pushed into doing anything, just as Ricky believed he had to have been pushed in front of that subway train. But Ricky was just starting to have trouble discerning what was real and what wasn’t. Even with the detective’s letter in front of him, after his visit to the subway station and the police office, he still was having difficulty accepting the reality of Zimmerman’s death. It remained fixed somewhere in the surreal. He looked down at the suicide letter and realized he was the only person named. He took note, also, that it hadn’t been signed by hand. Instead, the person who wrote the note had typed Zimmerman’s name. Or, Zimmerman had typed his name if he had indeed written the note.
Ricky’s head spun.
Any elation he felt at outmaneuvering the attorney that morning dissipated, replaced with a queasiness bordering on nausea that seemed to start in his stomach, but which he guessed was really psychosomatic. He rode the elevator to his home with the sensation of weight dragging at his heels, resting on his shoulders. The first threads of self-pity crept into his heart, the Why me? question dogging his slow steps. By the time he reached his office, he felt exhausted.