On the way out, Jude turned to Skyler and grinned. "By the way," he said. "There is one more thing."
"What?"
"I have it on good authority that your wisdom teeth are going to come in over the next year or so. And I'd say you're probably going to develop what they call a 'dry socket.' And take it from me, it's going to hurt like hell."
Jude took the subway to South Ferry, and as he was climbing the stairs to the Staten Island ferry terminal, he took a detour. He had come to a decision — but he wasn't proud of it.
He walked to a newsstand and ordered a pack of Camel filters. He ripped off the cellophane, rapped the pack against his left forefinger, and pulled out a cigarette. Amazing, he thought, how all the practiced ancillary rituals of smoking live on. How long had it been? — two years almost.
Moving quickly, lest his conscience intrude, he lit up and inhaled deeply. He almost keeled over. He felt as if an invisible hand had grabbed his lungs and squeezed them. He was dizzy, then faint. A long-ago familiar light-headedness set in. He felt his blood racing though his system as if his veins had suddenly contracted. Then came the beautiful calm.
But it was followed by a paroxysm of self-loathing. How could he be so weak? He tried to keep it at bay with rationalizations: how often, after all, is a fellow's life turned topsy-turvy by forces beyond his control? Who could stop at a time like this? He flicked the cigarette down with his middle finger — another old habit — and heard it hiss as it struck the water. He boarded the ferry.
Raymond was nowhere in sight. He checked his watch: exactly ten p.m. No confusion there. He walked around the ferry twice on both decks and checked out the passengers sitting on the wooden slat benches or leaning upon the outer railings — the businessmen and blue-collar workers returning home, the secretaries staying late for a few drinks, lovers out on a cheap excursion. What a stupid idea to meet here. When Jude had called Raymond at home to set a place and he'd suggested the ferry, it had struck Jude as melodramatic. How many late-night movies had he been watching on television? But Raymond had insisted he needed to take the ferry anyway. Where could he be going at this hour? Maybe Jude was on the wrong one; maybe he should go back and wait for the next. He glanced back at the stern and, beyond it, the ferry slip. Too late. The thick tie lines were already off, and the boat was churning in the water, bouncing off the tires hanging from the wooden piers, which groaned.
He walked back to the passenger cabin, and something on the deck below caught his eye, a wiper washing the window of a black Lexus. Jude thought he saw a hand inside moving, beckoning. Of course, that would be Raymond. He always liked good entrances. And here was an added advantage for a paranoid FBI man: it's hard to bug the inside of a car.
"How're you doing?"
Raymond waited until he was inside with the door closed before he began the perfunctory formalities. Jude was in no mood to waste time.
"Not so good, to tell you the truth. I feel like shit, actually. I can't sleep. I can't work. I'm in the middle of something that I can't make sense of. I'm being followed by a couple of psychopaths, and I think I'm in danger."
"Yeah. And your health is going to suffer, too, if you keep smoking like that."
"So you saw me back there."
"Like I always say, being observant is just a question of being observant."
"You could have said something — I've walked around this boat three times."
"Four, actually."
Jude looked at him. He was a reasonably handsome man two years shy of forty with a narrow face, sad-looking brown eyes, cheeks slightly scarred by acne and tufts of white hair flowing around the tips of his ears. He was wearing an open-necked blue shirt, expensive-looking.
He looked back at Jude and bobbed his head. "Why don't you tell me about it? Start at the beginning."
"You know the beginning. It was that New Paltz murder, but how it figures in all this, I still haven't worked out."
"Remind me."
"It was a Sunday, I got the assignment and went up—"
"Who gave it to you?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"I've been doing this a lot longer than you. Just answer the goddamned question."
"Well, it was the weekend editor, a guy named Leventhal. What does that have to do with anything?"
"Let me be the judge of that. I notice the Mirror didn't play the story big."
"No, not at all, a couple of paragraphs in the back."
"They tell you why?"
"No, they just said another story was better. That's the editors' prerogative — deciding where the stories go, and they're, you know, jealous of it."
"Yeah, I can imagine. A place like the Mirror. And to think I always thought they just threw them against the wall to see which ones stick. Anyway, go on."
"Well, you know what I found out up there, which wasn't much. The guy McNichol picked as the victim turned out to be a local judge, which you told me. And he was alive and kicking. The strange thing is, when I walked into his court and he saw me, he practically had a fit."
"Hold on, not so fast. Why did you go back? Were you told to follow the story?"
"No, not at all. Here is where it starts to get weird. You see, I'd been hearing that a guy was walking around who looked like me, exactly like me, a double. And one night he turns up in my building, just like that, and that's what he is — an exact double. I thought at first that he's some kind of long-lost identical twin. Except that he's not — it turns out he's younger."
Jude looked at Raymond and expected to see a look of surprise or maybe skepticism on his face, but if it was there, he couldn't spot it.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" Jude asked.
"No, what the hell. But I thought you stopped."
"I did, but I hated being a slave to my willpower."
"Very funny. But you didn't answer the question — why did you go back to New Paltz?"
"You see, the corpse, the dead guy up there, had a strange wound on his thigh. I told you about it before. It was about the size of a quarter, and it looked like somebody had gouged it out, maybe because there was some kind of identifying mark there. At least, that's what McNichol thought. And my double, whose name is Skyler, by the way, it turns out that he has a mark in the exact same spot. So I made the connection."
"What was the mark?"
"It was a tattoo of Gemini — you know, twins, the zodiac. And that's what he — I mean, Skyler — said they were called on the island. Gemini."
"Island?"
"Yes. He said there was a whole bunch of them, just like him, and they were raised on an island by people who were doctors and who took care of them and kept them in really good health."
"I see."
Jude had the feeling, now that he was laying it all out, that the story sounded too ridiculous to be taken seriously. He felt faintly foolish, and half hoped that Raymond would make fun of him and that somehow the whole thing would just disappear. But Raymond didn't do that; he seemed to be paying close attention.
"And did he tell you where this island is?"
"No, believe it or not — he doesn't know. He got out by stowing away on a plane, and he doesn't even know what state he was in."
"And where is he now?"
"He's somewhere. It doesn't matter. It's not important."
"Maybe it is important. Maybe he's in some danger — have you thought of that?"
Jude was silent. He had thought of little else over the past few days.
"Go back to the judge a minute. You said he was upset to see you?"
"I walked into his courtroom while he was presiding. As I said, he took one look at me and practically fainted. He had to leave the bench."
"And he didn't look familiar to you?"