The Ghost of Blackwood Lane Read online

  “Gary! What the hell was that? I couldn’t get you to take your damn foot off the gas, and we were racing along like a bat out of hell! You pass out? Are you okay?”

  Gary nodded slowly, his hands still gripping his seatbelt. “Yeah, I’m okay. More...memories coming back. I have a feeling that it’ll just get worse. Thanks . . .thanks for grabbing the wheel.”

  Mike didn’t say anything.

  Gary smiled weakly. “Maybe we should switch seats.”

  Mike smirked and climbed out of the car as Gary slid over. “You scared the hell out of me, man,” Mike said as he got back in the car. “Now I’m glad I came along—somebody’s got to keep you from killing yourself.”

  Gary nodded, watching Mike as he started down the highway.

  It was crazy, the idea that he was really someone else with a different name. How much else of his life had been sublimated by the hypnosis? If he’d been thinking straight, he would’ve gone and seen his father first, talked to him and found out what the hell had happened, but the dream seemed to be calling to him to come back here, and fast. Maybe the dream was just his mental wall finally breaking down.

  There was no way for him to understand all of it yet, but something inside him said his father’s information, though immensely helpful, would have delayed something crucial, something to do with the girl in the picture, the girl in his dream. There was some reason he had been drawn eastward. He hoped these debilitating headaches wouldn’t hamper him—how would his mind react when he saw her, if he did manage to find her? He was practically knocked out just from seeing a stupid landmark. Seeing her would probably drop him to the ground, rolling around in the mud and drooling like a maniac. That would be impressive, certainly.

  Memorable.

  Mike followed Gary’s curt directions, angling the car through the confusing maze of roads that was downtown St. Louis, heading over the Poplar Street Bridge and the Mississippi River.

  Gary turned around when they were on the massive bridge that spanned the wide river and looked back at the city. There was Busch Stadium, where the Cardinals played, and Union Station, and he could see gambling steamboats on the eastern side of the river, tied up to new docks—evidently the legalized riverboat gambling business was paying off.

  And he saw the Adam’s Mark Hotel, where the O’Fallon Township High School had its prom in 1987.

  A complete memory of his high school years popped into his head, unbidden, and this time, he had no adverse reaction. Gary could remember renting a tux and getting a corsage, and he could remember the dancing and the bad food and the large ballroom the prom committee had rented out for the senior class. And his date had been...a blank. Nothing. He had a memory of the prom and of dancing with someone—his clothes had been tight and itchy, he remembered. But who was he holding? He felt the beginnings of a headache again, flirting with him, and he wondered if he’d taken the girl in the picture to his prom.

  But remembering his prom was a good sign, he thought. There were memories back here, plenty of them, and he turned around again, facing east, facing the place where he had spent so many years. He wondered what would happen when he remembered it all.

  Chapter 30

  Vincent pounded his hands on the dashboard of his Mustang, hitting the dash so hard he left impressions in the leather.

  This wasn’t the way things were supposed to be going. Things were moving smoothly, and his brother had been cool about letting him set up the buys and work on reducing their competition.

  So what had happened?

  Vincent started the car and drove away from the little complex of buildings that had served as the offices of the legitimate Luciano family businesses for ten years.

  That first meeting, several months ago—that had been good. His brother had listened to him talk about the way things had been long ago, and Vincent had been surprised to hear that his brother had already come to many of the same conclusions.

  Vincent and Tony had talked for a long time, and it was in the course of that conversation that they had come to a real understanding, something that had not happened in the intervening years since their father had died. They agreed to work together toward a common goal. And their goal, to resurrect the memory of their noble past, could only be accomplished by one thing—taking the family back to its roots.

  Now it sounded like his brother was getting cold feet. Hell, he would’ve cancelled the whole buy tomorrow night if Vincent hadn’t talked him out of it.

  Vincent drove the car out toward The Hole. Everyone there knew him, of course, but no one really liked him too much—he’d never been a nice guy. He didn’t care what these people thought of him, or thought about what he did—he was making a new name for himself. And leaving The Hole had been a move in a positive direction. But he liked the place, liked the food, and needed a place to meet with the guys.

  Vincent had, a few years back, begun his own little criminal enterprise, back when the dingy restaurant had been called The Watering Hole. It had started in those dark booths off the bar, and although his organization had never grown to rival his brother’s in size or profit, it had afforded him a good income and a nice home. There had been money from the schemes, little things like running booze or guns or cigarettes up from Tennessee or over to Missouri, or setting up a small bookmaking operation run completely out of one of his guys’ houses.

  He trusted his guys completely because he’d known them for years. They were excited that he was moving back into the Luciano family, knowing what that would mean for them and for Vincent. Lots of money, and lots of opportunities to make even more money.

  Vincent took the Centerville exit off of I-64, pulling up in front of The Hole and getting out, heading inside.

  Doris was working behind the counter. She was the older sister of a girl named Doreen, a girl he’d dated a few years back. Doreen—she’d had the strange nickname of “Bird”—had been fun for a while, but of course, it didn’t last very long. Unfortunately, the girl had gotten way too interested in him, and after he’d dumped her, she’d taken it personally. One night she’d taken some pills and killed herself.

  Every time she saw Vincent, Doris looked like she wanted to kill him—he understood why she hated him, but it hadn’t been his fault. Her sister had been a crazy, clingy bitch.

  But Vincent tried to remember to smile at the older sister, which drove her even more crazy. Today was no different, and after he smiled at her, she turned and stormed away, making him smile even more. He’d only wanted to bang her sister, not marry her—he’d already made that mistake. It wasn’t his fault the girl had fallen for him, and it wasn’t his fault she’d taken one too many pills and ended up taking a dirt nap. He had never figured out why the old woman held such a grudge.

  Only one of his guys was in the bar, sitting in a booth along the far wall, nursing a beer and flipping through the paper.

  “Hey, Steve,” Vincent said, sitting down and waving at the new bartender, a guy Vincent had trained before he’d left.

  Steve folded the paper closed. “Hey, Vince. How’d it go?”

  “Well, the guy’s getting cold feet. He’s ‘uncomfortable,’ and I had to do some fast talking to keep him from canceling the buy.”

  “Serious?”

  Vincent nodded. “I think he wants to concentrate on some of the other things, get those going good, and then move into what we want. Anyway, the buy’s still on schedule, for now.”

  Steve sipped from his glass. “So, what next?”

  “Well, Tony’s still thinking about the coke business. If tomorrow night’s stuff moves fast and turns a good profit, he’ll be fine.”

  His beer came, delivered by a new girl he didn’t know, a cute waitress who scooted away from his table without even making eye contact. That bitch Doris had probably been filling the girl’s head full of lies about him.

  Vincent sipped down the head a little and set his glass back down. “That’s the only way to go. If he gets cold feet, I’ll make sure
tomorrow night’s buy goes through—it’s either that, or the family goes broke. How’s the other stuff going?”

  “Good. The guys are out and running around, getting ready. We already hit two guys, and the other nine are happening tonight. Shotgun will go under as soon as he hears about his guys getting dropped. You knew that going into this, though, didn’t you?”

  Vincent smiled. “I don’t want to hit him—we don’t need to. We hit the ten captains and his underboss and he’ll run so fast we won’t see him leaving. If we’re hitting his men he’ll assume we’re hitting him, and he’ll run.”

  Vincent, sipping from his beer, eyed the new waitress, imagining what she would say when he told her he was a millionaire.

  Chapter 31

  Rugio wasn’t a cautious man, usually. East St. Louis was a dangerous place to live, to grow up, and he’d learned a long time ago how to take care of himself.

  He was in his car, heading west up I-64 toward Fairview Heights. One of his dealers at the mall—he usually had at least three working the mall and its surrounding parking lots—was having some trouble, and he had called Rugio and asked if they could bump the prices down to offset the sudden, low-priced competition.

  The Lucianos were making life difficult for his dealers on the eastern side of the East Dogs’ territory, and sales in Fairview and Belleville, especially the eastern side out by the community college, were way down. Rugio didn’t want to bump down prices, but Shotgun had reminded him that, first and foremost, the stuff had to be moved. And, as strange as it sounded, they needed to reinforce customer loyalty and make sure they lost as few regular customers as possible.

  Shotgun seemed to think a war was coming soon, but Rugio doubted it—there hadn’t been a turf war for drugs in a long time, and he figured the rival groups would find a way to share the profits of this business. God knew, there was plenty of money to go around.

  He was busy thinking about the future of his business and didn’t see the car come up on his left side, passing him in the fast lane. The passenger window was down, and the person in that seat pulled something up from the floor, something long and metallic, and pointed it out the window.

  Rugio looked over at the car pacing his and suddenly realized there was a man leaning out the passenger window, pointing a shotgun at his car. Rugio’s first reaction was to swerve away from the car, and as he jerked the wheel, he heard a loud “boom” and knew he had been too slow.

  The car’s window exploded inwards and the car careened off the road, hitting the soft shoulder before leaping into the air and flying almost thirty feet, crashing into one of the trees that lined either side of the freeway. There had been no other cars on the highway in either direction, and the car with the two men in it slowed down and changed lanes, calmly taking the Fairview Heights exit before disappearing into the local traffic.

  Chapter 32

  They got into O’Fallon late on Friday night—there was nothing they could do except drive around and look for a motel. It had been an early flight out of LAX, but with the three-hour trip, the time change, and jet lag, all they really wanted to do was find a hotel and crash for the evening. Gary wanted to drive around to see if the town would bring back more memories, but Mike reminded him that they didn’t have a place to stay. They could start their search for answers on Saturday morning, after a good sleep.

  It turned out that both of the motels in O’Fallon were booked for the night, so they stayed at a small motel near the Interstate. It was a nice motel about halfway between O’Fallon and Centerville and just off the Centerville exit, and the rates were reasonable. It also had a cool glass hallway that connected the lobby of the motel with a restaurant and bar complex next door named The Hole. Mike and Gary had a nice dinner there before turning in, and they were served by a friendly woman named Doris.

  Mike watched TV in bed while Gary tried to rest—it had been a long and interesting day. He wanted a drink badly, and he tried not to think about the bar next to the restaurant.

  Before falling asleep, Gary followed his normal routine, even in the strange surroundings, and shuffled and pulled a card from his tarot deck, a ritual that seemed to be more and more important to him with each passing day. It was a card marked “The Tower.” It showed a tall tower against a dark sky—the top of the tower was glowing with light, a crown atop the tower, and there were two figures falling from it. A plant grew around the base.

  He didn’t know the meaning of this card and couldn’t remember seeing it before. He reached into the box and pulled out the little instruction booklet, which contained short interpretations of each card.

  “The Tower: A tall tower with a crowned roof has been struck violently by a blast of lightning and fire. Only the top, the crown, is severed, signifying a clean break from the past. The flame is a symbol of a strong and dominant occurrence. The structure is made of roughly hewn stone and has three windows. Two persons, a man and a woman, are falling to the ground. Meanings: complete and sudden change, breaking down of old beliefs, abandonment of past relationships, changing of one’s opinion, unexpected events, or loss of stability. The falling figures may represent head-first escape from the past and sudden immersion into new events. Reverse meanings: continued oppression, following of old ways, or inability to effect any worthwhile change.”

  None of those sounded very good to him—did the break from the past mean he was about to learn all about his missing memories, or that he would never learn about them, causing a permanent break from his past? The abandonment of past relationships—that sounded like he wasn’t ever going to meet the girl in the picture or find out what truly happened between the two of them. Then there were a lot of things going on around him—maybe it just meant he was working toward a solution and wasn’t as close to reaching it as he hoped.

  Gary put the cards and the instruction book back in their box on the nightstand and turned over to try and get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a long day. He’d glanced at the phone book before hitting the sack and found a short list of the psychiatrists in O’Fallon. He might need to talk to all of them if he was going to track down someone who might remember the late Dr. Frank Martin.

  And then Gary could take care of this whole crazy memory business and get on with his life.

  Chapter 33

  It was Friday night, and Judy was home alone, just the way she liked it.

  She had every light in the house on, and the TV was cranked up loud. She wasn’t worried about Vincent coming home anytime soon—since he rarely came home before 2 or 3 a.m. on Friday nights, Judy knew she had several hours of quiet, uninterrupted time alone before she really needed to pack up her stuff and go to bed.

  Judy had set up her easel in the living room and was busy painting.

  It was an ocean scene, tall waves and angry cliffs overlooking a rough sea. On one side of the painting stood a tall white lighthouse perched on a jagged outcropping of rock. The light of a subtle crescent moon illuminated the beach and surf, picking out beach grass and rocks and reflecting in the pools of tidewater. She thought it was probably her best painting in the last three or four years—she had been working on it off and on for about three weeks, and tonight it would be finished.

  Judy stood back and looked at it and was suddenly intensely proud. A part of her realized that for the first time in a long time, she was happy.

  Even if things were horrible in the rest of her life, she had her painting. At some point, Vincent would die in a wreck or get knocked off by one of his criminal buddies and she would be free. Until then, she would just have to console herself with her paintings. She had the letter from Texas upstairs, taped to the back of one of her dresser drawers, where Vincent would never find it. With that letter and Vincent dead or gone, she could make a new life for herself.

  She’d move to California, rent a little house by the beach, and paint all day.

  And look for Chris.

  There was something wrong with the sea grass in the bottom left-hand cor
ner of the painting—the way it stood against the distant cliff made the sea grass look too tall. She leaned in to touch it up. Her paint palette, resting in the crook of her left elbow, was covered with all the appropriate colors, the sea greens and the deep blues and the blacks she’d used to paint the sky. She dabbed up a little of the blue and mixed it with a touch of brown and a deep red to retouch the dark stone cliffs, covering the tops of the sea grass. Her light, practiced brushstrokes brought the cliff out a little more and made the grass seem shorter.

  She leaned back and smiled.

  The beam of the lighthouse was the last thing she needed to correct—it was too dark. On her palette, Judy mixed some bright white and with a little of the yellow—it needed to look bright against the darkened sky, but if it looked too bright it would seem out of place. Using a knife tool instead of a brush, she scraped the white into a growing cone of light coming out of the lighthouse, pulling a thin layer of paint across the canvas.

  Judy was completely lost in the painting. She was wondering how far the light would travel into the darkness, wondering how much moonlight the clouds would reflect, and she didn’t see the flash of headlights pass quickly through the room.

  She liked the way the lighthouse light looked. She dropped the knife and picked up another small brush. Getting a little of the white and yellow mix on her brush, she softly touched the tops of the waves below the cliff, making the water reflect the bright beam of light. Judy studied the painting for a long moment and then began dabbing the brush at the tops of the waves on the other side, bringing out the highlighted reflection of the moon’s light on the water.

  “What the hell is this shit?”

  She jumped, spilling some of the paint from her brush as it brushed against her arm. Her heart flipped from complete serenity to an insane pounding as she turned and saw her husband standing there, staring at her. A strange woman stood in the open door behind him, her shape outlined in the light from the front porch.