The Callahan Touch Read online

  She scrolled around, looked at dates, then places. I pointed to a reference. “Try that one,” I directed.

  Mary Kay hit more keys, and the article cited appeared onscreen. It was Greek to me, but I waited patiently for Jonathan to scan it.

  Suddenly he made a small “uh” sound.

  “Something?” I asked.

  He ignored me and kept on reading. Presently he said, “Jesus Christ.” Then he said, “Oh, I don’t—” Then he said, “It can’t—”

  Then he didn’t say anything at all for a long moment.

  Finally he reached for his coffee, and knocked it endwise, spilling the half-cup left in it. He caught it before it could head for the floor, picked it up upside down and tried to pour coffee into his mouth from the bottom of the mug. When it didn’t work, he frowned at it and flung it away over his shoulder. I ducked just in time.

  It landed in the hearth with a hearty chunkle.

  Jonathan just kept staring at the screen, with the expression of a man who is completely redecorating the inside of his head.

  Doc Webster muscled his way to the front of the crowd and read over Jonathan’s shoulder. After a few seconds, the smile wrinkles came out in his fat face. “Bingo,” he said.

  “What is it, Doc?” I asked over the growing murmur.

  “The seeds of a tabloid headline,” he said. “But one that lets Dr. Crawford off the hook. It ought to hit the papers in a few more years.”

  “Koprowski,” Jonathan said hollowly. “Live polio vaccine, competing with Salk’s killed vaccine. The first live oral polio vaccine tested on a large population. Sprayed in aerosol form into the open mouths of something like a third of a million Africans. Grown in the kidneys of African green monkeys—”

  “From 1957 to 1961,” Doc Webster agreed, pointing to the screen. “In the eastern Belgian Congo.” He scrolled the text. “Looky there: in 1959, Sabin reported that an unknown monkey virus contaminated Koprowski’s vaccine.” Mary punched some more keys. “And in 1960, the first-ever case of AIDS appeared. In the Belgian Congo. Nice going, Mary Kay.” She looked pleased.

  Jonathan now looked even more tormented than at any time so far in the evening. “But it takes time for a virus to mutate.”

  The Doc nodded. “Maybe. And maybe it starts right away, and just takes time to spread enough to be noticed. What was that incubation period you mentioned? Twenty to forty years? AIDS started to hit big in 1980—twenty-three years after Dr. Koprowski ground up his first green monkey kidney and sprayed the culture onto the wet mucous membranes of 350,000 Congolese! What’ll you bet some of them had open sores in their mouths or noses?”

  Jonathan sprang up, knocking over his chair. “But I…that doesn’t…it still—”

  “Oh sure,” the Doc said. “You could still be guilty—if you need to be badly enough. But I’m afraid no jury in the world would indict you on the present evidence…much less convict you. Or Dr. Koprowski either. There’s an excellent chance neither of you ever had a thing to do with spreading AIDS. At worst, you’re suspicious bystanders at this point. Are you ready to admit that now?”

  “God damn it—”

  “Jonathan,” I said sadly, “it looks like you’re going to have to return that hair-shirt to the rental shop, and get along without the joy of being a Tragic Figger of a Man. You’re a fraud.”

  Jonathan looked stricken. He spun back and forth, as if trying to find a path through us to safety…then turned his face to the ceiling.

  “Oh, Martin!” he cried, and began to sob like a child.

  Marty Matthias and Dave pulled him into their arms and hugged him together, and a cheer went up.

  △ △ △

  There was an especially joyous note in the celebration that ensued. We had come through our first crisis, on Opening Night—and in a manner that would, we felt, have made Mike Callahan proud of us. By the time folks began to so much as slow down in their drinking, my arms were tired, and Tom Hauptman was looking exhausted, and neither of us minded a bit. I had managed to completely forget the problem that still loomed large on my horizon.

  “Here you go,” I told the Duck, setting yet another Blessing in front of him and circling my palm over it.

  “Thanks,” he said, and put three singles on the bar.

  “No, no,” I said. “That gesture—” I repeated it. “—means it’s on the house.”

  He glared at me scornfully. “No, really? Do you know this one?” He gave me the finger, and pushed the bills another inch toward me.

  “Well, you earned it,” I said, confused.

  “I’m not so sure of that,” he said. “You mean that computer business, right?”

  “Well, having a Mac turn itself on at just the right moment sure seems to me like a funny coincidence. That’s you.”

  He shook his head. “Have you looked at the power cord?”

  I glanced over at it. It was not plugged in.

  “Improbabilities I do,” the Duck said. “Miracles I don’t. Lucking onto the right database, that was me, all right. The rest—uh-uh.”

  “Cushlamachree,” said Long-Drink McGonnigle, who had been eavesdropping—if that’s not redundant. “Then how—”

  “Beats me,” the Duck said.

  An idea occurred to me, so ridiculous I’d have rejected it out of hand if I’d been just a little soberer. Instead I held it up to the light and turned it to and fro. “Holy shit,” I murmured.

  “What?” the Drink asked.

  “Drink,” I said, and my own voice sounded odd in my ears, “who is the best hacker that ever took a drink in Callahan’s bar?”

  He looked down at the floor and thought for a minute. “Ever? Have to be Tom Flannery, I guess. He used to work for Xerox in Palo Alto before he moved east, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah. You happen to remember the date of his death, by any chance?”

  “Hell, sure.” The Drink looked up this time (according to Dr. W.H. Cosby, dates are stored in the air, above eye-level; names below) and thought some more. Suddenly his eyes opened so wide the wrinkles went away. “Christ in a garter belt! A dozen years ago tonight!”

  “Almost to the hour,” I agreed.

  “So what?” the Duck asked.

  “Drink,” I said, “what did Tom die of?”

  Long-Drink’s eyes were like cue balls. “First friend I ever had that died of AIDS,” he said hollowly.

  The three of us looked at each other—and finished our drinks as one.

  △ △ △

  “I hope this ghost business won’t keep you from coming back here,” I said to the Duck the next time I had a moment to talk. Privately I was prepared to offer him a discount if necessary to keep him coming around. A place like mine needed a guy like him.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said sourly.

  “Neither do I,” said Long-Drink, who had been deep in conversation with him. “That’s why it’s so scary.”

  One of the problems with being around the other side of the bar for a change is that I can’t discreetly kick Long-Drink in the shin any more. I made a mental note to talk to him later: maybe we could agree on a facial expression to convey the same message. “Nothing to be scared of, Drink,” I said hastily. “Whatever it was, it was good medicine. Nothing a man should give up a good tavern for.”

  “Relax, Mr. Subtle,” the Duck said. “You couldn’t keep me away from this place with rap music.”

  I brightened. “Pleased to hear it.”

  “That’s part of why, right there,” he said. “Most places I hang out, after a while they start to look at me funny, and pretty soon they ask me if I really have to leave so early.”

  “Why—,” Long-Drink began…and across the room, Fast Eddie’s right hand stopped playing. “—if you don’t mind my asking, else?” he finished hastily.

  “This Callahan gent,” the Duck said. “I’d like to talk with him.”

  I didn’t want to discourage him, but felt compelled to say, “I don’t really think
he’ll be back. I mean, I don’t know…but we’re not expecting him.”

  “Maybe not,” he agreed. “Then again, if I hang out here long enough, maybe he will.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I said. “And I’ll tell you the truth, I’d hang around Hell for a long while, for the chance of another conversation with Mike.”

  “I’d like to ask him a few things I’ve wondered about for a long time,” he said. His voice sounded almost wistful, and—for the first and only time that night—and for only a second, at most—his face looked vulnerable.

  I sent words on tiptoe. “You mean, ‘Why am I so—’?”

  “‘Why?’ is good,” he said, nodding. “‘How?’ would be even better. ‘Is there an on-off switch for the phenomenon?’ would be best of all. I’ve satisfied myself that nobody alive today knows the answers to those questions—but if anybody does, it’d be a time traveler. They’d have to know a lot about probability. I pumped that Phee character for all I could get, but most of what he told me turned out to be bullshit. Your guy Mike sounds okay. I got nothing better to do. Maybe I’ll stick around. As long as you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, we like coincidence around here,” Long-Drink assured him. “Why, Jake and I once worked in the same carnival, me runnin’ the carousel and him on the Ferris wheel, for almost two years, and we never met until he showed up here.”

  “Of course, we moved in different circles,” I said.

  The Duck’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. “Why don’t you both rotate on this?” he suggested, showing us a fingernail.

  Jonathan, who had come up on us unnoticed, barked with involuntary laughter. “Talk about a spinning black hole!”

  We all cracked up. Jonathan ordered straight Bushmill’s and took a stool next to the Duck. “You know why the Soviets call them ‘frozen stars’ instead of black holes?” he asked the Duck. The Duck grinned again and nodded, and they laughed together and exchanged a high five, the elderly scientist and the grouchy hobbit.

  “Well, you’re looking much more manic,” the Duck said.

  Jonathan nodded. “It’s silly. I should be at peace. I keep thinking, well, now you’ve lost the great melodrama of your life, your grand tragedy. Now you’re just a failure.” He grimaced self-consciously and sipped whiskey. “Maybe you’re right, Jake,” he said to me. “Maybe I’ve become addicted to self-pity.”

  “Self-pity is an easy disease to cure,” I said. “Try what I suggested earlier. Go do some good thing.”

  “Like what?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Random acts of senseless kindness?” I felt another lightbulb form above my cranium. “Wait a half, how about this? How many other experienced medical researchers would you say there are walking around right now who wonder why the SIV virus doesn’t make African green monkeys sick?”

  His eyes glazed over. He stopped breathing for so long that I reached for the seltzer teat to startle him back into it, but as I got my thumb on the mojo he took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. His shoulders lowered a half-inch—and got two inches wider.

  “May I use your computer?” he asked, staring through me.

  “Sure,” I said.

  He turned and looked at it for a moment. He took a step forward and then stopped and looked at it for another long moment. Then he took two more steps and hesitated again. He was looking at the plug, lying there a foot from the socket.

  “Never mind,” he said suddenly, and came back to his seat. “There’s no hurry. I work better when I’m sober, anyway.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” Long-Drink told him. “Lots of people have that problem.”

  Jonathan finished his drink in a long slow gulp, and stared into the glass for a moment. “And besides,” he went on, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Jake.”

  “Shoot,” I said, and then winced.

  So did he. “Excuse me a second.” He got up and walked to the chalk line. People quieted down expectantly, and he held his empty glass high.

  “To random acts of senseless kindness,” he said in a loud clear voice, and eighty-sixed the glass. As it burst, he pulled his gun out of his pants, popped the clip out, worked the slide, and sent the gun after the glass.

  What a merry sound it made, when it hit all that broken glass! The flames flared, and a few of them turned a cheery green from burning Cosmoline.

  An irregular rain of glasses applauded his toast—and then folks went back to their conversations.

  Jonathan returned to his seat. “Now,” he said briskly, “back when you were holding a shotgun on me, Jake, you said something that’s been nagging at me more and more as the night wore on.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe it stuck in my head because you used a polite word in the middle of cursing me. You said, ‘I’ve got problems of my own, friend.’”

  “So?”

  “So what’s your problem, friend?”

  I blinked at him. Cure complete.

  And as I opened my mouth to answer, Merry Moore drifted up to the bar, tacking against a breeze only she could feel. “Hey, Jake,” she said in a voice only a little too loud, “’re’s somethin’ I been meanin’ to ask, once things kinda quieted down—I just remembered.”

  I smiled. What a lucky man I was, to have friends like these. “Sure, Merry. Matter of fact, I was just about to—”

  “Hey, Tommy,” she called, ignoring me. “C’mere a minute.”

  Tommy Janssen came over and joined us.

  She blinked around at us owlishly. “Now listen while I ask him this. Tommy, you know that story you told about Ish’sh…about Ish’s wedding, and the white man with the knife?”

  “Sure,” Tommy said.

  She slapped the bartop. “What made you assume it was a white man?”

  In the silence that followed, Tommy stared at her with no expression at all for maybe ten seconds.

  And then his face broke into a big grin. “Hey, everybody,” he called out to the room at large, “Check this out: I did it again…”

  5

  The Duck

  It was our second night in Mary’s Place, about ten o’clock, and things were going pretty good. The fire was crackling in the hearth. The Fount was working well, making magic out of all natural ingredients. The booze flowed. More viscously, puns flowed.

  Me, I had trouble in mind. But I had it so far down below the surface that not even my best friends caught me at it. Nobody wants to hear the bartender’s troubles.

  And it was a good place to be worried in. Good company in good spirits will get you through a lot. Fast Eddie was in rare form, playing what he called mindmelds—doing Bud Powell with his left hand while his right played Joplin, for example. Eddie at his worst is terrific: when he’s hot, only a fool will fail to pay attention. The Tatum/Peterson combination was especially interesting.

  Jonathan Crawford wasn’t there that night; he’d promised to return frequently, but he had a hot lead to chase now, and would be too busy to drink for a while. There were about a dozen more people present than there had been the night before—Ben and Barbara, Stan and Joyce, Tina and Victor, Jim and Joan, a few others who hadn’t been able to make Opening Night. But except for the Lucky Duck (who was wearing pants tonight), all of them qualified as Immediate Family. That is, people who had been present in Callahan’s bar the night it was converted to a rapidly expanding plasma. Folks in a position to tell you, from personal knowledge, what a nuclear firestorm is like up close. Not that they do…tell many people, that is. Who’d believe them?

  But the Duck seemed to. People had been telling him Callahan’s Place stories all night, for the sheer joy of recalling them, at first—and either he believed every one of them, or the furry little bastard was damned if he’d give us the satisfaction of seeing how much he admired our skill as liars. I wondered which was true, after a while. From everything we’d learned about him the night before, extraordinary occurrences were utterly commonplace to him—but his pan
was so dead, even beneath all that beard, that you had to wonder if it was costing him effort to keep it that way. Folks began to visibly attempt to blow his mind, to come up with a true story that would exceed his credulity limit. Then at one point—just as Long-Drink McGonnigle had finished telling him about Dink Fogerty, who for a short time could make a dart-board want darts, the Duck suddenly counterattacked.

  “You find that unusual?” he said. “Strike you as bizarre, does it?” His tone was negligent, but his voice was loud enough to draw eyes. (Odd, that voice of his. You couldn’t call it beautiful, exactly, with that honking quality to it…but it was certainly commanding, almost mesmerizing, when he wanted it to be.) “You citizens think you know about weird, is that right? Watch this, turkeys!” He slid from his chair, strolled with lazy grace through the crowd to the television set, and punched it on. Without looking at the screen, he turned his back on it and returned to the bar, where he climbed back up into his chair with a nonchalance so massive that it translated as smug triumph.

  Those of us who could not see the screen (most of us) were oddly wary of changing that status; as one, we looked to Fast Eddie, who could see the screen from his piano bench, for a report. He screwed up his face and studied the screen.

  “Program crawl,” he announced.

  We understood what he meant. We just didn’t understand what it meant. All cable TV companies reserve one channel for an endlessly scrolling list of which programs are scheduled on what channels for the next hour and a half, in half-hour blocks. So what? Eddie squinted at the programs listed for a few seconds, found nothing to report, then visibly lowered his gaze to see if there was anything strikingly weird in the advertising copy that crawled horizontally by below the program listings, and came up empty there too.

  Then his eyes went back up to the program crawl…and grew very wide and round.

  “Ho-ly…shit,” he said hoarsely, and checked his watch, and looked at the screen some more, and rubbed at his eyes with his hands, and so on until Long-Drink, the challenged party, lost patience and snapped, “What the hell is it, Ed?”