The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [170]
He did look very different, so much so that Peter would have had difficulty recognizing him. His wig and neatly trimmed brown beard completely altered the shape of his face. Heavy horn-rimmed glasses replaced his usual rimless ones.
“I am ze master of ze disguise,” he said. With one hand he removed the beard. “You see? A few bits of adhesive tape hold it in place. Here beneath it all is the Warren you know and love, and now”—he fixed the beard in place once again—“we are disguised once more. You’ll excuse me if I don’t remove the wig, I trust.”
“What a perfect disguise. Petey didn’t even mention it. Isn’t it super, baby?”
He agreed that it was super. Warren went on driving, heading south and east, keeping up a running conversation with Gretchen. In a burlesque Viennese accent he told her he was Dr. David Loewenstein, the famous Austrian mystic and psychic medium. Gretchen played along, mimicking his accent, while Peter gratefully let the two of them handle the conversation. It was a pleasure to put his mind in neutral and coast for awhile. It would have been an even greater pleasure not to be in the car at all, and he had tried to find reasons not to go along. Warren could have taken her by himself, he had told himself from time to time. But he had never managed to make himself believe this and had not even attempted to sell it to Warren. No, he had to be there. He just hoped he would be able to handle it.
At least he was past the periodic touches of mania that had afflicted him the previous afternoon. Unwelcome thoughts still came to him, questions occurred that would have troubled him, but he was having less difficulty pushing them aside now. He was growing accustomed to the drug, remembering from earlier times how to use it and how to coast with it. And he was growing similarly accustomed to the role he was playing, managing at once to fit it comfortably while holding a portion of his mind apart from it.
On the edge, of course, there was the specter of what they were doing. This would not go away. On the contrary, it drew closer with every turn of the car’s wheels. He dealt with it by keeping himself strictly in present time and banishing thoughts of the future.
It was all as Gretchen said, a matter of will and concentration.
Warren stopped the car at a gas station. He told attendant to fill the tank, then excused himself to go the lavatory.
First, though, he placed a telephone call. When he’d been connected to the person he had spoken to earlier, he said, “This is Dr. David Loewenstein. I’m about ten minutes from you at the moment. My patient is presently cooperative.” His voice was neither his own nor the comic-opera voice he’d used with Gretchen, but was quite similar in pitch and inflection to the psychiatrist’s.
“Her delusion is being supported and she does not know our true destination,” he went on. “I wanted to make sure you would have restraint available. In light of her history I can’t overemphasize that.”
He listened for a few moments, then rang off. In the washroom he took off the false beard, peeled off the bits of adhesive tape, and fixed the beard properly in place with spirit gum. He swallowed two more Excedrins before returning to the car.
“Well, this is it,” Warren said. He swung the car through the iron gates and along the narrow macadam road. “We have arrived.”
Peter heard the words and looked at his own hands, surprised at their steadiness. Warren had spoken in a voice brimming with cheer and anticipation, but Peter heard them echo in his mind in another tone entirely, one of bitter resignation. Well, this is it. We have arrived.
It was not what he had expected. No guards on the gate, none of the stark gloom he had pictured. The general feel of the place was that of a college campus.
There had been a sign, though, and Gretchen had seen it. Now, as they passed between tall trees, she said, “This is the State Hospital.”
“Of course it is. And ze internationally famous Dr. Loewenstein is expected at any moment. Everything’s right on schedule, Gretchen.”
“But why are we here?”
“Just think