His Name Is John Read online

  “So he ends up in a potter’s field,” Elliott said, instantly depressed.

  “I’m afraid so,” Brad replied.

  Elliott’s mind automatically opened his trivia file, where the origins of the term potter’s field had been neatly stashed away from the time he’d had to look it up for a college term paper on WWI. It was from the Bible—Matthew 27:7—and involved the priests using the 30 pieces of silver returned by a repentant Judas, “to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners.” It was not called potter’s field because a potter owned it, but because the land was worthless for growing crops, and was only used by potters to dig clay. He’d found the thought depressing when he first came across it, and he still did.

  “And there’s been no new information on this particular one, I assume,” he said, bringing himself back to the moment.

  “Unfortunately not,” Brad replied.

  “What a hell of a way for anyone to end up,” Elliott said.

  “I agree,” Brad replied.

  “I don’t know why I’ve gotten so hooked on this thing,” Elliott said, “but it’s almost like I feel some sort of connection to the guy. He died right next to me and I just hate the idea of nobody knowing who he was.”

  “I understand,” Brad said. “But we’ve done everything we could. The positive side, if there is one, is that there is no statute of limitations on murder, and your guy is listed several places. There’s always a chance he’ll be identified, and his killer or killers found.”

  “But not much,” Elliott said.

  Brad sighed again. “Not much,” he replied.

  They talked for a few more seconds, before Cessy asked to talk to him to update him on the latest status of their vacation plans. Then she insisted on a full report on his current condition, whether he was sleeping well, eating properly, etc. He assured her everything was fine, and at last she excused herself to go put dinner on the table.

  As he took a frozen lasagna out of the freezer, put it in the oven, and went into the den to watch television, he still felt depressed reflecting on John’s fate. For anyone to end up in a potter’s field, regardless of what it was called, was sad beyond words. Maybe he could pay to have the body buried in a regular cemetery—he could afford it. But there still would be no information to put on a tombstone, and then what happened if John were later identified and his family wanted his remains?

  No, he realized, it was a noble thought, but not a very practical one. Maybe, if no one had come along in a year or so, he could reconsider it.

  He sat in front of the TV, his eyes and ears functioning but his mind oddly disengaged. He felt himself nodding off…

  My name is John.

  Oh, God, I know. Why don’t you just go toward the light, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do?

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. There is no light.

  What do you expect me to do about it?

  I don’t know.

  What do you know?

  Nothing.

  And again, the sadness.

  The soft ding of the oven announcing the lasagna was ready woke him with a start, feeling overwhelmed by confusion and frustration that were further compounded by his uncertainty as to whether the feelings were his or John’s—or if there was a John at all.

  He got up from his chair and went into the kitchen, contemplating seeking professional help. He made a small salad, returned to the den to set up a TV tray, went back to the kitchen for the lasagna and a glass of milk, all accomplished with a minimum of conscious thought. His mind was on John, and on himself. If there was a John and if all this wasn’t just some sort of game his mind was playing with him, how could John not know anything at all about himself? Again, Elliott thought of a stroke victim, wanting to speak but unable to make speech and mind connect.

  From their exchange during his nap, it seemed that John was finding his voice, if not his memory. Why had John chosen him for help? Well, that link was obvious if John were indeed the guy from the ER and not just some mental aberration.

  But if that were true, logic would further dictate that he should have sensed some reaction to or verification of the few details Brad had been able to provide regarding the body and its disposition. Yet there had been nothing.

  Of course, the bottom line of logic would be that there are no such things as spirits and ghosts.

  Elliott was not a psychic, or a medium. He’d never had his palm read, or been to a séance, or even seen a real deck of tarot cards. He’d never tried to foresee the future by staring into tea leaves at the bottom of a cup, or examining the entrails of an owl, nor had he ever understood why anyone would want to do so. He’d never, in short, been very big on the paranormal, and had never given much thought to the subject of ghosts or spirits one way or the other.

  Though not one given to long periods of introspection, he recognized that John’s unsought intrusion into his life was leading him down paths within himself he’d never previously taken. As he sat eating dinner, staring at but not really paying any concerted attention to the TV, he decided against seeking professional help for the moment. He’d always been able to work though his own problems, and couldn’t see any particular reason why he couldn’t handle this one as well. If John were some sort of a side effect of the accident, chances were good that he would simply go away in time. And in the meantime, he would just deal with him.

  He did find it interesting, and not a little disturbing, however, that John was now conveying thoughts other than “My name is John.” On the other hand, as long as John was not warning him that people were out to get him or encouraging any type of bizarre behavior, he could afford to just give it all a bit more time to see what might develop. And in truth, as frustrating as he found the entire John situation to be, it was also oddly fascinating.

  Nevertheless, he was rather relieved, on waking the next morning, to find himself unaware of having had any specific dreams involving John. The only one he could even vaguely recall had something to do with mountains.

  * * *

  Jim had said his appointment to list the Sheffield property was at ten thirty, so around half past eight, Elliott took a walk up to the little diner tucked under the Thorndale el stop for breakfast. He found himself going there two or three times a week, and chalked it up more to the power of habit than anything else. The food was adequate and abundant, but he doubted anyone had ever used the words ambience or cuisine in reference to the place.

  He was back home by nine forty-five, and disinclined by his still sensitive shoulder to attempt to do anything around the apartment that might involve a lot of motion, opened the living room balcony doors wide and settled into his favorite chair with a book he’d started some time before his accident.

  Jim called at eleven fifteen asking if Elliott could meet him at the Sheffield building at two, and Elliott readily agreed. Jim offered to come pick him up, but Elliott said he could just as easily take the el to Fullerton and walk from there. They agreed to meet in front of the building.

  “Normally,” Jim explained, “I prefer to show a property when the owner isn’t around, but given the time element and the circumstances, I think having you talk directly to the guy might help. Do you mind?”

  “Fine with me,” Elliott said.

  The prospect of a new project always excited him—going through a building, imagining it as it had looked when it was new and envisioning what it would look like when he’d finished, figuring out the balance between modernizing and retaining as much of the original character as possible, and finding ways to achieve the maximum effect with the minimum expenditure. For some reason, his attraction to this building was particularly strong.

  He knew the thousands of convoluted details involved in such transactions would undoubtedly drive most people to distraction, but he handled them with aplomb. The questions of leases and relocations and what to do when and in what order were always dealt with methodically, and overall, with a minimum of difficulty.
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  Jim was waiting for him in front of the building as promised. He’d deliberately approached from the opposite side of the street so that he could maximize his impressions of the building as it fit in with its surroundings. He was, again, favorably impressed.

  As they walked through the U-shaped courtyard toward the entrance, Elliott instinctively noted areas that needed tuck-pointing, windows and frames that should be replaced, a few minor cracks in the foundation, a broken rain gutter. But all in all, he decided, the building—from the outside at least—appeared solid and in good shape for its age.

  The small foyer was neat and clean, and he was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the materials that had been used during construction—they were actually upscale for the area. He could tell that beneath the several layers of paint on the paneled walls, the original hardwood waited for restoration. The mailbox doors appeared to be pure bronze, and the door buzzer buttons were, he was pretty sure, ivory.

  These were the kind of details Elliott always looked for in a prospective building, and he thought of them as “gingerbread”—details either already present or which could be easily added to appeal to a prospective buyer when it was time for resale. Beamed ceilings, hardwood floors, big rooms, wood paneling—even rounded doorways were a definite plus, he’d found. In buildings with courtyards, landscaping of even a very small space could add to the building’s overall appeal to both buyer and prospective new tenants.

  Jim pressed one of the ivory door buzzers, which was followed by the click of the door lock being released, and they entered the first-floor hallway. A stairway immediately to the right of the entrance led, Elliott assumed, to the top two floors. As he followed Jim to the first door on the left, he observed that while everything was showing its age, the building had obviously been well cared for. The carpets were worn but clean, the paint slightly mottled with age but not flaked or chipped.

  Jim’s knock at the door was quickly answered by a pear-shaped man in his late seventies, the stub of an unlit cigar clenched at the corner of his mouth. He quickly removed it and stepped aside, opening the door wide.

  “Come in, come in,” he said pleasantly enough, but without smiling.

  When they’d entered the large, comfortable living room and the door was closed behind them, Jim did the brief introductions.

  “Mr. Capetti, this is Elliott Smith.”

  The two men shook hands, exchanged the usual first-meeting greetings, and Capetti gestured them to a seat. Elliott of course let his eyes take in as much of the room as possible without making it obvious. Crown moldings. A real fireplace with fake logs—gas, he surmised. No obvious cracks in the walls or ceiling.

  Gradually, and rather disconcertingly, he became distinctly aware that someone else was in the room, and he had no doubt as to who it was. He didn’t want to even begin to speculate what John was doing there, or why, and forced his mind and eyes to focus on Capetti, who had taken a seat on the large sofa across from him, leaning forward to drop the cigar stub into an otherwise clean ashtray.

  “My wife made me promise to give them up before she died,” he said, indicating the ashtray. “But every now and again…” He looked from Jim to Elliott and shook his head. “This is all going a little faster than I expected it to. I haven’t quite adjusted to the fact that I’m actually selling.”

  Jim turned to Elliott. “The building has been in Mr. Capetti’s family since it was built,” he explained, though he had already mentioned it when he first talked to Elliott about the building.

  Capetti nodded. “My father bought it in nineteen twenty-six,” he said. “I lived here since I was born, except for a couple of years in the army and when I first got married. My kids were raised here.” He sighed. “It’s hard letting go of the past.”

  “I can appreciate that,” Elliott said, and, in fact, he could.

  “The most important thing to me is that I don’t want to see the place torn down. I been approached a couple of times by people who made me a good offer, but who only want it for the land. I happen to know the same people have made offers on the buildings on either side of me. Well, I won’t be part of it. Jim tells me you’re a preservationist. That’s what this town needs more of these days. Problem is, nobody gives a damn anymore. They changed the name on Marshall Field’s, fer God’s sake! A hundred and fifty years of history just wiped away like it was a runny nose! Macy’s! Macy’s is New York; Marshall Field’s is Chicago!”

  Apparently, suddenly realizing his passions were getting the better of him, Capetti stopped abruptly, and got up from the sofa.

  “Well,” he said, “I expect you’d like to see the rest of the place.”

  Elliott and Jim followed him as he began the tour, starting with his own apartment.

  “All twelve units are basically the same,” he said. “Two bedroom, one bath. All the units on this side had working fireplaces, but they were closed off years ago or converted to gas, like this one. They could be reopened if anyone wanted to. Eleven of the units are occupied; the people in 3D moved out last week, and I didn’t want to try to rent it out again until I knew whether I was going to decide to sell or not. So, I can show you that one, too, if you’d like; it’s a rear unit.”

  Elliott took mental notes throughout the tour, but what he saw pleased him. Hardwood floors throughout, lots of gingerbread already in place or which could be readily added. There were a lot of things that needed doing, of course. The kitchens and bathrooms would have to be replaced, the floors redone along with the wooden back porches, the single four-car garage torn down to allow room for a few more uncovered but private parking spaces.

  Perhaps because he was distracted by his concentration on the building he completely forgot about John’s presence until Capetti led them to the basement to show them the laundry, utility and storage areas, which were divided by a center wall running the length of the building. The minute they entered the basement, the sense of John’s presence began to fill him like water filling an empty glass. He tried to ignore it, concentrating on looking for signs of moisture, mold or other evidence of structural damage or weakness, but by the time they entered the laundry/utility half of the basement the feeling that the three men were not alone was overpowering.

  The front section of the space housed the furnace, boilers and electrical circuitry. He was pleased to note circuit breakers rather than fuse boxes. It was in the rear section, the laundry area, that he felt the weight of John’s presence most strongly, and like dye slowly poured into a full glass of water, he was aware that the sense of presence was gradually infused with one of confusion. It was only with great conscious effort that he was able force himself to concentrate on the tour. Luckily, neither Jim nor Capetti seemed to notice his distraction.

  From what he’d seen, the building appeared to be exactly what he’d been looking for, and he considered the asking price reasonable. He’d have to arrange for his subcontractor crew to go through the place to verify his impressions of the building’s structural integrity, but…

  Leaving the building, he accepted Jim’s offer of a ride home, which would give them time to discuss his impressions of the place, and for him to look over a packet of fact sheets Jim had prepared for him on the property: taxes, insurance, utilities, a projected city sidewalk assessment and other financial information, plus a list of other recently sold comparable buildings in the area, with their asking and selling prices. Jim had obviously done his homework.

  While he did his best to stay focused, he had been truly disturbed on several levels by John’s presence. What was he doing there? It was John—there wasn’t a question about that. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. That John seemed to be following him at will—John’s will, certainly not Elliott’s—reinforced his concern that the passage of time was not lessening his awareness of John, but in fact increasing it.

  While looking over the pages of information Jim had handed him, he searched his mind, looking for some indication of John’s presence with
them in the car. There was nothing.

  “Please understand I’m not trying to pressure you,” Jim was saying, “but if you are interested in the place, we really should act as quickly as possible. I just don’t want Evermore to get a whiff of this, and at this juncture I have no idea what’s going on at work, and how much Evermore already knows about our listings.”

  Elliott lifted up his right buttock slightly to put the papers partly under him.

  “I understand,” he said, “and I’ll go over all this information again carefully tonight. Right now, I’m strongly leaning toward taking it, but I can’t make a snap decision. I’ll give you a call in the morning. And if I decide to go with it, we’ll have to set it up for my guys to go over the place carefully before I make an offer.”

  “That’ll be fine,” Jim said.

  He spent the remainder of the afternoon reviewing the information Jim had given him, jotting down notes of things he’d thought of while going through the building, making lists of things that definitely required work—cosmetic touches that would enhance the building’s appeal to a future buyer—and making rough estimates of the projected costs of each based on his past experience. As he worked, he gradually became aware that John was unobtrusively present, as if just observing him. But he also detected… What? An interest? An interest in what? What he was doing? That was a first, as was the very concept of John being aware of anything other than his name and his understandable concern over his loss of identity.

  Elliott was still ambivalent about whether or not he might be subconsciously creating this entire John scenario by projecting his own thoughts and feelings and crediting them as originating from John. However, that overwhelming sense of John’s presence and…confusion…in the basement of Capetti’s building? He knew he hadn’t been projecting anything there. And he still had no idea of what it was all about.