His Name Is John Read online

  He dreamt that night of the building, and of the basement and of mountains, and the latter dream was filled with a longing he was well aware was not his.

  * * *

  He awoke in the morning with the determination to make an offer on Capetti’s building, contingent on the outcome of his crew’s inspection. To act in such haste was very unlike him, and that troubled him. He once again reflected on how likely it was that the changes in his life since his accident were the result of the actual existence of John, or if it might be indicative of some sort of undiagnosed brain injury resulting from the accident, which was also influencing other areas of his life, such as his judgment.

  He was increasingly convinced that John was real, which he knew in and of itself might be evidence of mental malfunctioning. He also knew that people with serious mental problems almost never thought they had any.

  He fought a rising tide of frustration and forced himself back to what he still felt confident was reality. As far as his judgment was concerned, he reasoned, he was looking for another property. The Capetti building was exactly what he’d been looking for, verified by his having had an interest in it long before the accident. The price was reasonable, and he was going to hedge his bets by making his offer contingent on an inspection by qualified people on whose opinion he could depend. So, it wasn’t as though he were just suddenly taking wild risks.

  John’s intrusion into his life, he reassured himself, was still largely peripheral, and as long as it remained that way, he could handle it.

  He looked up Jim’s cell phone number and called.

  * * *

  The offer was made, and as part of the eternal pas de deux of real estate sales, countered, responded to, and accepted with, for a change, a minimal amount of hassle. The inspections went off without a hitch and revealed no unanticipated problems. Even Elliott was impressed by the uncharacteristic smoothness of the process.

  Capetti had requested a 60-day escrow to give him time to prepare for his move to Florida, but Elliott, through Jim, had convinced him to accept a 30-day escrow with an up-to-30-day extension of Capetti’s occupancy at no charge.

  Elliott was therefore more than a little surprised when, shortly after escrow closed, he received a totally unexpected call at home.

  “Elliott Smith?” the very male voice asked.

  He did not recognize the caller.

  “Yes?”

  The voice had no warmth, no particular expression.

  “This is Al Collina. We were neighbors in Lake Forest when we were kids.”

  Elliott tried not to show his surprise. “Yes,” he said, “I remember. What can I do for you?”

  “I understand you just bought a property on Sheffield.” He did not wait for a reply. “I’d like to take it off your hands before you start renovations. I’ll make it well worth your while.”

  Capetti had mentioned that the buildings on either side of his had had inquiries recently, but wasn’t aware if they’d been sold. Obviously, they had, and it was, as he suspected, Evermore that had bought them. He also suspected Collina had known Central Management was handling the property even before he bought them out. He must, Elliott reasoned, have been one very unhappy real estate developer when he found it had been snatched out from under his nose.

  “I don’t want to see it knocked down for another concrete-slab high-rise,” Elliott said.

  “Who said that’s what I was going to do?” Collina asked. “It just so happens that building has sentimental value. My old man and Gus Capetti came over from the old country together. My dad loaned him the money to buy the place.”

  Sentimental value? To Al Collina? Somehow Elliott didn’t buy it.

  “That was very generous of him,” Elliott said. “But I never heard Mr. Capetti mention your father. And I’m curious why you hadn’t approached him on it yourself before he put it up for sale?”

  “I didn’t find out about it until just recently,” Collina said, obviously lying since Capetti said he’d been approached a couple times to sell, undoubtedly by Evermore. “I came across some of my old man’s papers and they mentioned it.”

  Elliott got the impression Collina was going out of his way to appear civil, but Elliott wasn’t fooled.

  “How’s Johnny, by the way?” Elliott asked.

  “He’s dead. I thought you knew.”

  Despite the number of years since Elliott last set eyes on Johnny Collina, he felt a strong pang of sorrow.

  “No,” he said, “I didn’t. How did it happen? When?”

  “He joined the Peace Corps in one of those God-forsaken African stink-holes,” Collina said almost casually. “It must have been eight years or so ago now. He was crossing some lake on a ferry when a storm came up and capsized it. Only a couple people survived. Johnny wasn’t one of ’em. They never found his body—they figure the crocs got it.”

  “God! I’m really sorry!” Elliott said, truly shocked. “I can’t believe it!”

  “Yeah. Well, shit happens. Him and me never were very close anyway. My old man had disowned him a long time before that. But then you knew Johnny was a fag.”

  He could hardly believe his ears. Johnny was Al’s brother! He wanted to know more, but felt his anger building and didn’t want to let it show. And why had Collina felt it necessary to say that Johnny was “a fag”?

  “So, about that building…” Al prompted after a pause.

  “No, I’ll keep it.”

  “Yeah, I figured you’d say that. But you think about it. You could make a damned good profit.”

  “Profit isn’t everything.”

  He could hear the sneer in Collina’s voice. “You and Johnny always were two of a kind.” His tone made it clear what he meant, and Elliott couldn’t help but wonder if Al knew about his and Johnny’s true relationship. It wasn’t difficult to read between the lines to figure out why Vittorio had disowned Johnny. A fag in the family? In Vittorio Collina’s family?

  But he didn’t want to pursue it, certainly not with Al. All he wanted to do at the moment was get off the phone.

  “I’ll call you if I change my mind,” he said.

  “Do that,” Al said, and hung up.

  * * *

  As busy as he was with his new project, Elliott was seldom more than peripherally aware of John’s presence…except, perhaps, when he would awake in the morning with dim recollections of recurring dreams of mountains. What they might mean, if anything, he had no idea.

  His hair gradually grew back to the point of it being hard for him to tell where the shaved area had been, and his scars were no longer sensitive to the touch. His shoulder gave him only occasional discomfort, mostly when he forgot that it had been injured, and tried to perform some motion that quickly reminded him.

  He had “Dinner at the Priebes’” twice, and Rick came by a couple times to spend the evening…and the night. Ever since they’d met several weeks before the accident, they’d hit it off both in bed and out.

  The first time Rick stayed over following the accident, Elliott found himself strangely self-conscious, keeping alert for any indication of John’s presence. Being watched while having sex, even by a spirit, wasn’t on Elliott’s list of turn-ons. But for whatever reason, John apparently believed in privacy, and Elliott was relieved.

  He lay there for a while, listening to the subtle changes in Rick’s breathing as he fell asleep, and shortly thereafter, followed him.

  Do I have someone?

  I don’t know.

  It would be nice to be missed.

  I’m sure you are.

  It would be nice.

  And then Elliott dreamed again of mountains.

  CHAPTER 3

  By the time escrow had closed on the Sheffield property, Elliott had all his forces organized. The one thing he did not like about buying a building for renovation was the issue of what to do with the tenants.

  Depending on the amount of work to be done, he was sometimes able to work around them. However, when th
at was not possible, as it wouldn’t be with the Sheffield property, his other properties usually had sufficient vacancies for him to offer to relocate the tenants to one of them. He had even occasionally moved a tenant at his own expense, an act of generosity only someone in his financial position could afford.

  But he didn’t do what he did to make money, though he almost always did. It was the restoration of the property to its original glory that gave him a deep sense of satisfaction.

  While his plumber, electrician and carpenter had been to the property several times and Elliott had met with them either singularly or jointly every couple of days, he himself had only made a few trips to the building to make some rough sketches of what he had in mind in the way of gingerbread. Their jobs were made relatively easier by the fact that all twelve units had basically identical layouts, so they were able to do all their measurements and estimates using the building’s one initially empty apartment as a model.

  As always, after consulting with the appropriate contractor, Elliott chose the electrical fixtures, kitchen appliances, new toilets, sinks and tub/shower units for the bathrooms. The layout of the kitchens was to be changed slightly to allow for new cabinets and a dishwasher. Part of the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room would be removed to create a pass-through between the two rooms for a more open feeling. The hallways were to be repainted, recarpeted and new lighting installed. The solid wood exit doors at the back end of the hallway would be replaced with full glass doors for better lighting and to reduce the claustrophobic nature of most hallways. The open wooden porches crossing the rear of the building were to be redone to give each rear unit a small private patio/balcony area flanking the center exit stairs. The kitchen window of each of the rear units was to be replaced by a doorway to the private balcony.

  The basement, too, was to be redone, with the laundry room separated from the furnace and utilities area by a new wall. The storage area half of the basement would remain largely unchanged, though with new paint, new tile and new doors for each of the twelve units.

  The week of the escrow close, Elliott arranged for the required building permits, then set up a Friday appointment to meet with his three contractors to finalize plans for the basement, which would be the first stage of the renovation while the final logistics of relocating tenants were worked out. He’d printed out rough sketches of his ideas and given copies to all three men for their input, arranging for his carpenter to make the final detailed to-scale drawings.

  He was to meet them in the basement, but the minute he entered the building and moved toward the doorway to the basement, located under the back of the stairway leading to the second floor, he was aware of John’s presence. Again, he equated this process of awareness to an empty glass being filled with water, but he was becoming used to it. He entered the laundry side of the basement to find the three contractors—Ted Swanson, the plumber; Arnie Echter, the electrician; and Sam Bryte, the carpenter—standing around a clothes-folding table in front of four washing machines and on which was spread Sam’s detailed drawing of the space. Elliott strongly sensed John’s presence near the back wall.

  After an exchange of greetings, he joined the men at the table. He was aware Ted and Arnie watched him closely as he looked at Sam’s drawing, doing their best to suppress grins. He looked from one to the other, puzzled.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Look closely,” Arnie said, letting his grin break out.

  He did as Arnie said. Arnie was right—something was wrong with the drawing.

  “Sam’s losing it,” Ted said, poking Sam on the shoulder.

  “Why aren’t the two sides of the basement equal?” Elliott asked.

  Sam sighed. “Because this side of the basement is three feet shorter than the other side,” he said.

  “See what I mean?” Ted hooted. “He’s losin’ it.”

  “I’m not losing it!” Sam said defensively. “I measured the damned thing three times. This side’s three feet shorter than the other side. It’s eighteen feet from the door to the back wall on the storage side, and fifteen feet from the door to the back wall on this side.”

  “How can that be?” Elliott asked. “I wonder if Mr. Capetti might have a copy of the original blueprints?”

  “He does,” Sam said. “I asked him right after I took the measurements. He had ’em in a trunk in the storage area.” He stepped over to reach behind the nearest washer, which had a faded handwritten “Out of Order” sign duct-taped to it, and pulled out a rolled up sheath of obviously very old blueprints.

  “Why the hell didn’t you use these in the first place?” Arnie said.

  “Because I didn’t think I’d need ’em, and I wanted you assholes to have your fun before Elliott got here,” Sam replied, untying the string that surrounded the roll.

  He switched his drawing to one end of the table and spread the roll open on the clear space, anchoring down the two sides with two one-gallon bottles of bleach. “They were in the trash,” he explained. “I filled ’em with water for the weight.”

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Ted asked.

  Sam grinned at him. “Yep.”

  The basement blueprint was on top, and Elliott, reaching for Sam’s drawings, saw that he was right. The laundry room half of the basement was now three feet shorter than it was on the original blueprints.

  He glanced at the rear wall. Concrete block, just like the rest of the basement. Absolutely no discernable difference. A wall was a wall was a wall. The only thing different about this wall was it was three feet closer to the door than it was supposed to be—and it had John’s intensely strong presence in front of it.

  “I wonder what’s behind it?” Sam asked.

  Elliott, who had been equally distracted by the puzzle of the three-foot discrepancy and John’s unexplainable presence, shook his head.

  “I haven’t a clue,” he said, hastily following up on Sam’s question. However, even as he spoke he sensed what he could only interpret as confusion mixed with distress emanating from the area immediately in front of the wall. The sense of confusion was familiar, similar to that he’d encountered the first time in the basement, but was now even stronger; the distress was a new and disturbing element.

  He pulled himself back to the moment, sincerely hoping the other three men were not aware of his distraction, and a quick glance at each of them showed they apparently were not.

  “When was this place built, exactly?” Ted asked.

  “1926,” Elliott replied.

  “So it was here during prohibition?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So maybe they had a still in there or something,” Arnie volunteered.

  “In a three-foot space behind a solid wall?” Sam scoffed. “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “Well,” Ted speculated, “a lot of gangsters lived in this area in those days.”

  “So what could they put in a three-foot space behind a solid wall?” Sam asked.

  Ted shrugged. “Who knows? Hide money maybe? There might be a fortune back there.”

  “Uh huh,” Arnie said. “I always wall my money up and forget about it for nearly eighty years.”

  Elliott said nothing, but the aura of John’s confusion remained strong, and was blending with his own.

  “Would an extra three feet of space make any difference to your plans?” he asked, trying to call the three men, and himself, back to reality.

  Sam shook his head. “Not really. But three feet more is three feet more.”

  “Well,” Elliott said, “we’ll start down here on Monday, and we can punch a small hole in it to see if there’s anything back there. If we don’t really need the space I can’t see taking the whole wall down.”

  A medley of head-nods and “okay’s” apparently settled the matter for the moment, but John’s presence remained by the wall, as did the confusion.

  * * *

  Rick invited Elliott over for dinner that Saturday evening
—a “first” in what he still wasn’t sure could be considered a budding relationship. He realized it was much too early to even think about such things, and he also wasn’t sure what he thought about the prospect of an other-than-casual relationship at all.

  He’d had three that he classified as such in his life, the longest lasting only four years. They’d all ended badly and left him with strong reservations about ever having a fourth. Rick, too, he’d learned, had also had a rather rocky history of relationships, the most recent being when a guy he really thought was his “Mr. Right” suddenly and without explanation dropped him shortly before he’d met Elliott.

  Still, Cessy might be right in insisting that it was time for Elliott, at thirty-eight, to start settling down.

  He had been to Rick’s apartment only once before, the night he’d picked Rick up at the Gentry on Halsted just before last call. They’d gone to Rick’s and gone almost directly to the bedroom. Elliott had had a meeting early the next morning, and barely had time to get out of bed and get dressed before he had to leave, so he really hadn’t seen much of the place, other than getting the general impression that Rick had talents that extended beyond the bedroom.

  He took a chance on driving over, stopping to pick up a bottle of wine, and was lucky to find a parking place within a few buildings’ walk of Rick’s. His earlier general impressions were confirmed as the two settled in for a before-dinner drink.

  When Rick excused himself to go check on dinner, Elliott’s eyes roamed idly around the room and settled on a large “coffee table” book on a lamp table opposite him. Curious, he got up and walked over to it. It was titled Moonrise, and the cover photo was of a crescent moon hovered over what at first looked to be the ocean, but on closer inspection was a sea of pine trees, some flecked with snow, which gave the illusion of whitecaps. He picked it up and carried it back to the couch, placing it on his lap and opening it with one hand as he retrieved his drink from the coffee table with the other.

  There was no text, just full-page and double-page photos. The first picture he turned to was of a full, cream-colored moon appearing above a stark, jagged black silhouette he realized were mountains. He was sure he had seen it before, and then realized that he in fact had.