Part 10 (1/2)

That was when he'd begun calling himself Ifasen-he'd found it in a list of Yoruba names-and developing a West African accent. Soon hotline callers were asking for Ifasen.

No one else would do. This did not endear him to his bosses, who were in the business of selling a service, not creating star players.

So in his off hours he started looking for something new. On a sunny Sunday morning in Ann Arbor he stumbled across the Eternal Life Spiritualist Church. He sat in on a healing session. The needle on his bulls.h.i.+t meter immediately jumped into the red zone but he stayed for the wors.h.i.+p and messages meeting. At the end, as he watched one person after another write ”love offering” checks to the church, he knew this was his next step.

He joined the Eternal Life Church, signed up for medium development workshops, and hit it off with the pastor, James Gray. Soon he was serving the church as a student medium, which meant he became privy to and a partic.i.p.ant in all the chicanery. After a year or so of this, the Reverend Doctor Gray, a big, burly white guy who thought having a young African-sounding black man as an a.s.sistant added to the mystical ambiance of his church, took him aside and gave him some invaluable advice.

”Get yourself educated, son,” he told Lyle. ”I don't mean a degree, I mean learning learning. You're gonna be dealing with all sorts of people from all walks of life with many different levels of education. You want to be a success in this you've got to have a wide range of knowledge on a lot of subjects. You don't need to be an expert in any of them, but you need a nodding acquaintance.”

Lyle took that advice, sneaking into cla.s.srooms and auditing courses at U of M, Wayne State, and the University of Detroit Mercy, everything from philosophy to economics to western literature. That was where he began scouring the street from his speech. Didn't earn a single credit, but a whole world had opened up to him, a world he took with him when he and Charlie left Ann Arbor for Dearborn to strike out on their own.

There Lyle set himself up in a storefront as a psychic advisor. They worked their a.s.ses off to perfect their techniques. The money was good, but Lyle knew he could do better. So they moved on.

And landed here, in an upper corner of Queens, New York.

Do it before you're thirty, they said. Well, Lyle had turned thirty last month, and he'd done it.

And now, sitting in the first real estate he'd ever owned, Lyle Kenton slipped his hands forward along the polished oak surface of the table, allowing the ends of the metal bars strapped to his forearms within the sleeves of his coat to slip under the edge of the tabletop. He raised those forearms and his end of the table followed.

”There it goes!” Evelyn whispered as the table tipped toward her. ”The spirits are here!”

Lyle eased back on his arms and worked one of the levers Charlie had built into the legs of the pawfoot table to raise its far side, right under Vincent McCarthy's hands. Lyle peeked and saw McCarthy's eyebrows arch, but he gave no sign that he was overly impressed.

”Whoops!” Anya giggled as her chair tilted in response to an electronic signal from Charlie's command post. ”There it goes again! Happens every time!”

Then Evelyn's tilted, then McCarthy's. This time he looked perplexed. Table tipping he might be able to write off, but his chair...?

Time to make him a believer.

”Something is coming through,” Lyle said, squeezing his eyes shut. ”I believe it concerns our new guest. Yes, you, Vincent. The spirits detect turmoil within you. They sense you are concerned about something.”

”Aren't we all?” McCarthy said.

Lyle kept his eyes closed but he could hear the smirk. Vincent wanted to believe-that was why he was here-but he felt a little silly too. He was n.o.body's fool and wasn't about to let anyone pull a fast one on him.

”But this is a deep concern, Vincent, and not about anything so cra.s.s as money.” Lyle opened his eyes. He needed to start picking up on the nonverbal cues. ”This wrenches at your heart, doesn't it.”

McCarthy blinked but said nothing. He didn't have to; his expression spoke volumes.

”I sense a great deal of confusion along with this concern.”

Again, he nodded. But Lyle had expected that. If McCarthy wasn't confused, he wouldn't be here.

Lyle half-closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his temples, a.s.suming his Deep Concentration pose. ”I sense someone from the Other Side trying to contact you. Your mother perhaps? Is she still alive?”

”Yes. She's not well, but she's still with us.”

That could be it. But now to salvage the remark about the mother.

”Then why do I have this sense of a definite maternal presence? Very loving. A grandmother, perhaps? Have your grandmothers crossed over?”

”Yes. Both.”

”Ah, perhaps that's who it is then. One of your grandmothers... although I'm not sure which side yet. But it will come, it will come... it's getting clearer...”

McCarthy, Lyle thought. Irish. Would Grandma McCarthy have been over here or back in Ireland? Didn't matter that much. Lyle knew a surefire Irish grabber. Never failed.

”I'm sensing a great love for an American president in this person... can that be right? Yes, this woman had a special place in her heart for President Kennedy.”

Vincent McCarthy's eyes d.a.m.n near bugged out of his head. ”Gram Elizabeth! She loved loved Kennedy! She was never the same after he was shot. This is incredible! How can you know that?” Kennedy! She was never the same after he was shot. This is incredible! How can you know that?”

What Irish grandmother didn't love Kennedy? Lyle wondered.

”Oh, you wouldn't believe what he knows,” Anya whispered.

”Ifasen's amazing,” Evelyn added. ”Knows everything, just everything.”

”I know nothing,” Lyle intoned. ”It's the spirits who know. I am but a channel to and from their wisdom.”

Lyle could see the hunger in McCarthy's eyes. He wanted more. He was knee deep in belief and wanted to take the plunge, but his Irish Catholic upbringing was holding him back. He needed a push, wanted a push. And Lyle would give it to him, but not quite yet.

Better to let him dangle for a while.

Lyle turned to Evelyn.

”But something else is coming through, a stronger signal, directed, I believe, at Ms. Jusko.”

Evelyn's hands flew to her mouth. ”Me? Who is it? Is it Oscar? Is he calling me?”

Yes, it was going to be Oscar, but Lyle intended to draw this out a bit. Oscar was her dear departed dog. Two months ago she'd come to Lyle wanting to know if he could contact her pet on the Other Side. Of course he could. Trouble was, she hadn't told him what breed Oscar was or what he looked like, and Lyle hadn't been about to ask.

He didn't have to.

During the first sitting-private at Lyle's insistence, because animals were so hard to track down on the Other Side-Charlie had sneaked in while the lights were out and borrowed Evelyn's handbag. Back in his control room he'd rifled through it and found a stack of pictures of a mahogany Vizsla. He'd relayed a description to Lyle's ear piece. Before returning the bag he appropriated a dog whistle he'd found lodged in the bottom of the bag.

Lyle had amazed Evelyn by describing Oscar to her, right down to his jeweled collar. The woman had been so grateful to learn that he was happy chasing rabbits through the Elysian Fields of the Afterlife that she'd left a $2,500 love donation on her way out the door.

”Yes,” Lyle said now. ”I believe it's Oscar. And he seems a little upset.”

”Oh, no!” Evelyn said. ”What's wrong?”

”I'm not sure. It seems you misplaced something of his and he wonders if you still care about him.”