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  It also meant that Insolers had lied to him, Chant thought. The way the test was designed, it would be transparent to anyone who knew anything about psychological screening instruments that it was the answer to every question but the sixth that mattered.

  “Neil, what the hell do they mean by this?”

  Chant glanced over to see where Tank’s thick, gnarled finger was pointing. “They want to know if you’re afraid of ghosts, Tank. Not at all, some of the time, most of the time, or all of the time.”

  Olsen thought about it, tapping the pencil’s eraser against his stained, chipped teeth. “Sometimes,” he said at last, and checked the appropriate box.

  Chant quickly went through the test, marking the fourth answer to ever sixth question as Duane Insolers had suggested he do.

  “What about this one, Neil?”

  Chant looked at the question. “They want to know if you’ve ever thought about fucking a corpse.”

  “Shit, man! They really get down to it, don’t they?!”

  “Not at all, some of the—”

  “Yeah, I got it Thanks, Neil.”

  Chant watched Tank Olsen check off the “some of the time” box, then closed his own booklet and tried to think If every sixth question was meaningless, it meant that his answers to the other questions would determine whether or not he was invited back to the next session. The real question was whether Montsero was looking for the best or worst of them, and Chant decided that the answer was obvious; bringing the two attractive, young student assistants with him had been a purposeful act on the part of the psychologist, designed to excite the men’s sexual fantasies.

  Chant went through the questionnaire again. On each of the remaining questions he checked off the box next to the most extreme answer. Then he closed his booklet and turned his attention to helping Tank Olsen and a few of the others.

  Insolers contacted him on the morning of the fourth day, and arrangements were made to meet in the afternoon.

  “So? How’d it go?”

  Chant shrugged. “It was the easiest hundred bucks I’ve ever made in my life Montsero talked for a few minutes, had us answer some dumb questions, then paid us off and sent us home. The whole thing didn’t take more than an hour and a half.”

  Insolers, who still exuded a strong medicinal smell, lit one of the Benson & Hedges and dropped the match into the heavy glass ashtray between them. He exhaled, then glanced furtively around the small Greenwich Village restaurant. It was early, not yet five o’clock, and there were only six other people in the dining room. Happy Hour was just getting underway in the bar.

  “Do you want something else to eat, Alter? How about some pie?”

  Chant shook his head.

  “You didn’t eat much.”

  “I ate what I wanted.”

  “You want a drink?”

  “No.”

  Insolers took two quick drags on his cigarette, stubbed it out “Did you check the boxes I told you to?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think of the tests?”

  “What was to think? You told me which answers to check off, so I didn’t pay much attention to the other questions.”

  “But you answered the other questions?”

  “Sure. But I just put down whatever came to mind. You must have been right about checking the fourth answer to every sixth question, though, because I’ve been invited back to the next session The letter came yesterday.”

  Insolers nodded slowly as he studied Chant. “Good,” he said in a low voice. “What did you think of Dr. Montsero?”

  “Comes off like a fag, but I think he’s a tough son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual?”

  “In an hour and a half? Maybe if you’d tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for, I could give you an answer.”

  Insolers shook his head. “Not yet. The important thing is that you made the first cut, so to speak. We’ll see what happens from here on out. And you’ll keep me posted.”

  “I don’t like being taken for granted, Insolers.”

  “I don’t take you for granted, Neil. I’ve told you that you’re very valuable to us. Do you mind if I call you Neil?”

  Chant offered an indifferent shrug.

  “Okay, Neil, you can call me Duane. I’d like to ask you a question, and I’d appreciate a straight answer; it’s important Four days ago you told me you weren’t angry about what had happened to you. Was that the truth?”

  “Are you calling me a liar, Duane?”

  “Take it easy, Neil. I think you were lying in that particular case In fact, I think you’re a very, very angry man.”

  “Wouldn’t you be if you’d spent twenty years in prison for a crime you didn’t commit? The state is thinking about giving me some money, but there’s no way they can pay for those twenty years. Goddam right, I’m angry.”

  “Sure. And you’re just waiting for a chance to get even, right? You’ve got some debts to pay.”

  “Maybe.”

  “If you’re so angry at the authorities, why did you agree to meet with me? You know I work for the CIA, which means you’re now working for the CIA.”

  Chant wasn’t at all certain what answer Insolers would buy, or what he might be looking for, and so he remained silent.

  “Neil, you can trust me. I need an answer. Does it make you feel good to spy on other people? Does it give you a feeling of power?”

  “Maybe,” Chant said carefully.

  “God knows you’ve had enough people spying on you most of your life, right? This gives you a chance to spy on somebody else for a change. You’ll know their secrets, but they won’t know yours Right?”

  “My reasons are my own, Duane. You’re not paying me to answer personal questions.”

  “Fair enough,” Insolers said evenly as he took some bills from his pocket and laid them on the table. Then he rose and put on his overcoat.

  “Any tips for the next session, Duane?”

  “Nope. You’re on your own now. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what Montsero will have you doing next. I’ll be anxious to hear your report. I’ll be talking to you.”

  Insolers walked away, and Chant signaled the waitress for another cup of coffee. When it arrived he stirred sugar into the strong brew, started to raise the cup to his lips, then set the cup down when he became aware once more of a strong medicinal odor. He slowly turned in his seat and found himself looking up into the cold brown eyes of Duane Insolers. An unlit cigarette dangled from the man’s thin lips.

  “I thought you’d left,” Chant said casually.

  “You know, Neil, something about you bothers me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “For one thing, you seem just a bit different from when I talked to you in your room four days ago.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s something I can’t quite put my finger on. I’m thinking about it. You wouldn’t be a ringer, would you?”

  “A ringer? What the fuck are you talking about, Insolers? You came to me, remember?”

  “I’ve done a little checking on you. San Quentin?”

  “You said you read all the applications. If you read mine, you know I was in Q.”

  “Funny thing about that. There is a Neil Alter who was recently released from San Quentin, and you pretty much fit his description.”

  “No shit!” Chant said, and laughed.

  “He supposedly went to Florida.”

  “I changed my mind, decided I’d see what I could make go for myself in New York. What the hell are you getting at, Insolers? You know, I’m already sorry I agreed to meet with you. I don’t think I’m going to do it again.”

  The other man was silent for some time as he studied Chant; if he was disturbed by the threat to cut off communication, he didn’t show it. “I just hope you’re not trying to bullshit me,” he said at last in a low voice “I’ve got a good nose for bullshit, a really good nose, and today it’s been twitching the whole ti
me I’ve been talking to you.”

  Chant sighed heavily with affected exasperation. “Why the hell should I try to bullshit you? For that matter, what would I have to bullshit about?”

  “Those are two very good questions, Alter,” Insolers replied in the same soft, slightly threatening, tone. “I’ll be giving them a lot of thought.”

  This time Chant tracked the other man with his eyes until Insolers had walked out of the restaurant. Duane Insolers, Chant thought, was not a man he would underestimate.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tank Olsen was also among the eighteen men who had been invited back to the second session. The huge, musclebound man seemed to Chant much more subdued and sullen than when they had first met. Chant made a few attempts to start a conversation, but gave up when it became evident that Olsen did not want to talk to him.

  This session had begun at one o’clock in the afternoon, and was still going on at seven-thirty. Except for a half-hour break to eat a dinner prepared by a caterer, the men had been kept busy all day answering several detailed questionnaires on their health and family histories, and undergoing complete physical examinations conducted by two internists and an ophthalmic technician who had been brought in for the occasion. Electrocardiograms and electroencephalograms were given; blood, urine, and stool specimens were taken; each man’s chest and stomach were X-rayed; their throats were swabbed; rectums probed; reflexes tested with rubber mallet and machine.

  Three men had been told to go home when it was discovered that they had severe health problems—one a blood disorder, and the other two diabetes Throughout the day Montsero, who was not involved in administering any of the tests, had wandered through the various rooms, sucking on an unlit pipe and watching through his reflecting aviator glasses. The man was constantly humming Christmas carols, although they were now well into the new year When there was grumbling, he patiently reminded the group that each man was being paid two hundred and fifty dollars for participating in the day’s battery of testing.

  There had been hearing tests, and now they were lined up in a darkened room waiting for a turn on a machine that tested for color blindness and visual acuity.

  “Get your hands off my fucking balls, you goddam fag.”

  Chant tensed slightly when he recognized Tank Olsen’s voice; the man was very close behind him.

  “I told you to get your hand off my balls!”

  Chant’s ninja-trained senses gave him ample warning time to escape the blow he knew was coming, but he purposely waited; to evade too quickly could give Montsero some indication of his true capabilities, and this Chant did not wish to do. Slowing time in his mind, he continued to wait as the other man’s fist shot through the air toward the back of his skull, then ducked away at the last instant, absorbing the force of the blow into the sinewy, powerful muscles in his neck and shoulders.

  Feigning pain and injury, Chant stumbled forward, caromed off the man in front of him, and fell to the floor. He immediately rolled to his left, feigning clumsiness as he cringed and protected his head and the back of his neck with his hands A booted foot bounced off his right hip, and Chant kept rolling. He came up against a chair, made a show of struggling to his feet. Tank Olsen rushed at him, and Chant dropped to his knees Olsen tripped over him and fell hard on the chair, smashing it. Chant got up and backed away until he came up against a wall, then assumed a defensive stance with his forearms crossed over his throat and stomach.

  Someone had turned up the lights. Chant watched as the heavy-breathing Olsen slowly rose from the floor, kicked aside the debris from the shattered chair, swayed, and rubbed his right shoulder. The other ex-convicts had lined up around the room, and their eyes glittered with excitement The technician who had been operating the eye-testing equipment had backed into a corner; his face was ashen, and he had bunched his baggy lab coat tightly around him as if it were a suit of armor. Montsero, his eyes as always hidden behind his tinted glasses, stood watching with the other men, his hands thrust casually into his pockets.

  Olsen sucked in a deep breath and rushed again. Chant stepped aside at the last moment and drove a straight, hard right into the man’s bullet-damaged right shoulder. Olsen grunted with pain, clutched at his shoulder, and slowly sank to his knees, his forehead cracking loudly against the wall where Chant had been standing. Still pretending to be unsteady on his feet, Chant moved a few steps along the wall to his right and waited.

  Olsen rose to his feet and proceeded to do exactly what Chant expected, which was to repeat what he had done moments before. Head down and arms spread like elephantine wings, the man came lumbering across the short space between them.

  Chant stepped forward in order to shorten the distance between them even more and thus reduce the other man’s momentum. He angled his body slightly so as to avoid being butted, then centered his weight and lunged forward to absorb the force of the other man’s body, deliberately allowing himself to fall into Olsen’s grasp.

  Olsen grunted with surprise at what he considered his good fortune. Ignoring the fact that Chant had raised his arms over his head at the last moment, the scar-faced man wrapped his arms around Chant’s waist, then lifted Chant off the floor and began to squeeze.

  With his arms free, Chant could easily kill or permanently cripple the other man in a fraction of a second. Instead, he cupped his hands around Olsen’s eyes, raised the startled man’s eyelids with his middle fingers and dragged the balls of his thumbs across the naked surface of the eyeballs. Olsen howled, as much in terror at the sudden realization of how easily he could have been blinded, as with pain, and immediately released his grip. Chant landed lightly on the balls of his feet and stepped back as Olsen, hands over his burning eyes, staggered around in a circle before finally dropping to his knees.

  It would be a simple matter to finish off the man with a fist or knee, but Chant decided that Neil Alter might well want someone besides Tank Olsen to pay dearly for this particular test, which had apparently been designed expressly for him—even if it were only an insurance company. He walked quickly across the room and picked up the piece of ophthalmic testing equipment, walked back, and dropped the heavy device on Olsen’s back, between the shoulder blades. Man and machine collapsed to the floor, the man unconscious and the complex but fragile piece of equipment splintering into a thousand shards of expensive ground lenses, plastic, and metal.

  Chant slowly turned to face the others in the room. Brute force was one thing these men understood; believing that this was what they had witnessed, there were quiet grunts of surprise, approval, and respect from the circle of ex-convicts Montsero had not moved, and his face revealed nothing. His hands were still in his pockets, and the unlit pipe still jutted from his mouth.

  “You can take that out of my pay,” Chant said to Montsero as he pointed to the shattered machine.

  Two men quickly stepped aside as Chant walked between them and out the door.

  Chant walked across the street from the Blake College campus and waited in the darkness. Twenty minutes later all of the men in the group except Tank Olsen emerged from the main building; they were laughing and joking, and in the light cast by the mercury-vapor lamps ringing the campus Chant could see that they were taking turns mimicking the way he had dropped the testing machine on Olsen’s back.

  Olsen came out fifteen minutes later. He was limping badly, and he paused just outside the exit to rub his eyes. He put both hands in the small of his back, stretched and groaned loudly, then continued limping down the sidewalk to the street. He turned right and headed toward the subway station four blocks away. Chant followed, walking on the narrow strip of grass between the sidewalk and street in order to muffle his footsteps.

  Next to the campus was a vest-pocket park in which all of the lights had been broken by rocks or BB pellets Now Chant quickly closed the distance between himself and the other man. Suddenly sensing Chant’s presence, Olsen started to turn; but by then Chant had already crashed into Olsen’s side, bumping the other
man into the darkness of the park. Olsen staggered, finally regained his balance, and swung a wild roundhouse right at the shadowy figure in front of him. Chant leaned back just far enough to allow the gnarled fist to pass in front of his face, then lashed out with a precisely aimed front kick that caught Olsen squarely in the solar plexus. The air exploded from the ex-convict’s lungs, his eyes bulged from his head as he grasped his belly, bent over double, then sat down hard on the cold, cracked concrete. His face immediately began to turn blue.

  Chant squatted down next to the big man. “Lie back, Tank,” he said quietly, gently pressing with his left palm against Olsen’s chest while with the other hand he reached down and gripped the man’s belt. “Try to relax I’ll help you breathe.”

  Still wide-eyed, Olsen allowed himself to be pushed on his back while he stared up into Chant’s face. With recognition came fear, but he did not move as Chant lifted his midsection by the belt and gently massaged an area just below his rib cage.

  “I’m sorry I had to hurt you again, Tank,” Chant continued in the same soft, even tone, “but I had to get your attention. What was that all about in there? Who told you to unload on me?”

  Olsen shook his head. He was beginning to breathe regularly. Suddenly his right hand bunched into a fist that shot toward Chant’s head Chant casually blocked the blow, then jabbed the stiffened three middle fingers of his right hand into Olsen’s midsection. The man’s eyes rolled back into his head as his chest heaved and he again began to gasp for air. Chant steadied him, massaged his diaphragm.

  “We can do this all night, my friend,” Chant said, “but I don’t see the point in your having to suffer. Answer my questions, and I won’t do that again Did Montsero sic you on me?”

  Olsen, shuddering with the effort to breathe, looked down at the fingers poised over his stomach He grimaced as if in anticipation of the next blow, shook his head.

  “Who, then?”

  “Can’t … tell.”

  Chant tapped Olsen’s stomach softly with the tips of his fingers. The man yelped, drew his knees up to his stomach and stuttered something that might have been a name.