Concert of Ghosts Read Online Free Page B

intended to travel beyond the immediate vicinity, the court had to be notified. That was the end of the thing. Some papers were signed and Harcourt McKay, whose hands were sweaty little plump paws, led Tennant out of the courthouse.
    Tennant blinked in the hard light of the morning. He looked along a stretch of Bridge Street. Bleak downtown Oswego was not his place of choice. Nearby was the sound of the Oswego River, which poured vigorously into Lake Ontario. The smell of freshly fried donuts drifted in the air.
    â€œSo who the hell is Rozak?” Tennant asked.
    Harcourt McKay, on whose upper lip lay a band of sweat, shrugged. “Maybe some joker. You get guys—clerks, shoe salesmen, nobodies—pretending they’re something else. Lawyers. Doctors. Gives them the old ego boost, I guess.”
    â€œTerrific joke,” Tennant remarked. “He sounded like he knew what he was talking about. He mentioned Kant. He knew the name of the county attorney, Flitt. He was pretty damn convincing.”
    Harcourt McKay had a strange mannerism, drawing his neck down deep into his shoulders. “I’m no psychologist, Harry. Who knows what gives some guys a kick, huh? He imagines he’s a lawyer, so he sounds like one. I was you, I’d write this Rozak off as a basic loon and concentrate on the biz at hand.”
    â€œYeah,” Tennant said. The biz at hand. The prospect of jail. But he couldn’t get Rozak out of his mind. He could see the maroon painkiller go from hand to mouth, he could still hear the voice. Everybody’s got a doctor somewhere, Harry . So what was Rozak’s game? A loose nut at a loose end, nothing better to do than make believe he was a lawyer? But the guy had had a certain authority about him, a sincerity that suggested he was more than a mere imposter. And his confidence about the outcome of Harry’s case had been absolute. Way too good, Tennant thought, to be true. He was depressed.
    Maybe McKay was right. The world was filled with oddballs. And Rozak was one of them—what else?
    McKay said, “We’ve got a bunch of work to get through, Harry. My diary’s stuffed for the day, so we’ll talk tomorrow. My office at noon. You want me to drive you home?”
    He turned down McKay’s offer. He thought he could thumb a ride back to Sterling. Besides, he had an urge to walk for a time, to clear the jail out of his head. He wanted to think.
    McKay handed him a business card. “Tomorrow noon. See you then.”
    â€œOne thing. I don’t want to do hard time,” Tennant said.
    McKay scrunched his neck down. “Who said anything about time?” He smiled—a quick flap of lips—and walked to his car, a wine-colored Buick rusted by the severity of Oswego’s winters.
    Tennant watched him drive away, then moved along Bridge Street in the direction of the state university campus, a scattering of windblown buildings on the shore of the lake. He figured his chances of a ride were better where there were students. He walked past stores, bars: the Cameo Café, Gentile’s Cameras, Byrne’s Dairy. In the distance were the monstrous stacks and electric wires of the power plant that dominated this small city.
    The morning was already humid and uncomfortable. When he reached a bar called The Woodshed, he was picked up by a dirt farmer in an old Dodge flatbed, who dropped him about two miles from home. Tennant, fretting again over his dog, hurried along the edge of the blacktop.
    He’d gone about a mile when a red Cadillac, brilliant as a wax apple, pulled up alongside him. The girl behind the wheel lowered her window. “Can you help me? I’m looking for somebody called Harry Tennant.”

2
    Tennant had lived for nine years in a quiet green world, a limited universe that made no demands other than the need to harvest his crop. He had his small white frame house and the secrecy of the trees and a mailbox at the end