Quest for Anna Klein, The by Thomas H. Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

radio signal, the man had suddenly swung back into the park, walked over, and sat down.
    â€œMy name is LaRoche,” he said, then laughed. “Clayton thought I might scare you off, so I have to be nice so you will not be afraid of me.”
    Danforth had no idea if this was true, but he suspected that it might be and felt himself challenged by Clayton’s evaluation of him.
    â€œYou don’t look very scary,” he said, though Danforth did find something frightening in this man, an edginess that made Dan-forth slightly unsettled in his presence.
    â€œNot scary at all,” LaRoche said. “Just a round little man.”
    He wore a faded derby, and his body was loosely wrapped in a brown trench coat, his hands sunk deep in its pockets. Despite the French name, he was, Danforth gathered from the accent, anything but French.
    â€œI am to teach the woman the skills she needs,” he added.
    Skills
was
skeels
and the
w
in
woman
had not been pronounced with a German
v,
linguistic characteristics that made it diffi cult for Danforth to pinpoint LaRoche’s accent.
    â€œClayton says she is small,” LaRoche said. He followed a lone bicyclist’s turn around the fountain. The cyclist made a second circle, and that seemed to add an uneasiness to LaRoche’s manner. “Your house is far away,” he said.
    â€œYes,” Danforth said. “And very secluded.”
    LaRoche nodded crisply, then looked out over the park, his attention moving from a woman pushing a carriage to an old man hobbling slowly on a cane. His expression remained the same as his gaze drifted from one to the other. It was wariness and suspicion, as if both the woman and the old man might not be what they appeared to be. “This weekend,” he said.
    Danforth nodded.
    LaRoche glanced toward the far corner of the park, where a man leaned against a lamppost, reading a newspaper. “I should go now,” he said.
    With that, he was gone, and for a time Danforth was left to wonder just what sort of man this LaRoche was. His accent had been impossible to determine, which could only mean that he’d never lingered long enough in one place to sink ineradicable linguistic roots. There had been a nomadic quality in his demeanor as well, rootlessness in his twitching eyes and in the way he was constantly alert to every movement around him. Had Danforth known then the dark things he learned later on, he would have seen that LaRoche suffered from a paranoia of the soul, the same fear that would later be experienced by the huddled masses that were crowded into railway cars and the creaking bellies of transport ships and whose cries he would hear in many as-yet-unknown dialects.

Century Club, New York City, 2001
    Dark things he learned later? Paranoia of the soul? Huddled masses? The creaking bellies of transport ships?
    I couldn’t help but wonder where Danforth’s tale was headed.
    â€œClearly, your story doesn’t end in New York,” I said.
    Danforth shook his head. “No, not New York,” he said. “We have decades to go, Paul, continents to traverse. Lots of sweep for a little parable.”
    â€œA parable?” I asked.
    Danforth shrugged. “Nothing more.”
    Now my journey here truly seemed a waste of time.
    Danforth saw the impatience that seized me and quickly acted to relieve it. “Tell me a little about yourself, Paul.”
    â€œWell, my father was a professor, as you know,” I answered.
    â€œAnd your mother?” Danforth asked.
    â€œA professor’s wife,” I said. “A listener. We had faculty dinner parties, the academics always holding forth. My mother hardlyever spoke on those occasions. I think she felt inadequate.” In my mind, I saw the car swerve on the ice, tumble into the ditch. “My parents were killed in a car accident.”
    â€œI’m sorry to hear it. And your grandparents?”
    â€œThey’re gone too,” I