Mindbenders Read Online Free PDF Page A

think. It wasn’t that I disbelieved—I couldn’t get a handle on what I was disbelieving.
    “Okay?” he asked, eyes still shut, as though that settled something.
    “No,” I answered because I didn’t know how to form a question. “Mr. Dulles—”
    “Call me Max,” he said and that was okay but I still didn’t know what to say.
    This neighborhood was about a century-and-a-half dingier than the last one. We had started with picturesque dingy and had now descended to watch-your-back, all-the-neighbors-have-guns dingy. Several of the houses looked abandoned; the store on the corner was boarded up solid. A few old people came out to take laundry off the line or walk the dog but they kept a close eye on approaching cars.
    When Mr. Dulles pulled to the curb, all at once, there was the tune he’d been humming, tinkling off the wind chimes on the porch. “Your Mr. Tauber lives in the second house from the end,” he said. “He’s not expecting company.” He looked around, like he was surveying the neighborhood, except there was almost no one on the street. “We’ll walk directly from the car to his place,” he said, as if I needed any prompting. He was planning on leaving me here ?
    He locked the car conspicuously when we got out. The front door of the house was locked the first time he pulled but he ran his finger over the lock a couple times and I heard the bolt throw. As we came into the front foyer, people were scuttering out of sight in the back of the house, like rats running from a light.
    Jazz was blaring in the front apartment, honking jazz, Coltrane or Sun Ra or something. Max knocked but it was just pro forma—no one could possibly hear knocking over that racket. So he gave it a moment and then banged. After several attempts, the music went quiet and we heard footsteps.  I could sense someone on the other side of the peephole for a moment and then a voice through the thin plywood. “What do you want?” The voice was unwell, full of tremors.
    “We’re friends of Dave Monaghan,” Mr. Dulles—Max—said and waited. After a pause long enough for second thoughts, there was a working of chains and locks and the door cracked open.
     “How do you know Dave?” the man asked, looking us up and down. He was tall and creaky, with a stiffness that could have been dignity or arthritis. His hands shook holding his cigarette and his shirt was buttoned wrong, out of synch at the collar, so I bet on arthritis. “Where is he these days?”
    “We should talk inside,” Max said and flashed him the look that had made my skull hot. Tauber stood up straighter all at once.
    “Ah,” he said with a wry smile, “ that’s how you know Dave,” and he pulled the door open and waved us in.
    It was shabby inside, even considering the neighborhood. The furniture was clearly other people’s throwaways. The chairs, scattered around the room, needed cushions—they were all stained and torn, bits of stuffing leaking out the seams. A couple of pictures hung at Tauber’s eye level, the kind of things they sell at the 99¢ store so you can have something on your wall.
    Last night’s dishes were in the sink—or maybe they just lived there full-time. A supermarket shopping cart stood in the kitchen, next to heaping plastic bags filled with cans and bottles for recycling. Tauber wandered the room, a proud man in hard times, trying to disguise his frailties. He pushed chairs into a group for us and then pulled up the shades a little, letting in some light.
    “Not expecting company,” he grumbled. The radio was still playing low; he walked over and switched it off. “Keeps down the voices in my head,”  he explained—at least he seemed to think that was explaining something. He was slurring a little. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d woke up still drunk from the night before—not so long for Tauber, apparently. “So if ya came from Dave,” he said, “there’s two questions: What’d ya come for and why