Free The Shadow Man by John Lutz Page B

restaurant. Or perhaps Larsen had wanted to perpetrate a joke and laid the groundwork for it. Or maybe Larsen had been setting himself up for a lucrative book of some sort to be marketed to the occult-hungry public. Larsen hadn’t seemed like such a man, but who could tell? And the waitress’s death? An accident. The simplest, and therefore probably correct, answer.
    Dr. Laidelier savored the last sweet sip of port and decided to go to bed. Without thinking about it, he crossed the room and locked the front door.
    A step away from the door, he stood still and smiled. Usually he left the door unlocked. At this time of night, all the patients were in their quarters, behind brick walls, and no one other than Security was on the grounds.
    Dr. Laidelier thought about unlocking the door, if only to prove something to himself. Then he decided that was reactive and unnecessary. Whether the door was locked or unlocked was unimportant, after all.
    As he ambled into his bedroom he was chuckling, chiding himself. He had studied in Berlin under Steinmetz. Dr. Steinmetz, though quite cognizant of the power of mind over body, did not believe that a man could walk through solid walls.
    And neither did any of his disciples believe that.

Chapter Thirteen
    Music blared from the open doorway of the Metropole, spilling out over the sun-warmed street to lose itself in the din of Times Square. A huge bearded black man stood outside the doorway, glibly trying to entice passersby inside. A large percentage of the people on the crowded sidewalk were tourists, some of whom paused and gawked in through the door at the two topless dancers gyrating almost mechanically on the lighted bartop stage, but the fast-talking, cajoling barker was having no luck in attempting to get someone actually to walk inside and spend money for a drink.
    “Topless!” the bearded man yelled at Andrews, as if he himself couldn’t quite believe it. “Step on in an’ check’em out!”
    Andrews, the waist-length jacket he had bought unbuttoned over his black turtleneck sweater, stood for a moment beneath the lighted marquee that was blinking futilely against the bright daylight. He could see the shimmering, spotlighted flesh of one of the dancers as she strutted back and forth on the bar, her lean body jerking almost casually in rhythm with the repetitious, high-decibel drumbeat. Her ribs showed, and her frantically jiggling bare breasts were small; it occurred to Andrews that such constant dancing would melt away every inch of excess weight from a woman.
    “Check it out up close, brother!” the bearded man invited through a jovial, lascivious grin. He appeared slightly surprised when Andrews walked past him and inside.
    As Andrews slid into one of the booths along the wall, his eyes became accustomed to the dimness and he saw that there were only three other customers, one of whom had his head resting on the bar, his eyes closed, his mind oblivious to the spiked high heels that cavorted sometimes inches from his tousled hair and empty glass. One of the dancers, the lean brunette he’d seen from the sidewalk, caught Andrews’ eye and smiled as she went into a series of bumps to keep up with the gradually increasing mad tempo of the drums. Andrews smiled back. He couldn’t help but think of the many Washington columnists who would love to see him now. How the media could distort. How they could separate the public man from the private.
    A waitress appeared alongside the booth, and Andrews ordered a scotch and seltzer. He watched the brunette and her tiny blond partner dance out of sync as the music’s tempo became even more driving and demanding. He wondered if the brunette was Leola Raymond.
    She wasn’t. When the waitress arrived with Andrews’ drink, she told him in answer to his question that Leola Raymond was the tiny blonde, and that she was due to take a break at the end of this number.
    Andrews turned his attention to Leola Raymond, who was graceful but not