Shriners, in Cleveland; the other to the Iron & Steel Institute, in Pittsburgh. Both corroborated the information he had got from Mrs Ammons. The Shriners still had him listed in their inactive roster, although they presumed him dead since they had not heard from him in seven years. The Iron & Steel Institute had revoked his membership in 1968 after a one-year lapse in his dues payments.
Well, Bill thought, at least one thing was becoming clear.
Sometime around 1967, something happened to cause Elliot Suggins Hoover to wish to disappear from the face of the earth.
*
The noise was appalling. A bedlam of car horns and obscenities battered through Janice’s wavering consciousness, pulling, tugging, wrenching her back to wakefulness. Against her will. She would have preferred the silent, restful nothingness to the tough, blasting cadences pressing in on her from all directions.
She was sitting on the kerb in a puddle of wet slush, where the policeman had placed her after the accident, leaning against a litter bin with the legend ‘Use Me Please’ hovering slightly above and to the right of her line of vision. A bevy of faces drifted in and out of focus around her, sympathetic, solicitous, rapt with interest and excitement. Beyond them, the indistinct figures of two men hurling foulnesses at each other strained to penetrate the barrier of blue-coated policemen separating them.
A voice suddenly descended to her ear, gently advising, ‘The ambulance’ll be here soon, ma’am.’ Why these words filled her with dread, she couldn’t define. She would have to think about it, in a methodical, orderly way, organizing each piece of information as Bill would, step by step.
She began with: The ambulance must not come. Which led to: Why must it not come? Because…
And here she faltered.
Backtrack!
She had been … where?
With whom?
Bypass it!
She had been in an accident. Of that she was sure.
She had been sitting in a cab, going … somewhere … A wire screen separating the driver from the passenger had impeded her vision somewhat. Even so, she could see what was going to happen fully a minute before it did. The corridor between the traffic on the left and the Number 5 bus on the right was much too narrow to slip through. Certainly, the cabdriver must have realized it. If he attempted it, the cab would be sandwiched between them and crushed. It was inevitable. Janice reenacted the scene in her mind, reprising the same shock of terror she had previously felt as the cab lunged madly forward at full speed, ploughing ahead in total disregard of the consequences. She recalled the metal scraping against metal sounds as the cab skidded bouncingly off traffic from left to right, the crunching collision against immovable forces, and the sudden, jarring halt that sent her hurtling forward into the wire screen … into blackness.
There was a fraction of a second, just before she fell into the soft cushion of darkness, when Janice experienced a fear, no, it was more a terror, so overwhelming that she thought her heart would stop beating.
Sitting on the kerb, sorting about the hazy corridors of her memory, Janice had the distinct feeling that the terror she had felt in the minuscule moment of time related to something quite apart from the accident. Some other issue, not the accident, was involved. Some issue or duty that the accident was preventing her from completing. Duty. Yes, it was a duty.
‘Keep it movin’,’ a policeman was saying. ‘Give her some air.’
A gauzy parade of faces milled sluggishly past her in double images, a grotesque montage of mixed genders; painted eyes; scarlet lips, pursed, smiling; the head of a man, bristling with red facial hair; a child, a girl, gawking wide-eyed down at her The girl! Janice’s eyes widened in alarm. The girl!
‘Oh, my God!’ Janice stammered aloud and struggled to her feet, clinging to the litter bin for support. Ivy! She’d be out of school! She’d be waiting! Alone!
Well, Bill thought, at least one thing was becoming clear.
Sometime around 1967, something happened to cause Elliot Suggins Hoover to wish to disappear from the face of the earth.
*
The noise was appalling. A bedlam of car horns and obscenities battered through Janice’s wavering consciousness, pulling, tugging, wrenching her back to wakefulness. Against her will. She would have preferred the silent, restful nothingness to the tough, blasting cadences pressing in on her from all directions.
She was sitting on the kerb in a puddle of wet slush, where the policeman had placed her after the accident, leaning against a litter bin with the legend ‘Use Me Please’ hovering slightly above and to the right of her line of vision. A bevy of faces drifted in and out of focus around her, sympathetic, solicitous, rapt with interest and excitement. Beyond them, the indistinct figures of two men hurling foulnesses at each other strained to penetrate the barrier of blue-coated policemen separating them.
A voice suddenly descended to her ear, gently advising, ‘The ambulance’ll be here soon, ma’am.’ Why these words filled her with dread, she couldn’t define. She would have to think about it, in a methodical, orderly way, organizing each piece of information as Bill would, step by step.
She began with: The ambulance must not come. Which led to: Why must it not come? Because…
And here she faltered.
Backtrack!
She had been … where?
With whom?
Bypass it!
She had been in an accident. Of that she was sure.
She had been sitting in a cab, going … somewhere … A wire screen separating the driver from the passenger had impeded her vision somewhat. Even so, she could see what was going to happen fully a minute before it did. The corridor between the traffic on the left and the Number 5 bus on the right was much too narrow to slip through. Certainly, the cabdriver must have realized it. If he attempted it, the cab would be sandwiched between them and crushed. It was inevitable. Janice reenacted the scene in her mind, reprising the same shock of terror she had previously felt as the cab lunged madly forward at full speed, ploughing ahead in total disregard of the consequences. She recalled the metal scraping against metal sounds as the cab skidded bouncingly off traffic from left to right, the crunching collision against immovable forces, and the sudden, jarring halt that sent her hurtling forward into the wire screen … into blackness.
There was a fraction of a second, just before she fell into the soft cushion of darkness, when Janice experienced a fear, no, it was more a terror, so overwhelming that she thought her heart would stop beating.
Sitting on the kerb, sorting about the hazy corridors of her memory, Janice had the distinct feeling that the terror she had felt in the minuscule moment of time related to something quite apart from the accident. Some other issue, not the accident, was involved. Some issue or duty that the accident was preventing her from completing. Duty. Yes, it was a duty.
‘Keep it movin’,’ a policeman was saying. ‘Give her some air.’
A gauzy parade of faces milled sluggishly past her in double images, a grotesque montage of mixed genders; painted eyes; scarlet lips, pursed, smiling; the head of a man, bristling with red facial hair; a child, a girl, gawking wide-eyed down at her The girl! Janice’s eyes widened in alarm. The girl!
‘Oh, my God!’ Janice stammered aloud and struggled to her feet, clinging to the litter bin for support. Ivy! She’d be out of school! She’d be waiting! Alone!
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