Strangers

your research turns up a similar case."
        "Not much chance of that. I've done a lot of reading in psychology and hypnosis for fifty years, and I've never heard of anything like it."
        "But you're going to research it, aren't you? You promised."
        "I'll see what I can find," he said.
        "And if you discover that someone developed a workable technique for getting through a memory block like this, you'll use it on me."
        Ginger was mystified, but she was also considerably less distraught than she had been when she first arrived at Pablo Jackson's apartment. At least they had gotten somewhere, even if they did not yet know where. They had found the problem, some mysterious traumatic experience in the past, and though they had not learned a single detail of it, they knew it was back there, a dark shape waiting to be explored. In time they would find a way to throw a light on it, and when it was revealed, she would know the cause of her fugues.
        "Tell Dr. Gudhausen," Pablo said again.
        "I'm pinning all my hopes on you."
        "You're damn stubborn," the old magician said, shaking his head.
        "No. Just persistent."
        'Willful."
        "Just determined."
        "Acharnée!"
        "When I get back to Baywatch I'll look up that word, and if it's an insult, you'll be sorry when I come back on Thursday," she teased.
        "Not Thursday," he said. "The research is going to take time. I'm not going to hypnotize you again unless I can find a record of a similar case and can follow someone else's procedures, knowing they succeeded."
        "Okay, but if you don't call by Friday or Saturday, I'll probably come back and bust my way in. Remember, you're my best hope."
        "I am your best hope… only for want of anything better."
        "You underrate yourself, Pablo Jackson." She kissed him on the cheek. "I'll be waiting for your call."
        "Au revoir.
        "Shalom."
        Outside, as she got into the cab, she remembered one of her father's favorite aphorisms, and, like a lead weight, it counteracted her new buoyancy: It's always brightest just before the dark.
        

    3.
        

    Chicago, Illinois
        
        Winton Tolk - the tall, jovial, black patrolman riding shotgun - got out of the police cruiser to buy three hamburgers and Cokes at a corner sandwich shop, leaving his partner, Paul Armes, behind the wheel, and Father Brendan Cronin in the back seat. Brendan glanced at the shop, but he could not see inside, for the big front windows were painted with festive holiday images: Santa, reindeer, wreaths, angels. A light snow had jus(begun to fall, and the weather forecast called for eight inches by midnight, which meant tomorrow would be a white Christmas.
        As Winton got out of the car, Brendan leaned forward and said to Paul Armes, "Yeah, well, nobody's knocking Going My Way, but what about It's a Wonderful Life? Now there was a terrific picture!" , 'Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed," Paul said.
        "What a cast." They had been talking about great Christmas films, and now Brendan was sure he had hit upon the best of the best. "Lionel Barrymore played the skinflint. Gloria Grahame was in that, too."
        "Thomas Mitchell," Paul Armes said as, outside, Winton reached the door of the sandwich shop. "Ward Bond. God, what a cast!" Winton had gone into the sandwich shop. "But you're forgetting another great one. Miracle on 34th Street."
        "That was terrific, sure, but I still think Capra's better-"
        It seemed that the gunshots and the startling cascade of shattering glass came at the same instant, with not a fraction of a second between. Even with the car doors shut, the heater fan making noise, and the police-band radio crackling and chirruping, the shots were loud enough to halt Brendan in midsentence. As the explosions blew away the Christmas peace of the Uptown street, the sandwich shop's painted window tableau dissolved, erupted in a glittering spray. New shots overlaid the echo of old reports, and the blasts were accompanied by a brittle and atonal music of glass smashing on the roof, hood, and trunk of the cruiser.
        "Oh, shit!" Paul Armes tore the dash-mounted riot gun free of its clasps, throwing open his door even as the glass was still raining. "Stay down," he shouted back at Brendan, and then he was out, crouching, moving around the car, and using it as a shield
        Stunned,