The Tower

Jade considered cutting straight to his own questions, but then he decided to give Dr. Lithemeir some play. That way, he might be more helpful when it came time for Jade to get some answers. Besides, Jade enjoyed sparring with him, especially since he was still wired from the caffeine.

"I'm a cross between an agent and I guess what you would call a private eye," Jade said slowly, wondering how to explain his occupation to a sixty-year-old professor.

"Splendid, splendid," Lithemeir said, rising and twirling his cane overhead until it caught the fan on the ceiling with a mighty clang. "A private eye." He ran his hand excitedly up his chin and scratched his gray beard. "Do you spend restless hours fingering a set of dimly lit venetian blinds, gazing over the city like the ever doleful eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg?" He spun to his window and dug his fingers through the blinds, bending them irreparably. "Or do you lean back in your chair with a glass of whiskey-which long ago replaced the opium pipe-delicately perched beside your crotch as a delightful blonde legs her way into your office with a piece in her purse?"

Jade stared at the professor for a while. "Actually, no. I track suspects, Professor."

Lithemeir waved his hand blindly as he moved a stack of papers over to one side of his desk, allowing a clearer path though which to see Jade. "Please call me 'Doctor' if you must." He suddenly froze and then sat forward excitedly. "By the club foot of Lord Byron," he said emphatically. "You're Jade Marlow!"

"Yes, Professor." Jade was losing patience. Patience was never one of his virtues, but on two hours of sleep and an empty stomach, he didn't even know what the word meant anymore. "I did introduce myself. Recall?"

"Yes, yes. Marlow. 'The Tracker.' I recognize you from the papers of late. I'd imagine you're all over the television but I haven't turned one on in years."

"It's not really that hard. All you have to do is push the power button on the remote."

"Yes, yes," he answered eagerly, ignoring Jade's sarcasm. "I would be honored to help you, my dear Tracker. I confess 'I am a gentleman and a gamester, for both are the varnish of a complete man.'"

Jade decided just to proceed blindly and ask questions. He cleared his throat and began. "I'm tracking a man by the name of Allander Atlasia." He felt a rush when he said the full name, as though he was mouthing a taboo and a desire simultaneously. "He's a cruel man. Extraordinarily cruel. And he's intense, intense as all hell." Jade leaned forward and grabbed a loose pencil from Dr. Lithemeir's desk, then began to play with it. In his eyes was the look of a man speaking of his absent lover. "He refuses to stop short of anything. He'll act on all his fantasies, giving them full range at any cost. He pushes, he pushes to the edge and doesn't worry about the fall."

Jade was pressing the pencil with his thumb, and it gave way with a resounding snap. Half of it clattered to the floor and rolled under his chair.

Dr. Lithemeir looked down at Jade's thumb, which was bleeding from where it had struck the jagged end of the broken pencil, and was startled to his feet. "'Which is the merchant, here,'" he said, "'and which the Jew?'"

Jade jammed his thumb into his mouth and applied pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. Pulling it from his mouth, he regarded it for a moment and then spoke calmly again. "Just let me ask a few questions, then I'm out of your hair."

"Proceed."

"He left a quote I need-"

"A quotation, Mr. Marlow. 'Quote' is a verb. 'Quotation' is a noun."

"Thanks for the grammar lesson. Now I know my day's not a total loss." Jade reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper which he smoothed on his knee but did not look at as he started to recite. "'Full fathom five-'"

"'Thy father lies,'" Dr. Lithemeir picked up the verse. "'Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a seachange into something rich and strange. Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! Now I hear them-Ding-dong, bell.'"

When he finished his recitation, he closed his eyes, still enjoying the afterglow of the piece. The fan overhead limped in circles. Jade noticed several dings on its blades from the professor's cane.

"The Tempest," Dr. Lithemeir said.

"Shakespeare?"

He nodded briskly, "The last romance, the last play. Shakespeare's farewell to the stage."

The last hurrah, Jade thought. It seemed appropriate to Allander's situation.

"Can you clue me in on its significance?" he asked. As Lithemeir started to speak, Jade cut in again. "In plain English, please. Pretend you're speaking to your daughter."