The City Below

by James Carroll

  The door opened. A stout, bald man in a bathrobe showed himself.

  "Father?"

  "Yes?"

  Doyle held up Jackie's badge. "I'm Detective Mullen. May I come in?"

  The priest looked wary, but he stepped aside.

  "I apologize for the hour," Doyle said, entering, "but it's an emergency. I need you."

  "But what—?"

  "A suicide. A would-be suicide. I got him to agree to talk to a priest."

  "A suicide!" The priest shrank back. "You should call the counseling center, the health service."

  "Father, the kid is a Catholic. We don't have time. Would you get dressed, please? In your clericals. It's important you wear your collar."

  The priest stared at Doyle for a moment, as if he were trying to wake up. But then all his years of conditioning worked their trick, and he nodded. "I'll be right back."

  "Do you have a phone I can use?"

  The priest opened an adjacent door and turned on a light, an office. Then he rushed back into the dark, tamed reaches of the residence, up a set of unseen stairs.

  In the office, beyond a Xerox machine, Squire opened the one door, a closet. Reams of paper were stacked to one side. A set of shelves held office supplies, including, he saw, heavy twine and plastic packing tape. He closed the door, noting that an old-fashioned rod key protruded from the keyhole. He turned it, click, and the bolt said out of the door's edge like a tongue. He turned it back.

  A phone sat on the desk. Three steps took him to it A card attached to the phone listed numbers, and when he saw one labeled Harvard Security, he did a little dance step; it's a gift to be simple. He dialed the number. He pictured the pimply faced night-shifter, a graduate student, awkward in the blue monkey suit, the kid who said, "Security."

  "This is Father Collins at St. Paul's," Squire said quickly. "I don't have time to say more than, I need a car here. I need you now. I have a student on the other line who's threatening to kill himself. He won't say which dorm he's in, but he's Harvard."

  "Father, we—"

  "He may deal with you. He most certainly won't deal with Cambridge Police."

  "But we—"

  "Who is this?"

  "Private Simpson."

  "Are you in charge?"

  "I'm the night dispatcher."

  "Well, get a car over here now, to St. Paul's rectory, Mt. Auburn."

  "All right, Father."

  "Don't call Cambridge. No siren. No lights. Do you hear me?"

  "Yes, Father."

  "I hope he'll tell me where he is, then your people will take me to him. Tell your people that."

  "Yes, Father. Right away."

  Squire hung up. He heard the priest clumping hurriedly down the stairs. Squire picked up a mammoth black volume the size of a telephone book, but bound in stiff boards. He went behind the door. The priest rushed into the room.

  "All set," he began, and never saw it, or felt it for that matter, when Squire brought the book smashing down on his head. He collapsed unconscious.

  Squire looked at the book. "Missal," he read. And he said, "You bet."

  By the time the Harvard police car pulled up in front of the rectory, Squire had stripped the unconscious priest, bound him, taped his mouth shut, and locked him in the supply closet He was just closing the collar on the black clerical shirt The suit coat would be too short, but it didn't matter. He put on the priest's baggy raincoat as he hurried out into the teeming night.

  "I have it," he said to the Harvard cop who'd just gotten out of the car. "Let's go."

  Only one cop. Beautiful. No stripes on his shoulder, and no gun at his belt, a kid. Good old fucking Harvard liberals.

  The young policeman's agitation was apparent when the engine died on him. He croaked, "Christ, I'm sorry, Father. Oh, Christ" But then he got the car going and dropped the lever into Drive. "Where is he?"

  "At the Fogg," Squire said. "Don't ask me more. He's the night security man, and he says he's going to shoot himself."

  "The Fogg!"

  "Are they yours? The security people at the Fogg? Are they Harvard Police?"

  "No, they're separate."

  "Are they armed?"

  The cop was driving fast now, heading up Arrow Street The museum was only two blocks away. "I don't think so. I mean, if they don't let us carry guns ..." The kid's voice shook, and his hands trembled on the wheel.

  He reached to the radio handset on the dash and was drawing it toward his mouth when Squire roughly grabbed it away.

  "Didn't they tell you? It's just me. Your job is to get me there, no one else. Otherwise, he's dead."

  The cop cringed at the rebuke, but didn't resist. The car bounced through a pothole on Mass. Ave. and cut into Quincy Street, passing the staid colonial buildings that formed one wall of Harvard Yard. Doyle thought of her, coming out of the pristine church, her bright green dress and the straw hat she carried, her loose blond hair, the movement of her thighs under the flowing fabric of her dress. That memory had shaped his fantasy more even than the image of her under him, those clothes wrecked, when, after all, she'd been like the others.

  The car stopped. "You come with me," Squire ordered. "The other museum guards don't know what's going on. You have to tell them." Doyle's authority was absolute. He got out of the car knowing the young cop would follow, and of course, grabbing his nightstick from its clip on the door, he did. The doctrine of infallibility. Otherwise, the cop might have wondered how this priest knew to go down the side of the building instead of to the front.

  Doyle had cased the Fogg, dreaming of this, years before. A way to get her; a way to get him. On the side was the unornamented staff door with the only buzzer. Doyle pressed it three times, urgently, then stood back. He swept his hand in front, so that the Harvard cop took his place exactly where Doyle wanted him. In the light, Doyle saw how drained of color the kid's face was. The rain, dropping from the beak of his hat, made it seem that he was crying. Jesus.

  The door opened, but only a crack, the width of a security bolt "What," a voice said gruffly.

  The young cop put his stick in the opening. "Let us in," he said. "Hurry."

  "You can't."

  "It's an emergency. You've got a suicide in there. Somebody's trying to kill himself."

  "There's nobody in here."

  "I've got a priest here. Somebody in there called the priest."

  Squire came forward. "How many are you?"

  "What?"

  "Night watchmen, security. How many?"

  "Two."

  "When did you last see the other one?"

  "Half an hour ago. He's in the other wing."

  "I've been talking to him on the phone. He's—"

  The door opened suddenly, all the way. The guard was black, and hatless. On the shoulder of his uniform, a patch said WACKENHUT. A pistol rode on his hip. Doyle pointed at it and turned on the Harvard cop. "You said they weren't armed." He spoke as if this proved the suicide threat was real.

  The Harvard cop, with abrupt authority, said, "Take us to him."

  The guard hesitated, but one more careful look at the priest convinced him, and he turned to lead the way. Doyle followed immediately behind. The moment that the Harvard cop drew the outside door closed, Doyle smoothly reached to the guard's holster, unsnapped it, and yanked the pistol out. "That's it," Squire said.

  "Oh shit." The guard fell against a radiator. He understood at once, and was now raising his hands.

  But the young cop stood with his back to the door, aiming the nightstick as if it were the gun he had obviously been wishing for, and he kept repeating, "What? What?"

  Squire aimed at his face. "Drop the stick." The kid did so, its clatter echoing in the closed corridor. "Over here, with him."

  As the policeman passed in front of him, Squire grabbed his handcuffs from his belt and threw them at him. "Put one on," he said.

  The kid had trouble opening and shutting the cuff on his wrist, but he managed it Squire ordered him
to push the other half through the protruding radiator pipe and to cuff the Wackenhut guard. They cooperated nicely.

  "I won't be long, gentlemen. If you cry out, I'll hear. And then, when I come back I'll kill you. Okay?"

  The guard refused to look at him, but the Harvard cop nodded.

  Doyle knew from a dozen visits, when he'd played museum-goer and she'd never seen him, where Joan's office was. He went there now, through dimly lit stairways and halls, to the second floor, off the atrium, without a thought for the other guard, the pretend suicide. Things were going too well to run into him—that was Doyle's conviction, and it seemed right.

  The door to her office was locked. Shit How could it be locked? He stood back raised his foot, and punched it firmly against the door. But the door did not budge.

  Easy does it One day at a fucking time. Let's do this.

  Squire knelt and studied the lock picturing its notched traps and cylinder bars snapping into alignment An old lock a simple one. If he could just...

  He straightened up and went down the corridor to the small table at the top of the stairs. It held tidy stacks of floor plans and exhibit brochures. There was a small drawer, which he opened. And there they were, fucking A. The dish of rubber bands and paper clips. He took a paper clip and returned to Joan's door, and only moments later he had picked the lock He went inside.

  As quietly as he could, he proceeded to empty the contents of drawers and files onto the rough-edge tile floor. He upended chairs and removed prints and paintings from the walls. He found an ink bottle and splashed its contents everywhere. And that was all. He left her ruined office as silently as he'd come. Message number one.

  In the corridor again, he stood against the wall, not moving, listening for the guard. Nothing.

  He went down to the first floor, took two quick lefts and a right, and, that simply, found himself in a room which, even in the darkness, seemed more charged than the others. Terribilità, she'd called it.

  He waited for his eyes to adjust. Like the bow of that ocean liner appearing out of the mist, the huge statue gradually took form in front of him and above him. The Dying Slave.

  "Don't touch," he remembered her telling him. The genitals came into focus at the level of his eyes. "Don't touch." But that had been the other statue down the hall, the naked woman. He had touched. The bronze lady had touched him. His bronze medal. His all-time hit.

  Now let Terry say he had no need to know. Now let her pretend it had never happened. "I'm of the parochial school," he'd said, and he still remembered it as one of his better lines. What acid the memory of that Sunday afternoon must have been to her all this time. How she'd lowered herself. And then—her voice, "Oh, oh, oh!"—how he had.

  Squire went to the long glass cabinet lining one wall of the room. He saw the drawings, but in the dark he couldn't see which was which. He fumbled for his matches, found them, struck one, and held it close to the glass.

  The pope's tomb. They had drawings for the pope's tomb at fucking Harvard. He moved the match along. Three drawings, four, and then he saw them, drawings of the slaves, the two slaves. It wasn't The Dying Slave he wanted, but the other one, The Rebellious Slave. He saw it, the fist clenched, the face uplifted in defiance.

  The match burned his finger, and went out.

  He took the guard's pistol out of his coat and raised the butt of it to bring it down on the glass, smashing it Buzzers and sirens began to blare at once, but he didn't care. He reached into the cabinet for the print, but its frame was bolted to the base. He smashed its glass and, pushing the shards aside, cut himself. He didn't care.

  "The wonder," she'd said, "is that it doesn't speak."

  But it did, to him. I resist, it said.

  He had the paper free, bleeding on it He rolled it as carefully as he could. Message number two.

  He carried the print in the hand that wasn't cut and began to run. The noise of the alarms was like needles in his eardrums now, slave torture. In the corridor leading to the side door, the two men were still handcuffed to the radiator.

  "Resist!" he yelled as he stormed down on them. "Resist!"

  The Wackenhut guard cowered at the sight of the crazyman, charging the door like Geronimo, like fucking Spartacus, but dressed like a priest To Doyle's amazement the Harvard kid, the terrified, pimply graduate student, if that's what he was, rose from his end of the radiator as Doyle approached, and he pointed his hand at him as if recognizing a ghost. Only too late did Squire realize that in his hand was a small gun, an unauthorized weapon the chickenshit had hidden on himself somewhere.

  He heard a loud crack For an instant the sounds of the alarms took second place to the gunshot. And in the same instant, an explosion went off in Doyle's chest.

  Another crack.

  He had his own pistol up, and he could have fired. But he didn't. Goddamnit, he didn't. A fucking Harvard kid. Instead, he thought of Jackie, as he'd looked years before, in his first blue uniform—that scared, but not that fucking dangerous. Like a third bullet in his chest, Squire felt a blow of remorse. Jackie!

  He staggered past the cop, bounced off a wall, knew he was hit bad. He crashed through the door, out into the rain, clutching his gun and Michelangelo, blood pumping through the stolen clerical shirt, a dying slave after all.

  ***

  Terry hung up the telephone. He felt a twisting of his bowels, as if his brother had plunged a hand into his body and was choking him from the entrails up.

  Joan had leapt out of bed, intending to dress and rush to the Fogg. She was sail in the bathroom. Terry waited for the toilet to flush; when it did, he went in. She was standing before the mirror, more naked, if anything, than ever. He stood behind her. Their eyes met in the glass. "It's your brother," she said.

  "I know."

  "I took him there once. The Michelangelos seemed—"

  "Joan." Terry took her by the shoulders. "I already told you. I know."

  "Did he tell you?"

  "Not exactly. He tried to use it as a weapon against me."

  "It is a weapon. I use it against myself."

  "Not anymore."

  She leaned back against him, fitting her body into the soft curve of his. She had never felt such strength from him before, had never allowed herself to feel so needy of it.

  He had his eyes closed, his face next to hers, an expression of inconsolable sadness. "I have to get over there," she said.

  "I'm going with you."

  Joan left him in the bathroom.

  She was at her drawer, having pulled on underpants, and was now fastening her bra, her back to the wall of windows, when it happened—the explosion.

  The center pair of French doors, against which the weather had been pushing the branches of the oak, blew in, shattering into a thousand pieces of glass and splintered frames. The black form of a man came crashing through, launched from the tree outside, and landing in a flayed heap on the white carpet.

  The wind and rain whipped into the room. Joan heard her own scream as a noise from outside herself. She watched, horrified, first as a stain of blood spread out on the carpet, and then as the hulk began to rouse itself and come at her. A monster of blood, matted hair, and filth.

  "The slave," he said, offering the crumpled print, as if in homage. But in his other hand was the gun, and he was raising that toward her too.

  "Nick!"

  Squire turned slowly and saw his brother at the threshold of the bathroom, beyond the bed. Perhaps it was Terry's nakedness, or simply the resolution in him; perhaps it was that Nick was too far gone already, but he seemed not to recognize him.

  "Nick!" Terry said again, moving now, closing the distance, watching the gun as it came up. Once, Terry would have experienced the prospect of death at his brother's hands fatalistically, the inevitable end of their perverse story. But not now. And not ever again. He walked directly to his brother, preempting him. Before Squire could react, Terry had the gun firmly in hand.

  Squire collapsed against him; hi
s weight took Terry down. But Terry controlled their fall. He took Nick across his lap on the floor. Squire gave him the print "Michelangelo," he said.

  "You're in bad shape, Nick."

  "Be my priest, Charlie."

  "I can't do that."

  "I killed Jackie. I committed adultery."

  "I'm no priest, Nick. You're the one in a collar."

  Squire laughed. "And you're the one with no clothes on. We switched places, Charlie." And then he looked up at Joan. "You did it to me, didn't you? You're really something."

  Joan was too horrified to speak.

  "You did kill me, like you said."

  And then Squire slumped. The breath left him.

  Terry looked up. Joan, clutching her unsnapped bra, her arms across her breasts, had not moved.

  And to bis paralyzing horror then, Terry saw the door open slowly, and there was Max in his hot-air-balloon pajamas. "Joan," Terry said, "go to Max."

  Joan did, covering herself. As she took the boy, leading him back through the door, Max continued staring at his father, at his two fathers. Terry thought, And all we'd ever wanted was one.

  The door closed. And Terry was alone with his brother, to whom he leaned then. He kissed his forehead. Already it was cold. "Oh, Nick," he said.

  The ruined print lay on the floor beside Terry. Moments passed before he realized what a disaster, in addition to everything else, this would be for Joan. And, of course, wasn't that Nick's point in singling out her office? He lay his brother aside, picked up the print, and tried to flatten it. Torn and blood-stained, the drawing of a naked, bound, defiant man meant nothing to Terry.

  He went back to the bathroom for his robe. He crossed to the table, thinking at first only to call the police. But then he saw the cigar box. And he realized at once the power it gave him: Joyce on tape, Farrell on tape, dealing with Nick Doyle, this murderer, this thief.

  Farrell could cover this. Terry looked at the print again. Farrell could cover Joan. He opened the cigar box, fingered the tapes, a last gift, despite himself, from Squire. Terry picked up the phone and asked the operator for the FBI.