It was in the place called the Skull, a place named Golgotha, that Simeon finally came to understand his purpose for being in this world. The Nazarene, now an adult, had been arrested and tried for his crimes. He had been sentenced to die, crucified between two common thieves. From the crowd Simeon watched the King of the Jews suffer, reveling in the fact that the one who had snatched him from death was suffering as he himself had.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the Nazarene cried out as he hung upon the cross, and Simeon took great pleasure in seeing that the Almighty seemed to ignore this man, as well, this man who called Him father.
Simeon wanted to go to him, to stand beneath the slowly dying man and ask him to take back his gift of life, that perhaps the Lord of Lords would look kindly upon this act, and allow him release, as well.
And just as he was about to force himself through the lingering crowd, the skies grew gray, then black, and the ground beneath his feet began to move as if alive.
“It is finished,” the one called Jesus cried out from the cross.
Sensing that his opportunity was fleeting, Simeon pushed against the mass of people, some weeping for their assumed savior, others waiting eagerly for his death.
“Nazarene!” Simeon cried out, finally breaking through the throng.
A Roman soldier stepped forward and struck him across the temple with the butt of his sword, sending Simeon to the ground, fighting to remain conscious.
And it was then that he heard the last words of the one who had taken away perhaps his only chance at regaining the rapture he had briefly known.
“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
And it was done. Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, was dead.
Simeon looked upon the face of his tormentor through the blood that dripped from the wound on his head, and saw the peace of death.
And he knew then and there that if he was to be denied that bliss, he would do everything in his power to see that it was denied to all.
He would take away their Heaven.
* * *
The evening had been next to perfect, and Remy did everything he could to hold on to the satisfying feeling of contentment he was experiencing. As they drove back to Boston, Linda Somerset snuggled close to him in the front seat of his Toyota, her head resting upon his shoulder as the new Brandi Carlile CD played on the stereo.
But when he drove, his thoughts tended to wander, and that very seldom lent itself to anything good. He found himself thinking of the dream he’d experienced, the one where he talked with the Almighty in the form of an old man, who Remy had once imagined was the personification of a perfect, human existence. Everything that he had wanted and would ever want for himself.
“I need your help, Remy,” God had said in the dream, his bare feet awash in the coming tide. “The Kingdom of Heaven needs your help.”
Remy reached for the radio, turning up the volume in the hope that Brandi’s gorgeous voice would drown out the memory of the words and what God had asked of him.
“There is a war coming, Remy Chandler,” the old man had told him. “And I need you to stop it.”
No pressure.
“It was a nice night,” Linda said groggily, as Brandi sang.
“Yeah, it was,” Remy answered, grateful for the distraction.
He put his arm around her and pulled her closer.
“You know it doesn’t really bother me,” she said.
“What doesn’t?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the road.
“When you’re gone . . . for work and stuff,” she explained. “It doesn’t bother me ’cause I know that’s your job . . . and I know you’ll be back.”
Remy pulled her even tighter to him. “That’s good to know.”
“And if you don’t come back I get to keep your dog.”
He laughed, happy that she and Marlowe had become so close. Remy wouldn’t have had a clue as to what to do if the black Labrador hadn’t liked Linda, but that was something he would never have to concern himself with. The dog had been pretty much smitten the first time he’d laid eyes on her.
“Don’t let him find out about that,” Remy said. “He’ll try to figure out a way to keep me out of Boston indefinitely.”
She laughed, rubbing her cheek against his chest. “Aw, Marlowe loves you more than he’s letting on.”
“Oh yeah? How can you tell?”
“He told me,” she said.
“Really,” Remy said bemusedly. “He talks to you now?”
“I can understand him,” Linda said. “We chat all the time about stuff.”
Remy found the conversation particularly amusing since he actually did have the gift of language. He was able to speak the languages and understand the tongues of all life upon the planet, including Labrador retrievers.
“You talk about stuff,” Remy repeated.
“We do,” Linda answered. “All kinds of stuff.”
“I’m sure it’s very interesting,” he said.
“You’d be surprised,” she answered.
The search for the ever-elusive parking space on Beacon Hill went as poorly as it usually did, forcing him to put his car on Cambridge Street, which meant that they had to endure the hike up Anderson Street to his home on Pinckney.
By the time they reached Revere Street, Linda was hanging all over him, jokingly telling him that she wasn’t able to go any farther and that he was going to have to carry her. He joked about leaving her there and going for help, which got them both laughing and holding each other close. And that just led to kissing.
At this rate they’d never get to the house, and the neighbors would be calling the cops for the indecent public display of affection.
“We should probably take this inside,” Remy said, looking deep into her eyes.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she answered, reaching up to touch his face, her fingernails on the roughness of his five-o’clock shadow sending currents of electricity down his neck and into his spine.
She suddenly didn’t have any problem climbing the remainder of the hill, urging him to follow with a seductive wag of her finger.
Remy pushed himself the rest of the way, catching up to her at the top of the street, and grabbing her around the waist. He was about to kiss her again, when he saw that they weren’t alone.
Steven Mulvehill sat on the front steps of Remy’s brownstone, legs splayed out onto the sidewalk.
“Hey,” the Boston homicide cop said as he casually looked up from his phone. Steven was one of the few people who Remy truly called friend, even though that relationship had been going through some difficulties of late.
“Hey back,” Remy said.
Steven had gotten a little too close to the secret world that Remy navigated, and had almost paid a deadly price. The friends hadn’t really spoken since.
“I was hoping I’d catch you,” Steven said. “Didn’t realize that you’d have company.” He reached down and picked up the paper bag at his feet. “We can do this another time. I’m Steven by the way,” he said to Linda, sticking out his hand as he stood. “You must be Linda.”
“Yeah.” She gave him a spectacular smile and took his hand. “Yeah, I am. It’s really nice to finally meet you.”
Steven’s own smile slowly waned as he returned his attention to Remy. “Give me a call. I know I’ve been out of touch, but I’m back now. We need to talk.”
Remy was about to reply, when Linda beat him to the punch.
“Hey, you know, I’ve got to get up early tomorrow,” she said, her eyes darting to Steven and then to Remy. “I was planning on going right to bed. Why don’t you stick around, Steven?”
Linda looked at Remy. He saw what she was doing, and loved her all the more for it.
“Why not,” Remy agreed.
She smiled briefly at him, and then turned it to Steven. “Promise you won’t keep him up all night.” Her eyes dropped to the paper bag in his hand. “Or that you won’t get him t
oo drunk.”
“Promise,” Steven said, holding up his hand in a Boy Scout salute. “I know what a sloppy drunk he can be and I wouldn’t want to subject a sweet thing like yourself to his shenanigans.”
Linda laughed out loud.
“Shenanigans?” she repeated. “Who uses these words? Let me guess, you have a word-of-the-day desk calendar, too.”
“He gave it to me for Christmas,” Steven said with a completely straight face, pointing at Remy. “Why?”
* * *
The silence on the roof of Remy’s brownstone was practically palpable.
He and Steven had grabbed some glasses and filled a bucket full of ice in the kitchen before heading up to the rooftop deck. Marlowe had been ecstatic to see his friend Steven and had insisted on joining them. He now lay beside Steven’s chair, looking up at him lovingly, tail wagging.
“How ya been?” Steven finally asked, breaking the silence, reaching down with his free hand to pet the black dog’s blocky head.
“Are you asking me or the dog?”
“Both,” Steven said. He brought his tumbler of Glenlivet 18 to his mouth and carefully sipped at the scotch.
“I’m doing all right,” Remy said, having some scotch of his own. “How are you doing, Marlowe? Steven wants to know.”
“I love Steven,” Marlowe said, tail thumping excitedly upon the rooftop. “Miss him.”
“Well?” Steven asked.
“He says he’s good,” Remy said, not bothering to share the extent of the dog’s emotions. “He said he missed you.”
“I missed you, too, buddy,” Steven said, leaning over in the chair to scratch Marlowe behind the ear and accept a wet, sloppy kiss.
Remy swirled the ice around in his glass, deciding to tackle the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. “Here’s the real question,” he said. “How are you?”
Steven moved uneasily in his chair, looking out at the twinkling lights of the city.
“I’m good now,” he said. “I’m getting there . . . getting better. I’m all healed up physically.”
“You know I’m sorry for what happened,” Remy told him. “If I had known what I was asking you to do would put you in any danger I would never . . .”
“It’s cool,” Steven said. “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
“When you wouldn’t answer my calls . . .”
“If we talked then it wouldn’t have been all right,” Steven said, downing the remaining contents of his glass. He set the empty tumbler down on the patio table and fished a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket, tapped one out, and lit it. “I just needed some time to think about stuff,” he said, blowing a stream of smoke into the cool night air. “I needed to think about what I’d seen . . . and how it was connected to you.”
Remy listened, sensing that his friend had more to say.
“I know you’d told me stuff in the past,” Steven said with a nervous chuckle. “But I never imagined . . .”
Steven’s voice trailed off, cigarette smoldering in his hand as he stared off into space. Remy was certain that he was experiencing it all again—his nearly fatal brush with the supernatural.
“I never meant for you to be exposed to that part of my life,” Remy said. “You asked me to keep it as far from you as possible, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job until . . .”
Steven looked at him with fear in his gaze. “It’s terrifying,” he said. His hand was shaking as he brought the cigarette up to his eager lips. “The things I saw . . .” Steven finished the smoke, stamping out the remains in an ashtray on the table.
“I know,” Remy said. “I’m sorry.”
“How do you sleep?” Steven asked, pulling the stopper from the bottle and pouring another few fingers of scotch into his glass. He added some ice as an afterthought.
“I’m not sure you remember, but I’m not human,” Remy said. He quickly looked to the doorway that led onto the roof, just to be sure that Linda wasn’t there to overhear, before looking back to his friend. “This kind of thing—I’m sort of built for it.”
“And I’m not,” Steven Mulvehill said, bringing his glass to his mouth for a sip of his drink. “But now I know what’s out there . . . not just what you’ve hinted at . . . what’s really out there, and I’m terrified . . . terrified to have anything to do with you because it might force me to come in contact with something that, this time, would finish me off in the most horrifying way imaginable.”
“I figured as much,” Remy said, sipping what remained of his drink.
The two were silent, the sound of Marlowe’s deep snoring the soundtrack to the moment.
“So how about now?” Remy finally asked him. “Are you still scared of what’s out there? Of me?”
Steven laughed, looking at his friend.
“Fucking terrified.”
That made Remy laugh, too, and shake his head.
“I wish there was something I could say or do to take away your fear, but . . .” Remy stopped, considering his words. “But it doesn’t change the fact that those threats are out there, and now with what happened in Back Bay . . .”
“You were involved with that,” Steven stated. “How did I fucking know you were involved with that?”
“You are a police detective,” Remy said. He leaned forward in his chair and reached for the bottle.
“I was out there,” Steven suddenly stated.
“Where?” Remy asked as he poured more scotch over the dwindling ice in his glass.
“The streets around where that business was happening.”
Remy sat back. “Did you see . . .”
“More shit that I wish I could unsee,” he said.
“Why would you go anywhere near something like that if you knew . . .”
“I saw it on TV and just about shit myself,” Steven explained. “I knew it—as soon as that special news report started, I knew that it must’ve had something to do with the crazy shit that you’d gotten me involved with.”
“Still doesn’t explain why you would go out into it,” Remy said. “Especially after what you’d gone through before. I don’t get it.”
“I was afraid,” Steven said.
“Yeah, I get that, but it doesn’t tell me why—”
“The fear was eating me alive,” he interrupted. “It was all I knew. . . . I woke up with it. I had lunch with it. . . . It was with me constantly, and it liked to remind me that it was the fucking boss.”
Steven took a big long drink, almost draining his glass.
“And when I saw that business on the television I wanted to pull the curtains and hide myself away. . . . That was what the fear was telling me to do.”
Remy continued to listen, urging him on with a glance.
“But I didn’t want to listen anymore,” Steven continued. “I didn’t want to hide anymore.”
“So you went out there, out onto the streets to confront your fears? Is that what you did?”
Steven chuckled, taking another cigarette from his pack.
“Sounds pretty fucking stupid doesn’t it?” he said, starting to laugh harder.
Remy laughed, too. “It really does.”
“But that’s what I did. I put my gun in my pocket, drove as far as I could, and walked as close as I was able.”
“And did you face your fears?” Remy asked.
“I don’t know what I fucking faced,” Steven said. “It was pretty horrible . . . but I faced it, and I lived to tell about it.”
Remy raised what was left in his glass to him in a toast.
Steven lifted his empty glass in response.
Remy finished off his drink, thinking of how he was going to word his next question.
“So what now?” he asked. He decided to have something more to drink. “Are you planning on walking the mean streets looking for evil to vanquish?”
Steven smiled. “Nothing so dramatic,” he said. “I’m back at work, doing my thing, but I see things differently now.”
“How so?”
“I know what’s really out there now, waiting in the shadows, as do a lot of people, I think, since what happened at the Hermes Building.”
“They were blind, but now they see,” Remy said grimly.
“Yeah, but I at least understand what I’m seeing,” the homicide detective said.
“So, you’re good?” Remy asked. “You’re dealing with this okay?”
“As good as can be expected,” Steven said in all truthfulness. “Am I still afraid of what could be waiting for me around the next corner? You bet your ass I am, but I’ll be damned if I let the fear win.”
They again raised their glasses in a toast, both of them drinking at the same time.
“Marlowe wasn’t the only one who missed you,” Remy said casually.
“You just missed the free booze,” Steven said with a knowing nod.
“Am I that transparent?” Remy asked.
“I was blind but now I see,” he said, throwing Remy’s quote back at him. Steven was smiling and finishing his latest cigarette when . . .
“Ah!” he said, turning in his chair toward his friend.
“‘Ah’?” Remy asked. “‘Ah’ what?”
“Malatesta,” Steven said, snapping his fingers. “The guy from the Vatican . . . What was that all about?”
“Guy from the Vatican?” Remy asked. “What guy from the Vatican?”
A sick feeling swirled with the alcohol that had pooled in his belly.
“His name was Malatesta,” Steven explained. “He was waiting for me outside my apartment right after the business in Back Bay.”
“What did he want?” Remy asked cautiously.
Steven shrugged. “He wanted to know what I could tell him about you.”
“And you told him . . .”
“Everything,” Steven said, his face suddenly very serious.
Remy wasn’t quite sure how to react when his friend caved.
“I’m just fucking with you,” the detective said. “I told him that I knew you were a Boston PI, and that we’d crossed paths a few times in our chosen professions, but that was about it.”
“Did he ask you anything else?”
Steven shook his head. “He verified your office address, thanked me, and left. I figured he was on his way over to talk to you.”
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