Book Read Free

The Night Archer

Page 14

by Michael Oren


  Back in the dining room, Desabbato is taking another woman’s statement. Her sobbing, actually, for it appears that she knows the victim from work. Through stringy gray strands plastered to her face, she wails about Freida, her tender soul and heart, and basically ignores the detective. That’s where I step in.

  “Miss?”

  “Kesselring.”

  “Can you tell me, Miss Kesselring”—I offer her a tissue—“did Freida Adams recently go on vacation?”

  Through the strings, she looks up at me and blows, a pale woman with splotchy cheeks. “Vacation?”

  She glares at me as if I’m insane, but my nod tells her otherwise.

  “A cruise, maybe? Somewhere, say, exotic?”

  Ms. Kesselring glances around the room. Her eyes land on the body just as it’s being bagged. “Yes. Yes, Freida went away in August,” she slobbers. “But nowhere exotic.”

  I nod again.

  “She went to Maine.”

  Within a minute, Ms. Kesselring is showing me Facebook pictures of Freida’s trip. Among these is one shot of the deceased posing in front of a white clapboard building—The Bristol Bay Restaurant and Inn—and another standing next to a twenty-foot statue of a lobster. Turns out there aren’t many such monuments, even in Maine, and that the lobster is something of a landmark. It belongs to the otherwise undistinguished Hathaway Lodgings located further up the coast.

  I hand Ms. Kesselring a second tissue, thank her, and check my watch. Twelve thirty-five Tuesday morning, it says. So far, I’m precisely on time.

  Still, it’s hard for me to wait all night at the station, filing reports, faking interest in the autopsy report, trying to look busy. At 9:15, I make the first of several calls to local law enforcement officials in Maine. I identify myself and ask them to stop by the two hotels and question the proprietors. I’m interested if, during the late Freida Adams’s stay, any other single guests were registered and, if so, what were their names and addresses.

  Bless those small-town cops, they’re always eager to help. By 11:00 a.m., I have the first of my answers. Turns out that both establishments hosted single male visitors during the time in question. A Robert J. Egret and one Timothy Smew. When it comes to false identities, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes. These practically scream at me, since both of them are types of waterfowl. Still, the coincidence doesn’t help me much, since the contact information they gave to the proprietors was also made-up. Less than fifteen hours into my investigation, I feel stonewalled.

  But then, when I least expect it, a break. I suppose you couldn’t call him a concierge, but the young man at the desk of one of the places where Freida stayed provides a description of Smew. Thirty-five, more or less, medium height, with thinning brown hair and—this he was specific about—a moustache like the kind men once wore in the movies. A pencil moustache, I guessed. Also, the young man took a liking to the kind of car Smew drove, a copper Kia Sportage. He happened to notice that it had New York plates and—the real tip-off—a rental sticker.

  This is where the process gets boring. Assuming the man calling himself Smew did not reside in Buffalo, I access the data banks of rent-a-cars in the Greater Metropolitan area. They keep lists of vehicles rented according to date, mileage, and make. The search is disappointingly swift.

  At 4:47, I’m at Cheap Car Rental—no kidding, that’s the name—in Washington Heights. Luck sticks with me and the Sportage in question is still sitting in the lot. Seems nobody else likes copper.

  Flashing my badge, the Dominican guy on duty rushes to open the doors. Even Cheap cleans its cars after they’re returned, and this one’s been thoroughly vacuumed. Well, not thoroughly. Gloves on, my hands probe the places nozzles can’t reach: deep under the seat cushions, in the cracks beside the console, behind the pedals. The last spot’s where I find it. A receipt which I see, holding it up to the last autumn light, comes from a pharmacy.

  And not just any pharmacy, but one located right down the street. Not much challenge here either. The young Indian woman behind the counter can’t look it up faster. The receipt’s for the purchase of an epinephrine autoinjector. Well, I think, even a master makes mistakes. The prescription yields the customer’s info.

  There is little sense waiting, certainly not to call it in. The distance is a matter of blocks. At 5:53, I turn down Dyckman Street onto Staff, and park in front of a granite-faced building typical of the neighborhood. The list of names next to the buzzer tells me the man called Segal lives in 3E. Seated on the top of the steps, a dark-skinned kid eats from a container of Cuban Chinese and taps his feet to distant Reggaeton. He smiles and lets me inside.

  I haven’t slept in more than two days, but the clock is rushing and so’s the adrenaline. Three landings later, hardly winded, I’m standing outside his door. Pushing back my jacket to expose the butt of my Sig Sauer—I like doing that—I knock and knock again. The third time, though, the door swings inward. And instantly I’m attacked.

  Not so much attacked as assaulted. Paws on my chest, dripping tongue lapping my neck. It doesn’t take much to subdue the animal, though, just a rustle of the crest between her ears. Relaxing, I take off my jacket and put on Act 2 of Macbeth, the part when Banco foresees his own assassination. “Come dal ciel precipita,” he sings, “O, how the darkness falls from heaven.” And I open the curio cabinet.

  Displayed inside are six pieces of evidence. An EpiPen, a ticket stub from a Verdi Extravaganza, a chestnut hair from a rare Peruvian dog—these are the latest entries. Over each item hangs an index card inscribed with a time. Two days, nine hours, and sixteen minutes. Four days, one hour, thirty-seven minutes. And so on.

  Reaching into my pocket, I produce a small metallic object. Reminiscent of a fist, it features a glittery lighthouse, a moose and several pelicans and, of course, a lobster. “Visit Scenic Maine!” it shouts. Placing the magnet on the shelf, I examine my watch. Eleven hours and fifty-eight minutes. A new record. Yet I can’t decide whether to celebrate or cry.

  Some people play solitaire and others challenge themselves at chess. I remember this as I close the curio cabinet and see my adversary’s reflection—the thinning brown hair, the Clark Gable moustache—in the glass. Your win is my loss, I want to both congratulate and condemn him. My success is your downfall. And only the dead stay dead.

  Nuevo Mundo

  July 25, Anno Domini 1536

  The rigging creaks like hangmen’s ropes, and the beat of the sails recalls the thud of bodies cut down. More than eight months at sea, six adrift in these doldrums, our ship, Delfina, is lost. And we are alone. Shortly after provisioning at Tenerife, the waves rose in monstrous claws that snatched our three sister ships—two caravels and a carrack—along with their provender, armaments, and two hundred men, and dragged them under. Since then, we have wandered in this endless, windless ocean. Once we longed for bullion, silver, and slaves. Now all we yearn for is life.

  Yet that yearning is unlikely to be filled. Our compliment of fifty hands is sliced to twenty—scarcely enough to man the three masts—and the larder yawns empty. Each day we consign at least one poor soul to the depths and watch, almost enviously, his descent. Father Rodrigo, his white hair and beard ghostly against his cassock’s blackness, still recites the Requiem Aeternam. But his prayers are needed more by the survivors, condemned to slower, unspeakable deaths. Only our admiral, Miguel Bueno de Mesquita, remains hopeful. Day and night, he stands at the forecastle, his doublet stuffed with cordage to disguise his own emaciation. Shielding his eyes from the ruthless sun, he peers westward. But, alas, all he sees is the West. Shimmering. Blinding. Empty.

  July 28, Anno Domini 1536

  I, Luis de los Rios y Guitierrez, serve as the admiral’s page. The riches of the Indies also fired my mind, but so, too, did the thought of finding my mentor, the famous Captain Lope Acuña. When barely able to dress myself, I was apprenticed to him by my father, and from Captain Acuña I learned all that a man needs to cross oceans. Yet, when the King comm
anded him to explore the farthest shores, to plant there our Catholic faith and enrich its Earthly Ruler, the captain ordered me ashore. “Grow up,” he scolded even as I wept. “Great seamen must first become men.”

  Those were the last words I heard from him. Four years passed and no letters, much less treasure, returned. But grow I did and strong enough to wield a sword in our Savior’s name. Like many squires, I listened raptly to the tales of New Spain and Peru, of Cortés, de Soto, and Pizarro, of the small bands of conquistadors vanquishing vast savage armies. I ached to join those bringing civilization to a bestial world. I dreamed of El Dorado. But most of all I dwelled on Captain Acuña, who was more of a father to me than my own. A locket with his likeness—balding yet comely, battle scars cleaving his beard—dangled from my neck even as I boarded the Delfina.

  The voyage was to replicate that of Acuña and perhaps reveal his fate. But our paramount quest was discovery. New lands, new missions, and mines to fill the kingdom’s coffers. To enlighten the natives, we carry the fruit of our science—astrolabes and clocks—as well as the harquebuses and cannons, powder and shot, to subdue them.

  All that is a miserable memory. After the storm, after months without easterlies or landfall, nothing remains but the specter of death by starvation or worse. Sailors often tell of crews left floundering and bereft of food who devoured, ultimately, one another. One captain, it was said, after feasting on the last of his men, mounted the masthead and, with a wheel-lock in his mouth, fed his brains to the fishes. This truly is the evilest of crimes, the undoing of all that we stand and sail for. Instead of saving savages, we become them. Our souls sink not into seas, but hellfire.

  August 1, Anno Domini 1536

  Along with the locket of Acuña, I now wear around my neck the keys to the magazine. My eyes cautiously follow the crew—Moors and Morannos escaping torture and the stake, desperados fleeing the gallows. My fear is not of mutiny, for which few of them retain muscle. Deranged by hunger, though, they might eat the gunpowder, rendering our firearms useless. Already, they have sickened drinking bilge water. Not far is the lure of human flesh.

  Before succumbing to that urge, I will follow that captain’s example. My blade will pass over such veins that, when severed, will deprive me of life but assure me peace eternal. No doubt Acuña did the same, if lost in these latitudes.

  With one hand on the locket, the other on my hilt, I keep watch over the deck. Behind me, Admiral Bueno de Mesquita is still peering. With his arm looped around a hawser for support, he gazes and gazes West.

  August 4

  Land!

  I was just completing my watch, fighting to keep on my feet and not faint in front of the men, when Curiel, our helmsman, shouted. A stunted, one-eyed Converso, Curiel was nevertheless deft with a rudder and his surviving eye keener than any pair. Excitedly on his dwarfish feet, he pointed toward the horizon. The clouds, though low and thick, seemed to part for him, and then he spied it. Barely containing my only exuberance, I stood behind Bueno de Mesquita as he inquired whether Curiel had reverted to his old Jewish falsehoods. Desperate minds can cruelly deceive, the admiral warned. But no, I found myself crying aloud, it’s real. Not only land but trees. And not only trees but, gathering curiously on the shore as we hoved, people.

  The admiral selected the ten men best able to stand and ordered them to arm. My chest nearly buckled under my breastplate, my arms and legs sagged beneath their greaves. My helmet felt like a hundredweight. Even this ledger of leather-bound vellum, once insubstantial, proved leaden.

  With great exertion, we managed to lower the dinghy, to rappel ourselves inside, and row. Curiel manned the tiller as Bueno de Mesquita stood braced in the bow with Father Rodrigo, cross and missal in hand, fast behind. When the keel scraped sand, the admiral and the priest managed to hoist themselves over the gunwale, and I followed them, sword drawn. The three of us waded toward the natives.

  They were mostly naked, as expected, their delicate parts covered by tight, brightly colored cloths. But their skin, rather than brown, was of a flaxen cast, as was their hair. A comely race, lithe and well-proportioned. And curious. Rather than dispersing at the mere glint of our armor, they congregated around us only to sneer and step back, as if from some noxious odor.

  The admiral raised his blade and declared, “In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Highness…” only to collapse to his knees. Father Rodrigo uttered something in Latin before presently doing the same. Only I was left with the white of the sand, the blue sky and sea, swirling around my eyes and my body sloping backward, listless, into the arms of one of the tribe.

  August 11

  How shall I begin to describe the wonders we have witnessed in this land? How, if I had not experienced them with sound mind and Christian heart, might I relate miracles performed for us and the mercies bestowed on our souls? I do not know if El Dorado indeed exists, but if it does, it resembles this, a city not of gold but of magic.

  From the beach, the natives bore us a league or so to their capital. No moat or battlements—no defenses whatsoever, only hard-tarred roads and bridges made of burnished steel, and structures higher than the tallest castle, tablet-shaped and constructed entirely of glass. Across the ground and throughout the air whirred the most marvelous machines and at speeds many times the swiftest stallion’s. There are, in fact, no horses to be seen, nor carts or litters. No sails for harnessing wind. Only engines of ingenious design and unfathomable reservoirs of power.

  In one such vehicle we were borne, the admiral, the priest, and I, and escorted into a chamber of soothing light and refreshing air, both from indeterminate sources. Natives, men and women, pressed fantastic tools to our eyes, tongues, and chests. Bags of liquid, conducted through hose and needles, streamed into our arms. They stripped and washed us with aromatic ointments, dispersed with our rancid vestments and draped us in white linen robes.

  One of the conquistador’s first tasks is to train native translators, but our hosts relieved us of this toil. We conversed and a machine the size of a hand transformed our well-mannered words into their babble and their babble into our mother tongue. We made it clear that not only the three of us, but also the remainder of the crew were in urgent need of salvation. With smiles and pacific gestures, they assured us that all of our men would be supremely cared-for, treated and feasted like kings.

  We, too, when bodily able, partook of strangely textured juices and meat of a delicacy unknown to my palate. In a short while, Miguel Bueno de Mesquita looked once again like the vigorous admiral I served and even Father Rodrigo regained his ruddiness.

  Recovered, we were led into an even larger hall, to be greeted by the tribal elders. Unlike those on the beach, clothed in what I now understood to be raiment for bathing, these savages were cloaked in jackets of dark material and pantaloons not unlike a peasant’s, with white shirts beneath and bandanas of florid silk knotted around their necks. One of them stepped forward and, with a half-bow, presented himself. His name, translated by that hand-sized machine, was El Líder.

  More or less the admiral’s age, El Líder was significantly taller, broader-limbed, and robust. From a face as regal as any in Christendom, his white teeth blazed, and his blue eyes glinted like Dutch porcelain. His hair was a rolling, golden sea. He took each of our hands in both of his and bade us ardent welcome. We returned his courtesies and assured him of our sovereign’s mercy.

  August 15

  Mere quill and ink cannot convey all that we have seen and experienced. From the portraits on the wall in which the images both move and speak to the fireless ovens and the staircases that rise while climbers stand motionless—all defy lettering, even language. Our hosts do not even need ledgers to record events but merely press little buttons. Words appear on a bright surface before them, perfectly formed.

  We have so much to learn from these aboriginals, and so much to take home. The admiral is especially impressed. He speaks endlessly of the advantages these blessings can bring to our ow
n people, easing their pains and relieving their hunger, entertaining them. So exhilarated is he that he barely hears Rodrigo’s grumbling about the absence of priests in this land, or even churches.

  My mind also whirls in astonishment. Often, I merely sit in my cabana, a simple room with two windows that look out at the dinghy, still beached and attracting the natives’ curiosity, and at the unmanned Delfina off-shore. I rarely notice them, though. My attention rather fixes on the floors that reflect my likeness and the water that runs, both cold and hot, without pumping. I sit in a bath of glistening spume or turn the dials that bring forth music of all manners and loudness, or that stoke and extinguish the light.

  The lack of priests is the least of my thoughts, along with the paucity of churches. Not once did I question the whereabouts of Curiel and our crew. And while Bueno de Mesquita dreams of returning home with our discoveries, I fantasize about taking one of the native girls I saw on the beach, bronzed with clean-shaven legs and a nose like a miniature prow, of forgoing fortunes in wilder climes and remaining in this Eden forever.

  September 5

  Once again and perhaps for the last time, penmanship fails me. This ledger is inadequate to contain the chronicle I must inscribe and its pages too diaphanous for its burden.

  So busy had I been for the previous fortnight, so preoccupied learning everything I could about this enchanted New World, that I lost all interest in the ledger. It remained in my room, gathering motes, alongside my sword, which the tribesmen were kind enough to return to me. I had no use for either the log or the rapier or for the Old World they represented. A world of ceaseless wars, famines, and the auto-da-fé. Here, by contrast, men lived in peace and plenty, and accepted one another not for the God they did or did not worship, but for the humanity we commonly enjoy.

 

‹ Prev