Would Cathy be surprised to find Gritz here?
“…we fear reason, Burke opined. We fear reason because we know man isn’t equipped with much of it. ‘We are afraid to put men to live and trade each of his own private stock,’ he explains in his Reflections on the Revolution, ‘because we suspect that this stock in each man is small…’ And Burke’s status as patriarch of modern Conservatism is clearly seen in what he says next, to wit, that ‘individuals would be better off to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages.’ Burke’s argument is that things are what they are after generation upon successive generation, that by complying with the prejudices of a time, men—Burke’s word, not my own—are acting reasonably, reasonably because these are the very prejudices that have allowed their society to flourish…”
Phantom Redemption had to be playing somewhere else around the city. Some better venues than Jackie’s. Places Gritz could take Cath, places he believed she’d be comfortable.
“…turning to Marx, his use of myth is two-pronged. There are the myths he cites and the myth that constitutes his method. Robert Tucker describes Marxism as ‘a moralistic or religious system,’ and by that he alludes to the humanism at the heart of Marx’s project…”
She wasn’t returning his calls. It was driving him crazy. They were still married for God’s sake. Gritz wondered if she was seeing someone else.
“…Marx, who described Prometheus as ‘the most eminent saint and martyr in the philosophical calendar,’ admiring Prometheus’ stand against the gods. Marx, who quoted Aeschylus’ Prometheus approvingly, Prometheus defying Hermes and those the herald served, Prometheus chained, stating, ‘better to be servant of this rock’—” the speaker at the lectern paused, his audience waiting for it “—‘than to be faithful boy to Father Zeus.’”
There were some laughs, a few claps.
“…Marx’s Prometheus a true revolutionary, chained to his rock and defying ‘all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge self-consciousness as the highest divinity.’ Quite the opposite, indeed, of our dear Edmund.”
More laughs from the academic crowd.
The giant man next to Gritz said, “Human.”
Gritz turned his head to look at him. The guy wore a collar. Biggest goddman priest Gritz had ever seen in his life. “Pardon?”
“Human self-consciousness is what Marx wrote.”
A little man wearing a bow tie had turned around and was frowning at them.
“Okay.” Gritz turned back to look at the column, the speaker still lost from his sight.
When the man on stage started speaking about myth as a totalitarian construct, Gritz looked at his watch. How long did these things go for? Yeah, no way Cath would ever imagine him at a place like this. Gritz was here and he couldn’t imagine himself here.
“‘But from out my coffin’s prison-bounds/By wond’rous fate I’m forced to rove/While the blessings and the chaunting sounds/That your priests delight in, useless prove.’”
Gritz hadn’t caught the seque or how the speaker had pulled it off, but the audience was listening raptly, so the guy must have done it well. “He lost me,” Gritz said out loud to himself.
“He’s talking about vampires.”
Gritz looked at the over-sized priest next to him. “Vampires?”
“It’s The Bride of Corinth.”
“The Bride of Corinth?”
“Goethe.”
Hearing the German’s name pronounced out loud always sounded funny to Gritz. When he’d first picked up Faust he’d looked at the name of the author and figured it was pronounced Gothe or something. Then he’d heard it pronounced Ger-ter over and over again and realized he was wrong, realized it was one of them things about language and pronunciation. Like the way v sounded like a w in certain words or phrases like veni, vedi, vichi.
“Vampires. Huh.” Gritz flashed back to the men in the Mercury, the Monster Squad or whatever they styled themselves.
The man in the bow tie had turned around again to give them that disapproving look. Gritz smiled back at him, thought it tempting to snatch the guy’s bow tie off his chest, decided it was time to leave.
Some more grad students were smoking cigarettes outside on 5th Avenue, under the sidewalk shed. The Empire State Building was lit up red, white, and blue. Gritz stood looking up and down the avenue. Which way was that bar?
The library was five or six blocks up. Sure, the Grad Center had its own. Gritz thought about retrieving his badge, using it to get in there. Dismissed that idea because he didn’t want to be surrounded by men like the little guy with the bow tie. He debated getting back in his car, driving to the midtown library. But there was nowhere for the car, the parking situation worse up there than here.
And, he thought, if he walked he could stop in at the bar for a quick one on the way. Gritz looked at his watch. The library should be open for a while still.
Tuesday
20 October 1998
23.
8:37 A.M.
The beast stalked its enclosure, growling, drool trailing from each of its mouths. The concrete walls and floor bore deep gouges from its claw-like paws. Sensing something—a presence—it looked up towards the wall that separated it from its freedom.
“Nothing to say?” Halstead goaded and, for once, Boone was at a loss for words.
The monster stared as if it could see through the one-way glass, as if it knew Boone was there, the bristles on its back standing erect. Each of its mouths gnarred with hostility, teeth glistening. One Doberman-like head let forth a deep, whooping bark and the other two followed suit. The barrier muffled its barks.
Boone had seen it before, much closer than this. He didn’t know what it was called but he knew what it could do. He felt naked straight-jacketed and strapped to the hand truck they were rolling him around on, naked without a .357 or something larger. He’d run into this thing once before.
And it had fucked him up good.
The vampires that stood around him—Colson, Wells, Halstead, and Pomeroy—contemplated the beast through the glass.
“What—what is it?” Boone managed to ask, never taking his eyes off the thing.
Colson answered. “A cerberus.”
“A cerberus? You mean there’s more than one of these things?” Boone couldn’t imagine.
The vampires did not answer.
The cerberus resumed pacing its space, heads turning to keep Boone locked in its multiple gazes.
“It’s like it knows he’s here,” Wells said of the creature and Boone.
“Nah, it smells you.” Boone shot back, regaining a confidence he didn’t feel. First they know about Jennifer and the kids, now this fucking thing. “It wants to mate.”
“Legend holds,” proffered Halstead, “it guards the gates of the Underworld.”
“It prevents those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping,” Pomeroy added.
“Then what’s it doing here?”
“The dark Lord has a taste for exotic pets,” replied Colson.
“And you’re showing me this because?”
“Because the dark Lord doesn’t make threats, Boone. He doesn’t have to.”
“You do it for him. That right, Colson?” Him. It was the first time, Boone realized, he’d referred to the thing running this show by the masculine objective pronoun instead of as an it.
“I remind you of what is at stake here,” Colson was saying.
“I get it. I run, you sick this thing on me.”
“Not necessarily you.”
“You f—” Boone blurted before he caught himself.
“Feeding time,” noted Halstead.
“It has an appetite for live meat,” Pomeroy said, an aside to Boone.
As they watched, a partition in one wall rose and four chimpanzees burst into the enclosure, scattering in different directions, chattering and shrieking. The cerberus sprang forward, the jaws of its mouths barking and snapping, catching one o
f the primates up before it had gotten far. Two of its mighty, shaking jaws tore the screaming chimp in half, showering blood across the scarred ground. Even as it did this, the cerberus had cornered a second terrified chimpanzee and commenced devouring it.
“Like the dark Lord, Boone,” Colson remarked calmly, “I find making threats distasteful, beneath me. But let me be blunt. That little, ‘I got business to take care of’ you pulled back at Enfermo’s? Try something like that again, and we’ll let Betsey off her leash.”
While the Cerberus devoured a third chimpanzee before their eyes, the final chimp pried futilely at the section of the wall where the partition had descended.
“Not much to say all of a sudden.” Halstead smiled at Boone for the first time ever. “Is there?”
When Colson asked if there were any questions, Boone didn’t respond. “You’re a young man, Boone, a young man with much rage. But I believe you can control this rage. More importantly, the dark Lord believes you can control this rage. Tell me, Boone: can you control this rage?”
Boone paused before answering. “Yeah.”
Colson nodded approvingly. “Wells.”
Wells got behind the hand truck and rolled Boone from the viewing chamber, following Colson. Pomeroy and Halstead were left alone at the glass, side by side. Betsey groomed its forelegs and paws, licking them and wiping its mouths. The lone chimp had given up at the wall and huddled in a corner.
“Rainford asked me to go with them,” Halstead mentioned.
“I was afraid so.”
Their hands found one another and they stood together, the cerberus chewing its meal.
“Whether this mission fails or succeeds,” Pomeroy reached up with its free hand to its pompadour, “our side is declaring war.”
“The war is already upon us. We have a chance to end it with the opening shots.”
Hands clasped, they stood quietly for some time.
“Be careful,” Pomeroy squeezed Halstead’s hand. “Come back to me.”
“I will.”
The cerberus called Betsey turned its attention to the chimpanzee cowering in the corner and the thing started to screech.
24.
1:25 P.M.
“That’s where she went? You sure?”
“That’s where she went, yo.” Marquis answered Luke’s question, the boys’ attention drawn to the apartment building a block over.
They stood together on the corner, Luke, Marquis, and Yuri, the three black youth not looking out of place. This neighborhood had been heavily Polish and Ukranian half a century ago. Since then it’d changed and there were all sorts of people that called it home. When the Moses towers had gone up a few blocks away in the late sixties, the neighborhood had taken on a darker tint. No one stopped to ask the boys if they lived nearby or what they were doing, and they were careful not to say anything to the few passersby. This last part was harder for Yuri than Marquis, but Luke had warned them both.
“You sure it was her?”
“I seen the bitch, yo.” Marquis harbored no doubts. “Took her ten minutes to get in the door.”
You know a lady walks by here? Her son had asked them that day on the street. Big lady? Heavy lady with thick ankles? Nice way to put what it was.
“Bitch fat like an elephant.” Yuri putting it like it was, his mind on the knife in his pants, the girl waiting on him back at the Moses. He’d finger fucked her behind the ventilation system. Made her touch him down there, pull on him some. Yuri wanted to get back to Moses, seal the deal. What he liked to do, when he fucked them, liked to take his knife out, unfold it, put it up against their throats. Not too many girls were into that though. Occasionally one of the older freakier ones, maybe one of the younger ones too excited to stop him.
“Who that?” Luke asked about the older white guy in the folding chair outside the building, some kind of brace on his neck.
“Some nigga.” Marquis was touching his cheeks, his bruises fading. The man had hit him in the face that day, had hurt him more than physically. Hurt his pride. Marquis had stood there trying not to cry, the man telling him in front of his friends he had blow job lips. Telling him a man steps to you, you got to step right up to him. Which Marquis intended to do, the 9mm under his shirt intended exactly for that purpose.
“We wait.” Luke leaned back against a car, arms crossed.
An Asian lady pushing a baby carriage passed on the other side of the street. Yuri was looking over at her and Luke saw him doing it, Luke figuring as long as Yuri was looking and not saying anything, not drawing any negative attention their way, then that was all right.
Yuri was wondering what it’d be like to stick his dick in an Asian lady. There’d been that girl Mona that time in school, when he’d gone to school. Mona wasn’t Asian but she had Chinky eyes. She’d been tight as hell too. Yuri thinking that had more to do with her age than any shape of her eye.
A white car with a red and blue stripe marked Department of Sanitation pulled up at the curb next to the man in the folding chair. The driver and the man carried on a little conversation, the man reaching up at one point to his brace. When the car pulled away, the man got up, folded his chair and went inside the apartment.
Luke watched the city car go, looked both ways on the street. “Come on.”
The three crossed, swaying a little with their swag on. Feeling good about what they were about to do. Luke paused to look both ways again before they stepped into the vestibule of the apartment. There was a wall of bells and mail boxes and a door barring their path. Yuri turned the knob and pushed against the door a few times until Luke told him to stop.
“We should what, yo?” Marquis already had his strap out, down behind his leg. “Ring the bell?”
That’s Mrs. Coyle, the son had told them. Let me tell you about her.
Luke reached out and did just that, rang the bell for 3B. Coyle. Then he pulled the steel pipe he had out of his pants. If Eddie Coyle came to answer, they’d have a little something for him. Club him—stick him—shoot him right there.
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz—
The door unlatched. The boys looked at each other. They stepped into a short hallway, a steep stairwell ascending to the second floor, a door to a ground floor apartment marked 1.
They went up the steps with their weapons out, the stairs making all sorts of noise under them.
Let me tell you about her. The fat lady’s punk-ass son telling them his mother was some kind of den mother for one of them faggot white boy groups.
The second floor was a long hallway, an apartment door at either end. Strong smells in the air, food and something else.
Yuri was wondering what it’d be like to stick his dick in a woman that large.
With Luke in the lead, they crossed the hall to the next staircase, another steep set of stairs disappearing into the murk above. Like the lights up there were out. The only illumination muted daylight that came from a smudged sky light.
Something creaked on the third floor landing.
Marquis looked at Yuri, Yuri looked at Marquis, and then both boys looked to Luke. A door opened on its chain back down the hall the way they’d come and Luke stepped back there fast, pressed against the hallway wall, the door closing before he could reach it. He heard the sound of multiple locks being set. Luke pressed himself to the wall next to the door, figuring whoever lived inside was looking out into the hallway now through the peep hole.
Yuri and Marquis looked back at him and Luke lifted his head, telling them to go on and get upstairs. He watched them turn onto the stairwell and listened to the stairs under their feet. He waited by the door, the pipe in his hand, waiting for it to open. Some nosy nobody gonna get their head bust.
Fat lady’s bitch son telling them his mom had named the dog after LeRoi-somebody, like it was some nigga they should know. Luke hadn’t had a clue who the man’d been talking of. It wasn’t like he went home and looked it up.
The noise on the stairs had ceased.
His boys were up there now. Better save a piece of that sumbitch for him.
Luke looked at the peep hole, wondering if the person inside was looking back out. He had Marquis’ nine, he could press the muzzle to the peep hole, put one in the door, teach whoever was inside a lesson about spying on people. But he didn’t have Marquis’ nine; Marquis did. Would the person inside call the cops they saw three unfamiliar black kids in the hall?
A snap and a grunt from upstairs grabbed Luke’s attention. A brief commotion, sounded like a scuffle, then nothing.
Luke looked back at the apartment door. Still no one opening it. Fuck them if they were watching through the spy hole.
He crossed the hall to the bottom of the stairwell, looking up into the dark. Couldn’t see nothing. “Marquis!” he whispered. “Yuri!”
Nothing.
“Marquis!” A little louder.
A sound from upstairs. Somebody was up there.
“Yuri!” Even louder. “Marquis!”
Yuri came down the stairs, something not right with him, his boy leaning against the bannister like he couldn’t keep his balance. In one hand he held some kind of cup, looked like an old-fashioned goblet from King Arthur days. Yuri’s other hand was up on his forehead, his knife sticking out of his skull.
Luke’s eyes opened as Yuri sat down, slumping back on the stairs five steps from the landing. His body convulsed with a seizure, eyes swimming in his head trying to focus on the knife handle jutting out of his forehead. His eyes shone white and his arms dropped, hands going slack, the cup tumbling down the remaining stairs to land at Luke’s feet.
Luke reached out and took the cup. He was puzzling over it, puzzling over what had become of Yuri sitting there motionless, when the stairs creaked beneath a new weight.
A man was coming down the stairs, looked like the man from the street that time, except—Except this guy was all kinds of fucked up.
I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) Page 14