by Nick Mamatas
And as though the thought made him materialize, the chimes rang as he pushed the door open with his shoulder. It was Riley, the man from Belle Terre. He had a big cardboard box in his arms, and struggled with its weight. I slid behind a shelf and thought of nothingness—much easier than trying to think of nothing. The clerk didn’t smile at him, but his eyebrows went up as he got to the counter with a single lurch and plopped the box on the table.
“Well, this should do it,” Riley said. I’d never heard his voice before. I had no idea what I expected him to sound like, but whatever it was, I was wrong. His voice was deep and soft at the same time, like a crooner from a black-and-white movie. “A free trade between fair traders.” I wanted to strangle him. Bernstein was always of the mind that the
capitalists knew the score, that Communism was inevitable, but Riley spoke like a bourgeois economics textbook.
“Okay, we’ll take a look,” the clerk said. “Take a look.” The air turned dark and cold, like a meat freezer’s. He reached in and pulled out a few slim, but wide, volumes, bound in leather like new library books. The spines were unremarkable, but familiar all the same. There’s no reason to print a hundred-page poster-sized book unless there are lots of images, diagrams. Art books, technical manuals, heavy math shit, and occult texts. That’s where I’d seen them. Bernstein’s house.
“Those are mine,” I said as I stepped out from behind the shelf. “You stole them from my friend.” Riley smiled at me, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t look surprised to see me, or upset. That was the archconfidence of the ruling class. Reagan and Bush smiling at the television while the Eastern bloc imploded.
The clerk shrugged. “I’m not interested in buying stolen merchandise,” he said to Riley. And then he turned to me. “Do you have any proof that this is your, uh, collection?”
“You should ask him for proof that they belong to him,” I said. “Those are valuable books. You could probably buy a house from the proceeds. If I pointed to an empty house and said, ‘Hey, it’s mine. Wanna buy it?’ would you without seeing a deed?”
“What do you know about these books?” the clerk said.
“What do you know about deeds?” Riley asked.
“Magick,” I said. “Sacred geometry, summoning spirits, enlightenment. Not the junk you can find at B. Dalton either. The real shit.”
“You’re right,” Riley said. “These are occult books. But you’re also wrong.” The clerk put the books back into the box, planted the frayed elbows of his sweater onto the countertop, and rested his chin atop his knuckles. He rarely got a show like this.
“Here’s how you’re wrong, miss,” Riley said. “I can point to a house and say, ‘Hey, it’s mine. Wanna buy it?’ as you put it, because I own a significant amount of real estate in the Village, and in Port Jefferson Station as well. Point in any random direction, and you’ll likely be pointing at one of my properties. There have been a fair number of short sales lately, foreclosures. Don’t you read the papers?”
“Which suggests to me that these very expensive books do belong to him,” the clerk said. “He can afford them, and we’ve been arranging this barter for months. This man knows their contents. Do you?”
“I know many things,” I said. I pointed at Riley. “Have we met before?”
“Of course not,” he said. “We clearly don’t traffic in the same circles,” he added, as an aside to the clerk.
“Clearly,” the clerk agreed.
“Then how do I know that your name is Riley?”
Riley jerked back, surprised, but the clerk shrugged and said, “Maybe you do read the papers. What are they calling you these days, Mr. Riley?”
Riley regained his composure. “Mr. Peace Dividend.” He smiled at me, the way a dentist does to a nervous kid. The worst possible smile. “I made a fair amount of money betting on war, in the markets.”
“How many millions of dollars’ worth of Grumman stock did you own?” the clerk asked him, fawning.
“More than enough. Too much, truly,” Riley said. “I liquidated it, decided to get into real estate. Then the East Germans developed a taste for freedom. I got out of the stock market just in time.”
“And you also dabble in the occult?” I asked.
“I ‘dabble’ in commodities. I can’t make heads or tails of this stuff, and that’s because there’s no heads or tails to be made of it. Occult books, fine art, palladium futures; it’s all the same to me. That’s my business. Now why don’t you mind your own business and let us carry on.”
Then I performed a bit of magick I’d never been able to. I started crying, at Will. Real tears. The tension fell from my face, my skin heated up, my voice changed to the sort of girlish coo I didn’t know I was capable of. “You don’t understand,” I said. “My life is really falling apart right now. I lost my boyfriend—these are his books, or he left them with me. And now he ran off with some high school girl. LILCO is going to cut the lights.” I blinked away the tears. “I don’t even know why you’re picking on me! What have I ever done to you?”
It was good. Almost all of it was true. Riley was impressed, but all my body did was stiffen a bit, against his own Will. But he wasn’t the target; the clerk was. If he shipped them out of town, I’d never see them again.
“Mr. Riley, do you know what this woman is talking about?” the clerk asked. He seemed dubious about the whole thing. The store was still cold, but now the frost seemed to be coming from his icy exhalations.
Riley made an uncomfortable little noise. “I’m afraid I do. If you’re concerned, just hold the books for now.”
“Oh, I’m not concerned,” the clerk said. He ducked under the counter and brought up a large, soft-looking package in a plain brown wrapper. It wasn’t a book, whatever it was. “Here you are, Mr. Riley.” Riley hugged the package to his chest, squeezing it almost comically, and without another word left the store.
I turned off the tears. “What was in that package?” I asked the clerk.
“Are you a police officer?” he asked. “Or are you just insane?”
“No. Would you tell me if I were?”
“Insane?”
“No, a police officer.”
“No, I would not tell you either way,” the clerk said.
“It was in a plain brown wrapper. Was it porn? Kiddie porn?” He opened his mouth to say something but I interrupted him, because men hate when women interrupt them. “No, it wasn’t even a book. It was a blow-up doll, wasn’t it? Maybe a kiddie-shaped blow-up doll.” I was close to shouting, “Pedophilia!” Pedophilia! was a powerful magical word, the abrahadabra of the late twentieth century. It shattered lives and tore up schoolyards in the search for secret sex tunnels, it pit neighbor against neighbor and legalized murder. Pedophilia! was a summoning word, a whistle for Satan and his army of prick-dicked imps. It could set a suburb to boil. Even I was a little wary of saying it too seriously, though if I could have done it, I would have won far more easily. Pedophilia! and the cops tear Riley’s mansion apart. Pedophilia! and Joshua gets dragged away, blubbering that he will tell who wanted Bernstein’s painting, and that sexy Japanese cartoons are too a legitimate art form. Pedophilia! and Dad goes away for a long long time. Maybe forever. But I couldn’t say it; I wasn’t even as good a witch as the girls from Salem. A failure of my Will, a reminder of my father and his living voodoo doll of me, Chelsea.
“Why don’t you go ask him,” the clerk said. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t even know what’s in that package. I just midwived the exchange.”
“Didn’t you care at all?”
The clerk looked at me, his eyes wide and hollow. He clearly didn't care about anything. That’s why he chose to work in a used bookstore in a town where people rarely read anything more challenging than Danielle Steele. “Fine, then,” I said, and I left.
“Hello! Riley?” I called out, on the street. He was only half a block away, headed down the picturesque little hill that made the block so attractive to day-trip
pers, and already had his car keys out. His Mercedes keys. I clomped after him, and he was being all cool. He didn’t turn around when I called his name a second time. He was so good at ignoring people. I let him get into his car and drive off. He made a left at the end of the block, suggesting that he was headed home. I could head over there myself pretty easily. Maybe I’d even see Chrysoula sweeping up after him, or cutting the crusts off his bread.
“Riley!” someone else called out. It wasn’t me; it was another woman, one with a familiar voice. I turned to see—it was Dad’s crackhead girlfriend, tumbling down the block behind me, hissing and growling. She walked by me, calling for Riley, ignoring me utterly.
I wanted her attention. “Hey, bitch; get any dick from my father lately?”
“No,” she said. “Haven’t you?”
“What do you want with that guy?”
“Maybe I want to suck his dick because your father turned out to be a faggot.”
I shrugged, and tried not to laugh. “I guess that’s a strong possibility.”
“What's your problem, bitch?” she wanted to know. All curious, almost like a normal person. “I need money, and he has it. He owes your father money, which means he owes me money. You too, you fat fucking bitch, but I know you don't have shit.”
“How does he owe my father money? That guy’s rich.” It was probably a mistake, listening to this woman’s hysterical babbling.
“From high school. They went to McDonald’s every day and ate Big Macs. In college, your father was a real fucking sport and bought all the beer for their little faggot parties. That’s how! Two hundred dollars,” she said, her voice a shriek now. “With interest! Compound fucking interest.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.
“I was there with Billy. I saw it all,” she said. “You think I’ve always been like this? You think I like living in a fucking abandoned house and shitting in the backyard? I went to school, you know, and I have a degree, so I’m fucking better than you. And I’ve got your father back, too. He came crawling to me when that whore he married finally fucking died.” She stared at me hard for a long moment. I guess she could have head butted me if she wanted to, if she had the balance to pull it off. Then her rictus broke, and she was afraid.
“What’s so funny?” she asked me. She was quieter now. “What’s so goddamned funny?” She wouldn’t even say “fucking” to my face anymore. I hadn’t even realized it, but I was smiling at her.
Lots of things were funny. My mouth was open, ready to announce the punch line, and even explain the joke. Whatever I said was going to be true. I had thought that I was a member in good standing of the Imaginary Party. Chairman Bernstein, Comrade Dawn. But something wicked this way had come, and neither of us had suspected at all. It was as though everyone in this stupid town was involved in a conspiracy except for us. Riley had Bernstein’s books; my father knew Bernstein too. And Riley bragged about buying up real estate—he was obviously the third friend my grandmother had mentioned, the one who bought the house out from under us. And now, here was Dad’s crackhead high school girlfriend, looking for Riley. I couldn’t ask any more questions of anyone. That would simply summon more doubt into my reality, bind my seekings with confusion. But I had no conclusions either, so I could say nothing. But I could still make a definitive statement.
I glanced around to make sure nobody was watching, then punched her in the face with every ounce of strength I had. It was a very good punch. I turned my ankle, loaded up my thigh, kept my arm all loose to get the kinetic link to my leg muscles going, focused on the first two knuckles, the whole Mike Tyson bit. I felt like there was another me, my own executive function or Holy Guardian Angel, observing from several feet away, critiquing my form. And my form was good. For me, the punch was a moment that stretched; for her it was a flash of flesh and pain, as it should be. Her nose vanished under my fist and her eyes glazed over. When I pulled my fist back—I was ready to unload a second time—she stood in front of me for a long moment. Then someone pulled the spine from her body and she crumpled to the ground, nice and easy. It was a mercy, really. Now she wasn’t all frantic about getting her hands on crack. With that nose, she wouldn’t be sucking dick behind the bait shop for five dollars a go for a few days anyway. I was practically a social worker. And I wasn’t even wearing my spiked ring.
By the time I made it to Belle Terre, it was getting dark. I was mostly keeping an eye on the sun, as it was a long walk back to where I’d hidden the car after leaving the hospital. Grandma was probably being treated very nicely at the hospital. She liked pudding. The lights were on in Riley’s home, and his wife was in the living room reading a magazine on the couch, but Riley wasn’t anywhere to be seen at first. Then I noticed a light in the basement window well.
I had to scuttle up to the well on my belly to see into the depths of the basement. It was huge—a single room the size of the manse—and finished. And Riley stood before a lectern. He wore a gaudy robe, black with pentagrams stitched in sequins, over his street clothes. Riley looked ridiculous, like the milquetoast boys Molly Ringwald woos in the movies with her eccentricities and spastic dancing, ten years later. Like a second-string Nazi. He hadn’t even taken off his sweater for the ritual. His pits must have been hot and stinking.
I presumed that the robe was his latest Good Read purchase. There was a book on the stand—it was an old book, definitely. Not even early twentieth century, nothing mass produced. The walls seemed to be lined with similar spines. Nothing I recognized from Bernstein’s, except as a matter of type. One corner was stocked with different books, thick and shiny volumes of your everyday law library. So Riley was an occultist—and even worse he was an attorney—and his sanctum was a furnished, carpeted basement with a relatively high ceiling and an old wet bar in the corner.
I wondered whether it was selling his soul to the most foul and darkest power that made his fortune, or if he used magick. Now, now, now / money, money, money! Riley didn’t seem engaged in a ritual. He was just skimming the book, turning a page every few seconds with gloved hands. Then I heard a dial tone, and static, and some buzzing. He had a PC with a modem in his sanctum too, and it was probably in one of the corners by the well, so I hadn’t spotted it. Riley pulled his gloves off as he marched toward the computer, toward me—I rolled out of his line of sight, then rolled back after a moment—and began typing in a noisy clatter. I couldn’t see him anymore though, as he was tucked away somewhere against the wall. But many things were explained. At least one thing was. Surely, Riley was the collector looking to buy the Tower painting. He seemed like that kind of idiot, trying to buy magick instead of earning it.
And he was rich. And he was an occultist. Bernstein’s rival, revealed at last.
18.
So, did Riley kill Bernstein? On one level, it hardly mattered. His neck was made for the lamppost. That he was a practitioner made him fit my mental profile of who might have killed Bernstein, but the world couldn’t wait for him to hang even were he innocent. Nobody gets as wealthy as Riley without exploiting the working class. That said, I was no anarchist. Killing an individual capitalist brings us no closer to revolution, and only leads to state repression. What did Trotsky say? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party?
But the great dark thing welled up in me again, filling the empty space behind my eyes. It was a roar in me, and I nearly threw myself in through the window, head first, to scuttle along the floor and kill Riley with my teeth. Then I realized something: I’d only ever attacked people weaker than I. That poor woman, damaged and enslaved by society and patriarchy. Joshua, a declassed, fat loser. Even idiot Greg. I’ve never taken on anyone who I thought, even for a moment, that I couldn’t beat. The black receded into the bowels of the Earth, and I had nothing left to do but run.
I was only halfway across the huge yard when a flashlight beam cut across the night before me. Chrysoula, in her widow’s bl
ack, held the torch and ran the light over me.
“Ah, you,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I know Riley. My father does, I mean.” Of course, that was true. In their youth. Occult shenanigans. Something.
“Your family,” she said, her accent thick on her tongue. “Your father. Yes, I know him. He walks around town, your father.”
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“I’m looking for a cat,” she said. I found myself wondering if she was looking for a missing cat, or if she was just looking for a brand-new cat to bring home for her collection.
“Well, I should leave you to it,” I said.
“Why? Where are you going now?” She stepped up to me, aimed the flashlight at my face.
“I put my grandmother in the hospital today. I have to go visit her. Some bad things happened to her—there are people in this town interested in beating up older ladies, so watch out.”
Chrysoula shifted the flashlight in her hand, holding it like a club. “I’ll beat them down.”
“Well, okay!” I went to move, and Chrysoula went to step in front of me. Then light flooded the lawn. Riley’s Mercedes roared past us. I thought I saw that he was still wearing his robe. “Did you see that?” I asked. “Do you know about your boss?”
“He’s not my boss. I’m my own boss.”
“Do you know what he does in that big basement of his?”
“I don’t clean basements, or bay windows.” She was about to say something else, when a cat emerged from the shrubs, ran over to her, and began rubbing its flanks against her ankles.