The Iron Angel

by Edward D. Hoch

“I am,” Michael conceded, taking a seat without being asked. “Your brother back in Gravita asked me to come find you. He saw your picture in the news-paper. FIFTY WIZARDS KEPT FROM THE POPE, the headline said, and one of them was you.”

  “That was last month,” Josef Patronne said with a wave of his hand, as if it had been a lifetime ago. “We went to Rome, but the Swiss Guards kept us from seeing the Pope.”

  “Your brother worries about you. What is this wizard business? You are a Gypsy, not a wizard.”

  “Cannot a man be both?” Patronne finished his glass of wine and said, “Tell me your name.”

  “I am Michael Vlado. I lead your brother’s people in Gravita.”

  “You are too young to be a Gypsy king.”

  “The old king is crippled and unable to rule. I do the job.”

  “And they have sent you to find me? What for? To return me to Gravita after forty years?”

  “Your brother is worried. The newspaper article said you lived here in Milan and claimed to have the power to fly unaided.”

  Josef Patronne smiled for the first time, almost like a schoolboy taking special pride in some accomplishment. “He is worried that I will fall?”

  “He is worried that you delude yourself, Josef.”

  A slender man of about Josef’s age suddenly joined them at the table, pulling up a chair and extending a hand to Michael. “I am Axel Tortero, a friend of Josef’s. Go on talking, you two. I only want a cup of espresso.”

  “Axel is also a wizard,” Josef explained, “but not a Gypsy. He was with us in Rome. Axel, this is Michael Vlado, from Romania.”

  “I’m an herbalist,” the newcomer explained. “I don’t fly like my friend Josef.”

  “Forget the flying,” Michael said, feeling that somehow he had stepped into another world. “Why were you in Rome?”

  “Ah!” Axel Tortero held up a finger. “We wanted to see the Pope at his weekly audience. We wanted him to acknowledge that the occult sciences are compatible with Christianity. You know, a Pope in the sixteenth century once described this area of northern Italy as a hotbed of witchcraft, and many still believe it to be so. Certainly there are superstitions here –”

  “And wizards.”

  “And wizards. But they are everywhere. If a priest heals a sick man, it is a miracle. If a wizard does the same thing, it is superstition.”

  “We are poor, ignorant people back in Gravita,” Michael tried to explain. “When we read of someone who can fly through the air, we do not think of miracles or superstition. We think the person is merely sick in the head. That is why your brother asked me to come here, Josef.”

  The black-haired man hit the table with his fist. “Henrik always worried too much about me, even when we were children. Go back and tell him I’m all right. Tell him I really can fly.”

  “Where do you do your flying?” Michael asked.

  “Next I will try the huge Galleria across the square. Have you been there yet?”

  “No.”

  “Come, then – Axel and I will show it to you.”

  Milan’s main square itself was a magnificent open space, dominated by a vast cathedral built entirely of pearly white marble. “It took forty architects four centuries to complete it,” Axel said as they passed it. “There is not another cathedral like it in all of Europe.”

  “It’s quite impressive,” Michael admitted, though he’d seen few cathedrals in Europe or anywhere else.

  “They have always built big in Milan. It is Italy’s commercial center and second-largest city. For a decade in the ’sixties, the thirty-two-storey Pirelli Tower was the tallest office building in Europe.”

  They crossed the square and entered the Galleria Vittoria Emanuele. It was a huge place with intricate mosaic floors and a curved glass roof some sixty or seventy feet above their heads. There were shops and cafes along the main floor, many with green awnings covering tables and concessions to lend an outdoor appearance to the sunlit activities. The Galleria was open to the surrounding streets and the square through its four roof-high entrances, and Michael could see a confused bird or two flapping their wings against the vaulted glass ceiling.

  “Here is where I will fly,” Patronne said. “The Galleria’s architect, Giuseppe Mongoni, fell to his death from the glass roof just days before the opening in 1878. Perhaps he was trying to fly, too.”

  His friend Axel, who might have been a booster of the Milan Chamber of Commerce, continued, “It is still the largest shopping arcade in Italy.”

  Michael stared up at the three floors of windows above the shops and at the wrought-iron balcony that circled the arcade at the third level. “What’s up there?” he asked. “More shops?”

  “And offices. Some places have been here since before the war.”

  A burly man smoking a thin cigar approached them. “No Gypsies or peddlers allowed here,” he announced. “Keep moving.”

  Josef Patronne’s face brightened. “My old friend Inspector Storia! You think we are shoplifters, perhaps?”

  “I don’t care what you are. Just keep moving.”

  “Inspector, this is Michael Vlado, come to visit me from my home in Romania.”

  “Another Gypsy,” the detective grumbled. He took another puff on his cigar.

  The detective’s presence seemed to disturb Axel more than Josef. He tugged at his friend’s coat, saying, “We must be going, Josef. You will fly another day. It is nearly time for your class.”

  Inspector Storia caught this last exchange. “I have had more complaints about you from the mothers, Patronne. What you teach their children has nothing to do with reading and writing. Be careful or you will have to fly from a prison cell.”

  “I teach religion.”

  “You teach the black arts. Three hundred years ago you would have been put to death by the Inquisition.”

  “Then it is good that I live in the twentieth century,” Patronne replied with a trace of a smile.

  He and Axel moved on, not waiting for Michael, and it seemed that his seven-hundred-mile journey was at an end. He turned back to the inspector. “I’m sorry you scared them away. I came here to see Josef Patronne.”

  “You saw him. Now be on your way, Gypsy.”

  Crowds of shoppers and strollers were moving all about them, but Michael barely noticed. He’d rarely encountered such an open hatred directed toward him because he was a Gypsy. It was a new experience, and an unpleasant one. “I have traveled far on my mission. I would like your help.”

  The inspector paused, eyeing him critically. “Say what you have to.”

  “Josef’s brother read about his visit to Rome to see the Pope.”

  Storia laughed – a short sharp noise that was hardly amused. “Foolish people, thinking the Pope would see them, much less condone what they were doing.”

  “What do wizards do?”

  “In their more harmless moments they practice faith healing and herbalism. At other times they’ve been known to act as the high priest for a coven of witches.”

  “And witches fly on broomsticks.”

  “No one flies, Mr. Vlado, except in airplanes. Medieval witches who confessed to flying were probably high on some early version of opium or belladonna.”

  “Then you don’t believe Josef’s claims?”

  “I don’t believe him, but I fear there are a great many children who might. That is why the man is a menace. Stay away from him. Go back where you came from.”

  “I must see him once more,” Michael decided. “I must have something more positive to tell his brother.”

  “Talk to the women. Find Elsa Mancini and Ida Fileno. Ask them what they think of your friend.”

  “Where do I find them?”

  “Ida is a nurse at Children’s Hospital. Elsa would be at home with her children. There are others as well.”

  Michael nodded. “Thank you.”

  As he left the Galleria, he saw Inspector Storia standing in its very center, staring up at the glass-enclo
sed sky.

  Elsa Mancini lived in a middle-class block of apartments not far from Sempione Park near the center of the city. She was a handsome, shapely woman in her mid–thirties and her first reaction to Michael’s visit was one of apprehension. “My husband is not at home. I do not allow visitors or salesmen inside.”

  “Then we’ll talk at the door,” Michael answered agreeably. “It’s about Josef Patronne. His brother –”

  “Patronne, the wizard! He should be in jail!”

  “His brother is worried about him. He believes he may have mental problems. He talks of flying –”

  “Always the flying! And he tells this to my son! Already one boy has tried to fly and broke his leg.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Are you a relative? Do you have any control over him?”

  “No, I only come at the wish of his brother.”

  “Take him away. Take him out of here.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “Then we have nothing more to talk about.”

  Michael tried to catch the door but she closed it in his face.

  He thought about going to the hospital next, to talk with Ida Fileno, but decided that could wait until tomorrow. Instead he had an early dinner and then tried to locate Axel Tortero. But Josef’s friend had vanished from his neighborhood, at least for that night. Perhaps they were together somewhere.

  Michael had taken a room at a low-cost tourist hotel on the Via Tunisia. It was there Inspector Storia found him shortly after midnight. “Get up and get dressed,” he shouted through the closed door.

  “What is it?”

  “Your friend Patronne tried to fly tonight at the Galleria. He’s dead.”

  Michael Vlado had barely known the man in life, yet he was sorry to see him dead, crumpled and broken on the mosaic tile floor, his blood making a pattern of its own. He lay near one of the green awnings, but not quite close enough that it could have broken his fall.

  “A security guard found him shortly before midnight,” Storia told Michael. “The Galleria has no doors, as you can see, but those gates limit access at night. Still, it would have been quite easy for him to get in and reach the upper floors. It looks as if he dove off the balcony up there or else one of the windows above it.”

  Michael shook his head sadly. “He couldn’t fly after all.”

  There was a commotion at the nearest gate and they saw Axel Tortero bearing down on them. “Let him through,” Storia called out to his men.

  When Axel saw Josef, he was beside himself with grief at the death of his friend. “The fool, the stupid fool! Those women put him up to this. He wanted to fly, to be some sort of real wizard.”

  “Did he tell you he was coming here?” Storia asked.

  “Not tonight, no. But he’d told me many times that he wanted to fly here soon.”

  The detective nodded. “And where were you this evening, Axel?”

  “Where? At the cafe, where I always am.”

  “All evening?”

  “I strolled a bit in the square, stopped in the Cathedral to visit.”

  “You, in the Cathedral?”

  Axel shrugged. “Even a sinner must speak to the Lord at times.”

  “You’re sure you weren’t with Josef? I don’t think he would have tried this alone, without witnesses.”

  “I would have stopped him if I’d been along.” He dropped to his knees beside the body, unmindful of the blood that quickly soaked into his pants.

  “Don’t touch the body!” Inspector Storia cautioned in a commanding voice. “This is still a criminal investigation.”

  Michael frowned. “Is flying against the law?”

  “No, but witchcraft is. Whatever went on here tonight, I mean to get to the bottom of it.” He stooped to pry something – a torn piece of paper – from the dead man’s fist.

  “What’s that?” Michael asked.

  “A paper with the word ‘pevole’ printed on it.”

  While the photographers and police technicians labored, Michael followed Axel out of the building. He caught up with the slender man halfway across the square. “I have some things to ask you,” he said.

  “About herbs and healing, that I know. About flying and falling, those subjects are foreign to me.”

  “What did you mean when you said the women put him up to it?”

  “The women. Elsa, and that Fileno woman, and the Petrie sisters and the rest. He spent too much time with them. I think he was with them tonight.”

  “Oh? Did they encourage him in his fancied flights?”

  “I don’t know. I stay away from them. Ask Elsa Mancini.”

  “I will.”

  Michael sent a message back to his friend Captain Segar, asking him to deliver word of Josef Patronne’s death to his brother Henrik in Gravita. There was little chance Henrik would claim the body or journey to Milan for the funeral. Josef had long ago cut his ties with the Gypsy family back home. He was a wizard now and perhaps he would be buried as one, with his friend Axel sprinkling life-giving herbs across the lid of the coffin.

  In the morning, Michael went to see Elsa Mancini at her apartment. At the door she hesitated, remembering him from the previous day, but now her husband was at home and she allowed Michael to enter. Davide Mancini was lounging at the kitchen table in his undershirt, a middle-aged man beginning to run to fat. He glanced curiously at Michael, noting the gold earring, and said, “This another of your Gypsy friends, Elsa?”

  “I don’t know him. He came here yesterday with questions about Josef Patronne.” She turned back to Michael. “What is it now?”

  “Patronne is dead. He fell from the top of the Galleria last night.”

  The woman crossed herself at the news, while her husband merely took another sip of his morning coffee. “Was he trying to fly?” she asked. “He talked of it sometimes.”

  “The police don’t know. It’s a possibility. Someone told me he might have been with you earlier last evening.”

  “I did not see him. I had some women friends in for a game of cards.” She motioned toward the living room, where Michael could see three card tables still set up with chairs around them. There were half-finished drinks and ashtrays still about.

  “A large group,” he commented.

  “A dozen of us. We get together for cards once a month.”

  “And drive me out of the house,” her husband complained. “I come back at midnight and the place isn’t even cleaned up.”

  “We played late,” Elsa explained.

  Michael remembered some of the other names Axel had mentioned. “Was Ida Fileno here?”

  “She came late, after she finished at the hospital.”

  “And the Petrie sisters?”

  “Yes, they were here. Why do you ask?”

  Michael had strolled into the room to look at the card tables. On one, a deck of cards still rested on an unused score pad. “I was only wondering. They are names I’ve heard.”

  “We are all friends.”

  Michael nodded, preparing to leave. “But you saw nothing of Patronne last night?”

  “Nothing.”

  Michael reached out and cut the deck of cards, turning over the top half. He almost expected to see one of the death cards, perhaps the queen of spades.

  Instead he saw the ten of swords. It was a tarot deck.

  Michael lingered in a cafe down the street that afforded a good view of Elsa Mancini’s apartment building. About an hour after his visit, he saw Elsa’s husband come out the front door and start up the block with one of their children, a boy of nine or ten. He followed them to a playground some two blocks away. The boy joined in a game with some friends while Davide unfolded the morning newspaper and sat down on a bench to read it. Michael went up and sat next to him. Davide did not notice him at first, then said, “You again!”

  “I saw you here and thought we might talk for a bit.”

  “I have no time for Gypsies,” Mancini replied.<
br />
  “It’s about your wife and Josef Patronne.”

  “Why should I talk to you? Are you the police?”

  “No, only a friend of Josef’s brother. When I go back home to Romania, I want to be able to tell Henrik how Josef died.”

  “Ask the police, don’t ask me.”

  “I want to know about your wife’s card games. What happens at them?”

  Davide shrugged. “They play cards – and gossip, I suppose. How should I know, when they send me away?”

  “There were tarot cards on the table. Those are used for fortune telling and the black arts.”

  “You credit my wife with powers well beyond her. Tarot cards are also used for Austrian tarock, a popular game in the north of Italy and other parts of Europe. It’s a game for three players but it can be adapted for four. Elsa and her friends have three tables so that a dozen of them can play at once.”

  Michael shook his head. “I know tarock. It’s played with a fifty-four-card mixed deck of tarot and regular playing cards. The deck on the table was a full seventy-eight-card tarot deck. They weren’t playing tarock.”

  “Well, then, perhaps it was tarocco. That’s played with a full tarot deck.”

  “But by only three players.”

  “You know your cards, Gypsy.”

  “What were Elsa and her friends doing last night? Was Patronne with them?”

  “How should I know? Ask her, not me.”

  “You are a superstitious people in this region. Witchcraft flourished here once. I’m sure you know what a coven is.”

  Davide’s eyes narrowed as he studied Michael’s face. “A group of witches led by a high priest or wizard. The traditional number is thirteen. Twelve witches and –”

  “And Josef Patronne?”

  Davide jumped to his feet, anger written across his face. “What are you saying about Elsa? Why do you make up these lies?” He called out to the child at play, “Come, Arturo – it is time to go home!”

  There was no point in pursuing them. Michael decided he’d already said enough – or too much.

  He found Inspector Storia at the Galleria. The detective was smoking another thin cigar, studying the glass roof and the sky beyond. “They tell me, Gypsy, that there is a Galleria in Toronto, in Canada, that is patterned after this one.”