Agnes Among the Gargoyles

by Patrick Flynn

  The priest sits down beside his nephew. "So, Ivan, what happens now?"

  "Criz offers us dessert, I guess."

  "You can't stay here, you know. Do you know where Father Chris is right now? Looking for an apartment. Both of us have to be out of the rectory in two weeks."

  The negotiations begin. Father Clarence calls his sister—Ivan's mother—in California, and then Ivan's sister in Eftsoons, Pennsylvania. The sister is willing to take him in for a few days and then drive him back to Clavelle. Ivan agrees reluctantly.

  "Can I talk to her?" he asks.

  He goes upstairs to use the extension phone after warning his uncle gravely about federal penalties for telephonic eavesdropping. The priest huddles up close to Agnes. She can smell the shrimp and wine on his breath. Faint odors of incense and wax and starch cling to his cassock, and Agnes catches the occasional whiff of an uncompromising and purgatorial old-fashioned laundress-type soap. She admires Father Clarence's grooming, the care with which his sideburns and neck have been razored. This must be what royalty is like close-up."

  "I want to thank you for all you've done for Ivan," the priest says to Agnes. "He's always been a troubled boy."

  "I can imagine, Father."

  "This isn't the first time he's run away. He's really much more comfortable in the world of fantasy. Unfortunately, he's getting older, and that sort of thing doesn't work as well anymore. I think most of his trouble comes from the divorce."

  "He seems very intelligent," says Agnes.

  The priest takes a long moment to reply. "I don't think he's much short of brilliant, actually, in his way."

  "He makes me laugh," says Agnes.

  "But I'm his bogeyman," says the priest. "All the evil in the world comes from me. Family life can be so exasperating. The older I get, the rarer are those occasions when I'm sorry never to have had a wife and children."

  Ivan comes back downstairs. "It's all set."

  Father Clarence gets a ledger-style checkbook and writes two checks: one to Ivan, and one to Greyhound.

  As the housekeeper does the dishes, Father Clarence says to her, "Edith, the Manhattan Democratic dinner has been pushed up two days. Plan for twelve on Wednesday night, and remember that the mayor is allergic to shrimp. I don't want him blowing up like a balloon here."

  "He ain't allergic," says Criz. "He just thinks he is."

  "Edith, don't be so cavalier."

  Father Clarence knows a bone specialist he thinks Ivan should see. He goes to find the number. While he is gone, Edith checks the pork roast in the oven. "Father Clarence thinks he's allergic to Hungarian paprika," she says with a chuckle, seasoning the meat with powder the color of brick dust that she shakes from an unmarked jar.

  At loose ends, Ivan and Agnes stand outside the rectory. Mrs. Criswell has given them sticky molasses-and-nut buns as big as dumbbell weights.

  "Where to?" says Agnes.

  "I don't know."

  "Come on," says Agnes. "I'll walk you to Port Authority."

  Ivan grabs Agnes's arm. "Look! It's Father Chris. Now that's my idea of a holy man. A wacko, but a holy man."

  Father Chris is Father Clarence's assistant. He is dressed in a thin cassock and thick sandals. He walks with his shoulders hunched and head bowed, as though moving into a stiff wind. Ivan plants himself in the priest's path, and they nearly collide.

  "Father! What's up?"

  The priest is momentarily addled by Ivan's hearty greeting. He has sunken cheeks and popping eyes, and a hacked concentration camp style haircut. He is only a few years younger than Father Clarence.

  "Oh hello," he says. "Have you been in to see your uncle?"

  "Been in and tossed out. He says you were apartment hunting."

  The priest looks from Ivan to Agnes. "There's nothing out there," he says in desperation. "Nothing! All I want is a room where I can pray and study. I was looking at studio apartments for $1000 a month. What can I get for $300?"

  "The men's shelter," says Ivan.

  The priest has no sense of humor. "That's free, isn't it?"

  "Well, yes, but there's protection money to pay."

  Father Chris's feet are blue from the cold; they are also a little brown where a sandal thong has bled. "I might have to get a part-time job. I have no time! I've got two full programs at St. Basil's and my Masters and the hospice and the retreats and the shut-in confessions...."

  Agnes tries to lighten his mood. "They pay pretty well for sleep studies, which is about all you have time for."

  Father Chris doesn't see the humor. One pulsing vein runs from his temple all the way down his neck like Highway 1 through Florida.

  "I could just throttle somebody," he growls.

  Agnes has an inspiration. Thinking of Tommy's apartment, she tells Father Chris that she knows a tiny place that will be vacant soon. "It's only about as big as a cell."

  "That's what I'm looking for," he says humbly.

  "I'll call him for you."

  Agnes and the priest exchange telephone numbers, and then he dashes into the warmth of the rectory.

  Agnes admires the architecture of the rectory. There are wings beside wings, roofs atop roofs, stacked dormer windows; there are sections of the building that might be adjacent and then again might be separated by a courtyard. The whole structure seems designed to fool the eye and produce vague feelings of anxiety, which, Agnes supposes, makes perfect functional sense.

  "Now that's a priest," says Ivan. "Completely unworldly. He didn't even notice my arm."

  "I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley," says Agnes. "I prefer your uncle."

  "He's not interested in God. He's interested in power."

  "I like the idea of priests having dinner with the mayor. Too much piety can be an awful bore."

  A familiar cream-colored Rolls with a WEGETTE license plate pulls up in front of the rectory. The driver gets out and takes the long way around the car to open the door for Madelaine. She is looking rather conservative today in a dark suit and a raincoat that matches the Rolls. As she turns, the sun catches the rubies in her brooch.

  Ivan pulls Agnes into a doorway.

  "What are you doing?" she says.

  "I had a run-in once with her at Clavelle. It was a big mess. She caught me hiding in a window seat at a junior sorority tea. I told her I wanted to be her sonin-law, but my timing was bad."

  Madelaine bounds gracefully up the rectory steps, and lifts one of the large circular knockers on the door. The instincts of a model die hard: such dourly picturesque surroundings are the bread-and-butter of fashion layouts, and Madelaine, out of habit, grips the knocker with one hand, kicks out the opposite leg, tilts backward, and thrusts her head dramatically upward. The pose lasts perhaps 1/250th of a second. The rectory door opens a crack and, all business, Madelaine slips inside.

  Ivan walks briskly away. "I can't do it," he says over his shoulder.

  "Can't do what?"

  "Any of it. I can't go to Eftsoons. I can't go back to Clavelle."

  He removes something from the waistband of his pants. He tosses it to Agnes. It's a book.

  "I took this off his night table when I used the phone," says Ivan.

  It is a missal. The burgundy leather cover is beautifully tooled. The placemarking ribbon is made of silk. Father Clarence's name is embossed on the cover. Agnes recognizes the prayer book as the Divine Office, the psalms, hymns, prayers and readings every priest must recite at specified times each day.

  "He doesn't need it," says Ivan. "I was going to sell it, but I'd rather you have it."

  "What the hell am I supposed to do...."

  He turns and runs off. He is surprisingly fast—Agnes remembers that from their encounter in the supermarket.

  "I'm not chasing you, Ivan," she calls out petulantly.

  But she does chase him. He ducks into the pedestrian tunnel next to the centerpiece of the Times Square redevelopment project, One Times Square Plaza. Agnes follows, but loses him in a knot of construc
tion workers. He couldn't have gotten away that quickly. He must be hiding close by.

  "Well if that's the way the little prick wants to be," she says loudly, "then fuck him."

  A bearded hardhat turns to her. "How I like a woman who carries a bible and talks dirty."

  Agnes walks back to St. Basil's with the intention of returning Father Clarence's breviary. Wegette's Rolls is still parked in front. Agnes decides to mail the priest his book. She thumbs through it. These things really should have return postage guaranteed, she thinks, like hotel keys. And then she notices something odd. The pages have not been cut.

  Far above her, she hears the sound of an old window sash opening. She looks up and sees Father Chris in the rectory's topmost turret. He is hanging out some laundry. The clothesline pulley squeaks as he hangs out socks and underwear and trousers and cassocks so thin you can see daylight through them and more socks and pillowcases and then a flaming red brassiere. He catches Agnes's eye and gives her a friendly wave.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  After a meeting with Faure and Condon and Mr. Parker in a garage in the middle of nowhere, in Staten Island, Bezel and the Frenchman wind up on the top desk of the ferry at something past four in the morning. They stand at the rail and watch the approaching towers of Lower Manhattan. They are alone except for a sleeping derelict and the gulls that hop around the railing and the benches.

  The Frenchman smokes his pipe. He wears those skinny headphones with the blue earpads you see everyone wearing. Bezel tried on a pair once. The music poured into his head and seemed to jumble his nervous system. But the music doesn't appear to bother the Frenchman. He placidly studies the sea.

  Bezel first met the Frenchman nearly a quarter-century ago, during Bezel's middleweight bout in Jersey City with Marcel Pepin, "The Normandy Nacelle." Pepin won the fight by a decision, but Bezel just missed being knocked out. As the bell sounded the end of the fifteenth round, Pepin landed a punch to the side of Bezel's head, a punch like a case of anvils. As he staggered to the ropes Bezel saw, for the first time, the bloated face of the Frenchman. He was in the second row, and practically glowing with rage, for he had bet heavily on Bezel.

  "You are no fighter!" he screamed. "You should be horsewhipped, you human turd!" He was speaking French, and the crazy thing was that Bezel understood him perfectly, even though Bezel understood no French. The punch had done something to his brain.

  Everything was so clear and simple.

  Bezel spat out his mouthpiece.

  "La critique est aisee et l'art est difficile," he replied.

  In a minute, Bezel's head stopped spinning. French was gone.

  How far Bezel and the Frenchman have come together! And yet not so very far at all. And now they plot a jewel robbery together.

  Bezel likes the idea of jewels. Jewels are compact. They are tidy and light. They will not strain the ligaments of even a limping ex-prizefighter. On the downside, jewels must be fenced, but that will be seen to by Faure, a likable man and an organizational genius. Condon, the explosives man, is pure muscle and pure hatred. He never says a word. He just sits there like he can't stand the smell of oxygen. Parker, the inside man, is a nervous wreck, but he doesn't have to do very much.

  Then there is the Young Pretender, whom no one but the Frenchman has met. The Young Pretender possesses information that will eliminate what the Frenchman calls "the specter of capture." They will walk in and take what they want and walk out again.

  The quiet on the ferry is unnerving.

  "Beautiful night," says Bezel, loudly, so he can be heard over the Frenchman's headset.

  "No need to shout, my friend," says the Frenchman. He stares straight ahead. "It is a beautiful night—clear but very cold. My favorite sort of night. There is a foreboding in the air."

  "Talk sense, would you please?"

  The Frenchman raises one eyebrow. "All I mean is that there is a storm approaching. It is blowing up from the south."

  "I don't see anything."

  The Frenchman laughs. "It is hardly something you would see, my good man. A man of the sea feels these things. My eyes are a compass and sextant. My blood and marrow work as a barometer."

  "If you say so."

  The Frenchman is as mannered and posturing and bilious as ever; to share his company is to nod meekly at one pronouncement after another.

  The Frenchman turns his cassette over.

  "What are you listening to?" Bezel asks.

  "The music of the spheres, recorded by a sad woman holding a bottle of whiskey."

  "Oh."

  "Cass was good, my friend. You were lucky."

  "For a while."

  The Frenchman seems troubled. "We live in a wondrous age," he says. "A man can obtain almost anything. Sweet berries in November? Sex at a moment's notice? A look at the paintings of Monet, a listen to Bruckner's Third, the aroma of truffles, the touch of silk—and some things that don't even exist! There was a program on television the other night: someone took sketches and drafts and notes from the papers of Beethoven and fed it all into a computer and produced something that could have been the Tenth Symphony."

  "How did it sound?" asks Bezel politely.

  "Why, terrible, of course. It sounded as though a goat had eaten the scores of the Nine Symphonies, and what it shat out—that's what the orchestra played. A Mulligan stew. A sonata for merde, if you will."

  The derelict stirs. He groans as though in pain. He must be stiff from the cold. His cane, leaning against the bench, topples to the deck. The derelict does not wake.

  The Frenchman goes on. Bezel regrets getting him started.

  "The sonata for merde, worthless of itself, does lead us to a greater understanding of the noble Nine. The sketches for Le Damoiselles de Avignon, in which Picasso seems to do everything wrong, make one marvel all the more at his genius, at his finally having gotten it right." The Frenchman taps the Walkman. "The unreleased performances of Cass Hardy, the singing that is really no more than drunken raving, allow one to see her genius more clearly."

  The Frenchman takes off the headset. He puts the Walkman down on a bench. Old newspapers and cardboard hot dog holders swirl about the deck. "So here is the question," he says. "Are we content with what the artist gives us? Or do we forage like pigs for whatever else we can root out, for whatever else we think will add to our understanding?"

  "That's a good question," says Bezel irritably. "I have one for you. Will we pull this thing off?"

  "I can't say," says the Frenchman.

  "Look in the stars, Mr. Sextant."

  The Frenchman looks up. "The constellations. My old friends! Look at them: Centaurus and Tucana, Musca and Triangulum and Crux."

  He flashes Bezel a merdeeating grin, waiting for a response.

  "So?"

  "You don't get it, do you?"

  "Get what?"

  "The constellations which I have mentioned are visible only in the Southern Hemisphere. I hope to gaze at them frequently from my estate in Argentina. The Southern Cross is a majestic group, but I shall miss the Dipper."

  The Frenchman continues to watch the sky. "The tape that I have been listening to has come to light only recently. It is a recording made on Cass Hardy's final night on earth. The poor creature. I have heard bits and pieces of the tape over the years, but this is my first encounter with the complete recording session. The tape is revealing of her state of mind on that night, which was desperate; of her philosophy, which was stoic, of her talent, which was undiminished; of her drinking, which was heavy; and of her companions, who were in some cases...surprising."

  The silence is heavy between the two men. Bezel shows no emotion. The Frenchman whistles.

  "You might find it interesting, Bezel."

  They pass the Statue of Liberty. She is imprisoned in a scaffold.

  "Eh, well," says the Frenchman. "The pilot of this bucket is an old acquaintance of mine, Boris Rillington. I should like to say hello. His sense of humor is atrocious, but his wine
cellar is well stocked. Care to join me?"

  Bezel says no. The Frenchman goes below.

  The outbound ferry passes on the left. The Frenchman did not take the Walkman with him. Bezel stares at it. Tapes of Cass's last night? Bezel remembers seeing Cass's manager, Philo, turning off the machines. He remembers the pilot lights winking out, and the little acrid smell the machines gave off when shut down.

  Could Philo have left one machine on?

  Is the death of Cass Hardy on tape?

  The Walkman is there as a test, Bezel thinks. He wants me to listen. He wants me to know that he knows the truth—it is the Frenchman's compulsion.