“I’d like to hear from you exactly what happened.”
“I just told you what happened. I was watching Garth restore Mr. August’s sight, and a young man tried to snatch my purse. Everybody knows that. Do you want to cause trouble for Garth?”
“No, Mrs. Daplinger. I’d just like to hear from you in more detail what happened. I’d like to know the exact sequence of events. According to the newspaper accounts, there were quite a few people standing on the sidewalk watching Garth and August, so whatever was happening was already attracting a lot of attention—enough so that an amateur photographer even started snapping pictures. It was during all this excitement that the kid tried to snatch your purse, right? The thief figured that everyone would be distracted by whatever was going on between Garth and Harry August.”
“What was ‘going on,’ Mr. Frederickson, was Garth restoring Mr. August’s sight. I think you do mean to cause trouble. I saw what I saw with my own eyes, and nothing you can say will change that fact.”
“Mrs. Daplinger, has Garth ever said to you or anyone else that I mean to cause trouble? Has he ever said anything bad about me?”
The woman hesitated a few moments, then shook her head. “Garth never says anything bad about anyone.”
“If Garth hasn’t said anything bad about me, why should you worry?”
The woman tentatively touched her gray-streaked brown hair, averted her gaze. “There are stories whispered about. Some people say that you’re jealous of Garth’s favor in God’s eyes, and that you’d destroy him if you could.”
“That’s a very old tale, Mrs. Daplinger, and it certainly didn’t start with Garth’s People.” I was beginning to feel like I had a starring role in Paradise Lost.
“Excuse me?”
“Who says these things? Marl Braxton and Tommy Carling?”
“No; I heard them from other people. Many believe it. It’s said that you stole sacred relics from Garth, and have hidden them away.”
A new wrinkle. “Sacred relics? What sacred relics?”
“For one, the Great Knife God gave Garth during Garth’s Great Quest to battle Satan.”
Whisper. Already strange and powerful religious myths were being formed as Garth’s stories were absorbed into people’s minds, smelted in the fires of imagination, then recast in unrecognizable shapes. I’d assumed that Marl Braxton and Tommy Carling had started the slander campaign against me, but I now realized that this wasn’t necessarily the case. People caught up in religious fervor didn’t need any prompting to form myths; the thought struck me that perhaps all religions, at least in their formative stages, need a Betrayer. This time around, I had the part.
“Mrs. Daplinger,” I said quietly, “doesn’t Garth teach that you should always speak the truth?”
“Yes,” the woman replied, and her dark brown eyes flashed. “And I won’t listen to any of your lies about Garth. You stole the Great Knife, and God marked you for it.”
“I didn’t come here to say anything at all about Garth, Mrs. Daplinger. I just want to know more about him. I’d like to hear the complete story of how he restored Harry August’s sight—what happened on that day. Since it’s the truth, I can’t see how any harm can come from repeating your story to me.”
“It was a lovely, sunny day,” the woman said, smiling at the memory. “I’d gone into Manhattan to shop. I was walking down Eighth Avenue, and I remember how crowded it was—I guess a lot of people had decided to go shopping that day. I stopped walking when I saw a crowd gathered on the sidewalk; they were watching Garth talking to Mr. August. I remember … Garth was crying; his cheeks were wet with tears, and every once in a while he’d sob. He’d taken out his wallet and was shoving bills into Mr. August’s cup. He was talking to Mr. August, begging him to come to a place where he would be taken care of so that he wouldn’t have to stand on the street and beg. People were laughing at Garth, shouting insults and asking him to give them money. A couple of men even scooped up bills that had fallen out of Mr. August’s cup.”
“It’s getting chilly out here, Mrs. Daplinger, and I don’t want you to catch cold. Don’t you think you should get a coat or sweater?”
She shook her head, said distantly, “I’m all right.”
“You weren’t laughing at Garth, were you?”
“No. I thought it was a sad spectacle. I felt sorry for both men, and a little embarrassed. Mr. August seemed very uncomfortable, and he kept trying to push Garth away from him. Garth just kept shoving money into Mr. August’s cup while he tugged at Mr. August’s sleeve and begged him to come along with him. Mr. August kept trying to push him away.
“Then I felt somebody grab my purse, and I started screaming for help. I turned around and saw this young man tugging at my purse, and cursing at me. People started crowding around us. The young man kept tugging at my purse, and I tugged back. Then he pulled a knife, and everybody backed away. I let go of the purse. The young man put it under his arm, then went to get the money from Mr. August’s cup. By this time, Mr. August had already been healed—but I’m not sure he even realized it. But he must have seen what was happening, because he snatched his cup away and started beating the young man over the head with his cane. The boy must have been startled and hurt, because he suddenly dropped his knife and tried to run away. Some men grabbed him and held him down on the sidewalk until a policeman came.
“By then, a number of people were staring at Mr. August, because they’d seen him strike out at the young man just as if he wasn’t blind at all. His dark glasses had fallen off, and he seemed to be in a kind of state of shock. He was staring back at the people around him, and his right eye was in focus and seemed perfectly all right. People were starting to say ugly things, claiming that Mr. August might have terrible scars on his face but that he wasn’t blind. They were shouting at Mr. August to give Garth back his money, and urging the policeman to arrest Mr. August along with the purse snatcher. Then, all of a sudden, Mr. August started shouting things I didn’t understand—now I know he was speaking in tongues. Then he dropped down on his knees and started kissing Garth’s feet. He was shouting that Garth had cured his blindness and made him see again. He begged Garth to take him along to whatever place Garth had been talking about. Garth pulled him to his feet, and they walked off together—with Mr. August shouting all the time that Garth had given him back his sight.”
“The policeman wasn’t interested in arresting Harry August?”
“I guess not; he was busy handcuffing the purse snatcher. Also, there was a lot of confusion; someone was snapping pictures, and people were just milling around. Some people were following Garth and Mr. August.”
“What did you do, Mrs. Daplinger?”
“Then? I was … upset. I just went home. Then, after the stories started appearing in the newspapers, I began to realize that I had actually been present when a miracle had been performed. I searched for Garth, and I became a member of Garth’s People. I guess a lot of people who were there on the sidewalk that day came to feel the same way, because I often see them at the caring houses where I go to help.” She paused, cocked her head, and smiled at me. “I feel very blessed, Mr. Frederickson.”
“Thank you for the time you’ve given me, Mrs. Daplinger,” I said quietly. “I appreciate it.”
The woman looked at my forehead, then into my eyes. “You don’t seem like a bad man.”
“I try not to be.”
“It’s strange how God works.”
“It certainly is, Mrs. Daplinger.”
“God chose Harry August to have his sight restored through the power of the Messiah; yet, I’m sure there are thousands of other blind men, women, and children who are so much more deserving. I know it’s uncharitable of me to say this, but Harry August is such an unpleasant man.”
Unfortunately, Sergeant McIntyre’s guilt and embarrassment weren’t sufficient to impel him to call a number of city, state, and federal agencies on my behalf, under the auspices of the NYPD. I had my own con
tacts, but milking them—and gaining access to certain confidential information—took time, as did checking out hunches and setting up a vigil outside the bathhouse for a couple of days in order to tail Harry August whenever he came out alone. However, three days before Christmas I felt I had gathered more than enough information to give Harry August an early Christmas present he definitely was not going to like.
Lawrence Harold D’Agostino was more than a little surprised to find me waiting for him outside his small, nondescript house on a nondescript street in Brooklyn, leaning against the Ford station wagon he’d owned—and driven—for eleven years. He spotted me when he was halfway up the block; his face went white, his jaw dropped open, and he turned and started to run away. I caught up with him three blocks later, in a small shopping center, when he tried to duck down a narrow alley between two shops. Gasping for breath, he wheeled around and threw a garbage can lid at me. I sidestepped the flying lid, then hit him in the stomach with sufficient force to knock the rest of the wind out of him and sit him down hard on a stack of old newspapers.
“You and I have a lot to talk about, Mr. D’Agostino,” I said as I took a sheaf of papers out of my jacket pocket and waved them in his face. “For a blind man, you’ve led quite an active life for the past few years.”
Harry August was starting to get his breath back—and with it, a semblance of calm and his usual cunning. “Fuck you, dwarf,” he said, rising to his feet and brushing off his pants. “I’ve got nothing to say to you, and nobody’s going to believe anything you say about me.”
“No? How about the driver’s license you’ve had since you were sixteen years old, and which has been renewed like clockwork every five years? You even got a speeding ticket two years ago—which is understandable, I suppose, since it would be hard for a blind man to see a speed limit sign or know how fast he was driving.”
“Nobody’s going to pay any attention to you, Fredrickson.”
“Certainly Garth’s People won’t, but I don’t intend to try to deal with them. Actually, I was thinking of going to the authorities with proof that you’ve been defrauding the city and state of New York, not to mention a couple of insurance companies, for years.”
Harry August ran a hand back through his long, greasy hair, studied me with his one good eye, swallowed hard. “What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Harry. You were injured in an industrial accident fifteen years ago, when a battery you were handling exploded and acid splashed over your face. You got a lot of money from insurance companies for that accident, including a lump sum in cash which you were supposed to use for plastic surgery. I don’t know what you did with that money, but you obviously didn’t use it for plastic surgery. My guess is that you decided to use it for something else—the horses, maybe, or a stock market flyer. You pissed it away.”
“It’s none of your business, Frederickson. Besides, Garth’s People will protect me; those fools think you’ve been marked by God.”
“Pretty soon, everybody—fools and others—will know all about you, Harry. You’ve been collecting disability, which you’re entitled to, since the accident, but somewhere along the line, early in the game, an examining physician made a mistake, or put the wrong entry in your file. The accident left you legally blind—20/200—in your left eye, but the right is perfectly all right; that’s in the original medical report. But New York State and the insurance companies have you listed as totally blind, in both eyes, and they’ve been paying you accordingly.”
“The disability payments are nothing, Frederickson. Nobody could live on them.”
“Seven years ago you applied for welfare assistance. Not only did you declare yourself legally blind in both eyes, but you neglected to mention the disability payments—which you were legally required to do. About three years ago you set up shop on that street corner to bring in a little extra income.”
“People owed me, Frederickson,” the other man said tightly, looking away.
“Ah. Bitterness. It seems to me that you were being pretty well taken care of. Why did people owe you?”
“You think you know the whole story, but you don’t. That money I got at the beginning wasn’t nearly enough to get me the kind of plastic surgery I needed—but I didn’t find that out until the insurance company had pressured me into signing a settlement for a lump-sum payment. At the time I thought it was a lot of money, but then I found out it wouldn’t fix my face. They screwed me good.”
“Why did your lawyer let you sign a settlement like that?”
“Ask him,” Harry August said, and spat. “He did a lot of work for the insurance company—something my own company didn’t tell me when they recommended him to me.” He paused, suddenly thrust his face at me as if it were a weapon. His one good eye flashed black fire. “How’d you like to go through life looking like this, Frederickson? I couldn’t get any kind of a decent job with a mug like this, and I knew it. What the hell good is money if you have to keep looking like something cats have been chewing on? So this guy who’d read about the accident and the settlement in the papers comes around and says he’s got this really great deal for me in real estate, where I can triple my money—and don’t laugh, Frederickson.”
“I wasn’t even thinking of laughing, Harry,” I said quietly. “You haven’t said anything that’s even remotely funny.”
“Sure, I was stupid—but I was desperate for money for the operations I needed, and I didn’t know then the things I know now about people. I believed him, Frederickson; he was a real smooth-talking guy. I ended up losing everything, including every penny I had in savings. After that … it’s like you said. But disability and welfare don’t go far in this city. That’s why I started begging. I’d certainly been fucked over enough, so I figured I’d fuck over other people for a change.” He paused, licked his lips. “What are you going to do, Frederickson? What do you want?”
“The answer to both questions is that I’m not sure yet. It sounds like you’ve had—have—enough miseries without my adding to them. That’s assuming any of the agencies involved would want to press charges.”
“Are you going to report me?”
“Let’s just say that I’d prefer not to.”
“Which means that you want something from me.”
“The first thing I want from you, Harry, is a videotaped repudiation of the notion that my brother restored your sight. We’ll tape it at a time and place of my choosing.”
“Why are you doing this, Frederickson? Your brother hasn’t done anything to hurt you, and neither have I. I haven’t hurt anybody. You really are jealous of Garth, aren’t you? And you want to use me to dump on him.”
“Harry, the motives for my strange behavior will have to remain a mystery to you. I will say that I’m not sure yet how I want to handle this; if possible, I’d like to minimize any damage to the people Garth has helped. But that’s for me to worry about. For the time being, you just go on about your business with Garth’s People as though this conversation had never taken place; that’s important. I’ll contact you about the videotaping after I’ve decided what I plan to do with you.”
“This is blackmail.”
“Yeah; something like that.”
“When the authorities see that tape, they’ll want to prosecute me anyway.”
“Not necessarily. The whole world knows you as Harry August; knowing the way a lot of governmental agencies operate, nobody may even make the connection between Harry August and Lawrence Harold D’Agostino.”
“Unless you spell it out for them.”
“Right—but I doubt that I’d feel compelled to do their work for them if you cooperate with me.”
“What the hell am I supposed to tell people?!”
“Your problem. No matter what you say, there’s no way you’re going to come out of this looking like Albert Schweitzer. All I’m concerned with is that you make it very clear that you could see perfectly well—at least with one eye—before yo
u ever bumped into Garth. That part had better be convincing.”
“Okay.” Harry August mumbled. “I guess I knew this whole business was going to catch up with me one day.”
“You reacted instinctively when that kid tried to take your money, right?”
“Yeah,” the other man said, shaking his head in disgust. “Your brother was driving me out of my gourd, and I just wasn’t thinking.”
“Then your glasses got knocked off. Suddenly you found yourself staring back at all those people who were staring at you. It was an ugly, possibly dangerous, situation, and you grabbed hold of the only life preserver at hand—my brother. He got you out of there. What I don’t understand is why you stuck around. Why didn’t you just split when the danger had passed? For that matter, why are you hanging around now?”
Harry August mumbled something I didn’t quite catch, and I asked him to repeat it.
“Money,” he said. “Even the way his operation was back then, I could see that money was starting to come in. And I could smell more—a lot more. I had this feeling that I’d stumbled into something that could become very big.” He paused, laughed bitterly. “I figured that one right, didn’t I? A lot of good it’s done me. The story of my life.”
“You also figured it would be a good opportunity for a con man like you to get your hands on some of that money, right?”
“I’m cooperating with you, Frederickson. I just hope you’re not going to give me any more grief.”
“Did you plan to skim?”
“Yeah, I planned to skim.”
“How’d you make out?”
Harry August shook his head. “I got food and clothing, but I never did get my hands on any money. Sure, there was a lot of money and goods coming in, but Tommy Carling already had that damn nun working with him, and she had eyes everywhere. That broad makes sure every penny is accounted for in her books, just in case anyone ever asks.”
“And to protect against people like you.”
“Yeah, I suppose so. Now there are dozens of volunteers—accountants, lawyers, money counters—to look after all the money and goods that come in. To tell you the truth, I haven’t even been thinking much about stealing the past few weeks; the deaths of those two TV preachers kind of spooked me.”
The Cold Smell of Sacred Stone Page 24