Do Not Go Gentle

by James W. Jorgensen

  “No, but Cal would do it all himself. You know he would, even though he hates paperwork as much as I do. Plus, Cal and I need to get some reports from the crime lab. I’m going to pick him up at the Wharf, and I’ve got our unmarked here at home, so I need to return it.”

  “Alright, alright, I give. You have a host of excuses, but not one good reason. Anyway, since you’re headed downtown, I need you to pick up some brochures at the Cathedral and drop them off at Saint Brendan’s on your way back to the district.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes. “Okay, I’ll pick up the brochures since I’m downtown, but why can’t I drop them off tonight? I can walk them over when I get home.” Eileen folded her arms and gave Jamie “the stare”—a look that had reduced grown men to quivering blobs of jelly and sent children screaming to complete their assigned duties. After about ten seconds, Jamie gave in. “Fine. Cal and I will drop off the brochures before we head to the district.”

  “Thank you.” Eileen had a satisfied look on her face.

  The sound of their youngest daughter, Riona, interrupted further discussion as she came down the stairs, jumping onto every other step. As she came into the kitchen, Eileen shook her head. “Child, is there some cosmic law that prevents you from just walking up and down those stairs?”

  Riona shook her head, causing the ponytail that held back her long red hair to swish back and forth energetically. “Nope-just one of the perks of me being your daughter.” Riona poured herself a bowl of cereal, added milk, and joined her parents at the table.

  Eileen looked at Jamie with narrowed eyes. “She gets that from you, sir.”

  Jamie put on a look of mock indignation. “Not me, madam,” but he held his hand out beside the table, and Riona gave him a low five on her way to get her cereal.

  “Mom.” A shout exploded from the top of the stairs. “Riona took my ND scarf.”

  “I did not. Brigid took it back with her when she went back to school.”

  Jamie shook his head and returned to reading the paper.

  Eileen glared at him, and then back at Riona. “Big help you are, mister. I don’t care who did what to whom—everyone just needs to get ready for the day. I have the car today, so if you ladies want a ride to school, stop your bickering and get a move on. Anyone not ready by seven-thirty is walking to school.”

  Jamie shrugged his shoulders. “Far be it for me to meddle in the affairs of my womenfolk.”

  Caitlin huffed into the kitchen and made a point of ignoring her younger sister. The girls, as usual, were dressed opposite of each other—Riona in a nice, but plain, blue oxford shirt and tan slacks—Caitlin in a green print dress. Riona could be wrangled into a dress with great effort while Caitlin wore dresses on a regular basis.

  Loading backpacks, grabbing cell phones, making lunches, and preparing coffee or tea in to-go cups punctuated the rest of the morning. It turned out that Eileen and the girls were ready before it was time for Jamie to leave, so they crowded around him on their way out the back door into the garage.

  As Jamie watched his family leaving, every instinct he had developed in twenty years as a cop banged away on his nerves. He had an overwhelming sense of danger, but no idea of the source. It’s just that nightmare, lad. It’s got you all tangled up and feeling bad. Shake it off. Try as he might, Jamie could not shake the sense of impending peril—that his life as he knew it was about to take an irrevocable and very bad turn for the worse.

  Chapter Two

  Dale Miller looked back at his partners sitting on opposite benches in the van, with the unconscious woman lying on the floor between them. Miller was a short, stocky man, with a broad, unhandsome face and a hairline that was receding at thirty. He was also a lieutenant in the Mazzimah, an organization purported to deal in quasi-legitimate businesses, but in fact, supported the needs of the Qedesh, the mysterious woman for whom all the Mazzimah businesses operated. Miller had never met the Qedesh, had never even seen her. Miller was just one step above the foot soldiers that carried out the day-to-day operations of the Mazzimah. He had recently been promoted when the lieutenant who managed the chain of pawnshops owned by the Qedesh was shot and killed during a holdup. As Miller had been the lieutenant’s right hand man, the captain of the Mazzimah had promoted Miller.

  Miller had been surprised to learn that all of the Qedesh’s lieutenants participated, on a rotating basis, in the clandestine activity in which he now engaged. As low man on the totem pole, Miller was just the driver. The captain, a man whose real name was never used, had told Miller about this activity and what was involved. Miller had agreed, although he had never participated in anything more serious than holdups prior to joining the Mazzimah. Kidnapping was another game completely. Quit whining, asshole. In for a penny, in for a pound, as Pop always said. It’s no skin off my butt that the Qedesh wants this broad.

  Miller got onto the 93 and headed toward the North End. He didn’t know where they were taking the woman, so he followed the directions provided by his accomplices, Turner and Franklin. Miller was still getting to know his fellow lieutenants, so he made sure his face was expressionless as they carried out this act. “Where we goin’ exactly?” he asked.

  “Near Copp’s Hill,” replied Franklin.

  Miller did as instructed, and as he drove the van just below the speed limit along the one-way street, he saw an opening appear in one of the old residential/retail buildings. It didn’t look like a garage from the outside—it looked more like a set of extra wide double doors with reflective windows. Okay, this is different.

  Miller steered the van into a narrow, shallow garage. At the rear was enough room to pull the van to the left and park it, allowing a driver to turn around and exit the garage driving forward instead of backing up. Without directions, Miller pulled the van into the parking spot.

  The three men exited the van. “You and Turner grab the woman; I’ll open the door,” said Franklin.

  Turner pulled on the woman’s feet, so Miller grabbed the woman under the arms and hoisted her. They walked to the back wall, about five feet away. Miller couldn’t see a door, but he did see a keypad. Don’t look like there’s any way out of here except the garage door.

  As Franklin finished entering a set of numbers on the keypad, the outline of a door appeared in the brick wall, and a reinforced steel door silently swung open. Hunh. Pretty cool.

  Franklin gestured, and Turner and Miller carried the woman through the door into a dim tunnel. “Hey, this is one of those old smuggler’s tunnels, ain’t it?” Miller asked.

  “Got it in one, sport,” replied Franklin.

  Miller could see that the tunnel was old, but someone had put some serious money into modernizing it. They carried the woman through the doorway and entered a larger room. There were twenty seats arranged around the back of the room, theater-style. At the bottom of the room, the seats gave way to conference tables in the middle and computer equipment along the sides. Damn. Someone’s put one helluva lot of money into this old smuggler’s tunnel. The room was well-lit, comfortable, and cool.

  “Place her here before me,” rang out a clear, contralto voice.

  Turner moved so Miller could face forward as they carried the woman. At the bottom was a raised platform. Miller saw a dark haired, dark skinned woman with huge brown eyes seated upon a comfortable, high-backed chair in the center of the platform. She was quite beautiful and young, thirty at the most. She seemed of average height and wore a dark red and brown tunic, girdled by a gold belt. Holy crap. This must be the Qedesh.

  Flanking the Qedesh were three men, two to the left, one to the right. Miller recognized the one to the right—it was his Captain, a tall, middle-aged, red-haired man dressed in a business suit. The other two men were much shorter—one was thin and dark skinned like the Qedesh in a dark red and brown tunic, but sporting a silver belt. The other man was a pale, rotund man with a sparse fringe of short white hair ringing his head. Pale blue eyes stared out from the recessed folds of the man’s face. Despi
te his girth, he wore an immaculate, tailored white suit, shirt and tie, and a white fedora with a dark brown band.

  Miller and Turner laid the unconscious woman before the feet of the Qedesh. Then, as he noticed that Turner and Franklin were kneeling, Miller at once dropped to one knee. “Turner and Franklin I know well,” she said with a slight Mediterranean accent, “but I do not know this third man. You may rise,” she told the kneeling men with a dismissive wave of a fine boned hand.

  “He is one of my men, Qedesh,” offered the Captain. “Dale Miller is his name. He replaced Art Montgomery as the lieutenant for the Mazzimah pawn shops.”

  “Ah, I remember now,” said the woman. “Mister Montgomery met with an unfortunate accident, did he not?”

  “Indeed. Occupational hazard.”

  “Pity.” The Qedesh turned the full power of her penetrating gaze on Miller. He tried to return her gaze, looking at her shoulder length, jet black hair, her full mouth, her hazel eyes, but he could not bear up under that gaze and dropped his eyes after a couple of seconds. “You appear to be strong, Mister Miller.”

  He returned his gaze to hers. “I believe I am, Qedesh.”

  She laughed, a harsh, clipped sound that seemed incongruous coming from such a beautiful woman. “We shall soon see, Mister Miller. We shall soon see. Your captain has placed a great deal of trust in you by allowing you to participate in this ritual. Do not disappoint him,” she said, then adding after a lengthy pause, “or me. We do not suffer disappointments lightly.”

  As the Qedesh stepped down before the unconscious woman, Miller noticed they had placed her at the center of a series of concentric circles made of dark red and black tiles. The black circles contained patterns—the outermost circle showed an ornate brown snake, stretching around the outer edge of the circle until its head met its tail. The next black circle contained dark red bees chasing each other around the arc. The third circle contained silver scorpions, also marching from end to end. Finally, the center’s black bull’s-eye contained a gorgeous, golden rampant lion. The intervening dark red tiles bore no designs.

  The Qedesh raised her hands, and in a slow, melodic voice chanted in a language Miller did not recognize, her voice rising with each phrase. Miller thought the room darkened and the temperature rose with each phrase, until by the end, the room was pitch black and searing. The Qedesh alone could be seen, a halo of golden light about her head and upraised hands.

  When the Qedesh had finished her chanting, she brought her hands together and knelt down beside the unconscious woman, the glow following her as she went. The Qedesh leaned forward, and Miller could see a metal ring around the ring finger on her left hand. He caught just a brief glimpse, but he thought the ring contained the same animal symbols as the circles upon the floor. The Qedesh turned the woman’s head to one side in an almost tender manner, reached out, and pressed the ring to the woman’s neck, crying out one final command.

  The unconscious woman bucked beneath the Qedesh’s grip, but could not break free and sank back to the floor. The woman’s eyes snapped open, but Miller only saw pain and emptiness in them. The Qedesh repeated her last command. A pale, sparkling mist rose from the woman’s nose and mouth, and Miller thought he could hear a moan of deep anguish. At the Qedesh’s third cry, the mist exited the woman’s body, which shrunk in upon itself. The Qedesh inhaled the mist and as she did, Miller could swear that her skin became more lustrous, her gaze clearer and younger, and that if possible, she exuded even more power and radiance.

  Dale Miller looked again at the woman he had helped kidnap, and despite the return of light and coolness to the room, he felt his sight dim and flushed as if he had a fever. The woman’s body had shrunk into a desiccated husk, worse than any ancient mummy he had seen on TV. A burn mark upon her neck showed an imprint of the Qedesh’s ring.

  When the Qedesh rose to her feet, she commanded Miller’s gaze with her eyes. Miller felt weak in his knees and sick to his stomach. The Qedesh stared at him and after several awful seconds, she smiled. It was not a humorous smile. “Very good, Mister Miller,” she purred. “Others have fainted at this sight. You did not. You may indeed be as strong as you believe.”

  Miller could not drop his gaze, but mumbled at last, “Thank you, Qedesh.”

  The Qedesh returned to her chair. “You men may go now. Return this shell to the place from whence you took the living woman. Ensure that no one sees you.”

  The return trip to the cemetery was a blur to Miller. He drove, but did not see beyond the memory of the ritual he had witnessed. After they had placed the woman’s corpse in the trees where they had taken her, they returned to one of the pawn shops where they had assembled earlier this morning.

  “You okay, Miller?” asked Franklin, looking at him appraisingly.

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Whatever you say, Miller. Whatever you say-we’ve been through that many times, and it still scares the shit out of me.”

  Miller shook his head. “I don’t know what I think.”

  As Dale Miller returned to his two-room apartment near the Back Bay Fens, he broke open a bottle of whiskey, sat on his sofa bed and, in a quick and thoughtful manner, got as drunk as possible.

  * * * *

  Jamie pulled up outside Cal Cushing’s luxury townhouse at Battery Wharf and waited, looking around in wonder as he did every time he came to Cal’s place. You couldn’t tell just by looking at him, but Cal came from big money. His family was an old, well-established, New England family, one of the “Boston Brahmins.” Cal had bought a three-bedroom condo at the ultra-exclusive Battery Wharf, which he admitted to Jamie that it cost him about $2 million. It gave him a nearby private dock for his luxury catamaran, a Perry PassageMaker. Cal slept there almost as often as his condo. While Cal was a full-time cop, he didn’t need the money from his salary. Cal had received full control over his trust fund at age 25 and then parlayed that into a large sum with shrewd investments. Despite that, Jamie never envied his partner. Cal’s material trappings were nice, but he was estranged from his family over his decision to attend the police academy rather than law school, and he was divorced from his wife, an “arranged” marriage that Cal had only mentioned once or twice. Cal’s got a lot of “stuff,” but no one to share it with.

  Jamie saw his partner strolling out of his condo. At five feet, seven inches and weighing around 190 pounds, Cal Cushing just managed to meet minimum police standards. Cal worked out on an irregular basis and was more sturdy than stout. As usual, Cal was wearing a tailored Devore suit, expensive Italian shoes, and a John Player Gold Leaf cigarette dangling from his mouth. As he opened the car door and got in, Jamie said, “Good morning, Mister GQ.”

  Cal narrowed his brown eyes at Jamie and spoke in his usual slow and measured manner, with a pronounced Boston accent. “Jealousy does not become you, Griffin.”

  Jamie chuckled and pulled away from the curb. “So did you take your latest lady friend out on the boat out last night?”

  Cal shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. She wanted to hit the clubs, so we started out at Enormous Room, and then wound up spending most of the night at Gypsy Bar.”

  “You lead a rough life, Cushing.”

  Cal smiled. “Well, as the saying goes, it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”

  Jamie chuckled. “Hey, after we pick up those reports at the lab, we have to swing by the Cathedral.”

  “Jamie, you know I’m not Catholic. Why would I attend services with you?”

  “They’re called masses, as you well know, and we aren’t going to one. Eileen asked me to pick up some brochures and take them to Father O’Connor on our way back to the district.”

  “As you well know, Saint Brendan’s is not on our way back to the station. Was this a request from your beautiful wife or an order?”

  “Is there a difference?” asked Jamie. “Hey, if you want to call Eileen and tell her we can’t be bothered with this—”

  “No, no. That’s
quite alright. I’m not about to cross a woman as fierce as Eileen.”

  “Wiser words were never spoken, boyo.”

  Jamie and Cal wasted no time making their pickups at the crime lab and the Cathedral. Navigating Boston’s one-way streets was always a joy for Jamie. He’d lived and worked in Boston all his life, but downtown Boston was never a picnic given its notoriously impatient drivers.

  It took them an hour and a half to run their “errands” then get to Saint Brendan’s, which was near Jamie’s house at the far south end of Dorchester. While no longer an incorporated municipality, the Dorchester neighborhood lay just south of Boston proper and still maintained a strong sense of community. Jamie could have risen through the ranks faster if he’d been willing to take assignments at other districts, but Jamie had been born and raised in Dorchester. Other than his stint at Notre Dame, he’d lived in Dorchester all his life.

  “How’s Brigid doing at Notre Dame?” asked Cal as they made their way south.

  “She’s settling into her new classes.”

  “She still on the water polo team?

  “Yeah. It’s a club sport, but it gets her in the pool, which gives her an outlet for her energy.”

  “How about that boyfriend?”

  “Carl? Still together, I think. Eileen would know far more about that than me. At this point, they both assure me it’s nothing serious.”

  “Jamie, Jamie, Jamie. That is always a bad sign. I think you’re in denial.”

  Jamie flipped his partner the “Vicky”: an insulting version of the V sign gesture—with the palm inwards, similar to “the finger.” “Yeah, I got your denial right here, laddie.”

  They arrived at Saint Brendan’s, and Cal offered to stay with the car. “After all, these Catholic enclaves are dangerous,” he said with a smirk.

  Jamie did not reply; he grabbed Eileen’s brochures and got out of the car. As he turned, Jamie stumbled and almost fell, which was unusual, as he had exceptional balance. Jamie heard Cal power down the window and call out, “Walk much, Jamie?” Jamie gave another “Vicky” to his partner and went into the parish office.