Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04

by Heartlight (v2. 1)

  "The Church excommunicated Walter Mansell for heresy?"

  "The Cathar heresy, to be precise; an old and pernicious one, but there's a dance in the old girl yet, as the actress said to the bishop. You'll be familiar with it, of course. It holds that Satan is coequal with God, and is the supreme ruler of the Material Realm." Godwin sighed, as if suddenly weary. "Now, tell me what your interest is in him."

  "A friend of mine has died," Colin said. "He mentioned Mansell's name as if he might be involved with the Black Order my friend was investigating. I don't know if he is—or even if it's the same group that I have reason to believe has ended the lives of three people in the last year—but I do know that I want to talk to him."

  Father Godwin shook his head sadly. "Oh, Walter, I warned you. And instead I seem to have flung you directly into their embrace."

  "You can't blame yourself," Colin said. Father Godwin glared at him, his normally mild brown eyes suddenly blazing.

  "Indeed I can, young man! It were better that Walter had died than that he should become such a tool of the Enemy. Nights when I cannot sleep, I wonder if I take too much refuge in the law. Knowing what he would become once he'd left us, it might have been better if I had killed him myself."

  Colin was no Catholic, but in many ways the Light that he served and the Roman Church held similar views. "He can still repent," Colin argued re-flexively. "So long as he lives, there is hope."

  "Ah, yes. An excellent rebuke, Teacher. Pride and despair together in one beguiling spiritual fault. But there are times when it is so hard to stand by and let Evil be done. It is a cold consolation to know that one is preventing a greater Evil by one's own inaction."

  "It is the hardest lesson," Colin agreed. The two men sat together for a moment in silence.

  "But you will be wanting to talk to Walter," Father Godwin said staunchly.

  "He is living in Brooklyn now, I believe. Would you ring for Mrs. Keppler? She will know which of my Liber Negri I need."

  Mrs. Keppler brought the ledger quickly—and fixed Colin with a meaningful glare. Colin raised a hand in token that he would cut the visit as short as he could. Father Godwin might have the vitality of a man twenty years his junior, but he was still a very old man.

  The Liber Negri were the records Father Godwin kept of his fallen angels, as he called them. The pages were inscribed in an exquisite copperplate Latin, the color of the ink showing that the entries had been made over the course of many years. He turned the pages quickly, obviously certain of what he was looking for.

  "Here we are. Walter Mansell. He lives in Flatbush. If you have a pencil, Colin, I will give you the address."

  Colin returned home, where half an hour spent with his atlases enabled Colin to pinpoint Mansell's precise location and give himself some idea of the layout of the streets surrounding the building. He was planning to tweak the tiger's tail, and there was no room in such a plan for surprises. When he was certain of where he was going, he went around to Cornby's Garage to pick up his transportation.

  The Black Beast had died two years before, at the end of a long life of faithful service. Colin had hesitated over a new car, but all the new models had looked too low-slung and gleaming for his tastes, and he couldn't imagine fitting his lanky frame into the front seat of one of those tiny imports.

  He'd compromised—far too close to the side of self-restraint, according to Claire—on an anonymous Ford van, bought secondhand. It was painted gas-chamber green and came pre-dented, but there was enough room in the driver's seat for Colin's long legs. A van had a number of other advantages as well, not the least of which was its cargo capacity.

  By six o'clock he was on the FDR Drive, heading south toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Ocean Parkway cut straight through Brooklyn on its flight toward Coney Island. Along both sides of the parkway stood brownstones and the classic C-shaped redbrick Brooklyn apartment houses. Generations of immigrants from every part of Europe had come to Brooklyn, leaving their legacy in nicknames that ranged from Little Sicily to Little Odessa. Once Brooklyn had been a thousand segregated neighborhoods, from Park Slope to Borough Park and beyond.

  Flatbush was an area of comfortable middle-class homes and apartments. Though once entirely Jewish, its population was changing as the old neighborhoods evolved with the influx of new tenants. Today it was no longer so easy to make an assumption about a person's religion by knowing their address.

  Case in point.

  Colin parked at the end of Mansell's street. There was a synagogue at one end and a yeshiva at the other, but they were both dark at this time of night, and on a Wednesday evening traffic was not particularly heavy. Colin eased the green van into the last available space on the street—someone must have just pulled out, because he could see the dark bulk of a double-parked car halfway up the street: a big black sedan.

  Colin did not think he would have to lie to Mansell—the unvarnished truth should be a shocking enough impact to gain him the man's cooperation, or at least the information he sought.

  He climbed out of the van and locked the door, handling the key carefully with his gloved hands. It was a brilliantly clear night, and the air was already startlingly cold; his breath made dense clouds on the evening air. Colin glanced around warily, but the street was empty, and he walked up the sidewalk toward Mansell's apartment, going over in his mind what he would say to the man.

  If Mansell was indeed a member of the same black coven that had murdered Sandra Jacquet, the lead detective on the case would be able to call him in for questioning. And if Colin's past experience was any judge, this would draw the whole coven out into the open, allowing Colin to neutralize them before they could do any further harm.

  It would still, however, leave the problem of Toller Hasloch. . . .

  Colin stopped as the door to the apartment building opened. The double-parked sedan—a Mercedes—stood at the curb. It made Colin automatically think of a doctor seeing a patient, although most doctors had stopped making house calls years before.

  Most New York apartments were constructed with an "airlock" as part of the lobby: two doors, an inner and an outer, that provided both security and insulation. The space considerations that controlled every facet of city life frequently reduced the space between those doors to awkward dimensions, necessitating callers' backing out through the outer door.

  The man on the steps faced precisely this problem. At first all Colin could see was the light of the streetlamp falling on his black cashmere topcoat and a sleek helmet of flaxen-fair hair. Then he turned, starting down the three steps to the double-parked Mercedes.

  The shock of recognition was like a shout in a silent world. But—somehow—it was not as startling as it should have been. It was as if Colin were an actor following a script he had read long ago, and on some level he already knew what was to come and who he was to meet here.

  Indeed, in some sense he had been born, he had come here, only to meet this man.

  The fair man stopped in the act of crossing the sidewalk to his waiting vehicle, and turned back toward Colin. Colin could not see his eyes, but he knew what color they would be: a grey so pale it was almost colorless, as cold and hungry as the winter sea.

  "Why, it's dear old Professor MacLaren," Toller Hasloch said gaily. "What an unexpected privilege it is to see you again."

  The years from twenty-three to thirty-four had been generous to Hasloch. His hair, though it brushed his shoulders in the current style, was no unkempt hippie mass, but an expensive Sassoon cut. His black polo coat was open over a double-breasted pin-striped suit with extravagant lapels; the silk pocket-square and fashionably wide tie were a bright Peter Max print and the deeply cuffed bell-bottoms broke over gleaming boots with high stacked heels.

  "I wouldn't call it a privilege in your position," Colin said. "Still, I suppose tastes differ. You've done well for yourself, haven't you? I see you've sold out to the Establishment."

  Hasloch smiled, an expression as cold and fa
lse as the man himself.

  "Professor MacLaren, I never intended to challenge the Establishment. I have always intended to suborn it, and then place it in service to the eternal Reich. It's remarkably easy once you've begun, so I find."

  "It sounds like a full-time job," Colin commented calmly. "I suppose I had better let you get back to it."

  "We'll meet again," Hasloch vowed. He turned to go, then stopped. "I suppose I ought to be coy in the best movie villain fashion and ask if you've read any good books lately, but you strike me as such an unlikely candidate for the role of James Bond that I can't bring myself to do it. I should mention, though, that if you're looking for Walter, I'm afraid he's out. But do feel more than welcome to call another day."

  He knows about the manuscript. He's baiting you. Don't react, Colin told himself.

  "Yes," Hasloch said, as if Colin had spoken. "I'm in this John Cannon business up to the eyes. Walter's one of mine. Every single one of those pathetic anti-Church reactionaries is mine—and there's nothing that you, with your precious White Light scruples, can do about it.

  "It's quite amusing, really. They think they're rebelling, but they're still celebrating the Big Lie of the Jew-inspired Roman Church, even in their trivial blasphemies."

  "I do wonder why you put up with it," Colin said commiseratingly.

  Hasloch threw back his head and laughed.

  "Because there's power there, my dear monk! Anywhere there is fear or hatred there is power that feeds the Aeonic Current. But acquit me of being anything so inconsequential as a Satanist—this is simply another mask for me, a diversion until the time for masks is over. And do go on with your pathetic and useless crusade," Hasloch said amiably. "You've put so many obstacles in your own way, you'll never prevail."

  In one thing, Colin thought to himself grimly, Hasloch had not changed. He still talked too much, though in one sense he was right—the actions which Colin could take and remain of the Light were much more circumscribed than those available to the Shadow. To lose patience with that fact, to use the methods of the Serpent, was to fall to the Shadow and become its tool, witting or not.

  "And do have a Merry Christmas, Professor." Hasloch turned away and climbed into his car. A moment later it was moving quietly up the street, white clouds of steam billowing from its exhaust.

  Colin watched until the car was out of sight, and then went up the steps to ring Mansell's bell. There was no answer, not that he had truly expected any. The encounter he had been drawn to here in Brooklyn had been with Hasloch, not with Mansell. And a challenge had been offered—and answered.

  The odds seemed insurmountable, the contest unwinnable, but all of Colin's life had been spent waging just such a war. The first victory must be over the Self, to gain the tools for all that followed. It was a battle that must constantly be refought, but each time he conquered his own impatience and despair, something far greater than himself had won a victory, and Colin became stronger.

  And so as it had been, it must be now.

  Colin walked slowly back to his van. His first stratagem had been blocked; there was no point in approaching Mansell now. He would try another approach.

  Preoccupied with his thoughts—any day which included Alan Daggonet, Father Godwin, and Toller Hasloch had to be considered an exceptionally full one—Colin nearly forgot that there was one last task for him to perform.

  "Claire? It's Colin. I'm sorry it's late, but I just got in. Did you manage to track down that hunch of yours? No? Well, then, there's a doctor's office on Park in the Eighties that I think might be the place you're looking for. Maybe you should see if they need a temp. ..."

  Friday, December 23, was cold and bright. Colin's destination was One Police Plaza, where Lieutenant Martin Becket and the Occult Crimes Unit had a small office tucked away in a corner of the sprawling maze of police headquarters.

  The building was located near city hall in what had been, almost a century before, the heart of Manhattan. In the years since, the city had spread, its center moving uptown with the skyscrapers that lined Madison, Fifth, and Sixth, and with the great public spaces such as Rockefeller Center that had been created half a hundred blocks north. Downtown—its concrete canyons in shadow on even the brightest summer day—had been left to the wizards of Wall Street and to various municipal offices, such as the one its inmates called, with varying degrees of affection, the Puzzle Palace.

  A uniformed policewoman ushered Colin to Becket's door and tapped on the glass. Becket looked up, waved at Colin through the glass, and the woman withdrew.

  Colin opened the door and went in.

  Detective Lieutenant Martin Becket, like most of his real-life brethren, was a middle-aged sedentary man with a receding hairline and a chainsmoking habit he tried intermittently to break. He had a wife, three kids, and a house in Queens. Only the .38 revolver in the black shoulder holster that he wore—visible, as his blue plaid sport coat was hung on the coat tree that teetered in the corner of the office—and the gold shield clipped to his belt distinguished him from thousands of other office workers in a thousand anonymous office buildings all over Manhattan.

  "Merry Christmas, Colin! Nice of you to drop by," he said, waving Colin to a chair. "I suppose it's too much to hope for that you've come to crack my big case?"

  "Sorry," Colin said, moving a pile of reports off the chair and seating himself in it. .

  Becket fired up another Camel and offered Colin the pack. Colin waved it aside; he'd managed to wean himself down to an occasional pipe, and lately he was starting to think he should give even that up.

  "So. You didn't come in just to pass the time of day," Becket said. "There's a limit to how long I'm going to be able to sit on this Jacquet thing—though the holiday helps—and if the ME's office ever lets some of the details slip to the press, I'd better be ready with the perp's head on a platter or the mayor's office is going to be asking for mine."

  The Occult Crimes Unit was only a small part of Becket's workload. It was primarily for information sharing and resource development, and the possibility for negative publicity ensured that it kept a very low profile. The Sandra Jacquet murder, however, might just be the one that blew the lid off the unit once and for all, and Becket was justifiably worried about the repercussions.

  "Then I've got some good news and some bad news for you, Marty," Colin said. "The good news is, I've got a pretty good idea of who killed her—it's a group—and I've got the name and address of one of them. The bad news is, I haven't got a blessed shred of proof. One of the people who could make the connection died two days ago of allegedly natural causes, and I don't think Lucille Thibodeaux will testify."

  "Neither do I," Becket said dryly. "They fished her out of the river this morning—suicide, the coroner's office says. I'd flagged her file, so they gave me a call."

  "Poor soul," Colin said softly.

  "You said you had a name for me?" Becket asked.

  "Walter Mansell, currently living in Flatbush. He's in the phone book, but I'll give you his address. He's a defrocked Catholic priest. I checked with a friend of mine in the diocese: he was also excommunicated for heresy."

  "Sounds like a model citizen so far. Not many people go to the trouble of getting themselves excommunicated these days," Becket commented. "So how do you connect him up with Jacquet?"

  "John Cannon mentioned the name in a phone call to me the night before he died," Colin said. "According to Lucille, she was pretty forthcoming with Cannon when he interviewed her, and passed on names that Sandra had given her. Cannon said that Mansell had tried to recruit him for the group when he got in touch with them."

  "So Thibodeaux—who's dead—dropped the dime on Mansell to Cannon— who's also dead. Nice. But it isn't," Becket sighed, "anything we can go within twenty blocks of the DA with. Still, it's always good to make new friends. I'll keep an eye out for our friend Walter."

  "While you're opening new dossiers, try this: before he died, Cannon turned in his finished book about Sa
tanism in New York to his editor, Jamie Melford of Blackcock Books. When I spoke to Cannon, he implied that he was receiving threats and pressure to withdraw the book. Melford's office was broken into and vandalized after Cannon's death and his copy of the manuscript stolen. It looks like Melford's starting to get the same treatment that Cannon got."

  "Did he swear out a complaint?" Becket asked, suddenly more alert.

  "He said the police were in about the break-in. I doubt he knows anything about Mansell, unless Cannon used his name in the book." But if he had, Cannon would know he'd be opening himself to an action for libel, and the old pro would have been too cautious for that.

  Unless, of course, he'd named names as a form of insurance, expecting to be able to go back and delete them later.

  "I hope you're going to tell me you've stayed away from Mansell," Becket said, lighting another Camel from the stub of the first.

  "I haven't spoken to him," Colin said truthfully. He thought about Toller Hasloch, but said nothing. He had no proof, other than Hasloch's own word, that he was involved with the Satanists . . . and he would have to be far more foolish than he was to trust Hasloch's word even for the fact that the sun would rise tomorrow.

  "Well, it's a start, anyway. I'll shoot Mansell's name down to Files and see what comes back. If he's got any priors—including littering—we can pull him in and see what we get with a fishing expedition. It'd be nice if we had the contents of Jacquet's apartment to work from, but somebody torched it the night she disappeared. Arson."

  Colin sighed, getting to his feet. "I'm sorry I couldn't be more help."

  "Well," Becket said, "at least now we know all these folks are connected. If there do have to be a bunch of kooks out there pretending they're witches, it helps that they all know each other."

  THIRTEEN

  NEW YORK, DECEMBER 24, 1972