Don Pietro Abbandando sat back, made a tent of his fingertips, and stared at his prisoner. FBI Special Agent Steve Corrigan was bleeding both from his nose and his split lip, and one eye was nearly swollen closed— all thanks to the Don’s goons.
“‘I admire your courage, Agent Corrigan,’ Abbandando rumbled in his deep, husky voice. ‘But, really, this foolishness has gone on long enough. If you continue to deny me the information I desire, Paulie and Marco here will really have to hurt you.’
Okay, so it’s not War and Peace. Big, fat, hairy deal. Your blood-soaked Mafia sagas have racked up big enough sales to buy this big house with your private office in back, to put the Jag in the driveway, and to keep Marcie the Bitch in the style to which she quickly became accustomed, once The Don hit the bestseller lists three years ago. Since then, the Mafia’s been very good to you, even if Marcie the Bitch hasn’t.
“Corrigan spat a mixture of saliva, blood, and snot on Don Pietro’s expensive Oriental rug. ‘Why don’t you tell Paulie and Marco to go—”
Then the creak of a floorboard in the quiet room causes you to look up, and that’s when you realize that something is very wrong. Because two guys you’ve never seen before are standing just inside your office door, and they don’t look like they’re collecting for the Red Cross. They’re both late thirties, tall, thick-bodied, wearing sport coats over open-collared shirts.
And here’s the real ass-kicker: the one in the gray sport coat has a gun.
He’s not pointing it at you. Yet. It’s just dangling from his big paw, some kind of automatic made out of that plastic stuff that everybody seems to be using these days.
You don’t know what to say, so you try indignation on for size. “How the hell did you get in here?”
The one in the brown tweed sport coat shakes his head. “Don’t matter.” He takes a step forward and gestures back toward the door with his chin. “Come on.”
“‘Come on’? What the fuck do you mean, ‘Come on’?”
Gray sport coat raises the pistol, and now it is pointed at you. “Somebody wants to see you. So let’s go. Quit screwin’ around.”
“Who? Who wants to see me? What is this crap?”
Tweed sport coat walks over, like he’s got all the time in the world. He puts his big hands on your mess of a desk and leans forward, so that his heavy face, with its hard brown eyes and five o’clock shadow, is less than a foot away from yours. His breath smells like cheap red wine.
“Look,” he says reasonably, “you’re coming wit’ us. That’s a fact. Only question is, you gonna feel okay on the way there, or are you gonna be hurtin’ in three or four different places, maybe bleedin’ a little”? He gives an exaggerated shrug, the theatrical bastard. “So, what’s it gonna be?”
When you haven’t got any cards worth a damn, all you can do is fold your hand. You stand up— slow, so as not to provoke this ape. “All right, okay, whatever. Let’s go.”
Tweed sport coat straightens up and nods approvingly. “I heard you was a smart fella.” He turns and walks toward the door. Gray sport coat gestures with his pistol, indicating that you’re supposed to follow. So you do.
They take you around to the front of the house, where there’s a dark green Olds Cutlass parked at the curb. Gray sport coat pulls out some keys and gets behind the wheel. The other guy opens the front passenger door and motions you inside. Once you’ve got your seat belt fastened, he gets in the back. Right behind you.
Gray sport coat turns to look at you. “Look, this drive ain’t gonna take long. You try somthin’ stupid on the way, you’re gonna get hurt. And Vinnie’s piece’ll shoot right through the back of your seat, comes to that. So you just chill, and enjoy the ride, unnerstand?”
“Yeah, all right,” you say. “But where are we going?”
“Can’t tell you that,” gray sport coat says. “It’s supposed to be, like, a surprise.” From the back, tweed sport coat makes a sound that might be laughter.
So the guy starts the car, and all of a sudden you’re thinking about your last novel, The Capo’s Daughter, published a couple of months ago. It’s another one of your lurid Mob melodramas, and its portrayal of Mafiosi characters was not kind. Some of the wiseguys in the book were cowards, others were drunks or drug addicts, and one debauched caporegime was shown sexually molesting his own daughter.
One of your cop buddies, Teddy Scanlon, told you a few weeks ago that he’d heard some of the local wise guys were convinced the book was about them— and they were not pleased. He tells you it’s nothing to worry about. Probably.
It’s all becoming clear to you now: the local mob, feeling insulted, wants you dead. But after a few moments, you realize it’s gotta be worse than that.
They’re not taking me someplace to kill me. They could have done that back at the office: walk in, bang-bang, and leave. Nobody else is home, they would’ve got away clean.
You’ve been scared ever since these two goons showed up. But now you’re terrified.
These bastards and gonna do me slow— just like that guy in Left for Dead who got caught stealing from the Family. They used pliers and a fucking blowtorch on him. Maybe the Capo who didn’t like my book is gonna watch. God, maybe he’s gonna do it himself….
You would have given in to panic then, begging these Mafia goons not to go through with it, offering them money, the Jag, anything. You’d have cried and pleaded, for all the good it would have done you— if it weren’t for the gun.
When you learned that the local mobsters might have your name on their shit list, you decided to get some protection. Scanlon had told you the simplest way to buy a handgun was at a gun show. No background checks, carry permits, or other bureaucratic bullshit required. He suggested a compact revolver, and said that a lot of cops carry their off-duty pieces in ankle holsters.
Which is how you come to be sitting in that car with a Smith & Wesson Model 642 Centennial Airweight strapped to your right ankle, loaded with five rounds of .38 Special. Nobody, except Scanlon and the guy you bought it from, knows about the gun. Your friends would have called you paranoid, and Marcie the Bitch would have been full of sarcastic remarks about penis substitutes.
You’ve never killed anybody, except on paper. You’ve never shot at anyone, never even fired the damn pistol, except a couple of times, out in the woods, to be sure it worked. You’re not sure you could do it, even now.
A few minutes later, you realize that your time to ponder the issue has just run out, because gray sport coat is making a left turn into the parking lot of a dilapidated warehouse, then slowing to a stop. “End of the line,” he says with a smirk.
You stare bleakly at the deserted-looking building and you know the Mafia boss is waiting inside, know that these two bastards are going to take you in there to be stripped naked and tied to a chair, then cut and burned and blinded and castrated and killed and you are NOT going to let them do that and as the car stops you unbuckle your seatbelt and lean forward, making a retching sound to cover your movements as you hike up your pant leg, unsnap the safety strap and grasp the revolver.
Now you sit upright and wait, heart pounding like a bass drum in a crazed rock band and tweed sport coat gets out from the back seat and walks to your door, opening it as gray sport coat is exiting on the driver’s side and tweed sport coat is saying something but the Smith & Wesson is in your hand now and you fire point-blank into tweed sport coat’s belly and as the bastard yells and staggers back you scramble out of the car and fire again, this time into his chest then you whirl to look for gray sport coat who’s standing next to the open driver’s door, staring, his mouth open in astonishment and you fire over the top of the car right into the middle of that fat thug face and gray sport coat falls straight back and doesn’t move anymore and now you stand there, huffing like a marathon runner, looking at the side door of the warehouse, knowing they’re inside, knowing that the sma
rt thing is for you to get the car keys and haul ass out of there, but now you’re in a rage over these arrogant fucks who think they can kidnap and torture and kill anyone they want and you remember that the holster has cartridge loops and you reload the gun with shaking hands because you’re near-insane with fear that’s turned into a frenzy of hate at the Capo who’s ordered this, and you’re going into that warehouse and kill the motherfucker and you don’t care what happens to you after that, you’ve just killed two Mafia soldiers so you’re a dead man anyway and you stalk over to the warehouse door and yank it open and inside you see the place is in near-total darkness but off to the left there’s a weak, flickering light that’s coming from some kind of flame and now you can make out someone standing there, his back to you, and you’re waiting for the bastard to turn and see his death coming but as your eyes adjust you see it’s a woman, Jesus, it’s Marcie the Bitch, and the flickering light is from a bunch of little candles and the overhead lights flare into life and even squinting against the glare you see there’s people there, people you know, all grinning and shouting something, and you’re having trouble making it out with your mind reeling and your pulse pounding and your ears ringing from the gunshots, but it sounds like—
“SURPRISE!”
* * * * *
Soul Survivor
Winter had finally loosened its death grip on the city, and Spring was in the air. The sun shone brightly, gentle breezes blew through the trees, and the suburban lawns were finally starting to look more green than brown. Outside the house at 441 Chestnut Street, birds were probably singing, but I can’t say for sure— we had the windows tightly closed, so that all the screaming, shouting, and cursing wouldn’t frighten the neighbors.
It was a beautiful day for an exorcism.
We’d been at it for about nine hours, and things seemed to be going okay, if I’m any judge— and I guess I should be. I’ve assisted at five of these things over the years. Five, not counting this one— the one that went bad.
I’m a private investigator, not a priest. But the diocese likes me to be around when these things go down. We have an arrangement that goes back quite a long time.
Like I said, the ritual had been proceeding pretty much the way you’d expect. We’d gone through the Invocation, and the Naming, and we were into the third series of prayers of the Denunciation.
Then Father Dwyer dropped his crucifix, and the whole thing went to shit.
* * *
So I’m pretty new to the private eye business, in the game for a little less than a year. At twenty-three, you’re full of piss and vinegar, if not exactly good sense. That probably explains why I decide to kick open the door of that warehouse where the kidnapped kid is being held, instead of waiting outside for the cops, who I’ve just called from a pay phone.
So I go charging in there, waving my Colt .38 around like it was some kind of talisman, only to find that there are a few more kidnappers than the two I was expecting. Four more, to be exact. And these guys are all so well armed you’d think they were planning to invade Bolivia.
Shots are exchanged, as they say on TV— quite a few shots, before the cops finally show up. A couple of the kidnappers are seriously wounded, and things don’t work out too good for me, either.
There’s a line Wild Bill Hickok used to say at the end of some of his tall tales, like the one he’d tell about the time he was surrounded by 200 hostile Comanches and had just run out of ammo. He’d pause, and wait for somebody to ask “Well, what happened, Bill?” Then he’d say, “Well, boys, they kilt me!”
Which is pretty much what they did in that warehouse. Kill me, I mean.
* * *
Dropping the crucifix isn’t really a big deal during an exorcism. I mean, it isn’t like you have to start over, or anything. Normally, the priest just picks the thing up, wipes it off if need be, and continues with the ritual.
But Father Dwyer had let his crucifix fall onto the chest of our possession victim, a middle-aged guy named Arthur Dillard. He was tied hand and foot to the bedposts, of course. Demons always resist being cast back into Hell, and they’ll hurt you if you give them the chance.
Rule number one: don’t give them the chance.
Dwyer broke the rule.
Not his fault, really. An exorcism is incredibly stressful on everybody involved, and nine hours of it is enough to make anybody pretty damn tired. Tired, and maybe careless.
As Dwyer bent forward to retrieve his cross, it occurred to me that he was getting dangerously close to our victim. I was about to yell a warning when the demon inside Dillard made its move.
* * *
As I find out later on, one of the cops responding to the warehouse knows CPR. Took the Red Cross course and everything. Although he can’t find a heartbeat, he keeps my systems going through a combination of mouth-to-mouth and chest compression.
The ambulance shows up quick, for a change, and it’s a short ride to the nearest hospital.
Where I proceed to die in the emergency ward.
That stuff you hear about dying— the white light, the sense of floating above your own body— it’s all true. In my case, the light gradually seems to be getting closer, or maybe I’m drawing closer to it, I don’t know. I can hear voices, too, and they sound familiar somehow, but I can’t quite make out what they’re saying.
“Well, if this is what checking out’s like,” I think, “it ain’t so bad, really.”
But it turns out the doctor running the trauma team hates to lose. Just hates it. So he keeps the rest of them trying things on me for several minutes after the EKG machine is showing flatline.
And damned if he doesn’t pull it off.
The white light starts to recede, and the pleasant voices in my head get fainter. The next voice I hear sounds a lot closer: it’s some woman yelling, “Doctor, we’ve got a heartbeat!”
They tell me later that I damn near beat the record, the length of time I was gone. And the fact that I came back without brain damage or some other major impairment is considered a miracle all by itself.
Of course, it turns out there is one major impairment, but nobody knows about that at the time, including me.
Everybody in the ER is eighteen kinds of happy about how they brought me back from the dead. The doctors and nurses on the trauma team are all grinning, exchanging high fives, all that.
Nobody ever asks me how I feel about it.
* * *
The demon possessing Arthur Dillard must have noticed fairly early on the flaw in the piece of rope that was tying Dillard’s right hand to the bed post. It felt the weakness, and waited.
Demons know all there is to know about waiting. They’ve had a lot of practice.
And they can move like lightning, when they want to.
Before I could even twitch, the demon had broken the rope and grabbed Dwyer by the back of the neck, gripping with the strength the damned often impart to their victims. By the time I came around the big bed, it had shaken Father Dwyer the way a terrier shakes a rat— and with the same result.
Dwyer, his neck broken, was probably dead before the demon let him fall to the floor.
The first thing I did was use my handcuffs to re-secure Stimson’s freed hand to the bedpost. The demon probably could have fought me over that and won, but I move pretty fast myself, and it wasn’t ready. It had assumed that, like any normal, sentimental human, I would run to Dwyer immediately, to try and help him.
I had counted on that assumption.
I mean, sure, I had liked Dwyer well enough. We’d worked together a couple of times before. But I knew he was either dead or dying. I figured the best thing I could do for him was to salvage what I could of the task he’d been trying to accomplish.
Trouble was, I didn’t know what to do next.
* * *
I’m still in the hospital, recovering
from the gunshot wounds and my cancelled trip to the Pearly Gates, when the Archbishop comes to see me.
I don’t know him by sight, of course. For me, he’s just some guy wearing a black priest suit with the funny collar, although I do notice the red skullcap he has on. So he introduces himself. Archbishop Anthony Costello, and I’m betting to myself that nobody ever calls him “Tony.”
He pulls a chair up next to my bed without waiting for an invitation. “How are you feeling, Mister McBride? Or may I call you Tom?”
“Call me anything you like, within reason.” I try to shrug, and immediately wish I hadn’t, since it hurts so much. “Not bad, I guess. Some of the nurses are pretty, and I get all the dope I want.”
He leans a little closer, looking very serious. “What I meant was, how are you feeling, uh, spiritually?”
I just look at him. “Aren’t you a little too important to be making sick calls to lapsed Catholics? The chaplain’s already been around, and I told him I wasn’t in the market.”
“Yes, I’ve heard as much. Regrettable, but your privilege, of course. However, this isn’t a sick call, in the usual meaning of the term.”
“What, then?”
“Mister McBride, did you know that you were clinically dead for several minutes, shortly after arriving at the hospital?”
“Yeah, so they tell me. I’m supposed to be one for the record books. No offense, but what do you care?”
He looks at his hands for a few seconds. “It’s important because of an old and rather obscure church teaching that says a person who is truly dead and then returns to life may, under certain circumstances… lose something in the process of coming back.”
Something a lot colder than the night nurse’s fingers starts working its way down my spine. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, man. All I lost was a few pints of blood, and they’ve already replaced those.”
“No, I’m talking about something even more important than blood. Considering the length of time that you were wavering between this world and the next, I’m afraid there’s a very good chance that you may have become separated from….” His voice trails off, and he looks away.
The Devil Will Come Page 20