Faustus Resurrectus

by Thomas Morrissey

“Where do you suggest I look?”

  “He changed his voicemail message sometime today, and he sounded a little drunk. Try Ninth Avenue. The bars along there are close to Midtown North. I’ll meet you at my place as soon as I can.”

  Father Carroll clasped his hand. “Good luck. Godspeed.”

  ***

  Standing in the kitchen annex to the dining hall, Valdes pulled back the curtain separating him from the mob. He nodded at what he saw—the word he’d had his people spread had been best received by feral predators from the fringes of society. He watched them shamble in, sullen eyes hot with anger or glazed by instability. A lust for violence hung in the air, stirred and strengthened by the alcohol and drugs he’d had distributed along with the food.

  Perfect.

  “Thy charges grow spirited and restless,” Faustus warned from behind him. “Wilst thy tongue maintain control o’er them?”

  “I won’t have to, not for long. People like this, you give them an enemy and the rest comes naturally.”

  “Once didst thou promote charity over cynicism, nein?” Faustus regarded him with thinly disguised disdain. “And now thou art absent all feeling for those souls led astray.”

  “You can’t be ‘led astray’ to your destiny.”

  “The ‘destiny’ of others, it seems, serveth thine interests well. Thou claimeth these people as brethren, yet it is thy machinations which casteth them into damnation. Thy machinations,” his voice softened, “and the hand of Faustus.”

  “You think I’m casting them into damnation? Have you taken a look at them? These people are already damned. They can’t take care of themselves. They’re helpless in the face of modern society. They need me.”

  “For what, pray? Struggle, challenge; these are hallmarks of life. The responsibility God hath given each for his own life requireth we judge and make correct choices. In this way do we learn and fulfill our purpose. To act differently resulteth in fallen souls, as,” he grimaced, “Faustus doth demonstrate. In God’s Universe it can be no other way.”

  “God’s Universe? I ask again, have you taken a look at them? Even if it is the perspective of some that this is ‘God’s Universe,’ I think our friends,” he gestured, “might have a different point of view.” Valdes remained unperturbed. “I get what you’re trying to do. I thought we’d settled this: I’ve made my decision. If anything, these people are going to ride my coattails. They’ll benefit from my foresight and planning.”

  Faustus said nothing.

  “This is all a moot point, anyway, isn’t it? After I’m through, none of this will matter. It’s a do-over for everyone.”

  “Suffering of this sort canst never be undone, Valdes. Damnation is subject not to thy whims of what is ‘fair.’”

  “I suppose we’ll see soon enough, won’t we?” Valdes turned his attention back to the mob. “But there is something that may be trouble. Our vessel’s fiancé, this Donovan Graham, will probably try to save her. Is there any way to tell if he—or anyone else who might try to stop me—might have infiltrated my little party?”

  Faustus stared at him for a long moment, but finally stepped towards the curtain to look.

  ***

  Donovan raced up the FDR Drive, not caring that he lost the blue SUV on the way. He pulled the Vulcan up on the sidewalk in front of Polaris and slammed the kickstand down, then pulled off his helmet as he ran inside.

  Henri was waiting. “Donovan, you are not to be here now!” He moved to stand in Donovan’s way. “You must talk to Meghan before you—”

  Donovan swept him aside with one arm as he marched to the host stand. Corey waited there with an amused expression. “Nice move.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Over there. I asked Guzman to buy her a drink.” He read Donovan’s face and grew serious. “Is everything all right?”

  Donovan said nothing, already moving towards the end of the bar where a chubby blonde girl sat. She seemed very uncomfortable, constantly touching a patch of bad skin on her cheek she’d tried to cover with makeup. He pushed through the group standing next to her. “Joann sent you?”

  She glanced over, startled. “Uh…what?”

  “I’m Donovan Graham. I’m Joann’s fiancé. Where is she?”

  “I’m Josie. Josie Ludescowicz. They call me Lude.” His directness caused her to shrink in on herself. “Uh, I don’t know. I mean, I know where she was, but…can I talk to you? Miz Clery said I could talk to you about stuff.”

  It was with great effort that Donovan calmed himself. He became aware of people watching him, so he took a deep breath and nodded. “All right. Let’s take a ride.”

  ***

  Back at his apartment, he made a show of locking the door behind them. “Safe now. Is Joann all right? Where is she?”

  Lude gazed around the living room, guilty and sad, and for an instant Donovan was reminded of a photo of Coletun’s mother Lola. “They’re keeping her in one of the rooms downstairs. Not on the dining hall floor. Below that. I think it used to be an operating room, but there’s nothing in there anymore, just—”

  “Operating room? Is she in a hospital?”

  “Oh! Uh…I don’t know. I guess it could have been. I think Mister Valdes told me and Dez when we first started living there, but I don’t remember things so good sometimes. It’s why I failed out of school.” She gave a halfhearted shrug. “I guess it’s how I ended up with Dez and them, and Mister Valdes.”

  “Where was it? That you ended up?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere near the park.” She squinted at him, twisting her fingers together. Her eyes were wet. “I don’t want to go back. That’s why I left. Miz Clery said I could talk to you about it.”

  Donovan held a poker face, desperately needing the information but not wanting to scare her. “Of course you can. But don’t you think it’d be better to go get Joann first? If anything happens to her—”

  “Oh, something’s gonna happen to her tonight. Mister Valdes acted like she was the most important part of everything.”

  He was barely able to restrain himself from grabbing the girl and shaking the truth out of her. “Where is she?”

  “It’s near Central Park, way up there. I used to have to take the subway to get anywhere. Big C broke a hole in the wall in the basement so we could go into the tunnels. It was kind of fun, like exploring caves back home…” She sighed, swiping at the tears that welled in her eyes.

  Whatever her role in Joann’s fate, she was a pitiable figure. Donovan steadied his temper and put an arm around her shoulder. She leaned into him, and he felt wetness through his t-shirt to his chest. “I’ll get you someplace safe until this is over. I promise.” She sniffed. “You said Valdes has her in a hospital near Central Park?”

  “A really old one. No one uses it anymore. The only doctor there is Doctor Fowlstus.”

  Faustus. After everything, Donovan still had to take a moment to accept what he was hearing. He shook his head. “Is it an old building in the park?”

  “It’s across the street.” She sniffled again. He handed her a box of tissues. “A bunch of buildings together.”

  “East Side or West Side?”

  “Uh…Central Park West.”

  He went to his office and retrieved Andrew Dolkart’s Guide to New York City Landmarks. “Do you have any idea what street?”

  “Uh…a hundred and…six. One Hundred Sixth Street!”

  Thumbing the pages, he came to the section 59th Street to 110th Street, West Side. One entry leapt out at him.

  New York Cancer Hospital, 32 West 106th Street.

  ***

  Valdes took the stage at 10:13 p.m. The mob, thoroughly enjoying the cheap liquor and drugs being offered, paid no notice until he took out his revolver and fired two shots up. Nobody panicked—this crowd was well-familiar with gunfire—but it got their attention.

  “A long time ago,” he began without preamble, “I hosted events much like this for my job. One of the first things I was
taught was that to make an evening truly memorable, you need a gift for the guests. Something personal that will make a statement about the purpose of the evening. Tonight,” he took out a cigarette, “I have something for you all.”

  “Pussy!” a drunken, skinny white teen shouted from the front.

  Valdes lit up, unoffended and in control. “Better.”

  “Really good pussy?”

  “Even better.” Raucous laughter spread. Valdes was unperturbed. “What don’t you have? Don’t say it,” he warned the teen with a good-natured smile. “Looking around, I’d say a lot of you don’t have a steady place to stay, or a stable income, or family to turn to, or many true friends.” A few voices rose in protest. He shook his head twice and held up a restraining hand. “No offense. Understand, I’m not offering pity. I’m no traveling preacher, and this is no soup kitchen party. I’m not here to discuss or condemn whatever you did that put you in your current circumstances. Frankly, I don’t care. The past is no longer my concern, and after tonight, it won’t be your concern either. A home? A job? Friends, family? You may lack them, but does that make you any less worthy a human being? Not to me. There are those who would believe that, you may believe that yourselves, but I don’t. I believe you have the most important thing, the most necessary thing, to get them if you want them. In fact, you can get whatever you want, if you want it badly enough. ‘The seeds of godlike power are in us still. Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will.’” He had a drag off the cigarette. “I’m not offering pity. I’m offering much, much more.”

  He exhaled smoke and watched the cloud drift over the mob. As it descended so did his gaze, and he made eye contact with a half-dozen people. None shied away; the sincerity, the truth in his voice had every one of them wanting to know more.

  “I had a wonderful life—job, wife, money, house—but to get it I was forced to give others power over me. When I became a threat to them, those people used that power. My job? Gone. My wife? Left me. My bank account? Taken by the government. Me? The Danbury Federal Penitentiary became my home.”

  Even now he was unable to keep the bitterness entirely from his voice. The crowd heard it and responded, the tone of their rumblings growing uglier. Alcohol, drugs and the paranoia of tightly-packed bodies simmered resentment from their personal experience. Valdes noted this.

  “There’s something that they don’t tell you, the people who have things, a secret to their success. Would you like to know what it is?

  “Getting what you want…is easy.”

  He paused for effect, a thin smile beneath the wisp of smoke that curled from his nostrils. The mob growled, restless and caged. On the monitor screen nearest him, a man was viciously stabbed, spilling greasy intestines and a flood of blood.

  “It’s easy,” he repeated, “if you have focus and desire.

  “Focus is tricky. Knowing what you want is probably hardest for most people, but not for all of you. I know what you all want. After months, years in jail, on the street, pushed around like punks, ignored except when you offend some asshole’s sense of what’s right or wrong, you want to be on top. You want your struggles to mean something in the real world. You want the rewards you deserve by right of your pain and struggle, rewards that by all rights are yours, rewards they’ve stolen! Because they have stolen from you—nobody gets rich or successful on their own! The only way they’ve succeeded is on your sweat, your blood, your hard work! They owe you, but do they care? No! You want to put your foot on the neck of every one of those scumbags and let them know that you are in charge of your life, not them. You want to force them to stop denying you what’s rightfully yours, force them to stop blocking your way to everything this world has to offer, force them to make restitution.

  “You want them to really pay.”

  A group pushed forward, provoking threats and a few punches.

  “So we agree,” he went on, voice rising. “You know what you want. You have the focus, but do you have the desire to get it? I do. Everything I want is just beyond my reach, but I can see it. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get it. No one will stand in my way. No one.

  “Who’s with me?”

  As the mob roared he scanned the hall, eyes coming to rest on a Hispanic man wearing a nylon skullcap. The man kept his head low, hiding in the center of the crowd. Valdes glanced back at Faustus, who nodded grimly.

  “You, sir,” Valdes said in a voice of shaved ice. “Would you step up here for a moment, please?”

  The man looked startled. A circle suddenly cleared around him. He turned to the left but saw Melvin brandishing a machete. He looked right and saw Officer Burt in his filthy uniform coat and police hat, clenching fists that sported brass knuckles. He whirled to make a break for it—

  Coeus emerged from the shadows and slammed him to the ground with one punch.

  The mob howled. Valdes watched with satisfaction as the giant snaked his pipeline arms into a full nelson around the dazed man’s neck and marched him through the chaos to the stage. He glanced around the room and jerked his head. Dez, Bridget, George and The Jogger pulled tarps off four long tables, revealing knives, swords, nail-studded clubs, machetes, broken bottles…

  Everyone in the room started grabbing weapons.

  “Does anyone else here recognize an undercover police officer when they see one?” Valdes motioned for Dez to join him on stage.

  The Hispanic man struggled in Coeus’ grip. “Man, the fuck’re you talking about? I ain’t no motherfucking cop!”

  Valdes ignored him. “His shoes, my dear.”

  Dez pulled the hiking boot off his right foot and handed it over. Valdes peeled back the insole and held it high for everyone to see. A shiny badge caught the light just right, winking at them all. Those in front screamed obscenities, and as one the mob surged forward.

  “You can’t kill me!” the Hispanic man shouted. “I got back-up coming!”

  Valdes’ snarl described his disbelief. “I will never let the police stand in my way, ever again.” All of his anger, every bit of his rage, was furiously controlled, channeled into his words. He turned to the crowd. “And as of this moment, neither will any of you.”

  He pushed the man off the stage. The mob fell on him, drowning his screams.

  “Now go,” Valdes growled, “take the park.”

  NINETEEN

  THE SIXTH TYPE

  “You all ready?” Donovan asked Lude. He waited for an affirmative before flipping down the front of his motorcycle helmet. “Hang on.”

  He rode the Vulcan up Eighth Avenue and around Columbus Circle. Picking his way through the traffic of some sort of construction project that involved concrete cinder blocks and wrought-iron fence spires, he followed Broadway uptown, towards 106th Street. He parked on 106th and West End Avenue. Central Park West was three cross-town blocks away. It would take a few minutes to walk to the Cancer Hospital from there, but the distance would give him time to review with Lude. He would have preferred to leave her behind in the relative safety of his apartment, but her attempts to describe where Joann’s cell was in the hospital were scattered and unreliable. Her presence, though, had given him a plan.

  “You’re sure no one knows you left to escape?” He locked their helmets to the Vulcan, slipped the keys into his boot, and started walking.

  “If anyone knew, I’d be dead.” She smiled nervously. “Don’t tell them.”

  “Just be cool. This will work. You said you guys were out all day gathering people? I’m your newest recruit.” At the apartment he’d changed into ratty clothes, and splashed some Bushmills on himself for effect. “Get me inside and we’ll go down to Joann’s cell. We’ll try to get in and out before anyone knows what’s going on.”

  “If you say so.”

  At the corner of 106th and Manhattan Avenue, Donovan looked down towards Central Park West. A wooden fence screened the lower half of the block. Tall shadows of buildings loomed in the meager streetlight. Saliva evaporated from his mouth. H
is heartbeat drummed louder but softened as they got nearer—there was no noise, no sound coming from inside the compound. He glanced at Lude, who looked confused herself. They approached a gate in the fence and he saw it had been nearly torn from its hinges. The dirt and stray papers nearby were flattened, and some garbage that had been within the fence was now scattered and blowing in the street.

  Deserted?

  He glanced around and stepped through the opening.

  The Cancer Hospital was no modern concrete and steel cracker box; with its corner turrets and Gothic architecture, it seemed designed more for restraint than recuperation. Even with occasional sounds from the nearby traffic the courtyard felt intensely isolated. Darkness filled the clearing with insulating numbness. Litter blew around his ankles while a million broken bottles crunched underfoot. The buildings looked condemned for a century, too creepy even for squatters. He turned to scan for signs of life behind the empty windows. Four stories up, light flickered in a turret atop a corner tower.

  “You said she was downstairs?” Lude nodded. He angled his head towards the light. “Do you know what that is?” She shook her head. He stared up at it for a moment longer, filled with uneasy suspicion that it was important. Time was an issue, though, so there was only one priority. “All right,” he said, turning away, “let’s go find Joann.”

  “When I left, this place was packed with people,” she whispered. “Two or three hundred, at least. Where is everyone?”

  “I think we’re about to find out. Which way is downstairs?”

  “Over here.” She led him through a door-less doorway into a filthy brick stairwell. Cracked, worn concrete steps led down, illuminated by a lone string of twenty-watt bulbs. “The way to her cell leads right past the dining hall,” she whispered. “That’s where Mister Valdes set the party up.”

  The further they went down, the more he got the feeling the place had been abandoned. There was the same atmospheric quality of chaos and recently spent energy here as at his apartment after the fight. Water stains, patches of black mold and crumbling plaster and brick marked every step of the way with nightmarish graffiti. It smelled musty and damp, with an undercurrent of unwashed body, but he was surprised there was no bitter stink of urine in the mix.