by Linda Stasi
“Well, that’s one priest I won’t be calling ‘friend’ anytime soon,” I said to Roy.
Over Terry’s screams, Roy answered, “What the hell was that?”
“Morris must have had some crazy friends. But actually, I have no idea what the hell that was. I’ll look up this Vilnius parish and maybe I’ll go pay Father Elias—not that I trust him—a visit. He might be able to shed some light on the locked tube.”
“Or he’ll knock you over the head with it and run off with some underage boy.”
“Shut up. Like I’d take it with me. Geez. This is who you trusted with the tube? Someone you consider an idiot?” I joked. Then, “You’re also a huge weirdo, by the way.”
“I’m the weirdo. Right,” Roy said as we got into the car and I turned back onto the highway. “Astoria or Hicksville?”
“I think we should go to your dad’s house and look around.”
“Breakfast first? Here, look, the best diner in the world,” he said as we drove past a typical Queens diner that looked like Versailles. “It was even voted ‘best diner’ by, well, I don’t know who, but it must be true, it says it on the banner,” Roy implored, pointing his finger.
“That banner was new in the Carter administration,” I cracked and then I pointed—to the backseat and the wailing child.
“Oh, right. Scream Boy,” he said. “Never mind.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” I moaned, turning around and trying to see if he was OK. “Roy, can you try sticking his Binky back in his mouth? It’s hanging on the ribbon on his onesie there.”
“What language are you speaking—Binky, onesie? That priest must have possessed you with the thirteen daimons—because you’re speaking in freaking tongues.”
“The thing on the ribbon pinned to his onesie—p.j.’s. It’s called a Binky. A pacifier.” Finally, Roy did as he was told and I turned the car toward Hicksville.
When we pulled up, I unbuckled Terry’s car seat and used the handle to carry him, and walked inside the old Levitt house. Terry was still fussing. “Maybe he’s teething,” I said, not really knowing what I was talking about. Mommyland was still a strange and unusual territory for me.
The house had had a makeover since the old days. The former shingled facade had been changed to resemble a Tudor castle plopped over a row Cape Cod house, sitting smack in the middle of Long Island suburbia.
The inside had remained relatively unchanged, however—1970s kitschy kitchen with avocado-green appliances, as it had been back then. The living room walls were covered in what looked like very good, very old paneling. Somebody had added deep purple velvet drapes. I peeked out of them to see kids riding their bikes and normal life going on, while inside there was this ugliness. For a split second I thought when I had looked out that the scene looked old—or fake. The bikes the kids were riding looked like 1950s Schwinns, and the girls were wearing dresses. I peeked through the velvet drapes again, but the kids weren’t there—must have ridden away.
Looking around the room, attempting to lighten the mood from the feeling of dread inside that house, I said, “Well, now I know where the rest of the drapes from Tara went.” I thought I was feeling all the bad vibes from the years of abuse in that chamber of horrors, and of course from the fact that the chief horror master had died in that house the day before. I later learned it was much more than that.
We walked back to the second bedroom on the first floor, which had been converted into a library/office with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with every manner of old book imaginable. It was musty and dusty and even creepier than the living room. The good thing, however, was that the minute we walked into that library room, Terry quieted down.
“There’s Mommy’s good boy,” I said, putting the pacifier in his mouth and a blanket around him. It was especially cold in that room. Freezing, in fact.
“There’s probably a few thousand in books here,” I said to Roy, easing down an old leather volume and feeling the beautiful binding.
Every book seemed to be about spiritualism: The Divine Pymander, translated by John Everard; The Chaldæan Oracles of Zoroaster, by W. Wynn Westcott; and The Secret Doctrine, the masterwork of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, in what looked like a first-edition binding. Books on sacred geometry, code breaking, magic, and even necromancy (communicating with the dead).
“Where did you ever find that book, the … the…”
“Right.”
He walked over to the shelf where he returned the book he’d been holding very carefully. Old habits die hard. He jumped a foot high when I put my hand on his shoulder from the back. “Your father isn’t coming back to yell at you for messing up his books,” I said gently.
“I hope…”
“He’s not. He’s dead. You can torch them if you want—although you’d be out some hard cash—and he can’t say anything about it,” I said, throwing one random book on the floor, which made him jump. Roy fake-laughed and handed me the ancient leather-bound Voynich Manuscript.
Just then Terry began wailing again. “The bang must have scared him.” I picked him up and soothed him, the tears running down his little cheeks.
“Mama up! Mama up!”
“I think I better head back to the city. It’s been too much excitement for one day for this little guy. Can I borrow this one and some of the other books?” I asked. “I want to see what the hell they’re all about and begin calling around to see who knows how to unlock that tube.”
“I’ll drive you back,” Roy said.
“No, it’s OK. I’ll call a car service. At least we still have that perk at The Standard. I am on a story, after all. Oh, let me copy down the info from that priest’s card.”
Instead he dug it out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Here, I don’t want it.”
The card was made of fine-grade vellum—not your standard-issue parish priest kind of card. It read in a fancy typeface: FATHER ARTURO ELIAS, with a +40-008 before the phone number.
“Curious,” I said, looking at it. “I’ll give this guy a call. I’ll go over to the church, see what he’s all about.”
“Sure, whatever.” Roy shrugged.
The car arrived and Terry and I got packed up to leave, Terry squawking the second we got outside that House of Creepiness. “He’s the only kid that ever wanted to stay inside this dump,” Roy said.
“That’s because he’s the only kid ever allowed inside that dump besides you. Remember?”
He nodded. “I can’t forget, unfortunately.”
“So, you leaving or what?” I asked, taking his hand.
“No, I need to clean up some stuff.”
“Clean up? Like what? Don’t want to leave evidence of the crime,” I joked.
“Exactly,” he joked back.
7
I got home, fed Terry, and put him down for his nap. He had finally calmed down as soon as he was back in his cozy crib.
I called Bob Brandt to say I’d attended the funeral and was working on the follow-up from home. “There’s a bunch of research I gotta do. And Bob, I went back to Roy’s father’s house, and it was weird with a capital ‘weird.’ I mean, the guy, this shadow of a man, had a library full of black-magic books.”
“Watch the quiet ones,” he said.
“Oh, and Roy gave me the relic to hold on to until I can find the right experts. It’s safe though.”
“I hope ‘safe’ doesn’t mean your apartment, Russo,” Bob said, somewhat incredulously. “You’re holding a possible ten-million-dollar relic—for safekeeping? Where? In your refrigerator?”
“Not to worry.”
He didn’t trust it. “Jesus Christ! Put it in a safety-deposit box!”
“You didn’t seriously just suggest that, did you? The thing was stolen out of a safety-deposit box—remember?”
“Oh, right. My bad. Bring it in. I’ll put it in the safe in the office.”
“No can do,” I said. I wasn’t about to tell him my sitter had gone home to Guia
na and I had no clue when she’d be back. “I’m having it analyzed by an antiquities expert,” I lied. “I can’t open it.”
“Just don’t lose the damned thing. This could be big. Very big.”
“As big as the exploding Chihuahua?”
“You are such a pain in my ass,” he said.
“You mean that in the nicest possible way, right?”
“Right.”
Whew! I’d dodged another bullet. The longer I could work at home, the shorter the time until Anna returned. If she ever did!
I rang up the old number I’d had for Father Paulo. Damn! “Questo numero non è più in servizio.” This number is no longer in service.
Ten minutes later my cell rang. Unknown number. I picked up anyway.
“Ciao, bella!”
“Father Paulo?” I was stunned. But then I shouldn’t have been. Either his number was still in service and he had that outgoing message for whatever reason or he had read my story, which had gone viral. Paulo was nothing if not a news junkie.
“Sí,” he said pretentiously, as though he hadn’t been born in the U.S.
“I tried you but the message said your number was no longer in service.”
“That’s correct,” he said, simply. “That old number is no longer in service. I’m in Israel now, and I’ve been waiting for your call.”
Father Paulo, at eighty-four, was still attached to the Vatican—sort of like their CIA—and had been part of the whole story of the cloning that I broke last year. But I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw a battleship. That being said, there was no denying his scholarship, his brilliance, and his knowledge of things esoteric. He understood the spirituality that had been lost in the pomp and circumstance and big-deal money matters that the Church had devolved into over the millennia. The fact that the Vatican had rented out space to McDonald’s within spitting distance of St. Peter’s was a particular source of annoyance to him.
“What is it that you have exactly? This relic?”
“Are you sitting down?” I asked, meaning it sincerely.
“I am.”
“Good, because this is a doozy. My friend Roy’s father, well, he was a real S.O.B. He was a bank manager during our growing-up years, and believe it or not, he was manager of a Citibank branch in Hicksville, Long Island.”
Clever and devious as old Father Paulo was, I heard a sharp intake of breath on his part.
“Do you know where I’m going with this?” I asked, to see if he’d give anything up.
“Possibly. It’s well known that the so-called Gospel of Judas had been stashed by some fool Egyptian black-market thief in a Citibank branch, yes.”
“One and the same as the branch where Mr. Morris Golden, father of my friend Roy, worked.”
“I do know that the so-called Gospel took a very circuitous route, and ended up in that not-safe safety-deposit box—and moldered into thousands of pieces. Case closed,” he said, somewhat smugly. Well, very smugly.
“But it is my understanding,” he continued, “that after it was found by peasants in Middle Egypt, the codex, which became known as the Codex Tchacos, had been moved all over the Middle East and Europe among dealers who tried selling it for years at what was then an extraordinary price. Finally the fool—I believe his name was Hanna, who’d kept it, lost it, found it again, all very disreputable—took it to New York. He thought he had a buyer there, but didn’t. Somehow it ended up in the safety-deposit box to rot. Tell me what I don’t know so far.” I could practically see him puffing up his chest. “Case closed?”
“Case just reopened,” I answered. Paulo and I had been through hell and back together last year. He wasn’t an easy man to like, but a very easy man to respect.
“This is the sound of me being intrigued.”
“Well, I hope you took my advice and are sitting down, Father. I think I’ve got lost pages from the Gospel of Judas. Roy’s dad must have stolen them right out of the bank vault.”
“Dear Jesus! How can that be? It’s only been a vague rumor that such pages exist.” He was a scoundrel, but I knew he would be the only one who could open the tube, and once he knew what I potentially had, he’d be desperate to get his hands on such an ancient text. His call had been a fishing expedition, and it had paid off. Rumors travel fast among his crowd.
“And so, Father, I’d like your help.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know for sure what I have, though.”
“Excuse me?”
“Whatever it is, it’s sealed in a tube, and it can’t be opened. Or it can be, by someone who’d know how, but I also know that if it is what I think it is, opening it could make it rot immediately.”
“Well, not immediately. It lasted for nearly two thousand years without rotting—until it hit that bank vault.”
“True. But I don’t want to take that responsibility on my own.”
“If I open it for you, I must be the one who interprets it.”
“Of course. But there’s also a practical side to this, Father. I need to sell it on behalf of my friend. I don’t want to go into the specifics over the phone, but you know me well enough to know I wouldn’t do anything illegal.” Dead silence on the other end.
“Geez. You think…” I added, trying to spur him along.
“I don’t think anything,” he said, cutting me off. “But if it’s what you say it is, I know of a buyer who’d pay handsomely.”
“My friend is looking for ten million dollars, nonnegotiable.”
“Let me get back to you on that. But are you sure your friend is willing to part with the relic?”
“He already has.”
“Meaning—what? That you have it?”
I didn’t answer.
He knew the answer by my silence. “Is it in a safe place?” he asked, somewhat panicked.
“Of course. Safer than a safety-deposit box, that’s for sure. That’s exactly where it sat rotting away for decades. All rotted, except for … well, what was stolen.”
“Or so you assume. You told me it’s sealed in a tube of some kind. That would be the proper storage, I believe, but in fact, you don’t even know if the tube is empty.”
I hadn’t even given that possibility any thought. What if?
He went on as though he hadn’t given me new food for thought: “Where did you store it, may I ask?” he said calmly. “This is too valuable a find to be sitting around in your home or somewhere foolish like that.”
He could tell by my silence that yes, it was in my home.
“You need to get it to me. In Israel.”
“In Israel? I can’t just drop everything and take off for Israel. I have a baby, you know.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“You did?”
“I did.”
“You heard I’d had a baby—while you were in Israel?” I asked incredulously.
“I assure you I am well informed.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said, parroting his smugness.
“I merely want to keep the relic safe forever, if it is what you say it is.”
“We both know you’re talking about the Vatican, so why not cut right to the chase, Father? But can’t you come here?”
“My health is not what it should be,” he answered. “My heart condition has worsened and I’m under a doctor’s care here. I’m not supposed to travel for another month. At least.”
I figured he was lying to get me to come to him, but how do you say that to an octogenarian priest? “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said instead. We knew each other well enough to know how to play the game. Then, “Can you hold on a second, Father? It’s getting very cold in here and I have to put on the heat.” My teeth were actually chattering. When I went to turn up the thermostat in Terry’s room, once again, I found the window was opened. What the hell? I’d shut it tight and relocked the club window guard thing. Terry slept through it all.
Who the hell had opened Terry’s window?
; I picked the cell back up. “I have to get back to you on all that. See, my sitter has taken off for Guiana and I’m here alone with the baby.”
“Bring him.”
“I don’t think so.” When did he turn into Father Mary Poppins?
“I’d like to see the boy. Even though he’s the son of…” he started.
“I’ll get back to you, OK?” I ventured, reaching for a sweatshirt.
Damn it’s cold!
He didn’t respond so I continued, “Lemme see what I can do.”
“You do that,” he finally said.
What could I do, really? My parents were due back in a couple of weeks. But could a find like this wait that long?
Answer: Absolutely not. Nor was taking Terry a possibility. He didn’t even have a baby passport. There were just so many things to think about that you never think about before you become a parent. A single parent.
My next call was to the super in my building.
Question: How could they have installed such an important item as a child safety lock that didn’t lock properly?
He ran right up, panicked, waking Terry in the process.
Answer: These locks are foolproof and break-proof and most definitely childproof. There was nothing wrong with the lock.
If it couldn’t open on its own, then how in hell did it keep opening on its own?
The super decided the best way to prove it was the way men have been proving things since caveman days: gaffer’s tape. He secured the lock with the fix-everything tape, then sealed the window sides, bottom, and top with more of it.
“If that comes off, missus, you either got one helluva strong baby or you got a ghost.” He laughed. Funny guy. I gave him a ten for his efforts and made a mental note to call the housing authority if it happened again. It was the law, after all, that child safety locks must lock, for Christ’s sake!
As I was changing Terry, the doorbell rang again. I ignored it. The super would just have to come back. It rang again.