Alaric set off at a run, crossing 8th Avenue as the light was changing, picking up speed as he headed east on 24th Street and people stepped aside. How much time did he have? Alaric, Animus had dubbed him, Alaric for wings. Above the gross earthly fray. Only where were his wings now, possibly in the final moments of the lurching cabs and jackhammers and panhandlers populating a Chelsea forever transformed in a world burnished new? He ran harder, his open jacket flapping behind him, dodging a red double-decker tour bus. “Come see!” he yelled, dashing by the stares, his laughter freed from years inside him. “Come see!” Alaric whirled, halfway across Sixth Avenue, rocketing so hard around the corner toward 23rd Street that he nearly fell, saved by his hands pushing off against the grimy sidewalk.
And there it was, the blue and gold flag softly twitching in the April breeze over the chapel of Robus Christi. He was gasping as he tripped up the steps to the front entrance, shaking uncontrollably as he pulled out the key Animus had presented to him as a tremendous honor. The only spare, Alaric. It was a sign of complete trust. And he had thought fleetingly of the parish priest back on the Ohio River who had taken him in, trusting the boy to be honest, trusting the boy who had fled the double-wide not to pry or steal. “Father, forgive me,” Alaric heard the sob catch in his own voice and he let himself into the sacred chapel, “for I have come. Let me share in the moment.” And he wanted to add that he had suffered so much, but he wiped his eyes as he strode down the short aisle, taking in the tall steady pillar candles. It was all his eyes could see as they accustomed to the dim light.
And then he saw it.
And he couldn’t from any cell of his brain make sense of it.
He stopped in his tracks, staring.
The lance, the nails, arranged in a strange tableau.
“Animus?” he choked.
On the dais, in front of the altar, lay the figure of the emaciated Guy Everett. Clothed in a loincloth. Alaric stepped closer. “Animus?” Louder this time. As leaned over, he took in the Crown of Thorns on the visionary’s still head, the Crown that Alaric had stolen. The barbs were rammed into the skin, leaving little pinpoints of blood. Because there was no more blood to flow. Alaric narrowed his eyes. He was looking at a corpse.
What could any of it be except plain and pathetic?
Pietà for one? Was that it?
Wiping a trembling hand across his mouth, he needed to think. Stepped away from the strange, absurd scene. But he couldn’t. He was confronted with the heavy blue velvet drapes of Robus Christi that ran along the back of the dais. Was this, then, what he had spent the last seven years preparing for? This…colossal error? Where was the resurrection? The test case for the life everlasting Animus had divulged from the prophecy he let no one else actually see? Alaric paced. Where was the altered world where lion shall lie down with lamb? Where mankind emerges divine in a world free of suffering and death?
Alaric stopped in front of the corpse as he stood there with helpless fists and anger erupted louder and more eternal than sex. With all his might, he kicked Everett’s corpse in the puny ribs, hollering his rage to the rafters of this useless place, more profane than a double-wide on a backwoods riverbank. And when he kicked him again, the Crown shifted and half-covered an unblinking gelatinous eye. There was no help for Alaric, who shrieked, whirling away toward the drapes he could only hope would smother him. Instead, he barreled into the standing pillar candles, burning low, waiting, like him, for endless flame, and Alaric made it happen.
His arms flung the candles against the drapes, there and there—and there—screaming until he was hoarse, the drapes going up in flames with a whoosh that reminded him of his soul all those years ago, first burning, and then burning out. He couldn’t watch it twice. Not twice. Stumbling away from the smoke and flames of the walls of the Robus Christi Chapel, Alaric nearly fell off the dais, then turned. Then fled.
31
Several things happened after Val left Killian outside Old Town Bar, but not before his thumb lightly traced the outer curve of her right breast. She headed uptown, barely mindful of traffic, and when she came to her senses her palms and forehead were pressed against the cool glass of a Macy’s window. How long had she been standing there? She checked the time: just past six thirty. And Killian was coming at eight. Val climbed into a cab, where she clicked off the TV and sank back into the seat that smelled vaguely like leather cleaner. The cab was the closest she could get to a sensory deprivation chamber. She gave the driver her address as his watchful dark eyes studied her in the rearview mirror. When she pulled out her phone to call Cleary, it rang. Aunt Greta. She took the call.
“I’m watching a church go up in smoke,” her aunt told her.
“What?”
“46 Gramercy Park West. Wasn’t that where you went after we met at the Morgan?”
Guy Everett’s home was number 44. “No,” said Val slowly. “I was next door. What’s happening?”
Rapidly Greta filled her in. “FDNY’s still trying to get it under control. Lots of old wood, and it’s gone up like a tinderbox.”
Val could picture the flag, in blue and gold, rippling right out front. R.C. “I think Everett owns it, Aunt Greta. I think both buildings belong to him.”
“Well,” drawled her aunt, “let’s hope he’s not the one they pulled out of there.”
“Dead?”
“Unrecognizable.” Then for a moment Greta sounded distracted. “If it’s Everett, I’d say the trail’s gone cold, in terms of Saul’s fragment, but it’s a bad choice of words.” Then she added: “We’ll know more later. Some people are descending on the site, distraught.”
Val made the quick decision that she’d leave her aunt out of whatever the evening ahead—hell, the hour ahead—held. She had something else in mind for the head of the Artifact Authentication Agency. “Auntie, I’m sending you some photos.”
Her aunt’s voice dropped. “Yes?”
“Show them around the crowd at the fire, okay? Let me know if anybody recognizes the guy.”
“Why? What are you on to?”
“Adrian’s killer.” As the cab pulled over to the curb, Val slid cash into the tray, waved off a receipt, and added to her aunt, “Ask those few distraught people at the scene. I’ve got to go.” With that, Val thanked the driver, ended the call, and slid out of the cab. Barely eyeing her building, she loped around the corner to Second Avenue and headed two blocks down to Le Pain Quotidien, as the rain started heavily. Inside the doors to the rustic bakery café, she called Lieutenant Cleary, who picked up before it went to voicemail. To her credit, Cleary listened without interruption while Val laid out what she had in terms of James Killian, the tattoo, the disturbing overlap with Adrian Bale in a village in Norfolk, the beer book, the beer.
“Where’s this guy now?” said Cleary.
“That’s just it. He’s never told me where he’s staying, but,” she scratched her cheek with sudden inspiration, “we’ve texted—can you get his location off that somehow?”
Cleary grunted. “What’s your number, Cameron?”
Val gave it to her. “Look,” she said, getting to the immediate dirty heart of it, “he’s coming over to my place—”
“He what? What the hell…”
“It was the only way I could guarantee he’d show up. Otherwise, if he gets the wind up, Cleary, he’ll bolt, and I don’t think you’ll ever find him, do you hear me?” Her heart was pounding as she stepped inside the café and moved to the bakery shelves. Val pressed her quietly, “Can you get over here, Cleary?”
“You don’t even know this is the guy.”
“I’m working on it. I’ll call you as soon as I know, all right?”
“I can detain him on reasonable suspicion, Cameron,” Cleary told her, her voice going high and wide, “but I hate reasonable suspicion.”
“Killian’s going to show up here with or without a po
sitive ID in—”
Cleary wasn’t done. “Reasonable suspicion is for assholes.”
“—sixty-five minutes.” The truth of it liquefied half of Val’s muscles.
A beat. “Call me, you hear me, Cameron? In the meantime, here’s what I’ll do.” And while Val mimed a cup of coffee to the counter clerk, Cleary said it had the earmarks of a classic sting operation. “I can put Horowitz, good man, bit of a cowboy, outside the building as a homeless vet.”
“Okay.”
“And I can replace the doorman with Chavez, loves undercover, fearless, you’ll know him by the nose prosthesis. Me, well,” the lieutenant spun the idea, “pumps, pearls, fake-hailing a cab. Sound like a plan?”
“Yes, yes, it’s good.”
“Best I can do on short notice. Don’t make me look like a moron here,” she warned. “With pearls, I’m already halfway there, you know what I’m saying? Meanwhile I’ll run your number and see if we can get his location.”
Meanwhile? There was hardly any meanwhile at all. Meanwhile meant ambling up Fifth Avenue with a soft pretzel, meanwhile meant browsing perfumes at Bloomingdale’s, meanwhile meant the guy you date before the really good one comes along. When Val said, “Just get here, Cleary,” her voice sounded very small. Not even good coffee could help. It took her a second to realize Cleary had hung up. She sipped, because she didn’t know quite what else to do, heading to the back section of the café, past the customers at the long communal table in the center of the place. Past people done with their workday who were after a good, quick bite to eat. When her phone rang and she realized it was Bale, she spilled some coffee as she fumbled to answer.
“Antony?”
His voice was tight. “Where are you, Val?”
“Le Pain Quotidien on Second Avenue.” She stood very still. “Tell me.”
“Melanie Ruskin made a positive ID.”
That’s Fintan’s guy, said Melanie, who had fortunately been sound asleep in her bed at the home of the fine Norfolk family she’d been assigned. Not out in a tent in a field somewhere. It was the middle of the night when Bale had roused Brother Martin and given him the job of finding the American girl with the pink Vespa. That’s Fintan’s guy all right, she had repeated. And Fintan’s guy had killed him. The boy had been recruited somehow to steal the Crown of Thorns from Burnham Norton Abbey, and when he bungled it all so spectacularly, his panic made him a loose-lipped liability and he had been killed. Then Killian had followed the trail of the Crown to New York, where he had killed Adrian Bale to secure it.
“I’m on my way.” Then: “Val?”
“I hear you. No, don’t come. He’ll see you and take off.”
“Val, he doesn’t know me.”
“Right. That’s right.”
“Tell me where I can find you.” The agreed to meet across the street from her building, and just around the corner on Second Avenue, then ended the call. Val waited out the rain in Le Pain Quotidien, pacing, clutching her phone as though it contained all the secrets of the universe plus a few useful weapons. By 7:41, she had edged to the corner building, out of the rain under their awning. Peering around the corner, she spotted a woman with jet black hair that hung to her shoulders, a wide-brimmed green rain hat, pumps and pearls stepping off the curb outside Val’s building to hail a yellow cab. One, a Toyota Highlander, slowly rolled down Second and eased its way onto 51st, its roof light off. Occupied. Cleary stepped back. Sitting up against the building itself was the promised cowboy Horowitz, dressed in shabby gray fatigues and fingerless gloves, holding a ragged cardboard sign Val couldn’t read from her angle. Fake doorman Chavez must be inside the building. How long had they been in place?
As eight o’clock got closer, Val’s heart started to pound. She had been standing unmoving against the corner building for seven minutes when she noticed the Toyota Highlander yellow cab come rolling slowly down Second again. As it eased its way onto 51st—again—Val stepped out just far enough to see it pass Cleary in her pumps and pearls, her arm raised with no cab in sight. The light on the Highlander was still off.
An odd dread settled in that Val couldn’t explain. Suddenly her phone rang.
James Killian showed up on her screen in the dusky light.
Something had gone wrong.
She answered the call, marveling at how normal she sounded. “Hey.”
“What’s going on?”
Val glanced across Second Avenue at absolutely nothing at all. Why would he ask what’s going on? The question terrified her. Somehow he had made the set-up with Cleary and the other undercover cops. They were screwed. “Where are you, James? Is eight still good?”
“I’m close.” He told her. “What’s going on?”
Where was he? All in that moment Val knew for sure was that if she bungled this call they would lose him forever. Everything was suddenly just that clear. She stepped away from the building and tried to look as relaxed and inviting as she possibly could. “Where are you?” she repeated, making an obvious show of looking up and down the street, delighted by his game. “James,” she laughed ruefully, “have you found me out?”
His words came fast and slurred. “I got here early, rang your buzzer but nothing. You were out and I didn’t know what to do. Maybe you forgot, so I got in a cab. Kept circling the block, waiting for you to show up. Waiting to—”
“Listen, if tonight’s not good for you…” She gave him a dose of disappointment. Where was Bale? How could she get Cleary’s attention? And then Val knew: she couldn’t. If it was Killian in the Highlander cab, Val was the only one who knew, and now the only hope the plan could still work was for her to go solo.
He blurted, “And then I saw you. What are you doing hiding around the corner? What’s going on?” His voice rose, and he sounded very young.
“Oh, shit, James—” she saw the Highlander heading toward her down Second, but then glanced away quickly “—you did find me out.” With that, she let her shoulders slump as she did a slow 360, half-expecting to catch sight of him walking toward her with his sexy swagger. Her smile was wide. “I’ve just been waiting to get the drop on you when you show up at eight. Why do you think I was so specific about the time?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I had some idea about coming right up behind you, so close I’d stop you right in your tracks.” Silence on the other end. “Silly, I know. But, look, it sounds like you’ve had a rough day.” She made a show of scuffing her shoe at nothing on the sidewalk. “You can take a rain check.”
“No!” he cried. “I’m almost there. I’ll be there.” When he added, mumbling, “Thanks for planning a surprise for me,” her stomach twisted.
At that moment Val realized that she couldn’t meet Killian out on the street. He knew exactly where she was standing, but she had to stick to Cleary’s plan and get him to head into her apartment building. “I’m getting soaked,” she managed a little laugh. I’ll wait for you inside, James.” Before he could respond, she ended the call, running lightly across 51st toward the entrance to her building. For the few seconds she was safely out of sight of the Toyota Highlander, before it rounded the corner, she jogged right past Cleary, telling her in a tight voice, “He’s here. He’s in the Highlander cab.” Cleary shot her a grim look and gave Horowitz a hand signal.
Val flung herself into the dry safety of her lobby, and turned to face the street. On her phone, 7:53.
When a different yellow cab pulled over for Cleary, she waved him on with what looked like some angry words, and when the driver pulled away, she raised her arm to hail another. It turned out to be the cruising Toyota Highlander as it pulled slowly past Val’s building, stopping in front of the French restaurant across the street. Cleary turned her hailing attentions in that direction. Slowly, the door opened and the passenger in the backseat paid the driver, then stepped out. As he stood up and scrutinize
d the street, Val took a step back.
Killian.
As he turned to face the building, patting the cab to take off, Val thought he looked like hell. Dirty, sooty, shaken. His mouth was hanging open as though he was struggling for air, and as he took a step to cross the street to Val’s place, he stumbled and had to catch himself from falling by twisting toward a double parked BMW. The swagger was gone, the cockiness was gone, and to Val it looked like it was all the guy could do to stand up straight. Yet, here he was. Whatever had happened to him, whatever he had done, James Killian had come to Val’s. In that instant she felt a profound pity.
As James Killian made it across a Manhattan side street in a rain that might as well be a flash flood in a New Mexico canyon, Cleary and Horowitz set upon him. Out of Val’s lobby barreled Chavez, sidearm drawn, and Val, suddenly completely unafraid, followed him. Cleary and Horowitz were shouting over each other, and when Killian began to yell, pulling out of their grip despite the flashing badges, they spun him around, which was when he saw Val.
On his face was a look of sudden understanding. What followed were a string of inhuman sounds as Val drew within ten feet of him, then stopped. Horowitz was yelling “fuck” over and over and Cleary, whose pearls broke when Killian had torn at them, was slapping handcuffs on him with grim determination. “Goddamn grandmother’s goddamn pearls you motherfucker,” she cried, almost like it was a reason for the arrest. Killian’s face was wild, his neck muscles straining as he tried to pull away and tried to make his life something different from what it was, and for a second, he stilled, and looked directly at Val, and in that instant she knew she would never be able to explain for as long as she lived, she felt she was looking at the stricken eyes of an eleven-year-old boy.
A Killer's Guide to Good Works Page 23