F Paul Wilson - Novel 03 (7 page)

           
 
Charlie came by one day to thank him. He said
he remembered being attacked by the three punks, but little else. Emilio found
the boy very shy-—he must have needed a tankful of tequila to work up the
courage to walk into The Blue Senorita—and completely normal in most ways. As
the years went on, Emilio actually grew fond of Charlie. Strange, because
Emilio had always hated
maricones.
In
truth, Charlie was the only one Emilio had ever really known. But he liked the
boy. Maybe because there was nothing swishy about him. In fact, no one in
security, or anywhere else in CrenSoft, seemed to have the vaguest notion that
Charlie was a
maricon.

           
Which was probably why the father
called on Emilio to find Charlie the next time he ran off. Each time Emilio
brought the boy back, the father offered him a bonus, and each time he refused.
Emilio was waiting for a bigger payoff.

           
 
That came when the father sold his company.
The entire staff, including security, went with the deal. All except Emilio.
Mr. Crenshaw took Emilio with him when he built his mansion into a cliff
overlooking the Pacific between
Carmel
and Big
Sur.
He put Emilio in charge of security during
the construction, and when it was finished, he kept him on as head of security
for the entire estate. The
senador
called
the place Paraiso. The papers, the architectural magazines, and the TV
reporters compared Paraiso to San Simeon, and people from all over the world
came to gawk at it. It was Emilio's job to keep them out. He was aided in the
task by the fact that access was limited to a single road which wound through
rough terrain and across a narrow, one-car bridge spanning a deep ravine with a
swift-flowing stream at its base.

           
 
After Mr. Crenshaw became Senator Crenshaw,
Emilio often shuttled between
Washington
and
California
on the Crenshaw jet. And now he was
shuttling down the West Side of Manhattan in a stretch limo.

           
 
Life was good on the fast track.

           
 
Emilio hadn't wasted his spare time during the
past ten years. He'd gone to night school to improve his English and his
reading. And he'd kept in shape. He'd sworn off the steroids but kept working
out. The result was a slimmer, meaner frame, with smaller but denser muscles.
At forty-one he was faster and stronger than he'd been in his halcyon days at
The Blue Senorita. And this Dog Collar place might be a little like his old
stomping grounds . . . and he did mean
stomping.

           
He popped his knuckles. He almost
hoped somebody got in his way when he picked up Charlie.

           
"It's up here on the left,"
Fred said.

           
 
But Emilio was watching to the right. On the
near side of
West Street
, near the water, a group of young men dressed in everything from
leather pants to off-the-shoulder blouses were drinking beer and prancing
around. Every so often a car would stop and one of them would swish over and
speak to the driver. Sometimes the car would pull away as it had arrived, and
sometimes the young man would get in and be whisked off for a rolling quicky.

           
 
Fred did a U-turn and pulled up in front of
The Dog Collar. As Emilio stepped out, Decker and Molinari appeared from the
shadows. Decker was fair, Molinari was almost as dark as Emilio. They were his
two best men from the Paraiso security force.

           
 
"He's still there. Want us to—?"

           
 
"I'll get him," Emilio said.
"You two watch my back." He pulled out a pair of plain, black leather
gloves. "And be sure to wear your gloves. You don't want to split a
knuckle in this place."

           
They smiled warily and pulled on
their gloves as they followed Emilio inside.

           
 
"He's wearing a red parka," Decker
said as he and Mol flanked the door.

           
 
Crowded inside, and dark. So dark Emilio had
to remove his shades. He scanned the bar that stretched along the wall to his
right. No women—not that he'd expected any—and no red parka. He met some frank,
inviting stares, but no sign of Charlie. He checked out the floor—crowded with
cocktail tables, a row of booths along the far wall, and an empty stage at the
rear. Slim waiters with boyish haircuts and neat little mustaches slipped back
and forth among the tables with drinks and bar food. Emilio spotted two women—
together, of course—but where was Charlie?

           
 
He edged his way through the tables, searching
the faces. No red parka. Maybe he'd taken it off. Who knew what Charlie might
look like these days—the color of his hair, what he'd be wearing? One thing
Emilio had to say for the boy, he was discreet. He wasn't deliberately trying
to ruin his father's political chances. He usually rented a place under an
assumed name, never told any of his rotating lovers who he was, and generally
kept a low profile. But nonetheless he remained a monster political liability.

           
 
Maybe that was why the
senador
had decided it was time to reel Charlie in. He'd been gone
for almost two years now. Emilio had tracked him to
New York
through the transfers from his trust fund.
He'd traced him across the country but now he couldn't spot him across this
single room. Had he made Decker and slipped out the back?

           
 
Emilio was about to return to the door to quiz
Decker when he saw a flash of red in the rearmost booth and homed in on it like
a beacon. Two guys in the booth—the one holding the parka had his back to him.
Emilio repressed a gasp when he saw his face. It was Charlie. The curly brown
hair was the same, as were the blue eyes, but he looked so thin. Emilio barely
recognized the boy.

           
 
Why do I still think of him as a boy? he
wondered. He's twenty-five.

           
 
Perhaps it was because part of his brain would
always associate Charlie with the pudgy teenager he'd carried out of that
Tijuana
alley.

           
 
Charlie looked up at Emilio with wide blue
eyes that widened further when he recognized him.

           
 
"Oh, shit," Charlie said. "You
found me."

           
 
"Time to go home, Charlie."

           
 
"Let me be, Emilio. I'm settled in here.
I'm not bothering anybody. I'm actually
happy
here. Just tell Dad you couldn't find me."

           
 
"That would be lying, Charlie. And I
never lie . . . to your dad."

           
 
He grabbed the boy under his right arm and
began to pull him from his seat. Charlie tried to wriggle free but it was like
a
Chihuahua
resisting a pit bull.

           
 
The guy in the other half of the booth stood
up and gave Emilio a two-handed shove.

           
 
"Get your mitts off him, fucker!"

           
He was beefier than Charlie, with
decent pects and a good set of shoulders under the T-shirt and leather vest he
wore, but he was out of his league. Way out.

           
 
 
“No
me
jodas!"
Emilio said and smashed a right uppercut to his jaw that
slammed him back into the inner corner of the booth. He slumped there and
stared up at Emilio with a look of dazed pain.

           
 
Emilio turned and started dragging Charlie
toward the door, knocking over tables in his way. He didn't want a full-scale
brawl but he wouldn't have minded another
maricon
or two trying to block his way. But most of them seemed too surprised and
off guard to react. Too bad. He was in the mood to kick some ass. He saw the
bartender come out from behind the bar hefting an aluminum baseball bat. Decker
and Mol intercepted him, and after a brief struggle Mol was holding the bat and
the bartender was back behind the bar.

           
 
Once he was free of the tables, Emilio swung
the stumbling Charlie around in front of him and propelled him toward the door.
Decker and Mol closed in behind them as they exited. Emilio heard the bat clank
on the floor as the doors swung closed. Half a dozen steps across the sidewalk
and then they were all inside the limo, heading uptown.

           
 
Charlie opened the door on the other side but
Emilio pulled him back before he could jump out.

           
 
"You'll get killed that way, kid."

           
 
"I don't care!" Charlie said.
"Dammit, Emilio, you can't do this! It's kidnapping!"

           
 
"Just following orders. Your father
misses you."

           
 
"Yeah. Sure."

           
 
Charlie folded his arms and legs and withdrew
into himself. He spent the rest of the trip staring at the floor.

           
 
Emilio kept a close eye on him. He didn't want
him trying to jump out of the car again—although that might be a blessing for
all concerned.

           
 
He sighed. Why did the
senador
want this miserable creature around? He seemed to love the
boy despite the threat posed by his twisted nature. Was that parenthood? Was
that what fathering a child did to you? Made you lose your perspective? Emilio
was glad he'd spared himself the affliction. But if he'd had a child, a boy,
he'd never have let him grow up to be a
maricon.
He would have beaten that out of him at an early age.

           
 
What if Charlie did die by leaping from a
moving vehicle? Or what if he fell prey to a hit-and-run driver? A major
stumbling block on the
senador's
road
to the White House would be removed.

           
 
Emilio decided to start keeping a mental file
of "accidental" ways for Charlie to die should the need suddenly
arise. The
senador
would never order
it, but if the need ever arose, Emilio might decide to act on his own.

           
I
was two decades and a half in the desert when they came to me. How they found
me, I do not know. Perhaps the Lord guided them. Perhaps they followed the reek
of my corruption.

           
 
They
too were in flight, hiding from the Romans and their lackeys in the
Temple
.
The brother of He whose name I deserve not to speak led them. They were awed by
my appearance, and I by theirs. Barely did I recognize them, so exhausted were
they by their trek.

           
 
I was
astounded to learn that they had brought the Mother with them.

           
 
FROM THE GLASS SCROLL

           
 
ROCKEFELLER MUSEUM TRANSLATION

           
 
Father Dan Fitzpatrick strolled the narrow
streets of his
Lower
East Side
parish
and drank in the colors flowing around him. Sure there was squalor here, and
poverty and crime, all awash in litter and graffiti, but there was
color
here. Not like the high-rise
midtown he'd visited last night, with its sterile concrete-and-marble plazas,
its faceless glass-and-granite office towers.

           
 
A mere forty blocks from the Waldorf, the
Lower East Side
might as well be another country. No
skyscrapers here. Except for aberrations like the Con-Ed station's quartet of
stacks and the dreary housing projects, the
Lower East Side
skyline rises to a uniform six stories.
Window-studded facades of cracked and patched brick crowd together cheek by
jowl for block after block, separated occasionally by a garbage-choked alley.
They're all brick of varying shades of red, sometimes brown or gray, and every
so often a daring pink or yellow or blue. With no room behind or to either
side, a mazework of mandatory fire escapes hangs over the sidewalks, clinging
to the brick facades like spidery steel parasites, ready-made perches for the
city's winged rat, the pigeon.

           
 
Everywhere Dan looked, everything was old,
with no attempt to recapture youth. Graffiti formed the decorative motif, layer
upon layer until the intertwined snake squiggles and balloon letters were
indecipherable even to their perpetrators. The store signs he could read
advertised old bedding, fresh vegetables, used furniture, and the morning
paper, offered food, candy, magazines, cashed checks, and booze, booze, booze.
And some signs he couldn't read— Koreans and Vietnamese were moving in. He
passed pawnshops, bodegas, boys' clubs, schools, churches, and playgrounds.
Children still played, even here.

           
 
He looked up at the passing windows. Behind
them lived young, hopeful immigrants on their way up, middle-aged has-beens on
their way down, and too many running like hell just to stay in place. And out
here on the streets dwelt the never-weres and the never-will-bes, going nowhere,
barely even sure of where they were at any given moment.

           
 
He wore his civvies this morning—faded jeans,
flannel shirt, sneakers. He wasn't here on Church business and it was easier to
get around without the Roman collar. Especially in
Tompkins Square
. The collar drew the panhandlers like moths
to a flame. And can you believe it—every single one of them a former altar boy?
Simply amazing how many altar boys had become homeless.

           
 
Tompkins
Square
Park
was big, three blocks long and running the
full width between Avenues A and B. Black wrought-iron fencing guarded the
perimeter. Oaks, pale green with new life, stood inside the fences but spread
their branches protectively over the surrounding sidewalks. Homeless
shantytowns used to spring up here every so often, and just as often the police
would raze them, but closing the park between
midnight
and
six A.M.
every night had sent the cardboard box
brigade elsewhere.

           
 
Dan walked past the stately statue of Samuel
S. Cox, its gray-green drabness accentuated by the orange, red, and yellow of
the swings and slides in the nearby playground, and strolled the bench-lined
walks, searching for the gleaming white of Harold Gold's bald head. They'd met
years ago when Dan had audited Hal's course on the
Dead Sea
scrolls. They'd got to talking after class,
found they shared an abiding interest in the
Jerusalem
Church
—Hal from the Jewish perspective, Dan from
the Christian—and became fast friends. Whenever one dug up a tasty little
tidbit of lore, he shared it immediately with the other. Dan was sure Hal had
picked up some real goodies during his sabbatical in
Israel
. He was looking forward to this meeting.

           
 
He didn't see Hal. Lunch hour was still a
while off but already seats were becoming scarce around the square. Then Dan
spotted someone waving from a long bench in the sunny section on the Avenue A
side.

           
 
No wonder I couldn't spot him, Dan thought as
he approached Hal's bench. He's got a tan.

           
 
As usual, Hal was nattily dressed in a dark
blue blazer, gray slacks, a pale blue
Oxford
button-down shirt, and a red-and-blue
paisley tie. But his customary academician's pallor had been toasted to a
golden brown. His nude scalp gleamed with a richer color. He looked healthier
and better rested than Dan had ever seen him.

           
 
"The
Middle East
seems to agree with you," Dan said,
laughing as they shook hands. He sat down next to him. "1 can't remember
ever seeing you looking so fit."

           
 
"Believe me, Fitz," Hal said,
"getting away for a year and recharging the batteries does wonders for the
mind and body. I heartily recommend it." He looked around. "You came
alone?"

           
 
"Of course. Who else would I bring?"
Dan said, knowing perfectly well who Hal was looking for.

           
 
"I don't know. I thought, well, maybe
Sister Carrie might come along."

           
 
"No. She's back at St. Joe's, working.
You'll have to come by if you want to see her."

           
 
"Maybe I will. Been a long time since I
stopped in."

           
 
Dan knew Hal had a crush on Carrie. A strictly
hands-off, love-from-afar thing that reduced him to a stumbling, stammering
twelve-year-old around her. But he wasn't alone. Everybody loved Sister Carrie.

           
 
"Do that. And bring some food. A long
time since you made a contribution."

           
 
Just then an eighth of a ton of black woman in
a frayed yellow dress lumbered up and spread a large green garbage bag on the
bench. She seated herself so close to Dan that one of her massive thighs rubbed
against his. He smiled at her and inched away to give her some room as she
settled herself.

           
 
Hal clapped Dan on the shoulder. "Saw you
on TV last night, Fitz."

           
 
"Did you. How was I?"

           
 
"You sounded good. I thought you came off
very well."

           
 
You wouldn't think so if you'd been there, Dan
thought.

           
 
. . .
you
just ain't getting it done . . .

           
 
His herd at his heels, he'd slunk back to St.
Joe's with his tail between his legs. At least that was the way it had felt.
The on-camera interview Hal had seen had been taped during the fund-raising
dinner, while he and the demonstrators were all waiting for Senator Crenshaw to
come out. After the senator's exit—after he'd been sliced and diced— Dan had
fielded a few questions from reporters but his answers weren't as sharp as they
might have been. They'd seemed almost . . . empty.

           
 
But perhaps that was just his own perception.
Everyone he'd seen so far today had told him he and the protesters had come
across extremely well on the tube. Dan would have to take their word for it.
He'd lacked the nerve to tune in last night.

           
 
Luckily, no one seemed to have caught Senator
Crenshaw's little diatribe on tape. Dan knew the wounded part of him within
would shrivel up and die if he had listen to that again.

           
 
"What the—?"

           
 
Hal's voice jolted Dan back to the here and
now. He glanced up and saw Hal staring past him in horrified fascination at the
fat black woman. She'd removed the mirrored half of a compact and a pair of
tweezers from her huge purse and was now plucking at her face. Dan couldn't see
anything to pluck at but that didn't seem to deter the woman. She was
completely engrossed in the task.

           
 
Hal shook himself. "Anyway, seeing you
reminded me that I had a present for you."

           
 
He picked up a football-sized box from the bag
between his feet and placed it in Dan's hands.

           
 
"What's this?"

           
 
"A gift. From the past . . . sort
of."

           
 
Dan hadn't expected a gift, though God knew
his spirits needed lifting after last night.

           
 
"Well, don't just stare at it. Open
it."

           
 
No ribbon or wrapping to remove, just a plain,
oblong wooden box. Dan lifted the lid and stared.

           
 
"What . . . ?"

           
 
"Your own
Dead Sea
scroll," Harold said.

           
 
Dan glanced at his friend. He knew Harold was
kidding, but this thing looked so damned . . . real.

           
 
"No, really. What is it?"

           
 
Harold launched into the explanation. A
fascinating story, during which a pair of thin, dark-haired, mustached men seated
themselves on the far side of the black woman; each began drinking his lunch
from a brown paper bag. Dan listened to Hal and sensed the mixture of
excitement and disappointment in his voice. When he finished, Dan looked down
at the loosely rolled parchment in the box on his lap.

           
 
"So, you're giving me a first-century
parchment filled with twentieth century scribbles."

           
 
"Damn near
twenty-first
century scribbles. An oddity. A collector's item in
its own right."

           
 
Dan continued to stare at the ancient roll of
sheepskin. He was moved.

           
 
"I. . . I don't know what to say, Hal.
I'll treasure this."

           
 
"Don't get carried away—"

           
 
"No, I mean it. If nothing else, the
parchment was made in the early days of the Church. It's a link of sorts. And
I'm touched that you thought of me."

           
 
"Who else do I know who's so nuts about
the first century?"

           
 
"You must have been crushed when you
found out."

           
 
Harold sighed.
"Crushed
isn't the word. We were all devastated. But I tell
you, Fitz, I wouldn't trade the high of the first few days with that scroll for
anything. It was the greatest!"

           
 
Just then a woman dressed in satin work-out
pants and a red sleeveless shell top walked over to the bench and stood on the
other side of Hal. She was middle-aged with a bulging abdomen. Dan noticed that
she wore red slipper-socks over red lace knee-highs. She'd finished off the
ensemble by wrapping Christmas paper around her ankles.

           
 
Hal looked down at her feet and said,
"Good Lord."

           
 
She smiled down at him. "Ain't blockin'
yer sun, am I?"

           
 
Hal shook his head. "No. That's quite all
right."

           
 
She then pulled a bottle of Ban deodorant from
her pocket and began to apply it to her right underarm—and only to her right
underarm. Dan and Hal watched her do this for what seemed like five minutes but
was probably only one. During the process she also managed to coat half of her
shoulder blade as well.