Final Sins (15 page)

Pulp Friction was a radical bookshop in Santa Monica, on the southern end of the outdoor mall called Third Street Promenade. Its inventory was a haphazard mix of new and used books, though the used ones went for full retail price, or more in the case of rare editions. Among the stacks were primitive carvings, faded Flower Power posters, erotic figurines, and other oddball ornaments picked up at garage sales.

Kitsch, Faust thought. A word in his native language that had made its way into American idiom.

There was also a cat, plump and glossy, lurking like a witch’s familiar. The cat was afraid of him. It kept its distance.

About fifty people had shown up for the book signing and his accompanying talk. The event had been mentioned in the newspaper and advertised at the store. He had expected a turnout of roughly this size. In Europe he would have had three times this many attendees. In parts of eastern Germany, the former Communist areas, he might have had five hundred people.

His admirers sat before him, arrayed in folding chairs. Most were young. Some of their faces he recognized from Cafe Eden. They were people he knew, at least in passing. Edward and Dieter were there, and Elise, of course. There was one girl who had pressed pages of poetry into his hand from time to time, her eyes yearning. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen—another Raven, but too closely linked to him for safety.

It would be interesting, though, to have a
willing
captive. A prisoner in the hidden room who wanted to be there, who savored the experience—all of it, even the final killing pressure of the strap around her neck.

The others were typical “fans,” mere dabblers. No one was well dressed except Faust and Elise. Even the shop’s proprietor had not dressed up. Faust frowned. The sloppiness of people today was a form of decadence.

He noted how many copies of his book the store had ordered—a nice stack. But it was the paperback. This annoyed him; the hardcover was still in print, and he earned higher royalties from its sales.

The proprietor glanced at the clock on the wall, which read 7:15. She asked Faust if he would “say a few words.”

He nodded courteously, acknowledging his audience. He spoke without notes, having made no preparations. His tone was cordial, conversational. His sentences were perfectly parsed. Subordinate clauses did not confuse him; agreement of subject and verb never slipped him up. He could speak better than most politicians—certainly better than most American politicians. But his calling was a higher one than public service. He culled the herd.

“Good evening, all,” he began. “I thank you very much for coming. I may say that while I am flattered by your attention, I do not merit it. There is nothing exceptional about me. I am not the world-historical hero of Hegel’s fantasies. I am neither the way, nor the truth, nor the life, and no one comes to the Father through me. Not that I believe in the Father, of course. I believe in nothing except myself. In this I am the opposite of most men, who believe in everything except themselves.”

He saw smiles around him.

“My only noteworthy quality is unflinching honesty. I do not shrink from truths. I do not comfort myself with lies. I do not prattle about virtue. Good and evil do not exist. Good is what works. Evil is what fails. That is all. The rest is mere rationalization. Were we living in biblical times I might put it another way. Having come down from the mountain, I would say to my flock, ‘This is the whole of the law: Do what thou wilt.’ Or to paraphrase the words of a later prophet, ‘If a man smites thee on the right cheek—smash him on his left.’”

The audience tittered, and the poetry girl applauded briefly but with fierce intensity.

“Please do not misunderstand me. I am far from comparing myself to Christ. This would be an insult—to my dignity, at least, if not to his.” The line, one of his standard tropes, got a laugh, as it always did. “It has been said that the antipodes of history are Caesar and Christ. If this is so, permit me to ally myself unreservedly with Caesar. Caesar was a
man
. It is to him that we should pay homage, not to some prattling carpenter with a Jehovah complex.”

More laughter, flowing easily now.

“Old Pilate was correct to crown that fool with thorns. He has been a thorn in the side of real men, men like Pilate himself, and Caesar, ever since. We are told that Christ influenced history more than any other figure, and perhaps this is so. But was his influence benign or malignant? This is the question. You know my answer. I do not stand here blushing delicately and reciting homilies about the blessedness of the meek and the weak. Indeed the modern outlook has been a blessing for only the meek. They have inherited the earth, as prophesied, and look what they have made of it. The milk of human kindness is poor nourishment. Give me blood. Blood is life, and our hearts know it, even if our priests do not.

“Unlike Job—and Handel—I know that no redeemer
liveth
. I do not grovel before deities. I demand that deities pay obeisance to me. I do not suffer guilt or shame. I practice all sins, and I revel in them. I do not want a world of love. I want hatred. Hatred is something pure and powerful, intoxicating, exhilarating. I worship nothing but myself, and I issue no commandments except one: Hate thy neighbor. Taste his blood.”

He went on, letting the words bubble up from some deep well of eloquence. His talent at moving a crowd was one that had surprised him when he finally discovered it. Despite his childhood encounter with the wolf, it had taken him years to realize his calling.

He had never seriously entertained the prospect of a career. To work at a desk would be torture, worse than incarceration. He would quite literally have preferred to be buried alive. At least in a grave he would suffer no one’s company but his own.

His solution was to become an artist. As an artist he could be free. He need answer to no one. He need only follow his creative impulses wherever they led. To his chagrin he learned that they did not lead very far. People looked at his paintings and felt nothing. This was no great mystery. He felt nothing when he rendered them.

Occasionally he fell into a way of getting money. For a time he had been a kept man, the favorite pet of a lonely older woman. He had cared nothing for her, and she had cared nothing for him; their relationship was one of mutual convenience, an exchange of bodily fluids and gifts. This arrangement suited him to perfection. It ended only when the lady became bored.

On other occasions, he relied upon handouts from his coterie of admirers, the lost youths who gravitated toward him, drawn by his fundamental indifference. They were sad creatures who fretted endlessly over other people’s opinions of them. They had grown up seeking to please parents, teachers, pastors. In Faust they found a man who simply did not care about others. He was a god to them. They crowded around him, scrapping for his affection like puppies squabbling over teats. Some had money. He accepted many loans, none of which he repaid.

His life might have continued indefinitely in this vein, had he not been arrested, at the age of thirty-five, for the murder of Emily Wallace. His subsequent notoriety had ensured an endless stream of income.

Not that his celebrity was in any sense mainstream. He would never be pictured on a box of Wheaties or hired to tout American Express cards. His following was of a more select nature. He had more admirers in Europe than in the States. But then, the U.S. was still so puritanical, encumbered by religious traditions that refused to die. He was encouraged, however, by the predominance of young people among his fans. The newer generation, or the more sophisticated among them, had taken him to heart. These young people had rediscovered the ancient pagan wisdom that prized power over mercy. They were little
Neros
, young
Caligulas
, untouched by what the modern world called morality. They were both a throwback and a leap forward. The world had taken a long and circuitous detour these past two thousand years, but now it was again finding its way. And its way was death.

“My critics,” he was saying, “are forever trying to pigeonhole me, to classify me like some exotic species of protozoan, to tag and label me. But you see, I resist categorization. I am sui generis. I am
rara
avis
. And as I am speaking Latin, let me add:
Ecce homo
. Behold the man. Behold me.

“Of course they have labeled me the Werewolf. It is the one tag that has stuck. People inquire if I take offense at this nickname. I do not. The wolf is a most estimable creature. For centuries he terrorized the collective imagination of the European continent. He gave rise to lurid fairy stories and grotesque superstitions. He was often confounded with the devil—another unfairly maligned figure, I may add.

“The wolf embodies cunning, boldness, stealth, rapacity. He is an archetype of sexual aggression. What do
you
think he had in mind for Little Red Riding Hood? It was not only his ears and teeth that were noteworthy for their size, one may be sure. I like to think that in the unexpurgated version of the story, Little Red found out exactly how big the wolf was in
all
his parts.

“The wolf indeed represents lust, sexual hunger—hunger of all varieties, even the hunger for money that we call greed. He is always contrasted with the weak and the soft—those potbellied, pork-bellied Three Little Pigs, for instance. Who among us has not wished to hear those pigs squeal as the wolf’s jaws snap shut? I myself was always most disappointed in that fable’s outcome.

“The ancient Greeks had a word,
lussa
, meaning wolfish rage, the insane ferocity that takes possession of a man fighting for his life—a man on the battlefield, perhaps. The wolf has always been the favorite totem of warriors, the symbol of all the restless and reckless men who seek blood and conquest, men who will not be bound by society’s dictates. The wild men among us, the killers in our midst.

“And I am one of them. I am the wolf, and he is I. Although I did not choose the name, I could not have selected one better.”

They applauded him. Dieter, Edward, and the poetry girl rose to give him a standing ovation. Many others followed suit.

Faust accepted their adoration calmly. He was accustomed to it by now. He had more admirers all the time. The trend of history was turning in his favor. How many serial murderers had practiced their trade before, say, 1960? A bare handful in all of history. Yet since 1960 their numbers had swollen in a rising tide of mayhem. For a time the media could tell them apart only by assigning lurid nicknames—the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, the Werewolf. Now even nicknames were passé, all the good ones having been taken. There were too many killers to keep track of. And more of them all the time. Sociopaths everywhere. Conscience had become increasingly irrelevant. It was akin to the vermiform appendix: still in place, but no longer functional.

Men without conscience occupied corporate boardrooms, ran for high public office. Some wore uniforms and badges. Some were doctors, attorneys, respected members of the community. Not all were killers, but all were capable of killing without remorse, should the need arise.

More of them every day. Most would not recognize him as one of their own. But their children would, and did. Their children, here in this room.

His
children, really. The future as he was shaping it.

He smiled on them—his progeny, the work of his hands.