The Demonologist (12 page)

Like a magician ensuring nothing is up his sleeve, I feel like I’ve done everything I can to establish the conditions for a real trick. If I’m able to figure out what the cities and numbers mean on the 27th, and if they correspond to verifiable reality, the magic of the recording is real.

And as the
Compendium Maleficarum
’s Brother Guazzo would note, if miracles are one way the savior proves his identity, magic is the way demons prove theirs.

L
ATER, ANOTHER CHURCH
. T
HIS ONE OURS, IF ONLY NOMINALLY, AS
our attendance has been limited to three Christmas Eves of the last five and an annual donation from Diane’s personal account. Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, uptown on West 86th Street. Chosen by Diane for its progressive congregation and fuzzily inoffensive denomination (United Methodist). A community we chose but didn’t, in practice, belong to.

Though today it’s serving a purpose. Tess’s memorial service. Hastily arranged by Diane and announced to me only yesterday in an e-mail buckshot with “healing” and “process” and “closure.” I’ve come for her sake, to present a united parental front. It’s what you do on occasions such as these. You show up.

But now that I’m here, standing across the street from the building’s octagonal tower I’d barely noticed before but which today looks ominously Venetian, watching the dark-suited colleagues and peripheral friends and members of Diane’s extended family all hauling
wreaths and their hesitant selves up the steps, I know I
can’t
go in. To enter would be the same as admitting that Tess is dead. If she isn’t, it might pull her away from me. And if she is, I don’t need the help of near-strangers to remember who she was.

I watch the last of them return their phones to their pockets and slip inside. But before I start away, Diane steps out into the sunshine. She must have been welcoming the guests at the door, letting them pat the back of her hand and replying with the appropriate phrases she’d be good at credibly repeating. Now, with the organ starting its prelude, she’s come to take a last look around. A last look for me.

I wait until she finds me. There is nothing on her face. A more honest expression than any she’d offered those within. It’s her feeling of vacancy, I see now, that is intolerable for her, and today’s service is part of an effort to start filling up the space. With activity, with words, with starting out
here
and heading off to
there
.

She raises her palm, as though to show me the lines drawn on it and invite a reading of their meaning. It’s a half wave, perhaps, or merely a twitch. Something unintended or abandoned. Then, once she’s returned her arm to her side, she backs into the darkness and the doors are pushed shut from inside.

T
HERE
’
S SOMEONE WAITING FOR ME ON THE STREET OUTSIDE MY
apartment.

That is to say, there’s a man in his midthirties standing with his hands in his pockets near the entrance to my building, casually glancing into traffic from time to time as though waiting for a cab, yet when one comes along, he turns his back on it like he’s changed his mind. There is no indication, when I spot him the moment I turn the corner off Columbus Avenue, that he is waiting for me. I’ve never seen him before in my life. And he is, at this distance at least, a near-perfect composite of the nondescript: white cotton shirt rolled up his forearms, weekend jeans, dark hair cropped short. Not tall but solid, a frame used to delivering and absorbing blows. He could be
ex-military. And he could hold one of the vaguely rough-and-ready jobs so many former servicemen hold in New York. Limo driver, personal security, doorman, bartender.

So what is it that sets him apart? His lack of distinction. Every posture, the way he’s tucked in his shirt, the calculated curl of his lower lip. He is someone who has been trained not to stand out. And given the visitations over the last week of my life, when a man like that stands by my door, he stands there for me.

Yet, as I approach, he doesn’t seem to notice me at all. I’m almost past him when he addresses my back.

“David Ullman?”

“Who are you?”

“My name is George Barone.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“It wouldn’t.”

I stare at him a moment.

“
Es vos vir aut anima?
” I ask him in Latin.
Are you man or spirit?

He doesn’t appear to understand the question. Nor does he seem surprised that I’ve just addressed him in an ancient language.

“Can I buy you a coffee?” he says. “Perhaps the street isn’t the best place for conversation.”

“Who says we’re having a conversation?”

“I’m sure this neighborhood isn’t lacking for cafés. I would be pleased if you would guide me to your favorite,” he says, ignoring my question, coming up alongside me so that his shoulder sidles against mine. From twenty yards away, we would look like old friends paused in deciding whether to head east or west to grab a drink.

“Why should I talk to you?” I ask.

“It’s in your best interests.”

“You’re here to help me?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

Normally, I would walk away from an exchange with a stranger like this. But now I have to open every door, accept every invitation. Even if it doesn’t feel like it could lead to much good.

To get closer to Tess, I will have to say yes to everything.

A journey of your own making.

“Sure,” I say. “There’s a good place this way.”

W
E WALK WEST TO
A
MSTERDAM, AND AROUND THE CORNER TO
the The Coffee Bean, where we find a table at the window. The man who calls himself George Barone buys me a cappuccino, but nothing for himself.

“Ulcer,” he explains as he delivers my coffee and sits across from me. Relaxed and friendly, but only
seeming
relaxed and friendly. I’m no expert in this area, but something about this man suggests a capacity for violence, the carrying out of unthinkable assignments. What gives him away is how he pays attention only to me. No pretty girl—or handsome boy—who comes near our table attracts even the briefest glance from him. When a barista drops a tray of mugs and they explode on the tiled floor, he doesn’t blink. His focus like a bird of prey.

“Stress,” I say. “Always is with ulcers.”

“My doctor says otherwise.”

“Oh yeah? What’s he say?”

“Coffee. Cigarettes. Booze. He recommends the avoidance of pleasure.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be sorry. Keeps me sharp.”

“What do you do, Mr. Barone? What do you keep so sharp for?”

“I’m a freelancer.”

“You write?”

“No.”

“Your business is more practical, then?”

“I pursue. Let’s put it that way.”

“A professional pursuer. And your current quarry is me?”

“Only indirectly.”

He waits, as though I am the one expected to report something to him. I sip my coffee. Stir it. Add sugar. Sip it again.

“Are you an assassin?” I ask finally.

“Are you still alive?”

“As far as I can tell.”

“Then let’s not worry about it.”

“What
should
we worry about?”

“Nothing. If you help me, right now, nothing at all.”

He touches a fingertip to the table, picks up a crystal of sugar. Stares at it as though determining the quality of a cut diamond.

“The man you saw in Venice,” he says. “Do you know who he was?”

“What do you know about that?”

“Quite a lot, in some respects. Though I am informed of only the facts that will assist me in my task. I’m sure you have questions I can’t answer.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Like that, for instance.”

“Is it the Church? Do you know who sent that woman to my office?”

“I’m not aware of any woman. I’m only aware of us. Here. Right now.”

And it’s true. He
is
only aware of us. His calm concentration negating the world with a hypnotist’s gaze.

“That’s very Buddhist,” I say.

“Is it? I wouldn’t know. I’m just an altar boy from Astoria with a job to do.”

“So you’re some kind of Vatican thug? That it?”

“I hope you’re not being rude.”

“Who else would you be working for? Does the Devil hire meatheads like you—sorry,
pursuers
? Either way, they flew me first class, you know. Whatever they’re paying you to harass me, you’ve got to ask for a raise.”

“Let me ask you again,” he says, ignoring my attack. “Do you know who the man at Santa Croce 3627 was?”

“Was? What happened to him?”

“Suicide. That’s what the authorities have ruled it, anyway. History of depression, strange and uncharacteristic behavior of late, then went AWOL altogether. It’s a pretty easy file to close.”

“How did he die?”

“Painfully.”

“Tell me.”

“Toxin ingestion. Battery acid, to be precise. A difficult thing to swallow a liter of, even if your goal is to end your life. Trust me. That shit
burns
.”

“Maybe somebody helped him.”

“There you go.
Now
you’re picking up steam, Professor.”

“You think he was murdered.”

“Not in the conventional sense.”

“What’s the unconventional sense?”

“Foul play,” he says, and smiles at the phrase. “There was most likely some very fucking foul play.”

“You did it.”

“No, not me. Something worse.”

I feel my knees click together under the table, and it takes a second to set them apart again.

“You haven’t answered my question,” the Pursuer continues.

“I’d forgotten you’d asked one.”

“Do you know who he was?”

“No.”

“Then let me tell you. He was you.”

“How’s that?”

“Dr. Marco Ianno.”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“I figured you might have. A fellow academic. A professor of Christian studies at Sapienza for some years now. Father of two, married. Quite well regarded in his home country for his defenses of the Church, though, interestingly, not personally a member of the Church himself. His writings concerned the necessary relationship between human imagination and faith.”

“Sounds like one of my lectures.”

“There you go again. They don’t just hand out those PhDs for nothing.”

“Why are you telling me this? You came here to deliver a warning?”

“I’m not a courier.”

“So what do you want from me?”

He presses the sugar crystal on his finger onto the table with a tiny, audible crunch.

“I believe you have a document,” he says.

“I got plenty. You should see my office.”

“It may be written, or a photograph. Though my bet is it’s a video. Am I correct?”

I don’t answer. And he shrugs slightly, as though he is well used to this kind of initial resistance.

“Whatever it is,” he goes on, “you have something that you took from that room in Venice that I’d like you to give me.”

“Don’t tell me. You’re going to write an astronomical sum on this napkin in return for it.”

“No. It’s a matter of accounting. Paper trails. There can be no residue to the transaction.”

“I’m just supposed to hand this thing—this
document
—over. That it?”

“Yes.”

“What’s my motivation?”

“The possible avoidance of following in Professor Ianno’s footsteps. And me, of course. There’s avoiding me.”

“Go to hell.”

Something passes over his face. So quick I might have only imagined it. A twitch at the top of his cheek. A switched gear.

“You don’t want to play it like that, David.”

“There was a time, not long ago at all, when a fellow like you, saying the things you’re saying, would frighten me. But not anymore.”

“I suggest you reconsider that.”

“Why?”

“Because I
should
frighten you. And if not me, there are other things. Really quite remarkable things.”

“The things that killed Marco Ianno.”

“Yes.”

“You’re in control of these things?”

“No. Nobody is. But they seem to have an interest in you.”

I raise my cup, but the sight of the sludgy coffee, the floating island of milk, almost makes me gag.

“The man in that room was mentally ill,” I say. “He was vulnerable to becoming convinced of impossibilities.”

“We all are.” The Pursuer almost smiles. “Maybe none more so than you.”

“He killed himself.”

“Just the same as they’re saying your kid did. Like they might end up saying about you.”

“You’re threatening me?”

“Yes. I most certainly am.”

I get up. My knees knocking against the side of the table and overturning my cup. The still-hot cappuccino spills over the table, splashing onto the man’s legs. It must scald him. But he doesn’t flinch. Grabs my wrist as I move to go.

“Give me the document.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I feel the turned heads of the other customers behind me. But he doesn’t notice.

“You misunderstand me,” he says, slowly and patiently. “I’m not a nuisance you can just walk away from.”

He lets go of my wrist. Expecting me to walk. But instead I bend low so that I’m inches from his face.

“I don’t care what you do. I’m not giving you a goddamn thing,” I say. “You lose what I’ve lost, and you hold on to whatever you’ve got left. In my position, there’s no protecting yourself, because I don’t
have
a self to protect anymore. So go ahead. Pursue away. And tell your employers they can go fuck themselves. Okay?”

Now I walk.

Up Amsterdam a block and a half, take a right onto my street. I don’t look back. But even after I turn at the corner, he’s watching me.

I know this as certainly as I know who Dr. Marco Ianno was.

I
DIDN
’
T RECOGNIZE HIM AS THE MAN IN THE CHAIR AT THE TIME.
But as soon as I heard Marco Ianno’s name moments ago he was returned to me. A colleague who witnessed the most unprofessional moment of my career.