Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (7 page)

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-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 pitbull.

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

“Get your mitts off him, fucker!”

He was beefier than Charlie, with decent pecs 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

FOUR

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 Korean and Vietnamese signs he couldn’t read.  He passed pawn shops, 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 6 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.  “I can’t remember ever seeing you looking so fit.”

“Believe me, Fitz, 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 knew 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, unrequited, 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.His herd at his heels, he’d slunk back to St. Joe’s with his tail between his legs.  At least that was they 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.