The Lucifer Messiah (12 page)

D
RYING SHEETS, SHIRTS, AND SOCKS HUNG FROM LINES
spread across the cramped space between apartment windows. Suspended from a forest of clothespins, the laundry seemed to dance as it dried, swaying to and fro and casting jubilant shadows on the bricks below.

The pulleys usually made a squeak when the lines were rolled in, but Maria Torriella couldn't hear it as she gathered her wash. Four children,
four little monsters
as she often said, howled from the living room of their tiny third floor walk-up. Frankie and Ernie, the two oldest at nine and seven, were teasing six-year-old Ralphie. As they tossed his baseball glove back and forth, just high enough to be out of his reach, tiny little Anita wailed from her crib.

To make matters worse, the sauce on her stove was bubbling over, and the garlicky red paste was beginning to burn on the outside of the pot. Maria, curlers in her hair despite the late hour of the day, was deftly tending to all three things at once. One hand on the laundry, one on the stove, and her booming voice making every attempt to
silence the kids. She might have succeeded, and might not have spilled sauce all over the front of her housedress, if the knocking hadn't erupted just then on her door.

With a slap on the back of the head to Frankie and a swat on the rump to Ernie, she swept across the length of the little apartment and unlatched the lock. She did not expect Vince Sicario to be on the other side, nor did she expect him to come busting into the room a second later.

But she was ready.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” she spat at him, holding her hand out to keep him at bay.

“I'm a friend of your brother's. You are Frankie Pen-tone's sister, right?” he answered, the kids still screaming.

“Little Frankie's little sis.”

“My brother ain't got no friends,” she answered back, the wooden spoon in her other hand poised like a weapon.

“I guess he never mentioned me. That's too bad, ‘cause, you see, I know a lot about you.”

“Yeah, like what?”

Vince took a quick glance around the place. It was cluttered. Toys were scattered all over the floor. Wicker baskets of laundry sat on the couch. There was an old, giant radio on the mantle that predated the War. It smelled of macaroni and tomato gravy and dirty diapers.

“Let's see. You're twenty six years old, you got four kids, you hang your clothes out the window to dry.”

Maria was shaking her head. He was too big to force out of the doorway, but she wasn't about to yield an inch.

“Who are you, the goddamn police?”

“No. I'm just someone who wants to find your brother.”

Maria had no time for his questions. She knew what her brother did for a living, and she wanted nothing to do with it.

“Yeah? Well I don't know where he is. Nobody does,” she answered.

Vince wasn't convinced, despite her apparent temper.

“Bullshit,” he said back, stepping closer to her.

“Hey, no swearing in front of the children, you asshole! Now get the hell outta here! I don't know where Frankie is.”

“Don't make this hard, I've had a really tough coupla days, and my patience is wearing thin, lady.”

Vince moved farther into the apartment, closing the door behind him. Maria backed off. Keeping the children corralled in her shadow, she carefully moved them toward the kitchen. Vince didn't care. From under his overcoat he was slowly drawing out his revolver.

Maria turned white.

“See, it's very important to me that I find your brother,” he said, lifting the pistol in a deliberately garish motion.

Her heart started racing. She felt the heat and the wetness under her arms and around her neck. Suddenly she couldn't swallow.

“Do you know who you're talking to? Who my brother is?” Boasting seemed to be the only card she had left to play. “He'll feed you your balls you bastard, bringing a gun into my place!”

He wasn't listening, and he proved it by aiming the weapon at a lamp on a small wooden table.

“We're old friends. I don't think he'd mind,” Vince chided.

He cleared his throat. His thumb brought the hammer back into a cocked position. The barrel caught a glimmer of the lamplight.

“This? Well, this he might mind.”

With a calm squeeze of the trigger, a single bullet sizzled across the room. It burst the lamp like a glass balloon. The blast exploded in Maria's ears, knocking her against the wall. A ringing concussion effect throbbed through her head. Squeals erupted from the kids in the next room.

She dropped her spoon as her muscles tensed involuntarily. Gray, hot smoke burned her nostrils and stung her eyes. Shards of glass and wood were suddenly splayed all over the floor.

One shot had turned her apartment into a war zone.

Momentarily startled, the display only seemed to make her angrier. Once she got her footing back she screamed, though she could barely hear her own voice.

“You think you can just come in here and start shooting this place up! You fucking asshole! You think someone won't call the police!”

For all it did to inflame her senses, the shot had calmed Vince's nerves. The smell of the gunpowder was familiar, a rather long-forgotten sensation. He inhaled it deeply from the warm air. He enjoyed it a little too much.

After his lungs were sated, he replied with a quiet cool, like a gunfighter caricature in a John Ford movie.

“Not in this neighborhood. I used to be a cop. They
won't be here for a while. Trust me.”

“
Gesù! Pazzo Schemal!
”

“The old lingo ain't gonna do it, honey. Sorry. Now, where is he? The sooner you tell me, the sooner I'll be outta your hair.”

“Goddamn you!”

Vince sighed. He didn't want to go to the next obvious step, but the woman was pushing him.

“Okay.”

Ralphie had poked his head in from the kitchen. Maria saw him. She screamed at him to move. But he didn't. She knew Vince was pointing the gun at him without even looking.

The other kids were wailing. She could hardly move.

“Okay. Okay.
Basta! Basta!
” she pleaded, trembling at the very thought.

Vince, quietly thankful that the lady had bought into his bluff, let the gun drop to his side. With a collected stride he stepped over a broken vase and moved closer to Maria. This time his voice was lower, but no less forceful.

“Where is he?”

Tears burst out of her fierce eyes. They were already streaming down her face by the time he got over to her.

“I don't know exactly,” she sobbed.

Vince raised his eyebrows. For a moment he lifted the gun again.

“I swear to God okay? I'll tell you what I know. He's in Jersey.”

“Jersey? What the hell's he doin' there?”

Maria was almost too rattled to answer. Slowly she managed to compose herself enough to say something.

“He's resting. You want to know where? Here's the address.” Hands quivering, she reached over to the table, fished out a small piece of paper from a pile of notes and handed it to Vince. “Take it and get the hell outta here.”

“You gotta be kiddin' me,” Vince mumbled when he read what was written on the scrap.

“What?” Maria questioned, still indignant despite everything.

“Nothin'. You've been a big help Mrs. Torriella. When I see your brother I'll let him know.”

Vince slipped his gun back into his coat and calmly stepped out the door, a scattered mess of an apartment left behind him.

“I hope you rot in hell!” she shouted as he left.

T
HE
B
LEECKER
S
TREET
H
AVEN WAS ALIVE.

Though the facade remained as nondescript as Vince had found it a day earlier, within the humble confines the air was charged. Neighbors and other Greenwich Village locals already knew that the place tended to fill up with borders once or twice a year, crowded with foreign guests like some European youth hostel. But what the outsiders could not know, what they could not see behind the hand-stenciled sign and the plain gray walls was something much different.

Inside the frosted glass double-doors, and beyond the oaken paneled foyer, the atmosphere hummed with the sights and sounds and smells of a party.

Chatter filled the main library hall on the first floor, gossip and conversation made in a dozen languages. The walls there were lined with Gothic-crafted cabinets of polished cedar crammed full with old books. A series of maroon oriental rugs broke the monotony of the well-worn hardwood floor. Positioned throughout the chamber
were a number of velvet cushioned, high-backed chairs and reading desks topped with Russian vases and the stark white busts of poets and statesmen.

Smoke from pipes and Cuban cigars—the kind usually reserved for special occasions—lent the air a sweet, thick aroma.

It was festive, though no decorations suggested a particular holiday. The people who mingled about were of all manners and sorts, young and old, male and female, and culled from as many different ethnic backgrounds as there were individuals circulating through the establishment. No single trait could have described them all, except that everyone present seemed genuinely happy to see everyone else.

More like a reunion than anything else.

Argus entered with his pocket-watch in hand. Lately every hour had become precious, and he was meticulous about keeping track of his time. He was alone, and he had begun to walk with a small cane, wincing with every step from some ailment that betrayed no other outward symptom. An exquisitely dressed Tiny Tim.

As he crossed the foyer and entered the library hall, he caught a look at a tall, distinguished-looking lady admiring the crystal chandelier directly overhead. Though he did not know her on sight, something about her, her mannerisms maybe, seemed familiar. The way she held her martini glass, with the pinky finger held out just a little pretentiously, or the thin stream of smoke she exhaled after a puff on her cigar.

She was slender, and appeared to be well into her
seventies, with leathery, wrinkled skin and gray hair tied behind her head in a bun.

In every way she appeared to be his complete opposite.

Argus approached as if he knew her. But when he presented himself, with a deliberately old-fashioned bow and flourish, it seemed momentarily that neither one recognized the other.

“On behalf of our kind that once called Prague home, I greet you,” he said.

Immediately a flash of recognition passed over the old woman's face.

“Argus?” she said. “I should have known. Who dresses better than you?”

He was dressed impeccably, as always, his miniature three-piece suit tailored in perfect proportion to his toddler's body.

“I accept your greeting, and pay you respect from my own followers, of Chaligny-Bastille,” she continued.

Now Argus's face lit up with the same moment of epiphany, as though he had just laid his eyes on the woman for the first time.

“Cygnus, a pleasure, as always. How long have you been in New York?” he asked.

“Less than a day. I waited in Paris for as long as I could, hoping to gather as many of us as were left there.”

“Of course, your Haven likely suffered the greatest of all of our houses. How many were you able to bring?”

Her expression was dour. He knew her response was not going to be pleasant.

“Barely more than a dozen. Before the War we were three times that many. I had hoped that your city would fare better, but from what I've read I did not hold out much hope.”

“Your feeling was correct, I am sad to say,” Argus answered. “The Nazis ravaged my beautiful city, and the Soviets who replaced them are little better. Few of my followers emerged from hiding during the liberation. I come here very nearly alone. The Haven of the Three Shields is no more.”

A new voice broke in then, from a third figure that neither saw.

“So the stories I've heard are indeed true, and Prague has been lost to our kind. A terrible shame, but one which very closely mirrors my own trials.”

It was a child's voice, higher pitched than Argus's, but obviously prepubescent. When they both turned to see after it, they shifted their gaze and saw a beautiful little girl with blond ringlets and a fancy lace dress.

“Aeson?” Argus began.

“It is I, ever young, as I see you are as well, in this incarnation,” she replied.

The girl did not appear to be any older than five, but she spoke with the diction of a scholar.

“Your followers?” Cygnus questioned her.

“Reduced to a mere handful. When the Germans starved Leningrad, I watched our kind die side-by-side with the city's inhabitants. Now there are only a few of us. Like you, we have abandoned our once great house in Peter's city,” she answered, the sadness somehow more despondent
when expressed on her delicate, girlish features.

“The war has left none of us unscathed. All the more reason for this new gathering of ours,” Argus said. “Has there been any news from the Keeper? I must confess that I have not been much in communication of late, and I do not even know the location of our fete.”

The little girl Aeson, who was sipping from a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, shook her head. Her curls seemed to dance across her shoulders.

“The Morrigan has left word here that the announcement will be made soon. Until then she has asked us to assist in bringing together as many of our kind as possible. For the moment, we have found a refuge here at this Haven, our common ground in New York for these many years.”

“Have we any idea how may of us there are?” Argus asked.

“Sadly, no one knows. So many were scattered over the past years, so many lost. This will be the first opportunity for a full accounting since the violence ended,” Aeson replied.

“Yes,” Cygnus followed, “but do not worry ancient one. I have been told that the plans are already in the works, and that we will soon know. The Morrigan will provide, as she always does.”