God Told Me To (15 page)

A pained look crossed Martha’s features.

“I had three pregnancies. The doctor said nothing was wrong with me. They never could find the reason for the miscarriages. Always in the fifth or sixth month. I wanted them so bad.”

“Peter never mentioned it, Martha. I’m sorry.”

“He wasn’t sorry. Oh, he said the right things. But he was always frightened of them. When the babies weren’t born, I could tell he was relieved. The doctor convinced me it would be better if we didn’t take any more chances. So I had myself operated on. But why should a man not weep when his children aren’t born?”

Casey had no answer. She played the piano. It made a lonely sound. The sound of metal rain.

The
Long Tom
show is the most popular of all New York City radio interview programs. Long Tom is famous for debunking hoaxes, equally famous for promoting his own often odd ideas which range from the dangers of fluoridation to the unquestioned fact of Abraham Lincoln’s ghost haunting the White House. The format of the show is simple. Long Tom will discuss a topic with one or two guests for a couple hours, then invite listeners to phone in their opinions or questions. Emile Lukas is a frequent guest whenever the topic involves a scientific phenomenon.

Detective Jordan had tuned in tonight’s show while driving home. He chuckled and laughed. After pulling into his parking space in the basement garage of the Bronx co-op where he lived, he sat in his car and listened an extra twenty minutes until the show was over. Chuckling, laughing all the while.

“This is Long Tom reminding you once again we’re discussing the ‘Voice of God’ murders. Hello, there. You’re on the air.”

“Long Tom? Am I on? I just want to say I don’t think God is calling the shots. But I sure would like to hear this Nicholas fella. Where is he?”

“Thank you for calling, sir. That’s the question uppermost in everyone’s mind. We’ve only a minute left, and I’m going to ask my guest, columnist Emile Lukas, to comment on Lieutenant Nicholas.”

“Where is the man? I have no idea. It’s been suggested that the police are holding him in isolation. Perhaps. But are we in the midst of a hoax? Let me say this. Peter Nicholas is a man with the obsession to lay out the truth. If the ‘Voice of God’ murders are a hoax, then the victim of that hoax is none other than Nicholas himself.”

Jordan laughed and snapped off the radio.

If only those clown callers knew, he thought, where the man with the Godly message was living.

He got out of his car, locked it, and started toward the ramp that led to the elevators. He was passing a large steel stanchion when a black man wearing sunglasses and a floor-length raccoon coat stepped from behind it and confronted him.

“Greetings, Mr. Jordan.”

“Zero, I fucking told you never to come near my home.”

Jordan started to reach for his weapon. He stopped when he noticed Zero’s right hand was in a coat pocket. The hand looked to be pointing the barrel of a gun.

“Weather’s still warm for that big a coat, Zero.”

“You know us black folks, Jordan. We like a little flash.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Bad vibes are going down.” Zero made a motion. “Walk you to your elevator. We can discuss all that needs discussing on the journey.”

They headed up the ramp with Jordan in the lead.

“I’ll get you for this, Zero.”

“You been getting too much too long. Raisin’ the ante like you did. That didn’t go down none too swift.”

“Told you at the time. I was just taking orders.”

“Uh-huh? From who? My people are still gettin’ busted. My associates’ people are getting busted. The Mr. Who can’t be too big.”

“Christ, if you’re talking about this past week.” Jordan started to swing around but was stopped by Zero gesturing with the hand still in his pocket. “Every so often there have to be a few arrests. We need statistics. For the Commissioner, the public, the fuckin’ FBI. You know how it works.”

“We have been noticin’ more than a few arrests.”

Jordan groaned. “So the mayor’s on a clean-up drive. Happens every couple of years. What do you want from me?”

“So how come you all can spare men to bust my people and the none of you can find old Straight Arrow Nicholas?”

They were almost at the elevators.

“Come off it, Zero. What do you want from my life?”

Zero laughed in Jordan’s ear. “Fairness. Let’s say equal liberty for equal graft.”

“I don’t set the going rates.”

“So you say.”

Jordan was facing the closed elevator. “I’m riding this thing alone.”

“Course you are.” Zero pushed the button. “You know, we’ve never been sure if there is a Mr. Who speaking through you, or if it’s just yourself playin’ yo-yo. Now, one way to learn would be to off you.”

“You’re too smart to shoot a cop.”

The elevator door slid open.

“Good night, Zero.”

Jordan stepped inside the elevator. He heard a small, sharp click. He realized his mistake. Zero had been holding a switchblade. Not a gun. But it was too late. The blade entered Jordan’s back. He groaned, choked, and started to fall forward.

Zero grabbed the detective and held him the few moments it took for the man to die. Zero had known just where to shove the knife so death would be quick and the blood would rush forward and up through Jordan’s mouth, preventing a final scream.

The elevator door began to close. Zero leaned against it. Once Jordan was dead, he dropped the corpse into the car and pressed the
Hold
button.

Zero stripped off his long raccoon coat. Beneath it he wore cheap coveralls. From the pockets he took plastic gloves and plastic boots to protect his suede shoes.

He entered the elevator and went to work. He quickly, brutally, slashed the body. He was careful not to step in the pooling blood. He was sorry the need for hurry prevented him from lingering. He dipped a gloved hand into a pool and in huge red letters scrawled on a wall—GOD.

FOURTEEN

The official word from the department was that Detective Simon Jordan had been murdered by a person or persons unknown. Enough nonofficial people saw and talked about the bloody word on the elevator wall to create widening interest in the “Voice of God” murders. Rumors began to flood the city. That there had been other murders the police were covering up. That Peter Nicholas had been silenced. Rumors feed on themselves. By the time of Jordan’s funeral, the police had begun to ready themselves for a possible citywide panic.

There was a bit of the circus in Jordan’s funeral. Hundreds of people who could not have known the man turned out to mourn him. There were TV cameras. There were reporters from the largest daily to the smallest monthly magazine. In the midst of the services a bedraggled, bearded man stood and held up a placard reading:
THERE’S STILL TIME, BROTHER.
There were groups passing out leaflets and soliciting money; there was a group giving money away. There were pigtailed representatives from Hare Krishna, scraggly-haired Jesus freaks, and a group of clean-cut, dulled-eyed youths rumored to be from Reverend Moon.

The minister who conducted the services did nothing to help squelch the growing panic.

“Lord, we do not understand why you have chosen to inflict this upon your children. If there is an answer—if there is a reason—will you reveal it to us before there is more suffering?”

Deputy Commissioner Hendriks realized the services were near an end. Hoping to avoid a confrontation with the press, he began to squeeze his way through the crowd. He suddenly found himself face to face with Peter Nicholas.

Hendriks whispered, “You’ve some nerve coming here.”

Nicholas whispered back, “This isn’t like the others.”

“You’re sick, Nicholas. You need help.”

“Jordan’s murder is not like the others.”

“Not one was like any other one. But you have gone and damn near got this city in a panic.”

“It is needed. The people need to examine their faith.”

Hendriks fought against raising his voice. “You come with me now,” he rasped between clenched teeth. “Maybe we can put an end to this madness.”

“I am going to get whoever killed Jordan.”

The mourners started singing a hymn. Their noise allowed Hendriks to speak more loudly, but the singers also began to move back and forth, back and forth, and Hendriks and Nicholas were continually jostled together.

“You’re no longer a cop, Nicholas. You’ll get nobody.”

“Jordan’s killer used God’s name. I can’t allow that.”

“You come now or I’ll have you arrested. There are cops all around you.”

“Also the press. You don’t want a scene.”

“Have you no responsibility for what you’re doing?”

Nicholas began to move back into the crowd.

“Where are you going, Nicholas?”

“To wait.”

“What?”

“To wait,” Nicholas was lost in the crowd. His final words were called above the singing mourners: “To wait for
Him
.”

FIFTEEN

Not all New Yorkers bought the “Voice of God” stories. The majority, in fact, did not. But in a city of eight million people that small percentage known as the
fringe
is enough to set a panic into motion. That ten percent of fools and paranoids, zealots who will promote anything that touches upon their tangential beliefs, the walking, wounded neurotics who during the best of times are barely able to get out of bed in the mornings and make it to work, the street thugs who use fear as a means of gaining power over the uneducated and the miseducated.

The killings that followed the murder of Detective Simon Jordan were not uncommon for a large metropolis. A teenaged boy in Brooklyn Heights shot his father following an argument at the dinner table. An unemployed laborer in Spanish Harlem took an ax to his wife and her lover when he found them in bed together. A young woman suffering postnatal depression threw her baby, then herself off a tenement roof in Little Italy. A taxi driver raped and killed a passenger and left her body on a Central Park bench. Such deaths occur with such frequency that often they don’t even make the papers. But ten percent of the population saw the “Voice of God” behind these deaths. And rumors feed upon themselves. Within three weeks the city was crippled. And the panic spread to New Jersey and Connecticut.

Vast numbers of people stayed home from their jobs. The sick calls at such essential services as the post office and sanitation department became so heavy that the governor was said to be considering sending in the National Guard.

Parents kept their children indoors.

Beaches, parks, and recreation areas were all but deserted. Movie and legitimate theaters were virtually empty.

The department of public health reported a record number of mental breakdowns and suicides.

Curiously, the crime rate dropped by 14 percent. The police department tried to emphasize this low rate in hopes of curtailing the panic. Most of the public, though, refused to believe the department’s statistics.

At the same time, churches, synagogues, and other places of worship were mobbed in what clergymen described as the largest religious revival in the history of America.

And on every Broadway street corner there could be found a ragtag man, itching from lice and filth, an American flag in his hand and a Bible under his arm. Such men had never been an uncommon sight at Manhattan intersections, but now people were listening to them.

“The Bible has written that the world will perish in flames! The time is now! The human race has sinned mightily and it must be destroyed. There is no redemption! No salvation!”

Emile Lukas eagerly greeted each day’s latest rumor. The madness he believed inherent in man was showing itself. Privately, Lukas thought that soon the religious revival would flip-flop, that those he termed the Disciples of Rot would see the folly of their prayers and hymns, and in an attempt to maintain Life would rip down the churches of their God of Death. But he kept a middle line with his columns. Egging people on but always referring to the “Voice of God” as being the theory of an obsessed cop. And he ended each article with the question all the city was asking:

“Where is Peter Nicholas?”

Nicholas still lived in the cheap hotel. He did little except listen to the police band on his radio. Sometimes when he stepped out for a bite to eat he would pick up a newspaper, which he read front page to back less for information than as a means of filling time. He listened to the comings and goings of the prostitutes and he stared long hours out the window at the gaudy splash of the street. Often he neglected to turn on a light, either sitting in the single chair or lying back on the bed, his only illumination coming from the gold glow of the radio dial and the neon that spilled in from outside.

He knew the department had an all-points bulletin out for his arrest. He didn’t consider himself to be hiding out. He was waiting.

The mirror attached to the room’s old dresser was cracked and bits of its silvering had chipped away. Whenever he looked into the mirror, which he often caught himself doing, he saw a distorted image of himself. He shaved in front of the cracked mirror, using an electric shaver because the community bathroom down the hall was a place he avoided. For a time he applied makeup to his face before going out, as he feared his scars would make him too easily recognizable. About a week after Jordan’s funeral, he noticed an odd thing. The scars were beginning to disappear. By the end of three weeks his features were nearly as unmarked as they had been before Bernard Phillips’ wife had attacked him.