God Told Me To (17 page)

“In the Old Testament.
‘The Lord our God is a vengeful God!’ ”

“I know my Bible. How well do you know
him.
Has
he
told you about
his
mother?”

Hirsch shook his head and flapped his hands. He made wailing sounds and used the ends of his scarf to wipe his tearful face and sweating forehead.

Nicholas told the story of Judith Phillips’ abduction and rape.

“Please,” Hirsch pleaded. “No more!”

“Take me to
him.”

“I can’t. You don’t understand.”

“Let me meet
him.
Perhaps I’ll understand.”

Hirsch wailed and shook, he babbled incoherently, his arms flapped bonelessly in the neon gloom. Soft red and blue tones splashed an eerie pattern over him. And at once strength seemed to enter him. He bolted from the bed. His chest swelled and he made a high, loud scream. It was a terrible sound. For the moment it lasted it was like something from the forest had entered the seedy room. Nicholas was too stunned by the outburst to react immediately, and he imagined feeling the floor shake beneath his feet and hearing the old mirror rattle above the dresser. Quickly as it had begun, the scream ended. Hirsch clutched his chest and fell back upon the bed.

His features twisted, became drawn with pain. He had fallen into a pool of blue reflection that gave his skin a liverish tone. He held his chest and managed to gasp, “Pills . . . help . . .”

Nicholas quickly went through Hirsch’s pockets and found a vial of pills. He pulled off the cap and tried pushing a pill into the man’s mouth.

“Can’t . . . swallow. Wa . . . wa . . . ter.”

Nicholas threw open the window to let fresh air into the room. A strong breeze rushed in, and jattering noise from the street.

Nicholas hurried to the bathroom for a tumbler of water.

He was gone less than a minute. In his absence the room had become a mess of wind-flung objects. The street noise was too loud, a clanging, whanging honking that sounded amplified.

He pushed the tumbler to Hirsch’s mouth.

“Can’t. Can’t swal . . .”

Nicholas forced open the man’s mouth, grasped his jaw, and by applying all his strength managed to open the mouth wide enough to dump in both pill and water.

Hirsch gagged. His body bucked spastically. The vial of pills Nicholas had unconsciously held onto were knocked from his hand.

The springs and headboard of the bed squeaked, scraped. An old newspaper Nicholas had left lying around was picked up by the wind. The paper slapped against the dresser. Street noise screamed through the window. The mirror rattled, suddenly crashed to the floor. Shards of glass sparkled. A whinning siren wind stabbed his ears.

Hirsch rolled to his side, spewed out the pill. Vomit splashed Nicholas. It soiled his hands with a yellowish, foul slime. Hirsch let go of his chest. Frantically clawed the neon air.

“Can’t swalllll . . .”

Nicholas dropped to the floor, ran his hands through the sparkling pieces of mirror searching for a spilled pill, and it didn’t occur to him to turn on a light. Bits of glass clung to his vomit-coated hands, needled his palms. He found a pill and it melted between his fingers, became soft wax, glowed gold, and the wind howled and he heard Hirsch gasp:

“Him!”

And the wind died. The street noise sounded as it normally should.

He straddled the body on his bed. Raised a fist and hammered it down hard against Hirsch’s chest. He bent over and tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The man’s lips were as cold as anything he’d ever felt.

“Damn you!” he shouted.

Again he smashed a fist into the dead man’s chest.

“You could have held on!”

He was about to strike the body again when he heard a sound behind him. A harsh, grating sound. He turned. What he saw caused him to leap from the bed, as far back as the window where he gripped the sill for support and found himself wrapped in a splash of neon gaud.

Standing at the door, lit from behind by yellow hall lights, was a grotesque dark shape.

SIXTEEN

They stared at one another.

Neither moved nor spoke.

Nicholas in neon splash. The shape grotesque and like nothing he had ever seen, ever imagined.

Seconds passed.

Nicholas said, “You’re not
him.”

Nicholas’s stomach went hollow as he realized he had moved out of reach of his gun. He determined that if the shape made a forward step he would lunge for the gun. But the shape turned and ran.

Nicholas grabbed his gun and gave chase.

The shape was rounding the corner of the L-shaped hall as Nicholas rushed through his door. Nicholas made it around the corner in time to see the shape pull open the door to the stairwell. He then recognized the shape for what it was.

A chauffeur. Dressed in old-fashioned livery. The type of uniform that would appeal to the conservative tastes of a man like Hirsch. Tight knee-high boots, trousers puffed at the thighs, stiff shoulder padding, and a fluffy cap had combined to give the chauffeur his grotesque shape.

The chauffeur fell in his charge down the stairs and Nicholas caught up with him at the first landing. The chauffeur tried getting to his feet, but Nicholas kept him on his knees by pushing a gun into the man’s ear.

“I saw nothing,” the chauffeur said. “I swear I’ll never say a word.”

“Shut up.”

“I only worked for him.”

Nicholas pressed the gun hard against the chauffeur’s ear.

“Told you to shut up. I didn’t kill him. I don’t want to hurt you. Just before you brought him here? Where did you come from?”

The chauffeur took too long in answering.

“Riverdale.”

The electricity again charged through Nicholas.

“You’re lying.”

“His home’s in Riverdale.”

Nicholas put more pressure on the gun.

“I didn’t ask where he lived.”

“Brooklyn.”

“Where in Brooklyn?”

“I never know where I’m at out there. Streets confuse me.”

Nicholas applied more pressure.

“This is a police .38 special. If I squeeze the trigger your brains will splatter like a pizza on that wall.”

“Epiphany Street. Old building. Condemned and all boarded up.”

“Ever take him there before?”

“Three, four times a week.”

“How long’s this been going on?”

“Little over a month. Always at night.”

“Ever go inside with Hirsch? Or see anybody else?”

“I just parked and waited. Hour or so. I saw some others come and go.”

“Who?”

“Mister! I couldn’t see their faces. There aren’t hardly any street lamps left out there. It has something to do with religion. They all of them carried Bibles.”

Nicholas pulled back his gun.

The chauffeur stood, rubbing his ear as if he’d been burned.

“Okay,” Nicholas said. “We’re going back to my room and pick up a few things. Then we’ll take a ride.”

“I swear to Jesus, mister. I won’t say a word.”

“You can say anything you want. So long as you wait two hours after dropping me off in Brooklyn.”

“You don’t want to go there. That neighborhood’s scary.”

The gray limousine glided through the river mist of the Brooklyn night. It wheeled smoothly over damp streets, neglected streets with loose cobblestones and deep potholes, and entered a part of the borough that had begun to be abandoned thirty years ago. An area the city had forgotten. A few street lamps that burned stood like pale sentries in the dark. Hollow, brick-strewn lots alternated with boarded-up buildings that appeared to lean upon one another for support. A few warehouses did business here during the day. At night the area was deserted but for the cats and rats that survived on each other.

The limousine slid to a halt.

The chauffeur pointed to a building.

Nicholas left the car. The chauffeur stepped on the gas and was gone.

Mist, thick as the cold fumes from dry ice, swirled around Nicholas and carried a pollution smell from the nearby river.

He looked over the building to which the chauffeur had pointed. Once it had been an apartment house. Age had put a crust on it, and a corner street lamp cast thin, blue shadow over it. Nicholas saw nothing to indicate recent activity here.

The front entrance was boarded over. He climbed the stoop steps and tested the boards. They were tightly nailed. On one board was tacked the remains of an official notice of condemnation. Nicholas tried the windows within his reach. They too were tightly boarded.

At the side of the building was an alley blocked by crates and battered metal garbage cans. He pulled aside one of the cans. It was full and heavy and scraped against the cobblestones. A nesting cat yowled and ran up the alley.

Nicholas took a small pen flashlight from his pocket.

The alley slanted steeply toward its center and held a dark stream of slime which probably never dried. The pen light bounced a dull, oval beam against the wet cobblestones. The stones were slippery with mud.

All of the basement windows were broken but too small for a man to crawl through. His light momentarily shined the green eyes of the cat. Again the cat yowled, then darted through one of the windows.

He reached the back of the building. A passage between it and the next building had been partially blocked by boards leaning diagonally between the separate structures. Nicholas pushed and the boards clattered to the ground.

He walked over the boards and through the passage.

He found himself in the ghost of a courtyard. The mist was trapped here and heavier. It stung his eyes. The silhouettes of tall, leafless trees stood outlined against the night sky. A shredded curtain, or perhaps it was a long-discarded gown, had caught in one of the trees. The shreds drifted like strips of flowing gauze. Cracked flagstones, weeds sprouting through the cracks, led past bare concrete benches and empty gardens to a barren fountain. Dry leaves scratched along the flagstones and brushed over his feet.

He discovered the rear entrance. It opened easily.

The corridor was narrow and black. He went only a few steps, then stopped long enough for his eyes to adjust to the dark. He flashed his light. The footprints of Hirsch and the others had marked a clear path over a floor covered with plaster and debris.

He came to a large, square lobby. It held the dry odor of slow decay. Nearly half the ceiling had collapsed and the remainder sagged dangerously. Nicholas’s path wound around high mounds of rubble. A rat skittered somewhere in the rubble. The noise startled him and he reached out and grasped a supporting beam. A section of the beam splintered like straws of a broom in his hands.

He reached the stairs. The footprint path continued straight up the steps but Nicholas didn’t follow it. He moved until he stood in the center of the old-fashioned square stairwell. He raised his light and looked upward. The pen flash did not have a powerful beam and he could see nothing beyond the first floor. He saw places where the bannister had broken away. High up in the black he thought he saw a faint streak of light. It was so far above he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t an illusion. Suddenly something dark fell into the beam of his flash. He leaped back.

The body of a cat landed at his feet. He shined his light on the dead animal. Rolled it over with his feet and examined it. Its neck had been broken.

He moved to where he was out of view from above. He switched the flash to his left hand and took out his gun. He started up the stairs. The cat had been a warning. Whoever threw it had been higher than the first floor and he didn’t stop there.

He paused at the landing between the first and second floors. He shined his flash on the next flight of steps until he had a mental picture of them. Then he snapped off the light and began a slow ascent. To keep the noise of his approach quiet as possible, he climbed on tiptoe, testing each step before putting full weight on it.

He stood silently in the darkness of the second floor until he was sure he was alone. He flashed the light along the hall. To his left, a large hole in the floor prevented any passage. To his right, the dust on the floor was thick and undisturbed. He formed a mental picture of the next steps and continued.

Each flight of stairs was long. The pace of his ascent was difficult to maintain. His legs quickly tired from the strain. His leg muscles began to twitch. With each step he seemed to sink a bit, as if the stairs were sodden, and his shoes felt like resisting weights. He kept away from the dangerous bannisters. Once, he touched his hand to the wall for support and chips of paint stuck to his skin like moist scales.

A trap awaited him on the third floor. It was too obvious. Another warning. A short distance down the hall was an apartment with an open door. Disturbances in the dust indicated someone might be inside the apartment. The disturbances weren’t footprints. Someone had created the path by throwing out a blanket or a robe and dragging it back along the floor. Nicholas took a coin from his pocket. Tossed it through the open door and heard it land somewhere below.

When he reached the next landing he didn’t have to use his flash to picture the ascending stairs. Light enough for him to see by seeped from above. The light had an amber cast. He pocketed his flash and continued.

The stairs moved.

He thought his aching legs were beginning to give.

Again the stairs moved. Just a shudder at first, as if the rotting wood of a few steps had sunk under his weight, but then the entire staircase began to shake and sway. He heard the cracking of timbers. He feared a collapse and tried to run to what he hoped would be the solid safety of the fourth floor. The stairs buckled. In the amber light the steps ahead looked like undulant brown mud. Twisting, shimmering, viscous. His shoes seemed to cling to the steps. He pumped his legs and climbed. He felt himself being forced nearer the bannister with each step. He fought to get back to the support of the wall. He pushed toward the wall. The stairs heaved. He was within inches of the bannister when something slid from under his feet. He slipped and kept from falling by grabbing the bannister. It snapped and fell away.