“Wow. That’s amazing.” Leon could feel the gold warming against his skin. He took a deep breath and concentrated, trying to absorb the purity, the strength, the flexibility.
“Now you are bulletproof,” Red Bear said. “You have nothing to fear, my friend.”
They lay silent for a while. The music had changed to some woman crooning about finding peace. The song set up a sharp ache in Leon’s heart. Red Bear was saying something to him.
“What? What did you say?”
“I asked you if it bothered you. Killing a woman.”
Leon thought a moment. Something about Red Bear made you want to tell him the truth. Those strange eyes of his made you feel he already knew the truth.
“Yes. I was shaking after. And scared. Maybe because she was a woman, I don’t know. That’s why I done her the same place you done Wombat. Woman. Man. Don’t see why it should make no difference. There’s nothing special about women. They’ve never done anything for me except make me feel like a loser, give me a lot of grief. Kinda feel bad for Kevin, though. He’s an okay guy. I don’t want him to know about it.”
Red Bear tapped Leon’s chest, gently. It felt like someone banging on a castle door, loud and echoey, fate come calling.
“There’s your loyalty again,” Red Bear said. “I admire that so much.”
“Kevin better not find out. Him and his sister were close.”
“He’ll get over it. How was he about Toof?”
“Scared. Same as I was first time.”
“I’ll calm him down. But now I want you to just lie still. I’m going to give you another little reward.”
Red Bear got up and pulled off his sweater. He was well muscled but not much bigger than Leon. Down his back, two long scars formed a V from his shoulders to his tail-bone.
“How’d you get those scars?” Leon said. “They don’t look accidental.”
“Never mind about that now.”
“I told you about mine.”
Red Bear smiled and stepped out of his drawstring pants. “Maybe I’ll tell you about them sometime. But for now, we have other things to do.”
Red Bear went to the door and called out to the other room. A moment later, a small blond woman stepped into the bedroom, naked. She had small breasts, a wonderful smile. She looked Russian, with deep-set eyes, wide cheekbones.
“This is Mira,” Red Bear said.
Mira sat on the bed. She took hold of Leon’s belt and undid the buckle.
“And this is Katya.”
A second woman came in, this one darker, bigger in the chest and, like her colleague, naked.
“Somehow,” Red Bear said, “I don’t think these ladies are going to make you feel like a loser.”
24
RED BEAR REMEMBERED RECEIVING those scars to the day, hour and minute. It had been his twenty-first birthday. Uncle Victor had taken him to the tool shed. To this day, no one but the two of them knew the goings-on in that little concrete shed, a miniature outbuilding surrounded by brute high-rises. Who could have suspected the magical power emanating from the backyard of a housing project in Toronto, that least magical of cities?
Victor led him to the tool shed, blindfolded him and steered him in darkness beyond the back wall and into his temple. The stench no longer bothered Red Bear—or Raymond, as he was then known. Far from nauseating him, the stench set his pulses pounding. Uncle Victor had been preparing him for this day; through years of training, had brought him ever closer to the black beating heart of Palo Mayombe. Raymond could feel it pulsing around him, the heart of magic.
“Today is the most important day of your life, Raymond.” Uncle Victor’s wheezy, disembodied voice was like a speaking kazoo. “Today you will become a full priest of Palo Mayombe. You do not have to take this step, remember. There is still time to change your mind.”
“I know. I want it, Uncle.”
“You are sure?”
“I am sure. There is nothing I want more.” Red Bear/Raymond inhaled deeply the smells of candle wax, cinquefoil and wormwood, and, above all, rotting meat.
“Very well. Two things will happen today. First, you will give up your soul. And second, you will be rayed out. You know what these things mean?”
“Yes, Uncle. My soul will die. And so for me there will be no chance of eternal happiness and no chance of eternal damnation. But I will be freer than any other man alive: free to take other souls.”
“And to be rayed out?”
“To be rayed out means that I will accept the pain of the scars in return for the light and the power of Palo Mayombe.”
“And you choose to do these things of your own free will?”
“I do.”
“Has anyone forced you in any way to do these things?”
“No.”
“And you recognize that once done they cannot be undone?”
“I do.”
“Very well then, we will proceed.”
Raymond heard his uncle draw the ceremonial knife from its sheath. This was followed by the sound of steel against whetstone. Then his uncle secured Raymond’s wrists in the leather cuffs hanging from the ceiling. His mouth dried. Tremors shook his body.
That wheezy voice, dry as paper, chanting now in the language of his chosen religion, Palo Mayombe. Then the first searing touch of the blade.
Who can number all the ingredients that go into the creation of a monster? A dead body, the brain of a murderer, a bolt of lightning—the mad scientist throws a switch, life courses through dead veins and evil walks the earth. The case of Red Bear is more prosaic.
Long before Red Bear was Red Bear, he was Raymond Beltran, son of a teenaged prostitute named Gloria Beltran, who was shipped out of Cuba in the Mariel boat lift of 1980. Little Raymond had been eight years old then, and if his life in Havana had been unstable, it was nothing compared to the journey he was about to undergo.
Gloria’s first stop was Miami, along with the other hundred thousand-plus Cubans of that exodus. She moved in with a cousin who threw her out when she came home to find Gloria plying her trade on the living-room couch, young Raymond not more than ten feet away in the next room. Her next stop was with an uncle, a much older and apparently more tolerant man. Unfortunately, Gloria had to quit that place on a matter of principle when the uncle insisted that she pay her rent in kind. The list of addresses that followed was long: two weeks here, three months there, each basement apartment more unpleasant than the last.
Then Gloria and Raymond caught what seemed like a break when they took up with Inigo Martinez, a drug dealer who had tired of the murderous competition in Miami and set his sights on the wide open market of Canada. Which was how Raymond Beltran came to grow up in a housing project called Regent Park on the east side of downtown Toronto.
Whenever the government does a census, Regent Park comes out as the poorest neighbourhood in Toronto. Most of its inhabitants are recent immigrants trying to realize some tiny approximation of their dreams. Many are single parents living on welfare; almost all are law-abiding. Inigo Martinez was not. Nor was he a successful businessman. His vision of Canada as a vast, undersup-plied market for his product turned out to be incorrect. So incorrect that a disgruntled competitor had him thrown from the top of a high-rise.
Gloria managed to evade deportation by persuading a Canadian of Cuban heritage to marry her. For a small financial consideration, he agreed to appear at several immigration interviews, have photographs taken of their “honeymoon” and so on. After her status was legalized, Gloria tried to coerce him into providing “child-support” payments, but he disappeared from her life as people with any sense were wont to do.
That left Gloria to raise Raymond on the income she received from Social Services and the proceeds from selling her body. Neighbours complained, of course, and the police were frequent visitors. The Catholic Children’s Aid Society repeatedly hauled her before the provincial court at 311 Jarvis Street on charges of child neglect. Having left school forever at the age of fourteen, Gloria saw no reason why her son should attend; she liked having him around the apartment.