Pawing open the medicine chest, her fingers walk over bottles. Pills, lots of pills: Darvocet, Vicodin, OxyContin. And Mackie’s works: two syringes, two halves of a Coca-Cola can, cotton balls for straining heroin, a lighter because discards are way too easy for the cops to match up to a pack. Mackie’s knife, the one he uses on the cans. For an old guy-has to be sixty, if he’s a day-he really goes through this stuff. He explained it once: Spoons are probable cause, but Coke, anyone can have a Coke can, for Christ’s sake, this is America.
Pills. Jesus, but Lily wants pills. Pills make things hazy, so she doesn’t care so much.
Mother
Who?
likes uppers. Feed a girl enough, she works for hours. And men will pay a lot of money for the young ones, especially the virgins. Virgins are good luck. They will cure a man of AIDS. Mother once knew a doctor in Poipet who could make virgins, over and over again. Doctors will do anything for enough money.
Not-Lily’s fingers twitch, flex, grab the knife. The blade locks into place with that sweet, metallic snick.
She says his name three, four times before he rolls over. Mackie’s fat, he’s a pig. Too much beer and Thai takeout, and the grease they use in those spring rolls’ll kill ya if the MSG don’t. His belly jiggles like quick-silver in the light of the dead channel.
“What the fuh?” He scrubs eye grit with the balls of his fists, an oddly childlike gesture. “What you want, bitch?”
“I’m not a bitch,” she whispers, the Lily piece of her mind finally realizing what is coming next, and, God forgive her, she wants it. She’s even happy because this is revenge, a sort of stand.
“But I’m not Lily.” And she brings the knife down. “I’m not.”
She doesn’t know if, through his screams, he hears. Certainly, in a little while, he’s past caring.
II
I was dead asleep when my pager brrred at one A.M. Technically, I was supposed to be at the station for third shift, but plenty of guys took calls from home. Not that I was home, mind you.
On these odd Fridays, I was sure my colleagues in homicide didn’t know what to make of me. I can guarantee you that the Black Hats at the synagogue-in Fairfax, off Route 236-thought my presence among them pretty weird. Me, too. Most days, I didn’t understand why I chose to study with the rabbi or occasionally come for a Sabbath meal and good conversation.
We’d met years ago on a murder I and Adam-my best friend, my partner-caught. Later, he’d tried to help Adam. Couldn’t, and Adam died. I don’t know if he thought he was helping me now.
Mostly, I was the student. I listened. I asked questions, very pointed ones, mostly about Kabbalist mysticism. The rabbi had interpreted a spell left at the scene of that case, so he knew his stuff. Not like Madonna-kitsch. Oh, sure, Kabbalah was magic, just as the mezuzah tacked to virtually every doorway in the rabbi’s house was an amulet. But Judaism was pretty specific: Suffer not a witch to live. Exodus 22, verse 18.
But. That’s different from saying magic doesn’t exist.
And Judaism has its protective spells and amulets. Every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has magical connotations. Name-magic, some of it. Heck, even Solomon bound demons to build the First Temple.
So we talked. Sometimes, we drank bad coffee, but only if his secretary was in that day.
I crept downstairs, guided by nightlights. The lights were on timers, as was the oven, the compressor on the refrigerator. The refrigerator light bulb was unscrewed. How Orthodox Jews made do before the invention of the automatic coffeemaker, I’ll never know.
Halfway down the stairs, though, I caught the unmistakable aroma of fresh coffee. Hunh. Turned the corner. “Rabbi, what are you doing?”
Dietterich shrugged. He was a bearish man, with a thick tangle of brown beard that was showing more threads of silver these days. In his black robe and slippers, he looked like someone’s scruffy, huggable uncle.
“I had… a dream. Don’t ask me what. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep, and I heard you moving around, so…” Another shrug. “You’ll need coffee.”
“You turned on the coffeemaker. Isn’t that forbidden?”
“Pikuach nefesh.” Dietterich was a native New Yorker. Every time he opened his mouth, I thought Shea Stadium. “ ‘Neither shall you stand by the blood of your neighbor.’ From Leviticus. To save a human life supersedes all other commands.”
“Well, they usually call me when it’s too late.”
He handed me a travel mug. He did think ahead. “But when you catch a killer, he can’t kill again, right? It evens out.”
The coffee was hot and smooth going down. Clearly he hadn’t taken lessons from his secretary. This was a bigger relief than you can imagine. “I suppose that’s true.”
“Think of this as an advance, a down payment. Save one life, it’s as if you saved the world. Making coffee so you don’t end up wrapped around a tree seems a no-brainer.”
“What about the Guy Upstairs?” For the record, I wasn’t sure where I stood on the God thing, but I can tell you this: I’ve seen what evil does, and I have no trouble bringing evil down. I’m not wrath of God about it. It’s what I do.
“Hashem can take a joke.” Dietterich hesitated, then said, “Jason, why do you come here? Don’t misunderstand me. We’re friends. But, in you, there is something missing. Here.” His bunched fist touched his chest. “You’re a detective, a seeker. You strive toward light where others see only darkness. But I still think you are a little bit like my hand here. You need to open, just a little.” His fist relaxed. “Like opening a door to a second sight. You can’t hold anything in your mind unless you open your heart.”
I don’t know how I felt. Not embarrassed. More like I’d been filleted and gutted.
He read my face. “I’m sorry. I’m intruding.”
“No. Don’t apologize. A lot of the time I’m stumbling around in the shadows.”
“Then do something about it.” He moved a little closer and pulled something out of a pocket of his robe. A glint of metal, a sparkle. “I don’t know why I haven’t given this to you before now. But now… feels right.”
The metal was like nothing I’d seen. In fact, my mind must’ve been playing tricks because the light was very poor. The metal wasn’t smooth but woven: gold filaments, I thought, and maybe silver? A hint of blue in the weave. I made out a five-by-five grid. A different gem sparkled in every square, both illuminating and magnifying a strange character-were they letters?-incised in the metal beneath. I counted five different symbols. Two were like runes, but the other three looked more like crude Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The center square was unique, with a character repeated nowhere else in the grid: a squashed teardrop canted right, tip down, broader bottom adorned with inwardly curved hooks or prongs. I thought: Georgia O’Keeffe. I rubbed my thumb over the gem there. A glitter of purple. Amethyst? “What is this?”
He opened his mouth, but my pager brrred again, and too late, I remembered I hadn’t called in yet. “Sorry, I have to take this. I didn’t want to use the phone in the house. But thank you.” I slipped the charm into my trouser pocket. “And don’t be sorry.”
“It’s fine, fine. We’ll talk later.” He made a shooing motion. “Go. Save the world.”
The crime scene guys had finished with pictures and were working the room. Kay Howard, the deputy M.E., was hunkered over the body. My partner, Rollins, was downstairs talking to the night clerk, a diminutive Indian with coke-bottle glasses and an accent that got thicker the more questions we asked.