“Send him up to my apartment,” Pro Bono directed the doorman.
If the visitor had gone up to the office and not the apartment, the doorman would have been required to ask for identification, which would have confirmed his suspicions. But since it had become a private visit, he let the visitor in without asking anything of him. The image of Sleepy Joe was there in security cameras, and despite the winter gear, his face registered clearly: a white male, young, about six feet tall. The time stamp on the security camera video showed him entering the building at 23:05 and leaving twenty-eight minutes later.
During that time, Sleepy Joe sealed Pro Bono’s mouth with duct tape and forced him to strip — to expose what he never exposed, not even to himself. He robbed the old man of his shell, leaving him as naked as the day he was born, forcing him to look at himself in the great antique mirror with a silver frame hanging in the foyer. Or maybe not. There was likely no mirror in that foyer. Pro Bono would not have wanted to undergo the daily tyranny of that object waiting for his arrival, dismissing him as he left — like a black hole, pulling him into the void to confront the naked truth of his pink and twisted anatomy, thus vanquishing the perfect image he had managed to build of himself as a defender of just causes, a loving husband, an admired, rich, elegant, and cosmopolitan man.
The ceremony must have taken place then in Gunnora’s bathroom, where there were plenty of mirrors, yes, and which, facing each other, must have endlessly multiplied the derision. And that, not what came later, had to be the worst part for Pro Bono: this presentation of the evidence, that his monstrosity was not in the distortion of the mirror or in the eyes of the observer, but painfully embedded in his very nature from the day he was born and until that night, which would be his last. That was the real knockout punch. In the truth of his nakedness, Pro Bono succumbed to the perpetrator. So it could be said that Sleepy Joe lacked subtlety in his cruelty. He did not realize that Pro Bono was suddenly no longer Pro Bono but just a shadow of the man whom Sleepy Joe bent over and tied to a column. He made fun of his hump and mocked his luxuries, put the silk scarf around his neck, hobbling and crouching like an ape, and when he grew tired of monkeying around, he pulled out the whip he had hidden under his coat.
The rest was predictable: the procedure of flogging a poor old man is routine, harder and harder, over and over again, taking it beyond pain toward death. The true sacred flash, the epiphany, the mystical spark was in the whip itself, this fetish with a life of its own that whistled like a bird when it shattered the air with its crack, being, as it was, the first object created by man to break the sound barrier. Ian Rose knew something from Wendy Mellons that the investigators of the case would never hit upon: for years the murderer had been exploring the infinite ritualistic possibilities of the instrument that he had used for the first time in the Morada of the Penitent Brothers on himself. To officiate over the person of Pro Bono, Sleepy Joe did not just use any old whip, but the quintessential one, the so-called Roman flagrum, which had been used in Judea, in the palace of Pontius Pilate, to whip the Son of God. The Roman flagrum has three straps with metal nails embedded at the tips that break off the skin with each stroke, that is, opening it into wedges, creating furrows, a fact that became more common knowledge because of Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ.
The body of Pro Bono, still gagged and tied to the column, but long bloodless, was found the following day by the cleaning lady.
“Stop at the first service area we come to,” María Paz asked Rose, only an hour into their journey to Vermont.
Rose protested: they couldn’t stop, that rest time had not been programmed into their plan. They couldn’t go stopping every minute. They would have to wait at least until Kansas. “Do you have to pee? Can’t you hold it, María Paz?”
“There, a mile away, stop at the service area,” she ordered. “Keep an eye on the signs, Rose. There must be a phone there somewhere. We have to call Violeta to warn her.”
In the Food Mart, they read through the daily newspapers and listened to the TV news broadcasts. Everywhere there were bursts, like wildfire, of the commotion created by the felon of the moment, whom journalists had poetically christened The Passion Killer. And not passion as in love, not love for María Paz, who apparently had not surfaced in the investigations. Nor love for Maraya, or Wendy Mellons, or anyone. Rather Passion with a capital P. And while Rose let the dogs out to pee, and María Paz did the same in the bathroom, the world was shocked at the sight of Sleepy Joe, this serial killer who was so beautiful. Amazing, how could someone so pretty and so blond be so evil?
“Look, María Paz,” Rose said pointing to one of the newspapers, “looks like your Hero was not alone.”
“Don’t tell me the bastard killed other dogs.”
“None that are known, but he crucified other people.”
The Passion Killer had been linked to at least nine serial murders committed in different parts of the country but employing similar methods, and most of the victims were people that neither Rose nor María Paz knew. Two of them had been crucified over the past year, one nailed to a door and the other to an armoire, with all the trappings of incense and candles that were considered the trademarks of the killer.
From a pay phone, María Paz called her sister’s school. She knew it would be a difficult, short exchange, but a crucial one on which the girl’s life could depend. María Paz would have to say the right words, so Violeta would act accordingly. She could not scare her with generalities, or create abstract fears, or pretend she could clearly explain the whole thing. Each sentence had to be short and to the point. And there was Violeta, on the line.
“Little Sis, it’s me, Big Sis,” María Paz told her.
“Not Big Sis, it’s the voice of Big Sis.”
“Listen to me, Violeta.”
“Listen to me, Violeta. I saw Sleepy Joe and I got scared. Sleepy Joe. If he comes near me, I’ll bite him.”
“Don’t leave your school, baby!” María Paz felt the blood empty from her head. “Do not go to Sleepy Joe. Do you hear me, Violeta? With Sleepy Joe, no. Sleepy Joe does bad things, very bad, and Violeta should not go with him.”
“Sleepy Joe was on the news.”
“Think hard, Little Sis. Think hard about what you’re telling me. Did you see Sleepy Joe, or did you see a picture of Sleepy Joe on the news?”
“On the news.”
“Good, Violeta, good.” María Paz felt as if her soul had returned to her body. Sleepy Joe was still not there, and Violeta was somewhat aware of what was going on, so it wasn’t necessary to go into endless explanations that would do nothing but lead to terrible confusion. “You heard about the bad things that Sleepy Joe has been doing. So you should not leave the school. Do not leave the school. Wait there, Little Sis, I’m coming for you.”
“Don’t come, Big Sis. The police came asking about you. I said nothing to the police. The director didn’t let them speak to me.”
Shit, María Paz thought. Shit, shit, shit. That’s all they needed.
“Now, just stay by the phone,” she told Violeta, after carefully weighing what to do. “Don’t go far from the phone. Big Sis will call you in five minutes.”
“Why twice?”
“Just listen to me. Stay by the phone, I’ll call back.”
María Paz hung up, and then started quizzing Rose in the same tone she had used with Violeta, uttering short and precise instructions and queries, emphasizing each syllable.