"Hello, Lee." She stretched out the l's, rolling her tongue over the consonants sensually, like a cat stretching itself. "Long time, no see." It was an accusation, an implication, and an invitation. Lee wondered if she was faithful to Chuck.
He took another breath and swallowed hard.
"Is Chuck around?"
"Yes, he's in the basement working out. Just a minute-I'll get him."
She put down the receiver, and he could hear the click of her heels as she crossed the kitchen floor. Since being married to Susan, Chuck had become devoted to his weight routine, buffing his already athletic body to a burnished movie star musculature. If he didn't exercise regularly, he was given to thickening around the middle-unlike Lee, whose appetite came and went, Chuck had been renowned at Princeton for his eating ability. He once ate four dozen Maryland crabs at a seafood festival, and Lee had seen him down a sixteen-ounce steak.
Susan had kept her looks, too-she worked hard at it. Hours at the gym, Botox, implants, micro this, retinol that-her body was a project. Within a week of giving birth to her son, according to Chuck, she was doing crunches in front of Oprah reruns. She'd get her beauty any way she could have it. From a bottle, a box, or a scalpel-it was all the same to her.
Susan came back on the line. "He's coming," she purred. "And don't be such a stranger-come out and see us sometime. It doesn't always have to be about business, you know."
Oh, yes it does.
Chuck came on the line. "Hello?" he said, sounding out of breath. Lee imagined him standing on the immaculate kitchen floor, toweling off, being careful not to get a drop of sweat on the perfectly waxed floor.
"Listen, Chuck, I have an idea."
"Yeah?"
"I know it sounds crazy, but I think Eddie's racing form may hold the key-"
"What racing form?"
"Eddie Pepitone called me before he died to say he had an idea about the killer's identity."
"And?"
"He had just won some money on a horse called 'Lock, Stock, and Barrel.'"
"So?"
"Eddie was a superstitious guy. I think he bet on that horse because of something he knew-or thought he knew-that he wanted to tell me."
"What would that be?"
"Well, you know how this guy has been getting into the churches so easily?"
"Yeah. But some of the churches told us they often leave doors open."
"I know. But remember how he got into the hospital the other night with no problem?"
"Right."
"And got into the locked room where they kept the communion wine with no sign of a break-in?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, this may sound far-fetched, but what if he has an expertise that helps him do this?"
"Such as?"
"Well, what if he's a locksmith?"
"Hmm. You mean as in 'Lock, Stock, and Barrel.' That's not bad. It's worth a shot, anyway."
"We agreed that he was probably self-employed, right?"
"Right."
"So what if he actually owns a business?"
"Okay," Chuck said. "We can put Florette's men on it right away."
"I rode the train down with him."
"Yeah? And?"
"He liked the idea. I suggested we draw a radius to begin with of a mile around that church in Queens. That will be the most likely place-assuming he works not far from where he lives."
"Okay. We can start calling places by about eight a.m."
"I'll be in your office at eight sharp."
"Okay." There was a pause, and Chuck spoke softly, as if he didn't want someone in the room with him to hear. "Lee?"
"Yeah?"
"You okay?"
"Yeah. I'm going to bed now."
"Okay. Do that, all right?"
"Sure. I may call Nelson first, but-"
"Oh, let him sleep it off. He acted like a total jerk."
"I know. He's in pain, though."
"Yeah, right. Aren't we all?"
"Yeah. Sure."
"Bed, Lee."
"Right. Good night."
"Good night."
There was a click on the line, and Lee imagined Susan wrapping her arms around Chuck, luring him to bed. Well, he thought, one man's meat is another man's poison.
He put on a CD of some vocal music by the Estonian composer Arvo Part, and looked out the window at the fading light as the voices of the choir floated around him in the air, singing cluster chords in soft, spooky tones. The days were getting longer now, and on warm days he could smell a hint of spring in the air. He knew he was supposed to rejoice in the opening of buds and the quiet greening of the trees, and yet all he felt was wistfulness.
He longed for a retreat into darkness, to sink into the womb of winter, instead of having to claw his way into the light. The longer the day, the more he felt the pressure to solve this case, and the growing impossibility of his task shook him to the core.
He could not know that was something he had in common with the man he pursued.
His mother rejoiced in the sunlight, of course; in fact, she took Lee's journey into depression as a rebuke to her very existence. When she asked about his mental health-which she did rarely-she danced around the topic as though it might bite her.
The phone rang. He picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Hi, it's me." It was Kathy. "Just called to say good-bye."
"Why?"
"I'm going back to Philadelphia tomorrow. The Vidocq Society monthly meeting. My dad invited me, remember?"
"Oh, right. Sorry-I forgot."
"No problem. My place is being renovated, so I'll be staying with my dad. I'll call you."
"Okay, great."
"How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine."
"Well, make sure you get enough rest," she said, sounding unconvinced.
"I'm going to go lie down right now."
"Okay. I'll talk to you later in the week."
"Right."
"I'll miss you."
"Me too."
After they hung up, he looked out the window at the Orthodox Ukrainian church across the street. A ray of moonlight fell on the huge round window above the door of the church, lighting up the colors of the stained glass like a kaleidoscope.
He was reminded of the sun glinting off the windows of the World Trade Center, windows that would never reflect light again, and of the three thousand souls that lay buried in the debris. The sheer arbitrariness of the attack still stunned him. But for the grace of…God? Fate? Nature? What would you call it if you'd rejected traditional Christian notions of faith? A leap of faith-more like a dive, a plunge into the abyss. And yet, he thought, surrender could be sweet-so sweet that intelligent, educated young men had surrendered themselves, or so they imagined, to the will of Allah.
He wondered what was in the minds of the hijackers as they carried out their implacable plan. For, he was convinced, it was not so different from what was in the mind of his own Holyman, the Slasher.
Chapter Sixty
He looked around the restaurant in Grand Central Station. These were all nice people, surely, with families and mortgages and dogs they had gotten from rescue shelters-scruffy terriers with sweet, lopsided faces, sporting red bandanas, who liked to chase Frisbees in the park on Sunday afternoons. They were the kind of people that advertisers targeted on television: middle-class families looking to upgrade their dishwashers, their laptops, their life insurance policies. They had aging parents in managed-care facilities they were concerned about, college tuition to save up for, IRA accounts to roll over.
But he existed outside of their world. His was a half-lit netherworld of dark drives and even darker deeds. He glided in and out of their cheerful daytime lives like a ghost, an unwelcome visitor whose mission was to disrupt their daily ordinariness to satisfy his appalling fantasies.
If he could not be one of them, then he would live to remind them of that, to let them know they were not safe-not in their fortified SUVs, their multiplex houses with the elaborate security systems, or their fabulously expensive office buildings with the Japanese fountains and designer furniture fresh from the showroom. He would strike wherever they lived, worked, or played. He would invade their safety like a virus, a worm, a bacterium. They could not know his world, but he would know theirs.