The guy in the other half of the booth stood and gave Emilio a two-handed shove.
“Get your mitts off him, fucker!”
He was beefier than Charlie, with decent pecs and a good set of shoulders under the T-shirt and leather vest he wore, but he was out of his league. Way out.
“No me jodas!” Emilio said and smashed a right uppercut to his jaw that slammed him back into the inner corner of the booth. He slumped there and stared up at Emilio with a look of dazed pain.
Emilio turned and started dragging Charlie toward the door, knocking over tables in his way. He didn’t want a full-scale brawl but he wouldn’t have minded another maricon or two trying to block his way. But most of them seemed too surprised and off guard to react. Too bad. He was in the mood to kick some ass. He saw the bartender come out from behind the bar hefting an aluminum baseball bat. Decker and Mol intercepted him, and after a brief struggle Mol was holding the bat and the bartender was back behind the bar.
Once he was free of the tables, Emilio swung the stumbling Charlie around in front of him and propelled him toward the door. Decker and Mol closed in behind them as they exited. Emilio heard the bat clank on the floor as the doors swung closed. Half a dozen steps across the sidewalk and then they were all inside the limo, heading uptown.
Charlie opened the door on the other side but Emilio pulled him back before he could jump out.
“You’ll get killed that way, kid.”
“I don’t care!” Charlie said. “Dammit, Emilio, you can’t do this! It’s kidnapping!”
“Just following orders. Your father misses you.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Charlie folded his arms and legs and withdrew into himself. He spent the rest of the trip staring at the floor.
Emilio kept a close eye on him. He didn’t want him trying to jump out of the car again--although that might be a blessing for all concerned.
He sighed. Why did the Senador want this miserable creature around? He seemed to love the boy despite the threat posed by his twisted nature. Was that parenthood? Was that what fathering a child did to you? Made you lose your perspective? Emilio was glad he’d spared himself the affliction. But if he’d had a child, a boy, he’d never have let him grow up to be a maricon. He would have beaten that out of him at an early age.
What if Charlie did die by leaping from a moving vehicle? Or what if he fell prey to a hit-and-run driver? A major stumbling block on the Senador’s road to the White House would be removed.
Emilio decided to start keeping a mental file of “accidental” ways for Charlie to die should the need suddenly arise. The Senador would never order it, but if the need ever arose, Emilio might decide to act on his own.
I was two decades and a half in the desert when they came to me. How they found me, I do not know. Perhaps the Lord guided them. Perhaps they followed the reek of my corruption.
They too were in flight, hiding from the Romans and their lackeys in the Temple. The brother of He whose name I deserve not to speak led them. They were awed by my appearance, and I by theirs. Barely did I recognize them, so exhausted were they by their trek.
I was astounded to learn that they had brought the Mother with them.
--from the Glass scroll
Rockefeller Museum translation
FOUR
Father Dan Fitzpatrick strolled the narrow streets of his Lower East Side parish and drank in the colors flowing around him. Sure there was squalor here, and poverty and crime, all awash in litter and graffiti, but there was color here. Not like the high-rise midtown he’d visited last night, with its sterile concrete-and-marble plazas, its faceless glass-and-granite office towers.
A mere forty blocks from the Waldorf, the Lower East Side might as well be another country. No skyscrapers here. Except for aberrations like the Con-Ed station’s quartet of stacks and the dreary housing projects, the Lower East Side skyline rises to a uniform six stories. Window-studded facades of cracked and patched brick crowd together cheek by jowl for block after block, separated occasionally by a garbage-choked alley. They’re all brick of varying shades of red, sometimes brown or gray, and every so often a daring pink or yellow or blue. With no room behind or to either side, a mazework of mandatory fire escapes hangs over the sidewalks, clinging to the brick facades like spidery steel parasites, ready-made perches for the city’s winged rat, the pigeon.
Everywhere Dan looked, everything was old, with no attempt to recapture youth. Graffiti formed the decorative motif, layer upon layer until the intertwined snake squiggles and balloon letters were indecipherable even to their perpetrators. The store signs he could read advertised old bedding, fresh vegetables, used furniture, and the morning paper, offered food, candy, magazines, cashed checks, and booze, booze, booze. And some Korean and Vietnamese signs he couldn’t read. He passed pawn shops, bodegas, boys clubs, schools, churches, and playgrounds. Children still played, even here.
He looked up at the passing windows. Behind them lived young, hopeful immigrants on their way up, middle aged has-beens on their way down, and too many running like hell just to stay in place. And out here on the streets dwelt the never-weres and the never-will-bes, going nowhere, barely even sure of where they were at any given moment.
He wore his civvies this morning—faded jeans, flannel shirt, sneakers. He wasn’t here on Church business and it was easier to get around without the Roman collar. Especially in Tompkins Square. The collar drew the panhandlers like moths to a flame. And can you believe it—every single one of them a former altar boy? Simply amazing how many altar boys had become homeless.
Tompkins Square Park was big, three blocks long and running the full width between Avenues A and B. Black wrought-iron fencing guarded the perimeter. Oaks, pale green with new life, stood inside the fences but spread their branches protectively over the surrounding sidewalks. Homeless shantytowns used to spring up here every so often, and just as often the police would raze them, but closing the park between midnight and 6 a.m. every night had sent the cardboard box brigade elsewhere.
Dan walked past the stately statue of Samuel S. Cox, its gray-green drabness accentuated by the orange, red, and yellow of the swings and slides in the nearby playground, and strolled the bench-lined walks, searching for the gleaming white of Harold Gold’s bald head. They’d met years ago when Dan had audited Hal’s course on the Dead Sea scrolls. They’d got to talking after class, found they shared an abiding interest in the Jerusalem Church—Hal from the Jewish perspective, Dan from the Christian—and became fast friends. Whenever one dug up a tasty little tidbit of lore, he shared it immediately with the other. Dan was sure Hal had picked up some real goodies during his sabbatical in Israel. He was looking forward to this meeting.
He didn’t see Hal. Lunch hour was still a while off but already seats were becoming scarce around the square. Then Dan spotted someone waving from a long bench in the sunny section on the Avenue A side.
No wonder I couldn’t spot him, Dan thought as he approached Hal’s bench. He’s got a tan.
As usual, Hal was nattily dressed in a dark blue blazer, gray slacks, a pale blue Oxford button-down shirt, and a red-and-blue paisley tie. But his customary academician’s pallor had been toasted to a golden brown. His nude scalp gleamed with a richer color. He looked healthier and better rested than Dan had ever seen him.
“The Middle East seems to agree with you,” Dan said, laughing as they shook hands. He sat down next to him. “I can’t remember ever seeing you looking so fit.”
“Believe me, Fitz, getting away for a year and recharging the batteries does wonders for the mind and body. I heartily recommend it.” He looked around. “You came alone?”
“Of course. Who else would I bring?”