“But then I start to hear other stuff. Guy I know, covers homicide, starts talking about these ritual killings. Bones alongside the Major Deegan Expressway, this fire circle up by the Cloisters. A snuff video, with all these women and some guy who gets it at the end, only no one ever reports him missing. Stuff like that.
“Then some bodies start to show up. Mutilated bodies. No single MO, the killings are all over the map, but a lot of the victims are homeless men. Sometimes homeless women. And a lot of kids. I mean, like runaway boys who’re hustling or whatever. Some people say it’s Santeria; maybe even Anton LaVey’s people. But then the Santeria folks say No way, this isn’t them at all, and even the other guys, the Satanists, get pissed off! That’s when I started to take a professional interest.
“Then I hear about something out West. One of Angelica’s bodyguards is, like, eaten by killer ants! On Angie’s ranch, with Angie supposedly asleep back in la casa. Then there’s all these unsolved murders of runaways and homeless people out in Arizona and L.A. and Seattle, and your acid test up in Provincetown, some dumb kid on smart drugs ends up wearing his small intestine for a necktie. Now you look me in the eye and tell me there’s not something weird going on.”
She tried to look him in the eye, but Baby Joe only stared at the stage, where two women were embracing and simulating orgasm. Annie lowered her head into her hands and ran her fingers across her buzz-cut scalp.
“And you really think Angelica’s behind it all?”
Baby Joe turned back to her. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“But why? I mean, I know she’s got something to do with it—I saw her, when I was hallucinating, or—well, whatever I was doing. But she can’t be in all these places at once. Can she?” Annie added, a little desperately.
“‘Let us placate her in advance by assuming the cannibalistic worst,’” recited Baby Joe softly.
“What?”
“Just something I read. Listen, Annie—”
He took her hand, her small fingers disappearing beneath his. “Something really strange is going on—I don’t mean just with you, or me, or Hasel, but with everything. The whole world, maybe.
“You remember how Angie used to talk—all that goddess stuff, all those books Warnick gave her? Well, I read some of them too—back then, I mean. And I saw what happened at the Orphic Lodge that night, before—well, before Oliver jumped—”
“And?”
“And—well, what if something really happened to them? What if Angie did something—what if that night, her and Oliver both did something, and—well, what if they woke something. Something they shouldn’t be screwing with.”
“Something like—what?” Annie asked warily.
“Christ, Annie! You were at the Divine, you know there’s a whole world of stuff out there that nobody else talks about! You weren’t supposed to find out, and I walked away from it, and maybe Oliver killed himself because of it—but it’s still there.”
Annie tried to draw her hand away, but Baby Joe only clutched it tighter.
“It’s still there, Annie! You know it is! Look what’s happened to the world since that night at the Divine—only what, nineteen years ago? People always say how the past looks better than whatever we have now—but Dios ko, things really have gotten worse! There’s all these horrible little wars, there’s this horrible plague that’s killing us and everyone’s pretending not to notice. Things happen like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and we’re supposed to just forget. Men go around hunting women and children like they were deer, and women fall on the men with knives. And on top of that, the whole fucking planet is just sort of dying. I mean, we got earthquakes, and fires, and floods, and droughts and blizzards and—well, everything! It’s like the pregame show for the apocalypse!”
His voice rose as Annie continued to look at him with a stony expression. “Don’t you see, Annie? This is it—and whatever it is, Angelica’s not just part of it. Angelica is it. I mean, for two thousand years Christians have been talking about the Second Coming, about Jesus and the saints and all that shit… but what if there could be a different kind of Second Coming?”
“But why is she killing us?” Annie tried to keep her voice from quavering. “We were her friends! Why did Oliver have to the, and Hasel? Hasel would never hurt anyone! And me, they tried to kill me—”
“Maybe to her it’s not like killing. I mean, if somehow this goddess has been reincarnated as Angelica.” Baby Joe laughed, a soft ominous giggle. “Maybe she’s trying to save us—keep us from seeing what comes next. Maybe she thinks she’s doing her friends a favor.”
For several minutes they sat without talking. Dancers walked on and off the stage behind them, sweat and glitter silvering the air in their wake. Finally Annie asked, “What about Sweeney? You’re in touch with her—does she know?”
“I told her about Hasel. And she knows about Angelica—I mean she knows that Angelica’s come back. She saw her on TV a week or so ago, some talk show.”
“But this other stuff? These—” Annie raked her fingernails across the table’s surface. “You know,” she ended brokenly.
Baby Joe dropped his cigarette on the floor and let it burn there. “She knows some. Hasel’s letter, and I faxed her some other things. Articles.” Glitter and grey ash sifted over him; he waved it away and said, “I’ve tried calling her this week but she’s never at the museum. Which is strange, ‘cause I don’t think she’s taken a vacation in five years. When I call her at home I just keep getting her machine.”
He fell silent. Annie couldn’t meet his eyes: they were so black he looked stoned or crazy drunk, and ferociously intense. She turned instead to gaze at the stage, where two women caressed each other with luminous violet talons. The mirrored floor beneath them was streaked with sweat and god knows what else. One of them arched her back so that her blond mane swept the floor. Her spike heel impaled a twenty-dollar bill, and she laughed.
“Fucking shit.” Annie swore beneath her breath and looked away. The sight of them sickened her, and the sound of the men watching, the way their drunken voices got husky and boyish at once. And their smell, that almost imperceptible musk of—what? Sweat and semen and whiskey-fueled hope, she guessed; then realized it was Baby Joe she could smell, the oily taint of vodka on his skin and pungent tobacco on his breath. Without wanting to Annie cringed, thinking of her old friend sitting beside her with an erection, his eyes fixed on the stage.
It almost makes you think they get what they deserve…
She recoiled in horror at the thought.
“What?” Baby Joe put a hand on her shoulder and started to his feet, looking around with that same fierce gaze. “You see someone, hija?”
At his touch she jumped, her skin prickling. But it was only Baby Joe. Sweet rude Baby Joe, with his Peter Lorre giggle and nicotine-stained fingers, his angry gaze directed at some imagined enemy out there in the strip club.