He had spent more time here than I ever realized.
I scanned the shadows, the objects, I let the air fill my nostrils.
Yes, he'd come here often and with someone else, and that person ... that person had died here! I hadn't realized any of this before, of course, and it was just more preparation for the meal. So the murderer drug dealer had loved a young man in these digs once, and it hadn't been all clutter. I was getting flashes of it in the worst way, more emotion than image, and I found myself fairly fragile under the onslaught. This death hadn't occurred all that long ago.
Had I passed this Victim in those times, when his friend was dying, I would never have settled on him, just let him go on. But then he was so flashy!
He was coming up the back steps now, the inner secret stairway, cautiously taking each step, his hand on the handle of his gun inside his coat, very Hollywood style, though there wasn't much else about him that was predictable. Except, of course, that many who deal in cocaine are eccentric.
He reached the back door, saw that I'd opened it. Rage. I slipped over into the corner opposite that overbearing granite statue, and I stood back between two dusty saints. There wasn't enough light for him to see me right off. He'd have to turn on one of the little halogens, and they were spots.
Right now, he listened, he sensed. He hated it that someone had broken open his door; he was murderous and had no intention of not investigating, alone; a little court case was held in his mind. No, no one could possibly know about this place, the judge decided. Had to be a petty thief, goddamn it, and those words were heaped in rage upon the accidental.
He slipped the gun out, and he started going through his rooms, through rooms I'd skipped. I heard the light switch, saw the flash in the hall. He went on to another and another.
How on earth could he tell this place was empty? I mean, anyone could be hiding in this place. I knew it was empty. But what made him so sure? But maybe that's how he'd stayed alive all this time, he had just the right mixture of creativity and carelessness.
At last came the absolutely delicious moment. He was satisfied he was alone.
He stepped into the living-room door, his back to the long hall, and slowly scanned the room, failing to see me, of course, and then he put his large nine-millimeter gun back in his shoulder holster, and he slipped off his gloves very slowly.
There was enough light for me to note everything I adored about him.
Soft black hair, the Asian face that you couldn't clearly identify as Indian or Japanese, or Gypsy; could even have been Italian or Greek; the cunning black eyes, and the remarkably perfect symmetry of the bones—one of the very few traits he'd passed on to his daughter, Dora. She was fair skinned, Dora. Her mother must have been milk white. He was my favorite shade, caramel.
Suddenly something made him very uneasy. He turned his back to me, eyes quite obviously locked to some object that had alarmed him. Nothing to do with me. I had touched nothing. But his alarm had thrown up a wall between my mind and his. He was on full alert, which meant he wasn't thinking sequentially.
He was tall, his back very straight, the coat long, his shoes those Savile Row handmade kind that takes the English shops forever. He took a step away from me, and I realized immediately from a jumble of images that it was the black granite statue that had startled him.
It was perfectly obvious. He didn't know what it was or how it had gotten here. He approached, very cautious, as though someone might be hiding in the vicinity of the thing, then pivoted, scanned the room, and slowly drew out his gun again.
Possibilities were passing through his mind in rather orderly fashion.
He knew one art dealer who was stupid enough to have delivered the thing and left the door unlocked, but that dealer would have called him before ever coming.
And this thing? Mesopotamian? Assyrian? Suddenly, impulsively, he forgot all practical matters and put his hand out and touched the granite. God, he loved it. He loved it and he was acting stupid.
I mean, there could have been one of his enemies here. But then why would a gangster or a federal investigator come bearing a gift such as that?
Whatever the case, he was enthralled by the piece. I still couldn't see it clearly. I would have slipped off the violet glasses, which would have helped enormously, but I didn't dare move. I wanted to see this, this adoration of his for the object that was new. I could feel his uncompromising desire for this statue, to own it, to have it here ... the very sort of desire which had first attracted him to me.
He was thinking only about it, the fine carving, that it was recent, not ancient, for obvious stylistic reasons, seventeenth century perhaps, a fleshed-out rendering of a fallen angel.
Fallen angel. He did everything but step on tiptoe and kiss the thing. He put his left hand up and ran it all over the granite face and the granite hair. Damn, I couldn't see it! How could he put up with this darkness? But then he was smack up against it, and I was twenty feet away and stuffed between two saints, without a good perspective.
Finally, he turned and switched on one of the halogen lamps.
Thing looked like a preying mantis. He moved the thin black iron limb so the beam shone up on the statue's face. Now I could see both profiles beautifully!
He made little noises of lust. This was unique! The dealer was of no importance, the back door forgiven, the supposed danger fled. He slipped the gun in the holster again, almost as if he wasn't even think ing about it, and he did go up on tiptoe, trying to get eye level with this appalling graven image. Feathered wings. I could see that now.
Not reptilian, feathered. But the face, classical, robust, the long nose, the chin .. . yet there was a ferocity in the profile. And why was the statue black? Maybe it was only St. Michael pushing devils into hell, angry righteous. No, the hair was too rank and tangled for that.
Armour, breastplate, and then of course I saw the most telling details. That it had the legs and feet of a goat. Devil.
Again there came a shiver. Like the thing I'd seen. But that was stupid! And I had no sense of the Stalker being near me now. No disorientation. I wasn't even really afraid. It was just a frisson, nothing more.
I held very still. Now take your time, I thought. Figure this out.
You've got your Victim and this statue is just a coincidental detail that further enriches the entire scenario. He turned another halogen beam on the thing. It was almost erotic the way he studied it. I smiled. Erotic the way I was studying him—this forty-seven-year-old man with a youth's health and a criminal's poise. Fearlessly he stood back, having forgotten any threat of any kind, and looked at this new acquisition. Where had it come from? Whom? He didn't give a damn about the price. If only Dora. No, Dora wouldn't like this thing.
Dora. Dora, who had cut him to the heart tonight refusing his gift.
His entire posture changed; he didn't want to think about Dora again, and all the things Dora had said—that he had to renounce what he did, that she'd never take another cent for the church, that she couldn't help but love him and suffer if he did go to court, that she didn't want the veil.
What veil? Just a fake, he'd said, but one of the best he'd found so far. Veil? I suddenly connected his hot little memory with something hanging on the far wall, a framed bit of fabric, a painted Christface. Veil. Veronica's veil.
And just an hour ago he'd said to Dora, "Thirteenth century, and so beautiful, Dora, for the love of heaven. Take it. If I can't leave these things to you, Dora "
So this Christface had been his precious gift?
"I won't take them anymore, Daddy, I told you. I won't."
He had pressed her with the vague scheme that this new gift could be exhibited for the public. So could all his relics. They could raise money for the church.