A redhead, a brunette, a blonde. One white, one black, one Oriental. Okay, and my favorite, a sexy, exotic Goth chick. Maybe a fat chick to handle the cooking. What more could a man ask for? Well, some privacy every now and then, maybe.
Of course, that's all a fantasy, I don't think I could handle more than one, and I sure as hell couldn't be one of a group myself.
Still,if you think you might be missing out in life being stuck to the same person day after day, check out Practical Polyamory. It could be just what the doctor ordered, along with Viagra-and maybe a Pacemaker.
Damn, I almost forgot-twins!
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Is Nothing Sacred?
Hey, Marilyn Manson
I think it's pretty sick of you buying the skeleton of a Chinese child, and masks made of human skin, and Nazi memorabilia, with the proceeds of your band's profits. Don't you have any standards at all?
If you're going to engage in those types of purchases, do it on your own dime, don't stick it to your band mates. Jeeez.
Hat tip to Hillbilly White Trash
By the way, Lem, you shouldn't be so hard on the band members. Marilyn has been an expert at hiding his true nature. After all, this is the man that gave the world Jack Off Jill.
I think it's pretty sick of you buying the skeleton of a Chinese child, and masks made of human skin, and Nazi memorabilia, with the proceeds of your band's profits. Don't you have any standards at all?
If you're going to engage in those types of purchases, do it on your own dime, don't stick it to your band mates. Jeeez.
Hat tip to Hillbilly White Trash
By the way, Lem, you shouldn't be so hard on the band members. Marilyn has been an expert at hiding his true nature. After all, this is the man that gave the world Jack Off Jill.
Sometimes They Wear Lavender
My new Christmas wishlist:
1. Hardbound copy of James Joyce's Ulysses
2. Flashlight
3. A bigger closet
And to think, it all started with Mad Magazine
Hat tip to Greg at Grad Student Madness
And if you really want to torture yourself, check out:
Encyclopediadramatica.com/USA
1. Hardbound copy of James Joyce's Ulysses
2. Flashlight
3. A bigger closet
And to think, it all started with Mad Magazine
Hat tip to Greg at Grad Student Madness
And if you really want to torture yourself, check out:
Encyclopediadramatica.com/USA
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Radu-Chapter XXV (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
Previous Installments-
Part One
Prologue and Chapters I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Part Three
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Radu-Chapter XXV (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
11 pages approximate
Berry dreaded sending his kids away, but felt he had no choice. Things were becoming more dangerous than he ever imagined they would have, and too many people knew where he lived. Too many people knew where his children went to school. Too many people knew enough to understand that Lieutenant James Berry had one weakness and one weakness only-his family.
It was gut wrenching, especially as concerning his oldest child, twelve-year-old Darrell. He was at that age where a son needed his father more than ever, even though he was growing more and more difficult. When he heard the news of his up-and-coming move to Salt Lake City, he became more sullen than ever.
To nine-year-old Karinda and seven-year-old Jimmy, it was also hard, though not as difficult. Karinda liked the idea of spending some time with her mom, and to Jimmy it was a big adventure. They were ready.
“Darrell, come on, son, your mom will be here shortly,” he shouted up the steps. After a couple of minutes, Darrell came down, lugging two suitcases, which he set by the door alongside the others.
“So how long is this going to be?” he asked.
“Maybe just a few months,” Berry said. “It may be a couple of years or so, just depends on how everything goes.”
“Well, I think it sucks,” the young teen said. “That woman ain’t my mom, and I’ll never see her as my mom. How in the hell can I look at her as my mom or even pretend she is, after she walked off and left us when I was like five and Jimmy was like, hell, not even a year old?”
Berry reacted with a pained expression, which he tried to hide, but turning away from his son just added fuel to the fire of his concerns.
“Darrell, a lot went down that you don’t know about,” he said. “It wasn’t all her fault.”
“Yeah, something is always going down that I don’t know nothin’ about,” he said.
“For God’s sake, Darrell, you go there every summer, have been for three years now, how is this that much different? I’ll be in touch, I swear. Hell, I might even be coming around there sometime. Who knows, I might even move there.”
“You mean you and mommy might get back together?” Karinda asked, obviously pleased at the prospect.
“Well, I didn’t say that now,” Berry replied. “Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dragons lie. Not that your mom is a dragon, just that sometimes two people can’t stay together.”
Karinda looked down as she faked a smile, as Berry looked over to his youngest, little Jimmy.
“So anything you want to say little man?” he asked as he ruffled the kid’s hair. “You are going to look out for these two for me, right?”
“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “What about you? Will you be all right, with your hand and all?”
Berry looked at his hand, still in a cast after seven excruciatingly difficult surgeries.
“The hand will be fine,” he said. “I can feel it tingling more every day, and the doc says it should be completely healed in another couple of months or so. So those bad guys better watch out, huh?”
Suddenly Karinda started crying, saying she did not want to leave, and James lowered into a crouching position and gathered her in his right arm, and then reached out for Jimmy, who fell into his other arm, as Berry cried.
“I love you both,” he said, as suddenly Berry heard the honking of the car horn from outside. They told him they loved him too, after which he rose and looked at Darrell, who now began to cry for the first time in years. Berry held his son up to him, told him he loved him, but by then Darrell could barely talk.
“Look out for yourself, and your brother and sister,” he told him.
“You do the same dad,” Darrell replied. “I love you.”
They went outside, where Frieda stood outside the Ford Explorer, its side passenger’s door open and ready to load.
Within a couple of minutes, the suitcases and other belongings were loaded up, and they were ready to go, but Frieda indicated a need to talk to Berry in private.
‘I’m going to need some more money,” she said.
“Hell, I’m giving you sixty grand a year, what more could you need?” he asked.
“Another sixty grand,” she said. “Kids are expensive, you know. You want them to be happy, don’t you?”
Berry unconsciously wiped his brow as he breathed deeply.
“Whatever I send you for the kids had damn well better be spent on the kids,” he replied. “I want them to know its coming from me too, because”-
“Hey, no problem,” Frieda replied. “Don’t worry, James. I promise I’ll look after them like they were my own.”
Berry shot her a stern look
“You know, that is really a smart-ass thing for you to be saying, isn’t it?” he asked. “I hope you don’t consider that funny, because I don’t think it’s a damn bit funny. In fact, I think it’s really kind of sad, don’t you?”
“James, you know I love these kids,” she said, now somewhat hurt by Berry’s none-too-subtle chiding. “I honestly appreciate you giving me the chances you’ve given me. God knows I don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t believe that or I’d never send them to stay with you,” he replied.
“I promise I’ll take good care of them,” she said. “I won’t let you down. You can trust me.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear,” Berry replied. “And for what it’s worth, I know that.”
“Good, then it’s settled,” Frieda said with a sigh. “Now, give me a hug to make it look good, and then I got to get the hell out of here.”
He hugged her, after which Frieda went to the car, now loaded with the children’s belongings. Berry tried to look brave as the kids waved goodbye and shouted they loved him, but as he waved back at them and told them he loved them too, all the time he smiled he wondered if he looked as stupid as he felt. He should have heard from Dorothy a week ago but had not. It was starting to concern him, and he wondered whether others had taken it on themselves to do the job he was supposed to do, and if so, why? The obvious implication might well be that somebody did not trust him, and that might certainly bode ill for him in some way or another.
It made it even more imperative that he do everything he had to do as though nothing were amiss. He had a job to do today, and he had to step on it before he ran behind schedule. He got in his car and drove to the upscale neighborhood where the girl lived, and parked across the street and just down two or three houses down, and waited. Before an hour went by, the girl left the house hopping mad. He could see the girl’s mother standing in the doorway. Berry rolled down his window just in time to hear the woman demand that her daughter return to the house.
“Fuck you, you fucking bitch!” the girl screamed in what was about the angriest tone of voice he ever heard. The girl went bounding down the street, and James wondered if this might be a good time to pull up to her and offer her a ride. No, he decided, that might look a little too suspicious. He really wanted nothing to do with this, but it was wholly out of his hands now. He knew what he had to do. He went to church.
At this time of day, no one was there, but the door was always open, as usual, and so he entered, dipped his good hand into the holy water, crossed himself, genuflected briefly, and then took his place at a pew as he started repeating the rosary. Hr then enunciated the Apostle’s Creed, after which he prayed earnestly for guidance. He was here earlier today, as he was almost every day, in time to partake of the Eucharist, but this time was different.
He heard the door open, and knew from the steps it was her. He lowered his head and shut his eyes, hoping he was wrong, that it was not her or that if it was she would back out at the last minute, and simply walk out. He told himself it would be out of his hands then. What could they say? He was only a human being, after all, and could only do so much. He was no miracle worker.
As he stood there, wishing he could make himself invisible, he noted the approach of the girl who even now kneeled down in the pew beside him.
“Hey are you trying to avoid me or something?” she said. “I’m here.”
“Yeah, I know, I’ll be ready in a minute,” he said.
“Are you sure you really know Dwayne Letcher?” the girl asked.
“You didn’t say anything to your parents or anything else about what we talked about did you?”
“Oh, hell no,” she said. “Not that I give a damn what they think, but I don’t want to mess up a good thing. Are you sure you can get me a job on one of Toby’s videos? You saw me dance, right?”
Indeed, Berry had seen the girl’s dance, and though he thought she was all right, Toby was unimpressed when he saw the audition tape the girl made.
“Let me get this straight,” he had said. “You say this girl is just sixteen years old, but you want me to”-
“I want you to do what the fuck I tell you,” Berry told him. “Everything will work out fine.”
That ended it, but Berry was really no happier than Toby had been. Still, he had no more choice than did his Citizen Informant. It was something Berry put down as a painful necessity.
“Yeah, not only did I see it, so did Toby.” he now told Susan Chou, “He practically begged me to send you over.”
The young girl was ecstatic, and for a minute Berry thought she was going to maul him right there in the church. It was a temptation, but luckily her firm, lithe body backed away from the embrace, which reminded him very much of when he began his affair with Marnie Moloku when she was about the same age as this girl.
“I still don’t get why you’re doing this,” she said. “Who am I that you’re so interested in helping me?”
“I just know talent when I see it, and I know you’ve got ambition,” he replied. “Look at it this way, one of these days when I’m an old man, and you’re a big star, I can brag to my grandkids that I helped you along the way, so to speak.”
“That’s cool, Mr. Berry, but how did you even know about me wanting to be in the music business? How do you know Toby anyway? Why would you even want to help me? I mean, I know you’re a devout Christian, as much as my mom supposedly is, and everybody here knows I had an abortion. I mean, shit, everybody has made it clear to me that as far as they’re concerned I’m the scum of the earth, whether they come right out and say it or not. I had already about had it with this place and these hypocrites until I met you a couple of weeks ago. Still, why me?”
“Oh, it’s just something I have to do, little lady,” Berry replied. “Everybody needs a second chance in life, and everybody deserves a chance to live their dream. Am I sounding hackneyed enough yet?”
“Hell I don’t even know what that means?” she said with a heartily childish laugh. “All I know is, I’m ready.”
Berry looked at her questioningly, s he said to himself that, yes, this one was probably always ready. At the same time, he almost hoped something would happen to change her mind-a sign from God perhaps, or a sudden outbreak of genital herpes. It was obvious though that something was driving her to take the path of least resistance on a road straight to her doom.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “When I talked to you about all this before you thought I was some pervert trying to pick up young girls.”
“Yeah, I called the Baltimore Police Department and asked to speak to you. They told me that you were on sick leave. I guess it’s your hand huh? What happened to it?”
“It got caught in a vise,” he said now showing some signs of concern. “Did you tell them who you were?”
“No, I just said I was a friend and I would call you at home,” she said. “Wow, though, I found out you’re some kind of hero or something. You helped catch some of those Arabs that blew up the hospital, and busted up that street gang too.”
“Did you call there from home or from a pay phone?” he asked, becoming increasingly worried.
“My cell phone,” she said. “What are you so worried about?”
“Well, for one thing, see, it wouldn’t look good for Toby if it got out he was friends with the cop that busted up the Pulse, because it would mess up his street creds,” he explained. “Just be sure you don’t mention that to anybody, especially to anybody around Toby. Also, the Arab thing at the hospital is still an ongoing investigation, and a lot of it is hush-hush, because we’re trying to prevent a backlash against innocent members of the Islamic community.”
“What does all this have to do with me?” Susan asked, and he could tell she was once more becoming suspicious of his true motives.
“Well, nothing, but if it gets out you’ve been calling me at work, you might get dragged into it,” he said. “That’s why you have to keep all of this between me and you, especially about me and Toby.”
She just looked at him for a second or two as though she were confused and not sure how to process this. He knew he had to do something, because he was losing her, and now he understood he could not afford to let that happen.
“Okay, let me put it to you this way,” he said. “Toby doesn’t work for me-I work for Toby.”
“Yeah, you explained that to me before,” she replied.
“Yeah, well here’s the thing,” he continued. “He found out it was actually the Pulse that blew up that hospital, and tried to blame it on the Arabs, in retribution for those kids that were poisoned. Two of those kids were relatives of the gang leader, but when Toby found out about it, he was appalled, and, well, he came to me. He thinks the Arabs had nothing to do with the poisoning either, and Toby hates terrorists, so when the Pulse pulled that stunt, it was the last straw. It’s a mess, and we’re still trying to work it out, but you have to keep quiet about all this.”
“Wow! Sure, Mr. Berry, my lips are sealed,” she said. “I guess its good you told me all this. Some people are saying Toby fucked over his own gang, but hell I know that’s not right, he was shot twice at that weirdo place, right?”
“Actually, the gang leader shot him because he knew Toby turned against them over the terrorist plot they hatched. They were planning to blow up Baltimore. The Reverend Harvey Caldwell was the ringleader of every bit of it. He was crazy as a loon, but nobody realized how insane he really was until he started ranting about a dead woman coming out of the toilet after him.”
The girl was in a state of rapture by now, and only wanted more. Berry handed her the card with the address of the recording studios of Dwayne Lecher’s Lecherous Records, which was dead in the heart of Seventeenth Pulse territory. Susan Chou left the church with stars in her eyes. Berry was sure that when they found her, those stars would still be there. Before he left the church, he resumed his prayers, and lit a special candle for the soul of Susan Chou. He asked God that she not suffer any more than necessary, and then he prayed for forgiveness.
When he finally left the church, he called Toby, and told him to make sure he disposed of Susan Chou’s telephone. He would have to think of something if the police searched her records, he reasoned.
“Oh, and by the way, Toby,” he concluded. “When you get through fucking Marnie, send her over my way. She and I need to have a long talk about her mother. She still hasn’t shown up yet.”
Lecher made no denials, just a slight haruumph, before Berry hung up. By the time he got to the house, he fixed a sandwich and decided to just sit around and wait for his kids to call, as Frieda promised she would have them do somewhere en route. As he thought of all of this, Berry went to the picture on the mantle, the one taken of him and a slim, svelte Frieda on the day of their wedding.
“You sure have changed, Frieda,” he muttered.
Just as he turned from the picture, the lights went out, and he heard the calling of the bird from outside his house. It startled him from his reveries, and sent a chill through his blood. He walked out the back door, and into the yard, where the large female black vulture sat perched uneasily on top of the rose bush, the weight of the now bare branches straining under the birds weight as she flapped her wings.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as he felt himself growing weaker. Then, the blonde man stepped forward, dressed like someone out of the fifteenth century, his long, thick, wavy blonde hair still in an ever growing wind, his green eyes piercing into his heart and soul with a cold malice that paralyzed Berry at once in his tracks. The bird hovered nearby the man, who he had almost forgotten. How could he have forgotten him?
“I hope you have said your prayers, James,” the man said. “I hope you have partaken of the sacred host. I will have need of you soon.”
Please, no, Berry thought, not again. He thought it was over with, and then he forgot it completely. The man made him forget. Now, he was back, and Berry realized he only wanted one thing.
“Please don’t do that to me again,” he begged.
Then, the bird let out a loud call that pierced through Berry’s very fiber, and he shuddered as he whimpered.
“I am not here for that,” the blonde man replied. “Though your blood can sustain me, it tastes sour to me, James. No, I am here for a different reason. I need your help in a different way. You are going to help me, too, aren’t you, my friend?”
“Of course,” Berry promised. “I’ll do anything you say.”
“That is good, James,” the man replied as his voice started to become other-worldly in nature, as though Berry was now hearing through a vacuum in time and space.
“Your hand is better, is it not? Of course it is. See, I really mean you no ill will. You have been a good friend to me, and I am of the mind that thinks a man should take good care of his friends. That is why I know I can depend on you now. Look into my eyes, and you will see what I mean.
“You are a servant of the people of course, and as such I think you should know that a heinous crime is about to be committed.”
Berry looked into the ancient eyes that pierced into his soul, but all he saw was dead bodies, in what looked to be a morgue. He was not sure what it meant at first, until he recognized one of the girls. Then, he recognized another one. Then, he recognized the man, standing there in the morgue, with a gun in his hand.
“You know what you have to do now, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yeah, I do,” Berry whispered.
Berry did not even realize the man had vanished until he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“James, are you all right?”
Berry turned to see the face of his longtime partner on the force, Frank Anderson.
“Frank, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“Oh, I just come by to see how you were getting along,” Frank replied. “I guess the kids have gone by now, huh?”
“Yeah, Frieda came and got them a couple of hours ago,” Berry replied. “It was almost like I stood there and let her wrench my heart out of my chest. Still, I had to do it.”
Berry indicated his damaged hand, reminding Anderson of the excuse he gave for the injury, as well as the need to send the kids away. One night, after returning from work, a gang of blacks assaulted him right outside his house and placed his hand in some kind of iron vise, with his gun in the same hand. It was obviously in retribution for his busting the Seventeenth Pulse, but unfortunately, he never got a good look at any of the perpetrators, who wore hoods.
Berry invited Frank to come inside for a beer, and the two men went inside the house. Frank noted the marriage photos of Berry and Frieda, and one taken of them and the kids, right after the birth of little Jimmy. They seemed so happy in the picture, though taken a mere two months before Frieda left Berry and abandoned her own kids.
“I’m sorry I missed Frieda”, Frank said as Berry handed him a Miller Genuine Draft. “For one thing, she had good taste in alcohol.”
“She hasn’t changed much,” Berry replied as he smiled at the jibe. “Put on some weight, though. Hell, you might not even recognize her.”
They sat and talked over old times, as Frank reminded him of how depressed he was at the time of the abrupt departure. Of course, Berry did not need him to remind him of that. He remembered well the time he came home, to find his wife livid with rage after Dorothy Moloku came to their house and told her of Berry’s affair with her sixteen year old daughter Marnie. She began throwing things at him, a vase, a potted plant, even a lamp. What made it worse-or perhaps what made it better in the long run-was that Berry had simultaneously engaged in an affair with Dorothy as well, which the woman also admitted to. It was the end of what seemed on the surface to be an idyllic, all American family.
“I have to say, though, it didn’t seem to affect your police work, at least not in the long run,” Frank said.
“I wasn’t aware it affected it at all,” Berry said as he shifted uncomfortably.
“Well, you forgot your great unsolved case,” Berry reminded him. “You never did find that woman that murdered her husband. Of course by the time they found out she’d already absconded with the insurance money, so who knows where she went off to, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” Berry said with a type of realization that portrayed the eruption of years of forgotten memories. “I remember that. Somehow, it came out her husband beat her all the time, so they autopsied his body and found evidence of poisoning. Yeah, I almost forgot that. What was that woman’s name, anyway?”
“Geraldine Malone,” Frank replied, as he finished his beer. “You know, I wouldn’t mind having another one of these. Who knows, maybe by the time I drink three or four they might actually start to taste good.”
“Yeah, sure,” Berry replied as he went to the refrigerator, from where he retrieved two more beers. “Damn, you sure got a memory on you, Frank, that was what-seven years ago?”
“Well, that eye for detail and long-term memory has kept me in the game,” Frank replied. “What surprised me is you don’t remember. I guess you don’t want to, though.”
“Well, why would you say that?” Berry replied uneasily.
“Oh hell, no big deal,” Frank said with a wave of the hand as he took another long drink of the canned beer. “We all have them, at least one of them.”
“We all have at least one of what?” Berry asked.
“The one that got away,” Frank asked with a shrug and a smile.
“Oh, yeah-the one that got away,” Berry said.
He affected a smile, but when he turned to look in the face of his partner and friend of some eight years on the Baltimore Police Department, he found himself shaken by the suddenly serious expression on the face of the grizzled old veteran, known widely as the master of a thousand interrogation techniques.
“I’ve got to say, I never thought you would never let another one get away,” Frank continued. “On the other hand, I guess Grace Rodescu is a lot more slippery than most.”
“What about Grace Rodescu?” Berry asked, starting to become uneasy.
“Oh, nothing much, just that I know for a time she was one of your CI’s, and for a while it looked like you mined her for every nugget you could dig out of her, but now she’s just disappeared, seemingly without a trace. You have to admit that is very unusual for someone with her profile. A published reporter, in addition to a heroin addict and a prostitute, with potential ties to organized crime, and here she just vanishes, in the aftermath of two particularly gruesome murders she is at least an alleged witness to.
“I don’t know,” he concluded with a shrug. “I just find it hard to believe you haven’t kept some lines of communication open, that’s all. You would seem to be one of the first people she would turn to. Of course, you might also be one of the first people she would hide from, but I doubt it would be that hard for you to find her, if you really put your mind to it.”
Frank took another sip of beer as Berry eyed him with curiosity.
“Well, I have been rather occupied,” you know, Berry reminded him as he indicated his mangled hand. “Distracted, you might say. I promise you, Frank, there ain’t going to be any more Geraldine Malones. Wherever Grace is, I’ll find her. Of course that will be a bit easier when I’m put back on active duty.”
Frank nodded, and then looked toward the clock.
“Frank, is there another reason you’re here that you’re not telling me about?”
“Well, yeah, to tell you the truth, there is,” he said. “Like I said, it’s this photographic memory of mine. Sometimes I think it is a curse, but it can be a blessing in disguise. For example, I remember you telling me about the woman you were having an affair with. Her name was Moloku, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, Dorothy, that’s right,” Berry replied. “Damn, Frank, you do have a memory. Anyway, yeah, that was a big fuck-up on my part, getting involved with a woman that turned out to be the wife of a Russian mob associate. I dropped that hot potato real quick, believe me.”
Frank was looking at his longtime friend now more glumly than ever.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“I don’t know about what?” Berry asked, growing more visibly alarmed by the second.
“Voroslav Moloku was murdered last week, and his wife Dorothy seems to have disappeared.”
Berry rose in his chair in an attempt to portray his growing anxiety concerning Frank’s obvious suspicions as a state of realistic and understandable surprise.
“My God!” he exclaimed. “No, of course I didn’t know about it. It doesn’t surprise me in the least, but-oh my Lord!”
“James, you’d better sit down, because that’s not all of it,” Frank continued. “You have to promise me you’re not going to breath a word of anything I’m about to tell you. I’ll just come right out and tell you-Internal Affairs is looking at you as possibly being complicit in his murder.”
For a while, Berry said nothing, as he sat back in his recliner, trying to put his thoughts into some kind of logical semblance of order, all the while pretending to process the news he was hearing, supposedly for the first time.
“Frank, that’s just crazy,” he finally said.
“Well, here’s the thing,” Frank continued. “Whoever killed Mr. Moloku left your gun at the crime scene, and evidently tried to make it look like a suicide, except whoever did it wiped the gun clean. There were no prints on the gun at all, not even Moloku’s, which does not make a bit of sense. According to forensics, it has been years since anybody even cleaned and oiled the damn gun, so there definitely should have been prints. It’s a wonder the damn thing didn’t explode and blow his or somebody’s hand off, to be frank.”
“Oh for God’s sake Frank, I got this injury six weeks ago,” Berry reminded him. “Do you really think if I was to do something like that, I would be that sloppy about it?”
“No, I don’t,” Frank replied. “I think I’ve convinced Internal Affairs of that, too. The point is it is definitely your gun. Do you have any idea how it ended up there? Did you ever have a gun stolen?”
Suddenly, Berry lowered his head, as though in a sudden flash of pained insight.
“The only gun I’ve ever had stolen is the one I thought Frieda took with her when she left,” he said. “I should have reported it, I know, but I just didn’t want to put the kids or me through any more hassle. It never occurred to me-Dorothy was at the house around that time. She was there several times, in fact, before I called off our relationship. Not only that, I left her in the house alone a couple of times. She was there once almost a whole day, watching the kids. I noticed it gone once while she was coming around, but in my mind, I just jumped to what I thought was the logical conclusion at the time. By then, Frieda had left and I had no idea where in the hell she was, and had no desire to go looking for her.
“Damn, what an idiot I’ve been!”
“It makes sense,” Frank said thoughtfully. “Just the same, I wanted to tell you to watch your back. You know how Internal Affairs can be when they think they might be onto something. They are going to want to go overboard getting all their damn ducks in a row.
“In fact, I might as well come out and tell you, they were here today. They were watching when Frieda came to pick up your kids. They know you went to the Catholic Church twice today, which they also consider somewhat curious. I told them you’re upset over the idea your kids might be in danger, but I don’t think they’re convinced, even though we’ve established you’re a devout catholic and a regular churchgoer.”
“And I bet they know you’re here now, right?” Berry asked, now feeling safe enough to allow the real anger he was feeling to show somewhat on the surface.
“Yeah, but they don’t know I’m telling you all this,” he said. “So keep quiet about it, all right?”
Frank was lying, Berry realized. Frank Anderson was the most above-board, by-the-book cop Berry had ever been associated with, and went out of his way to assist in any Internal Affairs investigation, feeling it was for the overall good of the police department to ferret out potentially rotten apples out of the barrel before they spoiled the entire crop. Berry knew this, but far from avoiding Frank, he went out of his way to cultivate him. He helped Frank in his efforts to improve the moral integrity of the force overall and never said or did anything that might leave his friend the impression that he was any less ethical than was Anderson himself. Now, he would almost be willing to bet his pension that Frank Anderson was wearing a wire as they spoke.
There were things Frank was not saying, and Berry knew that. Too much had happened over the course of the last four months, things that Berry always ended up in the middle of, and a lot of these things had the Moloku imprimatur, stamped on them like a maker’s mark. That would be something else he would have to explain, in time.
“Berry, are you sure there isn’t something you don’t want to tell me?” Frank asked. “I really want to help you, but if you’re holding something back, that might be impossible.”
Berry lowered his head.
“Yeah, I’ve been seeing Dorothy again,” he said. “I’ve been seeing her for the last couple of years, off and on. I haven’t been having an affair with her, though.”
“Are you sure?” Frank asked as he, almost seemingly despite himself, hunched his shoulders and lurched forward in his chair like a cat ready to pounce on a mouse.
“I’ve been seeing somebody, but not Dorothy,” Berry said. “I’ve been screwing her daughter Marnie.”
Frank whistled at this revelation and went back in his chair as though knocked backward by an unseen force.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for another beer,” Berry said as he rose and went to the kitchen. By the time that he returned, however, Frank had risen and looked at Berry with a mixture of sadness and sternness.
“James, I got to go,” he said. “Look, I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in, but I know something is going on that you’re not telling me. Personally, I believe somebody is trying to set you up to take the fall for this Moloku murder, but they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t think they had something on you that would make it easy to do that.”
“For God’s sake, Frank, I’m telling you”-
“Really, you shouldn’t tell me any more”, Frank objected. “I’ll tell you this, though. If you have any idea as to the whereabouts of Dorothy Moloku, you really should come clean on it, and if you do hear from her, at any time, you should encourage her to talk to the cops in Chicago. Yeah, they have been coming here asking questions. This looks like it might be an interstate affair, and you know what that means. That means trouble, and a hell of a lot of it, especially if it ends up implicating the Baltimore Police Department.”
Frank left the suggestion hanging in the air as he maintained a questioning gaze toward Berry, who found himself suddenly going limp.
“What was all that about out in the back a minute ago, anyway?” Frank asked. “It looked like you were talking to somebody.”
Suddenly, for just an instant, Berry found himself transposed out in the back year, and he saw once more the strangely garbed blonde haired man with the piercing green eyes, and remembered his words:
“Your hand is better, is it not? Of course it is. See, I really mean you no ill will. You have been a good friend to me, and I am of the mind that thinks a man should take good care of his friends. That is why I know I can depend on you now. Look into my eyes, and you will see what I mean.”
Berry knew then he had nothing to worry about, not from Frank, not from Marnie, not from Dorothy, and certainly not from the strange blonde haired man, who God, he now understood, sent to him in answer to his most earnest prayers for deliverance. He knew then that the man, whoever he was, could not be evil. He just seemed to be, as any avenging angel might to those who were uninformed and uninitiated. Berry rose and looked out his window, toward the bushes that waved in the breeze of a strong northeasterly wind.
“That rose bush was supposed to be a gift from me to Frieda,” he said. “I brought it for her, the day before she left me. Roses were her favorite flower. After she left, I planted it anyway. I guess in my mind, I thought it would somehow bring her back to me. Funny, ain’t it? The day she comes back here, she takes the kids, and all the roses are dead. Yeah, funny how things work out, huh?”
Frank nodded, and then lowered his head as he moved toward the door.
“Hurry back to work, James,” he finally said as he reached for the doorknob. “We miss you there. Everything will always work out for the best.”
“I should be back before too long,” Berry promised as he affected a well-practiced smile. “Remember what I said about church. The door is always open.”
“I’ll remember that,” Frank promised as he lingered just a moment in the face of the incoming cold air. “I might just finally take you up on that.”
Frank was almost out the door, but then he stopped and turned once more to face Berry.
“You know, the strangest thing,” he said. “As I walked up to you outside earlier, there in the back, I could have sworn I saw a vulture flying away.”
He shook his head, and then closed the door as he left.
Berry counted a full five minutes, and then bounded up the stairs, going into his bedroom where he hurriedly opened his closet door, where waited in a shoe-box hidden by old bills the cell phone he recently purchased under an assumed name, as he hurriedly called the number. After the third ring, he received an answer from the former Seventeenth Pulse member that went by the name of Hacksaw.
“Oh, shit, something’s up, huh?” he said. “You calling from this number do not make me feel good.”
“Yeah, Internal Affairs is what’s up, and they’re getting ready to stick a big rotten dick up all our asses. We’re going to have to call this off.”
“Too late,” Hacksaw replied. “It’s a done deal. She was good, too.”
“Did she suffer?” Berry asked in anxiety.
“Didn’t feel a thing”, he replied. “Matter of fact, she’s still got a smile on her face, last I saw. We made the video too. It’s gonna be killer shit when it’s put out. Toby thinks he’ll win an award, the numbskull. And yeah, before you ask, I did my magic. Spooky will be proud, wherever he be.”
“Hacksaw, you’re not hearing me,” Berry said in anxiety as he moved down the stairs to the living room window. Looking outside, he saw no sign of anybody.
“Is she still there?” he asked.
“Yeah, for now,” the Pulse member answered.
“Well, keep her there,” Berry demanded. “Whatever you do, do not under any circumstances bring her here, not now, not ever. Am I clear on that?”
“Oh, shit man, what in the hell are we supposed to do with her?” Hacksaw demanded.
“Hell, I don’t know, keep her on ice until I let you know,” he replied. “It shouldn’t have to be no more than two or three days, then you can dump her wherever. Just do it respectfully, all right? She was just a kid, you know.”
“Now what in the hell do you want me to do, order flowers?” Hacksaw asked in obvious exasperation. “Hell, man, this shit ain’t good. We cant’ keep her here long, and we’ve got to be damn careful where we take her, you know that.”
“Just do what I said,” Berry insisted. “Don’t bring her here, and wherever you take her, make sure you’re not followed. As my ex-wife used to always tell me when she wasn’t in the mood, sometimes you just have to improvise. Are we clear on that? Don’t fuck me, Hacksaw.”
Berry walked outside in time to see the moon waxing in a stately manner over the spot of the now dead rose bush. Maybe, he thought, the kids can return by the time it bloomed next spring, and this long nightmare will be over. He walked over to the side of it, where waited a deep hole, one deep enough and wide enough for the body that now he knew would never be there. He hurriedly removed the improvised sheet metal covering, and then he filled in the hole. Once he had it halfway filed, he picked up a handful of the rose bulbs and placed them inside, in a circle around where he then placed a cutting from the old tree, which would shoot forth with new life once the spring arrived in the company of the new addition, a continuation of its own life force.
He looked at his watch, amazed that it took him all of fifteen minutes to accomplish the work. He then walked over to the old withered branches that slept in a comatose state, warning of death, yet heralding the promise of new life.
“I’m really sorry, Frieda,” he said. “I’m really sorry it turned out this way. I guess you’re going to be alone out here for a while longer.”
The breeze blew stronger as though in response, and the cold cut through Berry like a knife. Otherwise, there was no sign of life. He looked around for the vulture, but even she deigned not to make another appearance on this dark night of the soul of Detective James Berry. He turned to walk back toward the house.
Almost as an afterthought, he turned once more toward the rose bush.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “The kids send their love.”
Part One
Prologue and Chapters I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Part Three
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Radu-Chapter XXV (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
11 pages approximate
Berry dreaded sending his kids away, but felt he had no choice. Things were becoming more dangerous than he ever imagined they would have, and too many people knew where he lived. Too many people knew where his children went to school. Too many people knew enough to understand that Lieutenant James Berry had one weakness and one weakness only-his family.
It was gut wrenching, especially as concerning his oldest child, twelve-year-old Darrell. He was at that age where a son needed his father more than ever, even though he was growing more and more difficult. When he heard the news of his up-and-coming move to Salt Lake City, he became more sullen than ever.
To nine-year-old Karinda and seven-year-old Jimmy, it was also hard, though not as difficult. Karinda liked the idea of spending some time with her mom, and to Jimmy it was a big adventure. They were ready.
“Darrell, come on, son, your mom will be here shortly,” he shouted up the steps. After a couple of minutes, Darrell came down, lugging two suitcases, which he set by the door alongside the others.
“So how long is this going to be?” he asked.
“Maybe just a few months,” Berry said. “It may be a couple of years or so, just depends on how everything goes.”
“Well, I think it sucks,” the young teen said. “That woman ain’t my mom, and I’ll never see her as my mom. How in the hell can I look at her as my mom or even pretend she is, after she walked off and left us when I was like five and Jimmy was like, hell, not even a year old?”
Berry reacted with a pained expression, which he tried to hide, but turning away from his son just added fuel to the fire of his concerns.
“Darrell, a lot went down that you don’t know about,” he said. “It wasn’t all her fault.”
“Yeah, something is always going down that I don’t know nothin’ about,” he said.
“For God’s sake, Darrell, you go there every summer, have been for three years now, how is this that much different? I’ll be in touch, I swear. Hell, I might even be coming around there sometime. Who knows, I might even move there.”
“You mean you and mommy might get back together?” Karinda asked, obviously pleased at the prospect.
“Well, I didn’t say that now,” Berry replied. “Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dragons lie. Not that your mom is a dragon, just that sometimes two people can’t stay together.”
Karinda looked down as she faked a smile, as Berry looked over to his youngest, little Jimmy.
“So anything you want to say little man?” he asked as he ruffled the kid’s hair. “You are going to look out for these two for me, right?”
“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “What about you? Will you be all right, with your hand and all?”
Berry looked at his hand, still in a cast after seven excruciatingly difficult surgeries.
“The hand will be fine,” he said. “I can feel it tingling more every day, and the doc says it should be completely healed in another couple of months or so. So those bad guys better watch out, huh?”
Suddenly Karinda started crying, saying she did not want to leave, and James lowered into a crouching position and gathered her in his right arm, and then reached out for Jimmy, who fell into his other arm, as Berry cried.
“I love you both,” he said, as suddenly Berry heard the honking of the car horn from outside. They told him they loved him too, after which he rose and looked at Darrell, who now began to cry for the first time in years. Berry held his son up to him, told him he loved him, but by then Darrell could barely talk.
“Look out for yourself, and your brother and sister,” he told him.
“You do the same dad,” Darrell replied. “I love you.”
They went outside, where Frieda stood outside the Ford Explorer, its side passenger’s door open and ready to load.
Within a couple of minutes, the suitcases and other belongings were loaded up, and they were ready to go, but Frieda indicated a need to talk to Berry in private.
‘I’m going to need some more money,” she said.
“Hell, I’m giving you sixty grand a year, what more could you need?” he asked.
“Another sixty grand,” she said. “Kids are expensive, you know. You want them to be happy, don’t you?”
Berry unconsciously wiped his brow as he breathed deeply.
“Whatever I send you for the kids had damn well better be spent on the kids,” he replied. “I want them to know its coming from me too, because”-
“Hey, no problem,” Frieda replied. “Don’t worry, James. I promise I’ll look after them like they were my own.”
Berry shot her a stern look
“You know, that is really a smart-ass thing for you to be saying, isn’t it?” he asked. “I hope you don’t consider that funny, because I don’t think it’s a damn bit funny. In fact, I think it’s really kind of sad, don’t you?”
“James, you know I love these kids,” she said, now somewhat hurt by Berry’s none-too-subtle chiding. “I honestly appreciate you giving me the chances you’ve given me. God knows I don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t believe that or I’d never send them to stay with you,” he replied.
“I promise I’ll take good care of them,” she said. “I won’t let you down. You can trust me.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear,” Berry replied. “And for what it’s worth, I know that.”
“Good, then it’s settled,” Frieda said with a sigh. “Now, give me a hug to make it look good, and then I got to get the hell out of here.”
He hugged her, after which Frieda went to the car, now loaded with the children’s belongings. Berry tried to look brave as the kids waved goodbye and shouted they loved him, but as he waved back at them and told them he loved them too, all the time he smiled he wondered if he looked as stupid as he felt. He should have heard from Dorothy a week ago but had not. It was starting to concern him, and he wondered whether others had taken it on themselves to do the job he was supposed to do, and if so, why? The obvious implication might well be that somebody did not trust him, and that might certainly bode ill for him in some way or another.
It made it even more imperative that he do everything he had to do as though nothing were amiss. He had a job to do today, and he had to step on it before he ran behind schedule. He got in his car and drove to the upscale neighborhood where the girl lived, and parked across the street and just down two or three houses down, and waited. Before an hour went by, the girl left the house hopping mad. He could see the girl’s mother standing in the doorway. Berry rolled down his window just in time to hear the woman demand that her daughter return to the house.
“Fuck you, you fucking bitch!” the girl screamed in what was about the angriest tone of voice he ever heard. The girl went bounding down the street, and James wondered if this might be a good time to pull up to her and offer her a ride. No, he decided, that might look a little too suspicious. He really wanted nothing to do with this, but it was wholly out of his hands now. He knew what he had to do. He went to church.
At this time of day, no one was there, but the door was always open, as usual, and so he entered, dipped his good hand into the holy water, crossed himself, genuflected briefly, and then took his place at a pew as he started repeating the rosary. Hr then enunciated the Apostle’s Creed, after which he prayed earnestly for guidance. He was here earlier today, as he was almost every day, in time to partake of the Eucharist, but this time was different.
He heard the door open, and knew from the steps it was her. He lowered his head and shut his eyes, hoping he was wrong, that it was not her or that if it was she would back out at the last minute, and simply walk out. He told himself it would be out of his hands then. What could they say? He was only a human being, after all, and could only do so much. He was no miracle worker.
As he stood there, wishing he could make himself invisible, he noted the approach of the girl who even now kneeled down in the pew beside him.
“Hey are you trying to avoid me or something?” she said. “I’m here.”
“Yeah, I know, I’ll be ready in a minute,” he said.
“Are you sure you really know Dwayne Letcher?” the girl asked.
“You didn’t say anything to your parents or anything else about what we talked about did you?”
“Oh, hell no,” she said. “Not that I give a damn what they think, but I don’t want to mess up a good thing. Are you sure you can get me a job on one of Toby’s videos? You saw me dance, right?”
Indeed, Berry had seen the girl’s dance, and though he thought she was all right, Toby was unimpressed when he saw the audition tape the girl made.
“Let me get this straight,” he had said. “You say this girl is just sixteen years old, but you want me to”-
“I want you to do what the fuck I tell you,” Berry told him. “Everything will work out fine.”
That ended it, but Berry was really no happier than Toby had been. Still, he had no more choice than did his Citizen Informant. It was something Berry put down as a painful necessity.
“Yeah, not only did I see it, so did Toby.” he now told Susan Chou, “He practically begged me to send you over.”
The young girl was ecstatic, and for a minute Berry thought she was going to maul him right there in the church. It was a temptation, but luckily her firm, lithe body backed away from the embrace, which reminded him very much of when he began his affair with Marnie Moloku when she was about the same age as this girl.
“I still don’t get why you’re doing this,” she said. “Who am I that you’re so interested in helping me?”
“I just know talent when I see it, and I know you’ve got ambition,” he replied. “Look at it this way, one of these days when I’m an old man, and you’re a big star, I can brag to my grandkids that I helped you along the way, so to speak.”
“That’s cool, Mr. Berry, but how did you even know about me wanting to be in the music business? How do you know Toby anyway? Why would you even want to help me? I mean, I know you’re a devout Christian, as much as my mom supposedly is, and everybody here knows I had an abortion. I mean, shit, everybody has made it clear to me that as far as they’re concerned I’m the scum of the earth, whether they come right out and say it or not. I had already about had it with this place and these hypocrites until I met you a couple of weeks ago. Still, why me?”
“Oh, it’s just something I have to do, little lady,” Berry replied. “Everybody needs a second chance in life, and everybody deserves a chance to live their dream. Am I sounding hackneyed enough yet?”
“Hell I don’t even know what that means?” she said with a heartily childish laugh. “All I know is, I’m ready.”
Berry looked at her questioningly, s he said to himself that, yes, this one was probably always ready. At the same time, he almost hoped something would happen to change her mind-a sign from God perhaps, or a sudden outbreak of genital herpes. It was obvious though that something was driving her to take the path of least resistance on a road straight to her doom.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “When I talked to you about all this before you thought I was some pervert trying to pick up young girls.”
“Yeah, I called the Baltimore Police Department and asked to speak to you. They told me that you were on sick leave. I guess it’s your hand huh? What happened to it?”
“It got caught in a vise,” he said now showing some signs of concern. “Did you tell them who you were?”
“No, I just said I was a friend and I would call you at home,” she said. “Wow, though, I found out you’re some kind of hero or something. You helped catch some of those Arabs that blew up the hospital, and busted up that street gang too.”
“Did you call there from home or from a pay phone?” he asked, becoming increasingly worried.
“My cell phone,” she said. “What are you so worried about?”
“Well, for one thing, see, it wouldn’t look good for Toby if it got out he was friends with the cop that busted up the Pulse, because it would mess up his street creds,” he explained. “Just be sure you don’t mention that to anybody, especially to anybody around Toby. Also, the Arab thing at the hospital is still an ongoing investigation, and a lot of it is hush-hush, because we’re trying to prevent a backlash against innocent members of the Islamic community.”
“What does all this have to do with me?” Susan asked, and he could tell she was once more becoming suspicious of his true motives.
“Well, nothing, but if it gets out you’ve been calling me at work, you might get dragged into it,” he said. “That’s why you have to keep all of this between me and you, especially about me and Toby.”
She just looked at him for a second or two as though she were confused and not sure how to process this. He knew he had to do something, because he was losing her, and now he understood he could not afford to let that happen.
“Okay, let me put it to you this way,” he said. “Toby doesn’t work for me-I work for Toby.”
“Yeah, you explained that to me before,” she replied.
“Yeah, well here’s the thing,” he continued. “He found out it was actually the Pulse that blew up that hospital, and tried to blame it on the Arabs, in retribution for those kids that were poisoned. Two of those kids were relatives of the gang leader, but when Toby found out about it, he was appalled, and, well, he came to me. He thinks the Arabs had nothing to do with the poisoning either, and Toby hates terrorists, so when the Pulse pulled that stunt, it was the last straw. It’s a mess, and we’re still trying to work it out, but you have to keep quiet about all this.”
“Wow! Sure, Mr. Berry, my lips are sealed,” she said. “I guess its good you told me all this. Some people are saying Toby fucked over his own gang, but hell I know that’s not right, he was shot twice at that weirdo place, right?”
“Actually, the gang leader shot him because he knew Toby turned against them over the terrorist plot they hatched. They were planning to blow up Baltimore. The Reverend Harvey Caldwell was the ringleader of every bit of it. He was crazy as a loon, but nobody realized how insane he really was until he started ranting about a dead woman coming out of the toilet after him.”
The girl was in a state of rapture by now, and only wanted more. Berry handed her the card with the address of the recording studios of Dwayne Lecher’s Lecherous Records, which was dead in the heart of Seventeenth Pulse territory. Susan Chou left the church with stars in her eyes. Berry was sure that when they found her, those stars would still be there. Before he left the church, he resumed his prayers, and lit a special candle for the soul of Susan Chou. He asked God that she not suffer any more than necessary, and then he prayed for forgiveness.
When he finally left the church, he called Toby, and told him to make sure he disposed of Susan Chou’s telephone. He would have to think of something if the police searched her records, he reasoned.
“Oh, and by the way, Toby,” he concluded. “When you get through fucking Marnie, send her over my way. She and I need to have a long talk about her mother. She still hasn’t shown up yet.”
Lecher made no denials, just a slight haruumph, before Berry hung up. By the time he got to the house, he fixed a sandwich and decided to just sit around and wait for his kids to call, as Frieda promised she would have them do somewhere en route. As he thought of all of this, Berry went to the picture on the mantle, the one taken of him and a slim, svelte Frieda on the day of their wedding.
“You sure have changed, Frieda,” he muttered.
Just as he turned from the picture, the lights went out, and he heard the calling of the bird from outside his house. It startled him from his reveries, and sent a chill through his blood. He walked out the back door, and into the yard, where the large female black vulture sat perched uneasily on top of the rose bush, the weight of the now bare branches straining under the birds weight as she flapped her wings.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as he felt himself growing weaker. Then, the blonde man stepped forward, dressed like someone out of the fifteenth century, his long, thick, wavy blonde hair still in an ever growing wind, his green eyes piercing into his heart and soul with a cold malice that paralyzed Berry at once in his tracks. The bird hovered nearby the man, who he had almost forgotten. How could he have forgotten him?
“I hope you have said your prayers, James,” the man said. “I hope you have partaken of the sacred host. I will have need of you soon.”
Please, no, Berry thought, not again. He thought it was over with, and then he forgot it completely. The man made him forget. Now, he was back, and Berry realized he only wanted one thing.
“Please don’t do that to me again,” he begged.
Then, the bird let out a loud call that pierced through Berry’s very fiber, and he shuddered as he whimpered.
“I am not here for that,” the blonde man replied. “Though your blood can sustain me, it tastes sour to me, James. No, I am here for a different reason. I need your help in a different way. You are going to help me, too, aren’t you, my friend?”
“Of course,” Berry promised. “I’ll do anything you say.”
“That is good, James,” the man replied as his voice started to become other-worldly in nature, as though Berry was now hearing through a vacuum in time and space.
“Your hand is better, is it not? Of course it is. See, I really mean you no ill will. You have been a good friend to me, and I am of the mind that thinks a man should take good care of his friends. That is why I know I can depend on you now. Look into my eyes, and you will see what I mean.
“You are a servant of the people of course, and as such I think you should know that a heinous crime is about to be committed.”
Berry looked into the ancient eyes that pierced into his soul, but all he saw was dead bodies, in what looked to be a morgue. He was not sure what it meant at first, until he recognized one of the girls. Then, he recognized another one. Then, he recognized the man, standing there in the morgue, with a gun in his hand.
“You know what you have to do now, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yeah, I do,” Berry whispered.
Berry did not even realize the man had vanished until he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“James, are you all right?”
Berry turned to see the face of his longtime partner on the force, Frank Anderson.
“Frank, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“Oh, I just come by to see how you were getting along,” Frank replied. “I guess the kids have gone by now, huh?”
“Yeah, Frieda came and got them a couple of hours ago,” Berry replied. “It was almost like I stood there and let her wrench my heart out of my chest. Still, I had to do it.”
Berry indicated his damaged hand, reminding Anderson of the excuse he gave for the injury, as well as the need to send the kids away. One night, after returning from work, a gang of blacks assaulted him right outside his house and placed his hand in some kind of iron vise, with his gun in the same hand. It was obviously in retribution for his busting the Seventeenth Pulse, but unfortunately, he never got a good look at any of the perpetrators, who wore hoods.
Berry invited Frank to come inside for a beer, and the two men went inside the house. Frank noted the marriage photos of Berry and Frieda, and one taken of them and the kids, right after the birth of little Jimmy. They seemed so happy in the picture, though taken a mere two months before Frieda left Berry and abandoned her own kids.
“I’m sorry I missed Frieda”, Frank said as Berry handed him a Miller Genuine Draft. “For one thing, she had good taste in alcohol.”
“She hasn’t changed much,” Berry replied as he smiled at the jibe. “Put on some weight, though. Hell, you might not even recognize her.”
They sat and talked over old times, as Frank reminded him of how depressed he was at the time of the abrupt departure. Of course, Berry did not need him to remind him of that. He remembered well the time he came home, to find his wife livid with rage after Dorothy Moloku came to their house and told her of Berry’s affair with her sixteen year old daughter Marnie. She began throwing things at him, a vase, a potted plant, even a lamp. What made it worse-or perhaps what made it better in the long run-was that Berry had simultaneously engaged in an affair with Dorothy as well, which the woman also admitted to. It was the end of what seemed on the surface to be an idyllic, all American family.
“I have to say, though, it didn’t seem to affect your police work, at least not in the long run,” Frank said.
“I wasn’t aware it affected it at all,” Berry said as he shifted uncomfortably.
“Well, you forgot your great unsolved case,” Berry reminded him. “You never did find that woman that murdered her husband. Of course by the time they found out she’d already absconded with the insurance money, so who knows where she went off to, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” Berry said with a type of realization that portrayed the eruption of years of forgotten memories. “I remember that. Somehow, it came out her husband beat her all the time, so they autopsied his body and found evidence of poisoning. Yeah, I almost forgot that. What was that woman’s name, anyway?”
“Geraldine Malone,” Frank replied, as he finished his beer. “You know, I wouldn’t mind having another one of these. Who knows, maybe by the time I drink three or four they might actually start to taste good.”
“Yeah, sure,” Berry replied as he went to the refrigerator, from where he retrieved two more beers. “Damn, you sure got a memory on you, Frank, that was what-seven years ago?”
“Well, that eye for detail and long-term memory has kept me in the game,” Frank replied. “What surprised me is you don’t remember. I guess you don’t want to, though.”
“Well, why would you say that?” Berry replied uneasily.
“Oh hell, no big deal,” Frank said with a wave of the hand as he took another long drink of the canned beer. “We all have them, at least one of them.”
“We all have at least one of what?” Berry asked.
“The one that got away,” Frank asked with a shrug and a smile.
“Oh, yeah-the one that got away,” Berry said.
He affected a smile, but when he turned to look in the face of his partner and friend of some eight years on the Baltimore Police Department, he found himself shaken by the suddenly serious expression on the face of the grizzled old veteran, known widely as the master of a thousand interrogation techniques.
“I’ve got to say, I never thought you would never let another one get away,” Frank continued. “On the other hand, I guess Grace Rodescu is a lot more slippery than most.”
“What about Grace Rodescu?” Berry asked, starting to become uneasy.
“Oh, nothing much, just that I know for a time she was one of your CI’s, and for a while it looked like you mined her for every nugget you could dig out of her, but now she’s just disappeared, seemingly without a trace. You have to admit that is very unusual for someone with her profile. A published reporter, in addition to a heroin addict and a prostitute, with potential ties to organized crime, and here she just vanishes, in the aftermath of two particularly gruesome murders she is at least an alleged witness to.
“I don’t know,” he concluded with a shrug. “I just find it hard to believe you haven’t kept some lines of communication open, that’s all. You would seem to be one of the first people she would turn to. Of course, you might also be one of the first people she would hide from, but I doubt it would be that hard for you to find her, if you really put your mind to it.”
Frank took another sip of beer as Berry eyed him with curiosity.
“Well, I have been rather occupied,” you know, Berry reminded him as he indicated his mangled hand. “Distracted, you might say. I promise you, Frank, there ain’t going to be any more Geraldine Malones. Wherever Grace is, I’ll find her. Of course that will be a bit easier when I’m put back on active duty.”
Frank nodded, and then looked toward the clock.
“Frank, is there another reason you’re here that you’re not telling me about?”
“Well, yeah, to tell you the truth, there is,” he said. “Like I said, it’s this photographic memory of mine. Sometimes I think it is a curse, but it can be a blessing in disguise. For example, I remember you telling me about the woman you were having an affair with. Her name was Moloku, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, Dorothy, that’s right,” Berry replied. “Damn, Frank, you do have a memory. Anyway, yeah, that was a big fuck-up on my part, getting involved with a woman that turned out to be the wife of a Russian mob associate. I dropped that hot potato real quick, believe me.”
Frank was looking at his longtime friend now more glumly than ever.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“I don’t know about what?” Berry asked, growing more visibly alarmed by the second.
“Voroslav Moloku was murdered last week, and his wife Dorothy seems to have disappeared.”
Berry rose in his chair in an attempt to portray his growing anxiety concerning Frank’s obvious suspicions as a state of realistic and understandable surprise.
“My God!” he exclaimed. “No, of course I didn’t know about it. It doesn’t surprise me in the least, but-oh my Lord!”
“James, you’d better sit down, because that’s not all of it,” Frank continued. “You have to promise me you’re not going to breath a word of anything I’m about to tell you. I’ll just come right out and tell you-Internal Affairs is looking at you as possibly being complicit in his murder.”
For a while, Berry said nothing, as he sat back in his recliner, trying to put his thoughts into some kind of logical semblance of order, all the while pretending to process the news he was hearing, supposedly for the first time.
“Frank, that’s just crazy,” he finally said.
“Well, here’s the thing,” Frank continued. “Whoever killed Mr. Moloku left your gun at the crime scene, and evidently tried to make it look like a suicide, except whoever did it wiped the gun clean. There were no prints on the gun at all, not even Moloku’s, which does not make a bit of sense. According to forensics, it has been years since anybody even cleaned and oiled the damn gun, so there definitely should have been prints. It’s a wonder the damn thing didn’t explode and blow his or somebody’s hand off, to be frank.”
“Oh for God’s sake Frank, I got this injury six weeks ago,” Berry reminded him. “Do you really think if I was to do something like that, I would be that sloppy about it?”
“No, I don’t,” Frank replied. “I think I’ve convinced Internal Affairs of that, too. The point is it is definitely your gun. Do you have any idea how it ended up there? Did you ever have a gun stolen?”
Suddenly, Berry lowered his head, as though in a sudden flash of pained insight.
“The only gun I’ve ever had stolen is the one I thought Frieda took with her when she left,” he said. “I should have reported it, I know, but I just didn’t want to put the kids or me through any more hassle. It never occurred to me-Dorothy was at the house around that time. She was there several times, in fact, before I called off our relationship. Not only that, I left her in the house alone a couple of times. She was there once almost a whole day, watching the kids. I noticed it gone once while she was coming around, but in my mind, I just jumped to what I thought was the logical conclusion at the time. By then, Frieda had left and I had no idea where in the hell she was, and had no desire to go looking for her.
“Damn, what an idiot I’ve been!”
“It makes sense,” Frank said thoughtfully. “Just the same, I wanted to tell you to watch your back. You know how Internal Affairs can be when they think they might be onto something. They are going to want to go overboard getting all their damn ducks in a row.
“In fact, I might as well come out and tell you, they were here today. They were watching when Frieda came to pick up your kids. They know you went to the Catholic Church twice today, which they also consider somewhat curious. I told them you’re upset over the idea your kids might be in danger, but I don’t think they’re convinced, even though we’ve established you’re a devout catholic and a regular churchgoer.”
“And I bet they know you’re here now, right?” Berry asked, now feeling safe enough to allow the real anger he was feeling to show somewhat on the surface.
“Yeah, but they don’t know I’m telling you all this,” he said. “So keep quiet about it, all right?”
Frank was lying, Berry realized. Frank Anderson was the most above-board, by-the-book cop Berry had ever been associated with, and went out of his way to assist in any Internal Affairs investigation, feeling it was for the overall good of the police department to ferret out potentially rotten apples out of the barrel before they spoiled the entire crop. Berry knew this, but far from avoiding Frank, he went out of his way to cultivate him. He helped Frank in his efforts to improve the moral integrity of the force overall and never said or did anything that might leave his friend the impression that he was any less ethical than was Anderson himself. Now, he would almost be willing to bet his pension that Frank Anderson was wearing a wire as they spoke.
There were things Frank was not saying, and Berry knew that. Too much had happened over the course of the last four months, things that Berry always ended up in the middle of, and a lot of these things had the Moloku imprimatur, stamped on them like a maker’s mark. That would be something else he would have to explain, in time.
“Berry, are you sure there isn’t something you don’t want to tell me?” Frank asked. “I really want to help you, but if you’re holding something back, that might be impossible.”
Berry lowered his head.
“Yeah, I’ve been seeing Dorothy again,” he said. “I’ve been seeing her for the last couple of years, off and on. I haven’t been having an affair with her, though.”
“Are you sure?” Frank asked as he, almost seemingly despite himself, hunched his shoulders and lurched forward in his chair like a cat ready to pounce on a mouse.
“I’ve been seeing somebody, but not Dorothy,” Berry said. “I’ve been screwing her daughter Marnie.”
Frank whistled at this revelation and went back in his chair as though knocked backward by an unseen force.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for another beer,” Berry said as he rose and went to the kitchen. By the time that he returned, however, Frank had risen and looked at Berry with a mixture of sadness and sternness.
“James, I got to go,” he said. “Look, I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in, but I know something is going on that you’re not telling me. Personally, I believe somebody is trying to set you up to take the fall for this Moloku murder, but they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t think they had something on you that would make it easy to do that.”
“For God’s sake, Frank, I’m telling you”-
“Really, you shouldn’t tell me any more”, Frank objected. “I’ll tell you this, though. If you have any idea as to the whereabouts of Dorothy Moloku, you really should come clean on it, and if you do hear from her, at any time, you should encourage her to talk to the cops in Chicago. Yeah, they have been coming here asking questions. This looks like it might be an interstate affair, and you know what that means. That means trouble, and a hell of a lot of it, especially if it ends up implicating the Baltimore Police Department.”
Frank left the suggestion hanging in the air as he maintained a questioning gaze toward Berry, who found himself suddenly going limp.
“What was all that about out in the back a minute ago, anyway?” Frank asked. “It looked like you were talking to somebody.”
Suddenly, for just an instant, Berry found himself transposed out in the back year, and he saw once more the strangely garbed blonde haired man with the piercing green eyes, and remembered his words:
“Your hand is better, is it not? Of course it is. See, I really mean you no ill will. You have been a good friend to me, and I am of the mind that thinks a man should take good care of his friends. That is why I know I can depend on you now. Look into my eyes, and you will see what I mean.”
Berry knew then he had nothing to worry about, not from Frank, not from Marnie, not from Dorothy, and certainly not from the strange blonde haired man, who God, he now understood, sent to him in answer to his most earnest prayers for deliverance. He knew then that the man, whoever he was, could not be evil. He just seemed to be, as any avenging angel might to those who were uninformed and uninitiated. Berry rose and looked out his window, toward the bushes that waved in the breeze of a strong northeasterly wind.
“That rose bush was supposed to be a gift from me to Frieda,” he said. “I brought it for her, the day before she left me. Roses were her favorite flower. After she left, I planted it anyway. I guess in my mind, I thought it would somehow bring her back to me. Funny, ain’t it? The day she comes back here, she takes the kids, and all the roses are dead. Yeah, funny how things work out, huh?”
Frank nodded, and then lowered his head as he moved toward the door.
“Hurry back to work, James,” he finally said as he reached for the doorknob. “We miss you there. Everything will always work out for the best.”
“I should be back before too long,” Berry promised as he affected a well-practiced smile. “Remember what I said about church. The door is always open.”
“I’ll remember that,” Frank promised as he lingered just a moment in the face of the incoming cold air. “I might just finally take you up on that.”
Frank was almost out the door, but then he stopped and turned once more to face Berry.
“You know, the strangest thing,” he said. “As I walked up to you outside earlier, there in the back, I could have sworn I saw a vulture flying away.”
He shook his head, and then closed the door as he left.
Berry counted a full five minutes, and then bounded up the stairs, going into his bedroom where he hurriedly opened his closet door, where waited in a shoe-box hidden by old bills the cell phone he recently purchased under an assumed name, as he hurriedly called the number. After the third ring, he received an answer from the former Seventeenth Pulse member that went by the name of Hacksaw.
“Oh, shit, something’s up, huh?” he said. “You calling from this number do not make me feel good.”
“Yeah, Internal Affairs is what’s up, and they’re getting ready to stick a big rotten dick up all our asses. We’re going to have to call this off.”
“Too late,” Hacksaw replied. “It’s a done deal. She was good, too.”
“Did she suffer?” Berry asked in anxiety.
“Didn’t feel a thing”, he replied. “Matter of fact, she’s still got a smile on her face, last I saw. We made the video too. It’s gonna be killer shit when it’s put out. Toby thinks he’ll win an award, the numbskull. And yeah, before you ask, I did my magic. Spooky will be proud, wherever he be.”
“Hacksaw, you’re not hearing me,” Berry said in anxiety as he moved down the stairs to the living room window. Looking outside, he saw no sign of anybody.
“Is she still there?” he asked.
“Yeah, for now,” the Pulse member answered.
“Well, keep her there,” Berry demanded. “Whatever you do, do not under any circumstances bring her here, not now, not ever. Am I clear on that?”
“Oh, shit man, what in the hell are we supposed to do with her?” Hacksaw demanded.
“Hell, I don’t know, keep her on ice until I let you know,” he replied. “It shouldn’t have to be no more than two or three days, then you can dump her wherever. Just do it respectfully, all right? She was just a kid, you know.”
“Now what in the hell do you want me to do, order flowers?” Hacksaw asked in obvious exasperation. “Hell, man, this shit ain’t good. We cant’ keep her here long, and we’ve got to be damn careful where we take her, you know that.”
“Just do what I said,” Berry insisted. “Don’t bring her here, and wherever you take her, make sure you’re not followed. As my ex-wife used to always tell me when she wasn’t in the mood, sometimes you just have to improvise. Are we clear on that? Don’t fuck me, Hacksaw.”
Berry walked outside in time to see the moon waxing in a stately manner over the spot of the now dead rose bush. Maybe, he thought, the kids can return by the time it bloomed next spring, and this long nightmare will be over. He walked over to the side of it, where waited a deep hole, one deep enough and wide enough for the body that now he knew would never be there. He hurriedly removed the improvised sheet metal covering, and then he filled in the hole. Once he had it halfway filed, he picked up a handful of the rose bulbs and placed them inside, in a circle around where he then placed a cutting from the old tree, which would shoot forth with new life once the spring arrived in the company of the new addition, a continuation of its own life force.
He looked at his watch, amazed that it took him all of fifteen minutes to accomplish the work. He then walked over to the old withered branches that slept in a comatose state, warning of death, yet heralding the promise of new life.
“I’m really sorry, Frieda,” he said. “I’m really sorry it turned out this way. I guess you’re going to be alone out here for a while longer.”
The breeze blew stronger as though in response, and the cold cut through Berry like a knife. Otherwise, there was no sign of life. He looked around for the vulture, but even she deigned not to make another appearance on this dark night of the soul of Detective James Berry. He turned to walk back toward the house.
Almost as an afterthought, he turned once more toward the rose bush.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “The kids send their love.”
Tarot Reading For Democratic Presidential Candidates
As promised, here is the Tarot reading for the Democratic candidates for President of the United States. For some reason, they do not seem as well delineated as the previous post detailing the cards drawn for the Republican candidates, though they are interesting in their own right.
Hillary Clinton-Eight of Wands (R)
-This seems to indicate that Hillary is well on her way to wrapping up the nomination, at least at first glance, despite the negative connotations that entails, or perhaps even because of them, in a sense.
Barak Obama-Page of Wands (R)
-Barak Obama, here portrayed as a messenger of change and even hope, though the reverse position details his major weakness, a belief by some that he might have moved too early and is out of his depth at this stage of his political career. This perception by many will dog him throughout the primaries, despite how well he might or might not do in the early ones. In the event his candidacy fails in the end, this will be the primary factor of responsibility for that.
John Edwards-Ace of Wands
-Incredibly, this is the only Democratic candidate whose card I drew in the upright position. What does it mean? Well, it is easy to read too much into reverse cards. The “R”, incidentally, beside some cards signifies that when the card was drawn, it was upside down. Most Tarot readers generally view this aspect as a negative connotation. Edwards, however, is upright, the only one of this group that is, so in his case, what is signified by a drawing of the Ace of Wands in the upright position?
Well, Aces are indicative of a sudden surge of energy, in this case (Wands) of an inspirational, possibly spiritual nature. John Edwards typically makes a big deal out of running a “positive” campaign (while using his wife in the background as an attack dog), but while this might seem to fit his overall campaign style and strategy, I do not believe it tells the entire story.
I think this might well be indicative of a potential upset in the Iowa Caucus or the New Hampshire primary-or both. If Edwards comes in a close second in one and wins the other, which is conceivable, it might well change the face of the campaign, setting the stage for a roll through South Carolina, Michigan, and other states where a strong early showing might bode well for his candidacy.
Expect him to play the God card, so to speak, and do not be at all surprised if he becomes more aggressive in the face of Obama’s recent surge in the polls due to this tactic. He is, after all, a lawyer, and what do lawyers want more than anything? That is right-they want to win.
Joe Biden-Nine of Swords (R)
-Joe Biden is arguably, out of all the current crop of Democratic candidates, the one most qualified to hold the office of President. Though I disagree with him profoundly on certain issues-gun control and immigration being at the forefront-he is the one I will probably vote for when the primary season comes rolling into Kentucky. Unfortunately, by the time that happens, he might well be out of the running. Senator Biden is not going to win a single primary of importance, if he wins one at all.
The Nine of Swords in this reverse position can mean many things. Though I favor him of all Democratic candidates, I am not going to delude myself for one minute into thinking that he is fearful for the future of the country if someone besides himself is elected, though I will cede that he can present himself in such an arrogant manner.
What I think it signifies, in his case, is a nagging gut feeling, probably an unreasonable fear, that his presence in the primaries could inadvertently drain votes from one candidate and therefore throw certain primary contests to one that might not otherwise win, and therefore influence the overall nomination process to no benefit to himself or his own interests. If I were correct, I have no doubt who it is he thinks he would draw votes from. He would doubtless draw them away from Hillary Clinton. I also have no doubt, as to who he thinks that might benefit-Obama. This is probably something that would ordinarily be of no great concern to him, but since the early primaries are stacking up to be a statistical dead heat between the three front runners in most polls, and since Biden is generally ranked fourth in those same polls, it is easy to discern how he could easily swing some primary states. He might conceivably feel himself responsible for a divided convention, which might be traceable to the results of the early primary contests, were they to give a candidate a surge he might not ordinarily receive.
There is also the possibility that Joe Biden might feel some growing fear-and this might not be so unreasonable-that an ultimately successful Hillary Clinton might not look too kindly on his opposition, if his candidacy caused hers a great deal of indirect discomfort. A President Clinton, would, after all, have powerful allies in Congress, especially a Democratic Congress, and Joe Biden might well feel her wrath-indirectly, of course-when the next round of committee assignments comes rolling through Capitol Hill.
I expect Biden to drop out relatively early, due to the reasons I stated.
Elliott Richardson-Four of Swords (R)
-Out of all the cards I drew for this series, this is by far the most mysterious. The Four of Swords signifies a necessary time of healing. Yet, from what is Elliott Richardson healing? Out of all the former Clinton appointees, this former Congressman and Secretary of Defense, and current governor of New Mexico, seems to have everything going for him, on paper. He is one of the top three-hell, I’ll come right out and say the only three-actually qualified to be President. He should be on top of the world. In fact, he is. Anytime there is a potential crises brewing anywhere on the globe, Elliot Richardson will always be on the short list of those called to make things right, by Democrats and Republicans alike. President George W. Bush even sent him recently to come to some kind of accommodation with North Korea over that nation’s nuclear program. Is it possible the man is just overworked?
No. I think the injury he must heal from is a self-inflicted one. By doing so lousy in the polls, he might have injured whatever potential he may have had to be the next Vice-Presidential candidate, which otherwise would have been a near certainty. He will nevertheless be on that short list as well, but the outcome is not as probable. If he does not make a strong showing in the early primaries, he might well be toast for this reason. At to this the added reason that Hillary Clinton never forgets a slight, and she could well see Richardson’s candidacy as just that.
Look for Elliott Richardson to be among the first Democratic candidates to next withdraw from the race, on some ridiculous pretext that of necessity will take valuable time by definition. Look for an international emergency or a need for his steady hand at the helm of New Mexico state business, some problem or another that only he can solve, and which by it’s nature would make running an extended campaign impractical.
Chris Dodd-The Ace of Swords (R)
-You might remember I drew the exact same card, also in the reverse position, for Republican candidate Mitt Romney. In this reading, however, the significance, while similar, also takes on a different connotation. Where Romney is finding himself fin the position of fending off negative attacks, in Dodd’s case, he is the one that will find himself in the position of having to engage in such tactics if he hopes to keep his candidacy alive. Dodd is one of the three candidates actually qualified to be President, but if he and the other two were the Beatles (with Dennis Kucinich as Ringo, of course), he would be George Harrison-the invisible kid. Unfortunately, for them and him, they are not the Beatles, they are a group of slimy politicians, and what hampers Dodd the most is the appearance that he might well be the sleaziest of the bunch.
The only possible hope he has of becoming a factor in the race is to go negative, and do it quickly. I think you are going to see him do it, too, and he will make no bones about it. He has nothing to lose, as he sees it (or will) and nothing to gain by staying on his current course. He will attack Hillary’s credentials and agenda, and Edwards’s as well. As for Barak Obama, as regarding his relative inexperience and naivety, look for him to stop just short of calling him an uppity black.
Whether all this will work of course might well be-in fact, probably will be-an entirely different question. I have an idea he will also withdraw from the race after the early primaries, and he will do so with noticeable contempt.
Mike Gravell-Three of Pentacles (R)
-If Gravell had his way about it, US citizens would pass or reject all laws, at least those of any significance, by the process of a national referendum. What a way to run a country. He also evidently thinks borders are a waste of time. Let people come and go as they please. Yeah, who does not want to migrate down to Mexico to work, just as Mexicans do here? Ol’ Mike seems to think we should carry everybody’s water for them, but don’t count on him supplying the hepatitis, cholera free water you would need to migrate there to do that. It is no wonder the guy is nowhere in the polls. The fact that the guy is obviously a fucking nut is almost incidental. Yet, he trudges onward and outward.
This former Alaska Senator and Governor was one of the ones in support of the leak of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam era, so you can expect him to eventually narrow his focus on the Nixonesque Clinton scandals of the nineties as his mantra. I doubt it gets him anywhere, but on the other hand, he might end up being the joker in this deck, if he inadvertently uncovers and then reveals some similar information regarding Hillary’s past influence on the Clinton Administration. He might also find new and improved ways to hit attack her influence in the current Iraq War. Gravell is the kind of guy that would probably pay big money for something like this. It probably still yet would not get him anywhere near spitting distance of the Democratic nomination. However, it might well get him a spot on an independent, third party ticket, which might be what he is really gunning for. What he might have to gain from such a thing-for that matter, what he might have to gain from doing what he is doing-only Mike Gravell could possibly know. Some things are beyond the range of Tarot cards, or for that matter, God.
Dennis Kucinich-The King of Swords (R)
-The little Smurf from Cleveland is probably in this race to the finish line. He is on a mission, and he will not surrender. He feels he is in the vanguard of truth, justice, and the American way, a leader of a movement to establish, once and for all, democracy, equality, and fairness, by God. He knows in his heart of hearts that if people would just listen to him, they will see the light and vote for him overwhelmingly, and to this end, he has developed a set of proposals straight from Alice in Wonderland, with a really cool version of The Matrix tossed in for good measure-a kindly, non-violent one, of course. No one would ever want to leave Dennis’s Matrix, you see, because once you stepped into the chamber, and saw the universe as Dennis sees it in his reality, you would never want to return to the world of anger, selfishness, greed, or meat.
Unfortunately, Dennis must punish the transgressors. In order to display his strength, uprightness, and determination that justice will prevail, he has sponsored a bill calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, and has put the Democratic Congress in a bind, and actually accomplished something few have ever considered possible. He has formed a coalition between conservative Republicans and the most liberal of those Democratic members of Congress, both of which are determined the bill should be passed out of committee and put to a vote of the full house.
Dennis is obviously hoping to draw a distinction between him and those other mealy-mouthed Democrats running for President. What he does not realize is, we already get the distinction, all too well. Dennis Kucinich is leading a failed campaign. In true Don Quixote fashion, he is too far gone, unfortunately, to know it is way past time to fall on his sword.
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Hillary Clinton-Eight of Wands (R)
-This seems to indicate that Hillary is well on her way to wrapping up the nomination, at least at first glance, despite the negative connotations that entails, or perhaps even because of them, in a sense.
Barak Obama-Page of Wands (R)
-Barak Obama, here portrayed as a messenger of change and even hope, though the reverse position details his major weakness, a belief by some that he might have moved too early and is out of his depth at this stage of his political career. This perception by many will dog him throughout the primaries, despite how well he might or might not do in the early ones. In the event his candidacy fails in the end, this will be the primary factor of responsibility for that.
John Edwards-Ace of Wands
-Incredibly, this is the only Democratic candidate whose card I drew in the upright position. What does it mean? Well, it is easy to read too much into reverse cards. The “R”, incidentally, beside some cards signifies that when the card was drawn, it was upside down. Most Tarot readers generally view this aspect as a negative connotation. Edwards, however, is upright, the only one of this group that is, so in his case, what is signified by a drawing of the Ace of Wands in the upright position?
Well, Aces are indicative of a sudden surge of energy, in this case (Wands) of an inspirational, possibly spiritual nature. John Edwards typically makes a big deal out of running a “positive” campaign (while using his wife in the background as an attack dog), but while this might seem to fit his overall campaign style and strategy, I do not believe it tells the entire story.
I think this might well be indicative of a potential upset in the Iowa Caucus or the New Hampshire primary-or both. If Edwards comes in a close second in one and wins the other, which is conceivable, it might well change the face of the campaign, setting the stage for a roll through South Carolina, Michigan, and other states where a strong early showing might bode well for his candidacy.
Expect him to play the God card, so to speak, and do not be at all surprised if he becomes more aggressive in the face of Obama’s recent surge in the polls due to this tactic. He is, after all, a lawyer, and what do lawyers want more than anything? That is right-they want to win.
Joe Biden-Nine of Swords (R)
-Joe Biden is arguably, out of all the current crop of Democratic candidates, the one most qualified to hold the office of President. Though I disagree with him profoundly on certain issues-gun control and immigration being at the forefront-he is the one I will probably vote for when the primary season comes rolling into Kentucky. Unfortunately, by the time that happens, he might well be out of the running. Senator Biden is not going to win a single primary of importance, if he wins one at all.
The Nine of Swords in this reverse position can mean many things. Though I favor him of all Democratic candidates, I am not going to delude myself for one minute into thinking that he is fearful for the future of the country if someone besides himself is elected, though I will cede that he can present himself in such an arrogant manner.
What I think it signifies, in his case, is a nagging gut feeling, probably an unreasonable fear, that his presence in the primaries could inadvertently drain votes from one candidate and therefore throw certain primary contests to one that might not otherwise win, and therefore influence the overall nomination process to no benefit to himself or his own interests. If I were correct, I have no doubt who it is he thinks he would draw votes from. He would doubtless draw them away from Hillary Clinton. I also have no doubt, as to who he thinks that might benefit-Obama. This is probably something that would ordinarily be of no great concern to him, but since the early primaries are stacking up to be a statistical dead heat between the three front runners in most polls, and since Biden is generally ranked fourth in those same polls, it is easy to discern how he could easily swing some primary states. He might conceivably feel himself responsible for a divided convention, which might be traceable to the results of the early primary contests, were they to give a candidate a surge he might not ordinarily receive.
There is also the possibility that Joe Biden might feel some growing fear-and this might not be so unreasonable-that an ultimately successful Hillary Clinton might not look too kindly on his opposition, if his candidacy caused hers a great deal of indirect discomfort. A President Clinton, would, after all, have powerful allies in Congress, especially a Democratic Congress, and Joe Biden might well feel her wrath-indirectly, of course-when the next round of committee assignments comes rolling through Capitol Hill.
I expect Biden to drop out relatively early, due to the reasons I stated.
Elliott Richardson-Four of Swords (R)
-Out of all the cards I drew for this series, this is by far the most mysterious. The Four of Swords signifies a necessary time of healing. Yet, from what is Elliott Richardson healing? Out of all the former Clinton appointees, this former Congressman and Secretary of Defense, and current governor of New Mexico, seems to have everything going for him, on paper. He is one of the top three-hell, I’ll come right out and say the only three-actually qualified to be President. He should be on top of the world. In fact, he is. Anytime there is a potential crises brewing anywhere on the globe, Elliot Richardson will always be on the short list of those called to make things right, by Democrats and Republicans alike. President George W. Bush even sent him recently to come to some kind of accommodation with North Korea over that nation’s nuclear program. Is it possible the man is just overworked?
No. I think the injury he must heal from is a self-inflicted one. By doing so lousy in the polls, he might have injured whatever potential he may have had to be the next Vice-Presidential candidate, which otherwise would have been a near certainty. He will nevertheless be on that short list as well, but the outcome is not as probable. If he does not make a strong showing in the early primaries, he might well be toast for this reason. At to this the added reason that Hillary Clinton never forgets a slight, and she could well see Richardson’s candidacy as just that.
Look for Elliott Richardson to be among the first Democratic candidates to next withdraw from the race, on some ridiculous pretext that of necessity will take valuable time by definition. Look for an international emergency or a need for his steady hand at the helm of New Mexico state business, some problem or another that only he can solve, and which by it’s nature would make running an extended campaign impractical.
Chris Dodd-The Ace of Swords (R)
-You might remember I drew the exact same card, also in the reverse position, for Republican candidate Mitt Romney. In this reading, however, the significance, while similar, also takes on a different connotation. Where Romney is finding himself fin the position of fending off negative attacks, in Dodd’s case, he is the one that will find himself in the position of having to engage in such tactics if he hopes to keep his candidacy alive. Dodd is one of the three candidates actually qualified to be President, but if he and the other two were the Beatles (with Dennis Kucinich as Ringo, of course), he would be George Harrison-the invisible kid. Unfortunately, for them and him, they are not the Beatles, they are a group of slimy politicians, and what hampers Dodd the most is the appearance that he might well be the sleaziest of the bunch.
The only possible hope he has of becoming a factor in the race is to go negative, and do it quickly. I think you are going to see him do it, too, and he will make no bones about it. He has nothing to lose, as he sees it (or will) and nothing to gain by staying on his current course. He will attack Hillary’s credentials and agenda, and Edwards’s as well. As for Barak Obama, as regarding his relative inexperience and naivety, look for him to stop just short of calling him an uppity black.
Whether all this will work of course might well be-in fact, probably will be-an entirely different question. I have an idea he will also withdraw from the race after the early primaries, and he will do so with noticeable contempt.
Mike Gravell-Three of Pentacles (R)
-If Gravell had his way about it, US citizens would pass or reject all laws, at least those of any significance, by the process of a national referendum. What a way to run a country. He also evidently thinks borders are a waste of time. Let people come and go as they please. Yeah, who does not want to migrate down to Mexico to work, just as Mexicans do here? Ol’ Mike seems to think we should carry everybody’s water for them, but don’t count on him supplying the hepatitis, cholera free water you would need to migrate there to do that. It is no wonder the guy is nowhere in the polls. The fact that the guy is obviously a fucking nut is almost incidental. Yet, he trudges onward and outward.
This former Alaska Senator and Governor was one of the ones in support of the leak of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam era, so you can expect him to eventually narrow his focus on the Nixonesque Clinton scandals of the nineties as his mantra. I doubt it gets him anywhere, but on the other hand, he might end up being the joker in this deck, if he inadvertently uncovers and then reveals some similar information regarding Hillary’s past influence on the Clinton Administration. He might also find new and improved ways to hit attack her influence in the current Iraq War. Gravell is the kind of guy that would probably pay big money for something like this. It probably still yet would not get him anywhere near spitting distance of the Democratic nomination. However, it might well get him a spot on an independent, third party ticket, which might be what he is really gunning for. What he might have to gain from such a thing-for that matter, what he might have to gain from doing what he is doing-only Mike Gravell could possibly know. Some things are beyond the range of Tarot cards, or for that matter, God.
Dennis Kucinich-The King of Swords (R)
-The little Smurf from Cleveland is probably in this race to the finish line. He is on a mission, and he will not surrender. He feels he is in the vanguard of truth, justice, and the American way, a leader of a movement to establish, once and for all, democracy, equality, and fairness, by God. He knows in his heart of hearts that if people would just listen to him, they will see the light and vote for him overwhelmingly, and to this end, he has developed a set of proposals straight from Alice in Wonderland, with a really cool version of The Matrix tossed in for good measure-a kindly, non-violent one, of course. No one would ever want to leave Dennis’s Matrix, you see, because once you stepped into the chamber, and saw the universe as Dennis sees it in his reality, you would never want to return to the world of anger, selfishness, greed, or meat.
Unfortunately, Dennis must punish the transgressors. In order to display his strength, uprightness, and determination that justice will prevail, he has sponsored a bill calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, and has put the Democratic Congress in a bind, and actually accomplished something few have ever considered possible. He has formed a coalition between conservative Republicans and the most liberal of those Democratic members of Congress, both of which are determined the bill should be passed out of committee and put to a vote of the full house.
Dennis is obviously hoping to draw a distinction between him and those other mealy-mouthed Democrats running for President. What he does not realize is, we already get the distinction, all too well. Dennis Kucinich is leading a failed campaign. In true Don Quixote fashion, he is too far gone, unfortunately, to know it is way past time to fall on his sword.
-
Monday, November 19, 2007
Attack Of The Clones-A Predictable Sequel
The picture at the left is the mugshot of Patrick Hutchinson, taken in December of 2005 following the murder of his wife Fontaine and Lexington Kentucky Fire Department employee Brenda Cowan. He was determined to be legally insane at the time of his arrest. A year later, he was determined yet to be legally insane. For a second time, as of today, he was determined, yet again, too mentally ill to stand trial.
So, what was the basis for the finding of legal insanity. Read on. I now present the original blog post about the entire incident, reprinted in it's entirety, as first published in December of 2005.
One day in February of 2004, a man by the name of Patrick Hutchinson, after years of dealing with the depths of insanity, finally went off the deep end. He shot and killed his wife of many years, leaving her dead body in the couples yard, in rural Fayette County. He then according to reports fired a number of shots, all of which precipitated a call to 911 by the police.
Unfortunately, there was an inexplicable disconnect between the Fayette County Kentucky Police and the Fayette County Fire Department, which also responded to the call. Yet, due to a breakdown in communications, the Fire Department was seemingly unaware of the danger that they hurtled headlong into on that fateful mid-winter evening. They found themselves in the line of fire, in a madmans sights.
As a result, a woman by the name of Brenda Cowan, the first African American woman to work on the Fayette County Fire Department, who had received commendations and had appearred on the local media in interviews, was shot to death. In addition, a police officer was also shot and injured. He recovered, but the death of Cowan was particularly hard, especially to the members of the Fire Department with whom Cowan was a well liked and respected member.
So why did this happen? Why did this young, vital, admired woman lose her life? What twisted madness afflicted the mind of Patrick Hutchinson?
He believed that the entire world, except for a chosen few which included himself, were in reality clones, intent on taking over the world, destroying all the true humans of the world and replacing them with soleless replicas. He evidently believed that these clones were only human copies in appearrance, in reality they were evidently some disguised species of either supernatural or extraterrestrial (or possibly both) origin, and of a serpentine nature and appearrance.
That is what he believed, with the utmost sincerity. What the genesis of this delusion was can only be guessed at, or even how long ago it began, though it seems to have been of a long duration. His wife and family were aware to a small extent of his mental and emotional instability, though I would imagine they didn't exactly comprehend the extent of it. Bu in fact, in his tortured mind, he firmly believed that there were only perhaps twenty thousand or so true humans left on the earth. All the rest had been killed, murdered, and replaced by these clones. The last straw, the breaking point, seems to have occurred when he obviousy came to believe that his own wife was, after all, a clone herself. One can only imagine by what process he arrived at this fateful conclusion.
Had it been a recent occurrence? Or had she been "one of them" all along, and fooling him for all these years, trying to control him and at the same time trying to find out just what all he "knew".
Did the total and final break come when she threatened to leave him for good, or possibly to do so if he would not seek help? For all the reasoning she may have tried to utilize at her disposal, someone with this level of delusion would never listen to any kind of logic or reason. Their logic and reason, after all, is as firmly esconced in their own mind as the average persons is to themselves. Such an appeal would be viewed as a trick, a manever to get him imprisoned, entrapped within some alien realm where he would be at the mercy of their far superior technology. He was, after all, one of the few who had somehow been immune to their invasion of his body, heart, mind, and sould. He had not only successfully resisted them, but had at the same time become aware of their presence. Not only was he therefore a danger to them, it was of the utmost necessity that he be kept under observation, studied. Only the most thorough and disciplned scientific research might yield clues as to what was so special about this one particular human. Once they learned the truth then they would be able to adequately deal with the "others". Those very few twenty thousand or so.
Perhaps this is what set him off. Perhaps she even admitted to the "truth" of this, as a means to humor him, or out of sheer disgust. She had had it with him, and decided she might as well tell him what he wanted to hear, he was going to believe it regardless. We may never know, for certain, as the secret is now perhaps permanently locked inside the tortured mind of Patrick Hutchinson.
It was recenty decided in court that Patrick Hutchinson was still yet unfit to stand trial. And so, for yet another year, he will be kept under psychiatric observation, yet safely locked away. It has been said that he may never be well enough to stand trial. He was obviosuly insane at the time of the trial, they said, and he is still every bit as insane now as he was then. True, he seems calm. Maybe he now believes he too is a clone. Maybe he has come to an inner acceptance of his fate. Maybe he now has come to loathe the person that was Patrick Hutchinson, and now longs to go out into the world at large, and take his place among the greater society of his fellow clones. Again, we may never know.
All we know for certain is that this procedure will be repeated once a year, he will be reevaluated on a yearly basis, to see if there has been an improvement in his mental condition. Should that day ever come that he is considered to be over his insanity, then he will finally, at long last, be put on trial for the murder of his wife and Brenda Cowen.
You see, Kentucky has this unusual policy that, if a person is considered insane, they can not be put on trial for any crime they may have committed while so afflicted. However, when it is perceived that they are cured, or in recovery, then they can be tried for the crime-depsite the fact that they were obviously insane at the time they comitted it.
In other words, it is not out of concern for the welfare for the mentally afflicted, out of a desire to see they are treated with compassion and fairness. They merely want to ensure that they know what they are being punished for when and if they finally are. Whether they had the vaquest idea of what they were doing at the time or not.
Patrick Hutchinson will probably never for the remainder of his life have a free day or night, he will doubtless be incarcerated for the rest of his life, whether he is ever tried in court or not. Crazy or not, I would imagine that the social life of a clone must look pretty good to him right now.
Be Careful What You Ask For (And Who You Ask It From)
The youth chastity movement, it seems, has a
According to Beatroot, the movement has gravitated beyond the US, and is starting up now in Poland.
Beatroot explains in this post how it seems the Church, at least as far as this movement is concerned, has an uphill battle in his adopted country.
I have to wonder about the Church's choice for a saint to guide this movement. Are they sure Karoline died a virgin? Are they sure she was a virgin by conscious choice even if she did die a virgin?
Let's suppose she wasn't a virgin. Imagine here for a moment that she had sexual urges and fantasies, and would have gladly given in to under the right circumstances, without benefit of marriage. Does it necessarily follow that she would have had no problem being molested by a Russian soldier?
Do they suppose that, if she had not resisted rape by the occupying soldier, that would have made her "damaged goods"-maybe even a "whore"?
There have been a lot of teenage boys and girls that have worn the silver ring, or otherwise made similar vows of chastity, that have reneged on them under the right circumstances.
Who knows but that maybe Karoline is reliving her life through them, let us say, somewhat vicariously?
After all, who knows for sure if she might not have been, let us say, just a little on the slutty side?
Just sayin'.
Tarot Reading For Republican Presidential Candidates
Admittedly, this post is not going to make any sense to people that are not devotees of Tarot, but I thought it would be fun to do anyway. Each card represents a current contender for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. As the meaning of Tarot cards are subjective in any kind of reading, bear in mind that each card as applied to the specific candidate for which it was drawn can have diverse meanings. A seemingly negative looking card does not necessarily mean a negative reading, candidate, or candidacy.
With that said, the cards drawn are as follows-
Rudolph Giuliani-The Devil (R)
-I have this strange idea some conservative Christians might suddenly become advocates of Tarot after seeing this. Be that as it may, this could be an indication of some problems that will continue to dog Giuliani going to issues of character and possibly temperament.
Fred Thompson-The Moon (R)
-An uncertain future and prospects with accompanying period of darkness and uncertainty for this presidential bid heightened by the effect that this candidate does not present what most people crave, which is an optimistic outlook, or at least he has not been clear in getting that message out.
Mitt Romney-Ace of Swords(R)
-Look for this candidate to become the focus of ever-growing negative attacks in the face of his potentially strong showing in the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. He would not do his campaign service by trying to portray himself as above the fray, nor should he do anything to encourage the perception that he is whining about it. He will simply have to adjust to it, or he might not survive it.
Mike Huckabee-The Hierophant
-This candidate has already shown himself to be the joker in the deck, speaking in terms of a standard deck of playing cards, but in this case, he is no “Fool”. The Hierophant is fitting for this candidate, who seeks to portray himself to socially conservative Christians in the GOP as a viable alternative candidate. This should pay dividends for him, as it in fact already has, at the polling booth and, in the aftermath, possibly in the Vice-Presidential selection process.
John McCain-The Magician
-This is interesting. If John McCain pulls out a victory in the New Hampshire primary, it would be akin to pulling a rabbit out of a hat, so to speak. It is not beyond the realm of possibility. What is difficult to fathom is how he can parlay such a victory into needed funds for his nearly bankrupt campaign, to say nothing as to how he might pull off the equally astounding feat of presenting himself as a viable candidate to a good many GOP voters who have honestly come to loathe the man.
Ron Paul-Wheel of Fortune (R)
-There is no “there” there. As the card implies, he has a hard-core, loyal following of devoted supporters. However, this will not last past the first few primary campaigns, at which point his fortunes will begin to illustrate obvious reversals.
Tom Tancredo-Five of Cups (R
-The one trick pony this candidate is trying to ride into the White House is going to throw him off before he ever gets out of the starting gate. In fact, it already has, he just does not seem to know it yet. He will when the results come in from Colorado, when he loses his own congressional district, probably to Romney or Thompson, or maybe even to Giuliani or McCain, either one of which would really seem like a betrayal. That of course is providing he stays in it that long, which would be inadvisable.
Duncan Hunter-Two of Cups
-This candidate will bow out gracefully soon, maybe after the New Hampshire primary, maybe before, but certainly shortly afterward. He will throw his support behind one of the other candidates, and will work tirelessly for the ultimate Republican nominee regardless of who that is, with an eye toward a potential future appointment.
So, there you have it. Later, I will do a reading for the Democratic candidates.
Before anyone asks me-no, there is not a Tarot card known as “The Bitch”.
With that said, the cards drawn are as follows-
Rudolph Giuliani-The Devil (R)
-I have this strange idea some conservative Christians might suddenly become advocates of Tarot after seeing this. Be that as it may, this could be an indication of some problems that will continue to dog Giuliani going to issues of character and possibly temperament.
Fred Thompson-The Moon (R)
-An uncertain future and prospects with accompanying period of darkness and uncertainty for this presidential bid heightened by the effect that this candidate does not present what most people crave, which is an optimistic outlook, or at least he has not been clear in getting that message out.
Mitt Romney-Ace of Swords(R)
-Look for this candidate to become the focus of ever-growing negative attacks in the face of his potentially strong showing in the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. He would not do his campaign service by trying to portray himself as above the fray, nor should he do anything to encourage the perception that he is whining about it. He will simply have to adjust to it, or he might not survive it.
Mike Huckabee-The Hierophant
-This candidate has already shown himself to be the joker in the deck, speaking in terms of a standard deck of playing cards, but in this case, he is no “Fool”. The Hierophant is fitting for this candidate, who seeks to portray himself to socially conservative Christians in the GOP as a viable alternative candidate. This should pay dividends for him, as it in fact already has, at the polling booth and, in the aftermath, possibly in the Vice-Presidential selection process.
John McCain-The Magician
-This is interesting. If John McCain pulls out a victory in the New Hampshire primary, it would be akin to pulling a rabbit out of a hat, so to speak. It is not beyond the realm of possibility. What is difficult to fathom is how he can parlay such a victory into needed funds for his nearly bankrupt campaign, to say nothing as to how he might pull off the equally astounding feat of presenting himself as a viable candidate to a good many GOP voters who have honestly come to loathe the man.
Ron Paul-Wheel of Fortune (R)
-There is no “there” there. As the card implies, he has a hard-core, loyal following of devoted supporters. However, this will not last past the first few primary campaigns, at which point his fortunes will begin to illustrate obvious reversals.
Tom Tancredo-Five of Cups (R
-The one trick pony this candidate is trying to ride into the White House is going to throw him off before he ever gets out of the starting gate. In fact, it already has, he just does not seem to know it yet. He will when the results come in from Colorado, when he loses his own congressional district, probably to Romney or Thompson, or maybe even to Giuliani or McCain, either one of which would really seem like a betrayal. That of course is providing he stays in it that long, which would be inadvisable.
Duncan Hunter-Two of Cups
-This candidate will bow out gracefully soon, maybe after the New Hampshire primary, maybe before, but certainly shortly afterward. He will throw his support behind one of the other candidates, and will work tirelessly for the ultimate Republican nominee regardless of who that is, with an eye toward a potential future appointment.
So, there you have it. Later, I will do a reading for the Democratic candidates.
Before anyone asks me-no, there is not a Tarot card known as “The Bitch”.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Wars Within Wars
Christian conservatives are up in arms, yet divided against themselves, over the prospect of Rudolph Giuliani becoming the next Republican nominee for office of President. To them, Giuliani is the man that could well threaten their power base within the party, and many of them are threatening to sit the next election out, or to bolt from the GOP outright. Others are willing to “hold their noses” and pull the lever if they have to, while yet others are convinced that Rudy might well be the only hope to defeat almost certain Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Finally, there are those who feel Giuliani could well destroy not only the Republican Party, but could ruin the country.
They point to his allegedly liberal positions on such matters as abortion, gay rights, gun control, and illegal immigration. A former pledge he made to appoint only those judges who are strict constructionists of the Constitution seems to impress them not one whit.
Fact-Rudy, as mayor of New York, supported Draconian gun control measures.
Fact-Rudy, as mayor of New York, ran New York City as a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants.
Fact-Rudy, as mayor of New York, supported a woman’s right to choose.
Fact-Rudy, as mayor of New York, supported gay rights, and even the idea of gay civil unions.
The most important thing, however, for some of them at least, may be their deep fear that Rudy Giuliani might well permanently change the character of the Republican Party by attracting moderates and liberals from the ranks of independents and from Democrats who would forever reverse the conservative gains made by Ronald Reagan. The country, as a result, will suddenly lurch to “the left”.
I do not believe it. Few Presidents changed the characters of their party and the nation. You do not need a full set of fingers to count them all.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan are the only six, out of forty-three Presidents, who have accomplished this feat, and Lincoln was the only one of them who presided over a divided nation. Regarding most of them, their presidencies brought with them mainly mixed results, with the exception of Washington, the only one whose presidency resulted in generally positive with very little if any negative consequences.
What is more, for the most part, these men did not change anything. Circumstances changed things, and these nine men simply rode twin tidal waves of discontent and hope, much like a master horseman reins two horses of a chariot.
Now, however, the twin tidal waves are solely those of discontent, with little if any hope involved. Far from these twin waves acting in unison, they are in mutual conflict with each other. It is more like a low-pressure area in conflict with a high-pressure system. It is causing a storm of epic proportions. No one can easily ride it and the most any chief executive can do at this point is hold in the reins of two horses pulling in two opposite directions. Whoever does it, if anyone can at this stage, must be more a person of Lincolnesque proportions than like Reagan or Roosevelt. Remember, even Lincoln could not prevent a civil war, and its effects are yet with us.
Well, the civil war is already here, and whoever wins the presidency has to deal with it. Make no mistake-it is a war, though not a shooting war like in the War Between The States, but more like a Cold War. It is even now being fought out on the battle lines of the court of public opinion, where candidates for public office are not ferreted out and put forward by party bosses in smoke filled rooms, but by corporate elites, union bosses, other special interest groups, and by the media. It is a Cold War, and the participants are engaged in a fight to the death.
If the Christians and other social conservatives of the Republican Party are not careful, they might well find themselves the first casualties of that cold war. Nevertheless, it seems they are determined to throw away what influence they have gained over the years. If they do that, they might find out the hard way that it might not be so easy to get it back. The Republican Party, after all, will survive-with them or without them.
In fact, they might soon find themselves face to face with the uncomfortable fact that a good many others in the Republican Party might give them a send-off they might not care to receive-“don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”
After all, the Republican Party leadership cares mainly about one thing-where is the money coming from. Who will support the party financially? Once they work that out-and believe me, they will work that out-the rest will follow. If the social conservatives leave the party, then certainly there will be those independents and moderate Democrats currently sick of the Democratic Party-like myself, for example-that will happily take their place.
That is not a threat. It is more along the lines of something that they, as religious, Bible believing Christians, should be able to relate to-it is a prophecy.
In the long run, however, I will say this. It is never good for any members of any self-identified group of citizens to cement themselves firmly within the ranks of one political party or another. There is a very good reason the Democratic Party is derided by many, after all, as the one who enslaved blacks to begin with, and now seek to keep them firmly entrenched within a "welfare plantation". The horrible truth is, there is in fact a great deal of truth to that. Ask any black conservative for public office.
If the nomination of Rudy Giuliani causes Republicans to rethink their party affiliation to the point that they actually become, as a group, thoughtful independents willing to look honestly at what both parties have to offer, and to likewise consider the negatives of both, it might in the long run be a good thing, for the Republican party, the Democratic Party, and for the country.
For the time being, however, they might well turn to the Bible, that to them sacred book which they place so much stock in, for guidance. They might well find words of wisdom therein that might be reminiscent of a Jagger-Richards song.
You can't always get what you want.
They point to his allegedly liberal positions on such matters as abortion, gay rights, gun control, and illegal immigration. A former pledge he made to appoint only those judges who are strict constructionists of the Constitution seems to impress them not one whit.
Fact-Rudy, as mayor of New York, supported Draconian gun control measures.
Fact-Rudy, as mayor of New York, ran New York City as a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants.
Fact-Rudy, as mayor of New York, supported a woman’s right to choose.
Fact-Rudy, as mayor of New York, supported gay rights, and even the idea of gay civil unions.
The most important thing, however, for some of them at least, may be their deep fear that Rudy Giuliani might well permanently change the character of the Republican Party by attracting moderates and liberals from the ranks of independents and from Democrats who would forever reverse the conservative gains made by Ronald Reagan. The country, as a result, will suddenly lurch to “the left”.
I do not believe it. Few Presidents changed the characters of their party and the nation. You do not need a full set of fingers to count them all.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan are the only six, out of forty-three Presidents, who have accomplished this feat, and Lincoln was the only one of them who presided over a divided nation. Regarding most of them, their presidencies brought with them mainly mixed results, with the exception of Washington, the only one whose presidency resulted in generally positive with very little if any negative consequences.
What is more, for the most part, these men did not change anything. Circumstances changed things, and these nine men simply rode twin tidal waves of discontent and hope, much like a master horseman reins two horses of a chariot.
Now, however, the twin tidal waves are solely those of discontent, with little if any hope involved. Far from these twin waves acting in unison, they are in mutual conflict with each other. It is more like a low-pressure area in conflict with a high-pressure system. It is causing a storm of epic proportions. No one can easily ride it and the most any chief executive can do at this point is hold in the reins of two horses pulling in two opposite directions. Whoever does it, if anyone can at this stage, must be more a person of Lincolnesque proportions than like Reagan or Roosevelt. Remember, even Lincoln could not prevent a civil war, and its effects are yet with us.
Well, the civil war is already here, and whoever wins the presidency has to deal with it. Make no mistake-it is a war, though not a shooting war like in the War Between The States, but more like a Cold War. It is even now being fought out on the battle lines of the court of public opinion, where candidates for public office are not ferreted out and put forward by party bosses in smoke filled rooms, but by corporate elites, union bosses, other special interest groups, and by the media. It is a Cold War, and the participants are engaged in a fight to the death.
If the Christians and other social conservatives of the Republican Party are not careful, they might well find themselves the first casualties of that cold war. Nevertheless, it seems they are determined to throw away what influence they have gained over the years. If they do that, they might find out the hard way that it might not be so easy to get it back. The Republican Party, after all, will survive-with them or without them.
In fact, they might soon find themselves face to face with the uncomfortable fact that a good many others in the Republican Party might give them a send-off they might not care to receive-“don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”
After all, the Republican Party leadership cares mainly about one thing-where is the money coming from. Who will support the party financially? Once they work that out-and believe me, they will work that out-the rest will follow. If the social conservatives leave the party, then certainly there will be those independents and moderate Democrats currently sick of the Democratic Party-like myself, for example-that will happily take their place.
That is not a threat. It is more along the lines of something that they, as religious, Bible believing Christians, should be able to relate to-it is a prophecy.
In the long run, however, I will say this. It is never good for any members of any self-identified group of citizens to cement themselves firmly within the ranks of one political party or another. There is a very good reason the Democratic Party is derided by many, after all, as the one who enslaved blacks to begin with, and now seek to keep them firmly entrenched within a "welfare plantation". The horrible truth is, there is in fact a great deal of truth to that. Ask any black conservative for public office.
If the nomination of Rudy Giuliani causes Republicans to rethink their party affiliation to the point that they actually become, as a group, thoughtful independents willing to look honestly at what both parties have to offer, and to likewise consider the negatives of both, it might in the long run be a good thing, for the Republican party, the Democratic Party, and for the country.
For the time being, however, they might well turn to the Bible, that to them sacred book which they place so much stock in, for guidance. They might well find words of wisdom therein that might be reminiscent of a Jagger-Richards song.
You can't always get what you want.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Radu-Chapter XXIV (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
Previous Installments:
Part One
Prologue and Chapter I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Part Three
Chapter XXIII
Radu-Chapter XXIV (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
19 pages approximate
When Aleksandre Khoska opened his eyes, he appeared to be in an airport lobby, though it seemed engulfed in fog. He knew he was supposed to be waiting for somebody, and though he knew whom it was he waited for, he seemed vaguely unaware of who the person was.
There were people all around, walking around aimlessly. He started walking straight ahead of him, toward where a group of people stood, the only people who remained in one place, the people who stood straight ahead of him, though at some distance. They became remarkably clearer as he drew closer to them. He seemed to recognize the old gypsy woman who smiled at him knowingly. He noted the old woman, incredibly ancient, who seemed not to know where or, for that matter, even who she was, as an old man stood watch over her. Yet, though he was considerably younger, Alek seemed to understand he was the woman’s husband, and was actually much older than she was.
When he saw the children, he felt sad, though resigned, at the sight of the young boy with the obviously broken neck slanted down on his right shoulder, and the heart-wrenching site of the two younger children who gazed at him with baleful, questioning eyes, their entire bodies afflicted with severe burns. Then he saw the young teenage girl, huddled in the corner, obviously sick, shivering as she cried. She was afflicted with boils. This horrified Aleksandre Khoska, who recognized the plague all too well, though he never saw it before.
“Is there a problem here?”
Aleksandre turned at the sound of the commanding voice to note the approach of what he took first to be a guard. He realized though that this was not an airport terminal guard, but a soldier, an American soldier in what appeared to be a World War I uniform, riddled with bullet holes and caked with blood.
An older man almost immediately joined the soldier. Aleksandre noted the vitriolic hatred and anger that emanated from the heavy-set balding man, whose face was purple with rage, as a throbbing vein pulsated violently at his nearly hairless temple.
“You are going to have to move along old man,” the soldier said, as Aleksandre suddenly recognized the Romanian medals that adorned the uniform of the soldier, though he seemed to be an American.
“I am sorry, but I do not seem to know where I am,” Khoska said to the soldier. “Could you perhaps give me directions?”
The angry man then stepped forward and glared at Aleksandre.
“I will give you directions,” he shouted. “Go to hell, you son-of-a-bitch.”
He then awoke, to realize he was still in the hospital, though this was to be his final day. Doctor McCann had already signed his release, and he was more than ready to go, but he dreaded doing so. Yet, he could not remain here forever. Soon, his nurse entered the room with a questioning look, to inform him he had a visitor.
“She says her name is Dorothy Moloku-I think I have that right,” she said. “Do you know her?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Aleksandre said as he stifled a groan, still sore from his encounter with what he had with some reluctance to admit was some form of demonic entity that invaded the sanctity of his little Orthodox Church.
“I will tell her you are sleeping,” the nurse replied. “It’s really past visiting hours anyway, but since she claims to be your daughter I thought-“
“No, I will see her,” Aleksandre replied. “I’m going to have to do so eventually, I suppose.”
When Dorothy entered, bedecked in costume jewelry she proudly wore as a copy of that which she kept fastidiously locked away for insurance purposes, dressed in black satin pants and matching blouse, her natural auburn hair glowing from the effects of her most recent spa treatment, Aleksandre winced.
“Were you on your way to some charity event?” Aleksandre asked. “If you are, I hope that I am not the charity.”
“I came to take you with me to Chicago,” she told him. “It’s been years since you visited, and this is as good a time as any. You won’t be bothered by reporters there, I promise.”
“I think the police want me to hang around Baltimore,” he replied. “There were two bodies on the church property. I’m sure you read all about the supposed black mass that took place in my church, and the alleged human sacrifice performed on the Eucharistic Altar.”
“Who were those people anyway?” Dorothy asked, and then acted as though she immediately regretted the question. “Never mind, that’s not important. I just want to make sure you are well cared for. After what you have been through you certainly should not be alone.”
“Agnes is coming from Romania in a few days,” he insisted. “She put in for a transfer, and seeing as to the nature of my injuries, the Church is allowing it. It really is not a good idea to go to your house at this time, though I do appreciate the offer. What does Voroslav have to say about this, by the way?”
“Voroslav is fine with it,” she insisted. “In fact, when I brought it up he told me he was ready to suggest the same thing.”
“Even though I have been cooped up for three weeks in a facility filled with every germ imaginable?” he asked. “I find that very hard to believe.”
Before she could respond to what she obviously took as a sarcastic utterance, the nurse returned and told Dorothy that visiting hours were really over, but she could allow her thirty minutes, as she looked at Aleksandre with a nod and brief smile.
“Doctor McCann did say I could leave tonight if I felt up to it, right?” Aleksandre asked.
The nurse looked surprised at this, but then affirmed this was so, whereupon Aleksandre informed her he believed he would leave tonight, to Dorothy’s obvious surprise.
“I will go with you,” he told her, “but I must return home first, as there are certain things I have to see to.”
“That’s fine,” she said.
It took Aleksandre all of Dorothy’s allotted time to dress and otherwise prepare to leave, during which time the nurse presented his discharge papers, at which point he signed them.
“Has that Doctor Chou still been inquiring after me?” he asked her.
“Chou?” she asked. “Not that I’m aware of. Doctor McCann might know.”
“Well, it’s not important,” he replied. “Thank you for your gracious hospitality and your kind and most professional manner during my stay, but it is time for me to leave, before I run up my insurance premiums more than necessary.”
After they left, Dorothy seemed ecstatic, pleased that he agreed so easily to come to Chicago. Soon, they pulled up to the Church Of The Blessed Sacrament, and Khoska was relieved to see the crime scene tape gone, though the absence of the old gold plated cross stood as a grim reminder of the previous weeks events. The scene still haunted him, though he tried not to think about it.
“Well, here we are,” Dorothy noted as she completed parking in the old cobblestone driveway that formed an angular pattern to beside the church doors. The lights were on, and Khoska was relieved to note that “the boys”, as Dorothy called them, were still there.
Indeed, the twin sons, the oldest children of Aleksandre Khoska, had gladly agreed to stay at the church and see to its security during the course of his stay in hospital, for which he was grateful. Now, he was glad to be out, though dreaded the prospect of asking one or both of them to remain a while longer until Agnes arrived from Romania. Unfortunately, there was a slight delay, and now he faced the prospect of a trip to Chicago, one he realized he could not afford to pass up.
“Gee, Dad,” the New Jersey priest named John said, “I’d like to stay longer, but there’s really a lot going on. I have so much to do as it is, and I‘ve gotten so far behind”-
“Why John I thought you retired,” Dorothy said, knowing full well her older brother did not take kindly to her to begin with, and especially resented any dispute from her.
“Yeah, I did,” John said uneasily, “but there’s a lot of personal stuff I have to take care of. Rita has had medical problems, for one, and”-
“Oh, you mean her back is acting up again?” Dorothy replied.
“It’s all right, John,” Khoska said. “I really appreciate you coming here when you did, and if you cannot stay longer I completely understand.”
He then shot Dorothy a stern look as Michael, the other twin, stepped out from the hallway that led to the interior of the church and it’s suite of offices.
“Well, we weren’t expecting you back until tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “What was this about Chicago? Dorothy, you’re as vivacious as ever.”
“Isn’t she though?” John asked, still stinging with discomfort.
“I just thought it would do poppa good to get out of this place for a while,” she said.
“Go on,” the twin named Michael insisted. “I can stay here a few days. It might do me some good.”
“What about your church?” Khoska asked. “Really, Michael, I should not impose on you this way.”
“I can swing it,” Michael insisted, as John suddenly cleared his throat.
“I’m sure I can take over for Michael at his church,” he suggested. “That way, I’ll be close enough to home I can see after my affairs, and Michael can stay here with no worries. That should work out fine, I mean if that’s all right with Michael, of course.”
Michael suddenly laughed a mischievous laugh.
“Hell, why bother to tell anybody?” he suggested. “We look alike, sound alike, and do almost everything else so much alike, most people probably would never notice. It might be fun.”
“You can’t be serious,” Aleksandre said, but suddenly Michael and Jonathon Khoska seemed like two kids again, almost giddy as they discussed plans for Jonathon’s last day, when Michael would return and walk into the middle of the service.
“We can turn it into some kind of lesson, I’m sure,” Michael suggested. “Be wary of appearances, that kind of thing. The kids will get a big chuckle out of it.”
“Well, I guess that settles it then,” Dorothy said. “We really should get going.”
“What in the hell’s the hurry, Dorothy?” Jonathon asked suspiciously.
“Well, none, I just thought since”-
“No, she’s right,” Aleksandre said. “If we leave now, we should be in Chicago before it gets too late. Hopefully, I can get good and rested over the weekend, and be back by bright and early, say, late Tuesday afternoon?”
Aleksandre was grateful for the presence of his older sons, as they provided him the ability to take care of a very urgent matter, as well as the excuse not to take a lot of time doing so. In fact, the sooner he got it over and done with, the better.
He made his way to the privacy of his office, where he noted the newly replaced urn, which this time he was certain held the genuine ashes of his beloved granddaughter Lynette. The city cemetery now contained those that apparently belonged to some other person, possibly a murdered girl named Spiral Lamont. A brief funeral service had been her lone farewell, though none attended, not even her family. He thought of this as he looked at the urn of Lynette, and considered it no wonder the world contained such hatred and violence. He began to weep, though he knew he should not, and composed himself as he looked within his safe. He closed it back after taking a roll of hundred dollar bills.
He then made his way to the basement, where he had yet one more matter of which to attend. He turned on the light and made his way down the musty, seldom visited basement, and toward the old broom closet that contained the false doorway behind which rested an old cabinet. Before he got to the door, however, it struck him that he was not alone. Someone was there with him this day. He always felt that way upon coming down here, but this was different. This time, the eyes he felt upon him belonged not to some spiritual entity, but his familiarity with that realm possibly prepared him for the intrusion of the more mundane intruder he sensed within his basement, where was stored so many private memories and unfulfilled promises. He quickened his breathing, and grew fearful. By the time he called out for help, he knew it would be too late. He doubted anyone could hear him from this distance at any rate.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “I know you are in here. Show yourself to me at once.”
He turned at the sound of a movement behind him, and saw then the figure silhouetted in the darkness, his shadow outlined by the dim light that shook weakly from its chain at the top of the steps.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Khoska hissed as he attempted with some difficulty to control his mounting fear. Then, the figure of a tall, lanky man stepped forward from out of the shadows.
“Okay, here I am,” Khoska heard the man say. “Don’t worry-I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Who in the name of God are you and what are you doing her?” Khoska tried to control his breathing and steady himself as the man drew two steps closer, until Khoska could make out clearly the face and form of the tall, lanky black man with the camera.
“You are a reporter?”
“My name’s Phelps,” the man said. “No, I’m a photographer, but same difference I guess.”
“I thought you people were warned to stay away from here,” Khoska said, relieved, and yet now angry at the intrusion.
“This ain’t business, Father,” Phelps replied. “This is a personal matter, having to do with Grace Rodescu. She’s a friend of mine.”
“Oh, so you’re the one,” Khoska observed bitterly, which induced Phelps to bite his lips.
“Very funny,” he said. “Look, we’ve worked together, and I guess I got to know her pretty good. You might not like her much, but if something happens to her, I doubt you’d feel that callous about it, right?”
“Actually, I would,” Khoska insisted. “She has pushed her luck to the limit, with me and with a good many others. As I told the police, I was unconscious when she left here, or was taken from here, and at the time I was assaulted, the only other people here besides her and I were the two people they found here murdered. For all I know she is responsible for that, or was complicit in it. As you may well be aware, she lived with the girl Sierra for some time. Sierra left and stole some things that belonged to Grace. Some would consider that curious, in light of the fact that two people are dead, while she seems to have merely vanished.”
“Grace is not a killer,” Phelps said firmly. “She might be a lot of other things, and most of them may not be good, but I am pretty confidant she doesn’t have it in her to actually commit murder.”
“Well, perhaps you do not know her as well as you think you do, then,” Khoska said cryptically, his voice tense with anxiety as he almost spat this declaration in the face of the beleaguered news photographer, who for just a few seconds held his breath as he turned from Khoska’s gaze.
“Look, young man, I do not really know you,” Khoska continued. “I am taking your word you are here for the benefit of Grace, and that you are acting out of concern for her welfare. However, I promise you I can tell you no more than you probably already know. Sierra Lawson knocked me unconscious, and by the time I awoke, Sierra and Joseph Karinsky were dead and Grace was gone.”
“I’m sorry, Father, but I get the impression you are holding something back,” Phelps replied, but before he could continue, an interruption brought the conversation to a halt.
“Who in the hell are you?” Michael demanded as he bounded down the steps in a near furious panic.
“Father, who is this man?” hhe insisted.
“I was just leaving, sir, I’m sorry for the intrusion,” Phelps assured her. “Look, Father, if you think of anything, if you remember anything, if you hear anything, will you please get in contact with me? Here, you can call me at home and leave a message if I am not there.”
Phelps reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a card. He handed it to Khoska, who took it warily.
“Very well, Mr. Phelps, I promise you I will do so,” he said.
“Wait a minute, just who are you, a cop, a reporter, or what?” Michael asked as Phelps edged by him while glancing at his face fleetingly, obviously uncomfortable at his accusatory tone.
“Its fine, Michael, he is merely seeing to the welfare of his friend,” Khoska explained as Phelps made his way up the steps.
“Grace Rodescu, I take it.”
Khoska started toward the steps and then realized he yet needed to see to his personal effects, and so told him to see that Jonathon and Dorothy did not accost the strange black intruder on his way out of the church.
“I’ll be up momentarily,” he told him.
After he left, he hurriedly checked the hidden latch on the false wall that led to his secret reserves of cash, gold, and relics, and saw it was evidently well. He opened it, looked inside, and then closed it quickly back. It was going to be a long trip to Chicago, but he hoped it would not take long.
Khoska was exhausted from his stay at the hospital, and dreaded the flight. He hated flying and did not trust planes. This would be his first flight since the death of Marta seven years ago. He had intended that to be his last flight. It had been no pleasure trip, nor would this one be. He did not intend to act as if it was. Still, he tried to be as cordial toward Dorothy as possible, though he said little.
“You surely are not planning to leave your vehicle at this place, are you?” he inquired as they pulled into the airport.
“Father, this is a rental car,” she explained. “When we get to Chicago, we’ll take a cab home.”
“Oh, I see,” Khoska replied as he looked out the passengers side window. “I would imagine we will have a long walk then, from the rental agency to the terminal.”
“No, I’ll just turn the key in when we get to the lobby, and then we’ll just wait for the flight. I took the liberty of purchasing your ticket when I purchased mine, so we could remain together. Our flight will be in about forty minutes, unless there is a delay.”
It was a short walk to the main lobby, where Dorothy turned in her keys with the receipt, and then they proceeded to the waiting area. Khoska was amazed at the number of people waiting for flights out of Baltimore, and particularly bemused by the number of small children, many of whom seemed to lack adult supervision.
“Are children allowed to fly on planes by themselves?” Khoska asked in amazement.
“Yes, it would seem so,” she replied. “They should have adults with them until they board though. Some people are rather careless, you know. Once they are on board, there’s not much they can get into, at least.”
“They are probably more savvy than I would be were I alone,” Khoska observed. He sat and began to doze off within ten minutes. He could not believe how tired he was after spending two weeks cooped up in a hospital bed, half of which seemed to have been unnecessary. For the last half of his stay he needed neither antibiotic nor any other kind of medication, yet McCann seemed insistent he remain for “observation”.
Now, he was completely exhausted, and more depressed than he had been in years. By the time the announcement was made of the departure for Chicago, some two hours later than originally scheduled, he was all but convinced he should return home. Dorothy sat there beside him and said little, other than to ask if he were hungry or would like a pillow.
He remembered how when she married Voroslav he objected, though meekly, his opposition based mainly on the age difference. Voroslav was thirteen years her senior, and married her when she was a mere eighteen, barely out of school. Yet, Dorothy was always willful and stubborn, and rare was the time she would listen to others advice when it did not suit her. Khoska predicted it would end unhappily, and when Voroslav was defrocked, he was sure that would be the end of it. Instead, Dorothy defended her husband, and declared she would remain until the end. She really seemed to love him. That was what Khoska found perhaps most objectionable of all, given the circumstances.
By the time they took their seat, Khoska resigned himself to whatever awaited in Chicago. Voroslav had the answers he needed-or so he told himself. After the plane left the runway and was on its way to O’Hare, he wondered if he made the right decision, while telling himself he really had no choice. The only thing he dreaded was being in the same home with Voroslav, who was perhaps the most peculiar fellow he ever knew. Some more old-fashioned folk even considered him demon possessed due to the nature of his curious afflictions.
Aleksandre did not look forward to his visit, for a number of reasons. He already knew the answers to too many questions. They were not pleasant, yet he found himself in the position of needing confirmation, of which his son-in-law was the only reliable source. Nevertheless, by the time their plane taxied onto the O’Hare runway, he found himself wanting to return to Baltimore.
He was dead tired by the time they made their way to the baggage claim area, and Aleksandre found himself wishing for as long a delay as possible, when suddenly he found himself the object of some attention from a couple of airport guards. Obviously, they found his manner of dress curious, as he remained dressed in his Orthodox robes. At length, one of the guards approached him in the company of a well-dressed man, obviously an airport official of some sort.
“Sir, we wondered if we might ask you a couple of questions,” the well-dressed man stated.
“I am not Islamic. I am an Orthodox Christian Priest!” Aleksandre said, incensed that the security at this airport would be so unprofessional, to say nothing of uninformed, as to not distinguish the difference. He looked toward Dorothy, who looked more embarrassed than angry.
“Is there a problem?” she asked.
The man looked embarrassed now, and looked around, to note the numbers of people milling about. He seemed to be looking for someone.
“Have you mistaken me for someone else, perhaps?” Aleksandre asked.
“It’s just a routine check, sir,” the man replied. “If you could just kindly follow me, this should not take long. You do have identification?”
“For what purpose should I follow you?” Aleksandre demanded. “What have I done?”
“Just go along with them, poppa,” Dorothy advised him, obviously perturbed, and yet unwilling to engage in a confrontation with persons of obvious authority at an airport where she was a frequent customer.
Aleksandre noted that there were others standing in a line undergoing security scrutiny, though there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary about any of them. One guard waved a wand over them as they progressed to a certain point, while some others stood off in the distance, drinking what appeared to be coffee and idly chatting.
“No, I will not just go along with them,” Khoska replied. “I have done nothing to warrant this treatment.”
“Sir, you are making this very difficult,” the man replied. “The quicker you follow our instructions, the quicker this can be over with. I assure you, this is routine airport security screening. As a passenger”-
“That is just the point!” Aleksandre shouted. “I am no longer a passenger. I am not departing. I have arrived, you idiot!”
Two other guards now approached hurriedly, as Aleksandre noted now what appeared to be a list in the hands of the one guard who remained silent throughout this exchange.
“Father, please for God’s sake just let them see your identification,” an obviously mortified Dorothy insisted.
“You would be well-advised to do as your daughter suggests,” the man now said in all earnestness, obviously annoyed at Aleksandre, who now regretted his tirade, and actually felt somewhat ashamed in the wake of a noticeable crowd that gathered, though they remained at some distance, looking curiously in their direction, as Dorothy practically hid her features from view.
He finally relented and produced his wallet, and after a brief perusal of it, the airport official handed it back to him.
“Enjoy your stay in Chicago, Father Khoska,” the man said with a noticeable hint of animosity.
“Father, that was completely uncalled for,” Dorothy observed. “You made a scene. Aren’t you the slightest bit embarrassed?”
“Perhaps a bit,” Aleksandre admitted. “I don’t care, I am tired, I am still not well, and I do not appreciate being monitored as though I were some sand monkey with a bomb hidden under my vestments. It is an insult. I bet if I told the bastard my name was Ahmed Mohamed he would have offered to buy my dinner by now. Screw all of them.”
“You just do not understand, poppa,” she replied. “It’s really my fault. I should have warned you ahead of time. Let’s just get out of here, please.”
Dorothy extracted her cell phone from her purse and quickly placed a call, which lasted under a minute. They waited less than five minutes outside the airport terminal before a limousine pulled up to the curb.
“This is one hell of a cab,” Khoska observed. “I will be glad when we get to your home, as I am exhausted. A good night’s sleep will do me good.”
“Voroslav wants to see you before you go to bed,” she said.
“Oh really, Dorothy,” Aleksandre replied in a voice tinged with anxiety. “Can it not wait until morning?” he asked. “I really am in no mood to bathe. I showered in the hospital not quite four hours before you arrived. Afterwards, I slept for a while and had the most disturbing nightmare. I am still quite ill, and my nerves are a shambles. Really, I would much prefer”-
“Father, really, would a nice hot bath kill you?”
Khoska fumed, not really knowing how to answer the question. He knew he should speak to his son-in-law before he retired for the night. There was actually a practical reason for doing so. If he spoke to the man tonight, there was a better than average chance he might not have to see him any at all for the duration of his stay. Perhaps a little inconvenience would be worth that much.
“I suppose I could put up with it,” he said as the airport faded from view. “I don’t know why I bothered to pack any clothing, frankly. That was a waste of time.”
“Well, you did say you might stay three or four days, and you sure can’t go about in the same clothes, and you sure can’t go about Chicago in a bathrobe at this time of year.”
“I have no desire to take in the sights of Chicago,” Khoska insisted. “Still, you have a point. After what I have been through over the last three weeks, two baths in one day is certainly a minor inconvenience. I am more curious as to what this was you should have warned me about.”
Dorothy suddenly seemed uncomfortable, as though she dreaded answering the question.
“It is nothing,” she finally said. “I am just glad we’re away from there. I was afraid you might cause us to be detained for far longer than you or I would have liked.”
Khoska knew she was lying, but said nothing as they finally approached the relatively modest two-story home that rested in the suburbs of northeastern Chicago. Khoska informed the driver that he could carry his own baggage, and at a nod from Dorothy, the elderly driver acceded to Khoska’s wishes as he carried Dorothy’s own quite cumbersome suitcase. She had obviously come to Baltimore prepared to spend more than a day or two if necessary.
When they made it inside the house, which seemed larger on the inside than on the outside, Dorothy told Khoska to deposit his luggage by the door.
“It will be well taken care of,” Dorothy assured him.
“I assume the bathroom is within a few short steps of here,” he said. She told him that it was indeed through the nearest door to his right. Incredible, he muttered to himself.
He bathed, after which he put on the newly cleaned robe that hung on the inside of the door, wrapped in plastic. He left his clothing in the floor after making certain he put his wallet, keys, and loose change inside the robes pockets.
Khoska remembered well where Voroslav’s room was as he walked up the spiral staircase that led to the upper floor. He proceeded down to the end of the hallway, past the two bedrooms that faced opposite each other, down past the bathroom that faced opposite a large linen closet, and to the end of the hallway, where a room without doorknob waited.
Khoska stopped at the sound of the beep initiated by his passage by an electronic eye, and a whirring motor produced by the infrared camera he knew announced his approach.
“Aleksandre, just a second, and the door will open,” he heard the voice of his son-in-law, who at fifty-six years of age was exactly in years between himself and his daughter Dorothy, who always had a predilection for older men. Khoska had mused upon their marriage that since he insisted her preferences were unseemly, she decided to compromise. In fact, there was twenty-six years between Khoska and his daughter, with Voroslav firmly between the two of them, and separated from both by thirteen years almost exactly.
The door opened and Khoska entered, to note the change that had occurred over the former criminal conspirator and Orthodox Priest. His hair, though still dark, was graying, and he had put on quite a few pounds. This was understandable, despite the fact that he did not eat a lot, nor did he drink alcohol. He exercised little, and in fact, he seldom left this room. Through his thick moustache, Khoska could detect the hint of a smile, for which Aleksandre could think of no discernible reason for him to affect.
“It is good to see you, Aleksandre, it has been a long time,” Voroslav said, as he made no motion to rise from his leather-upholstered recliner, which was in fact where he slept most of the time.
“I am glad to see you seem to be well,” Aleksandre replied as the door shut automatically behind him. He noted the presence of ionic air cleaning devices, and smokeless candles that filled the air with an antiseptic scent, as Khoska could hear fresh air filtered from an indiscernible source into the otherwise hermetically sealed off room.
“For the time being, yes,” Voroslav said. “I thought I would die when I was taken in for questioning, but there was little I could do about it.”
“You do know your life is probably in danger, I take it,” Khoska said. “What does Dorothy say about all this, and what of Marnie?”
Voroslav looked away as a worried expression briefly crossed his brow, but he quickly recovered.
“Dorothy will be fine,” he replied. “Or she would be, if she would just leave me to my fate, as I am always telling her. Unfortunately, you raised Dorothy a bit better than I think you imagine. Sometimes, if I did not know better, I would think she actually really does care something about me after all. Marnie, well that is a different story. She is away at university, going for her Masters in Business. I know she will be protected.”
“Protected from what, and by whom?” Khoska asked. “Really, Voroslav, I know you are not a well man, and you know it too. I will not bother going into that, as I know you are not responsible for your affliction. But please, for the love of God, can you find it in your heart to allow me to sit?”
At first, Voroslav seemed confused but then his black eyes gleamed with realization, as he told Khoska that of course he could sit, as he indicated the sofa that set off to the side of the room. Khoska then noted the presence of a liquor cabinet and ice tray, which Moloku explained he kept for the comfort of his guests, what few he had, though he allowed no smoking.
“Unless of course you would like to join me in a bit of hashish after we have finished our business,” he added, almost as a polite afterthought. “Of course, I would be very surprised, pleasantly so, if you would do that, but your expression tells me probably not.”
“You read my expression very well,” Khoska replied, to which Moloku smiled and nodded.
“Very well, then, before we get on with it,” he continued, “let me assure you, both Dorothy and Marnie are to be well provided for. There is no problem with the two of them.”
Khoska felt as though his son-in-law now resigned himself to whatever fate awaited and knew it was certainly coming. After all, he had turned states evidence against criminal associates who recognized loyalty to none, not even family, above loyalty to the code.
“So what exactly is it about Grace Rodescu you wished to tell me about?” Khoska asked him.
“First things first,” Voroslav replied. “On the end table by you, you will notice a folder. Feel free to examine its contents, if you will.”
Khoska did so, and was somewhat disconcerted by what he saw.
“Your father Volescu-what of him?” he asked uncomfortably.
“You will recall how he was shot outside our home in 1968, when I was a mere lad of seventeen, studying for the Priesthood,” he explained. “Go on, look at the other pictures.”
Khoska did so, only to see other, older pictures, of Voroslav and his father and mother, in seemingly happier times. In one of them, a picture that seemed taken in Romania, Voroslav was an innocent child of two or three years old.
“My parents emigrated from Romania after the war,” he said. “It was a very hard life compared to what they were used to. Of course, I was raised in the kind of filth and degradation my mother could never quite adjust to. She went from living a life of comfort and abundance, in clean and safe surroundings, to a time of traveling from one filth-infested slum in Europe to another. We finally made it here in 1958.
“Of course, what I and my parents went through was nothing compared to what the others were obliged to endure.”
“What others?” Khoska asked. “Whom do you mean?”
“My half-sisters and my half-brother,” he replied. “Yes, my mother was previously married, to a man named Ion Ionescu. He died two decades before we came to America, whereupon my father persuaded her to marry him. I was his only child, out of five. When they left, he insisted the others stay behind with relatives, though he promised to send for them later. He never did, and my mother grew cold and harsh, as much towards me, her own son, as towards him.
“When he was murdered that day, allegedly by Securitate agents in retribution for his activities against the Romanian communist regime, rumors circulated that you were responsible. I know you heard those rumors and probably believed them. In fact, I have reason to believe this caused you a great deal of anxiety.”
Khoska was stunned. He indeed always held himself responsible for the death of Volescu Moloku, but never imagined anyone connected him with the affair. Now, here was Volescu’s own son, now his son-in-law, decades later, inferring his complicity in a state crime.
“Are you sure you do not wish to have a drink?” Voroslav asked. “If you would like a little wine, I also have some of the finest Wisconsin cheese, straight from the docks of Racine. It is in fact the one indulgence I allow myself these days, apart from a little hash, which is a rarity.”
“No thank you,” Khoska said, trying to control his fear and his anger, the last of which he now felt was out of place under the circumstances.
“I do not deny my involvement with the communist government, as I was given little choice,” he said. “If this resulted in the death of your father I am truly sorry. I have spent years in regret over the incident.”
Voroslav looked at him harshly, as suddenly he reached over and extracted a mask attached to an oxygen tank that blended in well with the metallic nature of the furniture in the sterile environment within which Khoska found himself. Voroslav breathed deeply, and then returned the mask.
“Relax, Aleksandre, I did not send for you to berate you,” he then explained. “For one thing, if you were responsible I would have killed you long ago. Your involvement was incidental at most. No, I place the blamed squarely on the shoulders of he to whom it belongs-my half-brother, Sylveu. He came here and found my father, and killed him, in revenge for what occurred with his sisters. All of them were beaten and raped, one of them eventually killed by a brutal, drunken husband who sold her into prostitution. One of the twins died of pneumonia, eaten up with syphilis. The other twin died an old woman, forced to beg in the streets.
“Somehow, he came to America, got in contact with our mother, and he later killed his step-father, my own father. Then, the son-of-a-bitch had the gall to come proposing an offer of friendship, as after all we were half-brothers. He even admitted his crime, and claimed he was justified. Well, perhaps in his own mind he was. At any rate, he offered to help initiate me into his organization. I played along with him, and eventually I rose in the ranks.
“All the while, I learned what I could. He had no choice but to leave his own wife and child behind in Romania. In his despair, he spent days on end looking into their whereabouts. He discovered that his daughter married a man by the name of Rodescu, a mere farmer who barely managed to stay a step ahead of starvation.
“His wife, meanwhile, had died, and soon enough the Rodescu family was scattered to the winds. I saw to that. Rodescu himself disappeared, while his wife, in despair, turned her children over to the state after two of them died of infectious diseases caused mainly by malnutrition and exposure. She then took her own life.”
Khoska sat listening to this, what he realized now was a confession, in abject horror. He had no need to hear the rest of it.
“And then you took it on yourself to go to Romania, adopt her, and sell her into sexual slavery. Your own grandniece and you turned her into a heroin addict and whore. Voroslav, how could you?”
“Because he was dying, and I wanted him to know,” he replied. “I wanted him to know that he, who had sponsored my membership and rise within the organization, had enabled me to destroy his family in the process, and that I did so in the exact same manner that he himself had participated in the similar abuse of thousands of other innocent children.
“Then, after he died in agony, from cancer, I made sure my beloved mother knew the truth as well. It destroyed her, of course. She went all but insane, unable to speak, seemingly unable to hear. That is fine, as I understood very well that she knew the whole story, which was all I cared about.
“So there you have it, the story of Voroslav Moloku, the monster Priest of Romania. Yes, the Church eventually learned of my activities, and I was defrocked. And yes, Aleksandre, I know as well of your part in that. I accept the responsibility. It is even well and good that Grace Rodescu managed to survive, and bring the cycle of revenge to what I hope will be its completion. I accept her right to do so. I did not bring you here out of some self-serving search for forgiveness. I did my part to destroy the organization that my half-brother was such an influential and powerful member of. Granted, that was not my intention, but I still see it is only right.
“It is also right that I explain all of this to you now. Go ahead and look at the rest of the pictures. They tell quite a story. Somewhere within them is one with your grandfather, by the way. Perhaps you might recognize one of the men with him.”
“Corneliu Codreanu”, Khoska said as he found the one picture in question. As he looked at the old black and white, age-faded photograph, a thought occurred to him.
“Ion Ionescu was also one of his followers,” he declared.
“Indeed he was,” Voroslav admitted. “As was my father Volescu, until the time my father realized what an insane madman he was, and broke his ties to his Iron Guard organization.”
“According to some sources, your father found affiliation with Antonescu much more profitable and fortuitous. Some people considered him a traitor. You do realize that, do you not?”
Voroslav smiled.
“Codreanu was an anti-Semite, a fascist, and a religious fanatic. He was an ally of Hitler. He was no hero by any stretch of the imagination. Perhaps in his own mind he was sincere, but if so, he was insane at best, at worse possessed. All of this of course is of no consequence to me, but something else is.
“You see, Aleksandre, I have agonized over the prospect of telling you all of this. I wanted to tell you, but at the same time, I could see where it would serve no useful purpose. Then, you mentioned something in your call from the hospital, something that came wholly without warning. It was as though somehow, in some way, I was granted a bird’s eye view of the workings of destiny and fate.
“I have seen the hand of God, working through the minions of Satan. It reminded me of my days in the seminary, when I honestly believed there was a purpose to life, a truly divine plan. Of course, I eventually put aside such foolish pretenses. Beliefs such as that were for the benefit of the sheep, I came to believe, not the shepherd. It is the shepherd’s job to protect his flock from the ravages of nature, from the storm and from the wolf, and perhaps most importantly, from the ravages of their own animal impulses. I did not see myself as a wolf in shepherd’s clothing, by any means, only that I performed a necessary function to society.
“Well, all of this is what I had come to believe, and still believed up until that time I was defrocked, and even afterwards. Do you know that I still prayed, after that, even though I did not truly believe? Is that not amazing? What would make a human being act in such a manner?”
“Faith,” Khoska replied. “It is called the dark night of the soul. I have had my share of them.”
Before Voroslav could respond, a buzzer heralded the entrance into the room of Dorothy, who seemed to affect a casual attitude than was natural. Something about her manner was, in fact, wholly suspicious.
“So are the two older men in my life having an enjoyable visit?”
“I won’t say enjoyable is an accurate description, but it has certainly been enlightening,” Khoska replied.
“I have some business I have to attend to,” she said as though her previous statement had been a mere formality after all. “I might not be back for a few days. I will be back by Monday at the latest, and I will see you home the next day, poppa.”
Khoska nodded, not terribly disappointed at the announcement, yet wary of her true intentions to return at the time stated.
“Voroslav, if there is anything you need, you have my cell phone number written down somewhere, right?”
“Yes, it’s here in the book, but I am sure I will be fine,” Moloku replied. “Have a nice trip.”
“Goodbye then,” she said as she turned to leave. “Love you both.”
“That is it?” Khoska asked in amazement. “She just walks in and casually announces she is going off somewhere, and you allow this, and do not even ask her where she is going?”
“Oh, I know where she is going,” Moloku told him. “She is going to meet her boyfriend. She is having an affair.”
Khoska’s jaw dropped at this pronouncement and his eyes widened. Voroslav seemed to take his reaction with some amusement.
“Oh, I do not mind,” he insisted. “Like I said, she will be well taken care of.”
“Yes, and you never told me exactly what you meant by that,” Khoska replied, obviously hurt at this level of infidelity evidenced by his own daughter toward her husband of twenty-six years. Now, he obviously did not care to know any more, as Voroslav reached down and opened the top of an end table, from which he extracted what appeared to be a game board.
“I want to show you a little something I discovered, which I consider most interesting,” he said as Aleksandre watched him lay out what appeared to be some version of a chessboard, one that seemed to be a computerized machine of some sort.
“While I am setting this up, you should want to peruse the other folder, in the same drawer from which you took the first one. It has everything to do with why I wanted you to come here this night.”
Aleksandre however waited until Voroslav set the tiny little pegs on the board, choosing the white pieces for himself, the black pieces for his computerized opponent.
“As you shall see, the only choice you really have in this game is the choice of white and black.”
“What, is this supposed to be some kind of symbolic lesson or something?” Aleksandre asked, as he considered such displays to be a waste of his time. As Voroslav made his initial move of the knight’s pawn, two spaces up the board, Aleksandre reached into the end table and withdrew the folder.
“You will never defeat that machine,” Aleksandre said with a mirthless chuckle. “That has always been your opening move, and if I am familiar with it I would be certain the move is forever enshrined within that computer’s memory banks.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Moloku replied. “More than likely you are. I have defeated it twice, out of more than one hundred attempts, and I was hoping I could show you something that is most amazing.”
Aleksandre watched his son-in-law play the game opponent, which signaled to Moloku the moves it wanted him to make on its behalf.
“This is actually quite an old game,” he explained. “With one of the newer versions I seriously doubt I could do this. It is in fact a rarity when I defeat this game. I’ve had this thing for going on twelve years, and it took me more than three years to beat it, a feat I never repeated until a couple of years ago.”
Koska found himself increasingly drawn to the on-going battle of human intellect versus computer calculation. Within ten minutes, Voroslav lost a knight and one bishop, as well four pawns, while only taking two pawns and a bishop off the computers’ side.
“I think you are in a bit of a jam,” Khoska observed.
“Actually-I think I might be on to something here,” Voroslav replied. “Do you see it?”
Khoka did indeed see what appeared to be a potentially devastating move, one that would place the computer’s queen in dire jeopardy. All he had to do was place the king in check, which would necessitate a move one square away, exposing the queen to the ravages of Voroslav’s rook. Though he would lose this remaining rook to the king, Voroslav could then proceed to decimate his opponents’ field with his own queen, rooks, and remaining bishop and knight.
“You see, Aleksandre, the key is to not take too many of the opponents pieces, while making a few necessary sacrifices of your own in order to maneuver the king into an area where there is scant room for movement on its part. His own crowded field does him in.”
Voroslav then proceeded to take the queen, but to Khoska’s amazement, the computer did not respond by taking its opponents rook. Instead, the lights on the board changed, signaling that the computer changed sides. It was therefore now Voroslav’s queen that was off the board, and Voroslav who now had the option of taking the offending rook. Khoska now saw something he previously did not see. If Voroslav took the rook with his king, the computer could now put the king back in check with a knight, while simultaneously taking an opposing knight. The king would be obliged to e moved to one remaining open spot, at which point it could be checkmated by a rook.
“You see, I have no choice,” he explained. “I have to move from this side, before the computer will signal for me the move it wishes to make from my former side which it has now stolen from me. That makes three times that has happened. You see, Aleksandre, this computer is programmed to do anything involving the game of chess with the sole exception of losing.
“You asked me if there was some kind of lesson to this. Well, you have just seen it. This is a most accurate display of how the universe works. Whatever force put it into motion programmed it in much the same manner. Whatever move you make in life, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. No matter how well you seem to do, those who are destined to lose will lose in the end. Those who are destined to win will do so as well. This is not due to goodness and sacrifice, or to faith and holiness. It has everything to do, I am afraid, with cunning, guile, and the practical application of intelligence and strength. Ruthlessness is all but a necessity, at some point, of course.
“Even then, you have only so much in the way of good fortune, and once it is gone, then the game is over. Then, the universe will switch sides, so to speak.”
“I changed my mind,” Khoska now said. “I think I will have some of that cheese and wine. I am starting to become very hungry.”
He opened up the small refrigerator where he noted several varieties of cheeses and cold cuts, along with some yogurt, and he extracted what looked to be a portion of sharp cheddar, though a Wisconsin variety, and an unopened bottle of port. He poured himself a glass, and took the entire somewhat small portion of cheese. He knew that Voroslav would not eat from it once other human hands touched it.
“I am curious about something Voroslav,” Khoska asked. “You say you have struggled with your affliction since you were a teenager, so I was wondering how you could stand to go to a filthy place such as a Romanian orphanage, and return in the company of Grace, to say nothing of surrounded by all those people you encountered on your travels.”
“I did it more than a few times, frankly,” his host replied as Khoska hungrily bit into the wheel of cheese that was actually more of the taste of an Edom, and quite good. “Grace was not the first, she was merely the last. Yes, it was a struggle. However, I took comfort in the series of inoculations I was assured would protect me on my travels from every disease known to man. It got to the point I actually started looking forward to those trips, for precisely that reason. I insisted on the inoculations even when I was assured they were not actually necessary.
“That may have been my downfall, to tell you the truth. When the church discovered my activities, they officially said nothing. However, I have an idea one or two of the more holier-than-thou busybodies turned me in to the authorities. Of course, by that time, my activities in those regards were over, and yet I found I could make no flights even within the country without being questioned. Dorothy and Marnie were harassed as well. Dorothy threatened a lawsuit at one point, and so though the harassment did not exactly cease, it slowed considerably. Had you any problem at the airport?”
“Yes,” Aleksandre replied. “They were quite insistent that I show them identification, and answer their questions, which I found quite insulting. You mean that was all because of you?”
“I apologize, but yes,” Moloku replied. “9/11 gave them the excuse to be more through, I suppose, but Islamic radicals aside, their reasons are what they are. It is a waste of time and money of course, but when did the government ever let that even be a consideration?
“Imagine how you would have felt if your own daughter had her identity stolen, the way Marnie’s had been, and you were told there was nothing which could be done about it. You said it turned out to be Grace Rodescu’s doing, and I suppose it was. At the same time, consider this. How exactly could she have gotten such personal information about my daughter’s life, unless that information was on file somewhere, under the care of some person determined to find some criminal conduct through way of her.”
“You are saying that Grace got this information from someone in the government?” Khoska asked.
“The government or the police, obviously,” Voroslav confirmed. “She probably found it fitting to steal the identity of the daughter of the man who adopted her for illegal purposes, and then sold her. I cannot fault her for that, truthfully, but at the same time, it all goes back to what I was saying. The game’s outcome is already decided, and the winners and losers all have their predestined paths to follow. They might veer off course from time to time, but even at that, they only delay the inevitable.
“Well, I will no longer delay the inevitable-quite the opposite.”
As he said this, Voroslav extracted a gun from the drawer of his end table, and Khoska, who just now took a large drink of port, sat it down hurriedly and looked around frantically, almost certain Voroslav meant to kill him after all.
“The Krovelescu’s are the key,” Voroslav continued, seeming not to notice the frantic terror that gripped Aleksandre. “I realized that the minute you mentioned their name as being complicit in this affair. Of course, that should have come as no surprise to me, especially seeing as how I have had an on-going relationship with Martin Khoska and his wife for several decades now. In fact, you referred Martin to me when he came to you for help searching for his long lost mother. I was unable to help him, unfortunately, but we have remained friends, though we seldom see each other.
“Nevertheless, though the Krovelescu’s are a factor in our lives, and as you shall see, have been for some time, I never expected the level of involvement they have had in our affairs.
“I suppose you know by now of Radu. If not, you shall. I will say no more about him, for I am of the hopes that for your sake, as well as for the sake of Dorothy and Marnie, and the rest of your family, you will drop this crusade you are on. You see, I know exactly what you are doing. In that folder, you will find everything you need.”
Khoska found some relief at this statement, but was still overwhelmed with anxiety.
“Who was he, at least tell me that much,” Khoska said. “I know about Radu the Black, and Radu the Handsome, but this person”-
“The game is over, Aleksandre,” Voroslav replied, as his eyes became almost emotionally unexpressive, yet stern and even cold. “I am very sorry about Lynette. She did not deserve the fate she suffered. She was a very good person. Many were the times I wished privately that Marnie could be just somewhat like her. Just a little bit. That of course was quite unfair to the both of them. If there was ever anything in life I tried to acquire, it was a sense of fairness. It is now finally time to be fair to myself. Goodbye, my friend.”
To Aleksandre’s horror, Voroslav Moloku placed the barrel of the gun inside his mouth and in the space of an instant sent his brains splattering on the wall behind him, as Aleksandre Khoska loudly shouted an impotent and senseless no. He dropped down to his knees and prayed, and cried loudly as he swayed back and forth on his knees on the hardwood floor of the room in which Voroslav Moloku, who spent most of his last years confined within it, now ended his life.
He placed a frantic call to Dorothy, unsure of what he would tell her, but Dorothy never answered. Instead, her recorded voice advised to leave a message. He felt loathe to relay the night’s events on voice-mail, and was unsure exactly what to say. In despair, he hung up.
Aleksandre then remembered the folder, the one he never got around to perusing, and in an effort to calm his despair, opened the folder, only to see what looked to be a marriage certificate for Voroslav’s mother, though not to his father, but to her first husband, Ion Ionescu. What he noted, however, that shook him to the core, was the maiden name of Voroslav’s mother, which was Krovell.
He then noticed the old, age-lined black and white photograph of the young man of about twenty-five years old, the man in the Romanian uniform of the World War I era. Attached to the photo by a paper clip was a document that turned out to be a death certificate for a Lieutenant Jason Krovell, listed as a volunteer combatant for the Romanian Royal Army, killed in the line of duty early in the year 1917 in a battle against Turkish forces near the Black Sea. Another photo revealed the nature of his wounds to be at somewhat close range. In fact, his body appeared riddled with bullets. Then, the thought occurred to him.
“He was not killed in the line of duty at all,” he mused aloud. “He was executed.”
Suddenly the phone rang, and Aleksandre was now in the uncomfortable position of walking within touching distance of the corpse of his son-in-law, who sat staring out into the vastness of the eternity to which he at last surrendered. The caller ID of the screen was a number he did not recognize, and so he frantically scrolled down the list of names in a vain attempt to find a number with a name to match, an attempt that proved fruitless.
Aleksandre gave up, and said a quick prayer over the corpse of his son-in-law. He then closed his eyes.
He decided to replace the folders within the drawers of the end table from which he extracted them. He had no need for them, and was concerned about how this might look. How would he ever explain this? He and Voroslav did have a falling out at one point, over a good many of the very things they discussed this night. Though Aleksandre never confirmed or denied it, it was patently obvious to Moloku that Aleksandre was responsible for the Orthodox Church defrocking him.
Graces’ survival that night, in the woods of western Maryland, and the eventual recovery of her memory, enabled her to remember the name of the man who had adopted her. Aleksandre said nothing to the authorities. There was always the possibility that criminals had procured and used his son-in-laws identity. After all, no one would suspect an Orthodox Priest of such abominable activities as engaging in the sexual slave trade of young children. He tried to tell himself that this had to be the answer, though at the same time, his conscience would not allow him to keep the matter entirely secret. He reported it to the Church, who conducted an investigation. They found that, indeed, Voroslav and a small number of other Church priests and officials were involved, and so in order to forestall what might well amount to a crippling scandal, they swept the entire thing under the rug, while expunging from the Body of Christ those offensively guilty parties.
Aleksandre benefited from his silence, of course, but it left him with a guilt he never entirely came to terms with. He had nothing to feel guilty for, and yet he did. He should have done more, taken more action, regardless of the immediate consequences to his family. Now, it was too late. The game played on, and Khoska looked with great despair upon the form of his son-in-law, his gaping mouth wide open as the blood and gore that caked the wall behind him yet moved inexorably toward the floor. He knew well that he was merely looking upon the remains of the latest victim, but, unfortunately, probably not the last one.
“Why, Voroslav, did you do these things?” he asked. “What possessed you, and why did you do this, the most unforgivable of all sins? Why?”
Khoska jerked at the sound of the gun dropping finally from Moloku’s hand, producing as it did so a thud on the pristine, waxed hardwood floor. He saw then for the first time the white handkerchief by which he held the gun and pulled the trigger. Then, the thought occurred to him that sent waves of terror cascading through his body.
“That was not your gun, was it, Voroslav?”
He sat for twenty minutes, praying as he finally started to cry, until he heard the sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs. Even through the sounds of the fresh air circulating from the tanks in the adjoining room, Khoska could tell they were too heavy to be the footsteps of Dorothy, who tended to walk much like a cat, a maddening habit shared by her daughter Marnie. Someone was walking, actually tromping up the steps, slowly but surely, as Khoska, now in mortal terror for his life, hid within the adjoining room, squeezing uncomfortably between two instrument panels that he realized barely hid him from view as he gathered his flowing robe tightly around him.
He heard the beep produced by the electronic eye, and realized someone would have to grant admittance from within the sealed off room. Unfortunately, that was no deterrent to the person who waited outside, who proceeded to kick the door down.
“Stop that, what are you trying to do?” Aleksandre heard a female voice say, and soon enough, the door slid open.
“Uh-oh,” he heard the voice of the man say. “Guess what? We are too fucking late. I guess he took you up on your little offer.”
So-there was two people here this night, Khoska realized, and then he heard a female gasp.
“Oh, so now you’re going to cry,” the man said. “Come on, lay your head on here and cry those eyes out, get it out of your system.”
“I thought it would be easy,” the female voice said. “Now that he’s actually done it, and I’ve seen it”-
Marnie, Khoska realized, was the woman. She was crying, and Khoska peered briefly out, wondering what would happen next.
“Come on, you know he’s better off,” the man said. “I’m actually glad for your sake he had the guts to do it, to spare you the ordeal of having to do it yourself, or rather have me do it for you. It’s for the best.”
Khoska soon no longer heard the sounds of Marnie’s stifled crying, as the man continued consoling her.
“The folders should be in that end table over there,” she said. ‘Let’s get them and get the hell out of here.”
“Yep here they be,” he heard the man say. “Oh, shit, Marnie, somebody else has been here. Look, there is an open bottle of port, and some cheese. I thought you said your dad quit drinking a long time ago.”
“Maybe he wanted something to steady his nerves,” she suggested.
“Uh-uh, something just ain’t right here,” the man continued. “Look at this shit, his fucking eyes has been closed. Somebody shut them. I’ve seen enough people die I know for a fact when you die at least from a gunshot to the head there ain’t no way you eyes be shut, you be staring out into space, the great beyond, that be just the way it be. I’m telling you, somebody have either be here or they still be here. If they left, we had to just miss him, cos I’m telling you he just did this shit about thirty minutes ago. Look at this, he’s still a little warm. As cool as this room is he couldn’t have done it too long ago.”
“Hell, what are you, some kind of detective or something?” Marnie asked in what Khoska took as a teasing tone of voice.
“Well, come to think of it,” the man replied, “I do wants to be your private dick.”
From that point on, Khoska heard nothing but the sound of breathing, and the terrible thought occurred to him that Marnie, his own granddaughter, was engaged in what seemed to be activity leading toward a tryst, in the presence of the corpse of her own dead father.
“Come on now, girl, let’s get a room, this is weird shit,” the man weakly objected.
“No, fuck me here,” Marnie insisted. Khoska gasped, and immediately hoped the air circulation devices that now surrounded him would serve to cover the unfortunate sound. Fortunately, both Marnie and the man now breathed so loudly she doubted they would hear him if he pounded the wall. He could not help himself, he had to see, not because he wanted to view the act of his granddaughter’s sexual shenanigans, but he realized this might be the only opportunity he might have to see exactly with whom she was. It was obviously a person who was involved with Marnie in some criminal activity, one that would bode no good for him if they discovered him here. From the sound of things, Marnie brought this man up here for the express purpose of ending her own father’s life, and he had no illusions she would feel any qualms about ending his.
He carefully approached the curtain that blocked the view from one room to the other and peered carefully out the curtain. He was relatively sure of their distraction in the face of the groaning, grunting, and inadvertent swearing from the both of them, as the hardwood floor seemed to shake under the both of them. In fact, it shook under Khoska as well.
He looked out carefully to see the form of the large black man, who seemed to be almost three times Marnie’s size, and realized he was a man whose picture Lynette showed him, not long before she died, in a newspaper advertisement. His name was Dwayne Letcher, but he went by the stage name of Toby Da Pimp. He was a hardcore criminal, a former member of the now defunct street gang known as the Seventeenth Pulse.
According to Lynette, the late Brad Marlowe brutally assaulted him at the funeral of Marshall Crenshaw, after which the rap artist cancelled a number of appearances. Marlowe had almost crushed his throat. Now, he certainly seemed well enough, as Khoska, having seen enough of the sickening sight of his own granddaughter’s debauchery, once more withdrew into the relative privacy of the little room in which he planned to remain for some time, despite the urge he now felt to use the bathroom.
After a number of minutes that seemed more like hours to Khoska, the incident came to it’s conclusion with Toby cursing fiercely and then collapsing on the floor beside Marnie.
“Damn, that was the best fuck I’ve had in a long time, maybe ever-especially from you,” she said. “Hell, let’s just keep him here.”
“Yeah, right, let’s do that,” he said. “Hey, I just remembered-what about your mom?”
“Oh for God’s sake Toby I wasn’t serious.” She said.
“Uh, I wasn’t either, I was just saying, again, what about your mom? Do you reckon she’s there by now?”
“Hell, not this quick,” she said. “Her flight to Baltimore wasn’t scheduled for until about thirty minutes ago, and I doubt it’s even off the ground yet. Just the same, I’m going to call him now.”
“Hey, lover, your so-called girlfriend should be on her way,” Marnie said into the phone that rested right by her father’s corpse. “Be sure you give it to her good for me. I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow,” Toby said after she hung up. “Come on, let’s get moving, we gots to find that other shit before we get out of here, and we also gots to make sure there ain’t nobody else in this house. Look at this shit. He wrapped the fucking gun with a handkerchief before he shot himself. Ain’t that the pits. He had it bad, didn’t he?”
“Hey, you know something, I bet he doesn’t have a single fingerprint on that gun,” Marnie said.
“Well, so fucking what?”
“So, if we take the handkerchief it would look like a murder disguised as suicide, right?”
“Uh, yeah, and you’re the first one they would be asking about that.”
“Yeah, but you seem to have forgotten whose gun this is, whose gun I actually stole this from, and who it is registered to. In fact, it’s one of his oldest personal firearms.”
Toby remained silent for the time being, as though digesting the information and the implications thereof.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he said.
“Yep, I’m tired of his shit,” Marnie replied, “and you want him off your ass too. What better way to accomplish that? It will just look like a man killing his lover’s husband, the oldest story in the world. Well, one of the oldest stories anyway. If we are lucky, they will question him right about the time he is ready to dispose of her body. Come on-let’s go look for the shit. You search the living room downstairs and I’ll look in the bitch’s bedroom.”
“I keep telling you, now, if you’re going to hang with Da Pimp, that’s”-
“Yeah, I got it, I’ll search the beeyathch’s bedroom,” Marnie said.
“That be better”, Toby replied with a chuckle as the two of them finally exited the room, the door to which shut automatically behind them.
Khoska promptly removed himself from the confines of what once was a walk-in closet, before its conversion to an air-filtration center, and quietly yet quickly walked to the bathroom. He pissed as quietly as possible, worrying about the sound of it hitting the water in the bowl. It was a foolish thought, and Khoska knew very well if he was going to survive this night, he had to control his nerves. All he needed now was for April Sandusky to arise from the commode. He had to keep his nerve, he thought repeatedly.
“Keep your nerve, Aleksandre Khoska,” he muttered to himself, until he finally finished.
He walked quickly to the phone, picked up the receiver, and hit redial. The phone answered after three rings, and Khoska heard the familiar voice of Detective James Berry.
“You have reached the residence of James Berry and family,” he said. “At the tone kindly leave your name and number, and I’ll return your call, if you really, really want me to. Go on, punk, make my day.”
Khoska put the receiver down. Everything was finally coming together for him, as he frantically looked for the cell-phone number of his daughter Dorothy. He found it, and then he hurriedly dialed it from Voroslav’s phone. Although Dorothy never answered, at length he got once more the recorded message from her answering service.
“Dorothy, this is your father, and it is very important that you listen carefully to what I am about to say. Voroslav took his own life right in front of my eyes. Your own life is also in danger, from Marnie and Detective James Berry, so please avoid both of them. That is all I can say for now. I am in hiding, as my own life is in danger. Marnie is here with a black man, a rap artist named Toby the pimp, I believe. Go to the church and wait until I return, and then I will tell you everything.”
He hung up the phone, and then treaded cautiously to the door, where he placed his left ear while cupping his right ear with one hand to block out the sound of the machinery in the room. He could hear the sounds of walking and some talking, but it seemed to be at a distance. He returned to the phone, as he hastily extracted his wallet. Going through it, he found the card with the phone number. He extracted the phone and then walked over toward the one small window. He could see out of it enough to note there was indeed a balcony, from which Khoska hoped there yet would remain a set of emergency steps leading to the street below. He dialed the number. The phone rung several times before a weary voice answered.
“Phelps here, who is it?” asked the photographer.
“It is father Khoska,” Aleksandre replied. “I don’t have much time, so I cannot talk long. I have a favor to ask of you, and I also have a good deal of information I am sure you would be interested in, information concerning Grace, and a good many other things.”
“Yeah, okay, but what are you doing in Chicago?” Phelps asked him.
“Right now I am waiting for you to come and get me, and hoping it won’t take you a long time to get here.”
Part One
Prologue and Chapter I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Part Three
Chapter XXIII
Radu-Chapter XXIV (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
19 pages approximate
When Aleksandre Khoska opened his eyes, he appeared to be in an airport lobby, though it seemed engulfed in fog. He knew he was supposed to be waiting for somebody, and though he knew whom it was he waited for, he seemed vaguely unaware of who the person was.
There were people all around, walking around aimlessly. He started walking straight ahead of him, toward where a group of people stood, the only people who remained in one place, the people who stood straight ahead of him, though at some distance. They became remarkably clearer as he drew closer to them. He seemed to recognize the old gypsy woman who smiled at him knowingly. He noted the old woman, incredibly ancient, who seemed not to know where or, for that matter, even who she was, as an old man stood watch over her. Yet, though he was considerably younger, Alek seemed to understand he was the woman’s husband, and was actually much older than she was.
When he saw the children, he felt sad, though resigned, at the sight of the young boy with the obviously broken neck slanted down on his right shoulder, and the heart-wrenching site of the two younger children who gazed at him with baleful, questioning eyes, their entire bodies afflicted with severe burns. Then he saw the young teenage girl, huddled in the corner, obviously sick, shivering as she cried. She was afflicted with boils. This horrified Aleksandre Khoska, who recognized the plague all too well, though he never saw it before.
“Is there a problem here?”
Aleksandre turned at the sound of the commanding voice to note the approach of what he took first to be a guard. He realized though that this was not an airport terminal guard, but a soldier, an American soldier in what appeared to be a World War I uniform, riddled with bullet holes and caked with blood.
An older man almost immediately joined the soldier. Aleksandre noted the vitriolic hatred and anger that emanated from the heavy-set balding man, whose face was purple with rage, as a throbbing vein pulsated violently at his nearly hairless temple.
“You are going to have to move along old man,” the soldier said, as Aleksandre suddenly recognized the Romanian medals that adorned the uniform of the soldier, though he seemed to be an American.
“I am sorry, but I do not seem to know where I am,” Khoska said to the soldier. “Could you perhaps give me directions?”
The angry man then stepped forward and glared at Aleksandre.
“I will give you directions,” he shouted. “Go to hell, you son-of-a-bitch.”
He then awoke, to realize he was still in the hospital, though this was to be his final day. Doctor McCann had already signed his release, and he was more than ready to go, but he dreaded doing so. Yet, he could not remain here forever. Soon, his nurse entered the room with a questioning look, to inform him he had a visitor.
“She says her name is Dorothy Moloku-I think I have that right,” she said. “Do you know her?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Aleksandre said as he stifled a groan, still sore from his encounter with what he had with some reluctance to admit was some form of demonic entity that invaded the sanctity of his little Orthodox Church.
“I will tell her you are sleeping,” the nurse replied. “It’s really past visiting hours anyway, but since she claims to be your daughter I thought-“
“No, I will see her,” Aleksandre replied. “I’m going to have to do so eventually, I suppose.”
When Dorothy entered, bedecked in costume jewelry she proudly wore as a copy of that which she kept fastidiously locked away for insurance purposes, dressed in black satin pants and matching blouse, her natural auburn hair glowing from the effects of her most recent spa treatment, Aleksandre winced.
“Were you on your way to some charity event?” Aleksandre asked. “If you are, I hope that I am not the charity.”
“I came to take you with me to Chicago,” she told him. “It’s been years since you visited, and this is as good a time as any. You won’t be bothered by reporters there, I promise.”
“I think the police want me to hang around Baltimore,” he replied. “There were two bodies on the church property. I’m sure you read all about the supposed black mass that took place in my church, and the alleged human sacrifice performed on the Eucharistic Altar.”
“Who were those people anyway?” Dorothy asked, and then acted as though she immediately regretted the question. “Never mind, that’s not important. I just want to make sure you are well cared for. After what you have been through you certainly should not be alone.”
“Agnes is coming from Romania in a few days,” he insisted. “She put in for a transfer, and seeing as to the nature of my injuries, the Church is allowing it. It really is not a good idea to go to your house at this time, though I do appreciate the offer. What does Voroslav have to say about this, by the way?”
“Voroslav is fine with it,” she insisted. “In fact, when I brought it up he told me he was ready to suggest the same thing.”
“Even though I have been cooped up for three weeks in a facility filled with every germ imaginable?” he asked. “I find that very hard to believe.”
Before she could respond to what she obviously took as a sarcastic utterance, the nurse returned and told Dorothy that visiting hours were really over, but she could allow her thirty minutes, as she looked at Aleksandre with a nod and brief smile.
“Doctor McCann did say I could leave tonight if I felt up to it, right?” Aleksandre asked.
The nurse looked surprised at this, but then affirmed this was so, whereupon Aleksandre informed her he believed he would leave tonight, to Dorothy’s obvious surprise.
“I will go with you,” he told her, “but I must return home first, as there are certain things I have to see to.”
“That’s fine,” she said.
It took Aleksandre all of Dorothy’s allotted time to dress and otherwise prepare to leave, during which time the nurse presented his discharge papers, at which point he signed them.
“Has that Doctor Chou still been inquiring after me?” he asked her.
“Chou?” she asked. “Not that I’m aware of. Doctor McCann might know.”
“Well, it’s not important,” he replied. “Thank you for your gracious hospitality and your kind and most professional manner during my stay, but it is time for me to leave, before I run up my insurance premiums more than necessary.”
After they left, Dorothy seemed ecstatic, pleased that he agreed so easily to come to Chicago. Soon, they pulled up to the Church Of The Blessed Sacrament, and Khoska was relieved to see the crime scene tape gone, though the absence of the old gold plated cross stood as a grim reminder of the previous weeks events. The scene still haunted him, though he tried not to think about it.
“Well, here we are,” Dorothy noted as she completed parking in the old cobblestone driveway that formed an angular pattern to beside the church doors. The lights were on, and Khoska was relieved to note that “the boys”, as Dorothy called them, were still there.
Indeed, the twin sons, the oldest children of Aleksandre Khoska, had gladly agreed to stay at the church and see to its security during the course of his stay in hospital, for which he was grateful. Now, he was glad to be out, though dreaded the prospect of asking one or both of them to remain a while longer until Agnes arrived from Romania. Unfortunately, there was a slight delay, and now he faced the prospect of a trip to Chicago, one he realized he could not afford to pass up.
“Gee, Dad,” the New Jersey priest named John said, “I’d like to stay longer, but there’s really a lot going on. I have so much to do as it is, and I‘ve gotten so far behind”-
“Why John I thought you retired,” Dorothy said, knowing full well her older brother did not take kindly to her to begin with, and especially resented any dispute from her.
“Yeah, I did,” John said uneasily, “but there’s a lot of personal stuff I have to take care of. Rita has had medical problems, for one, and”-
“Oh, you mean her back is acting up again?” Dorothy replied.
“It’s all right, John,” Khoska said. “I really appreciate you coming here when you did, and if you cannot stay longer I completely understand.”
He then shot Dorothy a stern look as Michael, the other twin, stepped out from the hallway that led to the interior of the church and it’s suite of offices.
“Well, we weren’t expecting you back until tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “What was this about Chicago? Dorothy, you’re as vivacious as ever.”
“Isn’t she though?” John asked, still stinging with discomfort.
“I just thought it would do poppa good to get out of this place for a while,” she said.
“Go on,” the twin named Michael insisted. “I can stay here a few days. It might do me some good.”
“What about your church?” Khoska asked. “Really, Michael, I should not impose on you this way.”
“I can swing it,” Michael insisted, as John suddenly cleared his throat.
“I’m sure I can take over for Michael at his church,” he suggested. “That way, I’ll be close enough to home I can see after my affairs, and Michael can stay here with no worries. That should work out fine, I mean if that’s all right with Michael, of course.”
Michael suddenly laughed a mischievous laugh.
“Hell, why bother to tell anybody?” he suggested. “We look alike, sound alike, and do almost everything else so much alike, most people probably would never notice. It might be fun.”
“You can’t be serious,” Aleksandre said, but suddenly Michael and Jonathon Khoska seemed like two kids again, almost giddy as they discussed plans for Jonathon’s last day, when Michael would return and walk into the middle of the service.
“We can turn it into some kind of lesson, I’m sure,” Michael suggested. “Be wary of appearances, that kind of thing. The kids will get a big chuckle out of it.”
“Well, I guess that settles it then,” Dorothy said. “We really should get going.”
“What in the hell’s the hurry, Dorothy?” Jonathon asked suspiciously.
“Well, none, I just thought since”-
“No, she’s right,” Aleksandre said. “If we leave now, we should be in Chicago before it gets too late. Hopefully, I can get good and rested over the weekend, and be back by bright and early, say, late Tuesday afternoon?”
Aleksandre was grateful for the presence of his older sons, as they provided him the ability to take care of a very urgent matter, as well as the excuse not to take a lot of time doing so. In fact, the sooner he got it over and done with, the better.
He made his way to the privacy of his office, where he noted the newly replaced urn, which this time he was certain held the genuine ashes of his beloved granddaughter Lynette. The city cemetery now contained those that apparently belonged to some other person, possibly a murdered girl named Spiral Lamont. A brief funeral service had been her lone farewell, though none attended, not even her family. He thought of this as he looked at the urn of Lynette, and considered it no wonder the world contained such hatred and violence. He began to weep, though he knew he should not, and composed himself as he looked within his safe. He closed it back after taking a roll of hundred dollar bills.
He then made his way to the basement, where he had yet one more matter of which to attend. He turned on the light and made his way down the musty, seldom visited basement, and toward the old broom closet that contained the false doorway behind which rested an old cabinet. Before he got to the door, however, it struck him that he was not alone. Someone was there with him this day. He always felt that way upon coming down here, but this was different. This time, the eyes he felt upon him belonged not to some spiritual entity, but his familiarity with that realm possibly prepared him for the intrusion of the more mundane intruder he sensed within his basement, where was stored so many private memories and unfulfilled promises. He quickened his breathing, and grew fearful. By the time he called out for help, he knew it would be too late. He doubted anyone could hear him from this distance at any rate.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “I know you are in here. Show yourself to me at once.”
He turned at the sound of a movement behind him, and saw then the figure silhouetted in the darkness, his shadow outlined by the dim light that shook weakly from its chain at the top of the steps.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Khoska hissed as he attempted with some difficulty to control his mounting fear. Then, the figure of a tall, lanky man stepped forward from out of the shadows.
“Okay, here I am,” Khoska heard the man say. “Don’t worry-I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Who in the name of God are you and what are you doing her?” Khoska tried to control his breathing and steady himself as the man drew two steps closer, until Khoska could make out clearly the face and form of the tall, lanky black man with the camera.
“You are a reporter?”
“My name’s Phelps,” the man said. “No, I’m a photographer, but same difference I guess.”
“I thought you people were warned to stay away from here,” Khoska said, relieved, and yet now angry at the intrusion.
“This ain’t business, Father,” Phelps replied. “This is a personal matter, having to do with Grace Rodescu. She’s a friend of mine.”
“Oh, so you’re the one,” Khoska observed bitterly, which induced Phelps to bite his lips.
“Very funny,” he said. “Look, we’ve worked together, and I guess I got to know her pretty good. You might not like her much, but if something happens to her, I doubt you’d feel that callous about it, right?”
“Actually, I would,” Khoska insisted. “She has pushed her luck to the limit, with me and with a good many others. As I told the police, I was unconscious when she left here, or was taken from here, and at the time I was assaulted, the only other people here besides her and I were the two people they found here murdered. For all I know she is responsible for that, or was complicit in it. As you may well be aware, she lived with the girl Sierra for some time. Sierra left and stole some things that belonged to Grace. Some would consider that curious, in light of the fact that two people are dead, while she seems to have merely vanished.”
“Grace is not a killer,” Phelps said firmly. “She might be a lot of other things, and most of them may not be good, but I am pretty confidant she doesn’t have it in her to actually commit murder.”
“Well, perhaps you do not know her as well as you think you do, then,” Khoska said cryptically, his voice tense with anxiety as he almost spat this declaration in the face of the beleaguered news photographer, who for just a few seconds held his breath as he turned from Khoska’s gaze.
“Look, young man, I do not really know you,” Khoska continued. “I am taking your word you are here for the benefit of Grace, and that you are acting out of concern for her welfare. However, I promise you I can tell you no more than you probably already know. Sierra Lawson knocked me unconscious, and by the time I awoke, Sierra and Joseph Karinsky were dead and Grace was gone.”
“I’m sorry, Father, but I get the impression you are holding something back,” Phelps replied, but before he could continue, an interruption brought the conversation to a halt.
“Who in the hell are you?” Michael demanded as he bounded down the steps in a near furious panic.
“Father, who is this man?” hhe insisted.
“I was just leaving, sir, I’m sorry for the intrusion,” Phelps assured her. “Look, Father, if you think of anything, if you remember anything, if you hear anything, will you please get in contact with me? Here, you can call me at home and leave a message if I am not there.”
Phelps reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a card. He handed it to Khoska, who took it warily.
“Very well, Mr. Phelps, I promise you I will do so,” he said.
“Wait a minute, just who are you, a cop, a reporter, or what?” Michael asked as Phelps edged by him while glancing at his face fleetingly, obviously uncomfortable at his accusatory tone.
“Its fine, Michael, he is merely seeing to the welfare of his friend,” Khoska explained as Phelps made his way up the steps.
“Grace Rodescu, I take it.”
Khoska started toward the steps and then realized he yet needed to see to his personal effects, and so told him to see that Jonathon and Dorothy did not accost the strange black intruder on his way out of the church.
“I’ll be up momentarily,” he told him.
After he left, he hurriedly checked the hidden latch on the false wall that led to his secret reserves of cash, gold, and relics, and saw it was evidently well. He opened it, looked inside, and then closed it quickly back. It was going to be a long trip to Chicago, but he hoped it would not take long.
Khoska was exhausted from his stay at the hospital, and dreaded the flight. He hated flying and did not trust planes. This would be his first flight since the death of Marta seven years ago. He had intended that to be his last flight. It had been no pleasure trip, nor would this one be. He did not intend to act as if it was. Still, he tried to be as cordial toward Dorothy as possible, though he said little.
“You surely are not planning to leave your vehicle at this place, are you?” he inquired as they pulled into the airport.
“Father, this is a rental car,” she explained. “When we get to Chicago, we’ll take a cab home.”
“Oh, I see,” Khoska replied as he looked out the passengers side window. “I would imagine we will have a long walk then, from the rental agency to the terminal.”
“No, I’ll just turn the key in when we get to the lobby, and then we’ll just wait for the flight. I took the liberty of purchasing your ticket when I purchased mine, so we could remain together. Our flight will be in about forty minutes, unless there is a delay.”
It was a short walk to the main lobby, where Dorothy turned in her keys with the receipt, and then they proceeded to the waiting area. Khoska was amazed at the number of people waiting for flights out of Baltimore, and particularly bemused by the number of small children, many of whom seemed to lack adult supervision.
“Are children allowed to fly on planes by themselves?” Khoska asked in amazement.
“Yes, it would seem so,” she replied. “They should have adults with them until they board though. Some people are rather careless, you know. Once they are on board, there’s not much they can get into, at least.”
“They are probably more savvy than I would be were I alone,” Khoska observed. He sat and began to doze off within ten minutes. He could not believe how tired he was after spending two weeks cooped up in a hospital bed, half of which seemed to have been unnecessary. For the last half of his stay he needed neither antibiotic nor any other kind of medication, yet McCann seemed insistent he remain for “observation”.
Now, he was completely exhausted, and more depressed than he had been in years. By the time the announcement was made of the departure for Chicago, some two hours later than originally scheduled, he was all but convinced he should return home. Dorothy sat there beside him and said little, other than to ask if he were hungry or would like a pillow.
He remembered how when she married Voroslav he objected, though meekly, his opposition based mainly on the age difference. Voroslav was thirteen years her senior, and married her when she was a mere eighteen, barely out of school. Yet, Dorothy was always willful and stubborn, and rare was the time she would listen to others advice when it did not suit her. Khoska predicted it would end unhappily, and when Voroslav was defrocked, he was sure that would be the end of it. Instead, Dorothy defended her husband, and declared she would remain until the end. She really seemed to love him. That was what Khoska found perhaps most objectionable of all, given the circumstances.
By the time they took their seat, Khoska resigned himself to whatever awaited in Chicago. Voroslav had the answers he needed-or so he told himself. After the plane left the runway and was on its way to O’Hare, he wondered if he made the right decision, while telling himself he really had no choice. The only thing he dreaded was being in the same home with Voroslav, who was perhaps the most peculiar fellow he ever knew. Some more old-fashioned folk even considered him demon possessed due to the nature of his curious afflictions.
Aleksandre did not look forward to his visit, for a number of reasons. He already knew the answers to too many questions. They were not pleasant, yet he found himself in the position of needing confirmation, of which his son-in-law was the only reliable source. Nevertheless, by the time their plane taxied onto the O’Hare runway, he found himself wanting to return to Baltimore.
He was dead tired by the time they made their way to the baggage claim area, and Aleksandre found himself wishing for as long a delay as possible, when suddenly he found himself the object of some attention from a couple of airport guards. Obviously, they found his manner of dress curious, as he remained dressed in his Orthodox robes. At length, one of the guards approached him in the company of a well-dressed man, obviously an airport official of some sort.
“Sir, we wondered if we might ask you a couple of questions,” the well-dressed man stated.
“I am not Islamic. I am an Orthodox Christian Priest!” Aleksandre said, incensed that the security at this airport would be so unprofessional, to say nothing of uninformed, as to not distinguish the difference. He looked toward Dorothy, who looked more embarrassed than angry.
“Is there a problem?” she asked.
The man looked embarrassed now, and looked around, to note the numbers of people milling about. He seemed to be looking for someone.
“Have you mistaken me for someone else, perhaps?” Aleksandre asked.
“It’s just a routine check, sir,” the man replied. “If you could just kindly follow me, this should not take long. You do have identification?”
“For what purpose should I follow you?” Aleksandre demanded. “What have I done?”
“Just go along with them, poppa,” Dorothy advised him, obviously perturbed, and yet unwilling to engage in a confrontation with persons of obvious authority at an airport where she was a frequent customer.
Aleksandre noted that there were others standing in a line undergoing security scrutiny, though there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary about any of them. One guard waved a wand over them as they progressed to a certain point, while some others stood off in the distance, drinking what appeared to be coffee and idly chatting.
“No, I will not just go along with them,” Khoska replied. “I have done nothing to warrant this treatment.”
“Sir, you are making this very difficult,” the man replied. “The quicker you follow our instructions, the quicker this can be over with. I assure you, this is routine airport security screening. As a passenger”-
“That is just the point!” Aleksandre shouted. “I am no longer a passenger. I am not departing. I have arrived, you idiot!”
Two other guards now approached hurriedly, as Aleksandre noted now what appeared to be a list in the hands of the one guard who remained silent throughout this exchange.
“Father, please for God’s sake just let them see your identification,” an obviously mortified Dorothy insisted.
“You would be well-advised to do as your daughter suggests,” the man now said in all earnestness, obviously annoyed at Aleksandre, who now regretted his tirade, and actually felt somewhat ashamed in the wake of a noticeable crowd that gathered, though they remained at some distance, looking curiously in their direction, as Dorothy practically hid her features from view.
He finally relented and produced his wallet, and after a brief perusal of it, the airport official handed it back to him.
“Enjoy your stay in Chicago, Father Khoska,” the man said with a noticeable hint of animosity.
“Father, that was completely uncalled for,” Dorothy observed. “You made a scene. Aren’t you the slightest bit embarrassed?”
“Perhaps a bit,” Aleksandre admitted. “I don’t care, I am tired, I am still not well, and I do not appreciate being monitored as though I were some sand monkey with a bomb hidden under my vestments. It is an insult. I bet if I told the bastard my name was Ahmed Mohamed he would have offered to buy my dinner by now. Screw all of them.”
“You just do not understand, poppa,” she replied. “It’s really my fault. I should have warned you ahead of time. Let’s just get out of here, please.”
Dorothy extracted her cell phone from her purse and quickly placed a call, which lasted under a minute. They waited less than five minutes outside the airport terminal before a limousine pulled up to the curb.
“This is one hell of a cab,” Khoska observed. “I will be glad when we get to your home, as I am exhausted. A good night’s sleep will do me good.”
“Voroslav wants to see you before you go to bed,” she said.
“Oh really, Dorothy,” Aleksandre replied in a voice tinged with anxiety. “Can it not wait until morning?” he asked. “I really am in no mood to bathe. I showered in the hospital not quite four hours before you arrived. Afterwards, I slept for a while and had the most disturbing nightmare. I am still quite ill, and my nerves are a shambles. Really, I would much prefer”-
“Father, really, would a nice hot bath kill you?”
Khoska fumed, not really knowing how to answer the question. He knew he should speak to his son-in-law before he retired for the night. There was actually a practical reason for doing so. If he spoke to the man tonight, there was a better than average chance he might not have to see him any at all for the duration of his stay. Perhaps a little inconvenience would be worth that much.
“I suppose I could put up with it,” he said as the airport faded from view. “I don’t know why I bothered to pack any clothing, frankly. That was a waste of time.”
“Well, you did say you might stay three or four days, and you sure can’t go about in the same clothes, and you sure can’t go about Chicago in a bathrobe at this time of year.”
“I have no desire to take in the sights of Chicago,” Khoska insisted. “Still, you have a point. After what I have been through over the last three weeks, two baths in one day is certainly a minor inconvenience. I am more curious as to what this was you should have warned me about.”
Dorothy suddenly seemed uncomfortable, as though she dreaded answering the question.
“It is nothing,” she finally said. “I am just glad we’re away from there. I was afraid you might cause us to be detained for far longer than you or I would have liked.”
Khoska knew she was lying, but said nothing as they finally approached the relatively modest two-story home that rested in the suburbs of northeastern Chicago. Khoska informed the driver that he could carry his own baggage, and at a nod from Dorothy, the elderly driver acceded to Khoska’s wishes as he carried Dorothy’s own quite cumbersome suitcase. She had obviously come to Baltimore prepared to spend more than a day or two if necessary.
When they made it inside the house, which seemed larger on the inside than on the outside, Dorothy told Khoska to deposit his luggage by the door.
“It will be well taken care of,” Dorothy assured him.
“I assume the bathroom is within a few short steps of here,” he said. She told him that it was indeed through the nearest door to his right. Incredible, he muttered to himself.
He bathed, after which he put on the newly cleaned robe that hung on the inside of the door, wrapped in plastic. He left his clothing in the floor after making certain he put his wallet, keys, and loose change inside the robes pockets.
Khoska remembered well where Voroslav’s room was as he walked up the spiral staircase that led to the upper floor. He proceeded down to the end of the hallway, past the two bedrooms that faced opposite each other, down past the bathroom that faced opposite a large linen closet, and to the end of the hallway, where a room without doorknob waited.
Khoska stopped at the sound of the beep initiated by his passage by an electronic eye, and a whirring motor produced by the infrared camera he knew announced his approach.
“Aleksandre, just a second, and the door will open,” he heard the voice of his son-in-law, who at fifty-six years of age was exactly in years between himself and his daughter Dorothy, who always had a predilection for older men. Khoska had mused upon their marriage that since he insisted her preferences were unseemly, she decided to compromise. In fact, there was twenty-six years between Khoska and his daughter, with Voroslav firmly between the two of them, and separated from both by thirteen years almost exactly.
The door opened and Khoska entered, to note the change that had occurred over the former criminal conspirator and Orthodox Priest. His hair, though still dark, was graying, and he had put on quite a few pounds. This was understandable, despite the fact that he did not eat a lot, nor did he drink alcohol. He exercised little, and in fact, he seldom left this room. Through his thick moustache, Khoska could detect the hint of a smile, for which Aleksandre could think of no discernible reason for him to affect.
“It is good to see you, Aleksandre, it has been a long time,” Voroslav said, as he made no motion to rise from his leather-upholstered recliner, which was in fact where he slept most of the time.
“I am glad to see you seem to be well,” Aleksandre replied as the door shut automatically behind him. He noted the presence of ionic air cleaning devices, and smokeless candles that filled the air with an antiseptic scent, as Khoska could hear fresh air filtered from an indiscernible source into the otherwise hermetically sealed off room.
“For the time being, yes,” Voroslav said. “I thought I would die when I was taken in for questioning, but there was little I could do about it.”
“You do know your life is probably in danger, I take it,” Khoska said. “What does Dorothy say about all this, and what of Marnie?”
Voroslav looked away as a worried expression briefly crossed his brow, but he quickly recovered.
“Dorothy will be fine,” he replied. “Or she would be, if she would just leave me to my fate, as I am always telling her. Unfortunately, you raised Dorothy a bit better than I think you imagine. Sometimes, if I did not know better, I would think she actually really does care something about me after all. Marnie, well that is a different story. She is away at university, going for her Masters in Business. I know she will be protected.”
“Protected from what, and by whom?” Khoska asked. “Really, Voroslav, I know you are not a well man, and you know it too. I will not bother going into that, as I know you are not responsible for your affliction. But please, for the love of God, can you find it in your heart to allow me to sit?”
At first, Voroslav seemed confused but then his black eyes gleamed with realization, as he told Khoska that of course he could sit, as he indicated the sofa that set off to the side of the room. Khoska then noted the presence of a liquor cabinet and ice tray, which Moloku explained he kept for the comfort of his guests, what few he had, though he allowed no smoking.
“Unless of course you would like to join me in a bit of hashish after we have finished our business,” he added, almost as a polite afterthought. “Of course, I would be very surprised, pleasantly so, if you would do that, but your expression tells me probably not.”
“You read my expression very well,” Khoska replied, to which Moloku smiled and nodded.
“Very well, then, before we get on with it,” he continued, “let me assure you, both Dorothy and Marnie are to be well provided for. There is no problem with the two of them.”
Khoska felt as though his son-in-law now resigned himself to whatever fate awaited and knew it was certainly coming. After all, he had turned states evidence against criminal associates who recognized loyalty to none, not even family, above loyalty to the code.
“So what exactly is it about Grace Rodescu you wished to tell me about?” Khoska asked him.
“First things first,” Voroslav replied. “On the end table by you, you will notice a folder. Feel free to examine its contents, if you will.”
Khoska did so, and was somewhat disconcerted by what he saw.
“Your father Volescu-what of him?” he asked uncomfortably.
“You will recall how he was shot outside our home in 1968, when I was a mere lad of seventeen, studying for the Priesthood,” he explained. “Go on, look at the other pictures.”
Khoska did so, only to see other, older pictures, of Voroslav and his father and mother, in seemingly happier times. In one of them, a picture that seemed taken in Romania, Voroslav was an innocent child of two or three years old.
“My parents emigrated from Romania after the war,” he said. “It was a very hard life compared to what they were used to. Of course, I was raised in the kind of filth and degradation my mother could never quite adjust to. She went from living a life of comfort and abundance, in clean and safe surroundings, to a time of traveling from one filth-infested slum in Europe to another. We finally made it here in 1958.
“Of course, what I and my parents went through was nothing compared to what the others were obliged to endure.”
“What others?” Khoska asked. “Whom do you mean?”
“My half-sisters and my half-brother,” he replied. “Yes, my mother was previously married, to a man named Ion Ionescu. He died two decades before we came to America, whereupon my father persuaded her to marry him. I was his only child, out of five. When they left, he insisted the others stay behind with relatives, though he promised to send for them later. He never did, and my mother grew cold and harsh, as much towards me, her own son, as towards him.
“When he was murdered that day, allegedly by Securitate agents in retribution for his activities against the Romanian communist regime, rumors circulated that you were responsible. I know you heard those rumors and probably believed them. In fact, I have reason to believe this caused you a great deal of anxiety.”
Khoska was stunned. He indeed always held himself responsible for the death of Volescu Moloku, but never imagined anyone connected him with the affair. Now, here was Volescu’s own son, now his son-in-law, decades later, inferring his complicity in a state crime.
“Are you sure you do not wish to have a drink?” Voroslav asked. “If you would like a little wine, I also have some of the finest Wisconsin cheese, straight from the docks of Racine. It is in fact the one indulgence I allow myself these days, apart from a little hash, which is a rarity.”
“No thank you,” Khoska said, trying to control his fear and his anger, the last of which he now felt was out of place under the circumstances.
“I do not deny my involvement with the communist government, as I was given little choice,” he said. “If this resulted in the death of your father I am truly sorry. I have spent years in regret over the incident.”
Voroslav looked at him harshly, as suddenly he reached over and extracted a mask attached to an oxygen tank that blended in well with the metallic nature of the furniture in the sterile environment within which Khoska found himself. Voroslav breathed deeply, and then returned the mask.
“Relax, Aleksandre, I did not send for you to berate you,” he then explained. “For one thing, if you were responsible I would have killed you long ago. Your involvement was incidental at most. No, I place the blamed squarely on the shoulders of he to whom it belongs-my half-brother, Sylveu. He came here and found my father, and killed him, in revenge for what occurred with his sisters. All of them were beaten and raped, one of them eventually killed by a brutal, drunken husband who sold her into prostitution. One of the twins died of pneumonia, eaten up with syphilis. The other twin died an old woman, forced to beg in the streets.
“Somehow, he came to America, got in contact with our mother, and he later killed his step-father, my own father. Then, the son-of-a-bitch had the gall to come proposing an offer of friendship, as after all we were half-brothers. He even admitted his crime, and claimed he was justified. Well, perhaps in his own mind he was. At any rate, he offered to help initiate me into his organization. I played along with him, and eventually I rose in the ranks.
“All the while, I learned what I could. He had no choice but to leave his own wife and child behind in Romania. In his despair, he spent days on end looking into their whereabouts. He discovered that his daughter married a man by the name of Rodescu, a mere farmer who barely managed to stay a step ahead of starvation.
“His wife, meanwhile, had died, and soon enough the Rodescu family was scattered to the winds. I saw to that. Rodescu himself disappeared, while his wife, in despair, turned her children over to the state after two of them died of infectious diseases caused mainly by malnutrition and exposure. She then took her own life.”
Khoska sat listening to this, what he realized now was a confession, in abject horror. He had no need to hear the rest of it.
“And then you took it on yourself to go to Romania, adopt her, and sell her into sexual slavery. Your own grandniece and you turned her into a heroin addict and whore. Voroslav, how could you?”
“Because he was dying, and I wanted him to know,” he replied. “I wanted him to know that he, who had sponsored my membership and rise within the organization, had enabled me to destroy his family in the process, and that I did so in the exact same manner that he himself had participated in the similar abuse of thousands of other innocent children.
“Then, after he died in agony, from cancer, I made sure my beloved mother knew the truth as well. It destroyed her, of course. She went all but insane, unable to speak, seemingly unable to hear. That is fine, as I understood very well that she knew the whole story, which was all I cared about.
“So there you have it, the story of Voroslav Moloku, the monster Priest of Romania. Yes, the Church eventually learned of my activities, and I was defrocked. And yes, Aleksandre, I know as well of your part in that. I accept the responsibility. It is even well and good that Grace Rodescu managed to survive, and bring the cycle of revenge to what I hope will be its completion. I accept her right to do so. I did not bring you here out of some self-serving search for forgiveness. I did my part to destroy the organization that my half-brother was such an influential and powerful member of. Granted, that was not my intention, but I still see it is only right.
“It is also right that I explain all of this to you now. Go ahead and look at the rest of the pictures. They tell quite a story. Somewhere within them is one with your grandfather, by the way. Perhaps you might recognize one of the men with him.”
“Corneliu Codreanu”, Khoska said as he found the one picture in question. As he looked at the old black and white, age-faded photograph, a thought occurred to him.
“Ion Ionescu was also one of his followers,” he declared.
“Indeed he was,” Voroslav admitted. “As was my father Volescu, until the time my father realized what an insane madman he was, and broke his ties to his Iron Guard organization.”
“According to some sources, your father found affiliation with Antonescu much more profitable and fortuitous. Some people considered him a traitor. You do realize that, do you not?”
Voroslav smiled.
“Codreanu was an anti-Semite, a fascist, and a religious fanatic. He was an ally of Hitler. He was no hero by any stretch of the imagination. Perhaps in his own mind he was sincere, but if so, he was insane at best, at worse possessed. All of this of course is of no consequence to me, but something else is.
“You see, Aleksandre, I have agonized over the prospect of telling you all of this. I wanted to tell you, but at the same time, I could see where it would serve no useful purpose. Then, you mentioned something in your call from the hospital, something that came wholly without warning. It was as though somehow, in some way, I was granted a bird’s eye view of the workings of destiny and fate.
“I have seen the hand of God, working through the minions of Satan. It reminded me of my days in the seminary, when I honestly believed there was a purpose to life, a truly divine plan. Of course, I eventually put aside such foolish pretenses. Beliefs such as that were for the benefit of the sheep, I came to believe, not the shepherd. It is the shepherd’s job to protect his flock from the ravages of nature, from the storm and from the wolf, and perhaps most importantly, from the ravages of their own animal impulses. I did not see myself as a wolf in shepherd’s clothing, by any means, only that I performed a necessary function to society.
“Well, all of this is what I had come to believe, and still believed up until that time I was defrocked, and even afterwards. Do you know that I still prayed, after that, even though I did not truly believe? Is that not amazing? What would make a human being act in such a manner?”
“Faith,” Khoska replied. “It is called the dark night of the soul. I have had my share of them.”
Before Voroslav could respond, a buzzer heralded the entrance into the room of Dorothy, who seemed to affect a casual attitude than was natural. Something about her manner was, in fact, wholly suspicious.
“So are the two older men in my life having an enjoyable visit?”
“I won’t say enjoyable is an accurate description, but it has certainly been enlightening,” Khoska replied.
“I have some business I have to attend to,” she said as though her previous statement had been a mere formality after all. “I might not be back for a few days. I will be back by Monday at the latest, and I will see you home the next day, poppa.”
Khoska nodded, not terribly disappointed at the announcement, yet wary of her true intentions to return at the time stated.
“Voroslav, if there is anything you need, you have my cell phone number written down somewhere, right?”
“Yes, it’s here in the book, but I am sure I will be fine,” Moloku replied. “Have a nice trip.”
“Goodbye then,” she said as she turned to leave. “Love you both.”
“That is it?” Khoska asked in amazement. “She just walks in and casually announces she is going off somewhere, and you allow this, and do not even ask her where she is going?”
“Oh, I know where she is going,” Moloku told him. “She is going to meet her boyfriend. She is having an affair.”
Khoska’s jaw dropped at this pronouncement and his eyes widened. Voroslav seemed to take his reaction with some amusement.
“Oh, I do not mind,” he insisted. “Like I said, she will be well taken care of.”
“Yes, and you never told me exactly what you meant by that,” Khoska replied, obviously hurt at this level of infidelity evidenced by his own daughter toward her husband of twenty-six years. Now, he obviously did not care to know any more, as Voroslav reached down and opened the top of an end table, from which he extracted what appeared to be a game board.
“I want to show you a little something I discovered, which I consider most interesting,” he said as Aleksandre watched him lay out what appeared to be some version of a chessboard, one that seemed to be a computerized machine of some sort.
“While I am setting this up, you should want to peruse the other folder, in the same drawer from which you took the first one. It has everything to do with why I wanted you to come here this night.”
Aleksandre however waited until Voroslav set the tiny little pegs on the board, choosing the white pieces for himself, the black pieces for his computerized opponent.
“As you shall see, the only choice you really have in this game is the choice of white and black.”
“What, is this supposed to be some kind of symbolic lesson or something?” Aleksandre asked, as he considered such displays to be a waste of his time. As Voroslav made his initial move of the knight’s pawn, two spaces up the board, Aleksandre reached into the end table and withdrew the folder.
“You will never defeat that machine,” Aleksandre said with a mirthless chuckle. “That has always been your opening move, and if I am familiar with it I would be certain the move is forever enshrined within that computer’s memory banks.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Moloku replied. “More than likely you are. I have defeated it twice, out of more than one hundred attempts, and I was hoping I could show you something that is most amazing.”
Aleksandre watched his son-in-law play the game opponent, which signaled to Moloku the moves it wanted him to make on its behalf.
“This is actually quite an old game,” he explained. “With one of the newer versions I seriously doubt I could do this. It is in fact a rarity when I defeat this game. I’ve had this thing for going on twelve years, and it took me more than three years to beat it, a feat I never repeated until a couple of years ago.”
Koska found himself increasingly drawn to the on-going battle of human intellect versus computer calculation. Within ten minutes, Voroslav lost a knight and one bishop, as well four pawns, while only taking two pawns and a bishop off the computers’ side.
“I think you are in a bit of a jam,” Khoska observed.
“Actually-I think I might be on to something here,” Voroslav replied. “Do you see it?”
Khoka did indeed see what appeared to be a potentially devastating move, one that would place the computer’s queen in dire jeopardy. All he had to do was place the king in check, which would necessitate a move one square away, exposing the queen to the ravages of Voroslav’s rook. Though he would lose this remaining rook to the king, Voroslav could then proceed to decimate his opponents’ field with his own queen, rooks, and remaining bishop and knight.
“You see, Aleksandre, the key is to not take too many of the opponents pieces, while making a few necessary sacrifices of your own in order to maneuver the king into an area where there is scant room for movement on its part. His own crowded field does him in.”
Voroslav then proceeded to take the queen, but to Khoska’s amazement, the computer did not respond by taking its opponents rook. Instead, the lights on the board changed, signaling that the computer changed sides. It was therefore now Voroslav’s queen that was off the board, and Voroslav who now had the option of taking the offending rook. Khoska now saw something he previously did not see. If Voroslav took the rook with his king, the computer could now put the king back in check with a knight, while simultaneously taking an opposing knight. The king would be obliged to e moved to one remaining open spot, at which point it could be checkmated by a rook.
“You see, I have no choice,” he explained. “I have to move from this side, before the computer will signal for me the move it wishes to make from my former side which it has now stolen from me. That makes three times that has happened. You see, Aleksandre, this computer is programmed to do anything involving the game of chess with the sole exception of losing.
“You asked me if there was some kind of lesson to this. Well, you have just seen it. This is a most accurate display of how the universe works. Whatever force put it into motion programmed it in much the same manner. Whatever move you make in life, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. No matter how well you seem to do, those who are destined to lose will lose in the end. Those who are destined to win will do so as well. This is not due to goodness and sacrifice, or to faith and holiness. It has everything to do, I am afraid, with cunning, guile, and the practical application of intelligence and strength. Ruthlessness is all but a necessity, at some point, of course.
“Even then, you have only so much in the way of good fortune, and once it is gone, then the game is over. Then, the universe will switch sides, so to speak.”
“I changed my mind,” Khoska now said. “I think I will have some of that cheese and wine. I am starting to become very hungry.”
He opened up the small refrigerator where he noted several varieties of cheeses and cold cuts, along with some yogurt, and he extracted what looked to be a portion of sharp cheddar, though a Wisconsin variety, and an unopened bottle of port. He poured himself a glass, and took the entire somewhat small portion of cheese. He knew that Voroslav would not eat from it once other human hands touched it.
“I am curious about something Voroslav,” Khoska asked. “You say you have struggled with your affliction since you were a teenager, so I was wondering how you could stand to go to a filthy place such as a Romanian orphanage, and return in the company of Grace, to say nothing of surrounded by all those people you encountered on your travels.”
“I did it more than a few times, frankly,” his host replied as Khoska hungrily bit into the wheel of cheese that was actually more of the taste of an Edom, and quite good. “Grace was not the first, she was merely the last. Yes, it was a struggle. However, I took comfort in the series of inoculations I was assured would protect me on my travels from every disease known to man. It got to the point I actually started looking forward to those trips, for precisely that reason. I insisted on the inoculations even when I was assured they were not actually necessary.
“That may have been my downfall, to tell you the truth. When the church discovered my activities, they officially said nothing. However, I have an idea one or two of the more holier-than-thou busybodies turned me in to the authorities. Of course, by that time, my activities in those regards were over, and yet I found I could make no flights even within the country without being questioned. Dorothy and Marnie were harassed as well. Dorothy threatened a lawsuit at one point, and so though the harassment did not exactly cease, it slowed considerably. Had you any problem at the airport?”
“Yes,” Aleksandre replied. “They were quite insistent that I show them identification, and answer their questions, which I found quite insulting. You mean that was all because of you?”
“I apologize, but yes,” Moloku replied. “9/11 gave them the excuse to be more through, I suppose, but Islamic radicals aside, their reasons are what they are. It is a waste of time and money of course, but when did the government ever let that even be a consideration?
“Imagine how you would have felt if your own daughter had her identity stolen, the way Marnie’s had been, and you were told there was nothing which could be done about it. You said it turned out to be Grace Rodescu’s doing, and I suppose it was. At the same time, consider this. How exactly could she have gotten such personal information about my daughter’s life, unless that information was on file somewhere, under the care of some person determined to find some criminal conduct through way of her.”
“You are saying that Grace got this information from someone in the government?” Khoska asked.
“The government or the police, obviously,” Voroslav confirmed. “She probably found it fitting to steal the identity of the daughter of the man who adopted her for illegal purposes, and then sold her. I cannot fault her for that, truthfully, but at the same time, it all goes back to what I was saying. The game’s outcome is already decided, and the winners and losers all have their predestined paths to follow. They might veer off course from time to time, but even at that, they only delay the inevitable.
“Well, I will no longer delay the inevitable-quite the opposite.”
As he said this, Voroslav extracted a gun from the drawer of his end table, and Khoska, who just now took a large drink of port, sat it down hurriedly and looked around frantically, almost certain Voroslav meant to kill him after all.
“The Krovelescu’s are the key,” Voroslav continued, seeming not to notice the frantic terror that gripped Aleksandre. “I realized that the minute you mentioned their name as being complicit in this affair. Of course, that should have come as no surprise to me, especially seeing as how I have had an on-going relationship with Martin Khoska and his wife for several decades now. In fact, you referred Martin to me when he came to you for help searching for his long lost mother. I was unable to help him, unfortunately, but we have remained friends, though we seldom see each other.
“Nevertheless, though the Krovelescu’s are a factor in our lives, and as you shall see, have been for some time, I never expected the level of involvement they have had in our affairs.
“I suppose you know by now of Radu. If not, you shall. I will say no more about him, for I am of the hopes that for your sake, as well as for the sake of Dorothy and Marnie, and the rest of your family, you will drop this crusade you are on. You see, I know exactly what you are doing. In that folder, you will find everything you need.”
Khoska found some relief at this statement, but was still overwhelmed with anxiety.
“Who was he, at least tell me that much,” Khoska said. “I know about Radu the Black, and Radu the Handsome, but this person”-
“The game is over, Aleksandre,” Voroslav replied, as his eyes became almost emotionally unexpressive, yet stern and even cold. “I am very sorry about Lynette. She did not deserve the fate she suffered. She was a very good person. Many were the times I wished privately that Marnie could be just somewhat like her. Just a little bit. That of course was quite unfair to the both of them. If there was ever anything in life I tried to acquire, it was a sense of fairness. It is now finally time to be fair to myself. Goodbye, my friend.”
To Aleksandre’s horror, Voroslav Moloku placed the barrel of the gun inside his mouth and in the space of an instant sent his brains splattering on the wall behind him, as Aleksandre Khoska loudly shouted an impotent and senseless no. He dropped down to his knees and prayed, and cried loudly as he swayed back and forth on his knees on the hardwood floor of the room in which Voroslav Moloku, who spent most of his last years confined within it, now ended his life.
He placed a frantic call to Dorothy, unsure of what he would tell her, but Dorothy never answered. Instead, her recorded voice advised to leave a message. He felt loathe to relay the night’s events on voice-mail, and was unsure exactly what to say. In despair, he hung up.
Aleksandre then remembered the folder, the one he never got around to perusing, and in an effort to calm his despair, opened the folder, only to see what looked to be a marriage certificate for Voroslav’s mother, though not to his father, but to her first husband, Ion Ionescu. What he noted, however, that shook him to the core, was the maiden name of Voroslav’s mother, which was Krovell.
He then noticed the old, age-lined black and white photograph of the young man of about twenty-five years old, the man in the Romanian uniform of the World War I era. Attached to the photo by a paper clip was a document that turned out to be a death certificate for a Lieutenant Jason Krovell, listed as a volunteer combatant for the Romanian Royal Army, killed in the line of duty early in the year 1917 in a battle against Turkish forces near the Black Sea. Another photo revealed the nature of his wounds to be at somewhat close range. In fact, his body appeared riddled with bullets. Then, the thought occurred to him.
“He was not killed in the line of duty at all,” he mused aloud. “He was executed.”
Suddenly the phone rang, and Aleksandre was now in the uncomfortable position of walking within touching distance of the corpse of his son-in-law, who sat staring out into the vastness of the eternity to which he at last surrendered. The caller ID of the screen was a number he did not recognize, and so he frantically scrolled down the list of names in a vain attempt to find a number with a name to match, an attempt that proved fruitless.
Aleksandre gave up, and said a quick prayer over the corpse of his son-in-law. He then closed his eyes.
He decided to replace the folders within the drawers of the end table from which he extracted them. He had no need for them, and was concerned about how this might look. How would he ever explain this? He and Voroslav did have a falling out at one point, over a good many of the very things they discussed this night. Though Aleksandre never confirmed or denied it, it was patently obvious to Moloku that Aleksandre was responsible for the Orthodox Church defrocking him.
Graces’ survival that night, in the woods of western Maryland, and the eventual recovery of her memory, enabled her to remember the name of the man who had adopted her. Aleksandre said nothing to the authorities. There was always the possibility that criminals had procured and used his son-in-laws identity. After all, no one would suspect an Orthodox Priest of such abominable activities as engaging in the sexual slave trade of young children. He tried to tell himself that this had to be the answer, though at the same time, his conscience would not allow him to keep the matter entirely secret. He reported it to the Church, who conducted an investigation. They found that, indeed, Voroslav and a small number of other Church priests and officials were involved, and so in order to forestall what might well amount to a crippling scandal, they swept the entire thing under the rug, while expunging from the Body of Christ those offensively guilty parties.
Aleksandre benefited from his silence, of course, but it left him with a guilt he never entirely came to terms with. He had nothing to feel guilty for, and yet he did. He should have done more, taken more action, regardless of the immediate consequences to his family. Now, it was too late. The game played on, and Khoska looked with great despair upon the form of his son-in-law, his gaping mouth wide open as the blood and gore that caked the wall behind him yet moved inexorably toward the floor. He knew well that he was merely looking upon the remains of the latest victim, but, unfortunately, probably not the last one.
“Why, Voroslav, did you do these things?” he asked. “What possessed you, and why did you do this, the most unforgivable of all sins? Why?”
Khoska jerked at the sound of the gun dropping finally from Moloku’s hand, producing as it did so a thud on the pristine, waxed hardwood floor. He saw then for the first time the white handkerchief by which he held the gun and pulled the trigger. Then, the thought occurred to him that sent waves of terror cascading through his body.
“That was not your gun, was it, Voroslav?”
He sat for twenty minutes, praying as he finally started to cry, until he heard the sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs. Even through the sounds of the fresh air circulating from the tanks in the adjoining room, Khoska could tell they were too heavy to be the footsteps of Dorothy, who tended to walk much like a cat, a maddening habit shared by her daughter Marnie. Someone was walking, actually tromping up the steps, slowly but surely, as Khoska, now in mortal terror for his life, hid within the adjoining room, squeezing uncomfortably between two instrument panels that he realized barely hid him from view as he gathered his flowing robe tightly around him.
He heard the beep produced by the electronic eye, and realized someone would have to grant admittance from within the sealed off room. Unfortunately, that was no deterrent to the person who waited outside, who proceeded to kick the door down.
“Stop that, what are you trying to do?” Aleksandre heard a female voice say, and soon enough, the door slid open.
“Uh-oh,” he heard the voice of the man say. “Guess what? We are too fucking late. I guess he took you up on your little offer.”
So-there was two people here this night, Khoska realized, and then he heard a female gasp.
“Oh, so now you’re going to cry,” the man said. “Come on, lay your head on here and cry those eyes out, get it out of your system.”
“I thought it would be easy,” the female voice said. “Now that he’s actually done it, and I’ve seen it”-
Marnie, Khoska realized, was the woman. She was crying, and Khoska peered briefly out, wondering what would happen next.
“Come on, you know he’s better off,” the man said. “I’m actually glad for your sake he had the guts to do it, to spare you the ordeal of having to do it yourself, or rather have me do it for you. It’s for the best.”
Khoska soon no longer heard the sounds of Marnie’s stifled crying, as the man continued consoling her.
“The folders should be in that end table over there,” she said. ‘Let’s get them and get the hell out of here.”
“Yep here they be,” he heard the man say. “Oh, shit, Marnie, somebody else has been here. Look, there is an open bottle of port, and some cheese. I thought you said your dad quit drinking a long time ago.”
“Maybe he wanted something to steady his nerves,” she suggested.
“Uh-uh, something just ain’t right here,” the man continued. “Look at this shit, his fucking eyes has been closed. Somebody shut them. I’ve seen enough people die I know for a fact when you die at least from a gunshot to the head there ain’t no way you eyes be shut, you be staring out into space, the great beyond, that be just the way it be. I’m telling you, somebody have either be here or they still be here. If they left, we had to just miss him, cos I’m telling you he just did this shit about thirty minutes ago. Look at this, he’s still a little warm. As cool as this room is he couldn’t have done it too long ago.”
“Hell, what are you, some kind of detective or something?” Marnie asked in what Khoska took as a teasing tone of voice.
“Well, come to think of it,” the man replied, “I do wants to be your private dick.”
From that point on, Khoska heard nothing but the sound of breathing, and the terrible thought occurred to him that Marnie, his own granddaughter, was engaged in what seemed to be activity leading toward a tryst, in the presence of the corpse of her own dead father.
“Come on now, girl, let’s get a room, this is weird shit,” the man weakly objected.
“No, fuck me here,” Marnie insisted. Khoska gasped, and immediately hoped the air circulation devices that now surrounded him would serve to cover the unfortunate sound. Fortunately, both Marnie and the man now breathed so loudly she doubted they would hear him if he pounded the wall. He could not help himself, he had to see, not because he wanted to view the act of his granddaughter’s sexual shenanigans, but he realized this might be the only opportunity he might have to see exactly with whom she was. It was obviously a person who was involved with Marnie in some criminal activity, one that would bode no good for him if they discovered him here. From the sound of things, Marnie brought this man up here for the express purpose of ending her own father’s life, and he had no illusions she would feel any qualms about ending his.
He carefully approached the curtain that blocked the view from one room to the other and peered carefully out the curtain. He was relatively sure of their distraction in the face of the groaning, grunting, and inadvertent swearing from the both of them, as the hardwood floor seemed to shake under the both of them. In fact, it shook under Khoska as well.
He looked out carefully to see the form of the large black man, who seemed to be almost three times Marnie’s size, and realized he was a man whose picture Lynette showed him, not long before she died, in a newspaper advertisement. His name was Dwayne Letcher, but he went by the stage name of Toby Da Pimp. He was a hardcore criminal, a former member of the now defunct street gang known as the Seventeenth Pulse.
According to Lynette, the late Brad Marlowe brutally assaulted him at the funeral of Marshall Crenshaw, after which the rap artist cancelled a number of appearances. Marlowe had almost crushed his throat. Now, he certainly seemed well enough, as Khoska, having seen enough of the sickening sight of his own granddaughter’s debauchery, once more withdrew into the relative privacy of the little room in which he planned to remain for some time, despite the urge he now felt to use the bathroom.
After a number of minutes that seemed more like hours to Khoska, the incident came to it’s conclusion with Toby cursing fiercely and then collapsing on the floor beside Marnie.
“Damn, that was the best fuck I’ve had in a long time, maybe ever-especially from you,” she said. “Hell, let’s just keep him here.”
“Yeah, right, let’s do that,” he said. “Hey, I just remembered-what about your mom?”
“Oh for God’s sake Toby I wasn’t serious.” She said.
“Uh, I wasn’t either, I was just saying, again, what about your mom? Do you reckon she’s there by now?”
“Hell, not this quick,” she said. “Her flight to Baltimore wasn’t scheduled for until about thirty minutes ago, and I doubt it’s even off the ground yet. Just the same, I’m going to call him now.”
“Hey, lover, your so-called girlfriend should be on her way,” Marnie said into the phone that rested right by her father’s corpse. “Be sure you give it to her good for me. I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow,” Toby said after she hung up. “Come on, let’s get moving, we gots to find that other shit before we get out of here, and we also gots to make sure there ain’t nobody else in this house. Look at this shit. He wrapped the fucking gun with a handkerchief before he shot himself. Ain’t that the pits. He had it bad, didn’t he?”
“Hey, you know something, I bet he doesn’t have a single fingerprint on that gun,” Marnie said.
“Well, so fucking what?”
“So, if we take the handkerchief it would look like a murder disguised as suicide, right?”
“Uh, yeah, and you’re the first one they would be asking about that.”
“Yeah, but you seem to have forgotten whose gun this is, whose gun I actually stole this from, and who it is registered to. In fact, it’s one of his oldest personal firearms.”
Toby remained silent for the time being, as though digesting the information and the implications thereof.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he said.
“Yep, I’m tired of his shit,” Marnie replied, “and you want him off your ass too. What better way to accomplish that? It will just look like a man killing his lover’s husband, the oldest story in the world. Well, one of the oldest stories anyway. If we are lucky, they will question him right about the time he is ready to dispose of her body. Come on-let’s go look for the shit. You search the living room downstairs and I’ll look in the bitch’s bedroom.”
“I keep telling you, now, if you’re going to hang with Da Pimp, that’s”-
“Yeah, I got it, I’ll search the beeyathch’s bedroom,” Marnie said.
“That be better”, Toby replied with a chuckle as the two of them finally exited the room, the door to which shut automatically behind them.
Khoska promptly removed himself from the confines of what once was a walk-in closet, before its conversion to an air-filtration center, and quietly yet quickly walked to the bathroom. He pissed as quietly as possible, worrying about the sound of it hitting the water in the bowl. It was a foolish thought, and Khoska knew very well if he was going to survive this night, he had to control his nerves. All he needed now was for April Sandusky to arise from the commode. He had to keep his nerve, he thought repeatedly.
“Keep your nerve, Aleksandre Khoska,” he muttered to himself, until he finally finished.
He walked quickly to the phone, picked up the receiver, and hit redial. The phone answered after three rings, and Khoska heard the familiar voice of Detective James Berry.
“You have reached the residence of James Berry and family,” he said. “At the tone kindly leave your name and number, and I’ll return your call, if you really, really want me to. Go on, punk, make my day.”
Khoska put the receiver down. Everything was finally coming together for him, as he frantically looked for the cell-phone number of his daughter Dorothy. He found it, and then he hurriedly dialed it from Voroslav’s phone. Although Dorothy never answered, at length he got once more the recorded message from her answering service.
“Dorothy, this is your father, and it is very important that you listen carefully to what I am about to say. Voroslav took his own life right in front of my eyes. Your own life is also in danger, from Marnie and Detective James Berry, so please avoid both of them. That is all I can say for now. I am in hiding, as my own life is in danger. Marnie is here with a black man, a rap artist named Toby the pimp, I believe. Go to the church and wait until I return, and then I will tell you everything.”
He hung up the phone, and then treaded cautiously to the door, where he placed his left ear while cupping his right ear with one hand to block out the sound of the machinery in the room. He could hear the sounds of walking and some talking, but it seemed to be at a distance. He returned to the phone, as he hastily extracted his wallet. Going through it, he found the card with the phone number. He extracted the phone and then walked over toward the one small window. He could see out of it enough to note there was indeed a balcony, from which Khoska hoped there yet would remain a set of emergency steps leading to the street below. He dialed the number. The phone rung several times before a weary voice answered.
“Phelps here, who is it?” asked the photographer.
“It is father Khoska,” Aleksandre replied. “I don’t have much time, so I cannot talk long. I have a favor to ask of you, and I also have a good deal of information I am sure you would be interested in, information concerning Grace, and a good many other things.”
“Yeah, okay, but what are you doing in Chicago?” Phelps asked him.
“Right now I am waiting for you to come and get me, and hoping it won’t take you a long time to get here.”
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