Richard Montanari: Kiss Of Evil

The man is tall and thin, red-haired. He wears a cheap overcoat, sturdy black lace-up shoes. In the stale light thrown from the caged bulb on the wall in the underground service tunnel linking the Cain Manor and Cain Towers apartments, he looks tired and wan and deeply etched with worry. A man running on coffee, sugar, animal fat, liquor.

A cop.

“Evening,” I say, the barrel of the twenty-two up against Mary’s back. We stop walking. We are now about ten feet from the man.

“Evening,” the red-haired man replies.

I feel Mary tense, about to bolt. “What’s the weather like out there?”

“Getting pretty bad,” the man says, turning his body slightly away from me, the sort of move a left-hander would make if he were going to unsnap the holster of a gun on his left hip, a weapon hiding beneath his coat. His voice echoes slightly in the concrete tunnel. Above us, a water pipe clangs.

“Looks like we’re in for the evening,” I say. “Wife’s a little under the weather. Had to leave the party next door. Thank God for this walk-through, eh?”

“Oh yeah.” The cop takes a step forward. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

“Like I said, she’s a little nauseous. Bad shrimp or something, you know? Can’t trust those bargain basement caterers.”

“If you don’t mind sir, I’d like to hear it from her. Now, ma’am, are you-”

Suddenly, the crackle of two-way radio traffic bursts from inside the red-haired man’s coat.

Our eyes meet again. And we are linked forever.

Before he can make his move I step behind Mary, lock an arm around her throat, put the barrel of the gun to her temple. The redheaded cop freezes.

I say: “Put your hands behind your head and interlace your fingers. Officer.”

Slowly, reluctantly, he does. But he does not take his eyes from mine. His eyes are a deep green, unreadable, stoic in their calm. I know that this man can do me great harm.

“You have your handcuffs with you?” I ask.

The cop just stares.

I say: “Cuff yourself to the drainpipe.”

“No.”

I cock my weapon. Mary goes rigid beneath my hand. “Beg your pardon?”

“I’m not going to do it.”

“And why is that?”

The cop looks at me with a weariness I have never before seen in a man his age. A resignation of soul. “Because I’m a beat-up cop, pal. You hear me? A used-up old flatfoot. Letting you handcuff me is a nightmare far worse than anything you could do with that gun. Believe this.”

“Do you think I won’t kill her?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” the cop says. “I think you’re going to kill her. I think you’re going to kill me, too. You’re just not going to do it to me while I’m cuffed to a drainpipe. I’m leaving my son more than that. Sorry.”

I do not want to hear anymore of this.

I shoot him three times.

He stumbles backward and goes down, hard, flat on his back.

Mary shrieks. I cover her mouth. I put the gun to her head until the reality of her own death becomes apparent in her eyes. I lead her to the service elevator, then hit the button with my elbow. The car soon arrives.

I hear fire engines in the distance.

As we step inside I can also hear the traffic on the cop’s radio. The elevator doors close just as a woman’s voice says:

“Greg… Greg… you’d better get out… all hell is starting to break loose out here… Bobby’s down… repeat… Bobby’s down…”

He looks so ordinary, Paris thinks. Better than average looks, he had thought when the man had played the part of Julian Cruz. Charming and easygoing.

He had shaken hands with a monster and not known it.

But now, seeing him sitting in a chair on the computer screen, in the upper-right-hand frame of four, he looks ordinary. In the upper-left-hand frame, Paris sees himself, sitting on the chair, live, courtesy of the small digital camera clipped to the monitor and the track lights overhead. In the lower right is the old video of himself on the steps of the Justice Center.

“Mr. del Blanco,” Paris says.

“Christian, please, detective,” the man says.

“Call this off.”

“Did you enjoy your hot dog? Tasty?”

“Call this off.”

“Too late for that.”

“Let me ask you something,” Paris says, trying to sound a lot more in control than he really is. The magic mushroom is still making his mind take wing in a thousand directions. “I understand why you’re after me. I even understand why you went after Mike Ryan. But why the Levertovs?”

Christian reaches off camera. He brings back a trio of photographs. To Paris, they look like pictures of Christian coming and going from La Botanica Macumba. “Can you believe these? Clandestine pictures of me.” He laughs, holds them closer to the camera. “Turns out old Ike wasn’t just selling kosher hot dogs on that corner, detective. He was one of these block-watch people. I’d seen him around the corner a few times, passed the time of day with him, even met his wife. But about the fifth time I visited the botanica, he started to become suspicious, it seems, began taking pictures. Guess I wasn’t the right breed. Believe me, the minute a voodoo murder and a sketch of the suspect showed up in the press he would have been on the phone. I needed time. Old Ike just meddled in the wrong man’s business. Edith made the mistake of loving him.” Christian puts the photos aside, leans forward, adds: “The important question is, how did you feel?”

“What do you mean?”

“To be a suspect. Even for a minute. How did it feel when people, people you’ve known for years, looked you straight in the eye and thought you were a fiend? Did the shame of it all make you want to kill yourself? Make you want to get drunk and set yourself afire? Hmm? Show the world that Paris is, indeed, burning?”

In his mind’s eye Paris sees Bobby’s face, and how only ninety-nine percent of it believed him. “I know who my friends are. They know the truth.”

“Truth,” Christian says, wistfully. He reaches out of frame, returns with a sterling flask, sips from it. “Amanita muscaria. Very potent. Have you ever tried it?”

Paris remains silent.

“Where did it take you on its brief, exhilarating voyage?”

Dad, Paris thinks. “You wouldn’t begin to understand.”

“Oh, I bet I would. The Hinchi Indians say it invokes ancient memories. What are your ancient memories, detective?” Christian leans forward, taps a few keys. Instantly, in the lower-right-hand frame, a picture appears. A picture of Frank Paris. A picture that was in the newspaper next to his father’s obituary. The anger rises in Paris’s chest. His training pushes it back. Barely. He now knows what triggered his hallucination.

Christian says, “The first thing you should know is that I am in the very next room.” On-screen, Paris sees Christian walk out of frame. Then, faintly: “Hear this?”

Paris hears a muffled pounding from behind him. “Yes.”

Christian walks back into frame. “As I’m sure you know by now, you have only one bullet. In your life, right now, that bullet is currency. How will you spend it? The lock on the door? You could shoot it off, but then your gun would be empty and I would kill you.”

Before Paris can stop himself, he looks back at the picture of his father, thinks about the photograph in this butcher’s hands. He says: “Fuck you.”

Christian stares into the camera, motionless, as if a DVD had been put on freeze frame. Then, in a smear, he bolts out of frame, and, for twenty seconds the screen is a gray, out-of-focus blur. Then, the point of view changes to a longer shot, and Paris can now see that, in the bright white room next door there is an altar not unlike the chantry in Evangelina Cruz’s basement. But this one is larger, covered in a huge, brilliant white cloth. There seem to be candles everywhere, starring up the lens of the digital camera. On the steps of the altar Paris sees dried animal claws outlined against the cloud white sheet. He sees earthen cruets bearing ancient symbols. He sees a half-dozen brass plates bearing cones of incense, stacks of copper coins.