Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

I shook my head, looking over the apse and the empty pews. This place-this place that had been so important to me once. Now it just seemed like a hiding place for frightened old women, somewhere restful they could go to die, away from the crap and holler of life.

I closed my eyes again. I closed my hand into a fist, hoping to feel Christ's hand in mine. I felt nothing. I forced out a prayer.

Show me the way, Lord. Something terrible is happening-or is going to happen-I don't know which-something terrible is happening to my brain or is going to happen to this city-I don't know, I don't know which-maybe there's some kind of attack in the works-or maybe it's all me, maybe what happened to my mother is happening to me now, maybe even you are just some flash in my brain, some electrochemical kind of

… Ach! Show me the way. Show me the way.

He answered by cell phone. Hey, it's the modern world, what can I tell you? I'd forgotten to turn the phone off and just at that moment, it sang out with a sort of shrill, gleeful rudeness, the way a mischievous demon might fart in a place like this. The two old ladies swung around at me, their faces wrinkled and wrathful and dark. I made an apologetic smile and unwound from my pew. I hurried up the aisle and pushed out the doors, back into the city.

I answered the phone as I stepped onto the sidewalk. I could barely hear the voice on the other end above the grind and rumble of a bus passing on its way uptown. I stuck a finger in my free ear.

I said, "I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you. What'd you say?"

The voice was a man's voice. It was featureless, nondescript: "Mr. Piersall will meet you in an hour," it said, "in the Ale House downtown."

The Ale House was one of the oldest pubs in the city. Sawdustt covered the floor. Old newspapers and photos of dead Irishmen covered the walls. Left of the door as you came in, there was a brass-and-mahogany bar that probably predated the Draft Riots. Dusty bottles crowded the ancient shelves behind it. Above the bottles, there were more photos and more headlines, plus a mounted fish that looked like it might've been caught by James, son of Zebedee. Come to think of it, the bartender-with a face that had collapsed into a mass of frowning wrinkles-looked like he might've been there with James at the time. He was swiping down the top of the bar with a rag. There was an old pile of clothes in front of him that turned out to be a man drinking beer.

When I walked in, the barkeep took one look at me and tilted his head toward an archway. I went through the archway into the tavern's main room.

There were no windows here. The ceiling lights were dim as candles and had the same yellowish glow. The wooden tables were crowded against the walls left and right. Between them was the open floor with the sawdust on it streaked by passing footsteps. The place could've looked the same a hundred years ago. Only the paper napkins and glass bottles of ketchup on every table served as a jarring reminder of the modern world.

It was still early-before lunchtime. At first glance, the room seemed empty. Then I looked again at a potbellied woodstove whispering and snickering in one far corner. A lone drinker sat hunched at the table just beyond the stove, his back to me. He seemed, in that setting, like a figure in an old painting or photograph, a thing of more meaning than substance, a representative, say, of the Urban Man who carries the nation's lonely vastness inside himself, a symbol of that peculiar American solitude one finds in midnight diners and daylight bars.

I walked across the sawdust until I was standing over him. He raised his face to me. It was Piersall.

I'd seen him in the hectic crush that morning, of course, but it was different now, quiet and close like this. He had the glamour of TV on him, that camera magic that made him seem embossed on the flat facade of life, raised up from it, more real than real. His face was like a living billboard of itself-and not just his face, but the face beneath his face, the dashing features of Admiral Augustus Kane, distorted by bloat and hidden under wrinkles, but still glowing within somehow, still there.

He had his hand wrapped around a mug of beer. There was a shot of whiskey by it. They weren't his first of the morning, I could tell. His fat cheeks were flushed, his blue eyes hectic. A blood vessel throbbed on his mottled nose. Not quite noon, and he was already half in the tank.

"You Harrow?" he said. There was that voice, too-the same as it always had been: terse, rhythmic, distinctive, the admiral's voice.

I nodded down at him, tight and quiet in his starry presence.

"Have a seat. Have a seat," he said. He gestured to the chair across from him. He looked back over his shoulder. Startled me by shouting out, "Charlie! Two more!" Then he jacked the shot and finished the beer in two quick motions, his right hand flashing back and forth between the glasses.

I sat down. "Thanks for seeing me," I said.

He didn't answer. He looked me over, studied me, openly, not trying to hide it, cocking one outgrown eyebrow and running a sharp, narrow gaze up and down me. It gave him the aspect of a keen observer of men, a man who could peer right into your heart. As the moment went on and uncomfortably on, I began to get the feeling he meant me to think that about him. I began to suspect it was a part he was playing: the Keen Observer of Men. I'm a guy you can't put anything past, he seemed to be telling me. Don't even try.

Charlie-the wrinkly Bartender from Ages Past-clapped mugs of beer and whiskey shots on the table in front of us. He swept Piersall's empties onto his tray and retreated to the front room.

I put my hand on the mug, grateful to have something to fiddle with while Piersall stared. Piersall went on staring, waiting until the barkeep was gone. Then he said, "You've been. Following the news. I take it," in that syncopated way of his.

I wasn't sure what he meant: news of his canceled show? His arrest? The arraignment this morning? "I saw the news last night," I said. "Not today though."

He gave a snort, a sort of man-of-the-world, seen-it-all snort. I got the feeling this was a performance, too, another part he was playing: the Man of the World Who Has Seen It All.

"The news," he said. "The media! It's like Alice in Wonderland -only without the Wonderland. They have this-story they want to tell. This nonsense story. 'Angry TV Star Goes Nuts.' That's the story and if you challenge that-if you're brave enough, if you're -sane enough-to challenge that-then-oh, then they go at you. Tooth and nail. Hammer and tongs. Off with his head. You must be a drunk, a madman, a…" He waved one pudgy hand about dramatically, as if to conjure the word he was looking for out of the air. And he did: "A has-been." He lifted his shot glass to his lips, and added before he drank, "Which is rich, coming from a bunch of never-weres."

Then he did drink. He downed the shot whole and followed it with a knock at his beer.

I could only watch him, bemused. This was not what I'd expected. He didn't seem to care about the note I'd given to his lawyer. He didn't question me about it or try to find out more about me or what I wanted. He didn't seem interested in that at all. He didn't even seem interested in himself, in his situation. I mean, after the night he'd had-and the morning he'd had-I would've thought he'd want to at least try to appear sober in public. But no. He just showed himself as he was: a bitter and blasted man, a sort of Ancient Mariner with nothing left of life but the story he had to tell. And yet… and yet, even as I thought that, I thought: That little speech he'd just made, the laconic drama of it, the staccato syncopation-tooth and nail, hammer and tongs, off with his head. It was classic Patrick Piersall stuff, wasn't it? It could have been written for him. It could've been written for Augustus Kane. Was it possible that this, too, was a role he was playing: The Bitter, Blasted Man Who Had Yet a Story to Tell?