Paul Christopher: Michelangelo_s Notebook

It was, without a doubt, the horrible den of a madman. The crumbling plaster and ancient floral wallpaper were covered with newspaper clippings, drawings, pictures from magazines, annotated maps, scrawled letters in script so small it could barely be read, reproductions of paintings and here and there the broken pieces of plaster or plastic saints and angels, glued, tacked, nailed or simply placed in niches dug with spoons into the soft spongy walls themselves. It was a museum dedicated to the insane meanderings of an obsessed heart, the obsession impossible to penetrate or analyze except that it concerned the old war and people who had taken part in it, artists, art and the deaths of a hundred nobodies in a score of countries and most of all the life and times of a single hawk-nosed man in steel spectacles wearing the robes and mitred headpiece of a pope. The man from Rome had lost his faith long ago and sometimes found himself agreeing with the cynics that man had been placed on the earth to do no more than eat, fornicate and excrete but being here he knew there was something else: this man had been created to prove that hell existed. This place was a petri dish meant to provide a culture of the damned.

There were more rooms than he would have expected, as though perhaps two or maybe even three of the decrepit tenement apartments had been joined together. The only thing new in the place was the metal-clad front door and the locks that guarded it, easily picked. The kitchen lay in the middle of the apartment in the old-fashioned style with a pass-through into the small, dark parlor beyond. It was a horror, the chipped enamel sink resting on its own plumbing, open without cabinetry, stacked with crusted plastic plates and bowls and cups, a jar of grape jelly open and moldy on the counter along with a box of cornflakes, a soured pint carton of milk and a half-empty mug of coffee. A choked twist of old-fashioned flypaper hung from the overhead light fixture. Reaching up with thumb and forefinger the false priest tried the dangling pull cord but nothing happened.

He went into the parlor. An old rag rug, brown and curling at one side. A drawing in ink directly on the left wall: Christ on a cloud above a grotesque Calvary below and words beneath the triple crucifixion:

A closer look and the man saw that the figures on the crosses were women, bleeding from breasts and eyes and that there were strange inscriptions in faint winding circles above Christ’s head, vague and indecipherable.

There was a short hall and then another door, old and scarred but painted bright, fresh, robin’s egg blue. Inscribed on the door was a single word:

The Old Testament word for “Righteousness,” one of the thousand names of God.

The man from Rome eased back the slide of the Beretta with his free hand, took a breath and held it. He pushed open the door and went into the room beyond, the end of his journey. He reached up to shade his eyes with one hand, almost blinded by the light.

Behind them in James J. Walker Park Finn and Valentine could faintly hear the sound of children jumping rope, singing a counting song that became faster as they skipped.

“I am the Baby Jesus,

Marching to the cross.

I am the Baby Jesus.

My daddy is the Boss.”

“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” said Finn, sitting on the bench beside Valentine. Between his feet was a bag of equipment. They were both dressed casually in running gear. It was past seven and dusk was falling, the rush hour traffic on Hudson Street thinning.

“You’re the one who went in there today and took the keys.” Valentine smiled. “Besides, if we want to bring this thing to some kind of conclusion that will satisfy the authorities we have to have evidence. Right now everything’s circumstantial, Internet paranoia and conspiracy theory.”

“I just wanted to find out who killed Peter.”

“We will,” Valentine offered. “I promise you.” He kept his eyes on the house on the far side of St. Luke’s Place. The last lights went out and a moment later Hugo Boss appeared, locking the door behind him. The tiny Panasonic D-snap camera Finn had carried in her shoulder bag earlier in the day had given Valentine all the information he needed about the inside of the interior of the building including the name on the security panel just inside the front door. It appeared to be a relatively simple ADT system with a telephone line connection to a central security center. The system was almost ten years old and a single call to Barrie Kornitzer had given him the bypass code for the system within five minutes. Finn’s theft of the key ring had simplified things even more; after copying them at a locksmith’s shop on Carmine Street, she used the beeper on the ring of originals to find the car the keys belonged to, eventually finding a Toyota Camry on Varick Street that answered the call. She simply tossed the keys on the floor underneath the front seat and then manually re-locked the car behind her. When the owner eventually discovered them he or she would assume the keys had been left behind when exiting the car earlier in the day.

“I am the Baby Jesus.

I see every single sin.

I am the Baby Jesus

And I always win.”

Valentine checked his watch and then the darkened brownstone across the way. Nothing moved except the leaves in the trees. The traffic hummed a block away. Finn could faintly recall a few lines from an Edgar Allan Poe sonnet about some spooky dead love. She tried not to think about what lay beneath her, buried deep under the soil of the park. Old secrets. Older bones.

“Time to go.”

“All right.”

“I told Barrie most of what we know. If I haven’t called him by midnight he’ll let a friend of his in the Bureau know what we found.”

“That’s a comfort,” said Finn with a hollow laugh. They both stood up and headed across the street. Behind them, lost in the gloom, the children skipped.

They stepped into the dark house. Ahead of them and to the right was the ADT panel. A small, angry red light pulsed. Valentine punched in a set of numbers. The red light reverted to green.

“That was easy enough,” Finn whispered.

“This isn’t some high-tech heist movie,” Valentine answered. “After a while people get careless and they don’t bother with the basics.” He shrugged. “Besides, why would anyone break into a place like this? As far as anyone knows they’re just a bunch of paper pushers.”

“Maybe that’s all they are,” said Finn. “Maybe we’re wrong.”

“You said you thought your receptionist in the expensive suit was wearing a gun.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Then we’re not wrong. You don’t need a gun to guard papers.”

Valentine paused for a moment to examine the painting behind the desk. “You do need a gun to guard something like that, however.”

They moved quickly through the reception room and down the hallway into the open area at the center of the house. Finn dropped the equipment bag on one of the desks and slid open the zipper. Valentine took out a heavy flashlight and switched it on, panning the beam around the room. He saw nothing any different from what the camera had shown him: a large rectangular windowless room with a flight of stairs against the right-hand wall. There were three desks and a row of filing cabinets. A doorway at the end of the room led into a comfortable conference area with a long table and a half dozen chairs. There was a painting over the mantel of an old-fashioned fireplace to the left. It was too dark to see clearly; a muted landscape of some sort. Another door led to the rear of the house. It was locked. Finn stepped forward with her set of keys and tried them until she found one that fit. She turned it and the door popped open. They stepped through.