George Chesbro: Two Songs This Archangel Sings

I hung up the receiver, then walked back to the windows. I pulled the drapes shut over the huge expanse of glass, then once again went back to the phone and called my answering service. There were no messages. There was a pad and pencil hanging next to the directory, and I wrote Veil a brief note explaining that it was me who had shut off the lights and pulled the drapes, and asking him to call me whenever he got in. Then I picked up my gym bag and walked to the exit. I pulled open the sliding door, started to step into the elevator-and stopped. I knew that even if I went home, it was doubtful whether I would sleep; I would be up all night worrying about Veil, waiting for the phone to ring, searching for answers to the questions that filled the loft.

Even if Veil had been in such a rush that he had neglected to check to make certain the downstairs door was locked, it still did not explain why the loft door had been left open, or why every light in the place had been turned on full blast and left burning.

Unless the open doors and burning lights had been meant as some kind of a message to me. An invitation? A warning? Was it conceivable, I wondered, that Veil had literally meant to "shed light" on something? If so, what? His absence?

I decided it was an absurd notion, considering the fact that it would have been far simpler and more logical, not to mention cheaper, simply to call me, or at least to leave a note. But Veil had to be in some kind of trouble and, whether or not he had meant to send me some kind of message, there seemed to be absolutely nothing I could do about it.

Except hang around and wait to see what might happen. I slid the door shut, then turned the rest of the lights down to a dim glow. I went over to the mats, lay down, and rested my head on my gym bag. And I waited.

I awoke tired and stiff, with a milky, blurred January dawn seeping into my face through the skylight over my head. I knew Veil was not there; even if I had missed the opening and closing of the steel door, he would certainly have covered me with something, if not woken me up. It was cold in the loft, and I was shivering. Wishing I had worn my parka, I zipped up the jacket of my warm-up suit, pulled the hood over my head, then jogged in place a few minutes to get my circulation going before pulling back the drapes on a gray, cheerless morning that looked pregnant with snow.

In the early morning light Veil Kendry's vaguely menacing seascape seemed even eerier and more otherworldly, like some great sign posted to warn me that I was in a place where I did not belong.

There was zone heating in the loft, and the living quarters turned out to be warmer than the work area. In the kitchen, I went to the stove and put on a kettle of water to boil. After making myself a large mug of instant coffee, I unzipped my jacket and went to the telephone extension next to the sink. Once again I called all the hospital emergency rooms, and once again found that Veil wasn't in any of them; I hadn't expected that he would be, but thought it a necessary base to touch. Next, I called my service, but the only message that had been left was from a panicky student who feared-with good cause-that he'd failed my course. I didn't bother calling Garth. I assumed Garth would have gotten back to me if Veil's name had turned up on an arrest sheet, and I no longer considered it probable that Veil's trouble was with the police; it wouldn't explain the open loft and burning lights. Veil's problem, whatever it was, had to be more serious than one of his periodic run-ins with the cops, and his absence was beginning to feel like an oppressive weight growing ever heavier on me. Uninvited, I had entered more than a painter's loft; I had walked into a situation I was not certain how to walk away from.

Picking up my coffee mug, I went back out into the work area, went to the wooden equipment box next to the mats, and opened the lid. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold in this part of the loft went through me as I looked down into the box. Veil's oversize gym bag was missing, along with the half dozen shuriken he kept there, two throwing knives, and his nunchaku - two polished, rock-hard sticks of mahogany joined by a six-inch chain, a fearsome and deadly bonecrusher in the hands of a martial arts master like Veil Kendry.

Closing the lid, I leaned back against the box, sipped at my coffee, and tried to think. Wherever Veil was and whatever he was doing was his business, I thought, not mine. The missing weapons indicated that Veil was taking care of that business, and my chief concern should be for whoever it was Veil had gone to do business with. It had nothing to do with me. Veil would have asked for my help if he needed it, and he hadn't.

Or had he …?

Aside from locking up his loft and turning off his lights, what the hell did he expect me to do?

My coffee had gone cold. I set the mug down on top of the equipment box, glanced nervously at my watch, then went across the loft to the wall where the seascape hung. Walking slowly toward the opposite end, I carefully examined each canvas in the mosaic, thinking there might be some answer hidden in one of them. There wasn't-at least none that I could find. Viewed individually and at close range, each canvas indeed became "abstract," and even the menacing figures beneath the surface of the sea sank from sight. I could find no indication of anything in the individual canvases except for the fact that Veil Kendry's imagination and artistic talent seemed as unique to him as his almost superhuman fighting skills. Searching for my friend in the loft he had vacated was getting to be most frustrating, and it seemed increasingly apparent that I was on the errand of a fool.

Adding to my frustration was a sense of mounting time pressure. In slightly less than an hour and a half I was supposed to deliver a lecture-and not just any lecture, and not to students. As far as my career in academia was concerned, it was probably the most important speech I would ever make. There were police chiefs and criminologists in town from all over the world to attend a four-day symposium on serial murderers under the auspices of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The keynote address was being delivered at my university because it had the only auditorium large enough to accommodate all of the people expected to attend. In ninety minutes a few hundred people, including the university chancellor and the head of my department, were going to be sitting in their seats in the huge lecture hall, staring up at the lectern and expecting to see-me.

Some research I'd done on the minds and motives of serial murderers, published in a half dozen monographs in various professional journals, was now considered seminal, and possibly even predictive. As a result of those papers, I'd been invited to deliver the keynote address and was expected to discuss my most recent work. It was a signal honor, the kind of thing that allows one to advance rapidly in the academic world, an intense focus of attention on one's self and work for which most professors would sacrifice a year's sabbatical. I should have been home eating a good breakfast, studying my lecture notes, and trying to relax. Instead I was unshaven and grungy from spending the night on a gym mat, dressed in old, patched sweats and worn, dirty sneakers. If I got lucky and found a cab at this hour of the morning, or if I left immediately and sprinted to the subway, I might just make it to my apartment in time to shave, shower, put on my one good suit, and get to the university with a minute or two to spare before I was scheduled to begin speaking.

Turning back toward the far end of the loft, I caught a wink of light high up on the bank of windows. Puzzled, I moved a few feet to my left, keeping my eye on the spot, then realized with a start that what I was looking at was a bullet hole. I had not seen it the night before because of the darkness and would probably not have seen it at all if I had not been standing in the right place and looking up at the right angle. The fact that the glass had not been shattered indicated to me that the weapon used had been small bore, high velocity. I could now see that the glass was thicker than it first appeared and optically distorting. It could explain why the bullet had missed its mark.