The Lucifer Messiah (11 page)

Her head turned at every noise, aware of her surroundings like a she-wolf. She stepped slowly along the wet concrete, squinting to see.

A voice as slippery as the floor rattled her from behind.

“Good evening,
madam.”
There was a note of irony attached to the last, accented word.

The voice carried a sinister tone. Charybdis shivered as she turned to face it.

“Is that you, Scylla?” she asked, still unable to see through the darkness.

“Call me Rat, everyone else does these days.”

The forked-tongued speaker stepped out from the steam-girded shadow of a steel column. Though small and
wiry, he appeared threatening nonetheless. The olive skin of his face was partially obscured by his dangling bangs. They hung over his eyes and drooped down to his nose, a feature that by its length and shape suggested the root of his unflattering nickname.

“You're late. I trust that you haven't changed your mind,” Rat said.

Charybdis did not smile, but she neared, and she removed her overcoat, despite the cold. Rat, or Scylla as Charybdis called him, breathed deeply as the other came closer.

“Not even a question. How could you ask me that, after all these years?” Charybdis answered.

“It has been so long,” he said. “For ages now it seems I have wandered. Ever alone, an endless hunt my only purpose; thoughts of returning to you my only motivation.”

Before another word could be exchanged, Charybdis closed the final gap between them, and they kissed.

It was a long kiss, the kind between lovers who haven't kissed for so long they've almost forgotten how. It went on until it became two kisses, then three, or four, until finally one merged into another.

But no one was counting.

Sean's arm was still in the makeshift sling, and Vince had thrown his old coat over him like cloak. With the former cop at the lead, Sean trudged out of the doorway into the early morning light. It was the first time he'd seen the sun
in days. The dawn burned his eyes.

Maggie's hair was wrapped in a neckerchief. Most of the rest of her face was secluded behind oversized sunglasses.

“What makes you think Calabrese can't find my place too?” she asked.

Sean's breathing was labored as he stood there.

“I don't think he can't find it,” Vince replied, pausing to scratch his scruffy chin. “But I'm sure they're on to me. Relocating should buy us some time. That's all.”

Her car was parked about a block away, and she hurried past them to bring it around. Just then Vince realized that they should have waited inside while she did that. Any time out in the open could be dangerous.

It wasn't long before his instincts proved correct.

Sean coughed, negotiating the row of steps down to the sidewalk. Vince braced him on his good arm. Neither noticed the men approaching from across the street.

“She's pullin' the car around,” Vince assured him as Sean drifted in and out of consciousness. He was as pale as a ghost.

Three men in dark coats stepped around the cars parked in front of the pair. Vince recognized them right away. It was Paulie. There was a small revolver held close to his pocket.

“Good to see ya Mr. Mulcahy. I don't know how we missed you last time. But then again, it looks like maybe we didn't miss, if you know what I mean,” Paulie said. His two associates lined up on either side of Vince and Sean.

Sean was able to nod, barely. But Vince answered for him.

“What the hell is this Paulie?”

“Sorry, Vinny. It ain't nothin' personal, you know that. The boss has been lookin' for your friend here.”

Without being told, the Vig gently reached inside Vince's coat. The big man relieved him of the pistol in his shoulder holster.

“Tell you what Vin'. I don't want no trouble with you. But this guy here killed one of our boys the other night, and we gotta take him in,” Paulie continued. “You walk away right now, your name never comes up. Except maybe to tell Mr. Calabrese that you helped lead us to him. Which ain't really a lie, when you think about it. Since I never woulda made the connection if you hadn't gone nosin' around.”

“Can't do that, Paulie,” Vince began.

Before he could continue, Sean moved. He reached up with a languorous motion that was painful to watch. Gently, he rested his cadaverous hand on Vince's shoulder.

“It's okay, Vince. He's right,” Sean said, in little more than a whisper.

“Let him go, Vince. He's our problem now,” the Vig said.

“Trust me,” Sean whispered again as he hobbled away from the stability of his friend and toward the waiting hood with the bad comb-over.

“I'm all yours,” the wounded man said as he made one more step and fainted into Paulie's suddenly waiting arms.

“This sucker's half-dead already. Look at him,” Paulie said as Sean slumped against his chest.

With Vince looking on, three guns trained toward him, Paulie took Sean by the shoulders. He lifted him.

“Hey! Wake up you son of a bitch!” he shouted into the young man's face.

The noise seemed to wake him. Sean's heavy eyes drew open. Paulie tried to guide him, taking him by the wrist, as a car pulled up alongside. He hardly noticed when Sean's free hand clasped with his own. The touch was soft, and unthreatening, almost intimate somehow. That was why Paulie did not recoil right away, as he should have.

“Don't worry. I promise you won't feel a thing,” Sean whispered delicately, so that only Paulie could hear.

The next moments passed very slowly for Paulie Tonsils, as though the hands of his watch had been jammed to a crawl.

At first he felt only a mild sensation. An unsettling, dull warmth that slunk across his skin. The tiny hairs on his arms and chest stiffened. A ringing in his ears drowned out all other sound.

His heart was already pounding when Sean reached out with his wounded arm, free from the sling, to touch the bare skin of his other hand. A weird lull, a strange numbness inexplicably fell over his limbs. His extremities followed, and a moment later, his entire body.

It finally clouded his mind as well.

He could still see Sean, his own eyes closed as if lost in a deep and sudden trance. But when the young man opened them a moment later, there was something familiar,
something terribly familiar
about the gaze that Paulie saw looking back at him.

The others saw it too, and for an instant, they shared a
hint of the shock that paralyzed their leader.

Paulie could hardly muster a breath as he stood there in a half-dazed stupor, staring at his own face. There, as though through the pane of a magic looking glass, his perfect doppelganger stood looking back at him. The same olive skin. The same Roman nose. The same bad comb-over.

Somehow, he was clutching hands with himself. And the other him was smiling.

Even Vince caught a glimpse, the gangster Paulie standing face to face with his exact double, where Sean Mulcahy had stood only a moment before.

Shrieking tires broke the eerie calm as Maggie's Ford raced around the corner. Vince seized the arm of the assailant nearest him. In one motion he cracked Gino's limb backward. Almost simultaneously, he seized his revolver and fired three rounds at point blank range. One blasted a jagged red hole through Gino's open mouth. The other two shot directly into the face of the Vig, whose stunned expression was quickly reduced to a spray of blood and flying bone shards.

Sean, still clutched in the surreal embrace with the man whose form he now mirrored to the last detail, merely continued to grin. Paulie, horrified at the sight of his own face staring back at him, slowly slipped out of consciousness. His heartbeat slowed. His breathing fragmented. Life was draining out of him, drifting away.

After a few moments, his blood stilled. His lungs lapsed and exhaled one final time.

“C'mon, what're you waitin' for?” Vince shouted.

Sean said nothing, glaring at the limp form of Paulie Tonsils as it fell from his grasp. Sean's peculiar juvenile features re-formed as the two lost touch, not at once, but slowly. As a ripple glides across a pond, the change moved through his shimmering, pliable flesh. In a few moments the process was complete, and Sean Mulcahy once more stood on the sidewalk.

“Let's go!” Maggie shouted from the car.

Staggering away with Vince at his side, Sean leapt toward the waiting car. They both jumped into the back seat.

Without a word from any of them, and nary a look back to the three dead men on the street behind, Maggie put the car in gear and hit the gas.

Q
UIET REIGNED OVER THE LOFT WHERE
S
AM
C
ALA
brese often spent the night. The man rarely slept at home. Rumors held that he hadn't shared a bed with his wife in years. In fact, the story was that he hadn't even seen her since Christmas of '45, and that had been to tell her that their marriage was, for all practical purposes, over.

Despite his less-than-savory occupation, however, he was still a good Catholic. Divorce had been out of the question. So he had done the only thing he could do. He had made sure she had enough money to get along while he entertained himself, and he had sent her to live somewhere he knew he'd never have to go, somewhere he knew nobody ever really wanted to go.

As far as he knew, his wife was happy on Staten Island.

He was slumbering quite peacefully, the heavy shades drawn closed, when the man he called Lycaon, and nearly everyone else called Indian Joe, entered and roused him.

“What time is it?” Calabrese mumbled.

“Seven-o'clock. I know you've been sleeping late these past days,” Lycaon replied.

“I need rest. The festival is especially trying for me. I will need all of my strength.”

“I know, master.”

“Then why do you disturb me?”

“It's Mulcahy.”

Calabrese, as if injected with a dose of adrenaline, rose immediately. He lifted his great girth into a seated position.

“I'm afraid it is not good news. Two of the men on our payroll work out of the Midtown South precinct. A few moments ago we received a call from one of them, a Sergeant Maher, who incidentally wishes to thank you for the flowers you sent his wife on her birthday last month.”

The suggestion brought a much-needed laugh to the fat gangster's lips.

“In any case, he reports that they, and I quote:
Wheeled in three stiffs this morning. Shot down outside this guy Vince Sicario's place.”

“Our boys, I take it?”

“Indeed. The one called Paulie Tonsils and his two guys, Gino and the Vig.”

Calabrese scratched his chin.

“What colorful names these people give themselves. Pau-lie Tonsils. I've never seen the like, in all my many years.”

“It looks like some of our boys took it upon themselves to locate Mulcahy.”

“This Sicario again, the one Scylla's been looking at. Why does his name keep popping up?”

“I did some checking. It turns out he's a childhood friend of Mulcahy's. Knew him here before he left for what
they used to like to call
The Great War”

“Before he learned who, or even
what
he was. This Sicario individual is likely still unaware of Mulcahy's true nature. Lucifer may be able to evade us, but if he has friends here, we can use that. I want this man. Through him we can get to Mulcahy—in whatever form he's taken.”

“I'll have Scylla stay on him. We've already looked into his background a little, but not much has turned up.”

“What do we know so far?”

“Vincent Nicholas is his full name. Used to be a police officer in this area, retired a few years ago for reasons we haven't been able to determine. He's been described by those who know him as
a real sonnuvabitch
and
not someone you'd want to mess with”

“Sounds like the sort I could use on my staff right about now.

“Any family?”

“Nothing. Parents are dead, no relatives in the country. Married, but as far as anyone I've talked to can say, he and his wife haven't spoken in years. He evidently has no friends. Not the most sociable of New York's many denizens.”

“Fine. Keep our people out there. He's sure to turn up eventually. When he does, keep someone on him. But do not, under any circumstances, try to snare him. Once he's located, I want to be informed. If we lose him, we lose Mulcahy, and that cannot happen again.”

“He's already proven he'll kill to protect himself. Do you think he'll try to leave the city?”

“Always possible, but not likely. He's still one of us, after all, and he can't resist the call of the season any more than the rest of us can. He'll be here for the festival, but we have to get to him before then. Before anyone else gets to him.”