The Queen and I (16 page)

Heinrich Schultz and Mendel Fujikawa had made a mistake that they were not yet aware of. They had crossed the man who now had a ghost in his back pocket—but not just any ghost, the ghost of Saul Milick, and even more importantly and frightening to those who would dared stand against him, the ghost of Esther Feltcher.

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Hunt

Everything was exactly how Jeffrey had left it, not a single piece of paper, not a dirty sock, and not even the front door had been touched until Louis Grecko arrived at his home.

The large man casually walked through the apartment as if he had been there a thousand times before, opening the refrigerator, going through drawers, and even using the bathroom to relieve himself. Nothing was sacred when he had a job to do, and no obstacle or clue was too minute to take note of when he was hunting his next victim.

Schultz had made it quite clear that Louis was not in any way to kill Jeffrey or do him serious harm, but that did not change the determination of this evil and sadistic man from using all of his acquired skills throughout the years to hunt, capture, and deliver him to his employer.

Very little else in his life other than music, the theater, and his mother brought as great a source of pleasure to Louis than the hunt. It fed him, drove him, and he liked to think that it was what kept his boyish spirit intact, although his boyhood had been a rough one full of pain and abuse.

He walked passed one of Jeffrey’s mirrors and looked at his face. It was a source of great shame for him when he dwelt on it, but that shame also fed his hunger to cause pain to others and make them see that he was actually beautiful, one of God’s great creations; only the small minded and shallow saw him in any other light. That is what his mother had always told him, and that is what he came to believe in more than anything else in his life. What his mother told him had always come true, and she had never lied to him. She could make all of the misery in his life fade into nothingness with just a smile, and could chase away the demons with a well-placed song.

It was the music that visited him at night when he was alone in the darkness and there was nobody else in his world. When he roamed the streets looking for his next prey, or when he sat in his bedroom and looked across the alley at the widow in her apartment undressing when she thought that she was alone, it was the music that guided him.

Many listened to music, especially the kind you heard during a Broadway show, and heard only the score and the lyrics. Louis heard the true meanings of the songs, the hidden messages that the composer wanted only Louis to hear and bring to life. Every song had a message, and every message had a victim at the end of it. With all of the music that had been written and performed over the years, and all of the hidden words that were yet to be deciphered, Louis was quite sure he would live long enough to hear every one of those messages.

He had listened to the original score from
Wicked
after he had had his meeting with Heinrich and the little sissy, and heard the words the music was trying to tell anyone who could hear. It wanted Louis to find this Jeffrey David Rothstein for Heinrich, but it did not want Louis to deliver him; it wanted Louis to cause him a new kind of pain and to cause further destruction to anyone who stood in his way.

Much in the same way that the Good Witch of the North and the Wicked Witch of the West had once been friends, their lives intertwined with one another. Louis and his mother had their lives melded with that of Heinrich Schultz, and only through a separation of that bond could Louis ever truly achieve the greatness that the music told him he was destined for.

His mother had made her mark when she was young and worked for the Mossad, running all sorts of intelligence and espionage missions for the Israeli government. His father had been a small-time prizefighter who moved on to become a world-renowned mime, but Louis was the one who destiny was calling. It was Louis who was going to do something truly special with his life and leave a trail of death and destruction in his wake that had never been seen or heard of before.

Up until now, if his life had been a Broadway show, it would have closed before the curtain had a chance to drop during the first performance. But now with the rewrite taking place from the music, his life was about to take on the change he had always known it was meant to.

He opened a bottle of Jeffrey’s wine and chugged it down in three gulps. He had never liked wine, the acidic aftertaste, which he had once heard was something called tannin, the way it made him feel afterwards, or the way others perceived wine drinkers but this was his way of violating his prey. He was not one of the beautiful people and knew he never would be. He was not like Jeffrey David Rothstein or Heinrich Schultz or the little sissy man; he was nothing like them or Jeffrey’s girlfriend who stood smiling in the picture in front of him.

She was gorgeous, something only God could have created, standing there in her bikini with those dazzling sea-green eyes and sandy blonde hair. Her form was tight and athletic, and her skin was bronzed and smooth. Louis found himself salivating at her mere photo, and knew that he would have to pay her a visit. She would be his aria and the muse of his greatest work to date. What he had done to the young couple a few days ago was nothing compared to what he would do to her. With her, he was going to take his time.

The music truly loved Louis, because it had given him not only the clarity to know that he must take Jeffrey for himself, but it provided him with his girlfriend as a gift to keep forever. He would never kill her; he would remake her in his divine image that only the words told him. He would show her the Way, and the Way would make the two of them whole.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Anti-Playwright

The air was getting cooler in Zion as the seasons announced their change from summer to autumn, and Jeffrey was beginning to understand why so many fellow writers took to living in the country as their residence of choice as opposed to the city. There was a quiet calm to almost everything that the residents of the larger metropolises could only dream about. There was no hustle and bustle and certainly no rush hour.

He looked up at the perfect blue sky and thought about what it was that he would say to Saul when he got home now that he was in possession of this knowledge of the ghost’s life and eventual demise.

Saul had seemed to be such a cheery and pleasant entity in the short time that Jeffrey had known him, and the thought that he could have become so alone and so much in despair to the point that he took his own life was difficult for him to accept. But the words did not lie, the proof was that Saul was in fact a ghost, and there was no denying that.

He thought about the script that he had been neglecting, and came to the realization that he was still without a viable idea on what he was going to write or how he was going to convince his former backers who had abandoned him to once again dig into their pockets and support another project by the onetime prince of Broadway.

As he approached his car, he noticed two men were hovering around it, looking into the windows and speaking in hush tones. They were nothing much to look at and could have quite easily blended into any other small town in America with their baseball caps, stained work shirts, faded jeans, and of course, the five o’clock shadow.

One of them looked up as Jeffrey approached and motioned for his companion to take notice. The two of them were of medium build, and with the exception of their age differences, they could have quite easily passed as brothers. Jeffrey smiled courteously at them as he fumbled for his car keys, all the while wondering what new form of dreck was waiting for him now.

“Shalom, gentlemen,” Jeffrey said, noting how this seemed to be the acceptable mode of greeting in Zion.

The younger of the two spit and replied, “Save that Jew talk for a Jew.”

“There’s a Jew around, Sean?” the other asked. At least Jeffrey now knew one of their names, so that gave him a bit of an upper hand.

“Yeah, you dummy! Right in front of us.” He pointed to Jeffrey and readjusted his cap. “Big time city Jew no less.”

Jeffrey’s smile disappeared, and he continued walking to his car. The two of them moved step for step with him, blocking his way; the younger maintained eye contact the entire time.

“Can I help you gentlemen with something?”

“You can leave,” the younger one said. “Go back to New York where Jews are welcome.”

Jeffrey shook his head, raised his eyebrows, and continued, “It seems to me that Jews are welcome in this town as well, unlike ignorant anti-Semites.”

The younger man named Sean looked briefly confused by Jeffrey’s use of large words, and he looked to his companion for reassurance. The older one was still trying to figure out where Sean had seen the mysterious Jew.

“Does the sheriff know the two of you like going around harassing people for no reason?”

The older one started to chuckle, and Sean stared at Jeffrey with the kind of expression that one only sees in bad movies about life in Appalachia country. His brain was obviously still trying to figure out whether or not he had somehow been insulted.

“Say, Carl,” Sean continued, “don’t you drop off papers and such to this fella’s house?”

“Sure do,” the man named Carl answered. “When the spook ain’t around.”

“That’s right; Mr. City over here is living with a regular old ghost now, isn’t he?”

“He sure is, Sean.”

This was a bit troubling for Jeffrey to hear, because this obviously meant that word had somehow spread through the town that the cabin Jeffrey now owned and lived in was haunted, and the entire town seemed to know it.

It also made a lot of sense when he stopped to think about the odd behavior of the sheriff, the entire town seemingly wanting to ingratiate themselves to him in an attempt to make him want to stay, and that very strange encounter that he had had with Abby Tisch in the bookstore. Everywhere he went in the town, on the few occasions he had visited, had always been met with odd behavior from the residents, and even stranger still was that everyone seemed to know about Saul or something like Saul, and he was the last person to hear about it.

He knew he would have to pick his words very carefully, because he did not want to add any credence to this young man’s beliefs that Jeffrey was in some way in cahoots with a ghost. This was something Jeffrey needed to keep to himself until he at least had a chance to speak to Saul about it. Perhaps Saul was aware of the fact that the townsfolk were on to him, and he was staying put because of that. It was also quite possible, although highly unlikely, that he knew that he was the source of great interest to people like Abby Tisch, and he wanted to remain off of her radar for as long as he could.

“I’m sorry, did you say ghost?” Jeffrey deflected.

“Don’t play stupid with me, city man,” Sean answered harshly, taking a step closer. “The whole town knows that your place is haunted by some big faggot.”

“That’s right, a pansy like that Tinkerbelle, isn’t that right, Sean?”

“That’s right, Carl.” Sean moved even closer to Jeffrey and continued. “What’s been going on up there with the two of you? Getting all comfy and cozy like?”

Jeffrey swallowed hard against the smell of stale tobacco and alcohol permeating from Sean’s breath and answered, “I honestly have no idea where you heard such a ridiculous story, nor do I have the time to entertain such pointless gossip. Now, if the two of you will excuse me, I would like to get into my car.”

Carl took up position behind Jeffrey as Sean moved in even closer and said, “You just watch yourself, Jew. I’ve been watching you, the whole town has been. You and that faggot ghost of yours are going bye-bye real soon.”

Jeffrey felt an overwhelming feeling of protectiveness and anger swell over him, and he actually thought he felt his fist clench; this was not like him. He stared at Sean directly in the eyes, holding his gaze with every bit of bravado that he could muster, and answered, “A Jew-hating homophobe with oedipal overtures says what?”

Sean and Carl shot confused looks at one another and in unison asked, “What?”

Jeffrey smiled and said, “Exactly. Two for one.” He walked past the two dumbfounded men and unlocked his car door, sliding into the driver’s side, and continued, “Good day, gentlemen. I’ll try not to pish or plotz on your lawn.”

Sean and Carl watched as Jeffrey drove away, and Carl asked, “Sean, do you think we were just insulted?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because he was saying all of those fancy—”

“Jesus Christ, Carl! I know what you meant.”

Sean spat as he watched the car disappear into the town and continued to steam over the first meeting with Jeffrey. This was a smug man who needed to be taken down a notch or two, and Sean Wagner was just the man for the job. He knew what his foster father, Sheriff Pitts, had told him about laying a hand on Jeffrey, but he had never said anything about touching the house or his car.

He smiled to himself as he thought of the prospect of watching that old haunted house burn to the ground with Jeffrey stuck inside. The city boy and the ghost would both be gone in one fell swoop, and it made Sean feel like he had just won the lottery or some other coveted prize. The knowledge that he was going to do something horrible to the obnoxious outsider was beyond anything else that he could think of, and delight filled him with a warm and pleasing feeling that he did not want to let go of.

It was just a matter of time.

* * *

He rarely left the house for more than a few minutes, and that was usually to just walk around the property and enjoy nature’s beauty, but from time to time he left to go into town, and when he did, he was certain to keep himself concealed and did not allow anyone to be aware of his presence; that is, except from Melissa Foreman.

Saul watched as Jeffrey spoke to those two schmendricks, Sean Wagner and Carl Thomas. He heard a bit of the back and forth and had to admit that Jeffrey’s comeback was priceless, but there was something more that he could not explain.

How did a complete and total nudnik like Sean Wagner know about Saul, and what was Jeffrey doing in this part of the town? The only thing worth seeing was the library and that should not have served any purpose unless …

Saul stopped himself and came to the realization that his new friend had obviously come into town to do some research rather than ask any of his questions outright. It was a bit upsetting, but not that surprising given the nature of mortals. Saul knew how they felt about things that they could not understand. He had been one of them once and had felt the same way as they now do. If he had known for sure that there was an afterlife, he would not have been so quick to take his own life; by doing that, he was now doomed to spend eternity on earth living among humans and watching as they progressed, or more likely degenerated, from one generation to the next. There would be no heaven for him, and Jews did not believe in hell, so he just assumed that this was his place of eternal torment.

He would go back to the cabin this evening and carefully question Jeffrey about what he had been doing all day. He would gauge how far their friendship had grown in a short time and whether or not he could truly be trusted.

But first, he had things of his own to do while in town. The young Foreman girl, Melissa, was waiting for Saul for her acting lessons, and he never missed an appointment. Normally, she would come to the cabin, but Jeffrey did not know about her, and Saul wanted to keep it that way. She was showing a great deal of promise, and Saul was going to see to it that she was groomed into the diva he knew she could one day be. She would be his greatest achievement, and she would accomplish what he could never do during his life. She would conquer Broadway.

Between his work with Melissa and Jeffrey, his plans were now starting to take form, and he would soon know what true success and happiness were. It was all there for the taking; he just had to remain vigilant.