“I say that’s rubbish,” Matterson answered haughtily. “Purpose implies something bigger than us, and as an educated man, that is unacceptable. What you call purpose, or even more inane, fate, I call rationalized hindsight. Ellen and I came here deliberately. We chose to come here to wish Malkah a happy birthday. It’s no more complicated than that.”
Ellen nodded in agreement.
“I don’t doubt your intentionality,” Gideon rejoined. “Just your conclusions. You may have chosen to come here this evening, but you certainly didn’t choose meeting me.” Gideon nodded towards the door. “Or him…”
All heads swiveled towards the entrance, followed by three jaws hitting the table.
Ellen and Malkah exchanged looks of astonishment. “Him?” they both said.
Chauncey Matterson groaned. “Oh, shit…”
28
Street Smarts
“Hey,” Sam Jeffreys said, “isn’t that what’s-her-name and what’s-his-name?”
Sara squinted towards a table at the far end of the restaurant. Ellen and Chance’s new looks almost threw her. “Yeah, that’s them,” she said. “Cyrus, did you know they’d be here?”
“No, but this should be fun.”
“Fun?” Sara exclaimed. “They hate us. He’s a snob and she’s a bit—”
“Now, now,” Cyrus said with a smile.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” Sara insisted. “There’s a good Thai restaurant down the street.”
“Too late,” Sam said. “They’ve already seen us. Besides, Gideon is with them and you like him. Who’s that other girl with them?”
Sam knew that his wife loved dramas and that seeing Gideon Baer out with a pretty stranger would be more than enough to rouse her curiosity.
“Is that his girlfriend?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “He never mentioned that he was dating anyone. But, if you want to leave…”
“No, no,” Sara said. “That would be rude. We’re better than that.”
Sam and Cyrus exchanged knowing grins and fell in behind Sara as she led the way towards the table.
“Hello, everyone,” Sara said, “mind if we join you?”
Chance gave Ellen a panic-stricken look.
“Um, actually,” Ellen piped, “Professor Matterson and I were just leaving. But, please, feel free to take our seats.”
Chance and Ellen made a move to stand, but Beverly had already dutifully raced over to the table.
“It is a party, isn’t it!” Beverly exclaimed gaily. Without waiting for a response, she grabbed a nearby table and slid it over so that the three newcomers could join the celebration.
“But…” Matterson stammered.
Ellen Veetal placed her hand on Chance’s and gave him a look of forbearance. She was secretly glad to see Cyrus, and intrigued by the strange concoction of people around her. There was a piece missing from the bewildering evening, and she wanted to find out what it was.
Beverly passed out some menus, and when she came to Cyrus she said with a purr, “Well, hello.” She turned to Malkah, “How about this one? Is he taken?”
Malkah smiled mischievously and sang, “I don’t think so.”
Beverly turned back to Cyrus and stabbed her finger at him. “I call dibs on you, handsome.” She gave him a big, slobbering wink and then dashed off to see on some orders.
Chauncey Matterson squirmed. He was not used to being in the presence of so much testosterone. The three men around him were all big and brutish. He felt shrunken and shriveled. Normally, he might have fallen back onto his considerable intellect, believing that his smarts and wit would compensate for his lack of brawn. But these Neanderthals, he thought, were surely too obtuse to appreciate his genius.
Malkah Stern was as intrigued as her cousin. She hadn’t seen Cyrus since their long talk in the park, but the impression he had left on her was still fresh in her mind. That Gideon and Cyrus knew one another was almost too much to compute. How friendly were they? By the way they greeted one another, it was clear to her that they hadn’t met since she and Gideon started dating, so she couldn’t be angry at Gideon for not mentioning him. How was it, she wondered, that she found herself in the company of the only two guys in town who believed in angels? She recalled the oath that she had sworn to Cyrus. Had Gideon sworn a similar one?
Officer Sam Jeffreys was oblivious to the mental games being played around the table. He was hungry and impatient to order. Aside from his rumbling stomach, his only other concern was preventing Sara from demonstrating her knee-jerk loyalties. He knew how protective his wife was of her friends, and that any perceived insult would be met by her wrath. Sam didn’t like scenes. He dealt with them for a living. Once off the job, it was peace and quiet he relished most. He studied the menu, and as he kept one ear glued to the conversation so that he could intercede in a moment’s notice, concluded that the blue plate special sounded good.
Sara sat quietly, a pleasant smile on her face. She did not want to stare, but kept finding her eyes glancing back and forth between Ellen Veetal and Malkah Stern. They must be related, she thought. Sara easily admitted to herself that the two women were very pretty. She was perplexed by Ellen’s new look, however, because she thought that the woman had had lovely hair before.
But it was this other gal, Gideon’s date, that interested her the most, though they had yet to exchange more than hello. To Sara, Malkah appeared far more relaxed and easy-going than this uptight Ellen chick, and Sara’s high opinion of Gideon only reinforced her willingness to withhold any judgments concerning the woman, other than her objective acknowledgement that the young lady was a real beauty.
Gideon Baer looked at the situation much as he did the games of speed chess he had just played with Saul, only with multiple players. Sara and Sam were friends, and so there was no threat from them. Ellen and the professor he found amusing, and he rather enjoyed their befuddled agitation. At the same time, however, Gideon knew things about Professor Matterson that didn’t sit well with him. He considered the professor to be a brown-nosing opportunist with an over-inflated and undeserved ego. As for Malkah, Gideon figured he had some explaining to do with her later, but he was impressed with how she was handling things so far.
For Gideon, the blinking neon question mark was this Cyrus fellow. Gideon did not feel menaced by him. In fact, he found the guy immensely likable. But who was he, really? Gideon felt certain that this was the guy Malkah had alluded to more than once—the guy she said he reminded her of.
Gideon Baer considered himself a good judge of character, and a man not easily fooled by outward appearances. He sensed a martial streak in Cyrus, something a fellow soldier had an instinct for, and he liked that about the man. When they had last met, he had gotten a taste of Cyrus’s intelligence, or his phenomenal memory anyway, and that too impressed Gideon.
Still, for all the man’s virtues, there was something that didn’t add up about the guy. There was an aloofness to him, a kind of hovering. Gideon concluded that Cyrus was neither the sort of man you fathomed after just a couple of meetings, nor one to underestimate.
As for Cyrus, he wasn’t interested in soap operas. He knew that behind every soap opera was a collection of yetzers sparring for attention. He had one mission: to save the world from imminent collapse. He was convinced that one of the individuals at this table was the Swerver of the generation, and he had to find out who it was.
Seeing Chauncey Matterson and Ellen Veetal back together again was unexpected, and troubling. Was it the work of a cupid, or was the couple still in play? Ellen had surpassed the age limit for a Swerver, but he had to acknowledge that a Swerver’s age was customary, not foreordained. These were different times after all, and people married much later in life. Perhaps her recent trials had taught her something and she had overcome her demons? Or, more likely, as Volk had warned, Anteros or the yetzers were up to something.
“Oh, my gawd,” Ellen Veetal exclaimed, pointing. “Is that a gun?
Gideon pulled on his jacket to cover his holstered weapon.
Malkah turned to Gideon. “Did I sound like that too?” she asked.
“Umm…”
“Sheesh,” Malkah groaned, embarrassed.
“This is a gun-free zone,” Ellen protested indignantly.
“Calm down, Ellen,” Malkah said. “He has a special permit for that puppy.”
“Puppy?” Ellen looked at her cousin with horror, as if she had just lit up a cigarette, which was banned in the NPF after having been nearly taxed out of existence years earlier.
“That’s right,” Chauncey whispered to Ellen, “he’s one of those.”
“One of what?” Malkah said, overhearing him, and coming to Gideon’s defense.
“Never mind,” Matterson said.
“No, Professor, please, enlighten me,” Malkah insisted.
“A gunslinger,” he stated. “A bounty hunter. Mr. Baer here has an extensive military and intelligence agency background. He kills for a living.”
Ellen’s hand flew to her mouth. She turned to Gideon. “Oh my gawd, is that true?”
Gideon smiled. “The professor says it like it’s a bad thing.”
Ellen Veetal, appalled, if not a little frightened, swung her head back to her cousin. “Malkah Stern!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing seeing a hit man! Just wait till grandma finds out that her favorite grandchild is dating a mass-murdering terrorist! What has gotten into you?!”
“Relax, cuz,” Malkah said, “it’s no big deal.” She sucked in a mischievous smirk, and added, “Besides, someone has to do it.”
Aghast, and words failing her, Ellen could only stare at her cousin in dismay.
Sam Jeffreys, his husbandly senses abuzz, felt that his wife Sara was about to leap into the fray. He put a calming hand on her knee, and gave her a subtle shake of the head. Sara sputtered, and battened down her lips. Sam commended her with an approving wink.
Chauncey Matterson felt that this topic was working well in his favor. He thought he’d up the ante. He turned to Cyrus. “How about you?” he asked. “Do you approve of guns and killing?”
“I’m old fashioned,” Cyrus said. “I prefer to do my killing with swords, arrows, knives, and bare hands.”
Malkah chuckled to herself, recalling some of Cyrus’s preposterous stories about battling yetzers with his comrades. He didn’t go into detail about his fights, but she did recall him mentioning such weapons.
She still didn’t know what to make of the long tale he had told her in the park that evening. With each passing day it had become easier to disregard the entire happening. But then Gideon traipsed into her life, and with him, equally fabulous and absurd stories about angels and yetzers, Lamed-Vavniks, and a supernatural battle between good and evil. Things were getting surreal.
“I must say,” Ellen declared, addressing the three men in front of her, “I find your cavalier frivolity, well, frankly, uncivilized and disturbing. Death and mayhem is nothing to joke about. The answer to violence is not more violence.”
“Actually,” Gideon said, “in the real world, violence, or the threat of it, can have a most pacifying effect.”
“Education,” Matterson intoned, “education—not brutality—is the answer.”
“There are more people in the world running around with college degrees, law degrees, Masters, and Ph.D.’s than at any time in history,” Gideon rejoined. “Far more money is spent on education and welfare services than on national defense, yet neither the number of wars nor violent crimes have lessened. If Sam and I here were to hang up our badges and guns and go back to school, would the crime rate plummet?”
“You people are impossible,” Ellen said. “I’m stunned, stunned, that I could find myself sitting at the one table in this entire city where people are calling for a return to the barbarism that got this world into the mess that it is. No one we know thinks in the primitive, parochial way that you people do.”
Sara Jeffreys said, “You two really need to get out more often.”
Ellen rolled her eyes and turned to Cyrus. “You’re being very quiet,” she said accusingly.
Gideon said, “‘Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is counted wise.’”
“Proverbs 17:28,” Cyrus confirmed.
“Oh, gawd,” Matterson groaned, smacking his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Ellen, have you had enough? Shall we go now?”
“I think so,” she said tartly, pushing back her chair and standing.
Matterson followed suit. He whipped open his wallet, fished out a few hundred globals, and tossed the bills onto the table. “I believe this will easily handle our share. Good evening.”
“Thanks for the theater tickets,” Malkah said.
“Don’t mention it,” Ellen grumbled.
The group watched Chauncey and Ellen leave the restaurant.
“Boy,” Sara said. “They really don’t like us.”
A moment after the couple disappeared out the door they heard a scream.
“Ellen!” Malkah jumped to her feet and raced towards the door. The others followed. The first one out on the street, however, was Cyrus. He found Ellen and Chauncey sprawled on the ground.
“My purse!” Ellen cried, pointing down the sidewalk. “He stole my purse!”
Cyrus reached inside his jacket, withdrew a shuriken, and whipped the Japanese throwing star down the sidewalk, striking the fleeing man in the tendon at the back of the knee. The thug belly-flopped onto the ground. Officer Jeffreys and Gideon Baer sprinted up to the thief to make the arrest.
Malkah helped Ellen up and asked if she was okay.
“I’m okay,” she said, eying Cyrus with wonder as he offered Matterson a hand to his feet.
The professor declined the help and staggered up on his own. “The son of a bitch barreled right into us and snatched Ellen’s purse,” he said, outraged and offended.
“Clearly, he didn’t know that you have a Ph.D.,” Malkah quipped.
And then they heard a second, much more fright-filled scream.
29
Vigilantes
The shriek came from inside the restaurant. They turned and saw Beverly running out of the kitchen, her T-shirt smeared with blood, her hand over her mouth, and her eyes wild with fear.
“Gideon, Sam!” Cyrus shouted. “Quick! The alley!”
“I’ll go,” Gideon told Sam. “Cuff him to the lamppost and meet me around back.” Gideon took off around the corner to where the alley dumped out onto the street, his Kimber .45 ACP in his hand.
“Beverly!” Malkah cried, running back into the restaurant behind Cyrus.
“It’s Saul,” Beverly sobbed, hysterical. “Somebody stabbed Saul!”
The restaurant broke into pandemonium and people rushed for the exit. Cyrus ordered Malkah to stay with Beverly and to call the police.
He dashed into the kitchen, snatched a meat cleaver left stuck into a hunk of beef by a panic-stricken chef, and darted for the back door. He found Saul crumpled on the backstairs, blood pooling around him, crimson rivulets trickling down the cement steps. Strewn about were freshly made sandwiches.
Whoever did this, Cyrus deduced, must have come in the guise of the homeless that Saul was known to help. Cyrus knelt beside him and noticed at least three stab wounds. He checked Saul’s pulse—dead.
Cyrus figured that Gideon and Sam would be coming on the left so he sprinted right, the cleaver still in his hand. Low-wattage bulbs atop the back steps of the businesses along the alley cast just enough light to keep Cyrus from blindness. He raced on.
Rounding a bend, he heard a loud noise on his right. A big, green trash container rolled towards him in imminent collision. Cyrus sprang into the air, and with one hand on the lid of the dumpster, he cartwheeled over it and landed in a perfectly balanced crouch, his cleaver-holding hand extended. He looked in the direction that the trash bin had come and saw a figure in a dark trench coat standing in front of a telephone poll. The man withdrew a dagge
r from inside his coat.
Cyrus hurled the meat cleaver. The hatchet spun head over tail through the darkness, nailing the man’s trench coat to the telephone poll. He stepped towards the man, when he heard two sets of feet charging at him on the gravelly alley road.
He whirled and caught the wrist of the first assailant before the man could run him through with his knife. Cyrus twisted, yanked, and forced the attacker to drop the weapon. He pulled the attacker in, locked up his elbow, and throwing his hip under him, slammed the assailant to the ground. The thug howled in pain and cradled his dislocated elbow. Cyrus kicked him in the face and knocked him out.
The second man hurled his knife at Cyrus and then pulled out a gun. Cyrus dodged the knife and dove in a deft roll for cover behind the trash bin. He bounced up, and putting his shoulder into the dumpster, shoved it hard and fast like a tackling dummy into the goon, knocking over both the man and the big green container as a shot rang out.
Cyrus dashed around the side of the bin and spotted a long, frayed electrical cord that had spilled out onto the ground. He dove in a roll and came up onto his feet with the cord in his hand. Snapping the cord like a bullwhip, he cried, “Opa!”
The attacker scrambled from under the garbage, his feet slipping on the refuse. He stood and raised the gun.
Cyrus whipped the cord, wrapping it around the man’s neck. He jerked the cut-throat to the ground and stamped down hard on the man’s wrist, forcing him to surrender his weapon. Then, like an expert calf-roper, he took the free end of the cord and quickly tied the thug’s ankles together so that he was bound backwards from neck to feet in a reverse crescent. The man choked and gasped for air.
The original attacker tried feverishly to extricate himself from his pinned-up trench coat. Just as he freed the cleaver from the telephone post, Cyrus sprang towards him in a diving roll, popped up, and snap kicked the man in the groin. He followed with an elbow to the temple. He pulled the slumping assailant’s trench coat over the man’s head, spun him around, tied the tails of the coat together, and threw the package to the ground.
Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Complete Boxset: Books 1 - 3 Page 53
