Brimstone

by Douglas Preston

Pendergast was restlessly circling the corpse. "The death certificate listed lung cancer as the cause of death," he said.

  "I am aware of that," the doctor replied. "I was the attending physician then, and at your request, I have been hauled back here to be the attending pathologist now." The man's voice was brittle with grievance.

  "I thank you."

  The doctor nodded tersely, then went back to the clipboard. "I've performed a complete autopsy on the cadaver, and the lab results have come back. Now, what is it, exactly, that you would like to know?"

  "First things first. I'm assuming you confirmed this is indeed the body of Ranier Beckmann?"

  "Without question. I checked dental records."

  "Excellent. Please proceed."

  "I'll summarize my original records and diagnosis." The doctor flipped over some pages. "On March 4, 1995, the patient, Ranier Beckmann, was brought to the E.R. by ambulance. The symptoms indicated advanced stages of cancer. Tests confirmed an extensive-stage small-cell lung carcinoma with distant metastases. Essentially a hopeless case. The cancer had spread throughout the body, and general organ failure was imminent. Mr. Beckmann never left the hospital and died two weeks later."

  "You're sure he died in the hospital?"

  "Yes. I saw him every day on my rounds until he died."

  "And your recollection, going back over a decade, is still clear?"

  "Absolutely." The doctor stared at Pendergast over the tops of his glasses.

  "Proceed."

  "I conducted this autopsy in two stages. The first was to test my original determination of cause of death. There had been no autopsy. Standard procedure. The cause of death was evident, there was no family request, and no suspicion of foul play. The state obviously doesn't pay for an autopsy just for the hell of it."

  Pendergast nodded.

  "The second stage of my autopsy, as per your request, was to identify any unusual pathologies, conditions, wounds, toxins, or other irregularities associated with the body."

  "And the results?"

  "I confirmed Beckmann died of general organ failure associated with cancer."

  Pendergast quickly fixed his silvery eyes again on the doctor. He said nothing: the skeptical look said it all.

  The doctor returned the look steadily. Then he continued, voice calm. "The primary was a tumor in his left lung the size of a grapefruit. There were gross secondary metastatic tumors in the kidneys, liver, and brain. The only surprising thing about this man's death is that he hadn't showed up in the emergency room earlier. He must have been in tremendous pain, barely able to function."

  "Go on," Pendergast said in a low voice.

  "Aside from the cancer, the patient showed advanced cirrhosis of the liver, heart disease, and a suite of other chronic, but not yet acute, symptoms associated with alcoholism and poor nutrition."

  "And?"

  "That's all. No toxins or drugs present in the blood or tissues. No unusual wounds or pathologies, at least none detectable after embalming and almost ten years in the ground."

  "No sign of heat?"

  "Heat? What do you mean?"

  "No indication that the body had experienced the perimortem application of heat?"

  "Absolutely not. Heat would have caused a host of obvious cell changes. I've looked at forty, maybe fifty sections of tissue from this cadaver, and not one showed changes associated with heat. What an extraordinary question, Mr. Pendergast."

  Pendergast spoke again, his voice still low. "Small-cell lung cancer is caused almost exclusively by smoking. Am I correct, Doctor?"

  "You are correct."

  "That he died of cancer is beyond a reasonable doubt, then, Doctor?" Pendergast allowed a skeptical tone to tinge his voice.

  Exasperated, the pathologist reached down, grabbed two halves of a shriveled brown lump, and shoved them in Pendergast's face. "There it is, Mr. Pendergast. If you don't believe me, believe this. Take it. Feel the malignancy of this tumor. As sure as I'm standing here, that’s what killed Beckmann."

  It was a long, silent walk back to the car. Pendergast slipped behind the wheel—today he'd driven himself to Yonkers—and they exited the parking lot. As they left the gray huddle of downtown behind, Pendergast spoke at last.

  "Beckmann spoke to us quite eloquently, wouldn't you say, Vincent?"

  "Yeah. And he stank, too."

  "What he said, however, was—I must confess—something of a surprise. I shall have to write the good doctor a letter of thanks." He swung the wheel sharply, and the Rolls turned onto Executive Boulevard, passing the on-ramp for the Saw Mill River Parkway.

  D'Agosta looked over in surprise. "Aren't we heading back to New York City?"

  Pendergast shook his head. "Jeremy Grove died exactly two weeks ago. Cutforth, one week ago. We came to Yonkers to get some answers. I'm not leaving until we have them."

  { 45 }

  The bus inched through a long, white-tiled tunnel in stop-and-go traffic and emerged from an underpass, a long ramp amidst steel girders in semidarkness.

  New York City, thought the Reverend Wayne P. Buck.

  Beyond the web of steel, he could see limpid sunlight, sooty tenements, a brief glimpse of skyscrapers. The bus lurched back into darkness, the brakes chuffing as the line of traffic stopped again.

  Buck felt an indescribable mix of emotions: excitement, fear, destiny, a sense of confronting the unknown. It was the same thing he had felt a couple of years ago, the day he'd been released from prison after serving nine years for murder two. It had been a long, slow slide for Buck: delinquency, failed jobs, booze, stealing cars, bank robbery—and then the fateful day when everything went wrong and he'd ended up shooting a convenience store clerk. Killing a poor, innocent man. As the bus crept forward again, his mind went back over the arrest, trial, sentence of twenty-five to life, the manacled walk into the bowels of the prison. A period of darkness, best forgotten.

  And then, conversion. Born again in prison. Just as Jesus raised up the whore, Mary Magdalene, He raised up the alcoholic, the murderer, the man who had been cast away by all others, even his own family.

  After his salvation, Buck began reading the Bible: again and again, cover-to-cover, Old Testament and New. He started preaching a little, a few words here, a helping hand there. He formed a study group. Gradually, he'd built up the respect and trust of the prisoners who had ears for the Good Word. He was soon spending most of his time assisting in the salvation of others. That, and playing chess. There wasn't much else to do: magazines were showcases of materialism, television was worse, and books other than the Bible seemed full of profanity, violence, and sex.

  As parole grew near, Buck began to feel that his ministry in prison was preparation for something else; that God had a greater purpose for him which would be revealed in time. After he got out, he drifted from one small town to another, mostly along the border between California and Arizona, preaching the Word, letting God clothe and feed him. His reading began to expand: first Bunyan, then St. Augustine, then Dante in translation. And always, always, he waited for the call.

  And now, when he least expected it, the call had come. God's purpose for him stood revealed. Who would have thought that his call would take him to New York City, the greatest concentration of spiritual bankruptcy and evil in all America? Vegas, L.A., and other such places were merely sideshows to New York. But that was the beauty of doing God's will. Just as God had sent St. Paul to Rome—into the black heart of paganism—so had He sent Wayne P. Buck to New York.

  The bus stopped, lurched again, everyone's heads swaying in unison with the movements. They were now on some kind of concrete ramp, climbing a rising spiral between crisscrossed girders. It put Buck in mind of Dante's circles of hell. In a moment, the bus plunged back into darkness and the stench of diesel, the sound of air brakes hissing demonically. It seemed they were at the depot—but a depot such as Buck had never seen or imagined in all his born days.

  The bus ground to a halt. The driver said somethi
ng unintelligible over the public address system, and there was a great sigh of air as the door opened. Buck exited. The others all had to wait for their baggage, but he was a free man, without possessions or money, just as it had been six years ago when he walked out into the bright sunlight of Joliet.

  Without knowing where he was going, he followed a crush of people down a series of escalators and through an immense terminal. Moments later he found himself outdoors, on the pavement of a great street. He stopped and looked around, feeling a rush of dread mingling with the spiritual vigor.

  As I walked through the wilderness of this world…Jesus had spent forty days and nights in the desert tempted by the devil, and verily this was the desert of the twenty-first century: this wasteland of human souls.

  He began walking, letting Jesus take him where He would. Despite the crowded sidewalks, nobody seemed to notice him: the streams of humanity parted around him, then flowed together again behind him, like a river embracing a rock. He crossed a broad thoroughfare, walked down a canyon like street thrown into deep shadow by buildings that rose on both sides. Within a few minutes, he arrived at another intersection, even wider than before, with roads coming in from all sides. Huge billboards and garish forty-foot neon marquees announced he was standing in Times Square. He looked skyward. It was a heady experience, surrounded by the mighty works of man, the modern-day glass and steel Towers of Babel. It was all too easy to see how one could be seduced by such a place; how quickly one could lose first one's conviction, then one's soul. He lowered his eyes again to the traffic, the noise, the great rush and press of humanity. The words of John Bunyan came to him again: You dwell in the City of Destruction: I see it to be so; and, dying there, sooner or later, you will sink lower than the grave, into a place that burns with fire and brimstone: be content, good neighbors, and go along with me.

  Lost, all lost.

  But perhaps not all: here and there, Buck knew, walked those who could still be saved, the righteous people with the grace of God in their souls. He did not yet know who they were, and it was likely even they didn't know. Be content, good neighbors, and go along with me. It was for them he had come to New York City: these were the ones he would pull back from the brink. The rest would be swept away in the blink of an eye.

  For hours Buck walked. He could sense the siren-like call of the city tugging at him: its urbane window displays, its unbelievable opulence, its stretch limousines. Buck's nostrils filled with the stench of rotting garbage one moment, and the next with the scent of expensive perfume from some lynx-eyed temptress in a tight dress. He was in the belly of the beast, for sure. God had entrusted him with a mission, God had given him his own forty days in the desert, and he would not fail.

  He had spent his last nickel on the bus ticket and had not eaten at all during the ride. Somehow the hunger, the fasting, had sharpened his mind. But if he was to do God's will, he had to seek nourishment for his body.

  His wanderings took him to a Salvation Army soup kitchen. He went in, waited in line, sat silently with the derelicts, and ate a bowl of macaroni and cheese with a couple slices of unbuttered Wonder bread and a cup of coffee. As he ate, he slipped the shabby paper out of his pocket and perused the soiled article yet again. It was God's message to him, and every time he read it he felt fortified, refreshed, determined. After his simple meal, he left and began walking again, a new spring in his step. He passed a newsstand and paused, his eye catching the headline of the New York Post.

  THE END IS NIGH

  Satanists, Pentecostals and Prophets of Doom

  Continue to Converge at Site of Devil Killing

  He instinctively shoved his hand in his pocket before remembering he had no money. He paused. What to do? This headline was, without a doubt, another message from God. Nothing happened in this world without significance. Not even the slightest sparrow could fall from the tree…

  He needed money. He needed a bed for the night. He needed a change of clothes. God clothed the lilies of the field; would He not clothe him? That had always been Buck's philosophy.

  But sometimes God liked to see a little initiative.

  Buck looked up. He was in front of a huge building, guarded by two massive stone lions—the New York Public Library, the legend said. A temple to Mammon, no doubt filled with pornography and immoral books. He hastened around the corner. There, beside a small but nicely manicured park, were a number of people with chessboards set up and ready for play. They weren't playing each other; they seemed to be waiting for passersby. He approached, curious.

  "Play?" one of them asked.

  Buck paused.

  "Five dollars," the man said.

  "For what?"

  "Game of ten-second chess. Five dollars."

  Buck almost walked on. It might be considered a form of gambling. But then he paused. Was this, too, a little help from God? Buck sensed these players were good; they had to be. But what did he have to lose?

  He sat down. The man immediately moved his queen's pawn, and Buck countered, ten seconds for each move.

  Ten minutes later Buck was sitting on a bench in the park behind the library, reading the Post. The article told of small gatherings of people in front of the building where the devil had taken the man named Cutforth. It even gave the address: 842 Fifth Avenue.

  Fifth Avenue. The legendary Fifth Avenue. The Mephistophelean heart of New York City. It all fit together. He tore out the article and folded it up with the other, carefully slipping them into his shirt pocket

  He would not go there now; that could wait. Like David, he needed to gird his loins, prepare himself spiritually. He had not come to preach: he had come to do battle for the world

  He checked his pocket. Four dollars and fifty cents. Not nearly enough to find a bed for the night. He wondered just how God might help him multiply that money, as Jesus had multiplied the loaves and the fishes.

  There were still a few hours before sunset. Jesus would help him, Buck knew. Jesus would surely help him.

  { 46 }

  Beckmann's last known place of residence, as listed on the death certificate, was not far from the potter's field in which he was buried. Pendergast drove slowly past the decrepit building and parked before a package store a few doors down. Three old alcoholics sat on the front stoop, watching as they got out of the car.

  "Nice neighborhood," said D'Agosta, looking around at the six-story brick tenements festooned with rusting fire escapes. Threadbare laundry hung from dozens of clotheslines strung between the buildings.

  "Indeed."

  D'Agosta nodded in the direction of the three rummies, who had gone back to passing around a bottle of Night Train. "Wonder if those three know anything."

  Pendergast gestured for him to proceed.

  "What? Me?"

  "Of course. You are a man of the street, you speak their language."

  "If you say so." D'Agosta glanced around again, then headed into the package store. He returned a few minutes later with a bottle in a brown paper bag.

  "A gift for the natives, I see."

  "I'm just taking a page from your book."

  Pendergast raised his eyebrows.

  "Remember our little journey underground during the subway massacre case? You brought a bottle along as currency."

  "Ah, yes. Our tea party with Mephisto."

  Bottle in hand, D'Agosta ambled up to the stoop, pausing before the men. "How are you boys today?"

  Silence.

  "I'm Sergeant D'Agosta, and this is my associate, Special Agent Pendergast. FBI."

  Silence.

  "We're not here to bust anyone's balls, gentlemen. I'm not even going to ask your names. We're just looking for any information on one Ranier Beckmann, who lived here several years back."

  Three pairs of rheumy eyes continued staring at him. One of the men hawked up a gobbet of phlegm and deposited it gently between his badly scuffed shoes.

  With a rustle, D'Agosta removed the bottle from the paper bag. He held it up. Th
e light shone through it, illuminating pieces of fruit floating in an amber-colored liquid.

  The oldest wino turned to the others. "Rock 'n' Rye. The cop has class."

  "Beware of cops bearing gifts."

  D'Agosta glanced at Pendergast, who was looking on from a few paces back, hands in his pockets. He turned back. "Look, guys, don't make a fool out of me in front of the feds, okay? Please."

  The oldest man shifted. "Now that you've said the magic word, have a seat."

  D'Agosta perched gingerly on the sticky steps. The man reached out a hand for the bottle, took a swig, spat out a piece of fruit, passed it on. "You too, friend," he said to Pendergast.

  "I would prefer to stand, thank you."

  There were some chuckles.

  "My name's Jedediah," said the oldest drunk. "Call me Jed. You're looking for who again?"

  "Ranier Beckmann," said Pendergast.

  Two of the drunks shrugged, but after a moment, Jed nodded slowly. "Beckmann. Name rings a bell."

  "He lived in room 4C. Died of cancer almost ten years ago."

  Jed thought another moment, took a swig of the Rock 'n' Rye to lubricate the brain cells. "I remember now. He's the guy who used to play gin rummy with Willie. Willie's gone, too. Man, did they argue. Cancer, you say?" He shook his head.

  "Did you know anything about his life? Marriage, former addresses, that sort of thing?"

  "He was a college-educated fellow. Smart. Nobody ever came to visit him, didn't seem to have any kids or family. He might have been married, I suppose. For a while, I thought he had a girl named Kay."

  "Kay?"

  "Yeah. He'd say her name now and then, usually when he was mad at himself. Like when he lost at rummy. 'Kay Biskerow!' he'd say. As if he wouldn't have been in such a fix if she were there to look after him."

  Pendergast nodded. "Any friends of his still here we could talk to?"

  "Can't think of anybody. Beckmann mostly kept to himself. He was sort of depressed."

  "I see."

  D'Agosta shifted on the uncomfortable stoop. "When someone dies here, what usually happens to his stuff?"