Hunt for the Holy Grail

by Preston W Child

  “But why?”

  “Because you’re important to whatever is going on with this Grail thing, and if you are still in possession of the Holy Grail, I knew the Templars were still gonna come after you. And Miss Newton would want me to protect you.”

  Father Andre stared past the trees. He sighed.

  “Tell me, how is she?”

  “She’s safe, for now, as long as the Templars thought you were dead.”

  Diggs opened the door of the car. Andre looked inside the car, surprised that it let her seats and dashboard look new. Diggs took a small brown bag from the passenger seat. He took a big yellow envelope from inside and gave it to Father Andre.

  “I thought you might want to get to know her better. I made a dossier on Olivia Newton.”

  The cleric took some minutes to read the dossier. When he finished reading, he gave the envelope back. A stick broke nearby, and the cleric jumped, his head turned everywhere.

  “It’s the woods turning over,” Diggs said coolly. “I rigged the whole place, I’ll know if someone was coming from a quarter of a mile away.”

  “What now?” he asked.

  “I’ll take you as far as the city, then you decide what you wanna do.”

  The cleric nodded.

  —

  3

  Two days before the election, two things happened to Olivia.

  One was extraordinary, and the other was merely a surprise, a welcome beginning to a series of developments.

  Olivia walked through the office to the grounds and knew that something was off. Floyd wasn’t his usual quirky self; he avoided Olivia’s eyes. Marybeth was stepping out of Cohen’s office, and she sent Olivia a contended pout, that and no more. That was abnormal behavior from the bitch on a Monday morning, except, of course, if the bitch had been blowing Cohen earlier.

  Rob Cohen tried to look her in the eyes but never quite got through with it. He started arranging his desk. His desk never needed organizing. Cohen’s desk was like the cosmos, precise and orderly.

  Olivia dropped her handbag on her desk.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, Olivia,” Floyd said. He smiled like a hyena and went back to his interest in his computer screen.

  Olivia peered at Cohen’s office. He signaled her to come over; he nodded at the door. Olivia shut the door, another sign that bad news was coming.

  “Please.” He gestured at the chair.

  Olivia looked at it and demurred. The bad news was more comfortable to bear standing, so someone said.

  Cohen exhaled.

  “I just got instructions to downsize this morning,” he began. “I want to let you know I had nothing to do with this. I tried my best, I fought for you, you have to believe me—”

  “Why don’t you cut to the chase, Rob.”

  “You have been fired.”

  She shrugged and asked, “Why?”

  “I just told you, the corporate is—”

  “That’s the excuse they asked you to give me, Rob. Why don’t you tell me the truth.”

  That seemed to make Cohen feel better. He was a messenger of doom, and that was a tough job. He folded his hand on his ample gut. There were stains on his white shirt around his left shoulder.

  “It’s that damn expedition, Olivia.” He threw his hand in the air suddenly. “I told you to let it go, Olivia.”

  Olivia looked at her watch. She got up slowly.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get my stuff,” she said.

  Floyd was tired of communing with his computer screen. He gave Olivia a penitent look. Olivia put her stuff—a small library, a table clock she hardly consulted—in a box. She put her laptop under her underarm. Marybeth was not in sight as she walked out. Floyd caught up with her.

  “Let me carry that.”

  Olivia let him. She dropped her bag in the passenger seat.

  “What are you gonna do?” Floyd asked.

  Olivia put her sunglasses on and took her box from him. She put it in the trunk.

  “First, I’m gonna go to the beach, then I’ll see where life takes me.”

  Floyd laughed. He shoved his hand in his pocket. “I told them you’d take it like a man. You the man, Olivia.”

  “See you around.”

  Olivia skidded into the street, leaving Floyd in a cloud of dust.

  —

  She didn’t go to the beach; she was sitting at a late breakfast an hour after at a small restaurant downtown. She got the day’s special: pasta and poached eggs with veggies.

  Her phone started ringing and thus happened the second event of the day. For a moment, she entertained the thought that it was the Templars calling to tell her how tired they were of keeping Peter Williams. Could she come by some warehouse to take him? His body cut into comfortable little pieces.

  Or maybe someone from corporate, calling to tell her how sad they were that they had to let her go. Could she come by the office, talk things out with them, replace Cohen if it wasn’t so much trouble?

  It was Lawrence Diggs from another life, it seemed.

  Olivia told him it was good to hear from the former agent. It seemed the agent was not calling to catch up, for his voice was grave.

  “I have to assume that your phone is tapped, Miss Olivia,” he said, running his words faster than usual.

  Olivia’s antennas went to alert.

  “We have to talk, but not on the phone, too risky. Pier No. 3, Piedmont Bay, 7:00 pm tomorrow night.”

  On second thought, the pasta tasted insipid. Perhaps, terrible.

  —

  The man—if he was a man anymore—behind the voice always called first. He could never be reached because the line was always off.

  But Lin had been working. The order didn’t lack funds. Consequently, he had resources at his disposal.

  When his phone rang, and he saw the private number, he knew the time had come, the wait was over.

  “Come to me,” the spectral voice whispered.

  Click.

  —

  4

  An estimated 500,000 people were homeless in the United States every night. In Miami and the bay area, the number was just a fraction of that statistic.

  High-end communities shared even a smaller percentage of the number. In places like Pinecrest and the Gables area with choice houses with swimming pools and driveways, it was not a common sight in the day. But at night, a few homeless folks wandered about the street, looking for a place to lay their back and then move on when dawn came.

  Vinnie Malvern and his friends had been partying all night at another friend’s place on Southwest 64th Avenue. It was going on until 11:00 pm when the boys, four of them, were driving home. Vinnie intended to drop his friends off one after the other before he would finally turn back to his parents’ home on Southwest 58th Street, by Pinecrest Elementary School.

  There were four of them in the Mustang. Vinnie, who was driving the Mustang, which belonged to his father; Stebbins, Ray, and Mike, whom they also called Scramm because he wore his hair like the dude from the rock group called Popsicle Piss.

  Vinnie had gone by Stebbins and Ray’s homes. Stebbins had promptly vomited in the driveway as he stumbled up to his parents' house. Vinnie and Mike had continued on through 69th Street.

  As they turned a corner on that street, Mike had tapped Vinnie’s hand and pointed at a building to the left of them.

  “What?”

  Mike was pulling off his seatbelt already and opening the car door even before Vinnie stopped the car.

  “I gotta take something from there,” Mike said, getting out.

  “Scramm, are you crazy? There’s nothing in there.”

  The building that Mike was going into used to be called Pinecrest Florist and Balloons shop. It had been unoccupied for more than a year. No thanks to legal differences between the city and the developers. At some point in the recent history of its vacancy, homeless folks had lived in it. And dope boys like Scramm had turned it into t
heir stash bank too.

  So it was that properly drunk, Mike, who was getting up, falling down, drunk, and staggered up the overgrown driveway. He climbed the steps and opened the screen door, as casually as if he owned the place. He had then gone in and didn’t come back for many minutes.

  Impatient and falling asleep at the wheel, Vinnie Malvern punched the horn many times, but his friend didn’t show up. Vinnie had gone in to see what was holding up his friend.

  When he opened the door and shined his pen torch at the room, he found Mike in a pool of blood, and a man whose face he would never forget for the rest of his life was standing over the body.

  Vinnie screamed holy hell all the way to the car and sped home. He would later tell a detective assigned by Sheriff Tom Garcia that Mike, also known as Scramm, had been murdered by a bum.

  —

  “It’s a story to take you off your butt,” Tom Garcia told Olivia on the phone.

  Olivia had told the sheriff about the layoff, but not about the call from Diggs.

  “You’re pregnant?”

  “No, Tom.”

  “Good, get down here fast, I got the scoop for you.”

  Thirty minutes later, Olivia was clearing the tapes around the crime scene. She spoke with the detective in charge of the case, Charles Hoban.

  “We believe this is a random case,” Hoban said with little spirit. “We’ve been trying to clean the area of the hobos for months. They’ve been on the rise.”

  “They don’t call them hobos anymore, Detective.”

  “You can call them what you want. As we speak, the kid is at the station giving the departmental artist something to work with. My guess is he’s just some nut head without a home, probably broke out of a psych ward.”

  Hoban was a greying restless soul. He fidgeted and paced as he talked.

  “Any psychiatric hospital around?”

  “Evelyn Greer psychiatric hospital,” he said and stamped his feet.

  “That’s more than three miles from here, Detective.” Olivia stared at Hoban sideways. “You don’t find that kinda off?”

  “Nope. But we found about two pounds of dope lying around the premises, so this could also be drug-related.”

  Olivia wrote in her notepad and took another look at the body on the floor. An ambulance was waiting outside. The paramedics rolled a gurney in and proceeded with the evacuation.

  Olivia was standing on the porch when the ambulance rolled out into the street. She breathed slowly. Just one of her working days, she thought.

  —

  That night, Lin stood before the Pinecrest Florist and Balloons shop—former—and it was about 9:00 pm. No drunk kids were driving around with their parents’ car. It was just the lonesome house all by itself, empty and dark. Yellow police tape with the inscription of the Miami Police Department on it said Do Not Cross.

  He crossed the street and went into the house.

  They were waiting for him, the Circle of Templars from the Eastside. In the middle of the room, he scoffed at the superstition of the Order. They were standing in a circle around what was a crime scene. A crime that was committed by the Master himself.

  He was seated in the middle.

  Lin couldn’t count, he dared not, but he was sure there were more than thirty men standing in that dark room where they needed no light, because they were the light.

  “Welcome,” came the hollow voice of the Half-man.

  For the first time, Lin was seeing an outline of him, not the face itself, because it was covered in a cowl.

  “Your assignment resumes again. You know what you must do. Acquire the Holy Grail. The day is almost on us.”

  “Yes.”

  “She has been contacted, I suppose?”

  “I believe she has,” Lin said.

  “You must do more than just believe, my friend, you must know that she has,” the figure in the dark said in measured words. “So has she been contacted?”

  “Yes, she has.”

  “Then retrieve the Holy Grail from the boy as soon as you apprehend him.”

  Lin bowed and turned back.

  As he neared the door, the ghost voice said, “Let us not have a repeat of Rome.”

  Lin said they wouldn’t.

  He stepped into the chilly night and was gone.

  —

  Tom Garcia was right; she had gone from a hopeless romantic to a lonely and fortified city. She had been pushing Edward Byrne away. And for obvious reasons.

  “Penny for your thoughts…”

  She smiled at the face across the table. He was pretty; the half of him that was Italian overshadowed the British side. His dark hair was oiled and combed back on his forehead, giving him a movie star appearance. He always carried a day’s stubble; it was his trademark.

  But he was a lousy dresser. He wore a blue denim jacket over brown corduroy pants and a horrible looking sandal.

  He urged her with dark, intense eyes, his grin was quick and intelligent.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking, right now.” Edward forked a slice of steak into his mouth.

  “Your fashion, that’s what bothers me.”

  “Aw, then I should relax. We are talking about a problem without a solution.”

  Olivia laughed at the simple joke. Everything about Edward was unpretentious, an unusual breath of fresh air.

  Olivia checked her watch. “I have to go to work early, Ed.”

  “Yeah, can I have your steak?”

  “Sure.” Olivia pushed the remnants of her steak across the white tablecloth. She didn’t dig Italian cuisine very much.

  She waited for him to finish chewing; he wiped his sensuous lips with a napkin. He looked at her and asked, “What?”

  “Do you wanna come over?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It's just that you said you have to go to work early, you’d lost that chance if I come over and I’d have to lose a major deal too.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. The attraction was strong. Olivia loved the friendship until then. Edward had hinted about marriage the other night. The idea appealed to her. Not just tonight on account of the yellow lights that reminded of her romantic Rome, or the murmur of the packed restaurant. It was the solace of friendship and the presence of others like her, people valuing love and togetherness.

  They struck a deal; she would go home. Edward would go home and get some stuff and meet her.

  —

  Olivia entered her apartment after a ten-minute trek from the restaurant.

  The glow of a happy evening radiated on her face. Smokey was not there to welcome her. That was when she noticed she hadn’t used her keys to get in. Her heart fell down a chasm in her stomach. She threw her handbag on the floor.

  Olivia rushed through the large living room to the kitchen. The cat was not there either.

  “Smokey, baby!”

  She dashed into her bedroom. Her feet caught in the raised door frame, and she stumbled. But the cat was nowhere in there as well.

  “Smokey!!”

  A strong draught blew. It ballooned the light material curtains over her desk by the window. Olivia walked on shaky legs to the desk. She pulled the curtains aside, but the cat was not there still.

  A hum vibrated through the floorboards; she felt the mellow thrum in her feet. Her phone was ringing in the bag on the floor.

  “No…”

  It can’t be, it can’t be happening again, her mind screamed. The protest continued in her head even though a part of her already knew what had begun.

  Olivia opened her bag; she found the cell phone at the bottom of the bag. Her brows knitted; her breath forced itself out of her in gusts of rising anger.

  She punched the receive button. She put it on speaker. She listened to breathing on the other end.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she asked.

  “I am the fuck that’s about to fuck your life to smithereens,” came the clear voice.


  And she knew who it was.

  “You’re the Chinese scum, what do you want with my cat?”

  “And not just your cat, Miss Newton,” the voice said. “And I’m not Chinese, I’m Japanese.”

  “I don’t care if you’re Martian, where’s my goddamn cat? What have you done with him!?”

  “Your cat is the least of your worries. How about your boyfriend?”

  Suddenly the cell phone was like a foreign matter in her hand, like an alien species, forbidden, a recurring disease. She wanted to smash it against the wall, so much that the crashing would somehow make the voice crumble in the throat of the assassin and be the assassin's death.

  Her hands shook. Her grip on the cell phone tightened to the point of cracking it.

  “What do you want?” she asked, Her head screamed, The Grail!

  “You know what we want, you know how to get it!”

  Olivia screamed at the phone. Spittle flew from the corner of her parched mouth. “I don’t know shit, get away from me!”

  “There is no need for that sort of language,” the voice said flatly. “Your boyfriend Peter is alive by the way. If you care what happens to him eventually, then get us the Holy Grail, and we’ll let him go.

  “And this time, make it good, or you’ll lose everyone you care about, everyone. Edward Byrne and even your aunt May Gilmore in Connecticut.”

  The line clicked off.

  Olivia’s anger aroused anew. She started dialing Sheriff Tom Garcia’s number but stopped halfway through the digits. She put the phone in her pocket. She went to her desk and sat at the chair. She lowered her face into her palm.

  —

  5

  Piedmont Bay had two distinct piers. Pier 1 was slightly longer, and Pier 2, which was rarely used, jutted east and into the water.

  Olivia could not find Pier 3. Boats bobbed up and down lazily near Pier 1. A man wearing a straw hat and white khaki shirt and shorts jumped from a big boat to a small one. He hauled fishing lines on his shoulder.

  Daylight was fading fast. Olivia could see Sunset Bay from where she stood on Pier 2.

  Confused about her bearings, she decided to go back the way she came. That was when she saw the figure loom from beneath the pier she was standing on.