The Fraternity of the Stone

by David Morrell

  He recalled the exhilaration he’d felt when talking to his prisoner, when making his speech to airport security. After six years of relative silence, talking had made him feel strangely good. His mood changed abruptly as he asked himself why he’d bothered to leave his prisoner in the van.

  Well, I couldn’t very well have taken him with me.

  No, of course not. But…

  I had an option.

  Yes, but you didn’t take it.

  In the old days…

  True. When you fought for your life on the hill, you killed your opponent. (Mea culpa.) But here you had a choice.

  At once the implication struck him. In the old days, he wouldn’t have allowed the man to live.

  5

  Despite the changes in the world while he’d been away, one aspect at least remained the same. Or possibly it too was worse. Boston’s Combat Zone.

  After leaving the bus, he headed toward downtown Boston, walking through streetlight-haloed darkness along the city’s weirdly angled streets (the legacy of the haphazard 1600s, a city planner’s nightmare), passing chrome-and-glass structures next to historic brick-and-board facades, their interiors no doubt stripped and varnished, filled with hanging plants and Oriental rugs.

  But as he ventured farther into the city’s labyrinth, the buildings became oppressive. Pride gave way to neglect. He reached the jungle of the predators. The scavengers. The Combat Zone.

  Prostitutes, twenty feet apart, lined both sides of the streets. Despite the cold October night, some wore tight skirts, often leather, hitched above their knees, or slashed long dresses that bared the skin up to a buttock.

  As Drew walked past, they squinted at him, assessing.

  “Hey, sweet thing.”

  “How’d you like your string pulled, love?”

  Drew studied them as they studied him, scanning their faces, searching for a faint suggestion that this or that woman could be of use to him.

  A garish yellow car screeched to a stop beside him. Drew pivoted on guard, gripping the Mauser beneath his padded vest. He blinked, startled, as a woman in the passenger seat exposed her breasts, the nipples encircled by lipstick, and raised her eyebrows in question.

  Drew felt an unfamiliar tingle in his groin. He shook his head fiercely. She laughed and turned to the man beside her, who raised a beer can to his mouth and stomped on the gas pedal, roaring away.

  He struggled to subdue the perverse swelling. His sex drive had disappeared effortlessly in the monastery; now, within hours of returning to the world, it was back. He forced himself to continue walking, searching, but Arlene’s face came vividly to his memory.

  A young black woman attracted his attention. Her thick dark hair was cropped close, like a boy’s. Her breasts swelled beneath a Celtics sweatshirt; above it, she wore an open plastic coat. But what attracted him was that she kept pinching in distress at what appeared to be a rip in the calf of her panty hose. The gesture evoked his sympathy.

  As he approached, her eyes flickered. She straightened, jutting out her breasts.

  “Have you got a place?” Drew asked.

  “What for?”

  “It has to have a bed.”

  “What for?”

  Drew frowned. He couldn’t believe that he’d made a mistake about her.

  “Be specific,” she added. “What are you asking me?”

  He understood. “Entrapment? You’re afraid I might be a cop?”

  She blinked her long eyelashes. “Now why would a cop want to bother me?”

  “It’s been so long I forgot. I’m supposed to ask how much. If I’m the one who mentions the money, you can’t be charged for soliciting.”

  “How much for what?”

  “To spend the night.”

  “And what do you want to do for the night?”

  She wouldn’t believe the truth, he realized, so he made a proposition.

  “Oh.” She relaxed. “Is that all? For a minute, I thought you looked kinky. All I can say is you must have a high opinion of yourself if you think you can do that all night. Fifty bucks.”

  Even six years ago, that price would have been low. “For all night?”

  “Hon, one thing at a time. Maybe. We’ll see.” She tapped him gently on his stubbled cheek. “But we’ll have to do something about that sandpaper.”

  “That’s part of the idea.”

  The glint returned to her eyes. “Just follow me.”

  6

  She led him two blocks over, to a dingy apartment building with grime on the bricks and dust on the windows. The concrete front steps were spotted white with bird droppings.

  At the door, she paused. “Now, love, what you have to know is my boyfriend lives in the apartment next door. So in case you’re the kind who enjoys the rough stuff…”

  “He and two pals with baseball bats pay us a visit.”

  “There you go. I knew you’d understand.”

  They entered a musty vestibule and went up two creaky flights of stairs, the bannister wobbly. She unlocked a door to a small apartment and spread out her arm in a gesture of welcome. “Home is where the heart is. The den of inequity.”

  Noticing the pun, Drew suddenly realized that she was intelligent beyond being street smart. “You’ve been to college?”

  “Yeah, the school of hard knocks. But if it’s loving you want to learn about, I’ll teach you tonight.” She grinned and shut the door. The room was small but neat and attractive. “You’ll notice I didn’t lock us in, just in case my boyfriend has to pay us a visit. There’s booze in the cabinet. Scotch, rye, bourbon. Beer in the fridge. It all costs extra. I’ve even got a place to send out for sandwiches, but that costs extra too.”

  “I bet,” Drew said. “No booze. But I’m starving. Anything that doesn’t have meat. Tomato and lettuce sandwiches. Three, no make it four. Milk.” He scanned the room, his stomach rumbling, as she used the phone to order the food. A small Zenith television, a Sony stereo, a sofa, a director’s chair.

  “Is that the bedroom?” he asked, pointing toward a door.

  She laughed. “You think you’re in the Ritz? That’s the closet. Over there’s the john. Excuse the expression. The sofa’s the bed. Just lift the cushions and pull that sucker out.”

  He did so. At once he heard the rustle of cloth behind him. Alarmed, he turned. Too late. With practiced efficiency, she’d dropped her plastic raincoat, tugged off her Celtics sweatshirt, and was now yanking down her leather skirt.

  He raised a hand. “No. What I said I wanted to do—I lied.”

  She froze in an awkward crouch, her skirt down around her knees, wearing only panty hose, her pubic hair showing darkly through them. Her eyes blazed. Stooped as she was, her breasts dangled, making her look vulnerable. “What?” Furious, she straightened. “What?”

  Her breasts and hips showed creamy stretch marks against the smooth chocolate skin, evidence that she’d once had a child.

  “It’s not what I had in mind. I wanted to explain on the street, but I didn’t think you’d—”

  “Hey, I told you. Any rough stuff, anything kinky and—” She raised a fist to slam it against the wall of the room.

  “No! Stop!” Drew held up his arms. He knew that the walls were so thin that shouts would be as disastrous as her pounding. He strained to speak softly. “Please, don’t do it. Look, I’m backing away. I’m nowhere close. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

  “What the hell?”

  “I meant exactly what I said on the street. I want to spend the night. That’s all. To have a bath. To use your razor and make myself presentable. And go to bed. And sleep.”

  Her eyebrows arched. “You’re into baths? I’m supposed to wash you, is that it?”

  “Not at all.” Though he tried not to look at her pubic hair, his body betrayed him. After all, he hadn’t seen a woman, let alone a naked woman, since 1979, and he couldn’t help feeling attracted to her. But he had to resist, and struggled to focus on her dark boyish
face, ignoring her breasts. “Please, I wish you’d put some clothes on.”

  “Now that,” she said, but her voice was no longer angry, “is kinky for sure. You mean to tell me—” she posed suggestively, her eyes amused, sticking out one hip “—you don’t like what you see?”

  “If it helps you to understand, I’m … or almost was … a priest.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “So what? A friend of mine, she does two priests a week. I believe in equal opportunity. I don’t discriminate.”

  Drew laughed.

  “There, that’s the idea. Loosen up, huh?”

  “Really, how much for the night? But no sex.”

  “You’re serious?”

  He nodded.

  “Would I have to leave?”

  He shook his head. “In fact, I’d prefer it if you stayed.”

  “If that isn’t weird.” She calculated. “Okay, then, two hundred bucks.” The furtive movement in her eyes suggested that she expected him to argue.

  “That’s just about what I have.” He pulled out the wallets he’d taken from the man on the hill and the one in the van, tossing money on the pulled-out bed.

  “You never heard of a hotel?”

  He gestured toward his dirty clothes. “Like this? I’d be remembered.”

  “And you don’t want to be remembered?”

  “Let’s just say I’m shy.”

  Her smile became a sober reassessment of him. “And love, you’re also cool. Okay, I read you now. No need to fret. You’re safe here. Have your bath.”

  “But if it’s all the same to you,” Drew said.

  She opened the closet, pulling out a housecoat.

  “I’d feel better if…”

  She turned to him.

  “You were in there with me.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got some questions for you.”

  7

  And, he didn’t add, he wanted to keep her in sight.

  In the bathroom, he took off his grimy vest. She sat on a chair in the corner and lit a joint.

  “You sure you don’t want a drag?” she asked.

  “It goes against my religion.”

  “What does, relaxing?”

  “Dulling my senses.”

  She chuckled. “We wouldn’t want to do that.”

  Hot water from the faucet cascaded into the bathtub, raising steam that coated the mirror above the sink.

  Drew put his clothes on the shelf behind him, unobtrusively shoving his Mauser beneath the padded vest. The act of stripping in front of her wasn’t difficult. Physical shame had never been one of his—what was the slang from the old days?—hang-ups.

  “Not bad,” she said, judging his physique, then inhaling sharply, retaining the smoke. “A little gaunt in the haunches.” She gestured with the joint. “A little skinny in the ass. If I had your rear end, I’d have to go on welfare. All the same, not bad.”

  Drew laughed. “I owe it all to diet and exercise.”

  “Exercise? Hell, you look like one of those guys that runs.”

  Drew’s chest warmed; he’d been a passionate runner. “Yeah.” He smiled. “Jim Fixx, Bill Rodgers.”

  “God, I hope not. Fixx is dead.”

  Drew felt a jolt. “You’re kidding.”

  She sucked on the joint and shook her head. “Nope. He went out happy. Died on his jog.” She looked at him. “Where have you been? If you’re into that stuff, you’d know Fixx is dead. He had an inherited heart condition. All that jogging and—”

  Drew tried to recover from his shock. “I guess there aren’t any guarantees.” He turned to step into the bathtub.

  Abruptly she leaned forward from her chair. “Holy shit!”

  He swung back, ready to grasp for the gun beneath his pile of clothes. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? Good Christ, your back! What happened to you?”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Sorry, I forgot. My boyfriend.”

  “What about my back?”

  “The scars.”

  “The what?”

  “It looks like somebody whipped you.”

  Drew felt cold. He’d never realized. The years of penance he’d inflicted upon himself. The skipping rope with which he’d lashed his back. “Yeah, I was in Nam. Tortured.”

  “It must have been awful.”

  “I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

  Drew kept his back turned away from her and stepped over the side of the bathtub. He shut off the water and slowly sank down, feeling it rise past his groin, then above his waist, the heat relaxing his aching muscles. Indeed, he hadn’t had a hot bath since he’d entered the monastery, and the unaccustomed luxury made him feel vaguely guilty. He inhaled the lilac fragrance of the soap. As if he’d never seen one before, he studied a huge sponge that she’d given him to use as a washcloth, then soaked it and squeezed soapy water over his head.

  She’d taken another drag off the joint and now exhaled the smoke she’d been holding as long as she could in her lungs. “Well, I was wrong. About your being shy.”

  “It’s only a body.”

  “Yeah, I learned that quite a while ago. The shampoo’s on that plastic shelf near your head. Talk about dirty. Look at the water. You’ll have to drain the tub and start all over. What were you doing, rolling in mud?”

  The irony amused him. “You don’t know how right you are.” He scratched his stubble. “We both agreed that I need a shave.”

  “The razor’s next to the shampoo on that shelf.”

  She didn’t have shaving cream, and he had to use hand soap. “I’m sure this’ll sound odd,” he said. “Who’s president?”

  She choked on the smoke she’d inhaled. “You’re kidding me.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “But that’s the second time you’ve … when I mentioned Fixx. Don’t you watch television, read the papers?”

  “Not where I’ve been.”

  “Even in jail, they’ve got television and newspapers.”

  “Then that should tell you something.”

  “You weren’t in jail? But I had the impression…”

  “Believe me, don’t ask. The less I tell you…”

  “The better off I am. All right, you claim you’re a priest.”

  “Almost. What they call a brother.”

  “If that’s your story, I’ll pretend to believe you were in a monastery. Reagan’s president.”

  Surprised, Drew stopped shaving for a moment. “So Carter didn’t get reelected.”

  “Not the way he let those Iranians make fools of us.”

  “Iranians?”

  “The hostage crisis. Don’t you know anything?”

  “I guess that’s becoming obvious. Tell me.”

  Class was in session, and it distressed him. He learned about the Iranian assault on the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979. He learned that in 1980 the Soviets, claiming to be nervous about the violence in Iran, had invaded Afghanistan to make that country a protective buffer. Both of these crises, he realized with a shudder, had occurred because of him, because of something he’d done, or rather hadn’t done. Ripples. Causes and consequences. If he’d completed his last assignment, if he’d killed the man his network had ordered him to, the sequence would probably never have started. Instead, he’d entered the monastery, and his target had risen to power in Iran.

  Was I wrong? Drew thought. How many people have suffered because of me? But how can the decision not to kill be wrong?

  The woman continued. Because of Afghanistan, President Carter had refused to allow American athletes to attend the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The Soviets in turn had refused to allow their athletes to attend the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

  “The Russians claimed they didn’t go to the Olympics because they were worried about terrorists,” the woman said. “But everybody knew they were just getting even for what Carter did.”

  Terrorists. I
nwardly, Drew groaned. He’d hoped never to hear that word again.

  But there was more, much more. As she smoked another joint, free-associating about the major events of the past six years, the sickness in his soul became worse. He learned that Reagan had nearly been assassinated by a love-struck maniac who wanted to attract the attention of a teenage movie star who’d just begun classes at Yale. The Pope had been wounded during a procession in St. Peter’s Square by a Turkish religious fanatic supposedly working for the Bulgarian secret police. A South Korean commercial airliner filled with passengers, some American, had intruded on Soviet airspace and been shot down with no survivors, but nothing really had been done about it.

  “Why not?” she asked indignantly. “How come we let them push us around?”

  Drew couldn’t bring himself to tell her that nothing in such matters was ever what it seemed, that commercial airliners didn’t just happen to stray into hostile airspace.

  The gist was clear. These disasters seemed commonplace to her, but after his six peaceful years in the monastery, the effect of her list was devastating to him. He tried to avoid concluding that the unacceptable had become ordinary, that the world had gone insane.

  “Détente?” he asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “The arms talks. Nuclear treaties.”

  “Oh, they keep trying. But do you know what some assholes—they call themselves experts—are claiming? That we can actually win, survive, a nuclear war. They say it’s predicted in the Bible. That Christians will defeat the Communists.”

  Drew moaned. “Don’t tell me any more.” He stood, dripping water, preparing to step from the tub.

  She threw him a towel. “Better cover yourself up, love. Otherwise—” she raised an eyebrow “—you never know. I might get interested.”

  He’d made the right choice, he decided. She was good for him; she made him laugh. He wrapped the towel around his waist, then glanced at his clothes. “I guess I’d better wash them.”

  “I might as well do something for what you paid me. Let me help.”

  He wasn’t able to stop her in time. With a look of disgust, she picked up his grimy clothes. And stared at the Mauser beneath them.