The Queen and I

by Russell Andresen

  “I’m home, Mommy,” he said in his slightly high-pitched voice. “I brought you a present.”

  “What did I tell you about talking during my programs?” she snapped at him. “Jesus! You’re becoming more and more like your father.”

  Louis winced at the insult. He had always thought his father had left them when Louis was a very young age and he was now performing as a mime, which normally would have been amusing to him, but Louis had learned that his father had really returned to Europe and joined a rather nefarious consortium that wreaked havoc across the continent. He would one day find his father and introduce him to the Way.

  “I’m sorry, Mommy. Shall I talk to you later?”

  She coughed and answered, “No, goddamn it! I want my gift; bring it to me.”

  He entered the room and sat across from her. She watched him with a stern expression on her face and continued, “You know that Heinrich is looking for you.” She lifted his chin with a single finger and said, “He says you aren’t listening to him anymore.”

  Louis shrugged and took out the ear and presented it to his mother. She ogled it with intense appraisal and gently kissed the lobe. She cradled it like a baby and smiled at Louis. “You have always been Mommy’s good boy.”

  He nodded his head in agreement and asked, “Can I have a present?”

  “I don’t feel good today, Louis, maybe tomorrow.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that,” he answered. “I want to get a present for myself. I know who she is.”

  Cloris’ face went cold and she replied, “Who is she?”

  “She used to be Rothstein’s, but now another man has taken her. I want her; she should be mine.”

  His mother shook her head disapprovingly and said, “I don’t think so. There is no room around here for another woman like me.”

  “She’s not like you, Mommy,” he answered defensively.

  Cloris slapped him hard across the face, sending pain from his jaw to his ear. She knew how to hit him and where to cause the most pain, and she succeeded this time as she had on every other occasion.

  “What is that supposed to mean? Does she treat you better than me? Has she introduced you to the art of the hunt? Did she tell you about the Way?”

  Louis fought back a tear; he hated when his mother berated him. “She’s not like you. That’s what makes her special.”

  Cloris’s eyes went wide with rage, and she rose to her feet, grabbing a cane as she did, which she held high above her head. “On your knees, son,” she said coldly.

  Louis felt a fire burning deep in his chest and did as she asked and waited for the punishment that he knew was coming. She lashed at him repeatedly, hitting him so hard that the vibration in the cane hurt her own hands, and she yelled, “You are nothing but a disappointment! You are nothing without me! The Way will take you soon!”

  At hearing her mention the Way, Louis suddenly felt very calm, and for the first time in his life he felt clarity that he had never known before. He knew why the Way had led him home and why it had told him to attack that young man for no apparent reason. It was time for a sacrifice, a sacrifice that would deliver Louis from the life he was living and escort him to the life he wanted. It was time for Louis to leave the nest and spread his wings to fly on the wind that the Way was providing.

  She continued to beat him with growing ferocity, her eyes growing wider with anger and hatred, followed by surprise when he stood to face her and ripped the cane from her hands.

  He snapped it in half easily and threw the pieces across the room, all the while keeping his gaze on his now stunned mother. She slowly took a step back and raised her hands defensively as she began recognizing the purpose of her son’s stare. She had bred a monster that only she could had been able to control for these past thirty-some-odd years and now realized that the end was upon her. The Way she had introduced him to had obviously betrayed her and was now guiding her son in ways she was incapable of doing. She closed her eyes and waited for the curtain call to what was a beautiful performance.

  Louis gently grabbed his mother and held her back to his chest and wrapped his giant arms around her neck. He gently kissed her cheek and whispered, “The Way is ready for you now, and I have my own apprentice to train.”

  The snap of her neck echoed through the room, and her limp body fell from his arms in a clump of tangled limbs and a little blood from her mouth.

  Louis looked down at his mother’s body and heard the music playing softly in his ears. It was pleased with what he had just done and was signaling him that it was time for him to complete his training and take his rightful place in the Way. It was time for Louis to shed the memories of this life and begin building his new one, one that would show the world what only he and his mother had known for so long—he was the salvation and the means by which the world would be guided by the Way.

  It was time to leave for Zion, New York and his first pupil, Jeffrey David Rothstein. Anyone who interfered would be casualties of his crusade. He would leave destruction in his wake, and there would be no one to stop him. Schultz and Fujikawa would be next, and then he would make the woman his own.

  The dawn of his new life was before him, and Louis smiled to himself as the music began playing again.

  Chapter Forty-Three: With Two, You Get Kreplach

  “You really should buy something up here, Henry,” Mendel Fujikawa said as their limousine rolled through the quaint little town of Zion. “I can see why Rothstein would choose a place like this to hide from us; it lacks all forms of nuance and appeal. Why on earth would either one of us ever be caught dead in a place like this?” He lowered his sunglasses and looked at the rolling hills beyond the town sprinkled with vineyards and orchards and continued, “Although, it does provide the kind of privacy that men in our line of work appreciate and what we don’t want those prying eyes of the press to ever know about.” He reached over and held Heinrich’s hand tightly and turned to his best friend and lover, “We really need to do things like this more often.”

  Schultz smiled at his companion and stared ahead as the driver navigated the narrow lanes and turns of this town that, until two days ago, he had never even heard of. If not for Mendel’s informant who was following Louis Grecko, he would have never in a million years thought to look for Rothstein in this part of the world.

  That was the thing about theater types that Schultz could never understand and did not have a taste for; they always did the unexpected, and when one was dealing with them it usually proved to be more of an inconvenience than anything else. It had been true when he met with Rothstein for the first time and the playwright had refused to work with him. It happened a second time when Rothstein’s former assistant, Jacob Stone, had suddenly disappeared in spite of the fame and fortune that Schultz had provided for him, and it was happening again since word had reached him that the two former friends were now commiserating together in this godforsaken corner of the world. He hated the theater types, and these two in particular were his least favorite.

  “Did your little weasel tell you where we could find him?” Schultz asked solemnly.

  Fujikawa nodded his head and replied, “Are we talking about Rothstein or Grecko?”

  Schultz turned on his partner and said, “Grecko, of course. Rothstein is inconsequential to us once Grecko is out of the way.”

  Fujikawa sat in silence for a moment and continued, “I haven’t heard from him since he told us where we could find the two of them; besides, wouldn’t we be better served to let Louis finish the job he was hired for and then deal with him?” He picked at one of his fingernails and added, “It just seems like an awful lot of work on our part to get our hands dirty. You know how I always say you should never do the cleaning if you didn’t make the mess.”

  “That’s why we are doing this, Mendel. We made this mess, and we have to clean it up before we get caught in over our heads.”

  The car drove on smoothly through the town and approached the small hotel Schu
ltz had booked. He liked his privacy and had made it clear to the proprietor that it was in everyone’s best interest to keep things quiet about his being in town. Schultz was not famous in the sense that Jeffrey was, but with his kind of money, there was always at least one person who recognized him wherever he went.

  He turned to Fujikawa and said, “If things go our way, Louis will be dead by tomorrow and Rothstein will be on his way to the island.”

  “Provided our little friend has tracked and cornered Louis,” Fujikawa added quietly.

  * * *

  Sheriff Malcolm Pitts stalked around the precinct in the same bad mood he had been in for the last couple of weeks ever since he lost out on becoming the new cantor of the Zion synagogue. He couldn’t understand how it had happened. He had done everything he could to nail his performance and had been confident he would be triumphant when the votes were cast. Rufus O’Neal had given a strong performance, but he had stumbled over a few of the more difficult Hebrew words, and during the pronunciation of a couple, phlegm had flown from his mouth into the audience, which was a major faux pas no matter where you lived.

  He could not come to terms with the fact that he would be spending his Saturdays in the temple listening to O’Neal butcher the Hebrew prayers or praying to himself that the new cantor would fall ill. As the understudy, Pitts would then dazzle the crowd with his own renditions of the ancient text.

  His anger was not limited to his failure to win the title that he so desperately wanted. He was angry at his foster son, Sean, for disobeying his orders to stay away from Rothstein in a violent manner. And what was worse, he had had to arrest the young man for firing his gun inside the town limits during a drunken spell that had left Sean babbling about the appearance of a ghost living at the Rothstein house, and that they were all doomed in some apocalyptic end of the world precipitated by Abby Tisch. Try as he may with the young man, he just could not seem to be able to get through to him, and this was the last straw. He was going to have to write him off and be done with Sean Wagner. He knew it was probably for the best, but Malcolm Pitts did not like losing at anything, and this was no different.

  He anxiously walked to his office and closed the door behind him. It was about time for the phone call he had been waiting for, and he knew from reputation that it would be unwise for him to miss it.

  Pitts had heard of Heinrich Schultz before from a magazine article he had read at the Zion barbershop a few years ago, and he was intrigued by the man who had brought the drug that taught racial inadequacies to the masses. Pitts was not one to use any kind of narcotics, but he found the concept of this one to be interesting to say the least.

  Schultz’s assistant, a Mr. Fujikawa, had called the day before and informed him that the billionaire was coming to Zion on a very secretive visit to buy one of the local vineyards. He wanted the sheriffto personally see to his security and to help with a small matter of business that was not to be spoken of over the phone. While he found this to be somewhat exciting, he hoped the rich man was not about to ask him to do something illegal. He might just be the constable of a small upstate New York town, but he still had a job and a deep love of the law. Any attempt to cause him to deviate from his oath would result in the sheriff arresting the reclusive Schultz and giving him the first-hand experience of seeing the inside of a Zion jail.

  The phone rang and Pitts quickly answered. It was the assistant on the other end, informing him that they had arrived and were settling in to their new surroundings. An arrangement was made for the three men to meet in one hour to discuss the details of what they wanted from him.

  Malcolm Pitts looked out his window at the quiet serenity of the town and place of his birth and had a premonition that trouble was coming.

  * * *

  Louis Grecko stood over the shattered body of the man who had been following him since New York. He knew that this man was the one who had told Heinrich and the little man about his whereabouts, so his punishment had to be a slow and very complicated death. He admired his work and thought hard to capture that feeling, to bottle it up and store it away for later.

  This was the first murder he had committed since the death of his mother, and it did not feel like the others. Nothing felt like it had before he took her life as a sacrifice to the Way. He found he was having trouble focusing, he was finding humor in things that would normally never have aroused his attention, and he kept thinking about bunnies.

  Whatever this was that was happening to him, he was certain it was causing him to lose some of his edge. He needed that sharpness and cold-bloodedness to operate efficiently and effectively, and he was growing concerned about these new feelings and emotions.

  He brushed them aside as best he could and focused his attention on Jeffrey David Rothstein’s new home. He would visit him soon and finish the task set out for him by Schultz, and then he would stop in on his former employer and teach him the Way. The little man, however, did not deserve such a lesson and would be disposed of separately and without prejudice.

  Louis looked at the body again and suddenly thought of Alice in Wonderland; it had a bunny in it too.

  Chapter Forty-Four: I See You

  Melissa Foreman left the craft store in town where she had been sent by Saul to pick up some fabrics he said would be turned into her wardrobe for her grand premier on Broadway as soon as he, Jeffrey, and Jacob finished writing the script.

  She smiled as she walked, thinking about her friend, the ghost, and how much of an effect he’d had on her life in the short time they had known each other. Before meeting Saul, she’d been a very shy, introverted girl without many friends, but since she had met Saul, she was now more confident, outgoing, and eager to meet new people and learn new things about the world outside of Zion.

  Saul explained to her that her entire wardrobe would have to be drastically altered, because the orthodox Jewish clothing that she wore now was not going to help her career once she made it to the big city with Jeffrey. She did not have to turn her back on her new faith, but she certainly could not look as if she were in mourning twenty-four seven.

  She crossed the street and waved hello to Abby Tisch, who was opening up the bookstore. The relationship with Ms. Tisch and Saul had flourished in the few days since the ghost had come to the rescue of Jeffrey and Jacob. When he had revealed himself to the small crowd in the parking lot that evening, he had given Abby what she had always wanted, the answers to questions she had always had about the afterlife. And even more importantly, he was a person who was willing to talk about it.

  As Melissa walked to where she had left her bike, she saw a very large man approaching her, a man she had never seen before, one who was permeated danger and violence. She could not explain it; she just knew instinctively that this man was dangerous.

  She tried not to make eye contact with him, and found herself wishing that SheriffPitts was around, or better still, Saul. But they were not, and she was alone on the street. She would have to just hope for the best and pray that whatever this man wanted, she would not be the one who he asked.

  He stopped in front of her, and in a voice much higher than she would have suspected, said, “Good morning, young lady. I was hoping you could help me out with some directions.” He smiled, and that only caused more fear to enter her body. She had heard Saul talk of people who were insane and how you could almost smell the insanity; it was true in this case. Whatever had happened to this man, he was not operating at his best, and she hoped she could answer him and be on her way.

  “I’d be glad to help if I can,” she answered quietly, trying to hide her fear.

  “Can you tell me how to get to 16 Heron Drive?”

  Melissa’s heart skipped a beat, since the man asked for directions to the home where Jeffrey and Saul lived. This must be the monster I overheard them talking about, and now he’s somehow tracked them down to Zion. She thought quickly about what to say without appearing to be lying and replied, “If you go straight down Schmaltz Street, you�
�ll see a sign for Twenty-Seven South, take that for about five miles, and you’ll find it on the left.”

  Louis watched her carefully for any signs of deception and picked up on hers immediately. She obviously had heard of Louis and was trying to protect her friend Jeffrey. He nodded his head in understanding and smiled even broader at her and said, “That way? I thought that it was to the north.” He waited for her response.

  She swallowed hard and continued, “No, that would be Heron Lane.”

  Louis was pleased with her ability to lie as easily as she had just done with him. It showed a level of deviation from the norm that was rare in someone so young, and even more importantly, from someone who had been raised in such a sheltered life.

  “Well, I guess that it’s a good thing for me that I ran into you. I would have been chasing bunnies in the wrong place.” Again with the bunnies, he thought.

  Melissa smiled at him and hurriedly walked away, hoping he was not following her. She had to get word to Saul and Jeffrey as soon as possible that the man they were fearful of had come to Zion and that he knew where they lived.

  She casually looked over her shoulder and saw that the man had disappeared.

  * * *

  The girl was lying to him, and Louis took pleasure in that. It proved to him that his suspicions were correct and that the address he was in possession of was in fact the place where he could find Jeffrey David Rothstein. It was time for the hunt to come to its end, and for Louis to pursue his other goal, finding the woman and making her his own.

  That troubled Louis, though, in ways he could not understand. He had felt so strongly about dominating her and making her his own for so long that it seemed as if it was what the music and the Way had preordained for him. But since the death of his mother, the music was speaking to him less and less, and the path of the Way was becoming rockier and more treacherous to traverse. He could not explain this; he only knew that something was wrong with him.