Paul swung the backpack off, opened it, and stepped up to the shelves, leaning over each statue. He wanted them all, wanted to take them and put them in his basement room just to stare around at them, but that wasn’t why he was here and no matter how many he took that wasn’t what would happen to them. He reached out. This one, it was gold. He held it, let the headlamp glint off it. Then into the pack. That one was beautiful but it was iron. Leave it. The two there, with jewels and coral, into the pack. The silver one. That little candlestick, it too. That was all the best from the ledges. Now for the cases on the walls. Paul turned his head, sweeping the light around.
There she was.
Just like the first time, the girl in the kitchen, Paul almost pissed himself. A nun, in gray robes, big brown beads around her neck. She smiled softly and Paul’s mouth fell open. It was the same nun, the one from the cave, smiling the same smile.
“You—you—you’re still here?” he managed to stammer.
“I’ve always been here,” she replied. Her eyes twinkled, and she stood with her hands folded in front of her. When she smiled she looked like the lady he used to give candy bars to. He’d never noticed that before, that they looked alike. “Paul,” she said, “you know you can’t take those.”
His voice had rung oddly off the stone walls. Hers didn’t disturb the sense that everything was resting.
“How do you know my name?” This time he whispered so he wouldn’t get the same echo.
“You came here when you were a little boy.”
He nodded. “I used to watch you sitting there. Meditating.”
“I know. I thought perhaps you’d join me sometime.”
“I—”
Larry interrupted him, barking, “Paul! Get back to work.”
He said, “Just give me—”
“No!”
That was Roman. The kick was from him too. Paul’s head almost cracked. The pain was blinding, and he barely heard the nun calmly say, “Roman, stop that.”
The kicking stopped instantly. Paul stared at the nun. “You can hear them?”
She smiled. “You don’t have to do what they say, you know.”
Paul swallowed. “Yes, I do.”
“Yes, he does,” Larry said.
“Yes! He does!” Roman yelled.
“No,” said the nun.
“I can’t get them to leave.” Paul was suddenly ashamed of how forlorn he sounded. Like a real loser. He heard Larry snicker.
“Even so,” she said.
He wasn’t sure how to answer her, but he didn’t get the chance. “Paul?” That was Stoom, sounding dark. When Stoom got mad it was really, really bad. “Do what you came for, and do it now. Remember, Paul: no swag, no skag.” It was one of those times Paul could hear Stoom’s sneer.
Paul looked at the nun, and then slowly around the room. The headlamp picked out fierce faces, jeweled eyes. “There’s lots of places I could hit,” he said to The Guys. “Doesn’t have to be here. This was a dumb idea. You know, like my ideas always are. How about I just—”
“No,” said Stoom.
“No,” said Larry.
And Roman started kicking him, chanting, “No swag, no skag! No swag, no skag!” Then they were all three chanting and kicking, chanting and kicking.
Paul staggered forward, toward a statue of a person sitting cross-legged like the nun did. Pearls and coral studded its flowing gold robes. He reached for it but the nun moved smoothly in front of it. She said nothing, just smiled.
“No,” Paul heard himself croak. “Please. You have to let me.”
She shook her head.
“Paul!” Stoom snapped. “You moron loser. Push her out of the way.”
“No. I’ll get a different one.”
“I want THAT one!” Roman whined.
Paul swung his head around. The headlamp picked out a glittering statue with lots of arms, over in a case by the door. He turned his back on the nun and lurched toward it. By the time he got there she was standing in front of it, hands folded, smiling. He hadn’t seen her move.
“Paul,” she said, “this life has been hard for you. I don’t know why; I think, though, that the next turn of the wheel will be far better.”
He didn’t know what she was talking about. Wheel, what wheel? All three of The Guys were kicking him now, Roman the hardest, trying to pop his right eye out. “Please,” he said. “Get out of the way.”
She said nothing, just smiled the ticket lady’s smile and stood there.
Paul took two steps over to the next cabinet.
There she was.
“Please!” he shouted at her. “Stop it!” His head pounded, the pain so searing he thought he might throw up. He could barely see but he knew she was still standing between him and the statues. “Please!”
“Hit her.” That was Larry. Paul barely heard him through the pain. He tried to pretend he didn’t hear him at all but Larry laughed. “Hit her. With a statue.”
Paul’s hands trembled as he reached into the backpack, took out the gold statue. “Please,” he whispered to the nun–ticket lady. “Please move.”
She just stood and smiled.
Paul lifted the statue way high. As he brought it down on her shaved head he realized he was screaming.
He felt the impact on her skull, felt it all the way up to his shoulders, his back. The nun crumpled to the floor without a sound. Blood flowed from the smashed-in place, started to pool under her face. Paul dropped the statue; it fell with a splash into the puddle of blood. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God.”
“Oh my God is right!” Larry roared a grand, triumphant laugh. “You killed her!”
“Killed her! Killed her!” shrieked Roman.
“You know what happens now, don’t you?” Larry said. “You go to jail. Prison, you loser, you go to prison where there’s no smack and we go too! Oh, will that be fun!”
“No.” Paul could barely get the word out. “I didn’t. She’s not dead.”
“Really?” said Stoom. “Can you wake her up?”
Paul kneeled slowly, put out his hand, shook the nun gently. She still had that little smile, the ticket lady’s smile, but she didn’t respond at all.
“Look at all that blood,” Stoom said. “You’re stupid if you think anyone could be still alive with all their blood on the floor like that. You’re stupid anyway, but she’s dead and you killed her.”
“Prison!” Roman bellowed. “Killed her! Prison!”
“No.” Paul stood slowly, shaking his head. “No.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” Larry said. “Oh, yes.”
Paul took one more look at the nun, then staggered toward the exit door. An alarm shrieked as he pushed it open. He ran across the terrace, slipping on the autumn leaves. When he got to the railing he stared down; the headlamp shone on branches and bushes growing out of the wall beneath him but couldn’t reach all the way to the street below.
He grabbed the rail, ready to vault over.
“No,” said Stoom in that very hard voice. “No, you’re staying.”
Paul felt his grip tighten on the rail, like The Guys were controlling his fingers. He heard a siren wail. That would be the cops, because of the door alarm. If he was still here when they came, he’d go to prison for sure.
“That’s right,” Larry said with satisfaction. “Prison for sure.”
Paul took a slow, deep breath. “No,” he whispered. “She told me I don’t have to do what you say.”
The Guys yelled, they bellowed and kicked, but Paul loosened his fingers one by one. He climbed over the railing, stood for a minute on the edge of the wall. Then he dove. His last thought was the hope that The Guys wouldn’t have time to clear out of his head before he smashed it to bits on the pavement.
The impact, the thud of a body landing forty feet below, didn’t penetrate very far into the square stone room. It barely disturbed the resting stillness, didn’t echo at all past the golden Buddha in the middle of the floor. The statue la
y on its side on a smooth dry stone tile, beside a backpack full of other statues. Except for the statue and the backpack, and the single panel removed from the skylight, nothing was out of place. The calm silence in the room continued, and would continue once the statues had been replaced in their proper spots by the museum’s new director.
She would be pleased that something had scared off the thief, though greatly saddened that he’d fallen to his death over the railing at the terrace. As advised by the police, she’d add an alarm to the skylight. She had much to do, as she was all the staff the museum had. She guided visitors, and also sold the tickets, the ticket lady having retired years ago. She didn’t mind the work. She was hoping, even, to soon reopen the meditation caves, to perhaps make the museum not just a serene spot, but a useful one, as it once had been: a beacon for poor souls with troubled minds.
About the Contributors
(The authors' biographies are as they appeared in the original volumes)
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Jillian Abbott's short stories have won awards in the United States and Australia. She is a reporter at the Queens Chronicle and her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the Writer Magazine, and many other publications. She's currently at work on a new mystery series as well as her second Morgan Blake thriller. She lives in Queens.
Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award–nominated author of Queenpin, The Song Is You, and Die a Little, as well as the nonfiction study, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir. She lives in Forest Hills, Queens.
Pearl Abraham is the author of the novels The Romance Reader and Giving Up America. Recent essays have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly, the Forward, and Dog Culture: Writers on the Character of Canines. Abraham teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence College. The Seventh Beggar, her third novel, will be published in September 2004.
Thomas Adcock, an Edgar Award–winning novelist, was born in Detroit, raised in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan, and schooled just across the Harlem River in Fordham, the Bronx. A staff writer for the New York Law Journal, he has also worked on television drama projects in Los Angeles for Aaron Spelling Productions and NBC. He is coeditor with Tim McLoughlin of Brooklyn Noir 3.
Shailly Agnihotri was born in India, grew up in Baton Rouge, and now lives in New York City. She is a filmmaker and recently completed a documentary entitled Three Soldiers. Her other projects include a feature film, Sangrita (in preproduction), and a novel, East River. She likes to consult Vedic astrologers, buy silver jewelry, and eat spicy chat in Jackson Heights.
Ted Anthony, a longtime journalist, has reported from more than twenty countries and forty-seven US states. He has been a foreign correspondent in China and covered the aftermath of 9/11 in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the early months of the war in Iraq. He is the author of the cultural history Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song.
Charles Ardai, a lifelong New Yorker, spent his first thirty years living either at 51st and Second or 52nd and First, before packing the Conestoga and lighting out for the wilds of 10021. His first novel, Little Girl Lost (written under the pen name Richard Aleas), was nominated for both the Edgar and Shamus awards. Ardai is also the cofounder and editor of the award-winning pulp-revival imprint Hard Case Crime.
Kevin Baker is a novelist and historian. His latest book, Strivers Row, is set in Harlem in 1943. His father was born on Fordham Road, and many of his father's people lived (and died) in the Bronx.
Carol Lea Benjamin, once an undercover agent for the William J. Burns Detective Agency, a teacher, and a dog trainer, is the author of the Shamus Award–winning Rachel Alexander mystery series, as well as eight acclaimed books on dog training and behavior. Recently elected to the International Association of Canine Professionals Hall of Fame, she lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and three swell dogs.
Thomas Bentil works as a case manager on Rikers Island for Fresh Start, a vocational training and reentry program. He was first bitten by the writing bug while "doin' time" in that very place and as a participant in that very program. While incarcerated, he wrote and was the managing editor for a jail-based literary magazine known as the Rikers Review. In a previous life, Thomas was a mildly successful scam artist as well as a full-time methamphetamine addict.
Nicole Blackman lives in an undisclosed Brooklyn neighborhood where she prefers eavesdropping on unsuspecting people. She is the creator of the innovative "The Courtesan Tales" performance, and author of the poetry collection Blood Sugar (Akashic, 2002). She is currently wanted for questioning in the disappearance of three men in Brooklyn.
Lawrence Block is an MWA Grand Master and a recipient of the Diamond Dagger life achievement award of the UK Crime Writers Association. He lives and writes in Manhattan.
Ken Bruen, author of The Guards and The Killing of the Tinkers, is published around the world. He has been an English teacher in Africa, Japan, Southeast Asia, and South America. He lives in Galway, Ireland.
Mary Byrne was born in Ireland and now divides her time between teaching, translating, and writing. She collaborated with Lawrence Durrell on his final book of essays, and her short fiction has been published in Ireland, England, France, Canada, and the United States. Byrne won the 1986 Hennessy Literary Award and currently lives in France.
Tori Carrington (a.k.a., Lori and Tony Karayianni) has published nearly forty titles, including those in the Sofie Metropolis, P.I. series, which are set in Astoria, Queens.
Jerome Charyn's most recent novel, The Green Lantern, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in New York and Paris, where he is Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris. He was born and raised in the Bronx.
Suzanne Chazin is the author of the Georgia Skeehan mystery series, including the novels The Fourth Angel, Flashover, and Fireplay. In 2003, she received the Washington Irving Book Award for both The Fourth Angel and Flashover. A New York native, Ms. Chazin has taught fiction writing at New York University and Sarah Lawrence College. She is married to Thomas Dunne, a senior chief in the FDNY who oversees fires in the Bronx.
Terrence Cheng is the author of two novels, Sons of Heaven and Deep in the Mountains. He earned his MFA at the University of Miami, where he was a James Michener Fellow, and in 2005 he received a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches creative writing at Lehman College, part of the City University of New York.
Thomas H. Cook is the author of twenty novels and two works of nonfiction. He has been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award five times in four separate categories. His novel The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1996. He splits his time between Manhattan and Cape Cod.
Todd Craig is a product of Ravenswood and Queensbridge Houses in Queens, New York. He is a writer, educator, and deejay. Straddling fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Craig's texts paint vivid depictions of the urban lifestyle he experienced in his community. He currently teaches English at the College of Staten Island while completing his doctorate in English at St. John's University.
Ashley Dawson is a professor of English at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and at the College of Staten Island. He is the author of Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain and The Routledge Concise History of Twentieth-Century British Literature, and coeditor of three essay collections, including Democracy, States, and the Struggle for Global Justice and Dangerous Professors: Academic Freedom and the National Security Campus.
Jeffery Deaver, the author of The Bone Collector and a number of other international best sellers, was born outside of Chicago but lived in downtown Manhattan for nearly twenty years. He was an attorney on Wall Street before turning to writing thrillers full-time. One of his first novels was titled Manhattan Is My Beat, an Edgar Award–nominee about a crime involving a (fictional) film noir.
Ed Dee was born and raised in Yonkers on the northern border of the Bronx. He spent ten years of his NYPD career as a street cop in the South Bronx. Today these same streets can make him laugh and cry, but mostly wish he could do it all again. He loved this opportunity to write about the old neighborhood, the old songs, the gang, the redhead . . . da Bronx. Ed's latest novel is The Con Man's Daughter.
Bruce DeSilva is the author of the hard-boiled Mulligan crime novels Cliff Walk and Rogue Island, with a third, Providence Rag, on the way. His fiction has won Edgar and Macavity awards and has been a finalist for the Anthony and Shamus awards. He worked as a journalist for forty years, most recently as a senior editor for the Associated Press. He reviews books for the Associated Press and is a master's thesis advisor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Joanne Dobson, author of the Professor Karen Pelletier mysteries, spent her formative years on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx—as far away culturally as one could possibly get from New England's elite Enfield College where Pelletier solves crimes, and occasionally teaches a class. She has spent the large part of her teaching career as an English professor at the Bronx's Fordham University.
Jill Eisenstadt is the author of two novels set in Queens, From Rockaway and Kiss Out. She is an occasional contributor to the New York Times, among other publications, and is a part-time writing professor at the New School's Eugene Lang College. Her Queens Noir story, "Golden Venture," is based on a real event in the borough's history.
Victoria Eng was born and raised in Chinatown and Queens. She is a graduate of Hunter College and holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University. Her work has been published in The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings about New York City. She lived in New Mexico and Costa Rica for seven years, and is currently back in New York working on a historical novel set in Chinatown.
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