Vigil

by Robert Masello

  “And I suppose that you, for instance, think that you do know? You believe you’re aware of everything that might be pertinent to your work with that fossil?”

  Back to the fossil. “Yes. I think I was.”

  “But were you aware that one minute after your lab explosion, the bells in every church, synagogue, and mosque in the city started ringing?”

  Carter remembered hearing about it on the radio driving back from Ben and Abbie’s country house. “Yes. It was some kind of Halloween prank.”

  “A prank that has yet to be solved or explained.”

  “And you think that the ringing bells have some connection to the work I was doing?” Carter said, incredulously. “Are you saying that the force of the explosion set off, what, a sympathetic vibration in church bells all across the borough?”

  Ezra suddenly leaned forward, his elbow brushing his plate. “You have no idea what I think! The data is staring you in the face and you just don’t want to look back at it.”

  Carter remembered his thought about staring into the abyss. “What data are you referring to?”

  “You think these two events are just a coincidence?”

  “Yes. I do. What else could they be?”

  Ezra’s eyes fairly blazed with conviction—or, Carter thought, with madness. He could see Ezra wrestling with something, a decision. He was sizing Carter up, wondering whether to broach the topic he could scarcely avoid any longer. Finally he said, in a voice that indicated he had managed to overcome some profound reservations, “Come with me.”

  Ezra threw his napkin on the table, got up, and started out of the room. Carter followed him. He had no idea where he was going, or what to expect, but if he’d gleaned anything from the conversation they’d just had, it was that he’d better keep an open mind. Whatever Ezra wanted to show him, it was going to be . . . a stretch.

  At the end of a long hallway, Ezra stopped and unlocked a door. He kept his own room, in his own apartment, locked? More and more, Carter suspected he was dealing with a paranoid personality. Ezra stepped inside, and once Carter was in too, he closed and locked the door behind them.

  “I have to take certain precautions,” Ezra said.

  Carter nodded, as if he understood. The bedroom he was now standing in was very large and well furnished, but there was nothing in here that struck him, at least so far, as odd or remarkable. If Ezra had something to show him, it had to be through the doorway to his left.

  “Before I show you this,” Ezra said, “you have to promise me that you won’t say a word about it to anyone. Do I have your promise?”

  Carter agreed.

  “And you promise, too, that you’ll keep that open mind?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  Ezra paused, as if he still wasn’t sure he wanted to go forward. Then he opened the door to the adjoining chamber and looked around the interior before stepping inside. Another sign of paranoia? Carter thought.

  The air was stuffy and the room was dim. There were French doors, as in the dining room, but the curtains were drawn and Carter had the distinct impression that they were seldom, if ever, opened. Ezra walked to the far side of the room and flicked on a lamp above a drafting table. On the table, and on the walls above and around it, were acetate sheets covering yellow scraps and strips of what looked like ancient scrolls or papyri.

  “What are these?” Carter said. “The Dead Sea Scrolls?”

  Ezra didn’t answer, and Carter suddenly thought Oh my God—they are. He looked at Ezra, who held his gaze; in Ezra’s eyes, he saw a flash of defiance, and pride.

  “How on earth did you get hold of these?”

  “Let’s just say I found them. They were meant to belong to me.”

  Carter couldn’t resist going closer. He walked to the wall and studied one of the sheets hanging there. Even for someone as accustomed as he was to dealing with ancient things, these were astonishing. He had never seen a document so old—for all he knew, there weren’t any—and this one was covered with dense, indecipherable characters, written in a purplish ink so dark it was almost black. He looked over at the drafting table, where Ezra had clearly been at work assembling another section of the antique scrolls.

  “What do they say?”

  “As you can see, I’m still piecing that together. But they’re a mixture of things—stories, revelations . . . prophecies.”

  Carter was bending closer to the one on the drafting table. “Is it papyrus?”

  “No,” Ezra said. “It’s something else. But given its Middle Eastern origin, it’s unlikely to be a rice admixture. It’s probably some sort of animal skin—goat, sheep, camel, ox.”

  “Sounds like you still need to narrow it down.”

  “I do—and that’s where I thought you could help.”

  Carter glanced at Ezra, to see if he was kidding, but it didn’t look that way. He was serious. “How would I know?” Carter asked. “This isn’t exactly my field.”

  “But you do have a lab at NYU. You have access to all the usual dating techniques—radiocarbon, for example—and I’m sure you can do molecular tissue analysis, too.” Ezra came to Carter’s side and pointed his finger at a spot on the scroll where the light was the brightest. “Do you see? It has the texture, even possibly the pore structure, of an animal; what kind, I don’t know. I don’t know what the ink is made of either.” He looked over at Carter. “But if you were to run some lab tests, you could tell me.”

  “And that would help?”

  “With my work? Immensely. If I knew the composition of the scroll, and its date, I’d be able to figure out a lot of other things about it.”

  Carter leaned back. “If it’s so important, how come you haven’t just found someplace to do the lab tests on your own?”

  Ezra looked away, and to Carter it looked like he was rehearsing exactly what he wanted to say. “While my claim to this material is entirely legitimate, there are still certain authorities, here and elsewhere, who might dispute it.”

  Whew, Carter thought—this guy really was way out there on the limb.

  “And my activities at this time,” Ezra added, “are closely monitored.”

  He must be referring, Carter thought, to that “rehabilitation team” his stepmom had mentioned. Whatever Ezra was up to, he was certainly up to it in a big way. Carter looked around at the workroom. Books and papers were scattered all over the floor, and he could see where Ezra had set up his tools on an old toy chest in an effort to create a viable workspace. And strange as it all was, Carter would have had to admit that he recognized the place immediately—just as he recognized the kind of person who would set it up. It reminded him of some of his own makeshift offices and research spots. Despite all the money he apparently had, Ezra Metzger was one of those single-minded eccentrics who usually managed to worm their way into a university environment and then live out their days in a niche in the woodwork. The type was absolutely familiar to Carter; he had a sort of soft spot in his heart for the intellectual misfits—perhaps because he knew how perilously close he’d come, with his own expeditions and pet theories, to winding up as one himself.

  “Even if I agreed to get you what you want,” he said, “and I’m not saying that I can, how do you expect me to do it? You want me to just walk into the labs and unroll one of these scrolls?”

  “No, I know you can’t do that,” Ezra said, eagerly, sensing he was on his way to victory. “All you need is a tiny sample, and I’ve already selected that for you.” He held out a sandwich-size plastic baggie, inside of which Carter could make out a fragment of the scroll. “This should be enough to work with—and it’s all, quite frankly, I’m prepared to spare.”

  Carter took the baggie and held it up to the light; the strip inside was no more than an inch long and maybe three-quarters of an inch wide, but he knew that Ezra was right; it would be enough for the lab tests—if, that is, he could get them done at all. He might have to do quite a bit of fast-talking to explain how he, a paleontologis
t, had come by this particular specimen and why he needed the test results.

  But he’d made strange requests before.

  In fact, now that he thought about it, he’d never even called for the final results on the sample that he and Russo had taken from the fossil. In all the turmoil from the explosion, the death of Bill Mitchell, Russo in the hospital, he’d put it out of mind. He’d actually come to think of the fossil as having been irremediably lost in the lab inferno—it was just easier that way. But it wasn’t really so, was it? A tiny, unsullied fragment still existed. It wouldn’t be much, but at this point, he’d be grateful for anything he could salvage. And it would give him a good reason for showing up at the biomed lab in the first place.

  “You know, there’ll be lab costs for something like this,” Carter said, “and they could run pretty high.”

  “Whatever it costs,” Ezra said, dismissing the problem, “I’ll cover.”

  From everything he’d seen so far, Carter believed that Ezra would be good for the money. But when he started to slip the baggie into his front shirt pocket, Ezra stopped him.

  “Your body heat,” he warned.

  Carter said, “How do you want me to carry it?”

  Ezra turned around and grabbed a white mailing envelope. “Put it in this and carry it in your hand, or your outside coat pocket.”

  Carter obligingly put the baggie in the envelope, then sealed the flap. Just by doing so, he felt that he had inadvertently signaled his complicity. He had entered into some sort of pact with Ezra, a pact that he wasn’t overly eager to scrutinize. But then there were many things in his life right now that didn’t bear close scrutiny. Maybe he was being stupid, maybe he was just being helpful . . . and maybe he was simply trying to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he wasn’t one of those closed-minded scientists that Ezra had been going on about. Fair enough, but who was he trying to prove that to, he wondered—Ezra, or himself?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Arius smelled her before she even came out of the building, the scent of hyacinth wafting toward him, barely concealing the subtler but even more alluring aroma beneath it. The aroma of beauty and youth . . . and desire. She was slender, with rich brown hair and green eyes, and he wondered if the old man, the one who was now opening the car door for her, was silently reveling in her scent, too. How could he not?

  As the car slowly rounded the drive, he stood in his new clothes beside a decaying tree—how were they expected to grow with their roots buried in this . . . concrete?—and watched.

  This was another connection, another thread in the web he was so quickly constructing.

  It was a big city, he had learned, with countless people in it.

  But his web kept him centered, his web kept growing, in size and complexity. He knew that if he paid close attention to it, his web would eventually provide him with everything he needed to know . . . and everything he needed to bring about his ends. Carter Cox—whose name he had taken from the silver mailbox—had led him to this spot, and now, he knew it was time to follow the new thread.

  Time to expand the web again.

  As he turned and walked away, he passed a pair of young men, talking energetically with each other, and he was glad to note that they did not stop to stare at him; they didn’t even slow their conversation. A woman pushing a baby carriage smiled his way, then went back to babbling at her child.

  He was now that . . . believable.

  It hadn’t taken him long to assess this new world, and to learn that he had to make certain changes. He had looked around, at other men on the street, and quickly learned to tell the difference between the struggling and the successful, between the unwanted and the sought-after. And he knew, soon enough, that the red cloak—coat—was wrong. It was a banner for the unnatural. But he’d also taken the creature’s purse. And in it he’d found money—and even more. The purse was filled with these cards, small cards that fit neatly in the palm, each one with a different name on it; he had observed how people used them to acquire whatever they desired.

  And he had swiftly done the same.

  Now his coat was black—sleek and warm and long enough almost to graze his ankles—and his shoes were black, too, gleaming and pointed. He wore a suit, a dark blue the color of the sky just before the sun crested the horizon, and a white shirt of soft, white silk, with an open collar that wrapped like a band around his throat. And although he had long since discarded the purse (another sign of unnatural artifice) and the dark glasses—the sunglasses—that he had found inside it, he had replaced them with a differently tinted pair; round, with gold frames and amber-colored lenses. He knew that his eyes, otherwise, could prove unsettling—they were no one color, but could change with his mood and his surroundings. In them, he knew, people could see the light that coursed like blood through his body. His eyes could shine like a sunlit waterfall, flash like a river of golden coins, or boil like a flood of molten lava.

  It was best, all things considered, that he keep the glasses on.

  Every so often he stopped, deliberately, and breathed in the air. Even though the car was nowhere in view, the car carrying the woman who smelled of hyacinth, he could track her. He could follow her scent. He could feel the twitch upon the fragile thread of his invisible web—and he could follow it.

  It led him away from the river and into the heart of the city. Soon he found himself on a wide and busy street, outside a building with a long red awning and heavy doors of polished brass. She had gone in there.

  A man in a uniform held the door for him as he entered, and welcomed him to something called the Raleigh Gallery of Fine Arts.

  “Thank you,” Arius replied, always pleased to hear his words, and his voice, gain such easy acceptance.

  Inside, he sensed another happy confluence—not only was the hyacinth woman standing not far off, studying a painting, but the woman showing it to her was the one who lived with Carter. Elizabeth was the name he’d seen on the box.

  His web had just grown that much stronger.

  As he observed them—and yes, they had the same underlying scent—a small man came up to him, very eager, very friendly, with his hand extended.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met,” the man said, “but I’m Richard Raleigh, the owner of the gallery.”

  Arius extended his hand and nodded.

  “And you are?” Raleigh persisted.

  “My name is Arius.”

  “I detect an accent,” Raleigh said, smiling broadly, “and I’m usually very good at pinning them down. But I can’t for the life of me guess where this one might originate. Would you mind my asking where you’re from?”

  “Far away,” Arius replied.

  Raleigh nodded sagely, and knew enough not to pursue it. He had dealt all his life with monied, and even titled, foreigners, and he knew when to back off. Some of them liked to try to pass as ordinary folk, but Raleigh could pick them out of a crowd at a hundred paces. This fellow was, admittedly, more unusual than most. Maybe six foot two, with shades he apparently had no plans to take off, and dressed in expensively understated clothes, he carried himself like a royal potentate, his head back, his shoulders squared, his fashionably long hair rippling just over his shirt collar. Raleigh found it hard to take his eyes off him.

  “Allow me to tell you a little bit about our gallery. In this room, you will see most of the oil and watercolor works that we presently have for sale. But we also have an upstairs gallery for private showings of certain works—most of them Old Master prints and drawings.”

  Arius didn’t say anything, but stepped closer to one of the paintings—a sixteenth-century annunciation scene, displaying the elongated forms and skewed perspective common to the Mannerist style.

  “Yes, that’s a particularly fine work,” Raleigh said, “which only recently came onto the market. It’s been in the collection of the same Austrian family since the late fifteen hundreds, and it’s attributed to Fra Bartolommeo. Are you familiar with him?”

  A
rius cocked his head at the painting, as if trying to compensate for the altered perspectival lines. “No, I am not.”

  “Not many people are,” Raleigh rushed in, always eager to assure potential customers that whatever they didn’t know was strictly the province of the experts. “But if you would like to know anything more about it, our resident art historian—who oversees everything in our collection—just happens to be right here.” He gestured toward Elizabeth, who looked over in Arius’s direction.

  She was quite beautiful, Arius thought. Even more beautiful than the hyacinth woman.

  “Beth is with another client right now,” Raleigh said, “but I’ll introduce you to her as soon as she’s free.” Raleigh knew that Beth had a way with new clients, effortlessly winning their trust . . . and with the exception of Bradley Hoyt, that young dot-com mogul, their business.

  “I would like to meet her now,” Arius said.

  Now? Raleigh didn’t know quite what to do; Beth was with Kimberly Metzger, one of his most prized customers—just last month he’d sold her a Flemish portrait for close to half a million dollars—and he couldn’t very well interrupt them. But when he glanced their way, he noted that Kimberly was already paying more attention to the mysterious stranger than she was to whatever Beth was saying.

  “Do I have a rival for this painting?” Kimberly said, teasingly.

  “No, no, not at all,” Raleigh interjected, “but if I may, I would like to intrude for just a moment.”

  He didn’t have to go any further; Kimberly stepped forward, offered her hand to Arius, and introduced herself. “I know everyone in New York who knows anything about art,” she said, “but I’m sure that I don’t know you.”

  “Mr. Arius is just visiting the city,” Raleigh said, glancing up at him to see if this seemed correct. He got no objection.

  “Is that true, Mr. Arius?” she asked. “Are you new in town?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long do you think you’ll be staying?”