Comes a Horseman

by Robert Liparulo

  See? he told himself. Mind over matter. There’s always more power where you think there’s none. You just have to look for it, conjure it.

  He opened his eyes, this time ignoring the sting of sweat. Pippino Farago came into view, looking nervous and intimidated, as if he expected Luco to ask him to bench some free weights. But Luco knew his old friend had other reasons to be anxious.

  The dumbbells came down . . . slow, steady. Luco closed his eyes again. Up went the weights . . . then down . . . The song had reached its deafening crescendo, and Luco thought, Up . . . one . . . more . . . time. The track stopped. Luco lowered his arms and let them hang with the weights below the bench seat. Perspiration streamed over his skin as he caught his breath. Finally, he lowered one dumbbell to the floor, then the other. The next song in his custom playlist had started—“Elk Hunt” from The Last of the Mohicans. It was such a stirring orchestration, he was tempted to let it play to the end. Business was at hand, however, so he reached to the iPod clipped to his waistband and turned it off. He pulled the ear-buds out and draped the cords over his shoulders.

  “Arjan said you wanted to see me.” Pip shifted his weight to his shorter leg.

  “Have a seat.” He indicated a workout bench across from his own. He leaned sideways to snag a towel off a hook affixed to the mirrored column and began wiping his face.

  “Get everything taken care of in Jerusalem?” Luco asked. After Luco’s meeting with the Watchers, Pip had not returned to Tel Aviv with him, saying he had errands to run. He’d arrived hours later with one of the security guards.

  Pip seemed to take a sudden interest in Luco’s sneakers and mumbled some response.

  Dabbing the towel over his arms, Luco said, “How do I look?”

  “Uhh . . .”

  “Michelangelo arms, don’t you think?”

  Pip nodded. “You’ve always been fit.”

  “Better now than ever.” He ran the towel across his chest and dropped it in his lap. He leaned over, planting his forearms on his thighs. Pinning Pip with his eyes, he said, “We have a problem.”

  Pip winced and recovered quickly. “What’s that?”

  “I’m aware of your meeting today. With Hüber. Did you think I would not find out?”

  Again, the smaller man diverted his eyes. They darted back to Luco, then fled away once more. A smile, too, quivered into place, then vanished.

  Luco knew Pip could not bear the weight of direct confrontation, especially when it was Luco applying the pressure. When Arjan had reported the call Pip received from Hüber, he had shrugged it off. No way would Pip meet with a Watcher behind his back. Then the meeting took place, and Luco considered waiting to see how it all played out. Would Pip’s better judgment force him to confess his misstep, or would he surprise Luco by pursuing motives Luco could not fathom? What could Hüber promise that Luco had not already given? Then he realized he could not risk Pip’s betrayal, not now, not with the power plays he had set in motion at the Watchers meeting and in the United States. Better to meet Pip’s rebellion head-on, find out what was going on, and stop it quickly.

  He said, “I understand Hüber moving in on you. He has never masked his disdain for me. But you . . . my right-hand man . . . my friend. What possessed you?”

  Observing his hands squeezed together in his lap, Pip said, “Funny you should use that term.”

  “What? Possessed?” He laughed, the sound as cold as old bones.

  Pip nodded slightly. “You’ve . . . changed. You . . .”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  Pip’s gaze came up. “You’ve changed. When we started this scam, you were bold but careful. You were—”

  “Scam!” Luco came off the bench and stood like a boxer, ready to raise his fists in battle. “Is that how you think of my destiny? Is that why you’ve become weak?”

  Pip remained seated. Good for him. Luco would just knock him down if he stood up. Nerves made Pip’s forehead and upper lip wet.

  Pip hesitated, then said, “Scam is what you called it, Luco. Eight years ago, when—”

  Luco stepped in and struck Pip on the head, hard, knocking him off the bench. Pip scrambled up, pressing a palm to the side of his face. He stumbled backward awkwardly.

  “Eight years ago!” he said, his voice raised. “You told me about the Watchers and what they were looking for. You said you could be that person. You said it would be the biggest scam ever played. The biggest scam, Luco!”

  Luco felt his pulse quicken, his shoulders rise and fall with each angry breath. Through tight jaws, he said, “You don’t believe.”

  “Believe what, Luco? Believe what? That you can pull this off ? Yes, I do. That you are Antichrist?” His shoulders dropped. “No, that I don’t believe.”

  Luco’s muscles, already pumped, tightened further, until they were rock hard under taut skin. He scanned his surroundings, saw the dumbbells, and hefted one into his fist. He turned to Pip, who backed away, hands raised pleadingly.

  “Is that what you discussed with Hüber? Is this what it comes down to?”

  “No! Wait a minute . . . let me talk . . .”

  “I’ve heard everything I need to.” Luco stepped toward Pip. “Christ had Judas. I have you.”

  “Hüber asked me to help him, but I didn’t tell him anything. I—”

  “How can I trust you now? You went to him.” He moved closer.

  “Wait!” Near panic now. He took another step back. “You’ve pushed me around our entire lives . . . but I’m not stupid, Luco. I have . . . insurance.”

  Luco halted. “What are you talking about? What insurance?”

  “The Raddusa case file. I have it.”

  Luco felt the power drain from his wrath, as though Pip had delivered a physical blow to his gut.

  “It’s destroyed,” Luco said. “Gone.”

  Months ago, Father Randall had approached him about a prophecy indicating that while in his childhood Antichrist would murder his mother. Randall explained that he had yet to corroborate and vet the prophecy. Still, it was precisely the boost Luco needed to solidify the Watchers’ support.

  Everyone knew he had killed his mother when he was eleven years old. To the police, he had explained that she was abusive and that she was beating him when he grabbed a butcher knife and thrust it into her chest. He showed them the bruises she had inflicted on him. He cried and babbled his way to credibility, assisted by his forlorn father, who testified that his wife often beat the boy, despite his protests.

  “She was a troubled woman, my Maria,” he’d said mournfully.

  Luco’s friends heard a different story: that she had found his stash of forbidden magazines and a little grass an older boy had given him. She threatened to tell Papa, who would have beaten him mercilessly. So he had killed her and gotten away with it. The Watchers knew the story; the prophecy—once it was confirmed by their own theologians, which Randall would make sure happened—would cement their faith in him.

  Problem was, he had not killed his mother. His father had stabbed her in a drunken rage. At the time, Luco was fifty miles away with his father’s sister in Letojanni, Sicily. His father called him home, beat him for effect, and coerced him into taking the blame. “They’re not going to do nothing to a kid,” he’d said.

  One investigator suspected the truth. He had gathered evidence, such as Luco’s train ticket from Letojanni to Raddusa, the testimony of a neighbor who heard a fight and screams hours before the supposed time of death, and skin scraped from under Maria Scaramuzzi’s fingernails. But with father and son sticking to their story and anonymous threats leveled at the investigator’s family, the case was closed. Luco knew, however, that the prophecy would prompt the Watchers to investigate more thoroughly. Especially his detractors, Hüber and his cohorts. The file, with its circumstantial evidence along with the skin samples—which meant little thirty-one years ago but whose DNA would now definitively rule out Luco as the donor—would expose the lie.

  The truth
of his mother’s death was inconsequential—until it became linked to Antichrist’s identity.

  Luco knew from the start that he had to fulfill all vetted prophecies, particularly those his own theologians uncovered and he approved. One failed prophecy would be a death sentence. Since he knew himself to be the one, Luco suspected that Randall had made a mistake and in his enthusiasm had misinterpreted corroborative evidence. We tend to find what we seek, Luco thought. But the Watchers would never accept an error this major; they would believe that both he and Randall were frauds, even if they were not.

  Soon after Randall came to him with the matricide prophecy, Luco dispatched Pip to Raddusa. His task: to find the case file and to destroy it. The plan was to burn the entire storage facility to obscure their intentions. Even suspicion of Luco’s involvement was far better than leaving the file for the Watchers to find.

  Pip had completed his assignment without a hitch. Or so Luco had thought.

  “I kept the file,” Pip said. “I saw what was happening to you. I needed something to keep you from turning on me as you have so many people who trusted you. I started keeping a journal, but that was just my word. This is proof.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You were in Letojanni when your father killed your mother. They preserved evidence in a vial. It’s marked ‘Skin from beneath right-hand fingernails.’”

  Luco had once confided the truth to Pip, but he had never given details or spoken of any evidence. Pip had opened and read the file; that much was clear. But had he kept it? Luco believed he had. He did not think, however, that Pip had arranged for it to fall into an enemy’s hands upon his demise. That was too risky and too elaborate. If he killed Pip now, he was certain to find the file among his belongings, or he’d find a key or note that would lead him to it.

  Abruptly, Luco made his face soften into an expression of resignation. He turned away from Pip and walked to the workout bench.

  “You’re right, Pip. You got me. But what’s more important is that we’re friends.” He lowered the weight to the floor. “We can’t let something like this . . .” He returned his attention to Pip, who had backed to the room’s door. “Pip?”

  Wide-eyed, visibly trembling, Pip shook his head. He spun and crashed out the door.

  25

  He should have seen it coming. Madness! Pip moved quickly away from the workout room toward the elevator. He looked back to see the door shut; in the few seconds he watched, it did not burst open again, it did not give way to Luco’s wrath, surging to find him, to engulf him, to consume him. An armed guard standing just beyond the door watched him impassively. Pip’s eyes flashed to the man’s gun, to the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.

  He was at the elevator doors. He pushed the down button. It lit up, but he pushed it again. And again, watching the indicator lights above the doors.

  It really happened; Luco had gone over the edge. When? How could he have been so blind? Like Luco, had he been so caught up in the power and money, in the delusion, that he failed to see the transition from actor to madman? Or was insanity so cunning that it invaded slowly, with the stealth of cancer?

  He bolted away from the elevator, down the hall to the stairs. Erratic behavior alone would not alarm the building guards; Luco was forever ordering his people to rush here and hurry there. One call from Luco, however, and the guards would strike, like claws on Luco’s fingers. Pip pushed through the stairwell door and, grabbing the handrail, descended three, four steps at a time, ignoring the stiletto jabs in his left knee as his gimp leg tried to keep up.

  Increasingly over the past year, Luco had spoken more like a man fulfilling a grand destiny and less like one pretending to be the subject of that destiny. Privately with Pip, he spoke less of strategy, of how to convince, and more of how to do. The tone of their conversations had shifted from “What can I do next to impress the Watchers?” to “What should I do now to further my ascension, my reign, my kingdom?”

  Pip had thought he was merely witnessing Luco’s brilliant acting—method acting à la Brando, à la Pacino. Stay in the role, embrace the role. How could Pip have known the role would embrace Luco, grip him and absorb him? Luco had not become the role; the role had become him.

  Three flights down, on the landing of the floor on which he had his office, Pip stopped. His breathing and heartbeat were too loud in his ears to let in any other noises that might be echoing in the stairwell. He looked up through the opening between flights of stairs. He saw no one peering down, rushing to catch him.

  Up there was a man who had gone mad. He had tried for so long and so hard to convince others that he was someone he was not, that in his mind, he had become that other person. Pip had heard that Bela Lugosi, the actor who played Dracula in the 1931 movie, came to believe he really was that undead vampire. He had not gone around biting necks, but he always wore the black cape with the red lining and slept only during the day. Toward the end he had refused to acknowledge his given name and answered only to “Dracula” or “Count.” And Lugosi had it easy: he needed only to convince the camera eight hours a day for a twenty-day shooting schedule. Luco was under pressure to be the Antichrist constantly and forever. No wonder he had cracked.

  Cracked? Pip thought. The man has shattered. A million pieces on the floor, every one razor sharp and deadly.

  He reached for the door handle and then froze. Was that a sound from overhead? A door clicking shut, more quietly than if it had been allowed to swing shut? He moved back to the center opening. Nothing. He looked at the door.

  What’s in the office I need? What good is anything if I’m dead?

  He continued down, toward the parking garage.

  Maybe Luco’s madness came and went; maybe the persona of Antichrist only occasionally drifted into his consciousness before plunging away again, like a watery beast that comes up for a sip of air. Maybe. But even if that were so, Pip embraced no hope for himself. Despite their longtime friendship, Pip knew Luco would eliminate him. Luco the Pretender and Luco the Antichrist both had reason to distrust him.

  To Luco, the Luco, Pip knew too much. Knew of the planning and plotting and preparation they’d done before Luco had arranged for the Watchers to discover him. Knew of the scheming and evidence planting—prophecy planting—they’d committed since he had become the Watchers’ darling, their best hope.

  To Antichrist, Pip was—as he had shown in the workout room—a dissenter, whose doubt was corrosive, made more so by his credibility as Luco’s lifelong companion. Indeed, the relationship that should have assured Pip of his safety was the reason he had to die. Ambition bears no tolerance for sentiment, no use for matters of the heart, like friendship, compassion, mercy. And Luco—as well as Antichrist, Pip was sure—was nothing if not ambitious.

  Then there was the file. Evidence of the farce, of the lies and deceit. Luco would never tolerate its existence.

  Pip’s knee was throbbing now, pulsing in pain. The paperback book taped to his shoe had caught several times on edges of stairs, fraying badly. It was starting to look like a grayish pom-pom, puffing out in curling strips.

  Like a clown, Pip thought. I’m a clown in Cirque du Scaramuzzi. But the crowd is not laughing anymore, and the clown must go.

  A door at the bottom of all the stairs, marked with a foot-high letter “P.” Unlike the other floors, which had door handles, this one, essential for escape in the event of a fire, opened at the push of a bar that ran its width. Pip slammed into the bar and was in the underground parking garage. A hand seized him by the arm, jarring him to a halt.

  A deep voice said, “Hey!”

  Pip spun, pulling free of the grip. The guard who had grabbed him took a step back, one hand dropping to the butt of a pistol at his side. His face was hard, all business. Pip wanted to scream . . . to tackle this brute . . . to vanish as a sorcerer might; he wanted to do anything but stand there and let Luco’s long arm manipulate this puppet-guard into shooting him. Then the guard smiled.
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br />   “Mr. Farago,” he said. “You gave me a start, coming through the door like that. What’s the hurry?”

  Pip’s lips were stuck together, his mouth dry. All the moisture must have risen to his forehead, for a bead of it ran into his eye. He wiped it away and realized his face was as wet and slick as a trout’s. He meant to chuckle, but it came out a croak.

  “You know the routine,” he said, friendly, casual. “Everything needs to be done yesterday.”

  The guard shook his head. “Never ends.”

  On the way to his car, Pip looked back. The guard had returned to his post by the stairs door, with his back to the wall. He was watching Pip and gave him a nod.

  Pip reached his red Fiat sedan and lifted the key to the door lock. His hands were shaking so terribly, he scratched the paint and took a good ten seconds to get the key into the slot. As he climbed in, the paperback book caught on the doorsill, tore away, and fell to the garage floor, leaving hanging strips of duct tape on his shoe. His left foot was his braking foot. He’d have to lean in on that side to brake the car, but he didn’t plan on doing much slowing down until he reached Haifa. If he pushed the speed limit and drove all night, he could probably reach Beirut.

  He started the car. Its small engine revved and whined like a chain saw. He backed out, pulled forward, saw the light of day just past the guard shack.