The Broken Ones

by Stephen M Irwin

  “Good Lord, you’ve been busy.”

  “They cut some of my work shifts,” she explained. “And fortunately I’m fairly familiar with those two languages.” She unfolded a pair of reading glasses and looked at Oscar. “Yes?”

  “Please,” he said.

  She smiled. “That is, in fact, what it says here. And here, and here.” She touched the birdlike totem on its shoulders and on the top of its horned head. “ ‘Please.’ Messages of supplication. And here, there, and there it says, effectively, ‘We beg you’ or ‘We beseech you.’ But here, around the star, we see the main message.”

  Oscar leaned forward. “And what is that?”

  The room was still. The light in the lantern flickered and made the shadows on the idol’s gruesome, hungry face shift. It was as if the idol were listening.

  Gelareh licked her lips, and read, “ ‘Queen, our Queen. You, behind the darkness. You, behind death. You, behind the curtain of bone.’ ”

  Oscar felt the skin on his arms and neck prickle with goose bumps. His eyes were drawn to the wide, gluttonous mouth of the totem, its grossly spread legs, its unblinking stare.

  “ ‘Accept this gift we bring with joy. Ereshkigal, Queen of Queens, the gate is open. Come as you will and grant us your favor.’ ”

  She looked up at Oscar and raised her thin eyebrows.

  “Eresh—?” he began.

  “Ereshkigal.”

  “You mentioned her last time. The sister.”

  Gelareh nodded and left the room. Oscar looked out to the dark courtyard. The tiny bleed of light from the lantern made the wider darkness look enormous, holding infinite secrets. Gelareh returned with a heavy book entitled Artworks of Mesopotamia. She placed it on the table and flipped expertly through it.

  “Here.” She turned the open book down so that Oscar could see the color plate. “This is what’s called the Burney Relief.”

  When he saw the image, he felt his face suddenly tighten, as if someone had dashed ice water across it. The photograph was of a bas-relief carving. It depicted a naked woman. Her breasts were high, and her hands were raised, each holding a ringlike amulet. Large, feathered wings descended from her shoulders, and her legs ended not in feet but in powerful three-toed talons. Her eyes held no orbs but were dark, hollow pits.

  “We don’t know where she came from,” Gelareh said softly. “But she is, many believe, Ereshkigal.”

  The winged woman seemed to float above two lions—not restful beasts but carnivores alert and watching, lean-flanked and hungry. Beside each big cat was an owl. They looked as large as the lions, with talons as long as the big cats’ claws; each feathered head was as broad as the winged woman’s hips. These monstrous owls were wide-eyed, staring obediently from the stone, as if waiting for their mistress’s command to fly or to hunt. Oscar remembered the childlike form falling from the apartment building opposite Jon and Leonie’s apartment, plunging earthward, but leaving no trace below. And the dog’s head, ripped from its body and crushed, as if in a vise, or by those long, powerful claws. And the talons that had tick-ticked on the garage concrete just inches from his face. It was no dream, he was sure now.

  His mouth was as dry as sand.

  “Owls,” he said.

  Gelareh’s eyes were on the photograph of the relief. “Owls and lions.” She smiled. “But you see her wings? Her talons? She is closest to the owls. They’re her messengers, her ambassadors. Her soldiers.” Gelareh looked at Oscar. “Are you all right?”

  “Thirsty,” Oscar whispered.

  She went to the kitchen and he heard a glass filling. “She was painted red originally.” She handed him the water. “But she faded over time.”

  “Red?”

  “Red ocher.” Gelareh smiled grimly. “For blood.”

  Oscar stared at Ereshkigal’s sculpted head. Rings of horns held her hair above a face that was serene, almost smiling, beauteous but for the almond-shaped black hollows she stared from.

  “And what does she do?” Oscar asked.

  Gelareh shrugged. “Whatever she pleases. She is the Queen of the Night. Goddess of the underworld.”

  Three years ago, such things would have raised wry smiles. Today, there was no joking about death. The door to it had already been opened. The curtain of bone had been parted.

  “And this”—he touched the idol, and the skin of his fingertips seemed to recoil—“is to please her?”

  “To please her,” Gelareh said, staring at the idol she’d rebuilt. “To feed her. To summon her.”

  The room fell silent again. Oscar watched Gelareh. She looked paler, as if she, too, felt the listening, waiting stillness.

  “Masha’ Allah,” she whispered, and went to the kitchen. She moved the soup saucepan and slipped a disk of woven metal over the flame. She reached into an earthenware pot and threw a handful of seeds onto the hot wire grill. He heard her say softly, “Aspand bla band Barakati Shah Naqshband Jashmi …” Her whispered words were obscured by the popping of the heated seeds.

  She returned, wiping her hands and smiling self-consciously.

  “Aspand,” she explained. “Syrian rue. I know: I’m a superstitious fool. But this thing …” She shook her head at the reconstructed idol. “I haven’t enjoyed cohabiting with it.”

  Oscar noted the similarity between the grill Gelareh had just thrown the rue seeds upon and the circular grillwork in the throat of the idol.

  “Is that how she is summoned as well? Seeds on the hot grill?”

  “You’re right, hot coals go in here.” She indicated the vaginal gape between the idol’s legs. “But this is an altar for holocaust. The offering goes, of course, into the mouth, where it burns away. I’m not sure what the offering would be. In traditional holocausts, a whole animal or person would be burned. The priests would check it, to make sure it was unblemished. If it had a coat, it would be flayed, and its blood sprinkled about the altar. But this is quite small. The mouth here is big enough to accept maybe a bird or a rodent or a handful of flesh.”

  Oscar pictured the gash in Penny Roth’s abdomen, and Teddy Gillin pointing out the rude cuts where her ovaries had been excised. “A handful of flesh,” he repeated.

  Gelareh nodded. “At least we can say this has never been used. This crack here ruined it. The dark queen has not been summoned.”

  She smiled, but it was a forced expression. Oscar didn’t tell her about the ponytailed man who’d carried this idol’s wrapped twin from Florica’s.

  They sat in silence for a long moment.

  “Will you have more soup?” she asked, and they both smiled at how startling her sudden words were in the quiet.

  “No,” he replied. “Thank you.”

  She nodded, and went to the bedroom again. She returned with a cotton shopping bag and placed the idol in it.

  “If you want to break it again,” she said softly, “be my guest.”

  A bang startled them both. The French door to the courtyard swung loose on its hinge. Outside, the cold wind hissed in the climbing jasmine. The flames under Gelareh’s soup danced, and the aromas of herbs rode inside on the shifting air: basil, Jafari, star anise. Gelareh apologized and hurried to bolt the door shut.

  “This weather,” she complained. “Everything has gone mad.”

  Oscar let his nostrils drink in the last, delicate tendrils of fragrance. An idea jumped into his head.

  “Do you have any cinnamon incense?”

  Gelareh’s dark eyes fixed on him and narrowed. Without a word, she turned to the pantry and returned with a small earthenware jar that she placed in front of him. She opened it to reveal short, sticklike curls of brown bark.

  “Just the bark,” she replied at last. “Some people burn it as incense.”

  Oscar inhaled, and with the strong scent returned the memory of exactly where he’d smelled it last.

  Chapter 31

  The wind battered the motorcycle with invisible fists. Leaves and scraps of paper swirled through the white cone o
f the headlight. He could smell rain coming, and in the east, lightning flashed in the clouds over the ocean. He raced north, ignoring traffic signals and hunching his shoulders as he sped through intersections.

  Oscar stopped the bike not far from where he’d parked to visit Tanta and stepped onto the footpath where he’d paced waiting for her to finish with a client. Music played somewhere, an angry and shrill tune. The wind preceding the storm flung past a mixture of scents that combined into an unpleasant greasy ensemble. From a doorway, two boys in rags watched him with the attention of hungry rats.

  “Two bucks?” asked one.

  Oscar showed his badge, and the boys retreated into shadow.

  He went to the head of a narrow alleyway. It was here, two days ago, that he’d smelled fish and coal smoke and incense. Cinnamon incense. The buildings’ old downpipes whistled low and tunelessly. He stepped into the alley, and the wind diminished. It was dark, and he paused to let his eyes adjust. As he waited, his nostrils flared. He smelled spoiling potato, diesel oil, fish heads and, so faint that he wondered if he was imagining it, the earthy smell of burned cinnamon.

  He took the Taurus from his pocket and walked carefully down the damp alley.

  The walls were lined with old bins that leaked puddles of noisome liquids, and plastic milk crates and yawning old refrigerators that stank of piss. In shadows as thick as velvet, he heard tiny things scurry away. He inhaled. The herbal tang grew stronger.

  He stopped and looked up.

  A dozen feet overhead was a tiny window, hardly two handspans wide. Behind it, the orange light of a candle flame fluttered like a handkerchief in a breeze. Oscar didn’t dare turn on his flashlight, so he stepped toward the black wall beneath the window, one arm outstretched. His fingers touched cold brick, slick with mossy growths of who-knew-what. His fingers went left and right, feeling for an architrave. A wooden door. Its paint was peeling. He found the doorknob. Beneath it a keyhole.

  It was an old single-lever mortise lock. Of all the locks he’d picked in the locksmithing course at the academy, the single levers were the oldest and easiest to corrupt—a bent piece of wire would open them, as would most keys of the same type. Oscar pocketed the Taurus and quietly pulled out his own house keys, careful not to let them jingle, and found the one for his own home’s back door. He slid it slowly into the keyhole; it fitted and turned easily.

  Now was the test. If the resident within had so much as a single barrel bolt inside the door, he was stymied. He gently twisted the doorknob.

  The door creaked just a little and opened in its jamb.

  Inside was darkness, but the chorus of smells was much stronger: fresh flowers and tobacco and cinnamon incense. Oscar pulled out the pistol again and felt his way forward, left arm swinging in the dark like a blind man’s. It found something round and small as a child’s skull. His fingers traced across it, and he smiled to himself. It was a small sphere of timber, the cap of a newel post. Stairs.

  He kept as close to the wall as he could, slowly pressing and releasing his weight with each rising step. As he climbed, the smells grew stronger yet, and he became aware of vague shapes: an edge here and there, a rail, banisters. As his head grew level with the next story’s floor, a strip of light appeared: a line of candlelight from under a closed door.

  Oscar stood still. Now was the time to call the controller to send support units, Code One. But if he dialed now Naville might hear him and take another way out of his hidey-hole. But that wasn’t the real reason Oscar didn’t call. He wanted to catch the man himself.

  He padded softly toward the closed door.

  And something crinkled underfoot.

  He stood stock-still, cursing his luck. He listened, and felt his heart pushing hard behind his ribs. No sound from behind the door.

  Oscar slowly raised his boot.

  Beneath it was a bottle cap.

  And the light beneath the door went out.

  Oscar swore under his breath. If Naville slipped away, he would never be found. A rock spider who had survived three decades in maximum security knew how to keep a low profile. It was now or never.

  Oscar reached into his pocket for his pencil flashlight, held it beneath the grip of the Taurus, and stopped in front of the door, bracing for a shotgun blast through the thin timber. He raised one boot and kicked hard just below the lock. The door burst inward with a crash of splintering timber and snapping metal. He flicked on the flashlight, stepped quickly inside, and ducked.

  His heart raced as the light swept left to right, up and down, picking out details of an utterly unremarkable room: two wooden chairs at a tiny lopsided table; the curved arm of a tattered sofa with a blanket neatly folded at one end; a plant stand holding a jar of wildflowers; an unlit kerosene lamp; a small transistor radio on a sagging chipboard bookshelf that held only half a dozen westerns; a kitchenette that was merely a sink and a gas hot plate, with a breadbox and a small Tupperware container of spreads and cereals. Oscar fixed the beam on something noteworthy: a large mortar and pestle, flanked by a dozen jars of seeds and stalks. A large earthenware bowl covered with chicken wire. From the ashes on the mesh came the powerful, smoky kick of burned cinnamon.

  “Albert?” Oscar said. “Albert Naville?”

  Across the room, in an indented nub of a hallway, clustered three narrow doors. One was wide, showing an old porcelain toilet. A second was ajar, and through the gap Oscar saw a single towel hanging on a glimmer of flaky chrome rail. The third door remained closed.

  Oscar crept to the bathroom door and carefully pushed it all the way in, keeping the gun barrel back and ready. The bathroom was empty.

  He went to the closed door and listened. From behind came a soft but insistent sound, a whispered rustling like a dozen small birds trapped in a box. The thought of wings made Oscar’s heart gallop faster.

  “Albert?”

  No answer.

  He put the pencil flashlight between his teeth, took the cold brass handle in his left hand, and in one move twisted the knob and threw wide the door. In the same instant, he dropped low, grabbed the flashlight, and swept it across the room.

  There was no one in it. In the far wall was set the small, single window Oscar had seen from the alley. It was wide open. Cold air rushed in on a stiff breeze, and the busy, winglike flutter grew louder. Oscar looked up.

  “Fuck,” he hissed.

  Every square inch of the ceiling was covered with papers. Hundreds of sheets were pinned by thumbtacks to the ceiling, and they jittered and flapped in the wind. And every page was filled, either with words or with drawings or symbols. Some were English, some Latin, some French; hundreds more were covered with the rune-like cuneiform Oscar had seen on the idol, and on Penny Roth. Pictographs and hieroglyphs: Egyptian, Chinese, Mesoamerican. And symbols: vévés, crosses, swastikas, ankhs, eyes of Horus, signs of the zodiac, and stars. Dozens and dozens of seven-pointed stars.

  Oscar shined the flashlight around the rest of the room. Leaning against one wall was an old aluminum stepladder and, beside it, a small wooden footlocker. The room was otherwise empty except for a woven sea-grass mattress in the center of the floor, and a notebook and pen.

  Oscar heard a distinctive metallic click behind him.

  The voice that followed was calm and unhurried.

  “You never looked behind the couch.”

  Oscar felt adrenaline flood up his chest and neck. “My ex-wife used to say the same thing when I lost my keys.”

  He went to turn, but the voice froze him. “No, no,” said the man behind him. “Turn off your flashlight and put that cannon down.”

  Oscar flicked off the flashlight, and realized that a softer, warmer light came from behind him. Naville was holding a candle. He slowly bent and placed the Taurus on the wooden floor, not far from a notebook and an open cardboard box of thumbtacks.

  “Kick it away.”

  Oscar nudged the heavy pistol across the floorboards with his boot. And at last turned to face Albert Navill
e.

  Naville was more than a head shorter than Oscar, a spare man with no spare flesh. Despite the cold, he wore just a singlet and shorts; his limbs looked ropy and strong. Although he was in his sixties, Naville’s face was strangely youthful; he was clean-shaved, and his eyes and lips shared an odd, detached smile, as if he were remembering an unfunny joke told by someone pleasant but witless. His feet were bare, and his long silver hair was loose about his shoulders. It seemed that Oscar had disturbed him at his work. No time to dress, but time enough to find his pistol: a tiny derringer, but with two big holes in twin barrels. It looked to Oscar like a Noris Twinny—a nine-millimeter next to useless over more than twelve feet or in nervous fingers, but Naville was only six feet away and seemed eerily relaxed.

  He noticed Oscar looking at the small gun, and his eyes twinkled. “Yes, beware the little things.”

  He gestured for Oscar to remove his jacket. Oscar dropped it to the floor, revealing the empty holster under his left arm.

  “You know, I was in two minds about you,” Naville continued, and motioned for Oscar to lift his arms and turn full circle. “I am a student of behaviorism as well as innatism. I said to myself, don’t underestimate Oscar Mariani. He may yet be his father’s son.” He nodded at Oscar’s trouser cuffs. Oscar lifted them, revealing no ankle holsters, no more weapons. Naville seemed satisfied and grinned, showing a hint of the wild smile that Oscar had seen in the newspaper clipping. “And here you are.”

  Oscar wondered if he could close the distance between him and Naville before a lead slug smashed into his heart, and decided there wasn’t a hope in hell.

  “Where’s Taryn Lymbery?” Oscar asked.

  Naville tutted. “Straight into it, Detective. Where’s the foreplay?”