The Devil

by Erik Henry Vick

  It was gone. So was the lock.

  Panic set in right about then, but there was nothing to do but see it through to the end. One way or another.

  I rushed back to the door and put my body weight against it. I didn’t know how strong she was or whether I could hold the door against her, but I had to try. What the hell else was there to do?

  When she started screaming, I regretted everything. The sound of her screams tore at my heart. It was like hearing the world thrash in its death throes. Part of me wanted to rush inside and save her, despite the boy.

  It was about then that I realized the screaming had changed. It no longer sounded muffled, and it seemed like it was getting closer. I realized it was no longer screaming per se. It was more like laughter.

  “You shouldn’t have, kisa.” Her voice was amused, playful.

  I must have jumped about twenty feet straight up. She was standing in the alley behind me, an amused grin on her face. She had all five chains around her neck like necklaces, and the five padlocks dangled between her breasts like the weirdest pendants ever imagined.

  “Not one, but five beautiful necklaces.”

  I thought she was going to kill me. I thought she’d be furious. But she wasn’t. She was exhilarated more than anything. I also got the weird idea that she was proud of me—proud like the parent of a kid who had graduated from high school after six or seven years.

  “Come on, Bobo. Let’s go.”

  I glanced at the warehouse behind us and saw the thick black smoke pouring out of the broken window above the door.

  “Oh, that.” She snapped her fingers. The smoke just…disappeared, like some magician’s trick. The fire, too. “Fire is chaotic, Bobo. It’s mine. I own it like you own breath. But it was still a good plan.”

  I didn’t say a word. I was scared to.

  She looked at me for a long moment. “This is silly, chavo. Just accept what happened and let’s move on. No harm, no foul.”

  I looked from the broken window, now empty of dancing flames and glowing smoke, and then looked at her. “What the fuck are you, Lily?”

  She gave me a frank, appraising look. “Do you really want to know?”

  I nodded. “I do, Lily. I have to understand this.”

  She cocked her head at an angle so extreme she looked like some kind of bird of prey. She stood stock still. She nodded abruptly. “Okay,” she said. “But no questions, no interruptions. This is the only time we will discuss this.”

  I nodded. My mouth was too dry to talk.

  “I was first mentioned in the traditions of your people in the Book of Isaiah. Specifically, chapter thirty-four, verse fourteen. It’s silly, though. I mean, yes, I was at Edom, but I can’t take the sole credit for its desolation. There were…others. And the people there…” She waved her hand through the air and shook her head.

  “Some Jews have it that I was created from the same dirt as Adam and that I was his first wife, but I wasn’t. I was Lilu’s wife, for a time, until he betrayed me—the first of many betrayals, let me assure you. Over time, I’ve come to forgive him. He was as much a slave of his function as I am. At any rate, he paid the price for his betrayal so I can’t hold a grudge against him.

  “Others say I was the serpent in the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but that’s just silly. There never was a tree like that. Trees are just…trees.

  “Anyway, Christians and Jews—and the Babylonians before them—called me Lilith and Lamia, but those aren’t my true names. Neither is Ardat Lili, as the Akkadians called me. I won’t tell you my true name, so don’t ask.

  “But as to your question, Bobo, I am the daughter of the sky and sister to night and wind and storm. I am the hand of Inanna. I am the irritant of Asherah. I am the Spirit in the Tree. I am the Anzû bird. I am the queen of disease and pestilence. I am the bane of betrayers. I am the stealer of children. I am the Father of Lies.” She grinned at that one. “I am the Seven Witches. To quote one of your famous scientists, ‘I am become death, destroyer of worlds.’ I am the Corrupter.”

  As she spoke, her voice took on a thunderous quality, though its volume never changed. Her body began to fade in and out, and what I saw during those flickers was that creature made of wind-torn shadows, that seething, malevolent darkness that I’d seen back at Mikhail’s apartment. Then, all at once, the fade-in fade-out hocus-pocus ended, and she was just Lily. Knockout Lily. All sex.

  She looked at me with a kind of malicious amusement gleaming in her orange eyes. “I’m the devil, Bobo, just like I’ve always told you.”

  She winked at me. “Now, let’s go get you some food before you faint.”

  That was when I knew. I couldn’t kill her. I couldn’t stop her. I just had to get the fuck away from her.

  I thought I knew how I could do it, too.

  I stole from the devil, and she was vengeful.

  She’d never cared about the money. Not when we were the Dynamic Duo, and not when we were the kingpins of Brighton Beach. She just took her cut in cash and tossed it in one of the disused rooms in the warehouse.

  I’d convinced her to let me take care of some of her money for the sake of our future. I had joint accounts at Smith-Barney and at various offshore banks, but there were still piles of loose cash in the warehouse.

  After we had sex for the last time, I waited for her to fall asleep, being careful not to think about the money or the accounts. When she was out of it, I got up as chary as a cat burglar. The last thing I wanted to do was to jostle her.

  I walked naked into the “money room” and started shoving bills into a duffle bag I’d gotten for that purpose—one of those big shoulder-strap jobs. I just kept stuffing bills into it until I didn’t think I could get the zipper closed. I figured it was three-million bucks or so in the bag by the time I was finished. I looked around in disgust. There was plenty more cash still lying around—I’d bet more than ten times the amount I had in the bag—that I didn’t think Lily would ever look at again.

  I got dressed in silence and threw the heavy bag over my shoulder. I had planned on cleaning out a couple of the local bank accounts, but with the weight of just this one bag, I decided to try online where the money moved on electrons rather than my back. Anything I got that way would be gravy—and wouldn’t give me a ruptured disk.

  I slipped out of the warehouse as dawn threatened to break in the east. There were no cabs nearby, so I walked until I found one. Then I jumped on a plane at J.F.K. and flew six hours west.

  California was beautiful—more beautiful than I’d ever imagined. Or it was as I started to get away from the stink of L.A., at least.

  I checked into the Hotel Bel-Air, figuring if I was rich, I might as well stay in five-star luxury. The girl behind the desk looked at my rumpled jeans, my stained T-shirt, and the big knife on my hip with wide, round eyes, so I paid for the suite up front with eighty-five crisp twenty-dollar bills. The bellhop looked like he smelled something bad when he took my duffle—my only luggage—up to my room. When I tipped him two twenties and a ten, his expression changed.

  I showered and put back on the only set of clothes I had. Then I went down to the lobby and found the business center. Moving the money around was easier than I thought. I just did a couple of wire transfers from our joint accounts into my private offshore account, and that was that.

  I was a man of means, with three million in cash and just over seventy million in the bank. I walked into the little men’s boutique in the hotel’s lobby with a new attitude. I walked out with a new wardrobe and a snarky little smile on my face that matched the new swagger in my step.

  I couldn’t believe how easy it had been to get away from Lily. I hadn’t expected to get away, although I didn’t realize that until then.

  I have always, always jumped to unfounded conclusions. You can’t escape the devil.

  When I got up to my room, I saw the message light blinking on the phone. My stomach felt like it was encased in ice. I walked over to the phone and
picked it up. Before I could press the little button marked “Messages,” I could hear Lily breathing.

  It wasn’t a recording. I somehow knew that, although I couldn’t figure out how she could be connected to that phone at the exact instant I picked it up.

  “Why, Bobo?” she asked.

  Her voice sounded…hurt. I wish it had sounded angry or anything else. To hear the pain in her voice was somehow damning. “The kid,” I said.

  “That little bastard?”

  “Yeah.” I sighed into the phone and winced at the tornado sound it made.

  She made a squeaking sound like a lonely dog. “I knew it. I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but, kisa, it’s who I am. It’s what I am. Would you have me betray my own nature?”

  “I know, Lily. Really, I don’t hate you for it. I still love you more than life itself. I just…” As I said those words, I found myself wondering why I still loved her, and if there were anything under the wide blue sky she could do that would make me stop.

  “Just what, papi?”

  “I just can’t be with you anymore.” There were tears in my eyes, and it felt like my throat was filling up with a lump of snot.

  “Oh.”

  That was it. Just, “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry, Lil. I wish it could be different.”

  The line buzzed and hissed with silence.

  After what seemed like a geological age, Lily sighed. “I do, too, Robert.”

  Then the line went dead.

  I wanted to call her back. I wanted to tell her I’d made a mistake and to try to make everything right with her. I wanted her back.

  But that was just my addiction talking. I knew that from kicking coke.

  As I went to set the phone back in the cradle, I saw the message light was still blinking. I pressed the button.

  “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T BE WITH ME? WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE YOU ARROGANT LITTLE SLUG?”

  I fumbled the phone, startled by the sheer volume of Lily’s screaming voice. “Lily? Are you there?”

  “YOU WISH IT COULD BE DIFFERENT? BOY, LET ME TELL YOU HOW DIFFERENT IT’S GOING TO BE. YOU DON’T GET TO WALK OUT ON ME, ROBERT. NO! THAT’S NOT AT ALL HOW THIS IS GOING TO FUCKING END.”

  I was pretty sure the call wasn’t live. She must have left this message before we even spoke. Chills ran down my spine.

  The line hissed and crackled. At least she wasn’t screaming at me anymore. It was bad, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined it might be. “Listen, Lily, I want—”

  “NO, YOU LISTEN ROBERT, AND YOU BETTER FUCKING LISTEN GOOD. YOU THINK YOU CAN FUCK ME AND THEN JUST FUCK ME OVER? YOU THINK I WON’T ACT ON THAT, BOBBY? YOU ARE GOING TO REGRET THIS. OF THAT THERE IS NO DOUBT. NO! FUCKING! DOUBT!”

  I thought I could hear her breathing. “Lily? Are you on the line? Can we just talk?”

  “NO!”

  “No, you aren’t on the line, or no, we can’t talk?”

  I heard a click and pulled the phone away from my ear and just looked at the receiver for a minute or so. I had no idea what to think. Images of Mikhail’s corpse lying slumped in the chair, smoke coming out of his empty eye sockets, flashed through my mind.

  Lily thought I fucked her over? She thought I betrayed her?

  With that thought, the rage came.

  I slammed the phone into its cradle and swept the duffle bag over my shoulder. I grabbed my bags from the boutique and stomped out of the room. The hotel staff was obsequious as I checked out. Even the manager came out to see if there was a problem with the service. “We can’t offer you a refund, unfortunately,” she said.

  “Go fuck your refund,” I snapped, and that ended my stay at the Hotel Bel-Air.

  It had only taken her an hour or so to find me in L.A., I wanted to see how well she’d do with more distance between us.

  I caught a cab to L.A.X. and then a nineteen-hour flight to Singapore. Suites at the Marina Bay Sands resort are much more reasonable than at the Hotel Bel-Air. The bellhop looked confused by the shopping bags with the Hotel Bel-Air boutique’s logo on them, but his smile was broad and happy when I slipped him a hundred bucks. I figured his lack of a sneer should be worth something.

  I didn’t even look at the bathroom, I just dropped into the bed and fell asleep.

  When the phone trilled me out of a minor nightmare starring Lily, I was groggy and discombobulated. “What is it?”

  “Singapore, Bobs?”

  “Lily?” Dread was already circling in my guts like a shark circling an injured bluefin.

  “Have you forgotten me already?”

  Her voice sounded amused, but I was sure she was far from amused. Anything but, really. “You found me.”

  “Very good, cokehead. Have you already gotten back into that shit?”

  I shook my head, half to clear it and half in disbelief. “No, you weren’t wrong about that, Lily. Nothing will ever get me high like you did.”

  She snorted, but she sounded a little mollified. “Well, that’s over now, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I breathed. “I wish it wasn’t.”

  She let the line sing with her silence.

  “Lily?”

  “Yes, papi?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the money, too. I don’t know why I did that.”

  When she spoke, she sounded sad. Real sadness. Real regret. “Oh, Bobbicito, I don’t care about the money. I care about the betrayal.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry for that, too. Some things you wish you could take back.”

  She made a soft whimpering sound in the back of her throat. “But we can’t, can we?”

  “No,” I said and was rather surprised at the finality in my voice.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Can we part friends?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Her voice had gone cold, hateful. “Maybe we should ask your sister, Maryann.”

  I hadn’t talked about Maryann to Lily. Hell, I hadn’t even thought about her since she cut me off back when my sole focus had been cocaine.

  “Why would we—”

  Maryann screamed. It was a scream of pain and terror. As the scream faded, I could hear my nieces crying.

  “Lily! What are you doing?”

  Maryann screamed again—long and terrible.

  “Lily! You leave her alone!”

  “What was that, Robert? I can’t hear you very well over all this screaming.”

  I had visions of my sister with drool and snot covering her chin and utter emptiness in her eyes. “Leave her alone, Lily! She’s not part of this.”

  “Oh, I think she is, Bobo. I think everyone you have ever loved is a part of this now.” Lily’s voice had that same quality it had had when she was talking to Mikhail. “Want to talk to your little sis?” She asked it like she was asking if I wanted to watch television.

  “Yes! Please, Lily, don’t—”

  “Fine, here she is.”

  I heard the sound of the phone being switched to Maryann’s ear.

  “Mary, sweetie, are you okay?”

  There was no response.

  “Maryann? It’s Rob.”

  I heard a kind of snuffling sound, like a dog licking the phone’s microphone. Then she screamed again.

  When the scream died, Lily laughed. “Sorry, vato. Looks like Maryann can’t talk right now. Well, ever again, really.”

  Fury was pounding through my head like a spike driven into the ground with a sledgehammer. “Lily…” Bitter hatred dripped from both syllables, but we both knew it was impotent.

  “What’s that, Robert? You want to talk to your little niece next?”

  “No! Leave them out of this!”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll leave her like I left the boy in Prospect Park. You can fly back and slit her throat. And your other niece’s, too.

  “Come to think of it, Bobs, you will want to do for all your nieces and nephews. Don’t worry about your brothers and sisters, though. I’ll take ca
re of them.” Her voice was like pouring lava in my ears.

  “You don’t want them, Lily. You want me. Let me fly back to New York. I’ll bring the money. You can do whatever you want to me.”

  “No, Robert, I don’t think you have any say in this anymore. Sorry, but you gave that up in that goddamn hotel in L.A. telling me how this was going to be. And I can always do whatever I want to you. You remember that.”

  “Lily, please, I’m begging—” It was no use. The line was dead.

  What choice did I have? Those kids were my family. I knew it was a deadly trap—one that I had made myself—but I had to take care of my family.

  I couldn’t stand the idea of my nieces and nephews lying in puddles of piss and shit, drooling and crying. They didn’t deserve that. They didn’t deserve to look into that darkness any more than the kid in the park did.

  Knowing it would be my undoing, I flew back to New York. I had to put the children in specialized care. I couldn’t kill them. My brothers, sisters, and their spouses were all dead.

  The local cops thought—and probably still think—I did something to my brothers and sisters. They believed I gave my nieces and nephews an overdose of something that caused permanent damage. I was questioned for hours and hours and hours. All those cops looked at me like a slug, like I was the kind of man who would destroy his own nieces and nephews.

  I don’t care, though. Everyone I ever cared about is gone. Except for Lily. She isn’t gone. I see her all the time, behind me in the dark. Through the window at night.

  She’s always laughing the heh-heh-heh nightmare laugh.

  Last week, I saw her with a new man. She was pointing at me and whispering in the guy’s ear. He was glaring at me with eyes like daggers.

  That’s why I had to come all the way down here and talk to the F.B.I. I couldn’t go to a cop in New York—they’d never believe me after my brothers and sisters. And anyway, she’d know. And how could they catch her? But with what I’ve told you, maybe you Feds can trap her or something. I seriously doubt it, but maybe you can.

  And maybe if you put me in that federal Supermax prison in Colorado or wherever, maybe you can protect me from her.