The Testament of James (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens)

by Vin Suprynowicz

  Inside, in the bay windows of the bookstore at street level, several cats of unusual size were yawning and stretching as they heard noises in the kitchen.

  Skeezix, having set out most of the trays as requested, was now methodically opening the tuna fish sandwiches, eating out the filling, and neatly stacking the leftover slices of bread on a plate. Tabbyhunter came trotting up, and Skeezix shared one with him. Matthew gave him the evil eye, but he appeared oblivious.

  With Bob gone, and excepting Matthew, whose absences were unpredictable, Skeezix along with Marian the Mouse was what was left of the staff of Books on Benefit.

  Skeezix was a small fellow, who favored mid-twentieth-century tortoiseshell eyeglasses he picked up at the garage sales. His most unusual feature was his short multi-colored hair, a subtle but symmetrical tabby pattern of gray, white, gold and tawny brown, seldom combed and therefore rising up in unpredictable tufts and peaks, mostly above his ears. If it was a dye job it was either the most masterful or the most awful Matthew had ever seen. The cats loved him. He ran errands and reshelved books and generally helped out around the place, though his habit of napping away the afternoons curled up with one of the cats in some out-of-the-way corner did tend to reinforce the rumor that he had no actual permanent place of residence.

  His unusual hours worked out well in one respect, though. While Skeezix usually put in an early appearance from Monday through Wednesday, his absences on Friday and Saturday mornings were understood to be on account of his haunting the weekend garage and estate sales at an hour of gray and misty dawn when civilized folk hadn’t even started brewing their first cup of hot, let alone finished it. He was trusted with a weekly wad of company cash, starter money which he accounted for and replenished early each Saturday afternoon, usually arriving with a box of his garage sale finds.

  Marian slipped in. Bob had dubbed the computer gal “Mouse,” a pun on her constant umbilical attachment to the computer, though also a bit unkind, really. Marian the Mouse usually dressed in gray or beige, with occasional matching crocheted scarf and beret. Hair in a bun, though on closer inspection she didn’t really appear to be much over 30. Skirts a couple of inches too long, sensible flat-soled shoes. She ran incoming merchandise against other copies offered online to set prices, handled incoming online orders, and had also mastered Matthew’s fairly complex internet buying programs, grabbing underpriced books placed online by ignorant sellers world-wide, an enterprise demanding considerable intuition, since books being sold by the lazy and incompetent were, of course, also described by the lazy and incompetent, and you couldn’t very well e-mail them to ask “Does your six-dollar book have the following first edition points which actually make it worth four hundred dollars?”

  Chantal spotted Les hanging back at the door.

  “Come on in, Les.”

  “Thank you, Chantal, but Matthew has to ask me in.”

  “Matthew, can you ask Les to come in?”

  From the other side of the old dining room, where he was worrying a wine cork, Matthew shouted for Les to come in.

  “Thank You.” Les was well-liked. He helped out from time to time at the store, which made his reluctance to come in on days when he hadn’t been asked by a resident occasionally inconvenient. A tall, slim man with a large forehead and a thin mustache, he was the author of a series of horror novels, though royalties from the publisher always seemed scandalously thin.

  The place was soon packed, with the usual bustle of conversation. Bob had had his detractors, truth be told — he could be a bit of a drama queen and that had launched a few feuds. But tonight only the happy tales were re-told.

  The sun set and the evening was cool, so Matthew started a fire in the fireplace, which crackled cheerfully. In fact, the more casual visitors and acquaintances had already wolfed down their share of the food, expressed their condolences primarily to Matthew and Marian, and taken their leave, reducing the company to the dozen or so bookmen who were more accustomed to gathering there of a Sunday evening, when a latecomer in bleached white cotton slacks and a brightly colored shirt arrived.

  “Lance?”

  “Hi, Matthew. Been awhile.”

  The new arrival embracing Matthew showed a nice tan, a mustache, sun-bleached hair curling over his collar, gold neck chain, and turquoise Hawaiian shirt decorated with red parrots. The obvious interest of both Chantal and Marian seemed to confirm he was a bit of a hunk. In fact, he looked a lot like that old Magnum, P.I. guy on TV.

  “Great to see you, Lance. I don’t know if you heard, but our manager died last week. Most of us just came from the funeral.”

  “I did hear. And I wouldn’t have busted in uninvited, but right away I thought of the book he contacted me about. In fact, I was surprised when I couldn’t reach him; it was supposed to get here last Thursday or Friday.”

  “Bob died Thursday. He found a book on your list?”

  “He told me you were away. He didn’t contact you at all? It wasn’t just a book, Matthew; it was the book. How did he die? There wasn’t a robbery? Should I come back and talk to you later?”

  “Everyone here is a friend, Lance. There was some kind of incident that evening. He dialed 9-1-1, said he was having a heart attack, but he also said there was some kind of fight going on outside. Gunshots.”

  “And the book is gone?”

  “What book, Lance? Where from?”

  “A seller he said you’d dealt with before. I offered enough earnest money for an airfare. Actually, I bought the ticket for the seller.”

  “From?”

  “Cairo.”

  “Not Illinois?”

  “Not Illinois.”

  “Must have sounded good.”

  “Bob was cautious, but he said this seller had come up with some legitimate finds in the past, one-of-a-kind stuff. He warned me it was a risk, but the seller seemed nervous, he was in a hurry, which made sense, given the book he was talking about.”

  “Lance?”

  “Yes?”

  “The name of the book?”

  “Bob said the man had a tenth century codex, a true copy of The Testament of James.”

  Everyone who had been pretending not to listen fell silent. At the far side of the room, by the fireplace, one of the bookmen turned and slowly banged his forehead into a door jamb, several times. Otherwise it was so quiet they actually heard a cat jump to the floor in the back and go out through the kitchen cat door. Down the hill, the church clock chimed 8.

  “Not the Epistle of James?”

  “The Epistle of James is in the Gideon Bible in my hotel room, Matthew, a nice little four-page letter. By works a man is justified, and not by faith alone. Speak not evil one of another, brethren, can’t we all just get along. We all know the Epistle, which despite being mildly critical of Paul and the ‘faith alone’ gang was either heavily trimmed or ginned up out of whole cloth, probably about as authentic as most of your signed Harry Potters for sale online these days. I’m talking about the big one, The Testament of James the Just.”

  “Lance, I’m sure Bob wouldn’t have purposely misled you . . .”

  “You’re asking, and I appreciate your tactfulness,” said the man with the big biceps in the parrot shirt, “if I’ve turned into such an idiot that I don’t know The Testament of James is supposed to be the greatest book never written.”

  Matthew sat down wearily.

  “Lance, Lance.” He actually lowered his forehead into his hands. “The Testament ranks right up there with your hand-written Shakespeare, the lost first book of Homer, the Book of Mormon on gold plates. An original Testament of James wouldn’t even be a book.”

  “A first century original would be a scroll, obviously, but Bob’s seller said he had a later copy.”

  “Tenth century.”

  “I have the resources now, Matthew, assuming a price within reason. You haven’t found such a book, or any message from Bob about it? Do the police think there was a robbery?”

  “Once the
coroner ruled it was a heart attack, police interest seems to have waned. Other fish to fry. A few neighbors did hear something out front, but it was getting dark. Gunshots? A car backfiring? A TV turned up too loud? We’re going to do some asking around.”

  “Do cars still backfire?”

  “Here in the backwaters of New England we still tolerate poor people with jalopies. As for a message, there was a Post-it note on the computer screen, no way to tell if Bob wrote it before or after he called for the ambulance.”

  “And are you willing to share?”

  “Opens to gallinules.”

  “What?”

  “Three words on the Post-it note: ‘Opens to gallinules.’”

  “Gallinules are birds.”

  “They are.”

  “Mean anything to you?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Anything else?”

  In addition to the note stuck to the computer screen, Marian and Skeezix had found a torn-open pasteboard box on the front desk. Whatever had been inside was missing, though it had been padded with pages from a week-old edition of a Cairo newspaper. The Cairo in Egypt.

  Lance White set his jaw. “There are parties who might go to great lengths to keep a copy of the book we’re talking about from ever seeing the light of day, Matthew. Any chance your assistant’s death was not by natural causes? Could he have been killed for this book?”

  “Just outbidding you would seem simpler.”

  A lull came in the conversation.

  “OK, I’m used to being the one who asks the dumb question,” Chantal smiled. “What’s the big deal about this Testament of James?”

  “Richard?” Matthew craned his head to address the old timer who’d been sitting quietly in one of the red leather chairs by the fire, now reduced to something more like a glowing bed of coals.

  “So?” asked Professor Richard St. Vincent, who may have been dozing. “What question has you so stumped you have to turn again to the Old Jew, that I’m again welcome at your table?”

  “You’re always welcome here, Richard. We even let you eat the pineapple off the Hawaiian pizza. Stop whining.”

  Richard made a dismissive gesture.

  “Chantal asks for a run-down on The Testament of James.”

  “How long do you have?”

  “Give us the medium version.”

  “If someone should bring me a nice glass tonic water.”

  Skeezix was dispatched.

  “With ice, please.”

  “With ice.”

  The house was 150 years old, on a tree-shadowed street in the oldest part of a town that was much older still. Outside, the small pools of light from the lamp-post street lights were never quite enough to push back the darkness that had heard the footsteps of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. The trees rustled, the old house creaked as the temperature dropped on a crisp spring night. It was a company accustomed to tales of half-forgotten lore, and none better at summoning them up than Professor Richard St. Vincent, rare books and special collections.

  “So again it rears its head, this story of the lost book, The Testament of James the Just, not to be confused with the Epistle of James the Just, a little letter of uncertain parentage in your New Testament designed to convince everyone James was still part of the team, the brother of Jesus telling everybody to play well with others.”

  “James was the brother of Jesus?” Chantal asked.

  “A bit inconvenient for those who insist the mother remained a virgin till she died, a debate more religious than medical in which you’ll excuse me if I take no side.” Richard took his glass of tonic water from Skeezix and tried a sip, apparently found it acceptable. “Call them half-brothers, whatever you please.”

  “Actually, Matthew says Joseph knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son,” smiled Lance the Californian, “which would clearly indicate they got busy soon afterwards.”

  “The Matthew in question being not our host for the evening, I presume, but your Gospel According to Matthew.”

  “One, twenty-five,” nodded Lance, pulling his chair closer to the fire, and thus to the old professor.

  Richard snorted. “At any rate, no one during the time Jesus was alive seemed to know anything about this ‘born of a virgin’ business. There’s good evidence the Greeks who wrote the existing gospels sixty years later based it all on a mis-translation of Ezekiel. Ezekiel said the messiah would be born of a young woman, an almah. But the wrong word was used when that was translated into the Greek as parthenos, ‘a virgin.’ Jesus had four brothers, after all — James, Joses, Jude, and Simon — evidently sisters as well, and he was a candidate for being the messiah because he combined the royal lines of King David and the high priest Aaron by being descended from Joseph and Mary, both. If Joseph was not the father then Jesus’ claim to be the hereditary messiah would have been enormously weakened among first-century Jews.

  “So the gospels refer to James the Just as the oldest surviving brother of Jesus,” Richard continued. “James being the English name, you understand. On his coins King James of Scotland who succeeded Elizabeth the Great was identified by his Latin name, Jacobus, which explains why we call the post-Elizabethan theater ‘Jacobean,’ because the real name of James in Latin was Iacobus, in Hebrew Ya’akov, the same way they got Jesus from Yeshua.

  “James the Just was in Jerusalem till about the time of the big Jewish revolt in 65 A.D., give or take,” the old professor continued, now hitting his stride. “The Jews refused to erect statues and burn incense to the Roman emperors; the Romans could never figure out this ‘monotheism’ business, they thought the Jews were just being disrespectful. Add a nice tax revolt and you get a serious war starting in about 66 A.D. The Roman governor of Syria comes down with the 12th Legion to restore order and the Jewish rebels ambush and defeat the 12th Fulminata at the Battle of Beth Horon, which shocked the Romans considerably.” Richard closed his eyes and moved his head slowly from side to side, working out a crick in his neck. “The emperor Nero in Rome got upset enough to crucify Peter and Paul, both. Then the Romans send a better general named Vespasian and his son Titus, they do well enough that Vespasian is made emperor in 69; Titus stays behind and takes Jerusalem after a seven-month siege in 70 A.D.

  “Some reports say the traditional Jews stoned James to death in 62 for claiming his brother was the messiah. Others say the Romans crucified him closer to the year 69. Either way, the first problem with this report that he left behind an important book is that the Romans burned pretty much everything in sight within a few years after he died.” Richard St. Vincent looked around to make sure he had their attention, which he did. “Burned the city, crucified thousands, led the survivors away to die in the arenas. It’s a problem for most of our history of that era. Except for the writings of Flavius Josephus, a Jew who went to work for the Romans and who barely mentions Jesus — our Jesus — the earliest Christian documents are oral traditions that weren’t written down till at least a generation later, and in Greek, at that. Oral tales get embroidered. Old people get things mixed up, believe me.

  “So this tell-all book by James the Just sounds great, there’s a hunger for an actual Christian manuscript from before the destruction of the temple, something to clarify all the confusion and contradictions in the existing gospels, all written decades later under assumed names. But assuming he ever wrote it, and assuming it survived, you’ve now got a lot more than just the traditional fires and floods to explain why such a book could have disappeared. Meaning no offense to any of my neighbors today, who I’m sure are all peaceful and tolerant to a fault, but the leaders of the Christian Church some centuries back were known to go to considerable pains to suppress what they saw as heretical beliefs.”

  “The book would be considered heresy?” asked Marian the Mouse, tossing caution to the winds. She’d either made a resolution to start asserting herself more, or she’d broken her own rule and consumed more than one glass of wine tonight. As a matter of fa
ct, she now allowed Les the vampire novelist to pour her another.

  “If it says what people have claimed, they’d move heaven and earth to discredit it, I should think,” Professor St. Vincent nodded. “The Christian church you have today was founded by a Jew named Paul, who helped persecute the Christians — he was there to help stone Saint Steven — until he had his revelation on the road to Damascus, his epiphany, whatever. The New Testament was carefully put together to indicate that Paul visited Jerusalem from time to time to check in with James the Just and the Nazareans — the surviving followers who had actually known Jesus — that they were all on the same page.”

  Richard had drained his glass of tonic, gestured that he’d like another. Skeezix scurried. Matthew squatted down and used the poker to push the fragments of wood into the center of the fireplace to get the blaze going. The fire started to crackle again, casting a somewhat brighter yellow glow.

  “But that must have taken a lot of editing,” added Lance White, taking advantage of the pause. Matthew noticed Marian and Chantal both hung on the Californian’s every word, mooning like sick calves. “Because the most likely thing is just the opposite. Jesus preached only to the Jews. There were Greek cities right across the Sea of Galilee, but he never preached to the Greeks or the Romans, he just wanted to restore to the Jewish faithful the ecstatic core of their own faith, which he insisted the priests had hidden away from them. ‘Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who wished to enter.’”

  “Our visitor is right,” Richard nodded. “Jesus believed they’d turned a profound way of knowing God into a list of rules for how to cook cheese and whether you could pick a grape on Saturday. He preached that the priests had hidden away the important mysteries of their faith from the people, and to get their attention he set out to match the prophecies that told the Jews how to recognize their messiah, or at least a messiah, which means anointed one. In Greek: Christos.” Richard paused to accept his refilled glass from Skeezix, nodding in thanks.