Agnes Among the Gargoyles

by Patrick Flynn

"Don't make me vomit," says Agnes unsteadily. "God, that was brave! We've got to get you to a hospital."

  "What for?"

  "God knows what the old man has."

  That makes sense to Ivan. "I didn't even think."

  "I hate people like you," says Agnes.

  "Yeah?"

  "I hate people who do the right thing without even thinking."

  Sarah is abashed. "Ivan, that was amazing."

  "Thank you."

  "If he'd waited for me to help him he'd be dead."

  "I just beat you to it."

  "I froze," says Sarah. "I choked."

  "Don't take this the wrong way," Agnes says to Ivan, "but you don't strike me as someone who would know CPR."

  "I didn't set out to learn it, but when I was following Sarah around Clavelle, I used to watch her in her lifesaving class."

  Sarah blanches. "You did?"

  "The janitor's office was right next to the girls' gym. He had a peephole behind his calendar. What a sicko! Anyway, when they taught you CPR, I guess I just picked it up."

  Wayne comes over. He has been to the food truck. He artfully balances a hunk of bread, a bowl of chicken stew, a cup of water and a dish of sliced peaches. Agnes compliments his agility.

  "I've been to lots of cocktail parties," he says.

  Just then Syker, who has not stirred through all the excitement, lets out a joyous whoop.

  "I've got it!" he cries, looking to heaven pathetically. "I'm there! Cincin nadam! Cincin nadam!"

  Syker is in a fever of spiritual delirium. He looks like he might fall off the crate, which isn't all that steady anyway, sitting as it is on one of those ventilation gratings in the sidewalk. Hot air shoots upward, blowing Syker's hair back, as the subway roars beneath him.

  "Cincin nadam," says Syker.

  "The A train," says Agnes.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  "An unfortunate business," says Father Clarence.

  Agnes and Tommy sit with the priest in his office in the St. Basil School. The office is small, and cluttered with school junk: gym equipment and band uniforms and musical instruments and Braille textbooks. Over the priest's head is a sheet of parchment in a frame. It reads:

  ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT OUR STUDENTS ARE:

  TEENAGERS

  SCHOLARS

  MUSICIANS

  ACTORS AND ACTRESSES

  ATHLETES

  IN LOVE WITH LEARNING

  BORED BY LEARNING

  OBSESSED WITH THE OPPOSITE SEX

  IN NEED OF OUR GUIDANCE

  AND

  OH YES...BLIND

  "Miss Lenihan could be difficult," says Father Clarence. "We tried to accommodate her. She stayed on as Assistant Principal, but frankly myself and Father Chris assumed many of her duties. She insisted that we hold interviews for the director's job, so we did, even though I was already set on Miss Bailey. Maybe it was dishonest, but I couldn't do anything to hurt Miss Lenihan. She was an institution here at St. Basil's, and you don't just toss aside an institution."

  Tommy gives the priest Barbara's photograph. "Father, did Barbara Foucault come for an interview?"

  He studies the picture. Agnes is so nervous that she can't keep still. She wants to jump out of her skin. Father Clarence comes into the room with tea and coffee. This time, Agnes doesn't see a brassiere.

  "No," says Father Clarence. "I've never seen her."

  "It's very important," says Agnes. "It would be helpful to establish a link between the victims."

  "Some link besides Agnes here," says Tommy.

  "Does she have an alibi?" says Father Chris, in a mournful, bug-eyed attempt at humor.

  "The problem is that Father Chris and I didn't see all the applicants," says Father Clarence. "Miss Lenihan saw some people on her own."

  "How many people came to be interviewed?" Tommy asks.

  "There must have been fifteen or twenty."

  "Fifteen or twenty for a school play," says Father Chris wryly. "This town is full of hungry artists."

  Father Clarence leaves the room and returns with an accordion folder, which he gives to Tommy. "These are the resumes and cover letters," says the priest.

  "Great. I'll take these with me."

  "Of course."

  Father Clarence stands up. "I don't envy you your job, Detective. To puzzle out the motives of someone as deeply disturbed as the Minotaur—it must be very upsetting."

  "Sometimes, Father," says Tommy. "But then again, I never feel saner than when I'm tracking his psychotic footsteps."

  Father Chris chuckles to himself. "I think a lot of policemen get satisfaction from that."

  "Of course, my standards for what constitutes a healthy, productive life have probably dipped a bit over the years," says Tommy.

  As they drive away, Agnes goes through the resumes. From the bottom of the folder Agnes digs out a paper clip.

  "Answer me this," she says to Tommy. "If there are sixteen resumes clipped to sixteen cover letters, why are there seventeen paper clips?"

  "Agnes, get a grip."

  "Don't you think Father Chris is weird?"

  "All young priests are weird."

  "I think it's unsavory that he teaches blind girls. I think he may lecture in the nude or something."

  "You're grasping at straws," says Tommy. "Priests are not involved in this sort of thing. It's absurd. I think you're just nostalgic for the age of the Borgias."

  "I've always been fuzzy on them," says Agnes sadly. "Who were they again?"

  Chapter Sixty

  There are trophies mounted on the wall: heads of deer and elk and moose; there are elephant tusks and what might be a rhino's horn; there are two sets of antlers, so curved and looped that Bezel can't imagine what sort of beast would have worn them. Bezel looks up into the gloom and sees the marks of an ax on the ceiling beams. He sits in a velvet-covered armchair, drinking brandy.

  Spock, the kid with the mangled voice box, is rich. His house is enormous. His parents are in Europe. The cook and housekeeper are gone for the weekend.

  Faure and Condon sit on the sofa. Condon sits with his legs stretched out. He stares at his boots and says nothing. His pockmarked lumberjack's face is set in its usual scowl. His moustache is as big as a tire iron. Faure, more at ease, talks expertly about the keyboard action of the grand piano. He knows the name of the pattern on his teacup. Mr. Parker, from the Transit Authority, sits on the piano stool, swiveling from side to side like a bored child. Bezel asks Spock about the ax marks on the beams. The kid says those are the places where barnacles have been cut away; the ceiling is made from the hull of the Ann LaForge, the cargo ship that helped build the Spock family fortune in the last century.

  "Cargo, eh?" says Faure. "No doubt that included several of Mr. Parker's ancestors. You don't hold a grudge, do you, Mr. Parker?"

  "This job is my revenge on the white man," says Mr. Parker.

  The rich can pay for all the electricity in the world, thinks Bezel, but they seem to prefer their homes dark. Bezel must squint to read. He is engrossed in the book Spock has written, Tunnels of Destiny: The History and Design of the New York City Subway System (IRT, BMT and IND) Including Track Layouts, Signal Diagrams and Architectural Drawings of Many Stations. What a thing to have done! It's an amazing work—amazing and crazy. There is a whole section on stations and lines that don't exist anymore: Malbone Street; the Sands Street Terminal; the Culver Shuttle; the Third, Sixth and Ninth Avenue Elevateds.

  The four men and one boy go over their plan. There are gaps where Spock has chosen not to give out information.

  "It's not time yet," he says. "Mr. Parker knows, and I know, and it's best to keep it that way for now."

  "Why?" says Bezel.

  "You know why. Because you might wind up on Riker's Island and want to cut a deal with what you know. I know who I'm dealing with. You people aren't Citymeals-On-Wheels."

  "The young man is right," says Faure.

  "And the information's good," says
Mr. Parker.

  "I don't like it," says Bezel, glaring at Spock. "Why don't we just shoot you in the head and clear out the house?"

  Condon, his interest sparked by the possibility of violence, grabs the nearest weapon, a heavy glass candy dish.

  The kid is not intimidated. "Now I know why you threw the Bony Barrow fight. You just don't think things out, do you? There's nothing to steal here. People don't keep their hard assets around. What are you planning to take? Gold coins? Banded piles of cash?" The kid snaps his fingers. "I know one thing. My father has some stock options in his desk. On second thought, you'd better not. The cops would nail you before you hung up with your broker."

  Bezel is not convinced. "What about these paintings?"

  "Junk. Yard sale shit."

  "Silver?"

  "Pin money, Bezel."

  "All right then, we'll kidnap you."

  Spock walks away. He grabs a shotgun off the wall and points it at Bezel's forehead. No one moves.

  "You try it," the kid croaks without his amplifier, "and I'll blow your fucking Limey prick head off. I'll kill you like I killed the Frenchman."

  Bezel almost starts laughing. "You killed the Frenchman?"

  "With an icepack. I didn't want to, but he pissed me off."

  Spock works the shotgun bolt. The sound chills Bezel.

  Spock lowers the gun.

  "I'm only joking, Bezel. I wouldn't shoot you."

  "I know," says Bezel coldly.

  "What did happen to the Frenchman?" asks Mr. Parker.

  "I told you. I killed him," says the kid.

  "More likely he shacked up with one of his ex-wives," says Bezel.

  Spock puts the gun back on the wall. Faure lights a stinking French cigarette. Bezel puts on his windbreaker.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Out," says Bezel. "For good. This whole thing is crazy. I'm taking orders from a child. What if your parents came home? We'd be sunk."

  "You'd be sunk. I'd be grounded."

  The kid grabs Bezel's arm. "I knew it would come to this. I've got to prove myself to you."

  He herds everybody out of the house and into the garage. Bezel notes that the family dog sleeps on one of those mattresses from L.L. Bean. It is a bed he would have killed for on many nights in his long, confused, twisted life. Everyone gets into the kid's mother's Volvo wagon. Faure drives. The kid guides them into the center of a little town. They park at the railroad station.

  "Now watch," says the kid, grabbing a gym bag and getting out of the car.

  After the kid is gone, Condon says, "Let's take the fucking car."

  But no one makes a move.

  They wait.

  A twig snaps. A train speeds by without stopping.

  "There he is," says Mr. Parker. "Over there."

  Across the railroad tracks is a row of stores: liquor store, beauty parlor, travel agent, movie theater, dress shop. Spock's gait is unmistakable. He bounds up and down on the balls of his feet as though he were walking a slack tightrope. Gym bag in hand, Spock enters the liquor store. In the store's light it is apparent that he is wearing a ski mask.

  "He's going shopping," says Faure, with great amusement.

  The clerk, another kid, tall with a mane like a rock star, puts his hands in the air. Spock has a pistol. The clerk empties the till into the gym bag, then turns around. With an exaggerated windmilling of his arm, Spock pistol-whips the clerk and sprints out of the store.

  The railroad station's parking lot has been steadily filling up with cars. The cabstand comes to life. A train is on the way. The injured clerk is discovered, the alarm sounded. Just as the police start to comb the area, the movie theater lets out. Then the train pulls in. Now there is plenty of street traffic. Spock's timing was admirable. The train pulls away, and when most of the discharged passengers have gotten into cars or cabs, there is a knock at the Volvo's window. As cool as anything, the kid gets back in. Faure pulls out of the lot.

  "Did you see that?" croaks the kid. "I really clocked that asshole. Whap! Like fucking Peter Townshend."

  They drive back to Spock's house. Spock empties the money onto his living room floor.

  "Well?" says the kid.

  "Nice job," says Bezel.

  The kid is proud of himself. He brags about getting from the liquor store back to the car through a series of gullies and trails he used to explore when he was a child.

  When the excitement has died down, Bezel catches Spock on the stairs for a private chat.

  "Let's get something straight," says Bezel. "No one points a gun at me."

  Spock backs down. "Whatever you say."

  "I couldn't help noticing on my way to the loo a rather interesting piece of equipment in one of the bedrooms."

  "That's a dialysis machine. I had a little brother who died. My parents never got rid of the machine. It's sort of like a shrine."

  "Life is too, too sad," says Bezel. He whips out a hunting knife and has it to Spock's throat before the kid realizes what is happening. Bezel presses the knife to the soft flesh at the trachea.

  "You're lucky I like you, kid. I'll do another fucking operation on you. I'll take that machine and sell it for scrap."

  Bezel sheaths his knife.

  "You said it yourself, Spock. I ain't a Maryknoll missionary."

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Emerzian, the hot new restaurant, has cooled just a bit. Several tables remain empty throughout lunch. But what the clientele lacks in quantity it makes up in quality. Jackie Onassis is at the next table, not six feet from Agnes. Agnes keeps picking up snatches of her conversation.

  Mrs. Syker has the same long, hard face as her son. She wears a floral print dress and a hat crowned with a complicated system of nets and rigging. After many years of suffering with Tic Doloureaux, she has recently had surgery to deaden the trigeminal nerve. Discussing the procedure, Mrs. Syker asks Agnes if her features show any lack of mobility. Later on she will ask the waiter the same question.

  "...So I had to have the thing cleaned," says Mrs. Onassis. "None of the stains would come out...."

  Agnes stops eating her Roquefort soufflé. She couldn't be talking about the pink suit she wore to Dallas, could she?

  Mrs. Syker talks about her brother, whose health was bad for thirty years until he discovered he was allergic to the merchandise he handled every day in Syker's Fur Salon on the second floor.

  Bob Syker sullenly eats his polenta. That's all he wanted.

  Agnes says, "Mrs. Syker, when I was a little girl, I loved nothing better than going to your store."

  The old dame's eyes glitter. Her mouth forms a proud, tight little smile.

  "It is a marvelous place, isn't it?" she replies.

  Agnes does not correct her use of the present tense. Syker's has been closed for years.

  "...never liked her at all," says Mrs. Onassis. "I was immune to her Southern charm. Oh, she was a real barracuda..."

  Lady Bird?

  "Robert, what's the matter with you?" says Mrs. Syker. "You haven't said a word all afternoon."

  "I'm listening, Mother. I'm learning a lot."

  "You've never done that before."

  "I'm deferring to you."

  "It doesn't suit you. Look what you've done to your bread."

  Syker has tied his semolina roll in a knot.

  Mrs. Syker tells Agnes how Syker's paid its floorwalkers more than any other department store, and thus it was the dream of every New York balcony boy to head up a department at Syker's.

  "Balcony boy?" Agnes has never heard the term.

  "You know. Like our waiter," says Mrs. Syker. She makes a limp-wristed gesture. "There was a time he would have been in bedjackets."

  "Oh, God, so would I," says Agnes dreamily.

  "You're the first girl Bob has brought around who's even heard of the store," sniffs Mrs. Syker.

  When Syker leaves the table to call the office, his mother gets down to business. She looks Agnes in the eyes and says, "Th
ere's nothing between you and my son, is there, dear."

  Agnes hesitates. "I'm afraid not."

  "I knew it was too good to be true," says Mrs. Syker, sipping her iced tea. "I worry about him so much. He's such a difficult soul! So like his father, but his father was fortunate enough to have me."