The knocking sounds echoed in Joe’s ears like somebody knocking on the doors of a mortuary. The children said. “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” in a terrible soft unending appeal to a world that could hurt them so much. But they didn’t scream, and they didn’t cry, and with every knock of the hammer. Joe withered away inside of himself, until it was all finished and his spirit was as frail as a dried-up leaf.
The man had nailed the children to the wall like two paper dolls, their arms outspread, their feet scarcely touching the floor. Neither Joe nor Nina could look at them, or the expression on their faces.
“Mommy it hurts,” whispered Caroline. “Mommy it hurts so much.” And all Nina could do was kneel and weep.
The man paced around the room, his shadow swiveling from one wall to the other, admiring his handiwork, and slapping the head of the hammer in the palm of his hand.
“Now we’re going to say a prayer, yes? Now we’re going to ask the great one to forgive us. Now we’re going to pledge our lives to the old order, the way it was always supposed to be.”
“Please,” Joe begged him. “You can kill me if you like, but let the children go.”
The man shook his head. “This is it, Joe. This is where you make your peace with the god that you and all your kind turned your backs on. The real god.”
He rummaged around in his sack yet again, and this time he produced a red plastic bottle of barbecue starter fluid.
“Oh, God, not that,” Joe breathed.
“What?” asked Nina. “What?”
But Joe wouldn’t answer; and if there was anything merciful about being nailed to the floor, it was that Nina couldn’t see what he was about to do.
“Joe?” she pleaded. “Joe?”
The man walked backward and forward in front of the children, jetting them with fluid. All over their hair, all over their pajamas, all over their hands and feet. Joe Junior coughed and gagged at the smell of it, but although their eyes ran with tears, still neither child cried out.
“How about praying for forgiveness?” the man demanded, his glossy black mask dipping and swaying like the head of a huge black insect performing a ritual dance. “How about saying with me, ‘o great Beli Ya’al, whose day has now come, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.’”
“Are you crazy?” Joe screamed at him, in a sudden surge of panic and temper. Jesus Christ, who cared what the man did to him. Things couldn’t get worse.
“Come on, now, that’s not going to help any,” the man told him. “Just say after me, ‘o great Beli Ya’al, whose day has now come…’”
Joe remained mute; but Nina said, “O great Beli Ya’al… whose day has now come… forgive me.”
It seemed to Joe that the lights in the living-room flickered and darkened.
“Come on, Joe,” the man urged him. ‘“O great Beli Ya’al, whose return was written in pages of dust, whose name lived on when every other name was taken by the wind…’”
Joe shook his head, and began to recite his own prayer.
“Our Father, which art in Heaven… hallowed be Thy name… Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done… on earth, as it is in Heaven…”
But he stopped; because he knew that he would have to ask God to forgive him his sins—as he was supposed to forgive those who had sinned against him. And he would never be able to forgive this man in his black antlered mask, not even in heaven, not even in hell.
“Come on, now, Joe, we’re depending on you,” the man coaxed him. “‘O great Beli Ya’al, whose return was written in pages of dust…’”
As he spoke, the man approached the children, where they hung on the wall. Caroline appeared to have gone into some kind of fit, because her eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was quivering and bubbling at the mouth. Joe Junior had his eyes tightly closed.
The man said, more softly now, “…whose name lived on, when every other name was taken by the wind…”
Then he bent down in front of the children, and struck a match, and played it backward and forward beneath their cringing feet.
2
Larry was eating linguine pescatora and talking with his mouth full when Deputy Chief Burroughs came in through the swing doors of Salvatore’s restaurant and stood with his fists on his hips, shortsightedly peering from left to right.
At first, Deputy Chief Burroughs couldn’t see Larry through the curved glass screen which separated the doorway from the dining area. But then Larry saw him catch hold of Vito, the waiter, and mouth Lieutenant Foggia above the noise and clatter of the restaurant. Vito beckoned him around the screen, and along to Larry’s table under the mirror.
“God damn it to hell,” cursed Larry, trying to shield his face with his hand. “The first free evening in two months.”
“What is it?” asked Linda, turning around, and frowning.
“Dan Burroughs, wearing his Saint Joan face.”
“Oh, not here!” Linda protested.
“A visitor for you, Larry,” said Vito. “Hey, I’m sorry. I tried to tell him you were at “Prego”, but he wouldn’t believe me.”
“Who eats at “Prego”?” Larry replied.
Dan Burroughs pulled out a chair without being invited and sat down. He was dry, gray man, with sunken cheeks and pursed lips and eyes that looked as expressionless as ocean-washed pebbles. His voice was harsh from years of smoking and years of San Francisco fog.
“Hi, Dan, be my guest,” said Larry, sarcastically. “How about something to eat? The gnocchi’s good tonight.”
Dan said, “Spare me, Larry, will you? I wouldn’t of interrupted your dinner without good cause. Hallo, Linda, sorry about this.”
Larry poured Linda some more orvieto, and filled his own glass, too. He guessed that this was probably the last glass of wine he was going to be able to drink this evening. Dan was marble-hard and totally unforgiving, but he wasn’t the kind of man who canceled anybody’s R-and-R just because he was feeling out of sorts.
“There’s been another killing,” he told Larry. “Linda, I apologize for this, but you may want to excuse us for a moment. I don’t have what you might call the delicate touch when it comes to stuff like this. It’s going to upset you: so maybe you’d better hear it from your husband, rather than me.”
Linda slowly put down her fork. “I don’t mind, Dan. I’d just as soon hear it from you.”
Dan shrugged. “Please yourself. But I’m afraid it’s real bad news. Our ritual killer’s been out on the town again.”
“You mean this Fog City Satan?” asked Linda.
Dan gave her a sour, scarcely perceptible nod. He hated the hyped-up glamorized names that newspapers gave to killers and rapists and drug-runners. As far as he was concerned, they were nothing more than human detritus, on the same level as all those hundreds of pounds of dead skin and discarded hair that had to be swept every day out of San Francisco’s transit system.
“Four dead,” he said. “A father, mother, two children. Very, very ugly. You don’t want to know how ugly. But there’s something else, too. This time, the people he wasted were ours.”
Larry swallowed wine. “He killed a cop?”
“Good as. An ex-cop, you know him. Joe Berry. The whole Berry family.”
Linda raised her hand over her mouth in horror. “Joe Berry? And Nina? And the kids, oh God! I can’t believe it!”
Larry felt as if Dan had suddenly smacked him across the face. Numb, stunned; and suddenly much more vulnerable to sudden death. He crossed himself.
“What happened?” he asked, soft-voiced. “God almighty, we saw Joe just last Friday. He brought round a coffee-table he’d made for us. God almighty, I can’t believe it.”
Linda said, “They’re really dead? Nina, and the children?”
Dan nodded. “I’m sorry. All four of them. I told you it was pretty upsetting news.”
Linda started to weep. Larry reached across the table and grasped her hand.
“Hold on,” he told her. “Hold on.” Damn it, he could have cried,
too.
Dan took out a pack of Marlboro, and lit one. “It happened just over an hour ago. A neighbor heard shots, and raised the alarm.”
“Is Arne up there?”
“Arne’s up there, yes. Well, let’s put it this way. He’s up there at this particular moment in time.”
Larry caught the intonation. He could guess what Dan had in mind without even having to ask. But all the same, he asked.
“Am I totally misguided, or do I get the impression that you’re thinking of taking him off it?”
Dan blew out smoke. “He’s off it as soon as you can get to the scene.”
“Me?”
“That’s correct. I’m passing this one over to you, Larry. From now on, the Fog City Satan is all yours. I’ve already detailed Sergeant Brough to help you, as well as Jones and Glass. And anybody else you want, except for Gates and Migdoll.”
Larry glanced anxiously at Linda and then turned back to Dan. He didn’t like this one bit. He was good on neighborhood killings, family vendettas and domestic quarrels. He was comfortable with Italian brothers who had shot sailors for insulting their sisters; or Chinese restaurateurs who had hacked up rival restaurateurs for stealing their recipe for frog-shaped chicken. But he certainly didn’t relish the idea of working on the grisliest series of ritual massacres that the Bay Area had ever known. What was more, Arne Knudsen would be sure to hit the ceiling if his precious Satan case were taken away from him. Arne liked to think of himself as a kind of one-man nemesis, a Swedish Shadow, inexorably pursuing murderers through jungles of deception and shoals of red herring, until at last he arrived at their door with a warrant and a grim grin.
Larry said, “Dan… with all respect… I’m not so sure that this is my kind of assignment.”
“Your kind of assignment is the kind of assignment which I assign you to.”
“But Arne’s on top of it, isn’t he? I know he’s a grouch, but he’s a terrific detective. Look at that work he did on the Petrie killings.”
“For sure,” Dan nodded. “But the Petrie killings were systematic. The Petrie killings had a mathematical pattern. Knudsen’s unbeatable when it comes to systems and patterns. He’s more logical than Mr. Spock. But this Fog City Satan guy doesn’t kill by systems or patterns—no system or pattern that we can work out, anyhow. He just tortures and kills and each time he chooses a different location and a different family and a totally different m.o.”
Salvatore came up to their table, frowning anxiously. “The linguine’s no good?” he asked Larry.
“If God’s tears taste of anything, this linguine is it,” Larry told him. “But I’m afraid we’ve just received some terrible personal news. Another time, okay?”
Salvatore saw that Linda had been crying. “I’m real sorry. You want something? Maybe a coffee? Maybe a brandy?”
“That’s all right, Salvatore. Maybe you could call us a cab, so that Linda can get home.”
Linda said, “You’re not going to start on this tonight?”
“I’m going to have to,” said Larry.
“He’s going to have to,” Dan repeated. “Believe me, I feel like shit for breaking up your evening. I feel like shit for bring you such bad news.”
“But why does Larry have to take it on?” asked Linda, defiantly. “He’s buried in work already!”
Dan puffed out more smoke, and coughed. A large black-haired woman at the next table gave him a look of disgust that threatened to wither the pink carnations on their table.
“Linda, we’re all buried in work. Knudsen’s buried in work. Pasquale’s buried in work. Rossetti hasn’t seen his wife in so long he passed her in the street last week and didn’t recognize her. Larry has to take it on because Mayor Agnos is urgently demanding some fancy high-profile police work, and there is nobody on the roster who is fancier or high-profiler than your husband.”
Larry said, “Two Armani suits doesn’t make me fancy and high-profile.”
“Don’t shit me, Larry,” Dan told him. “You’re media-friendly and you look like you’re doing something useful even when you’re not.”
“Has it occurred to you that this assignment might be a little beyond my abilities?” Larry asked him. “Besides, Joe was a personal friend. I don’t want to make this into some kind of vendetta.”
“Vendetta? Don’t make me laugh. You’re Italian. Your uncle was Vincent Caccamo. Your whole life is one long vendetta.”
Dan coughed – a hacking, hoarse, rib-wracking cough that led the woman at the next table to drop down her fork in disgust. Her nervous-looking partner called, “Pardon me, sir, we’re trying to eat here.”
Dan heaved himself around in his chair and stared at the young man stonily. “Any luck yet?” he asked him.
Linda said, “Dan… tell me. Did the Berrys suffer much?”
Dan flicked a quick glance at her. But before he answered, he crushed out his cigarette and turned back to the young man at the next table and said, “Sorry. I apologize. It’s been a terrible day, is all.”
“Don’t mention it,” the young man replied. But the woman hissed at him, “Don’t mention it, for God’s sake?”
Dan said to Linda, “As far as we know, they suffered very badly. This guy is a maniac, it’s like he sits at home thinking up terrible ways to hurt people. Believe me, you don’t want to know the details, except that when they died it was a merciful release.”
“Is there anything I can do?” asked Linda. “Any relations you want me to call?”
Dan said, “Tomorrow morning I have to go break the news to Joe’s mother. She’s in a convalescent home in Berkeley. Maybe you’d like to come along. I could use the moral support.”
Linda nodded. “Whatever you need, Dan, just ask.”
Vito came up to tell them that the taxi was waiting outside. Larry guided Linda to the door, and Dan followed behind.
“What do I owe you for the meal?” Larry asked Salvatore, but Salvatore shook his head.
“Don’t worry about it, Larry. Come and enjoy next time. And all our sympathy, yes?”
They stood outside on Polk Street. It was one of those ghostly nights when San Francisco seems like a huge sailing-ship, becalmed in the fog. Dan Burroughs coughed into his hand. For the first time in a very long time, Larry felt unsure of what he was doing; uncertain about the future. He didn’t like the feeling at all. It reminded him of his first few weeks in homicide, when he had broken out into laughter – terrible high-pitched unstoppable laughter—every time he had been called out to look at another body. What had set him off was the almost-daily revelation that no matter how vain and pompous human beings could be, they were made up of nothing but meat and string and mess. He had once said to Linda that he was close to hating God, working in homicide. Unlike everybody else, except for doctors, you knew how disgusting humans were inside; even the most brightest; even the best. He used to watch Miss America and see nothing but muscles and skulls and heaped-up intestines—a parade of potential corpses in bathing-costumes.
Larry didn’t look like the bitter type; or the hysterical type. He didn’t particularly look like a detective. People at cocktail parties who tried to guess what he did for a living usually thought that he was a moderately successful musician, or something to do with commodities. He had that air of slight superiority; coupled with a very quiet way of talking; and a line in sardonic humor.
He was a shade too thin to be classically handsome. His face was long, with deeply-lined cheeks, almost gaunt. His hair was black, and stuck straight up like a brush, as if he were trying to grow out a crewcut. His best features were his eyes, which were always darkly circled, but green-emerald-green, and bright, and always sharp. And Linda loved his slow-developing smile.
All through her teenage years and early twenties, Linda had always been too small for most of the men she liked best. Her high-school hero and first serious crush, Glenn Basden II, had called her “the mighty midget”. She was abundantly brunette, curvy, brown-eyed, irreverent (and sh
e liked to sing); but she had a face like Bernini’s Saint Teresa, white as ivory, with heavy-lidded eyes and a perfect nose. Just the kind of looks to stir the blood of a professional Italian like Larry. And Larry hadn’t minded at all that she was only 5ft 2¼ins. She made him feel supremely protective.
Feeling protective was an important part of what made Larry tick. At least he liked to think so. If it wasn’t, then he didn’t know why he subjected himself year after year to all of the sleaze and all of the brutality and all of the reminders that the Life of Man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
He felt that he had a mission, kind of. If not a mission, then a duty for sure. Linda thought that he was vaguely peculiar, but she never brought him down. Without his mission, she didn’t know what kind of man he would be, and she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to find out.
Larry took hold of her shoulders and kissed her forehead and then her lips. “Tell the kids goodnight if they’re still awake.”
“Okay,” said Linda. “When do you think I might see you?”
Dan coughed again. “You know better than to ask that, Mrs. Foggia. Just tell him what you want for Christmas, and give him a goodnight kiss.”
Linda gave Larry a quick, light kiss on the cheek. “I hope it’s not—well, I hope it doesn’t give you any nightmares.”
Without another word, she climbed into the taxi and Larry leaned over to the driver and said, “Russian Hill, the quick way.”
“In un amen,” the driver replied.
Larry watched the taxi drive off, its brakelights briefly glaring at the intersection with Union Street. “Do you know what the trouble with this town is?” he told Dan. “Too many goddamned Italians.”
They climbed into Dan’s bronze Caprice, and drove toward Fulton Street.
As he drove, Dan carefully placed another cigarette between his lips and pushed in the lighter. “I didn’t give you the full picture because I wanted to spare Linda the grisly details,” he said. “But I think you’d better be prepared before we get there.”
Larry said nothing, but watched him as he lit his cigarette. The Caprice bucked over Van Ness.
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