EQMM, January 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Then, as she hung, she saw a pale slanting beam of light fall at the head of one of the theater's aisles. Someone—a man—had opened the door from the foyer. Now his enormous shadow fell into the light and now he himself was there. He came forward a few steps, but as the foyer door swung shut behind him, the theater was plunged into a nearly impenetrable blackness, and he paused uncertainly.

  Hailey felt her pulse speed up. She had caught a glimpse of the man as he entered and there was no doubt in her mind who he was. A hoodlum that size with a face that low—surely, this was the very Sarkesian her brother had told her about, the one who was coming to kill him.

  Hailey dangled in the air and watched as the man began slowly advancing again down the aisle, hunting, no doubt, for Steven. She held her breath. Her heart pounded against her chest. The killer came nearly to the foot of the stage. He stopped almost directly beneath her. Sarkesian took a long slow look from one side of the proscenium to the other. Hailey shuddered with fear that he would now lift his eyes and see her.

  And then the spotlight came on.

  Suddenly, to Hailey's horror, she was fully exposed, hanging there helpless and ridiculous in her white and golden robe with the feathery wings outstretched on either side of her.

  Sarkesian looked up—and Hailey was surprised to see he seemed even more horrified than she was. He cried out. He threw his scaly, ham-sized hands up beside his face. He leaned back as if afraid Hailey would strike him down on the spot. Frozen there, trembling, he stared up at her with a mixture of terror and awe.

  Hailey understood at once what had happened—understood what Sarkesian must've thought she was, and understood too the incredible piety and even more incredible stupidity of a man capable of believing such a thing. Acting almost as quickly as she thought, she stretched out her arm and pointed her finger at him sternly.

  "Sarkesian!” she thundered—and the echo effect, which the director had left on for further testing, magnified her voice so that it vibrated from floor to rafters. “Sarkesian—repent!"

  At that, as if the timing had been arranged by a power higher even than the director, the spotlight went out again.

  Hailey couldn't see what happened next. The light had temporarily blinded her. But she heard Sarkesian send up a high-pitched wail—and the next instant, she could hear his enormous body fumbling and bumping into seats as he made his panicked way back up the aisle.

  The door at the rear of the theater flew open. Sarkesian's massive silhouette filled the lighted frame. Then he was gone. There was the light alone. The door swung shut. There was darkness.

  Sarkesian didn't look back. He didn't even look to left or right. He ran out of the theater and into the street and was nearly struck down by an oncoming taxi. He found himself bent over the cab's hood, both hands braced against the wet metal as he gaped through the windshield at the frightened driver. Waving his arm wildly to make the cabbie stay, he rushed around to the car's side door and tumbled into the backseat. He gasped out his address to the driver. He sat huddled in a corner, shivering and whimpering, all the way home.

  Now, all right, you may laugh at Sarkesian. But even outside of journalism, truth and fiction are sometimes impossibly intertwined. A figment of imagination, a myth, even a fraud may lead us to powerful revelations. Come to think of it, do we ever find revelations in any other way? If Sarkesian was fooled by Hailey's quick-witted improvisation, if it caused him to stagger into his apartment and fall to his knees, if it made him pray and weep in the searing realization that he had lived a life of wretched wickedness in complete contravention to the commandments of his God—was that realization any less true for the way it came to him?

  In any case, the fact is: He remained on his knees all night long. And when the gray day dawned, he knew exactly what he had to do.

  He went to see Picarone. He found his boss eating breakfast with his wife on the terrace of their penthouse. The presence of the glamorous and somewhat regal Mrs. P. cowed Sarkesian and he spoke with his chin on his chest, gazing down at his own titanic feet.

  "I can't do that thing we talked about,” he said in his slow, dull voice. “I can't do any of that anymore. The bad stuff. I gotta do, I don't know, good stuff now, from now on. Like the Bible says."

  "O-o-oh,” said Picarone, lifting his chin. “Yeah. The Bible. Sure. Sure, Sarkesian, I get it. We'll only give you the good stuff from now on. Like the Bible says, sure."

  It was touching, Mrs. Picarone later told her friends, to see Sarkesian's great, granite face wreathed in childlike smiles as he floated dreamily out of the room.

  When he was gone, Picarone picked up the phone. “Hey,” he said, “I need you to take care of a little weasel named Steven Bean for me. And while you're at it, you can do me Sarkesian too."

  The call had gone out to a man named Billy Shine. He was known to all who feared him as “The Death.” There was no one who didn't fear him. He was a lean, sinewy man with a long ratlike face. He moved like smoke and half the terror he inspired was due to the way he could appear beside you suddenly, as if out of thin air. He could find anyone anywhere and reach them no matter what. And when he did find them, when he did reach them, they were shortly thereafter dead.

  Sarkesian would never have seen him coming. But he was tipped off—warned that The Death was on his trail. Mrs. Picarone had been sincere when she told her friends she'd been moved by Sarkesian's simple faith. She was, in fact, a regular churchgoer herself. Sometimes, she lay awake in a cold sweat, painfully aware of the contrast between the dictates of her religion and the source of her wealth. Normally, a quarter of an hour spent running her fingers over the contents of her jewelry box soothed her until she could sleep again. But that night, somehow, this was not enough. Exhausted, she made a stealthy phone call to a manicurist with whom Sarkesian sometimes shared a bed.

  Steven Bean, meanwhile, was sleeping just fine, curled up on the sofa in his apartment. I know: You'd think he'd be just about anywhere else, doing anything else. But after scrounging money from his sister to fund his escape, he had hit on the brilliant idea of increasing the stash by joining a 24-hour poker game he knew of. By the time he wandered out into the streets the next evening, he was all but broke again—and so tired that he convinced himself it would surely be safe at his apartment by now. Sarkesian had probably only been sent to scare him, anyway. He might even have been in the neighborhood to see someone else. Maybe it was Steven's own guilty conscience that had made him jump to conclusions and panic when he saw the killer approaching. What he really needed, he thought, was to be home and snug on his own little sofa. And so that's where he went and, after a few more drinks and a joint or two, he was out like a light.

  It's amazing people do these things, but they do. It's amazing what a little distance there needs to be between our actions and their consequences before the consequences seem to us to disappear entirely. One A.M. rolled around and there was Steven, snoring away with his hands tucked under his head, so deeply unconscious that even the entry buzzer couldn't wake him.

  But the door woke him when it crashed open, when its wooden frame splintered and fragments of it went flying across the room. That made him sit bolt upright, his jaw dangling, his eyes spiraling crazily. Before he could speak—before he could even think—someone grabbed him by the shirtfront.

  It was Sarkesian.

  "The Death is coming,” the big man said. “Get up. Let's go."

  What had happened: Sarkesian had become a new man since his encounter with the “Angel of the Lord” and he was determined to stay that way. After getting the warning call from the manicurist, he understood that it was not enough just to save himself. Knowing that The Death would come after Steven first, he saw he was responsible for protecting him as well. A sterner moralist than I am might wonder why he didn't call the police. But others had called the police in an attempt to avoid The Death and they were dead. No, Sarkesian knew Steven's safety was in his own hands. So here he was, shaking him awake


  At the first mention of The Death's terrible name, whatever was left of Steven's drunken complacency vanished like an ace of spades at a magician's fingersnap. He didn't know why Sarkesian had come to help him. At the moment, he hardly knew where he was. But he did understand that he had to run—and that there was nowhere to run from the likes of Billy Shine.

  Sarkesian didn't wait for him to figure this out or for anything. He grabbed him by the arm, got him dressed, and dragged him out the door. They were halfway down the second flight of stairs, Sarkesian in the lead, before he spoke again.

  "Where can you go?” he asked Steven over his shoulder.

  And Steven, still stupid with sleep, gave the only answer he could think of. “Tribeca. Above the bookshop. My sister's there."

  They took three cabs to avoid being followed. They traveled the last few blocks on foot. Soon they were running together through the severe, slanting shadows falling across the downtown boulevard from the line of brownstone buildings to their right. Tinsel and colored Christmas lights hung from the windows above them. And snow fell, a thin layer of it muffling their footsteps as they ran.

  As they approached the Mysterious Bookshop itself, they saw warm yellow light spilling through its storefront to lay in an oblong pool on the snowy sidewalk. Shadows moved behind the storefront's display of brightly jacketed books. Murmuring voices and laughter trailed out from within and a Christmas carol was playing—"O Holy Night."

  With a silent curse, Sarkesian understood: There was a Christmas party going on inside.

  A moment later, the voices and music grew louder. The bookshop door was coming open. A man and woman were leaving the party, waving over their shoulders as they stepped laughing into the night.

  Suddenly Steven found himself shoved hard into an alcove, Sarkesian's massive body pressed against him, pinning him, hiding him. They huddled there together, still, as the couple walked away from them toward West Broadway.

  When Sarkesian's body relaxed, Steven was able to move his arm, to lift his finger to point out his sister's name above a mailbox in the alcove. Sarkesian nodded. But Steven didn't press the buzzer button below Hailey's name. He was afraid she would turn them away. Instead, he went to work on the lock of the outside door. His fingers were trembling with cold and fear, but it wasn't much of a lock to speak of. In a second or two, he had worked it and they were inside.

  The talk and music from the bookshop were still audible through the walls. “O Little Town of Bethlehem” followed them up the stairway as Sarkesian and Steven raced to the fourth-floor landing. They made their way down the long hallway to the last door. Steven pounded on it with his fist. He shouted, “Hailey! It's me! Open up!"

  There was a pause. Steven was gripped by the fear that Hailey herself might be at the party in the bookshop downstairs. But then, her sleepy voice came muffled from within, “Steven?"

  "Hailey, please! It's life or death!"

  There was the sound of a chain sliding back. The door started to open...

  And at that moment, Sarkesian, waiting at Steven's side, felt a chill on his neck and looked to his left.

  There was The Death standing at the other end of the hall.

  He had materialized there in his trademark fashion, without warning, silent as smoke. Now, like smoke, he began drifting toward them.

  Sarkesian reacted quickly. With one hand, he shoved Steven in the back, pushing him through Hailey's door. With the other, he drew his gun.

  The Death also had a gun. He was lifting it, pointing it at Sarkesian.

  "Don't you do it, Billy Shine!” Sarkesian shouted.

  He heard a loud clap: The terrified Steven had shut Hailey's door, hoping Sarkesian would kill The Death while he cowered inside. But that changed nothing for Sarkesian. He was already moving down the hall toward Shine.

  The two killers walked toward each other, their guns upraised. They were fifty yards apart, then forty, then thirty-five. Sarkesian called out again: “Don't do it!” The Death answered him with a gunshot. Sarkesian fired back. The men began pulling the triggers of their guns again and again in rapid succession. One blast blended with another, deafening in the narrow corridor. The two kept firing and walking toward each other as steadily as if hot metal were not ripping into them, were not tearing their insides apart.

  At last, their bullets were exhausted. Each heard the snap of an empty chamber. They stopped where they were, not ten yards between them. Shine lowered his arm and Sarkesian lowered his. Shine smiled. Then he pitched forward to the floor and The Death lay dead at Sarkesian's feet.

  Sarkesian barely looked at him. He simply started walking again, stepping over the body without a pause. He let the gun slip from his fingers. It fell with a thud to the hall carpet. Only when he reached the stairway did he stagger for a moment. He held onto the banister until he was steady again. Then he started down the stairs.

  All this time, no one on the fourth floor had ventured out of his apartment. People heard the gunfire. They guessed what it was. They called the police and just hunkered down. But on the floors below there were doors opening, faces peeking out. The sound of choral music from the bookshop grew louder: “Silent Night."

  As the moments passed with no more shots, people on the fourth floor looked out too. Hailey looked out and Steven peeked over her shoulder, hiding behind her.

  "Yes!” he said, pumping his fist when he saw that The Death had fallen.

  But Hailey said, “What happened to Sarkesian?"

  Steven had told her in a single sentence about his rescue. She had guessed the rest, guessed what had happened to Sarkesian as a result of their encounter in the theater. Tender soul that she was, she felt bad for the thug. She felt any injuries he might have suffered were in part her responsibility.

  She came out of her apartment into the hall.

  "Sis! Sis!” Steven hissed after her, frantically waving her back.

  But she kept moving forward cautiously until she reached the stairway. She saw the trail of blood on the risers. With a soft cry of distress, she started down the stairs.

  She found Sarkesian lying on his back in front of the building, his blood running out into the snow. The partygoers in the Mysterious Bookshop had poured out of the store to investigate the noise and now stood gathered around him. The sound of sirens was growing louder as the police drew near. The bookshop door was propped open. “Silent Night” drifted out into the air.

  No one came near Sarkesian. He lay alone in the center of the crowd. He blinked up at the falling snow, his breathing labored.

  Then Hailey came toward him, her long white flannel nightgown trailing behind her. Many people saw and heard what happened next. Many of them talked about it to the journalists who soon flooded the scene. And yet it was never reported in a single newspaper, never mentioned on radio or television even once. This is the first time it's ever been told.

  Hailey knelt down in the snow beside Sarkesian. She leaned over him. He stirred, turning his eyes toward her. He tried to speak. He couldn't. He licked his lips and tried again.

  "I see...” he whispered hoarsely. “I see an angel."

  "Oh, Sarkesian,” said Hailey miserably. “I'm really not."

  Sarkesian blinked slowly and shook his head. “No,” he whispered. “There.” And with a terrible effort, he lifted his enormous hand and pointed over her shoulder at the sky.

  Then his hand dropped back into the snow and he was dead.

  ©2007 by Andrew Klavan

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  Looking for holiday gifts for a mystery buff? Several new books with Yuletide content are followed by some out-of-the-way items the reader on your list may not be aware of.

  **** Peter Lovesey: Murder on theShort List, Crippen & Landru, $17 trade paper, $43 signed hardcover. Two stories fit our holiday theme: “Bertie and the Christmas Tree,” from the very funny series narrated by the sleuthing-wannabe Prince of Wales, later Edward VII
; and “The Case of the Dead Wait,” combining mince pies, strolling carolers, and an alleged Wiltshire holiday tradition into a deftly constructed and generously clued whodunit for TV landscaping sleuths Rosemary and Thyme. Sgt. Cribb and Constable Thackeray also ap-pear, but the prize of the collection may be “Second Strings,” a comic crook story about the theft of a harp that is a masterpiece of misdirection. Most of the fourteen stories, varied in style and scene and bursting with ingenuity, are from original anthologies. Several will be new to American readers, one new to everybody.

  *** Jeanne M. Dams: Indigo Christmas, Perseverance, $14.95. In 1904 South Bend, Indiana, former house maid Hilda Johansson, now Mrs. Cavanaugh with servants of her own, plans a holiday party for underprivileged boys and comes to the aid of a former domestic co-worker whose husband is suspected of robbery and murder in the burning of a barn. The culture clashes of high and low society and of Swedish and Irish immigrants carry more interest than the okay mystery. Even readers normally impatient with a leisurely pace and a surfeit of domesticity should admire the author's grasp of period and locale, not just in superficial details but in social attitudes and preoccupations.

  *** JoAnna Carl: The Chocolate Snowman Murders, Obsidian, $19.95. Lee McKinney Woodyard, chocolate shop proprietor of Warner Pier, Michigan, becomes treasurer of the local Winter Arts Festival and encounters murder involving her fellow committee members. This strong example of the specialty amateur-sleuth genre, nicely written and leavened with humor, has a believable and well-differentiated cast and a tricky plot that doesn't drown in chocolate. Carl is the pseudonym of Eve K. Sandstrom.

  *** Barbara Allan: Antiques Flee Market, Kensington, $22. In their third case, antiques dealers Brandy Borne and her bipolar actress mother attend a flea market to augment their pre-Christmas stock. A murdered dealer, his British Goth granddaughter, and a missing first edition of Tarzan of the Apes keep the pages turning. This is surely one of the funniest cozy series going, though some readers may find the humor suspiciously masculine. Behind the collaborative byline are Barbara and Max Allan Collins.