Boyfriend from Hell

by Avery Corman

  Compared with most satanic Web sites, which featured gothic graphics and dark backgrounds, she found Cummings’s Web site to be conservative and well designed, with white space and a clean Bodoni typeface. The Web visitor to Darkangelchurch.org could find the Cummings stump speech, remarks “shared” by congregants, along with a series of images taken from the audio presentation, Cummings’s documentation of evil extant. Her overall impression was that Cummings tactically positioned himself as a moderate satanist, if there could be such a thing, nearly New Age in his approach.

  On Thursday nights during the public school year Ronnie went to the Thomas Jefferson Recreation Center on 110th Street and Third Avenue to help children from the ages of about twelve to fifteen in creating a recreation center newspaper. Making the rounds of recreation centers was Peter Gibbins, a pediatrician volunteering with a nutrition class for teenagers. Gibbins came upon Ronnie in the lobby and they chatted. He asked her to join him for a hamburger after they were finished for the evening. He, too, was doing good deeds, her social life was dormant, and she accepted. They went to a pub on Third Avenue and Ninety-fourth Street. Gibbins was in his early thirties, five feet seven with soft brown eyes and an innocent, young face, who didn’t seem to Ronnie as someone out of college yet, even though he was working at Lenox Hill Hospital in pediatrics.

  Ronnie’s roommate, Nancy, had been at her boyfriend’s apartment for the past three nights. Except for a brief phone conversation with Nancy, and the work with the children at the recreation center, Ronnie really hadn’t spoken to anyone for several days. When the conversation with Gibbins moved to her side of the table, her enthusiasm for the article she was working on, and her recent lack of adult contact, encouraged her to describe it all in an outpouring of enthusiasm. Somewhere in the middle of her monologue she became aware that this decent young man was squinting, apparently in distress, listening to her. She didn’t know what was causing the reaction—the subject matter, or her—and suddenly she had an uncomfortable feeling about herself, that she was carrying on like a lonely girl with no one she could talk to. But it wasn’t that, she told herself, it was as if she were trying out ideas for the piece, using this as a way of organizing the material. However, the squinting, the evident discomfort with her—it certainly wasn’t going very well.

  “I’m boring you.”

  “No, it’s fascinating. But—odd.”

  “Odd?”

  “You’re dealing with such odd people. A person who preaches Satan. Cult followers. Doesn’t it scare you?”

  “Why would it scare me? It’s ludicrous.”

  “You have to admit, what you’re working on, it’s not conventional.”

  “It’s just an article I’m writing. I’m totally conventional. I don’t even have a tattoo.”

  He didn’t smile. Doomed before it began. They went through the motions, small talk about movies they had seen. They both declined coffee or dessert and Ronnie passed on his offer of a taxicab home and went back to her apartment in a taxicab on her own.

  “I spooked a young pediatrician,” Ronnie reported to Nancy upon arriving home.

  “See, that’s where we underrated Michael.”

  “How did we underrate Michael?”

  “He’s a chef, which isn’t a traditional career, so he never had trouble with what you did.”

  “How do you figure bringing up what was nice about Michael does me any good right now?”

  “Sorry, I was just making an observation.”

  “On the open market I scare guys off. Never occurred to me that a piece on a satanic cult was—odd. Am I odd?”

  “No, you’re single.”

  The concern of every freelance writer was how much time to spend on research before you were overextending yourself on an article. She had been doing the research for two weeks; time spent tracking the Satanic noise on the Internet, going through books on satanism in the library, conducting interviews by phone with a priest in San Francisco who had delivered a sermon on God and Satan that appeared on the Internet, and a professor of religion at the University of Michigan, who was an outspoken nonbeliever in Satan. After one more bit of research she was going to begin writing. Richard Smith was the author of The Many Faces of Satan, a history of Satanic worship she had purchased in paperback. She found it to be a good popular history. On the back cover the author’s Web site was listed. Ronnie sent an e-mail to him explaining the nature of her article, asking if he would answer a few questions, and he responded by e-mail that he traveled frequently, but would be in New York that week and he would be glad to meet her for coffee, writer to writer. She e-mailed back and they agreed to meet at a Starbucks on Eighty-seventh Street and Lexington Avenue.

  She brought the book along with her; his author photo was on the back cover and she identified him at a table.

  “Mr. Smith? I’m Ronnie Delaney.”

  “A pleasure. I’ve read some of your things.”

  “Really? I’ve read your book.”

  She judged him to be in his late thirties. He was a trim, athletic-looking man in a blazer, white sports shirt and jeans, black loafers; light brown, wavy hair, pale light blue eyes, high cheekbones; so good-looking he was someone she would have taken for a model or a movie star, not “a noted lecturer on the subject of satanism, who has appeared at colleges and lecture halls throughout the world,” as stated on the book jacket.

  She told him about her visit to Cummings and his church and he knew about Cummings, that he was a recent starter in the satanic game. Ronnie was largely interested in exploring with someone who had written about satanism where he thought Cummings fit into the overall pattern. Smith didn’t feel Cummings was coming into it “heavy metal,” as he put it, more like “easy listening.”

  This corresponded to Ronnie’s sense and she offered that Cummings’s approach reminded her of the satanist of the 1960s, Anton LaVey, who had a run for a while as a pop satanist, extolling lust and hedonism.

  “Cummings does sound like LaVey. Satanism as a lifestyle. Sort of like being a vegan or smoking grass. Satanism Lite.”

  A good quote and she checked her tape recorder to see if it was running and jotted it down as backup.

  “What do you think of these cults using the Internet? Something as old as satanism being promoted electronically?”

  “Just shows the ability of the ideas in persisting.”

  “Why would you say people are drawn to these cults?”

  “Because people believe in Satan.”

  “Uh-huh,” she murmured without enthusiasm.

  “Who can prove Satan doesn’t exist?” he said.

  “Are you talking proof? Who can prove he does? By the way, I couldn’t tell from your book what you really think.”

  “You have to draw a distinction between Satan as a literary concept, as a metaphor for evil, and Satan as an actual presence, as an active instrument of evil.”

  “I don’t think Cummings is using metaphors. I think he’s talking Satan as an active presence in our lives, intervening, and for his people to follow Satan’s lead.”

  “Well, that’s the big leap of faith, isn’t it, for people who believe in Satan, that he truly exists as part of our world? I don’t think you can run a cult off a literary concept. Cummings would have to weigh in on Satan as a living presence. Like the churches weigh in on God as a living presence.”

  “And where are you in this?”

  “Intelligent people believe some spirit, some force for good, holds things together in the universe. Call that God, if you will. If you accept innate good, couldn’t you also be able to accept innate evil? And that would be Satan.”

  “Satan as a metaphor or Satan as a living presence?”

  “If pressed, I’d say both.”

  “Cummings claims the murder of his wife was a turning point for him.”

  “That would affect your beliefs. There are very good reasons why people accept Satan.”

  “His followers seemed so vulnerable. Is he
exploiting them?”

  “People look for answers. You can ask the same about organized religion.”

  “Well, if Cummings is the new Anton LaVey, LaVey didn’t last.”

  “Eventually, he died. That’ll do it. Clearly, you didn’t think much of this Cummings guy.”

  “He’s about as profound as those children’s drawings in school windows on Halloween.”

  They spoke a while longer and as they left the place she wondered if he looked back at her, since she was tempted to look back at him.

  Over dinner with Nancy she described the interview with Richard Smith.

  “I don’t know how much is useful, but he was amazingly good-looking.”

  “You don’t know how much is useful—is about the article. That he was amazingly good-looking is something else.”

  “I know. I can be into a piece, God, Satan, all that deep stuff, and then what I report back to you—”

  “Is that you met an amazingly good-looking guy.”

  “Interesting how shallow I can be,” and they both burst out laughing.

  She had a couple of questions for Cummings after speaking to Richard Smith. She called and left a message and he returned the call.

  “Ms. Delaney, Randall Cummings.”

  “Mr. Cummings, thanks for calling back. A couple of things I wanted to pin down. To be clear about it, your Satan, is that Satan as a concept or do you believe it’s an in-the-world Satan? A living Satan?”

  “Satan lives, darling. Watch the news any day of the week.”

  “Are you familiar with Anton LaVey?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you see any similarities—”

  “None,” he said sharply. “LaVey courted celebrities. He was part of the Rock-and-Roll Sixties. I have working people in my congregation and they’re well served by their church in their lives.”

  “Could you tell me again why?”

  “For people who feel they’ve been overlooked in society, who don’t live off the spoils of Wall Street or social class, my church gives them safe haven and a level playing field. Did you get that?”

  “I did.”

  “We are who we are and we’re proud of it.”

  She spent another two weeks writing the piece, trying to balance a straight reportorial position describing Cummings, his ritual and philosophy, with her own feelings, that there was something sad in people feeling so besieged and disenfranchised that they were attracted to his church, which was essentially exploitive.

  She was responsible for handing in about three thousand words and when she had a workable draft she passed it by Nancy, who liked it very much but thought by saying Cummings was as profound as children’s Halloween drawings Ronnie wasn’t going to win the Dark Angel Woman of the Year Award.

  Importantly, her editor liked it with just a few minor word changes. “Satan on 129th Street” ran in the May 2, 2005, issue of New York magazine. Cummings was shown in color on a full page, wearing his black hooded robe, posed at the lectern in the church, his piercing eyes straight ahead in a forceful look that said, I’ve got The Answer.

  Ronnie was careful to get Cummings’s quotes straight, but not to sell memberships for the man. She made her comparisons to Anton LaVey, quoted Richard Smith on “Satan Lite,” and if the license for sex Cummings offered and the balm for victims appealed to people, so be it. She felt she had done a responsible job.

  A few days after the piece appeared she received a note from Father Connolly, her priest when she was a little girl in the Bronx, and who had presided when both her parents died. He wrote, “I saw the article in New York magazine and wanted you to know how very proud I am of you and how proud your mother and father would have been.” She hadn’t come down on the side of the devil and assumed that appealed to a Bronx parish priest, but the note touched her.

  Nancy and her boyfriend, Bob, took her to a neighborhood Italian restaurant to celebrate. Bob was a real estate lawyer, a lanky six feet two with brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a hawk-like, intense face. A former distance runner at the University of Michigan, he sometimes jogged with Ronnie and Nancy in Central Park, slowing his Division I pace to accommodate them.

  He toasted Ronnie. “To our girl, for a major article.”

  “And smart,” Nancy added. “It’s a smart piece.”

  “I don’t imagine Cummings thinks so.”

  “Hear from him?” Bob asked.

  “No, I’m happy to say. He’s probably in the school of ‘say anything you want about me so long as I get a full-page, full-color shot of myself in print.’”

  “What’s next?” Bob asked.

  “New York wants me to do a piece on a bar that’s a hangout for European soccer games on TV. How eclectic is this life?”

  “This is why that doctor couldn’t handle you,” Nancy said. “You’re a major person. You need more than Mr. Right. You need Mr. Fantastic.”

  “Then my odds are poor.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know. I accept the compliment. We’re all major.”

  Nancy needed to pick up some clothes for the weekend and they went back to the roommates’ apartment. Alex, their ancient doorman, was on duty. A frail man, too small for his doorman uniform, Alex was not the most efficient doorman in New York. Perhaps he was one of the oldest. Alex was famous for forgetting to give people packages or for giving people the wrong packages. For most of the tenants Alex was a source of amusement, their Alex, their opportunity to be kind to the working elderly.

  “Something for you, Miss Delaney,” and he handed over a white box tied with a green ribbon. There wasn’t any indication of who sent it, just an index card with Ronnie’s name written on it inside the ribbon.

  “Do you know who this is from?”

  “I didn’t see anybody. It was left outside the door.”

  “Thank you, Alex.”

  He was pleased. He got the right package to the right person.

  They went up to the apartment, Bob took a can of soda from the refrigerator, Nancy went into the bedroom to collect her clothing, and Ronnie sat at the dining table and opened the box. She saw no card on top of the white tissue inside. Her scream brought Bob and Nancy running into the room. Inside the box was a dead black cat.

  As Nancy sat literally holding Ronnie’s hand, Bob called 911. It took nearly an hour for two police officers to arrive. Bob commented to the women that the leisurely response time was apparently determined by the non-emergency nature of the call; the cat was already deceased. In this period of time Ronnie had moved from fright to something close to rage, positive Randall Cummings sent the box. The police officers asked some preliminary questions, one of them took notes, and the officers went downstairs so that the doorman could be interrogated. He didn’t see anyone leave the box. It was outside the front door and he noticed it sitting there with the index card containing Ronnie’s name. That was all he saw or knew.

  “This is obviously a prank,” one of the officers said when they came back into the apartment.

  “It’s a death threat,” Ronnie said flatly.

  “I’m an attorney,” Bob said, backing her. “Not a criminal attorney, but nonetheless an attorney and I think you gentlemen have to raise the level of concern here.”

  “I write an article about a satanic cult and I get a dead black cat in a box. I take this very seriously.”

  The police officers left and an hour and a half later two plainclothes detectives came to the apartment. They were on another level of police work, which was largely dour. Detective Ralph Gomez, in his early forties, was a stocky man of five feet eight with a ruddy complexion, wearing a windbreaker, a checked sports shirt, and jeans. His partner, Detective Fred Santini, in his late thirties, was six feet one and gangly, with a protruding Adam’s apple and small, narrow eyes. He also wore a windbreaker, with a sports shirt and cotton slacks.

  After taking down the basic information Santini asked, “Is it possible it wasn’t this cult g
uy who sent this?”

  “Then one of his people,” Ronnie said. “He’s got about a thousand of them. For all I know they’ve got dead black cats stacked up like in a wine cellar.”

  Santini smiled slightly, Gomez did not.

  “May I see the article?” Gomez said.

  Ronnie produced a copy of New York magazine.

  “May we have this?” Gomez asked.

  “By all means.”

  “How long is this going to take?” Nancy said. “We’ve got a person here somebody tried to terrorize. I mean, are you going to get right on it?”

  “We’re on it right now, aren’t we?” Gomez said.

  “I guess we all want to know how this works, what the procedures are,” Bob said.

  “We’ll take the box, determine cause of death of this cat, which conceivably could give us something,” Santini said. “Check for prints. Did any of you handle the box?”

  “Just me. And the doorman.”

  “We’ll get your prints, if you don’t mind,” Gomez said. “And your doorman, and see what else is on it. My guess, there won’t be anything else. Somebody does this, they don’t leave prints.”

  “How would you know?” Ronnie said. “Have you had any experiences like this?”

  “Not precisely the same. But—things go on.”

  “Ms. Delaney, anyone you’re on the outs with? Like an old boyfriend?” Santini asked.

  “I did have a boyfriend, but I assure you this is not his style.”

  The detectives had a fingerprint kit in their car, which they brought up, taking Ronnie’s prints and then the doorman’s to match against prints they might find on the box. They concurred that Cummings was a prime suspect and were going to pay him a call. Ronnie was eager for that to happen, for Cummings to know the police department was involved. She suggested they also talk to Cummings’s assistant, whom she described as having the personality and the pallor for an action of this kind.

  “I’m going to say this is nasty, but I’m not sure it’s a death threat,” Santini said. “If it came from these people, maybe they’re just trying out, you know, their way of thinking. To scare you.”