by Avery Corman
“The bad news I know. I’ve been on the receiving end.”
“The good news, as I see it, the likelihood is—this is basically what they do.”
“I’m a writer, and the word ‘likelihood’ is the word I worry about.”
“I understand. These things are designed to frighten you. My guess, because they want to get back at you for what you wrote.”
“So you think it is the cult.”
“I do. But they only frighten you if you’re frightened.”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
“Somebody who recognizes this is their act. I can provide you with security, up to twenty-four hours a day with rotating people, but the way they’ve tried to come at you, somebody even standing right next to you isn’t going to stop them. Maybe I could’ve run after the person who tossed the cats in your path, or the trinket thing, but this time they didn’t do anything like that, they sent something by mail, so a security person wouldn’t have stopped it.”
“Personal security can’t help, is what you’re saying.”
“I don’t think so. I’ll provide it if you wish, at no expense to you, but no. The biggest problem, and this is where they’re clever, is that it’s practically impossible to pin pranks like this on anybody.”
“Cummings. His people.”
“No evidence. Not like a gun you can trace, or fingerprints, or someone you can ID. That’s why the cops are dragging their feet, also they’re preoccupied.”
“So you’re saying it’s practically impossible to get the person who’s doing this to me. Why exactly are we talking?”
“Well, I am offering security—”
“Which you’re telling me is useless.”
“And I’m telling you all this can only frighten you if you allow yourself to be frightened. You could put your mind in the place of—this is stupid and I won’t let it get to me.”
An unprotectable, unprovable harassment was directed at her, and these experts, the police and now this private investigator, were telling her to ignore it and eventually she would be left alone.
“I’m not going to let my life be turned upside down by some snake oil salesman in a hood. Thank you. I’ll let you know if I need anything from you.”
She was going to cut this off at the source.
On 129th Street across from the Dark Angel Church the protest group assembled, sometimes two or three of them, five at the maximum, holding placards for the benefit of passing motorists, pedestrians, or the occasional people in and out of the church during the day. The wording of their signs proclaimed, GO TO HELL, DOWN WITH SATAN, SATAN WORSHIPPERS GO HOME, and WHO BELIEVES IN THE DEVIL BELIEVES IN EVIL. The last, more biblical than the rest, missed the point as far as the cult members were concerned; they wanted to believe in evil. The protesters were middle-class whites who knew each other from the First Calvary Roman Catholic Church in Staten Island and they commuted by public transportation, ferry and subway, taking up their positions according to a sign-up schedule maintained by the group leader, John Wilson. He was six feet one, gawky, and wore too-short chinos and inexpensive checked sport shirts. His brown hair was thinning to baldness, his face sallow. A bachelor of forty-six, he was a dealer in religious artifacts he sold from home, a two-bedroom apartment he rented in the rear of a private house. His place was a kind of religious shrine, but with shipping boxes. He had neither female nor male relationships of a sexual nature, seldom went to the movies because he deemed them immoral, and devoted himself to his work and his Catholicism. He sold, by a combination of Internet and mail order, crucifixes, statuettes of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, and religious paintings imported from a wholesaler in Rome. He first became aware of Cummings and the Dark Angel Church while surfing the Internet. He attended a mass to see the Devil’s handiwork firsthand and was outraged. Wilson reported back to a couple of the churchgoers and the idea was born to create a protest vigil.
Alice Bayers, a stout woman of five feet two, forty-eight, a widow, was the self-proclaimed strategist. She had worked as a volunteer on behalf of local politicians and was a regular viewer of Meet the Press, which she lorded over the others in promoting her intelligence. She devised the concept of a vigil during the day, when they would most likely be seen, and in order to be economic restricted night protests to Saturday nights, the church’s time for mass. Wilson would have liked a more vigorous union-on-strike schedule, the others objected, and it was agreed they would take up their positions for a few hours during the day and on Saturday nights, provided the weather was dry and not too cold.
Beattie Ryan, sixty-five, a retired mail carrier, a beefy woman of five feet six, and a horse player, was designated weather marshal. She liked to boast she could stand on the street for long hours because of her powerful leg muscles developed in her work and from long days at the track. Lacking her physical abilities, the others carried lightweight folding chairs to the site and, although she claimed not to need one, Beattie Ryan brought one with her, as well.
Peter Askew, fifty-three, a recent alcoholic, and Martin Beale, fifty-eight, his mentor in Sunburst, the recovery group at the church, were two of the other loyalists, both army veterans from Vietnam on disability. Askew was five feet eleven, with a belly over his belt, currently unemployed, which freed him up for standing his post. Beale, five feet seven, did odd jobs in carpentry, and came and went as a protester according to his available work.
Discussions between the police and the protesters established ground rules: no use of hand-held public address speakers, no physical contact with cult members; the right to protest, but not to impede people from entering and leaving the church. Their position was across the street from the front entrance to the church, they were able to use the rest-room in a nearby gas station, and the police left them on their own during the day, save for a periodic drive-by from officers on duty. When the church was in session and the interactions between cult members and the protesters might escalate, two police officers were assigned to the protest site. Apart from shouting matches between opposing parties, which had become routinized street theater, violence did not occur.
Cummings lived in Yonkers and drove in each day, parking at a designated spot behind the building, out of the sightline of the protesters. When he did appear in front at the conclusion of a mass he was greeted by insistent booing, the protesters unaware that they were unwittingly bestowing a form of celebrity status on their enemy.
“We need literature,” Alice Bayers, the political strategist, declared one day when they were in their spot. “Something we can give out to people who pass by.” The group at the time consisted of Wilson, Askew, and Beale.
“We also need a name,” Wilson said, looking to assert his position in the group. He was the leader, he organized it, and he didn’t want Alice Bayers usurping his position in the bureaucracy. “How about the Anti-Dark Angel Church Group.”
“Why would we want to name ourselves after them?” Bayers said. “It gives them publicity.”
They nodded in agreement. Power was slipping away from him quickly, Wilson felt, and he needed to come up with another name fast.
“How about the Anti-Satanist Group?”
“I think it’s good,” Bayers said and the others agreed.
“So we have it, the Anti-Satanist Group,” Wilson said. “Praised be the Lord.”
Bayers and Wilson collaborated on the flyer, which included, “This Randall Cummings and his so-called church advocate more evil at a time when the world needs less evil. … This evil-spewing church and its teachings oppose everything God-fearing, good people believe in. … This evil-spewing church is opposed to all organized religion. … This evil-spewing church and its members and their possible actions are a threat to everyone outside their church.” Wilson contributed, “This evil-spewing church’s members should go to hell since they admire its gatekeeper so much.” He was proud of that. In summation they called for local, state, and federal authorities to shut the church down.
After her meeting with the private investigator, convinced of the course of action she needed to take, Ronnie called Cummings.
“Randall Cummings.”
“Veronica Delaney.”
“Ah, Ms. Delaney, calling me to make a dinner date?”
“Don’t leave your office, Mr. Cummings. Don’t go anywhere. I’m coming there.”
“It will be the highlight of my day.”
Wilson wasn’t doing very well distributing flyers on a humid May afternoon, the temperature in the nineties. Beattie Ryan was his only colleague on this sticky day and few people were interested in taking the literature. The sight of Ronnie walking toward the building aroused them—someone was actually there—and they began raising their banners and shouting, “Down with Satan, down with Satan.” She glanced over at them, not slowing her step. Wilson hurried over to Ronnie as she was about to head toward the side entrance of the building.
“I’m John Wilson of the Anti-Satanist Group,” he said, trying to behave in a leaderly fashion.
Under other circumstances she might have evidenced curiosity. She just wanted to get at Cummings.
“Okay.”
She turned away from him and he glared at her, offended.
“Our literature,” and he handed her a flyer.
She took the flyer without looking at it and folded it into a pocket of her jeans as she resumed walking.
Wilson was extremely disappointed in her reaction. He wanted her to read the flyer in its entirety in front of him so he could answer questions. Her indifference was an affront to him and he suddenly went from calm to seething at her behavior.
“I do the Lord’s work!” he said. “Do you work for the Devil?”
“No,” she answered. “I’m freelance.”
Ronnie rang the bell at the side door and Cummings’s assistant appeared. “I spoke to Mr. Cummings. He knows I’m coming.” He looked at her with contempt, stepped aside for her, and continued out of the building. She entered Cummings’s office and by contrast he was veritably sunny.
“Ah, the beautiful and talented Veronica Delaney.”
“Mr. Cummings.”
“I should add, and the egregiously misinformed Veronica Delaney.”
“Mr. Cummings, since I wrote the article I’ve been sent a dead black cat, black cats were thrown in my path, a death skull trinket was tossed at me by someone weird who ran off, and the latest is, I received in the mail a head shot of me, cut, with the head separated from the body.”
“Now what would any of that have to do with me?”
“Retaliation?”
“For what? I have more members since the article appeared than I had before. Surprise you? You probably thought you were putting me out of business.”
“Nobody else would care about me. It’s you or that assistant of yours or another one of your people.”
“Cosmo? He may be a little—socially challenged. But he wouldn’t do anything I didn’t tell him to do, and I didn’t tell him to do anything. As I said to the police more than once and I’ll say to you, it isn’t in my business interest to badger you. Now you got a good article out of me. I am good copy, let’s face it. Nice byline in a major magazine. Good for your career and a chance to get your vivid writing on display. By the way, you’re a very good writer for somebody so young. You could use more objectivity.”
“About someone who takes advantage of people?”
“I read your piece, darling. Anyway, we both got something out of it; you helped your reputation, I got the exposure.”
“But the exposure of the way you’ve been harassing me, if I wrote about that, it wouldn’t be so good for you, would it?”
“No, it wouldn’t. The media likes to protect their own and if it got to be a big deal, that isn’t the kind of coverage I’m looking for.”
“So let’s come to an agreement here. I don’t write the follow-up piece telling how you harassed me and you don’t follow up with any more of these harassments.”
“I can’t say yes to that.”
“And why is that, Mr. Mephistopheles?”
“Because, as I keep telling you, which you don’t want to hear, I had nothing to do with it. Here, want me to e-mail my people telling them to cease and desist? You can write it yourself.” He turned to his computer, did some typing, and read aloud, “‘To all members. It has come to our attention …’ What would you like to say?”
“You say it. They’re your people.”
“‘The writer, Veronica Delaney, who wrote an article about the Dark Angel Church for New York magazine, has been receiving unpleasant …’”
“Make that ‘has been receiving threats.’”
“‘Has been receiving threats.’” He composed aloud as he typed, “‘These are not the wishes of your leader, and anyone involved must cease and desist, effective immediately. Noncompliance will result in expulsion from the church.’ There. They’ve been told.”
“All right. But it doesn’t cover you.”
“It doesn’t have to cover me. I would never do anything like that. Use your logic. Why would I? I don’t need you here, threatening me with bad publicity. On some level, all publicity is good publicity, we’ve seen that, but I don’t need that kind of story. I didn’t do it. Repeat, I didn’t do it. Nobody under my instructions did it. You think there’s some rogue member of my cult, acting on his own, making the assumption it’s what I wanted? I truly doubt it. And if it’s so, and I do truly doubt it, with that e-mail, it’s over.”
She began to become dizzy, something about the tension of this encounter, she presumed, and Cummings began to blur in her vision. She vaguely heard him saying, “… it becomes me being the one harassed … the police … the time dealing with it …”
She made an effort to rise from the chair, “… get you something … water … call a car for you?”
She was aware of saying, “It’s over then,” and she made her way out of his office, holding her hand against the walls of the corridor for balance, and walked shakily into the street. She squinted from the sun, everything blurry, the group across the way chanting when they saw her, “Down with Satan, down with Satan,” a car horn blasting, someone yelling, “Watch where you’re walking!”
Her fingers brushed the sides of buildings for balance. If she could only sit for a minute she would be all right, in the shade somewhere, she couldn’t just sit on the sidewalk in the sun. With her blurry vision she saw something in the distance as if it were a mirage, benches beneath trees, and she sat on a bench and closed her eyes, and passed out.
She regained consciousness, a headache pushing in on her eyes. She checked her watch, 3:49. She had been up there an hour and a half. Her sight was clear now and she saw that she was on a bench outside an apartment building in a housing project two blocks from the Dark Angel Church. People were going in and out of the building and whoever she was who nodded off, a junkie, or a drunk from downtown, they were indifferent to her. She walked to 125th Street, hailed a cab, and closed her eyes until they reached her building. She was shivering from the strangeness.
7
ANOTHER BLACK HOLE, NO consciousness, a blank. She remembered talking to Cummings to a point and then nothing. She couldn’t trace a memory from the moment her vision began to blur to the time when she awoke on the bench. She lay on her bed with the lights off. She had been tense, it was a hot day, perhaps she had become dehydrated, but mainly the tension, she believed, the cumulative effect caused her to become faint, and Cummings, the tension of dealing with him, arrogant and blameless—and for all his protestations she still had no assurance some other awful object wouldn’t be sent her way.
No way around it. She needed to see a doctor. Her gynecologist worked in a medical group with other doctors and Ronnie prevailed upon her to arrange for an appointment with an internist.
By evening, after rest and a couple of aspirin, she was feeling more stable. She scanned her e-mail; Richard had written to her.
Paul Stone says
you are gorgeous and smart. I didn’t need a P.I. to tell me that, but apparently he thinks as I do, wait it out and the bad guys will go away. Back in New York in about two weeks.
An e-mail from Nancy:
Straight to business thing for Bob, then his place. See you in the a.m.
A break for Ronnie in television programming; Roman Holiday was on cable. She made an omelet for dinner, ate in bed watching the movie, then went to sleep.
Cummings made an appearance in her dreams, he was her taxicab driver and drove her into a black hole. She awoke and fell back to sleep. The clock radio went off at seven. Her intention was to try restoring herself physically with a jog in the park. She was getting into her jogging clothes when Nancy entered after spending the night at Bob’s apartment and called out a hello to Ronnie. Nancy went into her bedroom and turned on the television set to the news. The announcer’s tease for the next item after a commercial break startled her.
“Ronnie, get in here right away!”
Ronnie hurried into the room.
“Coming up, you’re not going to believe this,” Nancy said.
The female announcer appeared with an insert behind her on the screen, a shot of Randall Cummings.
“Satanic cult leader Randall Cummings is dead. The head of the Dark Angel Church, located on 129th Street, was apparently strangled to death in his church yesterday.”
“What?” Ronnie said, and her insides tightened with this shock to her system.
“He was found by an employee of the church. Police officials report a motive for the slaying is unknown. The Dark Angel Church advocates worship of Satan; the cult said to number over a thousand in the Manhattan-based congregation and via the Internet. Cummings was forty-five years old.”
The announcer started her next report and Nancy clicked off the television set.
“My God, I was there. Yesterday. In the afternoon.”
“You know how lucky you are nothing happened to you? You might have just missed the killer.”
