Two Songs This Archangel Sings m-5

by George C. Chesbro

  In the early morning light Veil Kendry's vaguely menacing seascape seemed even eerier and more otherworldly, like some great sign posted to warn me that I was in a place where I did not belong.

  There was zone heating in the loft, and the living quarters turned out to be warmer than the work area. In the kitchen, I went to the stove and put on a kettle of water to boil. After making myself a large mug of instant coffee, I unzipped my jacket and went to the telephone extension next to the sink. Once again I called all the hospital emergency rooms, and once again found that Veil wasn't in any of them; I hadn't expected that he would be, but thought it a necessary base to touch. Next, I called my service, but the only message that had been left was from a panicky student who feared-with good cause-that he'd failed my course. I didn't bother calling Garth. I assumed Garth would have gotten back to me if Veil's name had turned up on an arrest sheet, and I no longer considered it probable that Veil's trouble was with the police; it wouldn't explain the open loft and burning lights. Veil's problem, whatever it was, had to be more serious than one of his periodic run-ins with the cops, and his absence was beginning to feel like an oppressive weight growing ever heavier on me. Uninvited, I had entered more than a painter's loft; I had walked into a situation I was not certain how to walk away from.

  Picking up my coffee mug, I went back out into the work area, went to the wooden equipment box next to the mats, and opened the lid. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold in this part of the loft went through me as I looked down into the box. Veil's oversize gym bag was missing, along with the half dozen shuriken he kept there, two throwing knives, and his nunchaku- two polished, rock-hard sticks of mahogany joined by a six-inch chain, a fearsome and deadly bonecrusher in the hands of a martial arts master like Veil Kendry.

  Closing the lid, I leaned back against the box, sipped at my coffee, and tried to think. Wherever Veil was and whatever he was doing was his business, I thought, not mine. The missing weapons indicated that Veil was taking care of that business, and my chief concern should be for whoever it was Veil had gone to do business with. It had nothing to do with me. Veil would have asked for my help if he needed it, and he hadn't.

  Or had he …?

  Aside from locking up his loft and turning off his lights, what the hell did he expect me to do?

  My coffee had gone cold. I set the mug down on top of the equipment box, glanced nervously at my watch, then went across the loft to the wall where the seascape hung. Walking slowly toward the opposite end, I carefully examined each canvas in the mosaic, thinking there might be some answer hidden in one of them. There wasn't-at least none that I could find. Viewed individually and at close range, each canvas indeed became "abstract," and even the menacing figures beneath the surface of the sea sank from sight. I could find no indication of anything in the individual canvases except for the fact that Veil Kendry's imagination and artistic talent seemed as unique to him as his almost superhuman fighting skills. Searching for my friend in the loft he had vacated was getting to be most frustrating, and it seemed increasingly apparent that I was on the errand of a fool.

  Adding to my frustration was a sense of mounting time pressure. In slightly less than an hour and a half I was supposed to deliver a lecture-and not just any lecture, and not to students. As far as my career in academia was concerned, it was probably the most important speech I would ever make. There were police chiefs and criminologists in town from all over the world to attend a four-day symposium on serial murderers under the auspices of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The keynote address was being delivered at my university because it had the only auditorium large enough to accommodate all of the people expected to attend. In ninety minutes a few hundred people, including the university chancellor and the head of my department, were going to be sitting in their seats in the huge lecture hall, staring up at the lectern and expecting to see-me.

  Some research I'd done on the minds and motives of serial murderers, published in a half dozen monographs in various professional journals, was now considered seminal, and possibly even predictive. As a result of those papers, I'd been invited to deliver the keynote address and was expected to discuss my most recent work. It was a signal honor, the kind of thing that allows one to advance rapidly in the academic world, an intense focus of attention on one's self and work for which most professors would sacrifice a year's sabbatical. I should have been home eating a good breakfast, studying my lecture notes, and trying to relax. Instead I was unshaven and grungy from spending the night on a gym mat, dressed in old, patched sweats and worn, dirty sneakers. If I got lucky and found a cab at this hour of the morning, or if I left immediately and sprinted to the subway, I might just make it to my apartment in time to shave, shower, put on my one good suit, and get to the university with a minute or two to spare before I was scheduled to begin speaking.

  Turning back toward the far end of the loft, I caught a wink of light high up on the bank of windows. Puzzled, I moved a few feet to my left, keeping my eye on the spot, then realized with a start that what I was looking at was a bullet hole. I had not seen it the night before because of the darkness and would probably not have seen it at all if I had not been standing in the right place and looking up at the right angle. The fact that the glass had not been shattered indicated to me that the weapon used had been small bore, high velocity. I could now see that the glass was thicker than it first appeared and optically distorting. It could explain why the bullet had missed its mark.

  If it had missed its mark.

  The bullet had to have been fired from the roof of the factory building across the alley, which was some two stories higher that the loft. That gave me an approximate downward angle, but it wasn't much help in allowing me to determine the exact trajectory of the bullet into the loft.

  The canvases on the one wall hadn't been damaged, which meant that the bullet hadn't entered there. Slowly, eyes on the floor, I began to walk back and forth across the work area, looking for a bullet hole or bloodstain. I gave up after a couple of minutes; if there were bloodstains on the wrinkled tarpaulins that covered the floor, they would be indistinguishable from the innumerable splotches of red paint.

  The good news, I thought, was that there had been no bloodstains in the elevator; but then, Veil, if he had been hurt, could always have bandaged the wound. Whatever had happened to Veil, the answer to where he had gone, and why, did not seem to be in this part of the loft.

  Which did not mean that there might not be answers somewhere else in the loft.

  I went back into the living quarters, through the kitchen into the area where Veil slept. I'd been in this area before, but only now did it strike me how very little there was to see. After the vast expanse of the work area, the living quarters seemed excessively cramped and ascetic, like a monk's cell. It was all strictly functional. Just to the right of the kitchen entrance was a neatly made bed covered by a thick brown quilt that matched the color of the walls and ceiling. There was a bathroom with toilet and shower, and next to the bed a leather reclining chair with a reading lamp behind it. There was a bookshelf filled with books that looked well worn. Judging from the titles of the books, his reading was thoroughly eclectic, from Carlos Castaneda to Proust to Melville to Ross Macdonald, in addition to lots of history, philosophy, and science. A separate bookcase held dozens of back issues of magazines and newspapers-Scientific American, Newsweek, Time, The New York Review of Books, and various martial arts journals. Next to the wall on the opposite side of the kitchen entrance was a writing desk-bare except for a lead paperweight and a letter opener. There was also a small television set and stacked stereo components. His record collection, like his books, was eclectic, and his tastes ranged from classical to rock, from folk to vintage blues and jazz. There was a dresser and mirror flanked by two wardrobes, both filled with clothes.

  Wherever Veil had gone, he was traveling light.

  It struck me that, aside from the shards of personality that can always be ext
racted from a person's book and record collections, there was absolutely nothing personal in the living quarters-no pictures, no photographs, no mementos of any kind. The walls, like the surfaces of the desk and dresser, were bare of personal statement or reflection, making the living quarters as silent about Veil Kendry as the man himself. It was as if Veil had gone to great lengths to erase all traces of his past.

  Once, soon after I'd met the painter, I'd asked him where he had been and what he had done before coming to New York City. His reply had been flat and simple; there was no offense intended, but his past, all of it, was something he preferred not to discuss. That had been fine with me. I'd liked Veil Kendry for who and what he was, and who and what he might once have been had been irrelevant to me. Indeed, after that initial conversation I hadn't given the matter further thought-until now, eleven years later, standing in this spiritually stripped cell.

  Not bothering to glance at my watch because I knew it would only make me nauseated, I walked quickly to the desk and opened the middle drawer. Inside were invoices and receipts for art supplies, a checkbook, a few pens and pencils. There were no entries in the checkbook that seemed unusual, and there were no personal letters.

  I closed that drawer, opened the single, deep drawer to the left. There was nothing in the front of the drawer, and as I bent over to look in the back my eye caught something mounted beneath the desk, high on a back leg: a switch. I hesitated just a moment, then reached back and flipped it. I heard a sharp click behind me, spun around, and saw that a section of the floor about the size of a door had popped up an inch or so.

  At once excited by my discovery and embarrassed at just how far I was intruding into a very private man's private space and affairs, I walked quickly over to the raised section of floor, got down on my hands and knees. I pushed the panel back off its spring-loaded supports, grunted with surprise when I looked down into the hidden compartment, which was perhaps a foot and a half deep. There was a sharp odor of machine oil, and in one corner were bottles of gun oil, gun cleaning equipment, and a number of soft, oil-soaked rags. Around the edges of the compartment were brackets-now ominously empty-obviously intended to hold guns; judging from the configuration of the brackets, one of those weapons could well be a submachine gun.

  At the bottom of the compartment, directly in the center, was a fairly large oil painting, obviously by Veil but painted in the kind of dark, rich, vibrant colors he had employed at the beginning of his career, but which he hadn't used for years. The style, the brushstrokes, were undeniably Veil's, but this painting was unlike any of his other work I had ever seen. To begin with, the single canvas was complete in itself and painted in a totally realistic style.

  It was also jarring. In the painting, black-pajama-clad and uniformed Asiatics armed with carbines and semiautomatic weapons moved stealthily along a narrow trail winding through thick jungle growing over the foothills of a cloud-shrouded mountain range that rose in the distance. Hovering over the entire scene, rising over the misted mountains and suspended above the armed figures, was what could only be described as an angel, albeit a most unusual one. The suggestion of wings on its back and a halo around its head were composed of fire and dark smoke. The angel wore a long, flowing white robe covered with strange, mystical symbols colored magenta, crimson, and brown. Bullet-choked bandoleros crisscrossed the angel's chest, and he brandished a submachine gun. Long, thick yellow hair was whipped by a fierce wind that apparently affected nothing and nobody else in the painting. The angel had pale blue eyes, handsome features, unusually high cheekbones, and a strong chin. His lips were drawn back in a grimace of pain or rage, or both.

  That long, yellow hair of the figure in the painting was now liberally streaked with gray, and the flesh over the high cheekbones was no longer stretched quite so taut; there were more shadows under the eyes that remained a kind of glacial blue, but the face was nevertheless unmistakably that of Veil Kendry as he must have looked more than twenty years before.

  When I lightly touched the surface of the painting, I found it still tacky; it had been painted recently, within the past twenty-four hours. I gripped the canvas by the edges of its woooden stretch frame, carefully lifted it up and out. As I did so, I was startled to find a large, bulky manila envelope beneath it. My name, in black oil paint and written in Veil's familiar hand, was printed in large block letters across the face of the envelope.

  Setting down the painting, I picked up the envelope, ripped open one end, and dumped the contents on the floor. A quick count with trembling fingers told me there was ten thousand dollars, in hundreds and fifties, spread out before me. I shook the envelope, but nothing else came out, and a look inside confirmed that the envelope was empty. There was no note.

  After stuffing the money back into the envelope, I rose and hurried to the phone extension in the kitchen. This time I reached Garth at his apartment.

  "Yo, brother."

  "Mongo, where the hell are you?"

  "Veil's place."

  "What the hell are you doing there? You know, you just caught me; I was on my way out the door. Want to try and guess where I was going?"

  "Garth, listen-"

  "As a matter of fact, I was afraid I was going to be late for a very heavy lecture my brother is giving this morning to law enforcement people from all over the world. This brother of mine is supposed to be some kind of expert on serial murderers, which doesn't surprise me at all; loonies love him. Anyway, I'm very proud of this brother. There are a lot of cops from a lot of different places who arrived in town a few days early to see the sights, and I've been spending a lot of time getting drunk with them, bragging about my brother and telling them what a great speaker he is. By the way, do you plan to show up?"

  "Just shut up and listen to me, Garth. This is more important."

  "I'm listening," Garth said seriously. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm all right, but I've been here all night and Veil hasn't shown up. I'm almost certain he took off after someone winged a shot at him; there's a bullet hole in one of his windows."

  I paused for a moment, debating whether or not I should tell Garth now about the weapons Veil was undoubtedly carrying, decided that it would only cloud the more important issue. "I told you that he left his loft open, with all the lights on. It felt all wrong, and that's why I stuck around. I found the bullet hole this morning."

  There was a pause, then: "Explain to me the connection."

  "After I found the bullet hole, I started poking around the place. I got lucky and found a secret compartment. Inside, I found an oil painting and an envelope, addressed to me, with ten grand in cash inside."

  This time there was a much longer pause. "Very strange, Mongo," Garth said at last. "Just like your friend."

  "I want you to forget about the lecture; I'll give you a blow-by-blow description tonight, over steak and whiskey sours. I'll take care of that business, but I'd like you to go down to the station house and file a missing persons report on Veil Kendry. Now."

  Garth thought about it. "It's too soon," he finally said. "And you're not a relative. You have no legal standing to-"

  "I'm his friend. He's in trouble, Garth."

  "Any signs of a struggle in the loft? Blood? Overturned furniture?"

  "No," I replied reluctantly.

  "Then what's the problem? It wouldn't be the first time somebody went out, left the lights on, and forgot to lock the door."

  "You don't understand; you have to be here. I know he's in trouble."

  "You say. Kendry doesn't get in trouble; he gives it to other people."

  "I told you somebody took a shot at him. You don't seem to be taking that very seriously."

  "Wrong. The problem is that you don't know for certain that somebody took a shot at him because you don't know how long that bullet hole has been there. Am I right?"

  "Garth-!"

  "Did you find the bullet, or another hole where it hit?"

  "Garth, the loft's big as a Goddamn football fie
ld."

  "The hole could have been plastered over, or covered with something. I take bullets most seriously-but remember that this is New York, and that area where Kendry lives is zooier than most. That bullet hole could have been there for months, even years. Now, do you want me to send a car to pick you up?"

  "No," I answered curtly. I thought Garth was being totally unreasonable, not to mention callous, and it was beginning to make me angry. "I'm already downtown, and I can probably get there faster on my own. The shot had to have been fired sometime yesterday; it's why Veil left. Why don't you come down here? Maybe if you see-"

  "Whoa, brother," Garth interrupted, impatience creeping into his voice. "You may think I'm turning off on this thing because I don't like Kendry."

  "Are you, Garth?"

  "Just stop and think a moment. You tell me nothing in the loft has been disturbed. The police can't go in there, and I can't file a missing persons report, just because your buddy didn't keep an appointment. As a matter of fact, you shouldn't be up there right now."

  "What about the money, Garth? And the painting? I know this sounds crazy, but it occurs to me that it's almost as if he couldn't decide whether or not to ask for my help, so he left it all up to chance-first, whether I'd even notice that the door was open and come up to the loft, and then whether I'd find the things he left for me."

  "You're right. It sounds crazy."

  "Well, I did find those things."

  "Only because you're outrageously nosy."

  "The painting has to be some kind of clue."

  "A clue to what?"

  "Maybe to where he's gone, and why."

  "And what is it that you think he wants you to do?" Garth sounded as if he were talking to a child.

  "I don't know, Garth," I said, time pressure and frustration combining to squeeze my voice into a kind of plaintive whine. Garth thought I was being absurd, and in a way I could see his point. But he hadn't looked down into the secret compartment beneath the floor and seen the painting, or found the envelope with my name on it and ten thousand dollars inside; he hadn't seen the empty brackets or smelled the machine oil. "The only thing I can figure is that he may want me to search for him."