Constantine

by John Shirley

  Francisco had his hand on the iron spike, and understood. But he could not speak English, and he replied in Spanish. “I have yet to change my money.”

  The man shook his head. “Fool, I can’t understand what you saying. You got . . .” He rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign for money. “American?”

  Francisco shook his head.

  “Motherfucker, that some scandalous shit you trying to pull. I don’t wait around while you change your money. We going to see what you got on you and then you give all you got and you say thank you, Baley, for not shooting my motherfucking head off. Now get out the car.”

  He pointed at the door. Francisco shrugged and got out. The driver came around to his side, opening his coat to show a revolver in a shoulder holster. He put one hand on the gun and stuck the other one out. “I’m gonna kick your motherfuckin’ ass anyway, wetback—you pissing me off, looking like that. Maybe we take you somewhere, find out do you got some relatives can pay your way, but there going to be big interest, cocksucker—”

  “I’m no wetback. I came across the desert, not that river in Texas,” Francisco said, in his own language. He pulled out the spike, and slashed downward with it.

  Baley had drawn the gun, and the iron point smashed into his hand—shattering the gun and hand both, stabbing right through skin and bone, even though the point wasn’t sharp enough to cut through paper, let alone flesh. The driver screamed and tried to jerk his hand away, but only succeeded in tearing it up more on the iron spike clutched firmly in Francisco’s fist.

  Francisco kicked out—angry now, wanting to feel some part of his body striking this lowlife. He struck the man’s groin, hard, making him buckle over—as if the man were bowing to him. “Yes, bow to me!” Francisco shouted. “You should bow! You are scum! You dare to rob me? I will take all of this city for my own! I will be king of the thieves!”

  As he spoke, Francisco raised the spike again, swinging his arm all the way around in a cartwheeling motion to bring it down into the back of Baley’s head, and the spike seemed to carry a terrible momentum, as if energized by its own inner hunger, as it stabbed through the man’s skull like a nail through a boiled egg.

  The driver fell, twitching. Francisco examined the iron spike—and as he watched the driver’s blood beaded like mercury and ran off it, as if in a hurry to be away. In a second the spike was dry.

  He grunted in satisfaction and put it away in his pocket. He found a small roll of bills on the driver and got into the taxi, where he discovered the key in the ignition. He started it and drove away.

  But where to? Anywhere! Perhaps a bank—the spike could break open a bank vault . . .

  Plenty of time for that. First, follow your instincts. You will be guided. There is somewhere else you must go . . .

  Yes, plenty of time for robbery later. He would just drive to the east . . . that’s what felt right. There was something there, in the eastern part of this great city. There was a place, someplace special, that called to him.

  ~

  Constantine and Angela slept for a murky, uncertain while, fully clothed, spooning in his rumpled bed. He was sorry he hadn’t changed the sheets lately, but she didn’t seem to care. Later . . .

  After he took some medication. After they ate a spare breakfast. After what seemed like a gallon of coffee . . . They talked. Made certain determinations.

  They didn’t have a plan exactly. But they had a direction. Like when you’re lost in the wilderness, and you decide to head downhill, following a stream, reasoning it’ll take you to civilization. They’d follow water down . . . to Hell.

  So Constantine filled the old-fashioned porcelain bathtub. The kind with clawed feet on it that looked like they were going to run away with you once you were in the tub.

  Angela cleared her throat behind him. “Um—John? Do I take off my clothes or leave them on?”

  He smiled, making her wait.

  “John?”

  “I’m thinking . . .”

  “John!”

  There, he almost made her laugh with that one. “On is fine.”

  She stood there chewing her lip as he turned off the water. Talking to keep fear from taking her over. “Why water?”

  “Water is the universal conduit. Lubricates the transition from one plane to another. Now ask me if there’s water in Hell.” She didn’t, so he said: “Sit.”

  She grabbed his shoulder for balance, lowered herself in the lukewarm water, fully clothed. Immersed all the way to her neck.

  “Normally,” Constantine said, “only a portion of the body has to be suspended, but you wanted the crash course . . .”

  “Couldn’t you have made it warmer?”

  “It’ll be plenty warm soon enough.”

  “What will I see?”

  There was no way to prepare her for that. But she seemed to get a glimpse in his eyes of what he might see. She swallowed.

  “Lie down, farther,” he said.

  “Lie down?”

  “You have to be fully submerged—you being an amateur.”

  She blinked at him. He could see the decisive moment when she decided to fully trust him. She nodded. “For how long?”

  “As long as it takes. Here . . .”

  He bent and cupped the back of her neck, held her face just above the water as she submerged herself farther. Breathing hard, through her nose. He could feel her pulse in her neck, thumping fast.

  “Last chance,” he said.

  She just shook her head, once.

  “Then . . . take a deep one.”

  She took a deep breath and held it. He pulled his hand away gently and she settled to the bottom of the tub, her eyes watching him from under the water. He kept hold of her arm, firmly gripping her bare skin just above the elbow.

  He reached out with his psychic feelers and drew astral light down to him, transmitted it through his hand to her, helping her find the vibration that would unlock the gate to Hell.

  He could see panic in her face as she started to run out of air. She started to come up but he shook his head at her, smiled reassuringly—and shoved her back under again. He could feel the key vibrations circulating in the water, enclosing her. Yet she seemed to be psychically resisting . . .

  Let go, he urged her, mentally. If you’re going, go!

  There—he felt the doorway begin to open, the room’s lighting pulsating, each pulsation making the light dimmer.

  The water began to boil, roiling and steaming.

  His gaze caught a drop of water at the faucet, quivering, hanging there about to fall, then falling and stopping in midair. From the corners of his eyes he saw a black mossy growth creeping up the wall; cracks forming, oozing blood and acid; from somewhere far away the sound of a million million chewing mandibles.

  Time ceased, then gave a lurch . . .

  The drop fell.

  Angela thrashed in the water, her eyes wide screaming underwater. The water muffled the scream but the bubbles surged frantically from her mouth.

  He pulled her to a sitting position. She coughed, and wailed, and coughed water again . . . and recommenced screaming, clutching at him, flinging herself from the bathtub, and knocking him back onto the tiled floor, water sloshing over them both.

  Her screams became a wailing again . . . and then merely a moan. She lay there on him, trembling.

  “Oh God, John. All those people. Isabel.” She was sobbing now. “I’ve always known where the bad guys are . . . where to find them . . . where to aim, when to duck . . . I can see . . . I’ve always known . . . And I sent them there! To think I sent them there!”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Her hands began to flutter at the air, as if conjuring—purely from some dormant instinct.

  “Angela?”

  She looked at him then. “Someone was here . . .”

  She jumped to her feet and ran out of the room. Constantine stared after her in surprise—then followed.

  Soaking wet, she ran out of the apartment,
into the parking lot, through the still—open side door into the bowling alley. Constantine followed, wheezing. “Wait, dammit! Slow down, tell me what—”

  But now she’d gone through the door into the maintenance corridor behind the pin setting machines. Constantine caught up with her halfway down the corridor.

  “It was his, rolling—,” Angela said, her eyes wild. “Not a ball—something smaller. Shiny.”

  She reached Beeman’s little living area, cordoned off with yellow tape now. The outline of his body chalked on the floor.

  “He’s watching him die,” she said, as if she were seeing it now. “Like eating. A kind of feeding. Good. Full. So good . . .”

  She looked around, sensing something. Constantine almost picked it up too—but he let her have her head. She had let her talent out of the bag, and it needed freedom to blossom.

  She was staring at the catch trough where the bowling balls would be caught up after striking the pins. She reached down, plucked up a coin. A gold coin. Moving it dreamily, now, across the tops of her fingers in a familiar motion.

  Constantine stared at the cold coin.

  “Balthazar,” he said.

  ~

  He’d found some dry clothes for her. One of his old button-up shirts, some jeans that more or less fit. Now Angela watched as Constantine took the Christian relics from a display cabinet in his apartment.

  The pure platinum “Flask of Divinity” . . .

  “They’re all Christian relics? What about Islam and Buddhism? Don’t they have any relevance?”

  “Sure. But these work for me best because I come from a Christian culture.” He held the ornate flask up in the sunset light coming through the window. Silver-tinted rose. “My understanding of their significance adds to their power—which is formed by their history in the struggle with darkness. But there isn’t anyone religion, one set of relics and rules, that decides things. And if you look close at them, all religions have certain basics in common. Stuff like . . . oh, you’ll find some version of the Golden Rule in all of them. They all fit into the divine big picture somehow. Different symbols for the same kinds of things . . . and a Devil called Satan in our culture is called Iblis in the Muslim culture, or Shaytan but it’s the same guy. Gabriel’s called something else by the Hindus. Of course, the Christians get some shit wrong—and so do, say, the Native Americans, and for that matter everyone else. Not that I have the inside track myself—I just know a little more than some. But you want to really know, you got to have gnosis . . .”

  “Have what?”

  He looked wistfully at the golden, rose-tinged light that was turning the window into temporary stained glass. “Direct knowledge of the divine essence, girlfriend, the ground of being—you need to trust God for that, see. I don’t trust anyone. Or anything. Not very far.”

  She didn’t speak for a moment, as he put the petrified husk from the River of Life in his bag.

  Then she asked, softly, “You think you could ever learn to?”

  “Learn to what?” But he knew. He was just stalling.

  “Trust. Someone.”

  “I . . .” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  He didn’t say the rest aloud: Now that I’m dying.

  An uncomfortable silence, then. He felt he had to say something more. Bandage the silence. “I almost trusted Beeman. So of course I had to lose him . . .” He felt the anger in him then. He remembered a line from a Public Image Ltd. song:

  “Anger is an energy . . . anger is an energy!”

  His smile made Angela shiver. “Damned right it is,” he said aloud.

  “So you’re going to kill Balthazar? Can you just kill him? What about the Balance you told me about?”

  “The half-breed tipped the scales when he started killing my friends. I’m just adding some counterweight.”

  He took down a finely inlaid Christian cross of silver and steel, oddly shaped pieces arranged symmetrically. He took it apart, and reassembled it in a new shape. The Holy Shotgun. What had been its base was now a drum for its ammunition. A crosspiece that had been the arms of the crucifix now projected at right angles from the gun barrel as an additional handhold.

  “That’s a gun of some kind?” she asked, with a professional interest.

  “A special gun. Sort of like the Ace of Winchesters. Remind me to tell you about that sometime.”

  It was still cruciform in shape, but it broke down like a shotgun when he put the special round into it. He turned and fired it down the long length of the apartment; the gun roared and the shotgun pellets left a trail of flame before blasting apart a carton of Lucky Strikes.

  THIRTEEN

  Francisco had decided to change vehicles. Someone would be looking for this one when they found the body. Baley had probably used some cousin’s taxi.

  Yes, said the whisperer. That’s wise. They’re searching for this vehicle. But make your change quickly. The time is almost upon us . . .

  He’d better do this fast. He had a sense of a mission to fulfill, though he wasn’t quite sure what it was. But had the iron spike led him the wrong way so far? No. He was in America, where he’d always longed to be. Here there were Chicano gangs, black gangs, Italian mafias, Albanian mafias, Cuban mafias, Russian mafias; there were Chinese Tong, Armenian syndicates, Gypsy syndicates, and more powerful than all those—the syndicates of the Rich White Men.

  There was always room for another pig at the trough. And he would make himself head pig somewhere . . .

  There—a car lot. Somewhere in that glassy building to one side would be a rack of keys.

  He abandoned the taxi in an alley several blocks away, walked over to the car lot—and immediately found the security guard, a chunky Chicano eating a Subway sandwich and watching a small portable television set behind the glass, with his back to Francisco. Like a gift, wrapped up and waiting for him.

  Francisco looked at the glass, saw no alarm wires attached to it. They counted on the security guard. He smiled, thinking of the company counting on this oblivious, bored fat man to protect hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise. Like putting out a lapdog to protect against wolves.

  The security guard turned, frowning, asking what he wanted in English, his voice dimmed by window glass.

  Francisco grinned, and shouted, “Ay, que pasa, cabrón!” Then struck the plate glass with the iron spike, and the shards flew inward with such force and such diabolic guidance—that they pierced the security guard a dozen times. He sat there in his chair, his mouth full of sandwich, spasming, blood runneling from the corners of his mouth to mix with mayonnaise, his eyes dimming—shards of glass, all of them roughly in the shape of the iron spike, transfixing his inner organs, some of them projecting from his neck in the front. He would be dead in moments. Francisco scarcely glanced at the dying guard as he stepped through the broken window, his feet crunching on glass fragments, and went to the back room. Inside, he found a padlocked cabinet. The work of a moment to use the spike on the lock—it flew apart with barely a touch, and he reached for the keys to a fast sports car.

  No, Francisco. Flashy would get you noticed. You would drive it too fast. The police must not delay you. No time to kill patrolmen. You need something more like the city’s main fleet of cars . . . That one—you feel the tingle as your hand brushes the keys? Take it, Francisco . . .

  Yes, it was better to have something a little understated, so the police didn’t take notice, Francisco reflected.

  Two minutes later he was driving a new van through the streets . . . but to where? Was he to wander this vast city with no destination? What was that? A whore? Perhaps he should take his pleasure . . .

  No time for that. Turn right, here, Francisco. Down this street. Left at this one. Now another two miles . . .

  There, that building ahead.

  It looked like some sort of hospital to Francisco.

  He wasn’t touching the spike in his pocket at that moment, so he couldn’t read the sign that said: RAVENSCA
R HOSPITAL.

  ~

  The night hummed with engines, flashed electric light on chrome; neon signs blurred through car exhaust. SUVs and Hummers snorted, jostling for space on the streets like rhinos heading for a water hole. Angela and Constantine, driving through L.A., took it in the way leopards take in a jungle. Looking at very little directly—but aware of everything.

  Angela’s own SUV drew up at a stoplight near the BZR brokerage and public relations building. She looked up at the black, monolithic BZR offices. It was one of those buildings that seemed to suck in all the light that should have reflected from it; there were reflections of other buildings, but they were tinted, compressed, as if the building had eaten, absorbed their images; held them trapped.

  She glanced at Constantine, grim and pale beside her, and thought about suggesting a SWAT team. She could find some excuse to make it happen. Tell the precinct a story. If it didn’t work out, it’d ruin her career. But what did it matter? After what she’d seen, she believed that the end of the world was coming—unless they could stop it. Any risk was worth taking.

  But she knew what Constantine would say: Cops? They’ll just get in the way on an operation like this.

  There was something she had to ask him, while she still had the chance. “John, if Isabel killed herself to save mankind, why is she in Hell?”

  “Take your life in despair, you go down . . . rules. Spiritual physics. No grand plan. Just rules.” He pointed at the entrance to the BZR parking garage. “There. On the left.”

  She pulled into the parking garage, wound her way through the spiral labyrinth that protects all such buildings, level after level, till she found a visitor’s space. She parked—and Constantine turned to her. His eyes locked on hers. He reached into his coat pocket, then put his arms around her. They were cheek to cheek. For a moment sexual energy flickered between them. His arms went around her neck, teased at the nape.

  Strange spot for him to pick, she thought. But maybe it was their last chance to have that kind of memory, before they both died in this cold steel and glass monolith. Maybe . . .