Hound of Eden Omnibus

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “To cut a long story short, I eventually went to his ministry in Chicago, and he adopted me into the church and gave me a home, a real home. He taught me the Gospel, how to get a job, how to drive, everything. He took me in for no other reason except that the Lord spoke to him that night and told him to save this one soul. That I could be saved. He purged me of my addiction and cleansed my body. When I told Zach that I felt the call to preach, he said to me: “Well, I knew that was going to happen! That’s why God told me to save you, and not just anyone!”

  There was a pregnant pause.

  “Well… that’s quite a story.” I cleared my throat, shifting forward on the chair to stand. “But I think that’s all I need. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.”

  “Wait a moment, Rex. I’d like to ask you something.” Christopher held out a hand, bidding me to stay seated. “The reason I’m willing to share that story with people, even strangers, is because so many people hide their pain from others. So I ask the same question to everyone I speak to. What do you relate to about what I just told you?”

  It took me a second to process the question. I frowned, and eased back down. “Well… I didn’t have a wonderful time of things, if that’s what you mean. Not quite as bad as you. The alcoholic father, I suppose.”

  “You downplay how hard that can be to deal with. You say it’s ‘not as bad’ as what I went through, but that’s not what I’m seeing.” I couldn’t make sense of his expression. “What did he make you do?”

  My stomach jolted with a sudden shock of adrenaline that spread all the way to my fingertips. “What? My father?”

  The resemblance to Vassily was no longer apparent in his face. Christopher’s mouth was quite small and narrow. His feature were a jumble of parts now, but his mouth was smiling as he spoke. “It’s… I’ve done a lot of work with people, Rex, some very injured people. I can’t help but notice that you’re a very neat man, a very confident man, but you have the look of someone who was forced to dirty themselves at some point in their life. You seemed to really connect with my story.”

  Shock turned to irritation. “I wasn’t molested, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  Christopher leaned in towards me. He had remarkably clear eyes, a deep, crystalline blue. “There are many ways you can experience abuse. Just remember that’s not who you are. There’s another way.”

  “Religion, I assume?” I arched an eyebrow.

  “Not necessarily. It’s my job to teach people about the Gospel, not bribe them or trick them. No, I mean purification. Cleaning of the body and soul,” Christopher replied. “You wouldn’t have to wear those gloves anymore.”

  My fingers twitched for a moment. “I have sensitive hands.”

  “That kind of sensitivity is very common in people who experienced trauma.” He held up a finger. “Before you go, Rex, I want to give you something.”

  Frowning, I watched him rise and cross to his desk. For the first time, I noticed the signs on it. ‘Pastor Christopher Kincaid’ on a bronze plate, and a black and white sign next to it that read ‘Servant Leader’. He took out a pouch from the top drawer of his desk, and from that, he took a coin. He came back and offered it to me. It was a dime, worn smooth with age.

  “’Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, glorify God with your body’,” he quoted the verses with elegant ease. “The first step to recovery is ownership of your body, learn to smile despite the presence of darkness in the world. Take this, and use it to remember your price.”

  It was as if time had stopped. I was vaguely aware of the sounds of the city outside the window, but Binah broke the trance. She was meowing at the door and pawing at it, looking back at me with an expression of long-suffering impatience. Reading the faces of animals was always so much easier than trying to do the same with people.

  “Well, thank you.” I took the coin and stood up, and this time, I didn’t let him stop me. “I have to get going.”

  He smiled, amicable and relaxed, and rose in turn. “Not a problem. You know where to find me. I think we’d have a lot to talk about.”

  Not long after, I exited out of the building with several booklets and a lingering feeling of disorientation. Part of it was the foggy feeling brought on by the shock of adrenaline, part of it was the cognitive dissonance of hearing yet another person wax lyrical on how wonderful Lily and Dru Ross had been, and how they couldn’t have been involved in anything except one of the greatest semi-secret tragedies of the decade. But the paperwork with the address was there… somewhere. Or was it? I doubted I’d ever see it again. Ayashe had it now, and the Vigiles would make what they would out of it.

  I checked my watch to discover that nearly an hour had passed in Christopher’s office, and it was already eight-thirty in the morning. Agitated and thoughtful, I stalked off down the street into the wind, turning the coin around and around in my pocket.

  Chapter 21

  The next stop was Crown Heights. When I trod up out of the subway, the street felt taut with unspoken Cold War tension. Gangs of defiant young Hasidic Chabadnik huddled together on street corners, prickly and alert. On the other side of the road, equally defiant gaggles of Caribbean men clustered and talked beside cars and fences. It had been a month since the Crown Riots, but there was still a strong police presence, too – I spotted two blue cars nestled among the line up on the side of the road, and a pair of awkwardly Anglo-Irish officers walking around the block on foot. The weather was decaying into a storm, and the young oaks planted down the sides and center strip of Eastern Parkway fluttered in the cold north wind as it whipped through the buildings and made the fire escapes rattle and hum.

  Dr. Yuzef Levental lived and worked in the same building: a white rowhouse block with a short spike fence, tall spiked window bars, and a short, immaculately groomed hedge. Two tiny juniper seedlings flanked the concrete pillars by the door. I buzzed his door, and waited.

  “Hello, who is there?” Dr. Levental’s voice was distorted by the intercom, though he sounded as crisp as ever.

  “It’s Alexi Grigoriovich,” I replied, and continued on in Russian. “I was wondering if you have time for an early-morning visit?”

  There was a pause, and then the intercom shut off. After a few moments, the door buzzed, and I pushed my way into the chilly entrance hall.

  Dr. Levental was waiting for me in the threshold of his office, one hand on the doorknob, the other on the frame. By appearances, he could have been my father in another life. Ascetic and sharp-featured, his eyes were black and steely, his face weathered with age. “My goodness, Alexi, it’s been months and months. You look terrible! What has happened to you?”

  Before I’d left the clubhouse, I’d put on decent clothes and even brought a hat to cover my head out of respect for the doctor’s Orthodoxy, but there were some things clothes couldn’t hide. My suit was looser on my frame, face gaunt, eyes sunken. “It has been a difficult time, doctor. Alecheim Shalom. It is good to see you well.”

  “And peace be unto you, Alexi. But I doubt you are visiting me for peace.” We kissed cheeks before he drew me inside, turning into the house. “Come, close the door. Oy, why do you have a cat?”

  “Therapy animal.”

  He teched. “Is it properly housetrained?”

  “Of course. She’s a perfect gentlewoman.”

  Dr. Levental – he was never ‘Yuzef’ – was as devout as he was opportunistic, and he balanced his faith, his extracurricular interests, and his otherwise legal profession exceedingly well. The interior of the office was somehow both ostentatious, in that old New York apartment way, and monastic because of its large expanses of empty space. Like me, he kept floor to ceiling shelves that were full of books. Medical, historical, mythological books. It was a sight that revived the deep-bodied, hollow longing I’d felt since losing my apartment.

  The front desk was
still unoccupied at this time of the morning. The practice officially opened at ten, and his sons were engrossed in their studies upstairs while their father set up for the day. The surgery was large, and smelled of old paper and the accumulated musk and smoke of a hundred years of life.

  Dr. Levental waved me to an ornate wood and green crushed velvet chair. “What has happened to you, Alexi? I’ve heard nothing but bad news from Brighton Beach for years now.”

  “This and that.” I set Binah on the floor and squatted on the edge of the seat, hands laced between my knees, back stiff. The conversation paused while the doctor watched Binah for a moment. She went under my chair and curled into a ball to sleep, which appeared to satisfy him.

  “Mariya and Vassily Lovenko are both dead,” I said. “That is the worst of it.”

  Dr. Levental’s features, typically still and patrician, creased with sudden grief. “Yes… I had heard that. I am so very sorry I couldn’t make it to the funeral, but I want nothing to do with Yaroshenko. Nothing I hear about him is good.”

  “I understand well enough,” I said. “I left.”

  “You left the Brotherhood?” Dr. Levental gave me a quizzical look. “I’m surprised I am not seeing you laid out in the morgue today instead of in my office.”

  “I did, a little over a month ago. It’s a long story.”

  “Indeed. We can talk, but let me take a look at you while I do. I don’t like this yellowish color in your skin.”

  Dr. Levental went to go and get his tools. Stethoscope, depressor. He wouldn’t let me go without an actual exam. I resigned myself to being poked and prodded, and shucked my jacket off in anticipation of being asked. He returned to me, and clicked his tongue as he fit a blood pressure cuff and got to work.

  “You know, it all started so innocently enough back in the day,” he said. “The unions, maybe some protection for the businesses, some jewelry and gemstones changing hands… but now, it seems to me like it’s horror after horror. Drugs, murder, organs. Ay yai-yai. That is nothing you want a part of, Alexi. The organs of children, even. Can you believe it?”

  “Children?” Intuition tingled in the pit of my belly, and the parasite stirred warningly. “When did you hear about this? Recently?”

  He made an affirmative sound, pumping the cuff as he scrutinized the dial. “I heard from someone I know at Lenox Hospital that this scoundrel, Moris Falkovich, was providing children’s organs and bodies. I don’t know if you ever knew him… he was shunned for grave robbing, of all things. And all that mess he did with plastic surgery in the 80s? Good grief. But I still talk to people who know him, as I do… I have heard that he has been getting a name for himself as a pediatric transplant surgeon in recent times. A miracle-worker, they call him.”

  The cuff grew tight enough to be uncomfortable, and I could feel my pulse beating in the crook of my elbow before it depressurized with a squeal. “How so?”

  “I don’t know, not exactly. My friend at Lenox says that his clinic has been booking the theaters out for a few years now, but suddenly, very rich people from Arabia, from Europe and even from Israel are bringing children here for their surgery.” Doctor Levental lifted his eyes to meet mine for a moment. “My friend says that these children walk out of the hospital as if the person was never sick!”

  My stomach turned. My jaw worked, and I finally sat back, pushed by the gravity of what he’d just told me.

  “I don’t know what happened to the community, but I’ve been hearing that even Rabbis are involved in this business of organs. They always say: ‘The person gave this willingly, the donor is related’. But people don’t donate organs that often, Alexi. And children? Not a chance. Is that that useful to you?”

  “It might be.” I had to be careful with the doctor. If anything was too useful, the price went up – though it generally remained fair. Dr. Levental charged as much as the information was worth, no more and no less. “But I came to trade for a more specific request. I need information on Celso Manelli.”

  “Manelli! Oy gevalt, Alexi. You don’t ask for much now, do you?” Dr. Levental laughed, and hung his stethoscope around his neck. “Why are you looking into the Manellis if you’ve left Yaroshenko?”

  I leaned forward so that he could reach my back. “He killed Mariya and contributed to Vassily’s death. I need to settle the debt.”

  The doctor’s steady hand paused for a moment, the head of the stethoscope pressed against just beneath my scapula, and then he continued to move it around. “Well, that’s a good reason. But I can already see where this is going, Alexi. You of all people should know that there is no point to taking revenge. The Highest has many agents through which He will act.”

  “Maybe I am that agent. There were two murderers: one died from an unfortunate broken window accident. Celso is still alive.”

  The doctor grumbled something under his breath, and moved to the front of my chest. “I can find people who know what you want to know, but you had better dig two graves. Celso is a powerful man. Young and stupid, but protected by men who are older and smarter. Sorcerers, even. Can you believe it?”

  Not that I knew anything about that. “So I hear. But the fact remains. Mariya and Vassily didn’t deserve what happened to them.”

  “And neither did you.” Dr. Levental smiled, and I couldn’t read his expression. His voice, though, was blue and bittersweet. “Would you still want Manelli dead if he had harmed a stranger’s sister?”

  “He’s filth,” I said. “I wouldn’t think twice.”

  “But in the past, you would have delayed if there was paying business to be had from him? If someone had ordered you?”

  Grimacing, I looked down. The doctor caught my chin, and tipped my head up. He had a depressor: I opened my mouth, the small of my back aching, and let him work.

  “Maybe,” I said, once he was finished. “I don’t know if I ever really thought like that, to be honest. I was never like Nicolai Chiernenko, or Vanya. All I know is that I want out.”

  “If you are going after Celso Manelli, you are not ‘out’.”

  “Just because I can’t change my nature doesn’t mean I’m not out.”

  His sigh was long-suffering and deeply felt. “Any man can change, Alexi. Even if he does carry a burden of guilt and sin.”

  Except that I didn’t carry a burden of guilt, and I never really had. The very first man I’d killed had been a bully. He tried to stab me for my watch; I punched him off a bridge and slept soundly after the fact. That guy, he was a young Carl Panzram in the making. The kind of kid who threw kittens to flocks of seagulls for fun.

  There were a few things I thought I felt guilt for. My mother. Vassily. Mariya. Mostly, I was angry. I was angry that I was too rigid and too slow to change to anticipate Nicolai’s next scheme, and despite myself, I was angry that someone had taken the Wolf Grove children.

  “I appreciate the insight, but my goal hasn’t changed,” I said. “I need to know places. Associates. Security. Hangouts, vices, addictions… anything you can learn about Celso Manelli and the guys protecting him. I’ll pay for any of it, but I need it soon.”

  “Is next Sunday soon enough?” Dr. Levental went to his desk, took out a thick file, and set it on the desk. Fifteen years of my medical record. He took a fresh sheet of paper, and began to write. “I know someone who knows someone who can probably get all of those things, but it will take time.”

  “Sunday week is fine. What will it cost?”

  “Well, considering your talents, Alexi, I have a request in kind. Trade that will cover the cost of finding these things for you,” he said. “Nothing dangerous, nothing that will put you under Yaroshenko’s eye.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Dr. Levental looked up at me from his new record, and smiled. A shy, boyish smile, almost embarrassed. He sat up and back, lacing his fingers over his buttoned black coat. “Well, you see, I have been getting into sports in my old age.”

  “Sports?” I moved to stand, but the doctor wa
ved me down. Maybe it was some ingrained respect for my elders, but I promptly returned to my seat. “You never struck me as the kind of person to be found at a Mets game.”

  His smile grew. “More exciting than that, Alexi. Fighting. There is a big mixed martial arts syndicate in this city now. I am sponsoring a young up-and-coming bull in the ring and playing his numbers with some very wealthy people. It’s a bit of fun, but besides that, there is a prize being offered by one man, Lior Ostmann, for one of the syndicate fights. Fifteen thousand dollars, quite a lot of money. The semi-final match is on this Saturday, and I have gotten word that the man my boy is fighting is very strong. Too strong, strong enough that he has to be cheating. We don’t know how, but he’s been crushing the roster since he joined up. It’s killing the business.”

  My mouth twitched at the corner. “How unsportsmanlike.”

  “Yes, indeed. I want you to go and have a talk with this man. Convince him that professional sports might not be a good career for someone like him. I’ve written you his name and address, and you can take it from there. Tell me if you need money to motivate him into losing on Saturday.” The doctor tucked the note he was writing into a plain white envelope and stood, every inch the Hasidic gentleman. “Now, so you know… your blood pressure is low, and I think you have poor liver function. You need to eat more, sleep more. Eat good food, vegetables and lots of meat and fat, and take milk thistle. You have a little bit of a chest infection. I want to run a blood test to make sure it’s nothing serious.”

  “I will. And of course. If he has a price, are you fronting?” I took the envelope and stowed it in my jacket pocket while Dr. Levental went to go and get the strap and tray.