Crisscross

  Unable to speak yet, Gia could only nod. First the near miscarriage, now this. If she didn’t know better she might think somebody up there didn’t want this baby to be born.

  10

  Sitting at his office desk, Luther Brady studied the printout as TP Cruz stood at attention on the other side. Cruz looked exhausted, as he should: He’d been up all night and had lost his boss to boot.

  “So the elevator records show this John Roselli going to the twenty-first floor and nowhere else.”

  “Yessir. At least not by elevator. GP Jensen used it next.”

  The printout showed the elevator going directly to twenty-one a second time. The next use after that was when it was called back to twenty-one and taken to the lobby.

  “And this time?” He tapped the paper.

  “That was Roselli again, sir. He’s on the tape. But there was something strange going on with Roselli and the tapes.”

  “For instance?”

  “Well—”

  “Excuse me?”

  Luther looked up and saw his secretary standing in the office doorway.

  “Yes, Vida?”

  “I just got a call from downstairs. The police are here again and want to see you.”

  Luther rubbed his eyes, then glanced at his watch. Only ten A.M. When would this morning end?

  “Tell them I’ve already given my statement and have nothing more to add.”

  “They say they’re here on a murder investigation.”

  “Murder?” Did they think Jensen was murdered? “Very well, send them up.”

  He dismissed Cruz, then leaned back in his desk chair and swiveled it toward the morning sky gleaming beyond the windows. Jensen murdered…Luther remembered his impression when he’d first heard the news. But who could survive a confrontation with that human mountain of bone and muscle, let alone hurl him down an elevator shaft? It didn’t seem possible.

  Minutes later Vida opened the door and looked in on him. “The police are here.”

  “Send them in.”

  Luther remained seated as she stepped aside and admitted a pair of middle-aged, standard-issue detectives. Both wore brown shoes and wrinkled suits under open, rumpled coats. But they weren’t alone. A trio of younger, more casually dressed men followed them. Each carried what looked like an oversized toolbox.

  Alarm at the number of invaders and the looks on the detectives’ faces drew him to his feet.

  “What’s all this?”

  The dark-haired detective in the lead had a pockmarked face. He flashed a gold badge and said, “Detective Young, NYPD.” He nodded toward his lighter-haired partner. “This is Detective Holusha. We’re both from the Four-Seven precinct. Are you Luther Brady?”

  The detective’s cold tone and the way he looked at him—as if he were some sort of vermin—drew the saliva from Luther’s mouth.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then this”—Young reached into his pocket, retrieved a folded set of papers, and dropped them on Luther’s desk—“is for you.”

  Luther snatched it up and unfolded it. His eyes scanned the officialese but the meaning failed to register.

  “What is this?”

  “A search warrant for your office and living quarters.”

  The three other men were fanning out around Luther, opening their toolboxes, pulling on rubber gloves.

  “What? You can’t! I mean, this is outrageous! I’m calling my lawyer! You’re not doing anything until he gets here!”

  Barry Goldsmith would put them in their places.

  “That’s not the way it works, Mr. Brady. You have the right to call your attorney, but meanwhile we’ll be executing the warrant.”

  “We’ll just see about that!”

  As Luther reached for the phone the detective said, “Do you own a nine-millimeter pistol, Mr. Brady?”

  My pistol? What do they want with…?

  “Yes, I do. Licensed and legally registered, I’ll have you know.”

  “We do know. A Beretta 92. That’s one of the reasons we’re here.”

  “I don’t under—” And then it hit him. “Oh, no! Was Jensen shot?”

  The other detective, Holusha, frowned. “Jensen? Who’s Jensen?”

  “My chief of security…he died this morning…an accident. I thought you were here about—”

  Young said, “Where is your pistol, Mr. Brady?”

  “Right here in the desk.” Luther reached toward the drawer. “Here, I’ll show—”

  Holusha’s voice snapped like a whip. “Please don’t touch the weapon, Mr. Brady.”

  Luther snatched his hand back. “It’s in the second drawer.”

  “Step away from the desk, please.”

  As Luther complied, Young signaled one of the younger men. “Romano.” He pointed to the drawer. “Gun’s in there.”

  Luther felt as if reality were slipping away. Here in his building, his temple, his word was law. But now his office, his home, his sanctum, had been invaded. He was no longer in control. These storm troopers had taken over.

  And no one was saying why. He fell as if he’d fallen into a Kafka story.

  It had to be a mistake. Did they think he’d shot somebody? Who? Not that it mattered. He’d never even aimed that pistol at a human being, let alone shot one.

  This mix-up would be straightened out, and then someone at the District Attorney’s office would pay. Oh, how they’d pay.

  “What…?” He swallowed. “What am I supposed to have done?”

  Holusha pulled an index card from the breast pocket of his shirt.

  “How well do you know Richard Cordova?”

  “Cordova?”

  Luther ran the name through his brain as he watched the man called Romano lift the Beretta from the drawer. He held it suspended from a wire he’d hooked through the trigger guard.

  Cordova…he was drawing a blank. But how could anyone be expected to think under these circumstances?

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of him. It’s quite impossible for me to remember the name of every Church member. We have so—”

  “We don’t think he was a Dormentalist.”

  Was?

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was murdered late last night or early this morning. He was pistol-whipped, then shot three times with a nine millimeter. When was the last time you fired your pistol, Mr. Brady?”

  Luther relaxed a little. Here was where he’d turn the tables.

  “Four, maybe five months ago, and that was on a shooting range at a paper target, not at a human being.”

  Romano sniffed the muzzle and shook his head as he looked up at Young.

  “Beg to differ. This was fired recently. Very recently.” He lifted the pistol farther, twisting it this way and that as he inspected it. He stiffened. “My-my-my. If I’m not mistaken, we’ve got blood and maybe a little tissue in the rear sight notch.”

  Luther watched in uncomprehending horror as Romano dropped the Beretta into a clear plastic evidence bag. This couldn’t be happening! First Jensen, now—

  “Wait! This is a terrible mistake. I don’t know this Cordova person! I’ve never even heard of him!”

  Holusha smirked. “Well, he’s heard of you.”

  “I…I don’t understand.”

  “You probably thought you’d cleaned out his house pretty good, but you missed a few.”

  “A few what?”

  Holusha only shook his head in reply. Luther looked to Young for an answer but all questions dissolved when he saw the detective’s hard look.

  “We’ll need you to come up to the Four-Seven for questioning, Mr. Brady.”

  Luther’s stomach plummeted. “Am I under arrest?”

  “No, but we need some answers about your pistol and your whereabouts last night.”

  That was a relief. The thought of being led through the temple in handcuffs was unbearable.

  “I want my lawyer along.”

  “Fine. Call him and hav
e him meet us there.”

  He hadn’t done anything wrong, but he wanted Barry along to keep everything on the up and up.

  They had to be mistaken about his pistol…had to be.

  That reddish-brown stain he’d spotted in the rear sight couldn’t be blood. But if not, what was it?

  11

  “What should I call you?” Jack said. “I mean, since your name isn’t Roselli?”

  The old woman looked up at him from the seat of a Far Eastern fan-backed armchair. Her gnarled hands rested on her silver-handled cane. Her face was still round and puffy, her sinophilic apartment as crowded as ever with screens, statues, and inlaid tables. She wore a red turtleneck and blue slacks this time.

  She cocked her head. “What makes you think it’s not?”

  Jack had run the gauntlet of Esteban the doorman and Benno the Rottweiler—who’d subjected him to an uncomfortably thorough inspection of his crotch—and demurred the offers of tea and shortbread cookies. Now, finally, he stood before the old lady who’d told him she was Maria Roselli.

  “Because I found Johnny Roselli and he says his mother’s been dead four years. You look pretty alive to me, Mrs…?”

  “Why don’t you just call me Herta.”

  “Is that your name?”

  A small smile. “It’s as good as any.”

  Swell. “Okay…Herta. I can go with that. But—”

  She lifted one of her thin, gnarled hands from atop her silver-headed cane in a stop motion. “Just let me say that Johnny was both right and wrong when he told you his mother was dead. That may be true of his birth mother, but not of me. For I am his mother too, just as I am yours.”

  Jack felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He wasn’t going to have to argue with her. She’d just—in so many words—admitted who she was.

  He sank into a chair opposite her.

  “So there it is: You’re one of them.”

  A small smile stretched the tight skin of her moon face. “And who would ‘them’ be?”

  “The ladies with the dogs. The ladies who know too damn much. You’re the fourth.”

  The first had been the Russian lady with the malamute in June. The next had been younger, wearing a sari and leading a German shepherd. And the last had been Anya with Oyv, her fearless chihuahua. They’d all claimed to be his mother.

  He had no idea who these women were, or how many more of them existed, but somehow they represented a mysterious third force in the eternal tug of war between the Otherness and the Ally.

  “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  “On our first meeting you told me you didn’t know Anya Mundy. But obviously you do. How many other lies have you told me?”

  Under different circumstances he might have been angry, but now he was too tired.

  “I did not lie. You said, ‘Do you know an older woman named Anya?’ I did know such a person, but she is gone. You should have asked me, ‘Did you ever know an older woman named Anya?’ Then I would have given you a different answer.”

  Annoyed, Jack leaned forward. “Okay, let’s bypass the wordplay and cut to the chase: You manipulated me into getting involved with the Dormentalism. Why?”

  Herta reached out and stroked Benno’s head. The dog closed its eyes and craned its neck against her hand.

  “Because it must be destroyed. Or barring that, it must be damaged, crippled, driven to its knees.”

  This lady didn’t mince words.

  “Because it’s connected to the Otherness?”

  She nodded. “It was inspired by the Otherness, and has become its tool.”

  “How does a cosmic force inspire a cult?”

  “Through a man whose drug-addled mind was open to influence when the Adversary was conceived—or I should say, reconceived.”

  The Adversary…also known as the One…who moved about under even more identities and names than Jack…the Otherness’s agent provocateur in this world…whose True Name Jack had learned only a few months ago…

  Rasalom.

  And Jack was pretty sure he could name the owner of that drug-addled mind.

  “Cooper Blascoe told me he got the idea for Dormentalism from a dream back in the late sixties. Was that when Rasa—”

  Herta’s hand shot up. “Do not say his True Name! I don’t want him to know where I am. And neither do you.”

  Jack hated to admit it, but she had that right. He’d had a taste of what this Rasalom guy could do. Pretty scary.

  “What do you mean, ‘reconceived’?”

  “After millennia of striving to maximize the human misery that fed him, he was permanently eliminated shortly before World War II. At least that was what was thought. But in 1968, through a freak set of circumstances, he contrived to be reconceived in the womb of an unsuspecting woman.”

  The date rang a bell…Jack had been to a town where a “burst of Otherness” had occurred in 1968…been there a number of times. None of his visits had been pleasant, and he’d nearly lost his life there.

  “That wouldn’t have been in Monroe, Long Island, would it?”

  She nodded. “It would. And that was not the first time he came back from the dead.”

  “Anya mentioned that he’d been reborn a number of times. But look, I’ve got to tell you, Cooper Blascoe didn’t seem like a bad guy. Hard to believe a hippie like him was working for the Otherness.”

  “He was merely a pawn. His dream of the Hokano world that he turned into a pamphlet was Otherness-inspired. He planted the seed that Luther Brady later twisted into the monstrous entity of his church, to use as a tool to help the Otherness dominate this sphere.”

  Jack shook his head. “But as I understand it, the Otherness means to change everything here, make our reality living hell. Brady doesn’t seem the type who’d try to screw himself. Unless of course he’s insane.”

  “He is quite sane, but is possessed of the notion that the one who completes the Opus Omega—”

  “Opus…?”

  “Opus Omega: the Last Task, the End Work—burying those obscene columns in all the designated spots.”

  “You mean…” Jack pulled the flap of Anya’s skin from his pocket and unfolded it for Herta to see “…in a pattern like this?”

  A cloud of pain passed across the old woman’s puffy face.

  She sighed. “Yes. Just like that.”

  “So it all comes together. ‘No more coincidences,’ right? The flap of skin I can’t throw away, your hiring me to infiltrate the Dormentalists where I’d get a view of Brady’s globe and recognize the pattern…everything’s been carefully orchestrated.”

  He felt like a goddamn puppet.

  “‘Orchestrated’ gives me too much credit. No one—not the Otherness, not the Ally, and certainly not I—has that much control. People and objects are placed in proximity in the hope that certain outcomes will ensue.”

  “Is Brady in the same boat?”

  “Luther Brady is driving himself. I doubt he has any concept of what the Otherness’s new world order will be like, but I have little doubt that he believes that the man who completes the Opus Omega will be rewarded with an exalted position in it.”

  “But how does he even know about this Opus Omega?”

  “He too had a dream, but his was of a map of the world. It showed the nexus points around the globe, each radiating lines toward the others. Wherever three lines crossed, the intersection glowed. He had no idea of its significance until a forbidden book, The Compendium of Srem, was delivered into his hands.”

  “Forbidden, huh? How exactly does a book become forbidden? Like banned in Boston?”

  She offered him a tolerant smile. “In a way. It was banned in the fifteenth century by the Catholic church.”

  “Six hundred years…pretty old book.”

  “That was merely when it was banned. It’s much older than that. No one is quite sure how old. The Compendium first came to the church’s attention during the Spanish Inquisition when it was discovered i
n the possession of a Moorish scholar whose name is lost. He was put through unimaginable agonies before he died, but either could not or would not say who had given it to him.

  “The Grand Inquisitor himself, Torquemada, is said to have been so repulsed after reading only a part of The Compendium that he ordered a huge bonfire built and hurled the book into the flames. But it would not burn. Nor would it be cut by the sharpest sword or the heaviest ax. So he dropped it into the deepest well in the Spanish Empire; he filled that well with granite boulders, then built the monastery of St. Thomas over it.”

  Jack gave a low whistle. “What the hell was in it?”

  “Many things. Lists and descriptions of unspeakable rites and ceremonies, diagrams of ancient clockwork machines, but the heart of The Compendium is the outline of the Opus Omega—the final process that will assure the ascent of what it calls ‘the Other world.’”

  Jack felt a chill. “The Otherness. Even back then?”

  “Surely you realize that this cosmic shadow war is about far more than humanity. The millions of years since the first hominid reared up on its hind legs are an eye blink in the course of the conflict. It began before the Earth was formed and will continue long after the sun’s furnace goes cold.”

  Jack did know that—at least he’d been told that—but it was still hard to accept.

  “And as with all forbidden things,” Herta went on, “The Compendium could not stay buried. A small subsect of monks within the monastery spent years digging tunnels and secretly excavating the well. They retrieved the book, but before they could put it to use they were all slain and the book disappeared for five hundred years.”

  “If a boulder-filled well with a monastery overhead couldn’t keep it out of circulation, where did it hide during those centuries?”

  “In a place built by the Ally’s warrior—”

  “You mean the one Anya told me about—the one I’m supposed to replace? He’s that old?”

  Here was another thing Jack couldn’t or wouldn’t accept: Like it or not, he’d been drafted into this cosmic war.

  “Much older,” Herta said. “Almost as old as the Adversary. More than five centuries ago he trapped the Adversary in a stone keep in a remote pass in Eastern Europe. He sealed away many forbidden books there as well, to keep them out of the hands of men and women susceptible to the Otherness. But the fortress was broached by the German Army in the spring of 1941. Fortunately the Adversary was killed—albeit temporarily—before he could escape.”