The Scarlet Gospels

  It wasn’t often that Norma’s counseling of the recently dead overlapped with Harry’s life as a private investigator, but there were always exceptions. Carston Goode had been one such case. Goode by name, good by nature—that was how he’d styled his life. Goode was a family man who had married his high school sweetheart. Together, they lived in New York with five kids to raise and more than enough money to do so, thanks to fees he charged as a lawyer, a few good investments, and a deep-seated faith in the generosity of the Lord his God, Who took—as Carston was fond of saying—“best care of those who cared best about Him.” At least that had been his belief until eight days ago, when within the space of a hundred seconds his well-ordered, God-loving life had gone to Hell.

  Carston Goode had been on his way to work, bright and early, eager as a man half his age to be in the thick of things, when a youth had darted toward him through the throng of early birds on Lexington Avenue and snatched Carston’s briefcase right out of his hand. Lesser men would have yelled for help, but Carston Goode was more confident in the state of his body than most his age. He didn’t smoke or drink. He worked out four times a week and only sparingly indulged in his passion for red meat. None of these things, however, stopped him from being felled by a massive heart attack just as he came within two or three strides of the felon he’d decided to chase down.

  Goode was dead, and death was bad. Not simply because he’d left his beloved Patricia alone to raise their children or he wouldn’t now get to write the book of personal revelations about life and the law that he’d been resolving to do every New Year’s Eve for the past decade.

  No, the truly bad thing about Goode being dead was the little house in the French Quarter of New Orleans that Patricia didn’t know he owned. He had been especially careful to keep all knowledge of its existence a secret. But he had not factored into his arrangements the possibility that he’d drop dead in the street without the least warning. Now he was faced with the inevitable dissolution of everything that he’d worked so hard to appear to be.

  Sooner or later, somebody—either Patricia going through the drawers in his desk or one of his associates dutifully tidying up the work Goode had left unfinished at the firm—would turn up some reference to number 68 Dupont Street in Louisiana and, tracking down the owner of the house at the address, would discover it had been Carston. And it was only a matter of time before they would go down to New Orleans to find out what secrets it would reveal. And the secrets were abundant.

  Well, Carston Goode wasn’t about to take this lying down. Once he adjusted to his less corporeal state, he next learned the way the system worked on the Other Side. And, putting his skills as a lawyer to work, he very soon had jumped to the front of a long line and found himself in the presence of the woman he had been assured would solve his problems.

  “You’re Norma Paine?” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Why do you have so many televisions? You’re blind.”

  “And you’re rude. I swear, the bigger the bully, the smaller the dick.”

  Carston’s jaw dropped.

  “You can see me?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  Carston looked down at his body. He, like every ghost he’d met since his death, was naked. His hands instantly moved to his withered penis.

  “There’s no need to be offensive,” he said. “Now please, I have money, so—”

  Norma got up from her chair and walked straight at Goode, murmuring to herself.

  “Every night I get one of these dead-ass fools think they can buy their way into Heaven. There’s a trick my momma taught me,” she said to Goode, “once she knew I had the gift. It’s called Ghost Pushing.” With the palm of her left hand, she shoved Goode in the middle of the chest. He stumbled backward.

  “How did you—”

  “Two more of those and you’re gone.”

  “Please! Listen to me!”

  She shoved again. “Make that one. Say good night—”

  “I need to talk to Harry D’Amour.”

  Norma stopped dead in her tracks and said, “You’ve got one minute to change my mind about you.”

  4

  “Harry D’Amour. He’s a private investigator, right? I was told you know him.”

  “What if I do?”

  “I have urgent need of his services. And like I said, money is no consequence. I’d prefer to talk directly to D’Amour, after he’s signed a confidentiality agreement, of course.”

  Norma laughed, hard and long.

  “I never cease…” she started to reply, her words having to compete with her unfettered amusement, “… never … cease to be amazed … at how many absurdities can be uttered in perfect seriousness by folks like you. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re not in your law offices now. Ain’t no use in hanging on to your little secrets, ’cause you’ve got nowhere to put them except up your ass. So talk, or I’m gonna leave you to find some other ghost talker.”

  “Okay. Okay. Just … just don’t send me away. The truth: I own a house in New Orleans. Nothing fancy, but I use it as a place to get away from … my responsibilities … as a family man.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard this story before. And what is it you do in the little house of yours?”

  “Entertain.”

  “I bet you do. And who are the entertained?”

  “Men. Young men. Legal age, mind you. But young nonetheless. And it’s not what you think. No drugs. No violence. When we meet, we make … magic.” He spoke the word quietly, as though he might be overheard. “It’s never serious. Just some bits of nonsense I got out of old books. I find it keeps things spicy.”

  “I still haven’t heard a compelling reason to help you. So you had yourself a secret life. Then you up and died and now people are gonna find out. That’s the bed you made. Make your peace with what you were and move on.”

  “No. You misunderstand. I’m not ashamed. Yes, I fought what I was at first, but I came to terms with that a long time ago. That’s when I bought the house. I don’t give a shit what people think or the legacy I left behind. I’m dead. What does it matter now?”

  “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all night.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s no use denying it. And like I said, that’s not the problem. I loved every moment I spent at that house. The problem is that I loved my wife too. I still do. So much that I can’t bear the thought of her ever finding out. Not for me, but because I know it would destroy her. That’s why I need your help. I don’t want my best friend to die knowing she didn’t really know me. I don’t want our kids to suffer the fallout of her wounds and my … indiscretions. I need to know they’re going to be okay.”

  “There’s enough in that story to make me think you might be a decent human being under all those layers of lawyer and liar.”

  Goode didn’t raise his head. “Does that mean you’ll help me?”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “When?”

  “Lord, but you’re impatient.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. But every hour that passes makes it more likely that Patricia—that’s my wife—is going to find something. And when she does, that’s when the questions start.”

  “You’ve been dead how long?”

  “Eight days.”

  “Well, if your adoring wife loves you as much as you claim, I think it’s reasonable to assume that she’s far too busy grieving to be going through your papers.”

  “Grieving,” Goode said, as though the idea of his wife’s anguish concerning his death had not really come into focus until now.

  “Yes, grieving. I take that to mean you haven’t been home to see for yourself.”

  The lawyer shook his head.

  “Couldn’t. I was afraid. No. I am afraid. Of what I’ll find.”

  “Like I said, I’ll see what I can do. But I’m making no promises. Harry’s a busy man. And weary, though he won’t admit to it. So be warned: I care about his welfare as i
f he were my own flesh and blood. If this business in New Orleans goes sour because of something you fail to tell me here and now, I’ll have an undead lynch mob chase down your lily-white ass and hang you up from a lamppost in Times Square until Judgment Day. Understand?”

  “Yes Miss Paine.”

  “‘Norma’ is fine, Carston.”

  “How did you—”

  “Oh, come on now. I can see your dead, naked ass and you don’t know how I know your name?”

  “Right.”

  “Right. So here’s what we’ll do. Come back tomorrow, early in the evening. I’m less busy then. And I’ll see if I can persuade Harry to join us.”

  “Norma?” Carston mumbled.

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. When you hire Harry D’Amour, things have a tendency to become … complicated.”

  5

  The subsequent meeting had gone smoothly enough, the dead Mr. Goode giving Harry the number of a security box filled with cash (“for those little expenses I didn’t want my accountant asking me about”) from which Harry could take as much as he felt appropriate for fees, flight, and hotel costs, with enough left to cover whatever problems might pop up that would need “Monetary Lubrication” to ease them away. All of this brought D’Amour to where he now stood: before Carston Goode’s House of Sin.

  It wasn’t much to look at from the outside. Just a wrought-iron door in a twelve-foot wall with the number painted on a blue and white ceramic tile and set in the plaster beside it. Carston had been able to supply Harry with a detailed description of the kinds of incriminating toys Harry would find in the house, but he hadn’t been in any condition to supply keys. Harry had told him not to worry. Harry had never met a lock he couldn’t open.

  And, true to form, he had the gate open in under ten seconds and was walking up the uneven paved path that was bordered on either side by pots of various shapes and sizes, the mingled fragrance of blossoms as intense as a dozen shattered perfume bottles. Nobody had been there to take care of Goode’s garden in a long time, Harry noticed. The ground was slimy with decayed petals, and many of the species in the pots had perished for want of attention. Harry was surprised at the state of the place. A man as organized as Goode would surely have made arrangements to keep his garden looking nice and neat, even when he wasn’t there to view it. So what had happened to the gardener?

  Four strides farther, Harry reached the front door and he had his answer. There were thirty or more fetishes nailed upon the door, some small, clear bottles containing scraps of God knew what, and one small clay representation of a man, his cock and balls no longer between his legs—but tied with glue-caked string around his face. The genitals were upside down, so that his testicles could be painted as eyes and his penis as a jutting nose that was daubed bright red.

  Not for the first time during this trip Harry glanced around looking for some hint that his employer’s spirit was somewhere nearby. Harry had been in the company of phantoms often enough to know what tiny signs to look for: a certain strangeness in the way shadows moved; sometimes a low-velocity hum; sometimes the simple silence of nearby animals. But Harry sensed nothing in the sunlit garden to suggest he had Goode’s company. It was a pity, really; it would have made the search-and-destroy mission ahead a damn sight more entertaining if Harry had known the owner of the House of Sin was witnessing everything.

  There was a thick line of what was undoubtedly dried blood poured across the house’s threshold, its sacrificial thrashing source catching the lower half of the door in its death throes. Harry took out his pick again and quickly opened the two locks.

  “Knock, knock,” he muttered as he turned the handle.

  The door creaked but failed to move. He worked the handle back and forth a few times to be sure it was functioning, then put his shoulder to the job, with all hundred and ninety-seven pounds of him to back it up. Several of the bagged fetishes gave up the smell of their contents as he pressed against them: a dust of incense and dead flesh. Harry held his breath and forced the door.

  There was more creaking, then one loud crack that echoed against the courtyard walls and he was in, stepping away from the fetishes before he took another breath. The air was cleaner on the inside than out. Stale, yes, but nothing that instantly set off alarm bells. Harry paused for a moment. The phone in his pocket rang. He answered.

  “Impressive. Every case we’ve done together you’ve been on the line as soon as I step into—”

  “Shit?”

  “No, Norma. The house. I’ve just stepped into the house. And you knew it. You always do.”

  “Lucky, I suppose,” Norma said. “So is it a den of sodomy?”

  “Not at the moment, but the day is young.”

  “Are you feeling better?”

  “Well, I ate several pastries and had three cups of the best damn coffee I ever drank. So, I’m ready to go at it.”

  “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Actually, I got a question for you. We got fetishes covering the front door, some jars with some kind of shit in them, a little clay man with disfigured genitals, and blood on the threshold.”

  “And?”

  “Any idea what that’s all about?”

  “Doing what fetishes do. Somebody’s trying to keep the wrong things out and the right things in. Do they look new?”

  “A week or so, judging by the blood.”

  “So it wasn’t Goode’s doing.”

  “Definitely not. Besides, this is fairly elaborate stuff. Is it possible Goode did serious magic down here?”

  “I doubt it. Way he talked, he was using the magic as a way of getting his guests naked. He might have bled a chicken or drew up some phony circle to give it some flavor, but I don’t think it was anything more than that. Regardless, be careful. They do things differently down there. Voodoo is potent shit.”

  “Yeah, and some of it’s on my shoe.”

  The conversation ended there. Harry pocketed his phone and began his search.

  6

  Harry had only signed off with Norma for a minute, no more, when his exploration of the three small downstairs rooms brought him into contact with a patch of intensely cold air in the kitchen, which was a sure sign of a presence from the Other Side. He didn’t attempt to retreat from it or spit out the dozen verses he could recite that essentially meant “Get thee the fuck out of my way.” Instead he stood perfectly still, the air so chilled his breath formed a dense cloud at his lips, while the cold patch circled him and circled again.

  Back in New York, when Harry finally left the force he had sought a different type of protection. His queries soon brought him to one Caz King, a tattoo artist known for his expertise in arcane symbology. Caz tattooed visual defenses against dark forces on the bodies of his clients.

  Upon his instruction, Caz attempted to commit to Harry’s body every alarm system in his arsenal that was applicable to all forms of nonhuman life that Harry might encounter. Caz had done a thorough job, because the symbols and codes were soon fighting for space. Best of all, the alarm system actually worked. Even now, one of the small identification tattoos Caz had drawn on Harry was twitching, telling him that his chilly, unseen visitor was something called a String Yart, a harmless, nervous entity that resembled, in the words of those who’d studied them, a monkey made of loosely configured ectoplasm.

  Harry uttered the command, “No go, Yart,” the first two words calling into life the complex design Caz had spent a month of nights inking onto Harry’s chest. The design was intended to be a universal repellant and it worked beautifully.

  Harry felt the ink get a little hotter under his skin and then suddenly the patch of cold air left his vicinity. He waited a few seconds to see if there were other curious presences here who also wanted to inspect him, but nobody came. After two or three minutes of looking around the kitchen and finding nothing even vaguely interesting, Harry went into the other two rooms on that floor. One had a di
ning table, polished but still much scratched. There were large metal fixtures beneath each corner of the table, placed there, he assumed, to make binding someone to the table easy. But that was all Harry found in either room that he’d need to deal with before leaving.

  Upstairs, however, was a different story. On the floor inside the first of the three bedrooms there was a four-foot-high bronze statue of a satyr in a state of extreme arousal, the lewd mischief of his intent wonderfully caught by the sculptor. Carston, it soon became apparent, had quite an eye for erotic antiques.

  On one wall of the first bedroom was an arrangement of Chinese fans spread to display the elaborately choreographed orgies that decorated each one. And there was more antique erotica on the other walls. Prints that looked like illustrations to pornographic rewriting of the Old Testament, and a large fragment from a frieze in which the orgiasts were interlocked in elaborate configurations.

  There was a double bed in the room, stripped back to a stained mattress, and a dresser, which contained some casual clothes and a few letters, which Harry pocketed unread. Buried at the back of the middle drawer, Harry found another envelope, which contained one thing only: a photograph of what he took to be the Goode family, standing beside a pool, frozen forever in a happier time.

  Finally Harry had an image of Goode—his grin unforced, his arm tightly clasping his happy spouse to his side. The kids—three girls, two boys—all seemed as guilelessly happy as their parents. It had been good to be Goode that day, no question. And much as Harry scrutinized the father’s face, he could see no sign that Goode was a man with secrets. All the lines on his face were laugh lines and his eyes gazed into the camera lens without a trace of reticence.