Dante's eyes narrowed; a shudder of excitement ran to his groin as the sense of the man's tone, if not the words, got through to him. "Yeah. Yes, sir, I'd like that a lot."
"We recruit from all over the world," said Frederick. "Not many men meet our exacting standards. But after months of close observation, I can say with some confidence that you ... measure up."
"How'd you find me in the first place?"
"We have eyes and ears in many places. If it is meant to be, the right person will catch our attention. He is observed, studied, as you have been. If he's found worthy, we move to the stage where you find yourself now."
Dante swallowed; he felt small, filled with wonder, as if an angel had reached down and touched him.
Frederick finished tapping out his message. He leaned down, ripped the telegraph wires out of the wall, and handed the key to Dante. "Put that in a box for me, would you please, Mr. Scruggs?"
"Sure, Frederick."
Dante looked around; there were no boxes left in the room.
"Uh..."
"In there," said Frederick, pointing to the inner office, clearing a stack of papers from the drawers without looking up at him.
Dante nodded and carried the telegraph key through the door; he was immediately grabbed by a dozen grasping hands, lifted off the floor, and spread-eagled on his back across a desk. Dim light filtered through a slatted blind; Dante could barely make out their faces; no, they were wearing masks. Black masks; only their eyes showing through slits. A gloved hand smothered his mouth. Adrenaline pumped through his body; he struggled fiercely but couldn't move an inch, helplessly pinned.
Cows in the slaughterhouse, that's where his mind went; heads stuck through the rack, waiting for the sledge to cave in their skulls. What was that smell? Something pungent in the air; hot, sulfurous, like burning coals.
Frederick's face appeared above him; no smile now, fierce and purposeful. He reached down and pulled the knife from the sheath in Dante's pocket. The other men's hands were rolling up his sleeves, taking his pants down to his ankles. Squeals of terror came out of him; his bladder emptied involuntarily.
Frederick looked at the knife, read the manufacturer's trademark near the hilt. "Green River, Wyoming. How pleasing. The Green River knife is one of the best in the world. If this was a violin it would be a Stradivarius."
What the hell was he talking about? What did he want? What were they gonna do to him? Dante's eyes danced wildly around the room. Where were the Voices? Why couldn't somebody help him?
Frederick slit the buttons off Dante's union suit, spread it open, and ran the knife lightly over his privates.
"Have you even for a moment considered what the experience must be like for the women you've killed, Mr. Scruggs? What they must feel as you go about your work? The abject terror? Fear of dying? The pain as you make your first cuts? I have seen the bits and pieces of them you saved in your apartment; you are very fastidious about the parts you keep, aren't you? That interests me: One collector to another, what makes you choose? What draws you to keep one piece, discard another? The look, the feel? Is it the shape or the texture? The function of the part? Perhaps you don't know or haven't thought it through; yes, I think so. It's just magic, isn't it? The flesh is there, it speaks to you and you simply have to have it. I suspect this is how it's always been: When it speaks, you are bound to listen and obey."
Dante whimpered and moaned.
"Relax; isn't that what you always tell your girls in the beginning?"
He nicked him lightly with the blade; Dante felt a trickle of blood run down and pool between his thighs. Frederick leaned over next to his ear and spoke to him seductively, almost in a whisper. "Every pleasure has its price; every sin its reward. The rites of initiation are ancient and mysterious, as unknowable to us as the face of God. And yet we still obey them, because that is how the entrance into our brotherhood has always been achieved. You are baptized and reborn in the water of your own blood and fear. In no other way can you become useful to us; in only this way can you become more useful than you ever imagined. Be aware that death can always reach you; disobedience is not tolerated. Violence can be visited upon you with the speed of an idea. Your thoughts are no longer your own. Your mind and spirit belong to a higher power. Servitude has always been your goal, and now it becomes your reality. Trust that your life has brought you to this place in time, because that is what you wished for and all that it requires of you now is recognition and absolute surrender."
Frederick slammed the knife down into the table between Dante's legs, nicking his flesh again and starting a stronger flow of blood. "Be one of us and live forever."
Now a blinding pain seared into his left arm; Dante's eyes moved there, half-blinded with tears; smoke curled up from where the branding iron had left its mark on the bicep; as it lifted, he saw the burn; the burning circle broken by three jagged lines.
Dante fainted.
chapter 11
A half-assed collection of huts and shacks thrown up around the mouth of a failed silver mine comprised the city limits of Skull Canyon, Arizona. Population had boomed to a peak of 350 before the vein gave out and the railroad decided not to build a spur line station; these days permanent residents numbered exactly two: loco prospectors, sixty-five-year-old fraternal twins from Philadelphia, the Barboglio brothers, still working the shaft every day, living off the dust they could coax from its walls. The other ten were short-term residents, workers who cycled in and out of town, servicing the stagecoach stop and the fleabag Skull Canyon Hotel that provided sole lodging for travelers.
The population had swelled to thirty-one with the arrival the night before of the Penultimate Players—the hotel could only accommodate fifteen, so the stagehands and junior males spent the night sleeping in their wagons. Actually the number was thirty-two, if you included Frank McQuethy, who showed up just before dawn and found himself a notch in the high rocks that looked down on the canyon and hotel. Frank settled in as the darkness slipped away, close enough to see faces in the street through the scope of his buffalo gun, unhitched the safety, and waited for the Chinaman to show.
Five wagons parked behind the hotel; one carrying cargo. Horses stabled around the side. People started to stir as first light licked the top of the boulders on the rim; workers tossing out slops, carrying in wood, firing up the kitchen; smoke rose from the stovepipe chimney. Buckskin Frank pulled his saddle blanket tight around his shoulders and tried to stop his teeth from chattering, wishing he was huddled in front of that fire down below with a hot cup of java in his hands. He was hungry, too, his stomach eating at him when he caught a phantom whiff of bacon on the breeze.
The desert had turned bitter cold on his ride. He couldn't shake it off the way he used to as a kid; this kind of cold lived in your bones. During the night, about halfway from Wickenburg, Frank had decided he was too old for this shit; maybe he should have headed for Sonora, after all. Despair swamped him; he couldn't count how many fine, clear mornings of his life he'd wasted in exactly this way, on the high ground, waiting for some unsuspecting fuckup to come out of a house or a cave or a teepee so Frank could pump a bullet through him; this sort of waiting led to the same morbid self-examination he'd just experienced five years of in the joint. No sir, this dry-gulching work did not fit him anymore; all he wanted at this time of the morning was a firm mattress and a warm pair of tits, and he kept himself awake with the thought that they might only be one shot away.
The first actors stumbled out of their wagons when the hotel rang the triangle for breakfast; the younger ones stretched and strutted and swaggered in that self-conscious, catlike way of people who were used to being noticed; even out here in the middle of East Jesus, hung over and pissing in the bushes, not even aware that Frank was watching, they acted like they were in front of an audience.
No Chinaman.
Half an hour passed; breakfast over, the stable hands walked out the horses, hitched them to the wagons, and the rest of the actors
came out of the hotel. Frank studied each face carefully through the scope; four women, twelve men—all white— climbed into three of the wagons; one tall, fat, long-haired dude who acted like he was in charge took the reins of the one carrying what Frank guessed must be their scenery. The caravan seemed ready to roll but held up: the fifth wagon, smallest of the bunch, little more than a covered buckboard, remained empty.
Three last people walked out of the hotel; Frank inched forward, laid a finger on the trigger and glued his eye to the scope. A dark-haired woman—Christ, a real bright-eyed beauty—and a tall gangly man in a dark formal suit and between them a stooped figure with a long white beard in the queerest get up; a round furry hat, black suit, and heavy black coat. The two walked this old geezer between them to the last wagon and helped him climb into the back.
Something not right about this; Frank looked hard for details. Between the beard and the hat, Frank never got a clear look at the old man's face—there, as he stepped up into the back of the wagon and the coat moved, a dark stain on the side of his white shirt. Was that blood?
Should he take the chance? His finger tightened down on the trigger.
Think it through, Frank, said Molly's voice: You're still a convict and it ain't gonna help your case one iota to blow a hole through the wrong man in front of twenty witnesses. He eased back.
Raised voices. Frank swung the scope over; the long-haired blowhard jumped off the cargo wagon, waving his arms and screeching at the darkhaired woman; she gave him the business right back in his face. Frank couldn't hear the words this far away, but the tone of their voices reached him on the wind and Mr. Longhair was taking the worst of it. He finally tucked his tail between his legs and stomped back to his wagon, and the woman climbed into the back of the one where they'd stashed the old man. She had some spunk, this one.
The wagons began to roll out of the canyon and up the incline to the road leading west. The stable owner in Wick-enburg who'd rented them the wagons had told Frank the actors were headed to a religious settlement out in the desert, a place called The New City, twenty-five miles north-northwest of Skull Canyon. Place just went up in the last few years, wasn't even on the maps yet, but growing fast. Folks out there weren't Mormons and seemed to be Christian; beyond that the man wasn't exactly sure what they were: good customers anyway, paid on time. Seemed harmless enough, a little eccentric maybe; building some kind of castle out of stone quarried in the hills.
If they followed his instructions and didn't get themselves hopelessly lost in the desert—a big if—the posse wouldn't arrive in Skull Canyon until late afternoon; Frank couldn't wait that long. Maybe the Chinaman wasn't with this bunch, but instinct told Frank he should get a closer look at the old man in the back of that last wagon; these were actors, after all, and actors could do things with makeup.
He had another reason to trail after them that he wouldn't admit to himself; he wanted a closer look at the other person in the back of that wagon. That dark-haired gal had set his fool's heart tripping like a snare drum. And she looked enough like Molly to be her sister.
Frank worked the kinks out of his back, rode down to the hotel, and asked a few questions; no one had gotten a clear look at the old man. He looked like a Jew, one of them said; an Old World type like he'd seen back east. What he was doing with a theatrical company in the middle of the desert nobody could say; the man had some kind of high fever and they'd been told to stay clear. Once in the hotel, he never came out of his room.
The black-haired woman? A real looker. She was taking care of him; her and that skinny fella. Somebody said they heard her name was Eileen.
Was there a telegraph office where these actor folks were headed? Yes, sir. Frank left a sealed message for the hotel to give the posse; when they arrived, they were to wait for him in Skull Canyon until he wired with further instructions.
And if any of the posse inquired, he'd be obliged if they'd tell 'em Buckskin Frank had rode off to the northeast, toward Prescott.
Frank fed his horse, treated himself to a cold breakfast, and then set out on the dirt road heading west to The New City.
At eleven o'clock that night, when Doyle, Jack, and company arrived at the offices of Frederick Schwarzkirk, they found the door open and the two rooms vacated. No less than four detectives in the group—Jack, Doyle, Presto with his lawyerly eye for detail, and, in her own way, Walks Alone—pored over every inch of the place, while Innes and Lionel Stern stood watch outside in the hall.
The offices had been cleared out earlier that evening. Traces of burned paper in a trash can, a roll of telegraph tape in a drawer, the dusty outline of an object removed from the desk, snapped wirer running out the baseboard; a private telegraph wire had been installed, Jack concluded, hooking into the lines outside, an illegal tap.
A uniform residue of dust on shelves in the inner room said the books stored there had never been moved until they were taken away; Presto suggested they had been stacked there purely for show.
From a smaller desk in the inner room, Mary Williams detected a smell of human urine. She also found traces of fresh blood in the wood, and even though windows had been left open, a disagreeable tang of charred flesh lingered in the air. Something hideous and repellent had taken place in that room within the last hour.
This office had obviously been maintained as a front to cover the activities of the men responsible for the theft of the holy books, concluded Doyle. And that implicated "Frederick Schwarzkirk" as the surviving member of the team that had attacked them on board the Elbe. What connection this might have to the communal dream—aside from the translation of the man's name, Black Church—remained out of reach. And their intensive search revealed no clue to which direction the man might have taken.
"Let's ask ourselves," said Doyle, as they stepped outside again. "These men are nothing if not thorough: If they're moving on, what loose ends have they left behind?"
No one said it, but the thought occurred to every one of them: We're a loose end; they may be watching us even now. The concrete canyon rising around them offered no security. They stepped back into shadow, raised their collars against the harsh wind blowing in off the lake.
"Rabbi Brachman," said Jack with alarm.
"They wanted to show him the false book," said Presto, finishing the thought.
"Doyle, you, Mr. Stern, and Miss Williams return to your hotel at once; secure the book," said Jack, showing a flash of his old command. "Presto, Innes, and I will pay a return visit to Brachman's temple."
Jack jumped into the first waiting carriage; Presto and Innes followed. "Take the book to your room; don't open the door to anyone until we return."
Jack comes to life when there's an action to perform, thought Doyle. The rest of the time he's lost as a waxwork.
Doyle looked at Mary Williams as she climbed beside him into the second carriage, an idea taking shape in his mind.
A single lamp burned in a window on the floor above the pillared entrance to Temple B'nai Abraham.
"Those are Brachman's living quarters," said Jack. "The next window over is his library, from where the Tikkunei Zohar was stolen."
"Substantial-looking piece of business," said Innes, studying the building's Greek Revival facade.
"The thieves used a rear entrance," said Presto.
"That's where they'll try again," said Jack.
The three men stood in the shadows across the street. They had made one stop at their hotel, Jack running in to retrieve the suitcase he received from Edison after their visit to his workshop.
"Someone moving," said Innes, pointing to the lighted window.
A shape appeared between the lamp and window shade; difficult to distinguish, but it didn't look like the silhouette of an infirm seventy-five-year-old Orthodox rabbi. A tall figure, broad-shouldered.
Holding a large open book.
Jack unlocked the suitcase. Keeping it from the others' curious eyes, he removed from the case a heavy enlongated set of what looked li
ke binoculars. A rounded steel frame extended back from the eyepieces, an armature that allowed the glasses to be worn on the head as a sort of helmet. Jack slipped them on; they had the unnerving effect of making him look like an enormous bug.
Jack watched the windows of the temple without comment. Innes and Presto exchanged an uncertain glance behind his back.
"Uh ... see anything?" asked Innes.
"Yes," said Jack, scanning his head from side to side.
"Anything ... in particular?" asked Presto.
Jack stopped. "Quickly." He took off the glasses, put them back in the suitcase, and closed it, frustrating Innes to no end.
"Follow me," said Jack.
They ran across the street and around the back of the synagogue to the rear door, where Jack removed a sleeve of tools from a pocket in his vest and handed the square box to Presto. Jack reopened the suitcase and took out a square contraption the size of a shoebox, with a round, silver dome attached to the front end and in its center a glass bulb. Hinged flaps that circled the dome could be manipulated to enlarge or shrink the aperture around the bulb. Holding the gizmo in one hand, Jack handed the suitcase to Innes.
"Point the opening towards the lock and hold it steady," said Jack.
Presto did as instructed. Jack narrowed the aperture, then threw a small switch on the side of the box; a low humming emerged, and moment later, a thin, wavering beam of white electric light poured out of the opening and lit up the area around the keyhole.
"Good God," whispered Innes. "What is that?"
"What does it look like?" said Jack, as he knelt down with his picks and went to work on the lock.
"Battery-powered?" said Presto.
"A flash-a-light," said Innes.