“What?” asked Merlin impatiently.
“Signatures, kiddo!” They waved sheaves of paper in their filthy hands. “We got enough! All you need and lots more. Arthur, the guy with the Day-Glo sword, is now officially a candidate for mayor of New York!”
They stood there, arms spread wide, as if accepting thunderous applause. There was dead silence.
“Well,” grumbled Elvis, “don’t thank us all at once, y’know.”
CHAPTRE
THE ELEVENTH
GWEN HAD MANAGED to stop crying, but her face was still tear-streaked as she fumbled in her purse for her apartment keys. She breathed silent invocations, thinking, Please, please, please let him still be asleep.
She fished out her keys, unlocked the door, and stepped inside the dimly lit apartment. She glanced around at the empty living room and sighed with relief. She didn’t know where he was, and she didn’t care. At least he wasn’t at home. After getting the call from Miss Basil, wanting to know where she was, she had to get out for just a few minutes. She’d felt as if the walls were closing in on her, and she knew that if she stayed there a moment longer, she would just start screaming and never stop. That would certainly wake Lance, and he wouldn’t be happy about that at all. But if he woke up and discovered that she’d gone out, that would also infuriate him.
Lance stepped out of the bedroom, his hands on his hips. “So. You came back, did you?”
Gwen moaned and moved away from the door. She pulled the sunglasses off and tossed them carelessly on the floor, as she staggered over to a chair and sagged into it. “I just went down to the corner for some beer,” she said.
“So where is it?”
“They were out,” she replied tiredly, too mentally exhausted and aching to come up with anything even approaching a decent lie.
Lance walked over to her, laughing loudly, and took her chin in his hand, turning her head one way and then the other. “Quite a shiner you got.”
“I know. It’s the birthday present you forgot to give me last month, right?”
“Now, now,” he said and swaggered away. “There’s no need to get bitter. After all, you brought it on yourself.”
“Me!” She lurched to her feet, feeling the familiar sting of tears at her eyes and fighting them off. “You’re the one who came home drunk last night. Boozing and ... and sleeping with whores. God knows what germs you picked up.”
“Whores!” His voice went up an octave. “How can you say that? How can you say I was getting laid by strange women?”
“You reeked of cheap perfume.”
He snorted. “I can’t help it if women cling all over me.”
“Lance, your pants were on backward! Why did you come home to me with your pants on backward?”
“It was a joke, for chrissakes.”
“No, Lance.” She shook her head furiously, thinking about the job that she had probably lost, and thinking also of the man for whom she worked ... the man whom she felt as if she’d known all her life. “This whole relationship is a joke. And I’m the punch line. Especially when you came home the way you did last night, and you wanted to make love to me all reeking and disgusting. And when I refused you did this to me.” She pointed at her eye. “You did this. Not me. You!”
“Yeah?” He got louder, angrier, and he advanced on her, his fist clenching and unclenching. “And I can do it again. And again. I’m tired of your superior attitude. I thought you understood me. But you’re just ignorant, like all the rest. Ignorant! But I’m gonna teach you!”
“Teach me? Teach me what!” she said defiantly. “Hit me again and swell both my eyes shut, so you can teach me not to look at you! Because you’re disgusting! Look at what you’ve become!” It all spilled out of her, everything she’d been bottling up. “When I met you, you were bigger than the whole world. You were young and confident and full of fire! And I keep praying that the Lance that I fell in love with will return somehow. But he’s not coming back! All you’re doing is dragging me down with you! I can live on love. But I can’t live on pointless hope anymore! I can’t!”
He shoved her hard, and she hit the floor. “Big man!” she spat out. “Show who’s tougher! We’re the two biggest losers in the world. And the really sick thing is, I don’t deserve better than you!”
“I’m going to show you what you deserve,” Lance shot back. He swung his fist back. Gwen shrieked, throwing up her hands to defend herself.
Suddenly the front door was smashed open, wood splintering everywhere. Arthur stood in the door frame, and there was cold fury in his eyes.
Lance took one look at the intruder, grabbed a steak knife off a nearby table and charged. Arthur effortlessly sidestepped, grabbed the knife hand at the wrist, and drove a knee into Lance’s gut. Lance gasped, unable to draw a breath, and Arthur tossed him like a sack of bones across the apartment, sending him crashing to the floor.
He turned and looked at Gwen with infinite sadness, as if seeing something that he had fully expected. “What happened to you?” he asked.
Operating on reflex—a reflex that told her to cover for Lance whenever possible—Gwen stammered out, “I ... I ... punched myself in the eye.”
“You hit yourself?”
“Yes.”
“In the eye?”
“That’s right.”
He shook his head sadly. “Why in God’s name would you do that?”
“I was aiming at my nose and I missed.”
Arthur’s attention swiveled back to Lance, who was going for the fallen steak knife again. Gwen’s eyes widened in shock as Arthur, still nattily attired in a royal-blue, three-piece suit, reached to his left hip under his coat. For a moment she thought he was about to draw a gun. Instead there was the smooth sound of metal on metal as a gleaming sword was drawn from its sheath, seeming to appear in his hand like magic. In the dimness of the apartment the sword glowed with a life all its own. Lance scuttled back, crablike, toward the wall, never taking his terrified eyes from the darkly furious face of the man standing over him. Arthur knocked a lamp out of the way with a sweep of the sword, advancing on Lance until the frightened man could back up no farther. He pulled his knees up to his chin like a frightened child.
“You ... you wouldn’t kill an unarmed man?” he managed to say.
“Not a man,” Arthur said. “No. But you ... you little pissant ...”
He drew back his sword, ready to strike. Gwen cried out, “No!!”
Arthur looked to her and said, his contempt for Lance clear in his voice, “You would spare this ... this thing?”
“Please,” she whispered, her eyes fixed upon the gleaming blade. “The moment I saw that sword, my whole life ... made sense ... if you kill him, you’re a murderer, and nothing will make sense anymore ... I can’t go back to that ... I can’t ... don’t make me.”
Arthur took two steps back and sheathed the sword. Lance let out a long, unsteady breath, but it caught in his throat as Arthur said, “If you ever raise a hand to this woman ... or any other woman ... I shall cut it off. Then I will make you eat it. Do we understand each other?” Lance managed a nod, but not much more than that.
Arthur turned to face Gwen, who was still looking at him in wonderment. “Why?” he asked.
She couldn’t look at him, but she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Why what?” she whispered.
“Why did you stay here?”
“I had nowhere else to go.”
He basked in the warmth of her body, held close to him. “Now you do.”
He walked with her to the door. He looked back at Lance who still cowered in the corner, then smiled again and said, “Have a nice day,” and left with Gwen on his arm.
They went down to the street, and Arthur called “Taxi!” to the first unoccupied cab he saw. The cab swung over to the curb, and they popped into the back. As Arthur pulled the door shut behind them, Gwen said, “I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe when you whipped out your sword—”
&nbs
p; “Hey!” said the cabbie angrily. “I know this is New York, but let’s keep the filthy talk to a minimum, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” said Arthur meekly. He glanced over at Gwen and winked, and she smiled. It was her first real smile in weeks.
“So you two lovebirds want to tell me where you’re going?”
“Yes,” said Arthur. “Central Park.”
“Sounds good.” The car eased its way into the busy lunch hour traffic.
“Central Park?” said Gwen. “What’s there?”
“My home away from home.”
“Oh.” She paused. “Thank you. About not hurting Lance.”
Arthur turned and looked at her with surprise. “His name is Lance?”
“Yes. Why?”
“No reason,” he said grimly. “Just ... sick coincidence, I suppose. As for Lance, the only reason I didn’t hurt him was because you asked me not to. But he hurt you.”
“I suppose in a way he was right. I had only myself to blame. Because I let him get away with it. But never again.”
“That’s the way I like my queen to talk.”
She took a deep breath, and then said, “The sword ... it was Excalibur, wasn’t it.”
The surprise was evident in his face. He seemed both astonished and relieved that she was one step ahead of what he was going to say.
She looked up at him dreamily. “I’m really your queen? You’re really—”
“Yes. I am.”
“And I’m really—”
“I think so.”
“How can we know for certain?”
Arthur smiled. “We’ll think of something.”
YE OLDE SOUND BITE
“Firefighters responded quickly to the blaze and were able to extinguish it within a matter of minutes. No one was hurt. And now Louise Simons on brings us up to date on the doings of New York’s most offbeat candidate for mayor. Louise?”
“Thank you, Walter. Well, it was certainly the most unorthodox beginning to a mayoral campaign in recent times. He calls himself Arthur Penn, he is a self-described “Independent” candidate, and his ideas are, well, novel. First drawing attention to himself by climbing atop a statue in Duffy Square and putting forth intriguing and—some say—lunatic ideas about capital punishment, it was today announced that he has gained the requisite signatures to off daily enter the race for mayor. The campaign managers of front-runners Kent Taylor and Bernard Keating had no comment other than to say that they welcomed all comers ... even, according to DA Keating, the ‘clearly nut so’ ones. “
CHAPTRE
THE TWELFTH
BERNARD B. KEATING was accustomed to coming out of court rooms and being surrounded by the press. He smiled now into the cameras as they crowded around him on the steps of the big marble building he’d just left. Bernard struck a dramatic pose, one hand jauntily on his ample hip, his head cocked to one side, a smile plastered across his face. Moe floated unobtrusively in the background.
Bernard waited for questions about his plans for his campaign, his opinions on the current hot issues, his plans for the city if elected. And it was a tribute to Bernard B. Keating’s skill as a politician that he did not turn and slug the questioner when the first question out of a reporter’s mouth was, “What do you think of Arthur Penn’s chances in the upcoming mayoral race?”
“He’s made quite a splash with his soapbox speeches, Bernie,” shouted the reporter from Channel 4 news. “And some of the proposals he’s made are real unorthodox. Do you have any comment on—”
Bernard waved off the question and managed to keep his smile glued on his mouth. “Now boys, I have all of Mr. Perm’s proposals under consideration, and before I make further comment I’m getting the opinion of my advisors on the matter.” Switching into his stump speech, he suddenly said, “This city needs me and, more important, I need this city. And I’m hoping that you guys are going to put me where I can do the most good ... and no, not on unemployment.” He felt briefly buoyed by the laughter that line got. “We’ve got too many whining creeps on the city’s doles already. We don’t need welfare cases cluttering up houses. We don’t need homeless people to trip over in the streets. Now I’ve got as much humanity as the next guy ... unless the next guy is a sucker. Bottom line is this: New York for New Yorkers.”
“But Arthur Penn ...” another reporter began.
And Keating promptly cut him off. “That’s all, that’s all.” And he brushed by the reporters with uncharacteristic abruptness.
Moe followed on his heels, not thrilled by the turn of events, and when Bernie hopped into his waiting limo, Moe was even less thrilled that Bernie waved for him to get in as well. Bernie slid over to accommodate Moe and tossed one last wave to the reporters as the limo pulled away.
Once they were under way his friendly facade melted away like butter in a hot skillet. “What the hell was that all about?” he demanded.
“I’m not sure what you mean exactly,” said Moe slowly.
“Then I’ll explain it, exactly.” Bernie lit up one of his dread cigars, and opened the window a crack to allow the smoke to trail out behind them. “You were telling me a couple of weeks ago that there was barely any interest in this Arthur Penn, that he was going to go away.”
“I never said that, Bernie,” said Moe reasonably. “I said I hoped he’d go away. There’s a big difference.”
“Wonderful. So how come all I get are questions about Perm? Now what, I wonder, put the press on to this guy. Huh?”
“Well, uh,” Moe tugged uncomfortably on his collar, “I suppose in a small way it’s my fault.”
“Your fault. How is it your fault?”
“I called one of my contacts with the Daily News. I asked him to check through Penn’s background to find what he could dig up, dirtwise. He owed me a big favor, and he’s one of the best muckrakers in the business. Frankly, I’m surprised the National Enquirer hasn’t snatched him up yet.”
“The point, Moe. Get to the point.”
“The point is that he did the investigation. Real deep. Real thorough.” Moe turned a dead glance on Bernie. “Know what he found? Nothing.”
“Oh, come on,” Bernie said incredulously. “Your man just didn’t do his job, is all. Everybody’s got something in their past that can be used against them as a weapon.”
“This guy is squeaky clean, I’m telling you. My friend checked with everyone from the FBI and the IRS to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Not only does Arthur Penn not have any sort of negative record anywhere—not even so much as a parking ticket or late credit card payment—but he has a distinguished service record in the army. Everything about this guy checks out perfectly.”
Bernie took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigar, ignoring Moe’s wincing as the fumes filled the car. “Maybe too perfect, you think?”
“It has crossed my mind, yes.”
“You gonna keep digging on him?”
“I’m not exactly sure where to dig at this point. It backfired the first time around, because my reporter friend became so fascinated by Penn that he wound up doing a big spread on him. A lot of people have started getting turned on to Penn. If I get more people looking into his background, with my luck 60 Minutes will come in and canonize him.”
“So what do we do now?”
Moe interlaced his fingers. “We start analyzing his proposals, and elaborate for the edification of all and sundry exactly why they are stupid and unworkable.”
“Sounds good.”
“And in the meantime we can pray that our luck holds out.”
“Our luck?” Bernie shook his head. “I don’t see—”
Moe fixed him with a look. “Penn could be making a lot more hay of this attention than he is. Instead he’s playing it close to the chest. He surfaces for a few hours in random parts of the city, pontificates, then vanishes again. It’s like he’s making it up as he goes along.”
“Not exactly the way to make friends and influence people.”
“My fee
lings exactly. Let’s hope that we keep it up. The main thing we have going for us is this Penn’s utter lack of experience.”
“Yeah.” Bernie laughed with a cheerfulness he did not feel. “Can you imagine a guy who makes speeches and then vanishes? Never accessible to the press? What’s he trying to do, run a campaign through word of mouth?”
“So it would seem. There’s one thing that bothers me though.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
Moe paused thoughtfully. “What if it works?”
ARTHUR STOOD OUTSIDE the door to his offices, wrestling with a crisis of conscience. There was a part of him that wanted to take Gwen and hop on the nearest bus out of town. Or plane. Or boat! That would be excellent. A nice long cruise over the ocean, far away from Merlin and his machinations.
He looked at his reflection in the opaque glass. Who was he? he wondered. What had he become? For as long as he could remember—and he could remember quite a ways back—every action in his life had been made because he’d had to do it. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. His was the eternal sense of obligation, and it had begun to take a toll on him after all these years.
“Why me?” he said to no one in particular. “Why can’t I have a normal life? Why must I always be a tool of some greater destiny’?”
“Because that’s the way it is.”
Arthur looked down. Merlin was standing at his side, looking straight ahead. No matter how many times Arthur saw him, he didn’t think he would ever get used to seeing his mentor clad like a street urchin.
“You’ve been dressing down lately, Merlin,” he observed.
The young wizard shrugged. “I’ve always worn what’s most comfortable. In this age it’s jeans, sneakers, and T-shirt. Where the devil have you been the past week?”
“You know perfectly well where I’ve been, Merlin. There is no way you could not know.” He paused and then said, almost tentatively, “No hard feelings about ... you know.”
“Telling Percival to kill me? Oh hell no, why should I carry a grudge about a little thing like that? It’s not as if my life is worth anything to anyone.”