Night Secrets

  “Petty matters,” Farouk said, as if disappointed. “He is a man of small larcenies. He has done nothing which the local authorities would be interested in pursuing with sufficient speed to save the Puri Dai.”

  “So it’s up to us?”

  Farouk nodded.

  “How do you want to do it?” Frank asked, meaning the time and the method they would use.

  Farouk took the question differently. “With determination,” he replied. “And without relent.”

  For a little while they lingered in front of the liquor store. Farouk smoked a cigarette while his eyes idly swept up and down the street. He seemed deep in thought, as if considering all the moves it was now possible for the two of them to make.

  “Do you think Fellows is in there?” Frank asked after a moment.

  “I do not know.”

  “And the little girl?”

  Farouk shrugged. “We will soon discover it,” he said confidently. “If he is within the building, he will have to come out. If he is without, we will strike at him before he returns.”

  Suddenly, something occurred to Frank. “The raki,” he said anxiously. “That whole case of raki. It’s for the ceremony you talked about. To bathe the little girl.”

  Farouk nodded.

  Frank felt a wave of anger pass over him. “Maybe we shouldn’t wait,” he said. “Maybe we should go get him now.” He stepped away from Farouk. “The little girl may …”

  Farouk grabbed his arm, interrupting him. “It will not be done here,” he said. “It is a celebration. Many will come. It is a festival from ancient days. The little girl has not yet been harmed.”

  Frank turned westward, to the dilapidated red-brick tenement that rested at the far edge of Fifty-seventh Street, its western corner just beneath the cement canopy of the West Side Highway. “Well, how long do you want to wait?”

  “We do not know what we may find inside,” Farouk said. “We should try to take him on the street.”

  “So you just want to stake the place out,” Frank said.

  “For as long as possible, yes,” Farouk said. “But not from here. We must find another place.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. He glanced about, his eyes finally lighting on a small alleyway on the east side of the street. He pointed it out to Farouk. “How about over mere?”

  Farouk nodded immediately. “Yes, that is good. From there we could observe everything.”

  They walked to the alley and took up their positions at once, edging themselves into the slender brick corridor, their bodies concealed from the tenement by a single jutting wall.

  Farouk took out his cigarette holder, inserted a cigarette and lit it.

  Frank kept his eyes on the building, his face pressed up against the corner of the wall while he watched it intently.

  “You will never have the Puri Dai,” Farouk said after a moment, as if he knew exactly what Frank was thinking.

  Frank continued to watch the building. “Do you think she’s in there?” he asked softly.

  “If she is,” Farouk answered bluntly, “then she is already dead.”

  “She has a gun.”

  “As all women should have,” Farouk said, as if it were an indisputable truth of life that a gun alone would finally be the dark irreducible means of women’s deliverance.

  “I hope she knows how to use it,” Frank said.

  Farouk drew in a long, weary breath. “So do I.”

  Suddenly a light went on at the front of the third-floor landing, held a moment, then went off again. Frank leaned forward, raking his face against the rough cement wall as he peered closely at the now darkened space behind the unshaded windows. He could feel a dull ache in the wound on the side of his head, but it seemed almost a source of pleasure, a physical connection between himself and the Puri Dai, the only one he would ever know. He lifted his fingers to the bruised flesh, explored it gently for a moment, then let his hand drift down again to the empty holster at his side.

  “My gun has never been registered,” he said.

  “Do you wish it to be registered?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can accomplish this,” Farouk said. “Long ago I found the key to the Firearms Registry.”

  Frank looked at him, astonished. “You can register guns?”

  Farouk nodded. “To anyone I choose,” he said. “Do you wish yours to be registered?”

  Frank shook his head. “No. Because if she uses it, it can’t be traced back to me.”

  Farouk smiled knowingly. “You mean through you, to her, yes?” he asked.

  Frank didn’t answer. He kept his eyes fixed on the unlighted upper windows. “If we find them,” he said, “the Puri Dai and her daughter, what do we do?”

  “The Puri Dai cannot be released,” Farouk said. “She has betrayed the errate. She will never be safe from those who will seek vengeance.”

  “What about her daughter?”

  “She is young,” Farouk said. “She will grow into another face, another body. One day, she will be released.” His face grew very solemn. “But the Puri Dai, she is doomed.”

  Frank pulled his eyes from the window and looked at Farouk. “I wonder if there was ever a way out for her?” he asked.

  “There was only one,” Farouk said authoritatively. Then he reached down and opened his coat. The black handle of his pistol peeped out from beneath his arm like the muzzle of a small but fiercely determined animal. “And she has found it,” he added. “Blessed be she among women.”

  It was almost midnight before Frank finally pulled his eyes away from the building again. He could feel the wound she’d given him aching insistently, drawing one wide line of pain from the torn flesh to his weary, throbbing eyes.

  “Soon,” Farouk said, as if to give him strength.

  “Maybe they’ve already gone.”

  Farouk shook his head. “I do not think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Farouk lifted his arms helplessly. “Because I am one who lives on faith.”

  Frank turned back toward the building, once again pressing the side of his face against its rough surface. The front windows of the third-floor landing were still dark, but he could see a faint yellow glow, as if candles were flickering weakly far back in the room.

  “He must be in there,” Frank said. “Let’s go in and get him.”

  Farouk pulled himself to his feet, walked over to the edge of the wall and peered up at the windows. “He is not yet there,” he said.

  Frank looked at him. “How do you know?”

  Farouk’s eyes were no longer raised, but now stared straight ahead, level with the street. “Because he is there,” he said evenly.

  Frank immediately turned toward the street. He could see the man ambling slowly down the opposite sidewalk, the large straw hat cocked to the right, its brim shaking slightly in the breeze that swept toward him from the river.

  “That is the man, yes?” Farouk asked.

  Frank could feel his whole body tightening, as if someone were screwing his loosely fitted bones back into their sockets. “That’s him,*’ he said.

  Farouk stepped around him, as if to hold him back. “All right, we will act now,” he said. “But with care.”

  The two of them stepped out from behind the concealing wall and headed toward the street. They walked quickly, determinedly, closing in on him. Then, suddenly, the man speeded up, moved rapidly toward the building, then up the stairs and disappeared inside.

  Farouk and Frank sprinted after him, bounded up the stairs, then rushed through the small door that divided the littered vestibule from the street itself. They could see the door to the elevator closing slowly down the hall and darted toward it. In the single square of glass that served as the elevator’s window, they could see the man’s head, his eyes popping and staring; then, in a single, fleeting instant as the elevator began to rise, they glimpsed the Puri Dai beside him, the barrel of her pistol resting evenly in his ear.

  “Chr
ist,” Frank whispered admiringly. “She’s done it.”

  Farouk glanced left and right, his eyes searching the lobby until they found the door that opened onto the stairs. “There,” he said. “Hurry.”

  They took the stairs two at a time, scrambling hurriedly through its accumulated debris of empty cans, paper wrappers and broken glass.

  “All right, wait a moment,” Farouk said breathlessly when they reached the top floor. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Give me just a moment, please,” he gasped.

  Frank nodded, then stepped in front of him, opened the door slightly and peered out.

  Through the slender space of the barely open door he could see the elevator open shakily, its metal door rattling softly as it slid to the left.

  Inside, the Pun Dai was standing rigidly beside the frozen figure of the man. She waited until the door was entirely open, then she urged him forward very slowly, the pistol digging into his ear.

  Frank glanced quickly at Farouk. “They’re going out,” he whispered, then turned back toward the hallway.

  The man stood rigidly in place, his eyes fixed on the door in front of him, while the Puri Dai felt in the right pocket of his trousers.

  Frank looked back at Farouk again. “She’s looking for the keys,” he whispered desperately. “We have to move.” Reflexively, his right hand dropped to his side, his fingers searching frantically through the dead space of his holster until he realized that it was empty. Then he turned to Farouk. “Give me your gun,” he said.

  Farouk drew himself away. “No, you must wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For me, Frank,” Farouk said. “You cannot do this thing alone.” He drew in a deep breath, waited another moment to regain his strength. “All right,” he said finally. “Now.”

  Frank opened the door again and felt a kind of relief that the Puri Dai had disappeared into the apartment. “It’s too late to get them in the hall,” he said.

  “It does not matter,” Farouk said confidently as he eased himself into the hallway. “Come.” He walked to the door, pulled out his pistol and handed it to Frank. “I will go through the door,” he said. “And you will follow me with the pistol.”

  Frank took the gun, pointed it at the ceiling, then pulled himself back against the wall beside the door. “Whenever you’re ready,” he told him.

  Farouk’s body seemed to harden into a single massive ball. He aimed his shoulder at the door, then plunged forward.

  The door sprang open instantly, and Farouk stumbled into the room, then stopped cold and began to raise his hands as Frank rushed in behind him, his gun bobbing and shifting in the air like a small black nose.

  For an instant, he searched the room through the shadowy, faintly yellow light. Then he saw them, poised and frozen just inside the adjoining room. The Puri Dai stood beside the man, the pistol still digging at his ear.

  Frank faced her silently, the pistol stretching out toward her like the dark key to their collusion.

  The Puri Dai glared at him poisonously. “Leave us,” she said.

  The man looked at Frank and Farouk with an odd sense of relief, as if they were all old comrades, men who shared some common place in a vast conspiracy. He glanced at the pistol in Frank’s hand, then up into his eyes. “Kill her,” he said.

  The Puri Dai looked as if she thought Frank might obey. Instantly, she drew the gun from the other man’s ear and shifted its barrel slightly toward Frank. “Do not move,” she said. Then she returned the barrel to the man’s head.

  “Let him go,” Frank told her.

  The Puri Dai remained in place. “I have come for my daughter,” she said.

  “I’ll get her for you,” Frank assured her.

  “It is not for you to do,” the Puri Dai said determinedly. She pulled back the cock, turned the pistol back toward Frank and leveled the barrel directly at his eyes. “Leave us,” she repeated.

  Frank shook his head. “There’s a better way.”

  The Puri Dai’s arm stiffened. “Leave us.”

  They were only a few feet apart, and Frank could see her brown finger as it drew down on the trigger.

  “You’ll do it, won’t you?” he said, almost wonderingly, and with a strange, transcendent urge to praise the will that had transformed her into a woman warrior.

  “Leave us,” she whispered a final time.

  Frank stood in place. He could hear Farouk breathing heavily beside him. For a moment, he wanted to save him from the fury of the Puri Dai, but he realized that he did not want to save himself from that same vengeance, that instead, he wanted to take it, full and without regret, take it for what it finally was, a single shuddering act of age-old retribution.

  The Puri Dai’s eyes grew cold, and one of them closed slowly as she drew the pistol’s small black site down upon her motionless target.

  “Magdalena.”

  It was a woman’s voice, and the Puri Dai turned to it immediately.

  The old woman stood a few feet behind her, one of her thin brown arms wrapped around a small, dark-eyed girl with long black hair. The other hand held a pearl-handled knife at the girl’s throat.

  “Let Joseph go,” the woman demanded, “or Magdalena will die.”

  The Puri Dai did not move.

  “I will kill you as I killed the other,” the old woman said. “You must know your place.”

  The Puri Dai drew the pistol back to the man’s ear. She did not speak, but only stared at the other woman.

  “Let him go, Magdalena,” the woman said angrily. “It is not for you to decide her place.”

  The little girl stood rigidly in front of the old woman, her eyes fixed on the Puri Dai.

  The old woman stared at the Puri Dai hatefully. “Maria Salome would have helped you,” she said, “would have helped you leave your place. And so she died as a lesson to your daughter.”

  The Puri Dai pressed the barrel of the gun against the man’s head. “It was he who commanded you,” she said.

  “The Gypsy Father always commands,” the woman said proudly. “And the Three Marias must obey.”

  The Puri Dai’s eyes drifted toward the little girl, but she said nothing.

  “Let him go,” the old woman repeated. She pressed the blade against the little girl’s throat until a small trickle of blood ran in a jagged line down her smooth, brown throat. “Let him go,” the old woman said again, “or I will send this child to hell.” She pressed the blade downward again, and the little girl winced with pain, her lips parting in a single, softly spoken word: “Mother.”

  The Puri Dai looked at her in a single agonizing instant, and as she did so, she loosened the grip on her pistol and the man spun around quickly and snapped it from her hand. She did not resist, but only stood, staring at her daughter, while he wheeled to the right and pointed the pistol at Frank and Farouk.

  “This is Gypsy business,” he said. “You have no place here.”

  Frank edged the barrel of his pistol over toward him. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said.

  The man smiled sneeringly, then jerked the Puri Dai in front of him and placed the pistol at her head.

  Frank felt something in his body empty. “Don’t,” he said softly. “Don’t.”

  “Gypsy business,” the man repeated. He nodded toward the pistol. “Drop it.”

  Frank didn’t move.

  The man pressed the barrel of the gun hard against the Puri Dai’s head. “Drop it, now!” he screamed.

  Frank felt the pistol slip from his hand. It banged loudly against the wooden floor.

  “You, fat one,” the man said to Farouk. “Kick it over to me.

  Farouk obeyed, and the man swept the second pistol from the floor, threw open the chamber and spilled the bullets onto the floor. “I return it to you now,” he said snidely as he let it drop from his hand. Then he took a small step forward, pushing the Puri Dai ahead of him, the pistol bearing down in the soft flesh at her temple.


  “Let her go,” Frank said.

  The man motioned Frank and Farouk from his path. “Get out of my way,” he said.

  The two of them exchanged helpless glances, then did as they were told.

  The man smiled haughtily, then stepped through the still open door.

  Frank kept his eyes on him. “I will find you,” he said.

  The man seemed barely to hear him. He nodded toward the old woman and she immediately released the little girl and rushed to his side.

  The man smiled. “We only needed the girl to get the Puri Dai,” he said. He pressed the gun barrel roughly against her head. “You were right, the girl’s blood is spoiled,” he said to her. “You violated the errate—violated our world. She is useless now. And you have done it. That is why we lured you from prison, to make you think the ceremony would still go on. Because it is your fault that the errate has been lost, and now you must pay for it.”

  The Puri Dai winced slightly, then closed her eyes.

  Frank glanced back toward the little girl. She stood toward the back of the room, her eyes staring wildly at her mother.

  The Puri Dai opened her eyes briefly, let them settle on her daughter, as if to embrace her, but said nothing.

  Frank turned to the man. “Let her go,” he said.

  The man smiled. “It will be as you wish, my friend,” he said coldly. He drew the barrel of the pistol a small distance from the Puri Dai’s head and then with an abrupt, demonic jerk, he pulled the trigger.

  A burst of blood shot from the side of the Puri Dai’s head, and as he saw it, Frank felt something at the very center of his life crumble like a great building which had lost its old foundation. He lunged forward with tremendous force, and as he did so, the man stepped back and pushed her body forward into his longing, outstretched arms, then rushed from the room, half-dragging the old woman behind him.

  Frank slumped to the floor with the Puri Dai, his arms around her like the lover he would never be.

  The child let out a high, keening wail, and Farouk plunged backward and swept her up into his arms.

  Frank stared down at the Puri Dai’s uplifted face. He could feel her breath on his skin as he cradled her shattered head in his arms. Her eyes were open and staring outward, as if toward some vision that had yet to find its resting place on earth. Her lips moved silently, and he could see that she was trying to speak to him, to tell him something, and he imagined it as a single lost and visionary truth, one which, once uttered, might have saved the world.