The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Part 47

ANDREW KLAVAN.

A CERTAIN PORTION OF MY MISspent youth was misspent in the profession of journalism. I'm not proud of it, but a man has to make a living and there it is. And, in fact, I learned a great many things working as a reporter. Most importantly, I learned how to be painstakingly honest and lie at the same time. That's how the news business works. It's not that anyone goes around making up facts or anything-not on a regular basis anyway. No, most of the time, newspeople simply learn how to pick and choose which facts to tell, which will heighten your sense that their gormless opinions are reality or at least delay your discovery that everything they believe is provably false. If ever you see a man put his fingers in his ears and whistle Dixie to keep from hearing the truth, you may a.s.sume he's a fool, but if he puts his fingers in your ears and starts whistling, then you know you are dealing with a journalist.

As an example of what I mean, consider the famous shootout above the Mysterious Bookshop in the downtown section of Manhattan known as Tribeca. Because of the drama of the violence, the personalities involved, and the high level arrests that followed, the newspaper and television coverage of the incident ran for weeks on end. Every crime expert in the country seems to have had his moment on the talk shows. Two separate nonfiction books were written about it, not to mention the one novel. And along with several movies and TV shows featuring gunfights reminiscent of the actual event, there was a docu-drama scripted by a Pulitzer Prizewinning newspaperman who covered the story, though it was never released theatrically and went straight to DVD.

There was all that-and no one got the story right. Oh, they got some of the facts down well enough, but the truth? So help me, they did not come nigh it. Why? Because they were journalists-and because the truth offended their sensibilities and contradicted their notions of what the world is like.

So they talked about how La Cosa Nostra had been hobbled by the trials of the '80s and '90s and how new gangs were moving in to divide the spoils left behind. They focused on what they called Sarkesian's "betrayal" of Picarone and speculated about the underworld's realigning loyalties and racial tensions. They even unearthed some evidence for a sort of professional rivalry between Sarkesian and the man known as "The Death."

But the truth is, from the very start, this was really a story about faith and redemption-quite a mysterious story too, by the end of it. And that was too much for them-the journalists. They could not-they would not-see it that way. And because they couldn't see it, they put forward the facts in such a fas.h.i.+on as to insure that you would fail to see it too.

It falls upon me, then, to tell it as it actually happened.

Sarkesian, to begin with, was a Christian, a Catholic, very devout. He took communion as often as he could, daily when he could, and went to confession no less frequently than once a week. What he said in those confessions of course I wouldn't know, but it must've been pretty interesting because, along with being a Christian, Sarkesian was also an enforcer-a killer when he had to be-for Raymond Picarone. How Sarkesian reconciled these two facets of his life can be explained simply enough: he was stupid. Some people just are-a lot of people are, if you ask me-and he was one of them: dumb as dirt.

So on a given day, Sarkesian might kneel before the Prince of Peace asking that he be forgiven as he himself forgave; he might listen attentively to a sermon about charity and compa.s.sion; lift his eyes with childlike expectation to the priest who handed him the body of his Lord-and then toodle off to smash his knuckles into the mouth of one of Picarone's debtors until the man's teeth went pitter-pattering across the floor like a handful of pebbles. Virtually every journalist who reported the story discounted the sincerity of Sarkesian's beliefs because of the nature of his actions, but they were mistaken in this. Indeed, if it seems strange to you that a man might hold his faith in one part of his mind and his deeds in another and never fully examine the latter in the light of the former ... well, congratulations, you may be qualified to become a journalist yourself.

No. Sarkesian prayed with a committed heart and did his job with a committed heart and that his job included murder everyone who knew him knew. That he did that murder efficiently and without apparent compunction made him much feared by his employer's enemies. It also made him much appreciated by his employer.

"Sarkesian," Raymond Picarone used to say with an approving smile, "is not the sharpest razor at the barber shop, but when you tell him you need the thing done, it gets done."

Now it happened one day that the thing Picarone needed done was the killing of a young man named Steven Bean. Bean was a minor functionary in Picarone's organization and a sleazy weasel of a boy even for that company. For the third time in six months, Picarone had caught Bean skimming from his profits. He had decided to make an example of him.

So he summoned Sarkesian to his gentlemen's club on West 45th Street by the river and he said to him, "Sarkesian ... Stevie B ... it's no good ... we have to make, you know, a new arrangement." Picarone had taken to talking in this elliptical fas.h.i.+on in order to baffle any law enforcement personnel who might be eavesdropping electronically on his conversations.

Unfortunately Sarkesian, being not very intelligent as I said, was frequently also baffled. "Arrangement," he said slowly, chewing on the word as if it were a solid ma.s.s and blinking his heavily lidded eyes.

"Yeah," said Picarone impatiently. "Bean and us ... I think we're done ... you see what I'm saying? It's no good ... we've come to a parting of the ways."

Sarkesian blinked again and licked his thick lips uncertainly.

"Kill him!" said Picarone. "Would you just kill him? Christ, what an idiot."

Sarkesian brightened, delighted to understand what was expected of him, and set off on his way.

It was mid-December and the city was done up for Christmas. The great snowflake was hung over Fifth Avenue and 57th Street and the great tree was sparkling by the skating rink just downtown. Gigantic ribbons decorated the sides of some buildings. Sprays of colored lights bedecked the fronts of others. And early flurries of snow had been blowing in from the north all week, enough to give the streets a festive wintry air but not so much as to be a pain in the neck and tie up traffic.

So when Steven Bean awoke one early evening in his cramped studio apartment on the Upper West Side, he staggered to the window and looked out at a cheery Yuletide scene. There was snow in the air and lights in the windows of the brownstones across the way. There were green wreaths on the doors and the sound of a tinkling bell drifting from where Santa Claus was standing on the corner.

Unfortunately, there was also Sarkesian, trudging over the sidewalk on his way to kill him.

Steven had full awareness of his guilt, as do we all, though he'd managed to push that awareness to one side of his consciousness, as likewise do we all. But seeing Sarkesian plodding along with his great shoulders hunched and his big, murdering hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his overcoat, the guilt awareness snapped back front and center and Steven understood exactly what the killer was here for.

He leapt off the sofa and jammed his scrawny legs into his jeans, his scrawny feet into his sneakers. He already had a sweats.h.i.+rt on and was pulling a blue ski jacket over it as he rushed out of the apartment. He could hear the front door closing three floors below as he raced up the stairs. He could hear Sarkesian's heavy footsteps rising toward him as he reached the next landing. There was a ladder there leading up to a trapdoor. Steven climbed quickly and pushed through the trap and up to the roof.

Here, the white sky opened above him and the swirling flakes fell cold upon his face. Steven dashed through the chill air, across the shadow of the water tower. He reached the parapet at the roof's edge and leapt over it, flying across a narrow airshaft to land on the roof of the building next door. From there, he found his way to another trap, down another ladder, to the stairs of the neighboring building. In moments, he was on the street, running along the damp-darkened pavement, dodging the homecoming pedestrians. The streetlamps were just coming on above him as he pa.s.sed, making the falling snow glisten against the night.

At first, as he ran, he asked himself where he would go, but it was really a rhetorical question. There was only one place he could go: to the downtown theater where he knew he would find his younger sister.

Hailey Bean was in her mid-twenties, and was just beginning to realize she was not going to be a successful actress. She was a sweet girl, kind and gentle and loving; practical, down-to-earth, and sane. Which is to say she was completely unsuited for a life in show business.

At the moment, however, she was rehearsing a very small part in a once-popular drama that was to be revived off-off-not to mention off-Broadway. Hailey's role was that of an angel. At the end of the first act, she was to be lowered toward the stage in a harness-and-wire contraption. Hanging in mid-air, she would then deliver words of prophecy as the first act curtain fell. It was only a 45-second scene-with another scene about the same length in the second act-but it was pivotal. An elaborately beautiful costume-a white robe with gold tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and two enormous feathery wings-had been designed to make Hailey's attractive but not very imposing figure more impressive, and electronic enhancements and echoes were going to be added to her pleasing but less than awe-inspiring voice.

She was in the back of the small theater discussing these embellishments with the stage manager when Steven Bean burst through a rear door. Trying to keep a low profile, he planted himself in a dark corner-where he proceeded to make himself ridiculously conspicuous by gaping and whispering and waving frantically in an attempt to get his sister's attention.

The differences in character between Hailey and her brother can probably be at least partially explained by the fact that they were, in fact, only half-siblings. Steven had endured his parents' vituperative divorce, whereas Hailey had grown up in their mother's second, more stable, and loving household. Hailey was aware of her advantages and she felt compa.s.sion for her brother. But she also knew he was corrupt and reckless and dangerous, incapable of feeling anything more for her than a sort of puling, hissing envy and a fear of her decency which could shade over into hatred whenever she refused to give him whatever it was he was trying to get out of her at the time.

Still, he was family. So, as soon as she politely could, she excused herself to the stage manager and went over to see what he wanted now.

"He's after me" were the first words he gasped at her.

"Calm down." Hailey touched his arm gently. "Who's after you?"

"Sarkesian. He's coming to kill me."

The sister caught her breath and straightened. She didn't bother with any expressions of disbelief. She believed him well enough. "What do you want me to do?"

"Hide me!" Steven whined.

"Steven, where can I hide you? My apartment is the first place he'll look."

"You must have friends!"

"Oh, Steven, I can't send you to my friends with some thug coming after you."

"Well, give me some money at least so I can get away!"

"I don't have any more money."

"I'm your brother and I'm going to be murdered in cold blood and everything's fine for you and you won't do anything for me," Steven said.

Hailey sighed. She knew he was just trying to make her feel guilty but it didn't matter that she knew: she felt guilty anyway. Especially because, as she was forced to admit to herself, she wasn't being completely honest with him about the money.

Hailey was a clerk during the day at the Mysterious Bookshop, a store specializing in crime fiction located on Warren Street downtown. Because Hailey was pretty and efficient and meltingly feminine, she had become a favorite of the avuncular gentleman who ran the place. Sympathetic to her situation, he'd supplied her with an apartment in the brownstone over the shop and so her rent and expenses were fairly cheap. Thus, while it was true that Steven had all but cleaned out her savings six months ago when he'd gotten himself in trouble with Picarone's bookies, Hailey, by working overtime and scrimping on luxuries, had actually managed to save up a little more since then. The trouble was, she had a strong feeling she was going to need that money pretty soon. In a sort of semi-subconscious way, she had begun making plans to give up her acting career and go back to school.

She hesitated another few seconds, but she couldn't stand up to Steven's terrified eyes and his accusatory wheedling and her own guilt. Finally she said, "All right. I can't leave now. But come back at nine when the rehearsal is over and we'll go to the bank and I'll give you whatever I have."

Steven whined and pleaded a little more, hoping to convince her to go with him right away or even to let him use her bank card, but she stood firm and at last he slunk back out into the snow.

On some other evening, he might well have persuaded her to come with him. But as it happened, this was the night of a special technical rehearsal dedicated almost entirely to her character. An hour after their conversation, Hailey was dressed in her winged robe of white and gold, trussed up in her harness and dangling in mid-air about ten feet off the stage.

She was alone. The other actors had gone home for the night. Only the director and the stage manager were left and they were shut away in the booth at the back of the balcony. They had finished perfecting the echo effect for Hailey's voice and were now discussing their various lighting options, but where Hailey was, their conversation was inaudible. The theater was silent around her. For long periods, it was dark as well. Then, every so often, a spotlight would appear and catch Hailey dangling there in her magnificent winged costume. It would hold her in its glow for a moment as the director judged the effectiveness of the light's color and intensity. Then it would go off again as he and the technician fell to discussing their options once more.

For Hailey, it was a boring process. And since the harness dug into the flesh under her arms, it was kind of uncomfortable too. To distract herself, she tried going over her part in her mind but as she only had four lines, her thoughts soon began to wander. She thought about Steven, of course, about the danger he was in and the troubles he had had as a child and the sad mess he had made of his adulthood. She thought about the money she was going to give him and how hard she had worked to save it and how long it would take her to save some more. She fretted that she would never find a way to improve her life. Ironically, if she could have peered only a little more than a decade into the future, she would have seen herself the mistress of a large house in the northwestern corner of Connecticut, the cheerful mother of no less than five children, and the wife of a man who felt more love and grat.i.tude to her than I can rightly say. But for the present, all this lay obscured within the mists of time, and she hung in the darkness anxious and troubled.

Then, as she hung, she saw a pale slanting beam of light fall at the head of one of the theater's aisles. Someone-a man-had opened the door from the foyer. Now his enormous shadow fell into the light and now he himself was there. He came forward a few steps, but as the foyer door swung shut behind him, the theater was plunged into a nearly impenetrable blackness, and he paused uncertainly.

Hailey felt her pulse speed up. She had caught a glimpse of the man as he entered and there was no doubt in her mind who he was. A hoodlum that size with a face that low-surely, this was the very Sarkesian her brother had told her about, the one who was coming to kill him.

Hailey dangled in the air and watched as the man began slowly advancing again down the aisle, hunting, no doubt, for Steven. She held her breath. Her heart pounded against her chest. The killer came nearly to the foot of the stage. He stopped almost directly beneath her. Sarkesian took a long slow look from one side of the proscenium to the other. Hailey shuddered with fear that he would now lift his eyes and see her.

And then the spotlight came on.

Suddenly, to Hailey's horror, she was fully exposed, hanging there helpless and ridiculous in her white and golden robe with the feathery wings outstretched on either side of her.

Sarkesian looked up-and Hailey was surprised to see he seemed even more horrified than she was. He cried out. He threw his scaly ham-sized hands up beside his face. He leaned back as if afraid Hailey would strike him down on the spot. Frozen there, trembling, he stared up at her with a mixture of terror and awe.

Hailey understood at once what had happened-understood what Sarkesian must've thought she was, and understood too the incredible piety and even more incredible stupidity of a man capable of believing such a thing. Acting almost as quickly as she thought, she stretched out her arm and pointed her finger at him sternly.

"Sarkesian!" she thundered-and the echo effect, which the director had left on for further testing, magnified her voice so that it vibrated from floor to rafters. "Sarkesian-repent!"

At that, as if the timing had been arranged by a power higher even than the director, the spotlight went out again.

Hailey couldn't see what happened next. The light had temporarily blinded her. But she heard Sarkesian send up a high-pitched wail-and the next instant, she could hear his enormous body fumbling and b.u.mping into seats as he made his panicked way back up the aisle.

The door at the rear of the theater flew open. Sarkesian's ma.s.sive silhouette filled the lighted frame. Then he was gone. There was the light alone. The door swung shut. There was darkness.

Sarkesian didn't look back. He didn't even look to left or right. He ran out of the theater and into the street and was nearly struck down by an oncoming taxi. He found himself bent over the cab's hood, both hands braced against the wet metal as he gaped through the winds.h.i.+eld at the frightened driver. Waving his arm wildly to make the cabbie stay, he rushed around to the car's side door and tumbled into the back seat. He gasped out his address to the driver. He sat huddled in a corner, s.h.i.+vering and whimpering, all the way home.

Now, all right, you may laugh at Sarkesian. But even outside of journalism, truth and fiction are sometimes impossibly intertwined. A figment of imagination, a myth, even a fraud may lead us to powerful revelations. Come to think of it, do we ever find revelations in any other way? If Sarkesian was fooled by Hailey's quick-witted improvisation, if it caused him to stagger into his apartment and fall to his knees, if it made him pray and weep in the searing realization that he had lived a life of wretched wickedness in complete contravention to the commandments of his G.o.d-was that realization any less true for the way it came to him?

In any case, the fact is: he remained on his knees all night long. And when the gray day dawned, he knew exactly what he had to do.

He went to see Picarone. He found his boss eating breakfast with his wife on the terrace of their penthouse. The presence of the glamorous and somewhat regal Mrs. P. cowed Sarkesian and he spoke with his chin on his chest, gazing down at his own t.i.tanic feet.

"I can't do that thing we talked about," he said in his slow, dull voice. "I can't do any of that anymore. The bad stuff. I gotta do, I don't know, good stuff now, from now on. Like the Bible says."

"O-o-oh," said Picarone, lifting his chin. "Yeah. The Bible. Sure. Sure, Sarkesian, I get it. We'll only give you the good stuff from now on. Like the Bible says, sure."

It was touching, Mrs. Picarone later told her friends, to see Sarkesian's great, granite face wreathed in childlike smiles as he floated dreamily out of the room.

When he was gone, Picarone picked up the phone. "Hey," he said, "I need you to take care of a little weasel named Steven Bean for me. And while you're at it, you can do me Sarkesian too."

The call had gone out to a man named Billy s.h.i.+ne. He was known to all who feared him as "The Death." There was no one who didn't fear him. He was a lean, sinewy man with a long rat-like face. He moved like smoke and half the terror he inspired was due to the way he could appear beside you suddenly, as if out of thin air. He could find anyone anywhere and reach them no matter what. And when he did find them, when he did reach them, they were shortly thereafter dead.

Sarkesian would never have seen him coming. But he was tipped off-warned that The Death was on his trail. Mrs. Picarone had been sincere when she told her friends she'd been moved by Sarkesian's simple faith. She was, in fact, a regular church-goer herself. Sometimes, she lay awake in a cold sweat, painfully aware of the contrast between the dictates of her religion and the source of her wealth. Normally, a quarter of an hour spent running her fingers over the contents of her jewelry box soothed her until she could sleep again. But that night, somehow, this was not enough. Exhausted, she made a stealthy phone call to a manicurist with whom Sarkesian sometimes shared a bed.

Steven Bean, meanwhile, was sleeping just fine, curled up on the sofa in his apartment. I know: you'd think he'd be just about anywhere else doing anything else. But after scrounging money from his sister to fund his escape, he had hit on the brilliant idea of increasing the stash by joining a 24-hour poker game he knew of. By the time he wandered out into the streets the next evening, he was all but broke again-and so tired that he convinced himself it would surely be safe at his apartment by now. Sarkesian had probably only been sent to scare him anyway. He might even have been in the neighborhood to see someone else. Maybe it was Steven's own guilty conscience that had made him jump to conclusions and panic when he saw the killer approaching. What he really needed, he thought, was to be home and snug on his own little sofa. And so that's where he went and, after a few more drinks and a joint or two, he was out like a light.

It's amazing people do these things but they do. It's amazing what little distance there needs to be between our actions and their consequences before the consequences seem to us to disappear entirely. One a.m. rolled around and there was Steven, snoring away with his hands tucked under his head, so deeply unconscious that even the entry buzzer couldn't wake him.

But the door woke him when it crashed open, when its wooden frame splintered and fragments of it went flying across the room. That made him sit bolt upright, his jaw dangling, his eyes spiraling crazily. Before he could speak-before he could even think-someone grabbed him by the s.h.i.+rtfront.

It was Sarkesian.

"The Death is coming," the big man said. "Get up. Let's go."

What had happened: Sarkesian had become a new man since his encounter with the "Angel of the Lord" and he was determined to stay that way. After getting the warning call from the manicurist, he understood that it was not enough to just save himself. Knowing that The Death would come after Steven first, he saw he was responsible for protecting him as well. A sterner moralist than I am might wonder why he didn't call the police. But others had called the police in an attempt to avoid The Death and they were dead. No, Sarkesian knew Steven's safety was in his own hands. So here he was, shaking him awake At the first mention of The Death's terrible name, whatever was left of Steven's drunken complacency vanished like an ace of spades at a magician's fingersnap. He didn't know why Sarkesian had come to help him. At the moment, he hardly knew where he was. But he did understand that he had to run-and that there was nowhere to run from the likes of Billy s.h.i.+ne.

Sarkesian didn't wait for him to figure this out, or for anything else. He grabbed him by the arm, got him dressed, and dragged him out the door. They were halfway down the second flight of stairs, Sarkesian in the lead, before he spoke again.

"Where can you go?" he asked Steven over his shoulder.

And Steven, still stupid with sleep, gave the only answer he could think of. "Tribeca. Above the bookshop. My sister's there."

They took three cabs to avoid being followed. They traveled the last few blocks on foot. Soon they were running together through the severe, slanting shadows falling across the downtown boulevard from the line of brownstone buildings to their right. Tinsel and colored Christmas lights hung from the windows above them. And snow fell, a thin layer of it m.u.f.fling their footsteps as they ran.

As they approached the Mysterious Bookshop itself, they saw warm yellow light spilling through its storefront to lay in an oblong pool on the snowy sidewalk. Shadows moved behind the storefront's display of brightly jacketed books. Murmuring voices and laughter trailed out from within and a Christmas carol was playing-"O Holy Night."

With a silent curse, Sarkesian understood: there was a Christmas party going on inside.

A moment later, the voices and music grew louder. The bookshop door was coming open. A man and woman were leaving the party, waving over their shoulders as they stepped laughing into the night.

Suddenly Steven found himself shoved hard into an alcove, Sarkesian's ma.s.sive body pressed against him, pinning him, hiding him. They huddled there together, still, as the couple walked away from them toward West Broadway.

When Sarkesian's body relaxed, Steven was able to move his arm, to lift his finger to point out his sister's name above a mailbox in the alcove. Sarkesian nodded. But Steven didn't press the buzzer b.u.t.ton below Hailey's name. He was afraid she would turn them away. Instead, he went to work on the lock of the outside door. His fingers were trembling with cold and fear, but it wasn't much of a lock to speak of. In a second or two, he had worked it and they were inside.

The talk and music from the bookshop came through the walls inside. "O, Little Town of Bethlehem" followed them up the stairway as Sarkesian and Steven raced to the fourth-floor landing. They made their way down the long hallway to the last door. Steven pounded on it with his fist. He shouted, "Hailey! It's me! Open up!"

There was a pause. Steven was gripped by the fear that Hailey herself might be at the party in the bookshop downstairs. But then, her sleepy voice came m.u.f.fled from within, "Steven?"

"Hailey, please! It's life or death!"

There was the sound of a chain sliding back. The door started to open ...

And at that moment, Sarkesian, waiting at Steven's side, felt a chill on his neck and looked to his left.

There was The Death standing at the other end of the hall.

He had materialized there in his trademark fas.h.i.+on, without warning, silent as smoke. Now, like smoke, he began drifting toward them.

Sarkesian reacted quickly. With one hand, he shoved Steven in the back, pus.h.i.+ng him through Hailey's door. With the other, he drew his gun.

The Death also had a gun. He was lifting it, pointing it at Sarkesian.

"Don't you do it, Billy s.h.i.+ne!" Sarkesian shouted.

He heard a loud clap: the terrified Steven had shut Hailey's door, hoping Sarkesian would kill The Death while he cowered inside. But that changed nothing for Sarkesian. He was already moving down the hall toward s.h.i.+ne.

The two killers walked toward each other, their guns upraised. They were fifty yards apart, then forty, then thirty-five. Sarkesian called out again: "Don't do it!" The Death answered him with a gunshot. Sarkesian fired back. The men began pulling the triggers of their guns again and again in rapid succession. One blast blended with another, deafening in the narrow corridor. The two kept firing and walking toward each other as steadily as if hot metal were not ripping into them, were not tearing their insides apart.

At last, their bullets were exhausted. Each heard the snap of an empty chamber. They stopped where they were, not ten yards between them. s.h.i.+ne lowered his arm and Sarkesian lowered his. s.h.i.+ne smiled. Then he pitched forward to the floor and The Death lay dead at Sarkesian's feet.

Sarkesian barely looked at him. He simply started walking again, stepping over the body without a pause. He let the gun slip from his fingers. It fell with a thud to the hall carpet. Only when he reached the stairway did he stagger for a moment. He held onto the banister until he was steady again. Then he started down the stairs.

All this time, no one on the fourth floor had ventured out of his apartment. People heard the gunfire. They guessed what it was. They called the police and just hunkered down. But on the floors below there were doors opening, faces peeking out. The sound of choral music from the bookshop grew louder. "Silent Night."

As the moments pa.s.sed with no more shots, people on the fourth floor looked out too. Hailey looked out and Steven peeked over her shoulder, hiding behind her.