The Animal Hour (48 page)

They climbed. They passed stained-glass windows set at intervals into the wall. The colored panes were dark and muddy, but sometimes they caught a streetlight's glow from outside. Images in the glass flickered out into the shadows on the curling stair. A queen with golden tresses and a pitying gaze. A knight with a noble brow and a razor-sharp goatee. They shimmered dimly for a moment like half-remembered faces, and then vanished as the brothers climbed on. For some reason, the sight of them made Zachary more nostalgic still. He felt himself pining gently for the past, and he remembered the smell of autumn around the house in Port Jeff. How sad it was! The smell of grass when there was still suburban sunlight through the changing leaves. The cool air and the distant jets in the blue sky. Damn all those people, he thought—the cops, the feds. It didn't have to be this way at all. It was almost a joke, a cavalcade of stupidity. The FBI. The FB-fucking-I, going into fits over a stupid twenty-five thousand dollars. That's all he had wanted. A little money. To get free. To get away from Nana and her psychiatrists. From Oliver and his … well, lust. From the whole world that held him down, that pinned him to the ground with its bullshit details. But the FB-fucking-I, in its wisdom, had thought it was all some kind of big-time mafia scam. They had thought they were finally going to bag Fernando Woodlawn …

So they had sent in their agent. They had sent in their goddamned bitch of an agent to impersonate Fernando's courier, Nancy Kincaid.

Oh, she had been good; he had to hand that to her. There was no doubt about it. She had the ID cards all made up; credit cards, a driver's license. And she had a kind of girlish patter that was all very convincing, very true to form. If he hadn't been so nervous about the whole thing, he probably never would have caught on to her in the first place. He would have taken the packet of money from her, handed over the photographs … And the next thing he knew he would have had a .38 down his throat and a hot-eyed federal bitch screaming in his face that he was under arrest.

But he had outsmarted them. He had outsmarted them all. He had talked the federal bitch into his car. Then he had jammed his automatic into her belly and searched her. The minute he found the listening device in her blouse, he had known she was a cop, no matter what she said. He had hit the gas hard, sped away from the scene. He had taken them all by surprise and lost whatever backup she had brought along.

Then he took her to the mews. All along, she kept at it; she kept at her patter. She kept claiming that she was really Nancy Kincaid. Oh, she was good all right. And God knows, he wanted to believe her. He was swearing bullets by then, figuring he was finished. Figuring he was going to prison. Prison!

It was his lowest moment, his greatest moment of trial. He seriously considered killing himself. Only his faith in God sustained him then.

Finally, he thought of Aquarius. He still had his stash of the drug under a floorboard in his bedroom at the mews. He just needed a little, just enough to calm him down. He knew he'd promised God, but he figured … just a little, just enough. He had tied the agent girl up in Nana's bedroom. He had resurrected his syringes and the stolen vaccutainers. He gave himself the injection on his knees beside his bed. He wept as he did it, praying for Christ's forgiveness.

And the drug worked wonderfully. In minutes, a great, warm calm descended over him. It was as if the hectic world had been cut away from him. As if everything but himself had been neatly excised and he was floating alone like a cloud in the luscious velvet blue. He could think clearly. Fernando wasn't going to say anything. The creep wouldn't ruin his career over twenty-five thousand bucks. Only the federal agent would testify. She and the Kincaid girl herself were the only ones who could make the case against him. As the drug took hold, he could see it all. He could see the connections clearly. All the connections everywhere. He was going into a sort of synaptic ecstasy. That was when he had developed his perfect plan.

He went to work at once. He killed the agent first. He overdosed her with the drug. He began by just doping her with it, hoping it would get her to talk, to give him more information about the case against him. But she was a tough girl, unfortunately. She would not surrender to him. Even as she was going under, she was still claiming to be Nancy Kincaid. Even as she began hallucinating, she kept up her patter. Finally, in disgust, he had simply pumped his whole stash into her. It was enough to turn her brain to Cream of Wheat. Hell, it was enough to cook it up hot and steamy for breakfast. But she had hung on. Christ. Tough. Tough as nails, he had to give her that. She had kept repeating her cover story until she was unconscious. She had babbled about being Nancy Kincaid even after she had gone under. Then she just lay there. Wheezing. The drug paralyzing her lungs. Pushing her heart to the point of explosion …

So Zach had left her there to die. And he had gone off to find the real Nancy Kincaid.

He smiled wider—he almost laughed—remembering that. That part had been just hilarious.

By then, the drug had spread all through him. He was in a kind of mystic wonderland. Everything had Meaning, nothing was simply what it seemed. And he had felt no fear.

He had taken the Kincaid girl's address from the agent's license. He had gone to her building and announced himself as Officer Toody Muldoon. She had almost been expecting him. He had walked right up to her and talked her right down into his car. And they were off. It was as easy as that. By the time he got the Kincaid girl back to the mews, his life, his mind, his soul, were a single symphony of comprehension. He had tied the real Nancy Kincaid to the bed in mental ecstasy. Now, as he climbed the library stairs, he could only recapture the faintest trace of it. He could only mourn the passing of its transcendent beauty. And of that electric moment when he had made his first entry into the flesh of the pleading girl …

The bell in the clocktower tolled again. And again as the two brothers climbed. It had tolled itself out by the time they reached the landing.

Zachary stopped there. He stood at the crest of the stairs. He sighed wistfully.

Oliver moved on into the library's long, thin upper room. Zach stood and watched him. The familiar shape of him, the old movements. Zach watched him fondly. When Oliver came to a stop near the center of the room, he stood slumped, his head hanging. Shelves and shelves of books lined the walls on either side of him. Above him, in the imposts of the low arches, bodiless heads, staring faces, gazed down at them both. Music reached them faintly from the parade. Faces in stained-glass windows shimmered.

Once again, Zachary felt his love for Oliver rise in a flood. Oliver was going to save him again, as he had since the beginning of this, out on Long Island. Oliver was going to kill himself up here. Remorse for the Kincaid killing and the killing of the agent was going to overcome him. It would be a point-blank wound delivered in his own workroom, a room to which only he had the key. A clear suicide. And in all the confusion outside, with his face hidden under his cap, and his colored shirt under his coat, no one would remember seeing Zachary come in here with him or leave.

They would only remember King Death. It was eight o'clock now. King Death was passing the library outside, right on time. Zach would put the bullet in his brother and rush downstairs to make the switch with Tiffany in the trees in the library lot. With the skull mask on, she had pretended to be him, even with his friends from the magazine. They—and tens of thousands of onlookers—would be able to say that they had seen Zachary as King Death in the street outside when the killing was going on in here.

He smiled in the library dark. He could almost feel a trace of that mystical comprehension. The incredible syncretic revelation that had hit him when he formed this plan. When he had called Tiffany on the phone to explain her part to her, he had been practically giggling with the excitement, with the truth of it all. She had been in her bookstore nearby. Sitting in the back of the closed store waiting for him to show up with the money. When he called her to tell her what had happened, to explain his plan, she became hysterical.
But it's not a good plan, Zach!
she kept saying.
It can't work, it's crazy, it's a crazy plan! Everything is crazy!
She just didn't see it, at first. The way it worked. King Death. Ollie. The library. The dead women in the mews. Symbolically, it was perfect. Symbolically, it just all made so much sense.
Just don't forget
, he said, sending his rhythmic, persuasive tones into the mews phone,
eight o'clock. That's the Animal Hour. You see? It all makes sense. You won't forget now, will you? You have to be there. Eight o'clock exactly. That's when he's going to die.

Now then, the hour had come. Zach lifted the automatic out from under his quilted shirt. He felt so wistful, so sad. He loved his big brother so much just then. He extended his arm, leveled the gun at Oliver's back. He smiled fondly. His eyes were damp with sentimental tears.

Oliver turned around. He faced Zachary across the long room. He saw the gun and he stiffened a little, straightened a little. Even in the dark, Zach saw him open his mouth. He heard him catch his breath, as if he were surprised.

Zach's smile widened to a grin of affection. He shook his head. He laughed a little teasingly.

“Oh come on, Ollie,” he said, his voice sudden and loud in the library quiet. “Don't look at me like that. You always knew.”

A
bove the trees, beneath the gibbous moon, the steepled clocktower of the library tolled the time. The woman in the domino mask ran toward it wildly.

She could barely think for the pain now. The fire in her lungs. The electric streaks up her legs. The numbing ache across her back. Still, she pumped her arms, clutching her gun.

Stay alive, Oliver.

She pistoned her knees, spitting grunts through gritted teeth. She wept with the effort, peering through the tears. Peering through the eyeholes of the blinking mask.

Stay. Please.

She saw revelers jumping aside as she charged toward them. She saw Death again, the great paper skeleton, dancing in the air above thousands of upraised faces. She saw the onlookers clustered on the library steps. She saw it all through sheets of liquid red, and she heard the parade music broken into pieces: jangling, tuneless shards that seemed to be raining down around her. She ran, weeping. Black inside. She did not know who she was. She was black and twisted.

Stay alive!

“Oh!” she cried aloud in the agony of running.

Oliver.

Christ, she could not go on. She did not know who she was, and she wished she were dead rather than not knowing. It was so much blackness. So much blackness inside her, filling her. She ran faster, letting out another cry of pain. She ran as if the gargoyles were still after her; beating the air behind her with stone wings; bearing down on her with alabaster claws. The bell tolled yet again.

She had to elbow people out of her way now. The crowd was closing around her. Bright streaks of claustrophobic panic lanced her as she was surrounded by faces. So many faces, with melting cheeks and bloodshot eyes, sparse hair, vicious grins. They pressed in on her, thick as grass. Masks of torment. Men as women. Women as warty hags. She shoved her way toward the library steps, panting and sobbing at once. She twisted, waving the gun in the air. Just let him be alive, she thought, looking up at the library doors. And the thought, every thought, was washed away by the uncontrollable scream—
I don't know who I am!
—that sounded in the blackness of her.

Now she worked her way up the steps. Grabbing at people with her hand. Grabbing their arms, their shoulders. Pulling herself up by them, climbing over them. The bell tolled again. She heard them laughing at her. Shouting at her. Cursing. Her head rung with the shattered music of the parade. She felt the shadow of the great skeleton like a weight on top of her. She heard the wings of the gargoyles at her back, coming closer. She climbed toward the doors, thinking,
Still alive! Still alive! Oh please! Oh please!

She was at the door. She was clutching the entrance bar in her hand. She was on one knee, trying to get up, trying to stand.

Locked. It'll be locked
, she thought. The tears poured out around the sides of her electric mask. She moaned. Dragged herself to her feet, leaned against the door.

It swung open. She tumbled through it, fell inside. She heard people shouting at her. The cacophony of the parade. The wings of gargoyles. Again, she climbed to her feet. Slowly, behind her, the door swung shut with a pneumatic hiss. The noise of the crowd grew faint. The darkness grew thick in the recesses before her. She leaned against a gray wall, fighting painfully for breath. Her body convulsed with sobs. Her face was streaked with tears.

The bell in the tower tolled again, one final time. The sound seemed very far away. And then it was gone. It dissipated in the air. The quiet closed in around her, folded down over her. And she thought: