them and knocking on the door.
Music played within. An up-tempo number. Possibly swing. He couldn't quite identify the tune.
As Junior was about to knock again, the door flew inward, and over Sinatra having fun with 'When My Sugar Walks Down the Street,' Victoria said, 'You're early, I didn't hear your car-' She was speaking as she pulled the door open, and she cut herself off in midsentence When she stepped up to the threshold and saw who stood before her.
She looked surprised, all right, but her expression wasn't the one that Junior had painted on the canvas of his imagination. Her surprise had no delight in it, and she didn't at once break into a radiant smile.
For an instant, she appeared to be frowning. Then he realized this couldn't be a frown. It must be a smoldering look of desire.
In tailored black slacks and a form-hugging, apple-green cotton sweater, Victoria Bressler fulfilled all the voluptuous promise that Junior had suspected lay under her looser-fitting nurse's uniform. The V-necked sweater suggested a glorious depth of cleavage, though only a tasteful hint of it was on display; nothing about this beauty could be called cheap.
'What do you want?' she asked.
Her voice was flat and a little hard. Another man might have mistaken her tone for disapproval, for impatience, even for quiet anger.
Junior knew that she must be teasing him. Her sense of play was delicious. Such deviltry in her scintillant blue eyes, such sauciness.
He held forth the single red rose. 'For you. Not that it compares. No flower could.'
Still relishing her little pretense of rejection, Victoria did not touch the rose. 'What kind of woman do you think I am?'
'The exquisite kind,' he replied, glad that he had read so many books on the art of seduction and therefore knew precisely the right thing to say.
Grimacing, she said, 'I told the police about your disgusting little come-on with the ice spoon.'
Thrusting the red rose at her again, insistently pressing it against her hand to distract her, Junior swung the Merlot, and just as Sinatra sang the word sugar with a bounce, the bottle smacked Victoria in the center of her forehead.
Chapter 33
Our lady of sorrows, quiet and welcoming in the Bright Beach night, humble in dimension, without groin vaults and grand columns and cavernous transepts, restrained in ornamentation, was as familiar to Maria Elena Gonzalez-and as comforting-as her own home. God was everywhere in the world, but here in particular. Maria felt happier the instant she stepped through the entrance door into the narthex.
The Benediction service had concluded, and the worshipers had departed. Gone, too, were the priest and the altar boys.
After adjusting the hairpin that held her lace mantilla, Maria passed from the narthex into the nave She dipped two fingers in the holy water that glimmered in the marble font, and crossed herself.
The air was spicy with incense and with the fragrance of the lemon oil polish used on the wooden pews.
At the front, a soft spotlight a focused on the life-size crucifix. The only additional illumination came from the small bulbs over the stations of the cross, along both side walls, and from the flickering flames in the ruby glass containers on the votive-candle rack.
She proceeded down the shadowy center aisle, genuflected at the chancel railing, and went to the votive rack.
Maria could afford a do donation of only twenty-five cents per candle, but she gave fifty, stuffing five one- dollar bills and two quarters into the offering box.
After lighting eleven candles, all in the name of Bartholomew Lampion, she took from a pocket the torn playing cards. Four knaves of spades. Friday night, she had ripped the cards in thirds and had been carrying the twelve pieces with her since then, waiting for this quiet Sunday evening.
Her belief in fortune-telling and in the curious ritual she was about to undertake weren't condoned by the Church. Mysticism of this sort was, in fact, considered to be a sin, a distraction from faith and a perversion of it.
Maria, however, lived comfortably with both the Catholicism and the occultism in which she had been raised. In Hermosillo, Mexico, the latter had been nearly as important to the spiritual life of her family as had been the former.
The Church nourished the soul, while the occult nourished the imagination. In Mexico, where physical comforts were often few and hope of a better life in this world was hard won, both the soul and the imagination must be fed if life was to be livable.
With a prayer to the Holy Mother, Maria held one third of a knave of spades to the bright flame of the first candle. When it caught fire, she dropped the fragment into the votive glass, and as it was consumed, she said aloud, 'For Peter,' referring to the most prominent of the twelve apostles.
She repeated this ritual eleven more times-'For Andrew, for James, for John'-frequently glancing into the nave behind her, to be sure that she was unobserved.
She had lighted one candle for each of eleven apostles, none for the twelfth, Judas, the betrayer. Consequently, after burning a fragment of the cards in each votive glass, she was left with one piece.
Ordinarily, she would have returned to the first of the candles and offered a second fragment to Saint Peter. In this case, however, she entrusted it to the least known of the apostles, because she was sure that he must have special significance in this matter.
With all twelve fragments destroyed, the curse should have been lifted from little Bartholomew: the threat of the unknown, violent enemy who was represented by the four knaves. Somewhere in the world, an evil man existed who would one day have killed Barty, but now his journey through life would take him elsewhere. Eleven saints had been given twelve shares of responsibility for lifting this curse.
Maria's belief in the efficacy of this ritual was not as strong as her faith in the Church, but nearly so. As she leaned over the votive glass, watching the final fragment dissolve into ashes, she felt a terrible weight lifting from her.
When she left Our Lady of Sorrows a few minutes later, she was convinced that the knave of spades-whether a human monster or the devil himself-would never cross paths with Barty Lampion.
Chapter 34
Down she went, abruptly and hard, with a clatter and thud, her natural grace deserting her in the fall, though she regained it in her posture of collapse.
Victoria Bressler lay on the floor of the small foyer, left arm extended past her head, palm revealed, as though she were waving at the ceiling, right arm across her body in such a way that her hand cupped her left breast. One leg was extended straight, the other knee drawn up almost demurely. If she had been nude, lying against a backdrop of rumpled sheets or autumn leaves, or meadow grass, she would have had the perfect posture for a Playboy centerfold.
Junior was less surprised by his sudden assault on Victoria than by the failure of the bottle to break. He was, after all, a new man since his decision on the fire tower, a man of action, who did what was necessary. But the bottle was glass, and he swung forcefully, hard enough that it smacked her forehead with a sound like a mallet cracking against a croquet ball, hard enough to put her out in an instant, maybe even hard enough to kill her, yet the Merlot remained ready to drink.
He stepped into the house, quietly closed the front door, and examined the bottle. The glass was thick, especially at the base, where a large punt-a deep indentation-encouraged sediment to gather along the rim rather
