help the young man, but he didn't. He could have called 911, but he didn't. In truth, those ideas never crossed his mind. Kray was a missionary, and like all good missionaries, his mind ran along one track. Missionary zeal precluded any deviation whatsoever from his chosen path. So he stood behind the curtain, watching the world at its lowest, meanest ebb, and took heart, for only at the darkest depths, only when all hope is lost, does the catalyst for change raise a spark that turns into the flare of a thousand suns.
The moment was at hand; he knew it as surely as his heart beat or his lungs took in air. At last, when all movement had ceased, he turned and padded silently away, through a front parlor wrapped in the dust of ages. Everywhere lay teetering stacks of old books, abandoned magazines, forgotten vinyl phonograph records in colorful cardboard jackets. They weren't his, so he didn't feel the compulsion to categorize, alphabetize, catalog them, or even to align their edges so they wouldn't make his teeth grind every time he saw them.
On the paneled hallway walls were hung black-and-white photographs of a girl, not more than twenty, with intelligent, wide-apart eyes. The flattened, slightly grainy images of her face were the result of an extended telephoto lens like those used in police and DEA surveillance. In all the photos, the backgrounds were smeared and blurry. But in one or two could be made out a piece of the flag of the United States.
The kitchen was a cheery shade of yellow. It had wooden cupboards, painted a glossy white. Gaily striped cafe curtains were drawn across the windows. He paused at the soapstone sink, slowly drained a tumbler of cold water, then, after washing the glass with soap and steaming hot water he set it upside down in the precise center of the drainboard. He opened the refrigerator. Inside, all the metal racks had been removed to make room for the girl he'd curled into it, her knees kissing her chin. Her eyes were filmed, her blue-white skin a crush of crepe paper. Her arms were placed on her thighs. Her left hand was missing. Reaching into the triangular space between her heels and her buttocks, he removed a small cloth sack.
Off the kitchen was a small room. Once a pantry, the windowless room was outfitted with a small stainless steel sink, a cupboard straight out of a Grimm fairy tale, a beaten-up chest of drawers salvaged from the street and rehabbed with an exacting attention to detail. At the chest, he opened drawers that were filled neatly with chemical reagents, gleaming scalpels, retractors, sterile syringes, vials of sera all in perfectly neat rows set within mathematically placed metal dividers. He took out a pair of surgical pliers, put it in the right-hand pocket of his overalls.
Reaching up, he opened the cupboard.
'Ah, Carrie, you sense it, don't you?' Kray crooned softly. The pink inside of her mouth was almost erotic. People were so predictable, Kray thought bitterly. But you never knew about Carrie. That was the delicious part of it, like a spice only he knew about. She could wind herself lovingly about his wrist for years and then one day sink her fangs into the meat between his thumb and forefinger. He felt-it was a French word-a
'Dinner is served.' Opening the sack, he dumped the contents into his slightly cupped palm. The rat lay on its side, dazed, lethargic from the cold. Out snaked Carrie's wide, triangular head, its tongue questing. Coiling around Kray's wrist, the viper's demon head hovered over the slowly stirring rat.
'That's right,' Kray sang. 'Eat your fill, baby.'
The forked tongue quivered; the head reared back. Just as the rat, warming, rolled onto its pink feet, Carrie struck, her flat head lanced forward, her fangs sank to the root into the rat's neck. The rat's eyes rolled, it tried to extricate itself, but so powerful was the nerve toxin that it couldn't even move.
Afterwards, Kray returned to the back room, where he drew out a key attached to a loop on his overalls by a stainless steel chain. Inserting the key in the lock, he walked through.
On the other side, he shut the door, locked it carefully behind him, turned, and said to Alli Carson, 'What have they done to you?'
TWELVE
WHEN JACK walks out of Reverend Taske's rectory into the church proper, the first thing he sees is Gus sitting in a pew. His eyes are closed, his lips are moving soundlessly, but the moment Jack tries to glide past, his eyes open, and though he's staring straight ahead, he says, 'First time in a place like this, kid?'
Jack feels a tremor run down his spine. 'You mean a black church?'
Very slowly, Gus turns his head. His eyes are boiling with rage, and Jack shrinks back into the shadows. 'I mean a church, kid.'
Jack, hovering, doesn't know what to say.
'I'm talkin' God here.'
'I don't know anything about God,' Jack says.
'What
Jack shrugs, dumbfounded.
'Huh, smart white kid like you. Think you got all the perks, right?' His lips purse. 'What you doin' in these parts, anyway? Why ain't you tucked away nice an' cozy in yo' own bed?'
'Don't want to go home.'
'Yeah?' Gus raises his eyebrows. 'Rather be beaten up in a alleyway?'
'I'm used to being beaten.'
Gus stares at him for a long time; then he lumbers to his feet. 'Come outta there, kid. Only rats stick to the shadows.'
Jack feels like an insect stuck on flypaper. His muscles refuse to obey Gus's command.
Gus squints. 'Think I'm gonna hurt you? Huh, that already been done real good.'
Jack takes a tentative step forward, even though it means coming closer to the huge man. He smells of tobacco and caramel and Old Spice. Jack's frantic heart lurches into his throat as Gus lays a hand on his shoulder, turns him so that the early morning sun, colored by the handmade stained-glass windows in the church's front, falls on him.
'That little muthafucka Andre.'
He looks up into Gus's eyes and sees a curious emotion he can't quite identify.
'Past time someone taught him an' his crew a lesson, what d'you think?'
Jack feels a paralyzing thrill shoot up his spine.
Gus puts a thick forefinger across his lips. 'Don't tell the rev. Our secret, right?' He winks at Jack.
MEAN STREETS flee before the grilled prow of Gus's massive Lincoln Continental, white as a cloud, long as the wing of a seagull. Jack, perched on the passenger's seat, feels his heart flutter in his chest. His hands tremble on the dashboard. Below them, dials and gauges rise and fall. Gus is so huge, his seat has been jacked to the end of its tracks, the back levered to an angle so low, anyone else would be staring at the underside of the roof.
Beyond the windshield, the climbing sun bludgeons blue shadows into gutters and doorways. The wind sends sprays of garbage through the early morning. Soot rises into miniature tornados. An old woman in garters pushes a shopping cart piled high with junk. An emaciated man, fists clenched at his side, howls at invisible demons. An empty beer bottle rolls into his foot and he kicks it viciously. The old woman scuttles after it, stuffs it into her cart, grunting with satisfaction.
But this ever-changing scene with all its sad detail nevertheless seems distant and dull compared with the interior of the car, which is alive with Gus's fevered presence. It is as if his inner rage has frightened the very molecules of the air around him. It feels hot in the car, despite the roar of the air conditioner, and Jack somehow intuits that this unnatural heat is exceedingly dangerous.
Jack went once to the zoo with his class at school, while he was still going to school. He was both drawn to
