Down These Strange Streets

for a table, he’d discount it out of hand. When they walked through the glassand-chrome doors, Mason expected the woman at the maitre d’ station to ask if they’d like a reservation for next month, but instead, she’d shown them back to a little cream-colored alcove with an art deco halogen lamp suspended from wires above the table. So maybe Scarrey knew something.

“What’s good here?” Mason asked, looking over the menu. Fourteendollar BL T. Forty-dollar lamb shank.

“I usually get the salad with feta on the side,” Scarrey said.

“Right,” Mason said.

“There’s a coffee-crusted steak that’s good too. You could try that.”

Mason tried to figure out if the guy was joking, and almost decided he wasn’t. And if he was, it would serve him right for making the offer.

“All right. I’ll give it a shot.”

Scarrey waved the waiter over, and they ordered. Their drinks arrived before they’d finished. Scarrey got a European lager. Mason stuck to iced tea, and for iced tea, it wasn’t bad.

“So,” Mason said. “You believe all this stuff. Beleth, King of Hell. Demonic conspiracies. Like that?”

“Absolutely, I do,” Scarrey said. “I’ve seen it. I take it you don’t believe it?”

“I’ve seen a lot of things,” Mason said. “I’m just the cop, though. You want judgment, you want a judge.”

“I’m not sure being on the bench necessarily gives someone a deeper spiritual insight.”

“Amen,” Mason said, and Scarrey caught the joke immediately that time. The maitre d’ looked over at the sound of his laughter, smiled, and turned away.

“I didn’t always believe it,” Scarrey said. “But I hoped. I always hoped.”

“Hoped? That there was a global satanic conspiracy controlling the government and the police so it can sacrifice babies and worship the devil?”

“Well, not when you put it that way. But I hoped that there was a world more magical than my physical, obvious, mundane life. I was like that when I was young. Always looking for something miraculous. A visitation from God. Or a UFO abduction. I wanted to be a vampire all through middle school. Used to stand by my window every night and invite any vampires who happened to be around to come in. They can’t come in unless you invite them, you know. I was a bit ahead of the times on that. I wasn’t picky, though. I just wanted something to turn the world on its head.”

“Sounds like you needed a girlfriend,” Mason said.

“Oh, I did,” Scarrey said. “No, I stumbled into riders because I hoped to.”

“Riders?”

“It’s what people in the trade call them. The things that live just outside the world, trying to get in.”

“Why not just demons?”

Scarrey took a long drink of his lager, his frown drawing lines in his forehead. He smacked his lips.

“What’s the difference between an angel and a demon?” he asked.

“One’s good, the other’s evil.”

“What’s good, though? What’s evil? I mean, yes, you and I agree, I’m sure about almost everything. Hurting people who don’t deserve it is bad, being compassionate is good, and so on and so on. We likely even agree on particular cases. But even if every man and woman and child straight out of the womb agreed that something was a wrong thing to do, does that make it true or absolute? I doubt you’ll find anyone who approves of tuberculosis qua tuberculosis, but we haven’t asked the bacilli’s opinions.”

“So Beleth the King of Hell’s an angel?” Mason said.

“If you agree with him, why not?” Scarrey said. “If he destroys the things that you think should be destroyed and protects the things you want protected. Read the Old Testament; you’ll see that angels are terrible, frightening things. But they work in the service of God, and since you’re reading the Bible, you likely believe that God is good, and so . . . The difference between an angel and a demon is whether you both vote Republican.”

“And how would you agree with something like . . . what we’ve got locked up?”

Scarrey’s face lit up. For a moment, all the ingrained uncertainty and apology and awkwardness were gone. Mason felt like he was seeing someone different from the man who’d come in to see the prisoner.

“That’s the mystery, isn’t it? The mystery, not the puzzle. What kind of man would invite that into himself? One who hates women. One who enjoys sadism, or . . . or finds it reassuring somehow. One who is driven to it by fear.”

“Or is a fucking nutcase,” Mason said.

“Oh, Detective,” Scarrey said, chuckling, “if you don’t like my ideas about good and evil, you aren’t going to be satisfied with my opinions on sanity.”

The food arrived. The steak was black as a lump of coal, with a thick crust that bubbled and sizzled. Steamed carrots and broccoli florets adorned the side of the plate, alternating with the regularity of soldiers in formation. The dab of mashed potatoes smelled of hazelnuts and butter. Mason took a bite of the steak, and his eyes went wide. The forty-dollar price tag made more sense. The waiter put Scarrey’s salad in front of him, and a carved crystal plate with crumbled feta beside it.

“Gentlemen,” the waiter said, “the manager wanted me to tell you that all of this will be complimentary today. If there’s anything else I can get for you, just let me know.”

Scarrey made a little clicking noise with his tongue and teeth and shook his head.

“Tell her that she’s really entirely too kind.”

“Yes, sir,” the waiter said, and backed away with professional and wellpracticed grace.

Mason reevaluated the man across the table from him, but he kept coming back to the same place. Even now, on his home territory, he kept his elbows in at his sides, and he smiled unconsciously, nervously. But the chief could ask favors of him, and fancy restaurants downtown fed him for free. It didn’t fit. Scarrey sensed the attention and fidgeted.

“The manager and I go to the same church,” he said around a mouthful of lettuce. “Your chief attends services there too.”

“Really?” Mason said. “I wouldn’t have made him for the pious type.”

“Unitarian. Do you like the steak?”

Mason took another bite. The burned taste of the coffee crust, the salt and juice of the meat. The blood.

“It’s great.”

* * *

SOBINSKI’S APARTMENT WAS THE UPPER LEFT QUARTER OF A FOURPLEX. THE neighborhood was a mix of lower middle class and the wealthiest ranks of the poor. Dogs ran loose on the street in a ragged pack that watched Mason and Scarrey with the wariness of locals for outsiders. As they walked up the battered steel stairway, footsteps chiming, the smell of cooking sausage wafted up at them from the downstairs apartment. After the steak, it was a little nauseating.

Mason cut the seal, unlocked the door, and let Scarrey through. The place looked the same as it had the first time Mason had seen it. Tiny kitchen. The stovetop hadn’t seen much use, and the door of the microwave was spotted with splatters of brown. Narrow living room with a big flatscreen TV that was the only high-end appliance in the place, a beige carpet that couldn’t hide the drips and stains, and a floral couch with a rip at the side that leaked yellow-white stuffing. Scarrey walked around the rooms slowly, his hands in his pockets. Mason wondered whether it looked different to him, and if it did, how.

“Did you arrest him here?”

“Yeah,” Mason said. “I think he knew it was coming.”

“And he tried to run?”

“Out the back window. Fire escape. We caught him in the alley.”

“Mmm.”

Scarrey went down the two steps’ worth of hall to the bedroom. Single bed, unmade. Dresser with a pile of junk mail and bills. Socks on the floor. Scarrey squatted on the floor, looking under the bed.

“This was where you found the box of occult things?”

“The robe,” Mason said. “A bunch of fucked-up DVDs. Some books. They’re all back in evidence if you want to look at them.”

“That’s all right. There are other boxes down here, though.”