the layers of special cosmetic. Davenport had ripped it. Davenport had destroyed Beauty. Bekker froze, was gone…
A bum came up, saw him in the doorway.
'Hey,' the bum said, blocking the sidewalk, and Bekker came back. The bum was not particularly large, but he looked as though he'd been hit often and wasn't afraid to be hit again. Bekker wasn't buying it.
'Fuck off,' he bawled, his teeth showing. The bum stepped aside, suddenly afraid, and Bekker went by like a draft of Arctic air. Cursing to himself, Bekker turned the corner, waited for a moment, then stepped back to see if the bum was coming after him. He wasn't. Bekker went on to the Lacey building, muttering, growling, crying. He let himself in the front door, hurried down the basement, dropped into his reading chair.
Davenport in town.The fear gripped him for a moment and he flashed back to the trial, Davenport's testimony, the detective staring at him the whole time, challenging him… Bekker lived through the testimony, mind caught, tangled in the random sparking of his mind… And he came back, with a sigh.
What? He had a package on his lap. He looked at it in puzzlement, dumped it. The book. He'd forgotten. Final Cuts: Torture Through the Ages. The book was filled with illustrations of racks and stakes, of gibbets and iron maidens. Bekker wasn't interested. Torture was for freaks and perverts and clowns. But near the end of it…
Yes.A photo taken in the 1880s. A Chinese man, the caption said, had assassinated a prince, and had been condemned to the death of a thousand cuts. The executioners had been slicing him to pieces as the photo was taken.
The dying man's face was radiant.
This was what he'd sought in his own work, and here it was, in a century-old photo. This was the light, the luminance of death, pouring from the face of the Chinese man. It wasn't pain-pain was disfiguring: he knew that from his work. He'd been doing his own photography, but had never achieved anything like this. Perhaps it was the old black-and-white film, something special about it.
Bekker sat and gnawed his thumb, Davenport forgotten, obliterated by the importance of this discovery. Where did the aura come from? The knowledge of death? Of the imminence of it? Was that why old people, at the edge, were often described as radiant? Because they knew the end was there, they could see it, and understood there was no eluding it? Was the knowledge of impending death a critical point? Could that be it? An intellectual function, somehow, or an emotional release, rather than an autonomic one?
Too excited to sit, he dropped the book and took a turn around the room. The matchbox was there, in his pocket; three pills. He gobbled them, then looked at the now empty box. Here was a crisis. He'd have to go back out. He'd been putting it off, but now…
He glanced at his watch. Yes. Whitechurch would be working.
He stopped in the bathroom, clumsily fished himself out of the pants, peed, flushed, rearranged himself, then went to the telephone. He knew the number by heart and punched it in. A woman's voice answered.
'Dr. West, please,' Bekker said.
'Just a moment, please, I'll page.'
A moment later: 'West.' The voice was cool, New Jersey, and corroded. The voice of a fixer.
'I need some angels,' Bekker breathed; he used a breathy voice with Whitechurch.
'Mmm, that's a problem. I'm short. I've got plenty of white, though, and I've got crosses. Almost none of the other,' Whitechurch said. He sounded anxious. Bekker was an exceptional customer, white, careful, and paid in cash. A Connecticut schoolteacher maybe, peddling to the kids.
'That's difficult,' Bekker said. 'How much of the white?'
'I could give you three.'
'Three would be good. How many crosses?'
'Thirty? I could do thirty.'
'Good. When? Must be soon.'
'Make it a half-hour.'
'Excellent, half an hour,' Bekker breathed, and hung up.
When he'd cleaned out the basement, he'd found a pile of discarded sports equipment-a couple of dried-out leather first baseman's mitts with spiderwebs in the pockets; a half-dozen bats, all badly marred, and one split; a deflated basketball; mold- and dirt-covered baseball shoes with rusted metal spikes; two pairs of sadly abused sneakers; and even a pair of shorts, a tank top and a jock. He'd thrown it all in a long box with a Frisbee, a croquet set and a couple of broken badminton racquets. He'd pushed the box into a dark corner. Anybody looking into it could see all the junk with a glance; nothing good; nothing you'd even want to touch.
Bekker had sliced a C-shaped hatch in the bottom of the basketball and stashed his cash inside. Now he picked up the ball, took out three thousand dollars and carefully put the ball back.
After a quick check in the mirror, he climbed the stairs to the ground floor and padded to the back. Just as he reached the back door, the old woman's voice floated down the stairs. 'Alex…?'
Bekker stopped, thought about it, then exhaled in exasperation and walked back across the darkened floor to the staircase. 'Yes?'
'I need the special pills.' Her voice was shadowy, tentative.
'I'll get them,' Bekker said.
He went back down to his apartment, found the brown bottle of morphine, shook two into his hand, and climbed back up the stairs, talking to himself. Images of the deathly radiance played through his mind, and, preoccupied, he nearly stumbled into Bridget Land. Land was standing at the base of the stairs that led up to Edith Lacey's apartment.
'Ah,' she said, 'I was just leaving, Alex… You have Edie's medicine?'
'Yes, yes…' Bekker kept his face turned away, head down, tried to brush past.
'Are the pills illegal? Are they illegal drugs?' Land asked. She had squared herself up to him, her chin lifted, tight, catching his shirt sleeve as he passed her. She had smart, dark eyes that picked at him.
Bekker, his voice straining, nodded and said, 'I think so… I get them from a friend of hers. I'm afraid to ask what they are.'
'What are you…' Land began, but Bekker was climbing the stairs away from her. At the top of the stairs, he glanced back, and Land was turning away, toward the door.
'Please don't tell,' Bekker said. 'She's in pain…'
'Did you see Bridget?' Mrs. Lacey asked.
'Yes, down below…' He got a glass of water and carried the pills to Mrs. Lacey. She gulped them greedily, hands trembling, smacking her lips in the water.
'Bridget asked me if these were illegal drugs. I'm afraid she might call the police,' Bekker said.
Mrs. Lacey was horrified. 'You mean…'
'They are illegal,' Bekker said. 'You could never get these in a nursing home.'
'Oh no, oh no…' The old woman rocked, twisting her gnarled, knobby fingers.
'You should call her. Give her time to get home, and talk to her,' Bekker said.
'Yes, yes, I'll call her…'
'Her number's on the emergency pad, by the telephone,' Bekker said.
'Yes, yes…' She looked up at him, her thin skin papery and creased in the moody light.
'Don't forget…'
'No…' And then: 'I can't find my glasses.'
He found them near the kitchen sink; handed them to her without a word. She bobbed her head in thanks and said, 'My glasses, my glasses,' and shuffled toward the TV. 'Have you seen… No, you don't watch. I saw Arnold on the news.'
Arnold Schwarzenegger. She expected him any day to clean the crooks out of New York.
'I've got to go.'
'Yes, yes…' She waved him away.
'Call Bridget,' Bekker said.
'Yes…' From the side, her face glowed blue in the light from the television screen, like a black-light painting. Like the face of the dying Chinese…
Ultraviolet.
