Two Songs This Archangel Sings

'The hole could have been plastered over, or covered with something. I take bullets most seriously-but remember that this is New York, and that area where Kendry lives is zooier than most. That bullet hole could have been there for months, even years. Now, do you want me to send a car to pick you up?'

'No,' I answered curtly. I thought Garth was being totally unreasonable, not to mention callous, and it was beginning to make me angry. 'I'm already downtown, and I can probably get there faster on my own. The shot had to have been fired sometime yesterday; it's why Veil left. Why don't you come down here? Maybe if you see-'

'Whoa, brother,' Garth interrupted, impatience creeping into his voice. 'You may think I'm turning off on this thing because I don't like Kendry.'

'Are you, Garth?'

'Just stop and think a moment. You tell me nothing in the loft has been disturbed. The police can't go in there, and I can't file a missing persons report, just because your buddy didn't keep an appointment. As a matter of fact, you shouldn't be up there right now.'

'What about the money, Garth? And the painting? I know this sounds crazy, but it occurs to me that it's almost as if he couldn't decide whether or not to ask for my help, so he left it all up to chance-first, whether I'd even notice that the door was open and come up to the loft, and then whether I'd find the things he left for me.'

'You're right. It sounds crazy.'

'Well, I did find those things.'

'Only because you're outrageously nosy.'

'The painting has to be some kind of clue.'

'A clue to what?'

'Maybe to where he's gone, and why.'

'And what is it that you think he wants you to do?' Garth sounded as if he were talking to a child.

'I don't know, Garth,' I said, time pressure and frustration combining to squeeze my voice into a kind of plaintive whine. Garth thought I was being absurd, and in a way I could see his point. But he hadn't looked down into the secret compartment beneath the floor and seen the painting, or found the envelope with my name on it and ten thousand dollars inside; he hadn't seen the empty brackets or smelled the machine oil. 'The only thing I can figure is that he may want me to search for him.'

'Ah, yes, a little game of hide and seek. Are you listening to yourself? If Kendry wanted something from you, why wouldn't he just say so? Why play games?'

Of course, I didn't have an answer. 'Garth, I just have this feeling.'

'Get rid of it,' Garth replied in a low, very serious tone. He paused, sighed heavily. 'Mongo, my beloved brother, you think somebody snatched Kendry?'

'I didn't say that.'

'Good, because it would take a battalion of men to do that, and that place would be torn apart. You listen to me carefully. Kendry never got in touch with you, and you haven't been hired to do anything. The university, on the other hand, pays you good money to play professor, and in a very short time you're supposed to deliver a very important lecture. Get your ass out of there.'

'Garth, the envelope with the cash was addressed to me!'

'I don't care if it was addressed to Mary Poppins. It sounds to me like you just about had to tear the place apart to find it, which means that it doesn't belong to you. You're already trespassing; if you take anything out of there, some people might call you a burglar and a thief. Besides, you're the one who once told me that Kendry often drops out of sight for long periods of time.'

'That's true, but he'd always let me know when he was leaving so that I wouldn't count on our Wednesday night workouts.'

'So? This time he forgot.'

'Garth-'

'Did he ever tell you where he was going?'

'No.'

'You never asked?'

'Veil's a very private man.'

'Right. This is the private man whose loft you're tearing up and looting while he's away taking care of some private business.'

'Come on, Garth, be serious. At least stop being ridiculous. Why the hell would he leave without turning off the lights and locking the door?'

'You be serious. Kendry's a loony, Mongo. In fact, he's even loonier than you think he is.'

The smell of machine oil was still in my nostrils, and something in Garth's voice-perhaps a warning-gave me pause. 'Meaning what? Why is Veil even loonier than I think he is?'

'Never mind; he just is. Now turn off the lights and lock up that loft, brother, after you've put everything back exactly the way you found it. Later, after you've taken care of the other little item on your agenda for today, I want you to go home and write 'I will mind my own business' one hundred times on your blackboard.'

'Veil's in serious trouble, Garth, and he needs my help. I know it.'

'Shit. You're going to go looking for him, aren't you?' 'Well, not right now. I've got a lecture to deliver, remember? See you later, brother.'

3

The university was a lot closer than my apartment, so I went directly there and managed to be only twenty minutes late. From the looks of the packed auditorium, just about everyone had hung around considerably longer that any of my graduate students would have if I'd been late for a lecture. Walking through the building to the appropriate backstage entrance would have taken another three or four minutes, so I made a grand entrance from the rear of the auditorium. Holding a still-wet oil painting by the frame in one hand and a gym bag containing two towels, a change of socks, and ten thousand dollars in cash in the other, one unshaven and thoroughly grimy dwarf dressed in an orange sweat suit and dirty sneakers marched briskly down the center aisle and up onto the stage. There was scattered, uncertain applause as I set down the gym bag and painting, then stepped behind the lectern and up on the stool placed there for my convenience. I found myself looking out over a sea of puzzled and disapproving police-officer-type faces. To my right, ten rows back, I spotted the university chancellor; he did not look pleased. Next to the chancellor sat the head of my department; she did not look pleased, either. Garth had obviously arrived too late to get a seat, because he was standing up at the back, leaning against a windowsill. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was shaking his head as he rolled his eyes heavenward. Showtime.

There was nothing to do but apologize for being late, leave the matter of my somewhat unconventional appearance a mystery, and get on with it-which is what I did. Fortunately, lurid tales of sex and violence, however professionally and flatly offered, are always crowd pleasers, and sex and violence were what this talk was all about; the crowd of cops and academicians seemed pleased. I thought I had a few valuable things to say to them, and they seemed to agree. My audience sat attentively through a dry presentation of charts, statistical tables, graphs, and maps as they listened to stories of the grisly, blood-soaked scenes and episodes that had spawned the data. This was the stuff of nightmares in which I had been immersed for the better part of a year and a half, since what I thought of as my return to the real world from our parents' farm, where Garth and I had spent six months recuperating from our mind-bending and body-breaking excursion into a terrifying world of criminals, fools, and madmen.

Garth and I, with a lot of help from a decidedly odd assortment of friends, had managed to survive the Valhalla Project, and the experience had brought two close brothers even closer together. However, what could very well have been a sneak preview of the end of the world as we know it had changed both of us forever, initially plummeting us into a deep depression. We'd emerged from that bone-deep melancholy when we'd finally realized, and accepted, the fact that there was nothing to do but go on with our lives, immerse ourselves in our work, and try to be decent and just men.