The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

his hands that seemed to indicate the line of people. There was a conference between the three people, and then the nun turned and went into the building. Lights were set up, and the reporter and his team began walking down the line of people, interviewing those who were willing.

Five minutes later the nun returned with a short man with long, greasy black hair liberally streaked with gray, who walked with a slight stoop. Even from where I was standing, I could see the ugly red and white scars on the man's face, and he wore dark glasses-which he slowly and dramatically removed as the lights came on, the camera focused on him, and the reporter stepped up to him with a microphone.

That, I thought with a grim smile, would be Harry August, obviously a con man par excellence. Untold numbers of readers of The National Eye no doubt believed that my brother had cured Harry August of total blindness, and now the credulity of a broader television audience was to be tested; there was no doubt in my mind that a lot of them would believe it too. As my mother was fond of saying, some people will believe anything.

I waited across the street for more than an hour, but still saw no sign of Garth. People continued to file into the building, and very few came out; those who did were dressed in clean clothes, looked as if they had washed, and walked considerably straighter. Finally the line of people began to thin out and shorten, and Carling seemed ready to take a break. He stepped over to the curb, lit a cigarette.

Now I stepped out of the shadows and walked quickly across the traffic circle. Carling saw me coming, flicked away his cigarette, and held out his hand.

'Mongo!' Tommy Carling said brightly.

'Where's my brother, Carling?' I said coldly as I stepped up on the curb outside the entrance to the bathhouse, ignoring the other man's outstretched hand.

Carling shrugged, then made the same gesture I had seen him make earlier with the television reporter. 'I don't know. He's not back yet.'

'Back from where?'

'He's walking the streets with Marl and a few of the Guardian Angels; they're looking for more people to take in for the night.'

'Marl? Braxton's here?'

The male nurse nodded.

'Braxton's dangerous, Carling. You told me that yourself; you said he was the most dangerous man in the clinic. You're supposed to be a Goddamn mental health professional. What the hell are you doing parading around with this freak show?'

'Freak show, Mongo?' Carling said softly.

'I'm not talking about these poor people, Carling, and you know it! I want to know why you let my brother go off walking the streets with a potential killer!'

'Marl isn't dangerous any longer, Mongo,' he replied easily. 'Except, perhaps, to anyone who tried to harm Garth. That hasn't happened yet, and I don't believe it ever will. Marl is Garth's protector, not his enemy.'

'Carling, you son-of-a-bitch, why couldn't you at least have picked up a phone and told me that Garth was with you, and that he was all right?'

The big man with the pony tail flushed slightly, dropped his gaze. 'I guess I should have,' he said softly.

'You're damn right you should have! How the hell do you think my parents and I have felt all these months, not knowing whether Garth was dead or alive?'

'I. . wasn't sure what your attitude would be, or what might happen if the D.I.A. got hold of him again. I knew. . what Slycke was planning to do, and I just couldn't let that happen. If there was any chance that Dr. Slycke might somehow still manage to-'

'What the hell are you talking about? Slycke's dead.'

Tommy Carling looked at me, his mouth slightly open. He shook his head, swallowed. 'What did you say?'

'You didn't know?'

'That Dr. Slycke is dead? Of course not. How did it happen? When?'

'Is there someplace we can talk?'

Carling nodded, then gestured toward the entrance to the bathhouse. I followed him inside, through a group of bag people who were still clustered at the entrance. I stopped just inside the entrance and looked around, stunned by what I saw.

The interior of the building, that part which I could see, was huge; with all of the interior walls gutted, the space I found myself in looked as big as an airplane hangar. There was a lot of scaffolding spiderwebbing the interior space, and anchored to a stone balcony which went all around the hall. The entire roof of the building had been removed, and was now covered with layers of heavy plastic sheeting. Everything looked spotless-scrubbed where it was stone and freshly painted where it was wood. The line of people outside led directly to a long, gleaming counter where stew was being served out of huge, steaming cooking pots by men and women in green, logo-emblazoned jackets or headbands. People ate off paper plates in one section of the vast hall, while in another people rested in neat, tightly packed rows on air mattresses, covered by khaki army surplus blankets which looked new. At the far end of the hall, men and women wearing pale brown robes and paper slippers, with towels draped over their shoulders, emerged from two sets of swinging doors which exuded faint wisps of steam. The men and women filed behind separate partitions, emerged dressed in clothes that were obviously used, but clean. Then they left, or went to get food, or went to rest on an air mattress and blanket, which were being distributed by the nun.

Music, unobtrusive but still clearly audible, filled the hall, piped in through at least a dozen loudspeakers hanging from the stone balcony. Siegfried.

Men and women who were either doctors or paramedics moved quietly among the people on the air mattresses, checking throats, answering questions, listening to heartbeats, occasionally giving out something from the black leather bags they carried. Like the other workers, the medical people wore the distinctive green jackets or headbands.

There was a strange odor in the air, rising above all the other odors, which caught my attention, but which I could not immediately identify. Outside the building, there had been the smell of the streets and unwashed bodies; inside was the smell of soap, disinfectant, steam, paint, washed stone, medicine, plastic, coffee, hot food-but the smell that had caught my attention was none of these. I found the odor vaguely ominous.

'What the hell?' I murmured.

'Are you impressed, Mongo?' Tommy Carling asked quietly.

'Who runs this place?'

'Everybody; nobody.'

'Who owns the building?'

'It belongs to Garth; the deed is registered in his name.'

'Oh, yeah? Not bad for a guy who's never had more than two thousand dollars in the bank, and who hasn't even been bothering to pick up his disability checks.'

'The money comes from many sources, Mongo. God provides. Shall we go someplace where it's quieter?'

I followed Carling across the hall, through a maze of pipe scaffolding, through a door and into a medium-sized office. Like everything else, it had been freshly painted. There was a desk, and a couple of chairs. The entire wall behind the desk was covered with a rendering of the rings-and-knife logo. Siegfried was playing here, too.

'You mind turning off that music?'

Carling sat down behind the desk, turned a rheostat on the wall; the music grew softer, but continued to play. 'It always plays,' Carling said simply, motioning for me to sit down in one of the straight-backed chairs. 'We prefer it that way. We've learned from Garth to let that music serve to remind us of all that needs to be done; it focuses the concentration.'

'I find it distracting.'

Carling shrugged. 'Yes, well; there's the difference, I guess.'

'What difference?'

'Between you and us.'