Tales From the Black Chamber, page 15
“Don’t touch that!” said Anne, alarmed.
“Huh?” said Steve, pulling his hand back quickly.
“Hey, I’ve been paying attention in orientation. ‘Black magic, bad,’ right?” she said.
“Right,” said Steve and Joe almost in unison.
“Well, that’s some bad juju,” Anne said, feeling a little like one of the guys, when finally getting to tell them something and to indulge in some dark humor. She then explained, “It’s a main de gloire.”
“Amanda who?” asked Steve.
“A main de gloire. A Hand of Glory.”
“Sick,” said Joe, stepping back.
“A what?” asked Steve. “Remember, I’m just the muscle here.”
“A Hand of Glory,” explained Anne. “You take the severed left hand of a hanged man, desiccate it in some particular salts, and then make a candle out of the fat of his body and set it in the palm. Or just use the fat as fuel to daub on the fingers. See down there, those pointy bits are fingers, and they’re scorched on the ends.”
“That is sick,” said Steve.
“Hey, you’re supposed to be the tough guy,” joked Anne, punching him lightly in the arm.
“I’m just not big on, you know, mutilated corpses. So, what do you do with that?” Steve wondered.
“You rob people,” Anne said, to their evident surprise. “It supposedly has two effects. First, anyone in a house where it’s lit who’s asleep stays asleep until it’s extinguished. Second, it casts light that only you can see.”
“So, uh, does it work?” Joe asked.
“How do I know? Before I ran into you people, I’d have laughed it off as a particularly gruesome superstition. Now, I don’t know. I mean, I doubt it, but do you really want to mess with something like that?”
“Good point,” said Steve. He pulled on a pair of gloves, produced a Ziploc bag, picked up and sealed in the Hand, and gave it to Anne. “You’re the Librarian. This definitely goes in the Archive.”
“Fair enough,” said Anne, gingerly taking the bag by a corner, and slipping the grotesque trophy into the black bag she’d brought.
An hour later, and they’d searched the entire room to no further avail. Anne dropped the Rolodex and the portable phone in her bag to take back to the office to go through for information.
“When this is over, we’ll have to come back and scrub these floorboards,” said Joe.
“My favorite part of the job,” said Steve.
“A Hand of Glory. I wonder if he has a Grimoire of Pope Honorius III. That’s got a main de gloire recipe, I think,” Anne said, mostly to herself, considering it’d be a considerable addition to the Coolidge Foundation’s library, if it were as old as his Key of Solomon. Then, suddenly, she said, “Hey, guys, can we stop at an all-night Duane Reade before we check into a hotel? I really want a facial tonight.”
11
A few days later they were back in D.C. with no further breaks in the case. There were no addresses in the Rolodex or numbers in the phone’s memory that yielded any leads. A general mood of gloom settled back on the Black Chamber, replacing the momentary euphoria of having identified a suspect and brought back such exotica as the Greek grimoire, the scrying tray, and the main de gloire, the last of which John was particularly excited to see, as he’d read a fair bit about them but had never actually seen one. Mike was moved to inaugurate a series of awful puns, beginning with attempting to dub the case “The Hand Job,” which earned him a welt on the back of the head from a fat paperback C++ manual Joe winged at him.
Anne mostly worked on her Memoranda, which were what the Black Chamber called first-person, written accounts of incidents that were submitted to the Historian, who would draw up a complete, edited third-person account to be entered in the Chamber’s History, which also served as a reference. Alas, the History was silent on the topic of medieval necromancy or the lore of Tibet or Mongolia, much less a connection between the two.
That morning, however, Wilhelmina walked into the brainstorming conference with a twinkle in her eye. “I got it,” she said, smiling broadly.
“Got what?” asked Claire.
“I’ve got your next lead,” she said triumphantly.
“Really?” asked John. “Please tell.”
“The little boy.”
“The one I saw in the mirror,” Anne said with a sense of realization.
“Right,” said Wilhelmina. “I figure he’s got to have found the boy somewhere, and he couldn’t have taken off with him or murdered him without someone noticing. I know you said he was black, and in even the poorest parts of the community, you’d have a hard time finding a mother, however degraded or desperate, who’d let her child go off with a strange white man, even a priest.”
“Maybe especially a priest. The papers make them all sound like degenerates. Most of that stuff was in the ’70s and ’80s, though,” said Mike, warming to a topic.
“Mike,” said Joe. “Focus.”
“Right,” said Mike. “So how do we find him?”
“How do you think the bad guy found him?” asked Wilhelmina.
Joe spoke up. “Was he part of a parish? Because if he was, we should check the parochial school.”
“No,” said Mike. “I checked all of his institutional affiliations. He’s a free agent. He’s under the Archdiocese of New York, but they said that he basically does his own thing. He can afford to, as he’s got not only his own money, but a big donor roll, with some heavy hitters in the world of liberal philanthropy. The Ford, Gates, and other foundations, that kind of thing.”
“Oh, hell,” said Claire suddenly. “I know what it is. I was going through his Rolodex, working the contacts. There was one card that said BB&S, and when I called it turned out to be Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. There were a fair number of charitable organizations in there, so I didn’t think twice about it. I’m sorry.”
“Not at all,” said Anne. “None of us thought of it. Including me, who actually saw the kid. Let’s see what we can do.”
The following day, Anne and Claire, again posing as FBI agents, sat across from Judith Weintraub, the director of the Manhattan office of Big Brothers Big Sisters.
“Let me start by repeating again what I said on the phone, Ms. Weintraub,” began Claire. “This is not a criminal matter, nor are we looking to get anyone in trouble. We were asked to look into Monsignor Clairvaux’s disappearance by his concerned colleagues when they couldn’t get in touch with him. We have no reason to believe there’s been any foul play or that his Little Brother would be or has ever been in the least bit of danger. We just want to ask him a few questions to see if he knows anything, and then we’re done.”
“I understand,” said the director. “We’d like to cooperate, which is why we’re talking. Our children’s privacy is of paramount importance to us.”
“We wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Claire.
Anne spoke up. “Can I ask you one question, Ms. Weintraub? Monsignor Clairvaux was obviously a Catholic priest, and I mean, there have been some problems with Catholic priests and little boys, so how exactly did he get approved?”
“I’m not sure I like your tone,” said Ms. Weintraub, “but I understand your concern. First, we don’t regard priests as greater risks than your average unmarried male off the street. The statistics bear that out. That said, before pairing him with a boy, we did do a background check. We spoke to a number of Monsignor Clairvaux’s former girlfriends, and although most of them weren’t particularly well-disposed towards him, to a woman, they all confirmed that he was definitely heterosexual—perhaps voraciously or unpleasantly so—and had no concerns about his taking care of a little boy. And, frankly, he’s proved to be one of our best Big Brothers. He took his Little Brother to museums, art galleries, zoos, music recitals, and even an off-Broadway revival of Little Mary Sunshine that his Little Brother still talks about as being the funniest thing he’s ever seen. He taught the boy the rudiments of playing the piano, and a little French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin. His Little Brother adores him, and since you called, I’ve been worried about the monsignor too.”
Claire and Anne were taken more than a little aback at the director’s encomium to Monsignor Clairvaux. They’d both been expecting him to have acted sinisterly or to have put himself under suspicion. Anne couldn’t think of what to reply, but Claire, rarely at a loss for words, said, “Well, we certainly hope he’s just in a retreat house somewhere outside cell phone range, but it’s our job to check. Would it be ok if we were able to talk to his Little Brother?”
“Since we all understand each other, of course. He’s waiting in the conference room next door.”
Ms. Weintraub picked up a file and led them into the room, where they saw a cherubic, dark-complected black boy of about seven or eight, dressed spiffily in a sweater vest and tie. Anne involuntarily took a half step back in a shock of recognition. His was the face from the mirror. His obviously concerned mother, whose clothes weren’t quite up to the mark of those she’d bought her son, sat with her arm around the back of his chair. Anne, Claire, and Ms. Weintraub all sat down.
The director addressed the little boy. “Darrell, these are Special Agents Sotheby and Thatcher from the FBI. They’re trying to find Monsignor Clairvaux to make sure he’s ok. They just want to ask you a few questions. Is that ok with you?”
“Sure,” said Darrell in a soft voice, but with a lilt betraying a little excitement.
Ms. Weintraub turned to his mother. “Mrs. Green?”
“That’s fine,” Darrell’s mother said, with a little trepidation. Ms. Weintraub nodded to Claire and Anne.
Claire took the lead, as usual. “Hi, Darrell. I’m Special Agent Thatcher of the FBI. You can call me Hilda if you like. Here’s my ID.” He examined it as if it were a precious grown-up thing that he couldn’t quite believe he could play with. “We just want to ask you a few questions about Monsignor Clairvaux. Now, no one’s in trouble, no one is in danger, do you understand?”
Darrell nodded happily, and showed Claire’s FBI badge to his mother, who took it and looked at it intently for a second, then stared closely at Claire. Seemingly satisfied, she handed the ID back to Claire.
“Okay, so Monsignor Clairvaux is your Big Brother, right?”
“Yes. He’s great.”
“So we hear from Ms. Weintraub. You guys do a lot of fun stuff together, it sounds like.”
“Oh yeah! We do everything! We go to the Natural History Museum—last time there was this cool movie about this guy Shackleton and his boat that got stuck in the ice at the South Pole. It was very sad because they had to kill all the dogs that they brought because there wouldn’t be enough food for the poor dogs and they didn’t want to let them starve and the man who took care of the dogs cried. But they got off the South Pole, and not a single person died. I think that Shackleton guy is a hero.”
“I think so, too, Darrell,” Claire said, smiling. All the adults in the room were smiling, even Mrs. Green, parental pride in her eyes. Claire asked, “Have you ever been to Monsignor Clairvaux’s house?” and Mrs. Green’s face darkened again.
“A few times. One time he showed me a book he had about some Aztec guys, because we saw this really scary exhibit of Aztec art at the Guggenheim. And I was really scared of Aztecs. But then he showed me this book, and it was only the art they made that was really scary. They looked just like normal people. Sort of like Indians. Not the India kind, but the American kind.”
Ms. Weintraub put in, “Monsignor Clairvaux asked for our approval any time before inviting Darrell over, and volunteered to have a supervisor present.”
“How many times were you there, Darrell?” asked Claire.
“Um, I don’t know. About ten?”
Ms. Weintraub was looking at a paper from the file she’d brought. “We have one dozen approved visits over a two-year period.”
“Did you ever do anything interesting there?” Claire asked.
“Sure! We played the piano a few times, a couple times Monsignor showed me some magic tricks, and one time he showed me this awesome book about trains he had. It was real big, like one of those table-coffee books, and it had pictures of every kind of train in the world! His one grandfather was an engineer back when all they had were steam engines, but this book has all the diesels and electrics and even had some stuff on the maglev train they have in China and the TGVs in France, those aren’t maglev trains, but regular ones that go about as fast. TGV means train à grande vitesse, which means ‘train of high speed.’”
Claire smiled. “That’s very good! Tu parles français bien.”
“Monsignor Clairvaux est un bon professeur. J’espére que je suis un bon étudiant.”
“I’m sure you are a great student, Darrell,” praised Claire. “Your accent is great and your grammar is perfect.”
Anne leaned in. “Et linguam latinam discis?”
“Disco,” Darrell smiled, very pleased with himself.
“That’s fantastic. I hope you keep up with those languages. They can be really helpful in life,” said Anne.
“The monsignor got Darrell a scholarship through high school in the Catholic school system,” said Mrs. Green. “He’s taking those languages in school now, too.”
“They’re pretty fun,” said Darrell. “But I like math best.”
“Yikes,” said Anne. “Not me. Can I call you when I’m doing my taxes?”
Darrell looked shy. “Sure.”
Claire said, “Darrell, did Monsignor Clairvaux say anything to you before he left town?”
Darrell nodded vigorously.
“And what was that?”
“He said that he was going away for a long time, and he wasn’t sure when he’d be back, but when he came back we’d go to another Yankees game.”
“Did he tell you where he was going?” asked Claire.
“No, not really. Some place up north in Canada.”
Claire and Anne looked at each other in surprise. “Canada?” Claire asked.
“Uh-huh. One of his grandparents or great-grandparents or something used to live up there.”
“Did he mention the name of a town or a province or anything?” Anne asked.
“Nope. Just Canada,” said Darrell. “Do you think he’ll be back soon?”
Anne felt her heart sink. “I don’t know, Darrell. I really don’t. If he does, I’m sure you’ll be one of the first people he calls. But if not, you just keep doing what you’re doing in school, and being good for your mom, and being so polite and gracious to strangers like us. He will be very, very proud.”
“Thanks,” said Darrell.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Darrell,” said Claire, reaching across the table to shake his hand.
“Thank you, the pleasure was mine,” Darrell said carefully, as if trying to remember the pleasantry exactly.
“Mrs. Green, you’ve got an amazing son,” Anne said, shaking her hand as they all stood.
“I know. I wish his father were alive to see him,” she said, choking up a little.
“I’m so sorry,” said Claire, shaking her hand.
“My dad died in Afghanistan,” said Darrell. “He was a Green Beret and he was really brave and he saved six other soldiers and killed nineteen Talibans. They came to our house to thank Mom and me. And then we got a medal for him from the President.”
“Medal of Honor,” said Mrs. Green in a low, tight voice, her eyes bright with tears.
“My dad was a hero. Like Shackleton. Only he died. We were really sad. I still miss him. I wish I remembered him a little better, but I have a great picture the other soldiers gave us.”
Anne swallowed a huge lump in her throat and said, “It sounds like your dad was a great, great hero. I’m really proud to meet his son,” offering her hand for him to shake.
Darrell took it solemnly, then smiled. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Sure,” Anne said, bending down, as he stood on tiptoe and cupped his hand to her ear.
He whispered, “I remember you from the mirror trick.”
Anne whispered back, “I remember you, too,” and then, before she knew what she was doing, she hugged him.
Claire shut off her cell phone and slipped it into her pocket as the Delta shuttle’s stewardesses passed by checking her and Anne’s seat belts.
“What did he say?” asked Anne.
Claire lifted an eyebrow. “Verbatim? He said, ‘Canada? Oh, shit.’”
“John doesn’t like Canada?”
“No, it’s just that we don’t have the slightest jurisdiction in Canada. We’re a branch of the U.S. government. Our legal authority stops at the border.”
“Oh, right. So, does Canada have a, you know, chambre noire?” She spoke softly and circumspectly, though the flight was only half full.
“No. At least we don’t think so.”
“That leads me to a question. Who does have similar agencies?”
“That’s a very good question. Again, we can’t be sure that there aren’t ones out there below the radar, but we know of a handful. The British do, and they have been known to operate in places like Canada and India, so there may be some Imperial or Commonwealth connection. The Russians do, but we’re really not sure what they’re up to these days. In the Soviet days, they were after power and dedicated to stamping out evidence of the supernatural, lest it discredit the state cult of atheism. Nowadays with the whole weird Caesaropapist alignment of the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church, we’re not sure if that’s affected their mission. In fact, it’s possible that they’ve dropped below the Kremlin’s radar. They were part of the GRU, not the KGB, so the Kremlin probably isn’t as wired into them as they might otherwise be. Or they could have been abolished. Though that’s never a safe bet with shady, spooky organizations.
“France does, but they’re much more about the science of the supernatural, near as we can tell. Mostly gathering information, rather than running around with guns like we do. If you look in the library there’s a volume on the biochemistry of lycanthropy produced by them that we obtained. It’s very interesting. That said, if they’ve got a former French special-ops guy or two, that makes them as dangerous as we are with Steve. Steve always says that despite the French reputation for cowardice, his experience with their special forces is that they are very, very good and very, very ruthless.
