77 Shadow Street (67 page)

The boy sprints after the dog, away from the nightclub called Narcissus. They plunge into the street, dodging cars as brakes shriek and horns blare.

From the comparative safety of the next sidewalk, Crispin looks back across the street and sees the man on one knee, examining his bitten ankle. The woman in white is talking on a cell phone.

Crispin snatches up the dropped leash, and the dog sets off with purpose. He and Harley weave between the pedestrians, half of whom are costumed for Halloween, half not.

When the hunters are hot on the scent, some places are safer than others. Certain churches, not all, seem to foil these particular pursuers. Sanctuary can be found in that kind of church—whether Baptist or otherwise—in which, on Sundays, rollicking gospel songs are sung with gusto and booming piano. Churches in which Latin is sometimes spoken, candles are lit for the intention of the dead, incense is sometimes burned, and fonts of holy water stand at the entrances—those are also secure. Synagogues are good refuges, too.

Right now, he and Harley are a few dangerous blocks from any such a safe haven.

Reverend Eddie Nordlaw, who founded the Crusade for Happiness and who appears Sundays on his TV show,
The Wide Eye of the Needle
, preaches that God wants everyone to be rich. He operates from his mega-church, the Rapture Temple, on Joss Street, which is not far from here.

But Crispin has learned the hard way that the Rapture Temple offers no more protection against these enemies than does a shopping mall. Or a police station.

On the day of his mother’s wedding, when he watched from a high window, one of the honored guests whom he saw arriving was the chief of police.

Pedestrians admonish and curse Crispin as he pounds pell-mell after the bolting dog, holding fast to the leash and trying not to be jerked off his feet.

Water in motion can also screen Crispin from Giles Gregorio and everyone like him. A rushing stream, if it is wide enough, thwarts them. Even if the boy stands on the farther bank from them, in plain sight, they seem unable to see him and eventually give up the search.

In Statler Park, a man-made waterfall tumbles into a fake-rock pond. A narrow pathway allows you to walk behind the falls, where there is a grotto. In that sequestered hollow, you can look out toward the park, through the cascades. The hunters must know of that retreat; but Crispin has several times been safe there while they stalked him through the rest of the grounds.

Rushing torrents seem not only to deny them his scent but also to confuse their senses, as though the swish and burble of the water is not merely sound but also a language, as if Nature is speaking a dispensation to spare him from their homicidal fury.

He and the dog are at this moment far from Statler Park and no nearer any rushing stream. Their best hope is Memorial Plaza, two acres of granite cobblestones, raised planters full of flowers, and benches on which people sit to read the morning paper, to have a bite of lunch, to feed the pigeons, and even to contemplate the sacrifices made by soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who have died to keep them free.

Harley knows the city as well as Crispin does. Soon cobblestones are underfoot. At this hour, the lamplit plaza is deserted because, for everyone except Crispin and his dog, such places are dangerous after dark in this part of town.

At the center of Memorial Plaza, on a granite plinth twelve feet in diameter, stand three larger-than-lifesize bronze figures: marines in battle gear, one of them wounded and leaning on another, the third carrying Old Glory as if defiantly announcing their location to an adversary they do not fear.

These days, the city is operating with such an enormous budget deficit that the plaza lamps and the spotlights on the statuary are extinguished at nine o’clock to save electricity. All is dark but for the lunar lamp.

The sounds of celebrations ring in from surrounding streets.

Harley springs onto the plinth, and Crispin scrambles after him. The slab of granite is carved to represent a stony outcrop, as if the bronze marines stand atop a battle-blasted hill. Among those sculpted rocks is a place where a boy and a dog can nestle.

They are less than half concealed. Even without the spotlights that used to wash the statues, the boy and the dog should be visible to anyone passing by, for the moon is full.

Yet Crispin is confident that they are safe. They are safe in the company of these bronze heroes.

The woman in white, black strings dangling, rushes into the plaza. Moonglow powders her marionette face, and her blood-red lips look black.

While the woman surveys her surroundings, the boy half believes that he can hear her doll eyes click-click-clicking as she blinks, as if she is in fact an animated puppet.

Her gaze passes over him from right to left, then slowly left to right.…

She doesn’t hesitate or come closer. She turns and moves away toward another part of the plaza.

Proximity to certain symbols and images can make boy and dog invisible to this woman’s kind, as surely as does swift-moving water. Statues honoring acts of courage and valor. Certain religious figures carved or cast life-size or larger. The immense mural of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the front wall of the Russian-American Community Center. The huge cast medallion of America’s sixteenth president embedded above the main entrance of Lincoln Bank on Main Street.

A cross or a serviceman’s medal worn around the neck will not provide invisibility. The symbol needs to be of substantial size to be effective, as if the noble efforts and the determination of those who created and erected it are as important as the symbol or image itself.

The dog-bitten man in the white suit appears, limping. Soon there are five of them, though the others are not costumed, prowling the plaza and its immediate surroundings.

Although it is ancient, the silver moon looks newly minted.

On a nearby street, a drunken reveler howls like a werewolf.

The moon is without menace. It neither favors evil nor calls to those who do.

This is what Crispin believes at the age of twelve: By the light of the moon, truth can be seen as easily as by any other light. Year by year, he will refine that perception into a greater wisdom that will sustain him.

To see the truth, however, you must have an honest eye.

Across the plaza, the marionettes and their allies, who love lies, search for the boy and his dog, unaware that they are incapable of seeing that for which they seek.

6

JULY 26, THREE YEARS AND THREE MONTHS EARLIER …

Having been healed by the power of his nanny’s kiss or having been healed in spite of it, nine-year-old Crispin falls again into the cozy rhythms of Theron Hall. The world outside seems less real than the kingdom within these walls.

For some reason, Mirabell is excused from the day’s lessons. The three-year age difference between Crispin and his sister ensures that he is less interested in what she’s engaged upon than he would be if she were only a year younger or were his twin.

Besides, girls are girls, and boys are most like boys when girls aren’t around. Therefore, Mr. Mordred is even more interesting and entertaining when he is able to focus his attention on Crispin and Harley, with no need to tailor part of his lesson to a girl so small that her brothers sometimes call her Pip, short for pipsqueak.

Lessons begin at nine and are finished by noon. After lunch, Crispin and Harley intend to play together, but somehow they go their separate ways.

Most likely, Brother Harley is on a cat hunt. Recently, he has claimed to have seen three white cats slinking along hallways, across rooms, ascending or descending one staircase or another.

Nanny Sayo says there are no cats. Both the chief butler, Minos, and the head housekeeper, the formidable Mrs. Frigg, agree that no felines live in Theron Hall.

No cats are fed here and in this immaculate residence, no mice exist on which the cats might feed themselves. No disagreeable evidence of toileting cats has been found.

The more the staff dismisses the very idea of cats, the more that Harley is determined to prove they exist. He has become quite like a cat, creeping stealthily through the immense mansion, trying to sniff them out.

He claims to have nearly captured one on a couple of occasions. These elusive specimens are even faster than the average cat.

He says their coats are as pure-white as snow. Their eyes are purple but glow silver in the shadows.

Considering that Theron Hall offers over forty-four thousand square feet in its three floors and basement, Crispin figures that his brother might be engaged in a search for the phantom cats that will last weeks if not months before he tires of his fantasy.

At four o’clock on the afternoon of July 26, Crispin is in the miniature room. This magical chamber is on the third floor, across the main hallway from the suite in which the matriarch, Jardena, withers in reclusion.

The space measures fifty feet in length, thirty-five feet in width. Clearance from floor to ceiling is twenty-six feet.

In the center of this room stands a one-quarter scale model of Theron Hall. The word
miniature
seems inadequately descriptive, because each linear foot of the great house is reduced only to three inches in this representation. Whereas Theron Hall is 140 feet from end to end, the miniature is thirty-five feet. The real house is eighty feet wide, and the reduced version is twenty. The fifteen-foot-high likeness stands on a four-foot-high presentation table with solid sides rather than legs.

The model is such a painstakingly accurate rendering of the mansion that it’s endlessly fascinating to Crispin. The walls are made of small blocks of limestone, cut thin to minimize the weight, but seemingly thick. The carved ornamentation in the window pediments and in the door surrounds match perfectly to the real thing. The balconies, the richly designed cornice, the balustrade that serves as a parapet, the nearly flat ceramic-tile roof, the chimney stacks with bronze caps have all been re-created with obsessive attention to detail. The window frames are bronze, with genuine glass for the panes.

Through the windows, he can study rooms precisely as they are in the true house. The miniaturized library features shelves and paneling of select walnut, exactly as does the life-size inspiration. Even the furnishings and the artwork have been reproduced by a team of modelers who must have worked thousands upon thousands of hours to complete this magnificent reproduction.

A wheeled and motorized mahogany ladder with handrails and a safety tether rises to an oval stainless-steel track on the ceiling, allowing an observer to circle the model, peering in the windows at any level. At various points on the ladder are controls with which he can power it left or right, or stop it at any desired vantage point.

Of Clarette’s three children, only Crispin is permitted to climb the ladder and operate it. Other nine-year-old boys might be judged too young to deserve this permission, but Crispin is responsible for his age, and prudent. He always holds fast to the handrails and snaps the tether to his belt.

Now, as he motors the ladder to the west facade, to peer in at the ornately furnished rooms occupied by Jardena, he wonders—not for the first time—why the old woman lavished so much money on this miniature when she has the real house to enjoy.

According to Giles, his mother has always been as eccentric as his late father was industrious. The patriarch, Ehlis Gregorio, was obsessed with amassing enormous wealth, and his wife was driven to find imaginative ways to spend it. Seeking to understand the reasons for Jardena’s extravagant whims is a waste of time, because she does not understand why she undertakes such things as the model of Theron Hall. She commits to such projects, Giles says, simply because she can afford to do them, and that is all the reason she needs.

As Crispin rides the ladder, the door opens below, and his brother, Harley, rushes in from the third-floor hallway. “Crispin, come quick! You’ve got to see this.”

“There are no cats,” Crispin says. “Except the ones in that drawing-room painting, and they’re not white.”

“Not cats. Mirabell. You’ve got to see how she’s dressed.”

“She can dress any way she likes. Why would I care?”

“But this is weird.”

“She’s always playing dress-up.”

“Not like this,” Harley insisted. “Mom’s dressing her, and it’s just weird.”

Before her marriage to Giles Gregorio, Clarette never had much time for her children. She says that she prefers to play with grown men. Children are her business, she explains, not a leisure-time activity. She sports or games, or cuddles, with them only on those rare occasions when vodka and more powerful substances put her in a foolish or sentimental mood.

Since the wedding, she has become even more remote from them. If anyone is
raising
Crispin, Harley, and Mirabell, it is the staff of Theron Hall.

“I heard Mom say, when they finish fitting Mirabell’s new dress, they’re going to give her a bath in warm
milk
and rinse her with
aqua pura
, whatever that is.”

From high on the ladder, Crispin at last looks down at his brother. “That
is
weird.”

“And there’s other weird stuff like the hat they’ve made for her. You’ve got to come see.”

The model of the mansion will be here for further exploration whenever Crispin wishes to return to it.

He climbs down to a safe height before unhooking the tether and then descending the final ten rungs.

As Crispin follows his brother into the third-floor hallway, Harley whispers, “They don’t know I saw. I think Pip’s new dress is for some surprise party or something, and probably we aren’t supposed to see it until then.”

Hurrying down the back stairs, Harley explains that he was on the prowl for the mysterious white cats, alert and stealthy, when he came across the scene with their mother, Mirabell, and a housemaid named Proserpina.

Among the many chambers on the second floor are a sewing room and a gift-wrapping room. They are side by side.