The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller (40 page)

“Johnny Bones,” Martin breathed, looking away.

“Turner,” Rose said curtly. She felt ashamed. Ashamed of her name, ashamed of her nakedness. She went into the bathroom and put on her complimentary robe. It was so long on her that she looked like a Jawa from
Star Wars
.

Martin sat on the bed. He’d been bracing himself for this, but now that she’d said it, he felt like he’d been kicked in the guts. She was the same little girl he saw wearing that necklace when they led Johnny away in shackles.

“That girl is not for you!” Now he knew why Paul yelled with such vehemence. Why hadn’t he come right out and said what he meant? It wasn’t like he ever restrained himself from expressing his loathing for Clan O’Neil. There was a lot Martin couldn’t remember from their time together, but he always remembered the feuds and duels. Of all the clan chiefs they fought against there was no one Paul regarded as a more hated adversary than Johnny the Saint. And there was absolutely nothing Paul regarded as a bigger betrayal than what Martin had done years after they parted ways. He helped Johnny. Befriended him. Defended him.

Rose came out of the bathroom and watched him sitting there, shaking his head.

“Why are you so bent out of shape?” she scolded, “Look at the people
you
hang out with!”

“No, no, no,” Martin sputtered, as shaken by her outburst as he was by her familial lineage. “I’m not…I don’t think anything bad about him.…”

“Then why are you sitting there, shaking your fucking head?” Rose challenged him, half steaming, half grateful for his stammering attempt at reassurance.

“I knew him…your dad…a long time ago.”

Now it was Rose’s turn to sit on the bed. “How did you know him?” she asked with a grimace, like she was pulling the trigger in a game of Russian roulette.

“San Francisco,” Martin said, stifling a fake yawn, growing more anxious with every word. “Met him in a bookstore. I was looking at an old map. We started talking.”

“And…” Rose pressed impatiently.

“We talked a long time. Became friends, I guess.”

Martin talked a
long
time? They were
friends?
She was
fucking
her father’s
friend?

“So you knew him when…it happened?”

“Yeah,” he said, standing up, putting his robe back on.

“Oh, boy,” she said, tightening her lips. A wave of grief washed over her before she could think of anything else to say or ask. Martin looked out the window, thinking about the last time he saw Johnny and the little girl he kissed good-bye. She sure looked different now.

“Johnny’s a good man,” he mumbled, facing her again.

“For a killer?” Rose shouted. “I guess that doesn’t matter, since you’re a killer too!” She wasn’t sure why she felt so angry with him. She wasn’t sure about anything.

“Johnny never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it,” Martin replied without emotion.

“My mother too? She deserved it?”

“He didn’t kill Kathy.”

“Yeah, that’s what he told me. But he’s crazy!”

“He isn’t crazy. He never was. And he didn’t kill her.”

“How do you know that? What did he tell you?”

“He didn’t have to tell me,” Martin said, still strangely calm.

“Because…?” Rose asked, totally unnerved by his expressionless tone.

Martin turned toward the window again.

“How do you know he didn’t kill her?” Rose shouted, going over, pulling his sleeve.

“Because I was there.”

Rose staggered backwards, holding her thighs for support.
“You
did it?”

“No…no…not me!” Martin stammered, holding her, easing her back onto the bed.

“Then who?” Rose demanded, almost choking with shock and grief.

“I don’t know. But I know it wasn’t Johnny. We were together when he found her. I saw…his reaction.”

“
Together?
What were you doing? Why didn’t you tell the cops? How could you let him go to that awful place? Why didn’t you help him?”

“He wanted to go there,” Martin replied, avoiding the more troublesome questions.

“He wanted to go to the nuthouse?” Rose spat back.

Martin nodded. “He said it was the only place he’d be safe.”

“From
who
?” Rose sniffled, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her terrycloth robe.

Martin turned to the window. He had to stop talking…

“From whoever killed your mother,” he whispered, in spite of himself.

“Martin, who killed my mother?” she asked, sounding out each syllable. “You know, don’t you? You’re lying!”

“I don’t know,” Martin lied, while a memory tugged at him more urgently than Rose. The memory of Johnny making him promise never to tell his daughter who did it. He couldn’t tell her. He swore he wouldn’t. He thought about what happened the last time he broke a vow of secrecy, when he told Norine about Momma and the cellar. Momma said she’d know if he ever told anyone—and the next morning Paul came and took him away. If Momma knew what he was saying when she wasn’t around, Johnny would too. He didn’t know how it was possible, but he knew Johnny could do lots of things that weren’t possible.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” Rose yelled, “Your buddy! Paul!”

“No,” Martin said, shaking his head. “Whoever did it wanted that key. And Paul…” He cut himself off again.

“And Paul…” Rose prodded, waving her arm in circles, begging him to speed it up.

“Paul already has one.”

“Oh, he already has one. That makes sense,” Rose muttered, collapsing onto the bed. “Martin, what the fuck is going on here? Why would someone kill my parents for this key?”

Martin grunted, turning away.

“Stop holding out on me!” Rose shouted, startled by the strength in her voice.

“Okay…” Martin began, gritting his teeth, pointing to her “lucky charm,” amazed he was even remembering all this. “There are two keys. You have one. Paul has the other. He wears it around his neck all the time…like you.”

“What is it for?” Rose asked, a chill racing up her spine. “What does it open?”

“A book,” Martin whispered, breaking the final taboo of his secrecy oath. “At least, I think it does. I’m not sure if your key fits the same lock…but Paul’s key…it opens a book.”

“A book,” Rose repeated, completely dumbfounded. “Are you saying my mother was murdered and my father is in a lunatic asylum because of a book?”

“Yeah…more or less,” Martin replied.

“What kind of fucking book is it?”

“I don’t know,” Martin answered, his cheeks turning red. “I can’t remember. I did for a little while last night…then I forgot again.”

“Are you fucking with me? You can’t remember any of it?”

“No. But I know the Book is more important to him than anything.”
Or anyone,
he wanted to add. “The Book might be our way out of this. If I can find it…take it from him…and your key fits…maybe we could barter with him.”

“Barter with
him
? That maniac?”

“It’s our best shot. I could try to kill him, but I’ve seen a lot of people try and they’re all dead. He’ll probably kill me just for making a grab at it. Anyway, it’s a shot,” Martin said with a shrug, predictably oblivious to the calamitous effect his matter-of-fact explanation was having on Rose’s frantic mind.

“Who
are
you people?”

“Clan Kelly,” Martin answered simply, taking her question literally. “Paul’s my…”

Martin paused for a moment, so motionless it seemed he’d been frozen in space by a ray gun. Another dim recollection nudged him, prodding his brain like a warm, wet finger.

“Paul is the High King of the clans,” Martin continued robotically, flipping the switch, forcing the foggy words and images back into the dark, dank cellar of his subconscious.

“Oh, my god. I’m with a crazy man. Just like my crazy dad. I must be crazy too!” she cried, hanging her face in her hands.

“I’m not crazy. Johnny isn’t crazy. And you’re not crazy,” Martin said, sitting next to her like he actually knew how to comfort someone.

Rose sobbed for almost a minute and Martin managed to hang in there the whole time, stroking her hair. It helped that her hair was so soft.

“Paul…he knows my father, doesn’t he?” she managed to say, knowing the answer already, bracing herself for even more terrifying revelations.

“Yeah,” Martin said, grimacing. “That’s why he’s been looking at you that way. He must know you’re Johnny’s daughter. Johnny is the king of Clan O’Neil…and Paul really hates the O’Neils.”

“
My dad is the king of Clan O’Neil? This is insane!”
Rose screamed, out of her head with fear.
“This can’t be happening!”

Martin held her by the shoulders, trying to calm her down, saying nothing, taking long, slow breaths until she seemed calm enough for him to continue.

“Do you remember any stories your parents told you? Like a really long story you never heard anywhere else?”

“Yeah,” she said, sniffling into her terrycloth robe. “What’s that got to do with this?”

“Everything, I think,” he said, feeling hopeful for the first time. Maybe he didn’t need the white room. Maybe he didn’t need the Book. Maybe her story was the same as Paul’s. “We better have that picnic. I’ll tell you everything I can remember. Maybe your story will help me remember the rest.”

“Picnic! You still want to have a picnic? After all the shit you’ve said?”

“Yeah,” Martin said, completely unfazed. “I’m getting hungry and this is going to take awhile. But I have to tell you…some of this stuff is going to sound really weird.”

“Weirder than everything else you’ve been saying?” Rose asked, recalling all her father’s insane, ranting letters. “How weird could it be?”

“Weird weird,” Martin said, trying to think of a more apt description. “Religious.”

Paul bumped his shoulders into as many of the hustle-bustlers choking the aircraft carrier width of Fifth Avenue in front of St. Paddy’s as he possibly could. Bump. Wump. It was morning rush hour on the sidewalk, and some of the more pissed-off jostled pedestrians gave him the old “fists clenched like they’re really going do something” look. A few of the ballsier women gave him the old “Hey, watch where you’re going!” shout of indignation. Once they got a load of Paul, they kept on walking.

Paul looks even scarier than he is, if that’s possible. He has that longshoreman, teamster, biker, ’Nam-Vet, might-be-homeless, might-be-crazy, definitely-dangerous look down to such a T that the entire crowd would have collectively walked across the street to avoid him if they had seen him coming. Wump. Bump. Too late.

Paul walked up the cathedral stairs in his big clunky boots, making as much noise as he could with each thudding step.
Whomp. Clomp
. He went out of his way to thud into two more tourists on their way out the massive bronze doors, quickly erasing their “Wow, what a great big fancy place!” grins with twin shakes of their heads that said, “See, it
is
true what they say about these goddamn New Yorkers.”

Paul sneered with equal contempt.
People. Can’t live with ’em…can’t kill all of ’em.

He paused in the vestibule to soak in the candlelit, incense drenched air and gulped down as much of the musky scent as he could manage. He stuck his bald fingertips into the Holy Water and half-expected to hear it hiss and bubble. It was crowded today, as he expected. The altar was draped in purple. There were flowers everywhere. He made the sign of the cross, gave an inch-deep genuflection and clomped down the center aisle to his regular seat, a pew three rows from the front, on the left-hand side.

Someone was sitting there. Paul took a deep breath and stared down at the small gray-haired lady, with her white lace shawl and black, shiny rosary beads. She didn’t seem to notice. Her tightly combed bun and happy-sad, creamy-puffy cheeks were bobbing rhythmically in deep prayer, her lips moving in a whispery quiver, mouthing out the time-honored blur of sound that passes for The Hail Mary in marathon rosary specialists:

“HailMaryfullagracetheLordiswitheeblessdrthouamongwomenanblessdisthafruitathywombJesusHolyMaryMothaGodprayforusinnersnowanatthehourofourdeathamen.”

Pause. Repeat.

Paul was having none of it. “That’s my seat,” he rumbled in a low, raspy grunt that only a gawking, T-shirt-clad couple walking down the aisle took any notice of. They quickly rolled their eyes and waddled away, but the little old lady, her eyes seemingly welded shut, showed no sign of acknowledgment whatsoever and wheezed in enough wind to motor her way through another black bead.

Paul stuck a chisel-hard finger in the square of her hunched back and pressed it in like a fleshy harpoon. “Ow!” she said, her eyes fluttering open in fear and dumb surprise.

“That’s my seat,” Paul repeated.

The poor, sweet, frightened lady was torn between feelings of fear, rage, shock and disbelief. She felt like running, but her fear and proud anger kept her rooted on the spot. “No sir, this is
my
seat,” she finally managed to croak with all the courage she could muster, her voice trembling like a butterfly’s wings.

“Darlin’, you can move now or I’ll wait here all day and then follow you home.”