The Wolves of Midwinter

27

GRACE CALLED ON SUNDAY, January 6. Reuben was hard at work on an essay for Billie, this one on the tiny town of Nideck and its ongoing renaissance with new businesses and new home construction.

“Your brother needs you,” Grace said. “And he needs his father, too, if you can get the old man to come down here with you.”

“What’s happened? What do you mean?”

“Reuben, it’s his parish. It’s that neighborhood. It’s the Tenderloin. A couple of thugs attacked a young priest who was visiting Jim yesterday afternoon. Reuben, they beat the hell out of him, and castrated him. He died on the operating table last night, and maybe it was a blessing, I honestly don’t know. But your brother’s out of his mind.”

Reuben was aghast. “I can see why. Look, we’re coming. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

“Jim called the police, and they came here to the hospital. Jim knows who’s behind this, some drug dealer, some contemptible piece of filth! But they said there was nothing they could do without the dead priest’s testimony. Some other witness had been murdered too. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about. Reuben, Jim just about went crazy when the priest died. And Jim’s been missing since last night.”

“What do you mean, Jim’s missing?” Reuben asked. He was on his feet, pulling his suitcase off the top shelf of the closet.

“Just what I said. I begged him to come home, to stay at home, to clear out of that apartment and come back home. But your brother just doesn’t listen to me. Now he’s not answering his phone and the parish office doesn’t know where he is either. He didn’t say Mass this morning, Reuben, can you imagine? They called me.

“Reuben, persuade Phil to come down here. Jim listens to your father. Jim listens to you. But Jim simply never listens to me.”

Reuben was throwing things into the suitcase. “I’ll find him. He’s out of his mind over this, and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Phil was in the oak forest when Reuben found him, walking and talking with Hockan Crost. Hockan excused himself to give them privacy and Phil heard the story before he said a word.

“How can I go down there, Reuben?” he asked. “Look, the change came over me last night. Oh, don’t worry about it. I was with Lisa and she called Margon immediately. It was past midnight. Wow. Have I got a story to tell you—.”

“Then you can’t go,” said Reuben.

“Exactly. The change will come again tonight and nobody knows at what time. But that’s just part of the problem, and you know it. Look at me, son. What do you see?”

Phil was right. His hair was fuller, thicker, and the strawberry blond streaks in it were most lustrous and prominent and he had the physique of a man in his prime. His face still bore the stamp of his age, but his eyes, his expression, his movements—all had been beautifully altered, and Jim would see this at once. Grace would see it at once.

“You’re right,” said Reuben. “Jim’s crazed, obviously, and seeing you like this, well—.”

“Might just drive him right out of his mind,” said Phil. “You’ve got to go in without me. Try to get him to move back home. Or get him someplace decent, Reuben, where he can recover from all this. A nice hotel suite. Jim hasn’t taken a vacation in five years, and now this.”

After a quick call to Laura, who was in the town of Nideck working with Felix and several of the new merchants—and three unanswered calls to Jim’s cell—Reuben was on the road by noon.

He was almost to Marin County before he heard from Grace again.

“I’ve reported him missing,” said Grace, “but the police won’t do anything about it. It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet. Reuben, I have never seen Jim like he was. You should have seen him when we told him this priest was dead. I mean he was silently coming unglued. He just walked out of the hospital without speaking to anyone and disappeared. Reuben, we’ve found his car is in the parking lot. He’s on foot.”

“Mom, he might have taken a cab somewhere. I’ll find him. I’ll be there in an hour and a half.”

He pulled off the road long enough to call Jim’s rectory, with no success, to ring the apartment where he got no answer, and to leave another message on Jim’s cell. “I’m practically to the Golden Gate Bridge. Please, please call me as soon as you can.”

He was in San Francisco, on his way up Lombard Street, not certain whether to go home first or to the hospital, when a text from Jim appeared in his phone.

“Huntington Park, Nob Hill. Tell no one.”

“Minutes away,” Reuben texted and immediately turned right. This was not the worst place to be meeting his brother by any means. There were three hotels on top of Nob Hill right on the park.

It was raining lightly but the traffic wasn’t bad. He reached the summit of the hill in five minutes and pulled at once into the Taylor Street public parking garage. Grabbing his suitcase, he sprinted across Taylor and into the park.

Jim was sitting alone on a bench with a briefcase on his lap. He was in full Roman collar and black clerics, and staring ahead of him as if he was in a trance. A light rain gave a sheen to the pathways and had speckled Jim’s clothes and hair with silver, but he did not seem to feel the rain or the sharp cold wind.

Reuben reached out and put a firm hand on his shoulder. Still Jim didn’t lift his head.

“Look, it’s effing freezing here,” Reuben said. “What about we get some coffee in the Fairmont?”

Jim looked up slowly as if waking from a dream. He didn’t say anything.

“Come on,” said Reuben, taking him firmly by the arm. “It will be warm in there. It will be nice.”

He was still mumbling platitudes and inanities as he guided Jim into the big, bustling, and always glamorous Fairmont lobby. All the elaborate Christmas decorations were gone, but the lobby was in a way always dressed for a holiday with its shining marble floor, gilt-framed mirrors, gold columns, and gold-etched ceiling.

“Tell you what,” Reuben said, moving towards the desk. “I’m going to get us a suite. Mom won’t let you go back to your old apartment, not without turning the town upside down—.”

“Don’t use your real name,” said Jim in a dull voice, without meeting Reuben’s eyes.

“What are you talking about? I have to. I have to show my ID.”

“Tell them not to reveal your real name,” said Jim in a half murmur. “And don’t tell anyone that we’re here.”

The desk was entirely cooperative. They had a fine two-bedroom suite with a beautiful view of the park and Grace Cathedral opposite. And they would not give Reuben’s real name to anyone. Of course they recognized him. They knew he was the famous reporter. They would be absolutely discreet. They registered him under the pseudonym Creighton Chaney, which he offered on the spot.

Jim was in a daze as they entered the parlor of the suite, eyes passing over the ornate fireplace and sumptuous furnishings as if nothing was penetrating, as if he were engaged in some deep inner contemplation from which he couldn’t quite wake. He sat down on the blue velvet sofa and stared at the gold-framed mirror above the mantel and then at Reuben as if he couldn’t make much sense of what was going on around him.

“I’ll call Mom,” said Reuben, “but I won’t tell her where we are.”

Jim didn’t answer.

“Mom, listen to me,” Reuben said into the phone. “I’m with Jim and I’ll call you as soon as I can.” He cut the call off at once.

Jim sat there, holding the briefcase, as he had on the park bench, staring at the gilded fireplace screen as if there were a fire in the grate when there was not.

Reuben settled into a gold velvet armchair to his left.

“I can’t imagine what you’re feeling,” he said, “to have something like this happen to a friend. Mom said you told the police everything you know, that they said they can’t do a thing.”

Jim didn’t respond.

“Do you have any idea who’s responsible? Mom said something about a drug dealer that you knew.”

Jim didn’t answer.

“Look, I know you don’t want to tell me. You don’t want me rushing in and making a meal out of the culprit. I get that. I’m here as your brother. Will it help to talk about what happened to your friend?”

“He wasn’t a friend,” said Jim in that same dull expressionless voice. “I didn’t even like him.”

Reuben didn’t know what to say. Then, “Well, I figure that’s confusing at a time like this, too.”

No response.

“I want to call Dad and tell him I’m with you,” Reuben said and he went into the bedroom on the right. It was as lavish as the parlor with an elaborately dressed king-size bed and a curved couch beneath the window. Surely Jim would be comfortable in these digs if he could persuade him to stay.

As soon as Phil answered, Reuben brought him up to speed. This was bad. He would go get Jim’s things from the apartment and stay with him tonight, if only Jim would allow. “He’s in shock,” said Reuben. “It’s like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’m not leaving him.”

“I talked to your mother. She’s in a rage that I’m not coming down there, and I’m giving her ridiculous excuses just like I’ve done all my life for not doing what she wants. Call me back later, no matter what.”

Reuben found Jim seated on the couch still, but he’d laid the briefcase beside him on the sofa.

When he asked about getting Jim’s things, Jim looked up again as if waking from a dream. “I don’t want you to go over there,” he said.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ve got a suitcase with me. I always overpack. I’ve got everything you need.” He went on talking, because he felt somehow this was better than not talking, reflecting on what this shock might have meant to Jim, this happening in his parish. And he said from his heart that he was so sorry, so very sorry about what happened to the young priest.

When the doorbell rang, it was room service with a tray of fruit and cheese—the usual fare in such suites—from the manager of the hotel. And yes, they’d bring him a pot of coffee, too, right away.

Reuben set the food down on the coffee table.

“Is it a long time since you’ve eaten?”

No response.

Finally, Reuben fell silent, as much from not knowing what to do as respect for the fact that this was what Jim might want.

When the coffee came, Jim did accept a cup of it and drank it though it was very hot.

Then slowly Jim’s eyes moved to Reuben and he stared at Reuben for a very long time, looking him over in a slow, casual way, almost the way children look people over, without self-consciousness or apology.

“You know,” said Reuben, “if you do have any idea who did this …” He let the words trail off.

“I know exactly who did it,” said Jim. His voice was low and a little stronger than before. “I was the intended victim. And by now they know they failed.”

The hair stood up on Reuben’s neck. The old pringling began, and that inevitable heat in his face.

“They called him Father Golding the entire time they were beating him and carving him up,” said Jim, his voice darker with the first hint of rage. “He told me that as they put him in the ambulance. He never told them they had the wrong man.”

Reuben waited. “I’m listening,” he said.

“Are you?” asked Jim, his voice stronger and more clear. “I’m glad.”

Reuben was stunned, but he concealed it as he concealed the heat crawling under his skin.

Jim opened the briefcase and slipped out his laptop, and opened it on his knees, hitting a few keys, and apparently watching it connect with the Wi-Fi network of the hotel.

He set it down on the coffee table and turned it so that Reuben could see the screen.

A bright-colored photo of a young blond-haired man with sunglasses covering his eyes, and a San Francisco Chronicle headline: NEW PATRON OF THE ARTS IN TOWN.

Reuben swallowed, forcing the prickling to stop, to wait. “This is the guy,” he said.

“Fulton Blankenship,” said Jim. He slipped a folded piece of paper out of his jacket and gave it to Reuben. “This is his address. You know the area, Alamo Square.” He turned the computer, hit a couple of keys, and then turned it so Reuben could see it again. Big Victorian house, spectacularly painted, very impressive, something of a landmark, one of the witches’ cap Victorians they use in films whenever they can.

“Yeah, I know that house,” said Reuben. “I know exactly where it is.”

“This is what went down,” said Jim. “He’s a dealer, and his product is what they call Super Bo on the street, a mixture of cough syrup laced with every kind of junk drugs imaginable, selling for nothing at first and now for more than just about any other drug the kids can get. Highly concentrated. A test tube of it doctors a sixteen-ounce bottle of soda, sending kids to the moon after a mouthful. Perfect rape drug in larger doses, too. They’re coming in from the suburbs to buy it on Leavenworth and he’s signing up dealers just as fast as he can. About fifteen percent of those who OD on it die from it, and another five percent end up in a coma. Not a single one of those has ever woken up.”

He paused but Reuben knew better than to say a word.

“About two months ago,” Jim went on, “I started working hard on these local distributers, trying to get anybody to cop to who he was and what he was doing. Kids were dying!” Jim stopped because his voice had broken, and it took him a second or two to go on. “I was up and down Leavenworth every night. Last week, one of the boys comes to me, Blankenship’s lover, he says, sixteen, a runaway, a hustler, a junkie, who’d been living with Blankenship in that Victorian house. I stashed the kid in a suite in the Hilton, oh, nothing as fancy as this, but I charged it to Mom, Mom pays for my extras, and he was on the twenty-third floor and I thought he was safe.”

Again, Jim stopped, clearly on the edge of tears. His lips were working overtime and then he began again.

“The kid’s name was Jeff. He was on e-pills and Super Bo but he wanted to get clean. And I was all over the police and the DEA trying to get them to work with him, get him some protection, take his statements, put a cop on the hotel room door. But he was too druggy, too unreliable for them. ‘Get him clean,’ they said, ‘and then we’ll have enough for a warrant. Right now the kid’s a mess.’ Well, the boss’s men got to him yesterday afternoon. He was stabbed some twenty-two times. I told him not to call anybody—.” Jim’s voice broke again. “I told him!”

He stopped, and put his curled fingers against his mouth for a second, and then started again.

“When I got the call from the hotel, I went out the door immediately. And that’s when they came for me, and they got the priest staying in my apartment, a know-nothing innocent guy from Minneapolis on a layover on his way to Hawaii. A young innocent guy who wanted to see my parish, my ministry! A priest I hardly knew.”

“I see,” said Reuben. The heat in his face was unbearable and the pringling had become a fact of life. But he held the change at bay as he waited, marveling quietly that sheer rage and anticipation could bring it on as was happening now. He was marveling too at what was happening, at what this had done to his brother. His brother’s face, his brother’s tears were breaking his heart.

“There’s more,” said Jim, gesturing with one finger. “I’ve met the son of a bitch. I’ve been to that house. Right after the kid came to me, Blankenship’s lackeys forced me into a car and brought me there to meet with the man himself. They took me to the fourth floor of that house. That’s where he lives, this, this little tinhorn Scarface, this latter-day Pablo Escobar, this little rat-faced Al Capone with his big dreams. He’s so paranoid he’s backed himself into a fourth-floor apartment up there with one entrance and only a handful of lackeys admitted to the house. He sits there pouring cognac for me and offering me Cuban cigars. He offers me a million-dollar donation for my church, a million dollars, he has it right there in a suitcase, and he says we can be partners, him and me, just tell him where Jeff is. He wants to talk to Jeff, make up with him, bring Jeff back, get Jeff clean.” He broke off again, eyes dancing back and forth as he looked around the room, obviously struggling for calm.

“I didn’t challenge the little monster. I sat there listening, breathing that revolting cigar smoke as he talks about Boardwalk Empire and Breaking Bad and how he’s the new Nucky Thompson, and San Francisco is becoming again the Barbary Coast. San Francisco’s much more beautiful than Atlantic City ever was, he says. He’s wearing wingtip shoes like Nucky Thompson. He has a closet full of beautiful colored shirts with white collars. He gives twenty-five cents out of every dollar to charity, he says, right off the top. We have a future together, he says, him and me. He’d finance a rehab clinic and shelter at the church and I can run it any way I like. This million dollars is only the beginning. His heart goes out to his customers, he says. Someday soon they’ll make a movie about us, him and me, and this Delancey Street–style shelter that I’m opening with his money. If he didn’t sell to the rabble, somebody else would, he says. I know that, don’t I? he asks me. He doesn’t want anybody to be hurt, least of all Jeff. Where was Jeff? He wants to get Jeff clean, send him to an Eastern school. Jeff’s got artistic talent, I might not know. I got up and left.”

“I hear you.”

“I walked out of there and I walked all the way back home. And the next morning they tell me about an anonymous million-dollar donation to St. Francis at Gubbio earmarked for the rehab and shelter. It’s in the damned bank!”

He shook his head. The tears were thick in his eyes, a glaze.

“I didn’t dare go see Jeff after that. I called him, every day, twice a day. Lie low. Do not call anybody. Do not go out. And he verified just what I thought. There aren’t five people allowed in that Victorian house. Paranoia trumps greed and the desire for personal service. Three hardbitten henchmen do everything, and then there’s Fulton—except for the lab work in the basement. The Super Bo concentrate is thrown together down there by a team that works by day without a master formula; it’s whatever GHB, oxycontin, scopolamine they’ve got coming in. It’s poison! And they’re producing staggering quantities, everything going out on dollies to ‘perfume’ trucks. That’s the cover. A perfume company. The street distributers mix it with soda pop and sell out the same day they’re supplied.”

“I’m getting the picture,” said Reuben.

“You realize what might happen?” Jim asked. “If I were to go home? You realize what these monsters might do to anybody they found in the way if they came looking for me?”

“I realize,” said Reuben.

“And I can’t get a cop car to sit outside the house!”

Reuben nodded. “I’m getting the whole picture, as I said.”

“I warned Mom. I told her to hire a private security guard. I don’t know whether she listened to me or not.”

“I’m getting it, all right.”

“They’re crazy, suicidal, Blankenship and this bunch. They’re as dangerous as rabid dogs.”

“So it seems,” said Reuben under his breath.

Once more Jim gestured for attention with his finger.

“I Google-mapped the place,” said Jim. “There’s no vehicle access, not in front and not in back. The perfume trucks have to stop in the street. There’s a tiny backyard.”

Reuben nodded. “I understand.”

“I’m glad you do,” said Jim with a bitter smile. “But how can you do it, how can you get him without bringing the whole world out to hunt for the Man Wolf again?”

“Easily,” said Reuben. “But you leave that to me.”

“I don’t see how—?”

“Leave it to me,” said Reuben again, a little more firmly, yet quietly. “You don’t have to think about any of it a moment longer. I have others to help me think about it. Go in there and take a shower. I’ll order us some dinner. By the time you get out the food will be here, and we’ll have figured it out to the last detail.”

Jim sat there quietly reflecting for a moment and then he nodded. His eyes were like glass with their tears, flashing in the light. He looked at Reuben and he smiled bitterly, his mouth quivering just for an instant, and then he rose and left the room.

Reuben went to the windows.

The rain was coming down a little heavier now, but the view of the park below and the great pale mass of Grace Cathedral opposite was impressive as always, though something about the neo-Gothic façade of the church deeply disturbed Reuben and caused a pain in his heart. It stirred memories in him unexpectedly, not memories of this church so much as so many others that were like it, churches in which he’d prayed all over the world. A deep sense of grief was taking hold of him. He swallowed it down as he’d swallowed the change that had so wanted to break loose.

When Felix answered the phone, Reuben discovered for a split second that he couldn’t talk. That pain deepened and then he heard his own voice, low, and unnatural to him, slowly unfolding the whole story to Felix, his eyes fixed firmly on the distant towers of the cathedral, so reminiscent of Reims, Noyon, Nantes.

“I was thinking I’d get you a couple of suites here,” said Reuben, “that is, if you’re willing …”

“You let me book them,” said Felix. “And of course we are willing. Don’t you realize this is Twelfth Night? This is the Carnival season now until Lent. It will be our Twelfth Night feast.”

“But secrecy, the question of secrecy.”

“Dear boy, there are ten of us,” said Felix. “And Phil and Laura have never tasted human flesh. There won’t be a morsel left.”

Reuben smiled in spite of himself, in spite of the pain in his heart, in spite of the great dark outline of the cathedral against the western sky. It was dusk now, and quite suddenly, unexpectedly, the decorative lights of the huge cathedral were switched on, gloriously illuminating the entire façade. It was startling, the ghost of the church now solid and wondrously alive with its twin towers and softly glowing rose window.

“Are you there?” asked Felix.

“Yes, I’m here,” said Reuben. “And that’s what I was thinking,” said Reuben. “Eat every last bite and lick the plates clean.”

Silence.

The room was dark. He ought to turn on a few lights, he thought. But he didn’t move. Distantly, he could hear a terrible sound, the sound of his brother Jim weeping.

The door of the bedroom was open.

There came the scent of innocence, the scent of innocent suffering.

He moved soundlessly to the door.

Jim, dressed in the soft white hotel terry-cloth robe, knelt beside the bed, his head bowed, his hands clasped in prayer, his shoulders shaking with his sobs.

Reuben moved away, and back to the window and the comforting sight of the beautifully illuminated cathedral.