R
omulus was almost home, he was slogging up the last snowy slope to his cave, when he noticed the tracks.
One set of tracks going up—toward the cave. One set coming back down. No other tracks around. Of course. Who ever came this way? Nobody.
Except the murderer.
Last night. The footsteps he’d heard.
There was enough stray streetlight to read how smooth these marks were. That poor dead boy, he’d had sneakers on his feet, and sneaker tracks should have been filled with all sorts of strange sneaker hieroglyphics. Right?
Not these tracks. These tracks were smooth-soled.
Furthermore, thought Romulus, if this were the trail of a man who had been freezing to death, it should be wandering all over, shouldn’t it?
But these tracks were deliberate. They went right up, they dumped the body, they came right down again. No fuss.
These were Stuyvesant’s shoe prints.
So why the hell hadn’t the police found them?
Oh, but
of course
the police hadn’t found them.
These prints could have had a big
S
for Stuyvesant in the middle of the heel, they could have been glowing, could have been neon-red and pulsing, they could have stood up and danced the mambo, and still the cops would have overlooked them.
But nevertheless, let it go, Romulus. Forget it.
Remember, the poor boy was just bait.
It’s
your
soul that Stuyvesant’s really after.
H
e climbed up to the knoll above the cave and looked down.
And saw that someone was waiting for him.
Dark figure squatting in front of the cave, his back to Romulus. Looking nervously left and right. Listening.
Romulus stood there a moment.
Stuyvesant’s henchman, waiting for me. The angel of death. So why not just give it the slip? Turn around and go back the way I came. But that’s my
home
down there. They call me a homeless man, but
uh-uh
—and hell if Stuyvesant’s going to make me one. Chase me out of my own front yard—
uh-uh.
Romulus waited till a truck went whining past on the highway down by the river, and then he started to move.
He moved down the snow-dusted rocks as stealthily as he could. It wasn’t like when he was a kid—when he was a kid, he was a panther. But now he was so big and so damn far from his feet, it was like trying to be stealthy on stilts. It was like a telephone booth on stilts trying to be stealthy.
Yet he found he hadn’t lost it
all.
A little panther magic yet clung to him, and he knew these rocks by heart, and there was a regular rhythm of trucks down on the highway to cover for him.
He clambered down from one rock to another. Then he paused and collected his balance and let the silence collect, and when another truck went groaning by, he shifted to the next rock. And the squatting henchman, who was so intent on listening, didn’t seem to know
how
to listen. He was always moving his head just as Romulus was moving. Never hearing, and never thinking to look behind him.
Then Romulus lowered himself between two boulders and stepped out to the edge of the last rock. There was just a small patch of snowy ground between him and his enemy. He took a breath. He leapt down and hurtled forward, gathering momentum and by the time the henchman turned wildly and rose, it was way too late.
Romulus barreled into him.
Knocked him back on his ass. Pounced, and had him by the throat, and swung the fucker to his feet and slammed him against a tree. Slammed the wind out of him. The fool doubled over, gasping for air.
“
Rom!
Don’t kill me! Please God don’t kill me!”
Matthew. Matthew the Weasel. The little Italian druggie. Now Romulus could see him, could see in profile the long eroded ridge of the kid’s nose. The slight build, the stringy hair. Romulus put his arms around the kid. The kid blubbered and wheezed.
“Jesus, I’m dead already Rom, what you want to kill me for?”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, Matthew.”
“I’m dead already.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I waited for you. You never came. God, I thought I was going to freeze to death. I heard those wolves, Rom.”
“Heard what? I can’t hear you, you’re talking into my coat.”
Matthew pulled his head back. He was weeping. “Those wolves. They were coming to eat me.”
Said Romulus, “We don’t have any wolves in the city, Matthew. What are you doing here?”
The kid kept weeping. He said, “Rom. You were the one who found him, weren’t you? They said the Caveman found him—that was you. You found him.”
“You mean found the dead guy?”
“Scotty.”
“Yeah, I found him.”
“I
knew
they were going to kill him.”
“Matthew, you’re shivering.”
“I
knew
they’d get him.”
“You’re too cold.”
“I don’t care.”
Romulus said softly, “Why don’t you care?”
“Rom, have you ever loved anybody?”
The kid shut his eyes tight. Balled his fist and brought it down against Romulus’s chest as though it were a wall. With all his coats, it nearly was—Romulus scarcely felt the blow.
“Oh Jesus. Rom.”
“You loved this guy?”
“Rom. I gotta die, too. I gotta. I gotta.
Please,
Rom. I gotta die, too.”
“Yeah but not now, OK? Tomorrow if you want, when it’s light out. Right now you’ve got to get warm. Come here.”
He helped the kid into the cave. It wasn’t much of a cave, just a deep recess in the rock. But it was his home, and he wrapped his guest in the rags of an old blanket, and sat him down, and then he untied some strings and unfurled a pair of mad harlequin curtains that stretched across the face of the cave. So his guest was shielded, a little, from the roaring cold.
Then he gathered an armful of kindling that he’d been drying all winter, and set about making a fire.
“Jesus, Rom, what are you doing? You can’t light a fire in the park.”
“Then let them come after me. What, now they won’t let a man make a fire? But that’s what a man does. Fires all over this fucking planet, Matthew. This one’s mine.”
When the pyre was ready, shrewdly built, Romulus pocket-hunted till he found a book of matches (
970-NEED. Visa, MC
) and lit it. A quick, sure blaze. He sat beside the Weasel. He put his arm around him. Some semblance of coziness despite the flagrant cracks around the curtains. They watched the fire.
“OK. Tell me.”
T
hey killed him, Rom. He was too beautiful for them. Did you
see
him? God, I used to just lie there and look at him. Sometimes he got in a bad mood, you know? I mean, they’d fucked him up so bad—and then he wouldn’t let me touch him, so I’d just lie there and look, for hours.
“Oh Jesus, Rom. Jesus. I feel like somebody just tore half my insides out. Why’d they do it to him?
Why?
”
Said Romulus, “Who? Who did it to him, Matthew?”
“He was just a country kid, Rom. He grew up in this little town upstate, and he was in love with this real simple girl and he was going to work his way through college and then he was going to marry her. I bet they’d a had seven kids, and I’d never have even met him, but that’s OK—he’d still be
alive,
Rom. But then that bastard got hold of him.”
“What bastard? Stuyvesant?”
“He was fifteen, you know, and his parents were killed in a car accident—so what could he do? The state was going to put him in some school for orphans. All he needed was someone to take him in for a while. And that bastard came along.”
“Who?”
“You don’t want to know. Rom, they’re going to find me, and they’re going to kill me, and if I tell you, they’ll kill you, too.”
“Tell me.”
“You want to know?”
“Who’s the bastard?”
“I gotta tell somebody. But you already know his name.”
“Stuyvesant?”
“David Leppenraub.”
“Who?”
“You’re kidding. You don’t know who he is?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Photographer?
Trees of North America?
”
“Wait a minute. Maybe I did see his name in the paper. Some controversy . . .”
“Every paper in the fucking country. He did these pictures of trees, all kinds of trees, you know, in the city and gas stations and malls and like that, just these normal American scenes except there was always a little bit of violence in them, just a touch of blood or something. And in every one of these pictures there was also an angel, and this angel didn’t have no clothes or nothing, and this angel was beautiful. I bet he was. ’Cause this angel was Scotty.”
“He was the model?”
“Yeah. He was Leppenraub’s model. He was also Leppenraub’s slave. He took him in, put him up on his farm up in Dutchess County. He said he was some kind of precious flower. He said he was too good for that girlfriend of his. He gave him presents, and he made him a glamour boy. He made him the mascot for all his fancy parties. He gave him drugs and shit, all the shit that’ll fuck up a kid the fastest, I
know
about that shit. He turned him into a zombie. He just sucked all the blood out of him, so he could do whatever he wanted. He made him fuck all his friends. He made him do all sorts of shit.
“Once Scotty tried to run away, and a couple of Leppenraub’s party-boy goons came after him, and they brought him back to the farm and taught him a little
self-discipline,
you know? I mean they beat the shit out of him. Taught him to do what he was told.
“One time—listen to this, Rom—one time Leppenraub made Scotty invite his old girlfriend up to the farm. And she still loved him, she still didn’t understand what had happened to him. And they had lunch, the three of them, and she was looking at Scotty and she started to cry. And Leppenraub, he consoled her, oh yeah. He told her Scotty just wasn’t ready for serious
commitment,
but be
patient, child,
perhaps when he’s
ready
—and all the while Scotty was doing what he was told. You know what he was doing, Rom? He was jacking off Leppenraub under the table. Rom! The man made him do that. The man’s a fucking monster.”
“Jesus.”
“He’s the most sadistic bastard that ever walked the face of the earth. You see what he did to Scotty? You see the scars?”
“He was dressed when I saw him, Matthew.”
“You see the brand, Rom? He
branded
him—fucking heart tattoo on his butt.
Yours forever.
Oh Jesus.”
T
here was something outside. Matthew talked on, and Romulus shut his eyes, and he felt it, felt
them,
gathering out there. Something colder than the cold. Not wolves. Much fiercer than wolves.
Y-rays.
Sent down from Stuyvesant’s tower. Dense miasma of Y-rays, gathering on the other side of the rude curtains, settling in around the entrance to the cave. Eyelessly watching and listening in on Matthew’s grief, listening to every word.
M
atthew said, “Then he got crow’s-feet around his eyes and sores on his skin, and he started to look sick. And that’s how Leppenraub knew he had it. How he knew he’d given Scotty the virus. So—
so long,
fucker. Get the fuck out of here, fucker.”
“He just kicked him out?”
“Just like that, yeah. He didn’t have no use for him no more. Got hisself another model. Go die now, Scotty. Go off somewhere and die.
“Leppenraub though, he was real sick himself. He went in the hospital after he kicked Scotty out, and he was supposed to die.
“So they had this big party for him just before he went in, so everybody could say good-bye to him. And they gave a lot of speeches and everybody said how
gentle
he was, all the big wheels, and they fed him a little cake. If I’d been there I’d have fed him dogshit till he choked. But I didn’t even know who he was then.
“But anyway, the thing is, Leppenraub
didn’t die.
He’s back on his fucking farm. He’s feeling so much better, thank you. The fucker. Scotty’s in some
drawer
somewhere in the city morgue but Leppenraub’s having a high old time.
“And of course everybody just loves him.
“I mean wherever you go now it’s Leppenraub. You see the bookstores last Christmas? Leppenraub coffee-table books and calendars and shit, and they had that big exhibit at some museum. The Whitman or something. Me, I never looked at any of it. I wanted to, you know, just to see what Scotty had been like before Leppenraub ruined him, but he wouldn’t never let me. All those pictures of him, they just
humiliated
him.”
The tears kept washing silently down the Weasel’s cheeks. Romulus found a wadded-up tissue in a pocket, and he gave it to Matthew and Matthew wiped his face with it, but it didn’t do any good. The tears kept coming. He said:
“I don’t know how Scotty made it before I found him. I took care of him best I could. But he was just crazy. He kept talking about revenge. He had evidence, he said. He said he had this videotape that Leppenraub had made at one of the torture sessions. He said he was going to go to the bastard and let him know he had it and get some money. He acted so crazy, he weirded everyone out in the squat. They threw us out.”
“You got evicted from a
squat,
Matthew?”
“Hard to fucking believe, huh? Hey, what can I tell you? They should have left me out on the hillside when I was born. But still, you know, I guess it was OK, ’cause I still had Scotty. We was on the street—but we still had each other. Till one day he says to me, ‘I called Leppenraub. He wants to meet me. He wants to negotiate.’ ‘You going to do it?’ I says. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I got nothing to lose.’ I says, ‘You got us. You going to lose us.’ And he smiles, you know, and he says, ‘You and me, we’re going to Key West. We’re going to buy a mansion, and a boat, and live happily ever after.’ I says, ‘He’ll kill you.’ He says, ‘Yeah, well if he does, you tell ’em. Matthew, you gotta tell ’em you saw me. You saw what they did to me. You tell ’em.’