Page 23 of A River Red With Blood
“What did you learn from your former pupil?”Epstein asked.
“Kade wasn’t my pupil.Angel and I looked out for him after his mother and father died.He wasn’t with us for long.”
“But he learned from both of you.”
“He learned not to be like either of us,” said Louis.“As for what he had to say, he claims a man named Sturgis wants me dead, on the orders of an angel.”
Epstein pursed his lips.
“How curious,” he said.“I wonder what Sturgis’s reward will be.Perhaps he was promised salvation.”
“For arranging the killing of a man he’s never met?If I was Sturgis, I’d want that in writing.”
“I agree,” said Epstein.“There are all kinds of angels, and I wouldn’t trust any of them.But it’s also possible that this Sturgis is of unsound mind.”
“Which is the general view, Kade’s included.”
“But not yours?”
“It might have been, were Sturgis not a member of the Colonial Club.”
“Ah, that den of robber barons.”
“Robber barons may be the least of them,” said Louis.
The Colonial Club was an outpost of wealth and privilege on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue.It hid its secrets well, but Louis knew, from Parker’s efforts, that among its members were individuals—“Believers”—committed to the search for an entity they referred to as the Buried God.The most dangerous of them were the Backers, wealthy men and women who, whether they truly believed in the Buried God or used it only as a flag of convenience, were engaged in the systematic corruption of private and public institutions, including local, state, and federal government.From the wreckage of a plane in Maine’s Great North Woods, Parker, Angel, and Louis had retrieved a partial list of conspirators in said corruption.They were fellow travelers and compromised persons, many linked to the Colonial Club, if by degrees of separation, but so far had failed to identify any of the Backers.The Colonial was discreet to the point of paranoia; some openly acknowledged being members, but most preferred not to, and there were those who had never set foot inside theclub while enjoying the associated benefits of its business and political connections.A surveillance operation mounted on the Colonial Club, even over a period of months, might have yielded no useful information—indeed,hadyielded no useful information, because the Federal Bureau of Investigation attempted just such an operation before finally admitting failure.But D.Francis Sturgis, of that same Colonial Club, was currently attempting to suborn an act of murder, seemingly on the instructions of an inhuman being.
Louis’s coffee arrived, brought by a middle-aged man with prematurely white hair— Reuven, presumably—who did his best not to catch Louis’s eye, even when Louis thanked him.Louis saw that the man was nervous of him, but Louis was used to people being apprehensive around him.
“Traditionally,” said Epstein, “angels have done their own dirty work, as demonstrated by the fate of the firstborn of Egypt.Why outsource?”
“It might be cheaper, like buying machine parts from China.”
“Are you suggesting that God is a capitalist?His son, for those who believe, always struck me as a committed socialist.”
“And look what happened to him,” said Louis.
“He suffered the fate of so many who speak truth to power.”
Again, Louis thought Epstein’s words were being weighed precisely before he committed to them.Louis was being tested, but to what end he had no idea.What Epstein was saying appeared to be open to more than one interpretation, but the variations were known only to him.
“We could always ask Kittim,” said Louis.“He might have an opinion.”
“Kittim?I haven’t heard that name mentioned in years.”
“We can go next door to his former cell if your memory needs refreshing.Isn’t that why you arranged to meet me here?”
“Kittim is gone.”
“Dead?”
“Gone,” Epstein repeated.“We monitored his slow decay.We wanted to see what might happen at the end.”
“And?”
“The experiment was inconclusive.There was a fire.It may have been started deliberately.Kittim—or a layer of skin over old bones, which was all that remained of him by then—went up in flames.Others burned with him.”
“Meaning?”
