Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim 1)

One of his cousins listened quite a lot to a tape he'd made once of Toby playing on a street corner. But Toby didn't know of this; he couldn't possibly have known. So this potential warmth never reached him.

One of his old teachers at Jesuit High School had even searched every musical conservatory in the United States for a Toby O'Dare, but Toby O'Dare had never enrolled in any such institution.

You might say some of this family suffered grief for the loss of the soft peculiar music of Toby O'Dare, and grief for the loss of the boy who so loved his Renaissance instrument that he would stop to explain, to anyone who asked, all about it, and why he preferred to play it on the street corner, rather than the guitar of rock star affection.

I think you see my point: his family was good stock, the O'Dares, the O'Briens, the McNamaras, the McGowens, and all those who had intermarried with them.

But in every family there are bad people, and weak people, and some people who can't or won't withstand the trials of life, and who fail spectacularly. Their guardian angels weep; demons beholding them dance for joy.

But only The Maker decides what ultimately happens to them.

So it was with the mother and father of Toby.

But both lines gave Toby tremendous advantages: talent for music as well as love for it was certainly the most impressive gift. But Toby inherited keen intelligence, as well, and an unusual and irrepressible sense of humor. He had a powerful imagination that enabled him to make plans, to have dreams. And a mystical bent sometimes caught hold of him. His strong desire to be a Dominican priest at the age of twelve did not pass so easily with the coming of worldly ambition, as it might have done with another teenager.

Toby never stopped going to church during the roughest high school years, and even if he'd been tempted to skip the Sunday Mass, he had his brother and sister to consider, and wouldn't fail to set a good example.

If ever he could have only drifted back some five generations and seen his forefathers studying Torah night and day in their synagogues in Central Europe, maybe he would not have become the killer that he was. If he could have gone further back, and seen his ancestors painting pictures in Siena, Italy, perhaps he would have had more courage to pursue his most cherished designs.

But he had no idea such persons ever existed, or that on his mother's side, generations ago, there had been English priests martyred for their faith in the time of Henry VIII, or that his great-grandfather on his father's side, too, had wanted to be a priest but could not make the grades in school for such to be possible.

Almost no mortal on earth knows his lineage before the so-called Dark Ages, and only the great families can penetrate the deep layers of time to extract from them a series of examples that might inspire.

And the word, "inspired," is not one to be wasted in Toby's case, because as a contract killer, he has always been inspired. And he was inspired as a musician before that.

His success as a killer derived in no small part from the fact that tall and graceful as he was, blessed with beauty as he was, he didn't look like anyone in particular.

By the age of twelve, he had the permanent stamp of intelligence on his features, and when he was anxious, there was something cold in his face, a look of well-established distrust. But this passed almost instantly, as it was not something he wanted to reflect, and did not want to abide in himself. He tended towards calm and people almost always found him remarkable and attractive.

He was six foot four before he graduated high school, and his blond hair had faded to an ashen color, and his level gray eyes were full of ready concentration and gentle curiosity, and gave no offense to anyone.

He frowned seldom, and when he went out for a walk, just a walk on his own, to the casual observer he appeared a bit watchful, like one eager for a plane to land on time, or someone waiting a bit anxiously for an important appointment.

If startled, he would flash with resentment and distrust, but snap away from this almost instantly. He did not want to be an unhappy or bitter person, and he had cause over the years to become both, and he resisted it mightily.

He did not drink, ever in all his life. He hated it.

From childhood on, he dressed beautifully, principally because the children in the uptown grade school to which he went dressed this way, and he wanted to be like them, and he was not above taking expensive hand-me-downs from his cousins, which included navy blue blazers and khaki trousers, and pastel polo shirts. There was a look to the boys of uptown New Orleans that was located in these very clothes and he took to discovering and cultivating it. He also tried to talk like these boys, and slowly he eliminated from his speech the strong indicators of poverty and hardness that had always marked his father's taunts and bawling complaints and ugly threats. As for his mother's voice, it was accentless and pleasant, and he spoke much more like her than like anyone else in his family.

He readThe Official Preppy Handbook, not as a satire, but as something to be obeyed. And he knew how to roam the secondhand stores for the right kind of leather book bag.

In the parish of Holy Name of Jesus School, he walked through gloriously green streets from the St. Charles car line, and the fresh, beautifully painted houses he passed filled him with vague and dreamy longings.

Palmer Avenue uptown was his favorite street and it seemed to him at times that if he could live someday in a white two-story house on that street, he'd know perfect happiness.

He also came into contact with music very early at the Loyola Conservatory. And it was the sound of the lute, at a public Renaissance concert, that drew him away from his ardent desire to enter the priesthood.

He went from altar boy to passionate student as soon as he encountered a kindly teacher who taught him for nothing. He produced a purity of tone on the lute that astonished her. His finger work was fast, and the expression he gave to his playing was excellent, and his teacher marveled at the beautiful airs he could play by ear, and those included the songs I've mentioned above that always haunted him. He heard his grandmothers singing to him when he played. He played for his grandmothers sometimes in his mind. He played popular songs on the lute with great dexterity, giving them a wholly new sound, and an illusion of integrity.

At one point, one of his teachers put the records of the popular singer Roy Orbison into Toby's hands, and he soon found he could play the slower songs of this great musician, and give them tender expression through the lute that Orbison had so accomplished with his voice. He soon knew every "ballad" that Orbison had ever recorded.

And as he rendered all popular music in his own style, he learned a classical composition for every popular song, so that he could switch back and forth between them, bringing up the rapid and contagious beauty of Vivaldi one moment, and the mournful tender suffering of Orbison the next.