Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim 1)

One afternoon, he went to St. Patrick's Cathedral and sat for an hour staring at the main altar. He believed nothing. He felt nothing. The words of the psalms he had so loved did not come back to him.

As he was leaving, as he was lingering in the foyer of the church, looking back at it as if it were a world he would never behold again, a rough policeman forced a young tourist couple to leave because they had been embracing. Toby stared at the policeman, who gestured for him to get out. But Toby just took his rosary out of his pocket and the policeman nodded and moved away from him.

In his own mind, he was a failure. This world of his in New York wasn't real. He had failed his little brother, his sister, his mother, and he had disappointed his father.Pretty Face.

At times, an anger began to blaze in Toby but it wasn't directed at anyone.

This is an anger angels have trouble understanding because what Toby had long ago underlined in the book of Pascal Parente was true.

We angels do in some respects lack cardiognosis. But I knew intelligently what Toby felt; I knew from his face and from his hands, and even from the way that he now played his lute, more darkly and with a forced gaiety. His lute, with its deep roughened tones, took on a melancholy sound. Both sorrow and joy were subjected to it. He couldn't put his own private pain in it.

One night his employer, Alonso, came to Toby's little hotel apartment. He carried a big leather knapsack over his shoulder.

This was a place Alonso had sublet to Toby on the very edge of Little Italy. It was a fine place as far as Toby was concerned, though the windows looked out on walls, and the furniture was fine and even a little fancy.

But Toby was surprised to open the door and see Alonso. Alonso had never come there. Alonso might put him in a cab to go home after the opera, but he'd never come home with him.

Alonso sat down and asked for wine.

Toby had to go out to get it. He never kept liquor in his apartment.

Alonso started to drink. He took out from his coat a large gun and laid it on the kitchen table.

Alonso told Toby he was up against a force that had never threatened him before: Russian mobsters wanted his restaurant and his catering business, and they had taken his "house" away from him.

"They'd want this hotel," he said, "but they don't know I own it."

A small band of them had gone right into the house where Toby had played for the card gamers and the ladies. They had shot the men there, and four of the women and girls, and run off everybody else, and put in their own girls in place of them.

"I've never seen this kind of evil," said Alonso. "My friends won't stand by me. What friends do I have? I think my friends are in this with them. I think my friends have sold me out. Why else would they let this happen to me? I don't know what to do about this. My friends blame me for this." Toby stared at the gun. Alonso took the clip out of it, then shoved it back in. "Know what this is? This will shoot more rounds than you can imagine."

"Did they kill Elsbeth?" Toby asked.

"Shot her in the head," said Alonso. "Shot her in the head!" Alonso began to shout. Elsbeth was the reason these men had come, and Alonso's friends had told him how foolish it was for him and Violet to have given her shelter.

"Did they shoot Violet?" Toby asked.

Alonso began to sob. "Yes, they shot Violet." He wept uncontrollably. "They shot Violet first, an old girl like that. Why would they do that?"

Toby sat thinking. He wasn't thinking about all the crime dramas he had once watched on television, or the true-crime novels he had read. He was thinking his own thoughts, about those who prevail in this world and those who don't, those who are strong and resourceful, and those who are weak.

He could see Alonso getting drunk. He detested this.

Toby thought for a long time and then he said, "You have to do to them what they are trying to do to you."

Alonso stared at him and then broke into laughter.

"I'm an old man," he said. "And these men, they're going to kill me. I can't go up against them! I've never fired a gun like this one in my life."

He talked on and on as he drank wine, getting drunker and angrier, explaining that he had always cared about "the basic things," a good restaurant, a house or two where men could relax, play a little cards, have a little friendly companionship.

"It's the real estate," Alonso sighed. "If you want to know. That's what they want. I should have gotten the Hell out of Manhattan. And now it's too late. I'm finished."

Toby listened to everything that he said.

These Russian gangsters had moved right into his house, and brought the deeds for the house to the restaurant. They had deeds for the restaurant as well. Alonso, confronted at the crowded dinner hour, and safe amongst witnesses, had refused to sign anything.

They'd bragged about the lawyers who handled their deeds and the men at the bank who worked for them.

Alonso was supposed to sign his businesses away. They promised if he signed the deeds and cleared out, they'd give him a piece of things, and they wouldn't hurt him. "Give me a piece of my own house?" Alonso bawled. "It's not enough for them, the house. They want the restaurant my grandfather opened. That's what they really want. And they'll move on this hotel soon as they find out about it. They said if I didn't sign the papers, they'd have their lawyer take care of it, and no one would ever find my body. They said they could do to the restaurant the things they'd done in the house. They would make it look to the cops like a robbery. That's what they said to me. `You're murdering your own people if you don't sign.' These Russians are monsters."

Toby pondered this, what it would mean if these gangsters had moved on the restaurant at night, shut the big blinds to the street, and murdered all the employees. He felt a shiver when he realized that death was coming very close to him.

Without words, he pictured the bodies of Jacob and Emily. Emily with her eyes closed underwater.

Alonso drank another glass of wine. Thank Heaven, Toby thought, that he had bought two fifths of the best Cabernet.

"After I'm dead," Alonso said, "what if they find my mother?"

A sullen silence came over Alonso.

I could see his guardian angel beside him, seemingly impassive yet striving somehow to comfort him. I could see other angels in the room. I could see those that give off no light.

Alonso brooded and so did Toby.

"As soon as I sign these deeds," said Alonso, "as soon as they legally own the restaurant, too, they'll kill me." He reached into his coat and he took out another large gun. He explained that it was an automatic weapon and could shoot even more rounds of ammunition than the first one. "I swear, I will take them with me."