Fet nodded modestly.
“Much respect, Fet,” said Gus. “Much respect. Let’s take out the island. Like—right fucking now!”
“Whatever we do with it … we get one shot. We need to be sure.”
“I know who can get us the detonator, man. The only asshole that is still capable of getting anything dirty, anything crooked on the whole East Coast. Alfonso Creem.”
“How would you go about contacting him? Crossing to Jersey is like going into East Germany.”
“I have my ways,” said Gus. “You just leave it to Gusto. How you think I got the fucking grenades?”
Fet went silent, pensive, and then looked back at Gus.
“Would you trust Quinlan? With the book?”
“The old man’s book? The Silver whatever?”
Fet nodded. “Would you share it with him?”
“I don’t know, man,” said Gus. “I mean, sure—it’s just a book.”
“The Master wants the book for a reason. Setrakian sacrificed his life for it. Whatever is inside must be real. Your friend Quinlan thinks as much …”
“What about you?” asked Gus.
“Me?” Fet said. “I have the book—but I can’t do much with it myself. You know that saying ‘He’s so dumb, he couldn’t find a prayer in the Bible’? Well, I can’t find much. There’s some trick to it, maybe. We should be so close.”
“I’ve seen him, man—Quinlan. Shit, I’ve recorded that motherfucker cleaning a nest in a New York minute. Two, three dozen vampires.”
Gus smiled, cherishing his memories. Fet liked Gus even more when he smiled.
“In jail you learn that there are two kinds of guys in this world—and I don’t care if they’re human or bloodsuckers—there’s the ones that take it and the ones that hand it out. And this guy, man—this guy gives it out like fucking candy … He wants the hunt, man. He wants the hunt. And he’s maybe the one other orphan out here who hates the Master as much as we do.”
Fet nodded. In his heart the matter was resolved.
Quinlan would get the book. And Fet would get some answers.
Extract from the Diary of Ephraim Goodweather
Most midlife crises are not this bad. In the past, it used to be that people would watch their youth fade, their marriage break, or their careers grow stagnant. Those were the breaks, usually eased by a new car, a dab of Just for Men, or a big Mont Blanc pen, depending on your budget. But what I have lost cannot be compensated for. My heart races every time I think of it, every time I sense it. It is over. Or it will be over soon enough. Whatever I had, I have squandered—and what I hoped for will never be. Things around me have taken their permanent, horrible final form. All the promise in my life—youngest graduate in my class, the big move east, meeting the perfect girl—all that is gone. The evenings of cold pizza and a movie. Of feeling like a giant in my son’s eyes …
When I was a kid, there was this guy on TV called Mr. Rogers, and he used to sing: “You can never go down / can never go down / can never go down the drain.” What a fucking lie.
Once, I might have gathered my past in order to present it as a CV or a list of accomplishments, but now … now it seems like an inventory of trivialities, of things that could have been but are not. As a young man I felt the world and my place in it was all part of a plan. That success, whatever that is, was something to be gained simply by focusing on my work—on being good at “What I did.” As a workaholic father, I felt that the day-to-day grind was a way to provide, to see us through while life took its final shape. And now … now that the world around me has become an unbearable place, and all I have is the nausea of wrong turns taken and things lost. Now I know this is the real me. The permanent me. The solidified disappointment of that young man’s life—the subtraction of all those achievements of youth—the minus of a plus that was never tallied. This is me: weak, infirm, fading. Not giving up, because I never do … but living without faith in myself or my circumstance.
My heart flutters at the notion of never finding Zack—at the idea that he is gone forever. This I cannot accept. I will not accept.
Not thinking straight. But I will find him, I know I will. I have seen him in my dreams. His eyes looking at me, making of me that giant once again, calling me by the truest name a man can ever aspire to: “Dad.”
I have seen a light surrounding us. Purging us. Absolving me—of the booze and the pills and the blind spots of my heart. I have seen this light. I long for it again in a world this dark.
Beneath Columbia University
EPH WANDERED AWAY through the subterranean tunnels of the former insane asylum beneath the former Columbia University. All he wanted to do was walk. Seeing Zack atop Belvedere Castle with Kelly and the Master had shaken Eph to the core. Of all the fates he had dreaded for his son—Zack murdered or starving in a locked cage somewhere—standing at the Master’s side had never occurred to him.
Was it the demon Kelly who had drawn their son into the fold? Or was it the Master who wanted Zack with him, and if so, why?
Perhaps the Master had threatened Kelly, and Zack had no choice but to play along. Eph wanted to cling to this hypothesis. Because the idea that the boy would freely align himself with the Master was unimaginable. The corruption of one’s child is a parent’s worst fear. Eph needed to believe in Zack as a little lost boy, not a wayward son.