The Angel of Eden (36 page)

I showed Evelyn the picture I'd taken of Marya and Alaz the day before I left the Nemats. She gazed at it for a long time. I promised to frame it for her. Through her tears she told me how grateful she was that I'd given her her family back.

I got up to go soon after that. All the emotion had exhausted her. I leaned over to give her a kiss and closed the door quietly on my way out.

Fifty-Four

O
n the cab ride home my mind still churned over what Evelyn told me. “The sins of the father” reverberated through my brain. I felt remorseful about Marya, although she could have told me herself. Perhaps she preferred it that way. What had happened to her so long ago likely still festered in her heart. It certainly did in mine. Samuel and Evelyn had been more than good substitute parents. For that I was grateful.

I stopped off at the apartment to get some supplies for my drive to Strauss's place. I also texted Alice Jacobs to tell her I no longer needed the pages she was working on for the reproduction and would send her a check for whatever she'd already done. Then I tucked
The Steganographia
into my jacket pocket and scooped up Loki. I wanted to get away, to drive, to listen to music. The long trek to see Lucas Strauss suited perfectly.

As I approached the Porsche I called Strauss to tell him I was on my way. I spread a bath towel on the passenger seat beside
me for Loki to lie on, put Coldplay on the iPod, and headed for the Thruway.

It was much colder now than my first trip out. Ice tinged the pools of water left over from the flood; the fields were white and stiff with frost. But the Thruway was clear and dry and I made very good time. I arrived at Strauss's place just as the afternoon began to slip into twilight.

This time the buzzer worked; Strauss's voice sailed over the intercom. “Glad you've arrived safely, Madison. The gate will open momentarily.” His voice carried a jovial tone, although it sounded as if he had a frog in his throat. Living above that damp, dark first floor probably wasn't a great idea for an elderly man. I clipped on Loki's leash and we headed through the wood along the path to the house. She held herself tensely as we walked, hackles raised and tail down, clearly feeling more anxious the closer we got to the house. No fawns or bears this time, though; I guessed Strauss had pulled the plug.

The magician waited for me inside the gloomy, cavernous main-floor room. He had on an old fedora and a Burberry scarf wrapped around his neck. “Just got back from my walk,” he said, touching the tip of his hat. Loki growled at him.

Strauss jumped back at the sound and glared at the dog. With her black fur, he hadn't noticed her in the dim light. He frowned. “I can't allow that creature in here.” His voice croaked. “Apologies,” he continued, “I've come down with a sore throat.”

I tightened my hand on her leash. “Then we'll conclude our business outside. When I was away, I almost lost her. I'm not letting her out of my sight.”

“All right,” he said, “but keep the damn thing leashed and close to you; I don't want it anywhere near me.”

In the living room upstairs, what had seemed an elegant, smartly appointed space felt cheerless now, despite the fire burning
in the grate. Only one light was on and the blinds were shut. Strauss groaned slightly when he took his seat near the fire and put his hand to his back. “These old bones trouble me greatly in winter.” Reflection from the firelight flickered over his features, distorting them. “I'm afraid it's just you and I tonight. My man Harrison is off today.” He coughed a little and wiped his lips with a tissue.

I sat in the armchair nearest the door. Despite Strauss's orders, I let the leash drop. Loki parked herself at my feet, her ears perked up and her hackles still slightly raised. I gave her a pat to show her she had nothing to fear.

Then I looked up at Strauss. “This shouldn't take long.”

“No, indeed not.” He smiled and his cold eyes fixed on the dog again. “Have you had that animal for long? I suspect not. Am I right?”

“A few weeks, that's all. I guess you could say she strayed into my life.”

“Strange,” Strauss mused. “How fitting you'd choose a black dog for a companion. Faust's familiar was a dog. A black stray, too. What do you make of that?”

His dallying was getting on my nerves. I'd only just arrived but wanted to get out. Loki growled again, perhaps picking up on his hostility. I reached down to calm her with another pat. “It's all right, Loki,” I said.

Strauss's teeth showed when he attempted to smile. “Loki? You named her after the Norse demon? Most apropos. Canines haven't always been regarded as a friend to man, you know. They were associated with the underworld; the superstitious believed they haunted byways and bridges to draw the unwary into danger.”

“May we get on with things? It's a long drive back and already late in the day.”

His gaze shifted to his desk, a contemporary design made of tempered glass with chrome drawers. A matching cabinet stood
against the wall behind it. “I understand your trip proved hazardous. You almost died?”

It was my turn to frown. “Bennet told you that too?”

“Yes. We had a long phone conversation yesterday.” Strauss paused. “My promise has been fulfilled, as I believe you now know your true birth story. Although it didn't sound like the warmest of family reunions.”

My face reddened in irritation. Bennet had no business discussing my personal affairs with him. “That means you know about Helmstetter too? That he was my father? Bennet shouldn't have said anything.”

At the mention of Helmstetter's name, his jaw tensed and his lips formed an ugly line. “Please don't blame Bennet. I knew all along he'd gotten a child off a local woman and the calamities that followed. I only discovered you were that child when Tricia Ross inadvertently let it drop.”

I could feel my temper building. Loki whimpered, sensing my dismay. “How did you find out about Helmstetter and my mother?”

Strauss brought the tissue to his mouth again, coughed, and wheezed as he took a breath. Then he loosened his scarf, fumbled with the buttons on his jacket, and undid the top two. The metal buttons gleamed in the firelight. “I went to Kandovan myself on Helmstetter's trail two years after he absconded with my possessions. It was too late. By then he was long dead.”

“What the hell. You didn't bother to tell me any of this? You said you'd found out only recently that Helmstetter traveled there.”

“No. I eventually pried the information out of his mistress about where he'd gone.”

“So the whole thing was a charade—risking my life to send me over there when you already knew Helmstetter's fate.”

His gaze settled on me again. “Not at all. You returned with the book, did you not? And would you have gone over there just to retrieve the volume for me? The inducement of learning about your birth story provided a necessary incentive.”

“It was all a sham.” My mind went back to Bennet's cold shoulder at the Van airport.

“You knew Bennet all along, didn't you? She told me that, you know. She was aware of all this, wasn't she?”

“I was well acquainted with her parents, yes. I knew her from the day she was born.” He gave me a sly smile, and waited for his words to register.

The reality began to dawn and he saw it written on my face. I barely heard his next words.

He nodded slowly. “Yes. Bennet's mother was my former assistant, the woman who married Helmstetter. Shortly after she discovered he had a mistress, he abandoned both women. He left her broken and bitter. She remarried soon after and gave birth to Bennet a year later, but never really recovered from Helmstetter's betrayal. Bennet would come home from school to find her mother half out of it from drink. Eventually the marriage broke up, and Bennet was left to cope with her mother as best she could. She grew up with Helmstetter's phantom hanging over her head. It ruined her childhood.” He tapped his fingers absentmindedly on the chair arm. “I insisted that Bennet not tell you. If it's any solace, she resisted that—strongly—before she gave in.”

“And Bennet knew … about me?”

“She had no idea Helmstetter was your father, if that's what you mean. I kept that valuable piece of information from her. She would never have agreed to get involved otherwise. You seem to have gotten under her skin. When she called, she claimed she
couldn't face loving the son of the man who destroyed her mother. The connection seemed too ominous. She was furious with me.”

I felt the earth move under my feet. In my mind's eye, I saw Bennet's blank face at the airport, her blowing me off, wanting nothing more to do with me.

“Poor Bennet. She's quite bereft now and she really is poor, you know,” Strauss said. “But don't you see? It has turned out all right in the end.” He glanced at his desk again. “Forgive me for my little game. You'll find a check on my desk over there. I've rewarded you for your trouble quite liberally. You may leave the volume there too.” He shifted in his chair as if he was in pain and reached around to press his hand to his back.

I welcomed putting an end to this commission and my association with Strauss. He'd been honest about one thing at least. When I picked up the check, I saw he'd paid me double what we negotiated. I took Trithemius's book out of my jacket pocket and laid it on the desk. As I did, I happened to glance at the cabinet and saw the three Mesopotamian artifacts arranged neatly on the upper shelf—the two cylinder seals and the statue.

Perhaps that's what reminded me of Tricia Ross. And then the flash of firelight I'd noticed earlier on the metal buttons of Strauss's jacket connected to a memory. The scene in Ross's kitchen flooded back. The small round thing I'd seen among the tea things. It had eluded my memory, the telltale sign of who'd tortured her. It was a bloody metal button, just like the one Strauss pulled out of his arm the night of the spiritualist séance when I first met him.

I rounded on him, ready to accuse him of killing Ross, then reeled back in shock.

He'd stood up and moved in front of the mantel, his body silhouetted by the orange glow of the fire. He had a gun in his hand.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Completing our transaction to my satisfaction.”

“You're depraved. And far worse for murdering Ross.”

He let the accusation float by him. “The good professor decided to report the three artifacts to the FBI. She'd finally concluded they must have been stolen. Graciously, she wanted to give me a chance to voluntarily hand them over first and summoned me to her house to tell me.”

“So you proceeded to beat her to death?”

His lack of response was all the confirmation I needed. My stomach turned.

“So what was the deal about me? Were you taking a warped form of revenge on Helmstetter by putting his son through hell?”

Strauss's expression was full of menace. “Do you recall the Bible verse I recited at my channeling in Carroll Gardens?”

I remembered he'd stared at me after quoting that passage. At the time I didn't understand why.

“I'll refresh your memory,” he continued.

“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return to the house from which I came.' And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. Then it brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.

“I meant the passage for you as much as for Gina, for that is your fate. You'll recall that Helmstetter believed himself to be a direct descendant of the real Faust?”

“You told me that.”

“Faust sold his immortal soul not for fame and fortune as is commonly believed but for knowledge. It's an old story, isn't it, stretching all the way back to Adam and Eve's desire to eat of the fruit of the tree. In some respects Marlowe and Goethe recycled that myth. From Adam's time, man has not been content with his lot in life. He must rival the gods and always have more.

“The original Faust was never identified when he died. And some believe the devil made good the bargain. That he granted immortality to Faust's tortured soul.”

“Do you hear yourself? That's crazy.”

He smiled. “Perhaps. But Helmstetter clung to this idea. It's what prompted his own search for eternal life.”

“Well, I'm sure Bennet told you all about that too. It turned out to simply be a state of mind. Time vanishes under the influence of certain hallucinogens.”

“Don't be a fool. Helmstetter was brilliant. His mental capabilities totally eclipsed mine. Had he remained in America, he would have become one of the foremost magicians in history. He knew all about hallucinogens, would never have traveled halfway across the globe simply to partake of them. It is said the original Faust experienced a moment of transcendence. So too did George Helmstetter. Somehow, he discovered the secret of transformation in Trithemius's writings. He achieved his dream.