24   

Romanticism as theology: Is
there hope for the
spiritual drunk?

Gorgeous; the million-dollar wound that looked spectacular and didn’t hurt much. Roy surveyed the dramatic stain spreading over his shirt sleeve between shoulder and elbow. The whole thing was a beautiful movie, better than Bronson or Eastwood, and Charity saw it.

“Drumm, will it show on color TV?”

“If it doesn’t, we can touch it up.”

They were momentarily alone just inside the balcony doors, guards three deep in the hall, the crowd screaming outside as the assassin was torn like an unclean thing from their seething mass by Paladin guards and dragged up the marble steps to his doom.

“You bring that sumbitch here,” Roy seethed. “I want him to see me to my face.”

Click! “Instantly, Leader.”

He felt like the next thing to — no, he was God now, at least here. The Devil didn’t seem interested — Roy couldn’t figure that at all — but the rest sure loved him all right. They’d follow him.

He’d find Charity, tuck Florence away for rainy days... he had the whole thing knocked. Even Topside got out of his way. Damn if one of those angels didn’t look like... No. No way. Woody was alive. A live nothing back in Plattsville.

Roy gazed at Wembley’s picture in the space where his would hang in nobler majesty. Secretly he wished the portrait could be bare-chested, but that wouldn’t be dignified. Respectability warred with inclination and won. But still... maybe a sword and lots of fur like Conan.

Drumm entered, followed by three guards and a shabbily dressed prisoner, whom they sent sprawling at Roy’s feet.

“Get up, motherfucker. I want to get a good look at you.”

Roy realized he should have kept the man on the floor. Middle-aged and schoolteacherish, he wasn’t tall but seemed so because of a determined dignity.

“What are you?” Roy wondered. “Besides a lousy shot. You look like some kind of college perfessor.”

“I was a teacher, yes,” the prisoner admitted. “May I have my glasses back?”

Drumm laughed unpleasantly. “Old man, you won’t be around long enough to need them. Name?”

“Ernst Stabler.” There was a trace of High German in the accent.

“I remember him, Leader Stride,” Drumm explained. “Stabler: fled Germany when Hitler came to power. Under suspicion as a Communist in the U.S. during the fifties. An enemy.”

“I was a political writer.” Stabler tried to focus his deficient sight on Roy, one eye already closing from a well-aimed blow. There was another bruise on his chin. His clothes were badly torn.

“You got guts, old man,” Roy said with thin admiration. “Just stupid. You’re gonna apologize. Say you’re sorry for shooting at me.”

“I am sorry,” Stabler admitted easily. “Sorrier than you think. More than that, I was totally wrong.”

“How about that?” Roy smirked to Drumm. “Even the losers are with us.”

Stabler managed to stand like a granite statue even bleeding and handcuffed. “You misunderstand. The bullet only dignified you.”

“Hey look, scumbag, I got things to do and people to see. Roaches like you I just spray, you got it?”

“The image is apt,” Stabler said with his quiet academic precision. “In the fifties I wrote that fascism was a propensity of the schizoid German mind. Not so. It is universal as influenza and as tenacious. When healthy resistance wears down, you will appear. For a time, Mr. Stride. Because it is not only the power you need but the cosmic drama. Ask your resident dramatist, Drumm. That truly was the romantic German part of it. But even the Germans realized, if only subconsciously, that their own mythology ends in defeat and loss. Gotterammerung.”

A snap of Roy’s fingers and his Luger was fetched from the desk by an obedient guard. Roy leveled the weapon at Stabler. “You gonna tell me in straight talk, old man.” Stabler didn’t flinch. “You will come to it in time, as I did. As Hitler did. Until then, every wise decision will be nullified by two of sheer stupidity and indulgence. It must be so, and you know why it must be so.”

“You —” The son of a bitch made him so mad, Roy began to shake. He yanked back the pistol slide and pointed the weapon again. “You got five seconds to live. Talk straight.”

It was unnerving; Stabler didn’t even blink. “You even have the wrong symbol, Mr. Stride. Your sign is not the fist of power, it is Florence Bird.”

Aiming the pistol between those steady, knowing eyes that stripped him naked, Roy had a red-sick moment of recognition. This was his real enemy, not the Jews or blacks or any of the easily visible targets the Paladins held up to the mob outside. This one here. The ones who knew and had the power to describe him; who made him a white nigger, only one step up from the black ones and no different at all when it came to money or getting fired first. The ones who got to be officers, got the best jobs and the best cars and women; who never had to work for power but always got it somehow. Not only the inferiors would go but these motherfuckers, too. Before anyone else. Now. Because of the answer in his hand. You don’t look down on me.

But they did.

Roy fired. Stabler’s head snapped back, spraying blood and flesh. The rest of him went down like a pile of rags. Drumm stepped over the mess, unconcerned.

“Get rid of that,” he ordered.

When the guards were gone with the remnant of Stabler, Drumm adjusted his toupee and reassured Roy. “Don’t worry, my Leader. The rug is washable.”

“How’d he know about Florence?”

“I don’t know, sir, but —”

“If he knows, who else does, huh? She’s my private business.” Roy turned on Drumm, shaking with rage and the exhilaration of a new kind of power. Blooded and blood drawn. He’d never felt anything like it, not even in good sex.

“And now possibly the business of others,” Drumm reflected prudently. “Especially after you marry Miss Stovall.”

Roy dropped the Luger on his desk. “You got Florence hid good?”

“Trust me, Leader. But we must be prepared. If respectability is the daughter of morality, her jealous sister is blackmail.”

Roy understood. More than respectability’s sister, blackmail was her shadow, especially now. He really needed Florence tonight, but that would be asking for it. Where the hell was Charity? The high-rise district wasn’t all that big they couldn’t find her.

House to house if they had to.

“We must be prepared,” Drumm cautioned. “A scenario, orchestrated circumstances. We must make the disclosure work for us. That will be my personal operation. Trust me.”

“Yeah. I got to, don’t I?”

“Everything must work for us now.” Drumm pointed a pudgy finger at Roy’s bloody sleeve. “Even that.”

Lovingly, Roy fingered the stained sleeve with its bullet holes as credential. “He was right, that old man, he did me a favor. Listen to them out there.” He drank in the thunder, the music. “That fucker made me God.”

With grand panache, Drumm threw open the balcony doors. The roar invaded the chamber like floodwaters from a burst dam. “Show them their God, Leader! Oh, and the blood. Cheat your left arm down — that is, be sure the wound is slightly turned toward them. After you, sir.”

Roy stepped out onto the balcony, bathing in the sweet balm of total power.

STRIDE! STRIDE! STRIDE! STRIDE!