Faith of the Divine Inferno - Leslie Thompson (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

then poof, they weren’t. For the longest time I thought it was the product of magic or the punishment of the gods, but I have long since stopped believing in such nonsense. I have never experienced anything that had proved the existence of such characters.
I grimaced at the roasted smell of the remains as I touched his crispy flesh gingerly with my fingertips.
“Don’t touch him with your bare hands. We don’t know what made him burn. Use these.”
The man offered me a pair of latex gloves. Wondering who he was, I took them. There are few people in the world that use these things regularly. Cops and medical professionals used the gloves in the legitimate world, assassins and narcotics dealers in the criminal world. The man was too healthy for a career mixing Meth in a basement and he didn’t look mean enough to be a smuggler. It was possible that he was an assassin, but I wasn’t getting the strange twitch and crawl along my skin that happens when I meet people sociopathic enough to do that job. He might have been a doctor coming into the Cellar to purchase illegal organs or drugs, and he could just as easily be an undercover cop as a corrupt one. I really hoped he was a strung out doctor. It was the least ominous of the choices.
“Thanks.” I slid the latex over my fingers and searched the Dead Christian quickly. I didn’t worry about fouling my skin with whatever chemical that had incinerated him. Whatever it was had burned away before the fire went out. There was fragment of charred yellow from the shirt the Dead Christian had been wearing, and the lower half of his legs had bits of white linen slacks stuck into the burnt spots with white canvas shoes stretched over feet too big to wear them comfortably. Under ash where the hips had been was a thick wallet that had barely managed to survive the blaze. I peeled it open and found that the credit cards had melted into a single lump of plastic, and the driver’s license was barely visible behind the sleeve that held it.
“His name was Charles Abernathy,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Harry was suddenly standing on the other side of the body, bending over so he could stare at what was left of the corpse. I held out the wallet so that he could see the ID. He let out a sharp cry and staggered back in disgust. “Oh my god. I knew him.”
“He a friend of yours?” Baja asked him.
“He was a client. He buys art work from my auction house,” Harry replied. “His sister reported him missing a month ago. What was he doing down here?”
“Recruiting,” I answered. I had heard about the disappearance on the news. The cops suspected that Charles Abernathy had met with foul play, and was looking at his wife as a suspect for his murder. Obviously, the woman was innocent. I wondered if anyone would tell the cops this.
“What was he recruiting for?” Harry asked, aghast.
“He was handing out pamphlets for his church.” A light bulb went off in my head. The pamphlets could have been impregnated with a flammable substance that could be transferred to the skin and clothes. Once Charles had enough on him he burst into flames, or so that was my theory. But I have never seen any chemical that started a fire that quickly without everyone in the room smelling it first. Whatever had killed Charles had been fast and odor free.
I picked up the pamphlet that Charles had been holding and examined it. It looked ordinary enough with black ink printed boldly across cheap paper. There was a generic image of a church across the front with the stylized Star of Bethlehem hovering over the steeple. ‘Immortal Church of God’ was written in aggressive letters across the top and hours of worship were written in small letters across the bottom. Inside was a list of services the church provided, along with the names of the church officers, and a few quotes of scripture about peace, love, and forgiveness.
I closed the pamphlet and held it close to my nose without touching my skin. I smelled the usual odors of ink and paper with a delicate undertone of a sharp chemical. The foreign substance had a kick to it. It bit at my sinuses and created a sharp stabbing pain at the back of my skull. I tossed the pamphlet away and stood up. “Whoever killed him put a flammable chemical on the pamphlets he was handing out. Then they sent him into the Cellar to die, knowing that we won’t call the police and just get rid of the body for them.”
Baja made a disgusted sound and pulled a cell phone from the pocket of his jeans. “I’m calling the boss. Kootch, call the cleaner and get rid of the mess.”
Both men wandered away in opposite directions to make their phone calls. Harry’s bodyguard spoke urgently in his ear. Harry nodded emphatically and both men returned to the table to prepare to leave. The other vendors were moving fast to get out of the Cellar. No one wanted to meet the kind of men that would come here to get rid of a messy corpse, and no one wanted to know what they did with it.
I didn’t want to meet those kinds of people so I was getting out of there too. I slid my baton back into my belt and tucked the jade box and dagger under my arm. The man who had given me the gloves was kneeling over the corpse’s legs.
“You don’t want to be here when the clean-up crew arrives,” I said.
Unconcerned by my warning, the man grunted to acknowledge my words and remained where he was. Clean-up crews are not known for being polite, and if the man was so curious that he had to be here when they showed up, then he could suffer the potentially fatal consequences. Baja hung up his phone as I drew near him. “Tell the crew to take the pamphlets and dump them near the body. That will give the cops a lead to his killer without involving the Cellar.”
“You want them to bust whoever did this?” Baja was surprised. No one he knew cared about the death of one religious nut, no matter how bizarre and horrible their death had been. Baja didn’t know the dead man and he didn’t care why he had burned to death. As far as he was concerned, it would cease to be his problem once the ashes were swept away.
“I figure that the killer won’t stop with one victim, and he’ll continue to send people into the Cellar to die. Let the cops do their job and catch the lunatic. It will save your boss time and money trying to figure it out,” I explained.
“I’ll pass the advice along.” Baja said it like he didn’t think that the people who gave him orders would listen to me. A criminal organization did not go to the police for help. Either they were strong enough to deal with their problems on their own, or they perished.
I emerged onto the Little Five Points train platform and started walking to the street. My car was parked a few blocks away in a lot on Wall Street, and I was eager to get home before the sun came up. My little, silver sports car was parked under a street light so I had no trouble seeing the figure sitting on the hood. My first reaction was to be annoyed about someone’s butt denting the metal and scratching the paint job on my fifty thousand-dollar vehicle. Only then did I bother to wonder why someone would be sitting on a stranger’s car in the middle of the night. A couple of ideas occurred to me, none of them friendly, and I fingered my baton as I approached.
I sauntered to my car like I was the biggest bad-ass in the universe. If it were a random street punk, then he would move along as soon as I arrived. If someone was waiting for me specifically, then I would find out what they wanted and be on my way. Regardless, I wanted to get out of here without a fight. Acting like I itched to break a skull would go a long way to making that happen.
The figure turned at the sound of my footsteps and exposed his face to the harsh streetlight. He might have been handsome, but it was hard to tell around the bruised and swollen flesh around his left eye and the bloody mess made of his lips. After a moment I recognized the man as the Child of Orpheus who had followed me to the Cellar a few hours ago. This was new. None of the Children had ever approached me before. They preferred to lurk in my shadow. I wondered what had changed.
“Looks like Baja and Kootch beat your ass good.” I smirked as I opened the car door and put the dagger on the passenger seat.
“You told them I was a cop,” the man said angrily. “I’m surprised they didn’t kill me.”
“Baja must have been in a good mood.” I shrugged. “Are you here to bitch at me for getting your ass kicked, or do you have something more interesting to talk about?”
The man sighed and slid off of my car with a long squeak that sounded like my paint job was being gouged.
“I’m not here to bitch at you,” he said. I was willing to wait a few seconds to let him consider his words, but if he didn’t tell me what he wanted soon, I was leaving. Immortality does not mean I have an infinite supply of energy. I need to sleep like anyone else if I want to function properly. When the man didn’t continue, I opened the driver’s door and moved to get in.
“My name is Alejandro Reyes,” the man said. “I am from the Children of Orpheus.”
“I know. Do the Children know that you’re breaking the rules to talk to me?” I asked. Alejandro glared at me and shuffled his feet uncomfortably. The Children were under the impression that I wanted to kill all of them. I don’t know where they got that idea. I swear I didn’t threaten them.
“How do you know about the rules?” Alejandro was surprised.
“I sneak into your safe houses when I get bored. I read your records, and I put clear plastic wrap around the toilets to screw with you. I find it amuses me.”
“That was you? I got blamed for it the last time you did that!” Alejandro cried, outraged. I smiled sweetly at him. What was he going to do about it, leave flaming dog poop at my door? He ground his teeth, jumped when he hit a raw nerve in a freshly chipped tooth, and then groaned with pain through fingers clapped to his mouth. His fingers hurt him too, and he made another round of painful dance moves.
Finally, he got a hold of himself and glared at me with cold, dark eyes. “You saw the man that burst into flames tonight.” It was a statement instead of a question, so I didn’t say anything. “Did