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

do we go next?” Shaw asked, steering the car onto the main road. After a mile he slowed down and seemed to relax a bit.
I pulled the medallion out of my pocket and ran my thumb over the strange etchings of a plant drawn around the geometric design. I knew that Harry was the man I could take it to without fear that he would go to the cops or talk to crazy cult members. That sort of thing is bad for business. Aside from dealing in art and antiques, both legally and black market, Harry made a hobby of researching obscure artifacts and learning the purpose and stories behind them. If anyone knew what this damn thing was and why it was in Shaw’s house, he would know.
“Do you know Cervantes in Little Five Points?” I asked.
“The illegal antiques dealer posing as an art gallery?” he asked. “I’ve been in once or twice. Why?”
I pretended that I didn’t hear that. “Harry Cervantes does more than import and sell antiques. He also knows everything he can find about each piece that he sells. He says that the history increases the value of the pieces and keeps his clientele loyal. Bridget made a point of telling us to look into the medallion, and since she can’t or won’t tell us about it, then Harry will be our next best source.”
I didn’t know if he was angry or that he was simply tired, but Shaw didn’t speak as he got onto the freeway and headed back into the city.

Chapter 20

“Harry isn’t answering his phone,” I muttered as I clapped Shaw’s cell closed and put it in the cup holder next to the seat.
“Is that a problem?” he asked, pulling his sunglasses off of the dashboard and slipping them onto his face.
The sun was dipping toward the horizon, painting the world in shades of orange and gold and making it nearly impossible to see the other cars on the interstate. The bright light did nothing to dampen the warrior spirit of Atlanta rush hour traffic. Motorists circled each other in a dangerous dance as they fearlessly changed lanes in a majestic effort to shave ten seconds off of their travel time. They honked their horns like vicious battle cries, determined to make their opponents bow to their indomitable will. Most times everyone succumbed to the horn honkers, but once in a while one of the stubborn (or perhaps deaf) elderly, or the vindictively slow refused to bow down and were brutally punished by getting folded into two tons of crushing death. Unfortunately, these moments of freeway conflict were much like a bar brawl. Once the first punch is thrown (or the bumper is dented) the fight spreads to consume people who were only passing by, and the next thing you know, there are piles of walking wounded everywhere. And like all exercises in Darwinian Theory, only the fastest, strongest, and most vigilant of the species would make it home for another opportunity to reproduce. They won’t go for the reproductive opportunity because everyone is too stressed out from fighting rush hour traffic to do anything but suck down dinner and go to sleep.
“Kind of,” I sighed uncomfortably. “Harry is always making his next big deal or buying the best thing to come out of a dig. I’ve never known him to miss a call.”
“Well if it’s all the same to you I’d rather we didn’t go to him for information. I don’t like Harry Cervantes.”
“Have you met Harry?” I asked. I don’t know why I was surprised. Shaw is a cop, and Harry is a criminal. It makes sense that one of them would know about the other. Still, I thought Harry was slicker than to get noticed by the police. Shouldn’t he have a contingency plan for this sort of thing?
“I know of him,” Shaw said. “Cervantes was investigated for theft through fraud last year. Somehow he managed to make every paper trail lead to nowhere and every dime he made could be legally accounted for. We even consulted with the FBI and called in forensic accountants. We never found a damn thing.”
“Then why were you looking into him if he was clean?” I can admit that I was relieved. Harry was the best at the acquisition of the hard to find that I have ever known. I would miss him if he was gone.
“The High Museum of Art suspected that he had tried to broker a deal with them for a counterfeit Rembrandt. They filed a complaint.”
That was unusual for Harry. Sure he sold counterfeits, but he would never try to pass one off to people who can spot the differences between the fakes and the genuine thing. I wondered if this is the reason why he wasn’t answering the phone.
“So do you have any ideas of where to get information?” I was at a loss for ideas. Sometimes the shit piles up so deep that I don’t know where to start digging first. For once I had someone to ask the “Now what?” question. Usually I am alone when this sort of thing happens and I have to sit around and ponder until an idea dawns on me or something tries to kill me. This was kind of a nice moment for me.
“We should find something to eat,” Shaw said after a moment’s thought. “Then we can find somewhere to crash for the night. We can decide what to do next in the morning.”
I didn’t like that he had suggested that. I needed to do something productive. The last week had been nothing more than one kidnapping after an assault after an assault that left me bloody and wondering what was going on. That is no way to get things done. Passive is alright for marriage, but when things get this bad, a woman has to get up and do something about it. But since I had nothing better to suggest, I remained silent.
Bored, I took the medallion out of my pocket and examined it again. It was a thin piece of bronze that had been hammered into a crude circle the size of a fifty-cent piece. The etchings looked as if they had been hastily scratched into the surface with an edged blade, with enough skill that the pattern was more sophisticated than the tools. One side depicted a stylized drawing of a nightshade plant arranged in a geometric pattern that once meant something to me. I thought hard, trying to remember where I had last seen it. I recalled a towering stalagmite, thick with warm water and slick with cave moss growing from a yellow pool filled with sulfur. Near the top were raw cuts in the rock like the one on the bronze disc, and I didn’t know what they meant then either. All I know is that it had been terrifying to see it and I had run away. But I had been young then, and everything I found in dark places had frightened me. Now the pattern was only a curious thing, the mark or symbol of a group that wanted to hurt me. Symbols are meaningless and they cannot hurt me if I don’t believe in them.
I flipped the disc over and stared at the scratches there. There was a single word inscribed there, written in the ancient Norse runes spelling ‘contempt’. I grunted and felt my brain tickle with forgotten knowledge and I gave up. If it is as important as Bridget implied, then it would sort itself out soon.
Shaw pulled into a drive-thru and bought burgers and fries, and then he took us up the freeway to a seedy hotel just outside of Lawrenceville. The place was two years of neglect away from become a large hovel with a sagging roof and a weird smell. I’ve stayed in places like this before, but I can’t say I’ve ever slept in one. They attract all kinds of unsavory types and the locks on the doors are always lousy. No one with any brains will sleep in a place like that. Of course if a person was really smart, they wouldn’t go near these hotels at all.
“Are you sure about this place?” I asked grimacing at the weeds growing in the cracks in the parking lot and the familiar smells of vomit and beer coming from one corner of the building.
“The better hotels won’t let us rent a room if we don’t have a credit card, and the police will get our location the second we use anything but cash,” Shaw told me. “If you want to go into hiding, it’s this or a camp ground.”
I would have preferred the camp ground, but since I didn’t have a tent and no means to make one, I reluctantly followed Shaw into the closet disguised as the hotel lobby. People will brag about their ability to survive in the wild with only a pocket knife and a magnet like it’s some great accomplishment. It really isn’t. People have been scraping out a living in all kinds of terrain with much less for thousands of years. The trick is not to go around stinking like something’s dinner. But in the cities, you don’t have to smell like food, you just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. On top of that, human predators are nearly impossible to spot. They do have obvious hunting grounds though, and I do my best to avoid them.
“I hope you brought your wallet,” I muttered to Shaw as he approached the counter attended by a sickly youth of no determinate gender gone twitchy from addiction.
“I did. Where’s yours?”
“I assume it’s at your place where we left it while we were running for your life,” I replied. The addict flinched and picked at the side of his face and grimaced. I stared at the decay of teeth and gums that was the hallmarks of meth-mouth. Ugh.
“I’ll take care of it,” Shaw growled, digging into his back pocket. “Hope you don’t mind sharing a room.”
“Like I’m going to bitch about sharing a room,” I retorted, wondering what bug was crawling up his ass. “You’ve seen me mostly naked twice already and you had fingers in places I’d rather not talk about. Shut-up and pay the man.”
Meth-mouth guffawed lecherously while Shaw grimaced and blushed with embarrassment. Business was conducted brusquely; the hotel did not require us to sign any paper work, but did want payment up front. Shaw handed over the money without negotiating, and received an actual key rather than a programed card that the reputable establishments used. We took three flights of stairs to our floor because we didn’t trust the elevator after it landed with a bang and the doors got stuck in their tracks.
Once we got inside the room, Shaw slid the deadbolt into a flimsy door frame that would collapse under a firm kick and engaged the fragile security chain. Feeling a great deal less than secure, I grimaced at the door and turned my attention to the rest of the room. The place was filthy from neglect and time, with threadbare carpets and chairs upholstered in cracked vinyl. There were stains on