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I crossed the street. The snow felt rather good, but then I'm amonster.
I stood at the back of St. Patrick's, watching as my handsomeVictim came out, hurriedly through the snow, shoulders hunched, andplunged into the backseat of his expensive black car. I heard him givethe address very near to that junk-shop flat where he kept his treasures.
All right, he'd be alone up there for a while. Why not do it,Lestat?
Why not let the Devil take you? Go ahead! Refuse to enter Hell infear. Just go for it.
2I REACHED his house on the Upper East Side before he did.
I'd tracked him here numerous times. I knew the routine. Hirelingslived on the lower and upper floors, though I don't thinkthey knew who he was. It wasn't unlike a vampire's usualarrangement. And between those two flats was his long chain of rooms, thesecond story of the town house, barred like a prison, and accessibleby him through a rear entrance.
He never had a car let him out in front of the place. He'd get outon Madison and cut deep into the block to his back door. Orsometimes he got out on Fifth. He had two routes, and some of thesurrounding property was his. But nobody梟one of his pursuers?
knew of this place.
I wasn't even sure that his daughter, Dora, knew the exact loca-tion. He'd never brought her there in all the months I'd been watch-ing him, savoring and licking my lips over his life. And I'd nevercaught from Dora's mind any distinct image of it.
But Dora knew of his collection. In the past, she had accepted hisrelics. She had some of them scattered about the empty conventcastle in New Orleans. I'd sensed a glimmer or two of these fine thingsthe night when I'd pursued her there. And now my Victim was stilllamenting that she'd refused the latest gift. Something truly sacred,or so he thought.
I got into the flat simply enough.
One could hardly call it a flat, though it did include a small lavatory,dirty in the way barren, unused places become dirty, and thenroom after room was crammed with trunks, statues, bronze figures,heaps of seeming trash that no doubt concealed priceless discoveries.
It felt very strange to be inside, concealed in the small rear room,because I had never done more than look through the windows. Theplace was cold. When he came, he would create heat and light simplyenough.
I sensed he was only halfway up Madison in a crush of traffic, andI began to explore.
At once, a great marble statue of an angel startled me. I cameround out of the door and almost ran smack into it. It was one ofthose angels that used to stand inside church doors, offering holywater in half shells. I had seen them in Europe and in New Orleans.
It was gigantic, and its cruel profile stared blindly into the shad-ows. Far down the hall, the light came up from the busy little streetthat ran into Fifth. The usual New York songs of traffic were comingthrough the walls.
This angel was poised as if he had just landed from the skies tooffer his sacred basin. I slapped his bent knee gently and went aroundhim. I didn't like him. I could smell parchment, papyrus, variouskinds of metal. The room opposite appeared to be filled with Russianicons. The walls were veritably covered with them and the light wasplaying on the halos of the sad-eyed Virgins or glaring Christs.
I went on to the next room. Crucifixes. I recognized the Spanishstyle, and what appeared to be Italian Baroque, and very early workwhich surely must have been very rare梩he Christ grotesque andpoorly proportioned yet suffering with appropriate horror on theworm-eaten cross.
Only now did I realize the obvious. It was all religious art. Therewas nothing that wasn't religious. But then it's rather easy to say thatabout all art from the end of the last century backwards, if you thinkabout it. I mean, the great majority of art is religious.
The place was utterly devoid of life.
Indeed, it stank of insecticide. Of course, he had saturated it tosave his old wooden statues, he would have had to do that. I could nothear or smell rats, or detect any living thing at all. The lower flat wasempty of its occupants, though a small radio chattered the news in abathroom.
Easy to blot out that little sound. On the floors above, there weremortals, but they were old, and I caught a vision of a sedentary man,with earphones on his head, swaying to the rhythm of some esotericGerman music, Wagner, doomed lovers deploring the "hated dawn"or some heavy, repetitive, and distinctly pagan foolishness. Leitmotivbe damned. There was another person up there, but she was toofeeble to be of any concern, and I could catch only one image of her andshe appeared to be sewing or knitting.
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