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The wind almost caught the money. Then a hand, a living hand, ofcourse, the hand of one of these bums, flashed out in the firelight andcaught the bills and drew them back into the breathing darkness.
"Thanks, brother."I said, "Amen."The head I deposited in a similar manner much farther away. Backdoor dumpster. Wet garbage of a restaurant. Stench. I took no lastlook at the head. It embarrassed me. It was no trophy. I would neversave a man's head as a trophy. The idea seemed deplorable. I didn'tlike the hard feel of it through the plastic. If the hungry found it,they'd never report it. Besides, the hungry had been here for theirshare of the tomatoes and lettuce and spaghetti and crusts of Frenchbread. The restaurant had closed hours ago. The garbage was frozen;it rattled and clattered when I shoved his head deep into the mess.
I went back downtown, still walking, still with this last sack overmy shoulder, his miserable chest and arms and legs. I walked downFifth, past the hotel of the sleeping Dora, past St. Patrick's, on andon, past the fancy stores. Mortals rushed through doorways beneathawnings; cabbies blew their horns in fury at hulking, slow limousines.
On and on I walked. I kicked at the sludge and I hated myself. Icould smell him and hated this too. But in a way, the feast had been sodivine that it was just to require this aftermath, this cleaning up.
The others桝rmand, Marius, all my immortal cohorts, lovers,friends, enemies梐lways cursed me for not "disposing of the remains."All right, this time Lestat was being a good vampire. He wascleaning up after himself.
I was almost to the Village when I found another perfect place, ahuge warehouse, seemingly abandoned, its upper floors filled withthe pretty sparkle of broken windows. And inside it, refuse of everydescription, in a massive heap. I could smell decayed flesh. Someonehad died in there weeks ago. Only the cold kept the smell from reaching human nostrils. Or maybe no one cared.
I went farther into the cavernous room梥mell of gasoline, metal,red brick. One mountain of trash stood as big as a mortuary pyramidin the middle of the room. A truck was there, parked perilously closeto it, the engine still warm. But no living beings were here.
And there was decayed flesh aplenty in the largest pile. I reckonedby scent at least three dead bodies, scattered through the rubble. Perhaps there were more. The smell was utterly loathsome to me, so Ididn't spend a great deal of time anatomizing the situation.
"Okay, my friend, I give you over to a graveyard," I said. I shovedthe sack deep, deep among the broken bottles, smashed cans, bits ofstinking fruit, heaps and stacks of cardboard and wood and trash. Ialmost caused an avalanche. Indeed there was a small trash quake ortwo and then the clumsy pyramid re-formed itself quietly. The onlysounds were the sounds of rats. A single beer bottle rolled on thefloor, a few feet free of the monument, gleaming, silent, alone.
For a long moment, I studied the truck; battered, anonymous,warm engine, smell of recent human occupants. What did I care whatthey did here? The fact is they came and went through the big metaldoors, ignoring or occasionally feeding this charnel heap. Most likelyignoring it. Who would park next to one's own murder victims?
But in all these big dense modern cities, I mean the big-time cities,the world-class dens of evil桸ew York, Tokyo, Hong Kongyou can find the strangest configurations of mortal activity.
Criminality had begun to fascinate me in its many facets. That's whathad brought me to him.
Roger. Good-bye, Roger.
I went out again. The snow had stopped falling. It was desolatehere, and sad. A bare mattress lay on the corner of the block, thesnow covering it. The streetlamps were broken. I wasn't certainprecisely where I was.
I walked in the direction of the water, to the very end of the island,and then I saw one of those very ancient churches, churches thatwent back to the Dutch days of Manhattan, with a little fencedgraveyard attached to it with stones that would read awesome statisticssuch as 1704, or even 1692.
It was a Gothic treasure of a building, a tiny bit of the glory of St.
Patrick's, and possibly even more intricate and mysterious, awelcome sight for all its detail and organization and conviction amid thebig-city blandness and wastes.
I sat on the church steps, rather liking the carved surfaces of thebroken arches, rather liking to sink back in the darkness againstsanctified stone.
I realized very carefully that the Stalker was nowhere about, thattonight's deeds had brought me no visits from another realm, orhorifying footsteps, that the great granite statue had been inanimate,and that I still had Roger's identification in my pocket, and thiswould give Dora weeks, perhaps even months, before her peace ofmind was disturbed by her father's disappearance, and she would nownever know the details.
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