Dark Maze

cats who had sprayed urine to mark their territories. Anybody living in this place was sure to have cats about to control rodents.
    I went up one more floor where the cat odor was strongest. Then I moved toward the north side of the building, through a hallway where there once might have been offices full of people with work to do. Emptiness and stillness now, and all the doors gone but one.
    The single remaining door was closed. On it was written:

    HOME IS WHERE
    THE HATRED IS

    I knocked. There was no answer. I kicked the door, and it fell open stiffly.
    At least a dozen cats were in the big room beyond the door—backs arched, yellow-green eyes wide, fangs bared, throats hissing and growling.
    Then, something cold and hard poked at my neck.
    And a ragged whisper: “Hang onto your rosary beads and say good bye!”
    I shot my hands up into the air. The flashlight fell to the floor, rolled around and settled against a stack of newspapers shaped like a chair.
    I recognized the voice, of course. From the taffy stand on Stillwell Avenue, from the Carny Club. From the times she had said in parting, "God bless. ” I could see her puffy pink face and her hair the color of scrambled eggs, and her eyes done up like a pair of chocolate cupcakes.
    “You don’t want to shoot,” I said. “Who would tell the world of your father’s great works?”
    “My father?”
    “May I turn around now, Evie?”
    She said, “So, you know?”
    “I’m turning around now,” I said, moving slowly. She withdrew the gun at my neck, but kept it pointed at my chest. I said to her, “I’ve got some bad news for you.“
    “You must be crazy. I’m standing here with a gun on you.”
    “Oh, but you won’t shoot,” I said. “Not me. Your father wants me to know; he picked me to know, didn’t he?”
    Evie lowered the gun, the second one I had faced in the last thirty minutes. I quickly said a silent prayer of thanks. Evie said, “What bad news?”
    “Big Stuff is dead.”
    She put a hand over her heart and her eyes welled up with tears.
    I told her what had happened at the Horny Poodle, and I said I understood the Coney Island reasons behind all else that had happened. And it was the beginning of the truth I was speaking now.
    “You tell me the reasons, Evie,” I said. “Tell me you understand, too.”
    She said simply, “The paintings needed to come true.
    Everybody’s going to know him now. They can’t forget about him now.”
    “That’s right,” I said. “And now it’s over, Evie.”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you glad?”
    “Yes. I’ll see the face of God now.”
    “Will you first hand me that gun?”
    She turned it over to me and said, “See how nice I do what you say? I’m not some maniac like they say in the papers.” And I offered up my second silent prayer, this one to the patron saint of the mentally impaired.
    I asked, “Is your father here somewhere?”
    She looked up. “He’s in his studio, praying.”
    “Why is he praying, Evie?”
    “He’s praying for the Lord my soul to take. You see, I told him what I done...”
    “He had no idea, did he?”
    “Papa painted his pictures. I made them come true.”
    I took a pair of NYPD bracelets out from a pocket and said, “You probably know, I have to arrest you now.“
    “Yes,” Evie said. And then there was a dream in her voice. “They knoweth not what they do, O Father...”
    I cuffed Evie’s plump hands behind her. Then I stepped over to where the flashlight had fallen, picked it up and shined it on her.
    “I’m going to read you your rights, Evie. Listen carefully now, okay?”
    She nodded. I found my Miranda warning card in my wallet and put light on it and read her. After I had finished, I paused. “You made the pictures come true, is that right?” I asked finally.
    “First, I killed her. ”
    “Celia, your mother?”
    “Yes. She was a harlot from Hades.”
    “And then you killed Dr. Reiser?”
    “I made Papa’s picture come true.“
    “And Benito Reyes at the bodega?”
    “I made Papa’s picture come true.”
    “And then Johnny Halo?”
    “Big Stuff helped me. He hated Johnny bad.”
    “Why?”
    “He was jealous of Johnny and me.”
    “Jealous?”
    “I was trying to save Johnny Halo’s soul is all, trying to get him to give his life to God, like I give my life to God... “
    “And so you’d sometimes go up to Halo’s room at the Seashore, to try saving him?”
    “That’s right. Big Stuff, he took it all wrong.”
    “And Big