Free Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 18 - Nicotine Kiss by Loren D. Estleman Page A

look when I’m looking at a computer screen.
    He played an arpeggio. Suddenly the monitor was filled with postage-stamp images in full color of what looked at first like freeze-frames from a slasher film. A score of images displayed every manner of agony possible of a nearly naked man perced from hairline to ankle with arrows. Some were as green as amateur Polaroids, others so lifelike they made me bleed from pure osmosis. Evidently the fate of St. Sebastian had inspired Renaissance artists who had gotten all they could out of Christ on the cross. Winged angels appeared in flocks. They could fly, but as to intercepting arrows they were as useless as hairdressers at the Battle of the Bulge.
    “Fourth century,” he read. “Maybe earlier. Whenever the date’s unknown, it starts to read like pulp fiction. At one time I was studied up enough to take the veil. Not that they call it that when it’s the priesthood. Went to confession regular as the dentist. You’d besurprised how fast those made guys turn back into altar boys when you sprinkle the conversation with ecclesiastical Latin. I’m talking about guys that put other guys’ heads inside drill presses when their notes came past due. Not bad for a Dutch Reformed kid from Grand Rapids.”
    “Still go to confession?”
    “No point. The
paisani
are on the run. Now it’s Jews, Russians, Irish Protestants, blacks, and Asians. The Mexicans still attend, but they don’t believe. Damn shame. Like what happened to rock after the Beatles landed.”
    “I can’t figure out whether you hate the mob or love it.”
    “I wonder myself sometimes. Then bedtime comes around and I take off my leg with my pants.”
    He clicked on one of the postage-stamp images. A screen-size picture shot down from the top like a shaft of light. He was always upgrading his servers and equipment, supercharging the circuit boards and bundles of wire inside the computer tower like a kid tinkering with a hot rod. He had the hardware to manipulate the stock market in his favor, but he chose to use it for good, and the occasional exclusive.
    I looked at the same pathetic punctured figure I’d seen on Paul Starzek’s living-room wall. This was a cleaner reproduction from a plate generations closer to the original painting. The carving on the pillar he was bound to was wedding-cake sharp and the blood streaming from his multiple wounds was bright arterial red. The picture dated back to the middle of the fifteenth century and the paint still looked wet.
    I read the artist’s credit line. “Andrea Mantegna. Wonder who she was.”
    “She was a he, you lowbrow flatfoot. The Renaissance didn’t begin and end with the
Mona Lisa.”
    “Tell me about him, smart guy.”
    “What’s to tell? Look at the picture.”
    “What I thought. You don’t know any more about him than I do.”
    “You didn’t know he was a him until two seconds ago. I thought it was Sebastian you wanted to know about.”
    “I know how he died.”
    “You don’t even know that. It takes more than a shitload of arrows to kill these Mediterraneans.” He turned the page, or whatever they call it. Anyway a paragraph of text came up. I leaned over to read.
    Sebastian, of Gallic birth, was an officer in the imperial guard under Diocletian. Someone ratted him out as a Christian and he was strung up and used for archery practice. The widow of another martyr, St. Castulus, cut him down, patched up his wounds, and nursed him back to health. Diocletian found out and brought in more muscle, who beat him to death with cudgels.
    “His emblem’s the arrow,” Barry said, as if I couldn’t read. “It ought to be the blackjack, but you can’t expect scripture to make sense.”
    “Arrows take better pictures. A battered corpse is just side meat.”
    He sat back. His eyes reflected the cursor blinking on-screen.
    “What’s the attraction, Amos? Most of the stiffs you bring me are still warm. Anything in it for an out-of-work muckraker?”
    “I