City of Endless Night

42

What a day it had been for Marsden Swope. The anti-one-percenter demonstrations had really taken off, the Twitterverse, Facebook, and Instagram seething with calls for demonstrations. The biggest one had gathered around the towering new structure at 432 Park Avenue, the tallest residential building in the world, where apartments were selling for up to a hundred million dollars each. Somehow, that building — even though it was unconnected with the murders — seemed to have become for the demonstrators the very symbol of greed, excess, and ostentation, the perfect example of how the ultra-rich were taking over the city.

So he went down to observe. And it was quite a scene: rank after rank of protestors chanting, blocking the entrances, creating gridlock all around. And then a tweet had gone out calling for eggs, instantly viral, and within minutes the protestors had emptied the neighborhood stores of eggs and were hurling them at the façade from all sides, coating the snow-white marble and lustrous glass with a dripping, slippery mess of yellow goo. The police had moved in, the area was barricaded, and Swope had barely escaped by ditching his jacket and passing himself off as a priest in his cassock and dingy clerical collar.

More than ever, the melee had convinced Swope that violence was not the answer: that the one percenters and the anti-one-percenters were all part of the same conspiracy of hatred, evil, and violence. Swope now understood that he could wait no longer — he must act to stop the madness rising on all sides.

It was a few minutes past one in the morning when Swope crossed Grand Army Plaza and headed into the winter fastness of Central Park. As he’d walked up Fifth Avenue, he had been forced to thread his way through knots of laughing, drunken New Year’s revelers, but now as he moved deeper into the park, past the zoo and Wollman Rink, their numbers thinned until he was left blessedly alone.

He had a lot on his mind. With this latest murder, the city seemed to boil over. It was not just the protest at 432 Park. There were more stories of the super-rich fleeing. Some guy had started a blog that cataloged the private jets taking off from Teterboro Airport, with photos taken with a massive telephoto lens showing individual billionaires and their families climbing into their Gulfstreams and Learjets and modified B727s — hedge fund managers, captains of finance, Russian oligarchs, and Saudi princes. The demonstrations favoring the Decapitator, the “down with the one percenters” rabble, had also intensified, with one demonstration blocking Wall Street for four hours until the police finally broke it up.

The responses to his call for a bonfire of the vanities had also swelled enormously — so many, in fact, that he had decided the time was ripe to put his plans into action. It was a true miracle — well over a hundred thousand people had responded and claimed to be on their way to New York City, or already there, awaiting his announcement of where and when. The papers were calling New York the City of Endless Night. Well, and so it was, but with God’s help he would turn it into the City of Endless Righteousness. He would show everyone, rich and poor alike, that all wealth and luxury were anathema to eternal life.

When he reached the Sheep Meadow, he paused. Crossing it, he continued to the Mall, walked north, passed Bethesda Fountain, then skirted the mazy byways of the Ramble, deep in thought. Savonarola had held his original bonfire in the central square of Florence. That had been the heart of the city, an ideal place to broadcast his message. But today’s New York was different. You couldn’t stage a bonfire in Times Square — not only was it overrun with tourists, but the police presence was so heavy it would be over before it started. No — his ideal spot would be large, open, and easy to get to from any number of directions. His followers, carrying their luxuries to be burned in the fire, would need to have time to gather, start the bonfire, and throw in their “vanities.” It was imperative that they not be stopped too quickly.

Stopped. Swope noticed that his own feet had stopped, as if of their own accord. He glanced around. There were only a few distant revelers visible now, hurrying out of the park and heading for home. To his left rose the dark bulk of Belvedere Castle, its battlements illuminated by the glow of Manhattan. Beyond lay the monolithic wall of Central Park West apartment buildings, marching northward in an endless procession, broken by the façade of the Museum of Natural History. And directly before him, spread out in all its glory, stretching on almost as far as the eye could see until it terminated at the dark wall of trees surrounding the reservoir, lay the Great Lawn.

The Great Lawn. Even the name resonated deeply within Swope. This, indeed, was a spot capable of holding the multitudes that would respond to his call. This, indeed, was a central location, easily accessible by all. This, indeed, was an ideal place for a bonfire — and a place that the police would not be able to lock down and clear out.

A great conviction rose up in his mind: as if of their own accord, guided by heaven, his feet had led him to the perfect spot.

He took a step forward, then another; and then, charged with a sudden onrushing of emotion, he planted his feet in the grass and spoke the first words he had said aloud in more than two days:

“Here shall be the bonfire of the vanities!”