Elsewhere in the city, a man was plotting a supreme act of revenge. To look at him, you’d never credit Galen Blake with violence in his heart. It’s true that he wore an outdated badge of the revolution—his round, wire-rimmed glasses, which were known as Trotsky glasses in the Seventies, when Galen went to college.
Little round glasses are associated with Harry Potter now. Galen had vaguely heard of Harry Potter. He preferred fact to fiction, with the exception of science fiction, which Galen consumed in binges, the technical kind of sci-fi where computers and robots rebel against their foolish human masters. He was fifty-six, short, and unassuming. He was a loner, retreating from social contact as predictably as his hairline had retreated after he turned forty.
Loners plan acts of violence for various reasons. Delayed revenge for being bullied on the playground at school. Inner desperation that can’t find an outlet. Fantasies of grandiosity. But Galen suffered from none of these. His motive was not clearly formulated in the logical part of his brain. It was swallowed up in the hurt and hate that swirled inside him.
However, the main contenders for Galen’s hatred were God and love, the two biggest hoaxes in the world. For a long time he had mistrusted love. He knew early on that this was necessary if he wanted to survive. Young Galen came home from school one day to find his mother standing in the kitchen surrounded by sheets of chocolate chip cookies, warm and fragrant. She sat him down and silently watched him eat as many cookies as he wanted. She offered no warning that gobbling down so much sugar would make him sick. She waited until he could eat no more before telling him the bad news. They were alone; from now on, there would be no more Daddy, because Galen’s father had walked out, abandoning them.
Even at ten Galen knew it wasn’t healthy to be the only person in his mother’s life. She worried about this too, but worry didn’t help. She clung to him until she died; Galen was in his thirties. He came home from the funeral, ripping off his black tie and opening his collar so he could breathe. It was a hot July day. He went into the bathroom to splash cold water on his sweaty face.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the sink. You’re lucky, a voice in his head told him. No more mother. Father gone. You’re free.
The face in the mirror—pale, pudgy, with circles under the eyes—brightened up. Free! Galen loved his mother, but she fretted constantly about his being unmarried. “My son’s a confirmed bachelor,” she told her friends, who took this as code for “gay.” Galen wasn’t gay. He was just born to be alone, which other people, including his mother, couldn’t comprehend. So losing her was like losing one more person who didn’t understand.
These sketchy facts might have helped the police after Galen committed his act of revenge. But what do they really say? His worst secret was that he had no secrets.
No one observed his silent plotting. The plan he had in mind was simple, if extreme. It unfolded on a Wednesday, the day the city art museum was open to the public for free. Galen wandered in, mingling with the crowd, staring blankly at the gallery walls as if they were empty. His mind was solely fixed on the task at hand.
He headed upstairs, turning right, then left, before reaching a small, dimly lit gallery on the second floor. It was filled with people craning to see the old masters, but Galen was interested in only one work, a priceless Madonna and Child from fifteenth-century Florence.
He paused to take in the painting, loathing what most viewers adored—the rosy, glowing faces of mother and child, those ideal emblems of love. Galen snarled with disgust. The guard standing in the doorway turned her back for a moment. With a small inconspicuous motion Galen reached into his overcoat and pulled out a can of red spray paint. He stepped forward.
“Hey!” somebody yelled.
Galen sped up until he was directly in front of the masterwork, aiming the nozzle at the smiling, chubby baby Jesus. The visitor who yelled out took a dive for him. Galen only finished spraying a single letter, L, before he was tackled and pinned to the floor.
“Crazy bastard,” muttered the man who had knocked Galen down. He was a middle-aged tourist from Michigan, burly enough to have probably played college football. At that second it wasn’t clear if he swore because he loved art or because the red paint had hit his jacket, which now had a large L on it. Galen had missed the canvas entirely.
A loud racket broke out, of running feet, shouting voices, an angry alarm bell. Galen lay quietly in the middle of the erupting chaos, staring at the ceiling. He put up no resistance when the police arrived. At the precinct he was given a form to fill out—name, age, current address, phone number—like waiting at the dentist’s office. When offered his legally allowed phone call, Galen said he wanted to talk to a reporter from the local paper.
“I want to report a lie,” he said calmly, reciting the word beginning with L that he had tried to spray across baby Jesus. “There is no mercy. There is no God. Love is a fiction. People have to wake up.”
The desk sergeant was indifferent. “Reporters will be crawling all over this. You don’t need to phone them. Call your lawyer,” he advised. “Unless you have a shrink.”
But Galen insisted. Using the desk phone and the yellow pages, he dialed a number but only reached an answering machine.
“No one’s picking up,” he told the desk sergeant.
“Too bad. Off you go.”
Galen paced his cell, practicing the speech he intended to deliver when he got his moment. An hour passed, then two. He was slumped on the floor in the corner when a guard came by and unlocked the steel door.
“It’s your lucky day. No one’s pressing charges.”
Galen slowly got to his feet. So the whole thing had been a waste, a joke to pile on top of God’s other jokes. Behind the scenes, the museum officials had worked it all out. They couldn’t afford the bad publicity from prosecuting him. The museum’s fortunes depended on big traveling exhibitions. If word got out that their collection was this vulnerable, it would become twice as hard to borrow precious masterworks from other museums. Their insurance would skyrocket. Anyway, the Madonna and Child had come through unscathed.
As he was being discharged, Galen caught a young man in jeans and a T-shirt staring at him.
“Are you the guy?” the young man asked. He looked about nineteen.
“Leave me alone,” Galen grumbled, scooping up his things, the small change, wallet, and belt collected by the police. The kid grabbed up his parka from the waiting bench and followed him outside.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t carry out your mission,” he said. “Well, not sorry, exactly. Listen, there’s still a story here.”
“About what, a loony or a laughingstock?” Galen looked up and down the street, but there were no cabs. He’d left his car at home that morning.
The kid stuck out his hand. “Name’s Malcolm. I’m a reporter. I just want to hear your side of the story.”
Galen stared blankly at the proffered hand. He turned up the street, heading for the nearest bus stop, which was two blocks north. Malcolm trailed after him. Galen didn’t brush him off. As much as he felt humiliated, he still wanted to talk to someone who’d listen.
“Are you on the crime beat?” he asked.
“No crimes so far. I do obituaries, only your story got priority. We have two guys out with the flu.”
Great, Galen thought mockingly. I’m a notch more interesting than the dead.
He had been stoked on adrenaline all morning, and he realized that he was starving.
Under his parka the kid reporter looked underfed.
“I’ll buy you a burger,” Galen offered. He couldn’t bear the idea of crawling back home yet.
They crossed over to a fast-food franchise, put in their order, and sat down at a plastic table and chairs away from the freezing draft that blew in every time a customer entered. Galen felt a compulsion to wipe the tabletop clean, but restrained himself.
Malcolm pulled out a mini tape recorder. “You mind?”
Galen shrugged.
The reporter wore a smile, but he wasn’t thrilled when he first set eyes on the suspect, who looked like a rumpled English professor, completely harmless. The terrorist angle would have been great for Malcolm’s career, but it was quickly fading. He clicked on the machine. The tape whirred quietly between them on the table.
“One, two, three. Okay, we’re recording now. So why did you do it?”
“Because everything is a lie,” Galen said firmly, using the same tone of voice he’d use to return an overcooked steak: matter of fact and displeased.
“Um, can you be more specific?” Malcolm asked. “Do you belong to a movement or something?”
“No. I belong to the mass of humanity who have been swindled for centuries by the biggest lie ever perpetrated.” Galen suddenly felt his rage boiling up. “Belief in God has killed more people in history than all genocides put together. Where is mercy, where is love? It’s all a monstrous lie.” His eyes were glistening now with the fervor of his words.
A nut job, Malcolm thought to himself. But a hint of the terrorist angle was still breathing, on life support.
“Is there a version of God you think needs defending?”
“No. Weren’t you listening? I said it’s all a lie. Religion is mass hypnosis, and countless people fall victim to it every day.”
“Including you? Something must have happened to you. How did God hurt you personally?”
Galen hesitated. He wasn’t all that sure how God had hurt him. The whole thing was a jumble. Iris’s mad love, the angel paintings, her certainty that she was on some kind of spiritual mission. It had all glommed together in Galen’s mind, a festering mass.
“I don’t matter,” he said insistently. He searched for words. “If God is love, then all love is tainted. That’s the gist. That’s the thing nobody sees.”
“So your message is ‘Down with God’? You weren’t trying to improve the painting with a little squirt of red?”
“Don’t mock me.”
“I guess what I’m saying is, a lot of people hate religion or whatever. Not a lot of people vandalize art.”
Galen sat back in the flimsy plastic chair. “You don’t give a damn, do you?”
“How I feel isn’t the point.”
“Right.”
They were interrupted by hearing their number called. When Galen started to stand up, Malcolm preempted him. “Let me get this.” He trotted off and soon returned with a tray of burgers and drinks. “A bit of goodwill,” he said brightly.
But Galen’s mood was dark. He felt as if he was slowly deflating inside with a faint whoosh, shrinking into a curled-up ball. For a few minutes the two didn’t speak, distracted by their food.
In the silence Malcolm reassessed the story, if there was a story. It wouldn’t have legs as a feature, not without charges being pressed. He clicked off the mini recorder and put it away in his pocket.
“Wait. You haven’t let me finish,” Galen complained.
“I’ve got enough for now.”
Malcolm felt sorry for the nut job slumped in his chair knowing he had botched everything. “Frankly, you’d be better off if this whole thing dies down quickly. Put it behind you,” he said.
Wadding up the napkin from his burger, Malcom took a shot at a trash bin in the corner, sinking the paper ball in one clean motion, and then stood up.
“No harm, no foul. Okay?”
When Galen looked away, a pained expression on his face, the reporter shrugged. At least he’d have an anecdote for his buddy Frank back at the paper.
“Can I offer you a lift?”
Galen was too upset to do anything but shake his head. His eyes followed the kid out the door. Any chance to get justice went out into the cold with him.