by Ted Thackrey
It was the perfect setup line. I jumped on it.
“And what about the people who’ve been selling you similar stones since then?” I asked.
A SERMON
(CONTINUED)
The exploiter who seeks the power to move events cannot work his will in the world without the help of able disciples.
But false prophecy can wear another, and darker, face.
TEN
It wasn’t any kind of major coup, and Suleiman didn’t exactly tie himself in any knots figuring it out.
But it was interesting to watch him run our conversation back and forth across the mental scanners. And see his smile when he had the answer.
“I told you the Palermo stones were the only similar instance we had seen,” he said, “and unthinkingly added the words ‘at the time.’ Habits of precision can be a trap. And I have always known that my tongue would be the death of me in the end.”
“Well, perhaps not in this particular case.”
“Perhaps. But all the same . . . ”
The voice trailed away again, but the rest of the sentence was clear enough. All the same it had surprised him, and I could sense a renewed wariness—augmented now by a core of darkness, perhaps even of fear, that did not seem to be centered upon himself.
Enough.
The subject was still diamonds.
“There have been other sellers of lime-dusted stones since Gideon Goode, then?”
The hands opened in a splay pattern, intended, I think, to indicate bemused helplessness. Somehow, on Suleiman, it didn’t quite fit.
“One stone at a time,” he said. “Each brought to me by a different person—or, more properly, by the same basic person wearing a variety of bodies . . . ”
That wanted further explanation.
“Saiminjutsu?” I suggested.
Suleiman heard the word, knew it, and accepted its implications without apparent surprise.
“Perhaps,” he said. “The ninja hypnotic technique of Saiminjutsu is similar. And in another context, perhaps . . . yes . . .
but not in this case.”
“No hara,” I said.
“Precisely. No inner force. No power of self. These were empty men. Almost like robots . . . ”
For once the elegant jewel buyer seemed to be at a loss for words. And this time I was able to help.
“Or zombies,” I supplied.
He nodded at once.
“Precisely. Even the words in which they offered the individual stones for sale were the same—almost identical. As though someone had carefully rehearsed them.”
I thought of the obscene little altar room in Angela Palermo’s house, and did my best to repress the sudden sense of revulsion it aroused.
But Suleiman felt it all the same.
“Gideon Goode?” he said.
“Gideon Goode.”
“Well, then, God help them.”
“If He can . . . ”
The rest of our business took very little time.
Perhaps I had given the right responses to the right questions, worn a face that Suleiman could recognize. Or maybe it was just a mutual distaste for Gideon.
“You traced the sellers?” I said.
“Of course. As soon as the first had left the store. I knew then that there would be more. Would have to be more.”
“And all of them came from southern California.”
“From South Bay City.”
He let the place-name hang there between us, and that might have been all. A signal of dismissal. The implications were plain enough and he had given me the information I needed. But there was more, and I realized that he was waiting now for it to be supplied.
But not by me.
“From the Temple of the Eternal Flame.” The words had come from a loudspeaker located, I think, in the ornate worktable behind Suleiman’s desk. The voice was that of Perdita Soames.
But the tone was something I had heard elsewhere. And the words were familiar, too.
“You are so terribly wrong, both of you,” the voice said. “You do not see—you do not comprehend—plain truth! You reject it because it comes to you from an individual you find unacceptable. But the truth of heaven and of hell remains and will not be denied. The one who rules from the throne of the Almighty is not mocked, and the lies that consigned him to the realms of perdition will be trampled to earth.
“There is no true power in this earth but that which lives and strives in every word that proceeds from the mouth of that one.
“And Gideon is his prophet . . . Blessed be!”
Suleiman’s hand made contact with a control concealed under the cushions of his couch, and his sister’s voice was gone.
But I had heard enough.
“You . . . said she had met Gideon.”
The grimace that lifted one side of his mouth was sour, and the voice was cold.
“I am told that I possess the gift of understatement.”
Nariyuki no matsu. My breath had quickened as the woman’s voice rose in that peculiar singsong litany I had heard before from Angela, and I tried to control it now by seeking patience. But it was harder work than usual.
Self-control at a poker table is really a lot easier than it looks; nothing really valuable is at risk. Having money can make life easier and its lack can be an inconvenience. But you can’t develop a one-to-one relationship with a dollar bill, and a clear understanding of that single fact is the real difference between winners and losers.
Forget about the poker face. The real test of the winner is poker guts—sometimes known as emotional maturity.
But patience and control can be elusive when the stake is something more than money and you find yourself playing with an odd number of cards in the deck. Especially when one of them begins to look like the joker.
“Your more confidential clients,” I said. “They must be a trusting lot.”
Suleiman wasn’t offended.
“For reasons I’m sure you can imagine,” he said, “I have from time to time found it useful to preserve a complete record—videotape, with full audio pickup—of things that have happened in this room.”
“Useful.”
“Indeed.”
“But don’t bother to offer me a copy. My credit cards are all out of date, and besides, I don’t think our group was really ready to record yet.”
Suleiman took a deep breath.
“My apologies,” he said. “For whatever they may be worth. I could, of course, have warned you or even cut off the electronic taps at any time—and I appreciate your concern. ’Dita is, indeed, a follower of the gentleman we were discussing. And she heard everything we said. But that is less important than you may imagine.”
He stood up suddenly and gestured for me to follow as he moved behind his desk and nodded in the direction of a box that I had mistaken for the office intercom.
It was a pint-size television screen, in full color, apparently connected to a closed-system camera that had been arranged to scan the street outside Suleiman’s front door.
“At the corner,” he said. “The short man eyeballing the shops. So terribly interested in all the window displays.”
The scanner had just moved away from that part of the scene and I had to wait for it to return. But when it did I saw what he meant. I had not come to Suleiman’s door alone.
And my tail wasn’t even a pro.
Sometimes I just can’t help wondering how I have lived so long.
“My sister met Gideon on his first visit,” Suleiman said when we were seated again. “I was ill and that left her alone here. An unusual situation—and one I have since had reason to regret.
“I do not know exactly what passed between them. The videotape pickups were functioning, but by the time I realized that something was wrong and tried to view the tape, it had not only been erased but burned. No matter. The damage was done, and in whatever way it may have happened I think that it is permanent.
“My sister is rational i
s most ways. You saw her, talked to her, when you arrived.
“But that is facade. She is in fact in a constant state of inner turmoil—precariously balanced between the surface illusion of the person she was and the religious hysteric you heard just now. And the mere mention of Gideon Goode seems to be the trigger.”
I nodded and wished I had something encouraging to tell him. But my own cupboard was bare. This seemed to be my week for talking to people whose sisters had run afoul of Gideon. And for finding myself at a loss to offer any real help.
“He did—all that—in just one visit?”
“Apparently so. Though, again, it appears that we will never be entirely sure. I met the man only once, three days after his initial visit, when he came to deliver the stones and collect the price in cash. By that time the damage was done.”
“What about her husband? Your partner.”
Suleiman’s smile congealed, and the renewed heat of anger and frustration at his core became an almost tangible thing in the room, making me wonder how long the man could go on in such a state.
Those emotions are expensive. And controlling them can bankrupt the spirit in no time at all.
“Jack Soames,” he said when the wa was back to something like room temperature, “was more than a partner and more even than a brother-in-law. He was in fact my best friend.”
I noted his use of past tense but did not interrupt.
“He was, as you may imagine, even more shocked and angry than I when he returned home to find his wife in such condition. Jack is an American, born here in San Francisco and reared, I gather, pretty much on the streets. He had the background of a back-alley gang brawler but the soul of an entrepreneur and I came upon him at a moment when he had just completed one rather questionable but highly lucrative business enterprise and was looking for another. We joined forces in the beginning because I needed more capital than I had, and I think he entertained a secret notion of squeezing me out as soon as the business was well established.”
“But he didn’t do that.”
“No.”
Suleiman allowed himself a small reflective smile. “No,” he repeated, “and I have always preferred to think that it was not simply because of his interest in Perdita, though I fancy it played a part in his thinking.”
I could see how it might.
“From the first,” he continued, “Jack was more valuable for his street expertise—his pipeline to local sources of information and his working arrangements with certain elements of the police—than for the money he could bring to the operation.”
“He was your eyes and ears.”
“And muscle, as required. We were robbed three months to the day after opening for business. Jack stood quietly with his hands up while the bandits cleaned us out, and then made a single telephone call when they were gone. The loot was returned with profuse apologies an hour later.”
I couldn’t help smiling at him. “That,” I said, “is the kind of partner to have.”
Suleiman did not smile back. “And the kind of friend,” he said. “I told you he was away on business at the time of Gideon’s visit. His reaction was predictable—concern, followed by frustration, followed by rage.”
“And followed in turn, I imagine, by action?”
“Just so. Gideon had already left San Francisco. I often wonder what might have happened if he had not. But that is neither here nor there. He was gone and it took Jack nearly a week to find the man, by which time I think Jack was ready to have Perdita committed . . . or turn her over to the deprogrammers. And I might have allowed it.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
Suleiman’s eyes clouded and his wa cooled perceptibly. “It didn’t happen,” he said, “because Perdita got a telephone call—and seemed to pull herself together.”
Some of the chill that had touched Suleiman’s core now touched my own.
“The call was from Gideon,” I said.
“From Gideon,” he nodded. “What he said to her I do not know—that tape, too, was destroyed—but the essence appeared to be an invitation for her and Jack, or Jack alone if he preferred, to discuss the situation in person.”
“Jack agreed?”
“Immediately.”
“And never came back.”
“And never came back . . . ”
Jack Soames’s disappearance was not total, Suleiman said. He talked to his wife and to his business partner several times by telephone and sent occasional letters, with return addresses and postmarks that would have made him easy enough to locate.
“He even suggested a meeting,” Suleiman said. “And I considered it. But in the end, good sense—or cowardice—prevailed.”
It was Jack Soames’s voice that warned him off, he said. Something different about it. Something missing.
“Like the ones who came later, to offer more of the dusty diamonds?”
Suleiman shook his head.
“Not exactly,” he said. “Those men were hollow, yes. But Jack’s voice was almost eerie. Not slurred as it would have been if he was drugged or intoxicated, but a bit slower in cadence . . . and not quite rational.”
I thought it over.
“Scopolamine,” I suggested. “Or maybe one of the really nasty items they’ve been synthesizing of late from the hyoscine-atropine group?”
“Or any of the lysergic acid types, including but not necessarily limited to LSD-twenty-five. Yes, of course. Long-lasting effect combined with ease of administration—I thought of all that. And realized that I was powerless. No drugs were employed with Perdita, but she is hostage for Jack nonetheless.”
“And he is hostage for her.”
The oversize fingers spread again in admission of futility, and we sat in silence for a minute or two, occupied with our own thoughts.
But his were shorter than mine.
“I would help you if I could,” he said.
The rest of the sentence didn’t need to be said and wasn’t. I glanced again in the direction of the video screen on his desk. Its back was toward me, but I knew what it would show.
“I . . . could see you out the back door,” Suleiman suggested.
It was a nice offer and well meant, but everyone has his own specialty and this one was mine, not his.
“Don’t trouble,” I said.
He let me stand up and tower over him for a moment—no meager concession from a man with his devotion to image—and then brought himself to his feet with a fluid grace that belied the almost ungainly height.
“There is a lot of phony about me,” he said. “Starting with the color of my skin and not necessarily ending with the price tags on my merchandise. But I do not abuse the trust of visitors, and I would not like you to believe that the man following you was there by my doing. Or that of my sister.”
It was a nice speech and I didn’t have to believe a word of it. But I found that I did.
“I’ll leave by the front door,” I said. “And give him a little exercise.”
A SERMON
(CONTINUED)
Far more dangerous than the knowing impostor is the one who believes himself to be a true voice of the Almighty, a teacher of revealed wisdom.
Here is the true ravening wolf of the Gospel . . .
ELEVEN
The hardest part was getting the game started without tipping my hand.
I wanted to send a message to Gideon, and the man tailing me looked like as good a messenger as any. But using him to best advantage would require that he be brought to the right place at the right time in the right frame of mind—and that requires a certain amount of finesse. Plus, luck.
Emerging from the front door of Suleiman’s shop, I had to force myself through the ritual of glancing up and down the street, because that is something most people do by habit. The urge, knowing my shadow was out there somewhere and not wanting to scare him off for the moment, was to set my face firmly in the direction I was headed. But that could have served as a warning, especially if he w
as good enough to have followed me that far without being spotted.
My car could have been a problem, too, if I hadn’t had Suleiman’s word that we had arrived in the neighborhood together. If that was true, then he had to have wheels of his own and I took no particular trouble to make sure he was behind when I got back to the space around the corner where I’d parked my own rented automobile.
Just to make sure, though, I drove south for about a mile and then made two or three random turns—not fast, not slow, and not too obviously contrived—to single him out.
Sure enough, a nondescript Camaro with dirty Olympic plates turned with me and then ducked into a parking space for long enough to let a Volkswagen van get between us while keeping me clearly in sight, which was accommodating of him because the maneuver answered a couple of questions I hadn’t even asked yet. It told me he’d had a little experience, perhaps in police work or as a private op. And it told me he was alone, no backup car to let him play the kind of vehicular cross-tag that is so much harder to spot. Or lose.
Not that I wanted to lose him.
All in all, we passed a pleasant afternoon. For lunch, I took us to Sausalito where fine prawns and crackling cold Sauterne enhance the view of bay and bridge from a favorite restaurant of mine out on a point of land that juts away at right angles from the main tourist-shopping ambush. I took my time and was careful to keep my back to the door in an effort to let him get a crack at the cuisine. It seemed only fair, considering the future events I had in mind.
But he wouldn’t play.
Coming out, I spotted him lounging—not too comfortably—on a bench at the far end of the parking area, about five feet from where he’d parked the Camaro. A crumpled, greasy bag beside him told me everything else I needed to know. Poor bastard. And from here it was going to be all downhill. A poet or a philosopher might find pathos in that.
On the other hand, who the hell cared?
Relaxing over lunch, I’d spent a little time deciding on
just the right location for the final lap of our little gerbil race. But there were a couple of stops to make before we could go there.