Playing Saint

by Zachary Bartels

  “We were just discussing you, Parker,” Xavier said. “We were wondering if you could fill in some missing information about Hope Presbyterian. Of all the congregations I researched for this investigation, that church was one of the most elusive.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “First and foremost, did your father or your grandfather ever tell you anything about the history of the church, its origins in the late nineteenth century or anything about interchurch relationships with other congregations?”

  Parker suddenly came to an overdue conclusion. “That’s why you dragged me into this whole thing! You thought that maybe my grandfather told me something about the Crown of Marbella.” He laughed, astonished.

  “That’s one reason, yes.” Xavier nodded. “But we knew that was unlikely. There was also your connection to the police investigation. We always like to know what they know and where they’re focusing their efforts. But more than any of that, we brought you in because the Crown’s whereabouts is a local Protestant matter. And we are neither local nor Protestant. You, however, seem to know everyone. Or at least they know you. You’re our ambassador. You get our foot in the door, if you will.”

  “He will,” Ignatius said.

  “I still can’t get my head around this.” Parker stood and looked at the largest bulletin board, full of pushpins, photos, and notations. “You really think all this has to do with a glass ball with an ancient artifact inside?”

  “There are only fifty-seven Jesuits Militant in the world, Parker,” Michael said. “We wouldn’t have been sent here for some random string of church vandalism, or even for occult-related murders. The truth is, they sent us because this town is red-flagged to begin with. If the Crown still exists, it’s here somewhere. We’re going to get to the bottom of it, and we’d like your help.”

  Parker had another mini-epiphany. “And that’s why we were creeping around those churches last night, isn’t it? You were looking for the Crown. That’s what your list was about.”

  “Again, that’s partially true,” Xavier said. “We were also hoping to bump into the culprits, as we said, although that, too, was a long shot. We’ve been through fourteen church buildings in the last three nights, looking for any sign of the relic or any sign of trouble.”

  “To be realistic, though, the Crown was probably tossed out by an overzealous custodian years ago,” Ignatius said with a scowl.

  “But what about the league of pastors sworn to protect it?”

  Michael flopped down in an armchair. “There’s no league of clergymen, Parker. Not anymore. You don’t have to study this stuff long to realize that these secret fellowships rarely outlive the first generation. Add to that how frequently Protestant clergy move around, and there’s virtually no chance of succession for a group like that. It’s not like in the movies where thirty generations later, they’re all still organized, wearing matching outfits, eager to give their lives for the cause. There is no cause, because there is no threat. The group just fell apart. I’d bet my beads.”

  Xavier nodded. “But that’s not to say its memory doesn’t live on in some sense, through individuals and individual churches. Father Michael is right about these secret groups. And our job here is harder for it, but not impossible.” He gestured to a picture of Melanie Candor. “Her uncle was on the ministry staff at the First Methodist Church. He set up a mission in the 1970s, a major player in the ecumenical scene.” He gestured to a diagram of churches and ministries, full of crisscrossed, interconnected lines.

  “Isabella Escalanté.” He moved to the next collection of photos. “Her paternal grandfather was the pastor of a Lutheran church in town. For nearly fifteen years.”

  “This is all pretty underwhelming,” Parker said. “Uncles? Grandfathers? What about her fourth cousin, twice removed?”

  Xavier didn’t laugh. “How about this, then, Parker?” He pointed to a branch of names and photos. Their point of origin was an intentionally mysterious, black-and-white photo labeled Damien Bane (Birth Name: Daniel Banner). Beneath it was a school yearbook picture in which Damien looked the part of a classic high school misfit: close-cropped hair, acne, and an ugly sweater.

  Parker was impressed. “You got all that on Damien already? You were busy this morning.”

  “This man’s life is an open book; it didn’t take much. Damien’s mother gave up her parental rights when he was nine. He bounced around to different foster parents for most of his teen years. When he was sixteen, he spent six months living with the Reverend Clinton Raybrook, a fourth-generation Baptist minister in East Grand Rapids.”

  Parker considered this. “So you think he might have heard—or overheard—about the Crown through his foster parents, then done some research on the matter and found the legends behind it. Then—what?—got into Satanism and decided he had to have the thing at any cost for some dark, ignoble purpose?”

  “I’m open to that possibility,” Xavier answered. “Are you?”

  “I guess. He talked about curses and spells. If he knew about the Crown, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t want to get his hands on it. And maybe it gave him an excuse to kill a few people in the meantime,” he said, gesturing at the victims’ photos, “however tenuous their connection.”

  Michael clarified, “If he’s even responsible for the murders, which I’m nowhere near ready to concede. What can’t be denied, though, is that the Protestant churches involved in the recent rash of occult-inspired vandalism are all first-round draft picks for those seven—or twelve—slots in the Secret Protectorate of the Crown. Or whatever you want to call it.”

  “That has a nice ring to it,” Parker said.

  “Thanks. I thought so.”

  “But they’re all mainline churches as well,” Xavier said. “It could just be a big coincidence.”

  “Not even a big coincidence,” Parker agreed. “Almost anyone with roots here is going to have some ancestral connection to one of those congregations. Everybody’s got a minister in the family. This city churns them out. The Baptists have a seminary here. So do the Christian Reformed. The Puritans even have one on Leonard Street. Who knew there were still Puritans?”

  “That’s why we’ve got to stay focused on the center of all this,” Xavier said, “which I believe may be the Crown of Marbella. Something you may not have known, Parker: the second pastor of Hope Presbyterian Church was a close personal friend of Anthony VanderLaan, the author of one of the diaries confirming all this. I would bet my reputation that your grandfather’s church, your father’s church—your old church—was part of this conspiracy in 1893.

  “We haven’t checked the church out yet, because frankly I can’t figure out if it still exists. The phone number is disconnected, and the web page has been utterly neglected for quite some time. More than a year ago they seem to have folded or split or relocated. Which is it?”

  Parker felt the familiar stab of guilt. “They lost the building,” he said plainly. “And they’re currently without a pastor. I got them some space in a friend’s church. Holy Ghost Tabernacle. There aren’t many people left at Hope, but they still come together faithfully each week.”

  “What is the building like? The new building?” Ignatius asked.

  “It’s state of the art. Holy Ghost just built a new auditorium, and Charlie offered to let them use their old sanctuary for free.”

  “So this is shared space?” Michael asked.

  Parker nodded.

  Ignatius was fixing a drink. “This is a ‘church’ like the one on your television program—lights and screens and smoke machines?”

  “More or less.”

  Michael frowned. “Even if someone had the Crown in their possession a generation ago, they wouldn’t have moved it there. I need you to think, Parker. Did your father or your grandfather ever say anything about a church secret of some kind? Could have been an object that he was entrusted to protect, a sacred duty, even something vague?”

  Parker closed his eyes. “I don’t
think so.” He was having trouble concentrating with his current sleep deficit. “Wait.” A memory was emerging from the jumbled archives of his childhood, something he hadn’t thought about in twenty years. “Wait a minute, maybe . . .

  “When I was a little boy, back when my grandfather was still preaching and my father was the associate pastor, there was a break-in at a nearby church. The Foursquare Gospel Church, I think. It really shook up my mother. I remember before that we used to keep the doors unlocked almost all the time so people could come in and pray. But my father insisted that we start locking up. They argued about it for hours—pretty heated stuff.

  “I remember asking my grandpa if the communion ware was made of gold. He laughed and said it was worth less than his watch, but that someone might think it was valuable. He told me there were people who didn’t know Jesus and didn’t know any better who might try to steal from the church.

  “I asked if the church had anything valuable and he told me, ‘There is one thing, but no thief could carry it away, and no thief would even know it was a treasure to begin with.’ ”

  Michael was on his feet. “I swear, Parker, if you’re messing with me . . .”

  “I’m not. I haven’t thought of that in forever, but it’s as clear as anything to me now. I’m sure that’s what he said, almost word-for-word.”

  “A thief could not take it away, nor could he identify it as a treasure,” Ignatius repeated. “If he was referring to the Crown, it sounds to me like the relic may have been built into the structure of the church building itself. How else would it be both hard to detect and immovable?”

  “Worth a look,” Michael said, then asked Parker, “Is there another congregation in the old building?”

  “As far as I know, it’s still vacant. And you won’t even need to break in—I still have a key.”

  FOURTEEN

  THE NIGHTCLUB WAS CALLED CHURCH, AND IT WAS LOCATED IN the old Hope Presbyterian building. A long lipstick-red banner announced the grand opening, but it was battered and shredded by the wind, suggesting that the place had been around for a while. If Parker had thought he was sick at the prospect of the brain bucket, it was nothing compared to this. Rather than emptying his stomach, he felt like someone had emptied his soul.

  He considered a hundred what-ifs at once. What if he had never left the parish? What if he’d found a way to take out a line of credit and rescue the building? What if he’d used his television time to do a sort of save-the-local-church-a-thon before it was too late? What if he’d gone against his father fifteen years ago and voted to register the building as a Michigan historical landmark? He was pretty sure if they’d done that, he might still be looking at an empty building, but he doubted he’d be looking at a nightclub called Historic Church.

  In the back of his mind Parker knew he’d still been planning to make this right—to ride in some day, buy the building for a song and some back taxes, and deed it back over to the congregation. And he’d been afraid this would happen. That’s why he never drove by, never checked up on the place. He thought he could keep it exactly as it had been in his mind until he came to the rescue in real life.

  “Church: A Nightclub,” Ignatius read. “Inventive.”

  Michael extended a small monocular with a flick of his wrist and peered through it. “They’re open,” he said. “Until midnight on weeknights. What time is it?”

  “It’s ten after ten,” Xavier said.

  “It is?” Parker wished he were in bed, asleep. What on earth was he doing sneaking around another old church with these men?

  “I’ve got ten-fifteen,” Michael said. “It took forty-five minutes going back to your house to find the stupid key. I could have had that lock open in forty-five seconds.”

  “Well, it’s not locked now,” Xavier observed. “What’s to stop us having a look?”

  Michael’s laugh echoed up the alley. “Us? No. Parker and I will go in. No offense, Father X, but you and Eisenhower here would probably stick out just a bit. Lose the tie, Parker,” he said. He pulled off his own.

  Predicting metal detectors, Michael left his hardware with Ignatius and led Parker across the street to the entrance.

  “Do you think we’ll get in?” Parker asked.

  “Get in? This isn’t Manhattan. I’m sure everybody gets in.”

  At the door he passed a twenty to the lethargic bouncer, more than enough for the cover charge for both men. As they entered, Parker barely recognized the foyer, now covered in stylized fluorescent graffiti, bathed in black light. He tried not to imagine it as it used to be. They ascended some stairs and entered a large, open space where about forty twentysomethings were flopping back and forth to the repetitive squeal-thump of the techno music.

  “This sucks,” Michael declared, surveying the scene, “even for a Wednesday.” A small huddle of young men, spray tanned and mostly unbuttoned, snickered at the priest and the preacher.

  “I think we still might be overdressed,” Parker shouted at Michael’s ear.

  Two young women approached them, stuffed into minidresses and spackled with makeup.

  “There you are,” one of them said, her breath reeking of alcohol. “We’ve been looking all over.”

  “I don’t think we know you, sweetheart,” Michael said.

  “Yeah, we know you. You’re the guys who want to buy us a drink.” She giggled, then flashed a practiced smile.

  “I’m afraid I’ve taken a vow of celibacy. And my friend here is old enough to be your father. Or maybe your uncle. He’s really got an uncle vibe, doesn’t he?”

  “I’m a square,” Parker confirmed.

  “I can make you break that vow,” she said, swaying near, her perfume wafting in.

  “You’re better than this,” Michael answered without condescension. “Trust me; I have a gift for reading people. You don’t have to act this way.” She stared at him for a long time, then spun on her heels and walked away, tugging her friend along behind her.

  “I don’t belong here,” Parker said.

  “No. No, you don’t. Be thankful for that.” Michael quickly analyzed what he could see of the interior and formed a plan. “Let’s pretend we’re looking for someone and make our way around the outside of the room. We’re looking for any kind of artistic glasswork, hidden cabinet, or some other architectural anomaly.”

  “This whole place is an anomaly.”

  “That’s why you’re here, Parker. Try and picture it as it was.”

  “Minus all the metal, fog, and strobe lights.”

  “Exactly.”

  They moved slowly, and it took twenty-five minutes to make the circuit back to the door. A dozen young toughs arrived halfway through their survey, rowdy and roving, and Parker got the distinct feeling that he would have been beaten for sport had he not been accompanied by Father Michael.

  “This place just isn’t happening,” the priest said. “I wonder how much of the building is accessible. Where was the pastor’s study?”

  “This way.” Parker led him out the back of the large room and down a hall, the walls covered in chain-link fencing and illuminated by hundreds of red Christmas lights.

  Halfway down the corridor a large, bald black man sat on a stool in front of a velvet rope, blocking access to the hall. He was reading a thick book by the light of a little LED flashlight and didn’t notice Parker and Michael until they were on top of him. He quickly shined the light in their direction and hopped off the stool.

  “I’m sorry. This is the VIP area. VIPs only,” he said, not quite sounding like he believed his own words.

  “It’s cool,” Michael reassured him. “We’re VIPs.”

  “I know VIPs. And you’re not. You want to head back that way.” He shined the light back the way they’d come.

  Michael produced a small roll of bills and peeled off a few. “Do we look like VIPs now?” he asked, extending the money.

  “Almost,” the bouncer said, pushing the bills away. “Unfortunately, the VIP area is
spoken for until closing tonight. But you can be VIPs tomorrow.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “No problem.” He hopped back up on his stool and turned his attention back to his book.

  The men retraced their steps, descended the stairs out of the building, and strode back across the street, the cold air a welcome, invigorating change from the steam bath of breath and sweat inside the club.

  “Anything?” Xavier asked.

  “It’s too dark,” Michael answered. “And too many people. Could be in there, though. The place has been given a face-lift, but it’s all cosmetic. They didn’t knock down any walls or even plaster over the mosaic of the crucifixion behind the DJ stand. I want a better look at that place.”

  “It’s a little more than an hour before they close,” Xavier said. “Shall we make the rounds and come back?”

  Parker’s collar was damp and cold from the steady cascade of drool he’d deposited while he slept. He had tried to bow out of further nighttime adventures, but the priests had convinced him that without him as a guide, another trip into the club would be pointless.

  The last thing Parker wanted was to go back in there, to see even more clearly what they’d done to the church where he’d grown up.

  “I know it makes you sick,” Michael said, “but think about this. You might rediscover the most precious lost treasure of the Christian church.”

  Lacking the energy for a debate, Parker had caved—under the condition that he be allowed to nap while they drove all over town, swinging by each of the churches on Xavier’s list yet again. He had only been out for twenty minutes when the car came to a stop, jarring him from his shallow doze. The drool welcomed him back to the land of the living, as did a persistent crick in his neck. These little pockets of sleep weren’t helping.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Twelve thirty,” Michael answered. “We don’t know how long it takes them to clean up and close down, so Father Xavier has gone to have a look.”

  The two-way on Michael’s phone chirped annoyingly. “Parker’s key doesn’t work,” came Xavier’s voice. “But I had a look inside. No sign of anyone.”