by P. J. Day
Cindy placed the box on Paolo’s desk. Keelen took a seat and played on her phone.
“I’m betting you couldn’t sleep last night?” Paolo asked, with an enthusiastic smile.
“How’d you know?” Cindy asked.
“Well, I couldn’t either. This is too exciting. Here, let me show you something.”
Paolo and Cindy walked toward the professor’s desk. He picked up a carbon copy of one of the book’s pages. “I made some translations.”
Cindy’s eyes widened. “...and?”
“I don’t believe in crazy things,” Paolo said, his hands trembling. “This is either a hoax or what is contained in this book is prophetic.”
Keelen chortled in her seat. “Professor, I thought you were a man of science.”
Paolo eyed Keelen with slight contempt. “I’m either being tricked by you two girls or what is inside this book is something...something unprecedented.”
“Well, lay it on us, Mr. Rivers,” Keelen said.
Paolo placed the carbon paper back on his desk and lifted the book out of the crate. He immediately turned to the page he had copied and pointed to the picture of the Mary-like figure with the black shawl. A golden sun hung right above her head and there were three paragraphs of cryptic writing below her.
Paolo read the words with the ardor of a poet: “The Blessed Sacrament, kept for eternal salvation, on the road to Sunset.”
“Blessed Sacrament? From my research, that usually refers to the body of Christ, right?” Cindy asked.
“This is where it gets strange, though. I did some studying and found out that this is the first time anywhere where the Blessed Sacrament is being alluded to as something that is kept away, locked away. The body of Christ is always described as something that should be embraced and used as an example for salvation. It’s out in the open. Then this picture of this Mary-like figure is referred to in this book as the Blessed Sacrament. Why would an ancient Judeo-Christian text, if this book turns out to be the case, refer to a woman as the Blessed Sacrament?” he asked excitedly. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“So, a woman is the daughter of God in this book?” asked Cindy with enthusiasm.
“I don’t know, but what I gathered is that she is not related to Hebraic or Christ theology, instead she is mentioned as Roman, possibly Greek. The book also states that this woman, this Blessed Sacrament, is ransomed or sacrificed after Constantine. Remember, Constantine was the first Christian emperor that oversaw the transition of a powerful shift in Western thought and rule, essentially from polytheism to monotheism.”
“I wish I knew what you were talking about,” said Cindy.
“I need more time, but I’m concerned. I’m so exhausted,” said Paolo, his eyes clearly straining through his glasses.
Keelen stood up from her chair, matching Paolo’s nervous energy. She walked up to Cindy and grabbed her hand. “We’re done with all this, give me the book. I’m burning it,” she said. She then pointed at Paolo, who was sweating as if he just ran a marathon. “Look at him. This book is making everyone mad.”
“No, no,” implored Paolo, grabbing Keelen’s arm. “You can’t. This book speaks to me.”
“What’s it saying?” asked Cindy, who wrestled her arm away from Keelen’s grip.
“Stop it, Cindy. You’re making it worse,” Keelen cautioned. “Don’t encourage this behavior.”
Paolo licked his lips and plunged his finger deep onto the text. “It specifically states the year 1904 as the year the Blessed Sacrament gets her own Mission.”
Cindy craned her neck down toward Paolo, where his intense stare cemented itself into the text. Paolo raised his voice and read with clarity and power. “The crossroads shall be built 70 years later as a beacon for the return. The embassy shall guard the key to the Blessed Sacrament. This is to ensure the return, which shall occur at the epicenter of wickedness, where all those who will be harvested have been trained in their sin and iniquity.”
Cindy stepped away from Paolo. His face was wet, his grin feverish. Consumed by the text he said, “Don’t you see?”
“Cindy, let’s go,” Keelen said, hooking her by the arm.
Cindy pulled her arm away again. She wasn’t annoyed with Keelen, just enchanted with Paolo’s words.
“Our feet stand over the text,” said the professor, whose hand trembled as he removed his glasses for a quick wipe. His body was not refreshed. His blood pressure spiked his core’s temperature as sweat beads gathered all over his forehead. With reddened eyes he said, “The delegation for the Blessed Sacrament is on Sunset Boulevard. Wickedness is upon us.”
“Okay, this is ridiculous,” Keelen said sternly. It was one thing to obsess, another to be completely absorbed, she thought. “Professor Rivers, you’re mad, how could you possibly come to this conclusion?”
“Blessed sacrament...blessed sacrament...sounds familiar,” Cindy said to herself in deep thought.
Professor Rivers nodded. “You got it, there is a church called the Blessed Sacrament on the road to Sunset, built in 1904 next to the crossroads of the world.”
Keelen blew a dismissive dart of air through her curled lips. “Crossroads of the world...crossroads of the world? Are you implying...? The crossroads of the world is nothing but a collection of small office suites. Why would an ancient text refer to some stupid office park? Paolo, you’re reaching. It sounds like a tired mind that has shifted to delusional thinking.”
Paolo clumsily walked to his desk. He sat in his chair and lowered his head into his folded arms. He mumbled, “Man, I need some sleep.”
“Keelen, we need to go to the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, like now.”
It wasn’t that Keelen didn’t believe there was no validity to Paolo’s claims; she just didn’t believe the end result would produce something that would eventually satisfy Cindy’s expectations. “What do you think is going to come of this?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But there is something in me that wants to keep going. I gotta see what’s inside that church.”
“What if this is all some kind of conspiracy? Aren’t you afraid that something might happen to you? Like Raffi?”
“Go with me. We are visiting a church. Just a church. They’ll thank us when we discover the secrets behind this book. We’ll be heroes. We’ll be guests of honor on bingo nights.”
Keelen let out a deep breath. “Cindy, I love you. But I have other issues to deal with right now. I need to talk to Logan and figure things out with Matt.” Keelen then glanced toward Paolo. “Take the professor with you. Is that okay with you, Professor?” All she heard were snores. “Professor?”
“Looks like I’ll go at it alone,” said Cindy.
“Hold on,” Keelen said. “Look at me.”
Cindy stood still, with her slender arms at her side, like a soldier readying for her next order.
“Promise me once you’re done visiting this church, we all leave this stuff behind with the professor and you move on. You can stop by and ask for the credit you deserve, but this chase has its limits, actually, we have our limits. I don’t want to end up like Raffi.”
“Fine.”
“Thank you,” said Keelen, relieved. “Take me to Logan’s and I’ll meet up with you after you come back from the church.”
Cindy nodded and picked up the box with the book and the artifacts and headed out the door.
As the girls neared the office door, Keelen glanced over her shoulder and felt a resounding guilt for leaving Paolo behind by himself. She walked toward the red leather sofa in his office and grabbed a tribal quilt that had been draped over its back and gently placed it around his shoulders.
Chapter Twenty-two:
Intersection
Cindy parked alongside the painted green curb in front of Logan’s apartment building.
Keelen called Logan one more time before stepping out of the car. She looked at Cindy with worried eyes. “His voicemail again. It’s like he’s fallen off
the face of the Earth.”
“Don’t you have the keys to his place?”
“Yeah, but I’ve never worked weekends and it would be kinda awkward if I just showed up on a Saturday morning, don’t you think? What if he’s with that Eva chick again?”
“Just knock on his door and say you forgot some work or something.”
“I guess I can do that,” Keelen said.
Keelen stepped out of the car, closed the passenger door and stuck her head through the rolled-down window. “Do what you need to do in the church, but that’s it. No need to go further. I’m telling you that there are some very angry people out there who want this book.”
Cindy rolled her eyes and whined, “Fine, Mother. What are you going to do after you get a hold of Logan?”
“I’ll probably go over to Matt’s gym and talk things over.”
“Good luck.”
Keelen sighed. “I know.”
Cindy rolled up her window and drove north—taking the side streets toward Sunset Boulevard.
Keelen entered the building and then walked into the elevator and wondered if Logan was home, actively avoiding his phone calls, or freelancing a revolution.
She stepped out of the elevator and walked up to the apartment. The bright orange welcome mat Logan had at his door was gone.
She knocked twice and paused.
“It’s me. Keelen. I forgot something important on my desk. I’m coming in to get it.”
No answer.
Keelen pulled out her keys and inserted the gold Hello Kitty one into the keyhole. When she turned the knob, she heard the elevator doors open behind her. A short, dapper blonde girl with a pixyish grin emerged from inside the metal car.
“Hello,” greeted Tracy.
“Hi,” said Keelen, stiffed and leaning back against the door.
“Is this Logan Drake’s apartment?”
Keelen gave a half-nod and remembered that she was to guard Logan’s secrecy as well. “Um, who are you?”
“I’m Tracy Klein, the art and culture contributor for Estil Magazine,” she said, as she dug in her purse for one of her business cards. “Here, don’t worry, I’m legit.”
“I’ll make sure he gets your card. He’s a couple of floors up. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to, um, feed my baby.”
“Wait a minute,” Tracy said, as she narrowed her eyes. “I know you.”
“No, you don’t.”
When Tracy stared into Keelen’s distinctive blue eyes, she immediately recognized her from the viral video of Matt and Logan’s fight as the girl screeching for peace at Perry’s.
“You were in the middle of Matthew Nix’s meltdown last night, weren’t you?”
Keelen froze.
Tracy tilted her head and stared at the ground in deep concentration. “Hold on...”
“What?”
She looked up and pointed her finger at Keelen. “You screamed the name ‘Logan’ in the video.”
“Okay, and?” said Keelen, slightly perturbed that she was now infamously cast as the screaming girl in Matt’s video.
“Was Logan Drake there? Were you screaming Logan Drake’s name?”
“Seriously, lady. I don’t have time for this, my baby needs me.”
“Logan lives here, doesn’t he?”
“No.”
“That’s strange. Logan told me he lived here.” Tracy lied. She didn’t even have to bargain with Jack at Sotheby’s. The $5,000 Adam offered had been more than enough.
“Did Logan really tell you he lived here?” Keelen asked, putting her hands on her hips.
“Yes. Yes, he did. I promise, his location will be our little secret. A good journalist never gives up her sources. So, is he in there?”
Keelen paused. “I’m his assistant. I doubt he would bypass me to set up an appointment, especially with someone who claims to know where he lives.”
“Well, I’m here to give him something.”
“Just give it to me and I’ll make sure he gets it.”
Tracy pulled two tickets from her black purse and handed them to Keelen. “He’s our guest of honor for tomorrow’s fight. Front-row seats courtesy of the magazine’s editor, Adam Cagle.”
“Kind of a last-minute gesture, don’t you think? I don’t think he’s gonna want to go.”
Tracy swallowed and then cleared her throat. “Mr. Cagle and the magazine will make a $10,000 donation to the charity of Logan’s choice if he participates in the fight’s sponsored festivities.”
“Really? Why would your magazine go all out for an amateur boxing match?”
Tracy shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s my editor’s call.”
Keelen stared at the tickets and put them in her purse. “Is there anything else you want?”
Tracy rubbed the nervous sweat from her palms and wiped them on the side of her slacks. “No, that’s pretty much it. I would love to meet him. But this is really the only reason I came by. Just let him know that I think his work is revolutionary and I can’t wait to meet him if he does show up to tomorrow’s fight.”
Keelen flashed a polite smile. “Good, I’ll let him know. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to...”
“...take care of your baby?” Tracy said, with a wink.
Annoyed, Keelen curled her upper lip in a half-smile and nodded her head. Tracy walked into the elevator and waved one more time before the doors closed.
Keelen turned around, reinserted the key and turned the knob. The knob twisted a millimeter before locking up. She wiggled the key and tried again. The knob still wouldn’t turn.
“Dammit!” she shouted.
Logan had changed the locks on the door. Keelen was locked out of his apartment.
She texted Logan: Am I fired? Let me know, so I can move on.
She waited around the front of Logan’s door for a minute, waiting to see if he would text her back. He never did. She had nowhere to go. Matt’s gym was a 10-minute bus ride away. She quickly stepped into the elevator and descended into the lobby. When the doors opened, she was greeted by a finely dressed, bald man in his mid-fifties with a tattooed neck. He flashed her a reptilian smile.
“Hello,” he said, his voice airy, but with the hint of a rasp.
Keelen smiled and lowered her eyes. She hurriedly walked around the corner and saw the bus waiting at a red light. She didn’t even have to sit on the bench. Within a minute, she was already on the bus and on the way to Matt’s gym.
Fisker made his way up to Logan’s apartment. He knocked on Logan’s door.
“Mr. Drake, this is agent Fisker with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Just like Keelen, he received no answer. He placed his hand on the door, closed his eyes and gauged the temperature inside Logan’s apartment.
He gripped the knob tightly and twisted it with brute strength, breaking the metal shafts and pins that held the insides of the knob together. He pushed through the door with an abrupt thrust of his shoulder.
Fisker’s eyes scanned the apartment and they eventually fixated on a living space emptied of its contents. The furniture was gone. The canvases were gone. The blood packets that had been categorized and organized by blood type and color were gone. All Logan had left behind was the dried blood on the floor near his workspace and a large white bed sheet with a blood-drawn message that hung on the living room wall:
I will show the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes to Adonai except through me. The harvest will not occur without revelation to all. For the purity of man is undeservedly blinded. Death to corruption, death to greed, life for all.
Fisker scowled and tore the sign off the wall and shredded the banner into fine slivers of fabric.
Chapter Twenty-three:
Protests and Passageways
Cindy gazed up at the smog-free skies through her cracked windshield while maintaining a safe distance between the cartoon-contoured fender of her Beetle and the back of a white plumber’s van.
Traffic was brutal on Sunset Boulevard as it usual
ly was in the midafternoon on the famed 22 mile stretch of gravel.
Soon as she dropped Keelen off at Logan’s apartment, Cindy placed the mysterious sphere on the top of her Beetle’s dash, knowing it had the mysteriously inability to stay put and not roll around.
But minutes into her drive she soon found out that whenever she’d make a turn, the stationary ball spun around as if it contained a gyroscope at its core.
Like an ancient GPS system, the rod—which she had dangled from her rearview mirror with a piece of fishing string—seemed to feed off the energy of the spinning sphere and angled toward the direction of the church.
Elated, Cindy spotted the adorned steeple of the Blessed Sacrament Church in the distance, towering over all the buildings on that particular stretch of Sunset Boulevard. Its thin iron cross displaying its iconic power like a beacon for the faithful.
Her eyes then moved down from the Sunset skyline to the gaggle of hipsters who strolled the sidewalks past the trendy secondhand stores, and the burgeoning indie coffeehouse scene that didn’t include logos of polydactyl mermaids. From Echo Park on, the shops on Sunset had gentrified from panaderias and carnicerias, to a collection of co-ops and cupcakeries.
As traffic came to a complete standstill, she placed her hand on top of the large red book which partially stuck out of her black backpack, quelling an urge to bond with her newest obsession. It was hot to the touch as it had absorbed the sunlight that came in through the passenger-side window.
A smattering of honks entered her car. The traffic light in front of her had turned green, then red, then green again.
Annoyed the van had blocked her view, Cindy popped her head out through her window.
A few blocks down the jam-packed boulevard, she saw a westbound march of protestors holding signs, chanting, pumping their fists into the air.
A thick-necked man emerged from the white van. She then followed and stepped out of the car and approached the plumber. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. But that’s an ass-load of people,” said the burly man. “They look damn pissed, too.”
The crowd stretched past Highland and seemed to percolate all the way down through North La Brea. Without a doubt, it was the largest crowd Cindy had seen, and most likely, the largest crowd in city history.