Even with his financial success, the real estate only grew at a pace with the family’s needs, as far as Anna could tell. This pattern held until more recently, when Beau Dupere suddenly appeared on the list of California’s billionaires. Exactly how, Anna couldn’t tell any better than the few financial reporters who had tried to pin this down. One Internet rumor claimed that Dupere had once collected the largest multistate lottery ever awarded to an individual winner, another claimed that he financed an expedition that found the most significant cache of colonial Spanish gold in the Caribbean. Others merely traced a lattice work of investments which escalated his worth in boom years, as well as during downturns.
This is when the Dupere family moved to the cliff-top Malibu estate that Dixon Claiborne and friends now eyed with Puritanical disapproval. During this period, as well, he transitioned from finance to healing, his only apparent employment being a church staff position in a Malibu church affiliated with the other churches he had helped found.
Anna frowned at these “church staff” references and an accompanying lack of preaching or other traditional church professional responsibilities assigned to Beau. Justine, on the other hand, did appear on recorded media preaching or teaching at that progressive West Coast church. She made a name for herself as a teacher, but was generally overshadowed by spectacular claims regarding Beau’s healing powers.
Looking at an aerial view of their Malibu mansion, Anna tried to picture herself chatting cozily with the residents. She sighed and closed her Web browser, adding a few more clicks, until she had shut down her laptop.
“Well, I hope they take my interview,” she said, as if adjusting herself to the proper professional goal for her contact with the controversial healer.
I Was Hungry and You Gave . . .
At LAX, Beau Dupere stood with his daughter, Joanna. She looked up at the list of arrivals and departures, checking to see that their flight was on time. They had arrived earlier than expected and she could sense her father scoping the people around him for a target.
“You’re not gonna make us late again with some spectacular healing, followed by a huge revival, are you?” A hint of strained tolerance in her voice, she lowered her head and looked at her dad under her carefully plucked eyebrows.
Beau saw that look, reflected it back for a second and then burst out laughing. “Would I ever do a thing like that to you, Jo Jo?” He swung around and wrapped a muscular arm around her shoulders and squeezed. She allowed his strength to fold her frame like the baby gate they used to keep at the top of the basement stairs when the kids were small. Then she laughed too.
“Hey, I was only thirteen. I didn’t have much patience back then,” she said.
“Umhm. And now, six years later, you still remind me of it every time we wait in an airport.”
“Yeah, which is a lot of times,” she said. “I should check my frequent flyer miles.” Beau loved all of his children, of course, but Joanna, whom her mother called “Jo,” was the one who at least pretended to resist his charisma.
“Tell you what,” Beau said, “I won’t approach anyone from here to Toronto.”
Joanna stepped away from him to look up into his face. They started walking toward their gate, and she said, “This will be something I’ll have to see to believe, it would be like fasting for you.”
Again, Beau laughed and hugged her, even as they dodged through multivalent traffic in the big sunny terminal. Then Joanna thought of something.
“Wait, are you promising not to approach anyone because you know that people are gonna approach you?”
Great, full-chested laughter splashed toward the distant ceiling and walls, diluted in the expanse of the airport. Beau’s children knew him well. They had all travelled with him on various ministry trips for the last ten years. At first, it was to expose them to his work, and to protect him from temptation. He had to travel with someone, to more easily resist the many invitations from lonely women, and even a few men. He knew that travelling with his kids would keep his attention where it belonged. More recently, his children provided added healing power to his meetings, having apprenticed under the master.
“I know,” Beau said, when they reached their gate, “let’s hide somewhere that no one is likely to find us. You pick the spot.”
For Joanna, this seemed a twisted game. She was fairly sure that her father had received some advanced insight into what was going to happen in the next hour or so before boarding their flight, or after they boarded their flight, for that matter. If he already knew, then hiding might play right into that plan. As she thought about it, Joanna realized that she didn’t mind so much getting side-tracked by someone receiving their hearing or eyesight. Maybe it was just the feeling of unpredictability, the sensation of falling without even so much as a bungee cord to soften the eventual landing. Rather than solve the conundrum about whether hiding would actually make them easier for the appointed person to find them, she just decided to play along.
“Okay, I’ll choose the spot,” she said, looking around. She found an empty waiting area where the next scheduled flight was a few hours off. It seemed the least likely place for a chance encounter, even one that wasn’t really up to chance.
Beau dutifully pointed his forehead in that direction and followed his daughter’s clip-clop sandal steps across the concourse. Joanna plunked her brown leather shoulder bag on one of the gray seats, landing herself next to it. She let one sandal stay on the floor as she pulled a leg up under her and looked out the window at crews preparing jets for boarding. Beau headed for a seat across from her, his back to the window, but before he sat down, Joanna protested.
“Hey, you can’t sit there facing all the people streaming by.” She sounded like a ten-year-old protecting the sanctity of a board game’s rules.
“Oops,” Beau said with a smile. “Caught me cheating.”
“That’s right. You sit over here and look out at those planes. They won’t recognize you and you probably won’t see some airplane ailment they need healed.” Then she added, “I hope.”
As he sat down, Beau imitated a clairvoyant he had seen once. He closed his eyes, pressed a thumb and finger to his forehead and said, “Oh, I think someone here has a wing that needs healing.” Then he opened his eyes and gestured toward the line of planes beyond the window. “What d’ya know?”
Joanna shook her head and rolled her eyes, but the adolescent gesture aborted before landing back on her father. A movement on the other side of the row of chairs closest to the window interrupted her. A man dressed in an old black suit coat pressed himself up to a sitting position and attempted to regulate his twisted tassel of hair. Joanna’s first thought was a movie about a man who lived at the airport awaiting clearance to return to his war-torn country. Then she realized that a dozen real-life scenarios might explain someone sleeping in the boarding area of a flight scheduled several hours later in the day. The third wave of reactions turned to what sort of healing this man needed. She had chosen this unoccupied space to hide, only to find that it was, in fact, occupied. Glancing at her father, she tried to assess his interest in the stranger. Beau sat looking at the planes and a crew of baggage handlers loading an airliner two gates down, at least pretending not to have noticed the disheveled man.
As she might have predicted, however, the man stood up and walked to where Beau could not ignore him, standing directly in his line of sight and facing him across the row of seats. The man said something to her father in broken English.
“I sorry to bother you, sir, but I am need and must ask help from some . . .” His voice faded as he searched for the right word, weariness dragging him below the energy horizon he needed to humble himself and beg in a foreign language.
Beau looked him full in the face with a winning smile. “I’m sure I can help.”
Anyone who has been on either end of an attempt to solicit a handout, will recognize the break from expectations embodied in Beau’s open promise. The weary beggar didn’t see
m to have a follow up to such a transcontinental offer. But, then, he didn’t seem to have perfected the craft of panhandling yet either.
“You . . . you will . . . you will help? But I not say what help I . . .”
For Joanna, the reason for the question was as obvious as the reason for the unusual response. Though she couldn’t tell you exactly how rich, she knew her father was voluminously wealthy and could easily meet the financial needs of anyone they could find in that airport. She had also been present once when her father raised a man from the dead, at a healing service in Mexico City. For her father, sickness, death and poverty were enemies, enemies he didn’t fear, but rather expected to flee before him.
“I will tell you what you need, and if I’m right you will let me meet that need and a few others as well,” Beau said.
“You tell me?”
Beau nodded. He seemed confident that the man understood English better than he spoke it, so he spoke like he would to any neighbor he might meet at the local latte shop. “You are trying to get to Ottawa, but your wallet was stolen and all that was recovered was your I.D. So now you can fly but you have no ticket and no money. And the reason you’re going to Ottawa is because your wife is already there with your kids. You had to stay behind in Los Angeles for a few days, to meet a cousin who was going to help you make a business contact. Your wife’s mother is sick, so she couldn’t wait and took the kids ahead of you.”
It was fascinating to Joanna to watch a human face spill incredulity from each orifice. First the needy traveler’s eyes stopped moving, even blinking. Then his lips parted, and his jaw began to lower like the cargo door of a giant jet, huge hydraulic pistons slowly dropping it to the ground. Next, his nose twitched and then began to run, as tears overwhelmed the listener even before he felt their approach. Finally, the desperate man’s eyes blinked and then blinked repeatedly, as if batting away impossibility, in a desperate stretch to embrace the unimaginable.
Beau stood up and reached over the double row of seats between them, addressing the man by name. “Ahmed Naser, I’m Beau Dupere. God has sent me to help you.”
Ahmed grabbed his face with both hands, just as grievous gratitude exploded from his eyes and mouth. He relinquished half that hold on his face to take Beau’s hand and hang on, as if certain he would sink down through the floor if he let go. Joanna was sniffling ardently by this time, overwhelmed by sympathy for Ahmed and by renewed wonder at the goodness of God.
When he did finally let go, Ahmed pulled at his jacket lapels and ruffle his mop of hair. He grabbed his tangled beard with both hands and seemed to be trying to pull it off his face, oblivious to what anyone might think. Finally, he crumpled to the ground, his elbows landing on the seats in front of him, his face ensconced in his hands again.
Joanna just shook her head, her eyes dazed, her mouth open and wordless. She had tumbled well beyond the little game that had drawn them to this place.
Ahmed wobbled up to his feet and reached his hand out to Beau again. “Thanks you, brother. You have save my life,” he said, a spasm rocking his chest as he recovered from his shock. “You speak my life to me, so I know God has send you to help me.”
Beau smiled and nodded, shaking that offered hand. “Yes. God is good.”
“God is good,” said Ahmed in solemn agreement.
For the next few minutes, Beau gathered information about Ahmed’s specific needs. To meet them, they used Beau’s and Joanna’s smart phones, without any apparent angelic intervention. Not only did Beau purchase the ticket for Ahmed, he gave him all the cash he was carrying in his own wallet, equivalent to a year’s wages where Ahmed came from, though not in Canada, where he was headed. Beau also gave Ahmed the name of someone to contact for help getting work once he arrived north of the border.
As Joanna watched the final transactions of this linguistically challenged relationship, she felt a twinge of guilt for her earlier objections to being inconvenienced in the past, even if those objections were as mild as oatmeal. She remembered the blessings in which her life had been showered and asked forgiveness in a silent prayer.
But she didn’t let her guilt cloud the wonder of what had happened when God found them where they were hiding and brought them a stranger who needed to meet Him. She grinned at her father, eyes shining with admiration, as if she were a little girl all over again.
A Walk Around the Pool
It took three days of calling contacts, and contacts of contacts, before Anna found a number for the Dupere household. She had tried just showing up at the gate, but two very large, and entirely unmovable guards—in their black pants, black t-shirts and close-cropped hair—sent her away. It wasn’t hard to understand their vigilance. On the road, across from the driveway entrance, two dozen protesters chanted and waved signs. The boldly printed slogans said, “Come Clean Mr. Dupere” and “Repent of Your Sin.” More obscure to Anna were the signs that merely read, “II Peter 2:2.” She had to search the Internet for an explanation, something about depravity and false prophets.
But the protesters were not the only ones trying to get to Beau Dupere. On the driveway, by special dispensation from the guards, a half dozen supplicants begged for Beau Dupere to come out and heal them.
The taller of the guards confided to Anna, when she asked about this mournful lot. “Sometimes he actually comes out and heals them.” Her arched eyebrows and downturned mouth bespoke her surprise. She still had questions about whether this enigmatic church leader really could heal people.
When she finally did reach the Dupere household by phone, it was Justine that eventually spoke with her.
“Hi, Mrs. Dupere. This is Anna Conyers of Western Horizon News. I was trying to get an interview with Mr. Dupere, to get his side of the story, in light of the public criticism against him.”
“Public?” Justine sounded less surprised than simply unfamiliar with the reference.
“Dixon Claiborne, and his coalition of pastors, calling for Christians to stay clear of your husband, because of a list of misdeeds they claim . . .”
“We don’t pay attention to that sort of thing. There’s too much to do, for us to take time away to figure out what the critics are saying. Nothing good ever comes of that anyway,” said Justine, still lacking any interest—let alone emotion—in her tone. “But let me ask Beau and I’ll call you right back.”
Anna agreed, of course. She breathed a sigh when her cell phone rang ten minutes later.
“He says you should come over tomorrow after lunch,” Justine said, skipping any kind of greeting. “Can you do that, say around one in the afternoon?”
“Sure,” Anna said, knowing that any conflict with her schedule would just have to disappear.
At home that night, in front of her bathroom mirror, Anna looked at her dull brown hair, her too big glasses and pale, blotchy face. She started to pluck at the three stray whiskers that had reappeared near the corners of her mouth and wondered whether she had time for a haircut in the morning. Though she ignored her own internal inquiries as to why, she wanted to make a good impression on Beau Dupere. She pictured a warm smile on his tan face, his perfect white teeth sparkling like a sugarless gum commercial. Then her inner editor broke free from the handcuffs and gag and shouted, “What are you doing? He’s a married man, maybe several times over.”
Anna cursed, as the last of her dark brown facial hairs popped free from her grimacing lip. She dropped the tweezers and leaned on the sink, scowling at herself—the dreamer facing off with the critic, ready for a no-holds-barred round.
The next morning, Anna forgot about the hair cut when she found out that Beau Dupere was to be in Toronto that night, and had left for the airport. She discovered this by accident, doing an Internet search for recent news on Beau. She found a religious news service clip of his rented limo pulling past the protesters with their “II Peter 2:2” signs.
On her third try, she reached Justine by phone again, having squeezed past the gauntlet of assistants and other unid
entified female voices. “I thought I had an appointment to see Mr. Dupere this afternoon,” Anna said, trying to tamp down the whine in her voice.
“Hmmm. Yeah, actually, he thought you would like to talk to some of us first. He’s coming back in two days. He’ll be glad to talk to you then,” said Justine.
“Some of us?” Some of who? Anna wondered. Some of “us” wives?
Justine filled in the silence. “You do want to find out what’s going on in this house, right?”
Anna hadn’t said anything like that, which made her wonder whether Justine had been bluffing about ignoring the critics. She must have tuned into what Claiborne and the others were saying, in order to figure out what Anna would be investigating. But, then, that alone wouldn’t fill in as much as Justine seemed to be assuming.
This time, Anna answered, before Justine could bump the conversation again. “Yes, in fact, I would like to meet with you and some of the . . . others,” she said.
“Good,” Justine said. “That’s what Beau thought. See you at one?”
“Sure,” Anna said, trying to hike a bit of friendliness up over her consternation.
At five minutes past one, Anna sat in her gray Civic looking up at the expansive chest of guard number two. He leaned down and smiled at her, holding a cell phone to his ear. “Yes, they’re expecting you.” He maintained that grin as he hung up the call and motioned for his partner to open the gate. Anna offered a three-quarters smile in return, trying to disentangle from that All-American face looking in her window. When she turned toward the humming gate that was patiently swinging inward, she thought, “I’m pathetically lonely. There’s no way around it.”
Parking her car under a palm tree in the circular courtyard, in front of the huge Mediterranean style home, Anna climbed out and then had to duck back in to grab her purse. When she swung the leather bag over her shoulder, she fished out the digital recorder with which she hoped to capture the interview. As usual, her hands shook with the same nerves that constricted her breathing. On a good interview, these nerves would dissipate. During a contentious interview, they would generate adrenalin that usually helped her form challenging questions and keep pressing her point. Not knowing which kind of experience lay ahead of her added to the jitters.
If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1) Page 5