CHAPTER 17
Topeka, Kansas, February 2005
A COUPLE TIMES A DAY, HUGE diesel generators went on inside the factory building. Automatically, without warning. The floor shook. It was hard to make yourself heard even at close range.
The first tremors traveled across the floor just as Adderloy was about to say something. Then came the noise. He paused and sat down, knowing the routine. They waited it out.
They were in their third day. Some kind of plan had taken shape, and they lived on pizza and Thai food. They went out, sometimes one at a time, more often two and two, learning the roads into town and the escape routes. They sketched maps, bought stuff. Adderloy had gotten rid of the rentals and bought three used cars in town. The papers were in the glove compartment. (To be on the safe side, he’d gone over what they should do if stopped by traffic police. All the registration and insurance documents were legit. No sense doing anything rash.) But Vladislav nixed the first batch of guns that Adderloy brought, saying the weapons should be the same caliber—9mm—as the submachine guns he’d been promised. Adderloy never questioned Vladislav’s opinions on guns, though in pretty much everything else he was used to getting the final say. He’d claimed one of Mary’s armchairs, where he usually sat and handed out directives, cigarette smoke coiling above his head. He didn’t seem bothered by the fusty air of the factory, always wore a jacket and tie. N. never saw him head up to any of the rooms off the hallway to sleep. If N. got up in the middle of the night, Adderloy was always sitting in his armchair, reading under a single bulb.
When the generators went off, the stillness startled them, as if a film had snapped. They fumbled a moment.
Adderloy shifted in his chair. “Yes . . . ,” he began. Before the interruption, they’d been ticking off items in the master plan. “Suits?”
“We got everyone’s size,” said Reza sleepily. “Mary and I will buy them tomorrow.”
“Cooler and toolbox?”
“Making a run to Walmart tonight,” said N. “I’ll get the dry ice tomorrow.”
There were lists.
“City maps?”
Vladislav gave a thumbs-up.
Everything was broken down into detail, in matériel, in sequence. One at a time, in cardboard boxes and plastic bags, the critical events took physical form.
Everything else disappeared. Reza could tell you about a fight he’d seen in Toronto, and Vladislav joked about the newlyweds getting tangled in the wedding-dress train, posing for a photographer at Niagara Falls. But no one talked about anything farther back. Even Weejay’s seemed to be forgotten. All memories had begun to fade. Certain things would be bought today, others things get done tomorrow. Looking ahead, never mentioning a date. Time was becoming blurry and soon would stop altogether.
When Adderloy brought in bags with the right guns, Reza began to act nervous. After the submachine guns arrived, he stood by a window and aimed out over the city roofs in the night.
“We are not going to kill anyone?” he asked.
“We’re going to rob a bank.”
Time and again, it had been said. But what remained unspoken was that their plan would require someone to face the death sentence. That’s what it would really take, to give the minister payback.
“Cartridges?”
“A thousand,” said Vladislav, pointing to bright orange boxes on the shelf.
I’ll just be a minute,” said Mary, picking up her shoulder bag and disappearing into a bathroom.
N. was with Mary, back at her former workplace: the hospital. It was two o’clock in the morning. The idea was that no one on the night shift would recognize her. “Crabby night nurses—they won’t remember me,” she explained. She’d come to the hospital dressed in her usual black, but without any makeup. To N., it was a different face. Her eyes looked small, and she looked older.
N. sat in the empty waiting room. He looked around, took a magazine off the table. Celebrities smiled vacantly at him from the worn cover. He leafed absentmindedly, stopped at blurry paparazzi pictures of suntanned bodies on a sandy beach, then flipped through more pages of smiles and dresses hanging on scrawny bodies.
The bathroom door opened, and Mary came out again.
Although N. was expecting her, he looked surprised. “All white!” he couldn’t help saying. Not just dressed like a nurse, but transformed.
“Around here, you don’t exactly have a choice,” she said. She had sharp creases on her short-sleeved blouse, a name tag, pens. It was Mary, but then again it wasn’t. She dropped her bag on the floor in front of him and slipped a bill into the soda machine in the corner. Down fell a Dr Pepper—she took a few quick gulps, and the cold took her breath away. She looked at her watch. “We’re going this way.”
Without the slightest hesitation, she stepped into the small office. “It’s pretty urgent, will you excuse us?” The nurse at the computer muttered and walked out without looking at them. The minute the woman disappeared, Mary sat down at the terminal. N. stood in the doorway so he could check the hallway. He’d come to the hospital dressed as a janitor, or maybe an electrician, the kind of workman who always shows up unannounced in stained clothes. Behind him, he heard the clicks of Mary’s keyboard. A doctor, busy tagging a small bottle of medicine, passed by.
“Now the sun goes down, Charles-Ray,” said Mary, and stood up. She drummed her fingers impatiently on the printer that just started up. “He still gives blood,” she said to N.’s back. “Type AB, Rh negative.” The paper came out. “What’s yours?”
“What?” said N.
“Blood type?”
“No idea.”
“Something you should keep track of.”
They set off farther into the hospital. Mary went first, looking both homely and anxious. N. read the signs as they passed by: UROLOGY, ELECTRICAL ROOM, SURGERY . . . A big toolbox rattled against his legs with every step. Mary pushed the elevator button, and they went down a few floors.
N. knew from the silence that they were underground. Dull green hallways with fluorescent lights, a vague chemical scent. A sign said BLOOD CENTER. They could see a figure moving behind the frosted glass.
Mary drew N. aside. “Right now they’re trying to save an old woman up in surgery,” she said, taking a sip from the soda bottle she still carried. “There’s a man in there too, quite young. Traffic accident. Soon he’ll be brain-dead. With bodies leaking like sieves, there’s an exhausted team with each, pumping in the blood and sewing them up. According to the computer, the young guy has already received ten pints, the old lady six, and now I’ve placed another order. It’s urgent, and almost three in the morning. She’s here in the Blood Center alone. Surely there are rules, saying this and that about how it should be done, all very carefully. But not at three in the morning, when up in surgery they’re letting the stuff flow all over the floor anyway. So I’ll go in and won’t even say hello. Just tell her that I’ll get the bags myself. The papers are already in order—she’ll be happy not to have to take out bags again, after all the running around.”
Mary dropped her half-full soda in the trash. “You can wait here,” she said, pointing to yet another empty waiting room.
Even Mary’s sneakers were white. When she disappeared, N. looked down at his own, which had left black lines on the polished floor. He sat down on a chrome bench and leaned his head against the wall. Felt the night burning behind his eyelids, and the ventilation fan’s humming. The hospital’s smell pressed into him, its sweetish chemical. Something unhealthy, the odor of bodies. He remembered a hospital far away: the heat, the shapeless, swollen sores, backs covered with marbled bruises. He rubbed his hands over his arms, felt a chill up his legs as if someone had sliced them with a razor. Shivered.
He’d started to search for something to drink when Mary came back.
“Here!”
There were two bags of frozen blood, in separate sleeves of protective foam. N. took them and opened his toolbox.
Mary looked out
into the corridor, turned again. “The freshest you can get out of Charles-Ray Turnbull.”
The toolbox was big enough for N. to store a small cold bag in the bottom compartment. Soft, filled with blocks of dry ice. When he opened the zipper, white mist slowly poured onto the floor.
“So simple,” said Mary. Her look was triumphant. “Just like that.”
She slammed shut the toolbox, and N. started walking. As it banged against his leg, he read the signs: MRI, TRASH, MORGUE . . .
Mary’s industrial loft didn’t have a freezer, but the twenty-four-hour pizzeria on the corner did. So after a few kind words to the Lebanese guys who ran the place, they squeezed the cooler into the back of a big icy freezer, which otherwise held nothing but ground beef.
CHAPTER 18
TO LOOK THEIR VICTIM IN the eye, to meet Charles-Ray Turnbull once before they struck. The idea had been floated before, but in the end it was N. who convinced Adderloy to let him be the one. To watch Charles-Ray in action—a cat toying with a mouse, nothing more. A certain malicious satisfaction. To lay eyes on the man who had celebrated his losses, his suffering. Under Adderloy’s ingenious plan, the minister was going down.
“The two of you go, as a couple,” said Adderloy, and Mary raised her beer bottle in a toast.
The groundwork had already been laid, mapping Charles-Ray’s habits. A simple thing, completed in a matter of days. Not much of a challenge in Topeka, not with someone whose life was as straightforward as Charles-Ray’s. Besides, for their plan, they only cared about his mornings. There were few landmarks, really only two. His house—large, wooden, two-story—in a run-down area, where every little bush looked like a Christmas tree adorned with trash; and the sign-painting company he ran across town: TURNBULL—SIGNS OF THE TIMES. The company sign was peeling, just like the paint on his house. Between the two sites, he drove twenty minutes every morning in his red Lincoln. Reza and Vladislav had followed him a couple of times. When he got to a strip of car dealers, motels, and fast-food joints, he’d stop at a random drive-through for coffee. He didn’t always buy coffee at the same place—that was as unpredictable as he got. A couple of times he’d gone by his church on some errand, but that was just a stop on the way.
Not much more to it. The final act would be getting a look at him, but at the right distance, among people. At church.
In the half-full parking lot, N. and Mary saw his Lincoln parked near the entrance. The low building had no steeple, no cross, nothing but a sign with red plastic letters. Dusk had already fallen, half the sign disappeared in the twilight from the burned-out bulb inside the glass. When N. walked past, he saw that the plastic characters for church-service times and a Bible quote had fallen out of their grooves. They lay like dead flies at the bottom.
Mary looked, as usual, as if she were dressed for a funeral. Perhaps this was what caught people’s attention, drawing belated smiles when the two of them passed through the church doors. Soon an elderly man came up and introduced himself. He greeted Mary closely, squeezed her paternally on her arm as if testing her strength. Launched into a tirade about premonitions for the future, then asked if they were from the city.
“No,” said N.
“Not so, not so,” the man said, without taking his eyes off Mary. He stood a little too close. “Welcome, you are always welcome.”
Soon after, as if someone had whispered a message, the people around them started moving. Quickly people hung up their coats, ceased their chatting, and made their way toward the sanctuary.
The church hall was white, with high ceilings, but obviously the place hadn’t been built for masses or preaching. Maybe it was an old warehouse. Transformed, it looked like a huge lamp shop, lights suspended everywhere. As if to banish the shadows: lamps at the end of each pew, sconces on the walls, and three brass-and-crystal crowns hanging from the ceiling. The too-bright lighting made a newcomer feel not so much hot as anxious, although soon people’s foreheads began to shine. Everything sparkled, glittered, and shone. On one of the all-white walls, tall gold letters shimmered: JESUS—SAVE US ALL.
While people took their seats in the pews, a man paced back and forth on a platform that resembled a school stage without the curtain. His lips moved, mumbling, as the hall murmured.
Mary pulled N. to her and whispered, “That’s Charles-Ray,” with a nod toward the stage.
“Mm,” said N., continuing to stare straight ahead.
“Sit,” said the minister, in a low hiss from the dais.
Some of the buzz ceased. Turnbull, legs spread wide, looked at someone on one side, and then fixed his gaze along the aisle.
“Sit!” He swayed. His deep sigh expressed not annoyance but deep satisfaction. A black leather-bound Bible hung low in his hand.
It was quiet. He looked over the crowd, watching. Nodded.
“Thanks for this, what a night.” A breath in between, then almost shouted: “Thanks for this!” And stretching his free hand straight up, he grinned.
It was that face—it was true. N. remembered the sidewalk by the park: the evening after a rain, it was that face. From the flyer that he picked up, the image of a minister. Beloved Father.
“Sinners,” shouted the man from the dais, now with clenched fists. Someone clapped excitedly. “We are surrounded by the riffraff, we are led by them. Homofascists, lesbians, surrounded by creeping decay.” He sighed loudly. “The Muslims came flying over to obliterate the Sodomites in New York. And still, and still, no one understands.” He shook with the Bible at the ceiling, as if hordes of flying devils were about to descend on him.
“The Lord’s wave, the Lord’s wave left the pedophiles, rapists, and self-abusers to rot in unmarked graves. And yet. And yet”—the words tore from his throat—“no one understands!” His lips were already wet from saliva, his nails struck loudly against the Bible’s leather. “‘They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind.’”
“Amens” sounded here and there. Beloved Father Charles-Ray Turnbull pulled on his lapels and shook his head, as if his mouth had filled with something nasty.
Mary leaned next to N. “It’s brilliant,” she said. He looked at her, uncomprehending. She closed her eyes. “So completely . . . such reckless hatred.”
“Every day,” said the minister, pointing out over the congregation and then to himself, “we are forced to witness homosexuals who marry. Pictures of smiling dykes and sweaty queers who can barely contain themselves. That even marry in the good Lord’s name. We ask for retribution.” He lowered his head, stretched his hand in front of him. “We ask for retribution, Lord, Lord . . . Amen.”
After a few seconds of silence, just as the most zealous started swaying in the pews, he drew in a fresh breath of air like a drowning man. “And they multiply”—he beat his fists against his chest—“a crawling avalanche aided by science. Artificial inseminations, eggs and sperm from who knows where. Children born already degenerate, bred from paired male and female slime and scum. Have you ever seen such children, have you? I can tell you that a light shines from them. But it is not a Lordly light. Instead they desire their own death, these pitiful mutations of human flesh.”
N. looked at the people around him, their hands trembling, their eyes moist, while others panted, “Yes, yes . . . ,” in an incessant murmur.
Charles-Ray bent his torso into an arc as he read: “‘Shall I not punish them for these things?’ says the Lord. ‘And shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?’”
“Jeremiah,” someone shouted.
Seeing Turnbull, his blustering style, his wrinkled jacket, his flabby neck, and the sweating assembly, nodding and swaying—it filled N. with rage. He wanted to cut the man’s throat. Never in his life had he been so overpowered by such a desire to kill someone. It was a strange feeling, sweet and driven. In one leap he could be on him. His legs wanted to do it; they trembled with anticipation.
A single leap.
“Just look for now,” said Mary, so close that he felt her breath on
his cheek. She took his arm with both hands, pulled it next to her. “I know,” she whispered, “but just look for now. Soon . . . soon you will get to act.”
N. felt a cold, dead streak in his chest, and his hands started to sweat. He lowered his head and closed his eyes. One might have thought him sunk in prayer.
From the stage, the fire-and-brimstone extravaganza circled round and round: whores, homofascists, sodomites, sinners. The minister kept rising to his toes.
“Exterminate them,” he moaned. After a few screams and amens from the congregation, he stood perfectly still, closed his eyes, and in a monotone between breaths urged them to rally: “Our defiant army . . . constantly we shine the light . . . on nests of sin.” He ranted about foreign countries and places, to an increasing murmur of “Yes . . . Yes” and “Hallelujah!” Others in the room had feverish faces. They held hands over their foreheads and chests, someone spoke softly and incomprehensibly to himself, a person in the back was weeping uncontrollably. The minister was soon up and running again on the syphilitic and self-abusers.
The veins on his forehead and neck swelled when he shouted: “Our prayers have deprived the godforsaken of their children.”
N. struck his fist on the counter and shouted: “You bastard!” But amid all the fervent responses, his didn’t even make worshippers in the next pew turn around. Mary forced her hand into his and intertwined their fingers.
Charles-Ray Turnbull dropped his voice as low as he could: “Sacrifices . . . sacrifices against the devil’s legions.” The hall resounded with sacrifice. In a final eruption, he screamed about how the world’s gluttons and pedophiles rotted from the inside, and how the horsemen of the apocalypse now stormed, while voices called out “A hundred” and “A thousand,” as if all the world’s sins were being auctioned. The checks were passed from hand to hand toward the stage.
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