From the Heart

by Eva Shaw

  The pressure was on. Disaster pending. No time to waste. My bladder was going to burst. I would have agreed to anything. “Yes, yes, yes. Promise.”

  I’ll pass on the details of what happened in the next five minutes. I am woman. I multitask. I used that time to pray for wisdom. Most normal, moral citizens would have quietly gone with the FBI, leaving matters in their beefy, legal hands. I would have, too, except I’m not typically a normal citizen. But something Eddie said came raging back as I flushed the toilet. She’d said, “The ditz has no clue anyone has anything on her, so she’ll just keep compiling records and bilking unsuspecting Americans.”

  Au contraire. The ditz did have a clue. She’d been sweating like a stevedore when we bumped purses the day before. The ditz was probably packing for Brazil whilst I sat on the toilet. It didn’t take a psychic to see that Delta knew the jig was up when she sprinted to her car. Would the Muscled Madam cracking knuckles in the Mercedes believe me? I couldn’t go to Tom, because he certainly wouldn’t buck rank with the FBI invading Vegas like ants at a picnic. I had to do something. And quick.

  Well, duh. I had to get away. Or she’d be banging on the stall door and breaking through with one of her meaty shoulders. Walking out of the door marked “Women,” I bumped right into an answered prayer in the form of newspaper reporter and lovesick boyfriend of Gramps’ dance instructor. It was Carl Lipca. I grabbed the man by the collar.

  He choked as I twisted the collar of his shirt and grabbed him around the shoulders. Then I gushed, “I am so glad to see you.”

  “Jane?” He attempted to wrestle out of my half nelson. “I know you must be lonely as a preacher and all, but hooking up in the toilet is kinky even for me.”

  Before I could scream, “Slime bucket,” reality informed me that I didn’t have time to put the jerk in his place. “Carl, I’m not making a pass at you. I need your help. Someone I want to desperately avoid is waiting outside. I’ve got to get to church. I have to get away.” Albert would help me. He might have a prison record, but he was a good guy.

  The plan was simple. I’d sneak out of Outback . . . um, somehow . . . get to church, and have Albert take me to the PSA. We’d break in. I’d gather all the files. I’d call Gerry, and she’d tell me what to do.

  Carl gasped, which was reasonable considering I was currently twisting all the extra fabric from his collar, and I shoved the restroom door open wide enough to drag his body inside.

  “You know what you’re doing, Pastor Jane?”

  “Don’t be a dolt.” I snorted. “You got a problem talking in here?”

  A man and a boy were washing their hands. Another guy dashed from a stall, zipping his fly. A teenager looked up from finishing at the urinal. They all turned and stared. A fourth man bounded to the door, tripped on my foot, bounced against me, loosening my death grip on Carl, and blew the joint.

  Whoa, apparently in my frenzied state the above restroom wasn’t the one I had previously been in. I clamped my eyes shut, also clamping onto Carl’s shirtsleeve. “It’s the men’s room?”

  “Yes, Pastor.”

  I dropped my sumo hold on the journalist and cupped my hands around my eyes like blinders on a horse and scooted to the door. But not before I heard the kid say, “Look, Daddy, it’s that lady minister from church, the one you’re always telling Mommy that she looks like she’s a hooker,” while his ashen-faced dad hustled out.

  In the corridor to the restrooms, I pleaded, “Carl, listen, I need to get to church. I don’t want to call the police. Just get me away. If you care at all for Petra and what happens to her, you’ll help me.”

  “Care for Petra? Oh, it was fun, but that’s it. And can’t we just trot outta here and get into my car?”

  “No, I can’t. I need help. Carl, there’s someone out there in the parking lot I don’t want to see me leave. Can you humor me? Maybe if we change clothes? As weird as it seem, we’re about the same size.” Sometimes I think I understand everything, and then I regain consciousness.

  Desperate situations require desperate measures. There was no way on God’s green earth I was going to return to the clutches of Eddie, if in fact she and Monica were real FBI agents, which was suspect since the FBI doesn’t usually foot the bill for mansions such as the one where Monica lived.

  “I don’t think so, Pastor. I’d like to help, but I don’t think my dressing in drag and you fielding questions about your gender orientation when you’re meeting folks from your congregation in the men’s room are going to improve your reputation.”

  I was about to scream, “Reputation be damned. Lives are at stake,” And quickly realized I had.

  Then he said, “Wait, maybe, sure, I’ve got an idea that could work. But you’ve gotta promise to give me an exclusive after this is all over.”

  “Yes, anything, the answer is yes.” I gulped.

  “Look, the reason I’m here is the reason you’ll be able to leave.” This time he grabbed my arm and marched me toward the dining area. There sat Vera, she of the church secretary role, who looked up at us just after pinching a male food server on the rump. “Vera, look who I found in the men’s room.”

  She jumped up as if the server retaliated, and perhaps he did. “Jane, you don’t look well,” Vera said, popping a large red straw hat back on her head, twisting a boa around her throat, and wiggling her generous hips as she nudged me aside to snuggle-close to Carl.

  Carl looked like he’d said “g’day” to too much Foster’s beer at Outback. “Vera and I are, well, we’re friends.”

  “Carl, baby cakes, tell her the truth. You love me. And ooh la la, you make me feel like a kid,” Vera said flickering her false eyelashes and adjusting the cleavage in her low-cut and skin-tight tank top.

  I would have gagged if I’d had time, but the seconds were clicking down to when my abductor would storm in and grab me away. “I don’t care what’s going on with you two. Right now I’ve got fish to battle into a frying pan. Get me out of here, please. Help me, you two, or I swear I’ll tell the entire city, including your husband, Vera, all of this and more, now that I’ve put two and two and two and two together.” There was no four, six or eight at the end of my two-and-two desperate outburst, but it worked.

  “Okay, Jane,” Carl said. “Vera, give the minister your hat, and that purple scarf thing. Now let’s get thing going, ladies, and I use the term loosely. I’ve got a scoop to scoop.”

  Ignoring his dig, I tucked my hair underneath the hat, pulled the boa nearly over my ears, put my hand on Vera’s, and we walked out the big wooden doors. I twisted my head away from Eddie’s car and placed a napkin in front of my face, making sneezing sounds. “See that Mercedes? I don’t want the woman driving it to see me.”

  Carl nodded. “I’ve got the blue one over there. Ready?”

  I hunkered down and tilted my hat away from a black car. When I sneaked a peek up from the brim, I saw my goose was in the oven, and the timer was about to bing “done.” Eddie recognized me.

  “Hurry, Carl, open the door. Start the engine. Forget Vera. No, she doesn’t need to come with us. Eddie is going to get me.”

  Carl opened the passenger side, but instead of helping me in, he shoved me out of the way. “She’s the one who is after you? That woman punched me out when I was just asking some questions down at the shelter. In front of a bunch of ladies. I’ve got an ax to grind. Just get out of my way, Pastor.” With lightning speed, he yanked a bowling ball from the back seat and slipped his fingers in the holes. Suddenly Vera was screaming, “But Carl, that’s my bowling ball.”

  The ball sped across the twenty yards between cars. It looked like it was square on target, but it hit a curb. It missed the Muscled One, hit a light fixture and bounced and slammed straight into the Mercedes’ windshield.

  “Now get in,” he yelled. “And they said my bowling skills would never a
mount to much. Call you later, Vera.”

  I would’ve jumped at the chance, but at that second a silver Lexus zoomed into the lot and screeched to a screaming halt. I jumped back as it nearly nicked Carl’s car. It would have broadsided me if I hadn’t inhaled, thought thin thoughts, and gritted my teeth. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people, especially Albert Miller driving the formerly good Pastor Bob “the gambler” Normal, who was riding shotgun.

  Bob was out of his car before I could untangle myself. “Jane, forgive me for my sins. I need your help right now. Get into the car. We can’t spare a minute.”

  I didn’t agree to anything, mind you, because he didn’t give me a chance, opening the back door and giving me the old heave-ho. Eddie was about three feet from me, and I could feel the steam of her breath.

  Once I tumbled into the seat, I slammed and locked the door. “What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?” I clung to that seat for dear life. I didn’t want to be tossed to the floor again as Albert gunned the engine and drove over the lawn, speeding away from Eddie, who was screaming, swearing, and making obscene gestures.

  His words came in puffs. “A call came into the church a few minutes ago about you using the men’s room at the Outback Steakhouse . . . a complaint about your behavior. Oh, but no, praise Jesus, it was a prayer answered.” Gambling Bob Normal raised his hands to on High, but of course the ceiling of the car stopped that.

  “But where are we going?” I yelled over the grinding of gears and Albert grunting something I chose not to hear about someone’s parentage and ability to control a car. I tried unsuccessfully to find the seatbelt as Albert drove straight over the center median, flipped around the car around and in the opposite direction.

  “The PSA offices. Delta called to warn me to leave town fast. The Feds, she said, were closing in, and she wanted to warn me. She’s going to destroy all the adoption records. All the backgrounds of those babies will be lost forever. We must get there before she does it.”

  Chapter 14

  You’ve heard how opera singers can shatter a glass with a certain octave. Bob’s scream could have done it, too. “Jane, we have to stop her.” He was beating his fists on the dashboard so hard, I was certain the airbag would deploy. “She’ll do it. She’s that cruel, possessed with evil.”

  I leaned forward, still with a death grip on the seat to keep my balance. I kept my voice to a low and quiet scream; talking to lunatics in that way works best, at least so I’d heard on Dr. Phil. “Bob, what exactly is your connection with PSA? What do you know about their dealings and the children they’re bringing in for adoption? What about the orphanages in Poland? What of the women forced to become sex slaves? The human trafficking? Whatever were you thinking?”

  He flinched.

  I screamed, “Didn’t you ever think of saying ‘no’? Well, what do you have to say for yourself, you creep, and that’s a euphemism for what I really mean, which is—”

  “You don’t understand, Jane,” he interrupted.

  “I am sick and tired of being told I don’t understand. I do. If it’s about the money, Bob, then what happens to the money that comes and goes through PSA?”

  As he turned, Bob’s eyes reminded me of the pink cotton candy they sell at the circus that gets mushy before you finish. The gooey blood was cleaned from his chin, but his cheeks were the color of tomatoes that rot on the vine after the first frost. His bottom lip was sliced in the middle, and should’ve had a stitch, but heck, I’m no doctor. Trust me, it looked nasty. Albert swerved to avoid a semi; I gulped, digging my fingers into the back of Bob’s seat.

  He gulped, too, and twisted my way. “I tried to stop it, Jane. I tried, at first. Then I couldn’t. Delta is powerful. I gave up. I have sinned.”

  “Darn straight you have. You’ll get no disagreement with me on that.” A girl’s gotta call ’em as she sees ’em. “Did you even think of the human rights violations? The welfare of innocent babies? The broken lives and hearts? Did you even think about the inhumanity of selling and reselling people—flesh and blood humans—as if they were a commodity?” I had plenty more to say, but we were all going to die in a car wreck at any minute, so I held my tongue. The speedometer was steady at eighty.

  I concentrated on the scarlet welts that had turned a darker shade of burgundy mixed with molasses on Bob’s face. Not a nice view, but the only one I had if I didn’t want to look ahead at the road or at my white knuckles.

  “I sinned because I didn’t stop the cycle. I could have, but then money began increasing in the weekly offering, far more than the families who attend Desert Hills ever gave. The tithing was enormous, beyond anything I’d ever seen. We built the gourmet kitchen and the new sanctuary with the offices, the playground, the basketball courts, the preschools, and the possibility of having an elementary school on the campus. Without having to go into debt. We built it with cash.”

  Albert swore, slammed on the brakes, and skidded past a car that seemed to want to drive the speed limit. Then drove through a red light, again.

  I gulped and spat out, “Paid for with dead babies, as far as I can see, Bob. Besides, how could you be sure it was PSA and Delta’s doing?”

  “I wasn’t at first.” He hiccupped, “But then when I began talking about buying that tract of land where the recreation center now stands, Delta came to me and offered to finance it if I’d counsel some parents who had ‘somehow’ found their adopted children were handicapped. All parents get counseling sessions before the child is returned to the orphanage for re-adoption. Again and again, these sweet little children came and went to yet more inappropriate homes, only to be eventually dumped someplace, to struggle, or worse, to die in a back alley.”

  “Where do the promissory notes come in?” I stammered, because reasonable conversation was impossible at that speed and because of the big ol’ bloomin’ fact that we’d just made yet another left turn on a red light with traffic heading straight at us.

  “At first I counseled out of appreciation for Delta and her generous contributions. I felt certain it was God’s hand placing so many disabled babies in our area, not specifically in our church family, but we do have a few, as you know.”

  “And the money, did you charge for the counseling?”

  “No. I tried to stop, but suddenly large—” He turned to face front. “—no, not large, but incredibly large amounts of money were deposited into my checking account, the joint account with my wife. I couldn’t explain them. How could I?”

  “Your wife? What did she do?”

  He cleared his throat and winced as he attempted to puff out his chest. “I’m the man of the family. I handle these things, or at least I did.”

  I swear Albert abruptly changed lanes just to stop Bob’s posturing about how a big man handles the wifey’s money. We knew how Bob handled it.

  I dug at him anyhow, and the car slowed. “You’re saying the little good Christian wife shouldn’t be told about big old dirty money?”

  “No—well, yes, we have a traditional family.” He started to raise a hand, bumped his chin, and cursed. He whispered, “We did. Wrong on that count. I have been so wrong. At first it seemed the smart solution, just gamble it away and our church’s headquarters would never see it,” Then he stopped, blinked and I saw a flicker of the crazy guy who was going to dump me in the desert. In the next instant, the some-what normal, Bob Normal returned and said, “And gambling as I did seemed to deaden the pain in my heart about the babies and children who were dying. It worked for a few weeks, but the money poured back in. One day my wife, Prudence, opened the mail, something she never did, and saw there was nearly a million dollars in our personal account. I refused to tell her about it. She didn’t need to know. A man must lead his wife.” He took a breath and let it out in ragged lumps. “She left me, accusing me of having an
affair with Delta, but that’s not true, believe me. An affair could have been ended. I’d sold my soul by then. After my wife left, I gambled to ease the pain.”

  “Give me a break and let me guess, Bob—then the money stopped. But you didn’t. What happened?”

  “Delta demanded that I not only use Desert Hills Community Church in PSA’s advertisements, but insisted that our denomination provide endorsements. Suddenly my picture was plastered on PSA’s materials.”

  “I’ve seen them, Bob. The photos make you look like the village idiot,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true—he looked like an Elvis impersonator doing the village idiot.

  Albert grunted again, speeding through the intersection and dodging a car that just happened to think a green light signaled its right to cross.

  Bob continued, “There was a reporter from the local newspaper snooping at her office—think it was the same guy I just saw you with—and then a British couple pretending to want to adopt a disabled child, demanding one because it was God’s will, came into my office.”

  “So much money,” I sighed, knowing each dollar cost a child or a woman part of their heart.