by Eva Shaw
“The PSA has franchises, like a pyramid scheme, all over the country. Delta gets a lion’s share of it all. It’s Satan’s work, and I was caught in his claws. I could have gone to the District Council when it first happened, but I thought maybe it was God’s plan to build our little church in the desert. Yet the money just kept pouring in. I gambled for the buzz. Forgive me, Jane, forgive me and help me. Please?” He tried to grab the hand I was unsuccessfully using to keep myself upright.
I flicked his fingers it away like a big horse fly, but then he said something that made me flop back against the seat. He coughed and said, “There’s more. Something I’ve hidden all my life. I’m not Bob.”
“What? What are you saying?” I screamed not because anything the potentially criminally insane buffoon had to reveal, but because we were taking another corner, on a red light, at eighty miles an hour.
Bob sobbed. “It’s worse. I’m not Bob. Bob’s a name I took for myself. My birth name is Absalom.”
“Absalom? That power-hungry guy from the Old Testament? You really are Ab Normal?” I started laughing and it even sounded hysterical to my ears.
“Yes, yes, it’s been my curse my entire life, no matter how hard I tried to cover it up. Now I’ve lived up to the name.” He screamed like a girl as Albert cut off a mail truck.
We veered right and then left. “Don’t we all, Ab?” My fingers were numb from the death grip on the seat, and I decided that next time I choose a career, I’ll get one where I can ask, “You want fries with that?” Even with teeth ground together, I managed, “I hate you, Bob Normal. Just in case you needed to know that. However, since I’ve been plotting to destroy the PSA for days, I’ll help.”
We fishtailed to a skidding stop in front of the office building that housed PSA. Delta’s cream-colored car was in the lot. I looked both ways. No police sirens could be heard, and Eddie’s car was not in sight. I didn’t see any FBI agents in riot gear, nor had the SWAT teams arrived. Life was good.
So far.
Albert hadn’t put the car in park before Bob’s girly scream demanded, “Hurry, there’s no telling what she’ll do.” Bob pulled the scarf, and I came with it. Luckily, a desert gust of hot air snatched the hat, because it wasn’t my look anyway. We ran to the office marked Philemon Society of America. I turned to see Albert still in the car. This wasn’t his fight.
Bob threw back the walnut doors and dashed into the conference room. Delta was there. She sneered and turned back to the shredder. She was madly shoving reams of files. “They’ll never trace any of this to me.” She exploded with diabolical laughter, honestly, that could have come straight out of a black-and-white horror movie. Putrid, plastic-smelling smoke belched as she tossed another CD into the blaze that came from a metal trash can near her side.
Delta’s eyes darted to the files, to Bob, and then drilled into me. I screamed, “Don’t do it, Delta. Don’t destroy the records.”
“How will the babies get back to their real parents if you do this?” Bob pleaded. He was crying, on his knees pleading with her.
The sickly smile on her face and the glassy eyes confirmed the woman was two donuts short of a dozen.
“Delta,” I said slowly, and she looked my way. “Look at me. Bob’s right. Please don’t destroy the records.”
“Burned what I couldn’t shred. Just this one main file with all the locations of the orphans.” She dumped her purse upside down on the table, and the contents spilled over the conference table. “Where is that stupid file. One more and I’m done. No jury can prosecute me if they have no evidence.”
I thought of arguing, but at that second Delta was caressing a CD case.
“It was a first-class con while it lasted,” she said, her voice raspy husky from the billowing smoke. She tossed the case from hand to hand, like playing with a ball. She flipped open the case and looked at the silver plastic disk, stuck a finger in the center and twirled it. As if she were about to toss a Frisbee, Delta pulled back her wrist.
Common sense is a good thing. But you can’t beat spontaneity. In the second that it took Delta to move her elbow and wrist, I leaped across that walnut conference table. I screamed bloody murder because she would not murder any more if I had a breath left in me.
Papers flew, and Delta and I butted heads as I put a death grip on her wrist. Some unkindly things were said about me, and I’ll spare you. Delta’s chair flipped backward; I was on her waist straddling her and fighting for that silver CD. The trashcan was knocked on its side, and the papers that were strewn everywhere kindled a blaze.
Flipping me over like I was a rag mop, Delta was on me. What I lacked in strength, I apparently had in quickness, because we both wanted the same thing. I screamed, “Be reasonable, Delta,” but that’s Looney Toon thinking as a mad woman was making mincemeat out of my middle. She was using her butt to bounce up and down on my tummy, attempting to pin back my arms as the fire sprinklers came to life. The disk slipped in my grip, but that slip made me get more serious. I’d become a human punching bag. Delta was strong, much stronger than she looked all dressed in linen and silk.
I vowed right then that, if I lived through the beating, I’d take up weightlifting or kickboxing and return to Weight Watchers. Sometimes my mind wanders; sometimes it totally leaves.
Delta punctuated her salty language with a punch to my face. I would like to tell you that I turned the other cheek, but my face didn’t move fast enough. Her knuckles hit their target—my nose. I screamed. She cursed more. I wondered where Bob was in all this, and then I saw him. He should have been selling tickets to two chicks fighting. At least that would have been useful, but he was cowering in the corner, in a ball, crying.
The power shower from above must have finally gotten to Delta. She looked up at the sprinklers, and her fingers slipped. I got the CD and used it to shield my face with my left hand as I grabbed at her hair, attempting to inflict pain.
“Don’t touch my hair.” she yelled two inches from my nose.
So I grabbed even harder and the bleeping’ thing came off in my hand. Her hair, not her head. She took a breath, and I looked at what I had. A full wig. The puppy was heavy, too. We stared, eye to eye. Delta Cheney was no lady. She was a guy. Being that close, I saw the stubble on his chin.
It all made sense in a retrospective way, but since I had a guy straddling my waist, punching and slapping me because I’d mussed her, um, his hair, I didn’t take the time to ponder: transgendered or cross-dresser? Thank heavens Delta fought like a girl, or I’d have been out for the count.
As if the walls were exploding, fierce shouts erupted.
“Get away from her.”
“Grab the maniac lady.”
“You stop that this very second.”
“Stop it right now.”
I opened one eye, then the other. The Buscia Brigade had landed in full force. Pouncing redheads, gray heads, and a few blondes were inches from my face. They held Delta by the shoulders, but couldn’t move him or her off me. The lunatic slapped, pinched, and screamed.
Suddenly more people piled on top of the heap-o-me. Manly voices echoed in the office filled with bodies, rancid smoke, sprinkling spring-like showers of fire sprinklers, and the wail of the fire alarm pulsating in the same rhythm as the welts on my face. All the time, Delta, or whatever his name was, continued punching me in the ribs.
“Stop. Federal agents. Everybody down. Get on the floor. Get down. All of you. You, too, little lady, hey, don’t hit me. Wait, no, I’m not married. I’m sure your daughter is a beauty, but you’ll have to get on the floor. Get on the floor. On the floor. Right now.”
I didn’t have to move to the floor. I was on it and whimpering. I wanted to see the agents, wanted to thank the grandmothers, but I couldn’t lift my head. Slowly, like after college linebackers sacked the other team’s quarterback, bodies peele
d back from mine. Then male arms circled me. I fought Delta, or whatever I should call him. Or was it Pastor Ab Normal? His help was more repulsive than ever. This might not have been the most Christian response, but if he was going to grab that one last file and conceal it from the Buscia Brigade, he’d have to fight me for it. If just one baby could be reunited with his biological parents or placed in a loving home, it was worth this beating and more.
Then I felt breath on my cheek and heard a lyrical whisper.
“Tom.” I gasped for breath. “Are you an honest cop?”
He held the corner of the jewel case, but I didn’t let it go. “Yes, Jane.”
I released the CD as he pulled me into his arms, crooning, “Esta bien.”
“Tom, don’t let Delta, um, him have this,” I mumbled. My body throbbed, and my brain was about to explode. My nose gushed blood down the front of my formerly stain-free blouse that I had just bought, on sale, at Nordstrom’s Plus Size section.
“It’s okay, Jane.” Tom’s voice filtered through in a gentle wave, a sweet Spanish lilt on his lips like a ripple on a quiet pond.
I relaxed and sighed, just as I heard Monica Wainwright-Dobson ranting, “I knew she’d do this, I knew that silly bitch Pastor Jane Angieski would ruin it all. It’s all your own fault, Captain Morales. Geez, get the local law in, and suddenly it’s like Mayberry RFD. Where’s Sheriff Andy? The case goes from bad to totally bungled. Step aside. We’ll take over from here. Get back to walking the beat and let the Agency do its job.”
• • •
Here’s the point when I tell you, “When I woke up,” and it’s true. I woke up in a hospital bed, but trust me, I remembered it all, until everything became a swirl and I landed in a happy place. That is, I blacked out.
I recalled how stern and somber the men and women in bulletproof vests. FBI was emblazoned on their caps, and they crammed the conference room way past overflowing. I remembered the shouting as the guy formerly known as Delta pulled my hair, screamed yet another obscenity, and tried to kick as they pulled him away. I propped myself up on my elbows as Monica screamed and shook her fist at Tom. I was shocked that she knew the words she was using as she told Tom how his ditzy, lame-brained girlfriend ruined the entire operation.
Then I heard Tom giving it as good as he had gotten, hollering about how he was going to report it all. Not in those G-rated words, but you get the idea.
I heard how I was to blame in detail about me and my buttinski. The Feds had memorized my sordid past, and Monica squealed it out loud enough so I swear pig farmers in Kansas were wondering what was riling the sows. Then she turned the outrage on the Polish grandmothers, but they simply shoved her aside, let her know they didn’t care, and trotted out.
As I woke up, this was what I remembered. Pleasant thoughts? Bad guy caught? End of adventure? In the movies you see the heroine—that would be me—waking up in a hospital. Her lipstick is straight from Maybelline and her hair is Rodeo Drive perfect. If it’s a drama, there could be just enough peachy color on her cheeks to tell that, ohee, she’d been in a rumble.
I touched my face and needed to stifle the scream. My nose was bandaged, and my forehead felt fat, puffy to my touch. There was an IV in my arm, and I had trouble swallowing.
Gramps’ head was resting on the side of my bed. It was dark outside. Just a beep of some machine and his snoring interrupted the silence. I lifted the hand not connected to the IV. “I’m awake,” I said, and patted his shoulder.
He looked up, and tears spilled from his eyes. “You are so stupid, Jane. What did I tell you about fighting? Remember when you got in that fight in first grade? Remember that black eye? Well, you should see the shiners you have now.” He wiped away the tears and laughed. He laughed so hard he nearly tumbled on the floor.
I couldn’t because of the bandages strapped around my middle. I touched the gown and felt the pain of broken ribs through the flimsy fabric and the massive amounts of tape.
As he recovered, I had plenty of time to sip icy water from one of those glorious hospital flexi-straws.
“You might be doing God’s work here, but next time you should make sure He has you wearing protective face and body armor,” Gramps managed before being overtaken with a fit of laughter. Then the room was filled with all the faces I wanted to see. Harmony, Tom, and Albert were there and, along with three little redheaded buscias who were serving poppy seed cake and coffee. I swear it was weird, but it happened. Then Petra and more of the Buscia Brigade were crammed in my room.
I was alive, even with the splitting pain that went from ear to ear, straight through my skull and whatever brains I had left after the beating. Since there were no federal agents hovering bedside, apparently they’d wait to arrest me for obstructing justice and ruining the operation to catch Delta before she destroyed the documents until, when? After I left the hospital?
“Where is he? Where’s Bob?” I asked in whisper.
“You just hush up, Jane, baby, and don’t worry about him,” Gramps said. “And don’t worry about the Senate investigation that Gerry’s cooking up. They’ll just have to wait until you feel better for you to get to Washington. Interpol and the Feds need to duke it out for a while, playing the blame game.”
I sighed all the way to my toes. Justice, at least for Delta, would be done. Bob wouldn’t come out lily white, either, I fervently hoped.
With a bark, Tuffy hopped on the foot of my bed and snuggled down as if the mutt was a therapy dog. I had no clue how they smuggled the pooch in. I wouldn’t have put it past them to wrap the mutt in a baby blanket, telling folks the little one looked just like his mother, Jane Angieski, crime stopper. The talk about federal hearings felt like licking the chocolate frosting off a spoon—that delicious—and I begged for details.
“Are you sure you’re ready to hear it?” Tom asked, smoothing his rough fingers over my forehead. “We can wait, you know.”
“You arrested Delta, or whatever his name is? Did you get that CD with the files? That one last file that could help some children find their roots?” I managed in a raspy whisper.
“Yes—well, no.” Tom’s lips made a flat line. “There was only music on it. After all that.”
“Of course there’s music on it,” I screamed, and that hurt, but it just hit me. “Harmony? Did they bring my purse here? Go get it. Inside. Do you see a CD case?”
Harmony gave me the case and the sweetest hug on the face of the planet. We’d bonded, although this time I screamed internally from the pain inflicted by her embrace. Love hurts, they say, and in this instance, “they” were right. “I know you all think I’ve had ten too many blows to my brain, but Tom, try this. Really, listen, a few days ago the guy formerly known as Delta and I bumped purses, and stuff was scattered. I had the CD with the records all the time. I thought it was the music CD from your young garage band, Gramps. The jewel cases were the same color. See?”
“We’ll make sure it gets in the right hands, Jane. I promise,” Tom told me before kissing my forehead. I tried to crane my neck and position my face so my lips would be in his line of fire. Tom chuckled and changed positions. I got a peck on the cheek.
I put my head back as they told me the rest of what had happened.
Petra said, “That twelve-timer Carl is not worth the paper he’s printed on.” We all agreed.
My came were in a horsy series of grunts, but I managed, “What about VBS for this coming week?”
Gramps rubbed his chin and looked out the window to the night. “Heard Vera’s teaching archery, belly dancing, and how to mix a good martini, stirred not shaken.”
Forget the horsy grunting—this was a scream that, I swear, rattled the windows. “Noooo.”
Gramps patted me. “Just kidding, honey. Vera’s decided she should retire. And did. The board brought in a temp. Then the lunch ladies, the women who take
food to the mission, stepped in. They’re going to be handling VBS at the shelter, too. Hey, you heard about Greta and Drexel adopting little Mikel? Not the kid they were looking for, but they say it’s the right thing to do.” Gramps held my hand.
Voices turned into a melody, and drugged sleep snatched me away to a lovely ball where Scarlett O’Hara had chosen my outfit, including the jewels, and Tom was better looking than Rhett.
When a hand touched my shoulder, wanting to break into the waltz Rhett and I were doing, I shoved it away. I squeezed my eyes shut to keep out the daylight from my happy nap. “Not yet, Tom, come back,” I pleaded.
“Jane, oh, Pastor Jane, please listen to me, please, I beg you.” It was Gambling Bob Normal; he was kneeling at my bedside. I was certain our faces matched in the bruise and bashing department because he grimaced at me.
“If it isn’t the minister—formerly, I hope—of Desert Hills Community Church.”
“Don’t talk—it must hurt. I want to ask for your forgiveness. I’ve talked to the police, and I’ve talked with our leaders in Dallas. I’ve resigned. There will be some legal action, but I won’t bore you with this. For the next few months I’ll be doing social service work in Texas. My wife is coming back, Jane, praise God for that. I’ve been asked to find out if you’d consider taking over the pulpit.” He smiled.
I nodded demurely. Oh, yes, here it comes. “Thank you, Jesus,” I thought. Oh, yes, finally my own pulpit. This was the promotion I’d longed for, and now it had happened. I would have jumped out of bed to do the happy dance if it were not for the IV, the broken ribs, the splitting headache, and the general nausea of being beaten to a bloody pulp by a mad woman, um, guy. I managed a smile and look pious at the same time, even with the pain.
He looked down to the tile floor and said, “Until they find a senior pastor.”
“Well, joy of joys. Always the bridesmaid,” I mumbled and closed my eyes. He didn’t need to see the pathetic downer look in my eyes. It was time for him to get the heck out and let me wallow in my potential pity party. I didn’t want to talk anymore. I’d forgiven him. The black market baby business had been stopped, and the FBI was working with Interpol and the government of Poland. Eddie had been right, however; Monica and Louisa did get a promotion, and for all I knew, the Muscled Madam was lounging in Nassau chatting it up with pool boys and sipping drinks with umbrellas. I knew in my heart that God had better plans that for me to stay in Nevada, but I just wish that disappointment happens He’d give a clue once in awhile, don’t you?