“Recent events do concern me, but not in the way you might imagine,” Kokker said after she had left. “Bread?”
I shook my head.
“I remember my first time with another man’s wife,” Kokker mused.
I started. He continued, as though enjoying my discomfiture. “Confuses you at first, doesn’t it? Unnerves you. You think you won’t be able to live with yourself, with what you’ve done. Then the idea of it possesses and captivates you. Like all truly new experiences, it’s actually quite liberating.”
All I could manage was a sigh. The sunlight glinting off the thawing lake seemed to wink at me conspiratorially.
Kokker’s fat face munched the bread. I said, “Liberated is the last thing I’m feeling at the moment.”
“Don’t be so modest, Ricky. My wife and my former star masseuse? Soon you’ll be fucking me.”
“And yet it doesn’t seem to bother you at all. Why?”
Kokker finished the last of the slice of bread before going on. “Why, you ask? It’s all very simple, really. We want to reap more souls. Yours. Diane’s. As many souls as we can harvest. We want everyone to be as happy and enlightened as we are. The world was made for us, and we for the world. Your own Bible tells you that the world loves its own and cherishes its own.”
“This is insane.”
“Ricky, ask yourself this. Can you even imagine what it must be like never to be afraid? Has your romper room religion—with all its pretenses, pomp, and circumstance—ever given you that? Answer me truthfully.”
“But that’s all part of temptation—”
“Adapt or die!” he intoned with an orator’s aplomb. “The code of the real world, the world we live in. But once we do adapt, what joys! If your religion forbids you to adapt to the world, if you’re forever out of step and out of sorts because of your constricting superstition, I say pluck it out and cast it away! Open your eyes, Ricky. You’re in paradise right now; you’re only forcing yourself to pretend that it’s hell.”
He reached for my hand, but I snatched it away. He rested his palm on my side of the table. “You’re afraid of what’s in the mail. Afraid of who’s at the other end of the telephone. Afraid of your boss. Afraid of the judges. Afraid that on some state regulator’s arbitrary whim, you’ll one day lose your hard-won ticket to practice law and with it your wife and kiddies. You’re even afraid, Ricky, that Mark Kane will take a notion to replace you with somebody younger and cheaper. After all, you’re nothing more than a hack in a hack-buyer’s market—a Negro slave in a marketplace teeming with darkies. To a man like Mark Kane, you’re not worth even sixty seconds of face-time on local television. Doesn’t sound much like paradise to me.”
“Neither does marrying a sex maniac without a prenup. How happy and enlightened is that?”
He seemed annoyed that I’d questioned his world-view. Maybe he didn’t believe in it himself. There are hypocrites in every religion.
“What do you want, Kokker?”
“Why, Ricky,” he intoned, feigning surprise, “I hope today’s luncheon hasn’t placed us on a last-name basis so soon before your little trial. What’s her name again—Weegers?”
“I’ll ask again. What do you want, Doctor?”
“That’s better.” He grasped the knife’s bone handle and sawed away at the bread loaf, carving a huge slab this time. He offered it to me, but I shook my head. “You don’t know what you’re missing. This restaurant is truly four-star.” He spread a liberal swirl of butter. “Speaking of stars, and masseuses, I’m disappointed your lovely assistant couldn’t join us today.”
“Janis had a lunch date with a detective friend of hers.”
Kokker shook his head with disdain. “Such a waste,” he said. “A truly remarkable woman. An advanced soul. I sense she’s lived many lives before.”
“A friend of mine told me you’re quite the dabbler in religions. Is Hindu the flavor of the month?”
“I’m interested in that old-time religion,” he responded, unperturbed. “The truly primordial religion, before all the parades of snake-charmers and medicine men muddied up the spiritual waters. Your pretender from Palestine wasn’t the first, and he certainly won’t be the last. But before all that, there was and is a spiritual government, which has always ruled this world and always shall. My goal as one of the truly enlightened is to tap into it, to mold it to my own devices. William Blake and W. B. Yeats are my prophets. Ergo I trust you can appreciate my indignation when a certain religious artifact suddenly vanishes from my collection. A certain... ancient talisman, shall we say?” Kokker’s fingers fondly caressed the knife’s handle.
“You sit here and mock my Christianity, then expect me to play your games with you?” I stood up and would have thrown down my napkin if I’d had one in my lap.
“Were your clandestine escapades with Sandra some new sacrament I’ve missed hearing about?” he smirked. “I thought there were only seven, for the Seven Hills of Rome. Speaking of Rome, do you know there was a cult roughly contemporaneous to your early Christians who worshipped a bull-god they called Attis? It’s quite fascinating, really. Sit down, Ricky. I’ll tell you all about it.”
What could I say? I needed his testimony to keep my job to keep my wife and family, to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. He had me. I sat.
“Attis worshippers would climb into a kind of pit covered by a huge grate. A live bull would be led on top of the grate and then sacrificed. Its blood would shower down on the ecstatic supplicant below. He or she would be ‘washed in the blood of the bull’ as the saying goes. Guess where these gay festivities took place?”
“I’m on the edge of my seat.”
“Vatican Hill,” he shouted triumphantly.
“What’s your point?”
“My point? My point is that fad religions come and go, some in two-thousand-year cycles, but all are a corruption or perversion of the true religion. All are bathed in blood; blood in one form or fashion reigns in every one of them. Have you ever considered that, Ricky? That drinking blood or washing in blood might not be unique to your own morbid faith?”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what? Stop probing every unquestioned assumption your pathetic existence—it can hardly be called a life—is built upon? Come on, Ricky. You’ve had a taste of paradise. It’s pretty scary at first, and nothing like you anticipated. Join us. Don’t deny me twice. You’ll never have to be afraid of anything ever again.”
The waitress brought Kokker’s meal and my steaming cup of espresso. The door to the private salon snicked closed behind her before he spoke again. “Rather interesting, really, the pervasive role bodily fluids play in religion. At least one sect of Gnostic Christians, for example, worshipped semen and used it as a sacrament in their rituals. They regarded it as man’s opalescent psyche, the very distillation of his spiritual essence.” Kokker spooned a dollop of sour cream from his baked potato and ever so delicately dipped the tip of his tongue before I looked away. The taste of the espresso reminded me of burning tires. I thought I should say something in defense of my faith. Ricky Galeer, Defender of the Faith.
“Just because some other beliefs have imitated ours—”
“You buggered my wife,” Kokker interrupted. “Let’s hear your sermon.”
“My point is, there is one true Faith.”
“I agree.”
“No, you don’t. There’s supposed to be adversity and temptation in the world. We’re supposed to be in the world, but not of it. It’s a kind of test.”
Kokker eyed me like a piece of meat. “Pass-fail, or graded on a bell-shaped curve? I thought your Christ died for you. Why do you still need an entrance exam?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” I sighed.
“Have you ever considered missionary work? You seem to have a gift for it.”
“Sure, I stumbled. Badly. I don’t even understand why I did what I did, or why I even wanted to. It was like I was under hypnosis.”
; “Self-hypnosis,” Kokker offered.
“But I know I’ll be redeemed by faith.” My words sounded hollow in the quiet salon, as though I were trying to convince myself more than anyone else, but Kokker seemed already to have lost interest in the discussion.
“Give me the talisman, Ricky. If it’s money you want for it, simply name your price. We won’t quibble over your highly dubious claim to possession.”
“I don’t claim to possess it. It’s been stolen, but not by me.” Faced with his suspicious expression, I traced the dagger’s chain of custody as far as I could for him, ending with Madeleine’s disappearance. For some reason, I thought it important not to tell Kokker about her death. “Once it’s found, assuming that ever happens, your talisman will wind up in some police evidence locker.”
“That child must be found and the talisman wrested from her grasp,” Kokker warned. “It’s no plaything. Only I know its true power.”
“Suppose you tell me and we’ll both know?”
A wary look crossed his face. “She might cut herself,” he said. “For instance.”
“Somehow, I don’t think she’s worried. Why don’t you tell me why everybody’s really so interested in that toad-sticker? Or should I ask Diaz, Janis’s detective friend? Maybe you’d care to file a burglary report with him?”
All the arrogance went out of him at that. He forked up a Heimlich-maneuver-sized bite of the rich beef and chewed it as though it were his last. He swallowed before he answered. “You like my wife? Does she please you? Bring me back my talisman, the two of you, and you can have her to do with as you please.”
“Shouldn’t she have something to say about that?”
“Spare me, Ricky. You’re no feminist—simply a sexual addict in denial, suffering from a profound lack of impulse control. And after all, my wife chose you, not the other way around.”
“I have a wife already.”
“That hasn’t slowed you down up until now. I’ll tender a final offer: my wife and five hundred thousand dollars for the return of the talisman, no questions asked. Consider it a dowry. Simply say the word, and I’ll instruct Mark Kane himself to draw up the papers.”
“Mark Kane himself hasn’t drawn up papers in twenty years. He’s the Howard Hughes of the Metro East.”
Kokker continued undeterred. “Sandra is truly an exceptional partner. As you’ve assuredly discovered by now, she’s not a normal woman by any means. It tears at my heart to even consider letting her go. Seven hundred fifty thousand—untraceable cash, small denominations. My non-negotiable, final offer.”
“I don’t have the talisman.”
He eyed me like a pasty-faced Roman Emperor about to turn thumbs down on me in the Coliseum. “Then get it,” he said through clenched teeth.
I’ve always loved fine dining and seeing how the other half lives. Resisting the urge to ask Kokker to read my fortune in the espresso grounds, I took my leave of him and went back to the office. I carried unaccustomed big figures in my head. One was Sandra’s big figure. The other was the boxcar figure her husband had just bid me for the ridding of her: more money than we needed to get out of debt, infuse Diane’s business with ready cash, and even start my own practice. But how could I get the money out of Kokker without destroying my marriage? And what papers did Kokker want Mark Kane to prepare? In any court, the contract he proposed would be held illegal and unenforceable as being meretricious and in derogation of marriage. The money he was offering me had strings attached. In my experience, money like that went hand-in-hand with either one of two things: a horrible, maiming injury or a crime.
As if summoned by my obsessive thoughts, Sandra sat waiting in the lobby alongside Misty and Celestal Weegers. They were a study in contrasts. Any given piece of jewelry on Sandra cost more than Celestal’s car. Misty had brought along the baby. Sandra was all over the little one. She cooed at it and wormed her finger into its palm.
Sandra caught my eye first. Sandra caught every man’s eye first. “Got a sec?”
Under Celestal’s accusing stare, I walked her back into my office and closed the door, watching her hips and flanks move in the tight black dress. “Do you guys do wills?” she inquired.
“Our firm doesn’t, but Duane Benoit, with the probate firm across the hall, can certainly accommodate you. Dressed for a funeral?”
She nodded sadly. “My own, once I go see if Kirk will take me back.”
“Don’t you and he have an estate plan?”
“Up until recently, I didn’t see the urgency.”
I remembered the medallion-stripping ceremony and how it had seemed to age her. The grayness of a Belleville January afternoon now washed all the color out of her face. With her platinum hair and shimmering, black silk dress, she looked like a film noir femme fatale shot in black and white. I was about to tell her so when she asked me, “Can I rely on your discretion?”
“Of course.”
“Running into those two young kids out there in your waiting room is more than a co-inky-dink. I’d just wanted to drop by and see if you were free for lunch and discuss our whole situation, but there they were, and with a rug rat, yet. For maybe the first time in my life, I know what it means to feel guilty.”
“What do you have to feel guilty about, Sandra?”
“Discretion, remember?”
“Absolutely.”
She looked me directly in the eye and said, “I killed Celestal Weegers’s father.”
My chest heaved as though I had sprinted up three flights of stairs. “Pete Weegers hanged himself.”
“He had help.” She shook her head with infinite regret. “You see the burdens I’ve been carrying around?”
I hugged her, encircling in my arms the heaving amplitude of two big burdens she’d been carrying around. Her breasts were sentient beings—poor players wearing the twin masks of comedy and tragedy—pressing their faces against my chest. “I don’t believe you,” I said.
She pushed me away gently. She had a faraway look in her eye, staring across the abyss of the public square at the fourth floor of the courthouse as though the Angel of Death awaited her there. “The night of that massage parlor murder years ago—you know the one I mean—where that poor girl got her tits hacked off by some maniac? It was my first week working for Kirk. I was nineteen, and it was my first real job, not counting carny rat or fast food. I could tell Kirk’s Fruit of the Looms were starting to bind because of me, but I wanted to play my cards right.
“There weren’t too many patients that night. Pete was the last one of the evening; he’d hurt his back on the job or something. Kirk was starting to get antsy to make his daily trek to the Salome Spa, three doors down the strip mall from his clinic. Pete and I were the only ones watching when Kirk took off at seven-thirty-five. Kirk never came back all night, leaving me to lock up.
“I saw Mars lights reflected on the front windows of the clinic at eight-forty-five. When that big detective Diaz started canvassing the strip mall the next morning, I was Kirk’s only alibi keeping him at the clinic and away from the Spa at the time of the murder. See, I sorta figured he did it and all. That’s when I started hearing wedding bells in my future.”
“What made you think he did it?”
“Call it woman’s intuition. Plus, he showed me a bloody knife.”
“Why would you want to marry a guy you thought was a murderer?”
She shrugged. “A girl will do a lot of things for financial security. Plus, it was kind of a thrill-seeking thing for me at the time, a power trip. Forcing a fucked-up, scary guy to the altar. I was into a lot of occult shit myself back then, but I didn’t have to cast any spells on Kirk Kokker. The threat of the death penalty was enough to do that for me.”
“What about Pete Weegers?”
“My alibi for Kirk was no good if that big detective found Pete Weegers to shoot it full of holes. So I lured Pete into this woodshed behind his house, and you know the rest.”
“No. Tell me.”
“I told him it’d make the sex better. He slipped the noose on himself, smiling all the way, even after I kicked the sawhorse out from under him. He just hung there, smiling and waiting for me to do him. I had to zip him up, once he was dead, to make it look good. He’s come visit me after. He actually doesn’t hold it against me. You were there one of those times. Remember?”
I thought of Bobbi. What would she make out of this case? No statute of limitations on murder. Hell of a good insanity defense, though. “You left an eyewitness, Sandra. Eight-year-old Celestal was hiding in the shed. He saw the whole thing.”
“You’re shitting me!” Her eyes lit up. She bared her teeth in a rictus of panic.
“He’s in denial or something,” I hurried to add. “He thinks his dad hanged himself. Lately, he’s pissed that somebody exhumed his dad’s body and stole it.”
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