by J. A. Kerley
Uttleman cleared his throat. “Pastor Owsley’s wife seems kind of … chilly. Think he might be one to join our little—”
Johnson raised his hand. “Plenty of time to gauge the man’s needs. But that aspect is going to be curtailed for a while.”
“Because of the police questions?”
Johnson nodded, unconcerned. “Best we take a hiatus of a couple months, Roland. Rid ourselves of the current choices. A clean start come fall.”
Uttleman sighed dramatically and falsely. “Just when I thought Greta was starting to like me.”
Johnson smiled and gave Uttleman a reassuring pat on his shoulder. “We’ll have a final party, Roland. The night of the event. When the roof is drawn back on the tower and the stars are shining down on the event, we’ll be miles away, savoring our own, uh, spiritual moments. When Amos’s rash promise becomes reality and he’s free, he’ll become the Amos of old. Can you imagine what his second escape from death will do to attendance at Hallelujah Jubilee?”
“You said Eliot needs it to happen in four days …” Uttleman said. “Any special reason?”
“You’ve been out here too long, Roland,” Johnson grinned. “You’ve lost track of time. What’s special about that day? And why will it please Eliot?”
Uttleman ran the calendar in his head. He slapped his forehead in an Aha! moment.
“Damn, Hayes. It’s Pentecost.”
Harry Nautilus dropped Ryder at the airstrip, shooting a thumbs-up as the noisy gizmo shivered improbably into the sky. He hated choppers, damn things had the glide path of a brick. Bird and bees had wings, not rotors, which was the design nature intended.
Feeling an odd sense of renewal, he headed back to the motel to formulate a plan. He could be Carson’s eyes up here, but given the deadly events in Miami, he’d have to look close and fast.
His return path took him near the structure and he felt its gravity pulling him close. Just another look … see if anything new is up. Owsley was there and working, whatever the hell he did, and though he’d been brought back to his digs by someone from the crew on the structure, Nautilus had an excuse to visit.
He turned on to the rutted lane to the building. Rounding the first bend he saw a crew of three guys bolting a heavy steel gate to freshly installed stanchions. It was a natural choke point, scrub forest crowding one side, a steep drop-off into the drainage ditch on the other. One of the men glared and waved for Nautilus to stop, but he smiled and waved nonchalantly as he blew by, a cloud of dust and cursing in his wake.
The first thing he noticed on his approach was two bright new Chevy Suburbans – black and cobalt – parked by the guardhouse instead of the beater truck driven by the yokel Nautilus had lured from his post. The second was an empty semi rig parked beside the fuel and water tanks. Seemed another big piece had been delivered. Nautilus looked past the semi and saw a Towne Car with a trailer. The cranky old fart was here.
A hard-eyed block of meat and muscle was out of the guardhouse before Nautilus was in Park. Gone was the forest-ranger outfit, the new guy wearing a suit as black as his scowl. The breeze caught his jacket and displayed a shoulder rig carrying a Glock 17, major firepower.
“How’d you get past the gate?” Black Suit said. “The road is closed.”
“Gate?” Nautilus said. “I saw some guys working when I drove in.”
“What’s your business?”
“I’m Pastor Owsley’s driver. I wanted to see if he needed a ride back to his lodging.”
“Don’t leave the vehicle,” Black Suit said. “I’ll phone inside and ask.”
It took a few seconds before he returned. “He’s coming out. Stay inside your vehicle.”
Two stay-in-your-vehicles within a minute and spoken like a mantra. Black Suit had been rehearsed, Nautilus knew, and all cordiality had disappeared.
“Where’s the regular guy?” Nautilus asked. “With the Ranger Rick uniform?”
“Not your business.”
Owsley exited the building, tie off, shirt sleeves rolled up, a man distracted from his work. Behind Owsley the old guy in the wheelchair rolled to the main opening, beside him a pair of security types, more meat packed into suits. The old groper scowled at Nautilus as he side-mouthed words to security. All three squinted toward the Hummer like staring down a rifle sight.
Owsley arrived. There was no smile. “What is it you need, Mister Nautilus?”
“It’s about the time you usually get done, so I thought I’d see if you needed a ride back to—”
“I told you my return is taken care of. Please stop disregarding my instructions and go back in case Celeste or Rebecca need you.”
“I checked before I left and they didn’t—”
But Owsley was already walking away. Seized by a thought, he turned. “I heard that you were here last night, Mr Nautilus. Why?”
“I was bored at the motel and took a drive. When I came down the main road I saw smoke and thought I’d alert the guard.”
A long stare. “That’s all?”
“What else is there?”
“I don’t think you need to be here any more, Mr Nautilus.”
It was almost a dismissal. Back in the Hummer and driving away, Nautilus came to the road crew, one of them shaking his fist. He stopped beside three men, two young and skinny guys who looked straight from the turnip truck, and a man in his mid-thirties with square shoulders, thick arms and a black sweat-drenched sleeveless T-shirt with a Harley-Davidson logo. He strode to the Hummer with thick fists clenched.
“I fuckin’ told you to stop. You got dust all over me.”
“It’s a dusty road. And you’re not a stop sign.”
The man brandished his fist at the window line, his spit spraying Nautilus’s face. “I’m gonna bust your goddamn black—”
Nautilus grabbed the man’s fist in an iron grip and dove to the passenger side, pulling his assailant’s face into the roofline, Thump. Nautilus released the arm and it followed its owner to the ground. Nautilus resumed the driver’s seat and shot And? looks at the other two laborers.
“We ain’t lookin’ for no trouble, mister,” one said, staring at his prostrate companion. “Gabe’s just a hothead is all. An’ he’s hung over.”
Contemplating the various natures of idiocy, Nautilus retreated to his motel room, sat on the balcony with a brew, contemplating the sudden change in tone in the security staff and the unhappy looks aimed in his direction. He ran a potential conversation in his mind, the former guard talking to his superiors …
“I had to run out last night and chase some kids off the prop’ty.”
“You left the guardhouse?”
“That guy drives Pastor Owsley around, Harry Nautilus? He showed up and pointed where a fire was, some burning tires and shit. I wouldna left the guardhouse ’cept Nautilus said he’d watch things while I took a quick look. He’s a cop an’ all so I figured it’d be fine.”
Did they suspect a ruse? Or had the event simply revealed a breach in security resolved by putting hardcore gunslingers in charge. Or, the most interesting possibility, did Nautilus’s history as a cop mark him as more than just a guy who turned a wheel … and somehow a threat?
Questions, questions …
One thing was for sure, just like that the hayseed had been replaced by hard-eyed pros with heavy-metal thunder strapped to their chests. It was more than coincidence.
Also seeming more than coincidence: the glossy black Suburban currently crawling the parking lot below, pausing behind the leased Hummer, like making sure Nautilus wasn’t out roaming the night.
I’m up here, Nautilus thought, watching you watching me.
He smiled. This gig was suddenly getting interesting.
45
Frisco Dredd pulled in front of Sissy Sparks’s apartment building. After missing her in the darkened parking lot, he’d come back to his room and had a revelation: He could do no wrong. He was on a holy mission backed by the Lord Jesus Christ, King of all Heaven.<
br />
His thinking in the darkened parking lot had been addled. What he should have done was grab a hammer from the toolbox, smash the head of the runaway girl, then grab Sparks. His mission was pure and beyond worldly laws, the only law the Law of Heaven. The woeful whore Sparks would be atoning for her sins and the interrupting girl would be a lamb in the arms of Our Lord, him petting her and thanking her for letting Frisco kill her in His holy name.
Thank you, Lord for sending this revelation …
In the morning Dredd had visited a sign shop and paid a rush fee for two simple cardboard signs saying, Singer’s Carpet Cleaning, followed by a fake phone number. A few strips of double-sided tape and Dredd was ready.
The time was perfect, shaped by the hand of God … just past dark, so no one could see much, but still early enough a carpet cleaner could be making a pickup. Dredd had received another revelation in the afternoon: get a used area rug, carry it to the trash bin beside the whore’s building.
Dredd wore green pants and a green shirt picked up for a few dollars at a uniform store, and as he crossed to the trash bin, he sang a hymn beneath his breath:
“I have learned the wondrous secret, of abiding in the Lord,
I have tasted Life’s pure fountain, I am drinking of His word …”
It wouldn’t do for prying eyes to see a man take a rug to the apartment and come back still carrying it, but he walked empty-handed, a simple man on a job. He passed a slender man in tight white shorts walking a little brown dog, the man’s small high buttocks pressing the fabric – a faggot, you could tell, gonna burn in hell. The man looked at Dredd and nodded good evening and Dredd felt his animal strain at the wire, the queer’s filth trying to drag Dredd back into sin. He paid the sinner no mind and continued on his way.
“… I have found the strength and sweetness, of abiding ’neath the blood,
I have lost myself in Jesus, I am sinking into God.”
He reached the bin and gathered the carpet to his shoulder, plodding the final fifty feet to the whore’s door. He knocked, knowing by the lights she was in there. She left different ones on when she was out whoring.
“Who is it?”
“Got your carpet here, miss. All cleaned and ready to go.”
There was an eyehole on the door and he knew he was being watched.
“I didn’t have any carpet cleaned,” a woman’s voice said, hard and soft at the same time, like buttermilk mixed with buckshot. “You got the wrong place.”
“Apartment 22-A? That’s what it says here on my delivery slip, miss. At least I think so. I, uh, busted my glasses this morning. I cain’t see too well.” Dredd moved a piece of paper in front of his eyes, like a man with a visual deficit. “It sure looks like 22-A.”
He waited. Two seconds passed, five … The sound of deadbolts slipping free. The door opened and the whore stood framed in light. She was so beautiful Dredd couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
“Gimme that delivery thing,” she said. “I’ll read it for you.”
As Dredd stared with his mouth open, the Jezebel pulled the strip from his hand and looked at it.
“There’s no address on—”
But Jesus arrived to push Dredd across the threshold, the carpet falling as his hands reached for Sissy’s throat.
Ten minutes later, Dredd crossed the street to his van, the carpet heavy on his shoulder, the weight and nearness of the unconscious woman – wet mouth open with wide pink tongue drooling out – making his animal squirm and burn against the slender wire. A patrolling cop car rolled by and Dredd kept his face low as he aimed a weary smile and nod at the darkened occupant, just a workman making a late pickup. The patrol car continued down the avenue, no brake lights. Dredd opened the side door and slid the carpet inside. He could smell the vixen’s perfume and the pain in his animal made him gasp as the carpet cleared the opening.
He was closing the doors when he saw a pair of headlamps approaching …
The cop car had reversed direction. A whoop on the siren. Hidden by the open door, Dredd pulled a heavy masonry hammer from the toolbox and set it beside the carpet. He turned as the cruiser stopped.
Keep me safe in your arms, Lord. It’s in your name I toil …
He leaned into the light, pushing a broad smile to his face. “Hey there, Officer … I fin’ly get to go home. Hate these late pickups.”
Nothing from the darkened cruiser. After a few seconds the door opened and the cop from the other day got out, setting his hat on his head. “You’ve been here before,” the cop said, eyes wary.
“I wouldn’t think so, Officer. I usually work north of here.”
The cop’s hand went to the grip of his pistol. “Please keep your hands where I can see them, sir, and step away from the vehicle.”
“Just as soon as I get this carpet inside I can—”
“Hands out NOW!”
Though it was dark in the van, an angered Lord put the handle of the hammer in Dredd’s hand and spun him around so he stopped right in front of the cop, taking two steps and bringing the hammer down into the center of his forehead.
Jesus hit the cop two more times and threw the tool into the bushes of the whore’s apartment.
46
“Carson, it’s Vince Delmara. Where you at?”
“Heading to the Palace, Vince. I’m bushed. You?”
A long sigh, like the last air escaping from a balloon. “I’m looking at an MDPD officer dead in the street. You should hear what I just heard.”
Minutes later I was in Wynwood, a tough neighborhood until relatively recently, cheap rents and interesting housing stock attracting young hipster types and a host of trendy dining and drinking establishments.
I roared off Biscayne on to 29th Street, went a couple more blocks and turned a corner. The scene was a nightmare I’d seen too often: cop cars crowding the block, lights beating blue and white against houses and apartments, terrified onlookers restrained by uniformed officers, two ambulances, another half-dozen command vehicles and unmarkeds. The air was a crackle of walkie-talkie chatter. I heard barking and saw a pair of hounds from a K-9 unit being leashed up by a handler.
I parked as close as possible and jogged to a circle of cop cars in the middle of the street, Vince at the epicenter. I excused my way past a female officer wiping tears from her eyes and saw the sheeted form on the pavement, Vince standing above and talking to a pair of MDPD detectives, Frank Bowling and Leandro Basquiat. Vince said, “Give us a minute here, guys,” and the pair nodded and retreated.
Vince bent and pulled back the sheet. I saw a young and handsome face from the closed eyes down, above the eyes a hideous wreckage of blood and bone and brain. Vince replaced the sheet.
“Why am I here?” I said.
Vince nodded to an ambulance fifty feet away, pulled on to the sidewalk. “We got a lady that caught the last of the attack, dialed 911. It’s why I called you, given what you told me about the religious weirdness with the burned girls. The witness is pretty shaken, but I’ll let her tell you what she told me.”
We approached the ambulance as white lights flickered like fireflies in adjoining yards, cops and tech people searching with flashlights for a murder weapon, a pipe, a tool, anything. Two K-9 units were working the scene, one on either side of the street.
A red-eyed woman sat inside the ambulance, mid twenties or thereabouts, black leggings, a blue silk T-shirt to mid thigh, bright beads encircling her neck, her hair a bouffant of braids dangling to her shoulders. She would have been pretty, but crying had melted mascara down her cheeks and her pink lipstick was smeared. She wore black fingerless biking gloves, which explained the sleek Orbea bicycle in the grass beside the vehicle.
“This is Wenda Bronstein,” Vince said gently. “Miss Bronstein, I know you’ve told your story to me, but could you please repeat it to Detective Ryder.”
She nodded and swallowed hard. “I was – I was biking home, one block down. I couldn’t make out what was happening, it seemed s
o weird. I got closer and saw the police car and the … the policeman lying in the street under the streetlamp. A man was standing over him, saying words. It was like he was praying. I heard ‘Jesus’, and ‘Accept this sinner.’ Then he bent over the policeman and did that hand thing. Like in church.”
She made the sign of the cross. I shot a look at Vince.
“Th-then he got inside a white van,” Bronstein continued. “Not fast, but like he didn’t have a worry in th-the world. I swear he was grinning.”
“How close were you?”
“When I saw the blood I freaked and ran up on to the sidewalk. My feet came off the pedals and it took a second to get them back. He sp-spoke to me, just one word.”
“What was it?”
“‘Whore.’”
“What was he driving, did you see?”
“Just … a white van. There was some kind of sign but … I’m sorry, I was too scared, trying to get away.”
“We’ve got BOLOs out on white vans with signage,” Vince said, unnecessarily. A lot of white vans were going to be stopped tonight. I was thanking the young woman when we heard a yell from a yard two houses down.
“Over here. OVER HERE!”
We bolted past a pair of howling dogs, their handler pulling them back, leashes straining. I slipped on suddenly wet grass, Vince grabbing my arm to keep me from going down. “Easy,” another MDPD detective said. “There was a lawn sprinkler running. Everything’s soaked.”
We walked the last few steps to see legs beneath a stand of purple bougainvillea fronting the porch of a yellow duplex. I feared another death until the bushes flashed white and I heard the clicking of a camera, relieved to realize it was a forensics tech beneath the bougainvillea.
“I’ve got the shots,” the tech said. “I’m bringing it out.”
The tech was Martin Petitpas, a rail-skinny black guy in his early thirties who’d grown up in South Louisiana and whose nickname was Pittypat. He reminded me of a younger version of Wayne Hembree back in Mobile, same dry humor, same moon-round face. But there was no humor in Petitpas’s face as his wet clothes cleared the thorns and he displayed an evidence bag containing a rubber-handled masonry hammer, the label denoting an Estwing Big Blue, twenty-two ounces, forged steel, one face a hammer, the other a chisel curved like a fang, its four-inch length smeared with blood and cerebral tissue.