Book of Judas--A Novel

by Linda Stasi

  “I’m not the one who had the problem sticking around—remember?”

  “I remember very clearly. Anyway, I believe that your mood dictates success or failure.”

  I pretended to ignore him because, well, because he was right. Plus he was a pain in the ass.

  I hate him. No, seriously, I really hate him.

  “His followers,” Pantera continued, “show up to perform his rituals, which they think God gave him in visions.”

  “How very Prophet Muhammad of him,” I said.

  “The Prophet Muhammad worked for millions of Muslims, he must figure, so why not for the Prophet Jeremiah?”

  “Insane.”

  “No, smart. In fact, Acevedo’s feeding them a hodgepodge of all kinds of ceremonies he’s cobbled together from many ancient rituals. Like now, his followers are chanting a Dogon rite. Since Dogon’s got the world ‘dog’ in it and the Dogon worshipped the Dog Star, Acevedo—excuse me, the Prophet Jeremiah—must have figured that sacrificing a dog would be very on-point high drama.”

  “On point? Disgusting and tragic is more like it,” I added, still whispering. “But what’s in it for him?”

  “Same as any good televangelist. Money. He’s got followers all over the world. They pay him the long green to pray for them. And he’s got the whole God complex thing going on, too. The guy grew up in a Spanish orphanage. His mother, when she came around, was a prostitute.”

  “Oh crap. The murdered prostitutes out in Gilgo?”

  “Doubtful, but maybe Acevedo’s twisted game became Morris’s real-life obsession. Ritual murder of the girls.”

  “And—what?—Jean-Carlos told him to murder girls?”

  “Maybe Morris bought into Acevedo’s whole mash-up.”

  “And oh, by the way? You know all this about Acevedo—why?”

  “I’ve run into him along the way.”

  “I’ll bet you have. So apparently did Morris and look how he ended up. It seems Morris signed on with every religious scam artist of every stripe he could find.”

  “But Morris had the pages and Acevedo paid for access. He kept the other earring. Acevedo was probably promised it, along with the missing pages, when Morris dropped.”

  “Goddamn! Morris promised more people a piece of the action than Max Bialystock!”

  “Who?” he asked. Finally something he didn’t know.

  “The producer in The Producers,” I said. “Or is Mel Brooks too lowbrow for you?”

  “Such a wiseass,” he said.

  “You bet.”

  We watched as Acevedo’s followers filed out and drove away in several cars and one large van. Then the big man himself opened the windows, looked out, and went into another room. He came back wearing a tight T-shirt and silk pajama-type pants. He looked like an athlete in his prime, even though he was probably in his early fifties. When I looked down, I saw he was barefoot, carrying a bottle of wine and a glass in one hand, and an AK-47 in the other.

  He laid them all on the floor next to the chair, sat down, and put his feet up on the fire pit where the little dog’s bones were still smoldering, the rancid odor filling the air.

  Acevedo poured himself a glass of wine and lit a joint. He took a remote control from his pants pocket and pointed it. Immediately an ear-splitting scream of “Mother!” came roaring out of the hidden speakers. It made me jump a foot high on the stairs, and I was lucky to catch hold of the slippery glass banister to keep from tumbling down and making a racket.

  The very heavy-metal riff of guitars pounding over and over into the quiet, starry desert night followed “Mother!” It was an old recording of Jim Morrison’s. Acevedo picked up the AK-47 and stroked it like he still had the dog in his lap. He smiled and took a long hit off the joint and let out a laugh. Or it looked like he did, because the music overwhelmed any other sounds.

  Ah, the good life.

  “Now what?”

  “Now we go and get what we came for. Are you ready for this?”

  “Ready.” Sort of.

  30

  We shut off our flashlights and closed the door, leaving just enough room for us to shimmy through as we flattened ourselves against the wall and crept into the adjacent room, a big kitchen. The lights were on—not good—and Pantera did a quick sweep.

  “Let’s move.”

  Following as closely behind as I could, we inched our way back into the room where Jean-Carlos was still sipping and toking, the music still blasting.

  The staircase up was to the left, and somehow we managed to make it to the stairwell without him hearing. We climbed each step as quietly as possible, hugging the wall for fear of casting shadows.

  The upstairs portion of the house was as sleek, expensive, and modern as the downstairs had been. There were several rooms, one with a double door, which we figured to be the bedroom.

  We walked into a library room, which was very elegantly appointed—filled with ancient books and artifacts.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “The other earring. The missing other key.”

  A sound behind us! Shit.

  I spun around. In the doorway stood a gorgeous woman, clad only in a G-string, vast ringlets of hair cascading all the way down to her waist.

  “What?” she called out and started to run.

  In a flash, Pantera had her by the wrists, forcing her to the ground, gun to her head. “Not a sound—understand?” he said without much effect, as though he were asking for directions.

  She whispered back in Hebrew. It seemed like “what” was the only word she knew in English.

  He knew better and asked, in English, “Do you know of the Judas papers?”

  Lady Godiva shook her head. He pressed the gun farther into her temple. She shook her head again, twisting to get free.

  Good luck with that, sister.

  “Well, fuck me,” I heard a man say behind us with a heavy accent. I turned. Acevedo was standing in the doorway with the AK-47 pointed right at me.

  “You got a woman, I got a woman,” he said to Pantera. Then he burst into song, screaming the lyrics of a 1960s Jr. Walker rock song: “‘I said shotgun! Shoot ’em ’fore he runs now!’”

  I was paralyzed. Pantera didn’t budge. There were no tells, no change of expression, no pulling the gun from the woman’s temple.

  “I’ll just take what I came for, and your woman won’t die, Juan-Carlos.”

  Acevedo broke into a laugh. “My woman? Jesus, Pantera. ¿Esta pedazo de basura? I don’t even remember her name! Kill her if you like. It’ll save me from having to do it myself.”

  The woman started to sob harder.

  “Now, as for you?” Acevedo continued. “I don’t think you can say the same about this fine, if filthy, piece of ass you’ve got,” he said, glancing with disgust at my guano-covered hair. “See, I remember what you like. You like them whole. I know you wouldn’t want her once I rip a side of her face off. Aggh, messy!”

  Pantera answered just as coolly, like these two were having a nice conversation, “You could do that, but then I’d have to do the same…”

  “I told you, be my guest. I don’t even know the puta’s name.”

  “It’s Noelia.”

  Acevedo was taken off guard, looked surprised.

  “Noelia Acevedo. Your half-sister.”

  Oh, Jesus. This was more disgustingly twisted than I wanted to even think about.

  “No, she is not…”

  “She is,” Pantera mocked. “I have a copy of your sex tape. And better still, I have you both on video shooting smack, snorting coke, you name it.”

  “My followers know I used to live a sinful life—before I found God.”

  “Would that be very recently then? Because I just acquired the links and they were shot a month ago—one in the Old City, one right here in your humble abode. Dated.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Pantera answered. “Still, if my associates don’t hear from me in a fe
w minutes, the link gets activated and sent to every news outlet and every worshipper on your mailing lists—of which there are hundreds of thousands.”

  Acevedo, enraged, made a lunge for him, but Pantera sidestepped, grabbing Noelia by the hair and dragging her with him, never taking the gun from her temple.

  In the split second that Acevedo lost his cool and let anger overtake him, I jumped out of the way and started to make a run for it out the door. Acevedo, as fast and nimble as Pantera, grabbed me by the neck and forced me to the ground on my knees.

  “I will kill this bitch,” he screamed.

  “No, you won’t,” Pantera answered without changing expression. He looked at his watch, tugging at the woman’s hair in the process. “In five minutes the video goes out. There is even expert testimony identifying the Prophet Jeremiah’s sex-slave, former-stripper, half-sister. And, two minutes after that? Another file, with all of your personal information, goes to the syndicate.”

  “Syndicate,” Acevedo replied, without affect.

  “As in the Orthodox Jewish Russian Mob–slash–syndicate. Your enemies from the bad old days. Nasty boys but very pious.”

  Acevedo was beginning to break a sweat.

  “Somehow those guys, smart as they are, never figured out the whole Juan-Carlos turned Prophet Jeremiah scam. They know you’re in Israel, but they’re looking for the old you—the one who didn’t have surgery. The one who didn’t grow a full beard, shave his head, and find God.”

  Acevedo started sweating for real now. With the machine gun inches from my head, Acevedo demanded, “What the fuck do you want, Pantera? I thought we were good. That thing was all settled…”

  “Well, that thing was settled, sure, but this thing?” he said, nodding his head in my direction. “This is a whole new thing. Maybe some of your followers will forgive you. You can always take that chance.”

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “I want the key to the Judas pages.”

  “No. I can’t do that. And you know why I can’t do that.”

  “I want the key to the Judas pages.”

  “Why? You can’t sell the pages. They’re too hot.”

  “I’m not here to negotiate.”

  “It’s not here.”

  “Bullshit.” Pantera pulled at the woman’s hair so hard she cried out. “The clock’s ticking.”

  “Go ahead and kill her, I don’t care.”

  “But you do care if you lose your followers, your fortune, and this scam. Not to mention your life.”

  Was this really happening? Was Pantera really so cool under pressure, or more likely, was he that stone cold?

  “Did Golden tell you the pages held the secret to eternal life?” Pantera continued, yanking the woman across several more feet by her hair.

  The woman begged her brother for her life. “¡Pedazo de mierda! ¡Por el amor de Dios!”

  Pantera looked at his watch. “Two minutes.”

  “Wait, stop. Jesus wanted to create a movement. He had the code. Those pages—those fucking pages have the code. We can share the secret…”

  “Yusef, please, we can go in on this together, we can have all the power in the world!”

  Pantera just laughed. “Tell that to your brother who you sent to ambush us at the Prison of Christ. If he’s still alive, that is. Now give me the fucking key, Acevedo. And take the gun off the woman.” That would be me.

  Acevedo answered, still not moving the gun from my head. “I swear I’ll find you and get it back and when I do, you’re a dead man, Yusef.”

  “I don’t doubt that. Unless I have the secret to resurrection, in which case, good luck killing me off. The key, please.” Pantera looked crisp and cool, while I was sweating like a pregnant nun.

  Does Pantera want the pages for himself? Was that what this was really all about? Have I been had? Am I a dead woman? What about Terry? Roy?

  Shit. No scenario was a good scenario.

  Acevedo pulled me up and, still holding the gun, began to move toward the double doors of the bedroom as Pantera, still holding onto the naked half-sister, gun to her head, followed closely behind. Acevedo led us into the bedroom, which looked shockingly small. Everything was white, starched, pristine. That all changed when he pushed a button on a white nightstand next to the bed. The wall on one side slid open, leading into a huge and very Victorian room. The walls were painted bronze and were hung with all kinds of bondage equipment.

  There were whips and chains hung as neatly as a gardener’s tools, a bench with straps, a small cage, a morgue table, a suspension-looking frame, and yes, what looked like a torture rack from the Spanish Inquisition. Hell, there was even a dentist’s chair, of all things.

  “Nice place you nice young couple have put together here,” Pantera quipped, pressing the gun so hard into the sister’s head that she again cried out.

  “Please! Don’t shoot me!”

  “Then please don’t annoy me,” he answered. Turning to Acevedo, he said, “The key?”

  Acevedo pulled me over to a large inverted cross and moved it aside. A keypad was revealed, and I could now see that the cross was hanging on a nearly seamless door. He punched in some numbers and it opened. He took a box carefully out and laid it down on the bench.

  “Open it,” Pantera said. “And take the gun off my friend there. Drop the weapon and, for Christ’s sake, enough with your bullshit. Let her go,” he ordered, pointing the gun briefly away from the sister and toward Acevedo.

  Acevedo reluctantly did as he was told and as soon as I was released, I picked up his assault rifle.

  “Open it.”

  He unlocked the box to reveal a tiny, very thin, gold cross. Pantera picked it up and turned it around in his hands, feeling it with his fingers. “Ah,” he said. “Very clever. But where is the ritual? You know you have it.”

  “I don’t! I swear I don’t. The old bastard, Golden, he has it.”

  “What do you mean he has it? He’s dead.”

  “Yes, but … the son…”

  “What about him?” Pantera said and stuck the gun in Noelia’s mouth.

  “He’s got the book. It’s in that book. It’s mine. Morris left it to me. It’s all useless without it.”

  “What fucking book? I’m getting tired of your bullshit.”

  “I don’t know; he wouldn’t tell me. He brought it here, but wouldn’t tell me what it was! Some ancient thing. Big, with pictures.”

  “Not good enough!”

  The Voynich Manuscript! The only way we could get the key was to let Pantera know I had the book. But I’d deal with him later.

  “The Voynich Manuscript?” I cried.

  Acevedo nodded.

  “I know where it is,” I whispered to Pantera.

  Pantera looked satisfied, and so without moving the gun, he ordered Acevedo onto his knees and shoved Noelia down onto hers.

  “Do me a favor, would you?” he said to me. “Get me that cat-o’-nine-tails.” Then, “Oh wait,” he said casually, “I better call off Headquarters. We’re almost out of time here. And if one of us gets killed? Oh Jesus, you don’t want to know!”

  The guy’s good, I’ll give him that. Was he faking the whole Headquarters involvement in this thing? I mean, wasn’t this a personal job, after all? Yes. But was it for Terry—or for himself? But then again, with him, you never knew who he was doing anything for at any given time.

  Pantera forced Noelia into the dentist’s chair as Acevedo looked on helplessly. “Keep your gun on the holy man, will you?” he asked me.

  He gagged Noelia, placing the handle of the whip over a gag at her mouth. He then tied the straps of the whip together behind her back. He asked me for other leather straps and tied her to the chair, her hands across her chest, as she wept and tried to break free.

  Even in my terror, I couldn’t help but to think how weird it was that she was crying about being tied up in her own bondage room, yet.

  What kind of world did these people live in? I
again felt sick. Pantera noticed, out of the corner of his eye, and said, “Come on now, steady with that gun…”

  “Right.” As I kept the AK-47 trained on Acevedo, Pantera knocked him out with one punch, then carried him to the medieval rack and put one of the hideous black face masks studded with nails that were hanging nearby, nail side down, on his face. He then tied him up with his arms and legs stretched out in an X shape. Pantera turned the rack a few times, enough to wake Acevedo, who began screaming, trapped inside the mask. I winced and turned away from the scene in this modern dungeon. I couldn’t help but think back to the dungeon of Christ where people had suffered and died and how these two sickos had built a private dungeon for their incestuous pleasure.

  “Good? Good,” Pantera said. “Please pick up the box, will you?” I picked it up as he said to the half-siblings, “Don’t worry, pal. You won’t die. The housekeeper gets here at—what?—nine?”

  The helpless, perverted drug lord turned phony prophet moaned and struggled to free himself, but he had been trapped inside his own perversion. Literally. Pantera took the little cross out of the box and stuck it in his jacket pocket and snapped it shut.

  As we calmly (well, one of us was calm, anyway) walked down and out into the night, Pantera breathed in the fresh air. Tapping his pocket, he said, “What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.”

  “Did you make that up?”

  “Hardly. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.”

  “You are one crazy bastard, Pantera.”

  He laughed—a big, hearty laugh—breaking the silence of the night, and threw his arm around my shoulder. “Yeah.”

  But how crazy was he? I still had no idea. I shrugged his arm off my shoulder.

  Pantera, too, was back to all business in an Israeli minute, commanding, “Keep up with me,” as he put the hard hat back on his head and turned on the light. He grabbed my hand and we began to run, or rather he ran, dragging me behind. The night was pitch black and I was hitting the wall for real this time.

  When we got back to his motorcycle, the guard was still passed out. He knelt down and checked him for vitals. “All good.”

  “Not if you’re him it’s not.” I gasped, out of breath.

  “He’ll be OK. It’ll all be OK. Trust me, it’ll be OK.”