Blasphemy (11 page)

Lorenzo turned brusquely and began walking the other way, back toward town. Eddy lunged forward and grabbed his shirt at the shoulder. Lorenzo jerked his shoulder away and kept going. Suddenly he veered and went off toward the trailer.

“Where are you going?” Eddy cried. “Don’t go in there!”

Lorenzo disappeared inside. Eddy ran after him, pausing at the door. “Get out of there!” He hesitated to follow him inside, fearful of being jumped. “You’re a thief!” he shouted in. “That’s what you are. A common thief. Get out of my house now! I’m calling the police!”

A crash came from the kitchen, a silverware drawer flung across the room.

“You’ll pay for the damage! Every cent!”

Another crash, more scattered flatware. Eddy desperately wanted to go in, but he was afraid. At least the drunk Indian was in the kitchen and not in the back bedroom where his computer was.

“Get out of there, you drunkard! Human garbage! You’re dirt in the eyes of Jesus! I’m reporting this to your parole officer and you’ll go back to prison! I guarantee it!”

Suddenly Lorenzo appeared in the entryway, a long bread knife in his hand.

Eddy backed up and off the stoop. “Lorenzo. No.”

Lorenzo stood on the stoop, uncertainly, waving the knife and blinking in the setting sunlight. He did not advance.

“Drop the knife, Lorenzo. Drop it.”

His hand lowered.

“Drop it, now.” Eddy could see his whitened grip on the handle relaxing. “Drop it or Jesus will punish you.”

A gargle of rage suddenly came from Lorenzo’s throat. “I screw your Jesus up the ass, like this!” He jabbed the knife into the air so violently that it almost threw him off balance.

Eddy staggered back, the words landing on him like a kick to the gut. “How—dare—you—
blaspheme
our Savior? You sick—you
evil
man! You’ll burn in hell, Satan! You—!” Eddy’s high-pitched voice was choked off by hysteria.

A raucous, phlegmy laugh erupted from Lorenzo’s throat. He waved the knife around, grinning, as if enjoying Eddy’s horror. “That’s right,
up
the ass.”

“You’ll burn in hell!” Eddy cried, with a rush of courage. “You’ll call on Jesus to moisten your parched lips, but He won’t be listening. Because you’re
scum
. Human garbage scum!”

Lorenzo spat again. “Right on.”

“God will strike you down, mark my words. He will smite you and curse you, blasphemer! You stole from Him, you dirty Indian thief!”

Lorenzo rushed at Eddy. But the preacher was small and quick, and as the knife came at him in a wide, inefficient arc, Eddy skipped aside and seized Lorenzo’s forearm in both his hands. The Navajo struggled, trying to turn the knife back on Eddy, but Eddy held on with both hands like a terrier, twisting and wrenching the arm, trying to shake the knife loose.

Lorenzo grunted, strained, but in his drunken state he didn’t have the strength. His arm suddenly went limp and Eddy held on.

“Drop the knife.”

Lorenzo stood there, uncertainly. Eddy, seeing his chance, threw a shoulder into Lorenzo, spinning him sideways, and grabbed the knife. Losing his footing, Eddy fell backward with Lorenzo falling on top of his chest. Even as Lorenzo fell, however, Eddy had taken the knife by the handle. Lorenzo fell on it, the knife impaling his heart fore and aft. Eddy felt hot blood gush on his hands and with a cry he released the blade and pulled himself out from under the Navajo. The knife was in Lorenzo’s chest, right over his heart.

“No!”

Incredibly, Lorenzo rose to his feet, the knife sticking out of his chest. Staggering back, with one final effort he wrapped both his hands hard around the knife handle. He stood there for a moment, hands gripping the handle, straining to pull it out with rapidly ebbing strength, his face blank, his eyes filming over. Toppling forward, he fell heavily into the sand, the force of the fall driving the point of the knife out his back.

Eddy stared, his mouth working. Below the supine body, he saw a pool of blood running into the sand, soaking into the thirsty ground, leaving jellylike clots on the surface.

The first thought Eddy had was,
I will not be a victim again
.

THE SUN HAD LONG SET AND a chill was in the air by the time Eddy finished the hole. The sand was soft and dry and he had dug it deep—very deep.

He paused, drenched in sweat and shivering at the same time. He climbed out of the hole, pulled up the ladder, placed his foot against the body, and rolled it in. It landed with a wet thump.

Working with great care, he shoveled all the bloody sand into the hole, digging down as far as it went, not missing a grain. Then he stripped off his clothes and tossed them in next. Finally, in went the bloody bucket of water he had washed his hands in, bucket and all, followed by the towel he had dried himself with.

He stood shivering at the edge of the dark hole, stark naked. Should he pray? But the blasphemer deserved no prayer—and what good would prayer do for someone already writhing and shrieking in the blast furnaces of hell? Eddy had said God would smite him down, and not fifteen seconds later God had done just that. God had directed the blasphemer’s hand against himself. Eddy had actually witnessed it—had seen the miracle.

Still naked, Eddy filled in the hole, shovelful by shovelful, working hard to keep up his body warmth. By midnight he was finished. He raked out the evidence of his work, put away his tools, and went into the trailer.

As Pastor Eddy lay in bed that night, praying as hard as he had ever prayed in his life, he heard the night wind come up, as it so often did. It moaned and rocked and rattled the old trailer, the sand hissing against the windows. By morning, Eddy thought, the yard would be swept clean by the wind, a smooth expanse of virgin sand, all trace of the incident erased.

The Lord is scouring the ground clean for me, just as he forgives me and scours clean the sin from my soul
.

Eddy lay in the dark, shaking and triumphant.

THAT EVENING, BOOKER CRAWLEY FOLLOWED THE maître d‘ to the back of the dim steak house in McLean, Virginia, and found the Reverend D. T. Spates already parked at a table, perusing the five-pound leather-bound menu.

“Reverend Spates, how good to see you again.” He took the man’s hand.

“A pleasure, Mr. Crawley.”

Crawley took his seat, shook out the elegant twist of linen that was his napkin, and strung it across his lap.

A cocktail waiter glided over. “May I get you gentlemen anything to drink?”

“Seven and seven,” said the reverend.

Crawley cringed, glad he had picked a restaurant where no one would recognize him. The reverend smelled of Old Spice, and his sideburns were a centimeter too long. In person he looked twenty years older than on-screen, his face liver-spotted and mottled with that reddish sandpaper texture that marked the drinking man. His orange hair glistened in the indirect light. How could a man with so much media savvy tolerate such a cheap hair job?

“And you, sir?”

“Bombay Sapphire martini, very dry, straight up with a twist.”

“Right away, gentlemen.”

Crawley mustered a broad smile. “Well, Reverend, I saw your show last night. It was . . .
terrific
.”

Spates nodded, a plump, manicured hand tapping the tablecloth. “The Lord was with me.”

“I was wondering if you’ve received any feedback.”

“Sure did. My office has logged over eighty thousand e-mails in the last twenty-four hours.”

A silence. “Eighteen thousand?”

“No, sir.
Eighty
thousand.”

Crawley was speechless. “From whom?” he asked finally.

“Viewers, of course.”

“Am I right in assuming this is an unusual response?”

“That you are. The sermon really touched a nerve. When the government spends taxpayer money to put the lie to the Word of God—well, Christians everywhere rise up.”

“Yes, of course.” Crawley managed a smile of agreement.
Eighty thousand
. That would scare the piss out of any congressman. He paused as the waiter brought their drinks.

Spates wrapped a plump hand around his frosty glass, took a long drink, set it down.

“Now there’s this matter of the pledge you made to God’s Prime Time Ministry.”

“Naturally.” Crawley touched his jacket above the inner pocket. “All in good time.”

Spates took another sip. “What’s the reaction in Washington?”

Crawley’s contacts had learned that a significant number of e-mails had also arrived for various congressmen, along with heavy telephone traffic. But it wouldn’t do to inflate Spates’s expectations. “An issue like this needs to be pushed awhile before it penetrates the hard shell of Washington.”

“That isn’t what I heard from my viewers. Lots of those e-mails were copied to Washington.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said Crawley hastily.

The waiter came by and took their order.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” said Spates, “I’d like to collect that donation before the food comes. I wouldn’t want to get grease on it.”

“No, no, of course not.” Crawley slipped the envelope out of his pocket and laid it unobtrusively on the table, then cringed as Spates reached over and held it up ostentatiously. Spates’s jacket sleeve slipped back, exposing a meaty wrist well furred in orange hair. So the orange was real. How could the thing that seemed most fake about Spates turn out to be the one real thing? Was there something else, more urgent, that he was missing about this man? Crawley pushed down his irritation.

Spates turned the envelope over and tore it open with a lacquered fingernail. He slid out the check, held it to the light, and examined it closely.

“Ten thousand dollars,” he read slowly.

Crawley glanced around, relieved they were alone in the back of the restaurant. The man had no class at all.

Spates continued to study the check. “Ten thousand dollars,” he repeated.

“I trust it’s in good order?”

The reverend slid the check back into the envelope and stuffed it inside his jacket. “You know how much it costs to run my ministry? Five thousand a
day
. Thirty-five thousand a week, almost two million a year.”

“That’s quite an operation,” said Crawley evenly.

“I devoted an entire hour of my sermon to your problem. I hope to take it up again on
Roundtable America
this Friday. You watch it?”

“Never miss it.” Crawley knew the Christian Cable Service aired Spates’s weekly talk show, but he’d never seen it.

“I plan to keep on top of this until I’ve aroused the righteous anger of Christians across this land.”

“I’m very grateful, Reverend.”

“For this, ten thousand dollars is hardly a drop in the bucket.”

Goddamned Holy Joe
, thought Crawley. How he hated to deal with people like this. “Reverend, forgive me, but I was under the impression that you would take up the issue in return for a one-time donation.”

“And I did: one-time donation, one-time sermon. Now I’m talking about a
relationship
.” Spates tipped the glass up to his wet lips, drained the last of the drink through the column of ice cubes, replaced the glass on the table, and wiped his mouth.

“I handed you an excellent issue. Judging from the reaction, it seems worth pushing, regardless of the, ah, pecuniary aspects.”

“My friend, there’s a
war
on faith going on out there. We’re fighting the secular humanists on multiple fronts. I could shift my battle lines at any moment. If you want me to keep fighting at your salient, well, then—you’ve got to
contribute
.”

The waiter brought their filets mignons. Spates had ordered his well done, and the thirty-nine-dollar cut of meat was now the size, shape, and color of a hockey puck. Spates clasped his hands and bowed over the plate. It took Crawley a moment to realize he was blessing his food, not smelling it.

“Can I get you gentlemen anything else?” the waiter asked.

The reverend raised his head and lifted his glass. “Another.” He narrowed his eyes at the waiter’s departing form. “I believe that man’s a homosexual.”

Crawley took a long level breath. “So what kind of a relationship are you suggesting, Reverend?”

“A quid pro quo. You scratch my back; I scratch yours.”

Crawley waited.

“Say, five thousand a week, with a guarantee I’ll mention the Isabella project in each sermon and take it up on at least one cable show.”

So that’s how it was going to be. “Ten thousand a
month
,” said Crawley coolly, “with a guaranteed minimum of ten minutes devoted to the topic in each sermon. As for the cable show, I’ll expect the first show to be devoted entirely to Isabella, with later shows pushing the subject. My donation will be made at the
end
of the month
after
the airing. Each payment will be duly recorded as a charitable contribution, with a letter to that effect. That is my first, last, and only offer.”

The Reverend DonT. Spates gazed pensively at Crawley. Then his face turned into an enormous smile, and a freckled hand extended across the table, once more exposing the orange hairs.

“The Lord will give you value for your money, my friend.”

EARLY TUESDAY, BEFORE BREAKFAST, FORD SAT at the kitchen table in his casita staring at the stack of dossiers. There was no reason why having a high IQ would somehow protect you from the vicissitudes of life, but this group seemed to have more than their share of problems: difficult childhoods, dysfunctional parents, sexual identity problems, personal crises, even a few bankruptcies. Thibodeaux had been in therapy since she was twenty, diagnosed with the borderline personality disorder he’d read about before. Cecchini had gotten tangled up with a religious cult as a teenager. Edelstein had suffered bouts of depression. St. Vincent had been an alcoholic. Wardlaw had suffered from PTSD after witnessing his squad leader’s head blown off in a cave in the Tora Bora mountains. At thirty-four, Corcoran had been married and divorced—twice. Innes had been reprimanded for sleeping with patients.