Mission (17 page)

When the movie ended, we shouldered our way out back on to the crowded streets. Word images from The Man continued to flood into my mind. It was as if he was feeding me enlightenment intravenously. I understood that love, raying outwards from the soul, could pierce the hard, egocentric shell that held it captive. Its healing power could transform our lives; change the world and, in the final triumph of mind over matter, restore the balance between the opposing forces of the universe. The legendary Harmony of the Spheres without which everything, including the Celestial Empire, would go down the tube. Human consciousness was not a by-product of physical existence. It was not the result of bio-chemical processes but the thing that made those processes possible. It came from beyond Time and Space. From a higher realm of being of which The Man was part and to which he sought to bring us again by the power vested in him. And which was in all of us.

For each of us held the Key to the Kingdom. Where all things had been shaped by the Light of The Word. The indestrctible, unifying force that flowed through the cosmos and gave life to all within it. It could not be destroyed because it emanated from The One, The Presence, Y * W * H, Allah, the God-Head, the Creator, The Supreme Being, the Shekinah, the Unknowable, the Ultimate Principle; or Whatever. Which, according to The Man, was now locked into a life and death struggle with creatures spawned from its own being. The rebellious legions of ‘Brax.

But while the power of love could not be destroyed, it could be suppressed, perverted, misdirected. As when its energy was funnelled through our sexual organs and our senses as desire for the things of this world, or transformed by the malevolent influence of ‘Brax into hate.

It was not some grouchy moralism that had caused the ancient Hebrews to list our common failings among the seven deadly sins, but a more ancient wisdom. Lust, hate, pride, greed, envy were crippling deformations of the power of the spirit. They were the bars of the cage that imprisoned the soul. The chains that made the Celestial rider the slave of the earth-bound host that carried him through the seductive dream-caverns that ‘Brax had woven about the world.

To keep us from The Light.

‘Brax was playing for high stakes. He didn't want just what was on the table. He wanted the casino and the rest of this galactic Las Vegas. This was the take-over bid to end them all; and he was playing with loaded dice and a stacked deck.

One of ‘Brax's major coups in this titanic struggle had been the forced creation of the ego from which had sprung the cult of the individual and an abhorrence of collectivism. The achievement of the individual was upheld as a triumph of the
human
will. The proof that Man was master of his own destiny and that rational science would unravel the mysteries of the universe. Belief in God was held to be the vestigial remains of a more primitive, irrational state of mind.

The emphasis on the individual belied the truth. Handel may have composed
The Messiah,
but without a choir to bring it triumphantly to life it is nothing more than marks on pieces of paper. Even the most brilliant concert pianist was nothing without the generations of craftsmen whose collective skill had brought his instrument to its present peak of perfection. And there was a darker side to the supremacy of the individual human will. The Reverend Jim Jones could not have sown terror and death among his followers if they had not willingly subjugated themselves to his baleful personality. And if, instead of pandering to his lunatic ambitions, that fateful coterie of German generals and industrialists had told Hitler to take it down the street, the world might have been spared World War Two.

The egocentric behaviour of the Me-Generation; the obsession with doing one's own thing; the calculated selfishness that was required to claw our way to the top of the heap, discarding the people that were of no further use to us; all this was the reverse of The Man's teachings. We had turned our backs on the proto-communes that his disciples had created in the days immediately following the infusion of his power at the Feast of the Pentecost.
And they that believed were together and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need.
The only people who practiced that now were raggedy-assed Christian Anarchists. And who took any notice of them?

The trouble with niceness, self-sacrifice and goodness was that it was a real turn-off. And absolute goodness even more so. Like most people, I was capable of minor, unselfish acts but I was always careful not to let it get out of hand. After all, this is a tough world we live in. And in it, do-gooders usually end up by making everyone around them feel bad, or even inciting them to violence. I guess you could
put it down to the perverseness of human nature.

Or ‘Brax.

For behind any charitable feelings there lurks the insidious conviction that people usually get what they deserve; or should. Which helps us get over that attack of the guilts when we fail to write out a cheque for this week's good cause.

And what really gets us off the hook, gives us the excuse we need for not trying, is the discovery that even the good guys have feet of clay. It confirms our worst suspicions and makes us feel a helluva lot better to know that while Martin Luther King may have been to the top of the mountain and looked over the other side, he was also balling chicks in integrated motel rooms; that good old Ike, our open-faced soldier-President, had the hots for the peaches-and-cream English society-girl-soldier who chauffeured him around wartime London. And when we fail to contribute to the fight against leprosy, we can do so in the comfortable knowledge that Nobel Doctor Albert Schweitzer was a tetchy, egocentric old fart who goose-stepped over his staff and patients. And if only we could get some dirt on Mother Teresa of Calcutta, our joy at eating out in expensive restaurants would be unconfined.

That was the problem with The Man. Apart from cussing a fig tree, he hadn't put a foot wrong. It was true he had put the hex on the Gadarene swine, but that was in a good cause. He'd also bad-mouthed the scribes and Pharisees, but everyone seems to agree that they were just a bunch of assholes. Despite my ingrained scepticism, I had been struck by his essential goodness. As Miriam and Linda had been. There was a kind of basic integrity about the guy despite the fact that, up to now, he had reacted to everything with an intriguing passivity. But then if, as the Book said, he
was
the Son of God, he didn't have to
do
anything. His presence was enough; and from it, there radiated a quiet strength. Not an aura of physical force, but of incorruptibility. Which, in our day and age, was guaranteed to make people foam at the mouth.

I was jerked out of my ambulatory reverie by a sudden clamour across the street. A crowd of people stood back from a negro spread-eagled in a doorway. Blood pumped out from under his body and snaked its way towards the kerb. A cop, summoned by a distraught mini-skirted hooker hurried along the outside of the line of parked cars with a drawn night-stick. The sound of approaching sirens cut a shrill swathe through the noise of the traffic.

The Man took in the scene and started across the street.

I grabbed his arm and held him back. ‘Listen, stay out of it. There's nothing you can do.'

He tried to shake me off. ‘He's dying.'

‘Look,' I said. ‘They'll have called an ambulance. Let that cop handle it. He'll know what to do.'

He swung his arm up and twisted free. I swore under my breath and followed him across the street. We got separated by a couple of passing cars. By the time I reached the other curb, he was kneeling over the body. The crowd closed round him leaving a narrow channel for the blood to drain into the gutter.

Dear God,
I remember thinking,
don't let him start raising the dead.
The cop arrived. I stuck close behind him as he and the hooker made their way upstream.

The Man had rolled up the black guy's jacket and put it under his head, and had ripped a couple of strips off his shirt to make a pad to staunch the flow of blood from the stab-wound under the ribs. He got the cop to help him bind it into place but I had uneasy feeling that the Red Cross bandage bit was just to mask his magic.

‘You a doctor?' asked the cop.

‘No, a
rabbi,
' said The Man. ‘But I do a little first aid on the side.' He laid one hand on the victim's forehead and placed the other briefly over his punctured heart.

The black guy gave a little jerk, fluttered his eyelids then rolled his eyes from side to side. Then he raised his head, looked down at his bandaged rib-cage and surveyed the ruins of his shirt. ‘Jeezuss, what d'you do that for, man? I paid sixty dollars for this fuckin' thing!'

The hooker, a caramel-coloured fox with a dayglo wig shaped like a giant nylon pan-scourer, went down on her knees with a shrill cry of relief and cradled the ungrateful bastard's head. Two squad cars beat the ambulance into third place.

I hauled The Man up and made sure my fingers were riveted to his sleeve. ‘Come on. Let's get out of here.'

We left the hooker to explain who had done what to whom and slipped through the three-deep ring of spectators as the paramedics hauled out their stretcher trolley. I glanced back and saw the black guy sit up unaided. I knew they wouldn't find a mark on him. And that could lead to a lot of awkward questions.

‘What's the hurry?' said The Man, as I hustled him across to the east side of Broadway.

‘Just keep going,' I said. ‘You and your goddamn miracles.' All I wanted to do was grab a cab and put as much space as possible between us and the scene of the crime. But as always happens in situations like this, there were none available.

Someone called out behind us. ‘Hey, Rabbi!'

I held tight to The Man's arm and kept going. A greasy-looking, broad-shouldered guy in a leather bomber-jacket and tight jeans turned sharply and headed towards us from the other side of the street. His right hand was tucked inside his jacket. Which meant he either had fleas under his armpit, or a .38 Police Special.

The palm of somebody's hand slammed into my right shoulder. ‘Okay, you two – hold it right there.'

It was the same voice as before. I looked back and saw it belonged to a young bearded guy in a flat tweed cap, with an Army surplus combat jacket over a red and black striped football shirt. He grabbed hold of The Man and spun him around, covering us both with his gun.

His friend in the leather jacket arrived. A real greaseball. He flashed his NYPD badge. ‘Drug squad. We're going to have to turn you over, friends.'

Undercover narcs. It was insane. ‘Come on,' I said. ‘What is this? Some kind of gag?'

Flat Cap waved his .38. ‘Don't get smart, shit-head. Lay your hands on the roof of that car.'

I looked at The Man. ‘Just do as they say.'

We leant against the roof of a white Volvo. Greaseball toed our feet apart and frisked us for concealed weapons. Starting with me.

‘You're making a big mistake,' I said. ‘I'm a lawyer. A member of the New York Bar Association. And this gentleman is one of my clients from out of town.'

Greaseball made sure I was clean. ‘Okay, turn around.' He snapped his fingers. ‘Identification.'

I produced my wallet and showed him my driver's licence and business card.

‘Gutzman, Schonfeld and Resnick …' Greaseball ran his thumb over the raised ink on the card and passed it to Flat Cap. ‘They look expensive.'

Flat Cap glanced at it then slipped it into a top pocket. ‘Check out the other guy.'

I watched Greaseball frisk The Man and got my tongue into gear in
readiness to explain away the absence of any means of identification. He turned The Man around and checked the inside pockets of the padded wind-breaker.

‘Bingo,' said Greaseball. He exposed the left inside pocket of The Man's jacket and carefully pulled out a flat, transparent plastic bag full of white powder. He showed it to me, hefted it in his palm, then tossed it to Flat Cap. ‘I'd say that was a good six ounces.'

Flat Cap nodded, then grinned at me. ‘I suppose you're going to tell me that your client's in the bakery busines and that this is icing sugar.'

A real comedian.

What the hell could I say? If the lab tests proved the contents to be six ounces of uncut coke or heroin, we were in big trouble. It had to be a set-up. But how? Was it the black guy? Had he somehow palmed it off on The Man for friends to pick up later? And had the narcs seen the switch-play? Or had it been planted on him earlier? Perhaps in the store where he'd bought the jacket? Was this a ploy by ‘Brax to put The Man on the spot? It was the only answer that made sense – in which case, Flat Cap and Greaseball might not be undercover cops at all but agents for a much more sinister organisation. I was seized with alarm as my imagination began to run riot. If it were true, what could I do? I was helpless. How could I explain the situation to my friends in the D.A.'s office, and to the judge and jury?

My legs wanted to run, but the fear of a paralysing bullet in my back kept my feet glued to the side-walk. In any case, now that they knew who I was, escape was impossible. And so it was, that from out of my cowardice, I was forced to find the courage to commit myself to the defence of The Man.

‘My client's name is Yale Sheppard,' I said. ‘He's an Israeli national who arrived today from Jerusalem. His passport, wallet and identification were stolen at John. F. Kennedy. As his legal representative, I wish to know if you intend to arrest him – and on what charge?'

Flat Cap showed the dope to The Man. ‘Do you deny ownership of this package and all knowledge that it was concealed on your person?'

The Man shrugged.

‘Cuff him,' said Flat Cap.

Greaseball pulled The Man's arms behind his back and clicked the bracelets shut over his wrists. I still couldn't believe it was really happening. Once again, we were surrounded by a ring of blank-faced
sensation seekers. I was chilled by a curious sense of déja-vu; the thought that I might be witnessing a re-run of that scene in the Garden of Gethsemane.