The Last Blue Plate Special (10 page)

“BB, you’re smart,” I told him.

“Hey,” he replied, grinning and stretching his long arms in front of him, “I been knowin’ that!”

The orchestra segued into an upbeat rendition of “Come, Thou Almighty King” as a choir in brightly colored robes filled risers
at the back of the stage, singing. When they were all in place the colors of their robes replicated a rainbow. Then a man
with big gray hair in a tight black suit jogged onstage. I could see his lapel mike and knew it ran to a power pack clipped
to the back of his pants under his jacket. No mike wires. Ruby Emerald had spared no expense in equipment for her show.

“This is the day the Lord hath made, and it is BEE-YOOTIFUL!” he yelled, extending his arms toward the sky. The upbeat message
was somewhat confused by the fact that the man was weeping. At the time I just chalked his tears up to some sort of religious
fervor, an assumption that would almost immediately prove false.

At his wrists I saw white French cuffs and those lumpy gold cuff links jewelers make by melting leftover snips of gold together
in clumps. The crowd responded by yelling, “Yes!” Okay, crying older man in Blues Brothers suit and garish jewelry saying,
in essence, “It’s a nice day.” So far this didn’t even seem interesting, much less threatening.

“My name is J. R. Jones and I’m here to introduce you to the world God means you to
have
!”

“Yes!”

“To join you in singing his praise!”

“Yes!”

He was almost convulsed with grief now, eyes streaming, nose running.

“To bring to you, right out here on this stage, none other than
HIS
messenger with everything you need to know about God’s plan for
YOUR
prosperity, the Reverend… Ruby … Emerald!”

The man jogged offstage, his shoulders heaving with what appeared to be uncontrollable grief, as the crowd cheered happily.
Then the orchestra and choir lit into “Oh, Happy Day” as a woman in a pale green robe swept onstage. Multicolored pin-lights
directed at her mane of blonde curls refreshed my original impression of her as a Christmas tree angel.

“God loves you,” she said, revealing several thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontic work in a Glinda, Good Witch of the North
smile. “And God wants you to PROSPER!”

I guessed she was between forty and forty-five, from anywhere except the Deep South, and in this line of work because it beat
her last job as a receptionist for a large law firm.

As the choir hummed “Amazing Grace,” she raised her arms and began a prayer that seemed to touch on issues of concern to the
crowd.

“… lead us to Your kingdom …”

“Amen.”

“… where we enjoy the riches You have placed here for us…”

“Yes!”

“… because God’s people are His emissaries of pure joy and great prosperity …”

“AmenYesss!”

I was beginning to get the picture, and it wasn’t the one I’d expected.

“BB,” I whispered, “is this the sort of thing you usually hear at revivals? This prosperity business?”

“No, but don’t matter,” he answered. “Idea is to get folks worked up. These folks wanna get worked up over gettin’ rich instead
a gettin’ saved. Still the same. Look at ’em.”

The crowd was predominantly white, although there were noticeable groups of Latinos and Asians. All were comfortably dressed
in shorts, little denim dresses, sandals, and athletic shoes. Attractive, casual Southern California people accustomed to
fast food and the fast lane. I didn’t see anybody who looked capable of listening to Isaiah’s tale of epic destruction. They
didn’t want to hear about dead armies rotting in heaps as streams turned to pitch. They wanted to hear that God’s plan for
them included a recreational vehicle, new PC complete with Photo-Shop and digital camera, and maybe a cruise to Guam or something.
They wanted to hear that it was okay to be who they were. They wanted to hear it so much their eyes were glazing over.

After a sermon about accepting blessings, it became apparent that God would be particularly generous in the bestowing of worldly
treasures to those who signaled their interest by giving money to Ruby Emerald. As the singers and musicians performed a medley
of religious and secular numbers made popular in movies, cheerful teenagers collected checks. Apparently there was some kind
of giveaway connected to the “offering” because from time to time someone would jump up and yell, “Microwave! I won a microwave!”
or “Hey, got me a camcorder!”

“Here it come,” BB said after the collecting of money. “Gonna get down an’ dirty now.”

Even in the bright afternoon sunlight the stage became different, darker. Like the turning down of lights in a theater. You
know when that happens you’re heading into an altered state, something better than usual, more interesting. Something more
extreme
than your own life. Ruby Emerald’s head was bowed, a single white high-intensity pinlight illuminating her hair. The choir
hummed chords in C minor.

“The Lord knows you have needs,” she whispered after raising her head and flinging back her hair. “The Lord
gave
you those needs.”

“Yes.”

“So why shouldn’t you
meet
those needs and prosper?”

She was saying absolutely nothing, but the staging and music were evocative. I could feel the hair on my forearms rise as
the minor humming increased in volume. From the audience an older man stood and said something nobody could hear until out
of nowhere one of the teenagers appeared with a clip mike and power pack. After attaching these to the speaker, the smiling
boy dropped to one knee in the aisle and listened with rapt attention as the older man delivered in Shakespearian tones a
tale of accepting God and then doing really well in a real estate deal. The proceeds, carefully leveraged, had enabled him
to retire and devote himself to his ailing wife. Who had always dreamed of cruising to Mexico on their own yacht … which they’d
been able to do … before she died of whatever it was. Praise God.

Emerald solicited more testimonials, and got them. At least half were scripted and performed by professional actors, I realized.
The scripts had all been written by the same person. A person overly fond of the word “succor,” which rarely occurs in the
normal speech of anybody. The rest of the testimonials seemed real and involved less dramatic tales of success and financial
reward. Not one of the real ones included “succor” of any kind.

And every time somebody near the stage stood to speak, the same three men and two women would position themselves along the
stage apron, crouch, and watch.

“Cops,” BB said without interest.

“The children of God have a right to happiness,” Emerald insisted, pacing up and down now. “The righteous receive their reward.”

“Yes.”

The choir was loud now, the orchestra gradually joining. First the strings, then woodwinds, then brass and percussion. People
were standing, holding their arms aloft as if they expected something to drop from the sky. Emerald continued to pace and
shout, but I couldn’t hear her over the music and the crowd, who seemed to be chanting, “Manna,” over and over.

I didn’t hear the shot.

But BB did. In one motion he pulled me to the ground, stuffing my head under the seat of the folding chair in front of me.
I could hear a roar from the crowd as I hit my head on the chair seat trying to get up.

“BB, dammit!” I yelled. “We’re
supposed
to see what’s going on here. Let me go!”

“Roxie fry my oysters in hot lard, I let her lady get hurt at some honky revival,” he noted. “Look like somebody shoot the
preacher.”

“Oh, God, it’s Sword. And BB, nobody’s said ‘honky’ in at least fifteen years.”

“Jus’ stayin’ in character,” he said as he scouted the scene. “Look like they got the dude already.”

Waving my press pass with its police franking on it above my head, I made my way to the stage apron. Ruby Emerald was lying
on the boards at the edge of the portable stage, surrounded by people. To the left, one of the women cops was snapping handcuffs
on a man in a tight black suit. J. R. Jones, I remembered. The emotional emcee. He’d introduced Ruby Emerald through a flood
of tears. Beside him one of the male cops was holding a small-caliber handgun wrapped in his shirt-tail as he dropped it into
a plastic evidence bag. The smell of cordite hung in a cloud over the scene.

There was already a doctor tending Ruby Emerald, or somebody with medical training anyway, because I could see him directing
members of the choir to apply pressure to the side of Emerald’s neck as he clasped her wrist and nodded.

“Good, good,” he said in a husky voice. “Paramedics should be here any minute. There’s a hospital five minutes away. I don’t
think this is fatal if we keep the pressure on that artery.”

His crouched stance and calm attitude seemed military. But with his free hand he smoothed the hair from Emerald’s face and
tucked it in back of her ear. The gesture was loving, maternal. And revealing.

Behind Ruby Emerald’s ear and running along the base of her hairline was a fading reddish purple scar. I could see stitch
marks where the long incision had been sutured. At the ear the scar literally ran inside, vanishing into folds of cartilage.
The medical person supervising Emerald’s emergency care seemed to notice as well and ran a finger along the healing wound.

“BB, somebody’s tried to kill this woman before,” I said. “Tried to cut her head off or something. Did you see that scar?”

“Blue, you dumber than soap. Ain’t nobody try to kill you by cuttin’ the
back
of your neck. Knife just run into bone. Take a meat cleaver and a mighty strong man, get the job done. That scar ain’t from
nobody tryin’ to hurt her, no way. Too straight and clean.”

Sirens, close by. Abruptly the person supervising Emerald’s care stood and walked away, vanishing into the crowd. I hadn’t
paid much attention to him except to note that he seemed short for a man. I remembered dark glasses and a baseball cap. It
seemed strange that he’d walk off just before the paramedics arrived.

One of the female cops planted her serviceable shoes directly in my line of view and barked, ”Who are you?”

“Dr. McCarron,” I barked back, using an academic title rarely useful for more than getting a decent table in restaurants.
“The psychologist working with Wes Rathbone on the Sword of Heaven business.”

Few people understand the difference between psychology and social psychology and I didn’t see any point in confusing her.

“This is Bernard Berryman, who’s working with me,” I went on. “What happened?”

“What Sword of Heaven business, and why is Berryman in cheerleader drag?” she asked as BB shook his dreadlocks and scowled
at her.

“My associate, Dr. Bouchie, a forensic psychiatrist, and I are on your payroll as consultants,” I explained. “Somebody is
sending threats that seem to result in death. Ruby Emerald is on the list. But it looks like you’ve got our man. So who is
he?”

She looked over her shoulder at the man called J. R. Jones, who was crying again. One of the male cops was trying to take
a statement from him and getting nowhere.

“Says he’s in love with her. Says she was leaving him,” the cop explained.

“Same ole, same ole,” BB said, shaking his head. “Hard-hearted woman be the death of a softhearted man.”

“BB, it’s not the man who just got shot here,” I pointed out.

Then to the woman cop I said, “Would you radio Detective Rathbone that I’ll meet him at the station? He’ll want Dr. Bouchie
and me there for the interrogation, I’m sure.”

I wasn’t sure, but I was curious.

After calling Roxie at Auntie’s from a pay phone, I dropped BB off at his shop and headed for police headquarters. He’d had
enough of police stations, he said. On the phone Rox had confirmed what I suspected to be the usual reason for surgical scars
along ventral scalp hairlines. Rathbone was already at police headquarters when I arrived.

“This is not our man,” he said, ushering me to an interrogation room where J. R. Jones was drinking coffee from a foam cup
in the company of three detectives.

“I keep telling you I don’t know anything about swords of heaven,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

There was a smell in the room, metallic and musty at the same time. I’d noticed it before in the past. In prisons. Alleys
where drunks sleep in cardboard boxes. Nursing homes where nobody ever visits. The smell of despair. It was drifting from
J. R. Jones.

“This is Dr. Blue McCarron,” Rathbone introduced me. “She’s working with us on the Sword of Heaven situation.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” he said again. “Just leave me alone. I don’t care what you do to me. My life is over.
Just leave me alone.”

Up close I could see that his gray hair was heavily moussed and that contact lenses accounted for the startling blue of his
eyes. His jawline showed no jowls or neck paunch above the starched white of his collar, but the hand holding the coffee cup
was speckled with liver spots. J. R. Jones was a lot older than he looked.

“You must have been worried last night when Ruby was in the hospital,” I said. “If you’re not Sword, then you wouldn’t have
known what happened to her.”

“I didn’t know,” he said softly. “She was so sick, her heart pounding like a little animal’s. Like a bird. I’d kill anybody
who hurt her.”

Jones wasn’t a big man, but he took up a lot of space. Some people are like that, like what’s inside them spills over the
boundaries of their bodies. People who know too much are often like that. And people who feel too much. I pegged Jones for
category two.

“She’s a beautiful woman,” I went on. “And a charismatic messenger.”

Rathbone was watching me, signaling the other cops with an imperceptible shake of the head to stay out of it and let me run
with this.

“She’s an angel, and anyone who would harm her should be put to death,” Jones said with feeling. He seemed to have forgotten
that he’d just shot the aforementioned angel with a .22 handgun.