Holy Rollers (5 page)

“
Mr.
Merribaugh,” Hurley said abruptly, half rising from his chair and stopping Merribaugh in mid-sentence, his mouth still open. It was never a good sign when Hurley called him “Mr. Merribaugh”; they’d been partners too long for that formality. “I hope I don’t have to remind you that this conference was
your
idea.”

“No, Oscar, you don’t have to…”

Hurley leaned back against his chair, not quite sitting. “And you can imagine how embarrassing it would be to the Virginia Cathedral of Love if it failed.”

“Yes, Oscar, I know it would be…”

“So
don’t fail
.” Hurley dropped back into his chair—it groaned again—and began drumming his fingers on the Desk of Christ as he stared at his second-in-command.

“I won’t, Oscar.”

After a few seconds—seconds that felt like hours to Merribaugh—Hurley ran one hand through his silver pompadour. “Okay, it sounds like I’d better make July ‘Sodomy is Sin’ month. I just hope the congregation doesn’t get bored.”

With an audible sigh of relief, Merribaugh held the sheet of paper aloft. “They never seem to get bored with the gay issue. Ninety to ninety-four percent. The numbers are strong, but you can also see it in their faces. Adults even bring along their impressionable young children to hear your moral message! Gay marriage…gays in the military…gay pride marches with bare-breasted lesbians and men in skimpy thongs having sex right out on the street where
decent
people and children can see it…Our congregation will
never
accept that sin!”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Hurley. “Of course, I said the same thing about Congress just a few years ago, and now look what’s happening.”

Merribaugh bravely ventured to correct Hurley. “
Was
happening. I think we’ve got that under control now.”

Hurley sniffed. “I don’t trust any of them. Not a one.”

“The issue is still a winner. It still trends strongly. And the Project Rectitude conference…”

“We’ll discuss the Project Rectitude conference later.” There was finality in Hurley’s voice. “When your trickle of applications has finally become that flood you anticipate, I’ll be happy to talk about the details.”

“But—”

“Dennis,
please
!” Hurley saw the chastised look on his second-in-command’s face, and for a moment, remembered to love his neighbor. Especially his neighbor who knew, figuratively, where the bodies were buried. “I’ll tell you what; I’ll talk about it during my sermon on Sunday. Send me an e-mail with a few details and maybe I’ll be able to drum up some business for you.”

“Yes, Oscar.” Merribaugh didn’t like Hurley’s dismissive attitude but knew he’d come around. Eventually. Hopefully.

Hurley leaned back and tented his fingers again. “Speaking of the Sodomites, we have a more important item to address.”

“We do?”

“Leonard Platt.”

“Addressed. One hundred percent addressed.” Merribaugh chuckled. “We’ll never hear from Leonard again. I’ve taken care of that.”

“I hope you’re right, Dennis. But it still concerns me that he knows…some things I’d rather he not know.”

“You mean the existence of the safe.”

“I mean the existence of the
contents
of the safe.”

Both men vividly remembered the day they’d found Leonard Platt standing behind a file cabinet moments after they’d been throwing numbers like seven million dollars around. It hadn’t been their best moment…although it had been worse for Leonard. He hadn’t known it, but that marked the beginning of the end for him. Discovering he was a homosexual was a fortunate accident; they would have found some other reason to fire him—embezzlement would be easy to cook up—soon enough.

Merribaugh bounced the manila folder on his lap. “Leonard Platt really doesn’t concern me.” When Hurley started to object, he kept talking. “Leonard’s been fired, and Cathedral security is under strict orders not to let him back on the grounds. I suppose he could go to the authorities, but then what? Who will take the word of a disgruntled, fired employee—a
homosexual
disgruntled, fired employee—over the founder and the chief operating officer of one of the nation’s largest churches?” He smiled. “In any event, the contents of the safe can always be easily explained.”

Hurley nodded silently. “It still makes me very uncomfortable. I don’t trust Platt. Not one bit.”

Merribaugh tried to be reassuring. “Don’t concern yourself with him, Oscar. I’ll take care of whatever needs to be taken care of.”

Past that topic, Hurley returned to a related concern. “There’s another thing we need to focus on. Now that Leonard Platt is no longer with us, we need a new bookkeeper.”

“I’m sure we can find volunteers from the congregation to help us out. At least in the short term. As far as a permanent replacement, well…you know that will be difficult. We can’t hire just anyone.”

“Agreed.” Hurley laid his palms flat on the Desk of Christ. “We’ve already made the mistake of hiring the
wrong
person.”

Merribaugh fidgeted on the couch. “In fairness to Leonard, he was a good bookkeeper. Hardworking, honest…”

“Nosy.”

Merribaugh nodded. “Too bad he turned out to be a Sodomite.”

“You hired him, Dennis.”

“I did, Oscar.” He leaned forward. “
And
I fired him.”

Hurley couldn’t argue with that. And it wasn’t really Dennis Merribaugh’s fault that Leonard Platt was discovered to be a snoop and a Sodomite. It was just…sad. And it left a huge hole in the Cathedral’s finance office. After all these years, Hurley didn’t want to become a micromanager again, but…

“And you’re sure that these church ladies you bring in—for the short term—will be up to the job? I don’t have to remind you this is a complex organization.”

“They’ll be up to the job,” said Merribaugh. “I’m sure we’ll have someone in place by the end of the month, and the summer is usually quiet. All they’ll have to do is handle some data entry and cut a few checks.
I
will take care of the cash.”

Hurley smiled at Merribaugh, who sensed the smile was more a display of iron will than agreement and reassurance.

“
We
will take care of the cash, Dennis.
We
.”

$ $ $

Despite his position as chief operating officer of the Virginia Cathedral of Love, the Rev. Mr. Dennis Merribaugh’s office was significantly less glamorous than that of Dr. Oscar Hurley. Both men were headquartered in a four-story former plantation house, now a warren of offices and conference rooms, known as Cathedral House. It was located a quarter mile up the road from the actual cathedral, but Hurley’s 750-square-foot workplace—with its accompanying reception area, wardrobe, full bath, and powder room, not to mention the security office just down the hall—took up a large part of the second floor at the top of a twin set of sweeping staircases framing the entryway.

Merribaugh’s workmanlike corner office was tucked up on the fourth floor, with the other administrative offices. A calendar and a dry-erase board—not expensive tapestries—decorated the walls. Heat was provided by a temperamental radiator, not a grand fireplace. The only celebrity photo was a cheaply framed picture of Merribaugh with Victoria Jackson watching over the office from atop a metal filing cabinet. Two threadbare chairs stood in for Hurley’s three couches. And there was no seal on the navy blue throw rug he’d purchased for $12.99 at Walmart.

And, of course, he only had a standard-issue desk of indeterminate wood veneer. It was decidedly
not
the Desk of Christ.

Still, it was comfortable and large enough, and the windows overlooked the side of the cathedral where architects had somehow managed to install five-story reinforced stained-glass panels across most of the length, width, and height of the church, breaking the effect only at evenly spaced intervals to allow for load-bearing columns. When the morning and early afternoon sun hit the stained glass, the beauty could take Merribaugh’s breath away. He’d even shed a few tears on occasion.

Spreading out from the rear of the cathedral was Dr. Oscar Hurley’s latest pet project, an addition that, in Merribaugh’s opinion, added nothing to the aesthetics of the cathedral. The new auditorium wasn’t ugly, exactly, but it also didn’t quite mesh with its surroundings. The squat two-story building—with a seating capacity of three thousand people and twelve concession stands—didn’t detract much from the grand cathedral, since half the ground floor burrowed into the hillside, but it also didn’t complement it. Although to be fair, at certain times of day the auditorium’s skylights picked up reflections of the stained glass, rendering it simply beautiful.

Merribaugh’s office also had a view of the church’s claim to fame: the Great Cross towering 199 feet above the grounds…although, come to think of it, most other people in this part of Loudoun County had that view. That
was
the point of having a 199-foot cross piercing the sky, after all.

The Rev. Dennis Merribaugh had certainly had his cynical moments over recent years—darkly cynical, more often than not—but when entering his office and looking at his view, he was almost always filled with the power of God. Those massive stained-glass works of art…the Great Cross…no matter what he had just done, he always felt a moment of redemption and joy.

But not on this day.

On this day, he walked into his office and booted up the computer without even glancing out the window. The old Dell slowly came to life, and he clicked on a desktop icon labeled “Project Rectitude,” then clicked again and waited—again, interminably—for a spreadsheet to open.

Finally it displayed the names and addresses of fourteen men and two women, the only people who had registered to date for Beyond Sin, the conference he’d scheduled for the beginning of the following month. Just weeks in the future…it might as well be tomorrow.

Hurley had been right: Project Rectitude was Merribaugh’s baby. If it failed, Merribaugh would have to face the consequences.

It had seemed like a no-brainer for a mega-church like the Virginia Cathedral of Love to host an ex-gay ministry, so Merribaugh had fought for it, and finally Hurley acquiesced. True, Project Rectitude hadn’t cost much money over its first few years—a few dollars here and there for soft drinks and doughnuts, mostly—but now that he’d taken the next step and moved forward with the Beyond Sin conference, tens of thousands of dollars—maybe more; maybe
a lot
more—were on the line.

Not to mention the potentially damaged reputations of Project Rectitude, the Moral Families Coalition, and the Virginia Cathedral of Love. That cost would come without a price tag.

And all Dennis Merribaugh had to show for it were sixteen names.

Sixteen names, when two hundred was the break-even minimum.

Fortunately, Dr. Oscar Hurley had not asked to see the report he’d held in his sweaty hands fifteen minutes earlier…the report that said, more or less, that the parishioners of the Virginia Cathedral of Love thought the gay issue was increasingly a big yawn. Hurley had been only too willing to believe Merribaugh when he told him the issue still trended as a hot topic, which—like his antipathy over Project Rectitude and Beyond Sin—had more to do with Hurley’s dislike of the very
thought
of homosexuality than with anything concrete.

The numbers—absent Hurley’s prejudices—didn’t lie.

Happily, Hurley’s prejudices outweighed mere statistics when it came to guiding the ministry.

And at least that bought Dennis Merribaugh a little breathing room. And a little more time to bring in the two hundred people he’d originally promised Hurley for Beyond Sin.

“So this is beautiful Northern Virginia,” muttered Grant, sitting in the front passenger seat as their car idled at a red light outside the sixth strip mall they’d come across in the past two miles.

“This is it,” Farraday confirmed, sitting behind the wheel of the dark blue—almost purple, in the wrong light—Mercury Mystique he’d stolen five hours earlier from a Manhattan side street near the Holland Tunnel. As he waited for the light, he half turned toward Leonard, sitting behind him in the backseat. “This is where we want to be, right?”

“Right. The Cathedral is just a few miles down the road.”

Grant drummed his fingers impatiently on the armrest. “Just drive past ten more Walmarts and Home Depots and we should be there.”

But he was wrong. When traffic finally broke, the Mercury passed through the end of the commercial sprawl and they were soon traveling a few miles per hour over the speed limit toward the Virginia Cathedral of Love. Minutes later, Leonard leaned forward and pointed through the windshield.

“See the cross?” Grant, Farraday, and Chase looked out to the horizon and saw it towering over green hills pockmarked with signs announcing future development. “That’s the cathedral.”

Another several minutes passed, and Farraday was cruising down Cathedral Boulevard in Nash Bog, slowing almost imperceptibly as they passed the entrance to the Virginia Cathedral of Love. A signal light had been placed on the boulevard where it intersected with the six-lane road leading into and out of the grounds, indicating cathedral traffic needed some management. As the car rode over a shadow of the cross cast on the asphalt, Chase reflexively blessed himself, a learned habit he’d never quite been able to
un
learn.