Hush Money (16 page)

“Thanks, guys,” I said, showing them the door. “I'll remember you both in my will.”

When I came down about an hour later, they were still there, Freeling behind the wheel of the Firebird and Gomez standing next to it. It must have been one powerful itch, because the aztec was shooting pocket pool again, but they didn't follow me when I drove out of the garage, and later when I played a little hide-and-seek on the freeways just to make sure, I didn't spot them or any of the others.

I took Twink Beydon at his word. It was, like I say, my last card, my big play for the brass ring. Even before I left the house I must've had a hunch I wouldn't be sleeping there again for a couple of nights, or forty. I figured a suitcase would be too obvious, so I packed a toothbrush in my inside jacket pocket, and I even got out my dusty old musket from the dresser and loaded her up, though later I stuck her in the glove compartment for safety's sake. And then I took a shower, a shave, said so long to myself in the bathroom mirror, and got dressed for church.

15

I think I called it “one of our less savory neighborhoods.” That must be the euphemism of the year. Oh they've put the new Convention Center down that way and called it urban renewal, but it'll take a hell of a lot more than one measly Convention Center to bring civilization, Doris Day style, back to those parts.

South San Pedro? It's warehouses and markets, and a string of Chink restaurants that look like Seoul, Korea, the morning after the earthquake. They've got rats as big as cats down there—yeah, rats, honest to God, Doris—and the freeways up above in the sky belong to another world. You go out a little further and it's spadesville, solid, where they peddle the dope in six-packs and the law drives around in bulletproof vests shooting at anything that moves. And after that, it's Watts. At night down there you can feel Crime roaming the streets, with bloodshot eyes and a shiv up his sleeve and a sweet hip way of talking that makes your blood run cold, and even on a Sunday afternoon in May you keep your windows rolled up and your doors locked.

A nice place to raise the family.

Five o'clock came and went and so did six. All this is for you, Twink baby, I said in my mind, but the dusty laugh which came back was my own. The bridges were burned all right, and I had an image of Gomez swimming the moat, tugging a pack of crocodiles behind him on leashes.

The address I wanted belonged to a warehouse which looked like it hadn't been used since they switched over to round wheels. It was locked up tight. The street, like all the surrounding streets, was deserted, and the windows, such as they were, were either boarded over or black-painted. There weren't any signs except for some graffiti in chalk, the most printable of which was “Louis sucks,” and even allowing for his proverbial humility, it was tough to imagine Mr. Christ picking it out as the place to make a comeback.

I drove around it, stopped, and drove around it some more. Once I drove downtown, just to make sure downtown was still there. I had a couple of Chivas in the Biltmore bar, which was about as deadly as you'd expect on a Sunday afternoon, and then I went back. Still nothing. I thought of calling George S. Curie Ill's office to find out if a guy named Cage had showed up yet, then thought better of it. I thought maybe Christ had changed his mind, which was another thought I didn't like to think about. Finally I said the hell with it, pulled my stomach together and drove around to one of the Chink joints on San Pedro.

About six of the natives were at the counter, three on either side, watching the tong wars on a TV set which Chiang must have taken with him when he blew the mainland. The three on my side were eating, and I figured if they could take it so could I. I slid into a booth, tucked my pigtail under a bib and dug into a bowl of seaweed soup, with a side of fortune cookies. Strange as it may sound, I even had seconds on the Moo Goo Gai Pan, and stranger still the whole mess stayed down.

It was dark when I went back again, and for a minute I thought I'd taken the wrong street. Either that or I was late for church. There wasn't a parking space the length of the block, and they were big cars too, Buicks and Mercs, with a dash of foreign, what you'd expect maybe in a Baptist parking lot on Sunday morning, but off South San Pedro? I had to turn the corner and go almost to the next one before I found a slot for the Mustang, and then I walked back behind a squat little guy in a business suit and mustache who looked like he might have hustled clothes over on Westwood Boulevard.

I followed him to the warehouse door, which had only a single light behind it in a kind of entryway, then another door, and blocking it was a tall blond kid, Andy Ford style but bigger, and barefooted, and he was wearing one of those long rough brown robes of the model St. Francis introduced way back when. The coat-and-suit merchant in front of me had his wallet out, and I saw a fifty-dollar bill go from his hand to the kid's to a money box on top of a wood table, and there wasn't any change coming back. Then the kid stood by to let him through and it was my turn.

I could hear the music through the door and some other people coming in behind me.

“You wouldn't by any chance take a credit card?” I said.

“Sure will, brother,” said the blond kid. “Anything you've got, BankAmericard, Master Charge …”

I guess I was too surprised to do anything but fish mine out of my wallet and sign the chit when he'd run it through his machine. Things sure had changed since we used to pass the collection plate back home.

My contribution was also for fifty dollars.

“I hope it's worth it,” I said to the blond kid.

“There aren't too many who go away disappointed, Brother Cage,” he said to me, handing me back my card and turning to the customers behind me.

I went through the door and into a well-lit vestibule with white partitioned walls. The music was coming from beyond the walls, an organ and a choir, or maybe the audience singing, and from what I could see, it may not have been St. Peter's in Rome but it wasn't any old warehouse either. A light show was playing on the ceiling, a row of spots focused on the altar and the stained glass behind it, but where the congregation knelt was pitch dark. I smelled a strong musky incense, more Indian than Catholic, and then a gust of perfume, and a voice was saying in my ear:

“This way, Brother. This way.”

She was a big broad-shouldered number, almost as tall as I was, with short auburn hair that frothed about her face. She wore a white robe that gathered high under the neck with a clasp and a sash around her waist and ended at her bare feet. A white hood fell back off her head and her eyes had a gray-green cast and the white-toothed smile that came with the perfume made my knees wobble.

“I'm Sister Jan,” she said gaily, taking me by the arm. “I'm your sister for this evening.”

“But what about the service?” I said. “I …”

“We won't miss a thing, Brother,” she said, flashing the smile again, “not a thing. I promise.”

She led me down the vestibule into another room divided into stalls. I went along, thinking sex and God, God and sex, but not very hard. I glimpsed the coat-and-suit man being helped out of his suit by another sister, and not just his suit, and then Sister Jan did the same with me right down to my shoelaces. From somewhere she produced one of the hooded St. Francis jobs and draped it around me, tying the tie around my waist like a bathrobe.

The cloth was rough to the skin. I guess it was supposed to be.

“Why don't we just forget about the service, Sister Jan,” I said vaguely, and she laughed, dipping her hair in my eyes so that the perfume half-blinded me, saying huskily, “Oh come on now, the others are waiting for us,” or some such, the words no longer mattered very much, and back we went into the vestibule and around one end of the white partition, and she led me by the hand into church.

It was dark like I said, except for the colored lights on the ceiling and the spots on the altar, where a life-sized Christ was spreadeagled on a white cross. All I could make out following her down the aisle were the humpy masses of the faithful, but later when my eyes adjusted I saw brothers and sisters kneeling in couples on the floor, and all the brothers wore brown robes, the sisters white, and which were guests and which not I've no idea, except that some of the sisters looked twice as old as some of the brothers, and vice versa. There was sand scattered all over the floor, but it only hurt your knees a little while. The faithful were singing, and the incense so strong it blew down your pipes and out the other end, and the organ, which had to have been a tape amplified a thousand times, caromed off the lighted ceiling, the walls, and all but lifted your voice out of you.

“Sing along,” Sister Jan whispered to me, squeezing my hand, “sing along, Brother.” So I sang, and she never let go my hand while we knelt near the back. Others came in behind us, shadowy in their robes, kneeling and singing, until the music stopped with a gigantic organ chord rolling out of the L.A. hills, loud enough to bring down Jericho by itself, and another tall blond brother stood up in his Franciscan robe before the altar, extending his arms up and forward over the congregation, saying: “Would all you Sisters in Jesus please come forward now?”

It was Christian all right. It was also pagan, and aborigine, and turned inside out and unscrewed at the bellybutton. It was tactile and visual and processional. It was taste, sound and smell—a regular sensual catastrophe and all of it Jesus. The weirdest part—and a tribute to whatever mad freaked-out mentality had concocted it—was that if it was cockeyed at first, then it wasn't half so cockeyed only a little.

And then not at all.

It made perfect sense all right.

First the Sisters in Jesus went forward. Sister Jan went forward in a long shadowy swirl of white. She joined the line in front of the altar. Another brother stood beside the altar, a silver bowl in his hands. One by one the sisters knelt and kissed the Lord Jesus chastely. Then one by one the sisters took two of the wafers of Jesus from the silver bowl. Then Sister Jan came back to her brother with the two wafers of Jesus, and kneeling in the sand before him fed one to his tongue and the other to her own, and sealed their delivery with her lips. Then Sister Jan knelt in the sand beside Brother Cage, squeezing his hand, and together they bowed their heads to the prayer of Brother Philip, a prayer that made no sense at first but then began to make perfect sense, a prayer of thanksgiving to the Fairest Lord Jesus, hosannah, a prayer of union for the souls and bodies of the Brothers and Sisters of the Fairest Lord Jesus, hosannah, a prayer for the Fairest Lord Jesus to make His face shine upon their Adoration of His whole Body, hosannah, a prayer for Brother Pablo in his ministry this evening over the faithful community of the Fairest Lord Jesus, hosannah, a prayer for joy and singing, hosannah, a prayer for hope and love, hosannah, a prayer for understanding and community and the giving of each sister to her brother and each brother to his sister, hosannah, hosannah, amen.

All this, as I say, began to make perfect sense, and so it did for all the congregation to stand for Brother Pablo and to kneel again, and for Brother Pablo to be a little brother in the brown Franciscan robe with the light glancing off his specs like hailstones banging off the windowpanes, and for Brother Pablo to take his specs off while he preached and let his eyes shine out darkly over the congregation, preaching in a voice which wasn't loud or soft but so slowly you could watch the words coming out of his mouth in waves. Slow lazy word waves danced over the flower people, up one row and down the other until they got to Sister Jan and Brother Cage, in their ears and down into their bellies and making Brother Cage so light before they went back out the other ear all he had to do to fly was lift his arms, just like Brother Pablo lifted his arms over the heads of the flower people like wings. And the incense wafted through his wings and glided him into the air like a feather. And he circled like a kindly bird, waiting for the flower people to join him which they did, riding on his tail in a swarm of brown and white wings. And Sister Jan went with them up above the multicolored sky across the carpet of L.A. all the way to the sea, then curving on the curve of the hills, making the lazy rim of the great gray bowl in the sea of darkness, Santa Monica, Hollywood, Griffith Park, Elysian Park, dropping powder as they went, silver and gold, which scoured the sky and washed it clean and fell like snow on the good people of Los Angeles huddled in their homes where it never snows.

All this, as I say, began to make perfect sense. And it made perfect sense for Brother Cage not to fly, shivering in the brown robe and feeling his stomach start to twist and churn because he couldn't. And for them to come back down through the multicolored sky looking for him because they'd missed him. And to find him shaking like a leaf in a crosswind because he couldn't fly. And for the four-eyed Brother Pablo to say:

“Come on, Brother! All you have to do is fly!”

And for Brother Cage's teeth to chatter, and for him to answer:

“I can't fly.”

And for the four-eyed Brother Pablo to say:

“We can't wait much longer, Brother. It's now or never.”

And for Brother Cage to answer in a whining voice that wasn't even his own:

“I can't. I don't know how,” feeling the empty yawning gulfing pace where his stomach used to be.

“Sister Jan will show you how.”

And for Brother Cage to answer:

“Sister Jan isn't here,” and looking up, to see Sister Jan smiling down at him behind Brother Pablo, a long way off but so close he could reach out and touch her. And looking up, to see Brother Pablo's Chink and Drummer eyes staring down at him, bulging out of their sockets like twin brown oranges, and the fingers drumming patiently, impatiently. And hearing the drumming fingers like paint dripping on the roof of his head, for Brother Cage to squint his eyes and start to cry, hot like a baby, the tears oozing out like Mel Tormé singing “Blues in the Night,” and the cold empty place once they'd gone. Until a few thousand years later Sister Jan brushed the wet from his face and took his whole ear into her mouth, whispering: