Ring Game (52 page)

“Truth is, I’m hoping I never run into him.”

“Really? Maybe find him standing on the edge of a cliff or something so you can give him a little nudge? You don’t think about stuff like that?”

Crow said, “You want to know what I really think?”

Bigg grunted.

“I think we both ran into bad weather. We’re both lucky we didn’t get killed. I figure, why fight the wind?” Crow stood up, pulled a plate off the bar, racked it. “You’ve got a business here, something to do when you get out. Reckless endangerment? What’s that? It’s like accidentally backing over your brother-in-law with a lawnmower. You’ll be out in thirty-six months.” He pulled a plate off the other end of the bar. “Hire somebody to run the place for you.”

Bigg said, “How about you?”

Crow managed not to drop the plate on his foot. “No thanks.” He racked the plate. “I don’t want to work for anybody except me.”

“That’s what I’m, talking about, Crow. Buy the place off me. Wouldn’t you like your own business? Be your own boss?”

“No thanks.”

“Think about it. A young guy like you, lots of piss and vinegar, you could make some money here. Give those assholes at Bally a run for their money. What are you? Thirty-seven? Eight?”

“Thirty-five.”

“That’s a good age. I could finance part of it for you. You come up with, say, thirty thousand against a purchase price of two-twenty, pay me a couple thousand a month, you’d own it free and clear in a few years. Think about it.”

Crow said, “I don’t have to think about it. I’m not interested.”

Bigg shrugged. “Maybe I’ll sell it to Beaut. Of course, you realize that your membership deal won’t transfer.”

“Oh?” Crow looked around. “That’s fine by me. The place is going to hell. I was thinking about joining the Y anyway.”

To celebrate Carmen’s homecoming, Axel had invited Crow, Debrowski, and Sam over for Conitas. On their way to pick up Sam, Crow told Debrowski about Bigg trying to sell him the gym. Laughing at the idea as he told the story. Debrowski said, “Do you want to run a gym?” Crow wasn’t sure how to answer that. He said, after a driving a few blocks, “What difference does it make? I’m not going to buy it.”

“Why not?”

“No money.”

Debrowski nodded. “So what the hell is a ‘Conita’?” she asked.

Carmen seemed, for Carmen, unnaturally chipper after her stay in the hospital. She sat on the deck railing, chattering away about meeting Wayne Savage, telling Crow and Sophie all about the character he played on his soap opera, Johnny DeMars. She said she was going to send him a letter. Then she shifted topics, talking about a pair of shoes she’d seen at Dayton’s. The effect was somewhat unnerving—instead of her usual sleepy, bored, mildly surly self, she had become suddenly interested in the world around her, even going so far as to suggest setting up the volleyball net.

“The doctor said you should take it easy for a few more days,” Sophie said from the aluminum and plastic chaise lounge. “You just had a miscarriage.” She took a sip of her wine. “Besides, I don’t have a volleyball net.”

“Oh.” Carmen’s lower lip popped out, and her eyes went dead, recalling her more familiar self, then she brightened. “Let’s buy one!”

Moments later the phone rang. Debrowski answered, then called to Carmen. “It’s for you, Carmen. Somebody named Drew Chance.” Carmen ran inside.

Crow checked the coals in the Weber and adjusted the vents. Sophie watched him. She lit a cigarette.

She said, “I wonder how long it’ll last.”

“What’s that?”

“Carmen being in a good mood.”

“It’s sure different,” said Crow.

“You know what she needs? She needs to get married. I mean for real. To some nice guy. One of those doctors.”

“I’m sure she’ll find somebody.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Sophie climbed to her feet and disappeared inside. Moments later Axel came out carrying a platter loaded with strips of marinated beef and chicken.

“Where’s Sam?”

“He’s out back doing something to my car. Said it didn’t sound quite right on the way over.”

Axel began arranging the strips of meat on the hot grill. “Your old man, he’s one of a kind.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You got some of it too, Joe. You know, I maybe never thanked you proper for saving Carmen’s life. She’d be dead now if you hadn’t made that phone call.”

“I just dialed a number. I didn’t know Carmen was going to answer.”

“I still appreciate it.” He gave Crow a searching look. “You know, Joe, I’ve got a little money socked away. I’m looking to invest a chunk of it.”

“Oh? Like in what, stocks? I know a stockbroker you should avoid.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of putting it into a business. You know. Something small, but with good management and lots of potential. Maybe a health club, something like that. What do you think?”

The first official gathering of the New Amaranthine Church was held in the basement of a Unitarian Church in Richfield.

Benjy Hiss had spent much of the previous week phoning the Faithful, trying to convince them that just because the former leaders of the ACO had been exposed as frauds, the core values and beliefs of the church remained alive in the hearts and souls of its immortal members. The fact that the physical assets of the church had been seized by the government in no way lessened the truth of the Amaranthine teachings. Most of the Faithful listened, but it was no sure thing that any of them would actually show up. Many were concerned about the lack of leadership.

“That is why we are meeting,” he told them. “The torch has been passed. Polyhymnia DeSimone and Rupert Chandra violated the Amaranthine Principles. Others have stepped forward to take their places. As for the buildings—what are they? Bricks and mortar.”

It turned out he had nothing to worry about. The Faithful had come. The small room was packed. Benjy greeted them, and when everyone was seated he told the gathering of that fateful afternoon at ACO World Headquarters when a madman with a gun had broken in and fired a .357 slug through Charles Thickening’s stomach and into his spine. Most of them had heard or read about the shooting, but Benjy’s firsthand account proved riveting, particularly the part where the doctor said that Chuckles would never again walk, speak, or feed himself.

“My friends,” said Benjy Hiss, “in that moment I felt as though my world had ended. Just that morning I had learned that we had all been betrayed by the Elders—and then to hear this pronouncement of doom on my dear friend Chuckles. I confess to you, the faith left me. I could have embraced death in that moment, and I might have were it not for Flowrean Peeche. She saw my distress, and she laid one hand upon my wrist and she said to me, ‘Be there.’ In that moment, I felt her power enter my cells.”

Chuckles, who was standing outside the room with Flowrean, said, “Damn! He good!” Chuckles wore a white on white suit with a tie the color of blood. Something to remind them of his ordeal.

“He should be,” Flo said. “We’ve been working on it all week.” Flo, they had decided, should stay with her techno-Amazon look, only in copper. Even her nails were clad in copper foil.

Benjy continued: “And then she led me to Chuckles’s side and she laid her hands upon him, and I saw, with my own eyes, I saw the color of his skin change. I saw his eyes open. I called for the doctor, and when the doctor arrived at his bedside Chuckles lifted his hand, and he opened his mouth and he spoke. He said, ‘Believe.’”

Chuckles sat down in the wheelchair and said, “Let’s go get ’em, sister.”

Flo released the brake and wheeled him into the room and up the aisle to the front. She turned his chair to face the audience. Chuckles waited for the gasps and whispers to subside. He began to speak in his low, confident voice. He spoke for nearly an hour without stopping, though it was clear within the first few minutes that he had grasped the mantle of leadership. He had been accepted. Chuckles had planned to stand up at the end of his talk, to give them a miracle by which to remember that great day, but the Faithful were already so enthralled by their new leadership that it hardly seemed necessary. He decided to save that move for later.

“Each of us was placed upon this earth for a reason. Some of us came to till the soil, some came to create works of art. Some came to wage war, others to make peace, still others came to make children. More often than not, our purpose in this life remains veiled. Some of us fulfill our roles early on, others go on for many years doing nothing but filling privies. But fulfill our purpose we do, each and every one of us, whether we know it or not.

“And once we have done what we were sent here to do, we die.” Rupeek Chandarama pressed his palms together and smiled. “But not before.” Beads of moisture formed on his pale forehead, dancing in the flickering candlelight.

“Forty-two days ago, I died. My heart stopped beating. I was dead for seven minutes and twenty-six seconds. For seven minutes and twenty-six seconds I was in the light.”

Tears mounted his eyelids and spilled one at a time down his gaunt cheeks. He separated his hands and displayed pierced palms, now slick with blood. A young woman in the audience moaned; her eyes rolled up and her head flopped back. Apollonia Desiree rushed forward from the back of the small room and helped the woman lie down on the floor. The other Seekers—there were twelve of them this week—ignored the prone woman. Their attention remained riveted to the man sitting lotus-fashion on the low dais.

“I came back,” said Chandarama. “Against my will. I was drawn from the light as a child is wrenched from his mother’s womb. I was forced to return to this world for one reason only. I came back to fulfill my purpose, to tell you of the light. To share the joy of passage, to celebrate the inevitable transition between this world of discord and chaos and the next world, the world of freedom and light. And only when I have reached enough of you, only then will I be permitted to make my own passage. I pray to be taken soon.” A man in the audience cried out, “No, Chandarama!” Chandarama smiled. “You must accept what is to become. As it is written in the Thanatonic Coda: To live, one must be willing to die.”

Never bet against yourself.

—Crow’s rules

T
HE TV ROOM IN
the Hennepin County Correctional Facility, like every other area of the prison, had both written and unwritten rules by which it operated. Hyatt did not know how the television channel was selected, nor how it was decided who was permitted to sit in the chairs and who had to stand—as he always ended up doing—at the back of the room, leaning uncomfortably against the wall in his blue on blue two-piece ensemble, four inches of ankle showing between the tops of his canvas shoes—also blue—and the hem of his trousers. Today they were watching
Wheel of Fortune
. Every few minutes some literate type would shout out the puzzle solution, but most of the talk had to do with Vanna White’s long white legs.

Hyatt wasn’t taking in much. Mostly he saw a roomful of blue poly-cotton shirts with “HCCF” stenciled across the back. He didn’t care about Vanna White; the show going on inside his head absorbed most of his attention, even though it was another rerun of his star-crossed wedding day. Unbelievable, really, how many things had gone wrong, and none of them his fault. It was the same old story. You just couldn’t count on anybody. Carmen, Chip, Andy Greenblatt—every one of them had failed to do their part. It was almost as if it had all been a conspiracy to destroy him. It wasn’t fair. If everybody had done their part, he’d be on TV instead of watching it.

For no apparent reason, one of the guards walked over to the TV and switched the channel, producing a low muttering that lasted only a moment. Complaints would quickly result in a blank screen, so vocalization was kept to a minimum. It didn’t matter to Hyatt. He figured he’d be out in a few weeks. The charges were bullshit. He hadn’t done anything wrong, an important fact that would doubtless come out during his hearing, even with that pissant public defender talking. He hadn’t been the one to steal the limo. Chip had done that. And as far as the assault charges, that had been consensual. Carmen had been in on it since the beginning. Besides, she would never let those charges stand. She loved him. He was surprised she hadn’t already recanted.

What else did they have on him? Chuckles had reported him for shooting his vette. They called that reckless something-or-other, but it was clearly self-defense. Other than that, nothing. Worst case, he’d be out in a month.

An image on the TV caught Hyatt’s attention. Drew Chance, looking right at him, talking.

“A few weeks ago, this young woman—” A photo of Carmen. “—was on her way to the altar with her fiancé when, out of the blue, the young couple was kidnapped and driven nearly a hundred miles to a small church in a remote area. The fiancé was not harmed, but the young woman was subjected to a strange and bizarre bloodletting ritual.

“When she was finally found in the middle of a cornfield, near death from loss of blood, many questions remained unanswered. The police claimed the kidnapping was bogus, a staged event. The fiancé insisted that they were the victims of a strange cult. But why was her blood drained, and by whom? Why was this young woman chosen, and how was the kidnapping—bogus or not—engineered? Was this the work of vampires? Chupacabra? The Red Cross?

“Today we have in our studios Miss Carmen Roman, the kidnapping victim herself who, in this exclusive interview, will tell us for the first time the astonishing true nature of this crime. She will reveal that what the police called a
bogus
kidnapping was in fact a
real
kidnapping. But it was not some strange cult. No, as is often the case in crimes of passion, it was someone very close to her.”

Drew’s face was replaced by a headline:

MY FIANCé, THE VAMPIRE

Drew reappeared, the camera backed off to reveal Carmen—looking very schoolgirlish with her hair tied back in a ponytail and a fuzzy white sweater—sitting beside him, smiling into the camera as if she
knew
he was watching. Hyatt let himself slide slowly down the wall, his loose shirt riding up, bunching under his armpits. He wrapped his arms around his long white shins and rested his chin on his knees. He couldn’t see the television from that position. He took a deep breath and held it until her words became mush in his ears.