Salvation Boulevard (43 page)

That should be a simple question, right?

 

Lawyers are not permitted in the grand jury room. Max is sitting on the bench with me, to my right.

Then Manny sits down on my left. We look at each other. It bothers me that I still haven't gotten Ahmad Nazami out. “The good news,” I say, to tell him something, “is I got the report from the lab this morning. The prints from that vial of pills are a match for the ones I got from MacLeod's computer. Plowright was there.”

“You already told me that,” Max says.

“You do good work,” Manny says.

“I don't know what's gonna happen here,” I say. “Do you?”

“It's gonna work out,” Max says.

But he doesn't really know. None of us can know what's coming up around the next corner. So I look to Manny. If he isn't just a figment of my imagination, maybe he can access that kind of information.

“What that grand jury does in there,” Manny says, “that's about them. Not about you.”

“Yeah, right,” I say.

“What? If they indict you, will that make you think you did the wrong thing?” Manny asks.

“No,” I say.

Max says, “Take it easy. Relax.”

I stand up to ease the tension and walk down the hall to stretch my legs. Max lets me go. Manny comes with me.

“We will get Ahmad out,” I say to him.

“I know.”

“He's pretty damn lucky to have had you, and now Max,” I say.

“And you,” Manny says. “How are you holding up?”

“Tell you the truth, not so good. Gwen and I aren't going to make it. That can't be good for Angie, so I screwed that up too. Here I am, wondering if I'm going to get indicted, then face a trial. We've been through a lot of trials together, you and I, and we do our professional thing and pretend that the client is just a client, a thing, someone in a role, but we know the kind of hell that puts you through. Worse if you're innocent.”

I remember that to anyone else it will appear as if I am talking to myself. I look around to see if anyone is watching. We are down at the east end of the corridor, over by the stairs that go down to the holding cells. There is no one immediately nearby. Then I look down the long, long hall, with its high vaulted ceiling, shining marble walls, and bronze busts of heroes of the state and of justice set in niches in the walls. It seems to go forever. The old-time chandeliers no longer work, waiting for some time in the future when the legislature might vote
the funds for renovation. In search of a discount solution, someone installed mercury vapor lamps. They produce a light that is jagged rather than smooth across the color spectrum, with phosphorescence and strange sodium yellows. Now it seems to shimmer and even shake.

I feel hot, then chilled, and I break out into a cold sweat. The floor seems to be crumbling in the distance, more and more of it falling away, the collapse moving slowly toward me. There is no sound. I know it is a hallucination of some kind. I don't doubt that. But I can't stop it either. There are figures down there, in the rubble. I can't make out their faces. Most of them are going about their own business, but some look up at us. The bronze busts seem to lean inward, as if they are trying to come alive and escape from the places where they've been fixed in time.

Stress. Exhaustion. Fear. It's all catching up with me. I've lost everything that I thought made order and meaning out of my life, and now I am watching the physical world crumble around me as well. I am staring into the abyss. I am seeing the chaos that's right out there, beneath and around everything. More figures are gathering down in the hole where the floor used to be, the legions of the lost and the mad. I feel dizzy. I am terrified that I'm losing my mind and think I might faint or fall to my knees in tears.

Then Manny puts his hand on my shoulder, like he used to do sometimes. I feel the weight and the warmth of it, just as if he were real. And it steadies me.

He stands there beside me, a figure from a distant legend told by Herodotus, the ghost of a comrade who's fallen in the battle that still clashes around me. The two of us together, standing at the edge of the abyss. As every one of us does.

We stand straight, eyes forward. We are fighting to hold back the chaos. To do it, we've brought what weapons we could, those special human ones, rationality, justice, a knowledge of right and wrong. Even those things that might be called vanities, a craving for honor and glory. He lets me know, wordlessly, through his presence and posture and the testimony of his life, that whether or not this particular battle
is lost or won, there will be others, for the chaos always remains, and no matter how many battles we might win, the last one remains, the one in which we die. His steady hand and his set face tell me what he's come to say, that I must not despair in the face of it or accept false tales to deny it. I must know it and continue nonetheless because that is our glory. And our true salvation.

NOTE TO THE READER

Much of the material for the law-enforcement Bible study group depicted here is taken from “When a Christian Takes a Life” at
biblestudysite.com
.

One paragraph of Paul Plowright's speech on dominion is actually a quote from D. James Kennedy, pastor of Coral Ridge Ministries.

The article Plowright cites from the
Kuwait Times
appeared on July 21, 2007, written by Dr. Sami Alrabaa. It was about the curriculum in schools funded by Saudi Arabia. Though Plowright's dialog greatly condenses the article, it is accurate to the spirit of the original.

 

The poll Plowright refers to from ChristiaNet about addiction to pornography among Christians also exists. It's not particularly scientific; nor does it make comparisons with non-Christians. But it unquestionably refers to a pervasive reality.

 

The idea of taking a public university's endowment private and then shrouding its operations in secrecy, the managers free to do whatever they want with the money, is based on a real event at the University of Texas in 1996 when George W. Bush was governor of the state.

Their endowment was $16.5 billion.

Bush created UTIMCO (University of Texas Investment Management Company) and gave it to Thomas Hicks to run. The relationship was extremely lucrative for both of them.

Some years earlier, Bush had organized a group to buy the Texas Rangers baseball team. The same year that Hicks got hold of UTIMCO's billions, he bought the Rangers. Bush's original investment was $600,000. His share of the sale to Hicks was $13 million.

Hicks went on to become a “Pioneer,” a big Bush fund-raiser, and was vice chairman of Clear Channel Communications, the largest owner of radio stations in the country and a big supporter of the Republican Right and George W. Bush in particular.

The point, in terms of the novel, is that the fictional scheme is not only plausible but has been done.

Would it be done with a religious group?

Of course. That's what “faith-based initiatives” do. They take money that used to go to secular organizations and give it to Christian organizations, thereby rewarding the people who put the administration in office and sustaining them so they will be able to help in future elections.

Some people think that's a great idea. Others do not.

 

Fiction makes its own demands.

Even a novel of ideas should only go on about those ideas long enough to show how they motivate the characters and generate the action.

Some readers may want less. Presumably they skim.

Other readers may want more, more detail, more explanation, more support and justification.

When it comes to religion, I have found that almost everyone has their own ideas, and many people want to express them.

We are fortunate to live in a time when the final page is not the end, and the dialogue can continue.

Readers who want more or who would like to share are invited to visit
larrybeinhart.com

The website features a series of essays, the things that Professor MacLeod would have said had he been real and the things he would have written in
The Book of Nathaniel
had it been published. The site also includes a forum for an ongoing dialogue about religion, irreligion, faith, belief, and their intersections with politics, war, money, life, and death.

There are also videos, interviews, and reviews on the site.

Readers may e-mail the author at [email protected].

LARRY BEINHART is the author of
Wag the Dog
, which became the film with Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro. His novels—which include
The Librarian, No One Rides for Free
and
Foreign Exchange
—have won the Edgar, the Gold Dagger, and the Grand Prix de Literature Policier.

His articles and essays have appeared in the
International Herald Tribune
,
Washington Post, Los Angeles Times
,
New York Times
,
Esquire
,
Baltimore Sun
,
Chicago Tribune
,
Huffington Post
,
Alternet
.

His nonfiction books are
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
, and
How To Write a Mystery
.

He was a member of the Senior Common Room of Wadham College, Oxford, where he was a Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellow in Detective and Crime Fiction Writing.

He currently resides in Woodstock, New York, with his wife and two children, where he is a part-time ski instructor on Hunter Mountain.

Copyright © 2008 by Larry Beinhart

New York, NY 10003
Paperback first published in 2009 by Nation Books

 

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Beinhart, Larry.

Salvation Boulevard / by Larry Beinhart. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-568-58674-8

I. Title.

 

PS3552.E425S25 2008
813'.54—dc22

2008007049