The Brotherhood of the Wheel (33 page)

“Holy shit!” Heck said. “Is that?”

“It can't be,” Lovina said. “It's got to be an impersonator.” Then she added, “My goodness. Nice likeness, though.”

“It's not an impersonator,” Jimmie said, waving to the man, who appeared to be in his early thirties. The leather-garbed figure gestured for them to ascend the stairs with a thumbs-up and a wink. Jimmie gave the “okay” sign, and they began to slowly wrestle their way through the crowds toward the curving staircase. There were two such staircases on either side of the club's floor. Both rose to the man in black leather. “It's him.”

“But … he's dead, man,” Heck said.

“Yeah,” Jimmie said. “He was for a spell. He got over it.”

“Devil in Disguise” started to play. Jimmie was making good headway in the crowd. “Look, whatever you do, don't mention the dead thing, okay?” he said. “He's really touchy about that. I'll tell you later what the deal is, but just play along right now, okay? He calls himself Aaron now. Don't use his old name. He's got another nickname, too, in the occult underworld, but, for the love of baby Jesus, do not call him that to his face!”

“Call him what?” Lovina said. They had reached the stairs. Another security guy unhooked the velvet rope at the bottom of the stairwell and allowed them to pass after a thumbs-up from the man in the leather suit.

“Helvis,” Jimmie said.

Another pair of suited attendants, obviously armed beneath their tailored jackets, opened another velvet rope and allowed the three to enter. The foyer at the top of the grand staircases had been roped off and turned into a private lounge with a long Chesterfield leather sofa and two antique high-backed wooden chairs that looked as if they came straight out of the Middle Ages. As they approached him, the black-leather-clad man who now called himself Aaron strode forward and offered a hand to Jimmie. Lovina noted that Aaron almost swaggered with power and confidence. It
was
him. She had watched enough of his movies with her pops to recognize the walk, but how could that possibly be?

“Jimmie Aussapile,” Aaron said. “Gearjammin' knight of the ribbon! How are you, you old dog?”

Jimmie laughed and took the hand; it turned into a bear hug between the burly trucker and the black-clad, seemingly younger man.

“Keeping it between the lines and outta the ditches, A,” he said. “This is Lovina Marcou and Heck Sinclair. They're friends of mine, working on something with me.”

Aaron's eyebrow went up slightly, and the ghost of a sneer returned as he took Lovina's hand and kissed it. “Pleasure, darlin',” he said. The veteran detective couldn't help feeling her heart flutter and a flush of warmth on her face for a second. She suddenly understood all those women screaming and grabbing at this man in all the old black-and-white footage. The man had it, whatever the hell “it” was; he owned it.

Aaron turned his attention to Heck and narrowed his eyes. There was a flash of something there for a second—a glint of silver before the blue.

Heck took Aaron's hand and shook it firmly. “Pleasure,” he said with a grin. “Huge fan.”

Aaron looked to Jimmie for a second and found whatever validation he needed in the trucker's gaze.

“Thank you,” Aaron said to Heck. “Thank you very much. Y'all have a seat. You hungry? Care for a drink?” He gestured for one of his attendants, a young man in a white silk shirt, to approach.

Aaron sat in one of the chairs. There was a stylized pentagram worked into the design on the chair's back. Jimmie took the chair beside him, and Heck and Lovina sat on the huge Chesterfield.

“I could use a scotch,” Heck said. “Maybe a peanut-butter-and-nanner sandwich?” Jimmie frowned but said nothing.

“Water, please,” Lovina said.

“I'm good, thanks,” Jimmie said.

“Get me a rum and Pepsi and three bacon cheeseburgers,” Aaron said. The attendant nodded and departed without a word. “So what you working on, Jim? How can I help you, after all you and the Brotherhood did for me?”

“Missing children,” Jimmie said. “Being transformed into creatures, possibly a vessel for some other possessing force. It looks like it may be related to the Road, too. They're called Black-Eyed Kids. You hear anything about them from the left side of the street?”

Aaron's features lost their almost unconscious charm. He narrowed his eyes and the silver flash returned. “Children … sumbitches. Ought to be ashamed of themselves, if they could be. Me 'n the Memphis Mafia just cleaned out a nest of incubuses that were possessing priests in Chicago, molesting little kids. I've heard stories about these BEKs, but I figured it was all Internet bullshit.” Aaron glanced up at Lovina and raised a hand. “Pardon my French, darlin'. The Internet is full of all kinds of lies and misinformation. Trust me, I know. I ain't never had any kind of relationship with Bigfoot. We're just good friends.”

“These myths are real,” Jimmie said. “We tangled with them just yesterday. Lost a brother in it.”

The man in the white shirt returned with two lovely young women in long black evening gowns, slit to their shapely thighs. The man and the women unfolded and placed down simple TV dining trays that seemed somewhat out of place in the gritty opulence of the juke joint-mansion. The food and drinks were passed out. Heck downed half his scotch in a single gulp and started on the deep-fried, powdered-sugar-coated monstrosity in front of him with equal abandon.

The man in the white shirt leaned close to Aaron's ear. “A, got something that needs your attention,” he said. Aaron stood.

“Y'all eat up, enjoy the music, and relax. You need anything, you tell Skeets, here,” he said jerking a thumb at the attendant with the military crew cut and the machine gun under his coat. “I'll be back in a spell, and I'll see what I can dig up on these BEKs for you, Jim.” Aaron and his man departed and headed down the stairs to the club floor below. Lightnin' Hopkins's “Bring Me My Shotgun” was playing below, above the river of the crowd's voice.

“Okay,” Heck said, crumbs from his sandwich flying from his lips. “Trippin' my balls off during a night firefight in the Registan Desert is now officially the
second
most surreal experience in my life. Jimmie, what the fuck is going on here? What is his deal?”

“You all ain't going to believe this,” Jimmie said. “His deal is that when he was alive and just hitting his stride, becoming the first great rock icon, his mother got sick, really sick. This was back in 1956. She was going to die, in days. He had heard enough tales from all the old bluesmen he worked with; he went to the crossroads at midnight, and he made a deal with the man in the big black car.”

“Okay,” Lovina said. “I've heard that since I was a little girl—meet Papa Legba at the crossroads at midnight, just before dawn, bang on the shovel, name your price—all that jazz. You telling me it's true, that he sold his soul?”

“Crossroads are part of the Road,” Jimmie said, “and sometimes they have power, act as places in between worlds. And powers and entries can gather there. In Aaron's case, it was real. He bought his mama a few more years, and he did all he could to spoil her and make her happy and comfortable. He never told her, told anyone, what he had given up for her, for love.”

“So that's why he went downhill so hard,” Heck said. “He knew where he was headed, knew there was no escape.”

“Yep,” Jimmie said. “It was pretty much a cloud over the rest of his life. He hid from it in drugs and food, bargained with it with all his gospel albums, raged against it in wrecked relationships and false friendships. Finally, he died, lost and alone; he fell into the pit.”

“So what's he doing here, looking all fine and running a club, helping us?” Lovina asked. “Isn't he a demon? One of the bad guys?”

“He is a demon,” Jimmie said. “He looks that way most of the time. If he gets pissed, he looks … different.”

“Define ‘different,'” Heck said, wiping the crumbs off his shirt and gesturing with his empty glass toward an attendant. Jimmie plucked the empty glass out of Heck's hand and shook his head to the attendant that another drink wouldn't be needed.

“Imagine him in his seventies, Vegas-sequined jumpsuit, but about nine feet tall and about nine hundred and fifty pounds, all firehouse red, bloated skin, and ram horns; able to rip the head off a grizzly bear and then probably eat it with a side of Memphis barbecue.”

“Shit,” Heck said.

“Let's keep him happy,” Lovina added.

“I agree,” Jimmie said. “Anyway, he became very popular in Hell—too popular. He was still a good ole Memphis Baptist boy at heart, and he actually tried to act like a missionary in the pit. He used the only thing he ever knew how to use to praise life and cast light in the heart of darkness: his voice. He actually had a following in Hell, and the management got afraid of him, so they shipped him back up here. He's been exiled from Hell, and due to his contract deal Heaven can't touch him. So he tries to help people not make the same mistakes he did. He's got a crew; he calls them his Memphis Mafia. They hunt demons, foil the plots of the Infernal Masters, and try to help regular folks who have gotten in too deep with the Devil or some other supernatural loan shark.”

“Okay,” Lovina said. “I'll buy all this, Jimmie, but I swear to God, if Slim Whitman turns out to be some kind of fucking yodeling vampire, or something, I'm out.”

Aaron returned at that moment with his attendant and a woman. The woman was in her early thirties. She was short, only a few inches over five feet, with a rounded but slight figure and frame. Her skin was dark in color, as if, a few generations back, she was of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern ancestry. She had a mane of long, curly black hair that fell well below her shoulders. She wore glasses that covered wide, dark, and intelligent eyes, giving her a slightly owlish look. She wore no makeup or jewelry and didn't seem to want or need either. She was dressed in a pair of jeans, well-worn hiking boots, a gray sweater, and a hooded olive-drab parka jacket that fell to just above her knees. She had a large leather messenger bag slung over her shoulder and across her chest.

“This young lady was looking for y'all,” Aaron said.

The woman held a hand out to Jimmie. “Mr. Aussapile,” she said, “I'm Max Leher. I understand you need some consultation on a field case you're working on?” Leher offered her hand.

“First things first,” Jimmie said, rising. “The wheel turns.”

“The temple restored,” Max said without missing a beat. “How can the Builders help the Brethren?”

“That's it?” Lovina said. “Anyone could know those passwords. For a secret society, you guys seem pretty lax about security.”

“It's not just the words,” Max said, turning to Lovina. They locked eyes for an instant longer than normal, and they both knew it and looked away. “Um, it's inflection, tonal range, breath control. To do it properly, it's almost impossible to deceive and hit the proper octave frequency. We call it ‘speaking the soul.' Each order trains its members how to do it, to project the oaths the proper way to be recognized and to be able to recognize a true member. The Brethren train so they can even pick up tonal identifiers over CB-radio transmissions. It's not foolproof, but it's a lot more secure than it appears to the untrained eye.”

“Lot like learning a birdcall,” Jimmie said. “After a spell, you don't even think about it.”

“Oh,” Lovina said. “Okay. But you just told me all that, and I'm not a member of anything.”

“Oh,” Max said, turning red. She looked to Jimmie, who was smiling. “I … oh … that is to say … I'm … I didn't mean to…”

“This is Lovina Marcou,” Jimmie said. “With the Louisiana State Police. She's working the same case as us and she's been a big help, and she can be trusted. This is Heck Sinclair—he's my squire.”

“Sinclair?” Max said, looking at Heck and then back at Jimmie.

“What?” Heck said. “It's my mom's family name.”

“William St. Clair, or Sinclair, if you prefer, was the third Earl of Orkney, Baron of Roslin, the first Earl of Caithness,” Max said. As she spoke, she gathered verbal steam, her words always clear and precise but almost falling one on top of the next in her enthusiasm. “He built Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian, Scotland, a location of great significance to Free Masonry, the Templar order, and the Builders. One of his descendants, another William Sinclair, was the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. The Sinclair name is synonymous with Templar and Masonic royalty.”

Heck grinned widely and looked at Jimmie, who appeared to have just swallowed a cup of thumbtacks. “Royalty,” he said. “How about that!”

“Yeah, great,” Jimmie said, shaking Max's hand. “Thanks for coming out so quick to help.”

Aaron gestured to his people and more food, drinks, and chairs were brought out. There was a lull in the club's music, replaced by the murmur of the crowd. Jimmie offered Max his seat and took one of the new chairs. Heck began work on another scotch, and Lovina sipped her water.

“Coffee,” Max said to one of the female attendants. “Lots of cream and sugar, please … or a Monster, or Red Bull, if you have them. Anything with caffeine would really be great. Thanks.” She slipped a tablet out of the satchel she set beside her chair and turned it on. “I have to admit, I didn't know exactly what to think when I got the call to come out here. I've never done fieldwork, ever. The most action I ever see is trying not to get groped too many times on the DC Metro coming home from Georgetown.”

Jimmie chuckled. “Well, they kind of threw you in the deep end of the pool, Doc.”

“How did you know I was a doctor?” Max asked.

“Wild shot in the dark,” he said. “So what can you tell us about Black-Eyed Kids?”