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Chapter
Twenty-Three
The Greater
Picture
Without
saying a word, Jake motioned to the crowd on the sidewalk and the vehicles
gathered by the road. Sam mumbled,
“Let’s check it out,” as he pulled up behind a motorist beside the curb, but,
with a sudden determination, the older detective had already emerged from the
car and walked several yards toward the scene.
“Hey,”
he shouted to a pedestrian on the street, “what’s going on here?”
“The
devil has found himself a prophet to begin his work in the world,” the old man
replied quietly, gesturing discreetly to Salem Dade in the crowd.
The
old man, who seemed to appear out of nowhere, wore a dark suit and clerical
collar. There was a tattered Bible
in his wrinkled hand. Not
expecting such a lofty reply, Jake rephrased his question: “Did you see
anything out of the ordinary sir?”
“That
man is the False Prophet,” explained the old preacher in a gravelly voice, his
baldhead shining with the radiance of an opal in the morning sun. “Standing
around him, with that bunch, are his twelve disciples. The day before yesterday two other
homeless folk were incinerated by Satan’s wrath.”
It
sounded quite matter-of-fact to the detectives, which made his claim seem all
the more ludicrous, and yet Jake was troubled by the timeliness of his presence
on the street.
“There
must be a hundred bums in front of that alley.” He squinted, shielding his eyes
from the sun. “Which one are you talking about—the guy with the beard wearing
the white suit?”
“Yes,
the one who looks like Jesus. You
knew that immediately,” the octogenarian smiled, his dark eyes twinkling in the
sunlight. “You must stay with this case, sergeant….You, my son, in your search
for the truth, are not far from the kingdom.”
Both
Jake and Sam had turned to study the crowd and the alleged prophet in their
midst. When they looked back to
where the old man had stood, there was a vacant patch of cement on the
sidewalk. Because there were so
many pedestrians in front of the alley, it was easy to assume that he had
simply melted into the crowd, but neither detective had seen him pass by them,
nor did it seem likely that the crotchety old man could have walked out of
sight in such a short span of time.
“Jesus
Christ,” gasped Jake, “where’d he go?”
“Beats
me,” Sam scratched his head, “he must’ve ran like hell somewhere or vanished in
thin air.”
“Maybe
he’s sitting in one of these cars,” Jake suggested, bending down and looking
into an empty sedan parked on the curb. “Is it legal to park here?” He looked
back at his partner.
“…. What’s going on here, Sam?”
“Let’s go find out,” his
partner led the way.
After a few more steps,
Jake stopped abruptly and reached into his coat.
“Wait,”
he said, bringing his cell phone up to his ear, “let’s call this in. Dispatch might have reports on it. It won’t hurt to check.”
“Here,
use mine. Yours is dead, remember?” Sam handed him his phone.
Sam
was growing irritated with these delays.
He sensed that it might be, as the Leed’s fire investigation, another
long day. They were, as the other
detectives, supposed to talk to church members, but it looked as if the
sergeant had forgotten their appointments or didn’t care.
“Is that right Millie?” He
could hear Jake say. “The police didn’t think it was a 187? False alarm, eh…. Yeah-yeah, I’m
sure Officers Fletcher and Reed did a fine job, but we’re gonna check it out
just the same. Please let
Lieutenant Howard know we’re following up on this one…. Thanks Millie. Caio!” “That’s just typical of how the
police treat this neighborhood,” Jake moralized as they turned their attention
to the crowd.
Salem
Dade now wore a white suit in place of the Biblical outfit in which he debuted
on the street. Though he still
wore a beard, it was groomed to modern standards and his long hair was tied in
neat ponytail in back of his head.
In spite of these alterations, he still looked, in many vagrants’
opinions, like a modern version of Jesus Christ. Marie, who wore the same blue dress as before, looked even
more radiant, in spite of the lack of makeup or fancy attire. Virtually all of the twelve disciples
had been miraculously scrubbed up to look presentable, though they still wore
the same shabby old clothes.
A much smaller crowd had gathered as Salem rattled off a series of
religious generalities pointing to the new faith: “There will be a day when
skid row will become a garden and you, children, will share in a new day…” His voice, however, faltered as he
caught sight of Jake and Sam.
Here, he told himself, were the dreaded detectives Marie warned him
about: a graying, steel jawed veteran and his dark, swarthy sidekick, each
supporting a holstered gun by his chest and ready, with pad and pen, to trip
him up by his own lying tongue.
“Should
I act autistic like I did before?” He asked Marie in a croaking voice, as they
approached. “Maybe I could talk to myself, like Cassie. That would be a nice touch.”
“No,
that was a stupid idea,” she whispered. “Say only what I tell you. Don’t say anything until you clear it
with me first, but mentally—inside your head. Don’t move your lips; already many of these people think
you’re deranged.”
Salem
and Marie now stood quietly in the crowd.
Salem appeared exhausted and dazed to the detectives, which was partly
true since he had slept poorly last night. A frantic look shown on his face, as he watched them pass
through the crowd. Marie, who
looked out of place among this riff-raff, smiled confidently as she held his
hand.
“May
I have your attention!” cried Jake, waving his badge. “I’m Sergeant Cosgrove
and this is Detective Ruiz. We’re
from the police homicide division.
We heard there was a homicide down here earlier this week. So what else is new? We’re going to ask you folks some
questions. First, would someone
show us where it took place.”
“It
was in the alley, but it wasn’t a homicide,” Effie replied with a
toothless grin.
“They
were nuked” the bag lady said, folding her arms self-righteously, “burned up by
God’s wrath!”
“Okay
ladies,” Ruiz smirked, “show us the ashes. We need physical—not bullshit— evidence. No hocus pocus or little green men.”
“There
ain’t any,” Effie said, cackling with glee. “Go see for yourselves!”
“They’s
no ashes, no evidence. Thems folks
gone!” Ursula crowed.
“Blew
away in the wind, by the breath of our Lord,” Stork, offered, a dreamy expression
frozen on his pale face.
Walking
over to the alley, where, according to the dispatcher’s report, the alleged
homicides took place, the detective could see only darkness at first. After walking almost to the end of the
alley, swishing their flashlights to and fro, they spotted a patch of burnt
bricks on their way back out, but thought nothing of it at first.
“We’ll
check that out later.” Jake motioned to the wall.
“This
sounds like a hoax,” Sam frowned severely, “a big waste of time!”
“Probably
is,” Jake rubbed his jaw. “Someone
orchestrated this stunt, perhaps to hide a crime: drug-dealing, whatever. We gotta check it out, Sam. That son-of-a-bitch looks like Jesus
Christ!”
As they exited the alley,
Kaz, the little dwarf, jumped up and down with glee as if bereft of his
senses. The dirty, bearded, and
scabrous faces of many of the untouchables outside the circle of the twelve
filled the detectives with loathing as the vagrants grinned and chattered
amongst themselves. Unable to mask
his contempt, Sergeant Cosgrove mumbled to Ruiz, “There’s something really
weird about this, Sam. These are
the dregs of humanity. What’s that
counterfeit Jesus trying to pull?”
Sam uttered a nervous
laugh and shrugged. The sergeant
studied the vagrants, murmuring to himself, “No bodies… cremated… ashes… blown
away… Sounds like bullshit, Sam. I’ll be god-damned-to-hell!”
Sam
reached inside his jacket to touch the butt of his gun, frowning with disdain
at the smelly, unwashed bodies closing in. “There’s no mystery to this
Jake. Unless they hid the remains,
it’s some kind of prank.”
“Yeah,”
nodded Jake, scanning the crowd, “but for what purpose? Why pull a stunt like this on skid
row? Who’s going to care?” “Look
at their expressions, Sam,” he made sweeping gestures with both hands, “they
act like he’s Jesus. I bet if I
gave half of these winos a blood test it would be off the chart!”
“I
wonder what he’s on,” Sam pointed to Dade.
Sam
flipped the safety on his weapon, striking a Napoleonic pose with his hand
tucked into his coat. There must
have been a hundred or more derelicts gathered at the scene. All of the motorists who had stopped
and snuck up to take a peak, however, had shrunk back to the sidelines, several
of them driving away in their automobiles when the detectives arrived. Salem remained fixed in his corner of
the crowd, waving, at Marie’s insistence, as the detectives approached.
“I’m
going to try something different this time,” he whispered to Sam.
“Back away folks,” he
called out. “…. That’s it…. Now form a single file, beginning over here,” he
directed, making a face. “When I turn my voice recorder on, I want each one of
you to state your name and give me a brief account of what you saw. No
more bullshit please!”
“We’ll
save Rasputin until last,” he whispered conspiratorially to Sam. “I wanna get
him nice and nervous, so he’ll spill the beans.”
“Are
you serious?” Sam sputtered, looking over at the man. “This is getting
ridiculous, Jake. These are
bums. That guy’s addled in his
head!”
“Well,
something happened here today.” Jake pointed to the crowd. “I’m curious
to find out what. We’ve got all
kinds of nuts down here. This
won’t take long.”
Suddenly,
it dawned on Sam that Jake, for all his bluster, enjoyed this detour. A line immediately formed before the
detective, stretching out into street
“I’ll
just get the first twelve—an even dozen,” Jake quipped, but Sam was glaring
with disbelief at this charade.
Looking to Salem Dade for
directions, Royal Channing and Alden Taylor, who stood closest to him, found
him staring vacantly at the ground.
This fact was noted by the detectives, too: a trait that was common with
autistic men. On the other hand,
Jake noticed that the woman, who stood next to the man, had a self-assured
look. She wasn’t afraid, and
looked at the detective straight in the eyes. There was something unnatural, perhaps even sinister, about
the innocent-looking girl by the holy man’s side. Clearly, Jake had sensed immediately, she was in charge….
Was she his girlfriend, he wondered, or his wife?
“Effie
Powers,” the first vagrant mumbled into the voice-activated recorder.
“Effie?”
Cosgrove repeated sarcastically, holding the machine a safe distance from her
splotchy face. “Is that your god-given—I mean birth—name.”
“Ephalia,”
she frowned. “You satisfied now?”
“Ephalia,”
he repeated the name. “Tell me, Miz Powers, exactly what you saw here today.”
Effie,
who had made sure she was first in line, was an enthusiastic witness of the
wonders performed recently on skid row.
Not only had she seen the cremation, but she could also attest to Buff
Peyton’s miraculous cure, discrediting her version of the miracles in their
minds when she compared Salem to Jesus Christ. Stork, Alden, Troy, and Liz followed with their eye-witness
accounts but with nothing substantial to convince the detectives there was
anything more than “street paranoia” afoot. The dwarf struck them as deranged, and Cassie Moa, the young
woman standing next to the hard-looking Liz Moydin, also did not seem right in
the head. As Ursula gave her
account of what had happened this morning, she grew defensive when it appeared
that they didn’t believe her, swore at them, and stormed angrily into the
crowd. Buff, whom they claimed was
miraculously heeled, left out the part where he tormented the holy man,
himself. The one-time thug
fabricated the beginning to the story, placing all of the blame on the deceased
Rhoda Simms and Charlie Blintz, both conveniently absent from the scene. After it was claimed by the others that
Buff had been one of the chief persecutors of Salem Dade, Buff Peyton’s
testimony seemed like the least trustworthy of the group.
Heck Ramirez and Johnny
Trueblood, who suddenly had trouble speaking English, grunted unintelligibly
into the machine. For good
measure, since Cassie Moa, said nothing at all when he held the recorder up to
her face, Jake added the bag lady, Lucille Harding, whose ramblings sounded
like the account given by Effie Powers.
******
Across the street, unseen by
the detectives, stood Ignacio Rosales, a recent convert of Moses Rawlins brand
of born again Christianity. Though
he didn’t yet understand the subtleties of Moses’ new message, he had been
influenced by the preacher’s vision of the End Times. He was, he freely admitted, just biding his time on earth,
waiting for Jesus to return in the Second Coming and destroy this wicked
world.
Breaking from his duties
as dishwasher at the mission, Ignacio had taken a morning stroll down the long
boulevard leading into skid row just in time to catch the commotion near the
old Fairmont Hotel. Today was the
first day, since being released from the hospital, that he felt up to the
trek. As he lingered a moment near
the spot where Moses friends had tended to his wounds, a friend of Ignacio, who
stood amongst the idlers, waved to him as he looked his way.
“Ignacio! How’re you feeling?” He called,
shuffling across the street.
Ignacio recognized his old
drinking buddy Duke Haskins, who had “gone on the wagon,” himself, since
accepting Christ.
“Little better maybe, I
think,” smiled Ignacio, nodding his head obliquely. “I take walk to exercise bones. Ignacio getting lazy at new job.”
“That’s great Iggy,” Duke
called him by his street name. “I’m supposed to start work downtown, myself.”
“What’s going on?” Ignacio
motioned to the crowd. “Are those detectives over there?”
“It’s a long story,”
shrugged Duke. “I got wind of what happened just today. I saw him a distance away, myself, but
got out quickly when I spotted Charlie and his friends. It happened yesterday in this very same
spot. I heard those detectives
talking to a few eyewitnesses. It
all sounds like nonsense to me.”
“What happened?” Ignacio
squinted myopically at the scene.
“Two miracles,” Duke
answered, looking disapprovingly across the street, “a cremation and a
healing.”
In a tone indicating
contempt, he told his friend what he heard about the cremation of Charlie
Blintz and Rhoda Simms, not only Moses’ enemies but Ignacio’s worst enemies
too. Though he could scarcely
believe this good news, Ignacio listened incredulously to the claims by
witnesses at the scene.
“That’s ridiculous,” he
frowned. “You don’t believe that, Duke.
That fellow’s loco in the head!”
“Maybe so,”
shrugged Duke “He’s wearing a suit now, but yesterday he looked like a painting
I saw at the mission. It’s very
strange, Iggy, that a man like that would be down here.”
“Too bad Moses isn’t
here,” grumbled Ignacio. “He’d take that faker to task!”
Ignacio now followed Duke
back into the crowd. He could see
several old acquaintances among the audience. Unknown to him, of course, was the fact that many of these
same spectators had been among Salem’s hecklers on the street. Though Duke knew nothing of scriptures,
Ignacio had been reading his Spanish Bible continually after his injuries. He also memorized the “Christian
Basics” that Moses preached. He
remembered Moses warnings about a false prophet at the mission and wondered if
this man might not be that very man.
Even if he was addled, as his friend suggested, he found Dukes
comparison of him with Jesus Christ unsettling…. What sort of scam was afoot
among his old friends? He
wondered, elbowing his way gently through the ranks.
Ignacio stood anxiously
alongside Duke, as Jake questioned a bystander, who hadn’t even seen the
event. Ignacio could hear homeless
men and a few women mumbling to themselves about the miracles. About a dozen vagrants he recognized
stood around the holy man in what seemed like awe. What game is that man pulling? Ignacio asked himself,
as he listened to a man whisper to a friend, “Yesterday he looked like that
painting of Jesus hanging at the mission.
Now he’s dressed like some Wall Street dude!”
Ignacio and Duke were both
familiar with Harry Anderson’s famous painting of the Lord. Now, despite this reference to Wall
Street, there remained an ascetic, pastoral look to Salem. There was not mistaking that
‘Christ-like’ face. Duke was
worried about the deepening frown etched into Ignacio’s worn face. He had seen that look on his friend’s
face before. It’s what got him
beaten up by Charlie Blintz. His
friend seemed ready at any moment to call this charlatan out and was simply
biding his time, until the moment was right. Discreetly now, however, with Duke following behind, Ignacio
moved closer to the charlatan through the idlers in the crowd. Although Ignacio was much to short to
see what was going on, he could still hear what was being said. Many derelicts, who knew him and had
heard about his injuries, smiled at him, and moved aside differentially as he
approached. Finally, as a hiker at
the edge of the forest, he could see him: the Counterfeit Christ—the second
beast. Putting his finger to his
lips to stifle their greetings, he patted their shoulders congenially and
settled a short distance from the holy man, as any other idler in the
crowd. Duke held back fearfully a
moment, then, setting his jaw, bravely joined his friend as he appraised the
man.
“Officer,” Ignacio called
discreetly.
Thinking that he might be
just one more crackpot on the scene, Jake ignored him completely at first.
“Officer!”
Ignacio repeated. Following this
outcry, he made several psst-psst! noises and held up his hand.
“No,
Ignacio,” whispered Duke, pulling his sleeve, “this isn’t your business. You’re annoying that man!”
“Psst,
psst-psst!” Ignacio called again through cupped hands.
“What do you want?” Jake feigned
grumpiness. “You look like someone with something on their mind.” He held out
his voice recorder gruffly, stifling a smile.
“I
have lot on mind,” Ignacio said in a low conspiratorial voice.
“You
know what happened here?” Jake snarled at the little man, snickering under his
breath.
“Moses, he say the devil
find himself a prophet and begin his work here on the street.” Ignacio replied
quietly, gesturing discreetly to Salem in the crowd.
Jake looked at his
partner, who had a jaded expression on his face. “What’s he talking about
Sam? Does that sound familiar to
you?”
“Don’t ask me,” Ruiz
shrugged, “I’m a Catholic; I don’t have a clue.”
Frowning at this absurd
statement, Ignacio followed the detectives, disappointed but not surprised by
Jake’s reaction. Both detectives
seemed annoyed with him as he followed along prattling about Moses’ vision of
the End Times, until, at one point, Jake turned and cursed at him, making
shooing motions with their hands.
“The
part about the false prophet sound’s like what the old man was saying,”
Cosgrove commented to Sam, glancing back at Salem and his wife. “The beast rising
out of the sea,” he said, looked squarely at Ignacio, “is that suppose to be
him?”
“He
is one of the beasts,” the little Hispanic said, flatly, pointing to a black
book he pulled out of his jacket. “It’s all here what the Lord say!” He wrung
it in the air.
Ruiz,
amused by his Chaplinesque movements, spoke Spanish to him a moment, motioning
again for him to go away. The
little evangelist replied in clear, succinct English “I speak plain English
please, and I am not loco. That
man in crowd belongs to the devil.
He’s going to make a big fool of the world!”
Cosgrove
now glanced at his partner as if to say, “Make him go away!” Then, as he studied the Bible held in
the man’s gnarled hands, he turned his recorder toward the man and gave him a
nod. “We’re gonna check this out, okay,” he gave him a begrudging smile. “Tell
me about yourself,” he held it under his bristly chin. “What’s you name? Where you from?”
“Ignacio
Rosales.” He frowned at the apparatus. “I once lived on street but now work at
mission.”
“And you think this guy’s
a beast,” drawled Jake, curious about this subject now.
“Yes,” Ignacio nodded
quickly, “my friend Moses mean that man when he talk about false prophet.”
“Moses?”
Jake scratched his jaw, as he thought about what the old preacher had said. “I
just heard someone in this bunch talking about that guy.”
“Moses,
oh yes,” Ignacio smiled approvingly, “he’s my mentor leading me to Lord. Now I shall spread the word too.”
“What’s
he look like?” pressed Jake, scanning the faces in the crowd. “Is he a
crotchety bald-headed old man in a threadbare suit?”
“No,
he is crotchety middle-aged man, with shaggy hair, in old suit.” Ignacio
smiled wanly.
Sam,
who had been calling his wife, belatedly joined the conversation. “I heard someone talking about that
incident. He said the day before
yesterday Moses was assaulted then taken away by his friends.”
“What?”
Ignacio cried with alarm. “What happened?”
A second, unidentified
man, called from the crowd, “Charlie Blintz, one of those destroyed by God’s
wrath, roughed him up.”
Ignacio, who had recently been roughed up by Charlie, himself, feared the
worst. “Where’s Moses?” He looked
around for the owner of the voice. “Did they take him to the hospital. Please, someone tell me where he’s at!”
At that point, Wyatt
Brewster, emerged from the audience, an enigmatic smile playing on his
adolescent face.
“Don’t worry,” he patted Ignacio’s arm, “it couldn’t have been too
serious. He was on his feet
yesterday, spouting scripture, when they left.”
“Who left with him?”
Ignacio frowned with concern.
“His friends Al,
Skunk and Tom” answered Wyatt, searching his memory, “and some fellow—Alfredo I
think his name was—driving a mission truck.”
“Yes, yes, my nephew,” Ignacio rubbed his forehead. “I bet
they take him to county hospital.
That’s where my friends take me.”
Without a second
thought, Ignacio left the detectives standing there, with bemused expressions
on their faces for the quirky movements of the little man.
“Come, Duke, we must go to
hospital,” Ignacio said simply.
His friend Duke scurried
to catch up, as Ignacio began the long journey across town.
******
Wyatt, the one
member who had held back in the crowd and missed the cut made by Sergeant
Cosgrove, had been replaced by Lucille Harding, the bag lady, who was not even
a member of the twelve. Not
realizing the significance of this number, Jake had thought twelve informants
to be quite enough before moving on to Salem and Marie, until giving little
Ignacio a chance. He wanted the holy
man to stew awhile before he pounced.
Lucille, her curiosity satisfied, now departed with her shopping basket,
still not convinced who Salem Dade was supposed to be. With the detectives considering whether
or not this was a crime scene, the crowd had grown restive. Many of them departed back into the
hollows of skid row or followed Lucille uptown, with the goal of being near the
mission in time for the evening meal.
The young seminary student strolled away meditatively from the others,
as the detectives stood back appraising the crowd. All but a few of the vehicles parked on the curb had stolen
away. Several dozen street people,
who heard Salem’s speech, however, lingered uneasily, wondering whether or not
the detectives were going to arrest the strange man. From an incline, several hundred feet away, Wyatt could see
the detectives approach Salem and Marie.
He wanted to talk to the sergeant but secretly, without Salem’s
followers present, so, instead he talked to God.
“Lord,” his adolescent
voice broke, “take back this cup.
Give it to a wiser, purer man.
Choose a more worthy cupbearer, Jesus. Pick a man like Moses Rawlins to expose
the beast!”
At that very moment, as he
stared up through the skyline, the Lord gave Wyatt a sign. As he prayed, a great bank of June clouds moved in to dim the
scene. Salem’s radiant white
suit suddenly looked dingy.
Marie’s blue dress seemed drab.
All the radiance, Wyatt noted, emanated from one single break in the
sky. The Lord, the focus of all
glory, was speaking to him in the language of nature. Through symbolism, He was saying, “Salem’s a fake—a
counterfeit Christ!” As the clouds
moved, only the Word and the Spirit shined, until one great shaft broke through
and illuminated everyone standing near the hotel. The patchwork of light and dark shifted, rippling over
vagrants and detectives alike.
Salem, Marie, and members of the twelve remained subdued as the clouds
moved, the message quite clear in Wyatt’s mind. The small, ragtag assembly of drifters, he had reluctantly
joined, were the nucleus of a new world order, the religious counterpart to the
government of the End Times.
With this realization,
Wyatt gasped, his hand flying to his mouth. Evil, in the person of Dade, his mistress Satan, and the
devil’s disciples stood in the shadows.
Slowly, as a fungus, shunning light, they would take root, spreading
Dade’s poisonous philosophy over the world. Once again Wyatt felt the temptation to flee into the
city. “I’m not up to this!” He
yelped, dropping to his knees.
That moment, as Wyatt knelt again in prayer, Jake looked squarely at the
man of the hour. Having saved him
until this moment, the sergeant placed the voice-activated tape recorder in his
vest pocket. After turning up the
volume, he swaggered up to Salem and Marie.
“I
already know your names,” his voice dripped with sarcasm as he appraised the
pair. “You’re the one he’s talking about, aren’t you?” “What’d you do to these bums down
here,” he focused upon Salem, “hypnotize them? Give them some kind of religious whammy? Are you on drugs, Mister Dade?… Don’t
play innocent with me!”
“I
did nothing,” Salem answered honestly, raising his eyes to heaven. “I simply
follow my Lord’s will.”
“Oh
I see,” Cosgrove said, snickering under his breath. “God did it, right?… Just
what did happen here, sport? Was
there or wasn’t there homicides committed down here on the street?”
“Yes,
there were homicides,” Salem answered evasively, “but not murders. And it wasn’t a crime; it was an act of
judgment!”
“What
kind of double-talk is that?” Cosgrove snapped irritably. “I want straight
answers Dade. Did you witness a
homicide down here or not?”
Salem
Dade (a.k.a. Adam Leeds) was perspiring heavily now. The one identified as Marie Roget, Jake marveled, was dry
and composed. Her youthful face
and demeanor presented a state of peace and tranquility to the detective,
compared to the sudden “caught-in-the-act” look on Salem Dade’s face.
“What
are you suppose to be?” Jake asked, his steel blue eyes narrowing to slits.
“What’s a dandy, like you, doing on skid row?”
Satan’s
thoughts came swiftly this time, startling Salem half out his wits.
“What’s
the matter? Is that a tough
question for you?” The detective drawled, sticking out his chin. “Come on,
sport, I don’t have all day.”
“Unless
you’ve come to arrest me,” Salem answered, parroting Satan’s words, “my
presence here is of no concern to you.”
“You
atheist cops!” Effie shouted in the background.
“Leave
the holy man alone!” cried Stork.
Jake
and Sam walked several yards away from Salem, Marie, and the remaining eleven
disciples, unaware that the most important member of the group was not present
in the twelve. The largest segment
of the crowd had now backed away, in an effort, it seemed, to disassociate
themselves from the confrontation between Salem and the police.
“Jake,
take my advice,” Sam gave his shoulder a firm grip, “forget the lunatic. The only thing we might have here,
without evidence of a crime, is a runaway.”
“You
mean Marie?” Jake tossed his head at her. “That’s no runaway, Sam. She certainly ain’t no kid!”
“You’ve
seen your share of runaways, Jake,” Sam looked at him in disbelief. “She’s just
a child, no more than sixteen.”
“Trust
me, Sam,” Jake said with conviction. “She’s not sixteen. Did you look at those eyes? I’ve never seen eyes so dark and cold
in such a baby face.”
Sam
argued with Jake a few moments longer on the dangers of stereotyping a
subject. He also insisted on
running a background check on the girl since it was apparent that Salem Dade
had committed no crime. Jake,
however, had already made his mind up that something dark and sinister had
occurred here today.
“Do
you have any ID?” He stepped back to address them both.
In
what might have struck members of the crowd as another miracle, Marie reached
into a pocket and produced two social security cards. Each card, which looked brand new, had their names and
numbers printed on what appeared to be official stock. The detective, who was half-convinced
Salem Dade was mentally imbalanced, didn’t question why he hadn’t produced his
own. The action, far from
clarifying matters for him, added to the mystery, and yet he was not taken
aback. He would of course, after
jotting down the social security numbers on his notepad, check the numbers with
official records, but he already suspected that they were genuine. Such a gesture if not verifiable would
have been foolish, worse, in fact, than producing no cards at all. If this young woman was, in fact, a
teenager, she was a pro. Her voice
and gestures were calm and collected, and the expression on her face was
impossible to read. As if
second-guessing his doubts about Salem’s sanity, Marie explained that her
husband had suffered a traumatic experience recently with a gang of thugs and
was not himself. He would be back
in form in a few days.
Jake
had them give their addresses into his recorder and was not surprised that they
lived in a condemned hotel. The
fact that they didn’t have a telephone would make it that much more difficult
to keep tabs on this pair. It
seemed clear to him that they were street people, and yet there were too many
murky facts surrounding them to just let them off without a note of rebuke.
“Listen,” he gave them a
mocking smile, “I’m not finished with you two. I don’t know what your game is, but here’s my office number
and my cell phone number. If you
remember any details, please call me.
It’ll go easier on you, if you come clean.”
Handing
the woman one of his business cards, an obvious indication to Marie that he
knew she was in charge, Jake motioned his partner on. He had sounded like the typical hardboiled detective when in
fact he felt out of his element this time. There were too many things about Biblical prophecy and the
Apocalypse that he didn’t know or even wanted to know. It seemed too bizarre for his cynical
mind that this mismatched pare were anything more than an aberration on the
street. On skid row, Pershing
Square, and the boulevards uptown, countless lunatics and would-be messiahs
spouted their philosophies to pedestrians on the streets. What could be so special about a man
down here who looked like Rasputin, with a face like Jesus Christ?
Still within earshot of
the pair, he said to Sam, “That joker and that woman staged something here
today. I’m not sure if there was
really a homicide or it was made to look like one. But there aren’t any bodies. If the lieutenant okays it, we could have the CSI check out
the burnt brick back there.” “But
we got it covered today Ruiz,” he seemed to say for the couple’s benefit. “No
bodies. No evidence…. Just a lot
of bullshit on tape!”
Turning
back to the crowd in a sudden change of heart, however, he pointed menacingly
at everyone in sight. “I can’t arrest any of you, but I want you to break it up
here and now. You’re disturbing
the peace—my peace. Those of you who saw what happened down
here—minus the bullshit—should contact the LAPD homicide division. Now
move it!”
“As
for you, you son-of-a-bitch!” he called icily to Salem Dade. “I can’t book
someone for pretending he’s Jesus.
But so-help-me I’d like to have you locked up in a padded cell for
staging this show!”
“I
never claimed to be Christ,” Salem cried out, feeling Marie’s fingers squeezing
his hand. “I staged nothing for these people. The Lord performed the miracles, not I!”
******
“Where are we going?” Sam
asked the sergeant, when it became apparent that Jake was not walking back to
the car.
“I’ve got this feeling
about this place,” mumbled Jake, glancing back one more time at the scene. “I
just don’t know what it is,” he confessed to himself.
The entire assembly, Salem
Dade and Marie Roget included, now dispersed, and the few remaining motorists
drove away from the scene. The
detectives watched Salem, Marie, and eleven of the street people file quietly
into the hotel. In the distance,
dragging his heels, was the Judas Priest.
Turning to the alley where the alleged cremation occurred, they
re-entered the shadowy corridor. A
shaft of light fell on the smudge on the wall checked earlier by Jake and
Sam. Except for the dark
silhouettes of what could be the cremated man and woman, the detectives had, of
course, found no bodies, not so much as an ash. The burnt impression on the wall was indistinguishable from
any other abstract blotch, and yet Sergeant Cosgrove had seen this before…. The
more he looked at the wall, the more he believed a homicide was committed here
today.
“What
do you make of this Sam?” He asked thoughtfully, scratching the blackened
bricks with a key. “It’s like a shadow but indistinct…. and yet it reminds me
of some of those pictures of Hiroshima.
Remember the farmer and his cart caught on the wall?”
“Never
heard of it,” Ruiz gave him a bored stare. “That was before my time.”
“That
was before my time,” Jake looked at
him with disbelief. “Don’t you young whelps ever read?”
Sam
frowned and smiled at the same time.
“All right,” the older
detective sighed, looking back at the retreating crowd, “something’s not right
here. I don’t believe that crap
they’re telling us, but not this many bums could be hallucinating—not at the
same time. Why would they make something
like that up, Sam? What’s that
Salem Whats-his-face’s game.”
Sam
tried scraping the dark splotch with one of his keys.
“This
could be anything, Jake,” he sighed. “We could get Waters’ people to
check it out, but, after that bogus investigation in progress, I’m not sure
they’ll go for another leap into the dark.”
“Leap
into the dark,” Jake rubbed his jaw. “That’s what this is, isn’t it.” “But this
looks like someone took a blow torch to it,” he added, studying the wall. “…. Why would anyone do that?”
“I
dunno,” Sam was growing impatient, “who cares? Shouldn’t we check Breckenridge and Billingsley out?”
Jake
removed a Kleenex and plastic snack bag from his coat pocket, scrapped as much
of the sooty material as he thought necessary from the wall onto the Kleenex
and carefully folded this package into a plastic bag before placing it gently
into the pocket of his coat. What
Jake did was acknowledged as routine procedure by his partner. Sam was more concerned with the
overtime looming this day.
“Yeah,”
sighed Jake, walking with him back to the car, “the investigation at the fire
is a shot in the dark too. I’ve
said it before Sam; I got this feeling we’re not going to see that reverend and
his wife again.” “That fellow,” he pointed to where Salem and Marie had stood,
“appears to have just arrived.
I’m keeping my eye on him!”
Sam,
who would take the driver’s side once more, did a double take after thinking
about what Jake had said.
“What-the-hell
for?” He looked across the top of the car before climbing in. “He’s another
street crazy. We used to get them
all the time uptown.”
“This guy’s
different,” said Jake, climbing into the passenger’s side. “Why would a man
with a face like Jesus hang out in skid row. Why not Hollywood or Santa Monica peer.”
“Maybe he’s not hanging
out. Maybe, he’s hiding out,”
Sam said matter-of-factly, staring at the road ahead.
Though he didn’t think twice about what he had said, Sam had tied the two
investigations together in one fell swoop, and yet it seemed too absurd for
Jake to digest.
What could be significant
about any of this? He wondered, as he thought about Sam what had
said…. A strange, Christ-like
figure hiding out in skid row, right after the Leeds house caught on fire, who
was accompanied by a flaxen-haired young woman with onyx-colored eyes
…. Is that an unrelated coincidence… or did it mean
something?
I don’t know
anything about the Bible, he thought to himself, as Sam pulled away from the
curb. Why would Salem Dade be
called out as a false prophet and a beast by two separate people? Why would anyone come down here looking
like that? For Sam’s benefit,
however, Jake got back down to business, readying his map and instructing his
partner how to get back on the freeway again. What Jake really wanted to do was take his sample from the
alley wall to the crime lab and have it tested…. The greater picture, that
which no one else yet sensed, had already surfaced darkly in his mind, and
would rise incrementally throughout the days ahead.
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