The Lights of Tenth Street (55 page)

Others had tried before, with little success. But this night, the Spirit was moving. The Lamb of God knew those who were not as hardened as they might seem. He was, after all, the One who had looked into the eyes of those on His left and His right as they hung together, gasping for breath, and had known their hearts. He had welcomed a dying criminal into the Kingdom.

And this man, also, did not have much time. So the One who did not desire that any should perish was reaching out to him … again … and again. He would continue to do so until his time ran out.

The mighty angel watched his charge with somber eyes. The words did not seem to be getting through. But the music might. Gently, he began to sing, recreating the melody that had resounded through the church that holy night. The Latin words became the lyrics of heaven, the Word of God to a lost and hurting soul.

Marco passed through the security gates and pulled into his hilltop home. He wandered through the house, looking at the trappings of his life, wondering what it was all for.

He went to the bar and poured himself a drink. He wasn’t used to such melancholy thoughts. What it was all for, he knew, was money. And lots of it. That had always been enough.

He stared around the empty place, wishing he had convinced one of his women to come over for the night. It wasn’t too late to just pick up the phone. There were many who would come at his beck and call.

He went out onto the deck, the spectacular night view laid out before him. Holiday lights shone throughout the neighborhood, many of the wealthy residents having gone all out. His next-door neighbor had employed five people for a day to lay out an elaborate lighting scheme on their hedges and trees.

Marco had been too busy plotting how to blow his next-door neighbor up to worry about Christmas decorations.

He rested his arms on the railing and twirled the ice in his glass. What was he doing? How could he have come this far? A snatch of the choirs song played again in his mind, and he closed his eyes, trying to recapture the feeling he had had sitting alone in that congregation. Almost as if he wasn’t alone. He remembered the look in Ronnie’s eyes—the look that said she, too, had felt it.

And then another memory flickered in his mind. The memory of her screams … then her silence, her acquiescence to three brutal men. Here on this deck. Right here, where he was standing.

He pushed himself away from the railing and went back into the house. He took another swig of his drink, his eyes hard, cold, staring inward. He had done a terrible job of protecting her up until now. But he would find a way to protect her when it mattered.

“I’m worried about Marco.”

Tyson had finished showing Proxy around the secure building, the first time Proxy had been able to tour his high-tech domain with no one else around. It was Christmas Day, but neither Tyson nor Proxy had any use for the holiday. They’d get the best Christmas present imaginable in just a few weeks, if all went well.

The two men were sitting in Tyson’s office comparing notes. It had been a long time since they’d been able to sit down for a face-to-face discussion.

“What do you mean, worried?” Proxy sipped a spring water Tyson had brought him, watching Tyson search for words.

“Well—Look, let’s be frank. You know Marco rubs me the wrong way. You know it, I know it, Marco probably knows it. But let’s set that aside for the moment. That’s not my motivation here. There’s a problem with Marco. He’s … he seems to be wavering somehow. I can’t put my finger on it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was worried about the girls.”

“How so?”

“It’s almost like he doesn’t want anything to happen to them. He was asking questions about our intended disposition of the girls. I didn’t tell him, of course—he might inadvertently give something away—but I just got a bad feeling.”

“What do you suggest we do about it?”

“Well, in all honesty, I think we might have to consider plans for removing him. Permanently, I mean.”

Proxy sat silent for a minute, then leaned back in his swivel chair, staring at the high-up warehouse ceiling.

“Marco has been a loyal player, a key player.”

“I know that.”

“And most of what we’ve accomplished would’ve been impossible without the work he’s put in. There’s no sign that this ‘wavering’ you mentioned is any more serious than a sentimental attachment to his team. It hasn’t kept him from doing his job, and doing it well. He has been thoroughly loyal from day one.”

Tyson gave an internal snort, careful not to let Proxy hear him. Proxy was growing soft, blinded by Marco’s so-called “loyalty.” The only thing Marco was loyal to was himself and his expected payout.

“I can hardly bump off a key operative because of a hunch, with nothing else behind it. Can I?”

“I suppose not.”

“I was already concerned that eliminating five girls at once would cause more problems than it solved. The more we start removing people right and left, the more attention is going to be attracted, and the more chance that someone will stumble across something before the big day. We can’t afford that to happen, can we?”

“I suppose not.”

“You
suppose
not?”

Proxy was no longer idly looking at the ceiling. He was staring directly at Tyson, his eyes ice-cold.

“I mean yes, you’re correct. Of course we can’t afford anyone to come even
close
to the real plot. That’s why, I might add, we’ve planted many false trails for people
to follow. And of course we’ve planned a last-minute group accident for the girls, so that no one is suspicious … and if they
are
suspicious, by the time anyone investigates it’ll be too late. You don’t need to worry about that, chief. We’ve got this well in hand.”

Proxy continued his cold observation. “Except for Marco, you’re saying.”

“I’m saying we should watch him. Carefully.”

Tyson tried to keep his face impassive. For all Proxy’s money and vaunted experience, he was an old-fashioned strategist. He didn’t understand the ground-level realities of the current situation. That was why he’d hired Tyson, wasn’t it? He should trust his right-hand man to know what was best, and let him do it.

Proxy nodded and moved on to the next subject.

Tyson began to seethe. Just as with his Fortune 500 CEOs, Tyson was again subject to the decisions of an inferior strategist. He’d had the corner office, the staff members hopping at his every word … but it was all in vain without the final say, the final power to make decisions. Proxy had assured Tyson that he was hiring him to run the show. And now Proxy couldn’t even let him make a decision about whether to eliminate a possible security risk.

Tyson answered Proxy’s questions and engaged in deliberations over their next steps, even as his brain began running on a parallel track. If he got one more sense, one more piece of evidence that Marco was a concern, he would take matters into his own hands. As the old saying went, it was easier to act first and ask forgiveness later. Not that he would need forgiveness. Proxy was astute enough to recognize Tyson’s contribution when it mattered.

D
id I hear that a
stripper
stayed in your home last week?”

Sherry Turner tried not to laugh at the shocked look on Melanie’s face, her voice carefully lowered as she glanced around the crowded church lobby. When Sherry nodded, the older woman put a delicate hand to her chest as if she would faint at any moment.

“But, dear, don’t you think that’s dangerous? And right before
Christmas!
What about the children?”

“I think it’s the best thing possible for the children. Just like with the food pantry outreach. It’s giving Brandon and Genna a chance to see that their family doesn’t just say all the right words about what Jesus would do—that we actually
do
what Jesus would do. And isn’t Christmas the best time for there to be room at the inn?”

Melanie looked torn between discomfort at airing such a distasteful subject in public and a desire to go tell her confidants this juicy piece of gossip. But Sherry no longer cared so much what people thought. Just as it had been liberating to discover that all the perfect Christian soldiers around her had just as many hurts behind their flawless smiles, it had been empowering to be a part of getting the church’s “ministry muscles back in shape,” as Pastor Steven had put it. The past six months had seen a veritable earthquake inside Trinity Chapel.

Not everyone had been comfortable with the changes. Sherry tried to be patient with Melanie, a woman who clung stubbornly to the old ways, uncomfortable with the influx of unchurched people who didn’t know how to dress or act, didn’t know the unwritten rules of what Christians should look like, should talk like. Melanie desperately wanted to keep their church looking perfect and clean, attractive to the average suburban churchgoer, regardless of the spiritual consequences for all those slowly dying in secret. To be fair, she had supported the food pantry outreach, but her comfort level went only so far. Poor people—okay. Spanish-speaking immigrants—maybe. But
strippers?
Heaven forbid!

It wasn’t just strippers and prostitutes who needed healing, Sherry thought, eyeing Melanie’s strained face.

“I’m sure you were well intentioned, dear,” Melanie said, “but I can’t say that
I approve of you taking this person into your
home
. Especially after … well … the
troubles
your poor husband has had. Doesn’t it seem, dear, that you should not have put him in that position?”

Sherry tried to keep her voice even, as anger seeped around the edges. “Melanie,
you
are probably well intentioned, but you don’t know the whole story. Of course I thought of the impact on Doug. Of
course
I did! We talked about it, and he agreed it was something we needed to do
and
something he could handle. Doug was going to run it by some trusted friends this morning, just in case.”

“Yes, but
dear
—”

“Hello, ladies.”

Sherry turned to see Pastor Steven’s smiling face, his arm around his wife.

“Sorry to interrupt—”

“No problem,” Sherry said. “We are done here.”

“Oh? Well, in that case could you tell Doug that I’d like to speak with him before he leaves? I think it was wonderful that you took in that young lady last week, but since he said she was probably coming over for dinner soon—and just in case she does take you up on your longer-term offer—I have a couple of thoughts to share.”

“Thank you, Pastor.” Sherry couldn’t help taking some satisfaction in watching Melanie’s mouth gape open. “I appreciate your encouragement. I’ll go find Doug right away.”

She smiled at the pastor, gave Melanie as friendly a nod as she could manage, and went in search of her husband.

She climbed the stairs to the sprawling children’s area, her irritation with Melanie continuing to rub her like sandpaper. Finally, she stopped in the middle of a hallway.
Lord, forgive me for judging Melanie. I was like that, too, after all
. She hesitated, then plowed ahead.
Help me to love her as You do
.

Doug waited to tell Sherry about his talk with Pastor Steven until late that night, when they put the kids in their beds and fell gratefully into their own.

“Pastor Steven said that if we ever take someone like Ronnie into our home, that we need to be aware of a few things.”

When he paused, Sherry started to open her mouth, then snapped it closed. Doug rolled toward her and kissed her nose.

“Thank you for not interrupting. You’ve really gotten better.”

“I’m trying.”

“He said,” Doug continued with a small grin in her direction, “that we do need
to be careful to watch out for her response to me.”

“Her response to
you!
” Sherry started to sit up, then fell back against the pillows. “I would’ve thought the biggest concern was the other way around.”

“He cautioned me about that, too. He said that it could indeed be a stumbling block depending on how I handled it, and said I’d have to be very sure that this was God’s will, especially since my healing has been so recent. But that wasn’t really the main thing I learned. Years ago, Pastor Steven apparently did some work ministering to people in the … you know, the sex industry. He said these girls have been so emotionally messed up, so used by men—and sometimes abused, like Ronnie was—that when a Christian couple reaches out to them, the husband is probably the first kind, safe man she’s ever met.”

“Ahhhh.” Sherry gave a sigh of understanding.

“And so of course, inevitably, she’ll gravitate toward him. Apparently, these women sometimes have powerful spiritual forces at work in their lives—not surprising, I suppose—that work to suck men into their trap.”

“You make them sound like black widow spiders.”

“Not unlike that, actually. Lots of these girls are accustomed to luring men in—and once they’re out of the strip club environment, it may be totally unconscious—and then, of course, that begins to destroy them. Pastor Steven said he’s seen husbands who ended up having a one-night stand with this sexy girl they’d taken into their home.” Doug saw alarm spring to his wife’s face. “Of course, he said those were mostly men who’d never confronted their own issues and were secret pornography users or whatever.”