Corrupt Practices (41 page)

“
Deanna
. Shot to death. Am I next on the list?”

She sighs. “Do you know why we hired Harmon?”

I, too, can play the game of answering a question with a question. “Who’s this
we
you’re talking about, Harriet? Who’s this clandestine hierarchy who leads your church? Back at the firm, there was just McCarthy and the faceless drones who worked for him. Now I know there’s still you. Who are the others?”

“In accordance with the words of the Celestial Fount, we’re everywhere and nowhere. We’re material and incorporeal, of the flesh and of the spirit, woven into the fabric of society with invisible thread. We’ll show ourselves only on that glorious vernal night when the Sanctified Founder translates back from the Sixth Level Universe, when the word of the Fount burns with heavenly fire across the starry sky, turning night into day. McCarthy and the others are but earthly clarions trumpeting the Fount’s word. You were taught this, Parky.”

When I see her fervent expression, I feel a familiar heaviness in my limbs. After so many years, I somehow forgot that it isn’t an act, that she really believes this stuff. “In answer to your question, you hired Harmon Cherry as your lawyer because there was no one better.”

“It’s true the Harmon was the best. But we sent . . . I had McCarthy send the business to Macklin & Cherry because you were there.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You couldn’t have thought it a coincidence.”

It never occurred to me that it was anything but.

She smiles indulgently. “Oh, Parky. You
did
think it was a coincidence. How incredibly naïve of you. And yet at the same time strangely narcissistic, as though the twin lights of fate and destiny shine only on you. No, we hired Macklin & Cherry because you were there. I wanted you to work on our matters. If you’d advocated for us, truly understood our beliefs, maybe we wouldn’t have seemed so bad to you after all. Maybe you would’ve finally seen the light. Maybe you’d have returned to the fold someday.”

“I would’ve quit the firm before I touched any of that work.”

“You were a rising star at the law firm. You’ve always been a star. Then you strayed, and you lost it all. You’ve shut your eyes like a frightened four-year-old who believes that if he doesn’t see the truth, the truth no longer exists.”

A sickening thought occurs to me. “Did Harmon know I’m your son?”

“Of course not. He didn’t know that I existed. No one knows that I exist except a select few in the Assembly.” She smiles. “I’ve become a mythical character, you know.”

My smile mocks hers. “So have I. The First Apostate. You should’ve seen McCarthy’s face when I used those words at his deposition. Traces of the truth have survived no matter how hard you’ve tried to suppress it, right Harriet?”

Her expression hardens, and her eyes blaze with threat.

I shake my head in disgust. “How were Rich and Harmon killed? Who killed Deanna?”

“Harmon and Rich killed themselves. I have no idea what happened to your other friend.”

“Prove it to me, Harriet.”

She takes a sip of tea. “I’d prefer it if you called me—”

“You know I won’t call you Quiana. And I can’t believe you’d ask me to call you
Mom
.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear there was a tinge of hurt in her eyes. I couldn’t care less.

“What is it that you want?”

“Three things. First, I want a copy of Harmon Cherry’s notes.”

She shakes her head as though she doesn’t understand.

“Rich found some notes that Harmon prepared just before he died. They have something to do with the embezzlement scheme. Lou Frantz claims they don’t exist, but I think they do and that you’re hiding them.”

“We have no such notes.”

“Come on, Harriet. Rich said—”

“He was a liar. If something like that existed don’t you think we’d want to know about it? They do not exist.”

As a child, I developed an uncanny ability to detect her lies. It was a matter of self-preservation. Now, she seems to be telling the truth. Have the years dulled my ability to gauge her credibility?

“What are your other requests?” she asks.

“Let’s be accurate. They’re demands, not requests. I want you to tell me why the Assembly paid Lake Knolls’s chief of staff half a million dollars last year. And I want you to spread the word that Rich Baxter was murdered so your members won’t shun Monica Baxter and her son.”

The muscles of her neck tighten, in years past the sign of an impending explosion. She puts her cup and saucer down so hard that they nearly shatter. “Why would I share information with you, our sworn enemy? Someone who even as we speak is our antagonist in a court trial? Why would I ignore the truth and my own religious convictions by exposing the flock to contamination from the family of a suicide?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll go public.”

She studies my face for a moment. Her chin drops when she realizes what I mean. She bolts up from the sofa and goes to the window, standing with her back turned. Then she spins around and walks back, coming within inches of my face. “You know what happens when you detonate a nuclear device? You not only destroy your target, you destroy everything, even the things that you hold dear. You destroy yourself. You’ve never been prepared to do that.”

“Things have changed. Namely, Deanna Poulos. Richard Baxter. Harmon Cherry. There’s also the hatchet job that McCarthy did on my law student, Lovely Diamond.”

“Your law student? You mean your girlfriend, don’t you? She’s quite the little whore.”

“
You
think
she’s
a whore? Talk about the pot calling the kettle—”

She slaps my face hard. I revel in the sting. She’s afraid of me.

When I was a child, this room wasn’t a library. The windows weren’t bright and airy like now, but closed off by blackout curtains and iron security bars. The soundproof walls were covered with crimson drapes. There was a powerful stereo system with ceiling and wall speakers constantly pumping out the smooth jazz that Kelly liked. The lights were on dimmers, and during the “celebrations,” as Kelly called them, they would be turned down low. One of the attendants would light candles and burn incense. All these years later, I still can’t stand the smell of patchouli. In the middle of the room was a vast bed, far bigger than a king, at least eleven feet wide and fifteen feet long. Kelly bragged about how he’d imported it from England. He called it a super-Caesar bed, fitting because he fancied himself to be more powerful than a Roman emperor. The emperors couldn’t flit between universes.

I started participating in the sacrament called Ascending Sodality when I was thirteen, according to the original tenets of the Assembly, set forth in the secret Chronicles of the Celestial Fountain:
When a young person reaches his or her fourteenth year, the parents shall deliver that young person up to the Elders, willingly and with love, the male to the female Elder, the female to the male Elder. And the youthful initiates shall cleave to the Elders, who shall teach them connubial love, and they shall be married to the Elders and the Elders shall be married to them in the eyes of the Assembly
.

The Assembly was becoming a new, hip underground religion, one that appealed to the wealthy because it didn’t make them feel selfish and callous. Wealth was a sign of purity and heavenly grace. The most fervent believers, a group of twenty-two trusted insiders and their families, came to the compound to engage in Ascending Sodality.

Maybe the events of that evening happened because that morning, the increasingly volatile Kelly had engaged in a screaming match with my mother over some trivial decision she’d made without consulting him. Maybe they occurred because I was a fifteen-year-old who’d spent my entire life being the center of attention, who’d been a big star while Kelly struggled to land supporting roles. Probably he did it because he thought he could.

I hadn’t been scheduled to participate in a celestial celebration that night, so I was surprised that they summoned me to the room. As usual, I simultaneously felt arousal, apprehension, and disgust. Despite Kelly’s brainwashing, I knew innately that what I was doing—what
they
were doing to
me
—was twisted. Afterward, I’d feel a malaise, like the first vague symptom of a festering illness.

I knocked and went inside. The incense in the air felt heavier than usual. I took several breaths through my mouth so I could avoid the smell, but the smoke singed my lungs. Kelly stood in the middle of the room, fully clothed. Lying on the bed naked was a woman I knew as Greta, a wealthy downtown art dealer who had a son about my age. Greta was more attractive than most of the women—a brunette with a broad Slavic face, full sensuous lips, and aggressive, stony eyes, the darkest brown I’d ever seen. Most of the other women who practiced Ascending Sodality couldn’t hide their embarrassment or trepidation, no matter how often they’d had sex with children. Greta had no such inhibitions. She truly enjoyed young boys.

Kelly always watched these sessions, but never participated. He called himself a steward of celestial love. After a while, I got used to his presence. You can get used to almost anything when it means you get to feel good.

Kelly ordered me to undress. When I finished, Greta stood up, took my hand, and led me to the bed.

“It’s a great honor,” Greta whispered. Her face was glowing with rapture, like that of a true believer who’s just recognized the image of the Blessed Virgin in a water stain.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“He’s bestowing a great honor upon you. He’s the celestial messenger. I offered him my son, but he picked you.”

I still didn’t get it, but before I could ask her what she meant she batted her eyelashes, a gesture so melodramatic I expected a director to yell “cut.” She leaned over and took me into her mouth. She sucked on me for a while and then pulled away.

“Fuck me now,” she said. The rawness of her tone startled me. In the past, spoken words had to stay romantic and tender—exalted, Kelly would say. Ascending Sodality wasn’t supposed to be dirty or profane. I expected Kelly to chastise her for the language, but he didn’t. I hesitated.

“Put your cock inside me,” she said insistently.

Another aberration—no foreplay. We boys had been taught gentleness, kisses, caresses. I hesitated and then reached for the basket of condoms that were kept on the nightstand. It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and Kelly made safe sex a sacrament.

“Never mind that,” Kelly said from somewhere behind me.

“But—”

“Never mind that!”

I wanted to refuse, but I obeyed because I was afraid of what he’d do if I didn’t. I entered her carefully, just as I’d been taught.

“Do it hard,” Kelly ordered. “Hard and fast.”

Greta looked up at me with her half-open eyes and nodded. I began pistoning inside her. She matched my thrusts, and soon I felt as if we were nothing more than complementary machine parts. As always during these so-called celebrations, my mind became numb, incapable of feeling any emotion, much less transcendent love—unless crude physical pleasure counts as an emotion.

“Don’t stop until I tell you,” Kelly said.

It wasn’t difficult. One thing that we boys had learned from practicing Ascending Sodality with older women was self-control.

I felt something tickling the back of my neck, like the legs of a large insect. I flinched. It took a moment to register that I was feeling Kelly’s hand, and I heard him say,
The time has come
, and I looked back and saw that he was naked from the waist down, his penis erect, and I felt Greta hump back harder in excitement, and I started to pull out and let him take my place inside her, but when I felt him press his chest against my back and wrap his arms around my waist, I realized that it wasn’t her body he wanted, but mine. I screamed.

Even sodomy involving a male and female violated Assembly edict, and Kelly preached that homosexuality was a cardinal sin. In his public statements he made no apologies for his homophobia. He had this theory—AIDS was caused not by a virus, but by the mutation of T-cells resulting from the unclean act of anal intercourse itself.

“Relax, baby boy,” Greta whispered. “If you relax, it won’t hurt so much.”

I discovered then that I was no longer a child, that I could fight if I had to. I’d grown strong in the last year, and the sheer terror made me stronger. I flailed my limbs and elbowed Kelly in the sternum with all my might. Greta shrieked, as if I had struck God. Kelly backed away. I used the brief window of his surprise to roll off the bed and onto the floor. I got to my feet, but when I tried to run I tripped over the raised edge of the carpet and fell to one knee. Kelly reached for me, but I scrambled away from him, managed to stand, and ran out the door and down the corridor, stark naked. I made it back to my room, not knowing whether anyone saw me, not knowing whether Kelly was following me, certain that in short order he’d send his crew of Assembly goons after me. I’d not only disobeyed the wishes of the Assembly leader, I’d struck him. I would be punished for my heresy. I had to get out of there. But first I went into the bathroom and vomited.