Ring Game (26 page)

The fact that the demonstration had been staged bothered him, but only a little. It was a clear case of the ends justifying the means. Regrettably, it was necessary to deceive the Pilgrims in order to give them the gift of immortality. In the early days Rupe had questioned the need for such deception but, as Polly argued so convincingly, it had advantages. Nothing else they had tried had brought so many new Pilgrims into the fold so quickly.

Rupe took a large swallow of scotch. One day soon, the church would become rich enough and powerful enough that such crude recruitment techniques would become unnecessary. Soon, Stonecrop would be completed. He and Polly and a select handful of the Faithful would be residing happily within its twelve-foot-high limestone walls, safe from the collapse of the twentieth-century military-industrial complex, safe from the ravages of the Death Program, ready to reemerge after one hundred years of solitude into the Third Age, the age of enlightenment.

Rupe puffed on his cigar and imagined himself at the completed Stonecrop, deer and rabbits scampering alongside him through the parklike landscape. In the meantime, he was looking forward to his and Polly’s sabbatical at Stonecrop. Most of the building remained unfinished. For four weeks, Rupe and Polly would have Stonecrop to themselves, a taste of utopia to come. Free from the day-to-day aggravations of ACO business. Free to let their bodies heal.

The door opened and a compact, dark-haired man stepped into the office. Rupe felt a twinge of fear. He did not know this man, and this part of the building was supposed to be off limits.

“Can I help you?” Rupe asked. He set his drink on the leather blotter. The man appeared to be harmless enough, just a guy in blue jeans and a striped, short-sleeved shirt. He looked like a referee. Probably a Pilgrim looking for the restrooms, but it paid to be careful. The church had a way of attracting some fringe elements.

The man said, “How’s it going, Rupe?”

Rupe frowned. Only Polly called him Rupe to his face. He pulled his feet off the desk and sat forward. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Do I know you?”

The man smiled. “My name is Joe Crow.”

“How do you do?” Rupe said automatically. The name meant nothing to him.

Joe Crow looked around the office. “This used to be Mr. Bongard’s office,” he said. “I used to spend a lot of time in here.”

“Who is Mr. Bongard?”

“He was the vice principal.”

“This is no longer Mr. Bongard’s office,” said Rupe. “Might I ask what you are doing here?”

“You don’t remember me? I used to be one of your customers at Ambrosia Foods. Didn’t you used to be heavier?”

Rupe made a strained smile. He was supposed to remember every customer from the old store? “Are you here for the clinic?” he asked.

“Yes. It was quite a show. That smells like a good cigar.”

“It’s quite good. May I ask what you are doing here? This is not a public part of the building.”

“That’s all right.” Crow sat down in one of the two chairs in front of the desk. “I just wanted to talk.”

“Look, Mr. Crow, I am very tired. If you want to talk, I’d like to ask you to call tomorrow and make an appointment with my secretary.”

Crow showed no sign of departure. He laced his fingers behind his neck and leaned back. “That a Cuban?”

Rupe looked at the cigar. “Yes. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I enjoyed the show. How often do you perform?”

“Are you referring to the age regression?”

“Yes.”

“It was no show.”

Crow laughed. “Sure it was. I can see the makeup on your hands. It’s all over your sleeves. You should have cleaned up better. You never know who’s going to come walking in on you.”

Rupe stood up. “That’s enough. Get out.”

“Is the woman a regular, or do you use a different one each time?”

Rupe wanted to leap across the desk and throw the guy out, but the man was so confident and relaxed that Rupe wasn’t sure he could handle him alone.

Crow said, “Relax, Rupe. I’m not here to bust your act.”

“What is it you want?” Rupe asked.

“I want to talk to you about Hyatt Hilton.”

Rupert Chandra had a remarkably flexible and mobile mouth. When he spoke, his dark lips massaged and softened the words, giving them a warm velvet buzz with an inviting lilt at the end of every sentence. Even when he said “Get out,” his lips oiled and caressed the words to make it sound like a polite, slightly regretful request.

Rupe had changed a great deal since Crow had last seen him behind the counter at Ambrosia Foods, when Rupe’s aspect had been that of a wheezy sumo wrestler. His claim to have lost a hundred fifty pounds, at least, appeared to be true. The new Rupe had a slim, roll-free neck, a single chin, and nicely concave cheeks. His eyes were large, clear, dark, and long-lashed, and his once pudgy hands had become slim and elegant. His lips were still full, but had lost their pouty aspect. Rupe had transformed himself into an attractive, sleek man, radiating the smug but sincere solicitousness of your typical guru.

When Crow mentioned Hyatt Hilton’s name, Rupe’s mouth contracted into a large maroon asterisk. Crow almost laughed, but restrained himself. If he wanted to learn anything, it wouldn’t be a good idea to totally alienate the man. Still, he found it difficult to take Rupert Chandra seriously. The man was covered with makeup. It showed between his fingers, on the sleeves of his shirt, and under the arms of his blue silk shirt. He had smudged it under his eyes and deepened the lines that bracketed his mouth, trying to make himself look aged and tired. At close range, with the sunset pouring in through the window, the makeup on his face appeared crude, like something a four-year-old might do. But Rupe had applied it to himself surreptitiously, without a mirror, in front of a live audience—after removing it with his bare hands from the face of “Veronica Frank.” As he had stripped away her illusion of age, he had applied her years to himself. On stage, under controlled lighting, it had been utterly convincing.

Rupe said, “Why would you want to do that?”

“Talk about Hy?” Crow shrugged. “Is there some reason you don’t want to talk about him? Would you rather talk about how you pulled off that fountain of youth trick out there?”

“You are an extremely offensive man,” Rupe said, pointing his cigar.

“Sorry,” Crow said. “It’s just that I have this reaction when I see somebody running a game on innocent people.”

“You have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Possibly, but it doesn’t matter. I came here to talk about Hy.”

Rupe frowned. “What does he want? Is it money?”

“What makes you think he wants something?”

“Why else would he have sent you?”

That surprised Crow. “Hyatt didn’t send me. I’m investigating him for a client. A third party.”

Rupe relaxed visibly, his shoulders dropping a full two inches. “You are a private investigator?”

“That’s right.”

Rupe drew on his cigar, frowned, examined it critically.

“Your cigar went out,” Crow observed.

“I am aware of that.” Rupe set the dead smoke on the edge of his desk blotter and sat down. He rested his elbows on the desk and laced his fingers. “Who is this third party?” he asked.

“That’s the private part.”

“I see. In any case, I can’t help you. I haven’t spoken with Mr. Hilton since he left our organization last year.”

“You mean, since you kicked him out.”

“Mr. Hilton left of his own accord.”

“Really? Why did he do that?”

Rupe picked up his glass, rattled the ice cubes, and took a large swallow. Crow felt a twinge of envy come and go, like a bird’s shadow.

“It’s quite simple,” Rupe said. “Hyatt lost the faith.”

The reception area had once been a gymnasium. The basketball hoops were gone, but the painted lines still showed on the hardwood floor. The room now held two dozen large, round tables, ten chairs per table, and a long buffet table at each end. Nearly everyone who had witnessed the demonstration had stayed for the reception, many of them jockeying for position to meet the miraculous Mrs. Veronica Frank, who stood beside the platinum wig lady near the free throw line. Flo was curious, too, but she decided to wait for the crowd to thin. Heading for the food, she picked her way through the tables and clusters of chattering women, keeping an eye out for Joe Crow. She’d missed eating dinner that night. Flo loaded up a paper plate with cauliflower and carrot sticks.

Several green-jacketed men and women carrying armfuls of literature were working the crowd. One of them, a bright-eyed young man with carefully groomed blond hair, spotted Flo standing alone. He flashed a white grin and marched up to her with his right hand extended.

“One God,” he said.

Flo ignored his hand. “One what?” she asked, biting into a carrot stick.

“One God, One Way, One Life,” he recited. “Our first maxim. Are you familiar with the Amaranthine precepts?”

Flo, who was not, awaited enlightenment. The Amaranthine handed her a thin booklet. The cover read, in flowery script,
The Seven Steps to Physical Immortality
.

“My name is Ted. I’ll be your ACO representative. What did you think of the demonstration?”

“Could you not stand so close?” Flo asked.

Ted took a step back and hugged his armful of booklets against his green jacket.

“Thank you,” said Flo. She opened the book and flipped through the pages. After a moment, Ted spotted another lost soul and took off across the room. Flo relaxed and began to read the introduction.

Since the dawn of Mankind, human beings have sought to improve their lives. Many have found brief periods of health and happiness, but only recently have a chosen few succeeded in the greatest human endeavor of all time: the quest for Eternal Life.

The Amaranthine Church of the One was founded by Dr. Rupert Chandra, one of the world’s foremost authorities in the fields of Herbal Geriatrics, Shiatsu Regenerative Therapy, Extraction Psychology, and the teachings of the immortal Zhang Daoling. Dr. Chandra has multiple degrees from the Institute of Vedic Pharmatechnology in Rawalpindi, Pakistan; the Gahniv University Medical School in New Delhi, India; and the Vortex Herbal Institute of Sedona, Arizona. He sits on the editorial boards of several major medical journals including the
New Herbal Reporter
, the
Journal of the Alternative Medicine Association (JAMA)
, and
Metropolitan Homeopathy
.

Flo raised her head and scanned the room. The miracle lady was still out of sight behind a press of bodies. The tables were beginning to fill, with the seated groups listening to one or another of the green-jackets deliver an earnest pitch. Flo saw no sign of Joe Crow. She returned to her reading.

At the age of fifty-one, while performing an experiment with an infusion of amaranth petals and stonecrop rhizomes, Dr. Chandra became so involved in his work that he did not sleep for several days. It was during this period of sleeplessness that he experienced a spontaneous series of spiritual, psychophysiological and microbiological events, which led to a remarkable and unprecedented alteration of his body’s neuroelectrical balance.

Flo did not understand a word of what she had just read, but she was impressed. It was a lot like reading
MuscleMag International
. Nothing made sense, but the physical evidence was overwhelming.

Dr. Chandra immediately undertook the writing of what has become known as the Amaranthine Principles. For two days and three nights, he wrote, without stopping, a single, unending sentence, compelled and guided by the voice of Zhang Daoling, the immortal founder of the Taoistic sect of Right Unity, until, after completing four hundred pages, Dr. Chandra collapsed at his desk, falling into a coma which persisted for twenty-nine days.

At the end of the twenty-ninth day, Dr. Chandra awakened in a hospital room. To the amazement of the doctors, he knew exactly where he was and how long he had been there. He knew all the doctors and nurses by name. Furthermore, during his month-long coma he had lost 134 pounds, yet had retained all of his physical strength and was able to walk immediately upon awakening.

Before releasing him, the doctors insisted on performing a battery of tests. When they compared the results of these tests with the tests they had administered upon admitting him to the hospital, the doctors were stunned. For all intents and purposes, Dr. Chandra had gone from being a 300-pound, fifty-one-year-old diabetic asthmatic with a cholesterol reading of 379, to a strong, healthy, 166-pound man who appeared to be in his early thirties. His blood glucose levels were normal, his lungs clear, and his cholesterol reading had dropped to an incredible 138.

None of these facts seemed to surprise Dr. Chandra, for during his coma he had in fact been redesigning his own cellular structure under the guidance of Zhang Daoling, who informed him that the time had come to take humanity to the next step in their evolution, the step beyond the Death Program.

Since that day, Dr. Chandra has devoted his life to bringing these cellular regeneration techniques to the rest of mankind. Through the bimonthly ACO Extraction Events, he and his Eternal Companion, Polyhymnia DeSimone, have successfully taught thousands to reverse or halt the degenerative process known as “aging.”

Flo flipped through the rest of the booklet, searching for the “Seven Steps to Physical Immortality” promised in the title. She liked numbered processes. Articles titled “Three Steps to Bigger Biceps,” or “Five Guaranteed Techniques for Expanding Your Ribcage” always caught her eye. But the “Seven Steps” were nowhere revealed in the booklet, only a mealy-mouthed invitation at the very end:

Is physical immortality a reality? Without question. Is it possible for you? Dr. Chandra would like to invite you to find out.

There are Seven Steps to Physical Immortality. Each step must be undertaken in the proper order, with the proper guidance. The Elders of the Amaranthine Church of the One have created a series of programs designed to guide you easily and swiftly through each step.

For more information, please consult your ACO representative.