Salvation Boulevard (35 page)

“What are you going to . . . ”

“CTM has great security,” I said. Teresa's motives didn't matter; what she'd said had been the truth. “Cameras almost everywhere.
There's not a hope in hell of sneaking up and breaking in, even if I can open every lock in the building, in the middle of the night. Never happen. But you know what I can do? I can walk in, in the middle of six thousand or so other people. Then I can head for the men's room with a few hundred other guys relieving themselves, and you can head toward the ladies' room, and then we can open that door that says, ‘Private, Staff Only,' to the hall that runs backstage. And while Plowright is out there in front of the cameras, we can ride up to his office. Hide in plain sight—that's my best shot, I figure.”

“Too many people know you.”

I shrugged. “I'll tell you what else I think. I think if I go in there at midnight, Jerry Hobson will be waiting for me. And I expect he will then kill me and dispose of me.”

“No, no . . . . ”

“No, he won't be there?”

She didn't answer.

“Or no, you don't think he'll kill me?”

She tried to say, ‘he wouldn't,' but it didn't quite come out.

“What did he tell you? That they just wanted to meet with me, to pray with me? If you could just get me there, we would all pray together, and it would be alright? That's what they told you, right?”

She shook her head from side to side, but it wasn't even a real denial, and she couldn't look me in the eye, let alone look at me with love and devotion. Finally, she said, “If you think Jerry is going to do something, won't it be even more dangerous now?”

“Not for me. He won't kill me with sixty-five hundred people watching and the cameras rolling. Middle of the night, sure. Just him and me, haul my body out, toss it in the dumpster. Midnight's good for Paul and Jerry, not for me.”

“Whatever you say, Carl,” she said in the agreeable voice you use with the crazy people you're afraid to argue with.

“And you're coming with me.”

“Why? What?”

“Because I love you.”

“I don't understand,” she said.

“Because I have to know. I have to know if you're really on my side or theirs. Because I won't take things on faith anymore. I don't believe. I need proof. I want you beside me when I try the codes and find out if they're the right ones. When we get up to Plowright's private office, I want you with me when we find out that Nicole Chandler isn't there. And if she is there, then you can hear about whatever the hell is going on, hear the truth about her, her and Paul.”

She began to cry.

“Gwen, listen. I know you think I'm wrong, even crazy, but nobody will be happier than me if the evidence shows that I'm wrong. I want to be wrong. I want to believe.”

Through her tears, she said, “How can you say . . . say you don't believe?”

“I'll tell you what I do believe,” I said. “I believe you would never do anything intentionally to harm me. Or Angie. I believe that, Gwen. I truly do.”

She looked at me, nodding her head to say, yes, that was true.

“But I'll tell you something else, and you had better believe this. I'm carrying a gun. If you see Jerry Hobson and you say something to him, if you betray me, Gwen, and they come for me, they won't take me easy. I'll tear the temple down. I will tear the temple down. And if I die doing it, that's alright, because if you betray me, I don't care if I live or die.”

Once I realized that Teresa was most probably right and decided that the safest thing to do was go in broad daylight, I decided I'd have to try to disguise myself. I looked at myself in the mirror. The abrasions on my face and the purple, blue, and black bruising on my throat gave me the idea of using bandages. I went to an all-night drugstore and cruised the aisles looking for other possibilities. It was a big place that even had a wig section. I bought a cheap black rug that looked exactly like what it was, something for Halloween or for someone doing chemo whose medical plan wouldn't pop for a real hairpiece. Then I got a pair of those big, wraparound plastic sunglasses they give to old people after eye surgery.

While Gwen drove, I put on a big medical dressing that started on the right side of my face and went around my neck and chin all the way to the left side. Then I added the hairpiece and the glasses.

Gwen watched me with sideways glances. When I was done, I turned to look at her and asked, “What do you think?”

She burst out laughing.

 

The Cathedral of the Third Millennium was thronged. That was obvious when we tried to park. Lots A, B, and C—Acts, Baruch, and Corinthians—were full, and we had to go all the way to Deuteronomy to find a spot.

When she parked, I took off the glasses and the stupid wig for a moment. “Gwen, I'm going to give you a choice. You don't have to do this.”

“If you want me . . . ”

“Shh,” I said. “You need to know how dangerous this is. Jerry Hobson had at least two men whose job it was to keep tabs on Plowright's girlfriends.”

Her mouth tightened in disbelief and disapproval that I should be uttering such slanders.

“And not just keep tabs. Intimidate them if he thought they were going to create a scandal. Jerry drives that Hummer, the big one—that's a one-hundred-forty-five-thousand-dollar ride. He wants to make sure the money keeps on coming. They raped at least two of them.

“One of the guys, Danny Polasky, tried to kill me a second time. Almost choked me to death.” She was beginning to believe me. I could see it. Maybe because it was specific, with names and the damage to my face and hands and throat.

“Is that what . . . ”

“Yes.” I said. “Some other men, I don't know who they were, grabbed Polasky. They took him away and tortured him. Then they killed him and torched the place where they did it. It's not just MacLeod and Nicole Chandler. I don't know what it is, but that's two dead.” Hearing myself, hearing what I was saying to her, brought me to a complete stop.

“I'm wrong,” I said. “I am so wrong. I'm sorry. I got this all backwards and screwed up. 'Cause I'm obsessed or some damn thing. Give me the numbers. Just give them to me. I'm going to do this alone.”

“What? Why?”

“I'm listening to myself, and it's crazy, and if something happened to you, I couldn't live with that. I'm gonna do what I gotta do, and you go home and stay safe.”

“What?” she said. “And miss church?”

It was a face I hadn't seen for a long time, excited and casually fearless. Her favorite memories, when I'd met her, were about hitchhiking with a girlfriend to Baja when they were sixteen because they wanted to learn to surf—drove her parents ballistic—about getting caught in a blizzard in the New Mexico mountains on a churchgroup camping trip, and about the year in Nicaragua. It was a face I'd almost forgotten, one that had disappeared during our married years, with being a family, paying for the house and Angie's tuition, putting away money for college, being active in church affairs.

“You don't understand.”

“No, Carl, I'm doing this with you. I don't know what you've been told or what you think you've been told, but somehow you've got it wrong. There is no way, no possible way, that Paul Plowright is

. . . is doing the things you say. Having people murdered and raped, that's impossible. With seven thousand people around him . . . no, millions, millions of people watch him and know him, and know what a good man he is. The things you're saying are impossible.”

“Gwen, I'm sorry you don't believe me. So be it. But it's too dangerous, and I'm going to do it alone.”

“It's not dangerous because it can't be true. The only thing that's dangerous is for you to keep thinking the way you're thinking. So I'm going to go with you, and we're going to find out the truth together, before you go around saying these things to anyone else, before you do any more damage than you've already done.”

“No.”

“If you try to do it by yourself, I'm going to march up there and tell Jeremiah you're here. How are you going to stop me? Take out your gun and shoot me?”

 

“We'll walk up separately,” I told her as we got out of the car. “And stay separate until we meet outside the restrooms and go for the private door. Act like you would normally act if I were away and you had come alone. Smile, normal, all fine. Understand?”

“Yes,” she said and started on her way, circling right as I went out to the left.

As I got closer to the Cathedral, there were more and more people. I tried to follow behind groups, not close enough so that anyone spoke to me but near enough to be a tree in their forest.

“Hey, how's it going?” a cheerful voice said from my left. I looked over slowly, like a man half blind and in pain. It was Norton Cantine, a man I knew moderately well. A retired plumber who was very busy in church activities. A nice enough fellow. He looked at me closely, staring even.

Then he asked, “First time?”

I pressed my lips together in a sick man's smile and nodded a silent yes, afraid the sound of my voice would give me away.

“Well, you're in for a treat,” he said, enthusiastic as a Bible salesman. “Might do more for those eyes than any fancy surgeon. Jesus does miracles. Yes, he does.”

I nodded eagerly and gave him a big thumbs-up.

“See you inside, friend,” he said, slapping me lightly on the back. Fortunately, nice and high, so he was nowhere near my .45.

“Thanks,” I croaked in a whisper.

There was sweat in my pits and in my crotch. I smelled like fear.

As I got closer to the entrance, up in Parking Lot Acts, I began glancing into car windows, looking for unlocked cars with the keys left inside. Some people are bound to do that by accident, but a certain number of the congregation do it deliberately to prove to themselves how much better a Christian community is than the regular world outside, where you have to lock everything all the time, and they brag about it to their friends, ‘I leave my keys right in the car at CTM. And I drive a Lexus 450h!' with a ‘How about that!' expression. I guess they're right. I've never heard of a car being stolen during services.

Well, I was prepared to do it. I had lost my faith, and moral relativism had already crept in.

I made it to the entrance of the Cathedral, wading through a morass of fear and pricked along by adrenaline. Getting inside pushed us all closer together, and I was suddenly near enough to Gwen to see her face and that she too was full of tension and fear. I wanted to pray that she would keep it together. But I had the weird thought that if I prayed, it would draw God's attention to her, make Him aware of what was going on, and He might take the other side. Best to be quiet and try to sneak by Him. I know it's childish to think you can sneak past God, but that's what I felt.

Inside the lobby, there's an information booth to the left. On the right, there are two cloak rooms, one where you can check things with an attendant and one where you can just leave things. Most people use that one, especially, it seems, for baby carriages. I saw one old man leaving a cane, one of those very medical, metal ones with four feet for extra stability.

I waited until he had hobbled off, leaning on a younger man's arm. Then I stole it, adding one more level of infirmity to my disguise. I very much intended to return it before the services were over. Or if I failed to, maybe he would be healed and no longer need it.

As I shuffled forward to the internal doors to the auditorium, I spotted Gwen.

So did Jerry Hobson. He focused on her. Looked all around her to see if I was nearby. Then he headed straight toward her, his cop's eyes checking her out.

I wanted desperately to get close enough to hear. Would he sense something was wrong? If he asked, would she be able to lie to him, to tell him that I would still be coming at midnight, stepping into his trap? Would she want to lie to him? Or did she think I was a dangerous loon and that for the good of God and God's minister, it was best to tell Hobson that I was there in my foolish disguise?

The best I could do was get into a position where, if Gwen looked away from Jerry, she would see me. I circled around with my three-legged hobble.

I could tell that he was trying to hold her gaze. But she didn't want to look at him, which is unlike Gwen. She mostly looks right at people when she speaks. Now, however, her eyes were darting around. Suddenly, they moved across me. When we look for someone or something, we look for what we're used to seeing. The silly wig, the glasses, and the cane were not signals that said Carl to her. Then she remembered. Now that I had her attention, I made a gesture, reaching around behind my back where my gun was. Panic shot over her face.

Jerry caught it, and turned to look for what Gwen might have seen.

I turned to the right, showing him the profile with the big dressing on it, but behind my glasses, I kept looking toward him.

Jerry's gaze jumped back and forth, at me, behind me, and around me, but it was like looking for someone at the mall on Saturday afternoon. You can't actually look for faces; you look for hair color, known items of clothing, a familiar posture or way of walking, signs and symbols.

At last Jerry turned back to Gwen, said something with a fake pleasant attitude, touched her on the upper arm, and turned away. She had not betrayed me.

We each headed for the restrooms, then walked casually past them to the door that led to the backstage corridors. I left the cane behind before we went through. Surely someone would spot it, and it would find its way back to its owner.