Salvation Boulevard (38 page)

His reaction was to try harder. To show her how smart, how totally brilliant and awesome he was. He told her
how
he was going to build the City of God. He said he was going to use the enemy's own money to make it happen.

He was really excited. Nicole described it as ‘like when someone has a secret, especially when they're really getting something over on someone else but can't tell anyone, but they want to tell so they can really enjoy it.' Plowright said that he was going to get control of the USW endowment fund. He was going to be able to invest it however he wanted, in secret. He was going to take all that atheist, secular humanist money and use it for the City of the New Millennium. For the glory of Jesus.

The USW endowment was $5 billion.

It was quite a prize. You could build a whole city with it.

Normally, that would have meant nothing to Nicole. Aside from its being an astoundingly huge sum of money.

But it was an issue that concerned Nathaniel.

Currently, the money was controlled by the state's board of regents. They had open meetings, and the accounts were public. The governor had announced he was going to privatize it.

MacLeod was outspoken and passionate in his opposition. Under the privatization plan, the money managers could act in secret and didn't have to report on the specifics of their investments. That meant, according to Nathaniel, they could use it as a personal slush fund to reward themselves, their friends, and their political allies.

He talked about it in class, after class, and he was one of the leaders of a committee that was trying to stop it.

Now Nicole had discovered a whole new dimension to the plan. Something that Nathaniel didn't know, that no one knew—that Plowright was involved and how the money would actually be used. She could barely wait to tell her teacher what she'd found out. This was something that would make her special. Not just in that fond, “my special angel,” pat-on-the-head kind of way, but truly special.

She knew that she could find out more by acting stupid and naïve. She laid it on thick. ‘Oh that can't be true! How can you do that? I know you're incredibly smart, but I don't believe anyone could do something that brilliant.'

By then, Plowright was going on as he usually did about the evil that comes out of secular, anti-Christian institutions like USW, that teach moral relativism, and he had opened up porn sites to illustrate what he was talking about, while he went on to say how taking their money would be turning evil into good.

Like a tom turkey fanning his feathers, he was far too puffed up with his own display to think about any risk involved in answering her questions. Strutting, he said, “I'll prove it.” He opened his e-mail to show off the messages between himself and the governor. Plowright had written to name the company that would control the endowment. The governor had replied, “Thanks for your recommendation. I'm sure they're exactly the right people. I appreciate your support in the last election and look forward to it in the next.”

Nicole understood that anything that just came from her, a choir girl having an affair with her married pastor, would be easily mocked and discounted. The e-mails were hard evidence. They were the real prize. She was determined to get them for Nathaniel.

Plowright was fondling her and pressing his erection against her.

If she could distract him before he closed up the computer and get him to take her into the apartment, she could wait until he fell asleep afterwards, then sneak out and get the e-mails. She saw sex in service of a greater good as a heroic act. Had not Esther given herself to the king of Persia and in his bed discovered the plot to kill the Israelites, then brought the news to her uncle, Mordecai, and saved her entire people? Had not the prostitute Rahab harbored Joshua's spies and given them the information that enabled him to take Jericho. It was even said, though not in the Bible itself, that after the battle, Joshua had taken Rahab as his wife. They had children, and through them, Rahab had been in the direct line of the ancestry of Jesus himself. Yes, that was who she would be, Rahab to Nathaniel's Joshua.

“Yes, you are amazingly brilliant,” she said to Plowright, yielding to him, pressing back against him. Then he started to reach for the computer. She didn't know his password and had to stop him before he shut it down, so she acted eager and said, “Now. Oh, love me now. I want you.”

Afterward, he did fall asleep. The first time she tried to sneak out, he woke up. The next time, she waited almost an hour, until he was snoring and seemed out cold, before she slipped out of bed. She went out to the office and clicked on the computer. To her relief, it was still open. The e-mails were still there. She was about to forward them to Nathaniel but then decided she wanted to hand them to him physically, in person, and be there when he got them so that he would know, instantly, who had done this for him. She wanted to be there to receive his love and admiration.

She printed them. As she was taking the pages from the out tray, Plowright opened the door from the apartment and saw her.

Nicole grabbed the evidence and ran.

She called Nathaniel on her cell phone. She wanted, really, to go to his home, but he told her to meet him at his office, that it was simpler since she knew where it was.

Fifteen minutes after she got there, Plowright arrived with Jerry Hobson.

Hobson had a gun. While he held it on her and Nathaniel, Plowright got his e-mails back.

Nicole tried to snatch them and make a run for it. Hobson grabbed for her with one hand and got her by the hair. Hobson flung her to the ground and put his foot on her neck, holding her there. That's when the chain that held her cross must've broken, but she didn't notice until later.

Hobson gave Plowright the gun and said, “I'll get her out of here. You make sure he doesn't do anything.” Then he twisted her arm up behind her back and made her get up. He marched her out, holding his other hand over her mouth so she couldn't yell.

He put her in his car, the big Hummer. Then he put what she called “weird plastic handcuffs” on both her hands and feet. His cell phone rang, and he answered it. He said, “Yeah,” listened, then said, “I'll be right there.” He put tape over her mouth, made her lie down on the floor, and attached the “plastic things” to the bottom of the
seats so she couldn't move. Then he went away. She couldn't say for how long. It seemed long, but she didn't know.

Then he came back with Paul, and they drove away.

“We have to get rid of her,” she heard Hobson say.

“No! Oh, no, we can't do that,” Plowright said.

“We have to.”

“No, I forbid it,” Plowright said. “She's been misled. I'll pray with her. I'll bring her back to Jesus.”

 

They smuggled her into the tower and up to the apartment.

Hobson went through the place. He removed the phone, disconnected the TV cable hookup, and took the radio. He got a garbage bag and tossed anything he thought could be used as a weapon into it. He argued with Plowright again about what to do with her while she lay on the bed, arms and legs cuffed, the tape still over her mouth.

Then Plowright came and sat beside her. “I know you were misled,” he said. “I understand. I'm going to take off the tape, and I want you to tell Jeremiah that you want to come back to the path of righteousness and that we will pray together.”

When he removed the tape, she gulped in deep breaths of air. Then she screamed, “Help! Help!”

“Be quiet!” Plowright yelled at her.

She kept screaming.

“Shut up. No one can hear you.”

“Let me go! Let me go now! I won't tell if you let me go now.”

“You have to stay,” he said implacably.

“I'm not going to stay with you. Not ever!” Then she started screaming again. “Help!”

Plowright gave her one of his righteous looks, showing that he was severely disappointed in her. He got up and walked out of the apartment. She screamed one last time, hoping that when the door opened someone might hear her voice.

Then Jerry took over.

When he was done beating her, or maybe before it ended—she wasn't sure—Plowright came back. She was whimpering and moaning, in more pain than she'd ever felt in her life. Than she'd ever imagined.

Plowright sat beside her once again. He touched her hair gently. She flinched and turned her head away. “It's alright now. I'll protect you. I want to save you, body and soul. In the morning, I'll come back, and we'll pray.”

“If you try to escape,” Hobson said, “I'll kill you.”

“No, no,” Plowright said. “We don't want to do that. That won't be necessary, will it, Nicky?”

“No,” she said.

 

She needed clothing. Plowright brought her a set of school uniforms from Third Millennium Christian Academy.

If she got snippy, he would impose corporal punishment, just as they did at the school. If she got defiant, he would threaten to bring Hobson back. She called his bluff. But only once.

So they prayed. Watched inspirational movies and pornographic DVDs. And had sex.

Gwen said, “That's totally unbelievable. You don't have sex and watch pornography with people who beat you up and who you hate.”

In her world, where people had control of their lives, that might have been true. If she'd been on the job and met the battered wives, gone to the brothels full of women beaten into sexual slavery, visited the fortress of stone where once-straight men became other men's bitches, she'd have known that people of both sexes who have been hurt and abused and are living under constant threat will engage in sex and perform with apparently great enthusiasm. Whether that's feigned or real, or some combination of the two, is another matter.

There was one more thing. “I always thought Nathaniel would come to rescue me,” Nicole said, crying. “Now I know why he didn't.”

“Nicole,” I said as gently as I could, “we have to get out of here, before Paul, or Jerry, shows up.”

“I'm scared,” she said, sounding it and looking it and unwilling to go.

“She doesn't really want to leave,” Gwen said, looking down at the sex toys scattered all over the floor, then over at Nicole.

There was something to that. But Gwen didn't really understand. Gwen had Jesus, big time and for real. And she was innately courageous. She would burn at the stake before she would break.

She didn't understand how prisoners adapt. How people flow into the world around them the way water goes into whatever space is open to it, compromising one day at a time, taking consolation in whatever pleasure or relief they can find. After that, leaving means facing the dreadful knowledge of what you did, of what you became, and knowing you'll never quite believe the excuse that it was just to survive.

Even the strength and consolation of faith was lost to Nicole. It was through Jesus that she had been seduced and abused and imprisoned. It was the men of God who had killed the man she loved.

What awaited her outside this room? Nathaniel, the man who was to be her new salvation, was gone. No one she knew would see her as a Rahab who had opened Jericho to the Israelites; everyone would see her as what Gwen had already called her, Delilah, a whore and
traitor who had seduced their Samson in order to worm his secrets out of him and betray him to the Philistines.

I went over to her and put my hand on her shoulder. She jumped back, away from me, onto the bed, and curled up. I went to her, but not too close, and squatted so that I would be at her level, not looming over her. “I won't hurt you,” I said. “Please, listen to me. I'd let you stay if I could. I'd leave it up to you. But with what I know now, tomorrow the world is going to know, and then . . . then you won't be safe here anymore. You have to come with us now. I have to get you out of here. Otherwise . . . and I can't let that happen.”

She lifted her head and looked at me, then past me at Gwen, then back at me. “I want to . . . , ” she began, and I thought she was going to say, “trust you.” But then it got lost, and she asked, “How do I know that you haven't just been playing me to get me to go quietly and kill me? How do I know?”

“Oh, please,” Gwen said, offended by the idea. “What do you think we are? We're not going to hurt you.”

“I don't know what to think of you,” Nicole snapped back, “but you've made it damn clear what you think of me.”

“Whatever you are,” Gwen said patronizingly, “whatever you've done, we wouldn't kill you. We're good people, Christian people.”

It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Nicole froze. “Get out! Get out! Leave me be!” she blurted, then began to cry, almost hysterically.

“Nicole, listen to me. You know that Nathaniel wrote a book?”

She nodded yes.

“Plowright and Hobson tried to destroy that book, to erase everything that Nathaniel was, like he never existed. One of the things I was hired to do was find that book. So that Nathaniel will be remembered, so that his life will have meant something.”

That got her attention.

“I need you to help me. If you can help me, then you will have done something really special, truly special for him, the most special thing that anyone ever could do.”

“Do you think he'll know?” she asked me.

I thought about Manny. Were his appearances real or just my imagination?

She asked, “Do the dead know what we do after they've gone?”

Had Manny known, even before he died, that he could trust me to carry on when he was gone? Was that how the dead know what we do?