Soon (22 page)

That weekend, with time on his hands, Paul decided to finish the task he’d neglected so long: clearing out his mother’s house. Before heading over, he called a realtor to come and look at it on Monday before he left for Las Vegas.

Parking in the drive, Paul sat staring at the compact brick home where he had grown up. The lawn was cut, thanks to the landscaping service, but the shrubbery and flower beds were wildly overgrown. He hadn’t been here since Wintermas, more than six months before. It was the longest stretch he’d ever gone without visiting the house, including his time at college and in the service.
How much has changed—everything I’ve ever believed in
or even thought I did—since then.

Paul left the car and opened the front door. The air was thick and hot and stale. He moved through the empty rooms and stopped at the door to the basement. It had been six months, but he distinctly remembered locking the basement door—pushing in the button, testing the knob, sealing in the letter, which was either an NPO plant or, as he’d felt then, worse—a shattering be-trayal by his long-dead father. Now the door stood ajar.

Paul strained for sounds, then quietly pulled the door to him and locked it. He quickly circled the rooms of the small house, upstairs and down. Nothing. He returned to the basement door, silently unlocked it, and, listening again, made his way downstairs.

The basement looked empty, but he detected a tinge of something out of place in a house that had been shut up for so long: fresh air. He scanned the windows set at the top of the concrete walls. The one closest to the storage space was open.

The boxes were still in the storage space where he had left them, but they had all been rifled and dumped, their contents strewn on the floor. He knelt and discovered the old greeting cards congratulating his parents on his birth.

Who did this?
A vagrant looking for valuables? One of his NPO colleagues, stage-managing a search to look like a break-in? Or—more likely—Jae, opening the window for air, then forgetting it while searching for who knows what after finding Angela’s note?

For two hours Paul sifted through the mess, finally acknowledging his greatest dread: His father’s letter was gone.

22

PAUL SPENT THE REST
of the weekend packing what remained of his mother’s keepsakes, then made a last walk-through. Nothing seemed out of place upstairs, making him even more suspicious about the basement mess. Monday he showed the Realtor around and handed over the keys.

By two o’clock Tuesday afternoon, after checking into his hotel downtown on Fremont Street, he stood in the middle of the Vegas Strip.

The Strip dominated most of Las Vegas Boulevard just outside the city limits. It was lined with the biggest hotels in the world, offering twenty-four-hour entertainment, slot machines, cards, roulette wheels, and every other form of gambling anyone had ever conceived. Much of the half million-person population worked in the tourism industry that carried the town. Paul was amazed that so many people would travel so far to the heat of the desert to lose their money.

The instantly recognizable skyline featured two gigantic neon images: Apollo, the god of the sun and music, and Dionysus, the god of wine and carnal pleasure. New to Paul were the suggestive holograms in front of each establishment, featuring what looked like live people engaged in various explicit acts.

Paul had been carefully studying the New Testament, Revelation in particular, the last sixty to ninety minutes before falling asleep each night. He thought about the parallels Straight had drawn between the churches of Revelation and the major population centers of the USSA. If there was any question about which ancient church correlated with Las Vegas, it was dispelled by Paul’s destination: Thyatira’s.

Paul was jostled during the long walk to the place, the afternoon crowds as thick as they would be all night. He was surprised to see streetwalkers in the light of day and knew they would be even more pervasive after the sun set.

Similar to the others, this casino boasted a hologram depicting a woman who appeared to be losing her clothes as the image turned and danced. But always, just before the most revealing moment, gossamer veils strategically covered her.

Thyatira’s proprietor, a woman who called herself Jezebel, supposedly knew the Jonah character personally. Most of what Jezebel did with her casino was legal in Vegas. But Paul would be on the lookout for irregularities in case he needed to pressure her. He needed her to get to Jonah.

Thyatira’s was the largest casino hotel in the world with more than six thousand guest rooms and a main floor with more acres of gambling paraphernalia than any two other establishments combined. The slot machines and gaming tables all had alluring women depicted on them, and the bordello-like décor with garish reds and pinks accommodated the hundreds of flesh-flashing waitresses servicing the tables. The dealers were all provocatively dressed women.

Paul stopped cold as he gazed out over the floor. One of the girls looked familiar. He moved a few steps and she turned. That profile! Could it be? Impossible.

Paul juked and darted through the crowd, pushing and elbowing and excusing himself, but he kept losing sight of Angela. It had to be her, and yet how could it be? What would she be doing this far from home? Paul had never determined whether she knew the truth about her own father or whether she herself was an underground believer. Regardless, he had never pegged her for the kind of woman who might be found at Thyatira’s.

When Paul reached the main entrance, people were coming and going in a mad rush as if the place had just opened. Angela had seemed to vanish. It didn’t add up. It simply could not have been her.

An entourage swept past surrounding a handsomely and somewhat conservatively dressed woman of about fifty-five carrying a leather portfolio. She wore a lavender suit—tight, short, and flattering—but nothing like the suggestive attire of her employees.

Paul rushed to catch up, but as he edged close enough to call out, her muscle cut him off. “She’s not available,” a beefy, suited man said.

“She’s available to me,” Paul said, flashing his credentials.

The man nodded. “In the office. Follow me.”

By the time they had made it to her office, her bodyguard had whispered in her ear and handed her Paul’s card. She spun and her eyes found him. “I’m not really here today,” she said.

“I’m afraid this can’t wait, ma’am. I just need a few minutes. If you’re not really here, there should be no interruptions.”

Jezebel glared at Paul and turned to her secretary. “I’m not here,” she said, and Paul followed her into her office. He sat on a leather love seat and she in a chair facing him.

“So what does the NPO want with me? I run a legitimate business.”

“I need to know your association with Jonah.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you’re after him, we’re on the same side.”

“It’s known he uses socalled legal prostitutes for his rituals, and no one employs more than you do.”

“Don’t say ‘socalled,’ Agent Stepola. Everything in my place is legal and aboveboard.”

“Fair enough. Does he employ your girls?”

“He’s lured some, yes.”

“You lose any in the recent tragedy?”

Paul had finally gotten to her. Jezebel started to speak, then caught herself. “He’s dead serious about this stuff, you know,” she said.

“Stuff?”

“The religious mumbo jumbo. It helps if his constituents buy into it because it means more money for him. But it’s more than just a gig with him.”

“Ma’am, did you lose somebody?”

Jezebel actually teared up. She tried to speak but just held up two fingers.

“You lost two?”

She nodded and reached for a tissue from her desk. “I told them and told them not to get swept up in it. Most of my girls, far as I know, don’t even do drugs. Or if they do, it’s only recreational. First sign of a junkie, they’re out of here.”

Jezebel balled up her tissue and backhanded it into a basket ten feet away in the corner. “Look, I knew Jonah when he was a two-bit pusher named Morty.”

“Morty what?”

“Morty Bagadonuts was what he called himself then. I think the real name is Bagdona. Mortimer’s always been a lowlife, but he had an angle. He had a string of girls at the hotels on Fremont until he realized the potential on the Strip.

“I don’t let him have full access to my girls, but what they do on their own time is their business. Legalized prostitution is a tough enough game. Makes no sense to make the girls push dope too. But if you can get them hooked, they have to deal. That’s part of Morty’s religious thing. There’s the dope—for a price—and there’s the free love—but it’s not really free either. He says God told him while he was in the fish that those are the two ways to Jesus. So pay, shoot, play, and pray.”

“And he’s really into it? It’s not a scam?”

“I’d worry less if it was. C’mon, I sell dreams. You think my real name’s Jezebel? Mary Anderson, Cleveland. You can look it up. People come in here believing they’re going to beat the house, even though they know—they
know—
everything is tilted our way. Yeah, we need only a few percentage points off the top for every multimillion-dollar twenty-four-hour period, so we let ’em think they’re winning. But both of us know it’s a con.

“And our girls are also trained to persuade these marks they really are the most impressive men they’ve ever seen. In another setting, other circumstances, it could be true love. The more they believe it, the more they pay for it. So Morty found a tall tale people would literally buy into. More power to him. But really making
them
believe this stuff? Getting my girls to take enough dope to snuff ’em? No, uh-uh, that crosses the line. He’s got to pay.”

“Where do
you
think Jonah is?”

“I think Jonah as we knew him, the robe and all, is history. But Morty’s not far. No way he’s going to abandon this gravy train. He rents a penthouse at the Babylon under his own name. Nobody there knows Morty is Jonah. When he’s doing the Jonah bit he wears a dirt-colored robe, a long wig, and a fake beard. So many people bought into his story that he broke them up into what he calls congregations. There are literally too many to all meet in the same place without it getting around. So they’re in little pockets here and there, and he uses different girls in different places for the rituals.

“But when he makes the rounds of the casinos, recruiting, he’s just a balding, middle-aged redhead with stubble and bloodshot eyes. If you want to find him, the Babylon is the place to start.”

“He’s responsible for sixteen deaths we know about. The cops must be all over this.”

She snorted. “They were all over the news, carrying out bodies, making pronouncements. So far they haven’t connected Morty with Jonah—or if anyone has, let’s just say payoffs are not unheard of in this town. I wouldn’t even be talking to you if it weren’t for the girls. The only way I can see to deal with him is on his own terms. Someone needs to take him out.”

“If I can persuade you that he will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, will you help me?”

Jezebel studied him. “You look all squeaky-clean like you might actually be trustworthy.”

“Like you said, we’re on the same side here.”

Jezebel gave Paul a list of six employees who had done parttime work for Jonah. None had been seen for days. “They’re adults, but I’m worried. If you find them, keep them safe.”

“Deal.”

There were various ways to get around Vegas, from the limos of the well-heeled to rental cars, taxis, an elevated monorail, and sidewalks. Paul chose to blend in and used the monorail that ran the length of the Strip. He always disembarked a few blocks from his destination and tried to look like a tourist, gawking at the gargantuan hotels and casinos, moseying here and there.

At the Babylon, the second-largest establishment after Thyatira’s, he bought trinkets at a couple of stores and carried his shopping bags around the gambling floor and in and out of the theaters, trying to get the lay of the land.

Paul found himself studying every face as he moved around the Strip, staying within the shadow of the Babylon. The blood-shot-eyed redhead Morty was his main target, of course, but he found himself constantly on the lookout for Angela Barger too.

Once, while on a monorail car so crowded he had to stand shoulder to shoulder with others, Paul thought he saw her again. He couldn’t be sure because she had her back to him, but it looked as if she was talking with two or three ladies of the evening—who were not, of course, limited to the evening in that town.

Paul fought his way to the front and got off as soon as he could. He ran back to where he thought he had seen Angela. The hookers were still there, but she was gone.

He approached, shopping bags still dangling from his hand.

“Looking for a date, stranger?” one of the women said.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to bother you, but—”

“You a cop?” another said. “’Cause we’re working and we’re licensed.”

“No, I’m looking for the woman who was just here talking to you.”

“She more your style?”

“Well, no, I—”

The girls giggled and looked at each other. “She’s not even a working girl, honey. You don’t want her.”

“Yes, I do. Did she tell you her name? Do you know where she is?”

They shrugged. “You’re blocking traffic, man. If you’re not buying, move on.”

“Just tell me where I can find her,” Paul said.

One of the girls laughed aloud. “Try a church. Oh yeah. They don’t have those anymore.”