The Prophet Motive (14 page)

“Be careful!” they cautioned, in spite of the bull’s sluggishness.

The bull came to a full stop near the center of the ring. The matador walked to within ten feet of it, then halted, his upper body erect, knees bent slightly, balancing on the balls of the feet. Animal and man exchanged stares.

The crowd noise increased. Most spectators knew the bull’s stillness and its squared forelegs signaled to its opponent that it was time for the kill. Now all that remained for the matador to do, John knew, was to incite a final, feeble charge and then drive the sword home in the right spot.

The matador would try to plunge the sword a few inches above the horns—thus risking his own life—and down between the shoulders, severing the heart’s aorta, causing instant death.

But something strange happened. John saw the huge hump of muscle at the top of the bull’s neck—which should have been still by now, exhausted from picador jabs and the protruding banderillas—raise in a great crest, signifying anger. At the same time, the animal made a resounding snort, followed by a twitch of its left horn.

The hum of the crowd spiked when the bull charged with renewed speed. Instantly, it seemed, the animal had recovered all the energy that men and horses and weapons had drained away. The matador retreated a step, then another, then lost his nerve altogether. Dropping his sword and cape, he turned and ran.

A great roar erupted from the crowd—some of it laughter, more of it astonishment—as the matador raced toward the red fence in a snaking pattern. With every evasive maneuver, the bull swerved its massive torso to draw a new and deadly bead on the man in the scintillating suit of blue and yellow. The tips of the animal’s horns drew nearer and nearer their target. The crowd was in a frenzy. John had to stand to see the action.

At the fence, the bull gored the matador through the lower back, raised its head high, lifting the man off his feet, and then released him with a furious shake of its head. The impaled matador fell face-first into the dirt.

In the stands, harsh, high-pitched shrieks pierced the crowd’s roar. John crossed himself. A moment later, he spied a deep red circle on the back of the matador’s vest.

Two of the matador’s assistants, the banderilleros, jumped over the red fence and down into the ring. One was thin, the other stout, both men barely out of their teens. They raced across the arena, plunging into terror with the unmatched courage of youth.

Through the gate, seconds later, sped the other two matadors, followed by three picadors, minus their horses.

Before any rescuers reached it, the bull gored the injured matador’s leg at the thigh. Yet the matador made no reaction. He was now just a limp form.

The first to reach the bull was the thin banderillero. He gave it a smack across the muzzle, then broke into a dance, a crazed jig, trying to draw the bull’s wrath.

The pair of matadors arrived, flapping their capes in front of the horns. The bull ignored the capes, choosing to chase the banderillero. The youth led the bull on a zigzag course toward the opposite end of the bullring. Meanwhile, the stout banderillero and the picadors dragged the injured matador’s limp body toward a distant gate. Whether the wounded man was living or dead was anyone’s guess.

Running for his life, the thin banderillero tried vaulting the four-foot wall, but stumbled on take-off, and couldn’t get a leg over the top of the fence. He slid back down to the ground and turned to his tormentor a moment before being hoisted high into the air.

“Ayeeeeee!” The banderillero’s high-pitched scream ceased abruptly when he hit the ground, flat on his back.

The bull tried trampling the youth, who wriggled in the dust clouds, obviously hurt, yet managing—barely managing—to avoid direct hits from the beast’s jackhammer hooves. John winced at each narrow miss. Each angry stomp seemed a sure bet to turn human bone to powder.

“Loco!” he shouted, repeating what he kept hearing from a nearby group of Mexicans. Their contorted faces confirmed his alarm. This bull was not right. It was rabid or something. None of this should be happening.

One of the matadors still on his feet—the one in a silver and black suit of light—waved his cape in front of the bull like a semaphore flag, attempting to draw the beast away from the injured banderillero. The bull noticed him. Charged him.

With a quick sidestep, the matador evaded the charge gracefully. The bull rammed itself into the wooden fencing, splintering a plank. It staggered away, found the matador, and charged him a second time.

Its left horn caught the silver and black matador under his left armpit. The bull lifted its head. The matador pinwheeled in the air once before crashing to the ground. The bull completed its charge, turned around, and charged again.

“Enough!” John cried. “Somebody get this
vato
a gun!”

Marilyn heaved a sigh of relief at the bodies pouring through the gate. Three teams of stretcher carriers. They had come to claim the gored banderillero and the two gored matadors.

Meanwhile, the last standing matador in the stadium, resplendent in a gold and silver suit of light, took the bull’s charge. His legs trembled, but he survived the pass.

Directly below her, a man from the crowd inexplicably scaled the wall and dropped into the ring. He was tall and thin with square shoulders and a long, thick mane of silver hair. He wore a denim work shirt, black jeans and boots. He motioned for the matador to retreat. Then, in a powerful, resonant voice, he shouted to the bull.

“No more!” Only when she heard the voice did Marilyn realize this was The Wizard.

The cult leader confronted the bull ramrod straight, steps sure and steady. The gold and silver matador cocked his head at him, befuddled.

“No more!” The Wizard repeated, before adding something in Spanish.

The bull turned, pointing its blood-dipped horns at the new intruder. It scraped the earth with its forepaw, sending up a yellowish cloud of dust. A hefty snort pounded some of the dust back down into the ground.

The Wizard strode onward. Among the Earthbound members a deafening cacophony arose: burbling and crying and shrieking and shouting. Their leader was in grave peril.

Questions came to Marilyn in a torrent.
Who is this man? What is he doing? Is he crazy? Is he suicidal? Does he think he’s invulnerable
?

“No!” Aura wailed. “No-no-no!”

The Wizard motioned again for the matador to retreat. Instead, the last remaining bull fighter dutifully tried to gain the attention of the bull with a flap of his cape.

But it was too late. The bull had chosen Earthbound’s leader. The animal rocketed toward its latest nemesis, leaving a long thin, unbroken train of dust clouds in its wake.

Marilyn gasped at the animal’s pace. The gap separating man from beast closed at an alarming rate. In her mind, the speed, the ferocity, the red splotches of blood on its hide, and the madly flapping colored sticks poking out of its back had transformed the beast into some kind of a supernatural hellkite.

“Run!” Marilyn cried. “Get out of there!” In another three seconds, it would be too late for The Wizard.

The crowd noise unified into an anguished, ear-splitting wail. The Wizard kept coming. Steadfast. On a collision course.

When he turned slightly and began to raise one arm, Marilyn felt a rush of hope.
A gun
! she thought.
He must have a gun
!

A split second later, she realized she’d been wrong. No gun. She watched, dumbfounded, as The Wizard assumed the stance of a traffic cop ordering a car to stop—right arm stiff, in front of his chest, the palm of his hand perfectly vertical.

Ten yards to impact! No gun! No sanity!

The bull continued its furious advance. The Wizard remained frozen in his traffic cop stance. Marilyn cringed, anticipating the dreadful end of a shrewd though apparently quite insane cult leader.

Five yards!

Four!

Three!

The bull locked all of its legs at once and came to a stunning, sliding halt, just short of the unflinching maniac, whose only misfortune was to endure a heavy spray of dust.

The air cleared. The Wizard lowered the stop signal, and a moment later, a ton of animal flesh collapsed at his feet.

Surprise overwhelmed the onlookers, abruptly choking off their sounds. But quickly and inevitably, this sudden hush gave way to pandemonium.

Marilyn was among the first to cry out with joy. No longer was she an undercover spy, but for now a part of the collective, filled, like the others, with a jubilant helium, her body floating in air. She’d witnessed a miracle!

As The Wizard dusted himself off, she jumped up and down in place, waving her arms in the air, hollering, “Yeeehaaaa!” like some crazed cowgirl. Aura hugged her. She hugged back.

Directly behind them, a chubby teenage girl, trembling from head to toe, raised outstretched arms to the sky and began speaking in tongues. “Alababa bazoo! Alababa bazoo! Ho! Nee whoomphay moshunda!”

As the crowd bathed him in hosannas, The Wizard knelt over the bull, petting it gently on its forehead. The stands began to empty. Screaming, teary-eyed spectators began pouring through the gates and scrambling over the fence en masse to encircle the miracle-worker.

The Earthbound members who remained in the stands began to chant. Marilyn strained to hear the words.

“Hate the lizard! Hate the lizard! Hate the lizard!”

No
, she thought,
that can’t be right
. It was hard to hear with the fat girl in back of her speaking in tongues.

“Phaymoshunda! Lolafolana! Nigay rom toranamoo—”

The chanting picked up steam. When Aura joined in, Marilyn heard the chant differently.

“Hail The Wizard! Hail The Wizard! Hail The Wizard!”

Marilyn eyed the bull. The animal lay comatose or dead, at any rate undisturbed by The Wizard’s petting and the scores of wary people milling around it, gawking at it.

“How did he do that?” Marilyn asked Aura.

“He’s magic. That’s why we call him ‘The Wizard.’ ”

“I see,” Marilyn said with a soft nod. She collapsed heavily in her seat, not a spy for the moment, nor a police psychologist, but simply a woman wondering if she’d just lost her mind.

They reached the dark and distant peach orchard without speaking. For the entire route John had been checking over one shoulder or another, peering into the overlapping shadows of night, straining to hear a false note in the nocturnal Muzak of crickets, owls, frogs, wind, and leaves. He couldn’t shake that odd feeling of being watched.

“I gotta confess, Doc, after what happened today, down in Tijuana, I’m doubting everything I thought I knew about this cult leader and this case. I’m doubting whether I know when I’m awake and when I’m dreaming, or what’s fantasy and what’s reality. I feel like I’ve been mind-fucked, to use the clinical term.”

“Me too,” she said. “I can’t explain what we saw.”

“The only way I can is by acknowledging a higher power.”

“You’re not serious, right?”

“Why not? Don’t you believe in God?”

“My relationship with her is beside the point. Whatever happened, it was all smoke and mirrors. It
had
to have been.”

“But what if it wasn’t?”

“What are suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting the possibility that L. Rob Piper’s for real, and his cause sincere, and as far as these murders go, anyone with gifts like he’s got has to be one of the good guys.”

“Oh, John!”

“Isn’t it possible the man wasn’t involved in whatever happened to Esperanza Chavez? That it was Daryl Finck and, in all probability, Tom Mahorn, acting independently?”

“Oh, John, no!”

A flashlight beam from the other side of the fence washed over them both. A man called, “Hey!” John recognized the voice as Deputy’s Fry’s. They hopped the fence.

Fry waited for them in the center of the unlit farm road, his car parked a few yards behind him, slanted in the same ditch as the night before. Fry was in plain clothes.

“Thought this was your day off,” John said to him. “Thought you were sending us a replacement.”

“After what happened today at that bullfight?” Fry said. “No way was I about to miss meeting up with you two.”

“How’d you hear about it?” Marilyn said.

“Saw it all on TV. The local Ten O’clock News. Someone with a camcorder recorded the whole thing. Pretty amazing.”

“You got a good, close look at what happened?” she said.

“Yes,” Fry said. “But I still don’t have the foggiest notion how he did it. He told the TV cameras he’s a man of God with a ‘special connection’ to animals. A gift. He said he communicated with the bull’s mind, found evil spirits, and put it to sleep momentarily.”

“The bull’s still alive?” John said.

“I guess so.”