by Mark Lashway
“Honey?”
“No, Cam. It’s really warm out and my appetite isn’t there right now,” Shauna said.
“Brother John?”
“You know what, Cam? Maybe I will. I was in enough of a hurry to make sure I got over
here in good time that I didn’t take any lunch. What is there around here?”
“Plenty of variety,” Cam replied. “Myself, I’m goin’ to this place I went to last year. The guy and his wife make great Philly cheese steaks.”
“That’s loftier than what I usually have,” Abbot John observed, “but it’s not a real extravagance, so I’ll do that, too. Lead on, Cam.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Joey Creed took several rapid, deep breaths to purge as much carbon dioxide out of his lungs as possible before starting out, a technique that he had used often when entering an unfamiliar home to burglarize. Although he was expected to stay in his room until someone came to get him later, he had no intention of obeying. He had to get to work very soon. Having picked up on the routine here fairly quickly, he was willing to bet that everyone was at work now, leaving him a clear route to his destination. Putting his hand gently on the doorknob, he began turning it in a painstakingly slow manner so as to avoid any noise.
Drawing another deep breath, he inched the door open and was happy at the silence. He peered out as much as he could through the small crack and saw nothing. Emboldened, he opened it more and repeated the process. Finally, he was able to stick his head out enough to look both ways down the hallway. Again, nothing. Keeping watch all around, he moved out into the narrow hallway, carefully pulled the door shut and slowly let his hand turn the knob back to engage the latch. He knew that it would be at least another hour before anybody came to get him. Walking down the hallway as quickly as he dared, cautiously planning each step, he hesitated every several seconds by every room to listen for any activity within. When he was satisfied that nobody was around, he moved on. Within a few minutes he was clear of the living quarters and had reached the main corridors that led to the various parts of the abbey.
Here he took a few minutes to relax and steel himself for the next part. Joey had always had a good sense of direction, another trait that had made him a good burglar. He knew from his brief tours that there were two ways to approach the brewery, and from opposite directions. The first he rejected outright, since it involved a route that was the main artery of traffic throughout the abbey. He would travel via the secondary route, a corridor containing mostly storerooms, an administrative office and the infirmary. The chances of encountering anybody would be slight.
Joey closed his eyes, imagined the route and took another deep breath. Then he set out, moving quickly but craftily, making his way to the corridor that he wanted, ducking down whenever he had to pass by a window and stopping before any recessed doorway. He looked behind himself every several steps as a precaution. Discovery wouldn’t be dangerous, but it would mean the end of his assignment here. Then he would still owe Uncle Duke.
He was sweating now, although he couldn’t understand why. The danger of discovery, he figured, probably enhanced by the idea that he was going to sin against holy men. Joey hoped that there was no God, because this might be one of those things that would have him burning in Hell for eternity. He knew that he had never felt this way while committing any of his numerous break-ins. His mother had recently told him that he was a fucked-up loser. He could feel his face redden as he realized that she’d been right.
Finally, he reached his destination and stood outside a side door to the brewery. It was a very simple door, with no letters or numbers on it, not even any paint. It wasn’t ancient, but still appeared to be old, and was made from heavy wood planks and darkened with age. Joey gently put his gloved hand on the pewter-colored handle and began to slowly press it downward even more slowly than he had his own door. Too fast and someone inside just happening to be looking that way would notice movement. It had to be done in increments so tiny that every change in the handle’s position would be almost imperceptible. Taking a breath every few seconds so he wouldn’t tighten up, Joey worked the device ever-so-slowly and looked around often to make sure that he was still undetected.
After several minutes of patient work, the handle was all the way down and Joey peered into the small gap between the door and the frame to see that the latch was completely recessed. Now came the really tricky part. Keeping the handle pinned with one hand, he used the fingertips of the other to pull the door with the slowest motion yet. He knew that there would be no alarm on the door. These people simply didn’t operate like that. As with the handle, the progress had to be so slow as to be unnoticeable. He continued this and within 10 minutes the door was ajar just enough to give him a peek at roughly a quarter of the brewery’s area from different angles.
However, Joey was savvy enough to know that using several minutes for each step was eating up the one hour that he’d figured he had. He knew that he must get the bare minimum of what he needed and then leave. It was time to scan quickly. Not stupid enough to put his face right up against the small opening, he kept back a little ways. Although it strictly limited his field of vision, it kept him in the shadows. He gazed at the brewing area. The mash tuns, the boil kettles, the chillers, he knew what every piece was thanks to the instruction that Duke had given him. He was uninterested, just the same. Those weren’t what he was here for. Looking around some more, he saw off in one corner a small, plain table sitting next to a filing cabinet. Bingo. Peering around some more, he spied off to one side a metal door with a glass window in it that he knew had to be the entrance to a walk-in cooler. Bingo again. Those are what I came for.
He spent another few minutes spying on the brewery, noticing the monks going about their work along with a few civilians, all oblivious to his presence. He carefully noted where every single thing was and plotted the route that he would take the next time he was here, coming through the same door. It would be another burglary, and he always planned everything beforehand to maximize efficiency and minimize the time spent inside.
Halfway done, he simply reversed the process that he had used coming here, using an equivalent amount of time. As patient and cautious with the second half as with the first, he made it back to his room without incident. Looking at the small clock on his bedside table, he saw that he had spent a total of 48 minutes. He felt very satisfied as he plopped down onto his bed, awaiting the knock on his door to summon him.
Almost 40 yards away, a solitary figure with a hood pulled over his head pondered the entire affair. The surveillance that had been done on Joey Creed had been as unnoticed as the young man had thought his espionage had been. Knowing Creed’s destination and correctly predicting the route taken, the shadowing had been conducted at a distance and very discreetly. He’s good, very good, the man thought, but I knew he was coming. The question running through his mind was what to do now. Going to Abbot John would be ineffective, as nothing could be pinned on the young man other than snooping around. It was very clear as to what Joey Creed was after. Let him go for it? It would be extremely risky to take that approach, since it would require a lot of watching so the young man didn’t get away with the valuables. After all, he wouldn’t always be able to have an excuse to slip out of work to come watch Joey Creed. However, there was no other way at this point. The situation was very serious, and the man hoped that he was up to managing it.
-9-
After they had finished eating, Cam and Abbot John re-joined the others at Helen’s place for a while, then they all went to the demo area where the notorious screening event was to take place. They arrived early enough to get seats on the small bleachers inside the huge tent, taking the front row, although Cam had always strongly preferred sitting in the back near an exit. He’d always had a thing about being in the middle of a potential mob.
As Abbot John chatted with the others while clutching the cooler with the bottles of abbey beer, Cam took a sip of his drink an
d gave a heavy sigh. His attempts to glean some information from the monk while they’d waited for their food had been diplomatically fended off by John, who apparently was placing complete trust in Ned Inkwell and was wary of dealing with an outsider. Cam reminded himself that it was none of his business anyway. I can admire a man who will match wits with me, but I’m still so damned curious about this whole thing.
The scene appeared like it would play out much like last year, with the beers to be judged sitting in a large galvanized metal tub shallowly filled with ice. From what Cam could see, there were four bottled entries and two in kegs. The creators, all but one of them men, huddled by themselves over in a far corner, wearing the resigned looks of the soon-to-be hanged.
“You know, honey, I find this practice to be really strange,” Cam remarked to Shauna. She merely nodded. He noticed the abbot discreetly listening in. “I mean, from what I’ve heard, GWIBE is the only beer festival known to conduct this charming little custom. It’s….”
“It’s barbaric, that’s what it is!” she sputtered vehemently.
Cam was about to reply when he was interrupted by a sudden round of applause as the three-man tribunal strode into the tent wearing grim expressions, putting on the full show. As the clapping subsided, they took their seats at the cheap little table and motioned for the pourer to begin dispensing samples.
Dead silence reigned as the pourer did his thing with the first entry while the judges read the card identifying the beer style and the brewer’s name. There was a brief moment or so of tasting, then the whispering of the judges to each other.
“Arthur Mitt, come forward!” one of the judges commanded with a carefree wave and welcoming smile. A tall, young blonde man grinned and stepped up to the table.
“Your entry, an India Pale Ale, has been judged,” the middle judge declared, “and it was found to suck.” The smile that had lit the judge’s face had suddenly disappeared.
“Wh-what?” the young man gasped, totally confused.
“Whatever hop bitterness you put into it didn’t come close to masking the malty taste, which you probably got from mashing at too high a temperature, you moron!” the judge bellowed, shaking a fist, his face filled with hate.
“No….please….” Mitt whimpered.
“Pourer! Dump that fucking shit out on the ground!” the judge screamed. Mitt rushed to save his keg, frantic not to lose his five gallons, but was grabbed and restrained by three men acting as enforcers for the event. Helpless, he sobbed as the pourer pulled up the pressure relief valve to bleed out the CO², popped the lid off the keg and dumped the entire batch out onto the ground with a savage grin. The crowd went wild. Cheering rocked the tent. Mitt began to be bombarded with bits of garbage.
“Phew! I sure as hell didn’t see that comin’!” Cam yelled to Shauna above the noise.
“That was totally rotten!” Shauna snapped. “Now they want to be sadistic and toy with their victims!”
Trub would’ve thought that was funny, Cam told himself. One thing’s for sure, and that is I’ll never even think of entering this until Shauna has made me a competent brewer.
Cam glanced at Abbot John, who sat there in complete silence staring at the judges, appearing to remain unaffected except for the stricken look that he couldn’t quite hide.
“We all told you this was gonna be rough, Brother John,” Sonny told him.
“And so it is,” John replied in a flat tone. “This is certainly unique to me.”
“You’d think that they’d at least clean it up a bit with a clergyman here,” Helen said.
“No, no, Helen, this is as it should be. I want to see people as they really are.”
“Julian Clover!” the same judge barked, the signal that the judges were ready for the second candidate. Again, the pourer went through the routine, then the judges. The former Haitian immigrant stood before the table very warily, not about to fall for any tricks. His dark eyes bore into the judges and Cam could swear that his black skin was turning purplish-red.
“With many improvements in key areas this would be a competent beer,” the lead judge declared. “However, as it is, this is pretty much shit.” The judge took the bottle that the beer had come in and hurled it against a wood backdrop. The bottle shattered dramatically, dozens of shards of glass falling to the ground along with the remaining beer. The audience cheered mightily. Shauna shook her head in disgust.
Clover then did what Cam didn’t expect him to: He gave out an anguished cry, buried his face in his hands and began sobbing before running out of the tent. The crowd laughed louder. He made it out of the tent before the deluge of garbage. Abbot John sat quietly, the color slowly draining from his face despite his best attempts to appear blasé.
“They’re not going soft on them this year,” Bobby Bobb chuckled behind them. Most of them turned to see him sitting right behind them, along with Streicher and Kopp.
“Remember, as terrible as this is, it is really for the good of the craft,” Johann intoned, noticing the deep unease of the abbot.
“What purpose does this serve?” Abbot John asked.
“It weeds out the incompetents,” Sonny explained. “If they can’t even pass a preliminary taste test, why should they be allowed to enter into a full-blown competition?”
Bullshit. This is just tormenting the fresh meat for the entertainment of the mob, Cam silently answered, deciding to stay out of this one.
Cam suddenly felt like he had eyes on him as the judges began assessing the next entry. Discreetly, he scanned the area, turning his head so slowly as to be unnoticeable. Nothing struck him as unusual until he looked toward a far corner slightly behind him and to the left. A brief glimpse of long blonde hair moving away out into the dusk grabbed his attention. Despite the drinks that he’d had, he was still clear enough to realize that it was the mysterious blonde from the other night.
“Honey, I’ve gotta hit the latrine,” he told Shauna. “Besides, I’m gettin’ sore from sittin’ on these bleachers. I’ll stretch my legs and be back.”
“Do you just want to leave and I’ll go with you?” she asked hopefully.
“Nah. I won’t be gone too long. I’ll make it back before this ends.”
He left the tent and immediately loved the feeling of the nighttime air. As packed as the demo area was, he was still a bit surprised to see the multitude of GWIBErs milling about on the main road and elsewhere. He rapidly looked over the surrounding area and was disappointed to see nothing of the blonde woman. He had left the tent only several seconds after she had, but Betty had seemingly vanished.
“Cam,” came a voice from nowhere. Cam turned around and saw Bucky Fritsch, the driver of the pickup truck who had gone to the murder scene the other day.
“Hey, Bucky.”
“You look lost, Cam.”
“I was lookin’ for someone.”
“Oh? Who?”
“A blonde woman. Dale told me her name was Betty.”
“Oh….her,” Bucky mumbled, getting a strange look on his face.
“What is it, Bucky?”
“I don’t get it. What are you, the guy out of American Graffiti trying to chase down the mysterious blonde? You’re married to Shauna now, which, let me tell you, didn’t sit too well with a lot of the guys around here. Besides, haven’t you noticed that she’s not exactly….”
“Desirable?” Cam finished the thought. “Umm, yeah, I have. It’s nothin’ like that, Bucky. I’m just curious. Do you know her?”
“This is the first year I’ve seen her here,” Bucky replied with a shrug.
“Oh. Ah well, I guess….” Cam was interrupted by a booming voice from a few hundred feet away that he knew to be that of the main judge, as another poor miscreant suffered the fate of having their beer deemed unworthy.
“Gotta go!” Bucky said with a grin. “I don’t want to miss it all!”
Cam stood around, not wanting to go back in just yet. A man strode out of the demo area, face beet-red, wal
king furiously by him, obviously the latest victim. Cam looked away, not wanting to make eye contact. It’s a wonder that one of these folks hasn’t come back with a piece and wasted a bunch of people, he thought.
Tempted to go scrounge a free beer from someone, Cam remembered that the screening was already half over, and he didn’t want to miss the end. Suddenly, there was another roar from the crowd inside, and he realized that the fourth contestant hadn’t fared any better than the others. He wondered whether the entry had been from a keg or a bottle when a keg flew out of the tent and into a dusty side street. With a sigh, he slowly wandered back inside.
Someone had taken his spot next to Shauna, he noticed, so he just stood, angling for the best possible position to see the remaining action. The judges were just being served the sample from the fifth contestant, a man seemingly in his 30s and wearing a disturbingly vacant look on his face. The three-man tribunal slowly sipped their samples, then the judge on the left stood up, spewed the liquid from his mouth and gasped.
“This is pure shit!” he screamed, the other two judges nodding their agreement. He picked up the bottle that the samples had come from and smashed it against the backdrop.
In the blink of an eye, the contestant rushed forward at the judges, too fast for the enforcers to react. He knocked over the table, grabbed the condemning judge and bowled over the other two in the process. The offending judge reacted quickly, however, tucking his head in and rolling, succeeding in getting the attacker on the bottom, whereupon he began putting the fists to him as best as he could. It didn’t last long, though, as the enforcers caught up and pulled the two men apart. The attacker continued to thrash, loudly threatening the judges’ lives. When one of the enforcers shoved a .380 Auto into his face and muttered, “Unh unh,” the man calmed down. He was quickly manhandled out of the tent and off the premises and the show went on.
“Poppie Jenks, come forth!” the middle judge bellowed as the pourer began dispensing samples from the last contestant. A young woman strode up to the table, apparently a little nervous but showing a bit of I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude too, from what Cam could see. The crowd was silent, eagerly waiting to see which way the judges would go as their samples were slowly consumed. There were a few nods between them, then they huddled to whisper.
