by Rob Byrnes
But the agents had another concern at the moment. Namely, should they shoot their way in to the Rev. Mr. Dennis Merribaugh’s basement sanctuary? Or wait for him to come out voluntarily?
“You know what they should teach us at the academy?” asked Tolan, more to fill time than for any other reason. “Lock-picking.”
“That would be a useful skill,” Waverly agreed. “No one learns that anymore.”
Leonard, standing near them but not quite with them, except for those times they wanted to ask him the same damn questions, had finally had enough. He was starting to not care much about the money, especially since it appeared his confederates had deserted him. Maybe they’d left the campus altogether. There was certainly no reason to think they’d found their way into the Great Cross, which Leonard was still mostly convinced was solid and impenetrable, no matter what Chase had said about spirals or squiggles or whatever.
He decided it was an appropriate time to ask, “Since we’re all just standing around and I’ve got nothing to do, you think it’d be all right if I take off?”
Waverly smiled, but shook his head. “No, Mr. Platt, I don’t see that happening.”
$ $ $
Chase uncapped the bottles of motor oil, and starting at a point thirty steps or so below the spot where the footlockers had jammed, began liberally pouring it over the stairs, slowly backing up until he reached them.
“That should help,” he said, tossing the last empty bottle over the railing.
$ $ $
“What the hell?!” Merribaugh was mid-step when a slick empty plastic bottle hit him in the head. It didn’t really hurt; it was more of a surprise.
Although not quite as much of a surprise as the large man who suddenly loomed out of the darkness, knocking down his cocked index finger and thumb before he had a chance to react.
“A finger gun?” asked the man. “You were threatening me with a finger gun?”
Merribaugh hung his head in shame.
“Now,” said the man, “I personally think it would be a smart idea for you to get out of here before someone gets hurt. And by someone, I mean you.”
This, Merribaugh thought, as he slowly retraced his steps down the underground passage, was going to be extremely difficult and uncomfortable to explain to Dr. Oscar Hurley.
$ $ $
Chase kicked the first footlocker, then Grant kicked the second footlocker, and then gravity and past-its-expiration-date motor oil worked together to do their job. Just like they’d hoped.
Problem was, they worked together to do their job a little too well.
$ $ $
Unseen by anyone except the elderly security guard—who in any event no longer had full confidence in his faculties—Dr. Oscar Hurley left Cathedral House and hustled to his personal car, pausing only to throw a few armfuls of possessions into the trunk. He assumed he’d be back, and very soon, but with the FBI and other assorted unsavory types swarming through the Virginia Cathedral of Love that night, it was the last place he should be.
In the morning, when he could accurately assess the damage from a safe—and remote—vantage point, he’d be better able to handle things. It might take a lawyer, or maybe an entire firm, or maybe the entire Virginia Bar Association, but he had enough friends in high places that any damage would be neither permanent nor deep.
But in the meantime no one—not even Francine—would know where he was.
He started the car, pulled out of his parking space, and got almost one-tenth of a mile down the road before a black SUV cut him off, veering into his lane and forcing him to a stop.
$ $ $
Grant smiled and high-fived Chase in the darkened stairwell. “Now they’re moving.”
And they were. The two very heavy footlockers—weighted down further with seven million dollars in cash, give or take—moved effortlessly down the well-oiled staircase, picking up speed as they followed its spiral. Looking down from twenty—now thirty—feet above the racing boxes, Grant had an unsettling thought.
He hollered to be heard above the noise, even though Chase stood next to him. “Do you think maybe it’s too slick?”
“Nah, listen to them go.”
“I’m just worried about—” Grant started to say, but stopped at a new sound, a sound that could only be the deafening noise resulting from a violent collision between two very heavy footlockers and one not-as-strong-as-it-looked concrete wall.
“—runaways.”
Forty feet below where they stood, a floodlight now illuminated the interior of the Great Cross. And their hearts sank.
$ $ $
The campus—which had been so silent for much of the evening, even as two thousand people watched Walter Pomeroy’s version of The Sound of Music revision in all its born-again glory—was suddenly bustling with activity.
A dozen FBI agents—some guarding the handcuffed Dr. Oscar Hurley; Waverly and Tolan trying to figure out how to get Merribaugh out of the basement—stood with guns drawn.
Captain Joseph Enright—followed by the two junior agents, who’d just freed him on word that backup had arrived—stormed down the road from Cathedral House, but lost steam when he saw the black SUVs parked at all angles and Hurley in cuffs.
Chris Cason took in the chaos with confusion. If this was the end of the world, he knew God, at least, would appreciate Ant!
Leonard Platt took it in with the certainty that he would be the next to be cuffed, as soon as Waverly and Tolan were bored toying with him.
A few dozen curious bystanders—parishioners out for a smoke, ushers, deliverymen—who were drawn by the activity away from the shadows of the cathedral, auditorium, and loading dock, edged a bit closer to try to figure out what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks was going on. Is that Dr. Hurley in handcuffs? They look like FBI; are they FBI?
And then they thought, What’s that noise?!!
That noise was the noise two footlockers stuffed with cash made as they burst through the crumbling concrete blocks in the center of the Great Cross.
They hit the safety railing on the scaffolding a few feet beneath them with enough speed and force to dislodge the harness that attached the metal structure to the Great Cross.
With enough speed and force to pop open the latches that ordinarily would have kept those footlockers closed…
And then the scaffolding started to buckle.
Hurley had to be tased by the FBI agents before he would calm down.
Twice.
$ $ $
“High on a hill was a lonely goatherd,” sang the actress playing fundamentalist Maria onstage, who didn’t even have an opportunity to follow the line with a yodel before one of the footlockers smashed through the skylight. She grabbed a von Trapp kid by the hand and they dove out of the way, inches from the spot where the box ripped through the wires holding the marionettes before it fell to the stage, in the process spewing maybe three-point-five million into the air.
The audience screamed, gasped, and then fell silent. Until, that is, a large amount of that three-point-five million—first hurled to the stage by God’s hand, with the assistance of gravity and motor oil, and now borne by the auditorium’s powerful HVAC system and a strong cross-wind blowing through the shattered skylight—began floating through the air.
“Praise the Lord!” a few people shouted.
“Jesus provides!” yelled others.
A frenzy began as more than two thousand good Christians forgot all about that squashed goatherd and his goat, crushed somewhere underneath a greased-up footlocker, but remembered they needed to fill the gas tank on the way home. Or for the luckier ones with faster reflexes, to buy a nicer TV to watch Dr. Oscar Hurley on those Sunday mornings when they didn’t feel like driving to Nash Bog.
Two rather large piles of cash landed in the orchestra pit near Walter Pomeroy. He made sure no one was watching, then shoved the bills in his piano bench and dropped his ass back onto it. Not that he wasn’t appreciative of everything Jesus had done for him, b
ut he’d just been fired and was anxious to get back to New York—this ex-gay life was more depressing than his gay life had been—and this was as good a sign as any.
Maria and the von Trapp kid also found time to compensate themselves for their near-death experience. Although they both also knew they’d be suing, which was particularly precocious of the von Trapp kid, who was only six years old.
$ $ $
The second footlocker—the one that provided the momentum to send the first into the scaffolding with enough extra kick to plummet through the roof of the auditorium—made a less dramatic return to earth.
The box lay on its side, its monetary contents floating out into the night air, until the scaffold slowly collapsed toward the loading dock. As the structure fell forward, more bills flew, until the floodlights picked up little but green United States currency as it fluttered through the air.
Deliverymen scrambled out of the way as metal pipes crumpled toward them, running first in a direction away from the box that crashed through the auditorium skylight, then away from the second section moments before it fell over their trucks.
The second footlocker rode the scaffolding almost all the way down…
Until it plunged through the roof of a white panel truck and the loud sound of splintering wood filled the air.
Leonard Platt, standing not far away, heard that noise and immediately subtracted one million dollars from their hoped-for take. Then he looked up to the sky—at the thousands of pieces of currency floating through the air—and subtracted seven million more, just to keep it realistic.
He was a bookkeeper, after all. He had to keep accurate numbers.
$ $ $
Lisa and Constance had grabbed what they could in the auditorium before realizing the same scenario was unfolding outside. And there was a lot less competition out there.
“Looks like they found the money,” said Constance, quickly moving through a parking lot, snatching bills from the air and scooping them off the pavement.
Lisa was right behind her, trying not to think about what they’d lost. What was done was done. But as she peeled a twenty off a car windshield, she couldn’t help herself. “Only Lambert.”
Constance rounded another row of cars and stopped. “They’ve got Hurley in handcuffs.”
At her side, Lisa sized up the situation. “Looks like your friends from the FBI finally got their man.”
“Yeah, and I’m keeping my head down in case they’re out to get their woman again.”
“This is bad,” Lisa said, her eyes riveted on the agents guarding Hurley. She took out her phone and typed a warning to their colleagues, wherever they were.
$ $ $
Grant and Chase made their way as quickly as possible down the tightly winding spiral staircase—slipping in the motor oil even as they walked with care, feeling each whack of their tailbones on the slick, hard metal steps—but reached the hole that had been punched into the wall only when dust was rising from the loading dock, obscuring the view
“What…uh…What happened?” asked Chase.
A ten-spot hovered in the air near Grant like a butterfly. He grabbed it and jammed it into a pocket. “Nothing good.”
Chase nodded at the hole, at the floodlights. “How are we gonna get out of here without being seen?”
Grant looked out the hole in the wall of the Great Cross. “Dust. Money blowing around. Confusion Panic. Greed. There’s your answer.” His phone buzzed and he pulled it out of a pocket. “Oh, sweet. The FBI is out there, too.”
Chase looked at his partner. “You think we’re gonna get out of here?”
“Not really.” Grant’s shoulders slumped. “But I guess we gotta try.”
“Does anyone even know we’re in here?”
Grant thought that over. “They probably figured it out after seven million dollars went flying into the air. Because who else but us…?”
$ $ $
Waverly and Tolan looked at the chaos and had the same thought.
“Remember how we were afraid this might be a wild goose chase?” asked Waverly. “I guess we didn’t have to worry.”
“Guess not,” answered Tolan. He shook his head and his attention shifted to the hole in the cross. “They hid it in the cross. That was actually pretty ingenious.”
“Until it wasn’t.”
“Well, yeah. That, too.” Tolan sighed and rattled the door handle again. “So what do you want to do about Merribaugh?”
Waverly shrugged. “Wait him out, I guess.”
“I guess.” Tolan stared out into the closest thing he’d ever witnessed to a riot. “Wish I’d brought more peanuts.”
The Book of Lamentations
28
“I have a thought,” said Chase. Since they were nearing the bottom of the staircase and neither of them had come up with a decent escape route, Grant was willing to listen.
“Shoot.”
“We already know the walls are weak, right? At least in certain places?”
“We certainly do now.”
“How about we try to make a new hole?” Chase had a strange enthusiasm for his plan, which sounded to Grant like the least workable idea possible. His silence communicated that to Chase. “Just trying to help.”
“I know you were.” Grant’s voice was melancholy. He was ready to face the inevitable. “But we’ve had a good run, and maybe prison ain’t so bad. It’s not like we won’t know people.”
Chase stopped mid-step. “I’m too pretty for prison. I am not going.”
Grant continued his descent. “The situation says you are. But look, maybe we’ll get sent to the same joint. Maybe we can even bunk together.”
From not too far below them at the bottom of the staircase they heard Farraday’s voice. “Nobody’s goin’ to prison, so stop talking like that. We’ll work something out.”
“I take it you know what happened,” said Grant.
“Heard the noise, looked up, saw the hole, and figured it out.” He made out their shapes in the darkness as they tromped down the last few steps.
“It’s worse than you think. Lisa sent a text a while ago and the place is now crawling with FBI.”
“Have you heard from her since?”
“No,” Grant said, and reconfirmed with a glance at his cell phone. “Nothing.”
“There’s your answer,” said Farraday. “We got people on the outside. Tell ’em to get us out.”
“And how are they gonna do that? Supposing they haven’t been picked up, that is.”
“What, Lambert, you never heard of creating a diversion?” He cleared his throat. “It’s like I gotta do all the thinking around here.”
$ $ $
Lisa peered at her phone. “A diversion?”
Hiding next to her behind a parked car, Constance said, “Huh?”
“Those idiots are trapped inside the cross. They want us to attract attention so they can get out.”
Constance looked at the money floating through the air, the collapsed scaffolding, the holes in the cross and the auditorium skylight, a thousand people moving back and forth, and, finally, at Dr. Oscar Hurley and the FBI agents.
“Should’ve figured they were inside it.”
Lisa nodded. “This has their fingerprints all over it.”
Constance leaned against a car, setting off the alarm. She ignored it. “Honey, I can’t begin to think of how we’d attract attention in the middle of all this. Anything else is gonna look downright normal.”
$ $ $
Security Officer Chris Cason heard the women before he saw them.
“I’ve been possessed by a demon!! Save me, Jesus!!”
And then she came into view, a tall, middle-aged woman spinning feverishly through the crowd, screaming over and over again that she’d been possessed.
A smaller black woman he recognized from the congregation ran next to her, also shouting.
“Someone help!” she hollered. “The demons of greed have taken control of her bo
dy!”
“Help me, Jesus! Save me from greed!” She spun into the lawn beneath the cross, scattering the throng of people who were still collecting the floating bills before falling to the ground.
Cason took a step toward her, but stopped as she rose up.
“Give the money back to the Cathedral! Don’t let the demons steal your soul!”
“Yes! Praise the Lord!” The black woman turned to the crowd. “Give me the money so I can return it to its rightful place!”
“The demons!! They’re burning my soul!”
Near Cason, a woman who’d felt guilty about the sixty-two dollars she’d gathered collapsed to the ground. “Help me, Jesus! I believe!” He was rushing to assist her when another woman fell. And then another.
Waverly and Tolan walked away from the door, trying to figure out what was happening. Something about demons and greed.
Leonard Platt saw his opportunity and slowly edged away.
$ $ $
Merribaugh knew what was waiting for him. The FBI knew where he was, and they wouldn’t just shrug and walk away. Still, he’d put off the inevitable as long as possible, savoring his last moments of freedom in an empty basement.
But he heard the thieves approaching, and knew that wouldn’t go well for him either. It was time to face the music.
He opened the door…
…and said, “What the hell?”
He thought he knew what to expect, but that didn’t include hundreds of people running about and screaming. It didn’t include mass hysteria. It didn’t include collapsed scaffolding. And it certainly didn’t include a night sky littered with thousands of pieces of paper.
It also didn’t include a momentarily unguarded door, and—if there was one thing Dennis Merribaugh understood—it was that one should take every opportunity God provides.
