by Jude Hardin
So that was my plan, to wait it out until morning. I sat on the ground and settled back against the trunk of a pine tree. I yawned. It was cold and lonely out there, and I kept thinking about Brittney Ryan and how I had ultimately failed her. I never should have driven off and left her alone in my camper that morning.
I rubbed my eyes. The air was still and heavy and I could smell my own sweat. I had a miniature radio and a tiny set of headphones in my backpack, so I listened to NPR for a while to pass the time. An economic expert discussed the president’s new tax plan. Big deal. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. I just wanted to get the information I needed and get out of Chain of Light alive. If I could manage that, everything else would be gravy. Go ahead and tax my ass off. See if I care.
They started playing some slow jazz. I turned the radio off and rubbed my eyes again. I needed some coffee. I needed it to be administered intravenously.
I thought I might be able to shut my eyes for a few minutes, but, of course, that was a mistake.
I woke up two hours later with an AK-47 pointed at my face.
“Get up,” the Black Beret behind the assault rifle said. “Hands behind your head.” His buddy, Black Beret Number Two, stood a few feet behind him and also held an AK-47.
I got up and assumed the position. Number One slapped a cuff on my left wrist, pulled it behind my back and then did likewise with my right one.
“Easy,” Number Two said. “That’s Reverend Strychar’s new star guitar player.”
“I know who it is. He’ll be lucky to have hands at all when I get done with him.”
“I need to speak with Reverend Strychar,” I said.
They ignored me. Number One shoved me forward, and we walked single file toward the house with me in the middle. When we got to the door, Number One pulled out a cell phone and punched in some numbers. The deadbolt clicked open and we walked inside. I didn’t see a keypad for an alarm. I assumed the cell phone had disabled it remotely with the same code that popped the door lock.
“I need to speak with Reverend Strychar,” I said again.
“Shut up,” said Number One.
I wasn’t in much of a position to argue.
They led me through a maze of hallways, and we ended up in a conference room with a long table surrounded by a dozen or so chairs.
“Sit down,” Number One said.
I sat. I tried to remain calm, but I could feel my blood pressure in my eyeballs.
Number One propped his rifle against the wall and sat in the chair across from me. “What were you doing in the woods?”
“I need to speak with Reverend Strychar.”
Number Two stood by the door with his AK-47 trained on me.
Number One pounded his fist on the table. “We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. I’m going to ask you one more time. What were you doing in the woods?”
“You have vays of making me talk?” I said. It wasn’t the time to be a smartass, but I couldn’t resist.
“As a matter of fact, we do,” Number One said. “Again. What were you doing in the woods?”
“I need to speak with Reverend Strychar.”
Number One got up. “If he moves, shoot him,” he said to Number Two on his way out the door.
I didn’t move, and Number Two didn’t shoot me. Number One returned a few minutes later carrying a yellow dish towel, a small stainless steel bowl, and a couple of big thick books. He lifted one end of the conference table and slid the books under two of the legs, creating what I guessed to be about a thirty-degree slant. He left the room again briefly and came back lugging a plastic mop bucket filled with water.
They forced me to lie down with my back flat on the table. They had me tilted, as though I were going to be shot out of a cannon feet first. I stared at the ceiling. I knew what was coming.
“You’re not really going to do this, are you?” Number Two said.
“Is he giving me a choice?”
“We always have a choice. Let’s just wait till morning and let Reverend Strychar handle it.”
“Why don’t you go wake him up, and he can handle it right now?”
Number Two didn’t say anything. I got the impression Reverend Strychar didn’t care much for being aroused in the middle of the night.
Without further ado, Number One dipped the dish towel into the mop bucket and stuffed it into my mouth, leaving a tail draped over my nose and eyes.
The stainless steel bowl clanged metallically as he snatched it from the tile floor. I heard it plunge and emerge dripping. A slow steady stream then trickled over my face, saturating the towel and making it impossible to get enough oxygen. With my wrists and ankles shackled, I bucked and thrashed and gurgled wetly trying to shout. It was no practical joke this time. This fool was going to drown me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
The world started to go purple. Number One yanked the rag out of my mouth before I lost consciousness. He waited until I was finished coughing and gagging and sucking in precious air, and then said, “What were you doing in the woods?”
“I need to speak with Reverend Strychar,” I tried to say. It came out more like ah knee ah sneak ah never sniker.
“What’s your real name? Who do you work for?”
“Ah knee ah sneak ah never sniker, you song ah bench!”
He pushed the rag back into my mouth, deeper in my throat this time. He started pouring water on me again, and then an angry voice that wasn’t Number One or Number Two barked, “What is the meaning of this?”
The rag came out. I turned my head to the side and puked. Tears blurred my vision, but I was able to recognize Reverend Strychar standing in the doorway with a big shiny nickel-plated revolver at his side. He wore pajamas with a paisley print and a give-me-a-reason expression.
“We caught him in the woods, right outside the house,” Number One said.
“Get him up,” Strychar said.
Number One and Number Two helped me back into a chair. My face was dripping with water and tears and snot and vomit. Number Two wrung the dish towel out and wiped me off.
“What were you doing in the woods?” Strychar asked.
I acted indignant as hell: “The sax player in your band made it clear he doesn’t want me in his room. And he calls himself a Christian? He was hostile toward me, and I can’t live and work under those conditions. I was going to wait in the woods till morning and then be on my way. I just wanted to tell you in person I won’t be able to play for your band after all.”
“Why didn’t you just tell us that in the first place?” Black Beret Number One said.
“Quiet!” Strychar said, and then turned to me. “I apologize if Brother Simon was rude to you. I assure you he will be dealt with. I’ll arrange for alternate accommodations for you first thing in the morning, after the prayer meeting, if you’ll agree to stay. In the meantime, I would be honored for you to be a guest in my house tonight.”
“Well—”
“I insist. It’s settled then. You’ll stay here tonight, and I’ll find you a new roommate tomorrow. Do you happen to have a coin on you, Brother Matthew?”
“A coin?”
“Please.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out some change. I handed him a quarter. He flipped it in the air and let it fall to the floor. It bounced and spun and wobbled to a stop on tails.
Strychar turned, raised the revolver, and shot Black Beret Number Two in the heart. The AK-47 skittered away. Number Two didn’t grab his chest or say anything. He crumbled like a demolished building. His head hit the tile with a moist crack, the sound an egg dropped from a window makes.
“Brother John, take the shackles off Brother Matthew, and then clean up this mess,” Strychar said to Number One.
Number One, aka Brother John, took his key out and unlocked my cuffs with a shaky hand. He looked at me in a pleading sort of way. I didn’t say anything. I figured his time would come.
Strychar led m
e to a bedroom, a nicely furnished suite with a king-size bed and a sunken garden tub. My knees were weak. He gave me soap and towels and a fresh change of clothes. He told me to try to get some rest. He apologized again for Brother Simon, the sax player, and for the “reprehensible behavior” of the Black Berets. He told me goodnight and left the room.
Things certainly hadn’t gone as planned, but I was in. I was in the house. Now it was time to start looking for the combination to that safe.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I took a long, luxurious bath with a fancy bar of soap imported from Spain, and some bath beads from a jar. The soap box had a picture of a senorita on it with long black hair and ruby red lips. Her name was Susanna Francisca. She was beautiful. I was in love with her. I soaked in the hot soapy water for about thirty minutes. It was one of the top five baths of my life. I got out and toweled off and put on the clothes Strychar had left for me. Boxers, jeans, a polo shirt, socks, all brand new. I wondered if he had a department store hidden somewhere in the house. I wasn’t tired anymore. It’s amazing how a rootin-tootin torture session can get the old juices flowing. I felt brand new. I was fresh and energetic and I smelled like a million bucks.
The revolver’s blast in such close quarters had left a steady tone ringing in my ears, a B-flat I thought. It was annoying, but no worse than the hum after a concert back when I played arenas with my band. It reminded me of those guys and my wife and baby and the plane crash.
There was a bowl of fresh fruit on the dresser. I selected a shiny red apple and bit into it. Wicked delicious. I peeked through the blinds, saw Number One and another Black Beret loading Number Two’s body into the back of a white van. I didn’t know if it was the same van, but it was identical to the one I’d seen at the women’s dorm earlier. They loaded Number Two’s body in what I perceived to be a nonchalant and disrespectful manner, more like a sack of garbage than a human being. Maybe it was a common occurrence for Strychar to become aggravated and capriciously blow someone away. I felt sorry for Number Two, because he seemed to have qualms about the whole waterboarding ordeal. He’d tried to put a stop to it. I wondered if it was an act, though, a good Nazi-bad Nazi kind of thing. At any rate, Strychar had shot and killed him on the basis of a coin toss, which made Strychar verifiably insane in my book and not to be trusted an inch.
I waited until the van left, and then I waited another half hour. I figured Strychar was back to sleep by then. I got the penlight and a paperclip from my backpack and tiptoed out of the room in stocking feet, hoping to find the combination to the safe.
The house was huge, but I’d been through enough of it to know the basic layout. I found my way to the front door and from there to Strychar’s study. It seemed like a good place to start, good as any.
It was four o’clock in the morning. Complete darkness. I padded my way to the executive desk, gently rolled the chair out of the way, got down on my knees.
I held the penlight in my mouth and started ferreting through the drawers. They weren’t locked, so I didn’t need the paperclip I’d brought. I started with the one on the bottom right. It was a deep drawer with hanging file folders arranged alphabetically, K to Z. Personnel files. I looked in the Ms, didn’t find one for Massengill. My own file was there, in the Rs for Recore, and I saw that my driver’s license had been verified by a clerk in Dallas named Mildred Bates. Strychar was checking me out all right. I figured I must have passed. Otherwise, I would have been dead by now.
I examined the dates on a random selection. None of them was more than twelve months old. Longtime members like Massengill probably had records in a warehouse somewhere. These were just quick references for newbies. More of the same in the bottom left drawer, A to J on that side.
I checked the middle drawers next, first the right and then the left. Nothing of interest in those, just basic office supplies and some other miscellaneous crap. Post-Its, a stapler, a box of staples, a staple remover, an obsolete typewriter cartridge still in its original packaging, a Scotch Tape dispenser, a Florida Lotto ticket from ten years ago, a partially eaten roll of Certs, a box of paperclips, a variety of pens and pencils.
Strychar’s junk. Years of it. Everything looked old and neglected. I proceeded to the top right drawer. Strychar’s revolver lay there wrapped in an oily rag, along with a box of .357 Magnum cartridges and a cleaning kit. It was a Colt Python. The gun had a trigger lock on it, but the cylinder opened freely. It had that just-fired smell. I saw Strychar had replaced the spent round with a new one already.
There was a stray cartridge rolling around on the bottom of the drawer. I picked it up, examined it, and compared it to one of the shells from the box. It was identical, but slightly lighter in weight. I guessed the powder had been taken out of it. Whoever had done it had done a good job. You couldn’t tell by looking. It was an impotent dummy round, probably a prop for another one of Strychar’s practical jokes. Maybe some of the newbies were forced to play Russian roulette—unaware of the phony bullet in the same way I was unaware of the dull blade on the guillotine. I decided to play a little practical joke of my own. I replaced one of the real cartridges in the gun’s cylinder with the dummy, and left the real one on the bottom of the drawer. The next time Strychar played Russian roulette, he would empty the cylinder and use the stray for the game, only now the stray was a live round. If it happened to line up with the firing pin—whoops. KA-BLOOEY! Lucius Strychar, you’ve been punked!
Still no sign of anything that might resemble a vault combination. I had two more drawers to go, the top left and the top middle, and then I would start searching elsewhere.
When I opened the top left drawer, it hit me like a ton of numbered Ping-Pong balls.
The lotto ticket.
Why would anyone save a ticket for ten years? If the ticket’s a winner, you cash it. If it’s a loser, you throw it away. Maybe Strychar had absently tossed it into the drawer. Maybe he had forgotten about it. Or, maybe the numbers were chosen because they held some sort of significance.
I went back to the middle drawer on the right-hand side and retrieved the ticket. 20-21-22-31-34-39. I memorized the numbers, put the ticket back, closed the drawer.
Then I heard a toilet flush.
I switched off the penlight and held my breath. I could hear Strychar’s bare feet flapping on the hardwood floor, but fortunately the footsteps faded as he walked back to his bedroom. I had absolutely no excuse to be in his study, so I’m not sure what I would have done if he’d come in there.
It was almost five o’clock now. The prayer meeting started at seven, so Strychar would probably get up for good around six. That gave me an hour to get the safe open, tear the pages I needed out of The Holy Record, and get the hell out of there. It was riskier than ever now that I’d heard Strychar awake and walking around, but I didn’t know when I’d be able to get back into the house and have such easy access. It was now or never, and never wasn’t an option. Plus, I didn’t want to waste the suffering I’d gone through under the hand of John the Twisted Baptist. I felt like I’d earned the privilege to be there.
I waited until I heard Strychar’s bedroom door click shut. Then I waited a few more minutes, hoping his bladder was sufficiently empty now and that he’d gone back to sleep.
I quietly crossed the room, put my hand on the painting the vault was behind, and then remembered the terrible squeak the piano hinge had made when Strychar swung it out earlier.
Damn.
You could have heard an eyelash land on a rosebud in Strychar’s study. Causing that hinge to squeak would have been like announcing my presence with a megaphone. If only I’d come as prepared as, say, Batman, I’m sure I would have had some household lubricant in my trusty utility belt.
The gun cleaning kit. There had to be some oil in there.
I walked back to the desk and opened the top right drawer. Very slowly, very quietly. The cleaning kit was in a nice wooden case with a hinged lid, and the plastic bottle of oil was right on top. I took the
bottle over and squeezed a few drops on the piano hinge. I greased it all the way down, working the lubricant in with my fingertips. I lifted the painting slightly, put some positive pressure on it, and swung it out a couple of inches from the wall. So far, so good. I worked it back and forth a few times, then swung it out until the front of the painting rested flush with the wall on the other side. No squeak. With the vault’s door exposed and gleaming under my little light, I started dialing in the numbers from the lotto ticket.
I hadn’t messed with a combination lock for thirty-some years, since high school. I figured wall safes worked on the same principle as the good old Master I had back then, the one that kept would-be thieves from jacking my Right Guard, my Chucks, and my sweaty tube socks, so I started by turning the dial three times to the right to reset the tumblers. I kept dialing clockwise, stopped on twenty, went the other way and stopped on twenty-one. I continued alternating directions until I reached the final number, which was thirty-nine.
What a beautiful sound, all those tumblers clicking into place. I grabbed the handle, pushed it downward, eased the door open with a gentle tug.
There it was. The Holy Record. I stared at it for a few seconds, thinking there should be some glowing rays and heavenly music, but nothing happened so I reached into the vault and pulled it out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I sat Indian-style on the floor with the penlight in my mouth and The Holy Record in front of me. It was exactly 5:39. I opened the book to a random page and started scanning the longhand scrawl as rapidly as I could. More celebrity signatures—divine visions—dialogues with Jesus—a missionary trip to the Fiji Islands—and then today another victory—Brother Philip—Datsun pickup truck burst into flames—
I didn’t get any further. At exactly 5:45, Strychar’s alarm clock squealed like a boiled meerkat.
