Way Past Dead d-3

by Steven Womack

  There was a wreck on Broadway on the bridge over I-40 that was just being cleared away, so I missed the worst of the jam. Some poor sucker in an old Plymouth had turned left to get on the freeway, and what looked like a brand-new Toyota pickup-temporary tag still taped in the back window-had T-boned him on the passenger’s side. Somebody’s day was shot all to blazes.

  Getting past that sucked up about ten minutes, so by the time I found a parking space on a side street off Demonbreun Street at the top of the hill next to Tourist Trap Row, my heart was beating pretty fast. I had less than an hour now before my appointment with Phil Anderson at the insurance company, the appointment that I hoped would bail me out financially.

  So why was I running around working up a sweat on something I couldn’t do anything about? I couldn’t come up with an answer, so I just kept plowing ahead.

  Jericho’s was inside an old, renovated house that perched on the slight rise overlooking Broadway, next door to Gilley’s. The building was two stories high, painted gray, with tasteful maroon shutters on tall, double-hung windows. The name was emblazoned across the front in bright pink neon, with red crucifixes blazing steadily on either side of the crackling light. In two display windows on either side of the door, mannequins dressed in the custom-made clothes stood on mute display.

  It struck me as odd that there weren’t a passel of news vans and cop cars outside here as well as down at the morgue. But then the Pentecostal Enochians had always been fairly discreet about owning the place. Unlike some other religious cults who’d opened up storefront retail operations in order to convert the infidels, the PEs had been content to make a fortune quietly.

  I opened the door and stepped inside. The air was cool, dry, and scented with that stuffy textile odor I always associate with clothes stores or new carpet. An electronic bell chimed as I closed the door behind me.

  The large front room was crowded with clothes racks, with shelves against the walls rising all the way to the top of what must have been at least a twelve-foot ceiling. Jackets, denim or leather mostly, hung on the clothes racks, while the shelves were piled with folded jeans.

  And, God Almighty, clothes like I’d never seen before in my life. Pain quite literally came to my eyes and I found myself squinting to cut off some of the sensation. I pulled a stonewashed denim jacket off the rack and examined it.

  Every seam had been studded with rhinestones, red and gold and blue and yellow and green. Light twinkled off chrome buttons. The damn thing had to weigh at least ten pounds. And on the back, an airbrushed painting of Christ on a Harley-Davidson, and the words BIKING FOR JESUS! airbrushed with a flourish across the shoulder panels. Jesus was outlined in sequins, and the tires of the bike were gold leaf, either fake or real; I couldn’t tell which.

  Then I saw the price tag: $1,200. Damn, I thought, better be real.

  The rest of the stuff was in the same vein: airbrushed apostles at a long table staring beatifically at Christ as he spread his arms out to either side ($750); a sequined Virgin Mary staring up at a rhinestoned Christ on the cross ($900); and, of course, Christ in the clouds with his arms around Ail-vis as the two stare down at a miniature stylized rendition of mourners filing past the grave at Graceland ($1,400). The painted title above that one read THE KING MEETS THE KING.

  You know, one of these days, a few centuries down the road, archaeologists will excavate the ruins of Nashville, Tennessee, and they’ll come across this place. And they’re going to think we were all like this.

  I shook my head in wonder. As far as I was concerned, the success of this venture only validated my long-held belief that there is a significant portion of the populace whose wallets are bigger than their brains.

  Other racks had clothes decorated in a more secular fashion. If I wanted, for instance, a six-hundred-dollar jacket with an airbrushed George Jones or a Hank Williams, Jr., or a Tammy Wynette, this was the place to get it.

  A young woman with flowing black hair, wearing a floor-length paisley granny dress and sandals, stepped out from behind a curtained door at the other end of the room next to the counter and cash register. She looked to be early twenties at the most, with the glazed look that marks Nashville’s considerable population of hippie wannabes.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d like to see one of these jackets with Garth Brooks on it.”

  “Oh,” she said, then let loose with a long sigh. “We had one with Garth on it, but his people got a court order and made us quit selling them. Said the image of his face was his property and we couldn’t use it. He’s the only one who’s ever complained. Most stars are proud to be on a Jericho’s jacket.”

  “Maybe you should have offered him a royalty,” I suggested.

  “Naw, not worth it.”

  I wandered between a couple of racks casually, fingering the clothes as the young woman watched me. We were the only two in the store, as far as I could tell. Of course, at these prices you didn’t need a high customer volume.

  “This stuff is really nice,” I said, hoping God wouldn’t strike me down for bearing false witness. “Who does it? The custom artwork, I mean.”

  “Oh, we have a number of artists who create for us.”

  “Hmm, they don’t sign their work, though.”

  “Most of them figure it’s their way of doing God’s work. They don’t want any recognition. It’s all His glory, anyway, right?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ve always been curious about this place, but never stopped in before. How long’s it been around?”

  She turned a blank look on me. “I’ve been here almost two years. I don’t know how long it was here before that.”

  This young woman struck me as the kind of person a cult recruiter would look at and the words Dead Meat would come to mind.

  I noticed a small, white plastic bin on the counter next to the cash register. Tucked inside the bin was a stack of leaflets. I walked over and picked one up, then unfolded it. It was an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch sheet, tri-folded, printed in red ink. The headline across the top read ARE MASONS THE TOOL OF THE DEVIL? The rest of the pamphlet was filled with a diatribe about how every evil in the world was perpetrated by the Masonic conspiracy in conjunction with the Illuminati and the Trilateral Commission, or some such nonsense.

  I suppressed a chuckle. I always thought the Masons were those fat, middle-aged, balding guys who wore sequined fezzes and clown suits and rode miniature motorcycles in the Christmas parade and collected money for underprivileged kids. Or were those the Shriners? Hell, I always mix them up. In any case, it’s hard for me to imagine either of them being a tool of the Antichrist.

  When I turned back after scanning the paper, she was staring at me intently. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Charlotte.”

  “Hi, Charlotte. I’m Harry. You believe all this?”

  She nodded her head. “You should, too.”

  “Tell me, Charlotte, who owns this place?”

  Her expression shifted instantly to one of distrust, maybe mixed in with a healthy dose of pissed off.

  “Who are you?” she said, sharp now.

  “I’m nobody. Just curious, that’s all. Where can I find Brother Hogg?”

  Boy, that did it. Her eyes darkened; that deer-in-the-headlights look was gone, replaced by that of a dedicated soldier of the cross.

  “You’re a reporter, aren’t you?”

  “Everybody keeps accusing me of being a reporter today,” I said. “No, Charlotte. I’m not a reporter. I just want to talk to Hogg.”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Charlotte, lighten up. I might buy something.”

  “I said leave,” she repeated, this time her voice about twenty percent louder than before. I saw a shuffle in the curtain, and two guys stepped out from the same room where Charlotte had been. They wore white T-shirts that let me know in no uncertain terms how much they could bench-press. One had hair the
color and length of a lion’s mane, with a short, well-trimmed reddish beard. The other was just plain dark and looked about as mean as a snake.

  “Gee, I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  “Goodbye, sir,” she said, one last time.

  I stepped to the door and opened it, then turned back to her for a moment. She really was quite lovely; what a waste.

  “See you guys around,” I said.

  So discreet was apparently an understatement. The Pentecostal Enochians were not only disinclined to advertise their ownership of Jericho’s, they were liable to pummel you to goo if you asked too many questions.

  I cut over to Church Street, crossed the Viaduct just before you get to the Downtown YMCA building, then left again and found a parking space a couple of blocks down on the street in front the Tennessee Workmen’s Protective Association Building.

  Phil Anderson’s office was on the fourth floor, with a window that looked out over Capitol Hill and toward North Nashville. The blazing red Bruton Snuff sign over the U.S. Tobacco Company glowed like a landmark in the deepening afternoon shadows. Farther north, the traffic was just beginning to back up in the northbound lanes of I-65.

  I sat in the reception area outside a bank of offices for about ten minutes. Once Phil saw the videotape of the Shaquille O’Neal of the bricklaying set, I was going to be an insider here. I could feel it. I’d do a written report once Phil told me what he wanted to see in it, and I’d be available for court testimony if civil suit or prosecution arose; at my customary fee, of course.

  All in all, not a bad gig. I felt pretty good.

  A long line of beige-colored metal doors ran down the hall to my right, past the middle-aged secretary whose fingers buzzed away on a word processor. One of the doors flew open and an imposing Phil Anderson stepped out. I’m about six feet tall and have a tough time maintaining one sixty. Phil’s got at least four inches and a hundred pounds on me, and he moves like a hyperactive kid who forgot his Ritalin.

  “Harry, you rascal, how are you?” he demanded in his booming voice. The secretary’d heard it before. She never broke rhythm on the keys.

  “Fine, Phil, good to see you.” I stuck out my hand and he jerked it like a pump handle. A long lock of shiny brown hair drooped down over his forehead, and great bags hung under his eyes. I realized then where I’d seen him before; he’s what Thomas Wolfe would have looked like if he’d lived into his late forties and spent too much time on the couch with a six-pack and a case of potato chips.

  “C’mon down here. We’ve got a VCR and a monitor in the conference room. A couple of the other guys want to see this tape, too.” He turned to the secretary. “Jane Ellen, call Rick and Steve and tell ’em Harry’s here.”

  The secretary’s left hand picked up the telephone handset while-I swear it’s true-her right hand kept typing, covering both sides of the keyboard with one hand. Never missed a beat. Talk about a focused woman.

  We walked down the carpeted hall into a large conference room with a rectangular table that would have seated about twenty people. At the other end, a big JVC monitor and tape player sat on a portable gray metal wheeled rack.

  I sat my briefcase down on the table and opened it. “I went ahead and got an invoice ready, Phil. I ran into some pretty sizable expenses, equipment rental, mileage. No hotel bill, though. I slept in a van.”

  “No problemo, amigo,” he said from the other end of the room as he turned on the monitor. “We’ll take care of it right after the meeting.”

  I took out the videotape and slid it down the length of polished tabletop. The door opened behind me and two other guys stepped in, both in suits, striped power ties, the whole corporate costume.

  “Harry, meet Rick Harvey and Steve White. They’re the field investigators who were assigned to this case.”

  Great, I thought, so they already hate me. I went out and did their job after they screwed up. May as well make the best of it.

  “Hi. Harry James Denton,” I said cordially, hand extended. “Glad to meet you.”

  We did the corporate introduction ritual and immediately afterward I forgot which was which. They were both midtwenties, clean, well-groomed, polished. Probably applied to the FBI Academy and didn’t get in.

  “How much did you say you got, Harry?”

  I settled into a seat and tried to relax. “Little over an hour’s worth of him actually out of the chair. I spent a week up there staking the guy out. It took a change in the weather to get him on his feet.”

  “Oh,” one of the investigator clones said, “so that explains why it was so easy.”

  “It wasn’t that easy,” I answered. “I’m still scratching the chigger bites from laying in the grass for so long.”

  “Yeah,” the other one said, his voice a caricature of a cop movie. “Stakeout’s a bitch, all right.”

  Right, I thought. Barney Pife in a suit and tie. Guy probably carries a bullet in his shirt pocket.

  Phil popped the tape in and started it. Immediately the backyard in Louisville jumped on the screen, with the bricklayer in the wheelchair off to the side watching the action. The other adult male and the teenage boy passed the ball around, shot a few. Then the bricklayer held the ball.

  I’d seen it all before, so watched the other three to check the look on their faces when the guy jumped out of the wheelchair. When it happened, the two young suits set their jaws and tucked their chins down toward their chests. This was, after all, the tape they were supposed to have produced.

  Phil, however, howled like a true basketball fan, especially when the bricklayer did his three-sixty and slam-dunked the ball.

  “Guy’s good, ain’t he, fellas?” Phil commented, looking around at his two investigators. “ ’At’s a dang fine jump shot, too.” I turned back to the screen, trying hard to disappear.

  We sat there for the better part of the next hour, until finally the bricklayer’s wife came to the sliding-glass door, saw her husband bouncing around, and chewed his butt so hard the tiny video microphone caught parts of it. His shoulders slumped and all three men, caught and scolded, walked back inside. We saw the sliding-glass door slam shut and then the slide of drapes as the door was covered up.

  “Holy cow, look!” Phil called. “He left his durn wheelchair outside.”

  I grinned. “Yeah, just watch.”

  In a moment the drapes were pulled again and the door slid open. The bricklayer ran back outside sheepishly, flopped down in the chair, then strapped himself in. As the wife stood there with her hands on her hips, locked and loaded in the pissed-off position, the poor guy drove his wheelchair back into the house.

  Even the two suits behind me at the table were laughing now. Phil slapped the table hard and shook his head from side to side, his massive cheeks shaking with laughter.

  “Oh, boy,” he sputtered. “This is great. We not only got him, we’ve nailed his wife and the whole durn family for conspiracy to defraud. Harry, you deserve an Oscar for this one.”

  “Glad you like it,” I said. “I haven’t prepared a written report, but will be glad to if you’ll tell me what form you need it to take. I can also be available for affidavits or court testimony if needed.”

  “You think legal’ll turn this over to the DA?” one of the suits asked.

  “Well, buddies, this is some pretty dang blatant fraud going on here,” Phil said. “I ain’t seen nothing like this in a long time.”

  “It’s a good one all right,” I said, pulling my invoice out of the briefcase. “You got the guy dead to rights.”

  “Heckfire, maybe the guy’ll move to California and try out for the Lakers,” Phil said as I slid the invoice across the table.

  He opened the envelope and unfolded my bill, then let out a long whistle. “Dadgum, Harry, this is a pretty good hit here. Five thousand for a week’s work?”

  One of the young suits let out a disgusted snort, like the insurance company was some kind of benevolent organization that was always being taken advantage of.


  “My deal with you was that if I didn’t get the evidence, you paid nothing, and if I did, you paid double my normal rate as a bonus.”

  “Well, what in the hell’s your normal rate?”

  “Four hundred a day plus expenses,” I said. “On par with the rest of the industry. Five days, plus mileage, expenses, and the videotape charge. And you got a twenty-four-hour day out of me, rather than the standard ten.”

  I fought my normal codependent urge to seek approval by lowering the bill.

  “Phil, when you consider what I’ve saved you by not having to pay this joker disability for the rest of his life-not to mention scaring off other people who’d like to try the same thing-my fee’s a pretty good deal.”

  “Yeah, well, I just hope I can get this by accounting.” His voice had dropped, in tone and volume, and became filled with what he hoped I’d interpret as concern. Nice act.

  “Why don’t I touch base with you tomorrow and see how it’s going,” I suggested, standing up. “I can provide you with receipts and further documentation if you need it.”

  Then I tightened my gut and let fly with the next one. “How long do you think it’ll take your accounting department to cut the check.”

  “Oh,” he drawled. “They’re pretty quick. Generally takes about forty-five days, maybe sixty if they get backed up.”

  I swallowed hard; sixty days, assuming they’d pay the bill at all. In sixty days, they’d have to send the check to me in care of the homeless shelter. There was no way I could float that long.

  I got this real bad taste in the back of my mouth.

  “I’m sorry, Phil, but I’m afraid I’m not comfortable with that. I’m a small, one-man operation. Sixty days is going to cause me some real cash-flow problems. I was thinking more along the lines of ten days.”

  Phil shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing I can do about it, buddy. Procedure … It takes as long as it takes.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the two suits grinning. You little bastards, I thought, you’d probably scream like scalded dogs if your paycheck was an hour late.