Slashing Mona Lisa

by D. M. Barr

  “Ms. Torres? I’m April Lowery. We spoke on the phone.” April held out her hand and gave Camarin’s a firm shake. “Mr. Mangel asked me to personally escort you to your seat and to make myself available should you have any questions we can answer any time before or after your interview on Sunday. I trust your trip down was enjoyable?”

  “So nice to meet you. My trip was fine, thanks for asking, but I made the train by the skin of my teeth, and the snack car was closed. Is there anywhere here where I can buy a salad or something? Perhaps some place where I might meet some of the other staff members and speakers?”

  “I’m not sure that anyone will want to speak with you right now, while they’re prepping for the event,” said April after a momentary hesitation. “But we do have a whole spread laid out in the back for the staff. Come on, let’s get you something before the action starts.”

  April walked Camarin down the main aisle of the tent, its eighty-odd rows already abuzz with activity. Several of the attendees held up signs like In Terry’s World, We Count! and Mangia with Mangel! Others bounced beach balls around the arena, like at a rock concert. Each ball portrayed a picture of a happy face, cheeks filled with food.

  When the two women reached the front, April led Cam through a flap in the canvas, back outdoors, and then into an ancillary tent that housed what appeared to be the heart and brains of the operation. In every direction, people were in motion—from those carrying mounds of t-shirts to the kiosks outside, to others testing the audio-visual controls or counting the evening’s proceeds.

  “The food’s over here,” April said, waving from ten steps ahead.

  As Cam sped up to join the public relations exec, something in the corner of the room caught her eye. Two bodies, a man and a woman, half-hidden by a curtain, deep in spirited conversation. The woman’s cheeks were stained with tears. Camarin watched, mesmerized, as the man, very average-looking apart from his savior-like white robes—similar in style to those of the exorcist that still plagued her nightmares—reached for the woman and pulled her to him. She pushed back at first and then yielded to his embrace and finally, to a kiss.

  Must find her afterward. Figure out what that crying—not to mention that kiss—was all about. Exactly what kind of help did this revival profess to dole out anyway?

  April tugged at her arm, like a retriever pawing its gun-toting master. “Ms. Torres, please. Have something to eat so you’ll be able to concentrate on Mr. Mangel’s oration. I don’t want you—or your readers—to miss a second of his message or his followers’ reactions.”

  She linked her arm with Camarin’s and dragged her to the buffet at the back of the tent. It was an ostentatious display, better suited to an expensive wedding than a revival meeting. She bypassed the salmon cakes and pasta primavera, instead opting for fresh vegetables and salad. She didn’t even stop at the dessert table with an elaborate selection of cheesecakes.

  “The night begins with Terry welcoming his followers,” April explained as they wolfed down their dinner in the ten minutes that remained before the lights dimmed. “It’s always extremely inspirational. People get unbelievably emotional. Then he brings up one person to tell their story. Others also quickly volunteer to share, but he tells them to write down their thoughts and come back tomorrow night. Saturday’s event is made up almost entirely of whoever wants to come up to the podium and relate their experiences. Or ask Terry for his blessing. You’ll see—it makes for two quite memorable evenings.”

  “Are the crowds always this large?”

  “This is about average. In LA, we had twice this number. In Santa Fe, about half. In general, the bigger the city, the bigger the crowds. But Terry was born in Philadelphia, so we usually draw a fairly sizeable and enthusiastic group here.”

  Grace, the woman from the customer service table, came up behind them and tapped April on the shoulder. “Lights at half, Ms. Lowery. You and Ms. Torres may want to take your seats.”

  April thanked her and escorted Camarin to a front-row seat, directly in front of the raised podium. The room grew dark, and the audience hushed.

  Camarin pulled out her smartphone and turned on the camera.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Torres. No videotaping or photography is permitted. We will be happy to provide you with stock digital pictures of the audience for your story. Terry never permits himself to be photographed. He insists his message remain the star of the show.”

  “I assume that means no sound recordings either?”

  “I’m afraid not. But feel free to use your phone to take notes.”

  A spectator from the row behind tapped her on the shoulder. “I’m sorry. Do you mind? I can’t hear.”

  Camarin turned around to see a man whose heft took up two seats. “I’m a magazine reporter,” she whispered. “If you’re free later, I’d love to ask you your impression of—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Ms. Torres,” interrupted April. “We’ll be happy to provide you with appropriate people to interview after the show.”

  Camarin scrunched her brow. “Appropriate? What do you mean?”

  “You know, ones that have been vetted by Mr. Mangel.” She lowered her voice so only Camarin could hear. “Sometimes, haters infiltrate our events. I wouldn’t want your article to be tainted by people harboring an ill-meaning agenda.”

  “Of course not. I completely understand,” she said, already plotting how to approach random Mangelites without her overprotective chaperone.

  What exactly was his staff hiding? Perhaps those who’d realized that five hundred dollars was an absurd price for admittance. The real question was, would they feel ripped off enough to take out their frustration in some murderous fashion?

  And the others—those who were the most electrified by Mangel’s words—would they head off after the event to scour the streets of Philadelphia, searching for some diet-related merchant to sacrifice to the cause? She prayed that Saturday’s headlines wouldn’t fill her with the guilt of realizing that more persistence tonight might have paid off in spared lives tomorrow.

  Chapter 21

  Springsteen was right, fifty-seven channels and nothing on. But this was more like 108. Fletcher stretched out on the hotel’s king-sized bed, wearing a thick, terrycloth robe, head propped up on an assortment of feather pillows. He clicked mindlessly through the lineup, bypassing the news, the weather, sports, the endless array of juvenile comedies. The empty dinner dishes sat on a tray on the desk to the right, waiting to be taken outside the door for room service to retrieve.

  He wondered how Camarin had reacted to his note. Would she be upset that he’d left town without a mention? Was the invitation to dinner too much, too soon? Why did this dating stuff have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t you just say how you felt and then live happily ever after?

  The ring of his cellphone startled him out of contemplation. A call after nine o’clock was normally not a good sign. He didn’t recognize the number, but since it was past legal telemarketing hours, he figured it was legit.

  “Fletcher.”

  “Mr. Fletcher, it’s Rachel. From the office.” Her voice competed with peals of laughter and piano music.

  “Of course, I know which Rachel. What’s up?”

  “Mr. Fletcher…I wasn’t going to call. I was going to butt out, but I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m not one to tell tales out of school, but I’m concerned about Camarin.”

  Fletcher’s heart took a somersault and ended up lodged in his throat. “What’s happened to Cam? Is she all right?”

  “She started reading up on that Blubber Be Gone killing and found other similar murders…she thinks it’s connected to some weight-loss evangelist. I’m not sure of all the details, but she’s in Philadelphia right now playing Mata Hari, and I don’t feel good about it. I thought you should know.”

  He clutched his iPhone so tightly that his hand started to ache. “Philadelphia? We sent her to Washington to do an interview.
”

  “I know…some singer…I believe she’s planning to do that too. I just think she could get herself into a lot of trouble snooping around without a clue.”

  Fletcher could barely breathe. What was Camarin thinking, heading off without a word? When he’d specifically forbidden her from getting involved in investigating the murder anywhere but online. And stumbling onto something he’d sworn he’d never let her discover.

  “Rachel, you were right to call me. I’ll take care of it. Bonus in your paycheck next week for looking out for a coworker. Excellent job.”

  He disconnected the call, gave up a silent prayer, and reached for his laptop. Time to readdress the Feel Good About Yourself program, perhaps move up his plans. He needed to make sure there was nothing on the revival’s website or sales materials that tied Mangel to Lehming Brothers. He couldn’t risk any leads that might tip Camarin off to the connection. And then he would purchase himself a revival ticket online, under some anonymous name. Too late for tonight but he could make it Saturday. Hopefully in enough time to save both Camarin and the secrecy of his well-laid plans.

  Chapter 22

  The music was so loud it was practically deafening. Camarin covered her ears as Fanfare for the Common Man blared from the speakers only twenty feet to the right of her seat. The audience leaped to its feet, cheering and applauding, waving banners, creating a discord that could have woken Benjamin Franklin from his nearby grave. She shook her head. How did mere men grow to such power and reverence?

  A spotlight split the darkness, and a short, thin milquetoast of a man, dressed in long, white robes emerged from the back of the tent and took his place at the podium. About forty, with a receding hairline and a small, black mustache, he resembled a shoe salesman who used to wait on her as a child back in LA. But she instantly recognized him from the tête-à-tête she’d witnessed only minutes earlier, where he had kissed his crying companion out of her despair. No surprise there.

  The crowd grew even louder. Two enormous women screaming, “Terry, Terry!” stormed the stage, but security tackled them and led them out the side entrance.

  He stood an extended period, reveling in the crowd’s veneration, before he held his hands out, willing the assembly to settle down and retake their seats. The room grew silent for a long moment, waiting for their idol to address them.

  “You’re fat!” he yelled out at the crowd.

  “Thank you. We’re big, and we’re proud of it!”

  Camarin sat open-jawed, stunned first by his opening greeting and then by the hordes who screamed back in unison. She looked behind her and saw each person standing back up, fists held high in the air. Reading about Mangel from the safety of her office had been one thing. She could remain detached, like a researcher. But seeing the audience rise in solidarity, screaming for acceptance, for their—and for Monaeka’s—deserved place in the world, set her nerve ends tingling. She fought back tears.

  “You’re pigs. You make me sick,” he called out.

  “Oink, oink,” they yelled back.

  “You need to lose fifty pounds!”

  “You need to lose the fucking attitude!”

  “Society is thin, so they’re better than you!”

  “Society is filled with fat haters. Shamers. Bigots. They’re better than no one!”

  The crowd erupted into applause and high-fived each other. Camarin was left shaking from the revelation that the surrounding audience spoke her language. It was as if the voices had left her head and taken residence behind and around her, that each cheering person was the embodiment of Monaeka. The flush of revelation overwhelmed her with its power.

  Then she wondered, what if April Lowery noticed her reaction? Fighting to return to some semblance of an impartial reporter, she forced herself to type notes furiously into her phone’s notepad.

  “It’s on the tapes that Terry sells!” April shouted into her ear, trying to be heard over the clamor. “He prepares them for lots of insults and feeds them tons of comebacks, forgive the pun. I’ll get you a set of the recordings before you head back to New York, if you like.”

  “That would be great, thank you,” she yelled back.

  “I need to tell you a story,” Mangel announced through his microphone.

  The crowd instantly hushed, hanging on his every syllable.

  “Who wants to hear a story?”

  “We do!” they exclaimed as one.

  She felt herself as captivated as the rest of the audience. Despite his commonplace appearance, his stage presence was magnetic, his charisma undeniable.

  “It’s a story about a young girl named Christina Corrigan. I never knew Christina, and I’m sure most of you didn’t know her either. According to a lawyer named Sondra Solovay, who wrote a book called Tipping the Scales of Justice, Christina was a smart girl, a pretty girl, a girl with hopes and dreams like so many of your daughters. She had big ambitions, like working as a marine biologist and visiting Australia and its Great Barrier Reef. Instead, she died at thirteen, alone in her living room.”

  A collective gasp arose.

  “The papers didn’t seem to care about anything except her weight, which at the time of her death was 680 pounds. It was that weight that made her a pariah among other girls in the neighborhood, and a high school dropout. Why, you ask? Because her school wouldn’t accommodate her inability to climb the hill to their entrance or install an elevator to help her—or any of the other students with mobility issues—attend classes on the second and third floors.”

  Camarin’s ears pricked up, and she halted her typing, suddenly remembering her original reason for attending. No way to get to the school’s entrance? She remembered the murder of the school principal outside Santa Fe, left to die in a ditch for the same reason. She had definitely stumbled onto something here. The question was, did Mangel inspire violence in each city he visited, or did he have homicidal groupies who followed him from state to state?

  “Marlene Corrigan, her mom, did everything in her power to help her daughter. Everything the so-called experts told her to do. The doctors advised her not to feed Christina whole milk as a baby. That probably threw off her metabolism. She gained weight, more weight than the society around her felt comfortable with. Who here has felt the scorn of society?”

  “We have, Terry!”

  “Well, Christina felt it too. Her mother dragged her from doctor to doctor, who prescribed diet upon diet, but nothing worked. Sound familiar?”

  “Too familiar!”

  “Do diets work, my friends?”

  “No! Diets don’t work! Diets are the punishment society levels on those who dare to be different!”

  Not to mention that diets are the tool that our mother—the one person we trusted to provide protection and support—used to manipulate us and impose her will. A constant reminder that we’re nothing to any man except a face and a body, a present to keep tied up with a pretty bow for him to unwrap when the time is right.

  “Another of Terry’s mottos,” April explained in Camarin’s ear.

  “So I gathered.”

  “She exercised. She tried Deal-a-Meal and diet pills. She did what she was asked to do,” Terry continued. “And at seven years of age, that poor, beleaguered girl weighed 180 pounds. And do you think people offered her any sympathy?”

  “No, Terry!”

  “Did they show her compassion?”

  “No, Terry!”

  “Did they teach her to hate herself?”

  “Yes, Terry, they did!”

  “Well, life went on like that—with Christina alone at home, shunned by her classmates, hating every moment of her life. She was clearly suffering from a glandular condition that caused her to gain weight at an alarming rate, no matter what she ate. But did the doctors ever send her to an endocrinologist? No. To them, fat meant laziness, lack of self-control. Hand her a diet and send her home. Who were the lazy people there, my friends? Christina or the doctors who believed if you starved someone, it would solve
everything?”

  “The doctors, the doctors!”

  She’s lucky they didn’t try to exorcise the devil from her.

  “Meanwhile, Marlene, Christina’s harried mother, who was recovering from the death of both of her parents, spent her days shuttling between homeschooling her daughter and working two jobs to make ends meet. She came home from running an errand one day to find lonely, overweight Christina lying stone-cold dead on the living room floor!”

  The audience exploded into chaos. Through the pandemonium, Camarin pictured her own version of the Corrigan tragedy on the morning her mother and aunt discovered Monaeka’s lifeless body, the blood-splattered room heavy with the scent of sulfur.

  It took another five minutes before Mangel could continue his rabble-rousing.

  “That’s not the worst part, my friends.” He banged his fist on the podium for effect. Camarin braced herself, waiting for what could possibly be worse.

  “No?”

  “No. The police accused poor Marlene of felony child endangerment, of being responsible for her own daughter’s death. The newspapers convicted that poor, grieving mother in the court of public opinion before she could even get a fair trial. Six years! If convicted, that’s how long they wanted Marlene to rot away in prison for doing nothing more than trying to help her daughter gain acceptance from the fat-hating world.”

  Again, the agitation of the crowd forced Mangel to pause before continuing. Cam herself was shaking with upset over Christina, Marlene, and the closemindedness of the people in their world. For the moment, she was Monaeka, overcome by a need for justice. It was comforting that the entire room felt the same.

  As she looked around to watch others commiserating, she noticed April looking at her strangely. She realized how her response to the revival could give her away. She forced Monaeka back into the narrow constraints of her memory, straightened up, and willed herself to remain still.