“Well, I didn’t hafta ask them specifically. They told me themselves.” Freddie paused. On purpose. Let the bastard twist in the wind a little. “They all said it was just a great feelin’, Reverend. Like they were electrified, like they could do anything.”
“You mean a euphoria? A Rapture?” The emphasis was clear even through the phone.
“Hey, I’m not sure what those words mean,” said Freddie, who always believed it was better to play dumber than you actually might be. “But they all said it was like being high, but together, you know what I mean?”
“I think so.” Cooper sighed. “You’re sure about this shared responsibility thing? The people really believed that?”
“Oh yeah, that was definite.”
“They couldn’t have been duped into saying it?”
“Duped?”
“They said they felt like they were hypnotized, didn’t they?”
“Well, those were kinda my words, Reverend. You see, when the river kept rising, some of the people started to panic. They said they weren’t calm enough to let Carenza help them.”
“Amazing,” said Cooper. “Anything else?”
“Well, I guess you heard the reports that Ellington had a heart attack.”
“Certainly. Mean anything special to you?”
Bevins cleared his throat. “I don’t know. The doctors were pretty surprised. He was a young guy. Smells funny to me, but there’s no way I’ll ever make anything of it.”
“How are you getting along with Marion Windsor?”
“Pretty good, I guess. She don’t pay me much mind. Carenza, I’m not so sure about.”
“Really? Does he suspect anything?”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s more he just doesn’t like me. And that road-punk, Billy—he definitely don’t like me.”
Cooper chuckled. “Well, Freddie, I don’t think I’d be out of line to say you’re not the most personable guy I know.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” said Freddie. Fuck you, Reverend. Fuck you and your thousand-dollar suits and your cosmetic surgery and your Swedish masseur.
“Very well, Freddie. Now, is there anything else?”
“Just a couple things: have you got anybody else on this case?”
Cooper drew in a breath. It was as close to a gasp as he’d probably allow himself. “What? Of course not. What’re you talking about?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothin’, really. Just a feelin’.”
“Go on…”
“Well, I seen this guy at the Colorado thing. Tall, kinda lean, but he moves like he’s real agile and powerful. He always wears dark glasses. Thick mustache, dark hair. Sound familiar?”
“Not off-hand,” said Cooper, his voice hushed. “What bothers you about him?”
“Well, just that I seen him around a lot. At the Doubletree Hotel, too.”
“Has he done anything suspicious?”
“Nah. I just had a hunch he was one of us.”
“‘Us’?”
“You know, PI’s. Undercover guys, you know.”
“Oh, I see,” said the Reverend. “Yes, well, keep an eye out for him. Let me know if you see him again.”
“Okay, no problem.”
“You said a couple of other things—what else?”
“This is just a hunch too, but on the plane back here, I had the feelin’ somethin’ was wrong with Carenza.”
“What do you mean—‘wrong’?”
“I don’t rightly know. He was just actin’ funny. I mean nobody was dancin’ in the aisles after the river-thing, but our mark, well, he seemed to be wrapped up in his own thoughts. Didn’t talk to anybody.”
“Maybe that’s the way he dealt with the tragedy. You might be reading more into it than necessary.”
“I don’t know. You ain’t been around these people. There’s been this closeness, a trust I guess you’d call it, and I didn’t feel it on the plane home.”
“Really…?”
“I mean, knowin’ ’em all, I would’ve figured they would all be comfortin’ and supportin’ each other, but they weren’t.”
“Interesting,” said Cooper. “So all might not be serene in the fair land of Camelot…”
“Huh?”
“Never mind, Freddie. Thank you. A very good report.”
“Right, Reverend.”
“And by the way—I don’t think I commended you on Carenza’s background check.”
“No problem. Computers make it easy these days.”
“Yes, I suppose so. A pity you couldn’t find any dirt, though.”
“Well, Reverend, he is a priest, you know…”
“So they tell me,” said the Reverend.
FORTY-FOUR
Bessemet, Alabama—Cooper
* * *
November 9, 1999
A synthesized bird’s mating call—a northeastern loon—trilled throughout his bedroom suite.
“What was that, Reverend?” asked Lorianne, pausing to catch her breath. She was a coltish twenty-three-year-old blonde who worked one of the on-air telephones during Cooper’s broadcasts. Freemason always personally selected his telephone girls—they had to look extremely appealing yet wholesome.
Lorianne looked something other than wholesome in the high heels and G-string he’d asked her to wear; but that wasn’t to say she didn’t look good enough to eat.
Looking down between his legs, where Lorianne knelt with her ass stuck out, giving him some of the most hellaciously major fellatio he could remember, Freemason smiled.
“What’s what, Lorianne?”
“That noise…”
“That’s my intercom callin’ me, darlin’. Nice, isn’t it?”
“Oh, it surely is,” she said, smiling, then returned to her appointed task.
Freemason leaned up against the imported marble vanity, watching the action in the mirrored opposite wall. The smell of cedar from the sauna mingled with Lorianne’s perfume, lacing the humid air with a weirdly intoxicating scent. If heaven was better than this, he’d be damned surprised.
The plaintive mating call of the loon sounded once again, and he reached out, flicked the intercom switch.
“Yeah,” he said, studying the planes and lines of his face. His thick hair framed features waging valiant battle against the years. With the help of a little surgery and the latest dermatological drugs, he was Looking Good.
Lorianne increased the rhythmic movement of her head and he gasped involuntarily.
The intercom squawked unintelligibly. Cooper smacked it. “I said yeah! Speak to me!”
“Mason,” said the voice of Preston J. Pierce. “I’ve got Mel Cameron on the line.”
“Who?”
“Mel Cameron, sir. The guy from ABC. You know—NewsNight.”
Christ—that Cameron!
For an instant. Freemason felt an additional jolt of excitement, which he quickly quelled. Though Cooper’s upcoming appearance on NewsNight was not his first, it was still hard to not think of Mel Cameron as a star, a famous, deity-like person who never spoke to mere mortals. His show, broadcast every evening all over the world, was easily one of the most watched programs of the late nineties. Cameron’s blond hair and angular face were instantly familiar to billions of the earth’s populace.
And here was the host of NewsNight on telephone hold, twisting in the wind of electronic oblivion, waiting to talk to Freemason Cooper!
But hell, why not?
Sometimes you just forgot how famous you were in your own right, thought Freemason. And when he thought about it like that, well, maybe it wasn’t so unusual that Cameron would want to talk to him.
“Thank you, Press,” he said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. “Put the boy on, why don’t you.”
Pierce grunted assent; there was a click as the intercom went dead. The telephone chimed and Freemason tapped the speaker-phone button.
“Hello,” he said softly.
“Hello?” asked a female voic
e that definitely was not Cameron’s familiar baritone. The intercom speaker was flawless, enhanced even further by the bathroom’s acoustics. “Reverend Cooper?”
“You got the one and only! But who’re you, darlin’? I was expectin’ to hear ol’ Cameron’s voice.” Lorianne shifted position, caught her breath, and began to flick her tongue about in great earnest.
“I’m sorry, Reverend, my name is Deborah Curtis. I was just calling to give you our schedule tonight. Mr. Cameron never handles these kinds of details. I’m sure you understand…”
“Why certainly,” said Mason, although he couldn’t help feeling snubbed. It wasn’t like he and Cameron were strangers, after all.
“Are you ready, Reverend?”
“Fine. Fine. Whatever you have planned will be all right with me,” said Mason. “We supposed to crank it up at eleven-thirty, right?”
“That’s when we go on-air, yes, that’s correct. Mr. Cameron will do the warm-in solo, then we will begin cutting back and forth among the various guests—yourself included.”
“Okay, sounds good to me, Debbie.” He looked down at the splash of long blond hair rippling rapidly. Lorianne had stepped up the pace another notch.
“Unfortunately, I can’t give you a specific time-frame—you’ll have to be ready to come on at any time, all right?”
“I think I’m ready right now,” said Freemason. Bells and whistles were starting to go off in his body. The early warning system in his groin was sending out signals that an explosion was about to happen.
Cameron’s production assistant chuckled in a controlled, utterly professional manner. “Well, I can certainly understand your enthusiasm, but we’ll all have to wait until tonight, Reverend.”
“I understand,” said Freemason, gritting his teeth, trying to remain in control. He should tell the bitch to stop, but it felt too damn good.
“All right, then,” said Ms. Curtis. “Mr. Cameron looks forward to talking to you tonight.”
“You betcha,” said Freemason, almost crying out the words. “Tonight!”
Touching the cancel key, he leaned back against the countertop and let go. “Jeeeeezuzz!” he cried as he convulsed through a series of outbursts.
Lorianne didn’t miss a beat, continuing to oscillate back and forth like a well-oiled machine. Damn, this bitch was good. She continued until he began to go soft, the tension and strength leaving him like dishwater down a sink drain.
Lorianne looked at him with a shiny smile. “I guess that means you liked it, huh, Reverend…?”
FORTY-FIVE
St. Louis, Missouri—Windsor
* * *
November 9, 1999
Even if it was just for appearances, since returning to their St. Louis headquarters, Peter had acted as though nothing awkward squirmed and writhed between them.
Marion leaned back in her office chair and looked out her window, which overlooked Grand Boulevard and the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Evening prepared to put the city under siege. A gray pallor settled in among the leafless branches of the trees and shrubs, punctuated by the occasional protest of an evergreen. The year was careening past her in a blur of highly charged, emotional incidents; she wondered if she had the strength to endure many more of them.
Her feelings were so screwed up, she had no idea how she really felt about anything. There was something new about Peter, something so far unidentifiable. After all those people had died in Colorado Springs, he’d retreated from everyone. Without formal authority, she’d suddenly been forced to represent him to the world.
She wondered if this was Peter’s way of punishing her for talking to Dan, for panicking when he died.
She smiled bittersweetly. Well, if it was, she certainly deserved it.
All Peter would say was that he needed time to reevaluate his purpose, his “part in the larger scheme.” Even days after the group had returned to St. Louis, he continued to avoid everyone, using Marion and Billy as buffers. But his dealings with Marion were cool, distanced, very businesslike. She couldn’t really blame him—his ego had suffered two devastating onslaughts in a twenty-four-hour period. That he had consented to the international television interview spoke of his courage, strength, and inner reserves.
Dan’s death, the summoning of the river and its violent after math had shocked her into a reality she had forgotten existed, as if she’d been thrown from a warm cabin into the teeth of an icy rainstorm. Did she really love Peter Carenza? Or had she been entranced, like everyone else who met him? Had he made her love him? The questions were unsettling.
Where was the happy-go-lucky, fiercely independent, on-the-rise TV journalist? Her self-image seemed eroded, made coarse by her relationship with Peter. Had she actually become dependent upon him?
Certainly not financially. Technically she was still employed by WPIX, back in New York, though she hadn’t touched her local station salary in months. Her WPIX paychecks, and the beaucoup bucks she was making as a freelancer to the national networks, were being deposited directly to her St. Louis accounts. With that kind of income, she’d purposely left herself off the Carenza Foundation payroll.
No, he wasn’t controlling her with his money. But there were other ways to attach a person’s soul, bonds equally as potent, and just as hard to break.
“Excuse me,” said Billy, appearing in the doorway. “You have a minute?”
Slowly she turned her chair away from the window, faced him. His hair had been barbered into one of the latest styles. He was wearing one of his GQ casual ensembles. Though he’d only recently assumed some of Daniel’s old duties, Billy had begun to heed Peter’s suggestion that he drop the retired biker look for something more amenable to society at large. It was a good idea, but Marion knew it would take some time to grow accustomed to seeing Billy in worsted wool slacks, oxford button-downs, and penny loafers.
“Of course I do,” she said. “Close the door.”
Billy nodded, shut out the general din of an office under siege from ringing phones, shuddering printers, and whining copy machines.
“Ever since Daniel died, Peter’s been different,” said Billy. He might have changed his appearance, but his straight-ahead way of dealing with issues hadn’t altered a bit. Billy was not one to dissemble.
“I know…” Marion didn’t want to talk about it. She couldn’t possibly tell Billy she suspected Peter of being the actual agent of Daniel’s death. It was just too crazy.
“I mean, Peter’s basically not talking to me about anything if it’s not business related. I have no idea what he’s really thinking.”
“I know,” said Marion. “But I think he’s dealing with his problems in his own way. And I think, when he’s had time to analyze what’s happened, he’s going to understand and come back to us.” She ran a hand through her hair, fluffed it absently.
Billy shook his head slowly, gently. “Maybe you’re right. I hope you are. I practically worship Peter, but he’s also been my friend for a while now. I don’t want to lose him.”
She reached out, touched his hand. “You won’t, trust me. After the NewsNight show, he should relax, and I’m going to try to make him talk to me.”
The insider-rumors about ABC doing a piece on Peter had finally become fact. Marion had figured that after the river incident in Colorado, Peter would be added to NewsNight’s “topics of the minute,” as Charles Branford referred to ABC’s programming tactics.
“That’s right,” said Billy, checking his watch. “Only six more hours. Do you think Cameron’s going to go after him?”
“Probably, but subtly.”
“How’s that?”
“I think Cameron’s attuned to the mood of the general population,” she said. “He knows they like Peter. I don’t think Cameron will do anything that would jeopardize his own position with the public.”
Billy nodded. “Yeah, a real ballsy attack, if he makes it too obvious, would get a lot of people pissed off.”
Marion looked up at the ceiling,
thinking. “You know, if I was Cameron, I’d probably let my guests do the attacking for me. I’ve seen him do it before, and it works perfectly.”
“Really?”
“The guy’s a master of subtle manipulation,” said Marion. “Plus he has control of all the cameras, the cuts, everything. If one of his guests starts saying something Mel doesn’t like, he can just cut to somebody else. It’s instant editing. Cameron’s a master at shaping the show in real-time as it’s playing to the whole country, to the world.”
“Wow,” said Billy, his awe echoing something she’d once seen in Dan Ellington’s eyes.
Marion backed away. She couldn’t keep tears from appearing at the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Billy…”
“You were thinking about Dan, weren’t you?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“It happens to me too. All of a sudden, I’ll think of him. For no good reason.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone…” Marion wiped awkwardly at the tears.
“Laureen says you loved him,” he said with his usual directness. “You know, like you were in love with him.”
“She did, eh?”
“Well,” he said with an impish smile, “were you?”
“Billy, I’ve had my share of experiences. I’ve been in love before, or at least I thought I was. And one of the things you learn when you’ve been around the horn a few times is that it always feels different.”
“Okay,” he said, folding his arms, his body language trying to express neutrality.
“What I’m trying to say is I don’t know. I’m not sure what was going on with me and Daniel, or with me and Peter.”
He nodded. “Yeah, right. ‘Triad.’”
“What?”
“An old Jefferson Airplane song. Gracie Slick sang it. ‘Why can’t we go on as three?’ Or something like that. I always thought it was a weird song, you know.”
She stood up, wiped a tear from the corner of her eyes. “Yes, Billy, you’re right about that—it was a very weird song.”
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