by Sharon Sala
Then she got up, yanked a handful of paper towels from the roll and handed them to him in lieu of napkins.
“Thanks,” Ben muttered, around a mouthful of meat.
“Welcome,” January said, and took another bite of ice cream.
It wasn’t until she had eaten her last spoonful and Ben had polished off the last rib that their conversation resumed.
He was cleaning the counter. January had returned what was left of the ice cream to the freezer and put her spoon into the sink. At that point she turned around, leaned against the edge and just watched him for a few moments.
He was so damn gorgeous it made her ache—all lean body and hard muscles. Making love with this man could become addictive. Without thinking, she slid her arms around his waist and then laid her cheek in the middle of his back.
Ben was stunned by the gesture and the tenderness in her touch.
“Hey, honey,” he said softly, as he turned and wrapped his arms around her.
“Hey yourself,” she said, and hugged him fiercely.
Ben tunneled his fingers through her hair, then lifted her chin for his kiss.
“Umm…Chunky Monkey,” he said.
“Umm-hmm…Barbecue Bob,” she echoed.
He kissed her again, then cupped her face.
His hands were sure and strong, and January knew she hadn’t felt this safe since she’d left her parents’ house years ago.
“Ben?”
“What, honey?”
“I’m thinking real hard about the L word.”
“The L word? What do you—oh. That L word.”
She sighed. “Am I crazy?”
“I don’t know about you, but I sure am. Crazy in love.”
She nodded. “Yeah…me, too.”
The muscles in the back of Ben’s throat suddenly tightened. He tried to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. He touched her face, then her hair, then traced the shape of her mouth with his thumb.
“January.”
“What?”
“Nothing, just saying your name.” And it was then he remembered Rodrigo Rivera’s dig about her name. “Hey, honey, you never did tell me what your real name is. And don’t worry. If it’s something like Hortense, I can still handle it.”
January tried to smile, but Ben saw past it to the nervousness. Now he was frowning.
“What?” he asked. “And don’t tell me ‘nothing,’ because I can see ‘something’ in your eyes.”
“Let’s go to bed,” January said. “It’s almost five. We still have a couple of hours before we have to get up.”
“I don’t work tomorrow, and neither do you.”
January frowned. “Please. I’m really tired. We can talk in bed, okay?”
Now he knew something was up. He took her by the hand and all but dragged her out of the kitchen, turning off the lights as he went. When they were back in her bedroom, he waited while she went into the bathroom, and was still standing there when she came out.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” she asked.
“I’m waiting,” Ben said.
January sighed, then sat down on the side of the bed and turned on the lamp.
Ben sat beside her.
She’d made a ball of her fists and pressed them into her lap to keep them from shaking. She’d never given voice to the niggling fear that had been hers alone for so many months. Still, she wanted Ben to know, if only to hear him blow off her worries as no big deal.
“I don’t know why this is such an issue. In fact, I like my name. A producer I once worked with in Arizona is the one who shortened it. He said it was just too big a mouthful for the public to remember.”
Ben didn’t comment.
January took a breath.
“My given name is January Maria Magdalena. The producer dropped my middle name, tweaked the spelling of my last name to conform to Anglo tongues, and here I am.”
Ben frowned. “That’s a beautiful name. I don’t understand the big secret. January is the unusual part of your name and you’re using it. Maria Magdalena is—”
His expression froze.
January could see the pupils in his eyes actually dilating as understanding dawned.
“Mary Magdalene…God in heaven, January, and you didn’t think this was worth telling me? Who else knows this? Is this common knowledge in the business? Can you—”
“Stop!” she cried, and then put her hands over her ears. “Stop, stop, stop! You’re not saying anything I haven’t already thought about. It’s not common knowledge, in the business or otherwise, so I have no reason to assume I’m in any danger from the Sinner because of it.”
“Then why has he fixated on you?”
“I’m the one who went after him, remember? I called attention to myself. It’s only natural that he’d be curious about me.”
Ben thought about it for a bit, then nodded. “Yeah, okay, I see your point. Still, it’s one hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
January wanted to agree, but her conscience wouldn’t let her lie. “I don’t think any of this is a coincidence in the way that you mean.”
“But—”
“Wait. Let me explain.” She took a deep breath, then went on. “I think God works in mysterious ways. I think our paths…the Sinner’s and mine…were meant to cross. I don’t yet know how this is all going to play out, but I truly believe that.”
Ben looked at her. Twice he started to say something, but each time he was defeated by the certainty on her face. Finally he had no choice but to give in.
“Well, hell.”
“I know,” she said. “I could make myself nuts with this if I wanted to panic.”
“But you’re not the panicky type, are you?”
“No.”
Ben slid his arms around her and pulled her close. “And that’s only part of why I love you.”
She buried her nose in the curve of his neck. “Do you really…love me, I mean?”
Ben nodded. “Yes. Really. And if you want the rest of the truth, you need to know that scares me to death. You’re being stalked by a head case who, if your theory is right, thinks that kidnapping and killing is what it’s going to take to get him to heaven. Now, after what you just told me, I’m honest to God sick to my stomach.”
January felt his body trembling. His truth was hers, as well. She’d been alone with these fears for months. It felt good to have Ben on her side.
“Thank you for believing in me, and for trusting me,” she said.
“Come to bed with me now. I need to hold you. At least for now I’ll know where you are.”
January curled up in his arms as he scooted them both onto the mattress.
“It’s not my whereabouts that are the problem,” she said. “It’s his. We need to find him, Ben.”
Ben held her close.
“We’re trying, honey. God knows we’re trying.”
Jay slept while his disciples wept and begged and cursed him in every way they knew how. Their condition was worsening. Sores that had come from the filth in which they were living were horribly infected. The wounds on Matthew’s head where he’d pulled out his hair were crusted, except for one that was crawling with maggots. They’d tried to escape. They’d begged for their freedom. Now they were praying to die.
But there was one yet to gather, Tom knew.
The disciple most crucial to their captor’s quest had yet to be found.
Judas.
The betrayer.
Judith Morris was thirty-three, six feet two inches tall, and ten pounds shy of three hundred pounds. Her hair was worn in a buzz cut, and the earring she wore in her left ear was made out of barbed wire. She had a barbed wire tattoo around her neck and matching designs on her forearms. She could bench-press almost four hundred pounds and was missing an upper eyetooth.
Technically, she’d started life on the streets as a runaway, although she’d long since reached the age of consent. Now her residence in the universe was her business. She
ran a little numbers game out of an alley between an Italian restaurant and a Greek deli, and once in a while worked as a bouncer at Club Lesbo. In fact, few people even knew Judith had been born a woman, and those that didn’t would have been shocked by the news. Her nose had been broken, and there was a scar on her chin.
She looked like anything but a female.
And she went by the name of Jude.
Jay felt like an impersonator. Even though he believed his transformation had been a direct message from God, he didn’t feel comfortable. But he’d done what he’d done and now had to live with it. However, living was becoming a moot point. In addition to the pain that had been Jay’s constant companion for the past few months, he believed his body was beginning to break down.
Yesterday he’d eaten some breakfast right after letting out a fare, and within minutes of finishing the meal, had to pull into a gas station to throw up. It had been unnerving to know that his body was betraying him. And now that his hair was cut off, he’d found sore and swollen knots on his neck. After a panicked and thorough check of the rest of his body, he’d found one under his arm, as well.
Lymph glands.
Cancer’s freeway to the body.
He had even less time than he’d planned for. Finding Judas had become his primary focus, only the phonebook had yielded nothing in the way of a Judas.
Jude came out of her hole-in-the-wall apartment with a hangover and an attitude. Her bitch had taken a hike in the night after complaining of being knocked around. Jude was somewhat pissed off that she hadn’t been the one to make the decision, but she was secretly glad the loser was gone.
Her stride was defiant, her hands almost always curled into fists. Today was no different. She headed for the deli on the corner to get some breakfast before making her rounds. It was past time to confront the losers who owed her money, and she wasn’t above breaking an arm or two to collect.
She entered the deli with her usual swagger, shoved a Gucci-suited lawyer type out of line and took his place. One old woman muttered something in what sounded like Russian. Jude laughed in her face and answered her in pig latin, a skill left over from her elementary school days, then yelled out her order.
“You! You wait you turn,” the clerk shouted, and waved for her to move back.
“Fuck you,” Jude said. She snatched two bagels from a basket on top of the meat case, then threw a five dollar bill on the floor. “Keep the change,” she said, and took a bottle of orange juice from a cooler on her way out.
“Hey, Jude! Come back here, damn it! You owe me another dollar,” the clerk shouted.
“The bagels are cold, the juice isn’t, and you aren’t getting shit,” she yelled back, and kept walking.
Jay had been standing in line for more than fifteen minutes, but the moment he heard the clerk call the man by name, his hunger was forgotten. He stepped out of the queue and followed the big man out the door. He had absolutely no idea how he would ever get this huge man into his cab, but he’d prayed for his Judas, and God had answered.
Jude was halfway down the block, eating as she walked. Her stride was as forceful as the bites she was taking, but her mind was already on the rest of her day.
When Jay realized his man was on the move, he jumped in his cab and began following, staying at least a block behind. Several times he had to pull over to the curb and wait for Jude to exit different stores. He thought it strange that, even though he’d gone into at least five stores in the last hour, he hadn’t made a single purchase in any of them.
It was almost noon when he realized Jude was heading for a street corner. When Jude stopped and looked up and down, obviously waiting to hail a cab, it was all he could do not to shout. But when he glanced into his rearview mirror and saw another cab bearing down on the corner, Jay panicked. He set his jaw and peeled out from the curb as skillfully as if he’d come off the starting line at the Indy 500, and beat the driver to the fare.
The other cab driver honked at Jay and then shouted something foul as he drove past.
Jude stepped off the curb, opened the back door of the cab and slid in.
“Where to, mister?” Jay asked.
A frown slid across Jude’s face, and then she snorted beneath her breath.
“Do you know where the Little China Tea House is?” she asked.
Jay had never heard of it, but it hardly mattered.
“Sure do,” he said.
“Get me there in ten minutes and I’ll make it worth your while,” Jude growled.
The voice wasn’t as deep as Jay had expected, but he shrugged it off. It didn’t matter what Jude sounded like. It was the name that counted.
He put the cab in gear and pulled away from the curb. Jude passed out before they’d gone two blocks.
Jay glanced up in the rearview mirror to make sure the big man was unconscious, then headed for the warehouse. There was no more space in the old blast furnace, but it didn’t matter. He had a special place for his Judas.
When Jude came to and found a rat running across her belly, she screamed. It was the first female thing she’d done in years, and even to her, it sounded foreign. As it ran off her chest, she shuddered and tried to sit up. When she realized there were chains around her wrists, she couldn’t believe it. All she could think was that she was dreaming and at any time would wake up. It wasn’t until she gave the chains a yank and the pain raced up her arms that she realized it was no dream.
With a little maneuvering, she finally managed to sit up. Nothing looked familiar, and she had no memory of how she’d gotten here. The last thing she remembered was…
Her mind went blank. She had no memory of anything after coming out of Lee’s Chinese Laundry.
Think. Think. Out of the laundry. Up the street.
The cab! There’d been a cab at the corner.
“I took a cab,” Jude muttered, and was startled that her voice echoed. “Where the hell am I?” Then she started to shout. “Hey! Help! Help! Is anybody there? Help, someone! I need help!”
No one answered.
A second rat stuck its head out of a hole in the corner of a wall.
“Fuck you!” Jude yelled, and kicked out with her foot. It didn’t even move. “Damn it,” she muttered, and then groaned as she shifted her position, trying to ease the strain.
She needed to pee. It was inevitable. One of the few reminders she still had of being female. Despite her size, her bladder was small, and the flesh pressing in around it was always an urgent signal that waiting would not be wise.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Someone! I gotta go!”
No one came.
No one cared.
She waited until tears pooled in the corners of her eyes and the pain in her side was too sharp to bear any longer.
“God damn you!” she yelled. “God damn you!”
The release of urine was at once an immediate relief and an embarrassment. She hadn’t pissed her pants since she was a kid. The shame of it, coupled with a rage so strong it made her shake, overwhelmed her. She didn’t know whether to curse or cry, sitting in a puddle of her own pee and caught in a web of someone else’s making.
Three days later
Rick had been to the dentist and was coming in late. The front desk was a madhouse, and the sergeant on duty had turned red in the face from frustration and was a breath shy of losing his temper. Rick’s jaw was hurting, and he felt about the same way. He waved at the sergeant as he went by and was almost to the stairs when someone grabbed him by the arm.
It was a woman. A very small, thin woman.
“Hey, mister, are you a cop?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I can’t get anyone to listen to me, but I got a friend who’s disappeared.”
“You need to report him to missing persons,” Rick mumbled, then winced. “Sorry. Been to the dentist.”
She made a sympathetic face but stood her ground.
“That cop at the desk told me to go to missing persons, too. But h
e didn’t tell me where to go. Can you help me?”
“Sure, why not?” Rick said. “Come on. I’ll walk you up. What’s your name?”
“Mitzi Fontaine.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Fontaine. Now let’s see if we can get you some help.”
“Thank you,” Mitzi said. “I really appreciate this.”
Rick shrugged. “No problem. So, what’s your friend’s name…the one who’s missing?”
“Jude.”
Rick stumbled on a step, but caught himself before he could fall.
“Dang painkillers. Always make me woozy,” he said, but it wasn’t exactly what he was thinking. Last count he and Ben had, that street preacher still needed a Judas. This was a long shot, but the whole case was so far out that ignoring a lead, no matter how far-fetched, wasn’t an option.
“So what does this Jude guy do?”
“Oh, Jude isn’t a guy. She’s a girl. Only you can’t really tell it. She’s the bouncer at Club Lesbo, where I dance, only she hasn’t been around in three days, and that isn’t like her. It isn’t like her at all.”
Rick’s hopes fell. A dyke. That didn’t fit.
“A woman, huh?” Then he keyed in on what Mitzi had said. “What do you mean, you can’t tell she’s a woman?”
“I’m serious,” Mitzi said. “I like her a lot. She’s always nice to me, but I’d hate to be her enemy. She’s big, you know?”
“How big?” Rick asked.
“Like…way over six feet tall. And her body…well, it’s like a man’s body. I think she works out or something. She doesn’t have any boobs, or if she does, you can’t tell it. She looks like this really big weight lifter. Short hair, spooky barbed wire earring and barbed wire tattoos.”
“I don’t suppose you have a picture,” Rick asked.
Mitzi nodded as she dug in her purse.
“Actually, I do. I came prepared. It isn’t like Jude to miss work without calling in. That’s why I know something’s happened to her.”
Mitzi paused on the stairs and handed Rick the picture. It was of four people, sitting at a table in a bar.
“Which one is she?” Rick asked.
“There. The one on the far right.”
