Miscue

by Glen C. Allison

  Rosalind Dent listened to the man, patted him on the shoulder and murmured something Forte could not hear. She turned and walked over to him and sat in the chair he had first brought from the dining room for his night watch.

  “You okay?” she said.

  He did not look at her, keeping his gaze straight ahead.

  Dent sighed. “Yeah, dumb question.” She unbuttoned the raincoat, stood up and took it off and laid it on the floor next to the chair. She sat down again.

  “Listen,” she said, “I probably don’t need to tell you this, but you are off this case. From what we can tell, you had the deck stacked against you here. The kidnapper could see every move you made. But the word has come down from above that you don’t have access to this situation any more. I’m sorry, Al.” She brushed the water from her hair with her fingertips “You can collect your weapon. The shotgun shells are with a cop in the study.” She stood up.

  Forte held up his hand. “And what about Mrs. Lamberth?”

  “Upstairs with a doctor. Screamed herself mute. Doc gave her something to knock her out.”

  Forte nodded. “Thanks, Rosie.”

  She touched his shoulder and walked away.

  He stood up and walked into the dining room. He picked up the shotgun, checked the safety and walked down the hallway to the first-floor study. A young woman in an FBI jacket sat at a computer, scrolling through files. A cop looked over her shoulder.

  As Forte approached the cop to ask about his shells, the computer speakers emitted a voice message in a soft female voice, “You have mail.”

  The FBI tech double-clicked on the e-mail icon and a window popped up on the screen. Forte stepped closer, scanning the monitor quickly. The message read:

  Hallee is safe for now.

  My demand is simple: if you want to see Hallee again have $25 million ready to be wired to an off-shore account by 5 p.m. Monday. That deadline is non-negotiable.

  I will contact you before then with details for the transfer of the money and for a meeting place where you can recover Hallee.

  Please do not make me prove even further that I am serious about my intentions.

  For proof of authenticity that I actually have Hallee, look on the collar of her stuffed tiger.

  For the child’s sake, comply with my demands.

  The Rescuer

  Forte backed away from the desk and the FBI tech rushed past him, looking for Dent, the agent-in-charge. Another tech pointed to the kitchen door and the computer tech sprinted toward the door followed by the cop who had been in the study with her.

  Forte stepped back to the computer and checked the mail account settings in the e-mail program. He jotted some notes quickly then closed the menu and left the e-mail message on the screen exactly like the FBI tech had left it.

  He walked up the stairs and went into Hallee’s room. He could hear noises from the bathroom but the bedroom was empty. He walked to the window seat where the stuffed tiger lay on its back. On the collar was a small medal. Forte bent and read the words etched on it: Proverbs 24:11.

  He quickly turned and walked out of the room and down the stairs. He leaned against the wall in the hallway as a group of FBI agents ran past him and up the stairs.

  He poked his head inside the study where the cop still stood. “Got my shells?” he asked.

  The cop nodded and fished a clear plastic bag out of his jacket with seven shotgun shells in it. Forte took the bag and thanked the cop.

  Outside the study in the hallway, he nearly bumped into a figure standing next to the door. It was Tolan.

  “Guess you did the best you could,” the NCLU man said. “Or is that insensitive of me to say?”

  Forte said nothing. He moved to go around Tolan but the man put a hand on his arm.

  “Forte, I don’t know what you were doing in Mrs. Lamberth’s room last night, but I hope it doesn’t result in any more harm to this family.”

  Forte took the man’s fingers and bent them away from his arm. He looked at Tolan’s bulldog face but did not respond. There was nothing to say.

  Tolan glared at him a moment longer then walked away.

  Chapter 15

  Sunday, 4 a.m.

  Forte held the whiskey bottle above his head, gripping it tightly by the neck with his sparring-gloved hand as he tried to read the label in the darkness of the balcony. In the sky above the balcony, the storm had cleared but the moon still hid behind some clouds.

  The bottle was still sealed. Larue had given the whiskey to him at his high school graduation. Two days later he shipped out with the Navy. Much later, when Forte had submitted himself to the drug treatment program, he had kept several boxes in storage while he sorted out his life. When The Refuge was founded, he had rediscovered the bottle. It had remained, unopened, on a shelf in the closet of his guest bedroom.

  He had gone straight to the workout room when he left the Lamberth home. The guards who had just finished working out had stayed for a few minutes while he pounded the heavy bag. Whumpf. Whumpf. Left. Right. His anger was the first emotion to be dealt with and this was the safest way to do it. Whumpf. So damn stupid. Whumpf, whumpf. So completely careless. So… whumpf… totally… whumpf… irresponsible… whumpf, whumpf, whumpf. So totally irresponsible. He punched out his anger until he could no longer bring up his arms from his sides.

  Now he sat on his balcony, slumped in the round thick cushion of the cane lounge chair in the corner. The anger was gone now and he was left with the guilt and the misery of having failed at his mission. He missed the anger already.

  He pressed the whiskey bottle against the sweat of his forehead. The glass felt cool.

  Just one drink to take the edge off, to soothe him.

  Just one.

  He tilted the bottle and looked at it from every angle. The gold and red seal still intact, covering the cap at the top. The neck sloping gracefully down to the body where the insignia for the liquor company stood out in beautiful clear raised ridges on the sturdy glass.

  Just one drink would give him enough courage to make that short walk down the street to any corner where any one of a handful of street entrepreneurs could make his pain go away in ten minutes.

  One drink. Ten minutes.

  ’Til paradise.

  Then, more pain.

  He leaned forward. The clouds uncovered a sliver of moon. He held the bottle between his knees and looked at it. A single tear dropped and hit the neck of the bottle. He watched it slowly move down the glass. He set the bottle on the floor next to the chair.

  He would have to deal with the pain now. As it came to him.

  He leaned back and sank into the cushion and put a hand over his eyes. As soon as his eyes closed, he saw the empty bed, as he knew he would. He saw wet ends of the curtains whipping away from the open window as he dove through it onto the roof, rolling to the edge and dropping to the ground below and hurtling through the wetness following the footprints to the broken bush in the corner of the yard next to the brick wall with the streaks of dirt where boots had clambered over, then over he went and through the next yard with the house lights coming on upstairs and through the open gate and down the driveway out on the street where nothing moved and down the street gasping and around the corner to the next street and the next and the next as he ran blindly through the rain.

  Then the rain was gone and he was on another street in another time and place, a street more narrow and bordered by buildings instead of trees. Around the corner. A woman lying in the alley grime clutching red at her chest. A boy running past, eyes white-wild with fear. His wife, in his arms, the blood soaking his front, her eyes on his face until the light behind them flickered low and died out. The pain coming up from the deep, refusing to be covered up, refusing to be ignored, insisting on boiling to the surface where it could wrack with sobs that no person should hear. Or feel. Ruth, Ruth, too late… too late…

  He jerked awake, his arms poised in mid-reach in the air in front of him. His face was
wet.

  Boo sat perfectly still on the balcony rail, watching him but not coming near.

  Forte picked up the cordless phone next to the chair. He cleared his throat and hit the speed-dial button labeled number one.

  Manning Laird picked up on the first ring. His Bronx-accented voice sounded strong and clear. “Manny here.”

  “Do you ever sleep?” Forte said.

  “Almost as much as you do,” Manny said. In the background, a teapot began the first hollow strains of a whistle. “Somehow I have come to believe that sleep is a highly overrated commodity.”

  Forte held the phone against his ear. On the other end there was a comfortable silence.

  “Here’s the thing,” Forte said. He told about the kidnapping.

  Manny said nothing on the other end until he had finished. “A time of danger for you.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “I mean now.”

  “I know what you meant,” Forte said.

  Manny let silence fill the phone line between them. For all his glibness, he was unafraid of a still moment between friends.

  Forte listened to his friend’s even breathing. “Isn’t this where the sponsor is supposed to talk the addict out of roaming the streets to score some dope?”

  “Nah,” said Manny. “That’s just in the movies.”

  Forte smiled in the darkness. Boo leaped down from the rail and into his lap.

  Manny spoke. “So, what are you going to do?”

  Forte stroked Boo’s head between the ears. “First, I’m going to sit here in awe of your marvelous therapeutic style.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot. And after that, what?”

  “After that … nothing. I take the next step in living a real life, crappy as it may be.”

  Manny was silent for a beat on the other end. The whistling of the kettle had stopped. “Yes,” he said, “I believe you will.”

  Forte dragged the back of his hand across his cheek. “Thanks, Manny.”

  “Come see me later on today,” Manny said, then hung up.

  Forte pressed the button to disconnect and let the cordless phone hang from his fingers next to the chair. He felt the floor touch the bottom of the phone and he let it go.

  Boo got up and stretched, then circled once and lay down on his lap again. Forte closed his eyes. This time, no demons. Just darkness for a while.

  Chapter 16

  Sunday, 11:25 a.m.

  The organ swelled on cue as the choir director flourished his baton, bringing in the orchestra for a final crescendo as it joined with the voices of dozens of singers robed in purple and gold. Three television cameras caught the performance from three different viewpoints in the sanctuary: close-up, mid-way from the back, and high-angle from the balcony where the sun splashed through windows stained in abstract hues.

  Forte sat in the back near the center door wearing black chino pants, black boots, and his best white silk tee-shirt. His black leather jacket was draped over the back of the pew. No one had spoken to him since he entered the church except for one of the greeters in the lobby who had put a church bulletin in his hand before looking at his face. “Welcome… uh, friend,” the man said, his greeter’s special smile locked in place but his eyes showing confusion. Now as Forte sat on the pew, several of the people around him glanced at him from the corners of their eyes as they reached for a hymnal or adjusted a cufflink or pretended to search for a friend’s face across the aisle. A blond-haired girl, maybe four years old, peeked over the back of the pew in front of him. An attractive woman next to the girl pulled the child down to the cushioned bench without turning to look behind her.

  Forte picked up a Bible on the pew next to him, looked up Proverbs in the index and turned to Proverbs 24:11-12. It read: “If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?”

  The choir anthem had ended. A man strode to the center of the carpeted stage that was surrounded on three sides by pews fanning out and packed with people. Even from the back of the cavernous room, Forte could recognize him as the pastor, Jason Hamilton, from the man’s web pages that he had printed out before catching the flight to Houston earlier.

  Forte had awakened to a sun-drenched Sunday morning, the only time of the week that the Quarter approached a period of quietness. He had showered, made a few phone calls, then checked the Internet for news about the kidnapping. It was there as the lead story on CNN.COM. “Daughter of Murdered Abortion Doctor Missing.” A smiling head-and-shoulder photo of Hallee in a spangle-covered dance outfit was next to the headline on the web page. He saw his name in the third paragraph of the story as he scanned down, but he didn’t stop to read it. Didn’t matter, what’s done is done. He had searched for and found Jason Hamilton’s web page and printed out a half-dozen pages outlining the group’s crusade “to battle wickedness everywhere in order to advance the kingdom of God.”

  None of Forte’s contacts would have much for him until later in the day. So when there’s nothing else you can do, he had told himself, do something anyway. He had driven to the airport and barely had time for coffee, a bagel, and Checkers number one before catching the flight to Houston.

  Now he was listening to the man himself. Hamilton had taken a medium-sized Houston church and in seven years had increased its size twenty-fold by striding back and forth across the stage and insisting in his booming voice that the Lord would bless those who opposed evil, specifically the kind of evil espoused by abortionists and homosexuals. Hamilton had led dozens of protests across the nation, his followers holding signs proclaiming “The Lord Hates Faggots” and “God will kill baby-killers,” depending on the type of event he had targeted. The more the so-called liberal media had lambasted his point of view, the more popular he had become and the bigger his church had grown.

  Hamilton stood at the pulpit and looked out over his congregation for a moment before speaking. He raised his hand. “Hallelujah!” he bellowed.

  The crowd echoed him. “Hallelujah!”

  “Today,” Hamilton intoned, “before I bring the word of the Lord to you, I want us to pause in prayer for the kidnapped child of the abortionist Dr. Tyson Lamberth. Although her father is even now roasting in the never-ending flames of Hell for the wickedness he propagated here on Earth, his daughter Hallee Lamberth does not deserve the fear and possible death that may come her way simply because she is a member of a family where no righteousness reigned. She does not deserve fear any more than the millions of babies who have perished under the blades of abortionists right here in America since our country said it was lawful to kill those tiny children while in their mother’s wombs …” Hamilton continued in his prayer, then launched into a sermon that stretched out for the next 40 minutes.

  Forte glanced around him and could find no one who was not paying rapt attention to Hamilton’s sermon. He sat quietly and waited.

  At the end of the service, the choir segued into a praise chorus that the congregation apparently knew by heart because everyone joined in. Hamilton stretched out his hands and proclaimed a benediction before striding down the stage to a side door.

  Forte watched him go, then stood up and made his away against the flood of people moving toward the exits at the back of the church. People looked at him more openly now.

  Finally, he reached the doors at the front of the sanctuary and walked down a passageway until he came to a sign above a door: Church Offices. He opened the door and walked through a large reception area with two modern-looking workdesks and a more traditional receptionist’s desk in the center of the room. He walked down a hallway to a door with an engraved sign that read “Pastor’s Office.” He opened the door. Almost immediately he felt the muzzle of a hand-gun pressed against his temple.

  “Freeze!” the man holding the gun ye
lled. Forte froze. “Hands over your head!”

  Forte slowly raised his hands.

  Across the room sat Pastor Hamilton behind a boat of a desk. He had raised a bottle of Perrier to drink. His tie was loosened and his face was twisted into an expression that looked like a mix of shock and fear. When he saw that the danger had passed, his face relaxed. “Barry,” he said to the man holding the gun, “son, you need to remember to lock that office door. This boy coulda done killed us both if he wanted to.” He waved Barry to put down the gun and looked at Forte. “Please pardon Barry’s response to your rather abrupt appearance here today, Mr. Forte. We get some threats from time to time and have to be on our guard a bit. And just what brings you to our little church meeting today, Mr. Forte?”

  Forte put his hands down and looked at the man with the gun. Barry looked like a model for a young Aryan’s bodybuilder magazine: blond hair cut stylishly short, blue eyes, tan suit with tiny blue pinstripes. He slid a .44 magnum revolver back into a holster under his suit jacket, carefully buttoned the coat, and took three steps away from Forte, still eyeing him as he stood at parade rest.

  Forte looked at Hamilton. “You know me?”

  Hamilton grinned. “Why, Mr. Forte, you look just like your picture on CNN this mornin’. I must’ve had a half-dozen phone calls before church about your mishap over in New Orleans.” He stopped smiling. “I repeat, why are you here, Mr. Forte?”

  Forte walked over and sat down in one of the chairs in front of the pastor’s desk. The oak desk and two matching guest chairs rested on an oriental rug that covered a third of the office. A ponderous conference table surrounded by ten chairs occupied another third of the office. It was separated from Hamilton’s work area by a seating area with a leather sofa and two leather easy chairs. On the wall behind the pastor’s desk was a six-foot framed painting that depicted Moses coming down from the mountain with the tablets. Over the painting in elaborate silver scroll were the Ten Commandments.

  “I think you may be able to help me,” he said to Hamilton.

  “And why should I?” the pastor said.

  “Because of the girl.”