Spellbinder

by Harold Robbins

  “Don’t move!” he said hoarsely. “That needle you feel is a morphine Syrette. If it breaks you die a little bit at a time as your brain gets paralyzed cell by cell.”

  Brother Ely seemed to freeze.

  “Now, let’s get up. Very slowly. We don’t want to have any accidents, do we? And tell your friends to stay very far away from us. The casing on this Syrette is less than a fiftieth of an inch thick and can’t withstand even the slightest pressure.”

  “You heard him,” Brother Ely said hoarsely.

  “Okay,” Preacher said. “Now. Very slow.” Cautiously, he got to his feet, his hands still clasped over the man’s ears. Equally cautious, Brother Ely rose to his feet.

  “Now, walk backward to the wall with me,” Preacher said. “Still very slow.”

  A step at a time they went back until Preacher felt the wall behind. “Good enough,” he said. “Just don’t move.” From where he stood he could see the entire room.

  There were four other men, all staring at him. Preacher looked at them. He nodded slowly. “Tell them to strip to their underwear.”

  “You heard him,” Brother Ely said in a strained voice.

  “But Brother Ely,” one of the men said, “I ain’t wearing any underwear.”

  “Tough shit,” Preacher said. “Strip anyway.”

  The man hesitated.

  “Do as he says!” Brother Ely almost screamed.

  A few seconds later, there was a pile of clothing in front of each man. Somehow they didn’t seem as terrifying in their nakedness as they had in their clothing.

  “Okay,” Preacher said. “Now, brothers, line up, face to the wall, next to the door.” He waited until the men were in place. “All right, children, pick up their clothes and throw them in the back room.”

  Quickly the girls did as he said. “Charlie,” Preacher said. “Take care of Jane. There’s antiseptic swabs in the first-aid kit.”

  He looked down at Brother Ely. “Who has the car keys?”

  “I have. They’re in my pocket.”

  “Take them out and drop them on the floor. Slowly. Don’t forget.”

  A moment later the keys jingled to the floor.

  “Where’s the keys to Tarz’s car?”

  “They’re still in the car,” one of the men said.

  “Get them,” Preacher said to Melanie.

  A moment later she was back with them. “Hold on to them,” he said. “And kick these keys on the floor over to the men.”

  The keys slid along the floor. “Okay, brothers,” said Preacher. “Take the car and go home.”

  “Wait a minute,” the naked man said hoarsely. “We ain’t got no clothes on. We can’t go like this.”

  “Maybe you better tell them,” Preacher said adding a little pressure to Brother Ely’s ears.

  “Do what he says!” Brother Ely almost screamed.

  One of the men picked up the keys and went outside. A moment later the others followed him. The sound of the engine came to Preacher’s ears, then the bite of tires into the dirt. “Let’s walk to the door real slow,” Preacher said.

  They reached the door just in time to see the automobile going up the road at the edge of the Community. He stood there until the car crested the hill and disappeared.

  “Now what are you goin’ to do with me?” Brother Ely asked.

  “I haven’t any choice,” Preacher said. “You’d only keep coming back.”

  “I won’t. I promise,” Brother Ely said frantically. “I’ll even get Brother Robert off your back.”

  “Sorry,” Preacher said. He clapped his hands sharply and stepped back, letting the man go.

  Brother Ely’s hands flew to his ear. He stared at the blood on his fingers. His eyes focused with horror on Preacher’s face. “You really did it!” he said in a voice trembling with fear.

  Preacher looked at him for a long moment. “Not really,” he said finally, showing him the intact Syrette still in his hand. “All I did was scratch you a little bit. But, God forgive me, this was one time I wanted to.” Almost angrily, he crushed the Syrette in his hand and flung it out the open door. He pulled Brother Ely back into the room. “Strip!”

  “Not me too?”

  “You, too.” He watched Brother Ely undress, then turned to the girls. “Throw his clothes in with the others and lock him in the storeroom until we decide what to do with him.”

  Four girls surrounded Brother Ely and none too gently shoved him toward the storeroom. Preacher walked over to Jane, who was sitting up against the wall, and bent over her. The bleeding had stopped.

  She looked up at him. “Will it be all right?”

  He nodded. “It’s just a skin scratch. There won’t be any scar.” He turned to Charlie. “Get one of the girls to go with you. You’re going to have to take Tarz to the emergency ward at the hospital.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He went to the chair and picked up the still unconscious young man. He carried him out to the car and stretched him out on the back seat.

  Charlie came up behind him. “What do I tell them when they ask me what happened to him?”

  “Tell them he picked on the wrong guys and bit off more than he could chew.” He looked at her. “Also tell them that we’ll pay the hospital bill.”

  He went back into the meeting house and sank wearily into a chair at the table. Melanie came up to him. “Thank you for taking care of us, Preacher.”

  He looked up at her and smiled. “Don’t thank me, thank God,” he said. “It is only by His mercy that we can do the things we do.”

  “We all love you, Preacher,” she said.

  “And I love you,” he said.

  “Can I bring you a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” he said. “I think I’ll just sit here awhile.”

  “Do you want to be alone?”

  “Please,” he nodded.

  Silently the girls left the meeting house. He stared down at the paper bundle on the table. Finally he pulled it toward him and opened it. The neat bundles of bills were bright green against the drab brown wooden table. Finally, angrily, he smashed the bundles with his fist. The paper bands broke and the money scattered over the table, some of it falling to the floor.

  He was still sitting there several hours later when Ali Elijah came into the room behind him. The two men looked at each other for a long time without speaking.

  Finally Elijah broke the silence. “You look like you been doin’ some heavy thinkin’, Preacher.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You had some trouble here?”

  “Some. I got Brother Ely from the Sons of God locked in the storeroom over there.”

  “What you goin’ to do with him?”

  Preacher shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. Let him go in the morning.”

  “You’re goin’ to have to change your act now.”

  Preacher looked up at the black man. “What makes you say that?”

  “I heard over the car radio on the way down. They just took a bunch of hippies in for the Sharon Tate murders. They called them the Manson family. They had his picture on TV when I stopped for coffee. He got hair and beard like you.”

  “Something like that was bound to happen,” Preacher said. “Crazy Charlie, they used to call him.”

  “You know him?”

  “I saw him around Haight Ashbury once or twice.”

  “That’s a lot of green you got layin’ on the table there. The Jesus business has got to be better than the Mohammed business. We never seen no loot like that.”

  “It’s not a business,” Preacher said. “We’re into Jesus for love.”

  “You call it what you want. It still looks like big bucks to me. Seems to me that you’re sitting on a pile of gold and you don’t even know it.”

  Preacher looked at him. “You really think that?”

  “You bet your white ass I do,” the black man said. “I still remember my mother down at the gospel meetin’. When that preacher shouted
, they just buried him with money. All he had to do was open his mouth and holler Jesus!”

  Book II

  JESUS FOR MONEY

  Chapter One

  Jake Randle sat comfortably in the back seat of his black Mercedes 600 stretchout, safely invisible from all the world behind its dark brown bullet-proof sun glass. Outside, the bright Texas sun baked the earth with its one-hundred-and-ten-degree glare but Old Jake never felt it. He had the air conditioning thermostat set at a reasonable seventy-eight.

  An unlit Havana wiggled in his mouth as he chomped on it carefully so that it would not dislodge his dentures. Half the pleasure of a good cigar was in the chewing, not the smoking. The only thing he didn’t like about the cigar was the fact that the Commies controlled both the source and supply. If he had his way he would chase the bastards back to Russia or wherever they came from and turn the island over to people who showed the proper respect for the Americans. Hell, if it weren’t for the Americans they would still be sucking the hind tit of Spain.

  Idly, he glanced out the window as the car left the main street of the town named after his grandfather and turned onto the specially built road that led to his ranch forty miles away. The last building, an old decayed barn which had stood unused for twenty years since the river near where it had been built had dried into a creek, fell behind him. It was the sign in the field next to the barn that suddenly brought him upright in his seat. Twenty feet long, six feet high, it hung suspended between two poles, its red and black lettering on white canvas glaring in the sunlight.

  He tapped on the window of the chauffeur’s compartment. “Stop here.”

  “Yes, Mr. Randle.”

  The Mercedes pulled to the side of the road and Old Jake put on his glasses and peered out at the sign. The lettering was bold and easy to read.

  YOU HAVE SEEN THEM ON TV.

  Underneath were four photographs, each with a name over it: Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, Jerry Falwell, James Robison. Below them was an even larger photograph, but this one had lettering on each side. NOW, IN PERSON, LIVE! C. ANDREW TALBOT. Then below the photograph: THE GREATEST GOSPEL PREACHER OF THEM ALL! THIS SUNDAY 4 P.M. JESUS WANTS YOU, NOT YOUR MONEY. ADMISSION FREE! Smaller lettering ran along the bottom of the sign: SPONSORED BY THE COMMUNITY OF GOD CHURCH OF CHRISTIAN AMERICA TRIUMPHANT, LOS ALTOS, CALIFORNIA.

  He had just finished reading the sign when a cloud of dust came up in the field behind it and through it rose the top of a circus tent. When the dust settled, he could see the tractors pulling the ropes tight. At almost the same moment a platform, to which a giant white cross was affixed, rose at the far end of the tent. A few seconds later a forklift bearing rows of wooden benches moved under the top and men began placing the benches in rows in front of the platform. Behind the platform a canvas flap fell, on which there was another portrait of C. Andrew Talbot, his finger pointing at the rows of benches in much the same manner used by Uncle Sam in army recruitment posters, only the words were different: Jesus wants you!

  Looking beyond the tent Randle could see the trucks which had brought all the equipment, parked in a row along the far end of the field. There were also several vans and mini-buses. He looked back into the tent. Everything was moving with an almost army-like precision. Rolls of carpet were being laid between the aisles formed by the benches to a larger semicircle of carpet in front of the platform at the same time as a sound system and lights were being hung from the support poles. At first it had seemed as if there were many men, but then he counted only eight, all moving quickly under the supervision of a large Negro.

  He touched the button, lowering the window between himself and his chauffeur and his bodyguard. “Drive onto the field!”

  The chauffeur nodded and turned the limousine onto the field. He drove the car up to the front of the tent and stopped. “Okay, here, Mr. Randle?” he asked.

  Old Jake didn’t bother to answer. He pressed the button lowering the side window near him. Several of the men had stopped working for a moment to look at him, then at a word from the Negro went back to their jobs. Old Jake stuck his head out the window. “Hey, nigger,” he said. “Come over here!”

  Joe Washington looked at him for a brief second, then came toward the limousine. If he saw the bodyguard in the front seat take his gun from his shoulder holster, he gave no sign of it. “Yes, sir?” he asked politely.

  Old Jake stared at him. He didn’t like niggers. Niggers and Mexicans, no way you can trust any of them. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Gittin’ things ready foh the gospel meetin’, suh,” Joe answered, slipping deliberately into a black Southern dialect.

  “Who gave you permission?” Old Jake demanded.

  Joe shrugged his shoulders. “We got the papers from town.”

  “I own this property,” Old Jake said. “Nobody said anything to me.”

  Joe shrugged again. “I don’ know nothin’ about that, suh. I jes works heah.”

  Old Jake turned to the chauffeur. “Get my property manager on the phone.” A moment later he spoke into the telephone. “Did you let Lot Twenty for a gospel meeting?”

  “Yes, sir. They paid us two hundred dollars.”

  “Why wasn’t I told about it?” he shouted into the telephone.

  “I didn’t think it was important enough to bother you about it, Mr. Randle.” The property manager’s voice was shaking.

  “How many times do I have to tell you I want to know everything that’s going on here?” he shouted.

  “They came with very good references, Mr. Randle. Both Reverend Lydon and Deacon Ellsworth recommended them.”

  Old Jake was silent for a moment. The two men were the pillars of the local church. “Next time you tell me,” he growled. “No matter what it is.”

  “Yes, Mr. Randle.”

  Old Jake put down the telephone and turned back to Joe. “Who is this preacher, C. Andrew Talbot? I never heard of him.”

  Joe put a surprised look on his face. “He one of the mos’ pow’ful preachers in the country. Evvybody knows him.”

  “I never saw him on television.”

  “You got cable?”

  “Not down here.”

  “Tha’s why. He on cable back in California. Believe me, if’n you ever heard him, you would never fergit him. When he preaches the Gospel, dat ol’ devil, he jes gits up on his hind legs an’ runs.”

  Old Jake squinted at him. “An old-fashioned hell and damnation preacher, eh?”

  Joe nodded. “Yes, suh.”

  “None of that sweetness and light horseshit.”

  “No, suh,” Joe said. “The on’y thing he interested in is gittin’ the sin out an’ the people back on their knees to Jesus and salvation.”

  Old Jake was silent for a moment, then nodded in approval. “That’s my kind of preacher. I don’t hold with that other nonsense.”

  “He don’ neither.”

  “I think maybe I’ll come back, but first I’d like to have a private talk with him. Where is he?”

  “He ain’t here jes now,” Joe answered. “He’s over to the Baptist Church prayin’ with the congregation. But he’ll be real glad to meet you when he comes back. Maybe after the gospel meetin’.”

  “Maybe,” Old Jake said. He reached into his pocket and took out a hundred-dollar bill. “You hold a bench in the front row for me. I like to sit alone.”

  Joe looked down at the bill. “Admission is free, suh. I cain’t take that money. But I’ll make sure to hold the bench for you.”

  “You do that, boy,” Jake said. He leaned back in his seat and rolled up his window.

  Joe stood there watching the black Mercedes drive from the field, turn onto the road, and begin to speed its way home.

  One of the workmen came up to him. “He sounded like a real prick. I couldn’t believe my ears when you begun Uncle Tomming him.”

  Joe turned a baleful look on the workman. “You got a big mouth, Johnson. If you kept your hands as busy as your face we’d
have been all set by now.”

  Johnson stared after the fast-disappearing limousine. “Man, that’s a big black car. If’n it was any bigger it would be on Amtrak.”

  “That’s where you goin’ if you don’t get back to work,” Joe said.

  Johnson held up a placating palm. “Okay, boss. Okay.”

  Joe watched him join the men placing the benches under the tent, then turned back for a glimpse of the car. But it was gone. He shook his head ruefully as he walked behind the tent to Preacher’s Winnebago. The big silver RV with the black-lettered Community of God painted on it seemed to sparkle in the sunlight. He opened the door and stuck his head inside. “Beverly, you in there?”

  Her voice came from the rear of the van. “Come in, Joe.”

  He climbed in, closing the door behind him. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dark and savoring the air conditioning after the heat outside, then walked to the back of the van.

  Beverly was sitting at the small dining table that also served as a makeshift desk, a pile of papers spread in front of her.

  “How’s it goin?” he asked.

  She looked up at him. “Out of money as usual. We never seem to get ahead. Just enough money from one town to make it to the next.”

  “You talk to him?” he asked.

  “You know I did,” she answered. “Until I’m blue in the face. But he won’t listen. It’s God’s work, he says. Nobody’s supposed to make money on that.”

  “He’s gotta grow up,” Joe said. “The local churches will be satisfied with twenty percent of the collections. He don’t have to give them fifty percent.”

  She was silent.

  “You know how much them TV preachers is makin’?” he asked, then answered himself. “Millions. They don’t bust their ass preachin’ up and down the country, livin’ out of a shitty van. They got their own jet planes and they shack up at the number one hotel everywhere they go.”

  “I know that,” she said.

  “It’s steak or roast beef and potatoes every night for them,” he said.

  A faint smile came to her lips. “Maybe a little chow mein once in a while?”

  He grinned suddenly and shook his head. “I sure don’t understand why you’re hangin’ in there, Beverly. You got enough money. You don’t need it.”