Aces and Eights

by Ted Thackrey, Jr.

  “You said we were going to Heaven.”

  “So?”

  “So...?”

  “So we’re almost there.”

  A minute or two later I understood.

  The Reverend Holroyd Josiah Gillespie, DD—known to his electronic flock as the Voice of Heaven on Earth, and once famous along the back roads of North Carolina as Holy Joe the Bible salesman—lived in panoply and secure splendor five miles outside the city limits of Las Vegas and a good thousand feet below the topmost reaches of the satellite-transmission antenna that telecast his message to a Gospel-hungry world.

  He called the compound his Heaven on Earth, and seeing it for the first time I was a little surprised that he hadn’t thought to run tours and charge admission.

  It would have been worth the price.

  Guards at the gate checked our ID and made calls to some inner security office before opening the double-steel-bar barrier and directing us to a visitors’ parking lot just inside. No outside cars permitted past that point.

  But it seemed we were not to wander about at random, either.

  By the time the car was parked and the engine turned off, a customized convertible tricked out with a blue–and–white awning straight from the Fantasy Island television set pulled in behind us and a brightly smiling young thing invited us—by name—to climb in for a ride to headquarters.

  “Dr. Gillespie is expecting you,” she said.

  I smiled back and followed Maxey into the back seat, giving her a hand with the tote-bag purse that seemed only slightly smaller than a suitcase. She was wearing a safari getup this afternoon, and it went with that. But I still had to wonder whether the visit she had arranged was for a couple of hours or the rest of the week.

  Roads at the compound were laid out on a winding plan—not a straightaway on the premises—and it didn’t take long to understand why. Land use had been planned as carefully as at Disneyland or Six Flags, and extensive facilities were camouflaged, separated from the sight and sound of one another by plantings and the artful arrangement of what I took to be fronts—facades with no real buildings behind them—designed to simulate the streets and byways of an America that never was.

  We got the full treatment.

  With spiel.

  “This,” our driver-conductor chirruped, “is our main street, the one you’ve seen so often when Dr. Gillespie brings the people of television land to visit the Streets of Heaven...”

  I hadn’t.

  Years earlier, curious about the impact that my old acquaintance seemed to have on the tube, I had watched about twenty minutes of one of his broadcasts. But then I switched the set off and took a long, long walk in the woods to get the taste out of my mouth.

  Things like that give me stomach distress.

  But it was evident as we went on that our guide considered the Voice of Heaven’s words as water upon a parched earth, and I maintained what I hoped was a properly respectful silence as we moved along.

  The Main Street building fronts, I learned, were not as totally false as I had believed.

  Real people lived in the houses and worked in the offices and ran the one or two small business establishments visible along the spotless brick-surfaced street; necessary, it seemed, for proper support of an enclave that was in most ways a wholly self-sufficient civic entity, subject only to the continued support and provision of the Almighty.

  That had a nice ring, but I couldn’t help the passing thought that continued support and provision of Lake Mead and Hoover Dam had something to do with it, too, not to mention a nitpicking speculation at the size of the water bill that had to be the price tag of maintaining so much greenery in the middle of a desert. I kept it to myself, though. Some days my manners are almost civilized.

  Turning off the main drag, we found ourselves on what appeared to be the grounds of a small but elegant hotel, and our guide informed us that appearances were not, in this case, deceiving.

  “Retreat groups come here all the time,” she said. “And there are church conferences all year round. We provide a secure and healthy meeting environment, with conference and banquet facilities, for any Christian organization that can meet certain basic standards. They don’t have to be a part of Dr. Gillespie’s ministry; he loves all who love the Lord.”

  She paused for a moment, savoring this all-encompassing quality, and when she went on, the voice was better controlled and the words more businesslike.

  “Then, too,” she said, “we have important visitors from time to time, so we want to be sure that they are happy and well cared for during their stay.”

  Her voice trailed away as she negotiated a particularly sharp curve, and she did not take up her litany again, apparently preferring to allow the next exhibit to speak for itself.

  And I could see why.

  The Church of the Voice was just ahead.

  And I was impressed in spite of myself. Television evangelists tend to package themselves professionally, choosing their pulpits to reflect the basic quality of the persona they are attempting to project.

  Try to picture Oral without the Prayer Tower.

  Or Billy without the stadium.

  Or Bob without the Crystal Cathedral.

  Holy Joe Gillespie’s working space was, the guide said, a faithful copy of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. “Only better,” she declared, “because the people who built the one there in France didn’t know about reinforced concrete or have to build it to stand up to an earthquake.”

  We digested this in appropriate silence.

  The old church by the Seine had been copied full size, in minute detail, and its very presence in the middle of the south-western desert was enough to give one pause, never mind the effect of scale and proximity. The postcard pictures for sale up and down the state of Nevada and the stock three-quarter face view that preceded all sermons televised by the Voice of Heaven simply could not do justice to its sheer massive presence.

  No wonder Holy Joe wanted it.

  But then our guide added a codicil that brought things back down to earth-size, and reality set in once more.

  “Dr. Gillespie,” she said, “really meant to buy the original one and ship it back here. But the people who own it just wouldn’t listen. You know how those Catholics are...”

  We were about halfway through the tour when I realized that none of this was coming as any kind of shock or revelation to Maxey. She had seen it before.

  But I didn’t have much time to think about that.

  The Voice of Heaven, in person, was waiting to greet us as our canopied tour-buggy made the final turn around the grove of pine trees that formed a screening wall to hide the rearmost flying buttress of Notre-Dame, and we found ourselves riding down the carriage path to what seemed to be an enlarged and restored copy of the mansion at Tara from Gone with the Wind.

  Our guide concluded her spiel with an explanation. “This,” she chirruped, “is totally authentic—the house where Dr. Gillespie was born, fully preserved and authenticated, moved here all the way from North Carolina!”

  She smiled at us, and I smiled back without comment.

  Nothing to say.

  This was a side of Holy Joe I hadn’t suspected, and one that I knew would come as something of a revelation to anyone who remembered him as a ragged-assed back-road Bible seller. But if presidential candidates and movie starlets and corporate officers can reinvent themselves, why not television evangelists?

  None of my business.

  I turned the bottom of my face into a smile and left it that way as we pulled up to the fresh-painted portico.

  Greetings were effusive and the Voice of Heaven’s dismissal of our girl guide had all the quality of formal benediction, and I was glad when we moved inside.

  It was getting kind of deep out.

  But even when we were inside the plantation mansion, the professional projections of fellowship and good cheer continued. Holy Joe seemed to be working his way through a somewhat overproduced Technicolor gr
eetings-to-the-visitors tape intended for use on prospective contributors, and I wished I knew where the stop and pause buttons were located. A little of that goes a long way.

  Still, I managed to keep my mouth closed and my expression neutral through the ritual of finding seats in the main salon (air conditioned; I wondered if that, too, was a fully preserved and authenticated part of the original) and waiting while another bright-faced young thing brought in a tray of coffee and assorted bakery goods.

  I caught the elusive scent of chicory and had an almost uncontrollable urge to give the Voice of Heaven a fat lip.

  Mean-minded of me.

  But I still didn’t know why Maxey and I were here—except that it had been her idea and she seemed to be at home on the premises—and I just didn’t believe that he liked chicory himself or remembered that I did. Smelling it now, I decided that I could guess who had been poking into my past and annoying my secretary.

  I couldn’t decide whether I was more irritated about the invasion of privacy or the implied manipulation.

  I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the Seven Attributes of the Virtuous Man, but some of what I had been thinking must have been reflected in my face, because Maxey used the minor movement of reaching out to accept a cup from Holy Joe to grind her spike heel into my instep while favoring me with her sweetest and most distant smile.

  “Shut up,” she lip-synched when his back was turned, “or I will kill you.”

  I don’t think she really meant it. But I never got a chance to find out, because the serving of food and drink appeared to have ended the formalities and the Voice of Heaven was ready to get down to cases.

  “I remember you now,” he said without preamble, standing tall and slim and patrician on a part of the carpet where light from the window gave him an aura while leaving his face in partial shadow.

  Watching him, I wondered if there was a special mark that he tried to hit in order to be sure of the effect, but decided it would be too complicated; you’d need a different one for every hour of the day. No. This would be freehand. And good solid craftsmanship at that.

  “I suppose,” he went on, “that I ought to apologize for treating you like a stranger during the poker game last night and this morning, but there were...factors...that interfered.”

  Okay. We didn’t need to discuss it; I waited for him to go on.

  “Also, I think I ought to apologize for my actions during the game itself,” he said. “I’ve been under some considerable stress of late, and just wasn’t myself. I’d like to talk to you about that, if I may; it’s why I asked Mrs. Goines to bring you here today.”

  He paused, seeming to search for words, and I waited for him to find them.

  “I am not really a card cheat,” he said. “Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

  I didn’t reply and if I had, I am not sure the answer would have been an affirmative, but he took it for granted and went on.

  “My ministry,” he said, “has come to a crisis point. Something I’m sure you’ll understand as a brother minister.”

  “I’m a poker player,” I said.

  “You are a priest,” he said. “I call you brother and claim your aid and counsel in this, my time of trial. Danny DiMarco and Sam Goines were not the targets intended for the two men who came to the penthouse of the hotel this morning. I am told that you fought them and killed one and drove the other away, and that is nothing short of miraculous. But it is not the kind of miracle we can hope to see repeated.

  “Those men had come to kill me.

  “I was that target.

  “Unless you help me, I will be the target again. And this time I will surely die!”

  A SERMON

  (CONTINUED)

  If the wages of sin is death, and the wages of power is death also...is the possession and exercise of power, then, a sin? Is this the sorry message that these two men, from their very separate times and very different lives, have to offer us...?

  SEVENTEEN

  It left me stuck for an answer.

  Holy Joe—I just couldn’t make myself think of him as the Voice of Heaven—had uttered the words in a flat tone that ruled out any hint of histrionics. He believed it.

  But I couldn’t imagine why.

  He was standing at the very center of a high-security compound, surrounded by aides and potential bodyguards, protected by several layers of pomp and circumstance, not to mention a set of high-tech systems whose sensors I had noted on our scenic-route trip from the gate.

  A mouse might get inside.

  But a potential assassin would surely run into trouble.

  On the other hand, this seemed to be my day for talking to people who thought someone was plotting to kill them, and I risked a quick sidelong glance at Maxey before turning my attention back to our host.

  Maxey hadn’t missed the point.

  And our timing was, for old friends now become semi-strangers, still remarkably similar. She was in profile, but her single visible eye jinked sideways to meet mine at just the right moment. That was all we needed. Most people can talk for an hour and say less. And breaking away was harder than I’d expected.

  But necessary.

  “I thank you kindly for your confidence,” I said, opting for the kind of citified-country-boy manner I hoped might keep the party polite. “But I’m afraid I don’t see—”

  “Please!” He held up a hand as if physically to avert whatever it was I might have been about to say, and stepped off the rear-lighting position mark, moving deliberately as if with conscious intention to afford me a closer, unshadowed, and unguarded look at his face.

  It was a good move.

  If he was acting, he had been doing so for a long time and was too far into the role to get out. The Voice of Heaven on Earth was a strong and ebullient television presence, a charismatic whose flock looked to him for driving energy and positive response to any and all tribulation. They would hardly have recognized the man who stood before me.

  The features were familiar: high, pale forehead topped by tight-curled salt-and-pepper hair; slightly oversized nose, well compensated by a slightly prognathous jaw; and wide mouth that showed the prolonged effects of a minor underbite.

  But the skin was pale, almost transparent in the slanting light of afternoon, and there was just a hint of moisture in the hollows beneath the deep-set eyes—a suggestion of tears shed or about to be shed, that was emphasized by the slightly tremulous quality that seemed to dominate the lower part of the face.

  He had cut himself shaving, and the styptic pencil had evidently not been of much help.

  I found myself thinking, fleetingly and with some embarrassment, of skid row derelicts and the inmates of terminal charity wards. The Voice of Heaven’s hide might be cleaner and his clothes better groomed, but he carried with him that same air of uncomprehending disorder. Of chaos accepted. Of doom and loss.

  It occurred to me that his potential assassin—if there was one—could hardly have done more damage with a hand grenade. Destruction was already far advanced.

  “We were friends,” he said.

  And that was truly pitiful.

  For we never had been. And he knew it.

  But I was a guest in his house and, for all I knew, a self-invited one. Maxey hadn’t exactly filled me in on the details. I smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring fashion and was about to say something banal when there was a welcome interruption.

  “Joe,” a low-pitched but arguably feminine voice said from just outside the archway that seemed to lead into the dining room of the big house. “Joe, I want to talk to you a minute before Maxey and that gambler friend of hers get here...”

  This time it was Holy Joe’s turn to find himself at a loss for words.

  But none were needed.

  The woman who entered the room and hesitated for a moment just inside the door was not the kind who would ever need introductions or explanations. She carried hers with her, in plain sight, and they were
not the kind that would ever be questioned.

  Television had made her face at least as well known as her husband’s.

  Sue Harriet Gillespie, wife and helpmeet of the Voice of Heaven on Earth, was one of those vital and healthy women that Scandinavia seems to turn out as a kind of cottage industry—a national export against which no trade barrier will ever be raised. Or considered.

  Born in Sweden but reared in the lake country of Minnesota, she had been a showgirl in Las Vegas and, like Maxey, had made not the slightest effort to disguise her background after marriage. To the contrary. One of the strongest and most compelling elements in the television image projected by the Voice of Heaven on Earth was the smiling presence of his rangy and beautiful wife, their on-camera love affair and occasional—highly visible—tiffs forming a kind of soap opera subplot to the main narrative line of personal salvation.

  Even so, I could see now that the television screen had under sold the product.

  Holy Joe Gillespie is tall, and I had thought that the elevator shoes were simply an effort to emphasize this part of his public image. Now I realized that there might have been other reasons as well. Camera angles and out-of-sight stage dressing can be manipulated to increase or minimize relative height at the whim of the director. It is part of the craft. But reality is something else again, and standing near her husband now in the semi-privacy of their home, I could see that Mrs. Gillespie did not need artificial aids to bring her head to a level with his, and the spike heels she was wearing placed her at an advantage of two or three inches.

  She was the kind of woman for whom the word “formidable” was invented.

  And she loved it.

  “So sorry,” she said, not meaning anything of the kind. “I was on the phone upstairs and didn’t realize you had arrived. Hello, Maxey. So good to see you again. And you must be her friend—the one they call Preacher?”

  Some people have more teeth than others. Burt Lancaster. Kirk Douglas. Jim Coburn. Donny and Marie. I have talked to dentists about it, and they assure me that I’m wrong; thirty-two is the absolute limit for human beings and many individuals have only twenty-eight, because the final four at the back of the jaws had to be extracted or never appeared in the first place.