Oaths and miracles, p.15
Oaths and Miracles, page 15
“Until now.”
“Listen, Marty. We have the photograph linking Vincent DiPrima and Eric Stevens—”
“Hell, we have photographs linking Frank Sinatra to half the mob, and we aren’t indicting him, either,” Felders said.
“—and the taped mention of Verico by an indicted capo. We have Kozinski’s murder, too close to the anonymous note to chalk up to coincidence. And we have a chance here to stop the Relatives before they move into gene-splicing, a new area of small, potentially lucrative, highly exploitable companies with the potential to maybe someday change everything about how human cells are structured. I’ve been reading about recombinant DNA, Marty. This is only the beginning. The next century is going to be the century of biotech, the way this one was for discoveries in physics. Advance after advance after advance. We don’t see now the potential for money and control, no more than anybody saw it in airports on the day Orville and Wilbur Wright took off at Kitty Hawk. But now the Relatives own the air freight industry at LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark—we know they do. And they could one day own recombinant DNA, all legitimately, if we don’t commit to stopping them now.”
“You sound like a PBS special,” Felders said. But he was listening.
“Do you know what this gene-splicing could do? Find a cure for cancer. A cure for getting fat. For looking old. All patentable. What do you think those things would be worth on the open market? How much money would there be in altering the cell deterioration that causes disease? It’s brand new and wide open. I know we don’t have a lot on this case. But we do have something, and keeping it going is the first step in blocking the LCN from a whole new area of enterprises. An area that nobody, not even its own top scientists, knows what the future will be. We have to keep this investigation open. Take it away from me, if that’s your best judgment; but keep it open!”
Felders sat thinking, fingers still quiet on his desk. Cavanaugh waited, not breathing. Felders really did look feral, like some skinny rodent whose delicate bones belied the sharpness of his teeth. Naturally Felders didn’t want to sink those teeth into Duffy, his boss. But if Felders said no …
“Okay, Bob. If I can get Duffy to agree, you can have one more agent, plus Tamara Lang. She’s green, A.B.D. in molecular biology from Stanford, but she’s supposed to be good.”
“What’s A.B.D.?” Cavanaugh said, out of relief. Felders was going to let him continue the case.
“And you with a degree in English. She’s ‘all but dissertation.’ Did all the coursework for her doctorate and then changed her mind about a life of research. Decided she wanted to be an officer of the law.”
“Why would she—”
“Why did you? Stop quibbling, Bob. You get what you want: an agent to watch Judy Kozinski and a science advisor to watch genetics research. Now go justify them both.”
“I will,” Cavanaugh said, and suddenly hoped to hell that was the truth. He rose to leave.
“Oh, and, Bob—”
“Yeah?”
Felders didn’t look at him. “Stay away from Marcy. It doesn’t look good to have Justice investigators served with domestic-problem court orders. Give it up.”
“Right,” Cavanaugh said.
SIXTEEN
The radio station wasn’t what Wendell Botts had expected.
To start with, they didn’t even recognize his name at the reception desk, which was just that, a desk in a tiny crammed storefront office with the dirtiest window he’d ever seen. Here he’d gone and bought a new suit, paying fifty fucking bucks for it, and shined his shoes, and put on a tie. He’d skipped his A.A. meeting, too, which up till now he had a perfect attendance record for. And the bimbo behind the desk didn’t even recognize his name.
“Who?”
“I told you—Wendell Botts. I’m going to be on the air.”
“Oh.” She shoved a three-ring binder at him, the kind kids used in junior high. “Sign in and have a seat.”
The lined notebook paper was smudged and torn. Wendell signed at the bottom. Under “Host” he printed the rick abrams hour in big capital letters.
They’d been the only ones to respond to his letters. Forty-two fucking letters, and this Albany station was the only one to answer. Wendell had called them up right away and said yes, he’d come, he had an important story to take to the American people. Finally, somebody would really listen! But then he’d listened to “The Rick Abrams Hour” a couple of nights, and he wasn’t so sure. The guy was really snotty to his guests. Wendell had almost changed his mind.
But nobody else had answered his letters.
The girl behind the desk ignored him. Wendell sat on a sagging director’s chair, hands on his knees, waiting. Outside the dirty window, a neon light with three dead tubes blinked on and off: G-N-- EE. Half an hour went by.
“Hey, shouldn’t I go in soon?”
“Oh, they don’t want you until nine o’clock. You’re the last segment.”
“Then why did they tell me to be here by eight?”
The girl shrugged. Bitch. Glaring at her, the dyed big hair and heavy makeup and tight sweater, Wendell thought of Saralinda. Saralinda’s clean, sweet-smelling brown hair, her thin serious face, her slow hesitant walk, so feminine …
This radio show felt like his last chance to make Saralinda come home.
There’s never a last chance, they said at A.A. Swell. Great. But what did they know, a bunch of drunks? About the Soldiers of the Divine Covenant, A.A. didn’t know jackshit.
A door behind the receptionist’s desk opened and a woman came out. This one was middle-aged, well-dressed, and furious. She snatched a fur coat off a second sagging director’s chair and stomped outside, slamming the outer door hard. A gust of cold night air blew across Wendell’s knees.
“You can go in now,” the girl behind the desk said.
Just like a fucking doctor’s office.
Wendell lumbered around her desk and opened the door. He walked into a tiny room packed with electronic equipment. A guy wearing headphones took up most of the space. Beyond a glass window was a second tiny, dirty room—there didn’t seem to be any other kind here—with another guy wearing headphones, this one sitting at a table with two chairs. Crushed paper cups littered the table.
The man closest to Wendell motioned him through without so much as looking at him. Wendell decided there must be a commercial on the air; he was proud of figuring this out for himself. A little hard ball of excitement bounced in his belly.
The second room was walled with soundproofing, gray spongy stuff like what came in packing boxes. Wendell squeezed himself into the vacant chair, which was so close to the wall he barely had room to fit. Across from him, Rick Abrams had his eyes closed. Was the guy asleep?
Wendell studied Abrams, He didn’t look like his voice. The voice was deep and rich, but Abrams was a tall, skinny guy with arms like spaghetti. Wendell could’ve taken him with one hand. Abrams’s long, reddish hair was tied in a sloppy ponytail, and he wore a red sweatshirt. He looked like some kind of hippie wuss.
Abruptly Abrams opened his eyes and motioned for Wendell to put on his headphones.
“Our next guest, all you people out there with nothing better to do than listen to neurotic drivel, apparently doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than spew it for you. And drivel I suspect it is. But we’ll give the guy his fair hearing—hey, don’t we always?—his FCC soapbox, his Warhol allotment of fame, right to the nanosecond before the gong sounds. With us tonight is Wendell Botts, local construction worker, sometime religious nut, who’s here to talk about—are you ready for this one?—human sacrifice at a Waco-waiting-to-happen right here in upstate New York. Join with me in welcoming Mr. Botts, sound of furious applause, so what’s the story, Wendell?”
Wendell stared, confused. Abrams said so many stupid things, and he said them so fast—
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, it appears we have a problem in the front office, they’re booking mutes on the show. Must be a form of labor protest. Classier than picketing, what? But take your time, Mr. Botts, there’s still fourteen minutes and ten seconds on the Warhol meter.”
The what? Panicked, Wendell glared at Abrams, who was smiling across the table. No, not smiling … laughing, without noise. The prick was laughing at him!
“My name is Wendell Botts,” he said, and stopped at hearing his own voice in the headphones over his ears.
“So we’ve established,” Abrams said. “Points for positive I.D., Detective Botts. Now what’s the collar?”
“I …”
“C’mon, spit it out, there are tens of inquiring minds out there wanting to know.”
“I think they’re practicing human sacrifice at the Soldiers of the Divine Covenant camp in Cadillac, New York.” There. He’d got it out. It would be better now.
Abrams tilted his chair back against the wall and propped his feet on the table. There was a lot more room on his side of the table than on Wendell’s. “Human sacrifice. Right. And how do you know this, Goodman Botts?”
“I was a member of the Soldiers of the Divine Covenant. For almost three years.”
“Ah. And you personally witnessed this human sacrifice.”
“No, but—”
“What buts, Botts?”
“A lot of people have died inside the Soldiers’ camp.”
“People always die, Wendell. And worms eat them, as the poet so appetizingly reminds us. What makes you think these dead Soldiers were victims of unspeakable religious ritual?”
“The Soldiers sacrifice animals! I seen them! They believe Leviticus Seven—”
“Spare us the Fundamentalist chapter and verse, and cut to the chase. What evidence do you have?”
“I know how the Soldiers think. They—”
“You know because you were one. And now you’re a dropout, or a flunkout—were you expelled from Leviticus, Wendell?—and so you’re out to do the grand exposé thing, and make all the other religious nuts sorry they ever messed with you. Isn’t that right?”
“No, I—”
“It’s not right? You’re not out to expose the Soldiers of the Divine Covenant? But your letter to this radio station, which I have right here—and a charmingly written missive it is—says, that you do want to expose your old pew-mates. So which is it, Wendell?”
“I can’t—”
“Which is it?”
“Shut up!” Wendell roared. His own voice shrieked in his headphones. Abrams smiled. Looking at him over the tops of his cowboy boots, still propped on the table, Wendell saw that smile and he felt the old surge in his guts. Smash. Smash the smiling fucking face, the prick, the motherfucking bastard—
“‘Shut up,’” Abrams said in a sweet voice. “The perfect answer to all rational challenge that might—”
Wendell stood. He locked his hands under the table and heaved it up with him. Abrams and his chair crashed to the floor, and the table crashed on top of both. Wendell stood panting beside the wreckage, scowling at the engineer in the sound booth, who was frantically pushing buttons.
“Don’t you dare take this off the air!” Wendell yelled, “I got something to say and I’m going to say it! You hear me!”
The sound engineer nodded. Abrams struggled up from under the table, his ponytail untied, flailing his skinny arms. Wendell ignored him. He stood in the middle of the tiny room lined with sound baffles of dirty foam, and he fought to keep his voice under control.
“I was a Soldier of the Divine Covenant for four years. I ain’t proud of it now, but I know why I went in. It’s because the world treated me rotten, the way the world always treats poor people who don’t have nothing, not even a high school diploma. I couldn’t get work because the government said there was a recession and there wasn’t no work. It’s always that way for people like me. We’re the first to get fired when things go bad, and nobody cares if we can’t pay the rent, or buy shoes for our kids. There’s a lot of people like me and my wife out there, who’ve about given up hope.
“The Soldiers offered us some hope. They seemed to care what happened to us. They gave us milk for our baby daughter when all the rest of the world wanted to give us a kick in the ass.”
Wendell paused to collect his thoughts. Abrams was on his feet now, and his face had changed: gone narrow-eyed, suspicious. But he didn’t try to touch Wendell—good thing for him.
“People without no religion don’t ever understand why poor people join such weird religions. It’s because you can get caring there you can’t get nowhere’s else. Sometimes it’s weird caring, though, I know that now; I didn’t know it then. Me and my wife Saralinda became Soldiers, and we lived in the camp in Cadillac. Our little boy was born there. David.
“When I was a Soldier, I saw the animal sacrifices. Hell, I helped with them. The Elders would bless a woodchuck or a rabbit, and the helpers would stand away in a circle, and then the Elder would cut its throat. I can’t tell you the sound that animal would make. Sort of a squeal, but not really. It makes your blood run cold. Once they used a cat—”
“A cat? Somebody’s pet?” Abrams said, in Wendell’s earphones. Wendell saw him glance at a black plastic board labeled phone lines. Red lights blinked the length of the board.
“Maybe somebody’s pet,” Wendell said. “The kids weren’t supposed to watch, but sometimes they did. I saw them. ‘Like the twig is bent, the tree grows.’ It was a blood sacrifice, you see, to wash away the sins of the congregation. Even the kids’ sins. It’s the only use for blood that’s allowed. No eating meat, no blood transfusions.”
“Even if, say, a kid is dying?” Abrams asked silkily. Somehow he’d got the two chairs upright and the table, which now had one busted leg, shoved out of the way in the corner. He motioned to Wendell to sit down. Wendell sat, hardly noticing what he did. He felt a great urgency to get it all out, tell the whole story. It almost felt as if the words were jammed up there in his chest, and the sheer pressure was forcing them out without him even thinking what to say.
“Even if a kid was dying. No blood. But they shed it in animal sacrifices, because the Bible said to, and now I think they’re killing human beings too, because the Bible shows that death is the way to punish members of the congregation who fuck up. Or maybe their kin. Thirteen people have died inside the camp in the last nine months—”
“How do you know that?” Abrams said sharply.
“Some from the obituaries in the newspaper. Some from my wife. Even some from my little girl. Penny is almost five, kids have to go to funerals. To get them to accept God’s ways. Thirteen—but I think there’s more!”
“Why is that, Mr. Botts?” For the first time, Wendell noticed how Abrams’s voice had changed. It was quiet, respectful. Abrams glanced again at the row of blinking red lights.
“Because there’s limestone caves all under the camp, it would be so easy to hide a body in there, and the Soldiers are … they’re hard.” That wasn’t the right word, and Wendell frowned. Then the right words came to him. “They’re without mercy. Like the marines. Leastwise, they’re without mercy when they think the Bible wants them to do something … and my little kids are in there!”
It came out different than Wendell expected. He didn’t know he hurt like that. No, yes, he did know, of course he did, but he didn’t know that words could carry that much of the hurt. Not his words. He blinked and glanced around the tiny recording booth. God, he sounded like some bleeding heart pansy. …
But Abrams was saying, “The callboard is lit up like LA. gridlock, so let’s take our first caller. Go ahead, please.”
“This is terrible,” a woman’s voice said. “I never listen to you, Mr. Abrams, because your show is so dirty and nasty, but I’m glad I did tonight. Those poor kids—why doesn’t the law do something? Even if there’s not human sacrifices going on in there, it’s bad enough to think that precious innocent children are being forced to watch pet cats murdered because of—that’s not what the Bible intends, Mr. Abrams! Jesus is love! You did right to put poor Mr. Botts on your show—”
“Which you’ll of course listen to from now on,” Abrams said drily. “Next caller, please—”
“Botts, your predicament only underlines what I’ve said all along. The religious right in this country possesses a low cunning, using people’s legitimate need to be self-supporting in order to brainwash us into unthinking subservience. What’s interesting is that as long ago as 1943 Ayn Rand warned us in The Fountainhead—”
“Oh, God, spare us the Randians,” Abrams drawled. He winked at Wendell. “Talk about unthinking brainwashing …”
The caller started shouting. Abrams shouted back: insulting, smiling. The callboard blinked frantically. More people called, all excited. They seemed to think Wendell was fighting a good fight, that he was right to get his kids out of there. Abrams let Wendell talk to some of them, and he told them to write their congressmen and the FBI. Abrams rolled his eyes, but by that time Wendell didn’t care. These people thought he was right! They thought he should have Penny and David back! They listened to him!
Only one man was skeptical. Wendell hated his voice as soon as he heard it: cool, dry, snotty. He hated it even more when the man said he was a doctor. “What makes you think, Mr. Botts, that the so-called deaths by ritual sacrifice wouldn’t have been detected instantly in an autopsy?”
“Maybe there weren’t no autopsies!”
“But you’ve indicated that you learned of several of these deaths through the Cadillac Register obituary column, and you said that some of those were ‘strong healthy people with no reason to die.’ In such a case, the local authorities would automatically order an autopsy. Death by ritual throat cutting is pretty easy to spot, Mr. Botts. It’s the deep bloody gash under the chin that does it.”
