Pocket-47 (A Nicholas Colt Thriller) (21 page)

“Okay,” I said. “Those thoughts have crossed my mind.”

“It’s important that we keep the wrong kind of people outside the perimeter of this property,” he said. “That’s why we need the security. We’ve had some trouble in the past. Atheists, agnostics, pro-choice enthusiasts, and some other liberals and undesirables who were not exactly friendly toward our mission. We even had an informant for the FBI one time. You’re not an informant, are you Brother Matthew?”

“Me? I’m just a guitar player. I’m an honest Christian. An honest
white
Christian. I came here to serve Jesus and to be among my own kind. If you know what I mean.”

“I have to be sure, somehow, before I can allow you into my ministry.”

“You have my driver’s license. I imagine you’ve already run some background checks.”

“Yes, well, we all know identification can be falsified. The only reason you’ve gotten this far this fast is because you’re such a gifted musician. But I have to be certain that you haven’t come here to betray me.”

“I’m not sure where you’re going with this,” I said, trying to sound slightly insulted. “You want me to sign some sort of contract, or what?”

“I’m afraid that’s not quite enough. Actually, I’ve devised a little test.” He opened a drawer, pulled out a black bandana, and handed it to me.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“I want you to blindfold yourself.”

“Why?”

“It’s an exercise in trust and faith,” Strychar said. “And obedience. I want you to do it because I told you to. If you refuse, I’ll have to have you escorted from the property immediately.”

I didn’t believe he had any intention of kicking me off the property. I figured he would bury me on it if I didn’t play his little game. I was starting to get the distinct feeling that Reverend Strychar was a first-class nut job, and that I had made a grave error in coming here.

I wrapped the black cloth around my eyes and tied it behind my head. It seemed I didn’t have much of a choice.

I heard an electronic beep, and then Strychar said, “Bring it.”

A few seconds later the door opened and a pair of boots stomped in. Something substantial landed on Strychar’s desk with a dull thud and a metallic clank. It sounded like a wooden crate filled with nails. The delivery person walked away without saying anything. His footsteps slowed at the threshold, and he gently pulled the door shut on his way out.

“What’s the worst thing that could happen to a guitar player?” Strychar said.

“I guess dying would be the worst thing, for almost anybody.”

“Besides that.”

“I don’t know. Being paralyzed from a stroke or an accident. Not being able to play for one reason or another.”

“What about having one of your hands chopped off?”

I made a conscious effort to keep my respirations regular. “Yeah. That would be fairly devastating.”

“Allow me to describe the apparatus on my desk,” Strychar said. “It’s a miniature guillotine, about three feet tall, with an adjustable clamp that can be used for a variety of body parts. One of my craftsmen assembled it for me a while back. He used a modified axe head for the cutting blade. I want you to feel it.” He guided my hand to a thick chunk of steel that tapered to an edge. It was in the down position and harmless at the moment. It was cold to the touch. I couldn’t see anything, but I knew it was red on the fat end. Every axe head I’d ever seen was red on the fat end. I thought about snatching it loose from its track and burying it in Strychar’s throat. I was considering that option when the phone on his desk rang.

“Hello.” Strychar listened to what the caller had to say, and then responded with, “Correct. Two hundred pounds of brisket—the best—okay.” He hung up and turned his attention back to me. “Now, Brother Matthew, on the base of my little guillotine there are four wooden levers. Three of them are completely inert, but one of them is connected to the pulley mechanism that allows the blade to fall.”

The blade was still in the down position. He hadn’t raised it yet. He instructed me to touch the four levers to get an idea of their placement and how they operated. They had been sanded and varnished, and felt about as thick as slats on a chair back. They sprang back to position after being depressed, like the keys on a piano. I pushed all four of them, hoping to feel some slight difference in the one that activated the blade. No difference. All four were identical.

Strychar raised the blade. It locked into position with a click. He grabbed my left hand, pulled it forward, and secured my arm into the clamp wrist-up. A bead of sweat trickled down the left side of my face. My heart was pounding, and my gut felt like I’d swallowed a bowl of pennies.

“Why are you doing this?” I said.

“I told you, it’s an exercise in faith.”

“Seems to me if my left hand gets chopped off then everybody loses. I lose a hand, obviously, and you lose a guitar player. What’s the point?”

“If your left hand gets chopped off, then it’s the Lord’s will. That’s the point. All you have to do is choose a lever and press it. Then we can get on with our business. Do it now, please.”

I glided my fingertips over the levers. In my mind I had numbered them left-to-right, one through four. I stopped on number three.

“I can’t do this,” I said.

“Do it.”

“I can’t.”

“Do it,” he shouted. “Do it for Jesus. If He wants you to keep your hand, He’ll guide you to the right choice. Praise Jesus! Push that lever.”

He started hooting and hollering incomprehensibly, what they call “speaking in tongues.” The way I saw it, Jesus probably didn’t have time to fix the odds on Strychar’s demented game of chance. He was probably busy with other projects. I figured I was on my own. It was my choice to push the lever or not push the lever. If I refused, he would probably send in a couple of those boys in black and have my ticket punched. If I went through with it, I still had a 75 percent chance of walking away unscathed.

There was only one rational choice.

I pushed the lever.

Number three.

Immediately I knew I’d chosen wrong. The blade fell fast and hard. The pain shot through my wrist, up my arm and into my
shoulder. It terminated in my throat with a gasp. Every muscle in my body contracted, as though I’d been zapped with a million volts of electricity. Tears flooded my eyes, and a coarse roar pushed its way up from deep in my gut. I sucked in a few rapid and shallow breaths and then suddenly realized Reverend Strychar was laughing.

I pulled off the blindfold. There was no blood. My hand was still attached. I wiggled my fingers just to make sure. A sense of relief flooded over me as I struggled to catch my breath. I lifted the blade and examined it. The cutting edge had been grinded flat and dull. It was harmless. You couldn’t have cut butter with it. The whole thing was an elaborate hoax.

All the levers were connected to the mechanism that allowed the blade to drop, so the outcome would have been the same regardless of which one I’d chosen.

Har-dee-har-har. Strychar’s sense of humor was as twisted as his politics. When he finally stopped laughing, he looked at me appreciatively. “I needed to know your level of trust, Brother Matthew, the way God needed to know if Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac. I only want to protect my flock, those who come to me in need, those who are ready to accept Jesus. I have some literature I want you to take, and a questionnaire I’ll need filled out by tomorrow morning. Sorry it’s so long, but these are things we need to know before your initiation into the Brotherhood.”

“You mean that wasn’t my initiation?” I said.

He chuckled. “That was certainly part of it.”

He handed me a spiral-bound book titled
Welcome to the Chain of Light
and a thirty-page stapled questionnaire.

I could feel the sweat on my body cooling. I took a deep breath. “I’ll get to work on it right away,” I said.

“Brother Thaddeus will escort you to your quarters. Unfortunately, we’re short on space right now, so you’ll have to share a room with one of the other musicians.”

“I’m just happy to have a place to stay.” Deep inside I wanted to snap his neck with a quick jerk.

“There’s a men’s prayer meeting in the morning, seven sharp in the temple. I trust you’ll join us.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

“Good. After the meeting, Brother Perry will fill you in on rehearsal and performance schedules for the band. And, we’ll get you fitted for some new clothes.”

“All right.”

“See you in the morning then.” He rose and shook my hand again. “Oh, before you leave, I’d like for you to sign my book.”

He walked across the room to a painting hanging on the wall, an abstract interpretation of a European city on a river. It might have been Paris. He grabbed the frame and swung it out like a door, the piano hinge securing it to the wall moaning in protest all the way.

“Sounds like you could use some WD-40,” I said.

“I keep meaning to take care of that squeak. You know how it is. Always something.”

There was a recessed vault behind the picture frame. Strychar’s head and shoulders hid the safe from my view as he dialed in the combination. He opened the steel door and pulled out a behemoth of a book, a leather-bound volume the size of a briefcase.

“This is The Holy Record,” he said. “It’s my journal, starting in 1979 when I founded Chain of Light. Every member who has joined my church has signed his or her name in the book. Let me show you a few you might recognize.”

He opened the book to an early page and pointed out a couple of signatures. Big name celebrities. I couldn’t believe my eyes. He flipped through and showed me more names, people who still caught headlines from time to time, people I never dreamt would be part of such a sect.

The signatures, along with dense handwritten paragraphs chronicling thirty-some years of Strychar’s “spiritual journey,” filled the first half of the book. After that, the pages were blank. More than enough room for Strychar to keep journaling for the rest of his life. He wrote today’s date and then handed the pen to me.

“Would you be so kind?” he said.

I signed my name. I almost screwed up and wrote
Nicholas Colt,
but I caught myself in time.

“Thank you, Brother Matthew. We’ll see you in the morning.”

I left his study and walked out to the Hummer, rubbing my wrist and thinking about how I might be able to get five minutes alone with that book. Detective Fleming had said that Chain of Light wasn’t doing anything illegal, but I suspected otherwise. Especially since they had allowed fine upstanding citizens like Roy Massengill and Tony Beeler into the club.

I hadn’t seen a single motorcycle all day, or anyone wearing an eye patch, but it was a big complex and Massengill could have been anywhere on it. Even if he had left the property, I knew he would be back and that I would run into him eventually. I was counting on it.

Thad drove me to the men’s dormitory. It was a four-story brick building with a flat roof. I checked in with Brother David, the resident assistant on duty, and then went to my room on the fourth floor. It was a typical dorm room setup: two twin-size beds bolted to the floor, two small closets, and two desks. There was a tin can on one of the desks with some pencils sticking out of it, and a gold-plated letter opener with a picture of a man on the handle. It was either Jesus or Frank Zappa. I examined it more closely and decided it was definitely Jesus. Zappa had curlier hair.

I practiced on the Kay archtop for a while, thinking about Strychar’s guillotine. It was a practical joke, and yet a trial by fire at the same time. It was actually sort of clever. I wondered if all the newbies were required to do that, or if I had been singled out for some reason. I hoped Strychar had dismissed any ideas about me being an informant, and that I could stay as long and gather as much information as I wanted to now.

I put the guitar down, kicked back in bed and started reading
Welcome to the Chain of Light.
A few minutes later, my roommate walked in. It was the saxophone player from the rehearsal hall
earlier. He wore jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, and a black knit cap. He looked like some kind of lumberjack.

“What are you doing in my room?” he said.

“They assigned me here. Is there a problem?”

“Yeah, there’s a problem. I’m a senior band member, and I’m supposed to have a private room.”

He threw his horn case in the corner, plopped on his bed, opened a magazine angrily. Something wasn’t right. This guy seemed wired and aggressive, not at all docile like the others.

“I’m sure it’s only temporary,” I said.

“It better be.”

What an asshole. I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. He wasn’t even that great of a sax player.

“I think I’ll just go for a little walk,” I said.

I got up.

“Have you read that book yet?” He pointed toward my copy of
Welcome to the Chain of Light.

“Not all of it.”

“There’s a ten o’clock curfew.”

“Oh. So I guess I won’t go for a walk then. Is there a common area here in the dorm? You know, like a rec room or something?”

“First floor.”

I grabbed my backpack, left the room without saying another word. Sax Man obviously wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

I took the stairs down to the first floor and wandered around until I found the recreation area. It was a big room. There was a plasma TV on one wall and a cluster of chairs and a sectional sofa. Ping-Pong table. Pool table. Bookshelves stocked with board games and Bibles and paperbacks with titles like
Fasting Can Change Your Life
and
How to Pay Your Bills Supernaturally.

I took the cover off the pool table, scattered the balls around and started knocking them in. I was hitting softly, trying not to make a lot of noise, but a few minutes later Brother David walked in and told me the rec room closed at ten. He was about my age with a thick head of brown hair and a wooden cane.

“Is there any way you could change my room assignment?” I said.

“Not likely, full as we are right now. Why? What’s wrong with your room?”