“You haven’t seen but a faint glimmering of it yet, Mr. Crowe.”
They both let that one hang out there for a moment, sipped their beers. Side by side, like they were pals.
Crowe said, “I’ve seen some dirty fuckers in my time, Welling, but you take the cake. This guy, Murke… he kills your daughter, your own daughter, and you’re rescuing him, protecting him. And for what? Power? In one lousy, stinking city that’s already rocking on its heels and ready to hit the mat. That’s pretty pathetic.”
If he was mad, Welling didn’t show it. He played with his glasses, said, “I hate to sound as if I’m spouting off clichés, Mr. Crowe, but really… who are you to judge me? Your whole life has been nothing but one long, ugly bout of senseless violence. Do you suppose God approves of what you do? Do you think He’ll forgive you for the people you’ve hurt or killed?”
“I’m not interested in God’s forgiveness.”
“I thought as much. The man who doesn’t stop to contemplate God’s wisdom is a man whose life is—“
“Welling,” Crowe said. “Shut up. If this God of yours actually approves of what you do, or even what I do, then I don’t want anything to do with Him.”
For the first time, Welling showed some spark of anger. He gritted his teeth, looking at his bottle of beer, and said, “Blasphemy is a sin, Mr. Crowe.”
“Fuck you, Welling.”
His eyes snapped around and locked on Crowe’s, and there was rage there, finally. But in a second it was gone again, and he smiled politely. “My father always told me,” he said, “when you’re having a drink, never talk about politics or religion. Good advice, huh?”
He laughed and drained his beer, ordered another.
For two or three minutes they sat there in silence, drinking. When he was halfway through his second beer, Welling said, “I understand where you’re coming from, Mr. Crowe, I really do. Peter killing your girlfriend, Faith, was unfortunate. We didn’t really plan that, I promise you. It’s just that sometimes Peter is a little… hard to handle. You understand?”
Crowe didn’t answer, and Welling said, “This is a trying time for everyone, you see. Your employer, Vitower, is not… what’s the expression? Not going gently into that good night. He doesn’t understand that he has nothing to offer us anymore, that the real power on the street now belongs to Bad Luck, Inc. The death of his wife, Jezzie, has made him less than useful to us, you know? I’ve been trying for some time now to cut him loose, but… well, I may be the top dog in the church but I’m not a dictator, if you know what I mean. Other members want to keep Vitower. These disagreements have forced me to take drastic measures.”
He looked at Crowe. “You were sort of… pulled into all this, I’m afraid. None of it has anything to do with you. But I’m afraid that if you keep poking your nose in, it’s going to get cut off. Really, it’ll be out of my control.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Welling frowned, seeming for all the world like the pastor who tries without success to get through to the young heathen. Sad, quiet disappointment in his sensitive eyes.
“You don’t understand what the Society of Christ the Fisher is all about,” he said. “But I’m not surprised. Most people don’t. You seem to think it’s all about power, about manipulating things behind the scenes, and while that may be a part of it it’s only so that we can accomplish bigger things.”
“Bigger things,” Crowe said.
“Yes. You see, when the Society first formed, in the early part of the last century, it had a simple mission: to punish sinners. To eradicate sin, as God would desire. Such a simple, obvious mission, one that couldn’t be clearer in the Good Book. But the world is filled with hypocrites and liars, Mr. Crowe—as I’m sure you know—and the Society’s work was condemned and cursed by man. The Society took on the task God Himself had given, but other religious groups had grown too soft, too corrupted by the world. And so the Society was forced underground.”
He paused to sip his beer, and push his glasses back up on his nose. They seemed to keep sliding. He continued, “But we never went away. We continued our work. And we found others… lost souls. And we saved them and honed them to use their natural gifts for a greater purpose.”
“Lost souls,” Crowe said. “I assume you mean psychopathic killers.”
“What is a psychopath? He’s merely a candle without a flame. A vessel waiting to be filled with glory and purpose. And as far as the… less savory types we are forced to deal with—like your Vitower, or Bad Luck, Inc—well, I’m sure you understand that sometimes one has to bend in order not to break. It’s an unfortunate but sad truth of this corrupt world.”
“You’re absolutely breaking my heart, Welling.”
“I wish, Mr. Crowe, that I could make you see things my way. I’d love to count you among my friends.” Then, “I believe you’d fit right in with us.”
That got under Crowe’s skin. He snarled, “Welling, I’ll see you dead before this is over.”
Welling looked slightly taken aback by that, blinked behind his lenses. Then he sighed and finished his beer. He stood up, said, “Well, I suppose you’re going to make your mistakes, no matter what I say to you. I hate it, Mr. Crowe, I really do. But ultimately, you’re responsible for your own actions.”
He started away from Crowe, but stopped very suddenly and faced him again. He said, “Oh, and Mr. Crowe, about my daughter?”
Crowe looked at him, waited.
“I miss her every day. My wife never recovered from it, you know, and I don’t suppose I ever will either. But we all must make sacrifices to glorify His name, and my daughter in her childish zeal lost her way.” He paused, smiling sadly. “Suffer the children, as the Good Book says. Suffer the children.”
And then he turned and walked out of the bar. As if that explained everything.
It was full-on dark when Crowe left the bar, and so cold it bit straight through his coat like a razor blade. He stopped just outside the door, half-expecting to be ambushed before he’d taken three steps, but no one was around.
Whatever. It was going to happen tonight, he was sure of that. This dancing around they’d been doing with each other had to end, and they all knew it.
He walked back up the road, being careful to stay in the shadows as much as possible. Every sound he heard from the woods was a legion of murderous nut-jobs, every branch shifting in the woods a guy with a machete.
He had a pretty bad case of nerves going, which was a strange and foreign feeling. He played it through his head, examining it, wondering where it came from and why.
But then it dawned on him: he’d had bad nerves all along, ever since he’d come back to Memphis. It had been in his guts, seething around impatiently. In the day, before prison, he’d never experienced nerves because he had no expectations, no anxieties.
Now, though, now that he had a clear goal in mind, the nerves had been eating away at him without him even realizing it. He’d heard someone, a Buddhist maybe, say that expectation is the source of all misery. Peace of mind could only come with letting go of all that. Like the junkies at Jimmy the Hink’s place, human dregs who’d abandoned all ambition and with it all anxiety.
Now that he understood where the nerves were coming from, he told himself he felt better about it and kept walking.
He was on his guard to the point of being jumpy, so how they managed to get the drop on him was a mystery for the ages. It happened fast. He heard a noise in the woods off to his left, dry wood cracking, and as he stopped, eyes peeled in that direction, a blob of shadow swooped onto the road from the other side. He spun to face it, caught a glimpse of a yellow parka, a baseball bat swinging.
He raised his arm to block the blow, but too late. The bat hit him along the side of the head, and he fell to his knees. He couldn’t see anything but shuffling shadows. Heard nothing but roaring air and ringing in his ears.
The second blow from the baseball bat hardly registered, but it was enough to drop him far, far down into a red-tinged night.
First, a vague, purple-y mist and it started to shift and change to a dark, dark red, and at the same time he began to feel and hear a tremendous pounding at his temples. Blood shooting through his brain, reviving, torturing.
He was aware, peripherally, that he was coming out of it, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to stay in the dark. He wanted to bury himself in the cold dirt, away from the burgeoning pain of consciousness. But it insisted. It pulled him up, up and out of the blood-red mist and into a world of bright agony and pinpoints of sharp light.
He could hear voices, but couldn’t understand what was being said. He didn’t care. He squeezed his eyes shut and his head throbbed and he felt horribly sick. The voices kept talking, though, and he began to catch words here and there that he understood but that didn’t have any real context.
His eyes opened and he saw a single dim florescent light, buried in the ceiling. It wasn’t bright, but it still hurt to look at it and he turned away. Moving his head made the sickness come rushing up and out of him and he vomited all over himself.
Someone said, “Oh man, that’s gross!” and then laughed.
He forced his head around to look at the speaker. It was Cowboy Larry. He was grinning down at him.
Down at him. Crowe was lying on a cot, in a cold dank room.
Next to Larry, another figure took form and said, “Get a wet towel and clean him up.”
Larry said, “What? Why me? I’m not the fucking janitor.”
“Just do it, Larry. Show a little respect for the man.”
It was Welling. He smiled down at Crowe, like Crowe was a loved one just coming out of a long illness and Welling was overjoyed to see he was feeling better. Larry grumbled and left the room.
“Glad you’re back,” Welling said. “Do you need anything? Some water, maybe?”
Crowe couldn’t answer him yet. Welling yelled over his shoulder, “And Larry, some water as well!” and then, “For a while there, I was sort of worried we’d hit you too hard.”
“Fuck… off…” Crowe croaked at him.
He ignored that, said, “I want to make absolutely certain you recover, you know. We have a great deal to talk about.”
Crowe turned away from him, looked at the bare wall that the cot was pushed up against. He wasn’t tied or bound-- conceivably, he could jump Welling right now and escape. But the thought of even moving-- let alone jumping-- was far too daunting.
They’d stripped him down to under-shorts and tee-shirt and the room was freezing. The only furniture was the cot and a beat-up wooden chair. Above the bed there was a small casement window, closed and locked tight.
Larry came back with a wet towel, tossed it on Crowe’s chest. The cold of it shocked him into a sharper degree of awareness and he flinched. Larry said, “There’s his stupid wet towel. He can clean his own self off.”
Welling frowned but didn’t argue.
Slowly, Crowe sat up, placed his bare feet on the cold floor, and began gingerly cleaning the filth off. When he was as clean as possible, he tossed the soiled towel in the middle of the room and looked up at them. “How about that water?” he said.
Welling said, “Larry, would you mind?”
“Hell yes I would mind! You want him to have water, you get it yourself. You seen what this fucker did to me.” He held up his right arm, showing the bulky cast around the wrist.
Crowe laughed, although he was still too weak to put much into it.
Larry scowled angrily.
From a doorway behind them, someone said, “You got off lucky, Larry.” He came into the room carrying a plastic jug of water. Stone, the businessman. “Our Mr. Crowe killed Nick. And… my associate, Mr. Eckstine.”
There didn’t seem to be any malice in his voice. He handed Crowe the jug. Crowe swigged a huge gulp of water, felt his stomach consider rebelling against it before settling down. He set the jug carefully on the floor between his feet, closed his eyes, took a deep breath. The throbbing in his head relented a little bit.
When he opened his eyes again, the three of them were standing there staring at him-- Welling with studied kindness, Larry red-faced and furious, and Stone completely impassive. Crowe managed a grin, said, “So. The Whole Sick Crew. Except… except Metal Face. And the guy who bashed me with a baseball bat… Parka Kid.”
Welling said, “They’re around, don’t you worry about that.”
“Oh, and Murke. Where’s Murke, Welling?”
Welling didn’t answer. The others looked at him with more than a little disdain, and it was obvious trouble had been brewing in the ranks, like Garay had said. Welling was dangerously close to losing control of his God-bothering psychos. Crowe wondered if he knew that.
Welling said, “Larry, Stone… would you mind leaving me alone with Mr. Crowe for a moment?”
They started out, and Stone said, “We’ll be just on the other side of the door, Mr. Welling. I’d advise you to watch him very carefully.”
“No worries. Mr. Crowe isn’t in much shape to do much damage. And I think he knows that. Right, Mr. Crowe?”
Crowe didn’t answer.
Stone and Larry shut the door behind them, and Welling pulled up the wooden chair and sat facing him. The room was close and cold. The light in the ceiling cast a dim glow that felt sickly and surreal. It bathed Welling’s face piss yellow and colored the lenses of his glasses.
“You see, Mr. Crowe?” he said. “We could’ve killed you any time in these last two hours. Believe me, they all wanted to, and it was all I could do to stay their wrath. But you’re alive. What does that tell you?”
“That you’re an idiot.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m not an idiot. I’m merciful. Don’t you get it? The Church is not what you think it is. Earlier, in the bar, you said that you’d see me dead before you’d consider my position. Or something to that effect. But I really believe that, if you hear me out, you’ll come around to my point of view.”
Crowe picked up the water jug and had another swig. He set it back down, looked at Welling. Welling’s face was so earnest, so benevolent, Crowe had to laugh.
“Welling,” Crowe said. “Pay close attention this time, will you? I’ll try to spell it all out very carefully, so that even your pathetic mind can grasp it, okay?”