Homemade Sin (45 page)

The buzzards of destiny circled low over a motionless body near the bank of Lake Helen. Roland watched them swoop down toward the body then rise up quickly, covering the body and the ground with buzzard puke. Roland smiled, his fingers poised over the keys of his laptop. He was sitting in the deck chair of his 40-foot 1934 Playmate Series wooden motor yacht anchored in the center of Lake Helen. The black hull of the completely restored
Pilar
glimmered off the surface of the lake.

The boat was Roland's only extravagant purchase from the money Winfrey had given him to franchise the Fugu Lounge. The yacht had cost him a boatload of money, but to own Hemingway's boat was to feel the spirit of Papa sitting beside him. Stinky sat on a small velvet cushion on the roof of the pilot house, behind Roland's head, backseat-writing over Roland's shoulder. Hussey was sprawled out on a deck chair beside Roland, a copy of the Orlando Sentinel in her hand.

“Do you think your mother is upset that you didn't marry a doctor?” Roland said.

“Not at all.” Hussey said, looking up from the paper. “I told her you were going to be a famous writer and bestselling authors make more money than doctors anyway and you'll be home to look after her grandchildren. Besides, she told me she knew you weren't a doctor all along, she could tell by your hands.”

“Too rough?”

“No,” Hussey said. “She said ‘they weren't slapping yourself on the back or in someone else's pockets.'” Hussey laughed and turned back to the newspaper. “Hey, here's the ad for my book-signing in Orlando,” she said. “My agent thinks the Conjure book will be a big hit, but I have to make some appearances to promote it. Of course, I had to edit out some of the more dangerous potions but there are a lot of natural remedies in it. It should help those folks who can't afford doctors and prescription medicine.”

“How much do you expect to get for the Mambo formula?” Roland said.

“We should know tomorrow. The test trials went well and the FDA approved it last week. Probably more than enough to finish medical school, fix up my grandfather's house and pick up his practice where he left off. I think Mama Wati would approve. I'll be the next doctor-voodun of Cassandra. Who would have thought that purée of purple mushrooms would be worth so much? They're calling it the best thing to hit the market since aspirin. The journals compared its discovery to the polio vaccine.”

“Speaking of the mushrooms,” Roland said waving his hand toward the figure on shore. The man was bent over placing little flags in the ground on the bank of the lake. Moreover circled him like a shepherd making sure he didn't stray from his task. “How long are you going to make Cutter incite those buzzards to vomit on him and collect mushrooms?”

“Until he's farmed enough mushrooms to pay back all my parents' money,” replied Hussey as she disappeared around the bridge toward the bow of the boat. Roland watched Cutter shake his leg trying to shake off some of the buzzard puke. He reached back and pulled a beer from the little refrigerator, settled back into Hemingway's fishing chair and sipped his beer as he watched the sun start to dip low into the lake. His laptop computer sat on a little folding table in front of him.

“You shouldn't drink and write,” Stinky admonished Roland.

Roland took another sip of beer. “Hemingway once said ‘write drunk edit sober,'” said Roland. “I'm beginning to understand Papa more and more lately, must be the boat.

“Hey, Hussey, my friend,” Stinky's voice resounded in Hussey's head, “since you're up, how about popping down to the galley and bringing me a saucer of brandy and cream?”

“I think I liked it better when you wouldn't talk to me,” Hussey said as she disappeared down into the galley.

Roland glared at Stinky.

“OK, OK. Let's begin,” Stinky said as Roland's hands floated over the keys on his laptop.

“The story opens with a guy sitting on a bar stool at Sloppy Joe's in Key West,” Stinky dictated, “he's staring at a picture of Hemingway on the wall and sipping a Rum Runner. An omnipotent being in the form of a very handsome cat addresses him from under his bar stool …”

 

We hope you enjoyed
Homemade Sin
by V. Mark Covington. Please turn the page for a preview of
Church of the Path of Least Resistance
.

V. Mark Covington

Chapter One

Wednesday morning. Having to get up after only a few hours sleep was worse than no sleep at all. It left him feeling small and confused. He wanted to be back in bed with another two hours between him and having to deal with the Washington Beltway. Two more hours respite from weaving his Mercedes through rush hour tangles, trying to tie his tie while traffic ground to a standstill, making jackrabbit lane changes to close the gap in front of him before a car from another lane zipped into it.  Sipping a cup of coffee and listening to Howard Stern interview some drunken angry dwarf. Two more hours to curl up beside his softly-snoring wife in their nice warm bed and dream of Caribbean beaches, turquoise water, white sand and bikini-clad girls strolling along the waterline.

Come to think of it, the beaches in his dreams had been a lot warmer of late than his bed.

Instead he was standing in line at the 7-Eleven on a cold predawn March morning, smelling coffee and rancid hotdog grease wafting from behind the counter. He realized he had been transfixed, hypnotized as if he were still partially asleep, staring at the hotdogs, watching them roll over and over on top of the heated metal cylinders, when an icy gust of cold wind rushed through the door and shocked him back to reality. What the hell was he doing standing in line to buy coffee at 5:45 in the morning?

He stared out of the big 7-Eleven window as cars sped, fishtailed, and slowed in the dusting of snow on Connecticut Avenue. Damn snow, it was wonderful when it started falling in December, tolerable in February when the heaviest snows fell and closed down the city for a day or two, but in late March it was simply a nuisance. He shook his head in amazement that so many people were awake and slipping along on the snowy streets at this time of the morning.   

John Wye was not a morning person. Moreover, he was just not a four o'clock in the morning person, which was when the call had come.

At first he hadn't recognized the name.  The woman on the other end of the line said she was Helen Compari, and she'd sounded upset.  When his brain kicked off the fuzzy, wool blanket of sleep, the name sounded familiar. Helen Campari, Mike Campari's mother. Once his mind made the connection he bolted upright in bed, shocked awake by the realization that if Mike's mother was upset enough to call him in the middle of the night, something very bad must have happened.

“John,” Helen had said with a quivering voice, “Mike called fifteen minutes ago.  He wouldn't tell me where he was or what was going on and he tried to be calm and not to worry me but I could hear in his voice that he was scared.  He said he couldn't talk for long, and he asked me to call you and give you a message.  I don't understand it but I told him I'd call you.” 

“What was the message?” John asked, now fully awake.

“It was strange. He said to tell you to remember the song that was playing when you met Rachael. Then he said ‘Flight 1421.'
”

Fucking Mike, John thought, he was always into codes and secret words. He remembered the song. It started with the death of the chicken man in Philadelphia by explosion, and the singer instructing his girlfriend to apply cosmetics and coiffure her hair. The refrain referred to entropy or reincarnation or something, but the title was what Mike wanted him to get. Atlantic City. He flashed back to that night at the bar when Rachael had walked in. He hadn't been able to take his eyes off her and Mike had razzed him until he mustered the nerve to walk up and talk to her. Atlantic City.

John and Mike had been good friends in school, together with the third musketeer, Jimmy Keyo. John remembered the night Jimmy got into such deep shit. 

Jimmy had sucker-punched the Head of the Judicial Board back in college after that asshole had lobbied the rest of the board to give Jimmy a semester's suspension. Everybody had girls stay over in the dorm for weekends ‒ Jimmy just got caught. The smarmy little head of the student disciplinary board had leaned into Keyo's face and said ‘That little bit of tail will cost you a semester smart boy' and Keyo had hauled back and decked him. Jimmy had never been one for taking a lot of crap from anyone. 

A small, tightly-rolled joint fell out of Jimmy's shirt pocket when he drew back to punch the head of the board.   As the punch followed through, his eyes, as well as the eyes of the rest of the board, went from the bloody nose of their co-prosecutor to the small, almost toothpick-sized joint rolling across the floor. When Jimmy realized what had happened he bolted from the room, down the stairs and into the parking lot. John smiled as he remembered the sound of Jimmy's old Mustang crank up and tear ass off campus.

They'd talked about what Jimmy had done over dinner in the cafeteria and all the guys at the table had laughed like hell, until the already awful cafeteria food was so cold it was more trouble than usual getting it down. Two days later John had a call from Jimmy's mother, to relay a message from him. The message was, ‘The keys are a breeze
.
' 

After a lengthy discussion John and Mike had decided that Jimmy had fled to the Florida Keys.  That's when Mike had said, ‘If I ever get into something I can't handle you can bet your ass you'll get a call from my mother.'  And John replied, ‘And the same goes for me.'

That was the last time Mike or John had seen or heard from Jimmy Keyo. He'd dropped off the planet. Each rumor about him was different and grew more elaborate over time.

Now, fourteen years later Mike's mom had made a call to John. 

As soon Mike's mom hung up he had called directory assistance for Dulles International Airport. The information desk at the airport said there was no flight 1421 from D.C. to Atlantic City, New Jersey. But when John called the information desk at Reagan National he learned that there was indeed an American flight 1421 from D.C. to Atlantic City leaving at 9:45 that morning. 

As he stepped into the shower, John compiled a mental list of things he needed to do before he could get on the road to Atlantic City. First, he had to pack some clothes and stuff them in his suit bag. At least Rachael had an early meeting downtown this morning and would be too preoccupied to question John too much.  He didn't want to explain to her why he was packing up and heading out of town at such short notice. Then he had to call the office and let the boss know he would be taking a few days off. He would also have to remember to hit the ATM for some cash.

But his first stop would be the 7-Eleven on the corner. He needed coffee.

John was brought back to the here and now standing in line at the 7-Eleven as he became aware of another smell, underneath the hotdog smell, subtler and sweeter  … damn those doughnuts smelled good but one would cost him an extra mile on the treadmill tonight. Well hell, he didn't know if he would be home tonight, much less get a chance to work out. No, he'd settle for coffee.

As John moved up the line toward the cash register he remembered when Mike had asked for his help once before, the year after they had graduated from college. Again, it was his mom who had called. Mike had been working on some kind of water purification project or something for the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, on the West Coast of Africa.

For some reason, and against the strong advice of his supervisor, Mike had ventured into the countryside away from the capital city of Freetown, visiting the villages, getting to know the country people, as crazy as that sounded, and he had been picked up by a patrol as he walked down a rural village road. The only thing that had saved Mike's ass from a shallow grave, beside some dirt road, was that somehow Mike had made the guerilla colonel believe he had a rich father back in the States who would pay a king's ransom for his safe return.

The fat colonel with the gold braid draped over his sleeves slapped a cell phone in Mike's hand and said with an impenetrable accent, ‘Ca'yaPappa,' which Mike assumed meant his father.  Mike had called John, and John had placed a call to another old friend in Foggy Bottom, who had coordinated Mike's rescue through the Peace Corps. In twenty-four hours the cavalry arrived in the form of six Airborne Rangers. Mike was back in the States by dinnertime the next day.

As they stuffed the colonel into the back of an armored carrier Mike had stuck his finger in his face and shouted ‘Didn't your mother ever tell you not to pick up hitchhikers?' The rangers had thought that was funny as hell.

John and Mike had kept in touch off and on over the years, Mike had been John's best man at his wedding and they exchanged Christmas cards for a while; over time they had drifted into their own lives. John hadn't thought about how Mike was doing for years.

“Hey, buddy, whacha want? There's people in line behind ya.” John was brought back to the 7-Eleven, eye-to-eye with a middle-aged, olive-skinned man with a three-day stubble and a toothpick dangling between his lips. John shook his head to snap out of his reverie. “Coffee and … what the hell … one of those chocolate-covered doughnuts.”

The last John had heard of Mike Campari was that he was living in Philadelphia, at least that was the return address on the last Christmas card ‒ what was it, three or four years ago? The card had said that Mike loved living in Philly. So why was Mike having him fly to Atlantic City? He guessed he'd find out in a few hours. After John poured two packets of sugar into his coffee he punched in his office number on his cell phone.

John prided himself on becoming organized in a hurry, if necessary ‒ getting the job done and done right ‒ with machine-like efficiency. It was a talent that had served him well and allowed him to rise in the organization in a short period of time to senior systems analyst at the Exchequer Savings Bank in downtown Washington D.C. At thirty-two, he was the bank's expert in network design, the analyst everyone else went to when the system crashed and burned or locked out most of the users for an hour for no apparent reason.