“Can we get rid of some of this crap? It’s stifling.”

“Stay on task, Amos. We need to get this past us.”

Schrum continued to pick at the flowers. “How about that guy from Mobile – Owsley?”

“Owlsley who?”

“Ows-ley. Richard Owsley.” Schrum nodded toward the television. “You should do more market research, Roland.”

“Eliot’s gonna want a religious leader, not some no-name upstart.”

A quiet smile graced Schrum’s lips. “Then I’m the one to make Owsley’s case. I think when Eliot hears Pastor Owsley’s theological leanings, he’ll give the fellow a chance.”

20

Celeste Owsley’s call had come at seven a.m.

“Mr Nautilus, can you come here at nine? There are things to be discussed.”

Harry Nautilus drove to the Owsley home figuring he was about to be fired. Three days and two trips … one taking Celeste Owsley to a hairdresser to have the bouffant puffed and the claws buffed, then to a mall where the woman had shopped for two hours. The next day he’d driven mother and child to the local Cheesecake Factory and waited for them to emerge an hour later.

Celeste Owsley barely acknowledged Nautilus, yakking on her phone with scarcely a breath between calls. When he’d hauled mother and daughter to the restaurant they stayed in separate worlds, Mama sawing with an emery board, the girl texting.

The Hummer had a first-rate sound system and Nautilus had stashed several CDs in the glove box, mostly jazz mix-tapes, but also a copy of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which Nautilus considered the quintessential portrait of America, the urban side anyway, the pioneer spirit residing in Copeland’s Rodeo. Glancing into the rear-view, Nautilus had switched on Rhapsody, the swirling, sinuous clarinet opening filling the car.

“What’s that stuff?” the girl had yelled, looking miffed at being jolted from her phone.

“A famous piece of music by a man named George Gershwin. It’s called Rhapsody in Blue.”

“It’s weird,” the girl demanded. “Turn it off.”

“You should try it out. It’s very alive. It’s some of the most alive music I know.”

“That’s stupid. Music’s not alive.”

“We’ll compromise,” Nautilus said. “I’ll turn it down.”

The girl huffed and crossed her arms and so they continued for ten minutes, Celeste Owsley shooting cryptic – angry? – looks at the back of Nautilus’s head. When the Owsleys departed, Nautilus turned off the music and got in his Volvo. He was reversing when he saw the girl approaching the car. “Yes, Rebecca?” he’d asked, rolling down the window.

“That stuff?” she asked, pretending to stifle a yawn. “That music. What was it called again?”

He’d relayed title and composer and she’d turned and walked away, tapping at her cell phone.

Fourth day in the job and fired, Nautilus thought, pulling into both the present and the Owsley home’s driveway. Carson would get a kick out of that. But when the door opened, it wasn’t an angry Celeste Owsley on the threshold, it was an anxious one.

“Richard had to fly to Key West on business. He might be working in Central Florida for a while. He needs me, I mean us, there. What I need … if you can, is to come along and continue your services. For Richard, too. He’ll be needing a driver. It might be for several weeks.”

She tried a smile, but it wavered. Not fear, Nautilus noted, thirty years of reading faces in play, it’s something else. Anxiety, yes, and … excitement?

“Where in Florida, may I ask.”

“In Osceola County. You’ll stay in the finest available lodging, Mr Nautilus.”

Nautilus liked his own bed. His refrigerator. His music. Plus there was a brown ale fermenting in his closet.

“To be honest, Miz Owsley, it’s not really my kind of—”

“Richard said you’ll be considered to be working ten hours a day, Mr Nautilus.”

Nautilus paused in mid-refusal, and drove home to Art Blakey’s “A Night in Tunisia”, the wild drumming paralleling his heart: two hundred smackers a day! There was only one catch to Owsley’s request: Nautilus had to be ready to leave in ninety minutes. But he didn’t have to drive, at least.

A private plane was flying them to Florida.

21

“Get this fucking thing off my head!” Darlene Hammond screamed.

Frisco Dredd watched the woman yank at the black hood cinched beneath her chin. She’d been awake for ten minutes, coming out from under the chloroform after being semi-conscious through the night.

When she’d climbed into the van she’d been all dazzle eyes and non-stop questions like “Where’s Sissy?” and “How much money is she giving out?” and Dredd knew she had taken some filthy drug in her dressing room.

Dredd knew drugs. Satan had fed them to him for years.

When he’d pulled behind a strip mall she’d gotten jittery, “Sissy Carol Sparks is really giving away money?” turning to “LET ME OUT!”

She’d escaped, opening the door and jumping to the pavement, but he grabbed her and put the wet rag over her face and held her until she was just a limp shape in his arms. The heat had come over him – searing and vile, ancient snakes escaping from a locked basket – and he’d almost pulled into the woods to lose himself in her flesh, but the wires around his animal tightened and the lust turned to pain, letting him take her to the place of atonement.

“Are you there, you hillbilly bastard?” Darlene yelled, head snapping one way, then the other. She stumbled into one of the support posts in the old warehouse, then spun and ran into the wall. Like Teresa, she patted her hands along the bricks until coming to a boarded-over window.

“HELP!” Hammond screamed, fist pounding the plywood. “HELP ME!”

Frisco Dredd stared from two dozen feet distant, just inside the tight cone of yellowed light from a single bulb strung from a crossbeam in the old dirt-floored barn, its two windows freshly boarded with plywood, the rickety door loose on rusted hinges. The barn, a relic of a farm fallow for decades, was isolated in an empty field, far from prying eyes and listening ears. The nearest dwelling was three hundred feet away and posed no threat.

“YOU FILTHY FUCK!” Hammond screamed. “LET ME GO!”

Dredd held a bulging canvas sack in his arms. It clicked as he lowered it to the concrete floor. Dredd stared at the woman, the pointy, bouncing breasts, the long legs that had clutched legions of innocent men in their grip, draining their fluids and stealing their souls. The snakes began to writhe through his loins, his animal starting to awaken, to swell against the wires.

“Jezebel,” he whispered, the pain rising. “Whore.”

Hammond spun. “I HEAR YOU! TALK TO ME, YOU PERVERTED BASTARD.”

Frisco Dredd fell to his knees and prayed, feeling his animal dwindle, its pain lost beneath an energy greater than any earthly power. It quivered through his body and dropped his jaw in awe. Jesus was taking his place inside Dredd. Spittle frothed down Dredd’s chin and he fought to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head.

“Then the LORD rained upon Sodom,” he whispered, tearing open his shirt. “And upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven …”

Dredd stood unsteadily, opened the sack and reached inside. “For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer …” His hand returned clutching a smooth stone the size of a baseball. “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet,” he said. “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU BABBLING ABOUT?”

Dredd threw the stone. It whizzed over Darlene’s shoulder and hit the wall. BAM. “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him …” Dredd plucked another stone from the bag and put his whole body into the throw.