“How about we repair outside?” Belafonte said. “I’m pretty sure I don’t need to see this.”

“Repair what?” Billy the Voice said. “Is something broken?”

I made the translation and we adjourned to brighter light and fresher air. William Sutherfield didn’t seem the average strip-club patron, but I’d found there was no average, only a bell curve measuring loneliness.

A convertible full of fraternity types blasted by, one kid yelling, “Hey fat-ass, try dieting.”

Sutherfield sighed. “I lost a hundred-fifty-seven pounds three years ago and my voice raised a half octave. I can’t tell you how many jobs that diet cost me.”

“What struck you most about Miss Hammond?” I asked, leaning the wall.

Sutherfield gave it a full minute of thought, as though getting it exactly right was important. “The depth of her anger,” he said quietly. “At men, mainly, but a surprising amount aimed at religion. Maybe not anger so much as bitterness. She went out of her way to mock people of faith … idiots, she called them.”

“She piss anyone off by mocking them?” Belafonte asked.

“It wasn’t to their faces. Just to me.”

I asked about threats, boyfriends, lovers. I also wondered if Hammond had made any sideline money in her off-hours.

“Prostitution? I don’t think sex was her thing. She made money by showing her body, not selling it. But maybe she had in the past.”

“What makes you think that?”

“She told me stripping was the cleanest job she’d had, called it a factory: ‘Put in your time, go home and wash off.’”

“She do drugs?”

A sad nod. “Sometimes I could see them in her eyes, hear them when she’d laugh. Darlene wanted to be happy. She just didn’t know how.”

“So nothing out of the ordinary happened recently? Everything seemed as always?”

Sutherfield nodded slowly, like processing a memory through a haze. “A man came in the last time I saw Darlene. A hard-looking fellow with a flat face and nose. He was in a suit, cheap and baggy. They were at the end of the stage. I was trying to hear, but the music was loud.”

“You heard nothing?”

“I heard the word Sissy twice. Church once. Darlene started off looking at him with disgust, like she wanted nothing to do with the guy, but then she seemed to become interested in what he was saying.”

“They leave together?”

“I’d, uh, had a drink or two too many. I don’t recall. But I do remember there was something about the guy that made me keep looking at him.”

“How so?”

“Like I could imagine heat pouring off his body. Does that make sense?”

Harry Nautilus sat on his balcony, beer in hand. He had seen something truly weird that morning. But what?

After Owsley had entered the building, Nautilus had returned to the motel. At noon Owsley called to say another shipment was due and he’d be gone all day. The Pastor had a ride back to Hallelujah Jubilee and Nautilus had the day to do as he wished. Evidently the missus and kid were being flown back to Mobile to gather additional clothing and necessaries.

Nautilus had driven up to Orlando and wandered the town until finding a decent gumbo joint for lunch that also served local microbrews. But try as he might, he couldn’t shake the morning’s events from his mind: the bible tumbling to the ground, the screaming old man, Owsley breaking from frozen fear and turning in a performance that fell somewhere between ecstasy and lunacy.

It was all weird, Nautilus thought, cracking a bottle of beer and sitting a lounge chair on the balcony, looking toward the park, the huge tract rides and attractions and the looming cross. The whole treated-like-royalty shtick at the motel and park, the private audience with the ailing Schrum, the aircraft of a multi-million-dollar broadcasting network seemingly at beck and call. All for a small-time preacher from Mobile.

Sure, Owsley had a book out and made television appearances, but the book was regional and the broadcasts were on a cable network confined to the Deep South. It stood in stark contrast to the Crown of Glory network.

And what the hell was in that tall, slapped-together building where Owsley had spent the day?

The sun was dropping in the west and the huge cross of Hallelujah Jubilee – either majestic or intrusive, depending on your point of view – was backlit, the shadow falling eastward across the green field where the Ark’s denizens pastured. Nautilus was again running the morning’s pictures through his mind when a brittle voice intruded.

“I see you up there.”

Nautilus paused in mid-sip. He looked down three stories to see a crinkle-eyed woman in a formless dress staring up at him, her hair to her waist and a stubby finger pointing like an indictment.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” he said.

“I see you drinking up there. You shouldn’t be using alcohol. It’s a sin.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strange men?” Nautilus said, sitting back and resuming his thoughts.

Joe Grabowski waited for the forklift carrying a load of steel panels to roar past, then pulled a walkie-talkie and keyed it. “Got one more done, Walt,” Grabowski said. “Welded the seams, burnished the surface.”

“Be right there, Joe.”

A minute later Hillenbrandt buzzed up in a golf cart, the fastest way to travel the vast building where crews were building bridge sections, water towers and a host of custom steel assemblages. Machinery grumbled, sparks fell from welding torches, overhead cranes carried beams or partially assembled structures.

Hillenbrandt jumped from the cart. “I’ll call the shipper. That just leaves two more and 1025-M is finito.”

“We’ll have ’em done by next week,” Grabowski said. “No prob.”

“Five big shiny tubes,” Hillenbrandt said, revisiting the original order as he walked the length of a polished steel tube he could have stepped into without ducking. “One with a taper and end cap. Good work, Joe, we’ll all make money on this one.” He peered inside the fifteen-foot long metal tunnel. “Brackets all in place?”

“Per specs. Ready to lock together. Ever figure out what it is? Or what goes inside?”

Hillenbrandt started to rest his palm against the tube, stopped himself. It needed to be wiped down with an anti-corrosive, then wrapped in plastic to keep the surface bright and unmarred.

“Not mine to ask, Joe. Especially something this hush-hush.”

“All sections go to that Hallajubilee or whatever?” Grabowski said. “The religious park?”

“Yep. But I got no idea what it’s supposed to be.”

Grabowski reached into his pocket for his pack of smokes. He grinned and nodded at the hollow metal cylinder. “It’s empty inside now, Walt. But what if they put an engine in it?”

“Engine? For what?”

“A rocket engine. So they can fly to Heaven.”

35

Nautilus was outside Owsley’s hotel at nine a.m., leaning against the vehicle and sipping tasteless motel coffee. The door swept open at nine ten, the Pastor looking harried, though it was only in the eyes, the smile a luminous crescent of teeth.

“Celeste and Rebecca returned from Mobile last night, Mr Nautilus. Celeste wants to spend the day visiting her sister in Tampa, shopping, girl stuff. My problem is Rebecca. I know she’s sixteen and all, but …”

“She’s been practicing her independence.”

“It’s the internet and Tweeter, Mr Nautilus, the misinformation and assault on Christian values from every quarter. Children today have forgotten to honor thy father and mother, as stated in, uh …”

“Ephesians,” Nautilus said. “Something in the sixes.”

“Ah yes, 6:2. Anyway, uh, Celeste and I would appreciate it if you could, uh, watch Rebecca today.”

The word babysitter flashing in his head, Nautilus raised an eyebrow. “You won’t be needing me, Pastor?”

“I’m flying to Key West today. I need you to drop me off at the airport in a few minutes. Celeste wants to head to Tampa pretty soon. Could you possibly …”