Repairman Jack [08]-Crisscross (34 page)

And here it was, straight from the horse's mouth—or horse's ass, depending on how you wanted to look at it.

"Yeah, it all worked. Dormentalism kept getting bigger and bigger, spreading throughout the world, even to Third World countries—which may not have much money but they've got bodies and their governments practically have FOR SALE signs on their front lawns.

"Then came the time I thought Brady was gonna lose it. When he heard back in '93 that the Scientologists had wrangled themselves tax-exempt status for their church, he went after the same thing. But no way. Got us officially declared a church, yeah, but couldn't get tax-free status. Made him crazy that the Scientologists had something we didn't, but no matter what he tried, the IRS said no way. Which means those Scientologists must have had something super bad on somebody really high up to rig their exemption. So Brady had to be satisfied with starting the Dormentalist Foundation, which ain't as good a tax dodge as a tax-exempt religion, but it gets the job done."

Blascoe dropped his hands into his lap and hung his head.

"Then one day a few years ago I woke up and realized this thing called Dormentalism wasn't at all what I'd had in mind, that its natural harmony had turned into something ugly, the exact opposite of what I'd intended."

Jack shook his head. "Sort of like building a glass house and then hiring Iggy Pop to house sit."

"Just about. Even worse. At least you can fire a house sitter, but me… I had this high-sounding title of Prime Dormentalist, but I was a figurehead. I had no say in where Dormentalism—
my
thing—was going. Hardly anyone else did either, except maybe Brady and his inner circle on the High Council.

"Like I said, he'd looked like a godsend, but he turned out to be the worst thing that ever happened to Dormentalism. Or to me. I didn't believe in God when I started out, but I do now. Oh, not the Judeo-Christian God, but Somebody watching over things, seeing that what goes around comes around in certain cases. Like mine. I'm full of cancer because I started a cancer known as Dormentalism."

He made a strange sound. It took Jamie a few heartbeats to realize he was sobbing.

"It's not fair! I never wanted this corporate Grendel, this litigious, money-grubbing monster. I was just looking to get laid and have a good time." He looked up. 'That's all! Is that so bad? Should I have to pay for it by being eaten alive by my own cells?"

Jack was up again, looking out the door. He turned to Jamie and made a rolling motion with his hands. She got the message:
Let's move this along-

Jamie gave him a single nod. All right. He'd brought her up here, got her inside, and coerced Blascoe into talking. She was recording the interview of her career, so the least she could do was throw him a bone.

"Of course not," she told Blascoe. "No one deserves that. But tell me: Brady is said to keep this huge strange globe hidden away in his office. Do you know anything about that?"

Jack crossed back to his seat, giving Jamie a surreptitious thumbs-up along the way.

Blascoe nodded. "Yeah. Enough to know he's certifiable. You think you've heard some weird shit tonight? You ain't heard nothing yet."

18

"What's with this rain?" Hutch said, banging a fist on the wheel. They'd been sitting on 684 for what seemed like hours.

"Probably some asshole wrapped his car around an abutment up ahead," Lewis muttered from the shotgun seat. "How much you wanna bet he was yakking on a cell phone when it happened?"

"Yeah, while drinking coffee and doing eighty in the rain."

Jensen had the back seat of the Town Car to himself. He needed the space. Hutch and Lewis sat up front. Odds were they were right. Somewhere up ahead there'd be road flares and flashing red lights and glass and twisted metal all over the asphalt.

Jensen didn't care if people killed themselves on the road—probably cleaned up the gene pool a little—but even on a good day it pissed him off when they did it ahead of his car. The least they could do was wait till he'd passed.

Lewis half-turned in his seat. "Long as we're sitting here, boss, mind telling us what's up?"

"What do you mean?" Jensen said, as if he hadn't been expecting the question. The only surprise was that it had taken this long.

"This place we're going to—what are we looking at here?"

"I don't get you."

"I mean, we're loaded for bear, right? Just want to know what to expect. Who's in this cabin and why are we after him tonight?"

Besides Jensen, only Brady and a few High Council members knew the truth about Cooper Blascoe. The guy had become a real liability. Jensen had wanted him to have an accident, but Brady had vetoed that. Not that he wouldn't have liked Blascoe silenced and out of the way, but he'd said that a sudden death might cause more problems than it solved. Especially with the High Council. Even the members closest to Brady held out hope that Blascoe's erratic behavior was temporary and that he might be able to get back in touch with his xelton—obviously he'd lost contact—and turn himself around, heal his mind and his body.

Thus the cabin. Isolate him. Let him sink or swim. Jensen had arranged it. He'd also arranged a way to keep Blascoe from bolting the cabin.

The TP brigade, of course, knew nothing of this. They'd been told they were monitoring the home of a Wall Addict who was out to destroy the Church. Nothing more. Only Jensen and Brady had the codes to activate and access the AV feeds. TPs like Hutchison and Lewis merely kept an eye on the telemetry telltales, and called Jensen when something lit up.

Like tonight.

"We're not so much after the WA himself as much as the people visiting him at the moment. One of them is Jamie Grant; the other is the guy who snatched her from under your noses."

"We're packing heat for
them
!" Hutch said.

Jensen shook his head. Packing heat… Jesus.

"We don't know what we're heading into. We have reason to believe the man has mob ties."

Lewis jerked around. "The mob? What the fu—?"

"Exactly what Mr. Brady and I want to know. The weaponry is just a precaution. I do not want anyone shot—I have a lot of questions for the man—but I do not want anyone getting away with a recording of whatever they're discussing up there. If—"

"Hey,' Hutch said as the car eased forward. "Looks like we're starting to move."

Jensen peered ahead. The jam seemed to be breaking up. Good. They still had a ways to go.

"Think it's gonna matter?" Lewis said. "They've gotta be gone by now."

Jensen shook his head. "No, they're still up there. The WA we've been watching has a long story, and it's going to take some time to tell."

"But if they're smart they'll get him out of there and to a safe house where they won't be interrupted."

"Not if the WA refuses to leave."

And he wouldn't dare.

19

"I've gotten kind of used to weird," Jack told Blascoe, "so don't hold back. Lay it on as thick as you need."

He leaned forward and focused on the old man. A slew of questions were about to be answered—he hoped.

"It's pretty thick. I think I told you about Brady being land crazy. He's always buying or trying to buy pieces of property here and there. He sells this one to buy that one. At first I thought it was just a random shuffle, something he liked to do. Then I caught on that he was after specific parcels. I figured, well, it's as good a way as any to invest the Church's extra cash. Land prices are always going up, right?"

"Those specific parcels are indicated on the globe, right?" Jack said.

"I didn't know that back then but, yeah, right. That's why he's turned Dormentalism into a money machine: so he can buy these pieces of land. Some are cheap, but some are in prime commercial districts. Others are in countries that don't like foreigners owning their land, and so a lot of palms have to be greased. And still others… well, some folks just don't want to sell."

Jamie leaned forward. "What's he do then?"

"He keeps upping his offers to the point where all but a very few diehards give in."

"What about those diehards?"

"I don't know about all of them, but I can tell you about one couple. Their name was Masterson and they owned a farm in Pennsylvania that Brady wanted. Well, it had been in their family for generations and they weren't selling for any price. Brady said he'd settle for a certain piece of it but they wouldn't even sell him that. So Brady asks for a face-to-face meet with them and offers an all-expense-paid trip to the city, luxury hotel, the works, just to sit down with him. They accept."

Blascoe's comment that the couple's name
was
Masterson gave Jack an ominous feeling.

Jamie raised her eyebrows. "And?"

"And someone pushes them in front of a subway."

"Oh, jeez," Jack said. "I remember reading about that last year."

Jamie had gone pale. "I did a piece on it. They never caught the guy. Everyone assumed he was just another MDP." She looked at Blascoe. "Do you have any proof that Brady was connected?"

"Nothing that would stand up in court, but I remember Jensen telling him the news and hearing Brady say something about giving a TP named Lewis a bonus."

Jack had heard the Dormentalists were ruthless, but this, if it was true… it put a whole new spin on who he was dealing with.

He looked at Jamie. "We should get out of here."

"Hey," Blascoe said, "I haven't got to the weird part yet. Dig: Those white lights don't get lit when he buys the land. He powers them up only after he's buried one of his weird concrete pillars on the site."

He had Jack's attention. "What kind of weird?"

"Well, as I understand it—I'm not supposed to know this, you know; got most of it by listening while they thought I was out of it. Anyway, the concrete's gotta be made with a certain kind of sand, and the column's gotta be inscribed with all sorts of weird symbols. And then they've gotta put something else inside it before they can bury it."

"Like what?" Jack said.

"I never learned that."

"What kind of symbols?"

"I saw a drawing of a column once. Same kind of symbols as on the wall behind his globe. They're kind of like—"

"I've seen them."

Blascoe's eyes widened. "You
have
? How the hell—?"

"Not important. I need to know what Brady's trying to accomplish with these columns."

"You
need
to know?"

"Yeah.
Need
." Jack wasn't in the mood for chitchat. "So let's hear it: What's he up to?"

"I haven't a clue. He's burying the damn things all over the world and I don't have the faintest idea why."

"Didn't you ask?"

"Course I asked. Started asking a couple years ago, but Brady always dodged an answer. He was keeping stuff from me. Me! The fucking founder! When I got in his face about it, Brady tried to distract me with women and booze and drugs. But that wasn't gonna work. Hey, I'm older now. I've experienced just about everything I ever wanted to. Maybe more.

"But the globe was just the fuse that lit me up. Dormentalism was my baby but it had changed to the point where I no longer recognized it. No, forget recognizing it—I was
embarrassed
by it. Do you know that to reach the upper levels you not only have to spend a fortune, but you've got to swear off sex! Yeah, you heard me, to reach the High Council you have to become some sort of fucking eunuch—nice turn of phrase, don't you think?—which turns off all but the most fanatically devoted."

Jamie flashed her yellowed grin. "I
love
this!"

Blascoe poked a finger into the air. "Yeah, Brady's supposed to be abstinent too, but I found out he's got a place—not too far from here, as a matter of fact—that nobody knows about. And that means not even his innermost circle on the High Council. That's because they aren't looking. I was. It's a place where I'm pretty sure he does stuff he doesn't want anyone to know about."

Jack didn't give a damn about Brady's personal life. He could be dressing sheep in black garter belts and getting jiggy with them for all he cared. It was more tasty grist for Jamie's mill but provided no answers for Jack.

"Let's get back to the columns," he said. "Brady gave you no clue as to what's up with them?"

"He did say that the globe wasn't so much a map as a blueprint. It shows where the columns must go."

"So every bulb shows where he has buried or intends to bury a column."

"All except the reds. No columns go where the red bulbs are."

"Why not?"

He shrugged. "Before I could find out, he and Jensen dumped me here."

Jack unfolded the skin flap again. He studied the pattern of red and white scars and the lines connecting them, trying to superimpose the continental outlines. But he had no reference points. He needed another look at that globe. He wanted to know what the red dots meant. He had a feeling they were key.