Dead-Bang (3 page)

“Not exactly a friend. And I only heard Dad's part of the conversation, then Dad told me he had to go meet André, Mr. Strang, at the church. If he hadn't told me—”

“At the what?”

“—I wouldn't have known where he was going. You see, until the FDA banned Erovite it was produced by the Cassiday and Quince Pharmaceutical Company here in Los Angeles, and Dave Cassiday is an old friend of Dad's. When opposition to the sale of Erovite reached such ghastly proportions—it got really awful by early June, you know, just before that ding-dong preacher launched his SOS Crusade—”

“That who? Ding-dong … wait. SOS, that's Save Our Souls, isn't it? Ye Gods, don't tell me—”

My interruptions were ignored. But I was getting very suspicious.

“—Dave and my father discussed the situation and concluded it would be at least helpful and possibly essential to have some idea of what that ding-dong was likely to do or say next. Both my father and Dave Cassiday were acquainted with Mr. Strang and knew he'd expressed dissatisfaction with conditions in the local Eden, even hinted that he was on the verge of breaking with the Church entirely. So Dave managed to enlist him as a sort of, well, I suppose you'd call him an ‘undercover' man, someone who could keep them informed—”

“Hold it.”

I spoke rather sharply, and she managed to shut up. I didn't really have to ask the question. My suspicions almost confirmed themselves.

“Church,” I said. “Ding-dong, SOS, Eden, I'll bet a whole collection basket you're referring to the Church of the Second—”

“Coming.”

“Yeah. And the ding-dong simply has to be Festus—”

“Lemming.”

“Yeah.”

Well, it is already later.

Festus Lemming was the founder, organizer, leader, and ding-dong—that was not his official title—of the Church of the Second Coming, a collection of ecclesiastical fruitcakes that had to be described as
the
major religious success story of the twentieth century.

Seven years ago there had been no Church of the Second Coming. Seven years ago nobody except possibly his mum and dad had heard of Festus Lemming. But seven years ago the Church—and Festus Lemming—had been born.

It was said that Festus Lemming had seen the light—quite literally. While out walking, he had fallen down, in what some later claimed was an epileptic seizure, on the road to Pasadena, and he was swept up into the Seventh Heaven where, among others, he met silent-screen stars Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, who told him they were swell; even more important, simultaneously the Holy Ghost descended upon him and he experienced a vision in which he saw and thus knew the Truth, whereupon he was transformed, informed, and born anew. From that moment it became Lemming's duty, as well as almost maniacal desire, to lay the Truth upon a myriad of sinners enmeshed in the carnality and materialism of a suffering world, to share with all mankind that Message which he, and perhaps he alone, possessed in its entirety.

It was said of this transcendental experience that it had occurred to Festus Lemming seven years past, on the fifteenth day of August, on the road to Pasadena. It was said because Lemming said it. How else could it be? Who else could have said it? It had occurred only to Lemming, therefore, nobody else could have known about it; obviously, then, only he could inform the world of this wonder. And it was unquestionably a wonder, for when he had told others of it many of them believed in him and before you could say Hallelujah his followers had grown from one to two, then to twenty, then to ten thousand, and now in August on the very eve of the seventh anniversary of his Enlightenment they numbered three million or more. This in a period when membership in most other churches declined.

So today there were branches, or Edens, of the Church of the Second Coming in most major cities of the U.S.A., with the Los Angeles County Eden, or headquarters of the entire Church, centered in a soaring new four-million-dollar House of God in Weilton, Southern California. The founder's correct title, rarely used except on formal occasions or in letters to backsliders, was “The Sainted Most-Holy Pastor” Festus Lemming. There was only one of those. All other officials of the Church—the important ones, anyway—were also termed “Sainted” but, in descending order, the lesser Pastors were designated as More-Holy, Holy, Less-Holy, and Least-Holy. But even the Least was Holy and Sainted. André Strang, for example, as I learned from Dru, was fairly high up the ladder, being, in the Los Angeles County Eden, the Sainted Less-Holy Pastor Strang.

I said to Dru, “The way Lemming's been throwing everything but the altar candlesticks at your father, I wouldn't have thought he'd go within ten miles of Weilton, much less the church.”

“Ordinarily he wouldn't have. But with the climax of Lemming's campaign against Erovite and Dad, his SOS Crusade—and even his big Announcement—all less than twenty-four hours away, this is no ordinary time. And anything Strang could tell Dad might be very important now.”

“Uh-huh. You sure it was Strang on the phone?”

“Well … no, not really. Dad said it was, and I hardly think he'd have been mistaken about the person he was talking to.”

“This envelope he mentions, marked ERO, I suppose that must have something to do with Erovite.”

“Just about everything to do with it. The essence of Dad's notes, records, history of his experiments for over twenty years, everything—from the very beginning through all the steps in development and final formulation of Erovite—is in that envelope. I'm sure you realize, if the FDA ban is removed, and there's some chance it may happen, the information in that envelope could be worth millions of dollars to whoever possesses it.” She paused. “Even billions, if you want my, and Dad's, opinion.”

“I suppose so, maybe. If the stuff does what's claimed for it.”

She looked at me with a slight smile curving those reckless-red lips. “Everything claimed for it, and more. You can't judge the value of anything from the words of its detractors alone, or what's said by those having no personal acquaintance with the thing. And that is especially true of Erovite, Mr. Scott.”

“Shell.”

She nodded. “The early medical opposition caused much difficulty, but when it became known that Erovite was such a lovely sexual stimulant, it was the religious opposition, particularly the Fundamentalist-Christian opposition, that made the situation impossible.”

“Lovely?”

She blinked. “Of course. As I told you earlier, I certainly did
not
deliver the envelope. I'm convinced anyone who'd do this to get the formula would also kill Dad once they got it. But I did drive back to Dad's home in Monterey Park, in case anyone was watching the house, spent a few minutes inside and came out carrying an envelope. Then I drove here.”

“Think you might have been followed?”

“I'm certain I wasn't.”

“Well.… By the way, why here? I. mean, why me?”

“Dad once mentioned if he ever got into real trouble he'd like to have you around. He said you impressed him as a most ingenious and capable brute.”

“Brute?”

“He also has an idea you're his kind of man, as he put it, full of life and lusty, half-pagan, and you always seem to come out on top somehow, no matter what dumb things you do.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“That's all of real importance I can tell you, Shell.” She leaned closer and put one hand over mine. I would have sworn I could feel the hot beat of the pulse in her palm, going
thump-thump-thump
on the back of my hand. “What do you plan to do?”

Thump-thump-thump
it went. It was definitely hot.

“Dru,” I said, “the instant you appeared at the door of my cave—”

“I suppose first you'll go to the corner of Fifty-seventh and Pine?”

“Yeah, sure. I'll run around the block—ah, in Weilton, of course, that's what I'll do. The corner there, which is mentioned in the note.” I took the note from my pocket. “I will, as well, also be trying to decipher these hieroglyphics. And while in Weilton, if as I expect, I fail to find Doctor Bruno standing on the corner, I shall visit the Church of the Second Coming, because that is where your father said he was going, and it is so far as we know the last place where he may have been seen—seen in public.”

“That's what I would suggest.” Dru removed her hand from mine. “And you'd better get started, hadn't you?”

I watched her hot hand as it moved through the air and came to rest in her lap, which was probably even hotter.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'd better.”

4

Just a hop and a skip out of L.A. you take a right—toward the sea—at the Santa Ana Freeway, and a few miles farther along you'll see a sign.

Yes, you'll see it—none who have passed that way except the totally blind or unconscious have yet failed to see it—and even if you get only a glimpse you will be able to read the letters of flaming gold, a product of man's genius with electricity and neon and various other appropriate gasses, which proclaim:

FESTUS LEMMING—FESTUS LEMMING—FESTUS LEMMING

CHURCH OF THE SECOND COMING

REPENT YE SINNERS FOR THESE DAYS

ARE

THE LAST DAYS!

That is what it said. And it had given many people a chill when they considered, if the message were true, how many were the things for which they had better repent. Combined with the chill was a full measure of anxiety and suspense, for if these
were
the last days nobody knew how many of them might be left, nobody except Festus Lemming. He knew. But he had not told anybody else yet. He was going to, however. He was going to tell everybody about it on the seventh anniversary of his Enlightenment, on the evening of the fifteenth of August, or—tomorrow night.

Even without that interesting message, Lemming would have been assured of enormous attention, not merely from the approximately four thousand members of his own congregation and the three million souls in his Church, but from the citizenry at large as well. For tomorrow night would also mark the climax of his two-month-long campaign against Emmanuel Bruno, against Erovite, against sex, against sin, against filth and indecency and everything spiritually soiled or smudged.

Those not instantly informed by the name Festus had given to his Church, or by the flashing sign on the Santa Ana Freeway, had been informed of his message either by Lemming himself or reports in the press, radio, and television. Basically Lemming proclaimed—and vowed this was the very heart of the revelation he had experienced on the road to Pasadena—that these days
were
the “last days” prophesied in the Scriptures; that these were the days when predicted riots and upheavals and tumult and sin and evil
did
stalk the land; the days of wars and rumors of wars, of nation rising against nation, and famines and pestilences and earthquakes in divers places as foretold in Matthew and elsewhere. That, in sum, the time of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was now, or at least soon, was very soon, was almost now, and the Lord was about to come to Earth again in order to save it from otherwise inevitable and imminent destruction.

Whether Festus sincerely believed this or not, and there is no need to doubt that he did, it was undeniable that most members of his Church, and undoubtedly a great many more people who had heard of the message, did believe it. They believed because they feared these days of upheaval
might
be the real Last Days, and because Festus Lemming proclaimed it to be true, and because he was a most persuasive and convincing and devout vegetarian celibate who constantly spoke out against sin and evil, but mainly because he had experienced a vision on the road to Pasadena.

All this helped explain why Lemming and the members of his Church were so greatly exercised about Erovite and Emmanuel Bruno. The Sainted Most-Holy Pastor had for seven years made it abundantly clear that it was his duty and the duty of the Church and all of its members, in preparation for the Second Coming of the Lord, to sweep the Earth clean of sin. If this was not done and done speedily, the Earth would not be pure enough or clean enough, and the Lord would not come, and Earth would perish.

Sin was, however, in the view of Festus Lemming, almost entirely of the flesh, of the evil carnal body, and naturally the most doubly sinful sin of all was sexual sin, which usually required two evil carnal bodies for a single sinning. Consequently, along with his warnings and pronouncements of imminent doom, a doom which those so pure as to be without spot or blemish would escape through Divine intervention—though the rest of us, the ones with a little spot or blemish, would be condemned forever to the everlasting hots—there was much talk by Lemming of sin all over the place, this accompanied by many phrases like “fornicators and whoremongers” and “O ye accursed fornicators and whoremongers!” and “… into the flames of eternal Hell shall be cast the fornicators and whoremongers!” He really had it in for the fornicators and whoremongers.

One can easily understand, then, the dismay of Festus Lemming when, not long after the appearance of Erovite in drugstores, sources both medical and lay began to report and then confirm its astonishing effects upon human sexuality. At the precise moment when it was necessary that the world be clean, cleaner, cleanest, a flood of filth was inundating the land.

It came to Festus that if this monster was not killed while it was still little, it might soon become an adult that could not be slain; Earth would become lousy with fornicators; and the world would therefore end, not as he envisioned, with a whimper, but with a
terrible
bang. Further, since Erovite in large measure would be responsible for all of those fornicators, and Emmanuel Bruno was responsible for Erovite, it followed with rigid logic that Bruno was the greatest whoremonger of all time. It was a serious charge. But it was Lemming's duty to make it, and he did not shrink from his duty.