Games of the Heart (Crimson Romance) (33 page)

“The PSA offices. Delta called to warn me to leave town fast. The Feds, she said, were closing in, and she wanted to warn me. She’s going to destroy all the adoption records. All the backgrounds of those babies will be lost forever. We must get there before she does it.”

You’ve heard how opera singers can shatter a glass with a certain octave. Bob’s scream could have done it, too. “Jane, we have to stop her.” He was beating his fists on the dashboard so hard, I was certain the airbag would deploy. “She’ll do it. She’s that cruel, possessed with evil.”

I leaned forward, still with a death grip on the seat to keep my balance. I kept my voice to a low and quiet scream; talking to lunatics in that way works best, at least so I’d heard on Dr. Phil. “Bob, what exactly is your connection with PSA? What do you know about their dealings and the children they’re bringing in for adoption? What about the orphanages in Poland? What of the women forced to become sex slaves? The human trafficking? Whatever were you thinking?”

He flinched.

I screamed, “Didn’t you ever think of saying ‘no’? Well, what do you have to say for yourself, you creep, and that’s a euphemism for what I really mean, which is — ”

“You don’t understand, Jane,” he interrupted.

“I am sick and tired of being told I don’t understand. I do. If it’s about the money, Bob, then what happens to the money that comes and goes through PSA?”

As he turned, Bob’s eyes reminded me of the pink cotton candy they sell at the circus that gets mushy before you finish. The gooey blood was cleaned from his chin, but his cheeks were the color of tomatoes that rot on the vine after the first frost. His bottom lip was sliced in the middle, and should’ve had a stitch, but heck, I’m no doctor. Trust me, it looked nasty. Albert swerved to avoid a semi; I gulped, digging my fingers into the back of Bob’s seat.

He gulped, too, and twisted my way. “I tried to stop it, Jane. I tried, at first. Then I couldn’t. Delta is powerful. I gave up. I have sinned.”

“Darn straight you have. You’ll get no disagreement with me on that.” A girl’s gotta call ’em as she sees ’em. “Did you even think of the human rights violations? The welfare of innocent babies? The broken lives and hearts? Did you even think about the inhumanity of selling and reselling people — flesh and blood humans — as if they were a commodity?” I had plenty more to say, but we were all going to die in a car wreck at any minute, so I held my tongue. The speedometer was steady at eighty.

I concentrated on the scarlet welts that had turned a darker shade of burgundy mixed with molasses on Bob’s face. Not a nice view, but the only one I had if I didn’t want to look ahead at the road or at my white knuckles.

“I sinned because I didn’t stop the cycle. I could have, but then money began increasing in the weekly offering, far more than the families who attend Desert Hills ever gave. The tithing was enormous, beyond anything I’d ever seen. We built the gourmet kitchen and the new sanctuary with the offices, the playground, the basketball courts, the preschools, and the possibility of having an elementary school on the campus. Without having to go into debt. We built it with cash.”

Albert swore, slammed on the brakes, and skidded past a car that seemed to want to drive the speed limit. Then drove through a red light,
again.

I gulped and spat out, “Paid for with dead babies, as far as I can see, Bob. Besides, how could you be sure it was PSA and Delta’s doing?”

“I wasn’t at first.” He hiccupped, “But then when I began talking about buying that tract of land where the recreation center now stands, Delta came to me and offered to finance it if I’d counsel some parents who had ‘somehow’ found their adopted children were handicapped. All parents get counseling sessions before the child is returned to the orphanage for re-adoption. Again and again, these sweet little children came and went to yet more inappropriate homes, only to be eventually dumped someplace, to struggle, or worse, to die in a back alley.”

“Where do the promissory notes come in?” I stammered, because reasonable conversation was impossible at that speed and because of the big ol’ bloomin’ fact that we’d just made yet another left turn on a red light with traffic heading straight at us.

“At first I counseled out of appreciation for Delta and her generous contributions. I felt certain it was God’s hand placing so many disabled babies in our area, not specifically in our church family, but we do have a few, as you know.”

“And the money, did you charge for the counseling?”

“No. I tried to stop, but suddenly large — ” He turned to face front. “ — no, not large, but incredibly large amounts of money were deposited into my checking account, the joint account with my wife. I couldn’t explain them. How could I?”

“Your wife? What did she do?”

He cleared his throat and winced as he attempted to puff out his chest. “I’m the man of the family. I handle these things, or at least I did.”

I swear Albert abruptly changed lanes just to stop Bob’s posturing about how a big man handles the wifey’s money. We knew how Bob handled it.

I dug at him anyhow, and the car slowed. “You’re saying the little good Christian wife shouldn’t be told about big old dirty money?”

“No — well, yes, we have a traditional family.” He started to raise a hand, bumped his chin, and cursed. He whispered, “We did. Wrong on that count. I have been so wrong. At first it seemed the smart solution, just gamble it away and our church’s headquarters would never see it,” Then he stopped, blinked and I saw a flicker of the crazy guy who was going to dump me in the desert. In the next instant, the some-what normal, Bob Normal returned and said, “And gambling as I did seemed to deaden the pain in my heart about the babies and children who were dying. It worked for a few weeks, but the money poured back in. One day my wife, Prudence, opened the mail, something she never did, and saw there was nearly a million dollars in our personal account. I refused to tell her about it. She didn’t need to know. A man must lead his wife.” He took a breath and let it out in ragged lumps. “She left me, accusing me of having an affair with Delta, but that’s not true, believe me. An affair could have been ended. I’d sold my soul by then. After my wife left, I gambled to ease the pain.”

“Give me a break and let me guess, Bob — then the money stopped. But you didn’t. What happened?”

“Delta demanded that I not only use Desert Hills Community Church in PSA’s advertisements, but insisted that our denomination provide endorsements. Suddenly my picture was plastered on PSA’s materials.”

“I’ve seen them, Bob. The photos make you look like the village idiot,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true — he looked like an Elvis impersonator doing the village idiot.

Albert grunted again, speeding through the intersection and dodging a car that just happened to think a green light signaled its right to cross.

Bob continued, “There was a reporter from the local newspaper snooping at her office — think it was the same guy I just saw you with — and then a British couple pretending to want to adopt a disabled child, demanding one because it was God’s will, came into my office.”

“So much money,” I sighed, knowing each dollar cost a child or a woman part of their heart.

“The PSA has franchises, like a pyramid scheme, all over the country. Delta gets a lion’s share of it all. It’s Satan’s work, and I was caught in his claws. I could have gone to the District Council when it first happened, but I thought maybe it was God’s plan to build our little church in the desert. Yet the money just kept pouring in. I gambled for the buzz. Forgive me, Jane, forgive me and help me. Please?” He tried to grab the hand I was unsuccessfully using to keep myself upright.

I flicked his fingers it away like a big horse fly, but then he said something that made me flop back against the seat. He coughed and said, “There’s more. Something I’ve hidden all my life. I’m not Bob.”

“What? What are you saying?” I screamed not because anything the potentially criminally insane buffoon had to reveal, but because we were taking another corner, on a red light, at eighty miles an hour.

Bob sobbed. “It’s worse. I’m not Bob. Bob’s a name I took for myself. My birth name is Absalom.”

“Absalom? That power-hungry guy from the Old Testament? You really are Ab Normal?” I started laughing and it even sounded hysterical to my ears.

“Yes, yes, it’s been my curse my entire life, no matter how hard I tried to cover it up. Now I’ve lived up to the name.” He screamed like a girl as Albert cut off a mail truck.

We veered right and then left. “Don’t we all, Ab?” My fingers were numb from the death grip on the seat, and I decided that next time I choose a career, I’ll get one where I can ask, “You want fries with that?” Even with teeth ground together, I managed, “I hate you, Bob Normal. Just in case you needed to know that. However, since I’ve been plotting to destroy the PSA for days, I’ll help.”

We fishtailed to a skidding stop in front of the office building that housed PSA. Delta’s cream-colored car was in the lot. I looked both ways. No police sirens could be heard, and Eddie’s car was not in sight. I didn’t see any FBI agents in riot gear, nor had the SWAT teams arrived. Life was good.

So far.

Albert hadn’t put the car in park before Bob’s girly scream demanded, “Hurry, there’s no telling what she’ll do.” Bob pulled the scarf, and I came with it. Luckily, a desert gust of hot air snatched the hat, because it wasn’t my look anyway. We ran to the office marked Philemon Society of America. I turned to see Albert still in the car. This wasn’t his fight.

Bob threw back the walnut doors and dashed into the conference room. Delta was there. She sneered and turned back to the shredder. She was madly shoving reams of files. “They’ll never trace any of this to me.” She exploded with diabolical laughter, honestly, that could have come straight out of a black-and-white horror movie. Putrid, plastic-smelling smoke belched as she tossed another CD into the blaze that came from a metal trash can near her side.

Delta’s eyes darted to the files, to Bob, and then drilled into me. I screamed, “Don’t do it, Delta. Don’t destroy the records.”

“How will the babies get back to their real parents if you do this?” Bob pleaded. He was crying, on his knees pleading with her.

The sickly smile on her face and the glassy eyes confirmed the woman was two donuts short of a dozen.

“Delta,” I said slowly, and she looked my way. “Look at me. Bob’s right. Please don’t destroy the records.”

“Burned what I couldn’t shred. Just this one main file with all the locations of the orphans.” She dumped her purse upside down on the table, and the contents spilled over the conference table. “Where is that stupid file. One more and I’m done. No jury can prosecute me if they have no evidence.”

I thought of arguing, but at that second Delta was caressing a CD case.

“It was a first-class con while it lasted,” she said, her voice raspy husky from the billowing smoke. She tossed the case from hand to hand, like playing with a ball. She flipped open the case and looked at the silver plastic disk, stuck a finger in the center and twirled it. As if she were about to toss a Frisbee, Delta pulled back her wrist.

Common sense is a good thing. But you can’t beat spontaneity. In the second that it took Delta to move her elbow and wrist, I leaped across that walnut conference table. I screamed bloody murder because she would not murder any more if I had a breath left in me.

Papers flew, and Delta and I butted heads as I put a death grip on her wrist. Some unkindly things were said about me, and I’ll spare you. Delta’s chair flipped backward; I was on her waist straddling her and fighting for that silver CD. The trashcan was knocked on its side, and the papers that were strewn everywhere kindled a blaze.

Flipping me over like I was a rag mop, Delta was on me. What I lacked in strength, I apparently had in quickness, because we both wanted the same thing. I screamed, “Be reasonable, Delta,” but that’s Looney Toon thinking as a mad woman was making mincemeat out of my middle. She was using her butt to bounce up and down on my tummy, attempting to pin back my arms as the fire sprinklers came to life. The disk slipped in my grip, but that slip made me get more serious. I’d become a human punching bag. Delta was strong, much stronger than she looked all dressed in linen and silk.

I vowed right then that, if I lived through the beating, I’d take up weightlifting or kickboxing and return to Weight Watchers. Sometimes my mind wanders; sometimes it totally leaves.

Delta punctuated her salty language with a punch to my face. I would like to tell you that I turned the other cheek, but my face didn’t move fast enough. Her knuckles hit their target — my nose. I screamed. She cursed more. I wondered where Bob was in all this, and then I saw him. He should have been selling tickets to two chicks fighting. At least that would have been useful, but he was cowering in the corner, in a ball, crying.

The power shower from above must have finally gotten to Delta. She looked up at the sprinklers, and her fingers slipped. I got the CD and used it to shield my face with my left hand as I grabbed at her hair, attempting to inflict pain.

“Don’t touch my hair.” she yelled two inches from my nose.

So I grabbed even harder and the bleeping’ thing came off in my hand. Her hair, not her head. She took a breath, and I looked at what I had. A full wig. The puppy was heavy, too. We stared, eye to eye. Delta Cheney was no lady. She was a guy. Being that close, I saw the stubble on his chin.

It all made sense in a retrospective way, but since I had a guy straddling my waist, punching and slapping me because I’d mussed her, um, his hair, I didn’t take the time to ponder: transgendered or cross-dresser? Thank heavens Delta fought like a girl, or I’d have been out for the count.

As if the walls were exploding, fierce shouts erupted.

“Get away from her.”

“Grab the maniac lady.”

“You stop that this very second.”

“Stop it right now.”

I opened one eye, then the other. The Buscia Brigade had landed in full force. Pouncing redheads, gray heads, and a few blondes were inches from my face. They held Delta by the shoulders, but couldn’t move him or her off me. The lunatic slapped, pinched, and screamed.