The Best Bad Dream (26 page)

He who had started long ago and taken a path that revealed the true secrets of life.

As the great folk singer Bob Dylan had once sung (before he sold out), “He who is not busy being born is busy dying.”

How true that was, Alex thought, how true.

There had been a time, long ago, when Alex had thought that his entire generation was busy being born, but it had not been so. They were like all the other generations before them: sellouts. Busy all right. Busy making millions.

Only he and his band of brothers understood the true nature of the magical mystery tour called “Life and Death.” (Such inadequate words.)

Only the chosen few.

But wasn't that the way it had always been?

Jesus, Muhammad, Einstein, and some day soon, Williams.

Just a few, but those were enough. Enough to see that humanity went on to its great destiny.

He turned now and looked at the suffering, twitching, eyeball-popping threesome on their crosses.

He saw the girl look at him with an expression that said, “Please, please, have pity on me and I will suck your cock for all eternity!”

Alex Williams only smiled up at her.

He felt many things toward her—hatred, fury, even gratitude—but sorry, missy, pity didn't make the list.

He looked back at his audience, ready now. Ready for the beginning of the trial.

The trial at which he, Alex Williams, would be judge, jury and . . . immortalist.

Chapter Thirty-eight

“Jack, what the fuck are we going to do?” Oscar asked.

“I'm working on it,” Jack replied.

“Well, work on this, too, bro,” Oscar said. “I'm getting weaker by the minute.” “What?”

“I was shot, remember? Well, I've lost a lot of blood and I feel real dizzy. I can barely sit up.”

“Can you hang on a little longer?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, man, I think so. But we gotta make a move anyway, ese.”

Then they heard new, louder, terrified screams.

Behind the naked hipster Johnny Z, two more crosses were being brought into the room. And just behind the crosses two women were being dragged by hooded, masked men.

“Is that who I think it is?” Oscar asked, peering shakily from his bloodshot eyes.

“I can't fucking believe it—that's Michelle and Jennifer,” Jack said.

The girls had rags stuffed into their mouths.

The crosses were hastily raised, but there seemed to be some trouble with one of them.

“The crossbar is sagging,” Oscar said.

“What's the fucking world coming to?” Jack asked rehetorically. “You just can't find a good crucifix maker anymore.”

“You better show some respect,” the guy in front of them said. “Or that could be you two assholes up there!”

The entire congregation seemed to be getting antsy now and their leader, Alex Williams, moved quickly to his pulpit.

“As you can see there have been some last-minute additions,” he said. “But while my assistants are getting prepared there's no reason we can't start with our first trial.”

“It's Williams, all right,” Jack said, recognizing his voice. “He's been in with Lucky all along.”

Jack looked to his left and saw a masked man just down from Oscar, staring intently at Oscar's feet. Jack looked down and saw blood dripping on the floor. Then he looked to his right and saw a couple of the men watching him, too.

He wanted to attack now, before the trial started, but Oscar was leaning on his shoulder and Jack had to hold him up. He'd have to wait. If he stood up now they'd both be caught, and maybe shot by the guards along the wall, before they even got out of their seats.

Alex Williams made a pyramid sign with his hands. A second later, everyone stood and made the sign as well, including Jack, but Oscar stayed in his chair.

After Alex lowered his hands to his sides, everyone sat down again.

“We are here tonight to accomplish a deeply serious task,” the Blue Wolf leader said. “We must discuss the guilt or innocence of these three people who are accused of extreme crimes against the elderly. Some of us may be tempted to be lenient. We may say, ‘Well, none of these people have been arrested, tried, and convicted of said crimes,
and therefore who are we to play judge, jury, and executioner?’ But that is the very attitude that has been the bane of our existence. Older people in our society, the very ones who created the best of the world we live in, are not valued enough for anyone to bother to arrest those who commit crimes against them. Do not doubt it. I will not bore you with statistics except to say that every model we have used has come to the same conclusion. Which is this: if the crimes of these three defendants had been committed against younger people they would have not only been arrested but put in prison for years, possibly even executed. But since the victims were senior citizens—and I use the phrase proudly—they were not taken seriously. We have tried to petition the powers that be but our earnest entreaties have been met with a silence that borders on outright ridicule.”

The gathering in the cave suddenly came to life with cries of “No, no, no!” Many of them stood in their places and raised their fists in the air, screaming. Jack looked at Oscar, who was breathing deeply, trying to get his head clear.

The brethren in the cave sat down again and Alex Williams nodded his head as though he understood their anger.

“This is why we decided that we must make our own justice, a real justice, commensurate with the crimes committed.”

The crowd went berserk. The people leaped to their feet and began to scream like madmen.

“Yes!”

“Justice!”

“We, who created the world we live in, the great modern world of Western civilization, will not go down defeated like the generations before us. We will not submit and we shall not be moved!”

The audience screamed again and Jack felt a deep fear in his soul. How in the hell would they ever stop this and live to tell about it?

Williams continued.

“First, we shall have the readings of the crimes. I bring to your attention the case of Philip and Dee Dee Holden, owners of the Evergreen Retirement Community in Columbus, Ohio.”

Williams looked up at Dee Dee and Phil, each on their own cross, dripping blood. They looked down at him with eyes so filled with fear that they almost seemed comical.

But Williams didn't laugh or show any pity whatsoever.

“This supposed four-star retirement community houses over four thousand people. Their brochures and DVDs, their radio and TV spots, would have you believe that their community is a paradise for people over sixty-five.”

Alex Williams picked up a brochure and waved it at the audience.

“Let me read a little of this to you. ‘Evergreen is a virtual paradise for the elderly. The golf course, designed by Arnold Palmer, makes every day a great one for novices and old pros alike.’ Interesting, when you consider twenty-three people were bitten by rats on the greens just last year.”

The audience roared with disdainful laughter while Phil and Dee Dee groaned in agony.

Alex Williams's words continued to torture Phil. He had to hang there and listen as Williams read about the old people who had had strokes in the cafeteria and been left there to drool and spasm out on the floor until they expired. Why? Because Phil hadn't paid the money he owed to the insurance companies that indemnified the hospitals, so there was no emergency service at Evergreen. Phil twitched in agony as he heard case after case of neglect, of old people being left out in the snow to freeze, of a grandmother being robbed at gunpoint by her
own nurse, and of the case of a feeble old minister who had objected to his treatment and was therefore injected with the wrong medicine and died of shock before the ambulance arrived.

Phil squirmed in guilt and pain. There were so many crimes documented that he had forgotten most of them. A woman who had been raped by an attendant, another woman who had been shaken down to get cable service and, when she refused to pay, had been thrown out of an upstairs window. On and on they went.

Of course, Phil did recall some of them. Why? Because he had paid for them to go away. Had paid so many people he scarcely thought it fair to bring them all up again now. He'd paid inspectors from welfare, from Medicare, lawyers hired by people who had barely survived the impossibly harsh treatment they had received from the jerks he'd hired. He had paid cops, doctors, teachers, and the sons and daughters of those who had been injured and killed at Evergreen.

He had paid them and made most of them go away!

He was great with such negotiations. He had a real knack for it. And the ones he couldn't handle Dee Dee had taken care of, playing the sweet and innocent wife, opening her heart to people who had suddenly lost their mothers because they had accidentally fallen from a cheapo balcony that had collapsed.

Dee Dee had the human touch, one of the things he loved her for.

But look where all his talents had gotten him.

Strung up on a cross, with nails in his hands and feet.

And he hadn't even been convicted yet!

Chapter Thirty-nine

Oscar slumped against Jack. Jack turned and looked down the row at the true believers who were watching him.

“Osc, what's up?”

“I'm going to be okay,” Oscar said. “Feeling better. Just gotta get my balance. Another few seconds, amigo.”

“Good. But if we just run up there with our guns out, these fucking fanatics will mob us.”

“We need a distraction of some kind,
ese
.”

In front of them, though a little off to the side, the carpenters were repairing the broken cross. Jennifer Wu looked at her sister, who turned away in shame. Fucking Michelle, Jennifer thought. That crazy, greedy bitch. Jennifer looked at the cross and the big, ugly nails and wished they had just killed her when they were caught. If only Jack and his partner were here to save them. Where the hell were those guys?

Back at the pulpit, Alex Williams was coming to the end of his list of the terrible crimes committed by Johnny Z.

“And, finally, he killed two kindly old grandmothers in Fountain Valley, California, just last month. Killed them and took their antique butter churns, which he pawned in Desert Palms. This brings to the end the known crimes of Johnny Zaprado.” There was a cry of fury from the faithful.

Jack assumed that now that the list of charges had finally been read the trial would begin. Who knew how long that might last?

Oscar looked pale and wasted.

Alex Williams spoke again.

“You have all heard the documented charges against Phil and Dee Dee. How do you vote? Innocent or guilty?”

“Guilty!” the entire congregation screamed.

“Guilty it is,” said Alex Williams. “And Johnny Zaprado. How do you vote?”

“Guilty!” they screamed again.

“ Fuck him with a hot poker,” someone yelled.

“The verdict is guilty,” said Alex Williams. “And now we come to the penalty phase of the trial. Johnny Zaprado, the court finds you guilty of murder in the first degree, assault in the first degree, burglary in the first degree, and other crimes too numerous to mention. You are guilty as charged.”

There was a roar of approval from the crowd.

Williams looked up at Johnny Z, dripping blood from his hands and feet. Johnny's eyes were wide open in panic mode, and he tried to talk through the gag stuck in his mouth.

His words came out a muffled mess, and sounded like, “Waittt . . . gribmeahhh a chgabgagaga . . .”

Williams smiled at him and turned to his audience.

“Doesn't sound too intelligent, does he?”

In unison the masked audience screamed back at Alex.

“Noooooo!”

Williams looked up at the bleeding Johnny.

“You know what he sounds like?”

“Whaaaaaat?” they all screamed.

“Like a stroke victim. He sounds just like the senior citizens he used to victimize, right?”

“Yesssssss,” they screamed, and this was followed by much laughter and general good fellowship. A few of the people on either side of Jack and Oscar pounded one another on the back.

Jack looked at Oscar and whispered.

“It's a ritual, man. They're working from a script.”

“Yeah, bro. They've done this before.”

Up on the podium Alex Williams looked to the corner of the cave.

“Will you please bring out the ladder?”

From a darkened corner of the cave two white-masked men carried out a stepladder, which they quickly set up just beneath Johnny Zaprado's cross. They stayed on the stage looking intently at their leader.

Alex smiled and spoke to the audience.

“Shall I ascend?” he asked into his lapel mike.

“Ascend!” they cried.

Alex quickly climbed the ladder until he was level with Johnny Z. He gave a quick glance to Phil and Dee Dee, whose eyes were bulging out of their heads.

Then he turned his full attention to Johnny.

“You have been tried and found guilty of multiple crimes against the aged. You have beaten, maimed, and murdered scores of older people. You have shown no remorse for these crimes. Quite the contrary, you have been quoted by reliable witnesses as being proud of
your conquests of people who were older and weaker than yourself. And you have constantly bragged about your ability to outfox the laws. Why? Because you have intimidated all the living witnesses into silence. In short, you are a public menace, and we, the Blue Wolf council, have found you guilty of all the aforementioned charges. Have you anything to say for yourself?”

Johnny Z began to scream through his gag, “Guv me a changggg.”

The audience went wild with laughter.

“I'm sorry,” Alex Williams said. “Would you please say that again? Your diction left a little to be desired.”

“Ah thed . . . gimme a chance to . . .”

But the screams of laughter from the audience drowned him out.

“Here, let me help you,” Alex said. “Open your mouth, please.”

The defendant did so.

Williams pulled out the gag, and everyone could see the relief on Johnny's reddened face.

“Is that better?”

“Yes . . . yes . . .”