The Testament of James (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens) (21 page)

“I’ll speak up for you, Lance, if you tell me you’re good for it. No wishful thinking, though, Rashid’s brother carries a knife.”

“Will that do the job? Your vouching for me?”

“I don’t know, but it’s time to go.”

Richard met them at the door to Robinson Hall. He hadn’t seen any sign of Dominic Penitente and his gang. Lance had driven Matthew and the book there in his car; Hakim and his brother Patrick had pulled up just as they were departing and had followed in the Egyptians’ own rental.

Outside, the sun now struggled to shine through a copper-colored haze. The horizon was an unnatural dark gray, against which white birch trees and church steeples stood out in sharp relief in the kind of orange light usually seen only at sunset. Then, in the distance, came an ominous rumble of thunder.

Matthew paused when they reached the great central reading room. Richard had evidently thrown on one auxiliary bank of pin-spots high overhead. Adding their light to that of a pair of green-shaded desk lamps which had been left on for the weekend, they provided some pools of illumination, though the edges of the room and the four hallways leading away at 90 degree angles were still cloaked in gloom, especially as the sky darkened overhead.

“Richard, I want the book out of sight while I meet with him. Why should he make any deal at all if he can just have one of his goons shoot me in the knee and grab it?”

“It would be my honor. It’ll be safe with me in the rare book room.”

“Matthew, no offense meant to the good professor,” said the Rev. White, “but just to get a number into play I’m going to offer a round quarter million for this book, which I dare say Rashid’s family would be glad to get whether he turns up or not. I could probably go higher if we could get some professional appraisals, X-rays and a carbon-14. But either way I’m a little reluctant to see it wander off where any opportunist with a lug wrench could dent the good professor’s skull and make off with it. If no one minds, I’ll tag along and be the professor’s bodyguard.”

Richard smiled. “I’d be charmed, Reverend. I’m sure we could while away a pleasant afternoon discussing chronological inconsistencies in the Book of Acts, alone.”

Hakim al-Adar had been eyeing Richard curiously, evidently trying to match him to Matthews’ description. Finally he spoke up. “You cannot be a Jew. You have no horns, and you bear no resemblance to an ape, at all.”

“It’s my diet,” Richard explained. “I’ve been off my feed for weeks. Give me a few days on some nice kosher chicken soup and I assure you I’ll present a much more simian appearance.”

Hakim frowned, suspecting he was being toyed with. Richard took advantage of the lull to lead Lance White, bearing the precious
Testament of James
, down the hallway toward his inner sanctum.

* * *

“Come, we are going to meet your boyfriend,” said the character Chantal thought of as Monk Number Two, the taller, thinner one with the darker hair. “Now he will give us the book.”

“And him?” Chantal indicated the guy who had introduced himself as Hakim’s younger brother, Rashid al-Adar, which was easy to believe, since he could have been Hakim’s slightly smaller twin. Rashid, who had a serious black eye — a real blue and green shiner — and a small Band-Aid where he’d evidently been cut at the corner of his mouth, was sitting on a disreputable bile-green couch next to a pile of wrinkled sheets, handcuffed to an old-fashioned radiator in the cavernous, echoing old cinder-block building.

She’d been there less than an hour, most of which time the taller, more serious burglar-turned-kidnapper had spent on the phone, presumably with his boss, Dominic Penitente. The youngest thug, the tubby one, at first spent a lot of time smiling at Chantal and trying to make small talk in his broken English. Eventually he seemed to figure out that his current line of work was not a good way to pick up receptive young ladies, however, and he’d finally gone back to what apparently had been his two main forms of entertainment during his visit to America, consuming vast quantities of Coca-Cola and watching Roadrunner cartoons on the TV.

Chantal had driven past this building before. They must be in the administrative offices of the old high school. Sure. The St. Pius parochial school had shut down a few years back when they opened their swanky new campus out in the suburbs. The goons had only driven a few blocks south after they grabbed her; that had to be it.

“He comes, too,” answered the taller goon. “Everybody goes now, for the big trade.”

“Not till I go to the bathroom.”

“What?”

“The lavatory; the little girls’ room. We’re not going anywhere till I pee. It’s urgent.”

“There is no time. We go now.”

“Do you really expect me to wet my pants?” she shouted. The fucking wimp had a gun and he still backed down from her righteous fury, as though he was being whacked about the head and shoulders. “You’ve had days to plan this, and it didn’t occur to you that a kidnapped woman would occasionally have to use a bathroom, a water closet?! You’re not qualified to kidnap a cat!”

They finally agreed to let her pee. The tubby one went back to watching cartoons while theoretically guarding Rashid; the one who seemed to be in charge held the door to let her into the ladies’ room down the hallway after checking the window.

At least the goon allowed her the tiny dignity of closing the bathroom door, though she was sure the perverted little squirrel remained directly on the other side, listening. Unfortunately, the door pulled toward her to open, meaning she couldn’t use the door itself as a weapon, slamming it outward into his temple.

The window was, indeed, a non-starter, four feet wide and maybe seven inches deep and not really window glass at all, but those big translucent glass paving blocks. Even if she had all the time in the world to try and wedge the glass blocks out of place, strip naked and cover herself with grease, her rib cage still wouldn’t fit through a seven-inch slot. Place was built like a goddamned prison.

A quick glance behind the doors of the cupboard under the sink produced no joy. At least they’d left behind some soap and toilet paper, but no can of nasty inflammable bug spray, not even a nice bottle of caustic drain cleaner. Beside the toilet was a plunger, true enough. With its red rubber suction cup removed it became a 30-inch wooden rod. Even without a point, that could be a thrusting weapon. Shoved into the solar plexus and then the throat, it had possibilities against someone unarmed and unprepared. But the monk had a gun, and even a moron could pull a trigger.

The mirror could be shattered, a sharp shard would serve as a knife, but only if you could wrap the handle to keep from slashing your own hand. Besides, the noise would bring the little bastard straight in, at which point she’d be taking a knife to a gun fight.

She sat down on the toilet to give herself a minute to think. Making the expected noises would presumably keep her jailer from breaking down the door for at least a couple of minutes. Come on, think. She wouldn’t be here if she’d been faster reaching for her Lady Smith. Kind of hard to unzip a purse with one hand when you’re using the other one to hold a damned cell phone, not that she blamed Matthew for trying to warn her of something she should have been watching for, herself. First thing she was going to do when she got out of here was get herself a hands-free earphone so that would never happen again, goddammit.

Stop it; concentrate. Holding you at gunpoint was kidnapping. They’d be offering to trade her for the book, which was extortion. That Matthew would make the trade she had no doubt. Hell, big-hearted Matthew would trade the book for Skeezix, or probably for one of the cats, if they only knew it. But since these were all felonies on the part of these weird monks, if anything went wrong the next logical step would quite likely be to kill her, nothing personal you understand, just business, since it didn’t affect the jail time that much and murder victims were far less likely to testify. So escape would be wise, and using force was fully justified, both legally and in a practical, prefer-to-stay-alive sense. She’d once been taught that most rooms contained several potential deadly weapons. Think.

Brother Anselmo heard the girl flush the toilet. He took a step back from the door, expecting her to appear momentarily. She did not. He crept forward again, expecting to hear the tap running as she washed her hands. The Americans were generally quite fastidious about such things, especially the women. He placed the side of his head to the hollow wooden door. Silence.

He waited a few seconds longer. He understood women could take longer to arrange their garments, then their hair, but he had no idea what was reasonable. Perhaps the young American girl was going to remove her clothing and offer herself to him in exchange for her freedom. Most of these American girls were whores, he knew, so it was not unthinkable. And this one had a nice, firm ass and thighs. He felt himself becoming aroused, though there was no time to even consider letting himself be dragged down into that kind of disgusting lust and carnality, unless it could be done in six or seven minutes, of course. Is that what she was up to? He rapped on the door with his knuckles. “Hallo? Anything is happening there?”

More silence. Was she trying the window? Was there another door they had somehow missed?

“If you are not to be out from the room, I enter now,” he warned, sternly.

This was not right. Although he was the one with the gun, Brother Anselmo felt he had somehow lost the advantage. He tried the door. It was not locked. Slowly, he pushed the door open. The water closet was empty! Impossible! Though strangely enough, her shoes sat neatly on the closed lid of the porcelain bowl.

Ah, she must be hiding behind the door, hoping to catch him unawares. So he pushed the door all the way open now, expecting to feel the resistance of her body on the other side. He took a full stride into the room. “I warn you,” he said, “I have still the gun!”

But the door opened all the way against the wall. She was not behind the door, after all. Then, above him and to his left, a movement, a rapid movement! He started to raise his left arm. . .

In the last second he seemed to spot her, started to swivel back to his left, bring up his left arm, but too late. The thick white porcelain toilet tank lid must have weighed 12 pounds, and she’d already decided a glancing blow would probably accomplish little more than to upset the goon enough to make him reflexively open fire, so she brought it down on his head with all the strength she could muster. It made a sickening crack as it contacted the top of his skull. From her position standing astride the sink, her bare feet three feet off the floor, her back to the mirror — a position from which she’d been able to trip the toilet flush lever with the ball of her left foot — she ended up in a bent-knee squat. The damned porcelain lid had no real handles, of course, so it slipped from her grasp as soon as it had done its job, hit the floor with an even louder bang even before the young monk finished collapsing in a heap, his Beretta conveniently skittering across the tiled bathroom floor.

Chantal then overbalanced and found herself with no choice but to jump down on top of the creep, who appeared to be out cold, though oddly enough he also appeared to have an erection. Had he been playing with himself, out there?

She nonetheless wasted no time springing across the room to recover the pistol, checking out of habit to make sure it had a round chambered before anything else. Round chambered, at least several more in the magazine, which she slapped home soundly. Now, which way did the safety move on one of these pea-shooters? The red dot clearly meant “The range is hot.” You uncovered the red dot by using your thumb to slide the safety lever
up
, which she now remembered was correct, since it felt ass-backwards, having been designed by Italians.

Brother Anselmo looked to be in a bad way, which was good. Her instructor’s voice replayed in her mind, just as it was supposed to. “No, Mr. Prosecutor, I didn’t intend to kill him. I intended to stop him. I used sufficient force to stop him from harming myself or other innocent parties.” The goal was to halt the behavior. Whether they die is pretty much irrelevant, except that the dead ones are of course less likely to get up and cause more trouble.

Now she needed to get past this character, who was piled up right in the doorway. It did appear he was still breathing, surprisingly enough. If he was just playing possum, and grabbed her as she stepped over, she might have no choice but to put several warning shots into the center of his chest, which would create enough noise to rule out a quick and quiet exit from the premises. Ergo, gingerly recover and slip on her shoes, approach to within about two feet of the bleeding Italian, and now . . . She kicked him in the head with her right heel as hard as she could.

This time his head sounded like an overripe melon being dropped on the kitchen floor. Good. Brother Anselmo should stay down for quite some time. She did a quick frisk of his pockets, came up with a set of car keys, a spare magazine, and — bingo — her five-shot Smith, still loaded.

She wiped the heavy toilet lid clean and set it back where it belonged. Now to find a way out of this derelict religious propaganda camp and let Matthew know there was no need to give up the book.

* * *

“Mr. Hunter!” Dominic Penitente had put in an appearance on one of the second-floor balconies overlooking the sparsely lit reading room. He still looked like Count Dracula. Had his black cape always had a red lining, or was this his Good Friday best?

“Brother Dominic.”

“You have the book?”

“We have yet to see Miss Stevens or Hakim’s brother Rashid.”

“They are on their way. But I can’t be expected to pay anything for a manuscript unless I’ve examined it. Bring it out!”

“Your associates are known to carry guns, Brother Dominic. Once you have your hands on the book, why should we expect to see the hostages
or
any cash?”