Questions, questions …

One thing was for sure, just like that the hayseed had been replaced by hard-eyed pros with heavy-metal thunder strapped to their chests. It was more than coincidence.

Also seeming more than coincidence: the glossy black Suburban currently crawling the parking lot below, pausing behind the leased Hummer, like making sure Nautilus wasn’t out roaming the night.

I’m up here, Nautilus thought, watching you watching me.

He smiled. This gig was suddenly getting interesting.

45

Frisco Dredd pulled in front of Sissy Sparks’s apartment building. After missing her in the darkened parking lot, he’d come back to his room and had a revelation: He could do no wrong. He was on a holy mission backed by the Lord Jesus Christ, King of all Heaven.

His thinking in the darkened parking lot had been addled. What he should have done was grab a hammer from the toolbox, smash the head of the runaway girl, then grab Sparks. His mission was pure and beyond worldly laws, the only law the Law of Heaven. The woeful whore Sparks would be atoning for her sins and the interrupting girl would be a lamb in the arms of Our Lord, him petting her and thanking her for letting Frisco kill her in His holy name.

Thank you, Lord for sending this revelation …

In the morning Dredd had visited a sign shop and paid a rush fee for two simple cardboard signs saying, Singer’s Carpet Cleaning, followed by a fake phone number. A few strips of double-sided tape and Dredd was ready.

The time was perfect, shaped by the hand of God … just past dark, so no one could see much, but still early enough a carpet cleaner could be making a pickup. Dredd had received another revelation in the afternoon: get a used area rug, carry it to the trash bin beside the whore’s building.

Dredd wore green pants and a green shirt picked up for a few dollars at a uniform store, and as he crossed to the trash bin, he sang a hymn beneath his breath:

“I have learned the wondrous secret, of abiding in the Lord,

I have tasted Life’s pure fountain, I am drinking of His word …”

It wouldn’t do for prying eyes to see a man take a rug to the apartment and come back still carrying it, but he walked empty-handed, a simple man on a job. He passed a slender man in tight white shorts walking a little brown dog, the man’s small high buttocks pressing the fabric – a faggot, you could tell, gonna burn in hell. The man looked at Dredd and nodded good evening and Dredd felt his animal strain at the wire, the queer’s filth trying to drag Dredd back into sin. He paid the sinner no mind and continued on his way.

“… I have found the strength and sweetness, of abiding ’neath the blood,

I have lost myself in Jesus, I am sinking into God.”

He reached the bin and gathered the carpet to his shoulder, plodding the final fifty feet to the whore’s door. He knocked, knowing by the lights she was in there. She left different ones on when she was out whoring.

“Who is it?”

“Got your carpet here, miss. All cleaned and ready to go.”

There was an eyehole on the door and he knew he was being watched.

“I didn’t have any carpet cleaned,” a woman’s voice said, hard and soft at the same time, like buttermilk mixed with buckshot. “You got the wrong place.”

“Apartment 22-A? That’s what it says here on my delivery slip, miss. At least I think so. I, uh, busted my glasses this morning. I cain’t see too well.” Dredd moved a piece of paper in front of his eyes, like a man with a visual deficit. “It sure looks like 22-A.”

He waited. Two seconds passed, five … The sound of deadbolts slipping free. The door opened and the whore stood framed in light. She was so beautiful Dredd couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

“Gimme that delivery thing,” she said. “I’ll read it for you.”

As Dredd stared with his mouth open, the Jezebel pulled the strip from his hand and looked at it.

“There’s no address on—”

But Jesus arrived to push Dredd across the threshold, the carpet falling as his hands reached for Sissy’s throat.

Ten minutes later, Dredd crossed the street to his van, the carpet heavy on his shoulder, the weight and nearness of the unconscious woman – wet mouth open with wide pink tongue drooling out – making his animal squirm and burn against the slender wire. A patrolling cop car rolled by and Dredd kept his face low as he aimed a weary smile and nod at the darkened occupant, just a workman making a late pickup. The patrol car continued down the avenue, no brake lights. Dredd opened the side door and slid the carpet inside. He could smell the vixen’s perfume and the pain in his animal made him gasp as the carpet cleared the opening.

He was closing the doors when he saw a pair of headlamps approaching …

The cop car had reversed direction. A whoop on the siren. Hidden by the open door, Dredd pulled a heavy masonry hammer from the toolbox and set it beside the carpet. He turned as the cruiser stopped.

Keep me safe in your arms, Lord. It’s in your name I toil …

He leaned into the light, pushing a broad smile to his face. “Hey there, Officer … I fin’ly get to go home. Hate these late pickups.”

Nothing from the darkened cruiser. After a few seconds the door opened and the cop from the other day got out, setting his hat on his head. “You’ve been here before,” the cop said, eyes wary.

“I wouldn’t think so, Officer. I usually work north of here.”

The cop’s hand went to the grip of his pistol. “Please keep your hands where I can see them, sir, and step away from the vehicle.”

“Just as soon as I get this carpet inside I can—”

“Hands out NOW!”

Though it was dark in the van, an angered Lord put the handle of the hammer in Dredd’s hand and spun him around so he stopped right in front of the cop, taking two steps and bringing the hammer down into the center of his forehead.

Jesus hit the cop two more times and threw the tool into the bushes of the whore’s apartment.

46

“Carson, it’s Vince Delmara. Where you at?”

“Heading to the Palace, Vince. I’m bushed. You?”

A long sigh, like the last air escaping from a balloon. “I’m looking at an MDPD officer dead in the street. You should hear what I just heard.”

Minutes later I was in Wynwood, a tough neighborhood until relatively recently, cheap rents and interesting housing stock attracting young hipster types and a host of trendy dining and drinking establishments.

I roared off Biscayne on to 29th Street, went a couple more blocks and turned a corner. The scene was a nightmare I’d seen too often: cop cars crowding the block, lights beating blue and white against houses and apartments, terrified onlookers restrained by uniformed officers, two ambulances, another half-dozen command vehicles and unmarkeds. The air was a crackle of walkie-talkie chatter. I heard barking and saw a pair of hounds from a K-9 unit being leashed up by a handler.

I parked as close as possible and jogged to a circle of cop cars in the middle of the street, Vince at the epicenter. I excused my way past a female officer wiping tears from her eyes and saw the sheeted form on the pavement, Vince standing above and talking to a pair of MDPD detectives, Frank Bowling and Leandro Basquiat. Vince said, “Give us a minute here, guys,” and the pair nodded and retreated.

Vince bent and pulled back the sheet. I saw a young and handsome face from the closed eyes down, above the eyes a hideous wreckage of blood and bone and brain. Vince replaced the sheet.

“Why am I here?” I said.

Vince nodded to an ambulance fifty feet away, pulled on to the sidewalk. “We got a lady that caught the last of the attack, dialed 911. It’s why I called you, given what you told me about the religious weirdness with the burned girls. The witness is pretty shaken, but I’ll let her tell you what she told me.”