Dead-Bang Read online

  Long before this, long before, the Church had made it clear to all with ears to hear or eyes to see that it was strength to use those ears for hearing and eyes for seeing, even to joyously employ legs and arms and noses for functions natural to legs and arms and noses, but it was always carnal weakness and often an abomination to use the organs of sex for sex, they somehow being more carnal than carnal ears and eyes and noses, which may seem strange, but is all right, for the Church works in strange ways its wonders to perform.

  Thus when reports began to come in about men delighting—or occasionally terrifying—their wives, or vice-versa as sometimes occurred when a woman had been on Erovite for a few weeks and her hubby had not; and of individuals slowly waking to wide-eyed libidinousness after an apparently total sexual anesthesia of years; or of prodigious feats of evil which almost had to be lies; and of that now famous orgy in the old folks’ home, why, then, you can bet your boots, it became plain to those who care deeply about such things that something had to be done to stop this spreading evil lest the stiffs rise up in mortuaries and begin eyeing each other lustfully. Better that all the stiffs should stay dead; for why gain life only to lose it?

  Some were taken in by this argument. Some were not. But if sheer volume of sound and words and fury could have carried the day, those who proposed the argument would surely have carried it well out of sight; for, although there were minor disagreements, once the truth about Erovite’s appalling ability to increase the power and strength and vigor of man’s sexual desires and abilities—apparently raising his lower nature higher than it had ever been before, maybe even raising it almost as high as his higher nature—all those opposed to, or fearful of, or even kind of suspicious of sex, spoke out against it as one.

  Except for Festus Lemming—whose voice was the loudest of all, who volcanically damned sex of any kind, sex right-side-up or upside-down or sideways or back-to-back, with your clothes on, and who denounced at great and intimate length every conceivable nuance of sex, taking as his text and authority the Holy Bible—nobody suggested in public that Emmanuel Bruno should be stoned to death without delay.

  Others in the holy chorus dwelled somewhat less on sex, but paid at least as much, if not more, attention to Bruno and Erovite. It was agreed that every atom of Erovite should be destroyed, but as for Bruno they could not, being good Christians mostly, go so far as to agree completely with Lemming’s suggestion. Something, of course, would have to be done about Bruno, but the mind of mere man could not think of anything sufficiently horrible. So, God would have to do it.

  That, basically, was the message, and it came in loud and clear from first a hundred and then a thousand pulpits and ecclesiastical podiums. Priests and preachers and pastors and innumerable minor popes reared back and roared, at first in isolation, individually, and at last in one great booming mass. The Church spoke, and it spoke in a voice of thunder.

  And the Church said, as usual: No!

  Condensed—much condensed—the message was: as for sex, any kind of it was a dubious virtue; and it rampant and unrestricted by properly appointed restrictors was very bad; thus Erovite, which led to more of it when there should be less of it, was very bad; and Emmanuel Bruno was anathema, doubled and redoubled.

  In the past four or five weeks, aside from the hullabaloo about Erovite itself, two names had been spoken and shouted and screeched and sung; perhaps more than any other two names in a similar span of time throughout history. One, of course, was Emmanuel Bruno. The other was his chief opponent, the now-number-one spokesman for the forces of decency and the angels, Festus Lemming—but we’ll get to Festus later.

  I stood in front of the tropical fish tanks for a few more seconds, watching the guppies poking each other’s lower natures, then turned and walked back to my chocolate-brown divan and looked at Drusilla.

  “Emmanuel Bruno, huh?” I said.

  3

  By nine-fifteen P.M. I had put on my shoes—I’d been lolling before the television set in canary yellow socks, and slacks, of course, and a loosely knitted short-sleeved white sports shirt—and strapped on my gun harness, fully loaded Colt .38 Special snug in its clamshell holster. Carrying a cashmere jacket that matched the slacks and socks, I walked from my bedroom into the living room, feeling dressed to watch a tennis match, but probably not for what I was going to do. Probably not, because I still hadn’t the faintest idea what I was going to do.

  Dru and I had carried on a short question-and-answer session during the two or three minutes I spent in the bedroom—it did seem a shame that the first time I spoke to her in my bedroom she was in the living room—and I’d learned a little more not only about Erovite but of events immediately preceding her arrival at my door.

  She lived in a suite at the Westchester Arms in Los Angeles, her father in Monterey Park just a hop outside of L.A. Earlier this evening she’d spent some time with her father at his home. Near sundown he had received a phone call from a Mr. Strang and soon afterward left to meet him. Dru drove to her suite, where perhaps an hour later a messenger delivered the note she’d shown me. By the time Dru read the message, the boy who’d brought it was long gone.

  I sat by her on the divan, lit a cigarette, and said, “O.K., all we’ve got, so far, is the note and the call from this guy Strang. What did he want? He a friend of your father’s?”

  “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 whi
ch 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 uph
eavals 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.