A Pagan's Nightmare (27 page)

I was about to call him when Larry balled up the handkerchief and tossed it back at me. It fell short of my desk. “Ned, why
don’t you read the rest of my ending before you talk to anyone else? My therapist told me that a lot of my history comes out
in the end. Plus, it might give you a better sense of my story’s worth.”

So as Larry sat between my ferns, and Hollywood opened its checkbook, I plucked the pages from my desk and prepared to read.
But before starting I leaned down and fed his CD into my computer. Then I e-mailed the file to Angie.

Nuts as it may sound, I wanted her opinion.

B
UT OF COURSE
Miranda’s light blue Jetta was sitting in front of her apartment;Lanny himself had driven her to the airport on the day she
flew to Orlando. And indeed there was a light on inside the apartment—the rental manager had let herself in after not seeing
or hearing from Miranda in a month. She had failed to pay her September rent.

Instead of crossing the doorstep to a blissful reunion, Lanny had stumbled upon a common eviction.

To say that this event sent Lanny spiraling into a deeper level of insanity would be something of an understatement. He had
been so sure of blissful reunion—now he literally shook with disappointment.

Lanny stood in the doorway of apartment G3 and looked on as the rental manager—an older woman who seemed to take her job much
too seriously—filled out an eviction form. Warm air rushed from the living room, and Lanny wondered why the heat was turned
on for such a balmy September night.

“How much does Miranda owe?” he blurted. He would pay the debt himself if necessary.

The rental manager ran a finger down a page of residents. “Is she a fortunate or an unfortunate?”

Lanny motioned for the manager to step outside the apartment, which she did. He then showed her to the rear of his Xterra,
parked crooked across two spaces. “See that license plate?”

The manager read the stolen CU N HVN plate. Then, the bumper sticker. Satisfied, she nodded her affirmation. “Very good. This
means Miss Timms owes only four-hundred-twenty dollars for September. Will this be cash or check?”

Lanny saw an opportunity. “Check,” he said. “But before I write it I’ll need you to say the two-word code phrase.”

The rental manager nodded as if this was standard zealot procedure. “Triumphant soldiers.”

Lanny now knew the phrase—and wondered when he would get to use it—but right now he was most worried about writing a very
bad check. Though with a very bad check he could at least buy himself another day or two, enough time to search the apartment
for further clues.

Lanny pulled his checkbook from the glovebox and followed the rental manager back inside Miranda’s apartment. His lack of
funds classified his check as bad;his lack of status classified it as very bad. Lanny was officially dead, drowned off the
coast of Boca Raton, and his bank had cancelled his account.

Undeterred, he ripped check number 0817 from its brethren and filled it out on the kitchen counter.

The rental manager looked over his shoulder and said, “Oh, I forgot one thing. For just an extra five dollars per month, I
can hook you up with a twenty-four-hours-a-day subscription to TBS.”

Larry dated the check and muttered, “But TBS is already included with regular cable.”

“Sir, The Blessed Station is now premium content.”

Lanny turned away from her, shut his eyes tight. He was approaching his bursting point.

“Could you please leave now?” he asked between clenched teeth, and handed her his check.

The manager left him alone. When she closed the door, the stillness and the silence and the vacancy all melded together, increasing
his loneliness tenfold.

It never stops,
Lanny thought as he walked into Miranda’s bedroom.
It’s never going to stop.

Atop her nightstand he saw the framed picture of the two of them, sitting on a picnic blanket in Chastain Park. For long minutes
he stroked the glass. Then he picked up the picture and tucked it under his arm. He opened Miranda’s closet, reached for one
of her
dresses, and drew it to his nose. He sniffed the material long and hard. He reached for the next dress, then the next, sniffing
each one. The scent of his woman filled this closet, and as he pulled the fifth dress to his face, Lanny Hooch fell to his
knees and wept.

He woke in the closet sometime after 2:00 a.m., carpet creases pressed into the left side of his face. Minutes later he found
Miranda’s flowery blue journal beneath her bed. Lanny flipped through it and found the last entry. It was dated August 10,
just a week before she disappeared.

Yesterday I got a raise at work! And then I called Carla in Angusta avid told her all about it. My own sister had the nerve
to ask wie if I Wad a Willi I accused her of being greedy. She laughed and told me she was just joking. I told her that at
age 29, I had never thought of a will. So, today at lunch I Went and had a will drawn up. I split everything four ways: between
Mom, Dad, Carla, and Lanny. I love Lanny, and if anything should ever happen to me, I Want him to have one quarter of all
I have.

Lanny found a copy of the will tucked into the back of the journal. He also found four one-hundred dollar bills tucked into
the spine. A note stapled to the bottom of the will described in detail her IRA and savings information, and how to reach
her parents and sister.

Lanny figured that this financial data could help fund his search.
I’ll pose as the beneficiary of all the intended beneficiaries. And after I find her I’ll repay all the money.

One phone call the next morning flushed that idea. A zealot attorney at Predestined Probate LLC explained the bad news—since
Lanny Hooch was officially dead, and there was no changing that, all his monies would go to the state of Georgia. The attorney
also explained that even if Lanny Hooch was still living, his bequeathment
would have been small, since a new zealot tax consumed 66.6 percent of all inherited monies.

Flustered, Lanny consoled himself by remembering he still had the four hundred dollars from Miranda’s journal. He stuffed
the cash into his wallet—and solved one minor issue in the process. With his bumper sticker, license plate, and knowledge
of the two-word code phrase giving him room to roam, and with his ability to buy gas for only twelve cents per gallon, he
now had plenty of dough to resume his search.

I’m going to find her even if she’s become a zealot herself. I have to know… .

Certain that he had missed a clue somewhere along his journey, Lanny lay on the bedroom floor on his back and replayed in
his head his searching, his time in captivity, his late-night escape with his friends. He remembered what the guard had said
when he’d asked about female captives. He remembered the guard’s glance at the sunrise, the subtle nod to the east. And he
remembered the auctioneer’s sign propped against the stone wall.

After a quick shower he locked up the apartment and hurried out to his Xterra.

Suddenly in the wee hours, Lanny knew where to find Miranda.

He just had to pull off a vocational pose in order to get to her.

L
ANNY DID NOT TRUST
Atlanta, much less its airport. A direct flight was his preference—and Orlanda offered such a flight. He drove for six hours,
stopped to refuel north of the city, and barreled on at high speed.

En route he taped a note to his rearview mirror. The note was hardly original. By now he was too crazed, too excited even,
to come up with anything more than cliché.

Desperate times call for desperate measures….

Returning to the Caribbean was the desperate measure;discovering the whereabouts of Miranda was the call. Well, that and the
news that DJ Ned was back on the airwaves. Sometime in late morning, out of sheer curiosity, Lanny tuned his radio to Fence-Straddler
AM.

Lanny recognized the voice booming through his speakers—and this voice caused him to want to pick up his cell phone and call
Ned’s show.
Even better, if DJ Ned is back on the air, I could pay him a visit, invite him to come along, tell him I’m sorry he got sent
back to Cuba. Wonder how he escaped this time?

Lanny managed a slight smile as he heard Ned’s song intro: “This one goes out to an old friend, Lanny, who, if he’s still
around, is welcome to visit me anytime here in my Orlando studio. I’m DJ Ned Nazareth, coming at you live and revived from
Fence-Mender AM.”

Lanny jerked his truck to the shoulder and yelled, “Noooo!” at his radio.

DJ Ned continued. “Most of you are well acquainted with the funky guitar in this next song.”

Stopped fully and stunned beyond comprehension, Lanny recognized the opening guitar lick to one of his favorite tunes: “Play
that Funky Music, White Boy.”

DJ Ned spoke over the riff. “In case any listeners are still straddling the fence, I hope the lyrics in this song will prompt
you to join the big team. You do want to join the
big team
. . . now, don’t you?”

The new lyrics boomed inside the truck, and Lanny flinched at the chorus of “Praise the Zealot Movement, Lost Boy.”

Lanny’s head dropped against the steering wheel. Eyes shut, his mind in wobbly orbit, he lacked the energy to yell at the
radio again. All he could do was whisper, “No, Ned. No, no, no.”

He drove in a daze for the airport, but five minutes later the temptation to listen overwhelmed him. As if to sneak up on
his own radio, Lanny reached slowly for the knob.

DJ Ned’s voice boomed again. “A new superstar is making waves with his debut album, and he and his band are currently on tour
across the southeastern U.S. Today, I, DJ Ned, get to introduce this group to you. Please welcome to Fence-Mender AM Radio,
MC Deluxe and the InnerCity Rap Ensemble. I’ll now play their new single, ‘A Skippuh’s Nod to God.’ “

No! Not MC, too!
Lanny couldn’t bring himself to listen to the song. He turned off the radio and pulled back onto the interstate and drove
slumped in his seat.

I might just be the last poser left on the planet, but I’m still holding out hope for Miranda.

At Orlando International Airport, Lanny parked his truck, slipped deep into poser mode, and hurried inside the terminal. His
desperate measure grew mega-desperate as he approached the customer service counter of Detour Airlines.

“Next flight to Puerto Rico,” he said to the counter girl. “Economy class.”

“Of course,” she replied, typing the flight number into her keyboard. “And would you like to be seated in singing or non-singing?”

“Um… non.”

Lanny paid $160 cash for his ticket, but Counter Girl hesitated
to give him his boarding pass. She held it over her head, shook it twice, and said, “Recite the code phrase, sir?”

Lanny cleared his throat and reached confidently for his boarding pass. “Triumphant soldiers.”

“Enjoy your flight, sir.”

Donald Deacon and Sir Crackhead stood waiting on the warm Puerto Rican tarmac, greeting all arriving tourists.In black fatigues
and WWMD bracelets they greeted them. Surprised but not shocked to see his old mates transformed—after the DJ Ned and MC fiascos
he expected as much—Lanny descended the stairs from the plane, relieved that Marvin’s Lear Jet was nowhere in sight. Halfway
down he sniffed warm tropical breezes, then stepped onto Puerto Rican soil for the first time.

Lanny could tell from their blank faces that these former prison mates didn’t recognize him. These two were not crucial to
his mission, however, so he extended his hand to Donald Deacon and shook hard. “Triumphant soldiers.”

“Triumphant soldiers to thee,” Donald Deacon repeated in monotone.

“Indeed, thou art in the presence of triumphant soldiers,” said Sir Crackhead, shaking Lanny’s hand with a limpish wrist.
“What bringeth thee to Puerto Rico?”

Aw, man, now these two speak the KJ, too.
Lanny kept such thoughts to himself, knowing that these guys could be his best asset. Accepted as their equal, he walked
to an observation area and stood with them in the shade of palms, all three sweating in the Caribbean heat.

“I’m here volunteering to help with construction of Marvin’s language school,” Lanny explained. “In my former life I owned
a contracting business, remember?”

“Ah,” said Sir Crackhead with a smile. “I hath no recollection.”

Lanny figured they were so brainwashed that they didn’t remember anything, even their shared imprisonment in Cuba. Neither
man had asked about DJ Ned or MC. Thus Lanny played innocent,
noting the hilly terrain on one side of the island and wondering if Miranda were hidden there. He wanted to ease in to his
big request, but anxiety and excitement merged and produced in him a newfound bluntness. “Would you guys mind if I took a
quick look at the resistors who are held captive here?”

Donald Deacon raised a finger of objection. “Urn, sir, as thou art a construction worker, does not thou desireth first to
see the building site? Bulldozers already cleareth the land.”

“I’d really like to see the resistors…. Haven’t met any in a while.”

Sir Crackhead moved closer to Lanny, as if to whisper in his ear. “Can thou keepest a secret?”

“Of course.”

“Here in Puerto Rico is where we keepeth the
female
resistors.”

Yes!
Lanny thought, doing his best not to grin or dance a jig on the tarmac.
I was right. I knew it, I knew it!

Donald Deacon nodded in the affirmative, pulled a ringing cell phone from his pocket, and stepped away to talk to someone
in private. “Thou needest special permission to meet thy fairer gender,” he explained over his shoulder.

“I just want one little look.”

Sir Crackhead reached for his wallet. “Okay, if thou insist on seeing them, I do owneth wallet-sized photos. But if thou art
hoping to meet someone new, thou really did not need to cometh all this way. If thou wouldst subscribeth to the new online
dating service, E-Marviny, thou could viewest these female resistors and readeth their profiles.”