Costume Not Included (24 page)

  When the dust had settled over the infernal strike, Billy Lee called for the Throne to visit him again. He was not surprised when the being in white reappeared again; was Hardacre not, after all, one of the most significant figures in all of history? Was it not he, and he alone, who had unraveled the central secret of existence?

  The Throne came when he called, and together – though it was mostly Billy Lee's efforts – they wrote a new chapter for the divine story. It was to be called the
Book of Chesney,
but the young hero's role in it was more metaphorical than actual – essentially, it was Billy Lee Hardacre's take on how the world ought to be organized, with a surface gloss that reflected the preacher's understanding of how his views matched those of God.

  Billy Lee expected to release the book, with the prophet Chesney as its purported subject, and somehow bring about the next great change. Exactly how the process would work, he did not know. Yet he had faith that it would, and never once entertained the notion that his own considerable vanity was the main argument for his believing that he could, albeit with angelic assistance, change the world forever.

  But, to give him credit, he put it all on the line. No more weekly pillorying of the venal and foolish – the whole tenor of his Sunday morning program changed. Instead of a rehearsing the week's excesses and pointing an accusatory finger, Hardacre gave his viewers a history lesson:
How We Got Here
, it was called, an idiosyncratic explanation of the course of human events since ancient times to modern and post-modern, with Billy Lee leaping from epoch to epoch, making unusual connections between events famous and obscure, between individuals and mass populations.

  The incidents and personalities mentioned changed from week to week, but a common theme remained: things had gotten pretty bad and looked to be on the verge of getting worse. But unlike other Jeremiahs of screen and pulpit, Billy Lee Hardacre, did not prophesy doom and damnation. He did not predict the destruction of the world, but its new beginning.

  Specifically, the preacher described himself as the precursor. He had come to prepare the way, he said, and if this description raised in his followers an association with the first-century fellow that the world remembered as John the Baptist, that was no accident. Hardacre proclaimed a prophet – yet to be named, because his wife's son kept balking at the assignment – would soon emerge from the wings to take history's center stage. And when that prophet came, all things would be made new.

  The preacher had genuinely thought that Chesney, guided by the
Book of Chesney
– that is, guided by Billy Lee Hardacre – would be that new linchpin of the ages. He had since come to accept that that vision had been in error; he might even have misunderstood the angel. Instead, the strange young man had turned out to be a kind of precursor in his own right. Chesney had delivered unto Billy Lee the genuine article: the actual, living, historical, flesh-and-blood Jesus of Nazareth, who had been the central character in another of the umpteen new drafts that God had written since starting with a simple tale of two innocents and an ogre in a garden.

  Hardacre would have felt better about Yeshua bar Yusuf, as the prophet named himself – they'd settled on Joshua Josephson for the purposes of
The New New Tabernacle of the Air –
if the man could have given him a clear idea of what he would say when the cameras turned his way. But whenever he was asked, Joshua would just shake his curly head and say, "I never did know what was going to come out. So much of it was in response to questions people put to me. I would wait for the spirit to move me. Which it always did."

  "The Holy Spirit?" Hardacre said, wanting to be clear.

  The prophet made a shooing motion with one hand. "Not like it was later," he said, "when the spirit was somehow reinterpreted as a fully fledged third person of the tripartite deity. When I was wandering the roads, preaching, that would have been outright blasphemy. Straight to the stoning pit." He smiled ruefully. "Same as if I'd said
I
was one third of a divine threesome." He mused over something for a moment, then said, "Where was I?"

  "Being moved by the Holy Spirit."

  "Ah, yes. In those days we thought of it as the breath of the Lord, that which was first breathed into Adam's clay and then breathed anew into every infant as it took its first inspiration at birth. And in that draft of the book, I suppose it was." He frowned and went on, "I don't know whose idea it was to make it over into a pigeon. That came after my… transformation."

  "But is it still in you?" said Hardacre. He dreaded the prospect of the final moment, after all these weeks of build-up, when he would introduce the awaited one then watch as the fellow stood under the lights and couldn't think of anything to say.

  "I think so. If not…" Joshua shrugged. "I'll tell them a story. That's what I always used to do, especially if some smarty-boots was trying to trick me into saying something that would get me taken up by the Sanhedrin or the Romans." He raised his eyes to the ceiling and went on, "Of course, eventually…"

  He sighed then a thought occurred. "You don't have anything like them, do you? I've no interest in going through all that again."

  "No. You can say whatever you want."

  "Good." The prophet dusted his hands together. "Well, then, just leave it to me. I did this for years. It's like riding an ass, you know – you never forget how."

 

Sunday morning, Captain Denby summoned Lieutenant Grimshaw, the senior on-duty scene-of-crime officer, to his office and told him to gather up his team and whatever equipment they would need to exhume a body.

  "On whose authority?" said the SOC man.

  "Mine."

  Grimshaw had got where he was by being a team player, and he knew who was captain of the team he played on. "I need to check with the chief."

  "Do that," said Denby, "and you won't be in on what would have been the biggest case of your career."

  "Bigger than the Taxidermist?" Grimshaw had not been on duty that night and had missed out on the glory.

  "Way bigger." Denby lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. "Cathy Bannister."

  The lieutenant dropped his own tone to a whisper. "You know where she is?"

  "I got a tip. Reliable."

  Denby waited while Grimshaw worked out the angles. If he called the chief of police, Hoople would probably tell him to stay clear. J. Edgar had his own scene-ofcrime favorite, Lieutenant Schreiber, assigned to the case. Schreiber had also got the Taxidermist, which had led to appearances on network news shows, describing the state of the bodies and the layout of the crime scene. If Grimshaw could get that kind of exposure, it could catapult him into his life goal: to retire after he put in his twenty and open a scene-of-crime consulting firm. Rich defendants, facing serious charges – movie stars who murdered their wives, politicians who got caught taking too wide a stance in airport washrooms – would pay huge fees for a specialist who could muddy the evidentiary waters.

  "How reliable?" he said.

  "Rock solid."

  His calculations complete, Grimshaw said, "I'll get my crew."

  "Confiscate their cell phones before they saddle up," Denby cautioned.

  "Not to worry."

 

Billy Lee Hardacre used taped music for his broadcasts. He'd heard other televangelists recount horror stories of booze, drugs and illicit sex among their in-house choristers. He been told of one occasion where a live broadcast had teetered on the edge of disaster because a soprano soloist, pregnant by the basso profundo, had had to be manhandled out of camera shot and off the stage before she could make their private disagreements indelibly public.

  For the revelation of the new prophet, he decided to go classical:
Also Sprach Zarathustra
– better known as the opening theme to
2001: A Space Odyssey
. But first came his own segment, his last as the precursor, and Hardacre came on stage, as he usually did, to the strains of
Get Happy (Get Ready for the Judgement Day).
The set was unlit, except for a plain wooden stool beneath a single spotlight. The preacher came out of the darkness, a cordless microphone in his hand, rested one buttock on the seat, hooked a boot heel on one of the rungs, and smiled into the camera.

  "My friends," he began, "for weeks now I've been telling you that a new light is coming, a new day is about to dawn. Hold on, I said, for the time is almost at hand."

  He paused. "It's hard, waiting for deliverance, in a world that seems to have gone mad. A world where the strong oppress the weak, where the rich rob the poor, where the wise have given themselves over to foolishness. We look to the east and say, 'Where is the sunrise? When will the light come to chase away the darkness?'"

  He shook his head and looked down, silent and pensive. Then he raised his eyes to the camera again and said, "I thank you for your patience, friends. I thank you for your faith. I thank you for your courage, for your willingness to tune in, week after week, to hear me say, 'Hold on, it's coming! The dawn is about to break!'"

  And now his voice rose. "But I'm not going to say that to you today! I'm not going to tell you that you have to wait!" He rose from the stool and moved closer to the camera, and now the spot faded and more lights came up, creamy and golden, to illuminate the stage's backdrop in an illusion of heavenly light. Hardacre stopped at a place where an X was chalked onto the concrete floor and a carefully aimed spotlight created a nimbus of light about his head.

  "Friends," he said, his voice rising another level, "I'm not going to tell you to wait anymore! I'm not going to tell you the one we've been waiting for is on his way!" Beneath his words, the horns and drums of the fanfare began. "I'm not going to say, 'Be patient, have faith.'

  "Because your patience is about to be rewarded! Your faith is about to be vindicated!" The music built in intensity and volume as Hardacre's highly able sound engineer tracked his oration. "Because the waiting is over! Because the one you've waited for…" The music moved into the crescendo, and Hardacre followed its rhythm, waiting for the final roll of the kettledrums, then shouted, "is here!"

  The stage went dark again, only for a second. Then a new spotlight fell upon the curly-haired, bearded man who had been waiting in the darkness. Joshua stood with his hands in his pockets – he'd found that a most agreeable use for pockets. He stared down at his sandal-shod bare feet – he couldn't get used to shoes and socks – and rocked back and forth on his heels and soles. Then he looked up and around, as if not sure where his eyes ought to settle.

  Hardacre, standing out of shot beside camera one, pointed at the instrument's hooded lens. Joshua smiled and nodded – they'd rehearsed this, though without the music, and now he stepped toward the camera until the preacher showed him both palms. The prophet stopped, raised one hand to pensively pinch his lower lip, and remained silent. Five seconds went by, then ten. Hardacre made a rolling motion with one hand, which drew Joshua's attention though he didn't seem to know what the gesture meant.

  Finally, Billy Lee stage-whispered, "Speak!" which caused the other man to blink in surprise.

  "Now?" he said.

  "Yes, now!"

  "I was waiting for you to introduce me."

  "I did!"

  "Not by name."

  "You can do that."

  The prophet frowned. "What's the point of your being a precursor if you don't tell them who I am?"

  "Please," said Hardacre, "get on with it."

  "Do you want to play the music again? That was very… startling music."

  "No! I just want you to talk to the camera."

  The other man shrugged. "As you like." He seemed to gather his thoughts, then said, "Peace be upon you. I am" – he pronounced it carefully – "Joshua Josephson. I am a prophet of the Lord. I've come to talk to you about what the Lord wants from you."

  Here he paused, and Hardacre had the frightening thought that the man was thinking about the issue for the first time. The pause lengthened and the preacher's hand came up, trembling, just about to make the rolling gesture again, when Joshua said, "Not all that much, really. At least, not all that much out of the ordinary."

  The prophet lowered his head, pinched his lip again and took a step to the right, then another, then a third. The spotlight, robotically controlled from a computer in a booth two floors above the studio, tracked him smoothly. So did the camera, operated by the same computer. Joshua looked up, seemed almost surprised to find the device still looking at him, and turned to it again saying, "People always used to ask me: what does the Lord want of us? What are we supposed to be doing?

  "Does he want us to always be praying to him, and thinking about him, trying to get closer to him?" He looked away, tugged on the lip again, then came back to the camera. "Well… no." He paused again, then appeared to hit on something. "Put it this way," he said. "Imagine you take your child somewhere to play. Perhaps you even build a garden for the child to play in, with interesting toys and things to do.

  "Then you put your little one out there and you say, 'Go ahead, have some fun.' But, instead, all it does is sit before you and stare at you and ask you questions." He shrugged. "How are you going to feel?"

  He seemed to be waiting for a response, then realized after a moment that the camera couldn't give him one. "The point is," he said, "that the Lord put us here so he could watch us, not the other way round."

  He put his hands in his pocket and walked up and down again, the spotlight and camera tracking him. After a while, he shaded his eyes and found Hardacre. "Will that do?" he said.

  "No!" cried the preacher, then clapped a hand over his mouth. He had another fifty-three minutes of airtime to fill. He tried another stage whisper. "Tell them what should they do!"