Nina, the Bandit Queen (13 page)

Jarmeel Tolbert opened his church in a neighbourhood grocery store that had been abandoned for years. Inventing a religion based on being taken up into space and probed by aliens was easy enough, the hard part was figuring out how to inform other folks who’d had the same experience that he was open for business. It turned out not to be a problem. People started gathering on the sidewalk before he’d finished prying the plywood off the window. They all looked so totally happy to see him, it made him nervous. If he didn’t turn out to be all they hoped their leader might be, they were going to make the best of it, and anybody who tried to stop them would be really sorry. For the first time he got a hint of the burdens the founder of a religion takes on.

In spite of the things all these people had in common, none of them knew each other. Neither did they know how they’d known where and when to gather. Until they found themselves part of the crowd, each one believed nothing like what happened to them had happened to anybody else. They’d never so much as hinted about it to anyone, to blood relatives or even spouses, because they were afraid of being called crazy. Over the years some of them had begun to think they
were
crazy. Coming together like this was a revelation.

Jarmeel opted for a fundamental doctrine because fundamentalism had been getting headlines for other religions, and he figured a religion as cutting edge as his should also talk the talk. The first fundamental was you would never be accepted as a full member unless you’d been probed by aliens. It was followed closely by the belief that when you were taken aboard an alien spaceship in outer space, you had been much closer to God geographically than anybody else who’d lived to tell about it. However, Jarmeel was fundamentally opposed to getting specific about the probing, because some things were just between you and your Lord and the aliens. He personally couldn’t say what had been involved when he was probed because he was so filled with wonder by the other things that were going on. He couldn’t even put in words what the effect was on him, if you didn’t count his getting fired by the army and founding his religion.

It was different with different followers, though, and this led them to get into arguments that sometimes ended with people throwing furniture at each other during the worship service. Where it had been mainly spiritual with Jarmeel, a lot of folks remembered details right down to the size of the probes in millimetres and how there had been no need to sterilize them because the environment inside the spacecraft was germ-free. Because he couldn’t provide first-hand data like this, some members of the congregation tended to look on Jarmeel as a person who hadn’t been converted as profoundly as they had been, but he kept reminding himself that different viewpoints show up in all religions, especially during the startup. What it did, however, was leave him with a feeling that if they ever needed a martyr, he was the one they’d appoint.

Something else separating Jarmeel from the believers who could remember every tiny detail was that they got off on it. Believers who find that what are sometimes called the mysteries of their religions give them a buzz in their shorts have been a factor in all faiths and creeds forever. They’re usually far more devoted than anybody else, but on the minus side they are liable to explode like volcanos and blow the foundation the faith or creed was built on to hell and gone. This was more than an average risk for Jarmeel, since the proportion of this kind of believer was upward of ninety to one in Nearer My God, which he declared was his religion’s official name, despite it generally being known by his followers as the Church of Eee-Yow! They called it that because it was what they had exclaimed rapturously the moment they were first probed. It was also what they cried out when they attempted to recreate the experience using likely looking implements they bought in cooking equipment stores. Jarmeel eventually stopped being startled when they yelled Eee-Yow! at the tops of their voices when he finished leading them in prayer, and anyway it sort of sounded like some of the words that popped up in the prehistoric section of the Bible.

Something Jarmeel would really have liked to know was whether their followers scared the shit out of the founders of other religions. He’d stand in front of them and preach the word — “This ain’t science fiction,” he’d say, and they’d all start humming as if they’d swallowed electric shavers. “Because it ain’t fiction!” he’d say, and they’d hum louder. “But it ain’t science, either!” By this point Jarmeel would have to struggle with himself to keep from running like a crazy person out of the building, because the humming vibrations would spread right up through the soles of his feet until the stuff his eyeballs were filled with got jiggly. When he finally got a grip on himself, he’d shout, “What we got is built on faith!”

And they’d all start nodding. “But it’s more than faith. It’s more than faith because we’ve
seen
it.
With our own eyes!
When we were out there
in those alien ships!
” The thing about their nodding that spooked him was they all did it at precisely the same speed.

Nodding, humming. Nodding, humming.

“When you have seen it with your own eyes,” he’d tell them, “when you have felt it deep inside you. That’s when you know that what we’ve got here —” he’d point to his heart “— and here —” pointing to his head “—is
not
just some kind of faith-based religion. What we’ve got here
is space-based!
You hear?
A space-based religion!
You hear what I say?

“We don’t
need
faith, because we’ve
got
space!
Yes we
do!”

And they’d all start doing the thing that really creeped him out. They’d go “Hoooom, hoooom.” Over and over. Some of them would have their eyes rolled back until all you could see were the whites. “Hoooom, hoooom!”

Looking back on it, Jarmeel figured that a bunch of the members of his church had put two and two together. They didn’t get abducted for no reason. God doesn’t dick people around. God
wanted
them abducted because he had chosen them to do things he needed done that the aliens couldn’t handle for one reason or another.

If the followers didn’t know exactly what these things were, sometimes they would have a sudden revelation. For instance, it was revealed to quite a few of them that they should start showing up at church heavily armed. Sometimes on the subway or in the supermarket checkout line, it would be revealed that they should profess their faith by drawing their weapons and waving them around. Then the police would get called and sometimes there would be a shootout and sometimes a follower or two would end up getting killed, but at the very least thrown in jail. This understandably led them to claim they were being persecuted because of their religious beliefs.

Other religions were conspiring against them. And how was it those other, those enemy religions, could get the police and politicians to do things they wanted, while Jarmeel’s followers got arrested for shooting up the movie screens in cineplexes when they showed material that was contrary to the best interests of them and their God? The more things like this happened, the more Jarmeel’s followers came to see that religious toleration was nothing but a weapon the rich and powerful used to keep the meek and probed in their place. And they were going to do something about it. They had no choice. They had no choice because they were God’s servants. But the reason the first enemy church they burned down was the big Presbyterian one in South Chester was because it was the closest.

Nina would have had a better idea about some of the things she was up against if she had been even vaguely aware that there was more to the gay lifestyle than the kind of people you slept with and how it was you slept with them. For most of her life she didn’t even know there were lifestyles some people could opt for. Her failure to pay more attention to home decorating shows on TV led directly to her failure to appreciate the deadliness of the threat she faced. As for the gay people she knew in SuEz, they provided no insight. They lived the way everybody around them did — the way she did — because how else could they afford to?

One did stand out, though. That was Bootsy, and even Nina had to admit that his lifestyle was different. This was because at night he hid in the ravines down by the Parkway, sleeping on the ground or whatever. Nina’s children threw trash at everybody who went by the house who was weird, unless they were too scary, but it pissed her off when they did it to him, because by and large he was as normal as all kinds of other people they didn’t throw stuff at. Merlina said she didn’t know what she was talking about. The way he walked was totally weird: his arms straight down so they moved only a little bit, and his hands flat out at like little airplane wings. Something she did think was weird was that from the time Lady was five or six, she would call her sisters fuckin’ assholes when they threw stuff at him and would pick up whatever they’d thrown and throw it back at them. Nina didn’t think Bootsy even noticed Lady doing this. It was almost like he was glad they were throwing stuff. He’d weave his hips back and forth as if he was dancing. Finally Lady would start throwing rocks, and her sisters would run away, because she could throw hard.

Right around the time he started paying close attention to Nina, Sergeant Robbie Toole discovered he couldn’t stop vibrating with excitement, and he was sure this was because his senses were telling him he was on to a very profitable thing with the little round lady. At other times he was just as sure it was because his new boyfriend had moved in.

It could be that this boyfriend was more demanding than most, or it could be he gave Toole that impression because when you were twenty-eight and worked in a store that sold DVDs of old movies where the cowboy stars wore a lot of eye makeup, you were more tuned in to a lot of things and more inclined to stay up late and tear around town than when you were fifty-two and had been on the police force since you got out of college. However he cut it, Toole found himself spending far more than ever to finance a lifestyle that he was already blowing his brains out on.

If you didn’t have a bunch of different drinking glasses all made of the very choicest crystal, even if you had to look through brides’ magazines to find out which one the juice went in, your friends who were also participating in the same lifestyle talked behind your back. They said things like it was extremely fortunate that you weren’t an astronaut because you couldn’t get liftoff with a Saturn VI, which was a martini with two Viagras instead of olives, meaning it was fine with all concerned for anybody to get it on with your boyfriend whenever you weren’t guarding him with your fangs bared. Then there was the china, one set for fine dining, a whole different set for when you invited people for brunch in the sunroom, and none of which was ever brought out for everyday. Then there was the silver.

He was just had a smallish two-storey house on a dead-end street near a park, but he compensated. For instance, he’d spent five thousand dollars on silk cushions for the furniture on the deck. Toole had let this drop one recent Sunday afternoon and was delighted to hear his friends sniff as he sidled on to pour Chablis for his other friends, “What will he do if there’s a cloudburst, shit a brick?” “I think he must already, gold ones.” “Well, I mean, how else does he manage to …”

It had to be done. If he hadn’t thrown out a figure for the cushions, they would have made one up, and it would have been below what they sold the crap for at Total Discount. Nothing beat the gay lifestyle when it came to being cut-throat.

Scarcely two weeks later, it was another party — you couldn’t afford to let much time pass, or one of your friends would run your death notice in the paper. This particular night, Robbie Toole had all his very best stuff on display, not least — he was pleased to point out — Carlo. The dinner marked two months since they’d met. And on a major occasion like that, no one who was invited expected all the guests would be participants in the gay lifestyle, but despite that, almost all the guests were astonished to find the police chief there. And his wife. And Mayor Gladly Bradley. Nonetheless, the real standouts for a lot of the guests were four friends Carlo invited who Toole thought looked as if they made their living cruising men’s washrooms at convention hotels. If they did, it must have paid well, to judge by the quality of the leather they wore. Toole thought the cheesiest thing about them was how stressed they looked, as if they were having trouble keeping up the pace, and one day soon would be switching from cocaine to crack. And two of them were carrying knives. Just because Toole was crooked didn’t mean he wasn’t a good cop.

The police chief was there because, as a devoted Christian, he’d made a point of reaching out to the various kinds of people who somehow or other had managed to survive the internal battles to keep them off the force by reason of race, disability, and all the other things the police department was obliged by law to ignore in its hiring practices. Toole’s rise to the rank of sergeant was a sure sign that things had changed, and this, his most recent chief, depended on him so much for counsel and as an in-house ambassador, that Robbie boasted of being able to work him like one of those toy cars you went vroom-vroom on the floor with and then let go and watched it speed off wherever you’d aimed it. The chief’s Christianity was so intense that when he got home that night, he believed he’d lost his wallet. It never crossed his mind that it had been lifted by one of Carlo’s little friends, as Toole had taken to calling them. It also never occurred to him how much shrieking laughter its contents would provoke when bouncers demanded proof of age and the chief’s driver’s licence started getting flashed all over town. They ran off thousands of them, laminated and everything.

“Gladly” was the nickname pretty well everybody used for the mayor, because when he’d first gotten into politics it became well known that he was glad to do absolutely anything for anybody as long as there was something in it for him. Close observers also admired his gift for smelling dirty money anywhere inside the city limits. It was what had led him, years before, to befriend Robbie Toole when Toole had started politicking to rise from the lowest ranks despite his sexual preference. Gladly had the feeling Toole had the same capable nose where money was concerned and, since he was a police officer, was often in a good position to do something more than just sniff it. Eventually they’d become each other’s biggest political investment, and so this dinner was a very important event with a lot of things going on, quite apart from a number of the guests discreetly snorting the odd substance and caressing the odd well-filled crotch.

When they got a moment together, they had what might have sounded like kind of a strange conversation. The strange thing about it was they both spoke at the same time. But they had no trouble keeping track, because they’d had many conversations like this before. For one thing it saved time. Even better, it made life difficult for eavesdroppers.

The mayor said, “My finance chairman tells me that there’s a little bundolo unaccounted for in SuEz. From a bank job that went funny a couple of weeks back. Two, three million. Not huge, but it’s amazing nobody’s tracked it down yet.” He gave Toole a surprised look. “I expect somebody will soon, though,” he continued. “I know I’ve said it before, but you can’t just campaign when an election’s on. You have to keep reminding voters every day in between that they can’t live without you. It’s good to know we could do what we could to keep your new friend from getting sent back to where was it, Guatemala? And it’s always good to get a chance to talk to the chief in an informal setting. Jesus, he’s a boring fuck, but you have to keep the wheels turning. Anyway, listen, I got to run.”

While Robbie Toole said, “I saw you got a chance to talk to Carlo. He’s very grateful and was looking forward to meeting you. His English isn’t really all that bad, is it? He’s been taking classes. Did he tell you about his new job? Clearing tables at Farina’s was such a dead end.” Toole shook his head sadly. “But once you spoke to the feds about his little immigration problem, he turned out to be the
perfect
person for a shop a friend of mine owns that does a wonderful business in CDs and DVDs, and he’s enjoying the experience tremendously. And that street has picked up like crazy lately, so I’m sure he’ll have a lot of opportunities to mention your name to all sorts of potential voters. No, it was Colombia. And wasn’t it wonderful of the chief and his wife to come? I know he’ll be pleased he had a chance to chat informally with you.” He raised his index finger and wagged it a little bit. “I gather the actual amount is 1.18 million.”

Then he squeezed the mayor’s arm. “It was really sweet of you to drop by.”

“Always good to see you, Robbie,” the mayor said, putting an arm around Toole’s shoulder and giving him a bracing hug. And he was through the crowd, out the door, into his limo, and gone by the time Toole could say “Dinner,” just loud enough to catch everybody’s attention and signal the caterer, “I believe is served.” He thought it was more than just the tiniest bit interesting that the mayor’s office had phoned at four thirty that afternoon to say the important meeting that was scheduled for that evening had been cancelled at the last minute, and Mayor Bradley was going to be able to make it to the party after all. Interesting, but not all that much of a mystery now. “Better get your ass in gear, old love,” Toole said to himself. “Who’d have thought so many vultures have nothing better to do than circle such a pissy little pile of money?”

He’d had a good week and had been looking forward to a chance to celebrate ever since he figured out why he’d had the weird feeling that he knew her from someplace — the little round lady who’d been that asshole Carson’s sister. It turned out she’d had a couple of starring roles in the Toons. Okay, one was just a cameo, but it was a killer cameo when you started to see how everything fit together. Toole loved the Toons. Young cops had urged him to smoke a joint before watching, because when they did they laughed so hard their asses fell off. But he got all the pleasure he needed out of them without assistance. Besides, he never smoked dope when he was on duty. What could be stupider than getting tripped up by chickenshit regulations when you were doing some serious lawbreaking?

The Toons were selected video clips from closed circuit security cameras that got put together every week or so on the department’s in-house website. A cop might forget there was a camera in his cruiser, and everybody got to see him get out and take a leak in full colour. People who got arrested and put in the back seat sometimes did amazing things with parts of their bodies — stretching and waggling them around. The cops always said that if real movies had stuff in them like they saw in the Toons, it would make them more true to life, such as when the closed circuit caught a guy shooting another guy outside an apartment building. But if you ran the tape back further, you could see the gunman, while he’s waiting for the other guy to show up, picking his nose and looking at what he picked really very closely. It’s like he was thinking,
Whoa! I never saw anything like this before in my life!
The techies edited it so this ran over and over — picks nose, shoots guy, picks nose, shoots guy — until everybody was laughing so hard they were almost sick to their stomachs.

Most times, though, they were just peculiar things, and even the compilers weren’t sure why they’d included them. The famous bank security tape of Nina with her forehead on the counter in front of the teller, rocking from side to side, wasn’t famous because it had showed up on YouTube and everybody was talking about it everywhere, or even because a lot of people saw it on the Toons and said it should be in the annual highlight reel. It was famous because one person remembered it a few weeks after seeing it. As a result, something in his mind was triggered when he first set eyes on her. A couple of days later, he thought,
Hey!
and started going back through the Toons for the last while. When the techies dug out all the bank’s videos for that day, he got to see her outside minutes after the scene at the counter. She looked as if she was having an argument with some of his uniformed brothers and sisters from the holdup squad. Whatever was happening there on the sidewalk, though, there was no mention of it in the reports. According to the squad’s daily log, that call to the bank had been due to a false alarm.

Toole got the techies to do a computer search of other days around that time, and they discovered another performance by the same woman. Another performance at the same bank. This time another little round lady was with Carson’s sister. They were both dressed in crummy T-shirts and sweats that made him think of panhandlers on the stairs in the subways. The tape showed the women coming in the front door. Then they stopped, facing each other. Then the other woman puked on the Carson woman’s shoes. Then they ran out. It was like a bit of surreal slapstick from some old silent movie, beautiful and perfect. Toole watched that clip a dozen times. It made him laugh so hard his ass fell off.