“Hay-soos Christo.”
“Hay-soos Christo.”
“Hay-soos Christo.”
The whispers whipped into worshipful wails. Blasphemous blackshirts blew the blessing out in synergistic sync. I stood up stunned and stung by the fragrance of Frankincense.
The Juke Box Jesus. Re-resurrected in Rayban shades and a wild white sheet. Re-toupeed and regal in lizard loafers and a crazy crown of thorns whipped up from wires and widgets and White House whatnots.
He walked our way. He waved a transistor radio vandalized from the van. “Ave Maria” ate up the air–off the album “AllTime Hits” by Craig Crawford’s Christian Chorale.
He walked our way. He oozed optimum oomph. Juke Box Jesus outworks God at the Galilee Lounge in Las Vegas. He slid on his slick lizard loafers and lurched levitatingly.
He sliced and sluiced our way. He wiggled on wet grass. He warbled, “I grant you your freedom!”
Nine hundred niños went nuts. They stampeded–stigmata stained and hurled by the Holy Spirit.
They gored the guards. They tore at them with the tools they toiled with. They beat them with ball-peen hammers and hacked them with sheet-metal shears. They bullwhipped them and machetified them with machine-gun fire. They barged into the barbed-wire barrier barbarically strong. They ran though it razor-wracked and idolatrously indifferent.
Sammy said, “Dig it!”
The fence flew up and flattened the buffet table. Two dozen blackshirts went down wire whipped and barbed in the balls. Tojo took it all in. He stood trenchantly transfixed. He put his pistol to his teeth and tripped the trigger. I dodged whizzing wires and picked his pockets. I lifted the little Lucifer key ring.
Machine-gun fire torqued the table and tore it to tidbits. My mink moneybag was flayed to fur flecks. My half-million got bullet-burned and scrip-scrapped and devalued to a micro-dime on the dollar.
I vaulted up to the van. Sammy ran up rápido. Stigmata-stung muchachos stuck machine guns in the air and mowed down malevolent spirits. A group gravitated up to Mink Mountain. My stole stash was stripped to strings by stray bullets.
Sammy said, “Dig it!”
I sought out Savior Sinatra. I saw him swaying sweet in his sharp shades and sheet. He was smiling smug and smoking a cigarette. He was righteously and re-resurrectedly cooooooooool.
7
I lost my mink and my money. My psycho sidekick succumbed to the Savior and re-Sambofied himself resurrectionally.
I remained a Hush-Hush heretic and hauled to T.J. I left Juke Box Jesus and his jig John the Baptist at their cut-rate Calvary. Frank was serving up the Sermon on Mex Mountain. Ring-ading–nine hundred niflos noncomprehending. No way for them to grok and groove “Clip Me, Clyde” and “Baby, You’re Knocking Me Numbsville.”
Dig it, distinct:
It didn’t matter. The motherfucker made magic and charmed children into mass murder.
I dipped up to Club Diablo. I stashed my van by some burro stalls and stood by the basement door. I tried Tojo’s keys. Number two tickled the lock and let me in.
I latched it behind me. I swicked on a wall switch and laid some light in. A long corridor led to a crud-crusted crawl space.
The corridor reeked of cordite and caustic chemicals. I coughed and caught sight of hipbones and hair-hanks in a hardened heap. Blood blips and flesh flaps flared out flat on the walls.
Tojo’s torture chamber.
Quivering quiet upstairs. No delighted donkeyphile dementia. The club might be closed. Tojo’s minions might have caught word on the coup at Calvary.
I walked wary. I crept into the crawl space. I skivved my way through skeletons and scooted through scorched scalps. I squealed and squirmed into another hipbone-heaped hallway.
I saw a dust-covered door. I ratched keys into a rusty lock. Key number three tumbled the tumblers. I tumbled into a tunnel-like enclosure.
Shelves shot floor to flat ceiling. Film cans filled them up. Tape strips were stuck to the edges. Date designations blipped out in black block print.
Bolted to the back wall: a rust-ratched movie magnification machine.
The cans were crammed in chronologically. The dates dipped back to 1936. I started there and shot my eyes shelf to shelf.
I hit 3/9/53. The date distracted me. I got dizzy. My memory mailed me a message: the Mabel Monahan murder.