Jeff Sherratt - The Brimstone Murders

I woke up tangled inthe sheets, the blanket in a heap on the floor. Stumbling into my kitchenette with the sheet draped around my middle, I rooted through the junk scattered all over the floor and found the coffeepot. I glanced up at the open cupboard; the cops had dumped out my Yuban. A small heap of coffee was on the floor next to a broken jar of strawberry jam. I wasn’t upset about the jam, it was moldy anyway, but I was pissed about the coffee. I scooped up enough for a cup and called the office while it brewed. No one was there, but Rita had left a message on the answering machine.

She had an early appointment scheduled with a Deputy D.A. in Pacoima and would touch bases with me later in the day. I was to leave my client’s file with Mabel, and she would review it before she phoned the guy. She wished me a good day and said, “Keep smiling, boss. It will work out.” Yeah, I’ll keep smiling, I mumbled, and poured myself a cup of freshly brewed dirt.

I drifted into the bathroom, showered, shaved, and after dressing-chino pants and a sport shirt-I left the apartment.

I called the office again from a payphone outside of Dolan’s Donuts. This time Mabel answered. I told her where to find the client file for Rita and said I would be tied up for a while. She said, so what, I didn’t have any client appointments anyhow. Before hanging up, I asked her if she’d seen my gun anywhere, and of course, she said no.

After the call, I headed north on the Santa Ana Freeway toward Chatsworth, then made the transition to the Ventura Freeway. The traffic was a breeze, and forty-five minutes after I’d left Downey I turned off at Winnetka Boulevard.

Gene Krupa, the great jazz drummer, told us a long time ago that the big wind blows and brings the big noise from Winnetka. There were no big noises coming from this Winnetka-just a lot of small noise, traffic noise, busy people being busy noise, and the noise of strip malls going up on every corner. I was in the San Fernando Valley, not Winnetka, Illinois.

On my right, halfway between the freeway and Devonshire Avenue, just past Nordhoff, I saw a closed-up White Front store that had been converted into the Divine Christ Ministry Church. The plain vanilla-white building, with its huge arch soaring over the entrance, was set back beyond a million acres of cracked blacktop, the old store’s vast parking lot. There were only a few cars scattered around there, but I imagined on Sunday the lot would be jammed and overflowing. Salvation was a hot ticket these days. Parked at the front, in the shade of the building, was a black Mercedes 600 stretch limousine.

I pulled up to the main entrance, parked next to the limo, and glanced up at a new sign mounted over the doublewide doors. Painted in red letters on a white background was the church’s name, Divine Christ Ministry. Directly below that in script were the words: A day without Jesus is like a day without sunshine. I wondered who came up with that slogan. It seemed a bit trite. I shook my head. Hey, we are talking about the Almighty here. It seemed to me they could have picked something a touch more magnanimous, something like, “Give money, or go to Hell.” Tell it like it is, I always said.

Walking to the building’s entrance, I noticed the limo driver, a giant of a man, leaning on the fender reading a newspaper. I nodded when he looked up. He pinned me with his hard eyes.

I pulled open one of the doublewide glass doors and entered the building. A long hallway led to the main auditorium. A few pictures hung on the walls, photographs of dour looking men, and farther down at the end of the hallway was a large portrait of Jesus-his beard was trimmed and neat, his long hair styled and combed to perfection. He had the look of a movie star. Like he might’ve bought his cloak and tunic at Sy Devor’s on Vine Street.

Several doors were cut into the hallway. I tried the one marked Office, but it was locked, so I continued on to the end of the hall which opened into a large auditorium.

The place didn’t look like any church I’d ever been in. It looked more like a basketball arena, high exposed-beam ceiling and wood floors, but there were no hoops in sight. And unlike a basketball court, the floor was covered with row upon row of gray metal folding chairs. At the north end, a large stage extended the width of the auditorium.

Up on the stage a small group of men and about a dozen young and attractive women stood in a circle. A guy standing in the middle of the group, wearing a pinstriped double-breasted suit, seemed to be getting all the attention. I walked purposefully toward the stage, as if I belonged there. One of the men, a tall, long-limbed guy dressed casually in denim pants and a short-sleeve white shirt, saw me coming.

“May I help you?” he called out.

I kept walking toward the stage, about thirty feet away. “Looking for Reverend Snavley,” I hollered back at the guy.

“I’m Reverend Elroy, Elroy Snavley, but we’re a little busy right now. Do you have an appointment?”

“Just need a second of your time.” I skirted the front row of chairs and moved to the center of the room. Nearing the edge of the stage, I looked up at the group. “Hey, I like your slogan, outside on the sign.” A little friendly banter to break the ice.

The other man, the one in the suit, stopped talking and made an irritated, shooing gesture directed at Reverend Elroy. He obviously wanted the reverend to get rid of me.

Elroy came to the edge of the stage and, squatting, looked down at me. He was about forty; a pleasant-looking guy, lightly freckled face, disheveled sandy hair, but his nose was too large to fit comfortably between his close-set eyes, which kept blinking.

“Oh, do you like my slogan?” he said. “I paraphrased Cicero. You know, ‘A room without books is like a body without a soul.’”

“Kinda sounded a little like the Gallo wine commercial, too,” I said. “You know, ‘A day without wine…’”

“Yeah, that too,” he said with a hint of irritation.

I didn’t want to tell him what Sol’s friend, a comedian, had said: ‘A day without sunshine is like night,’ didn’t want to get on Elroy’s bad side right out of the gate.

“Hey, Elroy, can we get on with this?” the man with the suit demanded.

The reverend glanced at the suit, then quickly back at me. “I’m sorry, sir, but as you can see I’m busy.”

The man in the suit stood stiffly with his chest puffed, glaring at me. He was in his mid-fifties, a little paunchy, and he had a large head with an abundance of silver hair, leonine in its grandeur. The man had an expensive barber, and his suit cost more than my car. The limo outside must be his, I presumed.

“It’s about Robbie Farris,” I said.

Elroy bolted upright and swiveled to Mr. Suit, the man obviously in charge.

The suit glared at me. His gaze felt like a blast from a hot furnace. “Come on, let’s talk,” he said.

The rich guy’s name, Ifound out, was J. Billy Bickerton. I’d heard of him. Who hadn’t? He owned a string of evangelical TV stations across the nation. These religious, nonprofit stations made a lot of money, and Bickerton was very rich indeed.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s get to the point here. Just what do you want from us?”

I ignored Bickerton and addressed Reverend Elroy. “Reverend, I’m a lawyer, a member of the bar, and I’m defending Robbie Farris.”

The good reverend blanched. “I don’t know anything about him.”

Reverend Elroy’s plain, threadbare-carpeted office wasn’t much, maybe twenty-five feet long and about twelve feet wide with a small wood desk jammed at one end. We sat at a card table at the opposite end, away from the desk. Bickerton, the big shot, took a seat across from me. The Reverend was perched in his chair, on my right, nervous like a twittering finch.