Giles Blunt - No Such Creature

They had met at work. Bill was covering the day shift at the Flamingo, and he’d caught her coming out of a twelfth-floor corner suite in a maid’s outfit. It was only a matter of luck, really. He’d been up on the floor because a female guest was complaining that one of her many suitcases had been stolen. It had taken Bill all of about five minutes to determine the real story. She had complained the previous day about elevator noise in her tenth-floor room, so they’d moved her. Somehow they missed a suitcase that had been tucked in the back of her closet, and it had remained behind in the other room.

As Bill was coming out of her room, he saw this very attractive maid emerging from the suite at the end of the hall. Bill happened to know that the twelfth floor had already been cleaned, so he went to ask her a thing or two.

“Sorry,” she’d said. “I’m new here.”

He’d then asked for her hotel ID, which was clipped to her belt. It turned out to belong to someone else entirely. The only thing she had in common with the photo was dark hair. He cuffed her right there in the hall while he looked through her maid’s cart.

“Well, if that don’t beat all,” he’d said, pulling two purses out of the cart. “You always wheel cash and valuables around in a cleaning trolley?”

“I have no idea how that stuff got in there,” she said.

He took her down in the freight elevator to the security office, sending his junior to go work the lobby. The normal routine was to get a name and take a photograph, and then call the police to send a car. A security man was essentially just a witness. She had told him her name-phony as it turned out-and he had taken the picture. He had even had his hand on the phone, ready to dial.

Then she said, “Please don’t call the cops.” Normally, of course, he would have ignored such a request. He had arrested more than a few women in his time on the force, most of whom broke down in tears right away, and he had always found it easy to ignore. Some had hinted at the possibility of sexual favours in exchange for freedom, and he’d ignored that too. He booked them all. But that was before Jesus had come into his life.

Sabrina hadn’t burst into tears. She had just explained, pretty accurately, how things would go if she was arraigned on a break-and-enter charge: the bail, the trial, the last-minute guilty plea and-since this was a first offence-the suspended sentence. “I just don’t see it doing me or the owners of that property any good, do you?”

“And where in creation did you get the idea that I’m here to do you good, young lady?”

“I don’t know. Something in your face, I guess. Something tells me there’s more to you than your job.”

He knew, despite the evident sincerity in those green eyes, that this girl was fast-talking him, but somehow it didn’t matter. Las Vegas was full of beautiful women, and sex was readily available; it wasn’t that. Something about Sabrina got to him in a way that was new, and for the first time he sensed what Ronnie Deist called “the touch of the Lord’s guiding hand.” Bill Bullard was being called off the bench to help with the Lord’s game plan.

“If I were to let you go, there would be certain conditions,” he had said, amazed at himself even as the words left his lips.

“Such as?”

“Well, you’d have to come to church with me for one.”

“Are you serious?”

“And not just once. You’d have to come once a week for a couple of months.”

“That’s possible. I’m not saying I’ll do it yet. What else?”

“You’d have to let me help you.”

“What, you’re a priest now? A social worker?”

“No, I’m just a man who sees a person in trouble. You tell me you got no money and your landlord’s kicking you out end of the month. You’d have to let me help you find a job and a place to stay.”

“Okay, fine,” she said. “But if you think I’m going to sleep with you, you can dial the cops right now.”

So Bill set about trying to bring Jesus into Sabrina’s life. He put his all into behaving the way Ronnie Deist would have-cheerful, helpful, relentlessly correct-a gentleman from morning till night, protective of the weaker vessel. And oh, what a vessel: that smile, those eyes, that obviously divinely crafted shape. Sabrina was so pretty she made his knees wobble. But here she was in Las Vegas, where she’d had some idea of becoming a croupier. Her daddy’s rap sheet hadn’t helped her there. Then she’d been working as a waitress at Bistro Monty, and the manager had harassed her so much she’d had to quit.

First thing Bill did was contact Luigi Monticello, the eponymous owner of Luigi’s. When he was still on the force, Bill had gotten a crooked health inspector off Luigi’s back, and the old spaghetti slinger had never forgotten it. Sabrina aced her tryout shift, and was soon working a couple of nights a week. Score one for the Lord.

On the apartment front, he had not been so lucky. He had gone over the papers and the Internet ads relentlessly, but the studio apartments they looked at were either uninhabitable or too expensive for her ever to save any money. After three weeks he’d suggested she move in with him. Strictly platonic, he’d promised, and he’d meant it. Lord knows he’d meant it.

Sabrina kept her part of the bargain by going to church with him every Sunday. Although she was always polite about it, it was obviously not “taking.” He’d ask what she thought about the sermon and she’d just smile and shake her head. “Not for me,” she’d say. “Sorry, Bill. Not for me.”

When she finally had to move out of her apartment, she did agree to come and stay with him. “But let’s get this straight,” she had said. “The minute you put a hand on me, or come into my room, or make the least sexual suggestion, I am out of there, is that understood?”

“I have no problem with that,” Bill said. “You see, Sabrina, my faith has taught me to be grateful for all I have, and you’d just be doing me a favour in letting me share some of that happiness. No cost to you whatsoever. Except the church. The church deal stays the same.”

When she first moved in, she’d stayed in her room all the time. He had to coax her out of there like a stray, talk her into watching a little TV or sitting in the living room over a beer.

Now and again he would indulge in some Bible talk, trying to open her up to the idea that God is not just for Sundays. When the moment seemed apt, he would call up a telling story from the Old or New Testament. Sometimes she listened, nodding thoughtfully. Often she laughed.

“You’re such a wacko, Bill,” she’d say. “You know that, don’t you? You’re a religious wacko.”

“If by that you mean the life and death of Jesus Christ informs my day from morning to night, then yes, I hope I am a religious wacko.”

“See, only a wacko would say something like that.”

Bill remembered the spark in her eye when she’d said that, the rueful way she shook her head, black hair swinging, and it pricked his heart. It was the good things that hurt the most-her smile, her laugh. His life was a gutted hulk without them, even if Jesus was still around.

“The Lord must want something of me,” Bill told himself, sitting up on the couch. “He’s sending me this pain for a reason. He wants me to learn something. He’s telling me it’s not over. There’s more in this particular lesson plan for Bill Bullard.”

From a cluttered desk drawer he pulled out a portable hard drive, plugged it into his computer, and booted up. Bill did not pride himself on a great many things, Lord knew he had his limitations, but he did have a certain gift of foresight. Sabrina was not always gently amused by his efforts to protect-and, all right, correct-her, and this led to arguments and shouting and even a swat or two. And one night, after things had reached a particularly unpleasant pitch and he was certain that Sabrina was planning to catch the next flight out, he had attached a FireWire to her PowerBook and sucked out a copy of her entire hard drive.