Mercedes Lackey - Fiddler Fair (anthology)

First things first; Brother Lee’s wallet had been lying on the stand beside the bed. Lester grabbed it, pulled some bills out of it and shoved them at Star. The little blond grabbed them and fled without a word.

Now one complication had been dealt with. Star wouldn’t say anything to anyone; a hooker whose clients died didn’t get much business.

Then, he had helped Brother Lee back into his pants; shoved the wallet into his coat-pocket (a small part of his mind writhing with envy to see that the suit was Armani and the fabric was silk) and draped the coat over Brother Lee’s shoulders. He could not be found here; he had to be found somewhere neutral and safe.

There were car keys on the nightstand too; Lester had assumed they were for the vehicle outside. He had hoped there was a car-phone in it, but even if there hadn’t been he could still have worked something out.

But there had been a phone, a portable; Lester dialed the emergency number, returned to the ­motel room, got Brother Lee into the car and got the car down into the street moments before the ambulance arrived. There was, after all, no harm in being rescued from the street—only in being taken from a motel room in a state of undress. He had followed the ambulance in Brother Lee’s car, and claiming to be a relative, set himself up in the waiting room.

The reporters came before the doctors did. He had told them a carefully constructed but simple story; that he had met Brother Lee just that day, that the great man had offered his advice and help out of the kindness of his heart, and that they had been driving to Lester’s little storefront church when Brother Lee began complaining of chest pains, and then had collapsed. Smiling modestly, Lester credited the Lord with helping him get the car safely to the side of the road. He’d also spewed buckets of buzzwords about God calling the man home and how abundant life was to believers. The reporters accepted the story without a qualm.

He had made certain that Brother Lee found out exactly what he had told the reporters.

He bided his time, checking with the hospital twice a day, until Lee was receiving visitors. Finally Brother Lee asked to see him.

He had gone up to the private room to be greeted effusively and thanked for his “quick thinking.” Lester had expected more than thanks, however.

He was already framing his discreet demand, when Brother Lee startled him by offering to give him his heart’s desire.

“I’m going to give you the secret of my success,” the preacher had said, in a confidential whisper. “I used to be a Man of God; now I just run a nice scam. You just watch that spot there.”

Lester had been skeptical, expecting some kind of stunt; but when the quiet, darkly handsome man in the blue business suit appeared in a ring of fire at the foot of Brother Lee’s hospital bed, he had nearly had a heart-attack himself. It wasn’t until Brother Lee introduced the—being—as “My colleague, Mister Lightman” that Lester began to understand what was going on.

Brother Lee had made a compact with the Devil. The “number one saver of souls” on the airwaves was dealing with the Unholy Adversary.

And yet—it made sense. How else could Brother Lee’s career have skyrocketed the way it had without some kind of supernatural help? Lester had assumed it was because of Mafia connections, or even help from—Him—but it had never occurred to him that Brother Lee had gone over to the Other Side for aid. And Brother Lee and his “colleague” had made it very clear to Lester that such aid was available to him as well.

Still, there was such a thing as high-tech trickery. But Mr. Lightman was ready for that suspicion.

“I will give you three requests,” the creature said. “They must be small—but they should be things that would have no chance of occurring otherwise.” He had smiled, and when Lester had a glimpse of those strange, savagely pointed teeth, he had not thought “trickery,” he had shuddered. “When all three of those requests have been fulfilled, you may call upon me for a more complete contract, if you are convinced.”

Lester had nodded, and had made his requests. First, that the transmission of his car, which he had already had inspected and knew was about to go, be “healed.”

Lightman had agreed to that one, readily enough.

Second, that his rather tiresome wife should be removed permanently from his life.

Lightman had frowned. “No deaths,” he had said. “That is not within the scope of a ‘small’ request.”

Lester had shrugged. “Just get her out. You can make me look stupid,” he said. “Just make me sympathetic.” Lightman agreed.

And third, that the sum of ten thousand, two hundred and fifty three dollars end up in Lester’s bank account. Why that sum, Lester had no idea; it was picked arbitrarily, and Lightman agreed to that, as well.

He had vanished the same way he had arrived, in a ring of fire that left no marks on the hospital linoleum. That was when Brother Lee had given him the battered pages, encased in plastic sleeves.

“This is yours, now,” Brother Lee had said. “When you want Lightman to bring you a contract, you follow these directions.” He grimaced a little. “I know they’re kind of unpleasant, but Lightman says they prove that you are sincere.”

Lester had snorted at the idea of the Devil relying on sincerity, but he had taken the sheets anyway, and had returned to his car to wait out the fulfillment of the requests.

The very first thing that he noticed was that the transmission, which had been grinding and becoming harder to shift, was now as smooth as if it was brand new. Now, it might have been possible for Lightman to know that Lester’s tranny was about to go—certainly it was no secret down at the garage—but for him to have gotten a mechanic and a new transmission into the parking lot at the hospital, performed the switch, and gotten out before Lester came down from the hospital—well, that was practically impossible.

But there were other explanations. The men at the garage might have been lying. They might have doctored his transmission the last time he was in, to make him think it needed work that it didn’t. Something could have been “fixed” with, he didn’t know, a turn of a screw.

Then two days later, he came home to find a process-server waiting for him. The papers were faxed from his wife, who was filing for divorce in Mexico. He found out from a neighbor that she had left that morning, with no explanations. He found out from a sniggering “friend” that she had run off with a male stripper. As he had himself specified; she was gone, he had been made to look stupid, but among his followers, he also was garnering sympathy for having been chained to “that kind” of woman for so long.

She had cleaned out the savings account, but had left the checking account alone.

But that left him in some very dire straits; there were bills to pay, and her secretarial job had been the steady income in the household. With that gone—well, he was going to need that ten grand. If it came through.

Late that Wednesday night, as he was driving back from the storefront church and contemplating a collection of less than twenty dollars, the back of an armored car in front of him had popped open and a bag had fallen out. The armored car rolled on, the door swinging shut again under its own momentum as the car turned a corner. There was no one else on the street. No witnesses, either walking or driving by.

He stopped, and picked up the bag.

It was full of money; old worn bills of varying denominations; exactly the kind of bills people put into the collection plate at a church. There were several thousand bills in the bag.

They totaled exactly ten thousand, two hundred, and fifty three dollars. Not a copper penny more.