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The FBI/Kansas City Police Joint Task Force was called to order. Detective Tom Griggs sat back in his desk chair. Baseball in hand, rubbing his thumb on the stitching.
Charlie watched. Bit his lip. A baseball like that should be in a glass case.
Special Agent O’Malley, chomping gum like a cowboy, was sharing the results of their tap on suspected crime boss Ted Massey. “I’ll admit, when we started our watch on Massey, I thought it was going to be tough.”
Griggs leaned back and set one foot on his desk. “How do you mean?”
“All we had was speculation and hearsay. Massey seemed to keep his counsel to himself. In public, all of Massey’s conversations with his friends, family members, and employees—as far as we could ascertain through our previous means—were about legitimate business. We were worried we would never get close enough to find the difference.” O’Malley grinned. Pointed at Griggs. “But that sprinkler job was a work of genius.”
Griggs smiled. Shrugged. “I knew it was worth a shot.”
Charlie frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Griggs leaned forward and gave Charlie a patient look. “Do you remember when we paid Massey a visit?”
“Sure.” Charlie thought back to the weird trip to The Palm. Griggs had been so secretive. Acting so loopy. Demanding a meeting with a reputed crime boss. The entire conversation had been so vague, it begged the question, why bother? Then the lightbulb went on. “The guy on the ladder!”
O’Malley nodded. “That’s right. It was so simple that Massey never expected it. When you guys barged in there, Massey was so focused on Griggs—trying to figure out what a Kansas City cop was doing there—that he never thought to check the sprinkler after our men finished ‘fixing’ it. We installed listening devices in the back dining room, the kitchen, and the back office.”
“Sometimes the simplest things work best of all.” Griggs sat up. Set the baseball on the stand. “So, now you have your listening devices in place. What has it got you so far?”
Special Agent Harper pulled a large fold of paper from a case. “Now that we hear some of the back-room discussions, we know that Massey has several low-rent mobsters working the streets for him. It is exactly like we suspected—he is pushing certain pressure points to get local businesses to move. In particular, around this area.” She spread the map out on Griggs’s desk. Pointed to a red felt-pen circle. “It’s a depressed area. Even without the problem of organized crime, the business district is struggling already.”
“Yeah.” Charlie leaned in, looking at the map. “Several businesses around there are shut down or wheezing.”
“So what does that mean to Massey?” Griggs absentmindedly grabbed the baseball again. “If his goal is not to bleed protection money out of them, then why is he going to the trouble?” He started rolling the ball from hand to hand. “Even if he wants that property, why can’t he just wait them out? Buy them out? He’s a major businessman. Why take the risk with a lot of low-rent muscle?”
Harper pointed to another line on the map. “There is some major construction coming through that area. The mayor is coaxing a big developer to come in and build a major shopping center.” She looked up from the map. “The most likely place to build is right there in the middle. If Massey sits back and waits, he could miss out when this development deal goes public.”
“And everyone who owns property along there suddenly becomes rich.” Charlie grinned crookedly. “If they develop that district—shopping centers, strip malls, restaurants—it would be worth millions to anyone even adjacent to it.”
“That’s right, Charlie-boy.” O’Malley set a stack of printouts on the desk. “By the way, the transcripts make for some interesting reading.”
Griggs grabbed some of the papers and started skimming. “Anything in here about the Reverend Glory case?”
“Actually, you’d be surprised.” O’Malley recounted Massey’s orders to two of his thugs, a Ross Cleaver and a Bill Lamb, demanding that they go out and solve the murder for him. When the FBI man finished the story, he chuckled. “So if they solve the murder, that could save you guys a lot of work.”
Griggs chuckled. “Funny.”
Charlie grabbed his notebook, started flipping through it. “I still think it’s significant that Glory made such an arrogant prediction. One that failed to come true.”
“You said it yourself—it happens all the time.” Griggs exchanged an amused look with O’Malley.
“Sure,” Charlie said, finding his place in his notebook, “AD 950 in France. A man named Adso of Montier-en-Der predicted the rise of the Antichrist, which he said would happen when the line of the French kings failed.
“AD 1200 in Italy. Followers of a mystic named Joachim of Fiore believed the new millennium would begin somewhere between the years 1200 and 1260.
“There were also false alarms in the 1600s, in the 1700s, in the 1800s, in the—”
Griggs cut him off. “Those were all a long time ago. People are more sophisticated now.”
Charlie sighed. “In 1988, a former NASA rocket engineer thought he had the date figured out. He printed up a pamphlet and sold millions of copies. He was wrong.
“In 1992, a man in Korea”—Charlie squinted at his notes—“convinced his followers the Rapture was coming, but only for the extremely faithful. Reportedly, some women had abortions to make sure they weren’t too heavy to be lifted up to heaven. The man bilked his followers out of some four million dollars.”
O’Malley rolled his eyes at Agent Harper. Chomped gum more loudly.
“The Tokyo subway gas attacks in the mid-’90s were engineered by a cult that believed its leader was Jesus come back in the flesh.
“In 1997, a church leader in St. Louis claimed—”
“We get it, Charlie,” Griggs sighed. “We get it. A lot of people got it wrong. Which, if Glory is just one more in a long line of wrong people, makes it less likely—”
“But whenever one of these fringe groups latches onto their personal plans for Jesus, they get a little excited about it.”
“Excited?”
“Fine—crazy. But these are the sorts of people who went out in 1999 and dug bunkers and stocked up on cans of beans, waiting for Y2K to shut down modern civilization.”
“Why, was that in the Bible?”
“No,” Charlie said. “And neither is October 17. But that doesn’t stop the fringe from thinking the universe revolves around their plans.”
Harper spoke up. “So you think that one of Glory’s followers got caught up in all this, and went berserk after it didn’t happen?”
Charlie nodded. “Maybe.”
O’Malley winked at Charlie. “So, Charlie-boy, you’re one of those church types. How did you avoid getting caught up in all the hysteria?”
“Because the Bible says not to get caught up in a lot of conspiracy theories. When Jesus comes back, I want to be doing the work, not caught with my nose in a bunch of charts and graphs.”
Griggs stood. “I think Charlie has the right idea. Let’s get back to work.”
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Tribulation House: Reloaded
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