CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

 

 

MARY JO SAT directly across a small Formica tabletop from Susan and next to Jean at a window table in Steven’s Deli. The deli was small and had only ten tables and a long meat and sandwich counter. A wall of windows along one wall made the place feel like it was almost open to the city street.

Only two construction workers at a back table were in the place at the moment.

Mary Jo loved it here, since not only did they make a great salad with radishes and cucumbers and carrots, but the corned beef was some of the best in the city and that was going some for New York.

Besides that, the place always smelled heavenly of fresh bread and roasting meat combined.

Just on the other side of the wall of windows the normally busy traffic of New York streamed past. A delivery truck sat half onto the sidewalk near the back of the deli so that it forced people on the sidewalk into single-file along the windows.

Mary Jo loved how not a person walking by seemed to mind. It was just all part of a day in the city.

All three of them were eating basically the same lunch. All three had salads and Jean used an Italian dressing while Susan and Mary Jo both used vinegar and oil with a little salt. All three drank from bottles of water.

It turned out Susan came here often as well and the owner behind the counter had even called her by name when they came in. You had to be a regular in New York before that started happening.

And that meant that Susan lived somewhere in this neighborhood as well.

After they got seated, Mary Jo put a small phone-sized device on the table among them and clicked it on. “That blocks anyone listening to or recording this conversation from anywhere around us.”

Susan nodded and didn’t seem concerned in the slightest.

“So back to the beginning,” Jean said.

“You are going to have to confide everything in us,” Mary Jo said. “I know that’s not something we normally do in the order, but if we’re going to help you, we need to know every detail.”

Susan nodded again. “I had planned on that when I started searching for you for help.”

Silence except for the two construction workers across the small deli talking about some football game that Mary Jo didn’t care about.

Susan took another bite of her salad and then started into her story. Mary Jo couldn’t imagine telling anyone about her getting hired for a target and all the preliminary stuff she did, but they needed to know it all from Susan.

“I was contracted six years ago to target a man by the name of Jack Kelsall.”

Mary Jo glanced at Jean to see if she recognized the name. Clearly she didn’t.

“I was offered three million up front and seven million if I completed the task in a public fashion.”

“Wow,” Jean said. “Way above order normal.”

Mary Jo nodded. She had never heard of any assassin being offered that kind of money before. She had never come close to that amount, actually.

“The money doesn’t matter to me anymore,” Susan said. “Just part of the job. But I took the job and told the client it would take a lot of time. They gave me seven years.”

“Why seven years?” Mary Jo asked. There seemed to be no logical reason for such a time period.

“Seven years from the time I was hired,” Susan said, “Jack Kelsall will rise from the dead and speak to his followers and lead them into the new world, or some such garbage like that. Mostly he’ll just take a lot more of their money.”

“A dead guy has followers?” Jean asked a half second before Mary Jo could ask the same question.

“Millions and millions of them,” Susan said. “More by the day now. All waiting for him to rise from the dead. If he does, it will be sensational beyond words, a long con that took twenty-five years to set up and play out.”

Susan had been talking and all Mary Jo had gotten was more confused.

“I am missing some huge bits of information here,” Mary Jo said and beside her Jean was nodding her head as well. “Explain what you mean by a long con?”

“Twenty-five years ago,” Susan said, “Jack Kelsall and a close friend by the name of Carson White started a small religion based on the belief that it was possible to return from death to become immortal. Both were archeology and history students so they actually took some truths from our ancient order beliefs, but got most wrong.”

“Okay,” Mary Jo said. She didn’t want to sidetrack the conversation by digging into order beliefs that had made the three of them basically immortal. That would be a conversation for later.

“The religion they set up is called Ever Life. It had managed to attract enough followers to make a little money with their scam. But they needed to have Kelsall die and then come back to life to make the big bucks in the con.”

“So that’s what’s behind Ever Life,” Jean said, shaking her head. “Always wondered.

“Never heard of it before,” Mary Jo said.

“You are lucky,” Susan said. “They seem to be everywhere these days as the promised resurrection gets closer.”

“So Kelsall faked his own death and went into hiding twenty-four years ago,” Mary Jo said, starting to understand the problem a little better.

“And Carson White kept running the church,” Jean said.

Susan nodded. “They faked a jump from a bridge, body never found. Then White and the remaining church members got to work on Jack’s promise to return to his congregation in exactly twenty-five years, an immortal being.”

“And they’ve been milking these poor souls for money the entire time?” Jean asked.

“They have,” Susan said. “Thousands of prep products, courses to learn balance and rituals to prepare the soul to leave and then return as an immortal being. All costing thousands and thousands. They have taken in more millions than I want to imagine.”

“A real long con,” Mary Jo said. “Just like any typical religion.”

Jean nodded to that.

Mary Jo sat there in silence as the other two kept eating. This was really an amazing scam this guy was pulling. Amazing and about to work unless they found and really put the guy into the ground first.

In a public fashion.

And if three order assassins couldn’t do that, working together, no one could.