Chapter Thirty-eight

“Jack, what the fuck are we going to do?” Oscar asked.

“I'm working on it,” Jack replied.

“Well, work on this, too, bro,” Oscar said. “I'm getting weaker by the minute.” “What?”

“I was shot, remember? Well, I've lost a lot of blood and I feel real dizzy. I can barely sit up.”

“Can you hang on a little longer?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, man, I think so. But we gotta make a move anyway, ese.”

Then they heard new, louder, terrified screams.

Behind the naked hipster Johnny Z, two more crosses were being brought into the room. And just behind the crosses two women were being dragged by hooded, masked men.

“Is that who I think it is?” Oscar asked, peering shakily from his bloodshot eyes.

“I can't fucking believe it—that's Michelle and Jennifer,” Jack said.

The girls had rags stuffed into their mouths.

The crosses were hastily raised, but there seemed to be some trouble with one of them.

“The crossbar is sagging,” Oscar said.

“What's the fucking world coming to?” Jack asked rehetorically. “You just can't find a good crucifix maker anymore.”

“You better show some respect,” the guy in front of them said. “Or that could be you two assholes up there!”

The entire congregation seemed to be getting antsy now and their leader, Alex Williams, moved quickly to his pulpit.

“As you can see there have been some last-minute additions,” he said. “But while my assistants are getting prepared there's no reason we can't start with our first trial.”

“It's Williams, all right,” Jack said, recognizing his voice. “He's been in with Lucky all along.”

Jack looked to his left and saw a masked man just down from Oscar, staring intently at Oscar's feet. Jack looked down and saw blood dripping on the floor. Then he looked to his right and saw a couple of the men watching him, too.

He wanted to attack now, before the trial started, but Oscar was leaning on his shoulder and Jack had to hold him up. He'd have to wait. If he stood up now they'd both be caught, and maybe shot by the guards along the wall, before they even got out of their seats.

Alex Williams made a pyramid sign with his hands. A second later, everyone stood and made the sign as well, including Jack, but Oscar stayed in his chair.

After Alex lowered his hands to his sides, everyone sat down again.

“We are here tonight to accomplish a deeply serious task,” the Blue Wolf leader said. “We must discuss the guilt or innocence of these three people who are accused of extreme crimes against the elderly. Some of us may be tempted to be lenient. We may say, ‘Well, none of these people have been arrested, tried, and convicted of said crimes, and therefore who are we to play judge, jury, and executioner?’ But that is the very attitude that has been the bane of our existence. Older people in our society, the very ones who created the best of the world we live in, are not valued enough for anyone to bother to arrest those who commit crimes against them. Do not doubt it. I will not bore you with statistics except to say that every model we have used has come to the same conclusion. Which is this: if the crimes of these three defendants had been committed against younger people they would have not only been arrested but put in prison for years, possibly even executed. But since the victims were senior citizens—and I use the phrase proudly—they were not taken seriously. We have tried to petition the powers that be but our earnest entreaties have been met with a silence that borders on outright ridicule.”

The gathering in the cave suddenly came to life with cries of “No, no, no!” Many of them stood in their places and raised their fists in the air, screaming. Jack looked at Oscar, who was breathing deeply, trying to get his head clear.

The brethren in the cave sat down again and Alex Williams nodded his head as though he understood their anger.

“This is why we decided that we must make our own justice, a real justice, commensurate with the crimes committed.”

The crowd went berserk. The people leaped to their feet and began to scream like madmen.

“Yes!”

“Justice!”

“We, who created the world we live in, the great modern world of Western civilization, will not go down defeated like the generations before us. We will not submit and we shall not be moved!”

The audience screamed again and Jack felt a deep fear in his soul. How in the hell would they ever stop this and live to tell about it?

Williams continued.

“First, we shall have the readings of the crimes. I bring to your attention the case of Philip and Dee Dee Holden, owners of the Evergreen Retirement Community in Columbus, Ohio.”

Williams looked up at Dee Dee and Phil, each on their own cross, dripping blood. They looked down at him with eyes so filled with fear that they almost seemed comical.

But Williams didn't laugh or show any pity whatsoever.

“This supposed four-star retirement community houses over four thousand people. Their brochures and DVDs, their radio and TV spots, would have you believe that their community is a paradise for people over sixty-five.”

Alex Williams picked up a brochure and waved it at the audience.

“Let me read a little of this to you. ‘Evergreen is a virtual paradise for the elderly. The golf course, designed by Arnold Palmer, makes every day a great one for novices and old pros alike.’ Interesting, when you consider twenty-three people were bitten by rats on the greens just last year.”

The audience roared with disdainful laughter while Phil and Dee Dee groaned in agony.

Alex Williams's words continued to torture Phil. He had to hang there and listen as Williams read about the old people who had had strokes in the cafeteria and been left there to drool and spasm out on the floor until they expired. Why? Because Phil hadn't paid the money he owed to the insurance companies that indemnified the hospitals, so there was no emergency service at Evergreen. Phil twitched in agony as he heard case after case of neglect, of old people being left out in the snow to freeze, of a grandmother being robbed at gunpoint by her own nurse, and of the case of a feeble old minister who had objected to his treatment and was therefore injected with the wrong medicine and died of shock before the ambulance arrived.

Phil squirmed in guilt and pain. There were so many crimes documented that he had forgotten most of them. A woman who had been raped by an attendant, another woman who had been shaken down to get cable service and, when she refused to pay, had been thrown out of an upstairs window. On and on they went.

Of course, Phil did recall some of them. Why? Because he had paid for them to go away. Had paid so many people he scarcely thought it fair to bring them all up again now. He'd paid inspectors from welfare, from Medicare, lawyers hired by people who had barely survived the impossibly harsh treatment they had received from the jerks he'd hired. He had paid cops, doctors, teachers, and the sons and daughters of those who had been injured and killed at Evergreen.

He had paid them and made most of them go away!

He was great with such negotiations. He had a real knack for it. And the ones he couldn't handle Dee Dee had taken care of, playing the sweet and innocent wife, opening her heart to people who had suddenly lost their mothers because they had accidentally fallen from a cheapo balcony that had collapsed.

Dee Dee had the human touch, one of the things he loved her for.

But look where all his talents had gotten him.

Strung up on a cross, with nails in his hands and feet.

And he hadn't even been convicted yet!