The last time Lenny came to see me, he was spitting mad. Second he got to the motel he drank a double bourbon straight down, then another. Took him a while to calm down enough to tell me what was going on.
Turned out that Lenny had found out Dr Lund had organised a rally for Mitch Reynard in Fort Worth. Some sort of pro-Israel, ‘Believers Unite’ convention, and it burned Lenny bad that he hadn’t been invited to speak at it. And that wasn’t all of it. After he did that radio show–the one where that New York DJ ripped him a new one–Dr Lund had sent a publicist down to see Lenny. The publicist (who Lenny described as a ‘jumped-up two-bit lackey in a suit’) told him that he wasn’t to draw too much attention to himself, and to let Dr Lund and Flexible Sandy spread the news about Pamela’s message their way. Lenny was also pissed that Dr Lund didn’t want him involved in searching for that fourth child.
‘I’ve got to find a way to convince him that he needs me, Lo,’ he said. ‘Pamela chose me, me, to spread the word. He has to see that.’
I wouldn’t say I felt sorry for Lenny, but Dr Lund cutting him off, hijacking his message, you could see it made him feel like the unpopular kid at school. And I don’t think it had anything to do with money. Lenny said his website was bringing in donations from all over the world. You ask me, it was pride more than anything.
Dr Lund may have cooled towards him, but Lenny’s message was catching on like wildfire. People I never thought of as religious were going and getting themselves saved. Couple of my johns even went and did it. Some of them, sure, you could see they were just doing it as insurance–in case it did turn out to be the truth. Didn’t matter that the Episcopalians and even those Muslim leaders were saying there was no reason to panic, people really started believing it, you know? There were just all these signs happening all over the world–signs of plague, famine, war and whatever. That puke virus and the foot and mouth disease were getting worse, and then came that drought in Africa and the big scare when the North Koreans threatened to test their nuclear weapons. That was just the start. Then there were all those rumours about Bobby’s grandfather and that robot stuff that was going down with the Japanese kid. It was almost as if every time Lenny’s theories were shot down by someone, up would come another sign that backed them up. If you’d asked me back when I first met Lenny if he could have caused such a stir, I wouldn’t have credited it.
‘I need a stronger platform, Lo,’ he kept saying. ‘Dr Lund’s taking everything. He’s acting like it was all his idea.’
‘Isn’t this all about saving souls though, honey?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, course it’s about saving people.’ He got real mad about that, went on about how time might be running out and how he and Dr Lund should be working together. He didn’t even want to do his usual that day. Too wound up, couldn’t… you know. Said he had to go meet with that Monty fellow anyhow, start planning on how he was going to get back into the big boys’ good graces. He told me that there were quite a few ‘messengers’ like Monty already staying at his ranch, and I guess he was thinking about how it would be a good thing to invite more.
After he left, I was getting all my stuff together, ready to head on back to my apartment and my next client, when there was a knock on the door. I figured maybe it was Lenny again, regretting that he’d wasted our hour together just talking. I opened it, saw a woman standing there. I knew who she was straight away. I’d have known her just by the dog, that Snookie. She looked even thinner than when she appeared on Dr Lund’s show. Skinny–too skinny, like one of those anorexics. But her expression was different. She didn’t look as lost as she did back then. She didn’t come across as angry or anything like that, but there was a look in her eyes that said, ‘Don’t mess with me.’
She looked me up and down and I could tell she was trying to figure out what Lenny saw in me. ‘How long have you and him been doing this?’ she asked straight off.
I told her the truth. She nodded, and then pushed past me into the room. ‘You love him?’ she asked.
I almost laughed. I said that all Lenny was to me was one of my regulars. I wasn’t his girlfriend or mistress or anything like that. I know quite a few of my clients are married; that’s their business.
This seemed to give her some comfort. She sat down on the bed, asked me to fix her a drink. I handed her the same drink Lenny always has. She sniffed it, then drank it in one gulp. It ran down her chin and made her gag, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She waved her hand around the room and said, ‘All this, what you been doing with him. I paid for it. I paid for everything.’
I didn’t know how to answer that. I knew Lenny depended on her for money, didn’t know the extent of it though. She put the dog down on the bed next to her. It sniffed the sheets, then slumped on its side as if it was fixing to curl up and die. I knew they didn’t allow animals in the motel, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.
She asked me what Lenny liked, and I told her the truth. She said that at least he hadn’t been hiding some weird sexual fetish from her all those years.
Then she asked me if I believed in what he was saying, about the children being the horsemen. I said I wasn’t sure what to believe. She nodded, stood up to leave. Didn’t say anything else to me. There was a deep sadness inside her. I could see that straight off. It had to have been her who told the Inquirer about me and Lenny. It was only a day or so afterwards that this reporter called me up, pretending he was a regular john. Luckily I had my wits about me that day, but it didn’t stop the photographers trying their luck for days afterwards.
I came clean to Denisha after that, told her that Lenny was one of my clients. It didn’t surprise her. You can’t shock Denisha. She’s seen it all. Probably you’re wondering how I feel about Lenny now. Like I say, people are always trying to get me to say he was a monster. But he wasn’t. He was just a man. I guess when I decide to do that book those publishers are always after me to write, then I might talk about it more, but that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject for now.