part0007

Next morning a watery sun touched broken clouds with damp amber and liquid blue as we made our way down Castle Hill Avenue, in search of the Church of the Holy Father and Son at the End of Days.

Dehan was hiding puffy eyes behind mirrored aviators, leaning back in her seat.

“He couldn’t come up with a long name, so he went for something short and pithy.”

I smiled. “It covers the basics. It’s a church and it is dedicated to the Holy Father and the Holy Son. He is not interested in the Holy Ghost or the Virgin Mary. And as far as he is concerned, we are approaching the end of days.”

“Partying with this guy has got to be a blast.”

“I read up about him while you were snoring on the sofa, cradling a glass of tequila in your hand.”

She didn’t sound like she meant it. “He got his degree in theology from the University of New York, then went on to Dunwoodie but dropped out after his first year and started preaching the word, as he heard it, wherever he could persuade people to listen to him. Apparently he was good at persuading, because after just two years he had gathered sufficient donations and pledges to buy a lot with a condemned building on it, and start construction of his own church. He is described variously as a firebrand, a visionary, a charismatic prophet for the new age and a dangerous charlatan.

“He has been condemned several times by black activists for not championing black rights, and he is universally reviled by women’s groups and PC activists generally for his stance on women and women’s rights.”

She turned her head to look at me, but all I could see was myself looking back at me in her shades.

“Why don’t we let him tell you that? We’re here.”

I spun the wheel and we rolled into Homer Avenue, then turned right and pulled into the parking lot at the back of the church. We climbed out and stood looking at the vast, modern structure for a while. Dehan spoke my thoughts.

“That’s a hell of a lot of donations in two years of preaching.”

“I wonder who he was preaching to.”

“Not the choir, Stone, that’s for sure. I detect the subtle aroma of the laundromat.”

We made our way to the front of the building. It had a beige façade with plate-glass doors and a large, burgundy awning that made it look like an Italian restaurant, or a casino. We pushed through into a large, airy room with polished wooden floors, high white ceilings and walls that were part bare brick and part pine tongue and groove. In the wall opposite us there were heavy, walnut double doors with brass handles, and above them a vast statue of a bearded man who was presumably Jesus, though he looked more Nordic than Jewish. He wore a white robe and held his arms wide in a gesture of welcome that was evocative of the cross, though there was no bleeding from injuries to his hands or feet, or his side.

Under the statue was a single wooden plaque that read, “Chapel.” We crossed the echoing antechamber and pushed through the walnut doors into a large chapel, carpeted in blood red with rows of blond wood benches facing a white, semicircular stage with no altar, but a vast, stylized white cross that tapered into points at the end of each pole, making it look more like a star than a cross.

At the foot of the stage there was a table draped with a white linen cloth, and a man in a black soutane bending over the table, stacking a large pile of books. He stood erect and turned as we came in. He was black, in his early thirties, handsome, lean and angry. At a glance I guessed that the man smiling reassuringly on the cover of the books he was holding was himself.

We started down the aisle toward him and I said, “Reverend James Campbell?”

The acoustics in the room were good and my voice echoed loudly. His voice was louder and deeper.

“That is I. Who, then, are you?”

I pulled my badge and sensed Dehan do the same beside me. “Detective John Stone, of the NYPD. This is my partner, Detective Carmen Dehan.”

He grazed her with his eyes as we drew level with him, and curled his lips.

“Where are your children, woman?”

I felt Dehan stiffen and spoke quickly. “Detective Dehan has no children, Reverend. We’d like to ask you some questions.”

He didn’t answer for a moment, but remained scrutinizing Dehan, then shifted insolent eyes onto me. “About what, Detective?”

“About your mother.”

“My mother was a whore of Babylon and was struck down and removed hence to hell as all whores will be when judgment comes. She is of no importance. Nothing. She served her purpose as an organ of birth to bring me forth as a crusader for the Father. Now she is gone.”

“That’s pretty harsh.” I reached out and picked up one of his books, looked at his posed, grinning form on the cover and turned it over to look at the back. “What did she do to earn the label, ‘whore’?”

“She fornicated! She fornicated freely and of her own free will. She fornicated with men and boys alike without restraint, and for coin. She transgressed the most sacred of the Father’s laws. She was a harlot!”

I managed a frown and a smile at the same time. “The most sacred of the Father’s laws? I assume you are talking about Jehovah?”

“What other Holy Father do you know of, Detective?”

I sat on the front pew and placed his book on my lap. “None, but I don’t recall any of the Ten Commandments saying anything about promiscuity. Number one states, in true Judeo-Christian fashion, that the faithful shall have no other god but Him. Two outlaws graven images and three is an admonition not to take the Lord’s name in vain. Four was to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, and five,” I paused to wag a finger at him, “admonished us to honor thy father and thy mother. We don’t get to though shalt not kill till number six. Seven enjoins us not to commit adultery but says nothing of consensual premarital sex. Eight tells us not to steal, nine not to bear false witness and ten bids us not to covet. Nothing there about being promiscuous or selling sexual services.”

He had gone very still. His eyes were venomous.

“You quote the Old Testament at me?”

I shrugged my eyebrows. “The most sacred of the Father’s laws? Where else would you find them but in the Ten Commandments?”

Suddenly he was bellowing. “The Bible is nothing but a pack of Jewish lies! A fabrication by the church of the Antichrist and Nicea! Open your eyes and see the truth! Open your mind and your heart to the truth of the Lord! ”

I raised my left hand while still looking down at the book on my lap. “Thank you, Reverend, but what I would really like to know is, what is this sacred law you are speaking about? Where did it come from?”

“It came from the Father! ”

“But how did you find it? How did you come by it? Where is it written?”

He narrowed his eyes and studied me for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally he gave a small cough and spoke quietly.

“The Father spoke to me. He opened my eyes and poured clear light into my mind and my heart, so that I was able of a sudden clearly to see the lies which beguile and blind the minds of men!”

Dehan took a seat on the far side of the aisle. He didn’t seem to notice her. “When was that?”

I made a point of not sounding confrontational, but intelligently interested. He picked up a copy of his own book and laid his palm on it.

“She was killing me, the harlot, grinding me down day by day, driving steel blades into my soul, twisting them, plunging them deeper, ripping me apart and laughing, laughing, always laughing! Every day I came home from school to hear her upstairs, the grotesque, animal noises, the cheap creaking of the whore’s bed, the grunting of the animals she took there, and her incessant, eternal, damned laughing!

“I prayed. The Father knows I prayed. I implored Him to set me free from that hell. I prayed for Him to liberate me from my own hatred, to view her with His own dispassionate compassion. But He ignored me.”

“He ignored you?”

He nodded heavily. “He ignored me, because one of the greatest lies that the Judeo-Satanic Bible tells is that we must learn to forgive.” He leaned forward and shrieked, “We must never forgive! Never! Never! Never forgive! ”

He walked away on long, slow legs, then stopped and looked up at the ceiling. His voice was like the disembodied howl of an imprisoned daemon.

“We must punish! ”

He didn’t turn to face me. He remained staring at the ceiling above him and bellowed again, “Lord Father! Give me strength! We must punish! ”

Then he turned slowly to face me, and his eyes slewed toward Dehan.

“He made me see. The original sin was not Adam and Eve’s disobedience of the Father. It was the creation of Eve! ”

“The creation of Eve? God committed the original sin?”

“No! Imbecile! Fool! Do you not see? Yet the Father gave you eyes! It was Satan! Satan who created Eve from Adam’s rib! For woman is the spawn of Satan! ”

He was silent, panting, like he’d been running a long distance. After a moment I said, “Oh, I see…”

“Do you? All evil that has ever befallen Man has come from woman. We were created in the Father’s holy image! But tell me, answer me this, is there a queen of Heaven? Is there a Holy Mother? Has Jesus a sister? No! Nay! Nay! Nay to this! Man, man was made in the Father’s image! Has the Father breasts? Has the Father a cunnus ? No? Then in what way— tell me—in what way are they made in the image of the Father? Tell me that! They are the spawn of Satan! He created him and they are his servants! Sent to the Garden to lure Adam to his perdition.”

“And the Father told you this?”

“Does he often speak to you?”

“Don’t patronize me, Detective Stone. The Father does not speak to me. He gave me Grace of understanding. He infused my mind and my heart with His grace and His truth, and I understood.”

“What did you understand, Reverend?”

“That the creation of women was the true original sin that brought the downfall of Man. That woman is inherently evil, and that the lascivious hunger for sex will destroy us. The only way to salvation for Man is to eliminate women from the face of the Earth.”

I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and frowned at him.

He pointed at me with outstretched arm. “You know, in your heart, that I am right. You can feel the truth of my words. You know that the Father speaks through me.”

“Was it that clarity that led you to know that you had to kill the whore?”

He barked a loud laugh. “I did not kill the whore. The Father freed me. He sent another with that sacred task and set me free.”

“He sent another? Do you know whom he sent?”

He shook his head. “It is of no moment, Detective, for the primary purpose was served, which was to liberate me and allow me to bring the true word to the people!”

I smiled. “Reverend Campbell, your mother was murdered.”

“Do you not listen? What do I need to do to bring clarity to your mind? Do you send out detectives every time a swine is slaughtered in an abattoir? Every time a chicken is slaughtered or a rat is exterminated? Then why trouble when a woman is killed? She is lower on the scale of life value than the rat or the cockroach, for where they are dumb vermin, she is evil! She carries Satan’s seed and his intent!”

“Reverend Campbell, do you know who killed your mother?”

“No! And I don’t care! I have told you it is of no consequence!”

“A jury might think otherwise if you are tried for conspiracy to murder, or aiding and abetting a murderer.”

He smiled at me and shook his head. “I stand before a higher court than you, Detective, and I have no fear of your mundane games. Do what you must do, the Father will be my guide.”

“Where were you the night your mother was murdered?”

“I was out, visiting with friends. Your detectives asked me all this at the time. The Father intervened and removed me from the house…”

I snapped, “But you were still living at home with your mother.”

“I was a prisoner! Yes, indeed! What of it? I already told you the Father set me free! The Father set me free! ”

“What time did you get home?”

He turned his back on me and gazed up at the huge cross.

“I walked through that door¸ that open door, at exactly twelve o’clock at night. I went into the living room, where we had the dinner table, and I saw the fire was cold in the grate. I saw there was no food cooked. I was not dismayed, for this is a woman. This is what we may expect from their slovenly, deceitful species. I went upstairs to berate her and give her the sharp edge of my tongue, and what I found was judgment. Judgment had been visited upon her, without pity and without compassion. And that was the moment.”

“That was the moment that the Father gave me His holy grace and made me understand. He had punished her for transgressing against His most sacred law.”

I nodded, trying to collate what he was telling me, to give it shape in my mind.

“What is that most sacred law, Reverend Campbell?”

“Women! Women must not engage in sexual intercourse. Women must never engage in coitus. Nor in any kind of sexual activity.”

“It is OK for men?”

“It is not a sin for men. It should be resisted, but it is not a sin.”

“Only a sin if women do it. That is going to make it pretty hard for the race to procreate.”

He gave me that kind of kindly patronizing look fathers give their sons when they are being particularly stupid.

“That is kind of the point, Detective Stone. Once the race starts to die out, because men have the strength to resist the lure and temptation of women, then the Father will grant us final salvation. The vile species of womankind will be wiped out, and Man will rise to his preordained position, at the right hand of the Almighty Father.” He paused. “Now tell me this, Detective Stone, do I need a lawyer? Do you plan to arrest me?”

I shook my head. “We were simply seeking your help and your cooperation.”

“Then get the hell out of my church, and take your filthy whore bitch with you! I have no help to offer you but the light of the Holy Father. Sinners and fornicators, get the hell out of my church!”