Power Play

Chapter eight

When he arrived at the small suite of offices that housed Rev. Higbe Muckley's operation, there was a sign on the inside door.

It read: PLEASE WAIT. COMMUNING WITH GOD.

Inside the inner office, Muckley knelt alongside his secretary. They looked at a cross on the wall.

"Oh, God, their hearts were hardened and they do not hear our message," Muckley said.

"Amen," said his secretary, who kept her back very straight because she had a tendency to fall over when she leaned too far forward.

"Open their hearts to Your goodness, so they will receive our message of the glories of faith," Muckley said. He reached his right hand around the back of his secretary and touched the side of her right breast, through the thin jersey material of her top.

"Amen," she said.

"Why do evildoers persist in the land?" the Reverend Muckley asked the piece of plaster on the wall. He cupped her breast in his right hand and felt its soft weight. It sent a tingle up his right arm as it always did.

"Amen," his secretary said. She leaned fractionally toward the right so all her breast could lay against Muckley's palm. He kneaded the flesh.

"Help us get rid of Pruiss and evil, etcetera etcetera, etcetera and I'll think of more later," Muckley said.

"Amen," the secretary said, as Muckley climbed on her.

"Don't forget 'Hallelujah,' Sister Corinne," Muckley said.

"First you got to give me a hallelujah, Reverend," said his secretary.

"Ask and you shall receive," said Muckley.

"Oh, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah," she said a few moments later.

The Reverend Higbe Muckley, A.B.D., A.C.D., B.C.D., and B.E.D., was sitting behind his desk when his secretary ushered Will Bobbin into the inner office. The letters in his name meant nothing, except trifecta bets he had made and won at the race track in the last several years. His secretary paused in the doorway.

"Type those letters right up, Sister," he said.

"Yes, Doctor," she said. She winked at him, which Bobbin saw in the polished glass door of a wall-mounted bookcase.

He grinned at Muckley who cleared his throat and asked officiously, "Now what can I do for you, Brother Bobbin?"

Bobbin closed the office door.

"It's what I can do for you, Reverend," he said. He twisted the curl of hair over his right temple.

"What did you have in mind?"

"You've been bombing out," Bobbin said. "You've been here a couple of days already and nothing but yawns."

"It takes time to bring people to act against evil," Muckley said.

"Hogwash," Bobbin said. "You can't get these people riled up against Pruiss because he's cutting their taxes. That's the truth and you know it and I know it so let's not dawdle over that."

Muckley shrugged. "What do you have in mind, Brother?"

"I've got something that'll wake them up. Something more powerful than taxes. Something that'll get these people steamed and marching, just to make sure Pruiss gets his butt out of town."

"What would that be?" Muckley asked.

"More powerful than money," Bobbin said. "Sex."

Muckley looked up at him sharply.

"Picture this," said Bobbin. "Proof that Pruiss isn't out here for solar energy. He's out here to turn this nice middle-America, hogbelly and pancakes-for-breakfast county into the pornography capital of the United States? How about that?"

"You got proof?" Muckley asked.

"Yes."

"Then we'll get that sucker," Muckley said. "That'll get them marching."

"My idea exactly," Bobbin said.

Muckley searched Bobbin's face and said, after a pause, "I don't know anything about you, Mr. Bobbin."

"That's the way I want it."

"What do you get out of this?"

"Does it really matter?" Bobbin asked. "Can't you believe I'm doing it just to stamp out evil."

"That's fine in fund-raising letters," Muckley said. "But what are you really doing it for?"

"Let's just say I'm going to get out of it everything I want."

Muckley shrugged. "Whatever," he said. "You said something about proof that Pruiss is here to do pornography. You got that proof?"

"It'll be here in the morning plane from New York."

"Bring it in, brother, and let's see what we can do."

As he left the building, Will Bobbin thought that it was incredible that such fools could rise to positions of prominence. Muckley's idea of selling the ministry to allow people to buy at discount was a good idea, and probably the only idea the man had ever had or would ever have. And yet it had been enough to make him a national figure. Will Bobbin would play him like an accordion, to keep the wheels rolling until they rolled right over Wesley Pruiss and his solar energy scheme.

In his office, the Reverend Dr. Higbe Muckley looked at the door that swung closed behind Will Bobbin. It was the oil industry. He was sure of it. Who else had a vested interest in driving Wesley Pruiss out of Furlong County? Well, there was no law that prevented the oil industry from doing God's work. Or Higbe Muckley's.

He would wait to see what kind of proof arrived on the morning plane.

Chiun walked across the neat grass of the practice green toward the small stand of trees, beyond which the land sloped down a deep hill, across the eighteenth fairway, and to a forest beyond.

Remo followed him. "You know where they are?" he asked.

Chiun, wordlessly, pointed to two faint sets of parallel lines trailing across the green. Remo recognized them as probably heel marks from two bodies dragged over the grass.

Chiun stopped and looked behind a large tree. Remo saw the bodies of the three bodyguards, neatly piled up.

"Beautiful work," Chiun said.

"I don't know," Remo said stubbornly. "I think weapons take the fun out of it."

"Fun?" said Chiun. "What is this? What I teach you now is fun?"

"You know what I mean," Remo said.

"Yes, I do," Chiun said. "You are right. Weapons weaken the art. But at least if one is to use them, he should use them well. Our assassin uses his knives well. See. Here. Two men, dispatched perfectly with one thrust each. And here..." He pointed to the body of the martial arts expert, "... here two knives were used. One to kill and one to prevent an outcry."

Chiun touched the body with his toe.

"You still think they're red handled knives with horses engraved on the blades?" Remo asked.

Chiun shook his head. "That is not a think. That is a know. And that is what makes this dangerous."

"Well, Pruiss is lucky. He's got us."

"I am not talking about this Pruiss. It is dangerous for you," Chiun said.

"Why me?" asked Remo, but Chiun had already started to walk away.

They went back to the practice green where Pruiss lay in the portable bed, spun around so that the sun shone in his eyes. Rachmed Baya Bam had lifted the covers over Pruiss's legs again and was intoning words to the sun, in a language Remo did not understand. Theodosia looked at him approvingly. She glanced at Remo as he and Chiun returned and she smiled. Remo smiled back. Chiun sniffed.

The thin hissing voice of Rachmed Baya Bam insinuated itself over the clearing as he kneaded the useless legs of Wesley Pruiss.

"What language is that, Chiun?" Remo asked.

"Hindi," Chiun said.

"You understand it?"

"Yes. Even though he speaks it badly."

"What's he saying?" Remo asked.

"He is saying 'Oh, sun. Oh, yes, sun. This is Rachmed, sun. You hear me, sun? I'm talking to you, sun. Where are you, sun? Shine on me, sun. I don't want to sunburn though, sun, so don't shine too hard. How you like it up there, sun? Do you ever get bored, going around in circles, sun?' "

"C'mon, Chiun."

"You asked, I answered. What you do with truth is no concern of mine," Chiun said.

Pruiss cried out and Remo glanced over. Rachmed seemed to be wrestling with the muscles of Pruiss's right thigh.

"I felt it, I felt it," Pruiss said.

Theodosia squealed. "Wesley, I knew it. I knew it."

Baya Bam said in English, "Thank you, sun, oh gracious orb, whose gift is love and whose wisdom is in understanding."

"I think I can move it," Pruiss said. "My right leg. I think I can move it. Look. See if I can move it, Theo. Look."

The woman leaned over. "A little," she said, but her voice was doubting. "Maybe I saw it move a little."

"I know it moved," Pruiss said. "I know it did."

"Thank you, gracious sun," said Baya Bam.

"I think that's enough, Rachmed," said Theodosia. "Wesley needs his pain medicine. Let's get him inside."

Baya Bam nodded. Theodosia came to Remo.

"What did you find?' she asked.

"Bodyguards all dead. Knives," Remo said.

"That man is a fraud," Chiun told Theodosia.

"Thank you," she said coldly. "But he seems to be helping, doesn't he? All dead?"

"Yes," Remo said.

"Do you think we need more help?" she asked.

Remo shook his head. "We'll just wait for the twerp with the knives to surface. He will eventually."

Theodosia saw Rachmed wheeling the bed away.

"I've got to give Wesley his medicine right away," she said.

Remo watched her walk away.

"Frigid, I guess," he said. "But she's really dedicated to that Pruiss."

"She makes sure that she gives him his medicine on time," Chiun said.

"That's what I said," Remo said.

"No, it's not," said Chiun.

Before Flamma had been Flamma, she had been Blow-Blow La Flume. She had been the "special projects editor" for a New York publishing house. Her most special project had been the publisher who hired her and their in-office couplings had been long, complicated, frequent and so messy that when the publisher finally went to jail for child molestation, the couch in his office had been neither kept nor sold. The new publishers had taken it downstairs and burned it at curbside. The smell lingered on the New York street for days afterward. Blow-Blow La Flume was fired with the couch.

Still the whole experience had been a step up from the massage parlor for Blow-Blow, who, after his passing, had invested the publisher with all the virtues imagination could create, even though people who dealt with him on a less personal level had tended to regard him as a particularly virulent form of saprophytic fungus.

It was an easy step from the publisher's office to Gross Magazine, which was just getting off the ground. Blow-Blow's greatest virtue was that she had none — she would do anything. Theodosia had done the first centerfold for Wesley Pruiss, but Flamma did the next three, wearing disguises, so she couldn't be recognized as the same model. It was Pruiss who changed her name to Flamma, which, he said, had a classy ring. He also had her work out the techniques for belly-dancing with sterno burning in her navel. This was not as hard as it seemed, because the problem wasn't heat, it was cold. Sterno burned almost like an evaporation-with-flame, and an evaporating substance chills the surface beneath it. Flamma's navel was so cold at times that she was afraid to go to her belly-dancing lessons for fear that she would crack wide open in a sudden lunge of activity.

Wesley Pruiss was impressed by her experience in publishing and assigned her the task of entertaining distributors, printers and buyers to whom he owed money. She did this generally by letting them buy her a drink and then insisting they go to bed with her right away, because she couldn't live another moment without their bodies.

At first she had tried to talk to several of them but they wanted to talk about things like gross revenues and print orders and return percentages and profit and loss statements and all she ever remembered from her first job was seeing the publisher write things on the inside of a match book. He told her they were profit and loss statements. He would spend an entire dinner in a restaurant, rubbing her legs under the table with his, while putting numbers inside a match-book, and when they left the restaurant, he would leave the matchbook on the table.

Flamma had a dream. Even before she had been Blow-Blow La Flume she had been movie-struck, and she badgered Pruiss to start a film division and make movies, and if he had been seduceable, she would have tried that too. But Wesley had never shown any real interest in her and besides Theodosia seemed to have her hooks in him and never let the two of them spend any real time alone. Finally, Pruiss had said he would make a film and Flamma had thought of a remake of the life of Mata Hari or something like that. She saw herself as Greta Garbo. She saw the interviews in which she explained she was born in Ankara, Turkey, of a family of great wealth and stature. She saw herself winning awards at Cannes. She saw herself crowding Candice Bergen and Rex Reed out of the headlines.

When Pruiss told her that the movie was going to be called Animal Instinctsand was would involve a menage a menagerie, she was only slightly crushed. After all, even Greta Garbo had to start somewhere. From there, it would be onward and upward.

And then, just like that, the movie plans had been dropped. Theodosia explained to her on the telephone that it was because Wesley had been crippled and couldn't think of movies now, but Flamma knew better. She knew the bitch had deep-sixed Flamma's future because of jealousy, trying to keep her from the stardom that should be hers, and when Will Bobbin approached her, she hadn't even cared about the money. But when he promised her a film test at a Hollywood studio owned mostly by oil money, she quickly agreed to blow the whistle on Wesley Pruiss and his plans to create a dirty film center in Furlong County. She felt no remorse. A girl had to start looking out for herself sometime.

Bobbin met her plane when it landed at the Furlong County Airport. Flamma looked around through enormous circular sunglasses and was a little disappointed when she saw no one resembling a newsman or press agent. She had prepared for the occasion by figuring out a costume that was both mysterious and provocative. She wore a trench coat (mysterious) and under it, she was naked (provocative). She could go either way as the occasion demanded.

"Now, listen," Bobbin said as they drove toward town in his rented car.

"That's what I hate about not being a star yet," Flamma said.

"What's that?"

"People are always saying 'now, listen' to me. Do you think they said that to Marilyn Monroe?"

"Not if she listened. Anyway, sorry. I want you to meet this Reverend Muckley. He's the one who's going to blow the whistle on Pruiss for us."

"Who is he?"

"He's a mail order fraud of a minister from California. But he's got a lot of money, he's always on the television and he'll get you and your story in every paper and on every television broadcast from coast to coast. Instant stardom. And then the silver screen."

Flamma smiled. "I'm ready," she said. She opened the buttons of her trenchcoat. Bobbin looked over, gulped, and reached to button them back up.

"Hey, this is Middle America," he said. "Hold that."

"Okay," she said. "Reverend Muckley, you say?"

"Yes."

"I'll be very nice to him. Very, very nice."

"No, no," Bobbin said. "That's just what I don't want."

"What don't you want?" Flamma asked.

"I don't want you giving him any," Bobbin said. "Keep him sniffing around you to keep him interested. But don't give him any."

He seemed very sure of himself and Flamma said "I understand," but she didn't understand at all. Everything she had ever gotten in life, she had gotten by giving some away. Maybe twenty years ago, you kept a man interested by not giving him any, but now you kept a man interested by giving him some right away and making sure it was good. Because if not you, someone else.

But she decided to trust Will Bobbin. She had to. He was her only chance into the movies right now.

Bobbin ushered her into Reverend Muckley's office past the secretary who glared at them coolly, as if sensing that underneath the tan trenchcoat was a threat to her own 38-22-36 supremacy.

Muckley gulped when Flamma stood in front of his desk, smiling at him. He insisted that Bobbin wait outside because he wanted to verify for himself the accuracy of the woman's story.

Bobbin waited on a soft chair in the outer office. He heard the sound of footfalls inside Muckley's office. He heard furniture being moved. So did the secretary. She went to Muckley's office door and turned the knob. The door was locked. She swore to herself and went back to her desk without looking at Bobbin.

A few moments later, the door was unlocked and opened a crack. Flamma winked at Bobbin. "Okay," she called. "I'm doing what you said." She ran from the door, slamming it behind her. Bobbin heard the sound of Reverend Muckley whooping.

After another five minutes, Flamma opened the door and gestured Bobbin to come inside. Muckley was behind his desk, panting heavily. Disappointment shrouded his face. As Bobbin came in, Flamma whispered, "It's all right. But it was close."

"I have checked this young lady's story," Muckley panted, "to my own satisfaction."

"And?"

"And I think it is just what we need to show the people of this area what a sex-drenched beast like Weston Price has in mind for them. I will call the television people here this afternoon."

"All right," Bobbin said. "And Flamma, I'm out of it, remember?"

She nodded. "I know. I read that the Reverend Muckley was here and I volunteered to help him in his battle against the antichrist because I saw the light and realized that what Wesley was planning to do was evil."

Bobbin nodded. "You might tell the television men that Pruiss was going to make a dirty movie with you in it, but that you didn't want stardom that way. You'd pass up stardom if it had to come that way."

"For stardom, I'd eat dogshit in the street," Flamma said.

"I know that and you know that," Bobbin said. "But trust me. Do it my way. It'll make you more mysterious and the movie offers will come pouring in. You'll see."

"Keen," she said.

"And leave me out of it," Bobbin said.

"Cool," said Flamma.

"Of course," said Reverend Muckley.