“What about The Dead Ride Fast? He wants me back on that!”
“Since when?” Fritz was on his feet.
“Since half an hour ago.”
“But he can’t do that without—”
“Right. Roy. And Roy’s gone. And I’m supposed to find him. And the studio is being shut for forty-eight hours to rebuild, repaint what doesn’t need repainting.”
“Jerks. Dumb asses. Nobody tells me anything. Well, we don’t need the stupid studio. We can rewrite Jesus from my house.”
The phone rang. Fritz all but strangled it in his fist, then shoved it at me.
It was a call from Aimee Semple McPherson’s Angelus Temple.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said a barely restrained woman’s voice. “But do you happen to know a man who calls himself J. C.?”
“J. C.?”
Fritz grabbed the phone. I grabbed it back. We shared the earpiece:
“Claims to be the Ghost of Christ reborn and newly repentant—”
“Let me have that!” cried another voice, a man’s. “Reverend Kempo here! You know this dreadful anti-Christ? We would have called the police but if the papers found that Jesus had been thrown out of our church, well! You have thirty minutes to come save this miscreant from God’s wrath! And mine!”
I let the phone drop.
“Christ,” I moaned to Fritz, “is resurrected.”
49
My taxi drove up in front of the Angelus Temple just as the last stragglers from a few late Bible classes were leaving through a multitude of doors.
Reverend Kempo was out front, wringing his rusty hands and walking as if a stick of dynamite was up his backside.
“Thank God!” he cried, rushing forward. He stopped, suddenly fearful. “You are the young friend of that creature in there, yes?”
“J. C.?”
“J. C.! What a criminal abomination! Yes, J. C.! ”
“I’m his friend.”
“What a pity. Quickly, now!”
And he elbow-carried me in and down the aisle of the main auditorium. It was deserted. From on high came the soft sound of feathers, a flight of angel wings. Someone was testing the sound system with various heavenly murmurs.
“Where is—?” I stopped.
For there, center stage, on the bright twenty-four-karat throne of God, sat J. C.
He sat rigidly, eyes looking straight out through the walls of the church, his hands placed, palms up, on either armrest.
“J. C.” I trotted down the aisle and stopped again.
For there was fresh blood dripping from each of the cicatrices on his exposed wrists.
“Isn’t he awful? That terrible man! Out!” cried the Reverend behind me.