Chapter 12

I spent the entire trip back to Sal's place trying to keep Charlie from taking Samantha's head off. I seemed to be making a habit of pulling Mamtha's ass out of a sling, but the more I did the more antagonistic toward me she became. I'd quit putting in the effort if she wasn't Sal's daughter.

I didn't hear Marilyn Monroe's voice again for the entire trip. I'd ask Pinkie if I was going nuts, but he had heard it too and assured me I wasn't going off the deep end. I know I heard that voice, but it didn't seem to bother anyone else. Maybe I should take a hint from Sal. She was sawing logs.

While we were motoring on home and I was stressing out over what I thought were voices in my head, our good buddies from the plaintiff's table and a few of their best friends were having their own 'Come to Jesus' meeting in Poindexter Calhoun's conference room. And my guess was that the boys and girls on the bad guys' team were not having a really good time.

Barrington Hutton was about as red as a man could get without blood coming out of his skin. "Pinkston, you fucking idiot, why in the hell did you tell those two cunts about the law suit? We had this thing bought and put to bed. I might be able to understand it if you were trying to impress a couple of sluts, but God Damn it, boy, you're queer.

"Is there anyone in this organization that can keep their fucking mouths shut? We just barely got to Teasdale before he could sing to the Feds. Now we have this shit. Do you think you've learned anything from this fiasco, or do you need a personal demonstration?"

A chagrinned Robert Armstrong Pinkston rushed to defend himself. "No sir, Mr. Hutton. I've learned a lot. It'll never happen again. I still can't see how they got that information to anyone, though. They were with me every minute before the trial time except to go to the bathroom. They didn't have a chance to tell anyone."

Blaze Bobson took a deep breath and looked down her hawk beak shaped nose at the squirming man. "That, Mr. Pinkston does not answer the question of why you told them in the first place. The work we do here is important. We must use good judgment at all times. Your transgression showed a complete lack of judgment. I ask you the same question Mr. Hutton did. Why?"

Robert looked away from the intimidating woman who was the mother and chief confidant of Blake Bobson, the chief priest and director of the renamed Octagonal Church started by Jimmy Joe Jolly and hijacked by Bobson after Jolly's suspiciously convenient death. He answered to the floor that he was watching, "I don't know what happened. We were having a few drinks at my club, and it just came out before I caught myself. I kept track of them after that so they couldn't tell anyone else though."

Barrington replied, "Apparently you were too drunk to keep a good enough track of them because the word got out."

Poindexter Calhoun interrupted the attack on Robert. "Barrington, I stopped in on Judge Charter at the hospital after court. The leak may have been one of his law clerks."

"What?"

"It seems that the clerk thought that some of the wording was unusual, and checked with one of his instructors at UNLV. The professor agreed that it was unusual, but legal. The clerk tried to change it to something more conventional, but it would have hurt us, so the judge overruled his clerk. Either the clerk or the instructor could have told someone.

It was just bad luck that we got Jolly as a judge. An honest judge could cause us trouble, especially if he follows up on the incongruities he mentioned in Chambers."

Blaze nodded her head and then Calhoun continued, "I also heard from our bank in Carson City that the FBI wasn't looking for Teasdale until this morning. Once they started looking, they found him in a few hours. The preliminary coroner's finding is that the wound was self inflicted."

"Well, finally," commented Hutton. "At least we did something right."

The man nodded to Herman and Willard Forester who were sitting in the back of the room and mouthed, "Well done."

Blaze turned back to Robert. "That seems to take quite a burden off your shoulders, Mr. Pinkston. Now that it has, shouldn't you be getting back to your club? We can continue the damage control without you. You need to be seen there in case we have to do something at the ranch.

"This procedure has drawn too much attention to you already. We need to make sure you always have an alibi for the foreseeable future. We have several loose ends to eliminate, and we don't want you compromised. Go home now. We will stay away from you for a short while, but you will still get the reward for all your good work in good time."

"Thank you, Ms Bobson. You're right of course. I have to run my business. I will be ready when you or the church needs me again."

A moment after a relieved Robert rushed out the door, Blaze turned to Hutton. "You know you have to fix another of my son's failed tools, don't you?"

"I know, Blaze. He really wasn't that much of a tool anyway."

She nodded sagely.

Barrington reached into his briefcase and removed a sealed foil package and handed it to Herman. "You boys will have to take care of plugging another leak. Don't screw up like you clowns did with Rachel. I don't want to have to go back to Father Bobson and ask him to make any more of these cursed things."

To himself, he thought, 'I don't want to go back to him for anything. That creep gives me the shakes.'

"I'm going to go through this one more time to make sure you have it right. Push this tube all the way down his windpipe. When it touches the moisture in his throat, it will expand so he can't breathe. If no outside air touches it, it will evaporate in about ten to fifteen minutes with almost no trace that it was ever there. If it is exposed to air after the dampness activates it, it will evaporate in only a few seconds, so you have to be quick and accurate when putting it in position. Understand?"

"Yeah, Boss, We got it, but we didn't screw up the last time. That nasty bitch you are having sex with up there was the only one who could get close to Rachel. She installed the tube."

"Don't remind me of this most unpleasant task that I do for the cause. If she wasn't so valuable to us I'd use her for a blood sacrifice instead of a horse. It is not really sex when one has to put up with those phony tits and the smell of stale cigarettes. You're right, though, Herman. It wasn't your fault. She is a serious weak point in our organization.

"Her usefulness is coming to an end. I think I'd like the pleasure of terminating our operating relationship personally.

"What was your fault, however, was leaving Rachel alone with Pinkston when he was on meth. What in the hell were you doing?"

"We were in the sanctuary trying to decode Father Bobson's last message to us. We had to hurry to get Pinkston out when we heard the proximity alarm. It took both of us to control him and carry the blood bladder. I didn't think Rachel was in any condition to move, so I left her there. She's as solid as a rock. She won't tell anyone anything. I don't think her survival will harm us."

Barrington again looked at the brothers. "Do you still have the message?"

"No, we lost it in the confusion."

"You mean the confusion here you blew up a two million dollar temple, or the confusion where you left your priestess alive to be questioned?"

"She gave us the order to evacuate and destroy the facility. We were following her orders. She saw the trouble we were going to have with a drugged up Pinkston."

Blaze said in a deep frightening voice, "He uses drugs? It seems Mr. Pinkston has indeed earned a trip to visit our space fathers in the eight universes. You gentlemen will be honored with the privilege of doing the Great Spacer's work. May the light of the Eight Universes guide and protect you."

Herman and Willard dipped to one knee and in one voice replied, "Thank you for the blessings of the Great Spacer, Mother Bobson."

They rose, slowly backed away from Blaze, and left the room.

Calhoun was the first to speak after the brothers Dumb and Dumber left the room. "Great Spacer? You can't be serious. Eight Universes? I almost lost it. You are not going to tell me you believe that bullshit are you?"

Barrington replied, "Careful Mr. Calhoun, you're talking about the organization that pay's your exorbitant fees."

"Bullshit, Resources Incorporated pays my reasonable fees! You use the church for your own devices. I don't know what your interest is in that ranch, but it has nothing to do with religion or Great Spacers. That place is as holy as a sewage treatment plant."

Blaze looked at the man and smiled. "You may not believe, but our followers do. They also do as the church instructs. This is a very fortunate situation for Resources. Nowhere outside the Middle East can you find a more willing source of people willing to meet their destiny on the other side of this life for what they believe."

"Bull Shit, you go looking for scum and pay them to believe in you. You don't have a great army of martyrs. You have a moving land fill."

"That may or may not be true," replied Blaze, "but as you just saw, it works, and when our brothers from Detroit supply us with our new weapons and resources, we will be a force to be reckoned with."

Okay, let's face facts. Sex is good. Sex with a hot, older woman who memorized the Kama Sutra, understood its complete knowledge, and likes to practice its teachings is a hell of a lot more than fun. It's amazing. Amazing I say, and when she really gets wound up, as she did that night, just a wee bit exhausting.

Sal must have been turned on by Perry Mason and court room movies representing what we had experienced earlier in the day. She was really turned on and demanding when we went to bed. She must have also saved up her energy as she was well rested from all that riding around earlier in the day, 'cause when we consummated our evening she put into practice as many of the most obscure parts of the Kama Sutra that she could. She road me hard like I was a cutting horse in a rodeo barrel race and then put me away wet. Hot dog, what a night we had.

Oh the trials and tribulations of an apprentice redneck, will the suffering never end? Oh fate so cruel, what suffering doth thou impose on this oh so abused mortal. Feel sorry for me yet? Na, I didn't think so. I was soon to find out Sal didn't either.

Anyway, I didn't worry about not having any rest. I thought I'd get some sleep the next morning, but those o' so fickle fates conspired against me again. At exactly 6:01 AM a young, bikini clad, brown, bald headed ball of energy burst through the bedroom door and landed on my chest.

"Come on, JD. We're burning daylight here. Drop your cock and grab your socks. We've got work to do."

Sal rolled away from us and groaned, "Les watch your language. Whatever it is you want, just take JD and get out of my bedroom. I worked hard last night. I'm an old woman and need my beauty sleep."

Hey! She was throwing me out of bed, and I didn't even have any crackers in bed to deserve this treachery. "Sal, are you throwing me out?"

"No, JD, I'm sacrificing you to the sleep gods. I'll feel sorry for you and regret my action later, well maybe later, but right now I'm too damn sleepy to give a hairy rat's ass. Take Leslie somewhere and be quiet before you wake everyone in the house."

"But what about my sleep?" I whined

"You should have thought about that before you kept me up all night having sex."

"I kept you up..."

Before I could finish, Les interrupted, "Come on, JD. We broke the code last night."

"You did what?"

"We broke the code."

"How did you do that?"

"Well, Steve sent me a copy of the photograph he took of the code yesterday. I sent it to my friend, Elisabeth from Australia. Two hours later, she sent me the translation. She's really, really smart and nice."

"Australia? You must get around a lot."

"Oh, I've never met her. Professor Lora knows her brother. He's a captain in the Australian Navy. Prof was working on the math for a new computer targeting system for naval surface ships so that they can use the detection and targeting information from one country's ship to program the firing solution of the weapons system of another country's ship.