Reeves glanced at Carlisle. "Kick it down?" Carlisle looked up at the black front door with its discreet gold lettering. 555 East Fifteenth Street. He shook his head. "They're probably a little confused in there right now." He pressed the bell again, leaning on it. After about twenty seconds, the door was opened by a junior deacon. He was wearing his dress grays, but his tunic was unbuttoned and his T-shirt was hanging out of his pants. He looked bleary and hung over. "What the hell do you want?"
Carlisle had to give him full marks for blind pig arrogance.
"T7 taskforce. We're here to ask a few questions before the whitewash gets spread too thick."
"Are you crazy?"
Carlisle smiled. "Maybe, but at least I've got my pants buttoned."
"You can't come in here."
"You ready to buck a Suspicion of Terrorism warrant?"
"Where did you get that from?"
"Judge Sawyer signed it just a half hour ago."
"That old fool?"
"A judge is a judge is a judge."
"Forget it."
"We're coming in."
Carlisle moved quickly forward. The others were right behind him. The junior deacon took a fraction of second to realize that an attempt to block Carlisle would be an unwise course. Instead, he turned on his heel and hurried into the building, yelling at the top of his voice.
"It's the PD! The idiots think that they can come in here on an S of T!"
The decor was classic whorehouse, burgundy velvet and dark crystal. Even though Carlisle and his men stormed in like heroes, there was no way to resist a moment of awe. Goddamn deacons really took care of themselves. The main parlor was an impressive, high-ceilinged space with the inevitable staircase running up one wall. A half-dozen, half-dressed deacons had already gathered there. They looked shocked and not a little anxious. They were obviously meeting in response to the news that three of their more notorious co-workers had walked out of the pleasure dome to the in a hail of heatseekers. Seven or eight girls in lingerie or less sat on the couches looking thoroughly frightened. Carlisle went straight for the high ground.
"Nobody move! Don't breathe! Don't even think! This is the real thing, and you are all in a lot of trouble."
Five deacons instinctively froze. The sixth started forward, working up to bluster. But one of the riot squad was right there, and the flashguard of an M-40 was jammed under his chin.
"The lieutenant said freeze, blowhard."
Carlisle raised his tracy to his mouth. "We're secured in here. Send in the investigation team."
More uniforms streamed through the open front door. One squad charged up the stairs. Others fanned out in the parlor. Detectives followed, some carrying electronic search equipment. They were the shake and scan crew. By the time they finished, there wouldn't be anything in and about the house that they wouldn't know. Another particularly hard-faced group would conduct the individual interrogations. Carlisle had picked his team with some care.
There was shouting from the head of the stairs.
"What's the meaning of this? The whole bunch of you are going to end up in a camp!"
A red-faced senior deacon dressed only in longjohns was struggling with the uniforms at the head of the stairs. Carlisle knew him by sight: Booth, a big deal in the midtown CCC. Carlisle, waiting at the foot of the stairs, signaled that Booth should be allowed through.
"I'm executing a lawful S of T warrant."
"Are you out of your minds? You know what this place is."
Booth had obviously only just crawled out of bed. Carlisle realized that the deacon had not yet heard the news.
"Three of your men have just been murdered by the Lefthand Path as they left this building."
Booth looked sharply at the younger deacons. "Is this true?"
They nodded. Carlisle pressed on.
"It is possible that they may have been fingered by someone in here. Accordingly, the place is now sealed and everyone here will be questioned."
"What were the names of the victims?"
"Bickerton, Baum, and Kinney."
"My God."
Booth quickly recovered. He rounded on the nearest women.
"You're right, Lieutenant, and we'll start with the whores. I don't think we need to be too gentle."
Carlisle's reply was soft and cold. Early in his career he had learned the trick of talking quietly and forcing people to listen. "You won't start with anything, Deacon Booth. You're a suspect yourself for the time being. If one of the girls hasn't been passing information to the terrorists, the possibility has to be considered that the deacons have been infiltrated. As of now, this is a T7 case."
"I have to call someone about this."
Carlisle shook his head. Someone in the phone company who owed him a favor had ensured that all communications were cut off to and from the house. "This place is sealed."
Booth looked as if he were going to burst a blood vessel. Carlisle savored the moment. The raid had been his own brainwave. The plan had come to him fully formed immediately after he had heard about the killings, and it had taken him only a matter of minutes to sell the idea to a devilishly gleeful Captain Parnell. Of course, Parnell had protected himself. When the shit finally came down, it would fail directly on Carlisle, but right at that moment, Harry Carlisle was not thinking too much about long-term consequences. He was taking too much delight in sticking it to the deacons. Besides, what could they really do to him? The entire episode was too high profile for them simply to disappear him. The cloud that already hung over him would darken, but that hardly worried him. He was marked already.
Carlisle's team went to work like a well-oiled machine. The deacons' protests were ignored as their IDs, along with those of the women, were verified and individuals were taken into separate rooms for questioning. In fact, it all was running so smoothly that Carlisle found himself standing in the ornate parlor with nothing to do.
Reeves leaned over the bannister at the top of the stairs. "You ought to take a look at this place. They've got it all."
Reeves was not exaggerating. Before the Fundamentalists had taken over, Carlisle had taken Gail to a couple of love motels in New Jersey, but those had not been anywhere near as elaborate as the upper floors of the deacons' private fantasyland. He followed Reeves through the series of sexual playrooms. He saw silk sheets, circular beds, and fur rugs. He looked up at himself in mirrored ceilings and peered through one-way mirrors at hastily vacated love nests. There were no less than three fully equipped dungeons, each with its complement of chrome chains, leather restraints, slings, and pulleys, and its racks of whips, masks, canes, and paddles – and a few devices that Harry did not recognize. Even in their leisure time, the deacons seemed obsessed by the idea of pain and punishment.
"No expense spared."
"You're not kidding."
There was a certain twisted logic to the deacons maintaining their own closed whorehouse. Indeed, it was the same logic of applied hypocrisy that operated on every level of the Faithful regime. They used their thought police to enforce public morality, but at the same time they had to recognize that, among their gestapo, some of the boys would definitely be boys. This recreation facility and, Carlisle assumed, many others across the country, had been provided so that God's strong right arms could sexually unwind with only a minimal risk of scandal. Carlisle was quite proud that he, with a single stroke, had considerably upped the ante on that risk.