Nixon looked at Lucifer. “You’re going to let this happen?”
Lucifer nodded. “You’re on your own from here on out.”
“I thought we had a deal.”
“We had a deal when you were alive to make you president, and you’ve got a deal now to rebuild your place in history, but I sure as shit don’t recall guaranteeing to protect you from any hothead who wants to rip off your poker stake.”
Jim pointed the Gun That Belonged to Elvis at Nixon’s head. “Fork over the cash, you sorry son of a bitch.”
After a short reluctant pause, Nixon pushed the coins across the table. Jim gestured with the gun. “And the rest.”
“What rest?”
“Are you telling me you don’t have a little slush fund stashed away?”
With sullen reluctance, Nixon reached under his blue suit coat, pulled out a small leather bag, and tossed it on the table. “You’ll pay for this. You know that, don’t you?”
Jim’s lip curled. “Sure, I don’t doubt it. I’ll be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my days.” He gestured to Doc. “You’re coming with us, right?”
Doc smiled. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”
Jim shook his head and Doc looked around at the other players. “I hate to leave you all while I’m still ahead, but I’ve always made a point of never arguing with a man with a gun.”
***
“That was a pretty spectacular diversion.”
“Actually a lot of it was strictly personal. I didn’t know Nixon was going to be there. Did he really make a deal with Lucifer to be president?”
“More deals are made with Lucifer than you might ever suspect.”
“Did you ever make one?”
Doc coughed. “Believe me, if I’d cut a deal with the devil, I’d be a lot better off than I am now.”
Jim, Doc, and Semple rode down in the elevator. The two men seemed pumped, almost as if they were enjoying this adventure, but Semple wasn’t quite able to share their excitement. “Having made your big grandstand play, have either of you considered what we’re going to do next?”
Doc looked at Jim. “You don’t have a plan?”
“What do you mean, a plan? This has all been played strictly by ear.”
“Are you telling me you don’t have a way out of here set up?”
Jim started to look angry. “Wait a damned minute-”
Semple interrupted before Jim and Doc could embark on some absurd male argument. “All Danbhala La Flambeau told us was to get you out of that suicidal poker game.”
“La Flambeau? Where the fuck did she come into all this?”
As briefly as she could, Semple explained her and Jim’s encounters with the Voodoo gods and what had transpired on the island. When she’d finished, Doc slowly shook his head. “I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?”
Jim was still looking marginally belligerent. “Listen, if Hypodermic gives me the full softening-up treatment, and then La Flambeau and Marie-Louise say jump, I just ask how high.”
Doc’s mouth slowly opened. “Marie-Louise is involved in this?”
Jim nodded. Doc shook his head. “Do you know how deep you’ve got us in?” He sighed. “And do you know how long I’ve waited to get back in a poker game with Lucifer? And now I’m almost certainly persona non grata in all the casinos of Hell.”
Semple never could figure men’s lack of logic, and she certainly couldn’t believe that Doc was complaining about being rescued. “You would have come out of the game a brainless cabbage and you know it.”
“That’s hardly the point.”
Before Doc could explain what the point actually was, the elevator doors opened and the three of them stepped out.
***
Aimee could hear the breakaway nuns chanting somewhere behind the large cloister. Bemadette’s voice rose above the general chorus in a strange wailing counterpoint. The language was one that Aimee didn’t recognize. A weird glossalia, a unison speaking-intongues, as though some dangerous spirit were upon them. Aimee knew that they had to be psyching themselves up, building up a head of righteous rage before they finally came to finish her. The handful of sisters and angels who had remained loyal looked on as she knelt in the Sacristy. She pretended to be praying, but all she was really doing was sobbing to herself.
“Oh my God, Semple, what have I done? If you were here, you’d know what to do. Except you’re not here. You’re fragmented in Limbo and very soon they’re going to come for me. They’re going to come for me and take me to Golgotha. I didn’t mean to do what I did. I was just angry. You can’t blame me for being angry, after all the terrible things that happened. I’d make it just like it was before if I knew how, but I don’t. Since I destroyed you, I haven’t been able to make anything.”
Aimee would have prayed, had there been any point, and had there been anyone to listen to her prayers, but she knew there was no one. God had deserted her-or had never existed in the first place-and Jesus, after the briefest of honeymoons, had turned out to be a homicidal pervert. Never, either in life or Afterlife, had she felt so powerless and alone. As she knelt and sobbed, one of the loyal nuns tentatively approached her. “Sister Aimee?”
Aimee took a deep breath and got exhaustedly to her feet. “What is it, my dear?”
“Do Bernadette and her women intend to hurt us?”
Aimee didn’t answer right away. She knew that if Bernadette and her mutineers could break into the area of Heaven where she and the loyalists were holed up, they would almost certainly drag all of them out and crucify them. Bernadette had started calling herself the Hammer of God, and anyone who adopted such a title was unlikely to be interested in any kind of truce or accommodation. Whether the few nuns that had remained loyal needed to know the worst was a moot point. Aimee didn’t want to deceive them, but at the same time, if they knew how hopeless their situation was, they, too, would probably desert her. Aimee closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I really don’t think they mean us any good. They are very angry women.”
“It wasn’t your fault that Jesus did what he did.”
“They don’t seem to see it that way.”
Another nun joined the first one. “If there was a way for us to get some weapons, perhaps we could drive them off. Show them we mean business.”
Nuns talking about weapons came as something of a surprise to Aimee. “But this is Heaven. We never had a need for weapons.”
Now a third nun came into the discussion. “We heard that Bernadette and her people have a lot of weapons. We heard that she managed to conjure them.”
Perhaps the idea of these nuns wanting weapons wasn’t so farfetched as it seemed. They might have taken holy orders, but, prior to that at least three of them had flat-backed it in Doc Holliday’s disgusting brothel. Perhaps they still had a fighting core at the center of their being. The trouble was Aimee had no experience in conjuring things like weapons. In fact, since she’d destroyed Semple, she was finding it nearly impossible to hold Heaven itself together. Large circular Swiss-cheese holes had appeared in some of the buildings, giving the landscape the air of a surrealist painting.
“Couldn’t you conjure us some weapons? Maybe some light machine guns? We wouldn’t want to hurt anyone, just scare them off.”
Aimee looked at the nuns with an expression of terminal sadness. “I don’t know if I’m able to do anything like that. I have no experience. I’ve always been a pacifist.”
“What about Semple? Maybe she could help us.”
Aimee hadn’t exactly explained to the nuns and angels what had become of Semple. All they knew was that she’d left after Jesus was crucified. They certainly didn’t know that Aimee had blasted her into Limbo, and she wasn’t about to reveal that now. Aside from the fact that it would blow her image as the Princess of Peace and the helpless victim of Bernadette and her renegades, some of the loyalists might start asking why she couldn’t set up a similar vibration and blow Bernadette and her cohorts way into the back of beyond. “I don’t think Semple’s going to be coming back here for a very long time. She feels very guilty about bringing the false Jesus here.”