He began to slowly recount the story of Abraham, and how when the old Patriarch was through and had done his work, he was ready for his trip to the Promised Land. The Reverend recounted how the members of the old man’s tribe, the women, and the men, and the little children, had all stood before Abraham, and how God had promised that he would select a leader to replace Abraham. The preacher, with that familiar whiny voice that had excited millions of the helpless, likened Abraham to Admiral Matthews, and though he did not name himself as Matthews’s successor, he asked the church for their prayers, as he guided America through the great tsunami that lay ahead. After Jones had warmed up he began pacing up and down the pulpit, and sliding across the pulpit like James Brown. He began to do the Al Green hop. He began to do the old black preacher’s “uh huh … uh huh … huh.” His voice began to become gravelly, and he began to shout for emphasis, like Jesse Jackson. He knew how to screech and say OOOOOOOOO in falsetto like Little Richard, and then his voice took on that tremulous timbre like one of the greatest black preachers of all time, Reverend E. Franklin. Even some of these women who were the mainstays of Washington society, who hated Reverend Jones, women who spent a lot of time under the dryer and preparing for lunch, women who would spend entire days shopping for clothes, convulsed, their stomachs rippling. A couple of them even “went out,” and had to be assisted to the waiting ambulances that were always on hand when Reverend Jones was going to preach.
An American legend: Colonel Tom Parker was supposed to have said that if he could find a white man who could sing rock and roll like a black man, he’d make a million dollars. Elvis Presley was invented. It could also be said that if a white preacher could be found who could preach like one of the great carriers of the oral tradition, could preach like a black preacher, he would rule America. People were saying that Reverend Jones was that preacher. None of this pitiful, whining Jimmy Swaggart stuff. None of this wimpy Fulton Sheen crystal cathedral tepidness. None of this Jim Bakker Charlie McCarthy machinations, the theme parks, the positively nouveau display of wealth.
When he was on, Reverend Jones preached his gospel hour in a Texas church that held no more than 250 people, but the way he had the old sisters banging on them bass drums and slapping them tambourines, you’d think that God’s Own Philharmonic was carrying on inside that old church where the loudspeakers blasted Jones’s message to the thousands who stood outside. At the conclusion of Reverend Jones’s sermon, the church didn’t need no fire, because it was being warmed by the spirit of the Lord. By the spirit of Jesus. “Because when you got Jesus you don’t need no expensive indoor heating, no oven, no nuclear fuel, no solar energy, when you got Jesus you got all the heat you need. Jesus hits like an Atomic Bomb,” Jones shouted to the mourners. People began removing their overcoats. This had been the closest thing to a sermon that he’d preached since he joined the administration of Dean Clift. He didn’t want to be accused of mixing religion with politics, a charge that had been made when he became part of the inner circle which Clift fronted, and so he’d turned over his multibillion-dollar ministry to a young preacher named Rev. John the Conquerer, after the vision he had in a Riverside, California, motel, when Jesus appeared to him in the form of a desk clerk and asked him to go to Washington and save America from the primeval slime, Satan worship and Prince. Hip hop, funk, astrology, etc.
4
The lettuce was flecked with stains the color of soy sauce, and the tomatoes were turning black. The roast beef was thinly sliced, dry, and white. Krantz had been to a lot of these dinners. The same old chocolate pudding. Some of the current heroes, who’d blipped across the nation’s TV screens, were seated on the dais. Carson Richards, Wall Street speculator and junk bond addict, former pimp, whom the New Christians pointed to as an example of how a surp could still rise in an American society ruled by the Jesse Hatch administration, and the New Christian majority in Congress. Seated next to him was Ted Bare, the skinhead who became famous after setting a surp afire while the surp was wrapped in dirty blankets and sleeping underneath a Santa Cruz freeway. He didn’t remove his Boston Red Sox baseball cap; he wore sneakers and a red, white, and blue basketball jacket. Krantz wore the uniform of the New Christian, Barbie black and white pinstripes, after the suit worn by Klaus Barbie at his trial at Lyons. Reverend Jones saw Hitler as a misunderstood genius, a sort of knight of Christianity saving the West, defending the free world from the Mongolian hordes and Asiatic death. He required that members of his team wear the Barbie outfit. They never asked why, being loyal to Reverend Jones. He never discussed his Hitlerian ideas with the staff and only shared them with his intimates, Heinrich, and Joe Beowulf, a robot superhero on loan to him from Towers Bradhurst, Hollywood producer.
Krantz successfully concealed his red eyes with drops of Murine; he’d hastily shaven in the limousine that drove him to the hotel, and had done a pretty convincing job of it, only a few hairs having been missed; you couldn’t tell that he’d slept in his suit or that his shirt was drenched, or that his hands were trembling. William Manchester reported that the night before his Dallas murder (the Terrible One) President Kennedy’s hands were trembling as he made a speech before a group of scornful cattlemen. The same crew that had killed him were still in the secret government; Krantz knew, for he had met with them in out-of-the-way hotels and airport rest rooms as he gave them assignments coming from the Colorado Gang, as the inner circle was being called. Would they kill him? Had they killed Admiral Matthews? Matthews was right, but he wasn’t nuts. He’d always vetoed the kooky proposals that the King of Beer and the Reverend Jones had made. His sudden death was a shock because there had been no sign of illness. He and Krantz had attended a Press Club dinner the night before, and the Admiral had even been roasted.
They couldn’t kill Krantz, of course, but would attempt to do so if he exposed the mission. He paused from his thoughts long enough to hear his name called. The introduction, referring to his distinguished career as a television producer of the soap opera “Sorrows and Trials,” and the often-told story about how Reverend Jones had rescued him from a car accident and had miraculously delivered him from underneath its wheels — a story that had been embellished each time it had been repeated — was followed by a standing ovation as Krantz approached the microphones to deliver his speech. He made a joke about the Washington weather. Both airports were closed, and the hotel lights, though on for now, were threatening to go out. He made a joke about the Post Office, everybody’s favorite bureaucratic whipping boy. About how he’d been in one of the long Xmas lines and the woman ahead of him complained about having to pay the postage for a gift she received and the price of the postage exceeding the value of the gift. He then got down to the speech. It was the speech that he’d delivered hundreds of times, about the terrible period that happened before the administration of Jesse Hatch and Reverend Jones. About how surps in running shoes and hoods had just about taken over the cities. About how the United States was being laughed at by the world for the sellout deal that left-winger Ronald Reagan had made with the Russians, the one they were calling the Second Yalta. Some on the right, himself included, had even said that Reagan, feeble and sick and under the guidance of a San Francisco astrologer, had made a verbal agreement with Gorbachev at Reykjavík, one that amounted to surrender. He talked about how administrations after that had faltered, until the election of General Walter Scott, hero of Dominica, whom he described as “a shaft of light at the bottom of the cellar.” And how just as the Terribles that had begun with the assassination of J.F.K. were thought to have come to an end, General Scott died from a cold he’d contracted on Inauguration Day. And how Dean Clift had been sworn in to carry out the policies of General Scott, only to suffer “an episode of nervous exhaustion, saying that he was visited by Saint Nicholas.” The audience laughed, as usual, at this line. Krantz signaled them to cease. “It’s no joke, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “It wasn’t funny when he accused me, Admiral Matthews, Reverend Jones, and the King of Beer of being engaged in some sort of secret operation, therefore smearing three of the greatest patriots this country has ever known.” The audience rose and gave him a standing ovation, which was the usual response to this line, until Krantz requested that they resume their seats. He dramatically mopped his brow, the hotel’s generator being too hot. “Said that the four of us were in on some kind of fantasy that only existed in his mind, an Operation Two Birds, some kind of back-channel operation that, according to him, involved some rip-off artists, free-lance arms dealers, assorted and shady consultants and con men. No wonder folks began calling him President Weird.