Blood Test

To the left was the dead end punctuated by Mathias’s office. I ran to the right, nearly tripping over a potted palm in my haste. The corridor was empty and white. I felt as conspicous as a roach on a refrigerator. If discovered, I was a dead man: I’d seen the coke cache. I had no idea how long the orgy down the hall would last, or if the sentries’ circuit took them indoors. Speed was of the essence.

I searched the laundry room, the kitchen, the members’ library, looked for hidden tunnels, false walls, secret stairways. Found nothing.

Using a master key I discovered on the ring I’d taken from Graffius, I conducted a fruitless search of each room. Halfway through there was one false alarm: sudden movement under the bedcovers of one of the beds. For one heart-stopping moment I thought my search was over. But the body under the blanket was adult, male, hirsute, and thick, the face above it red-nosed, open-mouthed, and mottled: a cultist sleeping off a cold. The man stirred under the beam of my flashlight, passed wind, and rolled over, dead to the world. I left quietly.

The next room was Delilah’s. She’d kept some of her old reviews and press clippings in the bottom of a drawer filled with plain cotton underwear. Other than that her sleeping quarters were as barren as those of the others.

I went from room to room, checking another dozen cells before coming to the one I remembered was Matthias’s. The door wouldn’t respond to any of the keys on the ring.

I used the crowbar. The bolt was a long one and wouldn’t surrender until the door was nearly shattered. Anyone passing by would notice the damage. I slipped inside, taut with pressure.

It was as before. Identical to the others except for the small bookcase. Low ceilinged. Cool. Walled and floored with stone. Dominated by a hard narrow bed covered with a coarse gray blanket.

The humble domicile of a man who’d forsaken the pleasures of the flesh for those of the spirit.

Ascetic. And false to the core.

For the man was anything but spiritual. Minutes ago I’d watched him defile a church, drunk with power, cold as Lucifer. Suddenly the books on his shelves seemed to stare out at me. Mockingly. Righteous tomes on religion, philosophy, ethics, morality.

Books had revealed secrets once already this evening. Perhaps they would again.

Furiously, I emptied the shelves, examining each volume, opening, shaking, searching for false spines, hollowed out pages, clues scrawled in margins.

Nothing. The books were pristine, bindings stiff, pages crisp and unfoxed.

Not a single one had been read.

The empty bookcase teetered, shifted on its base. I caught it before it fell. And noticed something.

The portion of the floor that had been under the bookcase was a clearly demarcated rectangle, a shade lighter than the rest. I knelt, pointed the flashlight, ran my fingers over the edges. Seams. Cut into the stone. I pushed. Faint movement.

It took some experimenting to find the proper fulcrum. Stepping on one corner of the rectangle lifted the block sufficiently to lodge the crowbar in the opening. I exerted pressure. The slab rose and I pushed it aside.

The hole was about eighteen inches by a foot, four feet deep and lined with concrete. Too small for a body. But more than ample for other booty:

I found double plastic bags tightly packed with powder in shades of chocolate and vanilla: snowy cocaine and a brownish substance that I recognized as Mexican heroin. A metal strongbox full of sticky dark resin — raw opium. Several pounds of hashish in foil-wrapped chunks the size of soap bars.

And at the bottom of the hole, a single manila folder.

I opened it, read it, and slipped it into my shirt. By now I was carrying more cargo than the Southern Pacific. I turned off the flashlight, looked both ways down the hall. Heard the sounds of human voices. At the end of the corridor was a door leading outside. I sprinted, as fast as I could and hurled myself through it, lungs aching.

Cultists were streaming out of the sanctuary, most of them still naked. I made it to the base of the fountain without being seen and hid under the oak trees. Matthias came out surrounded by women. One wiped his brow. Another — Maria, the bland-faced, grandmotherly woman who’d sat at the entrance the day of my first visit — gave him a neck rub and fondled his penis. Apparently oblivious to these ministrations, he led the group to the lawn and bade them sit. Five dozen people obeyed, the crowd collapsing like deflated bellows. They were no more than thirty feet away.

Matthias looked up at the stars. Mumbled something. Closed his eyes and began chanting wordlessly. The others joined in. The sound was raw and atonal, a primal wail, passionately pagan. When they reached a crescendo, I sprinted to the viaduct and ran straight for the front gates.

Graffius was lying a few feet from where I’d placed him, twisting like a worm on a griddle, struggling to get free. He seemed to be breathing well. I left him there.

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