Guilt by Association Read online

  “They sure are good cussers, ain’t they, Miss Dani?” Admiration had covered Rosie’s dark face. “Kind of professional, you might say!”

  Dani served the rest of the sausages, put the frying pan back, then went to her seat. She was at a table with Bix, Betty, and Lonnie, and to her surprise Lonnie got up and pulled her chair out. “Thank you, Lonnie,” she murmured. She heard Betty say clearly, “I never noticed you giving me that kind of attention!” but paid no heed.

  She bowed her head and said a silent prayer of thanksgiving, noticing that the others fell into three categories: Rosie and Betty bowed their heads with her; Alex, Vince, Karl, Lonnie, and Karen sat there quietly until she lifted her head. Candi, Rachel, Sid, and Bix plunged into their meals at once, Sid and Bix making as much noise as possible to make sure she didn’t miss their meaning.

  When she lifted her head, they all began eating, and soon they were calling out their praise for the pancakes. “All right!” Vince said enthusiastically. “You are the greatest, baby!”

  Most of the others commented on the excellent meal, and Karen said, “A change is good.” She gave Dani a close look, her calm blue eyes missing nothing, and finally stated, “You’ve adjusted more quickly than the rest of us, I think.”

  Dani flushed and shook her head. “That’s because I was the last, Karen. You had all gotten the system working by the time I dropped in.”

  “Well, that ain’t right, doll!” Bix said, speaking around a mouthful of pancakes. “Ain’t no system in this world gonna make me adjust to this creepy joint!” He swallowed convulsively, and before the food went down his throat, he had stuffed another huge bite into his mouth. “All my life I been fightin’ against the system. Then just when I found the way to do my own thing, I get thrown into a nutty jail where I even have to go to the bathroom on schedule!”

  Dani tested the pancakes critically, found them good, then answered mildly, “Oh, Bix, I don’t think any of us are ever really free from a system. As far as I can see, the only freedom we have is to choose which system is the best for us.”

  “Now don’t you start in preaching at me!” Bix shot in angrily. “It’s bad enough in here, without having to put up with a lot of phony religion.”

  “Shut your yap, punk,” Lonnie said conversationally. He turned to lay his gaze on Bix. Lifting a heavy forearm, he added, “One more crack like that to the lady, and you won’t have no choppers to eat these here fine pancakes with.” Then he turned to Dani and nodded. “You gotta excuse Bix, ma’am. He ain’t had no proper raising, you see.”

  Bix’s jaw dropped, and he said loudly in an outraged voice, “Proper raising? Why you ignorant redneck! If I didn’t have . . . !”

  Dani placed her hands on both their arms, saying, “Please don’t fight.” She felt the thin arm of Bix, which contrasted with the muscular swelling of the Arkansan’s mighty bicep and added, “Let’s just enjoy the meal.”

  They both subsided, but when the meal was over and everyone was sitting back, talking, over coffee, Rosie asked suddenly, “Miss Dani, seeing you are a preacher, why don’t we have us a service, this bein’ Sunday and all?”

  Instantly, a protest went up, Sid Valentine slapping the table and saying with a profane oath, “No! I had enough of that when I was—” He didn’t finish, but slapped the table again, saying sullenly, “I say let them that’s religious keep it to themselves.”

  A sharp debate broke out, with Betty saying, “Those of us who are Christians have a right to have a service,” only to be challenged by vociferous, sharp objections from Candi and Bix. Rachel’s face tensed, and she said firmly, “What about me? Will you have a Jewish meeting for me?”

  Distressed, Dani finally stood up and picked up her plate, then Lonnie’s. The argument suddenly stopped, and she found everyone looking at her, waiting for her to urge a service on them. She picked up Rachel’s plate silently. When she looked around, seeing the anger, she said quietly: “This is wrong. We’re in enough trouble without fighting over God.” She picked up Bix’s plate, which made a loud sound as she let it drop on the others, then turned to face them. “Would it be all right if all of you give those of us who would like to meet together a time? Just an hour, while the rest of you are taking a nap or something. Perhaps in the women’s quarters.”

  “That wouldn’t do, Danielle,” Karl objected at once. “Rosie wants to be there.” He looked around and said, “Most of us aren’t too lively after lunch. I think we might let the service take place from one until two.” He looked around and asked, “Any objections?”

  Valentine looked up with an injured air. “The phonies ain’t running me out of no place, but let them play their little games!” Rachel and Bix wore angry expressions, but neither spoke. Holtz looked around and nodded, “Very well. From one until two, Miss Ross, you have the floor.”

  All morning Dani dreaded the time Holtz had secured. She offered to help Betty prepare lunch, but the older woman smiled and patted her arm. “No, honey. You work on your sermon. I know preachers like to do that. There’s a Bible over there on the coffee table.”

  Dani picked up the plain, black Bible and smiled at the inscription inside: Placed by courtesy of the Gideons. “I’ll bet they’d be surprised at where this one has ended up,” she murmured to herself. All morning she sat around reading and trying to pray. Her sermons to congregations of well-fed and self-satisfied church members had not proved difficult. She had spent a great deal of time extracting choice quotations from the better class of theologians, added some pertinent statements from poets and philosophers, then read the manuscript in a clear voice.

  Today she could call up enough quotes, but the stark reality of the circular prison clashed with her polished discourse. The cold air that seemed to settle on her like a blanket was no colder to her body than to her spirit, and when lunchtime came and departed and Rosie walked over with a beaming, expectant smile, she was quietly desperate.

  A quick look around showed that only Rachel was not present. Breathing a frantic prayer, Dani nodded and assumed a smile that might have quivered slightly. “Thank you all for staying,” she began and turned to nod at Sid, saying, “especially those of you who are opposed to a service. I’ll be very brief, I promise.” Sid snorted and picked up a copy of National Geographic with a picture of a snow leopard on the cover. Bix settled down defiantly, with his feet on the table and his arms crossed over his chest. “Get it over with!” he muttered angrily.

  Dani opened the Bible. “Let me read you a poem that I’ve loved for a long time.” Slowly she began to read the Seventy-eighth Psalm. What she would say when she had finished reading, she had no idea. God, give me something! she was praying as she read, feeling weak with fear at the thought of trying to preach without notes—without even an outline! The first eighteen verses spoke of the mighty works that God did in the history of Israel, and when she got to verse nineteen and read the words: “Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” something happened to her.

  That is my word: The thought came to her so suddenly and with such clarity that at first she almost thought it was something audible. After a second, she realized that it had not been spoken aloud, but had come into her spirit. Never had anything quite like that happened before, but at once Dani lifted up her eyes and began to speak. Each sentence was like throwing herself off a cliff into a dark pit, for she did not know from one to the next what would come. It was almost as if she herself were listening to some speaker, though her own voice fell over the silence of the room.

  “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” she repeated softly. “Anyone can furnish a table where there is plenty of food, but the children of Israel were trapped in a barren desert. Even the animals in that howling wilderness lived on the razor’s edge of existence, fighting over the scant food. And here they were, over a million people, some say, with nothing to eat. And they cried out in their fear, ‘Can God furnish a table—in the wilderness?’”
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br />   She went on to speak of the stark conditions, the lack of water, and the peril of starvation, in such bold vivid terms that even Bix forgot to look antagonistic.

  “Those people had no place to look but to God. There was no McDonalds, with a million quarter pounders, down the street. It was God or else. Sooner or later, with all of us, it comes to that. It may not be food, but something will catch up with us—something so big that we can’t handle it. Maybe sickness—or the death of a loved one. Things that can’t be ‘handled’ or ordered on a telephone.”

  As she spoke Karl looked around cautiously, noting that everyone in the room was listening—even Sid. He could see Valentine’s face, which was hidden from Dani behind the magazine, and momentarily the tough expression had faded as he listened. Rachel had come to the door of the women’s quarters and was standing in the shadow, her face hidden. But she stood there, poised as one who cannot decide whether or not to retreat. Candi’s face was set in an angry scowl, but both Karen and Betty were listening intently, especially Betty, who nodded emphatically from time to time.

  Rosie was the most enthusiastic, saying, “Amen!” loudly and grinning broadly. Lonnie, from across the room, was nodding also. An unhappy look covered Alex Morrow’s face, and he shook his head slightly as Dani came to the end.

  “God can furnish a table in the wilderness. I don’t think we are a bunch of ‘cold carbohydrates headed for destruction,’ as one writer has said. I think we are special to Him.” Then she said very quietly, “I believe God has furnished a table for us. Jesus Christ is the answer for our troubles—all of them.”

  She spoke a little longer, sharing her own conversion, and ending, “I’d like to close with a hymn and a prayer. Rosie, do you know ‘Amazing Grace’?”

  Rosie nodded happily and began to sing in a fine tenor voice, “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound—That saved a wretch like me.” Dani joined in, as did Lonnie, Betty, and surprisingly, Bix Bently. He added a harmony with a baritone that made the music somehow blend. The others sat there, looking a little uncomfortable, but as the song went on, it seemed that the room lost a little of its frigidness.

  Then Dani prayed simply, and when she was through, she gave a short laugh. “I guess you know now that I’m not much of a preacher. Thank you so much for joining me.”

  “Ain’t you gonna take a collection?” Sid asked acridly. “Never knew a preacher who didn’t have his hand out for money!”

  But Lonnie said, “That’s good preaching, Miss Dani. I’ve heard lots of preachers, but never no lady ones. Yet that was as good as any I ever heard!”

  The following night, after supper, Dani joined Karl and Alex at what Holtz called his office, a single table, separated from the rest of the furniture, with neat stacks of papers and a shelf for books. As she sat down Holtz smiled, commenting eagerly, “I have tried to organize a systematic study of our condition, but no one is very interested—except Alex.”

  “Well, it’s something to do,” Morrow said. “But we’re not going to think ourselves out of this, Karl.”

  “We’d better,” the German responded grimly, his lips suddenly a thin line. “Because we’re certainly not going to escape through that hole up there!

  “The prime target is to find out what we all have in common,” he explained. He picked up a folder and drew out a sheet with hand-lined rules and a list neatly drawn up on the left side. At the top were the names of the captives, and he said, “I’ll have to add your name, Danielle. Now, look, category one is location.”

  Dani looked at the sheet and said, “Not much there. We come from all over the place.”

  “Ah, but when we tie that with the dates that we were brought here, it may mean something. Look at this sheet.” He found another sheet of paper and put it on the table. It also listed the names, with a date beside each name:

  Sept. 30 Karl Holtz New York, N.Y.

  Oct. 8 Rachel Gold New York, N.Y.

  Oct. 8 Sid Valentine Newark, N.J.

  Oct. 14 Karen Sanderson Minneapolis, Minn.

  Oct. 24 Bix Bently Miami, Fla.

  Oct. 24 Roosevelt Smith Palm Beach, Fla.

  Oct. 29 Vince Canelli Detroit, Mich.

  Nov. 11 Alex Morrow Houston, Tex.

  Nov. 12 Candi Cane Los Angeles, Ca.

  Nov. 15 Lonnie Gibbs Corning, Ark.

  Nov. 15 Betty Orr Saint Louis, Mo.

  Nov. 30 Danielle Ross New Orleans, La.

  Dani studied the list silently, thinking hard. “Three times two people came in together—and at least two of these three were from the same area.”

  “But it doesn’t work.” Alex frowned. “Karl, you were in the New York area, along with Rachel and Sid. If he’d been nabbing people from one place he’d have gotten you at the same time, wouldn’t he?”

  “I was different.” Holtz shrugged. “I was in Berlin and had trouble with my reservation. I was originally scheduled to come to New York a week later, but I had to change my plans.”

  “Why did you come, Karl?” Dani asked curiously.

  “I was to write a book and become famous,” Holtz said with a sharp irony in his voice. “I’d been contacted by a man who called himself Eric Johnson. He was going to do a book about the real life of a German submarine commander in World War II—not the Hollywood version. It was going to be profitable, but that was not why I came. I wanted to set the record straight.”

  “He suckered you, just like the rest of us.” Morrow groaned and put his head in his hands in despair. “He was going to let me in on a bunch of United States government leases, with oil bubbling out of the ground!”

  Dani was looking at the list. “I can see that he got Rachel and Sid from the same area, and Bix and Rosie from Florida. But what about Lonnie and Betty? He’s from Arkansas, and she’s from Saint Louis. Not very close.”

  Holtz shrugged and said, “I know. Maybe it’s all some kind of coincidence. But if we ever make any sense out of this, we have to get all the information we have collectively and try to find a pattern. Maybe geography has nothing to do with it.” He leaned back and gave Dani a sharp look. “Tell me your impressions. I’d like to see how they match up with what the rest of us have thought.”

  Dani shook her head doubtfully, “It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard of, Karl. I know groups of people are kidnapped, hijacked, at times—but they are all a unit—they all have something in common. We don’t seem to have that unity.”

  She paused, then wondered, “What sort of person would do such a thing? Well, a rich person, obviously. It cost a lot of money to set this all up—fixing up this prison—and he had to spend a lot of money getting our backgrounds—” A thought struck her, and she gave a short laugh. “I wish my agency could land a big job like that!”

  “What else do you think about this man?” Holtz asked.

  “He’s mad, of course.” Dani shrugged. “But there’s such method in his madness! Just the details of getting us all here prove that. He knew what he was doing.”

  “Yes, I have thought of that,” Holtz nodded. “And he could have killed all of us, but did not.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “I do not understand it. It’s like some crazy world out of one of Kafka’s novels.”

  Dani sensed his depression and said quickly, “Don’t go to sleep. Show me what all you’ve done. Maybe something will click for me.”

  They worked on the papers for several hours, with Morrow getting bored almost at once. He left, and Dani and Holtz talked for a long time. He was a fascinating man, she discovered, and just as he got up wearily to go to bed, she said warmly, “Karl, I’m glad you shared this with me. As a matter of fact, I’m glad you’re here—oh, I didn’t mean that!”

  He smiled and took her hand. “I know what you mean, Danielle. We will have to lean on each other, yes?” Then he turned and said, “Good night. I will see you in the morning.”

  Dani was not sleepy. There was little sensation of night and day inside their prison. The small vents high overhead allowed onl
y narrow shafts of sunlight to come down to their level, and on gloomy days such as this there was little sense of time having passed.

  She went to fix another cup of coffee and saw that she was alone in the rec room. Dani got her coffee, returned to Holtz’s office, and began to go through the papers. An idea struck her, and she grabbed a pencil and began writing furiously.

  It must have been five minutes later when she almost jumped out of her skin as a hand touched the back of her head! She gave a muffled cry, leaped to her feet, and turned to find Vince Canelli standing by her.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you, Dani,” he said instantly. “Guess these crepe slippers are quieter than I thought.”

  “That’s—that’s all right,” she said, trying to control her shaking hands. “Just give some kind of a warning next time, okay?”

  “Sure.” He moved closer. “Mind if I join you for a cup of coffee?”

  “Oh, I’ve had about ten cups already, Vince,” she excused herself quickly. “It’s pretty late.”

  He took her arm and smiled, and his grip became almost painful. “Aw, come on, Dani. You been holed up with the German all night. How about a little equal time?”

  “Well, maybe for a few minutes, but I’m pretty tired.”

  “Sure, sure.” He nodded. “Come on over here. I been wanting to find out how a chick like you got into the preaching business.” He pulled her over to one of the couches, and when he sat down, she found herself pressed against him. He took his hand off her arm, but before she could move, he put it over her shoulder in what seemed to be a careless gesture, but the look in his eyes told her it was not.

  She began to talk rapidly, trying to think of some way to get out of the situation, but he held her so tightly that she had no chance to pull away. Finally she said, “Vince, don’t hold me so tight. I won’t run away.”

  He laughed and slid his other arm around her. Before she could say a word, he kissed her, holding her in his powerful arms, and began to push her back on the couch.