“Listen,” LaSalle said: “ ‘And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.’ I was in love with my evil, you see? It took a shank to the ribs to get my attention, but God got it. Boy, he dialed me direct.”
Steve said nothing.
“It was right here, in the infirmary, where I saw an angel of the Lord. I don’t know if I was out when it happened or wide awake. All I know is there was an angel in the room with me and he looked like, I don’t know, he looked big and perfect. Scared the living—I was scared, boy, but then he spoke to me. He said, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ Did you know angels say that right out of the box?”
“Never talked to one myself.”
“Yeah, they say, ‘Don’t be afraid,’ because man, you will be. But his voice calmed me down and he called me Johnny.”
“Had your file, did he?”
LaSalle narrowed his eyes. “This is not something to mock, my man. I’m telling you about a visit from a heavenly being, coming to me to tell me my life had been given back to me, but I had to follow the living Christ from now on. I was given a choice, don’t you see?”
Steve placed his palms on the desk. “Mr. LaSalle, let me give you one more shot at this. Why did you call me up here?”
“To save you.”
“To save me?”
Johnny LaSalle nodded.
“I don’t need saving,” Steve said.
“You know you do.” LaSalle’s eyes burned with an inner fire, like a prophet or madman or murderer. Maybe he was all three.
Steve put his legal pad back in his briefcase, snapped it shut.
“You do need to be saved,” LaSalle said. “I know it.”
Steve turned to the desk guard. “I’m through here.”
“ ‘And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season.’ ”
The guard picked up the phone and said something.
Steve started to get up.
“Don’t go!” LaSalle said.
“Good luck.”
The interior door opened and the same deputy returned, looking like he’d just been disturbed from a nap.
Steve was on his feet when LaSalle said, “You won’t stay and talk to your own brother?”
The deputy approached LaSalle.
“Wait a second,” Steve said. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Your brother. He was lost. And now is found.”
Steve’s chest tightened. The fact that this man would say that, that he knew Steve had a brother at all, needed explanation.
“I’m here for the prisoner,” the deputy said.
“I’m not through,” Steve said.
“You called it,” the desk deputy said. “That’s it.” He started unlocking Johnny LaSalle’s desk cuffs.
LaSalle said nothing, but his face was almost glowing.
“You’re one sick puppy,” Steve said.
“You just finding that out?” the escort deputy said with a laugh. He pulled LaSalle to his feet. The shackles jangled like loose change.
“Don’t believe them, Steve,” LaSalle said. “I bless the entire world. I need you.” Just before he turned his back he added, “My real name is Robert Conroy. I’m your brother.”
6
The next few moments passed like a slow-motion death scene. The deputy got LaSalle out the door, closed it, and all the while Steve stood mute. Like a statute named Stupid.
What had just happened? A prisoner calls him for an interview and knows about his dead brother? Not just that, invokes the name for himself?
That meant this guy had done research, actual research on him. Or had the information fed to him by another. But what sense did that make? Why go to all that trouble to put the needle in like that?
“Have a nice day,” the desk deputy said.
As Steve stumbled out, all the old memories flooding back, he knew it would be a long drive back to the Valley. He would be thinking of relief all the way, how he used to handle situations like this in the past.
He hit the speed dial as he drove. For his sponsor. Needed him right now.
Gincy answered. “Hey, what’s up?”
“You are not going to believe this one,” Steve said.
“Try me.”
His open invitation to talk, and his promise to listen. That’s what he was good at.
Gincy Ferguson, his Cocaine Anonymous sponsor, was a former Las Vegas dancer turned body builder and gardening enthusiast. During daylight hours, Gincy installed and serviced home fitness equipment, then volunteered his time helping at risk youth at a big church in Tarzana.
At forty, Gincy had lines etched in his face that read like a relief map of an improbably hard life. He’d come from a little town in Georgia, where his father had become the first African American in the county fire department. A father who died in a blaze when Gincy was a boy. That was the main reason, Steve decided, that they hit it off. Both were from the brotherhood of the fatherless.
Gincy’s big mistake was going for the glamour instead of the gold. “I could have had a job with the fire department myself,” he once told Steve. “But I wanted a different kind of light and heat.”
Landing in Vegas, Gincy discovered he had been granted two things “by the hand of God.” An almost perfect body and the ability to move it. With his movie-star looks—his nickname among the dancers was Denzel—it wasn’t long before he landed in the chorus of a Las Vegas revue that went on for seven years.
Which was more than enough time for Gincy to fall into the gaping maw of the high life. As one of the few straight male dancers on the Strip, he had his pick of the female contingent. And because of his natural gregariousness, Gincy got to be a favorite on the party circuit. Cocaine became his drug of choice.
It got so bad he was burning through his salary every month, then having to borrow, and finally having to borrow from the wrong people. Of which there are plenty in Las Vegas.
The debt got too high. One night Gincy was picked up by a couple of thugs and ended up with two broken legs.
No more dancing for Gincy Ferguson.
It was while he was in the county hospital that he had what he called a vision. When pressed he said it could have been just a very vivid dream but it didn’t matter. It was still as real as to him as a live performance of Chicago.
In the vision he saw his father walking through flames. But the man wasn’t burning. He was actually calm and calling out, “Get out of the fire, Gincy! Get out of the fire!”
When Gincy woke up, he was on the other side of belief. Still in leg casts, he checked himself into the addiction unit of the hospital and began the hard road to sobriety. And faith.
It was fine with Steve, the faith part, as long as Gincy was there when he needed him. Like now.
“I’ve just been out to the prison at Fenton,” Steve said, holding the phone to his left ear and steering with his other hand. “A guy pulled a weird one on me. Claimed to be my brother.”
Pause, then Gincy said, “That is weird. Why would he do that?”
“No idea. It threw me. I’m buzzing like a wire.”