Shoot the Lawyer Twice by Michael Bowen

Author:Michael Bowen [Bowen, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General
ISBN: 978-1-61595-318-9
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, Inc.
Published: 2011-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

“Jesus, watch what you’re doing with that whip!”

“Sorry.”

“We’re short-handed as it is!”

“I’m a little too into it, I guess.”

A man in his late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a coarse white tunic and sandals, sheepishly gathered up three intertwined lengths of dark yellow rope. He had an impressive dark brown beard, and you had to get pretty close to tell that his matching shoulder-length hair was a wig. If you did get that close you might have noticed blue eyes and other facial features that looked a bit Aryan for a first-century A.D. Jew.

“Okay,” said the younger man in gray hoodie and sweatpants who had admonished the whip-wielding actor playing Jesus, “let’s get set up and make this one count! It’s getting cold in here!”

Melissa shivered in agreement. Four walls sheltered the stone-floored assembly area, but the Romanesque arches looking out on the cloister walk were open and let in plenty of brisk winter air. They pretty much had to be open, of course, because no one would associate Thermopane with the Temple in Jerusalem under Roman rule.

The guy in the hoodie fussed with a digital video camera on a tripod. A dozen people took their places at small wooden tables forming a rough U in front of the arches. Coins heaped in mounds, paper dollars and euros overflowing wicker baskets, and carelessly strewn stock certificates covered the tables. Balance scales and papier maché doves in crude wooden cages completed the array of props.

The people behind the tables continued the theme of deliberate anachronism. Three were dressed in the same type of Mediterranean garb as the Jesus actor, but four were in business suits sharper than any Rep owned, two were women in long skirts and blouses, and three were in Catholic clerical garb—a monsignor, a cardinal, and a pope, Melissa thought.

The guy in the hoodie motioned to a coed, who awkwardly squatted to look at the flip-out screen on the video camera while she fingered the controls. Moving well away from her, he raised a still camera and spoke.

“Pan slowly along the tables….Slooowwly….No hurry….Zoom in on the money….Again, get each kind….Now pull back steady to wide angle….And…and…Jesus, go!”

The Jesus actor unfurled his whip of cords and snapped it over his head. He strode menacingly forward, lashed the floor, then raised the whip again and swished it in a vicious-looking, arm’s-length parabola. His hair flew behind him and his muscular body stretched athletically as he drew the whip back again in terrifying preparation for another lash. The money-changers scattered in entirely plausible panic. Tables clattered against the uneven stone as fleeing brokers upset them. Coins spilled noisily on the floor. Currency flung into the air swirled like confetti.

“Perfect! ” the guy in the hoodie yelled. “Cut! ”

Jesus angrily threw over a couple of tables that were still standing. He whirled right and left, as if he hadn’t had quite gotten the flogging out of his system.

“Got it!” the director yelled.

The whip swished through the air and mangled a euro floating around waist level.

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