Double Whammy

Charlie Weeb was only half-listening. He missed Ellen O'Leary; no one else looked quite as fine, topless in the rubber trout waders. No one soothed him the way Ellen did, either, but now she was gone. Took off after Dickie Lockhart's murder. One more disappointment in a week of bleak disappointments for the Reverend Charles Weeb.

"How much do I owe you?" he asked the lap dancer.

"Nothing, Father." She sounded confused. "I brought my own money."

"What for?" Weeb looked down; he couldn't see her face, just the top of her head and the smooth slope of her naked back.

"I got a favor to ask," the lap dancer said, whispering into his chest hair. "And I wanna pay for it."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"I want you to heal my poppa." She looked up shyly. "He's got the gout, my poppa does."

"No, child—"

"Some days he can't barely get himself out of bed."

Weeb shifted restlessly, glanced at his wristwatch.

"I'll give you two hundred dollars," the girl declared.

"You're serious?"

"Just one little prayer, please."

"Two hundred bucks?"

"And a hum job, if you want it, Father."

Charlie Weeb stared at her, thinking: It's true what they say about the power of television.

"Come, child," he said softly, "let's pray."

Later, when he was alone, the Reverend Charles Weeb thought about the girl and what she'd wanted. Maybe it was the answer he'd been looking for. It had worked before, in the early years; perhaps it would work again.

Charlie Weeb drank a Scotch and tried to sleep, but he couldn't. In recent nights he had been kept awake by the chilling realization that Lunker Lakes, his dream city, was in deep trouble. The first blow had come from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, whose auditors had swept into the offices of First Standard Eurobank of Ohio and discovered that the whole damn thing was on the verge of insolvency. The problem was bad loans, huge ones, which First Standard Eurobank apparently handed out as freely as desk calendars. The Outdoor Christian Network, doing business as Lunker Lakes Ltd., had been the beneficiary of just such unbridled generosity—twenty-four million dollars for site planning and construction. On paper there was nothing unusual about the loan or the terms of repayment (eleven percent over ten years), but in reality not much money ever got repaid. About six thousand dollars, to be exact. Wanton disorganization ruled First Standard Eurobank's collections department—as patient and amiable a bunch of Christian soldiers as Charlie Weeb had ever met. He kept missing the bimonthly payments and they kept saying don't worry and Charlie Weeb didn'tworry, because this was a fucking bank, for God's sake, and banks don't go under anymore. Then the FDIC swooped in and discovered that First Standard Eurobank had been just as patient and flexible with all its commercial customers, to the extent that virtually nobody except farmers were being made to repay their loans on time. Suddenly the president of the bank and three top assistants all moved to Barbados, leaving Uncle Sam to sort out the mess. Pretty soon the bad news trickled out: First Standard Eurobank was calling in its bad loans. All over the country big-time land developers headed for the tall grass. Charlie Weeb himself had been dodging some twit from The Wall Street Journalfor five days.

What aggravated Weeb was that he had intended all along to pay back the money, but at a pace commensurate with advance sales at Lunker Lakes. Unfortunately, sales were going very slowly. Charlie Weeb couldn't figure it out. He fired his marketing people, fired his advertising people, fired his sales people—yet nothing improved. It was maddening. The lakefront models were simply beautiful. Three bedrooms, sunken bath and sauna, cathedral ceilings, solar heating, microwave kitchens—"Christian town-home living at its finest!" Charlie Weeb was fanatical about using the term "town home," which was a fancy way of saying two-story condo. The problem with using the word "condo" was, as every idiot in Florida knew, you couldn't charge a hundred and fifty thousand for a "condo" fourteen miles away from the ocean. For this reason any Lunker Lakes salesman who spoke the word was immediately terminated. Condos carried a hideous connotation, Charlie Weeb had lectured—this wasn't a cheesy high-rise full of nasty old farts, this was a wholesome family community.With fucking bike paths!