Encounters Read online

  As soon as I got there, I started wandering the streets of the city, looking for the proper location for my tabernacle. It didn't take too long to figure out that most of the folks were heading for the Reeperbahn, which was an area loaded down with bars and nightclubs, and I figured that it didn't make much sense bringing Mohammed to the mountain since Mohammed was having a high old time right where he was, so I decided to look around for some For Sale signs, and after a few minutes I turned onto a little street called Herbertstrasse, the likes of which I ain't never encountered before or since.

  What it was was a bunch of buildings, each with three or four great big windows down on the ground level, and in each window was a pretty young German lady in her unmentionables, and for some reason not a single one of ’em had remembered to pull the shades down, and whenever I'd look in and offer ’em a smile of detached artistic appreciation, they'd smile right back at me.

  Well, I hadn't gotten halfway down the block when I decided that Herbertstrasse seemed just the place to establish my tabernacle, since it was close to the Reeperbahn, which would supply me with a steady stream of sinners, and it was filled with a bunch of friendly neighbors of the female persuasion who kept smiling at anyone who happened to walk by.

  As long as my mind was made up, I figured there wasn't no sense in wasting time, so I walked up to a blonde lady who was sitting by an open window, enjoying the cool evening breeze, to ask her if any of the buildings on the street happened to be for sale.

  “Good evening, ma'am,” I said.

  “Hi, handsome,” she replied in a thick German accent. “I am Helga.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Helga,” I said. “I'm the Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones. Do you know if any of these here hostelries is for sale?”

  She just stared at me and frowned, like she couldn't understand simple American.

  “The buildings, Helga,” I said.

  “Buildings?” she repeated.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Are any of ’em for sale, and if so, for how much?”

  “Ah!” she said, her face brightening. “How much?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thirty marks,” said Helga.

  “Thirty marks?” I said. “You're kidding!”

  She shrugged. “Okay, twenty-five marks.”

  “Twenty-five marks for everything?” I asked.

  “For everything, thirty marks.”

  Well, I didn't want no one to move out the furniture or the refrigerator, so I figured I might as well buy the whole place, lock, stock, and barrel, since it was such a cheap price for such a nice building.

  “Who do I pay?” I asked.

  “You pay me,” said Helga. “Wait and I open door.”

  A minute later the front door opened and she grabbed me by the arm and yanked me in off the street.

  “You pay me now,” she said.

  “I kind of thought I'd take a look around first,” I said. “You know, kind of inspect the plumbing and the heating and the necessaries and all.”

  “You pay me now,” she repeated.

  “Well, what the hell,” I said, counting out the money and handing it over, “for thirty marks, how badly can I get took?”

  Well, take my word for it, I never in all my experience found a person to be so grateful to make a cut-rate real estate sale. She practically dragged me up the stairs and into her bedroom, and before too long we got to know each other about as well as two people can get to know each other on such short notice. Helga kept shrieking and screaming like all get-out, and I kept trying to shush her up so we didn't bother the other tenants, but when I finally got her to keep quiet I heard all kind of yells and giggles coming from down the hall, and I figured either all the young ladies were entertaining their gentleman friends at the same time or else they had contracted some rare but contagious disease in which screaming and laughing were the two main symptoms.

  When we were all done, Helga climbed back into what she was wearing when I'd made her acquaintance and walked back downstairs, but I figured now that I owned the building I'd take a little tour of it, so I walked down the corridor, hoping I wouldn't catch no giggling disease, and pretty soon I came to a kitchen where about half a dozen blonde German ladies were gathered, most of ’em drinking beer or coffee.

  “Good day to you, ladies,” I said.

  “Who are you?” asked one of ’em in somewhat better English than Helga's.

  “I'm the Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones,” I said. “Are you just visiting, or do you all live here?”

  Well, she laughed aloud at that, which made me figure maybe I was right about the disease, and when she was all through giggling she said, “We work here.”

  “In the kitchen?” I said. “Just how many cooks does this place hire?”

  Well, she cracked up again, and this time she translated it into German, and everyone else started laughing, and I figured that the first thing I'd better do the next morning was stop by a doctor's office and get some kind of vaccination if it wasn't already too late.

  “Now let me ask you, Reverend Jones,” said the lady who spoke English, “what are you doing here?”

  “I just bought the place,” I said.

  “You?” she said, looking kind of surprised.

  “Right,” I said. “I was kind of hoping for something with maybe a steeple, but there just wasn't no way I could turn it down for the price.”

  “Do you know what this place is?” she asked.

  “As near as I can tell, it's an apartment building what's badly in need of windowshades and sound-proofing,” I said. “But once I clean it up and give it a paint job, it's gonna be the Tabernacle of Saint Luke.”

  “A tabernacle?” she repeated. “In Herbertstrasse?” Suddenly she started laughing again.

  “What's so rib-tickling about that?” I asked.

  “Reverend Jones, there is nothing in Herbertstrasse but whorehouses!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know,” I said, “I thought all them young ladies in the windows was dressed a little light for this time of year.”

  “Now that you've bought the place, what is to become of us?” she asked.

  “Well, I wouldn't never want it said that a place of worship threw the flowers of German womanhood out into the street,” I answered.

  “You mean we can keep on working here?”

  “Why not?”

  “It seems somehow inconsistent with running a tabernacle,” she said.

  “Nonsense,” I said. “A tabernacle can't function without sinners. If there's a better way to attract ’em, I ain't never come across it.”

  “Reverend Jones,” she said with a great big grin, “I think we're all going to get along just fine.”

  “Never occurred to me that we wouldn't,” I replied, grinning right back at her.

  “We've been turning over fifty percent of our earnings to the former owner,” she said. “How much will you charge?”

  “As a gesture of goodwill, the Tabernacle of Saint Luke only wants forty percent,” I said.

  “It's a deal.”

  “You know,” I said, “now that I come to think of it, I ain't got no place to stay. I'll be happy to lower it to thirty percent for any one of you frail flowers who'll give me a night's shelter.”

  Well, once she translated it I was overwhelmed with offers of shelter along with friendly, nurturing care, and my faith in the generosity and compassion of my fellow man—or in this case, my fellow woman—was reaffirmed.

  I got up bright and early the next morning and went to a local sign-painter and had him fix me up a sign that told one and all that they were about to enter the Tabernacle of Saint Luke, and I had him do it in German, French, Italian and English, just so we didn't lose no sinners that couldn't read a foreign tongue. Then I had him add that the casual sinner who entered the Tabernacle could find salvation, free beer, and a batch of friendly, caring young ladies who would be happy to listen to h
is confessions and even help him come up with some new ones.

  Once the sign was up and we were open for business, I took over the ground floor living room, set up a pulpit, and let it be known that I planned to spread the word of the Lord from 8:00 to 8:05 every evening, and maybe even oftener if the situation called for it. Hamburg was another town that hadn't never heard of bingo, but I found an old roulette wheel in a second-hand shop and announced that every Tuesday and Thursday we'd be indulging in friendly little games of chance to raise funds for our overseas missions.

  Things went along pretty well for the first week, and even better the second, and I got to thinking that if business kept up like this, I was going to have to start four or five more tabernacles on Herbertstrasse.

  I took to spending my mornings in the city's parks, recruiting handmaidens for the congregation, and I did my serious sleeping in the afternoons, when the salvation business was at its slowest. Then word got out that the Tabernacle of Saint Luke was charging ten percent less overhead for such business arrangements as the local females were inclined to make, and suddenly we had a steady stream of blonde ladies applying for positions with the tabernacle. Interviewing ’em was exhausting work, if you catch my meaning, but I figured it was my own special burden, so I done it with nary a complaint, and pretty soon we had three full eight-hour shifts of handmaidens toiling away in the service of the Lord, and an awful lot of the windows in the other buildings were temporarily boarded up.

  Then one night I came down the stairs after a vigorous afternoon's nap, and who should I find waiting for me there but Rupert Cornwall.

  “Well, howdy, Brother Rupert,” I said. “I ain't seen you since we was both courting Lady Edith Quilton back in India.”

  “Doctor Jones!” he said. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  “Just spreading the word of the Lord,” I answered. “How about yourself?”

  “Well, it's a strange situation,” he said. “I own this building. I've been away for a month, tending to other matters, and I just arrived back not ten minutes ago to find some interloper claims to have bought it.”

  “I hate to correct you, Brother Rupert,” I said, “but I ain't no interloper, and it just so happens that I'm the landlord of these here premises.”

  "You?"

  “That's right,” I said.

  “Who do you think you bought it from?” he demanded.

  “Helga.”

  “Helga's a goddamned prostitute!” yelled Rupert.

  “I'll thank you not to use the Lord's name in vain when you're in the Tabernacle of Saint Luke,” I said.

  “What the hell makes you think Helga had any right to sell this building?” he continued.

  “I negotiated it fair and square,” I said.

  “How much did you pay for it?” he asked.

  “Thirty marks.”

  "Thirty marks?" he screamed. “It's worth seventy-five thousand!”

  “I thought it was a mite inexpensive myself,” I said, “but that don't change the fact that it's mine.”

  “Where is your bill of sale?” said Rupert.

  “It was an informal transaction,” I said.

  “It was an illegal transaction!” he yelled. “This place belongs to me!”

  “Why don't we let the tenants take a vote on who they want to be their landlord?” I suggested.

  “They have nothing to do with this! This is my building, and I want you out of here in the next thirty minutes.”

  “Look, Brother Rupert, I don't see no reason why a couple of old friends like you and me can't work this out.”

  “We can work it out just fine,” he said. “Get off my premises.”

  “Well, I suppose I could clear out,” I said.

  “Good.”

  “Of course,” I added, “I ain't got no place to go, and I imagine the local constabularies would pick me up for vagrancy before long, and being the good-natured and friendly man of the cloth that I am, I'd probably try to entertain ’em with some amusing stories while they were fingerprinting me down at the station, and one of the ones that comes to mind is how you stole the Empire Emerald back in Hong Kong, and after we'd shared a laugh or two over that, I might tell ’em how you tried to get your hands on the Flame of Bharatpur when we was in Rajasthan, and sooner or later we'd share a drink or two and I'd tell ’em why you can't never go back to Australia, and that there's still half a dozen warrants out for your arrest.”

  “That's outrageous!” he said. “Does our friendship mean nothing to you?”

  “I cherish our friendship, Brother Rupert,” I told him. “But on the other hand, I ain't the one who's trying to throw you out into the street.”

  “Doctor Jones,” he said. “Lucifer, my old friend. Suddenly I feel certain that we can work something out.”

  “Well, that's right friendly of you, Brother Rupert,” I said. “And I want you to know that despite our little contretemps, I never doubted that you was a decent Christian who would do the right thing sooner or later.”

  “All right,” he said with a sigh. “Promise not to go to the police, and you can have a quarter of the take.”

  “I'm ashamed of you, Brother Rupert,” I said. “When you flim-flam me, you're flim-flamming the Lord. And betwixt us, me and the Lord have tripled the business in less than a month.”

  “All right,” he said. “A third.”

  “Sixty percent,” I said.

  “I can't let you buy more than half my business for thirty marks!”

  “You're looking at it all wrong,” I said. “I'm giving you almost half my business for nothing.”

  Well, we argued and haggled for another hour, and in the end it was decided that I owned fifty percent of the voting stock in the Tabernacle of Saint Luke, Rupert owned the other fifty percent, and the Lord held an option on three hundred shares of preferred non-voting stock.

  Things went along pretty well for the next week. Rupert had taken a room for himself at the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel, which was a fancy place in the center of town, but I couldn't see no reason to move out of the tabernacle, where I could keep in close contact with all them flowers of German womanhood who were toiling day and night in the service of the Lord, and whenever it looked like one of ’em might fall from grace I saw to it that I was always first in line with an uplifting word and a little missionary work.

  We were making so much money that I decided some new preaching clothes were in order, so I stopped by a local tailor and had him make me up a white silk suit, which I figured would reflect the purity of my thoughts, and I also got a couple of nifty green and red and gold Hawaiian shirts to go with it, just to make some of the sailors from the South Seas who stopped by feel more at home.

  Then I figured that as since I was now sharing the take with Rupert Cornwall, it wouldn't hurt none to do a little advertising to bring in even more sinners, so I made up a bunch of signs directing people to the Tabernacle of Saint Luke and posted ’em all over the Reeperbahn, so folks would know where to go to get their sins redeemed.

  All this time I was sweating and toiling in the service of the Lord, I hadn't seen hide nor hair of Rupert Cornwall, except for his nightly visit to collect his share of the money, and truth to tell I was feeling a little resentful that me and God were doing all this work for only half the profits, but being the big-hearted Christian gentleman that I am I kept my feelings to myself, except when the handmaidens would ask why he was still hanging around after I had bought the place, and I had to explain to ’em that the Lord teaches us to be charitable to sinners, though it wasn't a piece of advice I necessarily wanted them to live by, so I further explained that that particular passage was only in the Australian translation of the Good Book and since Rupert was the only Australian they knew, it didn't really apply to none of the other sinners who visited the tabernacle with money to spend.

  Then one night, while Rupert was upstairs counting out his share of the money, a group of ten real well-dressed guys walked in all at
once, and each and every one of ’em looked kind of unhappy, like life hadn't been treating ’em none too well of late.

  “Welcome to the Tabernacle of Saint Luke, gents,” I said, walking over to ’em. “Most of our handmaidens is otherwise occupied at the moment, but if you'd like, I can whip through a quick service and get you a head start on your salvation so's you'll have a few sins paid for in advance.”

  “Never mind that,” said the littlest one of the group. “Do you know who we are?”

  “It don't make no difference to the Tabernacle of Saint Luke,” I said. “We treat all sinners the same, regardless of race, creed, or political affiliation.”

  “We are the other landlords of Herbertstrasse,” continued the little guy, “and it is not inaccurate to say that we are seriously displeased with this establishment.”

  “You stole our girls!” shouted another.

  “And our customers!” yelled a third.

  “In other words,” said the little guy, “we don't mind a little friendly competition, but you, sir, are a monopolist.”

  “That's a lie!” I said. “I ain't never shot a king or a prince in my life!”

  He just stared at me for a minute and shook his head.

  “We have come to buy you out,” he said at last.

  “The Tabernacle of Saint Luke ain't for sale,” I said.

  “You're quite certain of that?” he asked me.

  “Lemme put it this way,” I said; “If I was you, I wouldn't go laying no serious bets against it.”

  “You have complicated our task,” he said sadly. “We came here to make you a legitimate business offer, and you refuse even to listen to it. That leaves us no other choice but to take over your business by other means.”

  And suddenly I was staring into the business ends of ten pistols.

  “It just so happens that the judge of the local probate court is my brother-in-law,” said the little guy. “If something were to happen to you, something shall we say permanent, I think it not unlikely that he would decide to award your possessions to myself and my associates.”