O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
before someone came from behind and knocked him out cold with a
club sandwich.
CHAPTER 11
When Deaf Lemon woke up in Limbo, he found himself facing a
bunch of people he had never seen before. Some guy in a suit was
jabbering on while the others watched, confused looks on their faces.
He was ranting about lawyers and people in high places and don’t
you know who I am and you’ll never work in this town again and all
sorts of shit that, frankly, he had all heard before from his days
sucking up to record executives. He had suffered many meetings with
people like that who showed you how powerful they were by yelling
at people over the phone while you were busy trying to sell your soul
at a bargain rate. Now that he was a hot commodity, he supposed that
he should be doing the same thing—sending back food, insulting
publicity peons, yelling at secretaries, and in this case—threatening a
bunch of loony kidnappers with crucifixion, but he knew that would
be pointless.
He was tired of the whole rigmarole. This show-business
nonsense. It was time he got away somewhere quiet, away from
people like this loud jerk who carried on about people as if they were
commodities like butcher’s meat. Some place where he could—
Hold on just one goddamn minute
. He shook his head.
Somewhere quiet? Loud jerk?
Was he hearing himself correctly?
More importantly, was he hearing?
It had been nearly twenty years since the car accident that cost
him that sense, and in those twenty years he could identify nothing
less subtle than the thud of a bass drum at a rock concert, yet now he
found himself hanging on every word, no matter how inane, that this
bozo was saying. It was as if there had been a block of concrete in his
head which was now mercifully extracted.
In his whole life, Deaf Lemon had not heard anything so
beautiful as Gareth Schlechtmann’s verbal assault on their long-
haired kidnappers. Nothing so beautiful that is, until one of them
finally responded to the tirade.
“Listen to me, my friend,” Yeshua said patiently, “We require
nothing of you but a little help. Should you decide not to come to our
aid, that is your prerogative, but I must point out that the rewards
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