Free Righteous02 - Mighty and Strong by Michael Wallace Page B

you’d think she wanted to wash his feet.
    “Agents,” Krantz said. “Not officers.”
    “Oh, I’m very sorry.” The man rose behind an oversized desk and a chair that looked an inch or two higher than the chairs on the opposite side. “My secretary told me that. I should have paid more attention.”
    “It’s perfectly fine,” Fayer said. “People call us officer all the time.”
    “Actually, I think that’s the first time I’ve heard it,” Krantz said. His partner shot him a look, but he ignored it as he accepted Eric T. Peterson’s outstretched hand.
    The man was a power shaker, the kind who thinks of a hand shake as a minor struggle for dominance. Krantz normally kept his handshakes to a minimum, but this time he squeezed back. Just enough to let Peterson know he could turn the man’s arm into a pastry bag, if he chose.
    You wanna squeeze? Fine, let’s see how you like it when I extrude your bones and muscle through your elbow.
    Krantz had thrown the hammer and the shot put for USC. Ten years ago, true, but unlike some of his former teammates, he hadn’t let himself go soft. Well, except for the smoking. Coach would have kicked his ass for that one. He’d picked up the habit in Iraq and it was a hard one to shake.
    Once he let go of Peterson’s hand, Krantz glanced out the window. The elder’s office was near the top of the church office building and looked down on the spires of the temple and the rest of downtown Salt Lake. It was a great view, and he was not even Mormon.
    “Why don’t you tell me about this security threat,” Peterson said, returning to his seat. “You said this has to do with the temple.”
    “I don’t know if there’s a threat to the temple,” he said. “We’re more concerned about people coming and going from Temple Square than the facilities themselves.”
    This was not about guarding church property, Krantz reminded himself. Let the Mormons worry about that, or local police. Temple Square was a religious Disneyland as far as he was concerned, with perfect smiles, cast members who refuse to deviate from script, and not so much as a flower petal out of place. Mormons and Mickey Mouse fans went nuts for that sort of thing, but it was spiritual Muzak for Krantz. And at least the guys with the mouse ears knew enough to put in cool rides and a gift shop.
    Krantz didn’t consider himself a religious bigot. Well, he’d made the occasional remark after having one too many beers, but only when someone else brought up how surreal it was to live in Utah. Like a goddamn foreign country. Watered down coffee, the way people looked at you when you lit a cigarette in front of their kids. Like you were snatching kindergarteners at the bus stop and shooting them up with heroin.
    Utah hadn’t been his first choice. He respected the LDS agents. Like Fayer, they were honest, sharp, and worked their asses off. But he’d put in for Vegas, where you could blow off some steam at a casino after work, and get a drink without submitting a fingerprint, two forms of ID, and a criminal background check.
    But what really chapped him was the lack of boundaries. Perfect strangers felt free to ask his religion. He must have been offered a Book of Mormon half a dozen times. He begged them off by saying, “You know, religion just isn’t my thing.”
    The one benefit of growing up Catholic was it had inoculated him against other strains of religious nonsense. Inoculated against, or made him allergic to, depending on your point of view. People started preaching and it was like those old Peanuts cartoons. All he heard was, “Wa wa, wa wa wa.”
    He’d thought it would blow over, but it never did. Take Fayer. Ninety-nine percent of the time she was so logical he thought she’d have made a good prosecutor. But every once in a while, she’d get some religious epiphany and would bring up Joseph Smith and his gold plates. Oh, and did Krantz want a free copy of the Book of Mormon?
    After about the fifth