Bad Girls of the Bible Part 11

MARK TWAIN.

Lila!" The receptionist's voice was just short of a bray. "Your six o'clock manicure is here."

"Shh." Lila shot the woman a look of aggravation. "You'll wake Sam." She watched as the man, now sprawled across her barber's chair, twitched in restless slumber, his dark lashes feathering across his rugged cheeks, his ma.s.sive shoulders more than filling the chair.

It happened every week. Judge Sam Nazar would show up for a shave and a trim, and within minutes his chin would fall to his muscular chest, his eyelids would droop, and a gentle snore would come rumbling from Lila's corner of the salon. Sometimes he even talked in his sleep, sharing the latest courtroom intrigue in a low murmur only Lila heard and never shared.

The other stylists found it amusing. "Slumbering Sam" they called him-when he was fast asleep and out of earshot.

Wide awake, seated behind the bench in his flowing black robe, Judge Sam was a formidable sight. Only a fool would poke fun at such a giant in the Dallas judicial community. One of the youngest on the bench, Sam had a hard-earned reputation and a hard-driving style. Hadn't he tossed drug dealers behind prison walls for life without parole? Didn't he routinely send greenhorn attorneys running from his courtroom, their tails tucked between their trousered legs, afraid of disbarment or worse?

And the death penalty? An easy call for Judge Sam. He'd sentenced dozens of men to their deaths without blinking an eye or shedding a tear-if his countenance could be trusted.

The legends that swirled around Sam Nazar were legion, though how accurate the stories were-well, that was anybody's guess. Like that rumor about his wife burning to death in a tragic fire soon after their wedding. Somewhere in West Texas, people said, though n.o.body had newspaper clippings to prove it. Or the old yarn that he'd chased off a dozen gang members with a bone. A bone? Folks were crazy.

Then there was the tale about Sam killing a runaway lion at the Dallas Zoo. Witnesses said he didn't even have a gun, just wrestled the lion to the ground and broke the animal's jaw.

One look at his hands-twice the size of most men's-and Lila believed that one. Judge Sam was the law, and everybody in the Metroplex knew it. Judge Sam was also in love with her, and n.o.body even suspected it.

Me! Lila! Not a society type in sequins and furs-a stylist at a downtown salon. A nice place, sure, but she'd hoped for better someday. When Sam strolled into her life, she thought she'd found her ticket to riches and comfort. Even if he did talk about his G.o.d more than she liked, his tailored suits and designer ties told her there was gold underneath his high-and-mighty exterior.

But he didn't give her money or gifts. He only gave her his love. At least that's what he called it. She'd heard the word before, plenty of times, and it usually meant something else altogether.

He didn't offer her his name or promise they'd have a future together. He only offered his head in her capable hands every Thursday and his arms wrapped around her slim waist every Sat.u.r.day night.

"Liii-laa! Your next appointment is here."

Ignoring the insistent voice of the receptionist blaring over the salon speakers, Lila slid a styling comb through Sam's hair and cast an admiring professional gaze on the natural body and dark, generous waves beneath her fingers. He wore his hair longer than any judge in Texas and didn't care who complained about it. Instead, he'd fix his piercing black eyes on hers and issue an order: "Comb it any way you fancy, but take no more than an eighth of an inch off the ends. Hear me, gal?"

She looked down at him now, her scissors flas.h.i.+ng in the artificial light of the Cutting Edge, and sleeked a damp clump of hair flat between her fingers, sliding the sharp blade along the edge. Snip. One-eighth inch fell to the black-and-white vinyl squares beneath her feet. Snip. Another cascade of wet ends drifted to the floor. Lila worked in silence, blocking out the hubbub around her in order to concentrate on the man who'd come to mean much more than a greenback tip in the soda gla.s.s propped by her salon mirror.

She'd never told a soul how she felt about Sam. Wasn't sure she knew herself. He was surly and unpredictable and-truth be told-dangerous. He also had a charisma about him that hinted at old money, serious social connections, and Texas roots that went all the way down to molten rock, best she could tell.

Of this she was certain: If she'd met Sam a few years earlier, he might have kept her from chasing after all the wrong sort of men-the kind Sam threw behind bars every chance he got. They'd all been physically strong but morally weak, every one of those men, and their weaknesses had proven to be their undoing. Problem was, when they fell, they never failed to drag her down another notch with them.

Sam rolled his broad shoulders, trying to get more comfortable in her chair even in his sleep. The innocent action sent a cool s.h.i.+ver tripping up Lila's spine. Strength in a man always got her attention. It made her skin tingle and her breath catch and her imagination run wild. Sam Nazar was all about power. Powerful muscles wrapped around a powerful mind acquainted with powerful friends in high places. He scared her almost to the point of fainting when he dropped in her chair every Thursday afternoon. Maybe it was better that he snoozed while she snipped. It made her less nervous that way. Even if he did occasionally tuck love notes in her smock pocket or whisper endearments in her ear when she bent over him with conditioner in her palms, the man was definitely less threatening when his eyes were closed.

Sliding the comb beneath the long hair on the back of his neck, she smoothed the hair upward and felt a rough line of scar tissue underneath the black strands. What's this? She'd never noticed it before. Hmm. Intrigued, she ran a fingertip along the jagged length of it.

Without warning, Sam jerked, making her jump and accidentally jab his thick neck with her scissors. In an instant he was sitting up straight, fully awake and looking none too happy. She'd barely broken the skin, but still a dot of blood blossomed into a tiny stream running down the back of his neck.

"Wh-what the-!" His eyes were angry storm clouds as he pressed an expensive handkerchief against the wound.

"Judge, I'm...so sorry!" She watched him stanch the small red blotch while she swallowed a lump that was climbing up her windpipe with alarming speed.

He lowered his hand and glanced at the red spot; then his eyes met hers and cooled as quickly as they'd heated. A wry smile stretched across his face. "Just a tiny scratch, sweetheart, judging by the blood."

"W-well, you're the judge." A wave of relief left her lightheaded, giddy. "I'm truly sorry, Sam." She gently touched the edge of the scar tissue hidden under his hairline. "When I found this-"

He yanked her wrist with a rough twist. "Don't touch that."

"Oh! I didn't...you never..." Her relief dissipated like hair spray. She shrugged, hoping to appear nonchalant. "It just surprised me, that's all."

"Well..." He tossed her hand aside as if to dismiss the subject. "No problem, Lila. Just a sensitive spot, that's all. Finish cutting while my hair's still wet, will you?"

Her hands were shaking as she gathered up another section of hair. "Sensitive, you say? That scar tissue looks like it's been there awhile. Does it still hurt?"

His voice dropped to a murmur. "Some wounds never heal."

Oh. She guided her shears around his collar, pressing her lips shut until her curiosity got the better of her. "It's a mean-looking line. Good thing your hair covers every bit of it. How...how did it happen?"

He turned to fix her with a steady gaze, giving nothing away with his eyes. "Three guesses, beautiful girl."

Her cheeks warmed, exactly as a girl's might, even though she'd seen three dozen hot Dallas summers come and go. "Gee, Sam. Another one of your guessing games?" She sighed in mock exasperation. "All right, first guess: Did you land on barbed wire on your daddy's ranch?"

He laughed. "Try again."

"Have a close encounter with a barstool in some Lone Star honky-tonk?"

"You know better than that." Sam never touched the stuff.

She paused, considering. "Did you find yourself at the wrong end of a jealous husband's straight-edge razor?"

The flicker in his ebony eyes was so slight she decided she must have imagined it. "I give up, Sam. What really happened?"

His grin was a loaded weapon. "A big dog bit me."

All day Friday Lila couldn't get the mystery of Sam's scar out of her mind. There wasn't a dog in the world with a bite that wide or that lethal. Sam was hiding something from her, the creep. Didn't he trust her? Who was she gonna tell? It wasn't the scar that mattered, not really. The fact that he'd lied to her, that's what pushed her b.u.t.tons.

Late Sat.u.r.day afternoon she was finis.h.i.+ng up her last client, whipping off the teal vinyl cape with a flourish, when she noticed three men filling the archway into her corner of the salon. Big men, well dressed, with smiles that suggested they wanted something from her.

The minute her customer was gone the men made their move. She watched them, wary. Who were these guys-vaguely familiar and more than a little scary? She swallowed hard and waited while they circled around her.

The stocky man, jangling a set of keys in his hand, spoke first. "Lila, isn't it? From Mesquite?"

She nodded, barely breathing. Was her foolish youth coming back to haunt her? What else did they know about her?

The man's voice was a measured growl. "It's come to our attention that Judge Sam Nazar sits in this chair every Thursday."

"Yeah," another one chimed in. "Falls asleep like a baby, we hear." His laugh was ugly. "Must have some kinda magic in those hands, miss."

Lila bristled. "How I serve my clients is my business."

"Not when he's the most influential judge in Texas." The tallest of the three stepped closer, automatically sending her body heat spiraling.

Power. Her instincts never failed her on that count.

His eyes regarded her with a sinister glint. "We've also heard he talks in his sleep."

How can they possibly know that? One of her coworkers must have spilled the beans. The jerks. She raised her chin defiantly. "So? Lots of people talk in their sleep."

They closed ranks on her, blocking her view of anything except their wide-brimmed Stetson hats and predatory smiles. The tall one leaned over and whispered, "We'll get right to the point, Lila. We have reason to believe that Sam Nazar killed a man. Maybe more than one."

The blood in her veins turned to ice. Sam, a murderer? It wasn't possible. She told them as much.

"You're wrong, miss. Dead wrong. Once the good voters of Dallas hear about this, Judge Nazar will be done in this town. Off the bench and off our backs for good. It's his one weak spot, that history of his. Did you happen to notice a scar above the back of his neck?"

Her eyes widened. The puzzle pieces were falling together. Of course! The scar was put there not by a dog's teeth but by a knife, no doubt wielded by a man who got himself killed in the process.

The men exchanged knowing glances. "All we need is his sleep-talking confession on this little microca.s.sette recorder." A small black box was shoved her direction. "That's where you come in, Lila. You and your pretty face should be able to coax a confession out of the judge, right? Ask a few questions, lull him off to sleep. Bingo."

The tall one slipped a bulging envelope out of his pocket and opened it briefly, waving the contents under her nose. "As you can see, we'll make it worth your while."

She didn't have to count it to know it was a huge sum of money. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands maybe. Enough to build that better life she'd been dreaming about. Enough to start over.

"Have we made our point, Lila?" He shoved the envelope back in his pocket and patted it with a rough-knuckled hand. "You're seeing Lover Boy on Sat.u.r.day night as usual, yes?"

So they know about that, too. She shrugged, then realized she'd given herself away. Clearly they knew the score, knew she was interested in their money, too. Sam was a nice guy. No, not nice-strong. Masculine. But there was no future there. Not for a girl like her.

Sam was a murderer, plain and simple. Who was to say she wouldn't be his next victim? Sure, she'd miss his soul-stirring kisses, but there was enough cash in that envelope to keep her warm for decades of chilly Dallas winters. Besides, all his talk about G.o.d got on her nerves, and she was growing weary of changing the subject.

The truth was, the opportunity of a lifetime had just marched through the doors of the Cutting Edge, and she wasn't about to throw it away.

An image flashed across her mind and disappeared just as quickly. An image of Sam waking up not in her lap but in prison. Shackled. Ridiculed. Stripped of his power. The big man cut down to size.

By her.

Sorry, Sam.

Lila took a deep breath and shoved her shaking hands into her smock pockets. "I'm listening. Tell me what you want me to do..."

A Truly Bad (Girl) Hair Day: Delilah

A woman like Delilah is the last person a devoted mother would choose for her only begotten man-child. But if Samson had fallen in love with a nice girl from home, there would have been no story. And my, my, was there ever a story.

The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the LORD blessed him, and the Spirit of the LORD began to stir him. Judges 13:24-25 "He" would be Samson, a man in no way like the G.o.dly Joseph of chapters past, despite Samson's auspicious beginning. A Scottish scholar of the twentieth century found Samson "more like Rob Roy and [Robert] Burns than he is like the mighty prophets and leaders of Israel."1 Rob Roy? Aye, I canna help but hear the skirl of bagpipes when I clap me eyes on his tartan-swathed thighs...

Well, maybe not. Surely such attire would have been an affront to Samson's n.a.z.irite vows-outlined in the sixth chapter of Numbers-which included no fruit of the vine (not even raisins), no contact with dead bodies, and definitely no haircuts.

For a guy who was supposed to avoid dead bodies, Samson surely created a ton of them. The Scotsman called Samson a "frolicsome giant." Giant, yes. Jolly and green, no. Samson's larger-than-life exploits in Judges 14 and 15 depict a rather mean-spirited, biblical Paul Bunyan who wielded his vastly superior strength like an ax on the necks of the Philistines.

His enemies had good reason to fear Samson, of whom the banner headline in the Timnah Times might have proclaimed, "He-Man Tears Apart Lion with Bare Hands." A feat, by the way, which he managed to do on the way to his own wedding feast.

"I am Samson; hear me roar."

His stunts were legendary. When his bride, a foreigner, was given away to his best man instead, Samson tied the tails of three hundred foxes together in pairs, attached a flaming torch to each set of tails, and sent them running into his enemy's grainfields, destroying everything in their path. (Think of the special effects it would take to create that panorama for the silver screen.) The Philistines retaliated by burning Samson's wife and father-in-law to death. Not as flashy as the fox fias...o...b..t much more personal. Samson eventually took revenge by striking down a thousand men with the jawbone of a single donkey, a move that was flashy and personal. No question, the entire book of Judges should carry a warning sticker-"For Mature Audiences Only." The murder and mayhem quotient, already high at that point in the story, got worse.

Samson found his way to a prost.i.tute's bed in Gaza while his enemies slept at the city gate, waiting to kill him in the morning. Our hero outsmarted them by jumping up in the middle of the night, lifting that very gate onto his broad shoulders, and carrying it to the top of a hill nearly forty miles away. Clearly even a night of pa.s.sion couldn't deplete the superhuman resources of this herculean man. Arnold, Sly, and Jean-Claude at their bench-pressing best wouldn't stand a chance against this musclebound brute, though Samson needed someone to cut him down to size.

It took a woman to accomplish the task.

A woman named Delilah.

Some time later, he fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah. Judges 16:4 In Hebrew, "Delilah" is variously translated as "languis.h.i.+ng" or "weak." In Arabic, "Delilah" means "flirt" or "coquettish woman."

By any definition, this valley girl's charms worked on poor, besotted Samson, who not only trusted her, he loved her. We are never told that she loved him in return, yet it's clear that he cared deeply for her. She was not a one-night stand, like the woman in Gaza. Or an abandoned wife, like the woman in Timnah. He "fell in love" with the woman. Period. The other two women are not named in Scripture, but this mysterious woman of whom we know so little-no past, no nationality, no family-had a name, and a delectable one at that.

We know very few facts about Delilah, but the things we do know raise more questions than they answer. She lived in the Valley of Sorek, between Israelite and Philistine lands, which tells us where her home was located but not where her allegiance dwelled. Was she Philistine or Israelite? The scholars can't agree on that one.

She had a house of her own, a rare distinction unless she was independently wealthy (meaning the bribe that followed wouldn't have had nearly as much appeal). Or she could have been a widow. Or a prost.i.tute. Though if that was the case, why wasn't she so named, since the harlot in Gaza sported that label?

Besides, if Delilah regularly sold her services, when did she find time for this long, hairy affair with Samson?

One commentator called her "The Undesirable Woman."2 The what? That was one attribute of Delilah that goes without saying: desirability. Obviously that writer never laid eyes on the lady, who must have been quite a looker to capture Samson's eye and heart. That she was a fallen woman of loose morals we have no doubt, since Samson spent time alone with her in her inner chamber-something Good Girls didn't do.

Powerful Samson could have had any woman he wanted, and he wanted Delilah, even though we see no evidence that she had a charming personality, great wit, boundless compa.s.sion, or gentle affection. Only one explanation remains: She was an extraordinary beauty who knew how to display her body, hair, and face to snare a man's heart. Even strong men can harbor a hidden weakness. For Samson, that vulnerable spot wasn't his long hair; it was Delilah herself.

Over the centuries commentators have slung buckets of mud in Delilah's direction. Though referred to merely as a "woman" in the Scriptures, she's since been labeled "a harlot," "a heartless seducer," "a temptress," "dark and sinister," "a temple prost.i.tute," and "one of the lowest, meanest women of the Bible-the female Judas of the Old Testament."3 The way I see it, the operative word for Delilah might be p.a.w.n.

The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said... Judges 16:5 This snippet of the story reveals an important fact: Betraying Samson wasn't Delilah's idea. Yes, she bought into it-literally, as we'll see in a moment-but conventional wisdom says, "Follow the money." In this case, the money led directly back to the Philistine heads of state. They were the ones who planted the seeds of betrayal in her heart.

If Delilah were on the witness stand, I'd have only one question for her: "Delilah darlin', did you choose to be with Samson for your own pleasure and then hear from the Philistines, or did those bad boys set you up to tear Samson down from day one?" Such a technicality would merely satisfy my own curiosity, since as far as the outcome of the story is concerned, it really doesn't matter. Either way, sooner or later Delilah was summarily used by powerful politicos with payback on their minds.

She might get our sympathy vote, though, if we knew she was coerced into it.

"See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him." Judges 16:5 The reputation of Delilah as one who could lure a man must have been known far and wide. The Philistine leaders appealed to her vanity and her confidence in handling the opposite s.e.x. They realized Samson's strength was superhuman, that its source was a "secret," not just a healthy diet, daily workouts, and a dose of steroids. The man's weakness was already obvious- women. It was his mysterious strength his enemies wanted to subdue.

Most translations say "afflict" him; it literally means "tie, bind, imprison, bring low." Yet during his tryst with the prost.i.tute in Gaza, the Philistines waited at the city gate to kill him.

"Subdue" him? Oh sure. That's what they told Delilah.

In truth, they wanted to bring Samson to his knees, humble him publicly, and then kill him. As with another legendary leader centuries later-William Wallace of Braveheart fame-the powers-that-be would not be appeased with a dead hero. They wanted a humiliated hero, and they needed Delilah to help them do their dirty work.

Notice they went to her directly. Not to her father, her brother, her husband, or her son, as would have been customary. Straight to Delilah. Our twenty-first-century ears don't perk up at that, but they should. Women of the time weren't famous for their financial ac.u.men. Something shady was going on, and the fewer people involved, it seemed, the better.

Think Watergate. Contragate. Monicagate.

Notice that they didn't appeal to her intellect or her sense of patriotism. No "this is for the good of the country" speeches. They didn't entreat her with promises of physical pleasure. No "give us your lover, and we'll find a man ten times his equal." They didn't aim for her tender woman's heart either. No "if he really loved you, he'd marry you" innuendos.

They trained their oil lamps on her own weakness-greed-and took careful aim with a loaded coin.