Forgotten and Lost 9

Eric Ong walked across the vast lobby of Great South Tower and down to the main entrance. The crowd of employees, upon noticing him, made way like Moses' parting of the Red Sea. It was late afternoon and the sun was beginning to set. The cultists had been put down with no help from the (ineffectual) police. 

As the taipan made his way through the path his employees made for him, Anselmo Sanchez put his shovel down, grinned in his usual childlike manner and gave a small wave. "Hi boss," said Anselmo sheepishly.

The taipan passed by him, patting his shoulder as he did so.

Eric came to the highway to meet the man, who was standing over the cultist Maximilian referred to as "Pinkie." The cultist lay on the ground, bleeding and moaning.

"So this is the one who shot Cardinal Zhang?" he asked the man.

"From what I've gathered, yes," the man replied, not taking his eyes off Pinkie. "Bastard," he snarled and ground his boot heel into the cultist's right shoulder.

Eric crouched behind the cultist. "Hi Pinkie," he hissed. "It's been a while."

The cultist didn't respond. He continued to moan in agony. Eric turned his head around and saw Maximilian standing in the distance, back turned to him and holding his sword.

"Excuse me, sir," asked the man. "You know each other?"

"Sort of," the taipan replied. "He used to threaten me."

"But he's only a kid."

"I was in that group before," explained the taipan, "both my son and me. But I left because I couldn't stand the stupidity. I tried to get my son to leave but-"

"He ended up joining them for a while," the man finished.

"For a while," Eric repeated. "And then he noticed, as I did, that something was wrong."

"You both discovered that the group was a fraud," the man concluded as the taipan stood up and lighted a cigarette.

"'I wonder how, I wonder why,'" Eric said to Pinkie, recalling the words of the old 1990's song 'Lemon Tree' by Fool's Garden. "'Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue, blue sky and all that I can see is just a yellow lemon tree.'"

He reached into a pocket with his left hand while whirling the cigarette in small circles with his right as he continued, "'I'm turning my head up and down. I'm turning, turning, turning, turning, turning around and all that I can see is just another lemon tree.'"

"What do we do with him?" the man asked.

"Him? Why, bring him off to the hospital of course."

"You can't be serious!" said the man incredulously. 

Eric pulled out his cellphone and dialed a number. "Hello, Dr. Ordonez," he said