Grist 01 - The Four Last Things (27 page)

“Fair enough. But one thing at a time. I tell you what I know tonight. We can draft the statement tonight. But you don’t get a signature until you hand me the million and I’ve counted it.”

He gave me a small, malicious smile. “Counting it will take quite some time,” he said.

I returned his smile. “I figure it’ll come out to about ten thousand an hour.”

He went to the desk and took out a yellow legal pad and an automatic pencil. “Begin,” he said peremptorily. “I’ll take notes and we can draft the statement from them.” He clicked the pencil twice and looked critically at the point. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Do you want that drink?”

“Sure,” I said. “Bring it in a bucket.”

“Scotch?” He was mein host to his fingertips.

“Unblended.”

“Of course,” he said. He went to the door, opened it, and left with a whisper of woolen slacks.

I passed a few minutes looking at the spines of the law books. There it was, the law in all its indifferent, magisterial glory, referenced and cross-referenced, a legacy of protection for the individual that marched in a straight line from Athens and the Roman Codification through the Magna Carta, the Age of Enlightenment, the Revolution, and more than two hundred years of earnest attempts to right injustice. Human rights, citizens’ rights, government’s rights, property rights, equal rights, civil rights, women’s rights, even animal rights. All of it printed and proofread, handsomely bound and numbered to fill the shelves of men and women who could defend it or destroy it. The books didn’t care who used them. They were as indifferent as the law.

Brooks came back in carrying a rattan tray with two large perspiring cut-glass tumblers on it. “Here we are,” he said, laying it carefully down on the desk to avoid scratching the surface. He picked up his drink. ”Tally-ho,” he said, clinking it against mine.

I couldn’t bring myself to say tally-ho, so I just nodded and drank.

Brooks put his glass down and picked up the pencil. “Let’s start,” he said.

I moved aimlessly around the room as I talked, picking up pipes, paperweights, awards, mementos, and the other flotsam and jetsam that bobs to the surface of a man’s den. Other than my voice, the only sound in the study was Brooks’s pencil gouging into the pad and an occasional muted expletive when the point broke.

“Eight or nine years ago, you must have had it all pretty much your way,” I said. “However Anna did it, whether she really was a channel, or a schizophrenic or whatever, it was easy to manage. She pretty much did it on cue, and there was only Wilburforce to contend with. And we both know that Wilburforce was no match for you. He’s all pressure points. He is that rarest of creatures, a total fraud. There’s not a real thing about him.

“But then Anna died, or Merryman killed her. That’s one murder, if it was a murder, that I know you had nothing to do with. It put you into a real quandary, didn’t it? The Church was up and running, cranking out money day and night, and you had no Speaker. Where was all the doctrine supposed to come from? What was the authority for Listening? Where was the glamour?
Did
Merryman kill her?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “This is your story.”

“So it is. So there you are, with the best idea for making money since the invention of the printing press, and it looks like it’s time to shut down. But a savior comes along in a bright-colored polo shirt. Dr. Richard Merryman—an internist, he says—proposes that he can create a new Speaker for you. His cut is half, or thereabouts.”

“Not half,” Books said automatically. “Not until later.”

“A substantial bite nonetheless,” I said. “Enough to wear a callus in your wallet. I would imagine that Merryman didn’t tell even you how he made Jessica Speak. Or Angel later, when Jessica got too old to appeal to him.”

Brooks looked up at me quickly. “Oh, that too,” I said. “This is going to make some story if it ever comes out. There’s hardly a single disgusting aspect of human behavior that it doesn’t contain. It’ll fascinate Adelaide.”

“She’ll never hear it,” Brooks said serenely.

“I think a million is a little cheap.”

“We have a deal,” he said.

“But the story is just getting good. I’m not sure I want to tell the rest of it for only a million.”

“If I understand you,” Brooks said, “You’re the only one who knows all of it.”

“That’s more or less true.”

“You haven’t bought yourself an insurance policy by sharing this with the police, because they’d act on it and you wouldn’t collect your million. Other people, that little Chinese girl, for example, may know bits and pieces, but you’re the only one who’s got the big picture.”

“The big picture. Admirably said. Yes, you could put it that way and not stray over the line into falsehood.”

“Then consider,” he said, “two alternatives. One is that you get a million dollars. Two is that something happens to you, something from which you would not recover. Either way, as you yourself put it, you go away. Both alternatives pose risks for the Church. You might not stay bought. You would certainly stay dead, but someone might connect it with us. We, or at least I, would prefer simply to buy you. Which would you prefer?”

“This is so civilized. Here we are, sitting in a book-lined study discussing my death as though it were a matter in which we were both only mildly interested. This is what I always wanted to do when I grew up.”

“I asked you a question.”

“Well, I’d prefer the million, obviously. Who wouldn’t? The question was whether I could up it a little.”

“You can’t.”

“Don’t get huffy. I just wanted to clear it up. The free-enterprise system doesn’t keep moving unless people push it. Where would you be if you’d settled for less?” I took a long swallow off my drink. “Gee, look at this swell house, and Adelaide and everything.”

“You needn’t mention her again. Go on with the story. I have to change for dinner.”

“Okay. So Merryman gets Jessica up and yakking, and it’s even better. You’re not just selling a little girl who likes to talk, you’re selling a spirit who speaks through a series of little girls. Things really take off. Membership grows and you begin to sell franchises, just like McDonald’s, and everything is, as you might say, tally-ho. And Merryman gets tired of Jessica after her breasts begin to develop and he auditions new Speakers and comes up with Angel, who’s just perfect. Great-looking, wonderful name, and she functions like clockwork.

“Of course, there’s a flaw in the ointment, as a friend of mine used to say, because it’s not your show anymore. You literally can’t do it without Merryman. Still, you guys are making millions of dollars every year between Listening fees, franchises, merchandising, and blackmail, and there should be plenty to go around. Except that there isn’t. One of you, and let’s concede for the sake of tact that it’s Merryman, is a real pig. Plus he’s a doctor, doesn’t like lawyers anyway, and he figures that you are a very expensive piece of superfluous manpower. How are we doing so far?”

He nodded. “Close enough,” he said.

“You’ve got Merryman by the short hairs for the time being. You know where the money is. He can figure it all out eventually, but it could take years. Nevertheless, you’re getting nervous. Years aren’t really that long, not where millions of dollars are concerned. The problem is that Merryman can run the Church without you, but you can’t run it without him. What you need is leverage. You need to be able to control him and keep him quiet somehow, running the little girls for the TV cameras while you sit back and work on your bank balance.

“And, lo! the Lord in his infinite wisdom and mercy delivers unto you a very nice young lady named Sally Oldfield. Sally’s just the kind of poor sap the Church was created to milk. She’s got low self-esteem, she’s lonely, she’s got some disposable income. All the qualifications for enlightenment. She sees Angel and she’s entranced. She goes through Listening and she actually finds out some things about herself. Happiness and fulfillment are dangled in front of her, and she goes after them. Paying for the privilege, of course.”

I rattled the ice cubes in my glass. Brooks stopped writing and watched me, his tongue wadded into one side of his mouth.

“And then she sees Dick, and it all falls apart. She knows who he is. She knows he’s a dentist from Utica, New York, the home of religions based on the wisdom of little girls, and that he uses hypnotism as an anesthetic. And she sees his proximity to the Royal Family, and she knows all at once how it works. He wires her, doesn’t he?”

Brooks said nothing, but he’d stopped writing.

“Her hair is always down when she’s onstage and up when she’s not. I’ll bet that she’s wearing a cute little Dan Rather button in her ear. He must have examined a lot of little girls, not that that would have been a trial for him, to find two who are as susceptible as Jessica and Angel. As their doctor he examines them in their dressing room before and after every Revealing. He probably puts them under while he’s checking their pupils and installs the wire. Then she goes out onstage and he watches the TV set until it’s time for the magic. He says her name five or six times into a headset, and off she goes. She repeats everything he says from then on, until it’s over. Angel mimics him so perfectly she even loses her accent. Then he examines her again and takes out the wire. After that, he fools around with her for a few minutes, tells her to forget everything, brings her out of it, and everybody goes into the next room for the party. Of course, Merryman’s already had his party.”

Brooks still hadn’t written anything.

“No notes?” I said.

“I’m not putting this on paper.”

“That’s probably a good idea. Sally knew Merryman but Merryman didn’t know her. That means he must have been famous in some way back in Utica, some way that was vivid enough to make her remember him all those years later. My guess, knowing his habits, is that he was charged with child molestation.

“So Sally goes running. She believes in the Listening, even if she doesn’t believe in Angel anymore. She goes to Wilburforce, who promptly turns her over to you in exchange for cash in hand and the promise to drop a lawsuit that was going to put him out of business. He tells her you’re an honorable man and that Merryman is a disease you’re trying to cure. What I don’t understand is why you turned her over to Fauntleroy and that other creep.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Or maybe I do. She wouldn’t talk to anyone but a Listener.”

His eyes flickered, and he looked down at the pad in front of him.

“So you gave her to Fauntleroy and Fauntleroy gave her to Needle-nose—a Listener—whose name I’d really like to know. I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what it is, would you?”

Brooks shook his head. His face shone in the lamplight.

“You didn’t want to lose sight of her and you didn’t want anything to happen to her, so you had Fauntleroy hire me to follow her while she was having her Listening sessions at the Sleepy Bear Motel.”

“No,” he said. “That was Ellis’s idea.”

“Anyway, the problem is that the Listener, who shall for the moment be called Needle-nose, is either already working for Merryman or else he gets the idea when he hears what Sally says that he could be on the way to becoming a very rich man. One way or the other, he cuts you and Fauntleroy out of the information Sally’s giving him and passes it on to Merryman instead. When he’s sure he’s got it all and that no one else knows what it is, he kills her. On Merryman’s orders, of course. Then he defects openly to the other side. Starts hanging out at the Borzoi, scrubbing the faces of the faithful with steel wool whenever they backslide a little. Is any of this new to you?”

“Some of it.”

“Is it worth a million dollars?”

“What happened to Ellis?”

“They killed him. More or less in front of me, to scare me off. They didn’t think I knew much of anything. Hell, I didn’t know much of anything. Then, I mean.”

“Well,” he said, “You’ve certainly caught up.”

“You didn’t know what Sally had on Merryman.”

“No. As you say, they cut me out.”

“You know now. Think it gives you the lever you need?”

“If it doesn’t, I’ve wasted a lot of legal training.”

“So is it worth a million?”

He stood up and ripped the pages neatly from his pad. Then he ripped out the four or five blank pages beneath and tore them into tiny pieces. He made a little heap of pieces on the desk and looked back down at his notes. He smiled at me.

“I should say it is,” he said.

Chapter 24

W
e agreed to meet at five the next evening to exchange the statement for the money, and I left. Adelaide saw me to the door.

“Please come back,” she said. “Sometime when you can stay for dinner.”

“After the holidays,” I said, thinking that Merry was going to have a very long holiday indeed. Adelaide leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.

Well, dismiss it. Too bad for Adelaide. All the dead and violated crowded into the Camaro with me as I drove: Sally, Anna and her mother, Ellis Fauntleroy, Jessica and Mrs. Fram, Angel. Mary Claire? I didn’t know about Mary Claire. They all sat there in reproachful silence as I drove downtown.

What was needed was something decisive, and very, very public.

It was well after seven when I got to the Russell Arms. I parked the Camaro on the street and walked over to the Borzoi.

I began to spiral in on it from two blocks away, noting the names of the streets, counting paces, looking for pedestrian tunnels, manholes, anything that suggested the possibility of passage. When I finally angled into the square the Borzoi dominated, I was on the opposite side from the hotel.

The homeless, temporarily liberated by the end of the rain from their cardboard and plastic, milled about aimlessly, talking to each other, talking to the sky, talking to themselves. Bottles were passed from hand to hand, no less carefully than Brooks had placed the tray on the polished desk. People wore anything—large coats, small trousers, pieces of rope, boots, bedroom slippers—as though their clothes had attacked them and fastened themselves to their bodies for life, like Spanish moss or mistletoe trailing from trees. The smell of humanity, concentrated and distilled, rose in eddies of conduction and roiled across the street toward me. The people in the square probably bathed more frequently than Louis XIV and his court. I closed my eyes and breathed it in, imagining the scent of Versailles.

The front of the Borzoi was as brilliantly lighted as the Winter Palace of the czar. So was the studio adjacent to it. Glaring white light, enough to make me wince when I looked directly at it, poured across the sign that said church of the eternal moment. The reflected light scattered itself carelessly over the people in the square, bringing a face into sharp relief here and there, glinting off bottles, zippers, buttons, buckles, the occasional gold tooth. The light of sanctity was only loaned to them; when the Church was finished with its business, it would leave them once again in the dark.

Well, the more people there were in the square, the better I liked it. I sat down on the curb and began to sketch the Borzoi and the studio on a pad I’d stolen from the Russell Arms. It said Holiday Inn at the bottom, which dulled the edge of my guilt.

I drew the buildings high up on the pad, allowing everything but the three lowest floors of the Borzoi to run off the top of the page. Then, in dotted lines, I started to draw the basement as I remembered it.

“Very nice,” said the man who had sat down next to me. He was wearing mismatched running shoes of different sizes and colors, and loose trousers that looked like they stayed up mainly because they were so sticky. The ensemble was topped off by what seemed to be a very good, if amazingly dirty, Giorgio Armani jacket.

“Thanks,” I said.

“God didn’t make buildings,” the man said, holding out a half-pint bottle of Johnnie Walker Red. I took a nip and handed it back.

“He didn’t?” I said, trying to orient the area of the basement that contained the kitchen. The man’s hand fell on the pad, and I was forced to look up.

“No,” he said slyly, “but he made the men who made the buildings.”

I edged his hand off the pad. “I guess that’s true.”

“He pulls their spirits upward with invisible strings,” the man said, “and they build skeletons of steel so they can follow him toward heaven. The truest seeker after God in this century was the man who invented the elevator.”

“Huh,” I said, feeling like Mrs. Fram. I wasn’t at all sure of my scale, and I needed to be.

“Even at sea, men put tall masts on ships so they can climb upward toward the Lord.”

“I thought they were to hold the sails,” I said.

“That’s what they tell people,” he said. He gave an abrupt laugh. “Sails,” he said in vast amusement. He laughed some more.

“Busy over there,” I said, sketching.

“Always on Friday,” he said, subsiding into mere chuckles.

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s the big day. The little chiclet.”

“Have you been inside?”

“No,” he said, drinking. “They don’t let real people in.” He held the bottle out again and I declined. He looked at the pad again. “Why are you drawing basements?” he said.

I stood up. “I want to get as far away from God as possible,” I said.

I walked out of the square and then down a side street. Taking a right, I angled back to the alley that ran behind the Borzoi.

It was empty and almost dark except for a couple of bare bulbs wearing tin hats that created cheerless cones of light that flickered down the rear wall of the building. I found the service entrances again and also a couple of casement windows that opened into the basement. I hadn’t noticed any windows when I’d been down there, and now I knew why. They’d been painted a thick, sooty black on the outside. That way, no one inside could scratch a line of light into them.

The locks were junk, in line with the Church’s policy of spending only on what was directly in the line of sight. One peculiar touch was that both doors had chains on them like the one that Caleb Ellspeth had been so reluctant to undo. The chains were on the outside. And why not? Who would want to get
into
the basement?

I checked for wires, leads, connections, electrical tape— any sign of an alarm system—and found none. The man they had put in the duct had said “thank you.” The woman in the dumbwaiter had closed the door on herself after I’d opened it. They didn’t need alarms. They’d implanted the alarms in the people.

At the far left of the building I found the intake for the air conditioner and heating system. It was a big, heavily screened area about four feet square. The screen was fastened with new screws but they’d been screwed into an old wall. I didn’t think they’d be much trouble.

The TV studio was a bigger problem. There were entrances and exits on three sides, one of them a big loading dock with an airplane door. People were working there, toting television equipment from a long green semi into the studio. Among them was my friend in the Hussong’s T-shirt. I watched from a doorway as long as I felt was safe, and then walked back to the Russell Arms.

In my room, I transferred the sketch to a larger piece of paper, added the doors and windows to it, and then used a red pen to trace the path I thought the ducts took. When I’d finished that, I drew the whole thing over from above. Then, for practice, I reversed my first drawing and tried to sketch the entire basement complex as it would appear from the alley behind the Borzoi. I taped all three sketches to the wall and sat on the bed to study them.

Of course, more of the area than I would have liked was purely hypothetical. I’d never been to the right of the cul-de-sac at the bottom of the fire stairs, the direction that led toward the light. The fire stairs, though, ran down the inside of the wall that the Borzoi shared with the TV studio. The corridors to the right could only lead to the studio.

The question was: who was between the Borzoi and the studio? Whoever they were, they were in for a rotten time.

But I couldn’t do it all by myself. I needed some help. I needed a man of talent. I needed Dexter Smif.