Valediction (10 page)

"He'll guard me alone?"

"He could guard Yugoslavia alone," I said.

"I could have some deacons come."

I shook my head. "If there's trouble, they'll just get hurt," I said.

Winston nodded. There was no resolve left in him. He was scared and it made him weak. In ten minutes Hawk showed up at the front door carrying a leather gun case and a Nike gym bag. He nodded at Winston, took a box of 12-gauge shotgun shells from the gym bag and set them on the table, put a box of .357 shells beside them, unzipped the gun case, took out an Ithaca shotgun, loaded it, and leaned it against the table. Then he looked around the room.

"Good place to get shot from the street," he said.

I nodded. Winston seemed to sink back deeper into his chair. He looked smaller than he had when I'd first met him.

"Let's find an inside room," Hawk said. He put his ammunition back into the gym bag. Picked up the shotgun.

I said, "I'm going out and work on things. I'll be back to give you a break."

Hawk nodded. Winston looked at me as if I were his father leaving him at a strange nursery school. "Do what Hawk says," I told him. "You'll be fine."

He nodded. I left him with Hawk and let myself out the front door.

I went to my office and called Vinnie Morris. He wasn't there. I asked for Joe Broz. There was no one by that name there. Which was a crock, but Joe had always been shy. I left word for Vinnie to call me and hung up and sat.

Across the street there was something hanging in Linda's office window. I looked harder. It was a big red heart. I smiled. The phone rang. It was Vinnie.

"For crissake, don't you know better than to ask for Joe," he said.

"Self-amusement," I said. "You still want to help me on the Paultz thing?"

"Depends."

"I need some people to keep Bullard Winston alive."

"The minister or whatever the fuck he is?"

"Yes. He's all we've got on Mickey."

"You with him now?"

"No. Hawk's got him."

"He's safe enough for now," Vinnie said,"Unless he annoys Hawk."

"How about you pick it up at eight o'clock, give you time to organize it."

"Sure. Where is he?"

I told him. "I'll be there at eight to meet you. Come yourself so I'll know they're your people."

"No sweat, just make sure you don't jerk us off on this one, buddy boy. We do this and you don't dump Paultz and Joe is going to say it ain't cost-effective. You understand?"

"Would I mislead you, Vinnie?"

"Yes," Vinnie said. "But only once."

I said, "See you at eight," and hung up. Before I left the office I drew a large smile face on a piece of typewriter paper and taped it into my window facing Linda's heart.

Vince Haller drew up a trust agreement for me that was twenty-eight pages long and read like the Rosetta Stone.

"They give courses in gobbledygook at law school?" I said.

"Law school is gobbledygook," Haller said. "No need for a special course."

"If it had been written by a sentient being, what would it say?" I was in Haller's office in the penthouse suite at 5 Staniford, thirty-eighth floor. Genuine antiques, original oils, Oriental rugs, word processors, good-looking secretaries, twelve attorneys. There was gold in gobbledygook.

"It would say that all earning of the capital funding of this trust would be paid to the Reorganized Church of the Redemption, in the person of Sherry Spellman, or her designee, and successors in perpetuity. It would say further that money deposited to this trust was deposited irrevocably."

"Who administers the trust?" I said.

Haller smiled. "Me," he said. "Or my designee and successors."

"Fee?"

"No fee," Haller said. "A tax deductible donation of time at our standard billing rate will be made each month." He was wearing his trademark white suit and a wide maroon knit tie with a gold collar pin.

"So all I have to do is get the thing funded and we're in business."

Haller handed me a deposit slip. "Got the account all ready. Opened it with a one-hundred-dollar tax deductible donation of my own. Checks should be made out to the Reorganized Church of the Redemption Trust."

"I have a feeling that the deposits will be in cash," I said.

Haller shrugged. "Always a negotiable instrument," he said. "You want to come out to the house for dinner Sunday? Mary Margaret has been On my ass to invite you out."

I shook my head. "Thanks, Vince, but I can't make it Sunday."

Haller nodded. "How are you?" he said.

"Still here," I said.

"I got a bottle of Black Bush," he said, "that I brought back from Ireland last time. Want to drink it with me and talk a little?"

"No," I said. "I talk too much as it is."

"How alone are you?" Haller said.

"Paul's with me, and I see Hawk a lot." Haller shook his head.

"And I've met a very wonderful woman," I said.

"They're all wonderful," Haller said.

"Well, many of them," I said.

"I love them," Haller said. "The way they talk, how they smell, the way they touch their hair, everything."

"I know," I said.

"I never thought one woman was enough," he said.

"I've always thought it was."

"Mary Margaret shares your view," Haller said. He stood and took a bottle of Bushmill Black Label Irish Whiskey from an antique highboy, poured two shots, and came around the desk and handed me one. "They don't export it, you know," he said. "Got to buy it in Ireland."

We drank.

"Mary Margaret's a fine woman," he said. "Good mother, good wife." He grinned. "Dutiful lover. But I got a girlfriend in Cambridge that the nuns never got to." He drank some more whiskey and shook his head. "Twenty-six years old, knows things that surprise even me, and I've been researching the field for some years."

"You love your wife?" I said.

"Sure." Haller came around the desk and poured more whiskey into my glass. "Best of all, but I love the girlfriend, too, and I know a woman in Washington I love, and I have loved five or six other women in the last five or six years."

I drank some of Haller's whiskey. It made Murphy's taste like Listerine.

"Worth the trip to Ireland," I said.

"Yeah, it's wonderful, isn't it. You love this woman you've met?"

"Yes."

"Surprise you?"

"Yes."

"You'll learn," Haller said. "You still love Susan?"

"Yes."

Haller smiled happily. He nodded. "See? See? Already you're learning." He filled his glass and pushed the bottle toward me across the desk. His phone rang. He picked it up and listened and said; "Tell him I'll get back to him, and Alma, hold all my calls, will you, honey?" He hung up.

"Maybe I loved a woman in Los Angeles," I said. "At least a little."

"Sure you did, why not give her a buzz? Never can tell when you'll get to L.A."

"She's dead," I said.

"The broad you were body-guarding?"

"Yes."

"Took the firm six months to get that straightened out with the L.A. prosecutor's office too," Haller said. "I didn't realize she mattered to you that way."

I looked at my whiskey, the light from the window made the amber look golden when I held it up. I drank some.

"I'm not sure I did either," I said.

"I have a friend," Susan said on the phone, "a guy friend."

I felt vertigo way inside. I said, "Yes."

"I've known him for a while," Susan said. "Before I left."

"In Washington?" The vertigo spiraled down. Bottomless.

"Yes. He's from here. And he got me this job."

"He must be a fine man," I said, "or you wouldn't be with him."

"I don't live with him," Susan said. Her voice was steady but I could hear strain in it. "And I don't wish to live with him or marry him. I have told him that I love you and that I will always love you."

"Is he content with that?"

"No, but he accepts it. He knows that he'll lose me if he presses." The firmness in her voice was chilling.

"Me too," I said.

Silence ran along the 3000 miles of line and microwave relay. Then Susan said, "You have got to get over Los Angeles. That's not a condition, or anything. It is truth. For your own sake. You have to be able to fail, to be wrong. For God's sake, you are human."

"Yes," I said. "I'm trying. I met a woman, and she helps."

"Good," Susan said.

"What's his name?" I said.

"You don't know him, no need to name him. He is not part of you and me."

I said, "That cuts it pretty fine."

Susan was silent.

"You don't mind Linda?" I said.

"No. You have to unlock. You have to open up. You're like a fortress with the drawbridge closed. If Linda helps you, I like it."

"And it makes you feel less guilty," I said.

"Maybe, and maybe if there's someone with you, I worry for you less . . . sometimes I worry about you so that I can barely breathe."

"I care about her," I said. "I guess I sort of love her. But not like I love you. Linda knows that. I have not lied to her about it."

"The only thing that would be awful," Susan said, and I knew from her voice that she was speaking of things she'd thought about often, "would be if you said to me, `I never want to see you again. I never want to look at your goddamned face again.' When I think of that I get the awful anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach."

"I will never say that," I said.

"Maybe you should use words like never and ever less often," she said.

"I'll never use them ever again," I said.

"Weak humor," Susan said, "but better than none."

"It hurts only when I laugh," I said.

"Yes. I'm going to hang up now. You be careful of yourself."

"I will."

"I'll call soon."

"Yes."

She hung up and the silence in the room swarmed in on me. I looked at my watch, 10:30. Linda had gone to a meeting of the art directors of Boston. I called her. She was home. I went. It was raining again.

Linda was wearing a pink nightgown when she let me in. I put my arms around her and held her against me soundlessly. After a while she leaned her head back and looked at my face, her body still pressed against me. "Susan?" she said.

I nodded.

"Come to the bed," she said. I hugged her harder against me.

She said it again, gently. "Come to the bed. We'll lie on the bed together."

I went with her to the bedroom and we lay on the bed. I hadn't even taken off my raincoat. Linda kissed me for a long time. And she touched my hair and rubbed the back of my neck. And patted my cheek quietly and kissed me again.

I clung to her as if I clung to earth, as if to let go were to disperse into the rainy night. Linda seemed to know that. She held me as I held her and kissed me and patted me. There was no sexuality to it. There was love and need and solace.

She said, "Do you want to talk?" I shook my head.

She rubbed my neck some more. "You talked with Susan," Linda said.

"Yes," I said. "She has a friend."

Linda gently disengaged us and put her hands on each side of my face and looked at me from very close and said softly and slowly with emphasis, "So do you," and kissed me on the mouth, and now it was more than love and need and solace. Now there was sexuality. Raincoat and all.

I made some Xerox copies of my notes of Winston's spilled beans. I put a copy in the safe-deposit box, took out one of the photos, and went back to my office. I got out two manila envelopes. In each I put a copy of the notes and a picture of Paultz and Winston. Then I went to see Sherry Spellman.

She was wearing jeans and a sweat shirt that said no YOU KNOW JESUS across the back, and was hoeing beans in a garden in back of the Salisbury branch of the church. She stopped when she saw me and looked a little less serious. Life would never be bubbly for Sherry.

We sat in the front seat of my car and I showed her the picture first.

"Reverend Winston, you recognize. The other man is Mickey Paultz, whose primary source of income is the processing and sale of heroin."

Sherry looked at me and widened her eyes. I gave her the notes. "Notice," I said as she began to read, "that each page is signed by Reverend Winston."

She read on and then stopped and looked at me and read some more. When she got through she shook her head.

"No," she said. I nodded.

"No. He wouldn't have done this. I don't know what you're doing but it's not true." I waited. There was the hum of locust in the air, and the sound occasionally of a dog, and now and then the rush of a car past us on Route 1.

"Why does he say these things?" I said.

"He didn't. You made them up and forged his signature." She looked at me. I waited. She shook her head again. Her eyes were wet.

"No," she said. "You wouldn't do that." She began to read the notes again. Halfway through she put her head down in her hands and began to cry. I patted her shoulder softly.

Finally she stopped crying. "It's true," she said. Her voice was clogged.

"Yes," I said. My throat felt a little achy. Sherry hunched very tightly; her shoulders pressing in toward her small breast.

"Isn't there anyplace for me?" she said.

"You like this church?" I said.

She nodded. "I know you think it's junk," she said. "But it is home for me. It is peace. We're not crazy cults or anything. We love God and trust Him and try to live like Jesus. And now it's gone." She was crying again. "And now I have no place."

I held her against me. My breath was heavy balanced against her sobs.

"It's not gone," I said. "I'll fix it for you." A crowd of chickens came around the side of the building clucking and pecking at the ground and began to mill around the yard near the front door. Feeding time. Sherry's body shook as I held her.

"I'll fix it," I said. "You don't need Winston. You are the church, not him."

She tried to speak, but she cried too hard. It wasn't intelligible.

"You can run it," I said. "I'll get you financing. I'll get you help."

A young woman in a plaid shirt and a wrapaound denim skirt and cowboy boots came out of the front of the church building and began scattering feed to the chickens. They made a lot of noise about it. As she scattered the feed she looked uneasily at me and Sherry in my car.