Valediction (6 page)

"Down the wrong tube," he said when he stopped coughing. His eyes were very bright.

"I don't really know my sign," I said.

"I'm a Virgo," she said.

I nodded.

The captain came and took our food orders. The band played "Moon River." Katie was a reporter for a UHF station in town. The food came. One of Spenser's laws of dining is that in high restaurants the food never lives up to the view. I tried my dinner. Right again.

"Have any of you been able to get a real handle on the punk rock phenomenon?" Katie said.

Hawk's face was as amiably expressionless as it always was. But his eyes seemed to gleam brighter and brighter. He had a bite of lamb. "Can't say's I have," he said.

Laura said, "Well, clearly it is a creature of the tension it creates between itself and the orthodox world."

I nodded.

The band played "Blue Velvet." We all danced.

"You are a big one, aren't you," Katie said.

"Yes."

We had dessert.

Laura said that she would love to interview Hawk and me together sometime. She had a theory about poetry and violence that she wanted to try out on us.

We had some brandy.

Hawk looked at his watch. "Time to go," he said. "I gotta bookie I gotta threaten early tomorrow."

We all smiled. And got up. And went.

I met Sherry Spellman at the International Food Fair at the Liberty Tree Shopper's Mall in Danvers. Owens brought her and four deacons came with him. I didn't recognize any of the deacons. Fresh troops. The food fair was a semi-circle of fast-food shops around a seating area full of tables. Owens and the deacons sat at a table near the Philly Mignon shop and Sherry joined me near Paco's Tacos.

She was pale blond and somewhat sunburned. Her hair was short and she wore no makeup. She sat down opposite me, folded her hands quietly on the table before her, and waited.

I said, "Would you care for coffee, or something to eat?"

She shook her head. Her glance drifted over to her churchmates, and then back to me.

I said, "You know who I am?"

She nodded.

I said, "How are you?"

"Fine."

She had a small voice.

"Are you happy?"

"I'm at peace," she said.

Again her glance drifted to the deacons and back.

I said, "Look at me. See how big I am?" I opened my coat. "See the gun?" I took my license out and showed it to her. "See, I am a licensed private cop." She looked at me and nodded. "Now, if you want to leave with me, you can. Owens and the deacons can't stop us. And if you leave with me, I'll protect you as long as you need it."

She nodded.

I said, "Would you like to leave with me?"

She shook her head.

"Tommy Banks says you were kidnapped," I said.

"No," she said. It was the firmest sound she'd made. "No, I wasn't."

"No one tied you up and took you away?"

"No."

"You joined the church on your own?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Too much hassle," she said. "I had to get away.''

"Who was hassling you?"

She shrugged and shook her head. "Everyone."

"Tommy?"

She nodded. "Who else?" She shrugged. "Dancing was too hard."

"What was the hardest part?" I said.

"Tommy."

"A slave driver?"

"He . . . it was just that he wanted me to care about it more than I did. Him too."

"What did you want?"

"To be by myself To see what I am."

"You need the church for that?"

"Yes."

I leaned back a little in my chair. She glanced over at Owens and the deacons. Good name for a country rock group.
Now with their number one single it's Owens and the Deacons. Yeah!

I shook my head slightly. Concentration wasn't what it should be. Sherry certainly didn't seem frightened. She didn't seem happy either, but her glances at the deacons were more the way a child looks to a parent than anything else.

"Tommy wants you back," I said.

"No." Very firm. Almost animated. "No."

"What's the best part of being where you are?" I said.

"I don't have to worry."

"About what?"

"About anything. Everything is simple and . . . and I don't have to think about things all the time."

"Do you love Tommy?"

"I guess so, I'm not sure. But I can't be with him."

"Too much pressure?"

"Yes."

"Pressure to dance?"

"Pressure about everything."

"Maybe you should move to San Francisco," I said.

"Huh?"

"Private humor," I said. "You don't seem happy."

She shrugged.

"On the other hand, I wasn't hired to make you happy. I was hired to find you and rescue you. But you don't seem to need to be rescued."

She shifted in her chair. She looked at Owens and the deacons. Her hands still rested, folded, on the table before her.

"Where are you living?"

"Will you tell Tommy?"

"No."

"Salisbury."

"In the branch church on Route One?" She nodded.

"Between the roadhouse and the salvage yard?"

She nodded again.

Owens and the deacons sat silently watching us across the room. All five men had their arms folded. Uniformity.

"I might come visit you now and then, Sherry. Not to hassle you. Just to visit. See if you need anything."

She nodded.

"You won't mind?" I said.

"No."

"Okay. You may as well rejoin your party." We stood. Sherry walked quickly back to Owens and the deacons. I went too.

"She says she wants to stay," I said to Owens. "I believe her."

"I should hope so," Owens said. The deacons all sat poised, like I might kick one of them at any moment.

"I told her I'd come visit occasionally. She said that was all right."

Owens didn't say anything.

"If I come to visit and don't find her, I'll start looking again. And I'll be really mad." I couldn't watch all four deacons at the same time. The one I was watching didn't blanch.

Owens said, "Let's go," and they got up and left. Owens and the Deacons. Actually Sherry and the Deacons sounded even better than Owens and the Deacons. I went out to the parking lot to find my car.

Sherry and the Deacons. Do-wop!

I sat with Tommy Banks on the only two chairs in his studio, in a corner, near a window that looked out onto Huntington Avenue, in case anyone wanted to. We sipped coffee from paper cups. On the other side of the studio the dance company took a break. I had already begun to realize that dancers almost always moved and made little step motions even as they rested. It was as if they were always hearing music, always carving shapes in space.

"She says she wants to stay where she is, Tommy," I said.

"Of course she does, they've brainwashed her."

"No. I don't think so. She says she wasn't kidnapped, and that she's free to leave." Banks's hands were clasped in front of him, forearms on the knees. His knuckles were white.

"They've made her say that. They took her and brainwashed her. I was there, they came and took her and tied and gagged her and dragged her away in the trunk of their car."

Across the room a complex short rattle sounded as someone did a tap step, someone laughed. I kept watching Banks.

"Do you know where she is?" he said.

"Yes."

"We've got to get her out of there. I'll go with you, we'll rescue her."

"Tommy, I don't think she's a prisoner. She has a right to stay there if she wants to be there."

"She doesn't have the right to kill me," he said. His voice was tight and squeezed. "She can't kill me. I can't make it without her. I can't . . ." He shook his head. I knew he couldn't talk. There were tears in his eyes.

"I can't . . ." He tried again. "I . . ." And then he sat with his hands clenched together, and his body hunched forward. I felt like sitting that way too. I straightened up a bit to make sure I wasn't.

"They've taken her away from me," he said. "You can't let them."

He didn't look up. I didn't say anything. Across the room the dancers moved less, and their talk died down. Banks's shoulders shook.

I said, "I'll talk with her again, Tommy."

He nodded. The room was dead silent now. I stood up and walked away. No one said anything. Paul's face was serious as he looked at me across the room. I looked back at him and we both understood something at the same time. There was nothing to say about it, so we didn't speak.

I went on out and down the stairs to the street. It was a clean summer day, even on Huntington Avenue. I walked downtown, past Symphony Hall, toward Copley Square. At the Christian Science complex a few kids were trying to wade in the reflecting pool and an official was chasing them out. In Copley Square the unfriendly high rise of the Copley Place development loomed up over Dartmouth Street, the heavy equipment cluttered the area and had Huntington narrowed to one lane around the construction site. A lot of trouble. Well worth it though, it would eventually rival the Renaissance Center in Detroit for its sense of open ease and hospitality.

It was a market day in Copley Square and truck farmers were selling produce in front of Trinity Church. People sat on the low wall along Boylston Street and listened to Walkmans or drank beer or ate their lunch or looked at girls or smoked grass or did all at the same time. I moved on down toward the Common. I was trying to think. Never easy.

I didn't think Sherry had been kidnapped. I wasn't sure whether Tommy really thought she had been or not. What he couldn't do was accept that she'd left him voluntarily. I had seen the clenched refusal to let go in him and I had seen Sherry talk about the pressure he'd put her under and I could guess that she had not so much sought the church as fled Tommy. Escaped maybe was a better word.

My heart was with Banks. I knew how he felt. But the kidnapping was fantasy. Even on three hours sleep I was pretty sure of that. Still, Sherry didn't seem to be having a swell time in the church and the church seemed a little hierarchical to me. I had told Owens I'd check on Sherry periodically and I was going to do that anyway. No real harm in looking into it a little more. Maybe there was a better option for Sherry than the Reorganized Church of the Redemption. Maybe there was an option that would ease some of Tommy's pain, or help him through it. Maybe not. Maybe there was no way to ease pain. No harm to trying. It was something to do. Irish whiskey can only take you so far.

I drove up to Salisbury to see Sherry. There were purple field flowers in bright density all over the meadows along Route 1. I'd looked at them nearly all my life but I didn't know what they were called. That was nothing. I'd been with me all my life and had just started to wonder about that.

Sherry was feeding chickens when I got there. She was spreading something that looked like dry dog food pellets around an the ground and a bunch of white hens flurried about her, pecking at the food. I realized I didn't know anything about chickens either. She looked up at me and didn't speak.

I said, "Hello, Sherry."

"Hello."

"How are you," I said. She kept distributing the pellets. The chickens kept scuttling around after them.

"I'm fine. I told you that last time I saw you."

"I know. I just like to check. You don't seem especially happy."

"The point of this world is not happiness," she said. "It is salvation."

I nodded. "Tommy is in pretty bad pain," I said.

She stopped scattering the pellets for a moment. "I'm sure he is," she said. "But that is Tommy's pain. I won't take ownership of his pain."

"I don't argue the point," I said. "But it sounds like a recited answer. Tommy loves you."

"Tommy needs me," she said. "That's not the same thing."

"Tell me about life here," I said.

"We have a regular life. Exercise in the early morning, study and instruction in the afternoon."

"What do you do for money?"

"We need very little, the mission is largely self-supporting." She gestured at the poultry. "And we grow vegetables and preserve them. Each of us receives a small stipend."

"From the church?"

"Yes."

"Is there anything you want?" I said.

"No. I'm doing what I want to do. I am comfortable. There is structure without pressure. I have friends."

"Do you contribute money to the church in some way?"

"No. My work and my prayers are what I give the church."

"Where do they get the money?" I said. Sherry looked at me as if I'd spoken in tongues. She shook her head without speaking. I took a card from my pocket and gave it to her.

"Here's my name and address and phone number. If you need me for anything, call me. Or come see me. I'll stop by again. Do you mind seeing me?"

"No," Sherry said. "I kind of like you."

"Thank you," I said. "I kind of like you too."

Walking back to my car, I was startled to find that I kind of did like her and that I was pleased that she kind of liked me. How unprofessional.

Back in my office I called Father Keneally. "Where does the money come from in the Reorganized Church of the Redemption?"

"Bullard Winston."

"Where's he get it?"

Father Keneally paused. "Actually, you know, I don't know. I don't know if he's privately wealthy or if he has backers. My professional interest is more directly with the doctrinal aspects of religious organizations."

"He doesn't collect from the members," I said. "He pays them."

"Quite unusual," Keneally said.

"Does he do fund-raisers?"

"I don't know," Keneally said. You could tell it was not something he was used to saying. You could also tell that he didn't like getting used to it either.

After I was through talking to Keneally I walked over to the library and looked up BuiIard VVinston in Who's Who. It didn't tell me anything about his financial stability. His town house was certainly costly, and maintaining a string of church missions and paying stipends to all the church members was bound to be costly. And I didn't believe that stuff about the lilies of the field.