by R. R. Irvine
“He told me he wouldn’t talk anymore until I showed some good faith,” Traveler said.
“It’s a bluff. He does it all the time. He knows he’ll have to settle for ice cream, low-fat at that. If it’s all the same to you, we’ll use your money to pay for strawberry, his favorite.”
Traveler nodded and left the twenties where they were.
“That’ll keep him supplied for the next couple of months. You can take up a carton of strawberry yourself, if you want to. Better you than me. I’m tired of getting my ears talked off.”
“I’d like to make a phone call first,” Traveler said.
“It’s on the wall in the back next to the milk case.”
The wall was covered with jottings, phone numbers mostly, and one riddle, which Traveler remembered from high school. WHAT’S PURPLE AND HAS TWENTY-SEVEN WIVES? BRIGHAM PLUM.
He picked up the receiver, dialed Moroni Traveler and Son, and got a busy signal. After a few moments, he tried again but the line was still busy.
Sighing, he went back to the front counter and paid for his Hostess Cupcakes and a Diet Coke. “Do you want me to eat this outside?”
The woman shrugged. “Why bother? No one else does.”
He took his snack back to the phone and tasted memories for a while. As soon as the recollections subsided, he began wondering what the hell he was doing in Park City, looking for a child that wasn’t even his. A child who, even if he existed, was someone else’s son by now.
Chances were old Eli Mabey had made a mistake. Even if he hadn’t, the Moroni in question was probably just what Eli said, a late-life child. Nothing to do with Claire.
Haven’t you learned by now? he asked himself. Claire’s still pulling your strings.
/ loved playing puppets as a child, she’d said to him once. I’d control their every move. I’d sing to them and make them dance. I’d put words in their mouths and make them fight.
That admission had come after she’d orchestrated a fistfight for him, one where he was outnumbered. Traveler brushed his shoulder, half expecting to feel that her strings were still attached.
They’d been out for a drive, sunbathing at Black Rock on the Great Salt Lake until Claire caught sight of sewage floating in the water.
“They say the salt kills everything,” Traveler had reassured her, but she wanted to leave.
Rather than head back to town, they’d taken State Highway 36 south through the towns of Toole, Vernon, and then Eureka, an old mining center with more historic buildings left than people. From Eureka, they doubled back on Highway 6 to Goshen, which had a history of name changes, from Sodom to Sandtown to Mechanicsville.
There, Claire insisted on stopping for lunch at the Tintic Bar and Grill, named for the Ute Indian chief who carried on bloody guerrilla warfare against the Mormon pioneers. If it hadn’t been for the lighted neon COORS sign out front, the place would have looked derelict.
The expression on Claire’s face should have warned him to keep on driving, but he was thinking of how good a hamburger and a cold beer would taste. By the time they were inside the crowded bar it was too late.
“Claire,” the bartender shouted, “we haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. If you’re looking for LaVar, he’s shooting pool in the back room.”
Claire shook her head, a show gesture judging by the look in her eyes; it was meant to appease Traveler but also to let him know she was in demand. There would be no getting out of there without seeing LaVar, he knew that immediately.
“We just stopped in for lunch,” she said.
The bartender eyed Traveler. “Give me your order, and I’ll bring it to your table.”
“You know what I like,” Claire said.
“Ribs it is. What about you, pal?”
“Make it two.” As soon as the bartender had handed over a pitcher of beer and two glasses, Traveler led the way to a table where he could keep his back to the wall.
“How do you happen to know this place?” he asked as soon as Claire was seated.
“It’s from one of my previous lives. The land of Goshen. Don’t you just love it?”
“And LaVar?”
“He could have escaped to the big city, but he chose not to.”
“With you?”
“You know the rules, Moroni. Past lives don’t count.”
The man who brought the ribs set them on the table with an exaggerated bow. He looked like a cowboy, tall, lanky, with a sun-leathered face and hands.
“Mo, meet LaVar,” Claire said.
When Traveler stood up to shake hands, LaVar’s eyes widened. “You’re a big bastard, aren’t you?”
The man’s cowboy boots, Traveler realized, made him look taller than he was, no more than five-eight. He had to crane his neck to look Traveler in the face. He tried to turn the handshake into a contest, but Traveler decided not to play.
“Claire always said I was big where it counts,” LaVar said with a wink.
“This is Moroni Traveler,” Claire added.
“Christ, she left me for an angel.” LaVar raised his voice. “Do you hear that! This guy’s named Moroni.”
“Hell, yes,” the bartender said, pounding the bartop. “I recognize him now. He played in the pros, linebacker for L.A. One mean muther.”
“He looks like a twangy boy to me,” LaVar said.
“Claire,” Traveler said. “We can still walk out of here.”
She licked her lips. “I haven’t eaten yet.”
“You back off, LaVar,” the bartender said.
“This ain’t no ballgame.” LaVar jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Besides, I got friends backing me up.”
The dozen men at the bar stopped talking to watch. Traveler sat down, hoping that would give LaVar some sense of victory.
“Menlove,” Claire said softly.
Traveler fingered a french fry.
“That’s LaVar’s last name,” she clarified. “Men-love.”
LaVar glared. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Men love,” she said. “Loves men.” In the silence Claire’s voice carried throughout the barroom.
“Bitch,” LaVar said.
“Moroni,” Claire said, wheedling.
LaVar’s eyes widened. Maybe he was seeing the light; maybe he’d back off.
“You don’t have to be jealous, Moroni,” Claire said. “LaVar never did have any lead in his pencil, except in the men’s locker room.”
Traveler shook his head against the memory of the fight that had followed. The remembered taste of blood subsided, overridden by the cupcake’s residue.
He drank the last of his Coke and phoned his father again. This time the line was free.
“There’s another Moroni, all right,” Traveler said. “Living out in Bingham Canyon somewhere. I haven’t got the family name yet, so I’ll stick around here for a while.”
“I need your help here. Barney’s going crazy. He can’t find Bill and Charlie.”
“They were supposed to be under arrest.”
“The police say they escaped from the hospital right after Bill had his leg set.”
“On crutches?”
“I’m just telling you what they told Barney when he showed up with a bail bondsman. Bill and Charlie are now considered fugitives.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Traveler said.
“Neither did the bail bondsman. He told Barney the last time something like that happened, the police were trying to cover up a beating.”
“What do you think?”
“That Bill should have known better than to mess around with the White Prophet.”
“The man’s only an apostle, and all Bill tried to do was touch him.”
“Barney says it’s part of the conspiracy against him and his building. He says the church has spirited Bill and Charlie away because they’re his friends. He says we’ll be the next to disappear, leaving him to face the church alone.”
“You sound like you believe him,” T
raveler said.
“You never know.”
******
Dr. Wilmot was waiting outside Moyle’s Market, leaning against the rusted door of a pickup that would have looked abandoned except for the up-to-date state inspection sticker on its windshield.
“I spoke with old Eli after you left him,” Wilmot said. “He tells me you’re looking for Glen Bosworth’s daughter, so I figured I’d put a word in your ear about that.”
“I’m on my way to deliver Eli’s ice cream.”
Wilmot waved away the comment. “I’ve doctored a lot of men in my time, enough to tell me more than I want to know about human nature. Take a man like yourself. I might be able to make a good guess why you’re looking for a namesake, but I won’t. That’s your business. Keeping my patients healthy is mine. Sometimes outsiders, people like you, don’t make that easy. I’m not talking about the cigarettes only. Eli can be very persuasive. But Moyle’s knows better than to deliver more than I prescribe.” He paused for breath. “I’m talking about you personally. You’re the kind who keeps pushing until something gives. I don’t want that something to be Eli Mabey.”
“All I want is a name,” Traveler said.
“That’s why I’m standing here when I have better things to do. I intend to point you in the right direction, so you won’t have to bother Eli with any more damn fool questions. The woman you’re looking for is Hannah Tempest. She and her sister are both living in Bingham, though for how long I don’t know, since Kennecott is looking to buy the place.”
“Did you deliver Mrs. Tempest’s child?”
“I don’t talk about my patients, Mr. Traveler, even after they’ve moved away.”
7
AN HOUR later, Traveler parked in a loading zone in front of the Chester Building. Nightfall had brought with it a warm wind, smelling of sycamores, mountain sage, and the promise of rain. Across the street, the floodlit temple rose like a Gothic beacon, its two-hundred-foot spires visible throughout the valley.
Traveler had half expected Martin to be waiting on the sidewalk so they could head directly for the police station. Instead, he was behind the cigar stand, serving coffee to Barney Chester and his elevator operator, Nephi Bates. Usually Chester allowed no one but himself behind the counter. At the moment, he looked slump-shouldered and dispirited. His hair was uncombed, his unlit cigar limp and on the verge of disintegration.
Bates looked as he always did, prim, his cassette player hooked into his belt, the earphones slung around his neck.
“It’s Mormon coffee,” Bates explained, extending his cup at Traveler’s approach. “Hot water with cream and sugar.”
“I used to give it to Moroni as a boy,” Martin said. “He always wanted what the rest of us were drinking, so we told him it was coffee. He never knew the difference.”
“I knew,” Traveler said.
“Your mother said cream and sugar took the sin out of coffee. What do you say to that, Brother Nephi?”
Bates eyed his cup. “A man needs all the friends he can get at a time like this.”
“Nephi’s been trying to help us,” Chester said. “Not that it will do any good. You can’t fight the church, not in this state.”
Bates set his cup on the countertop. “When I first heard about the plans for the Chester Building, it sounded like God’s work. So I said to myself, ‘Nephi,’ I said, ‘you can’t think about yourself when God needs more room, when he needs a parking lot for his house across the street.’ ”
“Would you like some coffee, Moroni?” Martin said, raising an eyebrow to indicate that he had real coffee in mind, or maybe that Bates’s Mormon coffee wasn’t as sin-free as the elevator operator had claimed.
Traveler accepted a cup without comment.
“The church takes care of its own,” Bates went on. “I’ve always heard that.”
“They promised him another job,” Martin explained.
“A man my age doesn’t like change.” Bates took his pocket-size edition of The Book of Mormon and held it tightly in both hands.
“ ‘And he that live in righteousness shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and the earth shall pass away so as by fire,’ ” Martin quoted.
Nodding, Bates walked the dozen or so paces to his elevator, where he ran his hand over the operating lever. “There are no more jobs for the likes of me. Not like this. This is the last of the great elevators here in Zion. Nowadays they’re nothing but metal boxes with buttons to push, with no need for an old man like me. When I thought on that, I said to myself, ‘Nephi,’ I said, ‘surely God would not want a work of art like this to be lost.’ ”
He left the elevator and returned to the cigar counter.
“You’ll always have a job with me, Nephi.” Chester’s words carried with them the smell of alcohol. Traveler tested his coffee and found it laced heavily with brandy.
“If I have to,” Chester went on, “I’ll find you another place.”
Bates’s chin sank onto his breastbone. “I don’t want charity.”
“There are plenty of old buildings left in this town.”
“They’ve all been modernized,” Bates said. His breath seemed to smell of brandy too, or was Traveler mistaken?
“Maybe I’ve let this place go too long,” Chester said. “When you think about it, there are plenty of things that need doing around here. Maybe if we work together, Nephi, you and I, we can make the old girl so beautiful no one would dare touch her. Are you game?”
The elevator operator raised his head.
“Are you afraid of heights, Nephi?” Chester pointed at the lobby’s ceiling. “If not, the two of us can go to work cleaning the mural up there.”
Bates stared up at Brigham Young and his band of pioneers. “For a minute there, I thought maybe we could do it, Mr. Chester. But you won’t have a building soon, or a ceiling to clean either.”
“Don’t you believe it,” Martin said. “Moroni Traveler and Son has been housed here thirty years. That’s why we’ve promised to fight this thing.”
“But we can’t do it without your help, Nephi,” Traveler added. “That’s why you have to tell us what you heard about the building.”
When Bates lowered his gaze, his eyes were glistening with tears. “He said it was a church matter. That means God must have spoken to the prophet.”
“I don’t think God talks about real estate,” Martin said.
Bates’s eyes went wide; he blinked and backed up a step as if to disassociate himself with possible blasphemy.
“If they want the Chester Building for a parking lot,” Martin persisted, “it has nothing to do with God.”
Bates pressed his lips into a tight line and folded his arms across his chest, the picture of a man intending to remain mute.
“Nephi,” Martin wheedled.
Bates shook his head.
“So be it,” Traveler said. “Come on, Dad, we still have time to see the police before dinner.”
“They were talking right in front of me,” Bates blurted. “Like I didn’t exist. Like I was deaf and dumb, just part of the elevator. It was the day you were out of town, Mr. Chester. You were out of your office too, Mr. Traveler, both you and your father.”
“There you have it, then,” Martin said. “You weren’t sworn to silence.”
“Mr. Tanner speaks for the prophet. You know that.” Awe filled Bates’s voice.
“Most likely he was speaking for himself,” Martin said. “Besides, eminent domain is the province of government, not religion.”
“Technically correct,” Chester said, “but where are you going to find a judge and jury in this state who’ll say no to the church?”
Bates closed his eyes. “Mr. Tanner says the Chester Building is only the beginning. He envisions—that was his word—an entire square block designed to complement the temple. He said the new church office building up the street had been a mistake, because it’s taller than the temple. Therefore, a new look is needed. I remember his exact wo
rds. ‘The temple must be resurrected in a new setting of proper grandeur.’ ”
“Who was he saying all this to?” Traveler asked.
“The thirteenth apostle.”
Martin shook his head. “White Prophets and thirteenth apostles are too much for me on an empty stomach. I’m going to dinner and then home to bed.”
“What about Bill and Charlie?” Traveler said.
“Chances are we’re not going to get anything accomplished until we can backtrack them in daylight.”
“What do we do about Willis?” Chester said.
“He’s on his honeymoon,” Martin said. “And we’re sure as hell not going to get in to see the thirteenth apostle until business hours tomorrow.”
8
MARTIN INSISTED on leaving the house at eight o’clock the next morning. Even that early, the temperature was seventy degrees.
While Traveler drove, Martin switched on the car radio. According to forecasters, the unseasonable weather was expected to last for another twenty-four hours, thanks to a high-pressure system centered over the Great Salt Lake Basin. By the time they’d driven half a mile, the radio in Traveler’s Ford Fairlane had warmed up enough to begin producing its usual static.
Martin pounded the dashboard. “When are you going to get rid of this piece of junk?”
“It’s inconspicuous.”
“Ugly’s the word. Pull over to the curb.”
As soon as the car stopped, Martin began fiddling with wires under the dashboard. They’d come to a halt in front of the Wasatch School, which Traveler had attended through the seventh grade.
“This radio’s old enough to have tubes,” Martin said.
Across the street, students were filing into the tunnel that allowed them to cross under South Temple without having to worry about traffic. Their ritual shouts—to ward off creatures said to lurk underground—echoed just as hollowly as they had in Traveler’s time.
“Henry Ford has a lot to answer for,” Martin muttered.
“We could always go back home and get your Jeep.”
