John D MacDonald - One More Sunday

by One More Sunday(Lit)

"What is it this time?"

  "A sly little variation. Here's the reasoning. They pulled the last year's personal tax returns of all our executive and administrative personnel. As you well know, every one of them tithes. They took the returns of the nine highest-paid people in the commercial end construction, leasing, housing and so on and the salaries came out close to one million total, so there is the question of the total tithe of a hundred thousand dollars."

  "What question?"

  "They say it can be called a kickback. We pay high salaries to reduce the profit on which we have to pay taxes, and then make those people kick back to the Church. They want to use that as a lever to pry open the whole contribution record, to make us prove to them that everybody tithes to the same extent everybody who works for any direct or indirect entity of Meadows Center. In addition, they have the usual complaints about our overhead charges to the commercial entities.

  Share of the airstrip expenses, motor pool, overall maintenance, legal staff and so on."

  "When are they going to give up?"

  "They aren't being paid to give up."

  "On all tax-paying portions of this complex, our books are clean and our practices are all within the law. As far as contributions to the Church are concerned, that is none of their business. Have you run this past the brothers Winchester?"

  "Yes. Charley says that if we paid Wintergarten ten million a year and he tithed one million, we might be forced to discuss it with them on the basis we were translating potential profits into tax-free gifts. But there is no blatant example, and their reasoning, he says, is faulty. We can stonewall it all the way to the tax court, meanwhile being careful about any warrant to grab the books and records, so we can stonewall that too. But he says we just might mention it to the Senators this coming week."

  "We'll arrange it so Charley can bring it up. I see you have brought your little tape player, and I assume it has something to do with what my sainted sister calls the Japanese nodules."

  Finn smiled and pressed the play button, saying, "Now hear this."

  John Tinker leaned back, eyes closed, making a fingertip tent as he composed himself to listen to this latest effort after so many failures. He heard the buzzing sound of a phone ringing somewhere, and then the heavy voice of a man saying, "Hello?"

  He sounded irritable and impatient.

  "Is this Mr. Albert? Mr. Francis M. Albert?" a woman asked.

  "Yes, yes. If you're selling, I'm not buying."

  "Please hold the line. The Reverend Doctor Matthew Meadows would like to speak to you."

  "To me? What? What kind of a dumb joke are you..."

  "Francis? This is your pastor speaking." John Tinker opened his eyes and leaned forward. It was the rich instrument of old intimate, resonant, unmistakable.

  "Reverend! It is you! I thought it was a joke that..."

  "I called you, my son, because we here at the Church are worried about you. We haven't heard from you in ten months."

  "Is it that long? Honest to God. I mean excuse me, I didn't mean to say that. Look, I didn't know it was so long."

  "I have been worried about you, personally. I have been wondering if you might be in some kind of serious trouble, Francis. You and your wife have been members for six years. Is there trouble? Is there any way we can help you?"

  "I don't know. I mean maybe. What happened, our daughter came down with some trouble of the spine. It's a long word and it means like it is disintegrating. And the treatments are killing us."

  "Would that be Sharon or Karen?"

  "Honest to God, you remember the names! Excuse me again.

  It's the little one. It's Sharon. She just turned eight. It's pitiful, she's being so brave about it. You wouldn't believe the expense."

  "I can well imagine. And it would of course limit your tithe, Francis. But it should not eliminate it. You are not the sort of person looking for an excuse to stop supporting your Church.

  You and I have been together in the Church a long time, and we have both learned that no matter what you give, no matter how great your sacrifice, God will give you good fortune in far greater measure than your gift to Him."

  "I know, I know. It's just that..."

  "I would not want you to be opening up your life to greater misfortune by forsaking Him. Please let us know what we can do to help. We will be praying for little Sharon and for your whole family, Francis."

  "I can't believe this has really happened! I never thought that a man as busy and important as you would have time for..."

  "God is love."

  "Uh... bless His holy name."

  Finn turned the machine to rewind. John Tinker shook his head. He looked pale.

  "I never really thought that Japanese fellow could make it work."

  "It's very eerie. This was a real conversation. Delinquents picked at random. Fifty calls. We counted only those where we could get through to the actual person. The calls were made over a three-day period. The resulting gifts averaged out two hundred and sixteen dollars per call. The lowest response was ten dollars, the highest fourteen hundred. Personal letters of thanks went out to each one, over your father's facsimile signature."

  "I keep forgetting that technician's name."

  "Mickey Oshiro. Here's a transcript of what you just heard.

  The portions that were canned have been highlighted in yellow. You can see that there are more of them than you would expect. Every voice pattern has been matched on a screen to the patterns lifted from your father's recorded sermons and Bible classes. The operator fills in the personal remarks on a phonetic keyboard and then at the right moment pushes T for transmit. She has to have a good memory for all the canned phrases. We put them on the key pad in a two number code. And there is another code to imitate the way the voice drops at the end of a sentence, or goes up when a question is asked. It is all a product of voice synthesis, John.

  And very, very difficult for the operator. On lots of these calls she got rattled at the unexpected and had to break the connection and call back."

  "You have just one operator?"

  "Yes. Glinda Lopez. The other two I tried couldn't handle it.

  Glinda can just barely handle it. Understand, she is using a machine to talk in someone else's voice, without being detected or sounding false. The sweat runs right off her face. On the early ones she had the worst time. She bit her lip once and bled. But she's quick and smart and getting better with each call. She can't do an eight-hour shift of that. Nobody could. It's too intense."

  "Maybe you could motivate her by giving her a percentage of what she brings in."

  "That wouldn't work with her. She's not that sort of a person. She believes what she is saying. What Matthew Meadows is saying through her, through the machine. If I push her too hard she'll burn out, and then she might get cynical about jacking money out of people who can't afford to give it."

  As he saw the change in John Tinker's expression, he knew at once that he had gone too far. The minister of God leaned toward him and said gently, "Perhaps you do not believe in the efficacy of prayer, old friend."

  "I only meant..."

  "An offering is a prayer to the Lord. You are sick at heart and you give up a piece of your life to be made whole again. Money is the way we measure the effort in our lives. The work we do is transmuted into gold, and in our gratitude we tithe the Church. We tithe God. We pray in gold. If you do not understand that at this late date, Finn..."

  "Just clumsy wording. I'm sorry. I've burned out some of my people in the past. Their motivations change. They get cynical.

  I think it probably happens in every endeavor, John. It's part of the process of living and working. And believing."

  "And you do believe?"

  "Of course."

  John Tinker Meadows looked directly into his eyes and Finn Efflander managed to endure that penetrating directness without looking away. And once again he wondered if John Tinker Meadows might be going mad. He seemed to be slowly, day by day, increasing
the distance between himself and the people who ran his organization, the people he had to trust. At times like this, when John Tinker began talking about the necessity for faith, Finn felt alarm, as though he were alone in a room with an animal that had no idea of what its next move might be, and cared nothing about the consequences. He thought that it was time to talk to Mary Margaret again, to compare notes. There might come a day when this bleakness, this look of fury and outrage held in precarious control, might show itself from the pulpit.

  It irritated Finn that this preacher his own age was able to cow him, to alarm him. In a highly successful business career he had dealt on even terms with men of far more power than John Tinker Meadows could wield. It was the suggestion of a destructive madness that made him so quick to try to mend any rift, he had decided. It was as though this whole Meadows empire which he had so carefully rebuilt out of the chaos was a castle of playing cards on a living-room rug, and John Tinker was a two-year-old playing in the same room, willful, destructive and unpredictable.

  John Tinker sighed and relaxed and said, as though nothing at all had happened, "Something has come up. I don't think it's of any particular importance. Yesterday afternoon I had a long talk on the phone with Jeremy Rosen."

  "The name seems to ring a bell."

  "It should. He's a good friend of the Church. He's an Associate in the Society of Merit. And he's the chief executive officer of Burlington Communications, headquartered in New York. Last year when they picked up Farber Publishing, the magazine called Out Front was part of the package. Does that ring any bells?"

  "Something about the police. Right! One of their people came down to write something about us and disappeared.

  Nothing to do with us, though it's a good guess she was going to write something unpleasant. We gave our full cooperation.

  Sheriff Dockerty was very apologetic about the whole thing.

  What's up?"

  "Jeremy has been reviewing the acquisitions. Out Front is beginning to make money sooner than anybody thought it would. He called in the managing editor to discuss budget and upcoming features. The editors are sending another investigative reporter down to try to open it all up again and see if there was any connection between the Church and her disappearance."

  "But there wasn't!"

  "You know that. I know that. But vicious gossip and hints of scandal sell magazines. And we are especially vulnerable.

  Those who have never found God, or who have turned their backs on Him, would like to destroy His true Church. Jeremy said that he could put a stop to it, but he would rather not because he was afraid that it would look as if we had brought pressure to bear on him. And he said there is a good relationship there between the editors and the reporters, and he feels that if he starts censoring their projects, the best ones might leave. I told him I understood his reluctance and I appreciated his warning us in advance. They're sending a woman again, sending her down sometime this week." He tugged his wallet out of his hip pocket and removed a scrap of paper that had been in with the currency.

  "Her name is Carolyn Pennymark. Jeremy thinks she's about thirty years old. She was with the Washington Post before she went with Out Front about two years ago."

  "If she checks into one of our motels, or makes a reservation, I'll be informed right away. Then what?"

  "How would you suggest we handle it?"

  With only momentary hesitation, Finn Efflander said, "I'll sic Jenny Albritton on her. Instant photo and thumbprint for her gold ID badge. Total charm. All the literature. Everything open to her except the mail room, the money room and the computer room. Access to you, too, of course. And maybe a little chopper ride around the reservation?"

  "Good thinking. And by the way, Finn, are you reasonably sure that person, that Mrs. Owen who disappeared, had no kind of meaningful contact with any of our people?"

  "She got into Administration and saw the Reverend Walter Macy for about three minutes. She had made an appointment to talk to him about a gift of property to the Church. One of our best security people, Eliot Erskine he used to be on the Atlanta police force thought she acted strange in some way, so he followed her into Walter's office after she had been in there not more than two minutes. She was rambling on and on to Walter about some icons her grandfather had brought from Russia before the Revolution, and when it became evident to Erskine that she was lying or confused, Walter told her to bring them in and they would have them appraised by professionals and she would be given the appraisal report so she could write them off as a gift. He thanked her for her generosity, and Erskine led her back out to where a terribly battered old pickup truck with a bearded driver was waiting for her. She told Erskine her car was being fixed."

  "What day was that?"

  "A Friday. She was on the gate report as a Miss Olan. Friday morning. May sixth. We've got no other record of her seeing anyone. And we would have if she had."

  "I guess I have no reason to feel uneasy about this, but I do."

  "I'll take care of things. Not to worry."

  "You're invaluable to me, Finn. I don't know how I could manage without you at my side. Give the very highest priority to this voice synthesis, please. As soon as you think she is able, have this Lopez woman start training one or two more."

  "Will do."

  "God is love," John Tinker said, rising to his feet.

  "Bless His holy name," murmured Finn.

  Four Joe Deets looked forward to Sunday afternoons. He spent them in his windowless office on the second floor of the Communications Building. A long desk had been built against one wall. He sat in a secretarial chair of pale oak and fake leather, with fat rubber tires. With one practiced shove of a foot, he could scoot along the desk from the terminals to the printers, and over to his own personal computer with its modems, two printers and eight-inch Winchester disks.

  Sunday afternoons were fun time, investment time, the day for juggling money. There were eleven tax-exempt trust funds, all discretionary. They were divided among the trust departments of four New York City banks, three banks with three apiece, and one with two. A fifth bank served as a temporary receptacle, a way station between the Central Citizens Bank in Lakemore and the eleven trust funds.

  It was his policy, proven by results, to keep all the funds invested at all times, moving from stocks to bonds to money market funds and back, long and short, depending on his sense of the marketplace. The securities analysis program on the big mainframe computer downstairs was wonderfully complex. It was tied into a market updating service so that after any business day he could print out each fund, showing current values and the percentage of change from the previous printout, the history of that particular investment and its rating in comparison to the performance of all other holdings in that fund and in all the funds under his control. Each week, after the infusion of new money, he apportioned it among the funds and set up the buy and sell orders. By tapping a very few keys on one of his terminals, he could print out the month-to-month history of each fund back to the day five years before when he had written the lengthy and intricate program that controlled the input and output and continual updating of these funds and all their transactions.

  After proper safeguards had been built into the bank computer system for interbank transfers, he had been given a private access code which enabled him to make the transfers, and which also provided for a printout of his activities, if any, at the end of each working day for each bank involved.

  Whenever he sent buy or sell instructions on any one. of the eleven accounts, he sent simultaneous advice to the discount brokerage house which, by agreement with the banks, handled all ECB orders.

  Through his personal computer, without the knowledge of anyone else in the world, he leased space in a mainframe computer in Virginia, space which he accessed with a variable code he knew was almost impossible to break. On each Sunday afternoon, after he had decided on his buys and sells for the following Monday morning, he put those recommendations into his privately l
eased space. Then he arranged for the ECB mainframe to access that same space with a simpler code, one which would not permit changes to be made in the stored information. It was printed out and always contained the ending phrase "Courtesy of Conover Resources' and the date.

  Once all the transactions had been completed, Joe Deets would compute the total dollar volume of all buy and sell orders and transfer a tiny percentage of that total as an advisory fee to the bank account in Philadelphia of Conover Resources. That fee was moved in and out of the Conover account very quickly, ending up in a blind trust in a branch of the Bank of Nova Scotia in Freeport in the Bahamas. There, under the careful husbandry of Number 712-311, it had grown from the four hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars he had pilfered to over seven hundred and sixty-five thousand in the three and a half years since he had set it up.

  There were times when he wished he had named the advisory company with a little less bravado. His mother's maiden name had been Clara Conover. And the dear old thing would have considered it a mortal sin to steal from any church, regardless of its beliefs.