Liddy went back to one of the pictures and studied it.
"That son of a gun is a lot better hung than I would have guessed.
He's a real bull."
"When I first found out what was wanted of me, I didn't want to do it. I thought of coming right back to you."
"I would have told you to go right ahead."
"Why?"
"You never had to be political, Elly."
"Sometimes in Atlanta it seemed pretty political."
"Not like Uncle Sugar. The more you know about everybody around you, the longer you last. And the better you make out.
Look at it the other way. You refuse to tail the big man, I back you up, then what happens when Walter Macy takes over?"
He picked up the Kodacolor prints and leafed through them again.
"I heard rumors. But you know something? I thought he had more sense. My God, he's a national figure. He went after this like a schoolboy. Real dumb. If he wants some great ass on the side, the way to get it is line up somebody you can trust to go get it for you. And not here. In Vegas or L.A. or Houston.
It's bush league to go sneaking off with the wife of one of your own people. It's dangerous. Worst of all, it's plain stupid."
"Agreed. Did I do right to stop at this point, Rick?"
"Without this here casework, no. With it, yes."
"What's his point, having me go on and on?"
Rick Liddy thought it over, rubbing his knuckles along the blue stubble on his jaw line.
"Let's say he couldn't figure out what to do with it. If he wants to knock John Tinker out of there so he can move in, who does he take that crap to? Fat sister? She wouldn't forgive the messenger. He could take it right to John Tinker and tell him to move over, or else. Or else what? That's what John Tinker would ask him. Does he find some anonymous way to slip it to Rolf Wintergarten? So Rolf shoots his wife, and then John Tinker and then himself. And when all the laundry is hung out to dry, Walter Macy might find himself kicked out by Mary Margaret, who would be very likely to find out what he did and how he did it."
"This stuff is too raw for publication anywhere," Erskine said.
"But maybe if some magazine had it locked in the vault, they could go ahead and do some action-proof articles on the Reverend Doctor John Tinker Meadows. Juicy ones."
"The sort of thing that Mrs. Owen from that Out Front magazine could have been looking for."
They were policemen and their minds worked in a police fashion, having been shaped and formed by early knowledge of the infinite capacity for evil and misadventure the human animal possesses. They sat silently, with Richard Liddy looking blindly at the security map that covered the blank wall, and Elly Erskine staring out at the curtain of rain beyond the windows and not seeing it.
Erskine spoke first.
"I'd say she wasn't alone with him more than one and a half minutes before I went hurrying into his office. She didn't ring true. She set off all my bells."
"Ninety seconds isn't much time."
"Time enough to set something up."
After another long silence Erskine said, "And it could be why he can't let go, why he can't tell me to quit. He wants it to look to me and maybe to his wife as if he is still gathering information, and has never made any attempt to use it."
"Provided he let his wife know about it. What are we trying to do here?" Liddy asked irritably.
"What have we got here anyway? Isn't this supposed to be some kind of church?"
"We're both members, Rick."
"We have to be. Sure. But aside from that, I would be anyway. It answers something for me. It fills up some kind of hole I used to have inside me. It means a lot to Martha and me.
It means we'll never lose each other, no matter what. How about you?"
"I don't know. The time I feel the presence of God is when I take time off and walk across the countryside. The growing things and the birds and the small animals. It fits together into a plan that I don't think could ever have happened by accident.
And I don't think I'm the end product of a series of accidents.
The machinery is too complicated."
"Okay, so the Church is valuable and worth protecting and we are part of the machinery of protection, Elly. So where do we go from here?"
"I think I better tell Doctor Macy I have to beg off because you've given me some extra duty and I won't have enough time."
"And see how he acts?"
"If he gets really nasty mad, we've been thinking bad thoughts. If he just blusters around a little, or acts relieved, are you going to try to follow up on anything?"
"I don't know. I just don't know. I might go back through the records and see if I can find out where he was on the afternoon and night of the seventh of May."
"As employees and as members of the Church, Rick, isn't it our duty to eliminate him as a possible choice?"
"If we can. Yes. I guess so. He works hard. He puts in long hours. He does all those programs and he's forever going out of town as a guest preacher. I wish the old man was still functioning. He was fantastic. You came aboard in time to hear him, didn't you?"
"He was great. Let me put it this way: he was so great I don't want Walter Macy, like they say, wearing his moccasins."
"A strong church shouldn't depend on just one man."
They sat in silence, thinking of their shared dilemma.
Erskine got up. He told Rick to keep three or four of the photographs, just in case. Keep them in the vault. He said he'd bring Rick a dupe of the tape. He said he'd report on Doctor Macy's reaction. And, holding the canvas bag under his raincoat, he headed down the hall toward the torrent outside.
When the heavy rain began, Jenny Albritton had to suspend her guided tour of Meadows Center, cancel the helicopter flight and drive the female reporter from Out Front back to the Meadows Center Motor House. She parked and went in with her to make certain her deluxe reserved rooms on the second floor in the rear, overlooking the fields and farmlands, were now ready for occupancy.
As she had been taking the woman around, to the Tabernacle, the University grounds, the Settlements, the Mall, she had been trying to get some clues about her attitude toward the Eternal Church. Carolyn Pennymark was in her late twenties, Jenny guessed, with a mop of tangled chestnut-brown hair, a small delicate face with pointed nose and slightly receding chin, prominent upper teeth. She wore glasses with very large lavender lenses and thin silver frames. She was slender, except for a meatiness of hip and thigh, wore a wrinkled brown blouse, baggy khaki pants and running shoes. She carried a huge canvas shoulder bag, and when she asked questions of Jenny Albritton, she taped the question and the answer on a little mini-cassette Sony, and from time to time she took photographs, using a Leica so old that the white metal showed shiny where she held it and pressed the shutter and the film advance.
When Jenny had glanced sidelong at Carolyn Pennymark several times, she'd decided that the woman had the face of a surly fourteen-year-old boy, blank, skeptical, indifferent and clean of any suggestion of makeup. Jenny left her at a table in the motel coffee shop, saying she'd be back in a minute, and soon she returned from the desk carrying a large brown envelope. As she sat, she placed it in front of Miss Pennymark.
"This is our press package, and I've added some other material that may help you understand us better. Now even though the Church organization had absolutely nothing to do with the...
disappearance of your colleague, we want you to be our guest."
The Pennymark woman stared gloomily at her.
"I don't like this shit, lady. I didn't come down on promo."
Jenny shrugged.
"It's nothing I had anything to do with. Mr. Efflander talked yesterday to Mr. Jeremy Rosen."
"Who is Efflander and who is Rosen? Just for starters."
"Mr. Rosen runs the conglomerate that owns your magazine and he is a friend and supporter of the Eternal Church. Mr. Efflander is the chief administrative officer here. It's all been arr
anged. Look, I think I know how you feel. I've worked on newspapers."
"I bet you have."
"Are you trying to be rude, Miss Pennymark?"
"I'm not trying to be anything at all, pal. I don't have to be anything or do anything except look this freak farm over and write a story." The no-color eyes behind lavender lenses were unblinking.
"All right, so this is awkward for you."
"I didn't say that."
"I wouldn't have set it up this way."
"I don't care what you've set up. What I don't want is any more guided tour, okay? If you have one all set up, forget it.
Guided tours have a funny smell. They steer you away from anything interesting."
jenny Albritton looked down at her fists and took a deep breath.
"What are you trying to be, for God's sake? Are you trying out for a part? You want to be Barbara Waawaa? Get off me a minute."
"I want us both to get everything clear."
"Hooray for clarity. You have a gold badge in there. Wear it in some kind of visible place on that ragbag blouse. You have the ID card with your picture. On the back of the card are the places you can't get into. The money room. The computer rooms. Upstairs in the Manse. Otherwise you can go clopping around in your army boots anywhere you please, and the hell with you!"
Pennymark smiled.
"Hey, there's a living person inside there, huh? Thanks for all your help, Jenny baby. Anyway, don't sweat it. If anything gets published out of this, we can both be surprised."
"Mr. Efflander's arrangement with Mr. Rosen is that they will publish whatever you wish to write about the Meadows Center."
"How nice! I don't have any angle at all."
"Don't expect one from me."
"I wouldn't even ask. Lindy Rooney Owen is stale news. She has slipped off the end of page eighty-five. They teamed us three times, God only knows why. She never did hard news in her life. She was the kind that, on a paper, you would send her to cover the school board budget meeting. On Out Front they'd send her to find out why a star walked off a set and cost Warner's five mil, or if Rod Muscle in his new underwater special is futzing around with Marilyn Boobs who was all set to get married to Vinnie Invincible."
"So what are you doing on that magazine if you are such a red-hot investigative reporter, dearie?"
She smiled again.
"God only knows. They must have bought me with all that money. Or maybe they wanted to look as if they had something to do with real news. Anyway, we've got no clue why Lindy Prettypants came down here. It was a self-assignment. And it probably had something to do with some kind of tea party or gala on the green. They told me at the office her husband is down here."
"I wouldn't know about that."
"Of course you wouldn't know about that because it doesn't have anything to do with PR. I know where he's staying."
"I'll tell you one thing that has to do with PR, Miss Pennymark. The Meadows family has always been totally cooperative with the media. There was no reason for her to use an assumed name and some kind of cover story down here."
"The reason would be what a pal of mine calls dramatic ignorance. That's what happens when people try to spice their lives with what they see on the tube. Cops try to act like Hill Street. PR ladies try to be Leslie Stahl. What's the generally accepted version around here of what happened to Lindy?
That is, if you're not too pissed at me to tell me."
"I'll answer your questions because that's my job. I don't have to enjoy it. Nobody has any proof, of course, but the thing that seems most likely is that she left Saturday night or early Sunday morning to drive down to the city and catch her flight. Somebody got in the car with her somehow. Maybe she had car trouble. Maybe somebody forced her off the road. So they raped her and robbed her on some little lumber company road, buried her and her suitcases and stuff, then looked at the rental papers in the glove compartment and took the car down and left it in the airport parking lot and walked away."
Pennymark made a face, twisting her mouth.
"Christ, what a dingy way for Miss Priss to die. Lindy was the kind of person, if there was a full-length mirror, she'd undress in the closet."
"Excuse me, dear, but you won't get much cooperation from the Church people here if you take the name of the Lord in vain, and if you use generally foul language."
Carolyn gave her a long expressionless stare, and then said, too sweetly, "Oh, do forgive me!"
"Of course." She looked at her watch.
"And I've got miles to go before I sleep. I left you lots of background material. Just sign for anything you might want to eat or drink. I really think it would be very helpful to you to read the material, no matter what you think of the whole operation here. It will give you an. overview that will save you time."
' "Overview." I like that. That's real classy. I'll read it, just the way I've been reading everything I could get my hands on about all these electronic preachers ever since I found out I might be coming down here. My own overview. Of Falwell, Jim and Tammy Baker, the Armstrongs, the Crystal Cathedral and all the rest of them."
"Maybe you should stay in this afternoon and this evening.
The weather is looking terrible. I can pick you up for a helicopter ride tomorrow if you like."
"No like," Pennymark said.
"I'll rip through this stuff and then maybe you can fix up a car for me to rent and a map of the area."
"Driving could get very difficult."
"Everything in this world can get very difficult sooner or later, love. Thanks for all the attention."
Carolyn Pennymark finished her coffee and went up and inspected her small suite. It looked out on heavy rain coming down, rain heavier than she had seen in a long time. She unpacked with the speed and efficiency of long practice, trying to remember the last time she'd had a suite all to herself. She stretched out on the bed nearest the window and called the office, asking the switchboard for Marty Gehman's extension.
This is me, old buddy, down here in Bible country, with it all arranged for God to pick up the tab for everything. You wouldn't have been in on that, would you?"
"No way. It all went on at a level I will never attain, Carrie.
So enjoy. It could never happen again."
"What I've got here is a darling little suite. Blue and gray and rugs you can lose your feet in, and big windows and a bathroom bigger than my place on Fifty-eighth. I was met by PR. Why do all the PR women look alike?"
"Like what?"
"You know. Every one I've practically ever met is blonde with long elegant legs, cornflower eyes, golden hair, big round boobs and a round little ass, both in constant bobbing motion.
As many white teeth as a harpsichord. An infectious grin. And everything they say has an exclamation point after it."
"Baby, you sound like you were back to practicing your Joan Didion imitation."
"Okay, so I should save it for my book. Good thinking.
Anyway, I had a note on my desk about where Lindy's husband is staying down here and I need it. It's the top sheet on the blue memo pad, okay?"
He came back on the line in a couple of minutes.
"It is called the County Line Motel. And you got a pencil, I'll give you the number." After she had written it down, he said, "Otherwise, how are things?"
"I've got a lot of material here I am going to read. It is raining outside as hard as I ever saw. I keep hearing thunder bumping, and I can hear the chimes in their big Tabernacle through the sound of the rain. My early impression is that the money comes into this place like it was coming down a coal chute."
"You old enough to remember coal chutes?"
"Marty, I am old enough to read about everything. You know, it's kind of nice country around here. Rolling hills, meadows, orchards, reminds me of a part of France I was in once. It ought to be pretty when the sun comes out. If it ever does again."
"Carrie, you get any feeling of cover-up there?"
"They seem to be
straining to prove there's nothing to hide.
And all of us big-time magazine persons know that means one of two things. Either they have or they haven't."
"Shrewd, kid. Very shrewd."
She heard a cracking sound on the line and then a quick loud zoo slam of thunder.
"Hey, goodbye. Lightning too close!" She hung up. She had turned the bed light on. It was darker in the room.
She read all the literature. She had never had to take a speed-reading course. She came from a family of compulsive readers. If you didn't finish a book quickly enough, somebody took it when you weren't looking. The light kept flickering and the storm seemed anchored directly over the motel.
John D MacDonald - One More Sunday Page 24
