Finn leaned back and gave him a lazy smile.
"You know, John, you may just be right after all. A man can get so stale in a job he loses his perspective. Maybe I have an exaggerated opinion of my own importance. I think I'd like to take a leave of absence. Say a year."
"You could make it permanent if that's what you want."
"We'll know better what each of us wants after the year is up."
"By the time the year is up we will have a man of the first quality here directing the building of the medical complex."
"I hope so. I think I can get away in thirty days. I'll find a good man to run the store for you."
"Finn, old friend, I don't want to put you out like that. I want you to start enjoying your long vacation as soon as possible.
And living well on that money you've saved. I'm sure Harold Sherman can handle the odds and ends."
Finn Efflander hesitated, torn between loyalty to his organization and his people, and a dirty glee at what he thought might happen at Meadows Center under Harold Sherman.
Character won, and he said, "I don't think Sherman is right for the job."
John Tinker Meadows got up from behind the great desk.
"We had the judgment to pick you, Finn. I think we have the judgment to pick the man who'll fill in for you or replace you, whatever the fates decide. Drop us a card from some island resort, please. We all want to stay in touch with you, of course."
After Finn left, John Tinker Meadows looked over at the wall at the familiar photograph of Matthew Meadows standing beside General Dwight D. Eisenhower at some ceremonial occasion. The General was holding a salute and the preacher had his hat in his left hand and his right hand over his heart.
He remembered his father telling him what he did in moments of stress and confusion. He started to flip the Book open at random. It was the Oxford Bible, handsomely bound in heavy leather, one of the many gifts his father had received. But instead he turned to a familiar passage. His finger came to rest on the fifth chapter, seventeenth verse of Galatians.
"For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh:
and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would."
He closed it and took the more familiar Jerusalem Bible and turned to the same verse.
"Let me put it like this: if you are guided by the Spirit you will be in no danger of self-indulgence, since self-indulgence is the opposite of the Spirit, the Spirit is totally against such a thing, and it is precisely because the two are so opposed that you do not always carry out your good intentions." He read on.
"If you are led by the Spirit, no law can touch you. When self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: fornication, gross indecency and sexual irresponsibility; idolatry and sorcery; feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy; drunkenness, orgies and similar things. I warn you now as I warned you before: those who behave like this will not inherit the kingdom of God."
He came out from behind the desk and walked slowly through the long conference room and into his suite. He walked into the bathroom and stared into the mirror and fingered his crust of beard, hearing the scratchy sound it made.
He thought he should take a shower. His body felt stale.
By habit long ingrained, after he had stripped, he lowered himself to the cool tile floor for the series of push-ups. But after three he let himself settle naked against the tiles, cool against his chest, belly and groin. He thought about Molly. He thought about her being hurled up into the air when her car tripped over. He tried to feel pity, sorrow, loss. There was nothing. So he tried to feel relief, gladness, relaxation. Still nothing. He created the most vivid pictures of her in his mind, trying to create at the very least some faint visceral stir of longing. Nothing. Nothing at all.
He rolled up onto his knees, and with hands in front of his chest, palms pressed together, chin down, eyes closed, he said, "Father in heaven, please tell me what is wrong with me."
It was a long time since he had tried any kind of direct prayer. He had prayed, but it had been an easy, practiced thing, words without any anticipation of an answer. Always before when he had tried direct prayer, there had been a kind of an answer. There had been somewhere in his consciousness a resonance, as if his own words echoed in the back of his skull, and in their echoing they set up a sympathetic resonance with some part of his spirit, giving him comfort and the sense of having been heard.
This time his words were totally flat. They seemed to rise to a place not more than six inches above his" head, and were there deadened and dispersed, as if absorbed by a slab of cork. He looked up at the light fixture in the center of the ceiling and said loudly, "Father, please tell me what has gone wrong!"
But no one heard. No one was listening. The hoarse sounds died without echo or emphasis. All his life he had thought of himself as being alone. But not like this. Not so totally alone.
Not so totally empty. Not this close to death.
"Paul!" he whispered. But Paul was gone too. Along with Poppa and all the rest of them. Paul had looked up to him. And this had made him a better person than he was.
Lieutenant Coombs and Sergeant Slovik of the SBI sat in Mrs. Holroyd's living room amid the overfurnished clutter of forty years of marriage and eight years of widowhood. The draperies were drawn to close out the heat and sunlight, and in the gloom a large ceiling fan turned slowly.
"I know what they're saying," she said, 'but they don't say it in front of me more than one time. Moses is a gentle person."
"But you said he has seemed different lately."
"He's been doing more preaching, that's all. He has a really fantastic memory, Lieutenant. He preaches about God on street corners. Is that illegal these days?"
"Only when he does it on private property without permission."
"I told you. I am a light sleeper. That dreadful old red truck of his is very noisy. As you maybe noticed, my driveway out there is full of lumps and holes. When he drives in or out it sounds like somebody banging on garbage cans. And there is no way he could leave during the night and come back at night without my hearing him. It would make me very nervous to have him leave at night because it means I'm alone here. It makes me nervous to have him in jail. Do you think I'm lying to you? I'm old, but I have a fantastic memory. Moses would not do anything so sinful. He is a hard worker. He does not drink or smoke or use bad language. Sheriff Dockerty checked his record, you know. And he has never done anything bad in all his life. My doctor says he probably had schizophrenia, and some people do get over it and can live out in society. They are dumping them out of the sanitariums all the time lately. Saving money, they say. But they won't remember to take their medication, even if they are able to afford it. We should all be glad that Moses can support himself provided, of course, you don't have to use him as a scapegoat for a murder you can't solve."
"Mrs. Holroyd, please. We do honestly want to find out who murdered Mrs. Owen."
"Then you should get right to it, and let Moses come home.
Some wretched children have vandalized his old school bus since the rain, and he should come back and fix it before more rain comes."
"May we look at it?"
"If you have Moses' permission."
"We do."
"Then go right ahead."
They found six smashed windows, and a sour pile of clothes and books on which had been dumped the contents of opened cans of peaches, beef stew, evaporated milk and a variety of canned soups. With gingerly care, Slovik extracted the books, wiped them just enough to find out what they were about.
"No porn, Jerry," he said at last.
"Travels in the Holy Land. History of the Crusades. Living in Christ's Name. Stuff like that."
"They look old."
"They're like, you know, from garage sales."
They searched with care but found no letters, no photographs, no medicines, no magazines or newspaper
s.
"The kids could have taken stuff," Slovik said.
"Somehow, I doubt it," Jerry Coombs said.
"I was thinking maybe we could hang on to him so if whoever did it is still in the area, they'd feel safe and maybe do something stupid. But it isn't fair. Let's let the son of a bitch go. He's got a lot of work to do here. Look, those little bastards even let the air out of his tires."
When they got back to the County Courthouse, Coombs called the State Attorney General's office, explained his recommendation to release the suspect and got permission to so advise the Sheriff. There were no charges to be filed.
After Moses, back in his own clothes, was released and had left with a deputy who would drive him on out to Mrs. Holroyd's place, Sheriff Dockerty called Rick Liddy at the Security Office at Meadows Center and said, "You wanted to know about Moses. Coombs got permission to let him go. No way he was involved. But he sure was a popular suspect.
People were right willing to believe he done it. Coombs says some kids trashed his school bus while he was my guest.
Expressing the opinion of their folks, I'd guess. If we had somebody else nailed for the Owen murder, I'd feel better about letting him go. People get that vigilante feeling about people who look and act different. And these days they think the law favors the criminals. Which is no news to any law person. I'm too short-handed to do much but I'm going to try to check on him now and then. It would be a real big help to me, and to Moses too, if you could hand me another suspect."
"I would if I could. You know that."
He beeped Eliot Erskine after the phone call and when he called back in, told him that they'd let Moses go. He could hear the relief in Erskine's voice.
In the late afternoon Finn flander met with Charley Winchester in the offices of the law firm in downtown Lakemore. When he heard the news, Charley stopped being the mild and jolly joker, and became agitated.
"I'll talk to John about this. It's just a little rift. It can be mended. We need you around here."
"It's not a rift. John and I understand each other. All I want to do is get away for a while. Haven't I earned that much?"
"But you're the one holds this thing together!"
"Nonsense. It was a mess when I got here, but I've had a few years to straighten it out, set up systems, work out the checks and balances. I've been kidding myself about how essential I am. I'm not, really. I've been going a little stale."
"How? What do you mean?"
"I'm a problem solver. Personnel relations was a big problem here. Equitable pay increments. Job descriptions. Reporting procedures. Security measures. Advance planning. Okay, so I've got good people now in all the key slots, and I've been letting Harold Sherman sit in on almost every meeting I set up.
He's pretty humorless but he knows how everything works.
And I haven't any choice, actually. John Tinker says Harold can fill the bill, and John Tinker is the head man. I've been creating problems so I can find the answers. Running in place.
I've been butting into lower-level things where I don't belong, like McGaw's little production operation, and checking the maintenance schedules on the aircraft. When I finally told John I thought I needed a break, I felt a genuine sense of relief."
Charley got up quickly and went over to the windows to look down into the State Street traffic, his hands locked behind him. Finn realized that from that angle Charley looked a lot older than he did head on.
"Your man in New York couldn't find anyone, eh?"
"Anyone good."
"Same with the University. We couldn't find anyone good for that job. So we finally hired Hallowell."
"He was here when I came aboard."
"Due to family contacts he got all the right tickets. He's fairly bright. But his problem is narcolepsy."
"I knew there was a word for it. I think the second or third time I saw him, I was in his office and he was asking me a question and he paused and all of a sudden he was snoring. So I went out and asked his secretary if he was all right. She went in and came out and said everything was just fine."
Charley came back and perched a heavy haunch on the corner of his desk.
"I just don't like the way things are going, Finn. I don't think Rolf is going to stay on here. He is completely broken. That young woman was much too important to him. Maybe she was his chance to stay young a little longer. Matthew is out of it now. For good. He had such a bad day Saturday Mary Margaret came to me to find out if there isn't some way we can get him institutionalized under some other name, in some good place."
"Can you do that?"
"I think so. Switzerland, maybe. But then her conscience is going to turn her sour. She's having trouble finding nurses. I told her to hang on for a while."
"Hang on until the big medical complex is next door," Finn said.
"It ought to be able to provide nursing care."
"Oh, John Tinker will go ahead with it," Charley agreed.
"The money is available. And he has a compulsion to buy all the respectability he can get. He knows that Matthew Meadows' orders to his flock to avoid doctors and hospitals made the whole ECB operation suspect to a lot of people. Now he can go the other way, and change public opinion a little bit.
Finn, you're right. If it isn't first class it isn't going to kill the patients. John Tinker worries me lately. He seems to be withdrawing somehow. There's no lift. No sparkle. He's not enjoying life. The sermons are mechanically good, well rehearsed, full of camera cues. I think Mary Margaret is gaining a couple or three pounds a week ever since Matthew got so much worse. Who have we got left around here ? Walter Macy ?
He could do well running a little bit of a church in a rich parish, and play politics with the deacon list. He's not up to operating anything this big...
"Joe Deets can't keep his hands off the pretty little girls. So he's going to get into very big trouble. Finn, you can talk all you want to about taking some time off, having a nice rest, but you are leaving what begins to me to look more and more like a sinking ship. Ever since Matthew's trouble started, the longterm membership trend has been turning down. Very slowly, but definitely down. An institution like this needs constant attention from somebody who knows the whole picture and knows what he's doing."
After several moments of silence, Finn shook his head and said, "No. No, thanks. For several years now old friends all over the country have been saying, "What in hell is Finn doing down there with that bunch of weirdos?" I haven't been paying conscious attention. I've told myself I don't care. But I guess I do. This may be a rude question, Charley, but how do you rationalize it?"
"I don't have to rationalize a thing, friend. To me and Clyde, the ECB is a nice piece of business. Without us it would have gotten into a lot more trouble than it has, and paid a lot more taxes. We're advocates. And everybody at one time or another needs one. For my own personal private opinion, I can tell you this much. I can't see a whole lot of harm in bringing folks into church to hear the old-time religion. Lifts the hearts. Refreshes the spirits. Makes them feel like they're part of something real special. This place is like a shrine now. They come from all over the country to listen to the biggest loudest electronic chimes in the known world."
"And if you weren't taking care of their legal problems, somebody else would be?"
"Let's not get philosophical-tricky, Finn boy. What's your departure schedule?"
"By tomorrow noon, I'll be long gone, provided you can disentangle me from some of the things I've had to sign. When I get an address, I'll let you know."
"Got any destination?"
"Vermont, I guess. Haven't seen it since I was a little kid in camp."
"Well, let's check the paperwork. And then we'll have a drink."
The Hemstead Brothers Funeral Home sent one of its hearses down to the city Sunday evening and brought Molly Wintergarten's body back to Lakemore for processing. The sister-inlaw of the deceased brought in a dark blue Halston dress that same evening, and some of Molly's c
osmetics from her dressing table.
The sister-in-law's name was Alice Berns, a tall, pale, grayhaired woman in octagonal eyeglasses without rims. She told 2-73 Buddy Hemstead that she had the authority to select the casket, and she picked a steel box with a bronze metallic finish, white satin interior, and an outer container of waterproofed concrete. She said that Mrs. Wintergarten's mother and sister had been informed, and they would be coming down for the service, scheduled for noon on Wednesday in the small chapel on the grounds of the Meadows Cemetery. She said that the Meadows Center would be providing the music, the service and the actual work at the grave site. Buddy Hemstead said he was familiar with the system as he had taken care of other people from the Church who were buried there, including young Paul Meadows, who had died at an early age.
John D MacDonald - One More Sunday Page 33
