by R. R. Irvine
“Your mother once said I’d drink myself to death.” Martin’s voice squeaked with the strain of reaching across the room. “For years after that I was a teetotaler.”
Traveler leaned his forehead against the glass, expecting it to be cool. It was hot enough to make him jerk back.
“I was a bad influence on you, she used to say. I’ll bet she’d turn over in her grave if she knew you turned out to be a detective.”
I always wanted to be like you, even after I learned you weren’t my real father.
Between them, paternity was a subject never mentioned directly, but only alluded to. Genes, Martin contended, were overrated. Upbringing was what counted.
I know the truth of that every time I look at you. Traveler rubbed his eyes. If he broke down so would Martin. Neither of them could stand that. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing himself to relax. When his shaking hands wouldn’t cooperate, he thrust them into his pockets and returned to his father’s side. “I’ll drive you to the hospital tomorrow and then stick around until you’re ready to come home.”
“Go take a look at yourself.” Martin thrust the scotch bottle at his son. “You look awful. Worse than I feel, for God’s sake. You ought to get drunk. That’s what I intend to do.”
“Dad, I—” Traveler drank to hide a fresh surge of emotion.
“I don’t want you moping around the hospital all day tomorrow either.”
“You can’t drive yourself home after an operation.”
“They’re only slicing off a little piece. No big deal.”
“You’ll be groggy from the anesthetic.”
“I’ve always wanted a ride in an ambulance. I might even pay extra and have them use the siren.”
“If I don’t drive you, I’ll worry even more.”
“Who asked you to? You’ve got a job to do.”
“I thought you wanted me to get out of it.”
“There have been times in my life when I envied Mormons. No matter what happens, the church is always there to comfort them.” Martin tilted his head to one side as if listening for the echo of what he’d just said. “This is one of those times.”
Traveler fled to his bedroom at the back of the house. The room hadn’t changed in thirty-five years, which was as far back as he could remember. The walls were knotty pine, the floor covered with a linoleum patterned like wooden planks. The furniture, battle-scarred from childhood, was 1940s maple meant to resemble early American. Martin had kept everything intact until Traveler moved back last year. Only then did his father threaten to sell off everything as junk.
There were times in this bedroom when Traveler awoke in the night thinking he was a child again.
“Oh, Dad,” he breathed.
Martin spoke right behind him. “I ought to charge you rent.”
“Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“A good detective needs ears like a cat. Now, about that rent.”
Somehow Traveler managed to smile. His father was a master at changing the subject when he wanted to avoid confrontation.
“I could always move back in with Claire,” Traveler said.
“Now there’s a woman equal to your mother, my late wife.”
“Kary wasn’t that bad.”
“I wasn’t always this short, you know. It was Kary who cut me down to size.”
“If that was true, Claire would have turned me into a dwarf by now.”
Martin swallowed a mouthful of scotch. “She called the other day.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“What the hell good would it have done?”
Traveler shrugged. “What did she want?”
“The same as usual. She said she was lost and needed a private detective to come find her. I offered my services, but she said she was only interested in the Angel Moroni.”
With that, Martin turned and walked back down the hall. Traveler followed his father all the way out of the house and onto the front lawn. There Martin pointed the bottle, now half empty, at his son’s Ford. “You’re blocking the driveway. I might want to get out later.”
“You shouldn’t be going anywhere,” Traveler said. “You should rest. Besides, you’re in no condition to drive.”
“There’s time enough for that in the grave,’ someone once said.” Martin stepped over to his Jeep, a dark-gray, four-wheel-drive station wagon that was his pride and joy, and ran a hand along its fender. After a moment he stood back to admire the sticker that ran across the rear bumper: OLD AGE AND TREACHERY WILL OVERCOME YOUTH AND TALENT.
“Don’t I wish,” Martin said, and slid in behind the wheel. After a moment he patted the passenger’s seat.
“You’re not driving,” Traveler said as soon as he was inside.
He started to roll down the window but his father said, “Leave it be for a while. I got chilled in the house.”
The interior of the Jeep felt like an oven.
Martin stared through the windshield as if intent on the road ahead. “I thought I had a summer cold at first. A mild sore throat, nothing more. Then three days ago I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned. He was the one who spotted the growth at the back of my throat. I hate going to the dentist, you know that. I put it off a long time. Maybe there are other things I’ve put off too long.”
As Martin spoke the heat inside the car seemed to dissipate. Gooseflesh climbed Traveler’s arms.
“Have I ever told you about your mother and me?”
Traveler blinked his stinging eyes. He‘d spent a lifetime waiting for such a revelation. And now, when Martin was about to break his own taboo, Traveler realized he didn’t want to hear anything that might turn out to be a deathbed confession.
Martin handed over the scotch. “You’re right. I’d better stop drinking if I’m going to drive.”
“I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go. You know that.”
His father gulped a breath preparing to answer but started coughing instead. Then he couldn’t stop. In desperation he climbed out and bent over at the waist, coughing until he retched.
In time he said, “That sure as hell sobered me up.”
“I still don’t think you ought to drive.”
“I’m too shaky right now. But the first chance I get I’m going to visit old friends, starting with Miles Beecham.”
“You haven’t seen him in years.”
“Miles and I go back a long way. We were in the war together.”
“He‘s an advising elder to the Council of Seventy, for God’s sake.” In the hierarchy of the Mormon Church, the Council of Seventy was only a rung below the Twelve Apostles and the president himself, God’s living prophet on earth.
He stared into his father’s pleading eyes. What he saw there made him cringe.
Martin quoted from The Book of Mormon. “ ‘Lay your hands upon the sick and they shall recover.’ ”
9
TRAVELER WAS in his bathrobe drinking coffee when someone cranked the old-fashioned doorbell at six-thirty the next morning. The man standing on the porch had the carefree face of an elderly cherub.
“Don’t tell me,” Traveler said. “You have to be Miles Beecham.”
“That’s right. And you’re Moroni. I haven’t seen you since you were a boy.” He eyed the cup of coffee in Traveler’s hand and shook his head in good-natured disapproval.
“Come in.”
Beecham wore a gray suit that was tailored to hide most of his Santa Claus stomach. His twinkling blue eyes matched his tie and his short snow-white hair shone like a halo.
When he stepped across the threshold his nose twitched. Traveler had seen the maneuver before: good Mormons testing for cigarette smoke.
Beecham let out a sigh of relief. “I seem to remember that your father used to go against the Word of Wisdom.”
Traveler had been thinking the same thing all night, wondering if cigarettes had caused Martin’s tumor. Martin had kicked the habit years ago and would have done so even sooner,
he liked to say, but for the fact that smoking was his way of protesting religious oppression.
“Your father called last night. He‘s expecting me.”
“This is the first I’ve heard about it.”
“He asked me to drive him to the hospital.”
Traveler studied Beecham carefully, looking for any sign of a crack in his cherubic face, a hint of what he and Martin might be up to.
“Your father and I have been friends for a long time,” Beecham said.
“Why are you here so early? Dad’s not due at the hospital until nine.”
Beecham smiled away the question. “Did Martin ever tell you about me?”
“Only that you two were in the war together.”
He nodded. “That’s just like him. He‘s special, you know. A deep one. A man of integrity. One of the few gentiles I’ve ever trusted completely.”
Traveler had trouble swallowing. The words sounded too much like an epitaph.
“He saved my life.”
“How?”
Beecham closed his eyes to recapture the memory. After a moment one hand began touching his chest as if searching for a wound.
“My father never talks about the war,” Traveler prompted.
Beecham’s eyes opened. He nodded. “Please tell Martin I’m here.”
“I don’t think he’s awake.”
Beecham closed his eyes again.
Shaking his head in wonder, Traveler trudged halfway down the hall to his father’s room. Martin was sitting on the edge of his bed, fully dressed and waiting. He, too, wore a suit and tie.
10
TRAVELER TOOK his time showering and dressing, but it was still too early to go to work. Fixing breakfast didn’t appeal to him so he drove downtown and parked on Broadway, the name for Third South when it had been department store row. The street signs still said Broadway, but the department stores were gone.
He started walking but couldn’t escape the haunting image of Martin dressed in suit and tie. Morticians dressed their clients like that.
Traveler shook his head. It wasn’t like him to be morbid. But a suit and tie were so out of place in weather like this.
Think about something else, he told himself. Think about breakfast. And that’s when he found himself standing in front of a grimy store window displaying used furniture that looked more abandoned than salable. Memory had led him to what was once the Broadway Café, a hangout of his youth.
Reversing direction, he headed for State Street. At the corner he paused in front of the Center Theater to look up and down the street, searching for targets of opportunity. Halfway up the block he spotted Wainwright’s, known for its homemade doughnuts and pies. When he got there, a sign on the door said the place was going out of business in two weeks.
It was the same up and down that entire section of State Street. Even the old I & M Rug Company across the street, a fixture since the Great Depression, had been converted into a mall for antique stores.
Once seated at Wainwright’s counter, Traveler had the impulse to order hundreds of doughnuts. They could be kept frozen for years, to be defrosted on those occasions when nostalgia got the better of him.
But he settled for two chocolate doughnuts, both of which he dunked. He was just finishing up when someone down the counter said, “Foreign money is ruining our town.”
“Arab?” his neighbor asked.
“No. It’s California money I’m talking about.”
“Bull. It’s the Japs you’ve got to worry about.”
They were still arguing when Traveler left. By the time he walked the block and a half to his car, he was soaked with sweat.
He risked the air conditioner all the way to the fair grounds on North Temple and Eleventh West, which was also headquarters for the State Motor Vehicle Division. There, Judd Hatch left the line of limp-looking applicants to fend for themselves and treated Traveler to a cup of vending-machine coffee.
“I’m on my break,” Hatch said to someone who glared at him. “Come on, Mo. We’ll talk in the lunch room.”
As soon as they were seated facing one another across a Formica-topped table, Hatch grinned and held his cup out in a toast. They touched cardboard rims.
“Every time I see you, Mo, I think of that South High game. That was the first time I broke my nose playing football. It’s never been the same since.”
“I remember. There was blood everywhere.”
Hatch fingered his nose. “If it hadn’t been for you, all of it would have been mine. Nobody else on our team raised a finger to help.”
At six six, two hundred and eighty-five pounds, Hatch had been the biggest kid at East High. In those days size was enough to get him on the football team.
“I was closest, that’s all.”
“You got kicked out of the game for breaking the other guy’s nose.”
“He sucker-punched you.”
“But the referee didn’t see it.”
The refs hadn’t seen much around Hatch. He was too awkward and too fat. As a lineman he was used more as an obstacle than anything else. He became the butt of jokes. But Traveler knew how he felt. Sudden spurts of growth had made him feel awkward and ungainly, too, particularly with girls.
“You were the only friend I had on that team,” Hatch said.
“You’re imagining things.”
“Am I? I ran into Gus Evans a couple of weeks ago. You remember him, our great running back. Used to snap towels and play grab-ass in the showers.”
Traveler nodded.
“The bastard asked me if I still had breasts.”
Not a smart thing to do, Traveler thought. Since high school, Hatch had discovered weight-lifting. The flab of youth had been replaced by two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle.
“What did you say to him, Judd?”
“He was with some woman so I kissed him right on the mouth. Jesus Christ, you should have seen him. I thought he was going to puke on the spot.”
“You keep doing things like that and you’re going to lose your job. Then who will I have to run license plates for me?”
Hatch snorted. “The same old Mo. Come on. Let’s find us a computer terminal.”
They went down a long, linoleumed hall, trying one duplicate door after another until they found an empty office. When Hatch sat down the desk chair sighed desperately. “Let’s have the number, Mo.”
“I’ve only got a name this time. Heber Armstrong.”
“What do you need?”
“I want to know if he has a current driver’s license. If not, has he applied for one?”
“That’s easy.” Hatch entered his access code before typing out the name.
The computer beeped.
“His file’s been flagged,” Hatch said.
“What does that mean?”
“Any number of things. Too many tickets. Driving under the influence. A felony accident.”
“Can you pin it down?”
Hatch pursed his lips. “I think I’ll play this one cute and use someone else’s access code.”
“How can you do that?”
“Trade secrets.”
Hatch typed in a combination of numbers and letters.
“Jesus, Mo. Look at this.” He tapped the computer screen with his fingernail. “All inquiries concerning Armstrong, Heber, are to be directed to this telephone number. Now that is unusual.”
Traveler agreed. The number belonged to Willis Tanner.
11
BRIGHAM YOUNG waved, or appeared to, as Traveler drove through the shimmering heat waves and passed the prophet’s statue at the head of Main Street. Traveler intended to camp out in the lobby of what used to be the Hotel Utah until Willis Tanner granted him an audience.
But when he tried to pull into the underground parking lot a uniformed city policeman, not one of the usual security guards, waved him on his way.
Traveler switched off the car’s radio and air conditioner and rolled down his window. “I’m here on busi
ness, officer.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Visitors’ parking is full.”
“Willis Tanner,” Traveler said, hoping the name might work miracles.
“I don’t care who you are, sir. I have my orders.” A second policeman arrived as backup.
Traveler saluted and drove the two blocks to his usual parking lot. Walking back would be hell. The radio had just told him so. As of 10:45 A.M. the temperature in Temple Square stood at one hundred degrees. A high-pressure area was centered over Utah. As long as it stayed put, the heat wave would continue.
The parking lot attendant had his radio on, only it wasn’t reporting weather. A woman had been found murdered, this time in Jordan Park. Police were saying there were similarities with yesterday’s killing. Both deaths had occurred on the west side of town. Salt Lake’s real money lived on the east side.
By the time Traveler had walked back to the Hotel Utah, two more uniformed police officers were visible directing traffic. Another stood outside the entrance but didn’t say a word when Traveler pushed through the door. Once inside, he felt as if he’d walked in on a missionaries’ convention. Young men wearing suits were everywhere. They moved in and out of doors, up stairways and down, and back and forth across the lobby. But no one was waiting at reception.
Traveler approached warily. Today there were two young men behind the desk, each with his own computer terminal.
Traveler nodded at first one and then the other. “I’d like to see Willis Tanner.”
“Is he expecting you, sir?”
Traveler thought that over. “Probably.”
“Name, sir?”
“Moroni Traveler.”
His angel’s name caused the young men to exchange speculative glances before typing queries into their computers. Both looked surprised at the answer they got. Only one of them said, “I’ll have you escorted upstairs, sir.”
Two more young men materialized at Traveler’s side. These two were Tongans, whose matching suits emphasized their bulk.
“If you’ll please follow them, sir.”
