But what could he do, short of having the old woman tortured? Not a damn thing. She’d do what she said.
He laughed out loud. He’d been flayed! Well, to hell with it. Once he possessed the bird he’d be free, clean of the last twenty years, rid of the nightmares, rid of the black desire that drove him out into the neighborhood after dark….
Last night he had come to himself outside the church, standing on the sidewalk in the midnight wind and holding a burned-down candle. Apparently he’d bitten the burning end off it, because his tongue was blistered and there was wax in his teeth. He had fled home in a blind rush, where he had found his back door open wide, water running in the kitchen sink, all the stove burners flaming. His memory of what he’d done inside the church was a heap of fragments, like an image in a broken mirror: climbing in the dim well of the bell tower, stomping on a man in a dark room, smoke curling up from torn-apart hymnals….
He stood up from his desk now, picked up his umbrella, and left the office, locking the door and heading down the stairs and out onto the porch. Peetenpaul himself was just then pulling up along the curb, driving the new truck and dressed for business.
59
“YOU PROMISED,” NORA said.
Walt glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She was frowning hard, looking straight ahead, her hands folded across her chest, her bangs a razor-straight line above her eyebrows.
“But I didn’t know we would make that much, did I?” Walt asked. “You’ve got the bubble string already. Today after school we can go to the dime store and you can pick out … let’s see … three things. We’ll do that every day for … two weeks. Three prizes a day.”
“How many is that?” Nora asked.
Eddie counted on his fingers. “Kind of a lot,” he said.
“Nuh-uh,” Nora said unhappily.
“How many prizes did you promise the children?” Ivy asked.
Walt grinned weakly at her. “About two thousand,” he muttered, “give or take.” He turned left, onto Chapman, heading for the preschool.
“How many is that?” Nora asked, instantly happy again. “That two-thing?”
“It’s a lot,” Eddie said. “A really lot.”
“But how many?”
“Count to twenty,” Ivy said helpfully. “And then count to twenty again. And do it over and over a hundred times.”
Nora immediately started to count out loud, her head bobbing back and forth.
Ivy grinned at Walt. “Old moneybags,” she said. “Two thousand prizes!”
“I’ll think of something,” Walt said, although actually he had already tried and he couldn’t think of anything at all. Through his wholesalers he could buy carnival prizes in bulk for two or three cents apiece—plastic spiders and skulls, rhinestone rings, silver-painted plastic charms, window stickers—but there was no way the children would be happy with being handed three gross of each of these things. And even if that would work, it would still easily cost him hundreds of dollars.
“Fourteen, fisteen, fisteen,” Nora intoned, moving from there into a realm of numbers that Walt was unfamiliar with. She stopped suddenly. “Mr. R-Guy!” she said.
Walt looked. Argyle stood under the porch roof in front of his downtown office, talking, for God’s sake, to the inspector, who was dressed in a coat and tie. He had gotten a haircut, apparently, and trimmed his beard.
“Why, it’s Mr. Peetenpaul,” Ivy said. “That’s the man who bought the properties.”
“Is it?” Walt asked broadly. “Well, I’ll be damned. It’s a small world, I guess.”
She looked at him. “What’s wrong with you all of a sudden?”
“Well, it might be Mr. Peetenpaul,” he said. “But whoever he is, he didn’t buy any properties. He happens to work for Argyle.” Walt widened his eyes at her, and she frowned back at him, as if she didn’t quite understand. Nora kept on counting, bouncing in her seat now.
“How do you know he works for Robert?” Ivy asked.
“Trust me. I know. I’m not sure what Argyle’s up to with this sales-commission scam, but like I told you, it’s not as simple as you think it is. Watch out he isn’t playing you for a patsy.”
Ivy was silent, looking at the street now, taking it all in. Walt felt vindicated by this, and then almost immediately ashamed of feeling that way at Ivy’s expense. But hell, it was time that she had a glimpse of the real Argyle—Argyle the sneak and the manipulator. Now she didn’t have to take Walt’s word for it, which of course she hadn’t taken anyway, to her own peril.
“I don’t mean you shouldn’t take his sixty grand,” he said, suddenly thinking of the money.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“Okay.” He glanced at Nora again, a bright idea coming to him out of the blue. “How’s this?” he asked her brightly. “We’ll consolidate.”
Nora stopped counting. “Wha-a-a-t?” she asked, screwing up her face at him.
“Consolidate. It means a putting-together, a gathering into a bundle, so to speak. The many become one, the one greater than the sum of its parts.”
“What’s parts?” She frowned, as if she were concentrating. Eddie remained silent.
“I’ll give you an example,” Walt said. “Instead of twenty-five pennies, you get a quarter.”
“I get a quarter?”
“No, I’m just making up an example. Look …”
“A zample?”
“What I mean is instead of two thousand little bitty prizes, you get a couple of big prizes.”
“What kind?” Eddie asked now.
“I was thinking along the lines of a bicycle,” Walt said, glancing at Ivy, who didn’t respond. She was still in a funk. “How would you like that?”
“What did he say?” Nora asked Eddie in a loud whisper.
“He said we could have bikes.”
“And maybe a swing set for the backyard …” Immediately Walt thought of Argyle and his fund-raiser expenditures. “Or maybe something else nice,” he said.
Nora began to hop up and down in the seat now, spring-headed, counting happily again. The preschool appeared, and over the tops of the cars parked in the lot Walt could see the head of the tyrannosaur, steadfastly guarding the sandbox. Somehow it looked like an old friend this morning. “So much depends on a sad dinosaur,” he said, pulling into a space, “glazed with rainwater beside the spring chickens.”
He laughed out loud. “That’s a poem,” he said to Nora.
“Don’t … be … silly,” she said, rolling her eyes and opening the door. Eddie slid across the seat in order to get out on her side.
Walt climbed out into the rain and glanced at the front of the school, where someone was just then coming out the door. For a moment he didn’t recognize the man, who was hunched over as if to keep the rain off his face. The man looked up, stopped, and then came on again, angling toward them now, his face full of anger and determination. It was Jack.
60
“BACK INTO THE car,” Walt said.
Ivy turned around in her seat and grasped Nora’s arm, hauling her inside again as Walt reached for the ignition key, looking back to see that the kids were safely in. Eddie slid back into his spot and slumped down in the seat, not looking at Jack, but staring at the upholstery like he’d been drugged.
Walt was suddenly full of rage. This had gone on too damned long! He wrenched on the door handle, starting to get back out of the car.
“Don’t,” Ivy said, grabbing his arm. “Not here. Not now.”
He hesitated. The look on her face convinced him. “Right,” he said, and slammed his door, shifting into reverse and backing out in a rush just as Jack started to run toward them. He changed direction then, heading toward the street, leaping over the parkway junipers in order to cut the car off when Walt pulled out of the lot. “Bad move, asshole,” Walt muttered, swerving around straight at him, getting him in his sights. He punched the accelerator and Jack threw his arms up and jumped backward, stepping up o
nto the curb again and stumbling through the shrubs.
“Take it easy!” Ivy warned him.
“I’ll knock him into the schoolyard,” Walt said, but the preschool was a half a block back now, and he eased up on the accelerator, watching for Jack’s T-bird to pull out onto the road, chasing them. When it didn’t happen, he relaxed.
Then he saw that Ivy was giving him a look, and it came to him out of nowhere that the kids were in the car, that he’d probably scared the hell out of them….
In his anger he hadn’t given Nora and Eddie a second thought, but had lost his mind instead, involving them in his own war against Jack, as if they weren’t deeply enough involved in the man’s creepy behavior already. Whose side are you on? he asked himself.
“Sorry,” he said to Ivy. He glanced in the mirror and saw that Eddie was crying. Nora sat silently, her thumb in her mouth.
He scrambled in his mind for something to say, something to make it all right. Nothing came to him, except that there was something terrible and hard about taking care of children, and that no matter how good you might be with them one moment, you were sure to screw it up another. He slapped the wheel with the back of his fingers, making it hurt.
“Let’s hit the All-Niter for doughnuts,” he said, shamelessly deciding to buy them off. “Then we’ll go down to Toy City and pick out a couple of bicycles.” He and Ivy could Christmas shop some other time.
Nora didn’t take her thumb out of her mouth, but she nodded.
Eddie sniffed, and then in a shaky voice he said, “I can’t ride a bike.”
“Before the sun goes down this evening,” Walt said, “you’ll know how to ride one, or by golly your Aunt Ivy will stay up all night teaching you. She once taught an ape to ride a bicycle, and it was a two-wheeler, too.”
“An a-a-ape,” Nora said, smiling again. “Nuh-uh.”
“Yeah-huh,” Walt said, turning into the lot in front of the All-Niter. “After that she taught the ape to sing.” There were already several cars in the tiny lot, so he drove to the far end, shutting off the engine.
“Look there,” Ivy said, pointing. It was Peetenpaul’s truck, parked at the rear of the shop and sheltered from the rain by a big pine tree. The man himself stood beside the open passenger door. They watched as he pulled off his black suit coat and tossed it inside. Underneath he was wearing a garish Hawaiian shirt—big red hibiscus blossoms on a blue background. He reached into the truck and pulled out a white linen jacket, folding it over his arm, then reached in again and drew out a leather suitcase. Then he took his keys out of his pocket, tossed them into the air, caught them, and threw them onto the floorboard of the pickup, slamming the door after them. He turned and hurried across the lot toward a waiting vehicle, yanking open the trunk and dropping the suitcase in on top of several others.
“I’ll be damned,” Walt whispered. It was the Biggs-mobile, the old Buick! Maggie Biggs herself sat in the passenger seat. Peetenpaul climbed in the driver’s side, backed out and swung around, straightening out and moving slowly past them, heading for Chapman Avenue.
Mrs. Biggs wore a yellow muumuu and there was a flower in her wig the size of a plate, as if she were on her way to God’s own luau. She spotted Walt as the Buick rolled past, and tipped him a big wink, evidently mighty happy to see him. She picked up something off the dash—what appeared to be airplane tickets—which she waved in his direction. Peetenpaul waved too, waggling his thick fingers and hunching over to have a look at Walt through the partly open window.
“Thanks, sweetie!” Mrs. Biggs shouted, and then the Buick was gone, bumping out onto the avenue and tearing away east toward the freeway.
“What on earth was that all about?” Ivy asked.
“That was my old friend Maggie Biggs,” Walt said, astonished at this turn of events. “I think her ship just came in.”
“She’s a friend of Mr. Peetenpaul?”
“I believe she is,” Walt said, “although I just now found that out myself.” So Peetenpaul was the legendary Mr. Peet, the man who had taken the stove apart after Walt had screwed it up! Postal inspector, real estate entrepreneur, plumber, eater of doughnuts … Walt shook his head, putting it all together at last. Somehow he was unaccountably happy at this turn of affairs. “You know what I think?” he said to Ivy. “I think that sometimes what we don’t see would fill a tub.”
“Amen to that,” Ivy said, getting out of the car. “For heaven’s sake, let’s eat.”
Nora and Eddie and Walt got out too, and the three of them jogged through the rain toward the All-Niter, where Lyle Boyd was just then sliding a fresh tray of glazed doughnuts onto the rack.
61
BENTLEY WALKED UP onto Argyle’s porch, this time in broad daylight, and knocked hard on the door. He carried his Bible, and he had a half dozen appropriate verses tagged with slips of paper. That was dangerous—most people would sooner let a door-to-door salesman into the house than a man with a Bible—but it was time to come clean, all the way clean, no punches pulled.
The door opened finally, and Argyle stood there looking disheveled, as if he had woken up from an afternoon nap. He squinted, perhaps half recognizing Bentley but not quite placing him. Then he smiled. His eyes narrowed when he saw the Bible. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“What can you do for yourself?” Bentley said, and it was instantly clear from Argyle’s face that he knew him entirely now, that he recognized Bentley’s voice.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s Father Flanagan, after all these years. So you turn out to be the neighborhood bellringer, too, eh? The thorn in my side, and the man who just took a pile of my money. We meet at last. Pardon me if I don’t shake hands until I know why you’re here.”
“‘What the wicked dreads will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted,’” Bentley quoted. There was no use opening the Bible. He knew that one by heart.
“So what?” Argyle asked.
“Well, for openers, my name’s not Flanagan. That’s so what. My name is Lorimer Bentley. What I pretended to be in the past isn’t of interest to us any more. I’ve repented of that, and I suggest you do the same. That’s why I’ve come here.”
“Repented? Was this before or after you cashed the check I gave Obermeyer?”
There was a clattering noise behind him in the house, and then the sound of a heavy object knocking against the wall. Argyle turned around and looked, and Bentley caught a glimpse of something—someone—moving across the room.
He stared meaningfully at Argyle and shook his head tiredly. “As for your money,” he said, “what you gave me in the past was well spent. If I had it, I’d give it back to you, but I’m afraid it’s blood out of a turnip now. And I’m ashamed to admit it, too. I’m ashamed of the whole thing. I thought I was running a con for the Lord. It was pure sinful foolishness and stupidity.” Bentley took Argyle’s hundred-thousand-dollar check out of his coat pocket and held it up between his thumb and forefinger. “As for this …”
Argyle snatched it out of his hand and tucked it away in his own pocket. “Thank you,” he said. “In fact, I no longer need your services. The situation has changed dramatically since I last spoke to you.”
“That’s true,” Bentley said. “It’s gotten a hell of a lot worse, hasn’t it?”
“For you, maybe. You should have been quicker on the draw with that check.”
“Take a look at this, if you can stand it.” Bentley removed a photograph from his coat now—Father Mahoney’s Polaroid photo—and showed it to Argyle, who immediately shuddered at the sight of his own idiot face.
“So what is this?” he croaked. “Some sort of extortion? The whole world’s playing that game, eh? Even the Church wants in. Repentance you call it!” He took the check back out of his pocket and handed it to Bentley, who looked at it for a moment in astonishment, and then tore it to fragments, dropping them on the porch.
“You’re a hard man to satisfy,” Argyle said.
&nb
sp; “Not really,” Bentley said. “I want your soul.”
“It’s not for sale.”
“It was once.”
“You’ve got delusions of grandeur, haven’t you?” “I don’t have any delusions anymore. And you didn’t either when you called me the other day. You’re in trouble. Take a hard look at this snapshot. That’s the face of a man with one foot in Hell.” He held the photo up again, then abruptly tore it to shreds, too, and threw the pieces onto the porch with the torn-up check. “There’s your extortion for you,” he shouted, losing his temper now. “Keep your money. I’m here to right a wrong. It’s not too late for either one of us.”
“You’re right about that. It’s a brand new day for me.” Argyle smiled at him now. “Anything else up your sleeve?” “A new day! How? Because of that damned … thing you’ve got in the coffin in the back room? If that’s your plan—trying to fool the Devil with a golem—then you’re a sorry damned fool. And I mean damned, too.”
“What a perceptive man you are,” Argyle said, a look of mock astonishment on his face now. “So you’re the one who’s been peering through my windows! Well, you certainly are tenacious. I like that in a man.”
There was an immense crash now, like a drawer full of silverware hitting a linoleum floor. This was followed by the grunting of a human, or nearly human, voice.
“Destroy it,” Bentley said.
“Would you like to meet him?” Argyle’s voice was full of enthusiasm. “He’s rather crude by some standards, but with a little help he’ll do the trick. And I suppose it’s true that if it weren’t for you he wouldn’t have any … life at all. I guess you’d call it life.”
“I wouldn’t call it that, and I utterly deny having anything to …”
“Well, come on in then and say hello.” Argyle opened the door, stepped back, and gestured Bentley into the house.
All the Bells on Earth Page 32
