“I did.”
Together they walked off to forget the night.
* * *
ATKINS SAT behind his desk and blinked. He thought that perhaps he’d misunderstood, or perhaps had not explained himself clearly enough. He went through it again, this time holding the telephone closer to his mouth, and then again he heard the answers that he’d heard once before. “Yes, I see.… Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.” He hung up the phone. In the tiny, windowless little office he could hear his own breathing. He angled the desk lamp away from his eyes, and then held his hand underneath its glow. The tips of his fingers were bloodless and white underneath his nails.
Atkins was frightened.
* * *
“COULD I maybe have a little more tomato for the burger?” Kinderman was clearing a space on the table for the order of French fried potatoes that the dark-haired young waitress had brought them.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, and then set the plate down between Kinderman and Dyer. “Will three slices be enough?”
“Two is plenty.”
“More coffee?”
“No, I’m fine, thank you, miss.” The detective looked over at Dyer. “And you, Bruce Dern? A seventh cup?”
“No, thanks,” said Dyer, putting his fork down beside a plate on which rested a largely uneaten coconut-curry omelette. He reached for the cigarettes on the blue-and-white tablecloth.
“I’ll be back with the tomato,” said the waitress. She smiled and moved away toward the kitchen.
Kinderman stared at Dyer’s plate. “You’re not eating. Are you sick?”
“Too spicy,” said the priest.
“Too spicy? I’ve seen you dip Twinkies in mustard. Here, my son, let the expert tell you what’s spicy. Chef Milani to the rescue.” Kinderman picked up his fork and took a bite of Dyer’s omelette. Then he put down the fork and stared without expression at Dyer’s plate. “You have ordered an archaeological find.”
“Getting back to the movie,” said Dyer. He exhaled his first drag of smoke.
“On my list of the ten greatest movies ever made,” declared Kinderman. “What are your favorites, Father? Maybe name the top five.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Not often enough.” Kinderman was salting the fried potatoes.
Dyer shrugged diffidently. “Who can pick the five best of anything?”
“Atkins,” the detective immediately responded. “He can tell you at the drop of a category: movies, fandangos—whatever. Mention heretics, he’ll give you a list of ten, and in order of preference, without hesitation. Atkins is a man of hurried decision. Never mind, he has taste and is usually right.”
“Oh, really? And so what are his favorite films?”
“The top five?”
“The top five.”
“Casablanca.”
“And what are the other four?”
“The same. He is absolutely crazy about that movie.”
The Jesuit nodded.
“He nods,” said Kinderman bleakly. “ ‘God is a tennis shoe,’ the heretic tells him, and Torquemada nods and says, ‘Guard, let him go. There is much to be said on both sides.’ Really, Father, these rushes to judgment have to stop. That’s what comes of all this singing and guitars in your ears at Mass.”
“You want my favorite movie?”
“Kindly hurry,” glowered Kinderman. “Rex Reed is in a phone booth waiting for my call.”
“It’s a Wonderful Life,” said Dyer. “Are you happy?”
“Yes, an excellent choice,” said Kinderman.
He beamed.
“I guess I’ve seen it twenty times,” the priest admitted with a smile.
“It couldn’t hurt.”
“I sure do love it.”
“Yes, it’s innocent and good. It fills the heart.”
“You said the same about Eraserhead.”
“Don’t mention that obscenity,” Kinderman growled. “Atkins calls it ‘Long Day’s Journey into Goat.’ ”
The waitress had come over and set down a dish of tomato slices. “Here you are, sir.”
“Thank you,” the detective told her.
She looked at the omelette in front of Dyer. “Something wrong with the omelette?”
“No, it’s just sleeping,” said Dyer.
She laughed. “Can I get you something else?”
“No, that’s fine. I guess I just wasn’t hungry.”
She gestured at the plate. “Shall I take it?”
He nodded, and she took it away.
“Eat something, Gandhi,” said Kinderman, pushing the plate of potatoes toward Dyer. The priest ignored them and asked, “How’s Atkins? Haven’t seen him since Christmas Eve Mass.”
“He is well and in June will be married.”
Dyer brightened. “Oh, that’s great.”
“He is marrying his childhood sweetheart. It’s so nice. It’s so sweet. Two little babes in the woods.”
“Where’s the wedding going to be?”
“In a truck. Even now they are saving their money for furniture. The bride is employed at a supermarket checkout stand, God bless her, while Atkins, as usual, assists me in the daytime and by night robs 7-Eleven stores. Incidentally, is it ethical for government employees to work two jobs, or am I just being finicky about this, Father? I welcome your spiritual advice.”
“I didn’t think they kept very much cash in those stores.”
“Incidentally, how’s your mother?”
Dyer had been stubbing out his cigarette. He stopped and looked at Kinderman oddly. “Bill, she’s dead.”
The detective looked aghast.
“She’s been dead for a year and a half. I thought I told you.”
Kinderman shook his head. “I didn’t know.”
“Bill, I told you.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not. She was ninety-three and in pain and it was a blessing.” Dyer looked aside. The jukebox had come to life in the bar and he looked toward the sound. He saw students drinking beer from thick steins. “I guess I’d had five or six false alarms,” he said, returning his gaze to Kinderman. “A brother or a sister calling me over the years to say, ‘Joe, Mom’s dying, you’d better get up here.’ This time it happened.”
“I’m so sorry. It must have been terrible.”
“No. No, it wasn’t. When I got there they told me she was dead—my brother, my sister, the doctor. So I went in and I read the Last Rites by her bed. And when I finished she opened her eyes and looked at me. I nearly jumped out of my socks. She said, ‘Joe, that was lovely, a dear, nice prayer. And now could you fix a little drink for me, son?’ Well, Bill, all I could do was just tear downstairs to the kitchen, I was so damned excited. I poured her a scotch on the rocks, brought it up to her and she drank it. Then I took the empty glass from her hands, and she looked me in the eye and said, ‘Joe, I don’t think I ever told you this, son, but you’re a wonderful man.’ And then she died. But the thing that really got me—” He broke off, seeing Kinderman’s eyes welling up. “If you do your blubbering act, I’m leaving.”
Kinderman rubbed at his eye with a knuckle. “I’m sorry. But it’s sad to think that mothers are so fallible,” he said. “Please continue.”
Dyer leaned his head across the table. “The thing I can’t forget—the thing that really struck me more than anything—was that here was this wasted ninety-three-year-old lady with her brain cells shot, her vision and her hearing half gone and her body just a rag of what it was, but when she spoke to me, Bill—when she spoke to me, all of her was there.”
Kinderman nodded, looking down at his hands clasped together on the table. Black and unbidden, an image of Kintry nailed to the oars hit his mind like a bullet.
Dyer put a hand on Kinderman’s wrist. “Hey, come on. It’s okay,” he said. “She’s okay.”
“It just seems to me the world is a homicide victim,” Kinderman answered him morosely. He lifted his drooping gaze to the pri
est. “Would a God invent something like death? Plainly speaking, it’s a lousy idea. It isn’t popular, Father. It isn’t a hit. It’s not a winner.”
“Don’t be dumb. You wouldn’t want to live forever,” said Dyer.
“Yes, I would.”
“You’d get bored,” said the priest.
“I have hobbies.”
The Jesuit laughed.
Encouraged, the detective leaned forward and continued. “I think about the problem of evil.”
“Oh, that.”
“I must remember that. A very good saying. Yes, ‘Earthquake in India, Thousands Dead,’ says the headline. ‘Oh, that,’ I say. Saint Francis here is speaking to the birds, and in the meantime we have cancer and Mongoloid babies, not to mention the gastrointestinal system and certain aesthetics related to our bodies Audrey Hepburn wouldn’t like we should mention to her face. Can we have a good God with such nonsense going on? A God who goes blithely shtravansing through the cosmos like some omnipotent Billie Burke while children suffer and our loved ones lie in their waste and die? Your God on this question always takes the Fifth Amendment.”
“So why should the Mafia get all the breaks?”
“Enlightening words. Father, when are you preaching again? I would love to hear more of your insights.”
“Bill, the point is that right in the middle of this horror there’s a creature called man who can see that it’s horrible. So where do we come up with these notions like ‘evil’ and ‘cruel’ and ‘unjust’? You can’t say a line looks a little bit crooked unless you’ve got a notion of a line that’s straight.” The detective was trying to wave him off but the priest went on. “We’re a part of the world. If it’s evil, we shouldn’t be thinking that it’s evil. We’d be thinking that the things we call evil are just natural. Fish don’t feel wet in the water. They belong there, Bill. Men don’t.”
“Yes, I read this in G. K. Chesterton, Father. In fact, that’s how I know your Mister Big in the velterrayn isn’t some kind of a Jekyll and Hyde. But this only compounds the great mystery, Father, the big detective story in the sky that from the psalmists to Kafka has been making people crazy with trying to figure the whole thing out. Never mind. Lieutenant Kinderman is on the case. You know the Gnostics?”
“I’m a Bullets fan.”
“You are shameless. The Gnostics thought a ‘Deputy’ created the world.”
“This is truly insufferable,” said Dyer.
“I’m just talking.”
“Next you’ll tell me Saint Peter was a Catholic.”
“I’m just talking. So then God told this angel I mentioned, this Deputy, ‘Here, kid, here’s two dollars, go create for me the world—it’s my brainstorm, my latest new idea. And the angel went and did it, only not being perfect we have now the current chazerei of which I speak.”
“Is that your theory?” asked Dyer.
“No, that wouldn’t get God off the hook.”
“No kidding. What is your theory?”
Kinderman’s manner grew furtive. “Never mind. It’s something new. Something startling. Something big.”
The waitress had come by and slipped their check on the table. “There it is,” said Dyer, eyeing it.
Kinderman absently stirred his cold coffee and shifted his glance around the room as if watching for some eavesdropping secret agent. He leaned his head forward conspiratorially. “My approach to the world,” he said guardedly, “is as if it were the scene of a crime. You understand? I am putting together the clues. In the meantime, I have several ‘Wanted’ posters. You’d be good enough to hang them on the campus? They’re free. Your vow of poverty hangs heavy on your mind; I’m very sensitive to that. There’s no charge.”
“You’re not telling me your theory?”
“I will give you a hint,” said Kinderman. “Clotting.”
Dyer’s eyebrows knit together. “Clotting?”
“When you cut yourself, your blood cannot clot without fourteen separate little operations going on inside your body, and in just a certain order; little platelets and these cute little corpuscles, whatever, going here, going there, doing this, doing that, and in just this certain way, or you wind up looking foolish with your blood pouring out on the pastrami.”
“That’s the hint?”
“Here’s another: the autonomic system. Also, vines can find water from miles away.”
“I’m lost.”
“Stay put, we have picked up your signal.” Kinderman leaned his face closer to Dyer’s. “Things that supposedly have no consciousness are behaving as if they do.”
“Thank you, Professor Irwin Corey.”
Kinderman abruptly sat back and glowered. “You are the living proof of my thesis. You saw that horror movie called Alien?”
“Yes.”
“Your life story. In the meantime, never mind, I have learned my lesson. Never send Sherpa guides to lead a rock; it will only fall on top of them and give them a headache.”
“But that’s all you’re going to tell me about your theory?” protested Dyer. He picked up his coffee cup.
“That is all. My final word.”
Suddenly the cup fell out of Dyer’s grasp. His eyes were unfocused. Kinderman grabbed at the cup and righted it; then picked up a napkin and blotted at the spillage before it ran over onto Dyer’s lap.
“Father Joe, what’s the matter?” asked Kinderman, alarmed. He began to get up, but Dyer waved him down. His manner seemed normal again.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said the priest.
“Are you sick? What’s the matter?”
Dyer picked a cigarette out of his pack. He shook his head. “No, it’s nothing.” He lit up and then fanned out the match and tossed it lightly into an ashtray. “I’ve been getting these dumb little dizzy spells lately.”
“Seen a doctor?”
“I did, but he couldn’t find a thing. It could be anything. An allergy. A virus.” Dyer shrugged. “My brother Eddie had the same thing for years. It was emotional. Anyway, I’m checking in tomorrow morning for some tests.”
“Checking in?”
“Georgetown General. Father President insists. He’s got a sneaking suspicion I’m allergic to exam papers, frankly, and he wants some scientific confirmation.”
Kinderman’s wristwatch alarm began to buzz. He turned it off and checked the time. “Half past five,” he murmured. His expressionless gaze flicked up to Dyer. “The carp is sleeping,” Kinderman intoned.
Dyer lowered his face into his hands and laughed.
Kinderman’s beeper sounded. He plucked it from his belt and turned it off. “You’ll excuse me a moment, Father Joe?” He was wheezing, pushing up from the table.
“Don’t leave me with the check,” said Dyer.
The detective did not answer. He went to a telephone, called the precinct and spoke to Atkins.
“Something peculiar here, Lieutenant.”
“Oh, really?”
Atkins related two developments. The first concerned subscribers on Kintry’s route. No one had complained of not receiving a paper; all had received one, even those to whom Kintry would have delivered one after his stop at the Potomac Boathouse. All had received one after he was dead.
The second development concerned the old woman. Kinderman had ordered a routine comparison of her hair to strands of other hair that were found clutched tightly in Kintry’s hand.
They matched.
3
When she saw him through the window he’d been gone for only minutes but she gave a little gasp of delight and started running. She tore through the door with her arms outstretched to him, her laughing young face a fond radiance. “Love of my life!” she cried out to him joyously. And in a moment, the sun was in his arms.
“Mornin’, Doc. The same as usual?”
Amfortas did not hear it. His mind was in his heart.
“The same as usual, Doc?”
He came back. He was standing in a narrow little grocery and sandwich s
hop around the corner from Georgetown University. He looked around. The other customers had gone. Charlie Price, the old grocer behind the counter, was studying his face with a gentle look. “Yes, Charlie, the same,” Amfortas said absently. His voice was dark and soft. He looked and saw Lucy, the grocer’s daughter, resting in a chair by the storefront window. He wondered how his turn had come so quickly.
“One chop suey for the doctor,” murmured Price. The grocer bent over to the windowed compartments where the morning’s fresh donuts and sweet rolls were stored, and he extracted a large glazed bun filled with cinnamon and raisins and nuts. He stood up and slapped a square of wax paper around it and then placed it in a bag which he set on the counter. “And one black coffee.” He shuffled toward the Silex and the styrofoam cups.
They had bicycled halfway around Bora Bora and suddenly he spurted swiftly ahead and around a sharp curve where he knew she couldn’t see him. He braked and jumped off and quickly gathered up a clutch of the vivid red poppies growing wild by the road in blazing swarms like the love of angels massed before God; and when she rounded the corner he was waiting for her, standing in the middle of the road with the burning flowers held out to her gaze. She braked in surprise and looked at them, stunned; and then tears began to slip from her eyes and down her face. “I love you, Vincent.”
“You been working in the lab all night again, Doc?”
A paper bag was being folded and closed at the top. Amfortas looked up. His order was ready and waiting on the counter. “Not all night. A few hours.”
The grocer examined the haggard face, met the umber eyes as dark as forests. What were they saying to him? Something. They shimmered with a silent, mysterious cry. More than grief. Something else. “Don’t push it,” said the grocer. “You look tired.”
Amfortas nodded. He was fumbling at a pocket of the navy blue cardigan that he wore above his hospital whites. He slipped out a dollar and gave it to the grocer. “Thanks, Charlie.”
“Just remember what I said.”
“I’ll remember.”
Amfortas took the bag and in a moment the front-door chime tinkled lightly and the doctor was out in the morning street. Tall and slender, his shoulders bent, for a time he stood pensively in front of the shop with his head angled downward. A hand held the bag up against his chest. The grocer moved over beside his daughter and together they watched him.