Brother Oliver leaned past me to say, in a shocked voice, “Brother Mallory! You aren’t thinking of fighting the man?”
“No no,” Mallory said. “I just want to see him, that’s all, see what he looks like.”
“We’re peaceful men,” Brother Oliver reminded him.
“Of course,” said Mallory, but somehow the glint in his eye didn’t look all that peaceful to me, so I said, “Brother Mallory, it won’t help us if we do a lot of brawling there.”
“The farthest thought from my mind,” Mallory insisted, and went away before we could lecture him further.
“Hmmmm,” I said, watching his broad back move down the aisle.
Brother Oliver cleared his throat. “Father Banzolini, were he here,” he suggested, “might agree that a lie under the circumstances would be a very very minor sin.”
“I’ll fail to find Frank Flattery,” I agreed.
Brother Silas came by next, perched on the same armrest, and began to talk to us casually about the Flattery household. He seemed fascinated by architectural details, the layout of the rooms and so on, and I didn’t catch his drift until he asked, still casually, “You didn’t see anything that looked like a wall safe, did you?”
Brother Oliver lunged forward across me again; he seemed to be spending much of this trip in my lap. “Brother Silas,” he said sternly, “we do not intend to steal the lease.”
Silas gave us that glare of outraged guilt with which he used often to face policemen, judges, wardens and other authority figures. “What do you mean, steal? They stole it from us. Getting it back, getting our own property back, isn’t stealing.”
“That’s sophistry, Brother Silas,” Brother Oliver told him.
“It’s common sense, is what it is,” Silas grumbled.
I said, “We didn’t see a wall safe. Besides, they probably keep leases and things like that in a safe deposit box in some bank anyway. Most people do, don’t they?”
Silas nodded, reluctantly. “Yeah,” he said. “Mostly what you get in a house is personal jewelry.”
Brother Oliver said, “I hope you aren’t going to suggest bank robbery next.”
Silas glanced at the other brothers all around us. “Not with this string,” he said, and went away.
Brother Oliver frowned after him. “What did that mean?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
Brother Flavian was next. “I think we ought to call the media,” he said.
While Brother Oliver was saying, “What?” I was saying, “I really don’t think so, Brother. Reporters and cameras and things like that just don’t lend themselves to reasonable discussion.”
“Reasonable discussion? We’re talking about pressure. Maybe Dwarfmann and Snopes don’t mind public pressure, but Flattery has to go on living in his community.”
Brother Oliver returned to my lap, apparently having caught up with the conversation. “Absolutely not,” he said. “We are not performing penguins, we are a Monastic Order and we have to behave like it.”
“Even if we lose the monastery?”
“Capering for television cameras,” Brother Oliver told him, “is not going to solve anything.”
“It ended the war in Vietnam,” Flavian told us.
“Oh, hardly,” I said.
“It sounds unlikely,” Brother Oliver said. “But even if it did, ending a war is not the same as renewing a lease.”
“Even if the media showed up,” I said, “which is unlikely, and even if they took us seriously, which is unlikely, and even if they took our side—”
“Which is likely!” Flavian insisted, and shook his ever-present fist.
“Even so,” I said, “our deadline is midnight tonight, and our message wouldn’t get into the media until tomorrow at the earliest.”
“It’s the threat,” Flavian told us. “What do you think this man Flattery would do if he looked out his front window and saw his lawn full of television cameras?”
“From what I’ve seen of him so far,” I said, “I think he’d reach for a shotgun.”
Brother Oliver nodded and said, “I couldn’t agree more. We know this man, Brother Flavian, and I must say he’s very nearly as hot-tempered and stiff-necked as you are yourself.”
“I believe in justice!”
“You certainly do,” Brother Oliver said.
Flavian switched gears all at once, saying to me, “What do you intend to say to this man Flattery?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted.
“Do you mind if I talk to him?”
That brought Brother Oliver back into my lap lickety-split. “I do,” he said. “I absolutely forbid it.”
I said, “Brother Oliver, all I ask is to talk to him first. If I fail, anybody can talk to him who wants to, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Fine,” said Brother Oliver.
“Fine,” said Brother Flavian, and he went away.
Mr. Schumacher was next. A kind of dazed but beatific smile seemed to have fixed itself permanently to his face, and I couldn’t help contrasting this euphoric look with that pinched cranky expression he’d worn when I’d first met him. Sitting where all the others had perched, he leaned across the aisle and spoke past me to Brother Oliver. “Abbot,” he said, “when I join up with you people, do I get to pick my own name?”
“Of course,” Brother Oliver said. “Just as long as it’s the name of a saint. Or if it’s biblical in some other way.”
“Oh, it’s Biblical all right,” he said.
“You know the name you want?”
“That I do.” His smile turning a little sheepish, he shrugged and said, “I suppose it’s the result of all those Bibles I’ve read over the years in all those hotel rooms, but if nobody objects I think I want to be known from now on as Brother Gideon.”
There was a party going on at the Flatterys’ house, the only center of commotion in an otherwise darkened neighborhood. The driveway was full of parked cars and the air was full of accordion music. Light gleamed into the night from every window in the house, upstairs and down, and boisterous party noises bubbled and frothed amid the accordion chords.
“Oh, dear,” said Brother Oliver, looking out the bus window.
“A party,” I said.
“Why a party?” he asked plaintively. “Tonight, of all nights.”
“Uh, Brother,” I said. “It’s New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh, yes.”
Brother Peregrine, moving past toward the front of the bus, said, “Accordion music was one of the things that drove me away from the world in the first place.”
I asked him, “What is that tune, do you know?”
“I’m afraid it’s ‘Danny Boy,’ ” he said. “In polka time.” He moved on.
The driver had turned the bus in among the parked cars, had pressed forward as far as he dared to go, and had now come to a stop, with a great sneezing of air brakes. Looking around the edge of his dark cloth drape, he called, “Here we are, Mr. Schumacher.”
Mr. Schumacher — the potential Brother Gideon — was still seated across the aisle from me, and now he turned in my direction to say, “Well, what next?”
“We can’t very well come back another time,” I said, “so I guess the only thing to do is join the party.”
So that’s what we did, and for some time nothing at all happened. Flattery must have invited all of his relatives and all of his friends and all of his neighbors and all of his business acquaintances and everybody not covered under a previous heading, and they’d all come, and the result was that sixteen robed and cowled monks (plus one semimonk in mufti) were swallowed up in the incredible crush of people like a water buffalo in quicksand, causing not the slightest ripple of excitement or even attention. And a second result was that I couldn’t seem to find my host.