Blake was staring at her, not speaking. He nodded. Miss Jessica Sue stood up and ruffled his hair. Very softly she said, “Stay with us if you can, dear. But if you must leave, God bless you.”
Long into the night Blake lay awake trying to understand. He could hear the sisters’ voices in the living room and finally he went to his door and listened. Miss Annabelle was talking.
“I’m sure he was following us again. I really don’t think we should let Blake out at all for the next week. This is the third time.
Blake crept back to bed and stared at the ceiling until the lights in the house were out and the sisters were quiet. Then he wrote a very brief good-by letter, and he took his suitcase and left the house. It was July, and he was nine years old…
Blake pedaled north, keeping to back roads again, and by the time the sun was up, he was miles from the Laidley sisters’ house. Two days later the sisters had a visitor, a gray-haired man with a briefcase and an official air about him. He demanded the boy they were harboring and was met with blank stares and an offer of tea. He returned with a search warrant, found no trace of a child in the house. He called the report in to Billy Warren Smith.
Billy hung up frowning. That damn kid, he thought. Everything was okay until the brat showed up. He stared at his secretary, a misshapen woman of indeterminate age who wore a brace on one leg and walked with a sideways slant, dragging the useless leg slightly, making a scruff-scruff sound everywhere she went. He motioned for her to leave and watched her slow progress across the spacious office; she left a trail of scuffed carpet behind her. Sometimes she left a trail that went to the picture of Obie and Blake and stopped there, then led back to the outer office. Billy was certain she prayed before the picture on the wall. He pushed the call button for Dee Dee’s office and waited until her face showed on the interoffice comset. “It’s another bitch,” he said then. “If it was the kid, he’s slipped out again.”
Dee Dee shrugged. “You know the orders. Keep looking.”
“Yeah, I know. Dee-Dee, have lunch with me. I want to talk to you.”
Dee Dee looked at him more intently then, paused, smiled slightly and said no. “Sorry, Billy. Obie doesn’t like it when you bad mouth the kid. Besides I have a date for lunch already.”
“Stay there. I have to talk to you. I’ll be right in,” Billy said.
He passed through the busy outer office where a staff of twelve was kept occupied all day. No one in the outer office was whole, healthy, and normally shaped. Mac-Kee, the treasurer was a hunchback; Miss Llewelyn, his secretary, had suffered from a birth defect that had left her partially shriveled; Betty Odets, the bookkeeper, had a club foot, and so on. Billy walked among them feeling well and content with himself. They loved him, loved Dee Dee, loved Obie with a blind loyalty, loved each other. They were all convinced that when the time came Obie, or his miracle-working child, would heal them, and so they could smile and be happy waiting.
Dee Dee’s office was no larger than his, but she had had a decorator fix it up for her, and it was like a page out of a travelogue extolling the beauty of a Polynesian paradise. There were plants with blooms and plants without, a jade fountain, and a pool with cool ivory steps leading to it. There was bamboo and wicker furniture. Dee Dee had learned about clothes during the past few years also, and she wore expensive, deceptively simple Asian-type silk dresses, high at the throat, sleeveless now in the summer, beltless, forever stylish, and eminently suitable for her slender figure. Her hair was pulled back from her face with a velvet band, and swung loosely down her back. Obie preached that women should not cut their hair,’ and Dee Dee advertised this point beautifully.
“Dee Dee, do you know where he is? They let the kid slip through. Who’s going to tell him?”
“He’s at Mount Laurel.”
“No, he isn’t. I tried there. What’s he up to, Dee Dee?” Billy paced for a moment as Dee Dee studied her nails minutely. “Okay, you don’t know either, do you?”
“Billy, calm down, okay? Obie needs a rest, that’s all. He isn’t ‘up to’ anything. He’s resting and praying and trying to decide what to do about Merton’s suggestions. That’s all there is to it.”
“Merton!” Billy said the name bitterly. “Why’s that crook suddenly holing up with Obie and issuing statements?”
“He’s not a crook. He’s converted, born again,” Dee Dee murmured. Billy laughed. He sat down abruptly. “I don’t like ten-year plans,” he said sullenly. “And even less twenty-year plans. It’s crazy. Merton is crazy and Obie listens to him. Why?”
Dee Dee looked up then and there was a look of pity and dislike on her face. “You don’t learn anything, do you, Billy? None of this is for Obie, you fool. It’s all for the kid, for Blake. When he comes back there will be an organization that’ll make the Catholic Church look like a practice exercise. Blake will step into it a general, pope, king, commander, leader, what have you. It’ll be his, complete with churches in every city and town, with lieutenants in every church, all of them just waiting for his return to finish the job that Christ couldn’t do, make a heaven on earth.” Dee Dee’s voice was dispassionate, coolly distant, and she returned to her nails, twisting her hands to catch the light on the pale ivory gleam. “And, Billy, a little piece of advice, for old time’s sake. Layoff Merton. He’s what Obie wants now. He’s in. You try slipping it to him, and that’s all, friend.”
“Yeah, Obie’s gone nuts.” Billy stared at the girl. She would stick, he knew. Hate-love would hold her, ready to jump in the sack with Obie, and equally ready to stick a knife between his ribs. Too, Dee Dee had somehow learned about financial advisers, and she relied on them to manage her private income and gifts, so that, although he didn’t know, he felt certain that if Dee Dee should walk out that day, she would be a wealthy woman for the rest of her life. Not so with him. Wanda’s fault, not his. Wanda was a glutton, for food, for clothes, for houses, cars, jewels, furnishings. They had a bank account of less than five figures, and it didn’t matter how he tried to manipulate their accounts so he could stash some of it away in stocks and bonds, she found out and bang they were in debt and he had to dip into the extra and bail them out.
“He’s gone nuts,” Billy repeated and heaved himself up from the chair. He started for the door, paused to say, “If you hear from him before I do, will you tell him I have to talk with him. Not Merton, but Obie.” She nodded and he left her. Dee Dee waited a moment, then called Obie on the view phone; He was in the city that week talking with foreign emissaries.
She reported Billy’s talk verbatim practically and Obie smiled gently and nodded. “Billy can’t stand any confusion,” he said simply. He closed his eyes when she told about the agent’s report on the elusive boy, and when he opened them again, there was the sad smile on his face. “God’s will,” he murmured. “Come to lunch at noon. You’ll want to meet some of these people.”
Merton met her at the door of the apartment where Obie was living. It was a large, very plain apartment, rich, but simple. Merton briefed her on the guests: holy men from India, Taiwan, Hiroshima, Hanoi…. The conference was to discuss the affiliated Voice of God Church in their areas.
INTERLUDE FOUR
Tokyo, UPI, Sept. 3