Morgan tilted his head back, apparently trying to look superior. “No actual crime has been committed — yet. But we, at least some of us, are greatly concerned that one will be.”
“So I gather. Go on.”
More throat clearing. “You have, of course, never been to the tabernacle.”
“Correct.” I nodded with a smile, mildly irked by the “of course” but amused by the disapproval in his voice.
“Well,” he sniffed, “then you probably aren’t aware that we get a total of some twelve thousand every Sunday attending our three morning services plus our evening service.”
“Impressive. But I gather one of those twelve thousand is causing you and your leader grief.”
“What makes you think that?”
I shrugged. “Give me a shred of credit. Look, for the last few minutes, we’ve been tiptoeing around each other like two cautious welterweights in Round One. I could probably sit here for another hour or more trying to guess your problem, but I won’t — I’ve got other things that I’m paid to do. Now, I suggest you unload whatever it is you’ve got and let me see it before I get on with the rest of my life.”
“All right, it’s just that this is difficult to talk about,” Morgan said stiffly. “For the last six Sundays, we’ve gotten very disturbing notes in the offering pouch — all directed at Barney.”
“Pardon my ignorance, but what’s an offering pouch?”
Another superiority sniff. “As I am sure you know, most churches send plates down the pews for the offering — the collection, if you will. But some, and we are among them, circulate cloth or leather pouches through the congregation — they have handles and they’re about this deep,” he said, holding one palm about a foot above the other. “For one thing, it’s easier to be private about your offering if you’re giving cash, and for another, our sanctuary is so big that if we passed conventional plates, they’d all overflow — even if we had twenty of them. The pouches hold a great deal more than a plate.”
“Okay, so what do these ‘disturbing notes’ say?”
Morgan looked to be having more gas pains. “I’ve brought them.” He sighed, reaching into his suitcoat and drawing out a packet of folded sheets that were paper-clipped together. He eyed me for several seconds, trying to decide whether I was trustworthy. Apparently I passed his trust test, if only barely. He handed over the small bundle, but turned loose of it like a widow giving her Social Security check to a mugger.
“As I said, there are six notes,” he told me. “They are arranged in the order in which they came.”
I slipped the paper clip off, holding the sheets by the edges so as not to add my fingerprints to heaven knows how many others already there. The white sheets all were the same size, six by nine inches, probably from the same pad, and each had a message hand-printed in capitals in black ink from a felt-tipped pen. Here they are, in sequence:
REV BAY: MISFORTUNE PURSUES THE SINNER, (PROVERBS 13:21)
REV. BAY: TAKE YOUR EVIL DEEDS OUT OF MY SIGHT (ISAIAH 1:16)
REVEREND BAY: THE STING OF DEATH IS SIN (I CORINTHIANS 15:56)
REV. BAY: DEATH IS THE DESTINY OF EVERY MAN (ECCLESIASTES 7:2)
REVER. BAY: YOU DESERVE TO DIE. (I KINGS 2:26)
REV. BAY: THE TIME IS NEAR (REVELATION 1:13)
“Pretty ominous-sounding stuff,” I said to Morgan. “Does your Mr. Bay get this sort of message often?”
“Reverend Bay does not,” he replied, squaring his shoulders and looking offended. “Oh, once in a while, we find a note in the offering pouch expressing disapproval — usually mildly — about something in a sermon or in some other part of the service, which isn’t unusual in a church our size. But this...”
“What does Bay think about the notes?”
“He professes indifference,” Morgan said irritably. “Feels it’s just the doings of some ‘misguided soul,’ to use his words.”
“You don’t agree, of course, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Mr. Goodwin, these are the work of a psychopath, someone who I believe is truly dangerous.”
“Maybe that’s the case,” I conceded, flipping open my notebook. “You say these have been coming for six weeks, which figures — there are six of them. Along about the third Sunday, didn’t you, or someone else at the church, get suspicious and start watching more closely as the collection was taken?”
Morgan flushed. “We should have, of course. But we — Barney, me, the rest of the staff — all believed this was the handiwork of a demented individual, perhaps someone who was just passing through New York and soon would be gone. We get a lot of one- or two-time visitors from out of town.”
“Does Bay have any enemies? Or any secrets that would make him vulnerable to, say, blackmail?”
Lloyd Morgan shook his head almost violently. “No, sir, and I must tell you I resent that suggestion.”
“Hold it right there. You walked in here — without an appointment, I hasten to point out — looking for help. Nobody twisted your arm to come. If you feel like doing any resenting, you can damn well do it outside, on your way back to Staten Island.”
That deflated the boy’s radials. He bit his lower lip and took an economy-sized breath. “I’m sorry. This has been stressful for all of us, and I guess it shows. As far as enemies, Barney doesn’t have any that I’m aware of — or that he’s aware of, to hear him talk. Oh, there are ministries in the New York area that are jealous of his success, but it’s inconceivable that one of their members would resort to this sort of despicable behavior.”
“Uh-huh. How would you describe the makeup of your flock?”
Morgan leaned back and laced his hands behind his head, which suggested that I was about to get more answer than I’d requested. “Mr. Goodwin, our membership, or ‘flock,’ as you so quaintly term it, is something over twelve thousand strong, and that’s not to mention the hundreds of thousands in our ‘electronic congregation,’ who watch on TV from every single state, every Canadian province, and sixteen other countries, including Korea and the Philippines.
“Demographically, our members are a healthy mix. Of the twelve thousand plus, more than half are under thirty-five, and forty-four percent are single. And you’ll probably be surprised to learn that almost four thousand of them live in Manhattan — many in the Village, East Village, and Soho. And several hundred ride over on the ferry weekly. Would you have guessed that?”
“Never,” I said solemnly.
That brought forth a thin smile, which Wolfe would have described as smug. “I thought not,” he said in a satisfied tone that made me yearn to help him out the door.
“Have you begun any type of internal investigation, or tried to at least figure out where the note-writer sits every week?”
“No. As I said before, we kept hoping it would... go away by itself.”
“These things rarely do. What about the police?”
Morgan shuddered, and I noticed beads of perspiration on his ample forehead. “With due respect to the authorities, this is the last course we want to pursue — at least at this point. As you of course know, the past few years have been difficult ones for high-profile ministries, particularly ones with a television arm. Now, I don’t for one instant mean to compare us with some of the evangelists you’ve heard all too much about in the media. But the fact is, because of them and the awful image they have, we are very skittish about any kind of publicity that could be construed as sensational. And we are naturally quite concerned that if we called in the authorities, word would inevitably get to the press. Now do you see why I asked earlier if our talk was confidential?”