The big man with the pony tail flushed slightly, dropped his gaze. "I guess I should have," he said softly.
"You're damn right you should have! How the hell do you think my parents and I have felt all these months, not knowing whether Garth was dead or alive?"
"I. . wasn't sure what your attitude would be, or what might happen if the D.I.A. got hold of him again. I knew. . what Slycke was planning to do, and I just couldn't let that happen. If there was any chance that Dr. Slycke might somehow still manage to-"
"What the hell are you talking about? Slycke's dead."
Tommy Carling looked at me, his mouth slightly open. He shook his head, swallowed. "What did you say?"
"You didn't know?"
"That Dr. Slycke is dead? Of course not. How did it happen? When?"
"Is there someplace we can talk?"
Carling nodded, then gestured toward the entrance to the bathhouse. I followed him inside, through a group of bag people who were still clustered at the entrance. I stopped just inside the entrance and looked around, stunned by what I saw.
The interior of the building, that part which I could see, was huge; with all of the interior walls gutted, the space I found myself in looked as big as an airplane hangar. There was a lot of scaffolding spiderwebbing the interior space, and anchored to a stone balcony which went all around the hall. The entire roof of the building had been removed, and was now covered with layers of heavy plastic sheeting. Everything looked spotless-scrubbed where it was stone and freshly painted where it was wood. The line of people outside led directly to a long, gleaming counter where stew was being served out of huge, steaming cooking pots by men and women in green, logo-emblazoned jackets or headbands. People ate off paper plates in one section of the vast hall, while in another people rested in neat, tightly packed rows on air mattresses, covered by khaki army surplus blankets which looked new. At the far end of the hall, men and women wearing pale brown robes and paper slippers, with towels draped over their shoulders, emerged from two sets of swinging doors which exuded faint wisps of steam. The men and women filed behind separate partitions, emerged dressed in clothes that were obviously used, but clean. Then they left, or went to get food, or went to rest on an air mattress and blanket, which were being distributed by the nun.
Music, unobtrusive but still clearly audible, filled the hall, piped in through at least a dozen loudspeakers hanging from the stone balcony. Siegfried.
Men and women who were either doctors or paramedics moved quietly among the people on the air mattresses, checking throats, answering questions, listening to heartbeats, occasionally giving out something from the black leather bags they carried. Like the other workers, the medical people wore the distinctive green jackets or headbands.
There was a strange odor in the air, rising above all the other odors, which caught my attention, but which I could not immediately identify. Outside the building, there had been the smell of the streets and unwashed bodies; inside was the smell of soap, disinfectant, steam, paint, washed stone, medicine, plastic, coffee, hot food-but the smell that had caught my attention was none of these. I found the odor vaguely ominous.
"What the hell?" I murmured.
"Are you impressed, Mongo?" Tommy Carling asked quietly.
"Who runs this place?"
"Everybody; nobody."
"Who owns the building?"
"It belongs to Garth; the deed is registered in his name."
"Oh, yeah? Not bad for a guy who's never had more than two thousand dollars in the bank, and who hasn't even been bothering to pick up his disability checks."
"The money comes from many sources, Mongo. God provides. Shall we go someplace where it's quieter?"
I followed Carling across the hall, through a maze of pipe scaffolding, through a door and into a medium-sized office. Like everything else, it had been freshly painted. There was a desk, and a couple of chairs. The entire wall behind the desk was covered with a rendering of the rings-and-knife logo. Siegfried was playing here, too.
"You mind turning off that music?"
Carling sat down behind the desk, turned a rheostat on the wall; the music grew softer, but continued to play. "It always plays," Carling said simply, motioning for me to sit down in one of the straight-backed chairs. "We prefer it that way. We've learned from Garth to let that music serve to remind us of all that needs to be done; it focuses the concentration."
"I find it distracting."
Carling shrugged. "Yes, well; there's the difference, I guess."
"What difference?"
"Between you and us."
"How does God provide, Tommy?"
"You seem fixated on financial questions, Mongo."
"I'm curious; I'm curious as to what Garth is a part of, and who's financing it. If the deed for this place is registered in Garth's name, it could make him legally, or morally, responsible for things he might not want to be responsible for."
"Did you see anything illegal or immoral happening out there?"
"I just got here."
"Some people might say that it's none of your business," the other man said evenly.
"Some might."
"Would you believe that we picked up this place for a ten percent down payment against the back taxes owed by the previous owners?"
"I don't know. Why shouldn't I believe you?"
"Because you're a very skeptical man, Mongo-some people might even describe you as cynical."
"Yeah, but I've never tried to buy a bathhouse."
"It was foreclosed some years ago by the city after they closed it down. At the time, this wasn't exactly a target area for real estate developers, and the city was more than happy to unload it. It was a white elephant."
"There are a lot of other things going on around here that aren't financed by payments against back taxes."
"Word gets around."
"Word of what?"
"Word of good people with good intentions doing good things. Most people really do want to help people who are less fortunate than they are, Mongo, if you only give them a chance-and if you set an example and lead them. There are individuals and corporations, as well as various relief and funding agencies, which heartily approve of what we're doing, and they've been contributing substantial amounts of money, goods, and services. They like what's happening here. Most of the construction and mass organization you saw out there has only begun to happen in the past month or so."
"What is it that's happening here?"
"What you see."
"I'm not sure what I see."
"That doesn't surprise me, Mongo," Carling said in the same even tone-which was beginning to irritate me. "Each person must finally be responsible for what he sees-or doesn't see-with his own eyes, how he feels about what he sees, and what he does about it. That's one of Garth's lessons; it seems simple, but it certainly isn't."
"I'm Garth's Goddamn brother, Tommy, and I've been searching for him for four months! Why is it that none of this great 'word' ever got around to me?!"
Tommy Carling studied me with his expressive, hazel eyes. "Perhaps you didn't have the ears to hear, Mongo," he said at last in a very soft voice. "Somewhere it's written, 'Seek and ye shall find.' "
"You've got to be putting me on," I said in a low voice, feeling my anger begin to swell in me.
"I don't understand what you mean."
"No? Let me tell you who else has been just a tad concerned about Garth, my friend. Did it ever occur to you that his mother and father might have liked to receive just one little ring-a-ling to inform them that their son wasn't dead or lying comatose and unidentified in some strange hospital?!"
"But, if Garth chose not to-"
"Garth's sick!" I snapped. "He's not responsible for anything he thinks, says, or does. You're the one I hold responsible, Tommy!"