"Tell me another one," Sister Zachary said knowingly. "We know what the press is like."
Eleanor opened her eyes so wide that Zsa Zsa Gabor's sunglasses wouldn't have covered them and ruffled the pages in her notebook. "I'll rip these out if you like," she said. "You can have them. We're not going to quote you. We just want to tell the truth about the Church." She actually tore one page out. It was blank.
Sister Zachary and Dr. Wilburforce exchanged a look. "How do we know that's true?" he asked.
"Remember Deep Throat?" I improvised. Dr Wilburforce coughed, and Sister Zachary's eyes began to roll. "I don't mean the porno movie," I added hastily. "I mean Woodward and Bernstein's source for All the President's Men. Everyone wanted to know who he was, but the two reporters never told anyone. Even now, now that it's all over, they haven't. We may not be Woodward and Bernstein, but if this story is as good as we think it is, we'll protect anyone who helps us."
There was a long silence. Wilburforce and Sister Zachary exchanged a glance. Sister Zachary shook her head. "Nope," she said. "I think it's time for you to leave."
We all sat there, if you didn't count Sister Zachary, who was standing.
"May I say something?" Eleanor asked in her sweetest and most submissive-Asian-female voice.
The tone seemed to lift Wilburforce's spirits. "Of course you may, my dear."
"I don't mean to sound pushy or anything," Eleanor said, smiling winningly, "but I've already got all these notes. Also, Algy's wired, which means that this whole interview is on tape. I mean, there's just no way you can deny what you've already said, and we've made no promises about keeping you out of the story so far." She looked from Wilburforce to Sister Zachary. "This is difficult for someone who's not used to confrontation," she said, "but you could probably get your asses sued to hell and gone if we just print what we have already." She shrugged apologetically, and I stifled the urge to kiss her. "If you see what I mean," she said.
"I told you," Sister Zachary said. "I told you you were asking for trouble." She subsided, tapping her foot angrily.
Wilburforce pumped several pounds of innocence into his dark eyes. "I'm a great admirer of the Church, actually," he said. "As you pointed out, we derived much of our doctrine from theirs, although we've, um, refined and purified it. It's absurd even to consider the possibility that anything I've said could be actionable." Distracted by the sheer ludicrousness of the possibility, he picked absently at his nose. "Still," he added, "you're the experts."
Sister Zachary snorted again, but other than that she held her peace.
Wilburforce dreamily examined his finger. "And since, as you say, your story is really about the Church rather than the Congregation, I suppose I should ask you how we can proceed. I think it was Jefferson who said he would prefer a free press with no government to a government with no press. A sentiment, I may say, that I certainly share."
"In other words," I said, "we can ask you some more questions?"
"More questions," Dr. Wilburforce said dully. He looked despairingly at Sister Zachary.
"In exchange, there will be no mention of any of this," Sister Zachary said after a couple of warm-up breaths. "Not me, not him, not the Congregation."
"Agreed," Eleanor said.
Dr. Wilburforce glanced at his weighty wristwatch. "We have your oath," he said. "The next gathering is due in a little more than an hour, and we have to prepare. You've got ten minutes." He lifted himself ponderously back onto the corner of his desk.
"What was your job in the Church?" I said. Sister Zachary pulled up a rickety-looking chair. I held my breath as she sat in it.
"He was Anna's personal physician," she said. The chair held.
"Why did she need a personal physician?"
"The Revealings," Wilburforce said from his perch. "No one understands the Revealings. Somebody had to monitor her vital signs, check her eyes, make sure that the Revealings weren't harming her."
"Tell me about the Revealings."
"She was a channel," Dr. Wilburforce said. "She had an amazing receptivity. Alon spoke through her whenever he wanted. At the beginning, it was random. Later, when he began to understand that it was more, um, productive to do it when the members of the Church were gathered, he popped up mainly during the formal Revealings. Other than the fact that she channeled Alon, she was a perfectly normal little girl."
"Is this on the level?" Eleanor asked.
Wilburforce looked affronted. "Absolutely," he said. "I'm a doctor. Do you think I'd participate in anything that wasn't aboveboard?"
We all let that pass.
"Does Angel, the new Speaker, have a personal physician?" I asked.
"A nonentity," Sister Zachary said. Her tone would have curdled cream.
"Does this nonentity have a name?" I asked, knowing the answer.
"Certainly," she said. "Richard Merryman."
"You don't like him," I said.
"That's neither here nor there," she said airily. "He's not Hubert Wilburforce."
He certainly wasn't. On the whole, I thought that Wilburforce, a good old-fashioned fraud if ever I'd seen one, was less dangerous than Merryman. "What percentage of your Congregation," I asked, "is made up of people who've left the Church?"
"Half," Sister Zachary said promptly. "The others are new seekers after truth."
"Among the people who've come to you from the Church," I said, "was there one named Sally Oldfield?"
"Yes," Dr. Wilburforce said.
"No," Sister Zachary said.
"We seem to have a difference of opinion," I observed.
"The answer is no," Sister Zachary said. "We never knew her."
"I was thinking of someone else," Dr. Wilburforce said apologetically. "Someone with a similar name. What was her name, dear?"
"Sarah Elder," Sister Zachary said promptly.
"And Sarah Elder is alive and well? I could talk to her if I wanted to?"
"If you could find her," Sister Zachary said. "She's no longer with the Congregation."
"No forwarding address?"
"I think she moved to Denver."
"Or maybe Boulder," I said.
"Maybe," Sister Zachary said. "Whichever, she's not here."
"What about Ambrose Harker?" This time their bewilderment rang true. "Or Ellis Fauntleroy?"
"What a dreadful name," Wilburforce said. "His parents must not have wanted children."
"He's never been here either," Sister Zachary said.
ZERO, Eleanor wrote in her notebook. Then she drew little candles around it. Eleanor always doodled candles. I dithered over whether they were phallic symbols or symbols of hope. Eleanor maintained that phallic symbols were symbols of hope.
"You said the Church had new leadership," I said. "Who are they? All the public sees are Angel Ellspeth and her mother." Wilburforce goggled helplessly at Sister Zachary. Sister Zachary shook her head tightly. Wilburforce began to search for a match.
Eleanor rose to an inspiration. "We know there are lawyers," she said. "You told us the Church was litigious. There are lawyers, aren't there?"
"Sweetheart," Sister Zachary said, "lawyers are the whole banana."
Chapter 12
The lawyer's name was Meredith Brooks. Like Ambrose Harker, or Ellis Fauntleroy, for that matter, he had two last names. Unlike Ambrose Harker, he was who he said he was.
And then some.
Brooks, Martin, Soames, and Pearce occupied every square foot of a cloud-catching floor in Century City. In addition to the Waspiest name I'd ever seen on a lawyer's shingle, Brooks, Martin, Soames, and Pearce had the most medieval furniture.