There was a knock at my door. It was Carlos, with some questions about a case I'd handled earlier. As he was leaving, Hamilton called; it was his lunch break. "Is this a good time?" I asked him. "It may take twenty or thirty minutes."
"Go ahead," he said. "What you're doing is more interesting than eating at Hannery's. If necessary, I'll catch a sandwich and juice from the snack machine later."
I told him what Molly Cadigan had said about the leaders of the church believing in Ray Christman's theories on reality and the alternative futures of mankind—some kind of doom on the one hand and presumably a golden age on the other, with the church being the difference. That they were scared because Ray wasn't around to feed them new procedures and keep the thing going; that basically they were fanatics who might go off the deep end if they thought someone was going to show that Christman was dead.
"Does she have something there?" I finished. As I said it, I remembered what Hamilton had told me about a hole in his own life, a sort of pointlessness, since he'd left the church.
It took him a minute to respond. "She has a point. Three kinds of people get to the upper echelons of the church. One kind is cynical predators. Another is dedicated fanatics. I'm not sure which kind Lonnie Thomas is; some of each, maybe, incompatible as they seem. And the third kind is people who honestly believe but don't behave like fanatics, people who can get things done and who can get others to get things done, in spite of confusion and stupidity.
"As for their running scared . . . With due respect to Molly, I doubt it. Worried maybe, but not scared. They've been without Ray Christman for about half a year now, and I think they've probably gotten used to the situation. And I saw no evidence that Ray was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born unto a virgin. What he did, other people should be able to do, especially when they have his lead to follow. I suspect that before long they'll start coming out with new procedures they've invented themselves, and say that Ray sent them. And the faithful will cheer themselves hoarse, and start transfering credits to pay for them.
"Whatever; Molly's point is well taken. If I were you, Martti, I'd be careful not to let the church know what you're interested in."
We disconnected then, and I sat there sorting out who I'd told. Nobody in the church. The biggest danger seemed to be that Armand Butzburger might get a guilty conscience and unload it on his confessor or whatever they have.
* * *
At quitting time I got in my car and drove east down Beverly. I'd only gone half a block when I saw a guy behind the wheel of a parked DKW sport coupe. I'd have sworn it was the same guy I'd seen that morning across the street from the Neophyte Building, but wearing a white soft cap now—a cap like a lot of merchant seamen wear, with a small, snap-down bill and a button on the top. And it occurred to me that someone didn't need to drive the same car all the time. Suppose he'd been hired by the church. He could take a different car every time out. He'd parked it nose-on to a loading zone, where he could pull out quickly. And sure as hell, he did.
So I drove east all the way to LaBrea, catching sight of him pretty often, then south, and pulled into a parking lot at a Denny's. I went inside, and walked right through the kitchen and out the service entrance, with the chief cook yelling at me. Then I slipped around the side of the building and peered over the shrubbery. I could see the DKW in a bank lot across the street, where the driver could watch for me driving out.
I waited till the light at the intersection turned red, stopping the traffic flow, then I trotted out and across the street, hand inside my jacket on the butt of my Walther 7.65mm.
The DKW backed, U-turned, and burned rubber out another entrance. There was no question at all about it now; I'd had a tail. And he knew that I knew. I watched his disappearance with a big rock in my stomach.
8
Winifred Sproule
My wife is self-employed, a professional psychic with a reputation that lets her charge fairly big fees. Psychics have been big in L.A. since the plagues at the turn of the century, and the business is growing. Anyway, while Tuuli isn't awfully busy, she makes a good income. Generally she arranges things so she can sleep late—commonly till nine. By which time I've been at the office for an hour, which means I either fix my own breakfast or eat out. Most often I eat at Morey's Deli, down the block from the office. It's not that I don't like to prepare meals; I just don't like to eat by myself. Besides, there's less traffic earlier.
But on the day of my appointment with Winifred Sproule, I ate at home. I was trying to make up for all the fat, chocolate-frosted doughnuts I'd eaten at Molly Cadigan's the day before, so what it came down to was low-fat cottage cheese, Rye Krisps with nothing on them, and slices of raw turnip (try raw turnips; they're mildly sweet), all washed down with a big glass of Altadena Dairy's real churned buttermilk.
I can enjoy a meal like that without getting carried away. Probably because it's not sweet and not salty. Some foods send me into a feeding frenzy. Chocolate! God!
The only thing wrong with breakfast that day was, I had the TV on to the morning news. Which featured a trashing. Trashers had damn near destroyed a senior citizens' center in Burbank the night before. After disabling the alarm system, which had taken some know-how, they'd poisoned the shrubbery and lawn, slashed and hacked the furniture, knocked holes in the drywall, spray-painted obscenities . . . and waited till they were ready to leave to break the windows; the noise would bring the beat cops.
The police estimated the trashers must have carried out the whole thing in under ten minutes. As if they'd drilled it. Something like that always rouses a terrible urge to homicide in me. Which scares me, because I almost always carry a gun. I imagine myself shooting half a dozen of them, gut-shooting them, then going around kicking the wounded, busting ribs and stuff like that. Bad stuff. It makes me remember . . .
So I turned off the TV and did the drill my therapist gave me after mom and dad were killed, to settle me down. It usually only takes a minute or two. Then I went down to the parking level, got in my car and left.
The Hypernumbers Institute is in Bel Air, of all places, on a little goat-trail street called Chikaree Lane that snakes along the top of a ridge in the Santa Monica Mountains. I went the back way, via Mulholland Drive and Beverly Glen. I hadn't realized the neighborhood was a security neighborhood, but Dr. Sproule had let the gate guards know I was coming, so my Prudential ID got me through.
The institute sprawls along the upper slope, with a great view across Stone Canyon to the west. A rambling, two-story building with cedar siding, it could easily pass for some holo star's western-style mansion. Tall Mexican pines shade it, while rhododendrons stand guard. The receptionist called and told Sproule I was there, then gave me directions to her office. Somehow I'd expected to see students trooping through the halls or standing around drinking coffee, chatting. Instead it was quiet. The few people I saw looked as if they had things to do.
Winifred Sproule's office was on the second floor. Most of her west wall consisted of sliding doors, one-way Klearglass that opened onto a balcony with view. They were open when I walked in, open to birdtalk and a warm April breeze. Sproule had gotten up when I entered. I'd visualized her pretty well—blond, slim but well-built, and all-round good looking. Also elegant, in spite of, or maybe because of, the short, slit, Singapore skirt. The kind of elegance you see in old 2-D movies with European leading ladies. Dietrich. Garbo. She could easily have passed for the proverbial thirty-nine, but I judged she'd be in her late forties. That seemed like a minimum, if she'd been a high-ranking Noetie while Leif Haller was still alive and publicly active.