“I was wondering if you could help me find a minister.”
“A particular minister?” the soft-spoken secretary asked.
“A Reverend Grove or a Father Vincent. They’re affiliated with a church called Messenger of the Divine.”
“Never heard of the institution,” he said with quiet distaste. “Doesn’t sound like one of our congregations at all.”
“No Grove or Vincent?”
“What is this concerning?”
“An exorcism,” I said.
“A what?”
“I got a white man locked up in my basement and I wanna see if an old-time Holy Roller can call the devil out of him. That way maybe I can save the world from his evil… Uh-oh, he’s trying to break out of his cage. I’ll call you back.” I hung up and laughed a mean laugh.
Before my venom was through, the phone rang. I had the immediate and irrational fear that somehow the Council for the Baptist churches knew the numbers of the sinners that called them. I let the ringing go on for a while before answering.
“Tannenbaum residence,” I said brightly.
“May I speak to Hedva Tannenbaum, please?” a man asked. He spoke in perfect but not necessarily American English. His tone was haughty, that’s really the only word for it. The words were mannered, but the voice was not.
“Who’s askin’?” I said in response to the voice.
There was a moment’s hesitation and then, “John Manly.” The name didn’t sound right on his tongue.
“Well, Mr. Manly,” I said. “Mrs. Tannenbaum doesn’t want to speak to anyone just now. She’s had a pretty rough time of it the past few days and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
I was being hard on Mr. Manly for no other reason than that his tone reminded me of the snootiness of the secretary at the Baptist Council.
“To whom am I speaking?” Manly inquired.
“To whom,” I replied, “doesn’t matter. What matters is that Fanny isn’t gettin’ on the phone, so either you gonna tell me what you want or we gonna break off the connection right here and now.” For an instant the image of that bureaucrat sitting at the window of the courthouse flashed through my mind.
“Excuse me? What did you say?” Manly asked.
I realized that, in my anger, I had slipped into the fast-talking patter of my neighborhood. Manly hadn’t understood my brilliant barbs.
“What do you want me to tell Fanny?” I asked, now patient.
“I must speak to her personally. It’s very important.”
“Maybe to you, but Fanny’s got other things on her mind. Does she know you?” I asked.
“What I have to tell her is very important.”
“I’ll give her the message. What’s your number?”
“Tell her now, while I am waiting.”
“No.”
There were big red-and-purple flowers, shaped like bells, clustered on a bush outside the sitting room windows. A sleek green hummingbird appeared next to one of them. From one to another that hummingbird milked five of those flowers before Manly spoke again.
“It’s about business,” he said. “I’m a real-estate agent. I want to know if she’s interested in selling her house.”
“I don’t think she’s movin’ nowhere right now, but gimme your number and she’ll call ya.”
He finally relented and left a number. It was a Hollywood exchange. “Room three-two-two,” he added.
I hung up and wondered about that number on the way to the window. The hummingbird fled at my approach. I could hardly blame him; when a shadow the size of a mountain looms up above you, you run first and worry about what it could be later on — from the safety of your nest. If you had a nest, that is.
FEARLESS AND FANNY RETURNED at about four. Before I could tell them about the call Fearless started in.
“Paris, it was on the car radio.”
“What?”
