Me and William could see through the curtains that they didn’t come to negotiate, so we made it out the back and had the deacons move us out overnight.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
Father Vincent looked in my eyes and saw that he had to give more to be let off the hook.
“Elana got mad ’cause William wouldn’t tell her why we were runnin’ or who was after him.”
“She didn’t know about the accountants?”
Vincent shook his head. “William didn’t trust that girl. He just wanted to be on her good side.”
“Did he stay there?”
“No. Elana took the bond back and left him.”
I realized that Elana had known where Grove was the whole time she was crying in my bookstore.
“Good riddance to bad garbage,” Vincent said. “Everything was okay for a couple’a months. We moved out here, and William kept a low profile. He still did some fencin’, but not so much as before. But then that Leon Douglas, Elana’s old boyfriend, got outta jail. Douglas beat William somethin’ terrible. He beat him so bad that he realized that Elana had to be lyin’ about him havin’ the bond, so they left — leavin’ William to bleed.
“After that, William called the accountants again. He told them that he was in hidin’, that they couldn’t find him, but maybe he could still get their bond.”
“Why he say that?” I asked.
“ ’Cause he was a fool,” Vincent declared. “The only thing he got outta that beatin’ was that the bond must’a been worth somethin’ more than what Elana said. Two days later the accountants sent over the man, and we had a meetin’.”
“What was that about?”
“It was a man named Holderlin,” the minister said. He sat back against a shelf, weak himself from the strain of our bluffs. “He told us that Leon had been working for him to get the bond but that Leon lost the girl, so he needed our help to find her. Holderlin said that he was working for the Jewish government, that money was stole from them by this Tannenbaum guy. He said that the bond was probably one of many, that they were probably printed in sequence. He said one bond would lead to the rest and that there would be a finder’s fee.”
“He said that he worked for Israel?” I asked.
“Yuh.”
“How much did he say it was worth?”
Vincent gave me a suspicious look.
“I heard millions,” I said, trying to head off his misgivings. “But I don’t know exactly.”
“I want outta this, Lockwood. I don’t need to get killed over somethin’ like this.”
I remember thinking that he was giving better advice than when he stood in front of his transient congregation.
“Was this Holderlin a young man?” I asked, adding my description of the man I saw with Latham and Elana out in front of the Pine Grove Hotel.
“No, no. He was in his forties, big dude. Grove’s age, maybe a little more. He had a partner too. I didn’t get a good look at him ’cause he drove the car.”
“Did this Holderlin tell you how you could get in touch with him?”
“No. He got our number, but we never had his.”
“What are you gonna do now?” I asked.
“The congregation needs me now that Brother Grove has passed on,” the pastor said. “They need me more than ever.”
“That may be,” I said. “But I suggest you change your address again, Reverend, and maybe the name of your congregation.”
Father Vincent considered my words as I considered him. He was a killer like Leon Douglas, but he didn’t use his hands. Instead he had used stealth and lies, along with good timing, to manage the murder of his nemesis, William Grove. He was a murderer, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I doubted if any court would convict him. It put a sour taste in my mouth.MM
I swallowed deeply and then left the minister to his God. But I wasn’t breathing easy. Brother Bigelow and two other deacons were waiting for me in the small yard.
“What you doin’ here, man?” Bigelow demanded.
