Comeback

of care, Dwayne.'

'Which brings me,' Dwayne said, 'to this boy Carmody.'

Archibald sighed. 'A knottier problem than most,' he admitted.

'I think we ought to get rid of him.'

'For zealousness? Dwayne, we've never had to do anything like that before, and I just worry it could backfire on us.'

'He's making trouble,' Dwayne insisted. 'He's an infection that could spread. I like my troops motivated.'

'Yes, of course. But the press, Dwayne. The press is a constant affliction. If Tom Carmody's disaffection led him to the wrong reporter, if he found a sympathetic ear in the media to listen when he says we threw him out because he got religion, it could be very bad. Very bad.'

'Three days' wonder.'

'Maybe. And maybe it's open season on servants of the Lord right now, Dwayne, and we ought to, as our corporate friends say, protect our asses.'

'I don't like what he says to the troops,' Dwayne insisted.

Archibald understood what Dwayne's problem was. The Marine Corps method of dealing with rotten apples was to seek them out, identify them, and throw them away before they could infect the rest of the bushel. But the Marine Corps didn't have to worry about the combination of a naturally hostile press and a business dependent on voluntary contributions. What Tom Carmody could do to sow doubt in the minds of Dwayne's troops was nothing to what he could conceivably do, with the right reporter's help, to sow doubt in the minds of people like the six hundred drinking their thermos coffee at the moment out at the arena. Employees come and go, but the six hundred are needed forever.

Which it would not be politic to explain to Dwayne, an essentially simple soul whose range of comprehension was unlikely ever to extend beyond the perimeter of the brigade. If someone was troublesome to Dwayne's troops, that's all he would see or care to see; the larger picture was beyond him.

Archibald said, 'I tell you what. After the crusade today, I'll have a chat with Tom, see if I can bring him round a bit.'

'Fine,' Dwayne said. 'But, Will, look at him when you talk to him. Look him over. Keep an open mind. If he isn't gonna come around, tell me. I won't just fire him, I'll ease him out, so he don't get mad.'

The idea of Dwayne being tactful brought a faint smile to Archibald's lips. He said, 'I'll study him like the lesson of the day. How's that?'

Tina said, 'Maybe you could talk him into joining some monks or something. Go into a monastery. Then he'd be away from us, but he'd be happy.'

Dwayne always squinted a bit and looked away when Tina spoke, as though a bright light were being shined on him. He did that again now, and left it to Archibald to say, 'Tina, that's a very good idea. I'll sound him out. A monastery is an excellent place for a religious young man.'

'He's got a girl friend,' Dwayne said, with no inflection.

Archibald raised an eyebrow. 'Has he? So much for the monastery. Is she part of the problem, do you think?'

'Probably. Don't know for sure.'

'Perhaps I should talk to them both together.'

'She isn't here,' Dwayne said. 'She isn't one of us. She lives back in Memphis,' he explained,

Memphis being Archibald's home base, where he had his Eternal Jesus Chapel and where his television ministry was taped.

'Well, I don't think we should postpone the issue until we get back to Memphis,' Archibald said. 'I'll talk to Tom this afternoon, after the crusade, and if necessary, talk to the girl later, when we get home. What kind of girl is she?'

'Don't know,' Dwayne said, and shrugged. 'Mary something. Don't know a thing about her.'

2

Just around the time William Archibald was whistling in the shower, Mary Quindero was beginning to die. She knew it, or suspected it, or feared it, but couldn't warn her murderers because they refused to hear anything except the answers to their questions, and she had no more answers. They, Woody Kellman and Zack Flynn, didn't know she was dying because they had no idea of the cumulative effect of the strangle-and-reprieve, drown-and-reprieve methods they were using to get the answers they felt she was still holding back. And her brother, Ralph Quindero, couldn't know what was happening because he was over at Zack's place, watching an old horror movie on the VCR, unable to be present while his friends pressured his sister, and not realizing just how stupid they were.

'Don't hurt her, or— You know, don't do— She's my sister, you know, I gotta ...'

'Don't worry, Ralph, when she sees we're serious, what's she gonna do? What's her choice? We gotta pressure her a little, that's all, so she knows we're serious. That's all.'

That it hadn't worked that way was simply a miscalculation on everybody's part, starting with Ralph, who hadn't believed his pals would actually harm his own sister, and continuing with Woody and Zack, whose knowledge of the world came from movies and TV, which hadn't told them that, in real life, you could kill a person by repeatedly holding her head underwater in a bathtub, and finishing with Mary herself, who was motivated by a foolish desire to protect her dumb younger brother and who couldn't believe until too late that he wouldn't at some point come in and make them stop. But he didn't.