and shouted at them, but that only made the teenagers torment them more loudly.
Meanwhile, the good Reverend Cartwright was raising the gasoline can to the sky again. The eyes looked more crazed than ever.
One more time he raised the gasoline can. He really needed to get some new material for this part of his act. The can thing was almost as boring as his songs.
His benediction finished, he brought the can down and bent over to unscrew the cap.
By now the sneerers and three burly members of the church were standing inches apart insulting each other. Two of the print reporters were hovering over their notebooks so the paper wouldn’t get drenched by the rain. One of them glanced up at me and grinned. This was good stuff for a story.
Standing behind him, out in the street with a few other onlookers, I saw the large, glowering shape of Roy Davenport. He saw me watching him. He rubbed his nose with his middle finger. A subtle man. We’d tangled verbally many times at city council meetings when Lou was using his surrogates to push through something that was good for him and bad for everybody else.
It was while I was staring at Davenport that it happened, so I can’t say I was an eyewitness. But I sure heard the screams. I may even have heard the whoosh when Cartwright a) poured way too much gasoline on the goodies and b) stood way too close to the sudden explosion when it came.
I turned just in time to see the holy man’s robes go up in flames while a wild, flailing pack of his believers flung themselves on him like jungle animals on a fresh carcass.
Even the sneerers shut up. Somebody shouted “Get an ambulance!”
The crowd broke into small groups, the way the crowd had at the anti-war rally the other night. I saw two or three women tip their foreheads to their Bibles and begin to pray.
The rain now came with enough force to pop when it hit. Umbrellas and newspapers and scarves went over heads at the same time that a cry went up from the people who’d rushed forward to help Cartwright.
I tried to push my way through a phalanx of believers, but they pushed and shoved back. They knew a pagan when they saw one. There was a sob, and I was pretty sure it came from Cartwright.
“God has prevailed!” somebody in the tight circle surrounding the religious man cried.
And damned if he wasn’t right.
The circle opened so the rest of us could see Cartwright standing upright in his tattered and blackened robes. His smile was positively beatific. He waved to us with papal majesty. Into the crowd, into the day, he shouted: “God loves me! The only thing that got burned were my robes!”
I have to admit the son of a bitch looked pretty good to me right then. Sure he was a con artist and a showboat, but he’d been around us so long now that he was one of us. And I was happy to see he was all right, if only because he was a lot funnier than most of the comedy shows on the tube.
Voices shouted prayers of gratitude to the surly skies, and flock members rushed forward to touch him.
My elation lasted only about forty-two seconds before I was back to seeing him for the snake he was. Besides, I wanted to talk to Roy Davenport.
I didn’t see him. I was already wet, so I decided I might as well get soaked. I rushed among the parked cars in the lot, gaping into windshields. I had no idea what kind of automobile he was driving. Then I saw him across the street and down the block about a quarter of the way. He was walking toward a big-ass black Pontiac. The rain was at the slashing stage now, blinding me as I ran down the middle of the street. Everywhere people were running to get away from the suddenly furious deluge, ducking into shop fronts and under awnings. But not Davenport. Head down, he walked slowly toward the sleek black Pontiac Bonneville. Even parked, the new car seemed to throb with power.
I called his name a few times, but he didn’t turn around to see who was chasing him. I caught up with him, splashing across the pavement. I grabbed his arm. He jerked away and gave me a shove that pushed me back two feet.
“I need to talk to you,” I said above the pounding rain.
My shoes were filling with water. So were my eyes and ears. My clothes were heavy with water. “When was the last time you talked to Lou Bennett?” I shouted at his back as he bent over to unlock his car.
He didn’t answer me. He just started to open the door. I probably wouldn’t have done it if I’d had to think it through. I rushed at him, slamming the door shut before he could stop me.
He moved so fast I wasn’t sure what he was doing, until an enormous hand clutched my throat, started choking me. I could hear people shouting as they realized what was going on. I managed to hit him hard on the side of his eye. His hands loosened enough for me to pull out of his grasp. Then he shoved me again. The wet surface of the street worked like ice. I skidded backward several feet, doing a silent comedy routine of wheeling arms and stumbling feet as I tried to stay upright. But it didn’t work. I landed on my butt, landed hard enough that I was stunned when my body slammed the concrete. I just sat there then getting wetter and wetter, watching him get into his Bonneville. My throat was raw from where he’d choked me.
I could have stayed there awhile, I suppose, but the cars honking for me to get out of the way made me change my mind. Getting soaked and choked was enough for right now. I wasn’t quite ready for getting run over.
I drank a beer and read about a third of Graham Greene’s It’s a Battlefield while I soaked in a tub of water so hot, they probably could have served me as an entree to cannibals. My cat Tasha kept me company by dozing on top of the clothes hamper. I had a Gene Pitney album blasting in the living area.
The hot water had taken care of my scratchy throat. By the time I’d climbed the rear steps to my apartment, I was sneezing. The sneezing was gone now, too.
I finished by taking a brief cold shower before grabbing my terry-cloth robe and going into the kitchen area and shoving a TV dinner into the oven. Sometimes they tasted better with the aluminum foil on. I tried not to remember Jane saying that after we were married, TV dinners would be banned forever from that misty sentimental mythic home we’d be building.
I ate as always in front of the TV set. There had been small anti-war protests across the country, the only one of note being in Berkeley. The local channels would be running the stories about Lou Bennett’s murder and the anti-war meeting that had preceded it.
I was shoving myself into T-shirt and jeans when the phone rang. These days, a call had a paralyzing effect on me. Maybe my heart even stopped for a single second. Would it be Jane? And if it was Jane, what would she say? And if it was Jane, what would I say?
A woman crying: “Have you talked to him?” I wasn’t quite sure who it was until she said: “This book idea is insane.”
When I realized who it was, I almost smiled. Was she finally seeing him as I saw him? “I’m not his lawyer any more, Molly.”
“They’ll convict him. He doesn’t seem to understand that.” Then: “I just worked up enough courage to call you now.”
“Didn’t he tell you that I’d talked to him?”
“He said he’d fired you.”
“Of course he said he’d fired me. It’ll make a better story for the book. I quit, is what happened. He’s going to get in so deep, he’ll never get out. He lives in a fantasy world, Molly.”
“But I love him so much. I don’t care how much he lies or cheats or steals.”
“He steals?”
“Just cars. And not all that often.”
“Ah.”
“You’re so judgmental, McCain.”
“Yes, I even thought that Hitler wasn’t all that nice a guy.”
“You and your sarcasm. Now you have to help him. You just have to.”
At least she’d quit crying. I decided to try and make her feel better. “I’m still working on the case. I think he’s innocent. But I’m not doing this for him, Molly. He’s a jerk.”
“He’s not a jerk. He’s artistic, and most people don’t know how to handle artistic people.”
Not much I could say to that. If bunco artist was a synonym for artistic, fine, he was artistic.
“Will you tell me the minute you find something, so I know he’ll be all right?”
“Sure, Molly. But there aren’t any guarantees.”
