The Godwulf Manuscript

talked. Her voice was showing the liquor. She was talking with extra-careful enunciation?the way I was. She handed me the drink and then put her hand on my upper arm and squeezed it.

'How much do you weigh?' she asked.

'One ninety-five.'

'You work out, don't you? How much can you lift?'

'I can bench press two-fifty ten times,' I said.

'How'd you get the broken nose?' She bent over very carefully and examined my face from about two inches away. Her hair smelled like herbs.

'I fought a ranked heavyweight once.'

She stayed bent over, her face two inches away, her fragrant hair tumbling forward, one hand still squeezing my arm, the other holding the drink. I put my left hand behind her head and kissed her. She folded up into my lap and kissed back. It wasn't eager. It was ferocious. She let the glass drop from her hand onto the floor, where I assume it tipped and spilled. Under the blue robe she was wearing nothing at all, and she was nowhere near as sinewy as she had looked to me the first time I saw her. Making love in a chair is heavy work. The only other time I'd attempted, I'd gotten a charley horse that damn near ruined the event. With one arm around her back I managed to slip the other one under her knees and pick her up, which is not easy from a sitting position in a soft chair. Her mouth never left mine, nor did the fierceness abate as I carried her to the couch. She bit me and scratched me, and at climax she pounded me on the back with her clenched fist as hard as she could. At the time I barely noticed. But when it was over, I felt as if I'd been in a fight, and maybe in some sense I had.

She had shed the robe during our encounter and now she walked naked over to the bar to make another drink for each of us. She had a fine body, tanned all over except for the stark whiteness of her buttocks and the thin line her bra strap had made. She returned with a drink in each hand. Gave one to me and then stroked my cheek once, quite gently. She drank half her drink, still standing naked in front of me, and lit a cigarette, took in a long lungful of smoke, let it out, picked up her robe, and slipped into it. There we were, all together again, neat, orderly, employee and employer. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.

'I think Terry is with a group in Cambridge that calls itself the Ceremony of Moloch. In the past, when she would get in trouble or be freaked out on drugs or have a fight with her father, she'd run off there, and they let her stay. One of her friends told me about it.'

She'd known that when she'd called me. But she'd gotten me out here to tell me. She really didn't like her husband.

'Where in Cambridge is the Ceremony of Moloch?'

'I don't know. I don't even know if she's there, but it's all I could think of.'

'Why did Terry take off?' I didn't use her name. After copulation on the couch, Mrs. Orchard sounded a little silly. On the other hand, we were not on a 'Marion' basis.

'A fight with her father.' She didn't use my name either.

'About what?'

'What's it ever about? He sees her as an extension of his career. She's supposed to adorn his success by being what he fantasizes a daughter is. She does everything the opposite to punish him for not being what she fantasizes a father is… and probably for sleeping with me. Ever read Mourning Becomes Electra, Spenser?'

That's how she solved her problem with names; she dropped the Mister. I wondered if I should call her Orchard. I decided not to. 'Yeah, a long time ago. But is there anything you could tell me about Terry, or the Ceremony of Moloch, that might turn out useful? It is past midnight, and I've gotten a lot of exercise today.'

I think she colored very slightly. 'You are like a terrier after a rat. Nothing distracts your attention.'

'Well,' I said, 'there are things, occasionally, Marion.'

Her color got a little deeper and she smiled, but shook her head.

'I wonder,' she said. 'I wonder whether you might not have been thinking of a way to run down my dear daughter Terry, even then.'

'Then,' I said, 'I wasn't thinking of anything.'

She said, 'Maybe.'

I was silent. I was so tired it was an effort to move my mouth.

She shook her head again. 'No, there's nothing. I can't think of anything else to tell you that will help. But can you look? Can you find her?'

'I'll look,' I said. 'Did your lawyer tell you what the cops wanted?'

'No. He just said Lieutenant Quirk wanted her to come down tomorrow and talk with him some more.'

I stood up. Partly to see if I could. Marion Orchard stood up with me.

'Thank you for coming. I know you'll do your best in finding Terry. I'm sorry to have kept you up so late.' She put out her hand, and I took it. Christ, breeding. Here she was, upper crust, Boston society, yes'm. Thank you very much, ma'am, for the drink and the toss on the couch, ma'am, it's a pleasure to be of service to you and the master, ma'am. I gave her hand a squeeze. I was goddamned if I was going to shake it.

'I'll dig her up, Marion. When I do, I'll bring her home. It'll work out.'

She nodded her head silently and her face got congested-looking and red around the eyes, and I realized she was going to cry in a minute. I said, 'I'll find my way out. Try not to worry. It'll work out.'

She nodded again, and as I left the library she touched my arm but said nothing. As I closed the door behind me I could hear the first stifled sob burst out. There were more before I got out of earshot. They would probably last most of the night. I went out the front door and into the dead, still white night, got in my car, and went back to town. Every fiber of my being felt awful.

Chapter 12

It was about one thirty when I got back to my apartment. I stripped off my clothes and took a long shower, slowly easing the water temperature down to cool. In the bedroom, putting on clean clothes, I looked at the bed with something approaching lust, but I kept myself away from it. Then I went to the living room in my socks and called a guy I knew who did night duty at the Globe. I asked him where I could find the Ceremony of Moloch. He gave me an address in Cambridge. I asked him what he knew about the group.

'Small,' he said. 'Freaky. Robes and statues and candlelight. That kind of crap. Moloch was some kind of Phoenician god that required human sacrifice. In Paradise Lost, Milton lumps him in with Satan and Beelzebub among the fallen angels. That's all I know about them. We did-a feature once on the Cambridge-Boston subculture and they got about a paragraph.'

I thanked him and hung up and went back into the bedroom for my shoes. I sat down on the bed to put them on, and that was where I lost it. As long as I was up I could move, but from sitting to lying was too short a distance. I lay back, just for a minute, and went to sleep.

I woke up, in the same position, nine hours later in broad daylight, with the morning gone. I went out to the kitchen, measured out the coffee, put the electric percolator on, went back, stripped down, shaved, showered, put on my shorts, and went out to the kitchen again. The coffee was ready and I drank it with cream and sugar while I sliced peppers and tomatoes for a Spanish omelet.

I felt good. The sleep had taken care of the exhaustion. The snow had stopped, and the sunlight, magnified by reflection, was pure white as it splashed about the kitchen. I greased the omelet pan and poured the eggs in. When the inside was right I put in the vegetables and flipped the omelet. I'm very good at flipping omelets. Finding out what was happening with Terry Orchard and the Godwulf Manuscript seemed to be something I wasn't very good at.

I ate the omelet with thick slices of fresh pumpernickel and drank three more cups of coffee while I looked at the morning Globe. I felt even better. Okay, Terry Orchard, here I come. You can run, but you can't hide. I considered stopping by to frighten Joe Broz some more but rejected the plan and headed for Cambridge.

The address I had for the Ceremony of Moloch was in North Cambridge in a neighborhood of brown and gray three-decker apartment buildings with open porches across the back of each floor where laundry hung stiff in the