'Go away,' Sister Zachary said at the door. In the bright morning light her fat face was bumpy and pitted, as though there were loose gravel beneath the skin. The tentlike dress was crumpled and dirty.
'Mrs. Jenks,' I said, 'it's either me or Homicide. You and Jinks may have even fewer choices in the immediate future.'
'Homicide?' she said, not even noticing the use of her name. 'What's Homicide got to do with it?'
'They haven't traced Sally Oldfield here yet. They'll be real curious when they do.'
'Why shouldn't she come here?' she said defiantly.
'Even more interesting, why should you two and Jinks lie about it?'
She caught the name this time. Her face stiffened. Her features were all squeezed tightly into its center, making her look like the end of a cigar that's been crimped and bitten off.
'What do you know about Jinks?'
'Not as much as I'll know in fifteen minutes.'
'We told you she didn't come.'
'And I know differently. Now, are we all going to sit down for a chat, or am I going to come back with the cops?'
'You're going to get us into trouble,' she said childishly.
'I certainly hope so.'
'I don't mean the cops. We're used to cops.'
She wavered irresolutely while the morning traffic on Vermont puttered north and south behind me. 'I'm not going anywhere,' I said. 'I'm not the kind of problem that disappears if you don't think about it. Come on, let's go talk to Jinks.'
She decided. She tipped her two hundred pounds left, swayed, and then lurched to the right, hauling the door open as she went. I followed her, closed the door behind me, and snapped the lock.
Wilburforce was right where we'd left him, sitting on the edge of his desk. He had an accountant's ledger on his lap and he looked up, startled, as Sister Zachary waddled swiftly into the room with me in panting pursuit.
'Counting souls?' I said, sitting down in the same uncomfortable chair.
'What? What?' he said a little wildly. He sounded like an outboard motor. 'Oh, souls, I see. Souls, indeed. A little newspaperman's joke.' He summoned up a rheumatic chuckle from the lower depths.
'Newspaperman, my ass,' Sister Zachary said. 'He just threatened me with the cops.'
'You're not a newspaper reporter?' Affronted innocence flooded his eyes.
'So we all lied a little,' I said. 'You didn't tell me about Sally Oldfield, and I didn't tell you I was a detective.'
His eyes got very small and he looked over at Sister Zachary, who was sulking in the corner. 'Show me your buzzer,' he said.
'I don't have a buzzer, Jinks,' I said, reaching for the book. He was quicker than I was. He slammed the ledger shut and placed it carefully on the desk behind him.
'That was a former life,' he said with an air of great dignity. 'That person no longer exists. And if you haven't got a buzzer you're not a detective, are you?'
'I'm a private detective.'
'Well,' he exhaled, giving me the false choppers from ear to ear, 'then I don't have to talk to you. You might as well be a Campfire Girl.'
'Wrong. You're withholding evidence in a murder investigation. I'm involved in that investigation in a semiofficial capacity.'
'Semi,' he said, with a blinding grin. 'A miss, as they say, is as good as a mile.'
'And the Homicide cops,' I said, smiling back at him, 'are as near as your phone.'
'He knows she was here,' Sister Zachary said. 'Stop farting around, Jinks. He knows she was here.'
'My dear,' Jinks said reprovingly. 'Language, language. Remember what Malagrida said. 'Language was given to man to conceal his thoughts.' '
'Who was Malagrida?' I asked in spite of myself.
'I don't have the faintest idea. Stendhal quotes it in a chapter heading for The Red and the Black.'
'That must be a useful book in your profession.'
'We can all learn from Julien,' he said sententiously. 'It's a young man's education in the ways of the world, really. It's not Julien's fault that the world's machinery is oiled with religious hypocrisy. There's a lesson in it for all of us.'
'This is fascinating,' I said. 'If we had the rest of the morning we could probably get through The Charterhouse of Parma too. But we don't. I know Sally Oldfield was here, and I know that you-both of you-went to some lengths to convince me that she wasn't. I want to know why you lied and I want to know what happened here.'
'I don't mean to be thick,' he said, 'but could you explain again why we shouldn't just throw you out?'
'No. Mrs. Jenks here just indicated that the cops were no worry compared to-what? — the Church?'
'You didn't,' Jenks said, stricken. Sister Zachary gave him a sullen shrug.
'As far as I'm concerned, you can have them both,' I said. 'Talk to me, and I'll try to see that you only get the cops.'
'Un embarras de richesses,' Jenks said bitterly in second-year French. 'We have a nice little life here. We're not breaking any laws, we're not hurting anyone. I haven't performed surgery in years, not even an appendectomy. The nearest hypodermic is probably down on the sidewalk. Why should you come along all of a sudden and ruin everything?'
'Ask Sally Oldfield.'
'She's dead,' Jenks said promptly.
'Precisely.'
'Oh,' he said. Then, after a minute he said, 'She was just a girl.'
'She found out something about the Church. She came to you. What did she say?'
Husband and wife exchanged a long, fraudulent look. 'Who told you she came here?' Sister Zachary said at last.
'Forget it. I want to know what happened.'
'It doesn't seem fair,' he said.
I got up, and both their heads snapped up to follow me. Their chins and sub-chins quivered.
'Listen,' I said. 'As Mrs. Jenks said, stop farting around. Who was it? Who'd she find out something about?'
'Merryman,' Mrs. Jenks said. She pronounced the name very quickly, as though it were something she had to get out of her mouth before she tasted it. 'It was Merryman.' Jenks looked at her as though she were Benedict Arnold.
'My dear,' he said.
'Oh, shut up,' she snapped venomously. 'Which do you want, the cops or the Church? It was that crap doctor.'
'What did she find out?'
'We didn't ask,' Jenks said. 'We didn't want to know.'
'They'd known each other somewhere,' Mrs. Jenks plowed stubbornly on. 'Or she'd known him, anyway. She recognized him from somewhere, and she was dismayed. She was crying.'
I looked around the office, picturing Jenks, or Wilburforce, sitting fatly behind his desk and Sally crying. She'd run here. Of all the places in Los Angeles, of all the places in the world, she'd run here.
'You didn't ask what she'd learned?'
'As I said,' Jenks repeated, 'we didn't want to know. We've had our little experience with Dr. Merryman, thank you. He's nobody you want to fool around with, unless you're a snake charmer. And even then, you'd have to be careful. We wanted no part of it. Did we, dear?' he asked Sister Zachary.
'Not an iota,' she said.
'So tell me about Merryman.'
Jenks looked, if possible, even less comfortable. 'He's Angel's physician,' he said. 'Although my guess is that
