I ran five miles in the softest sand I could find and then headed uphill toward Santa Monica. By the time I got back down to Alice, I knew what I wanted to say to Ambrose Harker. I had a lot of general questions about the surveillance, and a lot of specific questions about Sally Oldfield. It was pretty clear that most of what I'd been told was goop, pure and simple, and I thought the police would be interested in it. Enjoying the prospect of ruining Harker's day, I jumped into a cold wave and washed the sweat off before driving to UCLA for a long sauna.
All of what Eleanor calls the toxins had been sweated out of my system by the time I gave my name to the guard at Monument Records. He checked the list and directed me to Harker's office on the eighth floor, higher than the hoi polloi but well below the upper-executive stratosphere.
The secretary with the lovely voice weighed two hundred chocolate-ridden pounds. The terrible thing was that her face was so beautiful and that her smile could have illuminated Century City. A wedding ring cut deeply into her finger. Maybe it was the man's fault. For lack of anything better to do, I sat on the couch and picked up a copy of Record World.
A buzzer on her desk did its thing. 'He'll be right out,' she said, with her incandescent smile.
Ambrose Harker strode out of his office door looking grim and businesslike. He didn't extend his hand.
'Okay,' he said. 'What's all this crap about the cops?'
I knew I was supposed to say something, but I couldn't, because my mouth was hanging wide open. I'd never seen Ambrose Harker in my life.
Chapter 5
Big Sur is a long way from anywhere, and that's where it should be. If it were any closer it would look like the rest of the world.
As it is, it looks like Big Sur: cliffs overhanging the grayest Pacific on earth, Monterey cypresses perched on fragile spits of land, defying gravity to dangle their gray-green needles over the eternal churn of the sea. It's so perfect that a Hollywood boy like me expects a credit roll scrolling above the horizon. Scenic designer: God. Special effects: the Apostles, and so forth.
Only two kinds of people lived there, rich straights and poor crazies. As I steered a rented car out of Carmel airport at five p.m., I had no idea which kind I was going to see.
I'd made an embarrassed exit from Ambrose Harker's office, thinking about calling the cops, but to give them what? They already had Needle-nose's description from the motel, they already had the license number of his stolen car, they already had the number of times he and Sally had been there. What I had was a client who didn't exist and a burning sense of having been suckered.
They didn't have Sally's name, but they'd get that quickly enough. And if they didn't, I might be able to use it as a bargaining chip for a fact or two.
I also had the fact that Skippy Miller had recommended me for the job. And that was all I had. A poor thing, but mine own.
Cypress Grove was a conference center located in the center square of God's country. On a map of paradise, it would have been C-3. I hiked down the hill from the parking lot through a stiff November sea breeze, to Reception. WELCOME, the banner read, THE CHURCH OF THE ETERNAL MOMENT IS HERE AND NOW. Beneath the banner was a long Formica table at which were seated two identically gray-costumed individuals wearing Chinese cadre jackets that Mao wouldn't have sneered at. The nameplates in front of them read LISTENER DOOLEY and LISTENER SIMPSON. Listener Dooley was a red-faced Irishman with the kind of highly weathered nose that, when it occurs in fur-bearing species, causes taxidermists to look for new materials; Listener Simpson was about twenty- four and very pretty. Listener Dooley was snoring gently, which made it easier to follow my instincts and choose Listener Simpson.
'Welcome to the present,' Listener Simpson said. Her eyes were a disconcerting shade of ice-blue. Behind her hung a beautifully lit color photograph of a woman and a little girl of eleven or twelve. The little girl's blond hair cascaded down over the shoulders of her immaculate white dress.
'It's kind of hard to escape from the present,' I said. 'People spend millions trying to do it. Looks like Listener Dooley's managed.'
Listener Simpson's cool blue eyes flicked down to a photocopied sheet in front of her and her voice cooled a couple of degrees. 'Are you expected?' she asked.
'Anything can happen in the present. 'Expected' is sort of future tense, don't you think?'
'I think that you don't understand the present,' she said without looking up. 'Everything is here and everything is now. Could I have your name, please?'
'Grist,' I said. 'But you won't find it there. I'm looking for Skippy Miller.'
'Mr. Miller is here.'
'And now. Can someone tell him I'm also here? Now?'
Her eyes engaged mine and held them. 'That depends,' she said, 'on what you want, and on whether he'll want to see you.'
'He'll see me whether he wants to or not.' She didn't look away, and neither did I. 'He owes me a few. A six- pack, at least.'
'He's in Listening,' she said. She was still staring straight into my eyes. 'He won't be free until seven-fifteen, just before the Revealing.'
'That's about an hour.'
'As you say.' It was one of the most noncommittal responses I'd ever provoked. 'Whom shall I say wants to see him?'
'Whom? Simeon Grist.'
She turned a pad of paper toward me. It said public church business at the top. 'Could you please print that?' she said.
'Hell,' I said, 'I could probably even write it.'
'We'd prefer printing.' She gave me a tiny public-relations smile. 'For the sake of clarity.'
'Ah, clarity,' I said, doing as I was told, 'we worship at thy shrine.'
Listener Simpson pushed a button at her right hand and the door behind her opened to admit a clear-eyed fifteen-year-old girl wearing tight black jeans, a blouse of Chinese-checker red, and a pair of seventy-dollar Reeboks. She surreptitiously shifted a wad of chewing gum to her cheek as she approached the table. Simpson scrawled something on the bottom of the page I'd printed my name on, glanced at her watch, and noted the time in the lower-right-hand corner. 'This is for Mr. Miller,' she said. 'He'll come out of Listening in 12A in forty-six minutes. He's to choose whether he wishes to come here or not.'
'Yes, Listener,' the girl said around her gum. 'Should I make a copy before I deliver it?'
'Of course,' Listener Simpson said a little peevishly. 'If it's not in the files it doesn't exist,' she added with the air of one repeating a well-worn dictum. The girl didn't look particularly grateful for the advice. She let out a world-weary sigh and left the room as though she were happy to be out of it, cracking her gum as the door closed behind her.
'Kids,' Listener Simpson said to herself. Listener Dooley emitted a sympathetic snore.
'You were probably like that once,' I said. 'All energy and no direction.'
She gave me a grave look and then shook her head. 'I was worse,' she said. 'I don't know why nobody killed me.'
'Children seem to be important to the church. Kids as couriers, the little girl on the poster behind you.'
'Children are important to every Church. Like them or not, they're the messengers to the future. 'Suffer the little children to come unto me.' Jesus was only one of the religious leaders who realized that children were essential.'
'A high-priority demographic group.'
She weighed it for a second. 'A little bald, but accurate. It's probably better than sentimentalizing them.'
'Tell me about the Church.'
'I'm not qualified. I can only tell you a few things, and those are more what we're not than they are what we
