“You and your wife …” Lundeen started, but I interrupted him.
“You have witnesses, Sergeant,” I said, knowing where we would get before we got there.
“Witnesses,” said Preston, moving back to the railing. “The plasterer fell. No one was there. The Bartholomew woman might be having her period or something and you, you’re getting paid to hear voices and find murder weapons. Five will get you ten that’s not human blood on that ax.”
“It’s not,” Sunset agreed.
“Show business people have imaginations,” said Preston. “I’ll give you that.”
That was about the time Raymond returned and asked, “I miss anything?”
“The 1930s,” I said.
Preston chuckled. “You got a sense of humor,” he said. “I like that Let’s go, Al.”
“Let’s … that’s it?” asked Lundeen, looking at me. “What about protection? Investiga … Why don’t you go down and question everyone?”
“Not the way it works,” said Preston, nodding to Sunset to head for the door. “Put a little evidence together here. A body or two with a bullet or knife wound and we’ll talk business. You,” he continued, pointing at me. “Come with us for a second.”
I followed the two cops out into the hall. Raymond started to follow but was waved back in by Sunset, who closed the door with one hand and held the ax with the other. He didn’t seem to be worrying about blood or fingerprints anymore. He lifted the ax up like a bat and began to swing at pitches from a Yankee down the hall. Preston came close enough so that I could smell his Sen-Sen.
“Peters,” he said. “Cut the shit. Tell these people to get their publicity some other way besides finding phantoms.”
“No shit here, Preston,” I said.
“We wouldn’t even be here if the Captain wasn’t afraid Stokowski would raise a stink,” he said. “And I don’t want to come back. We understand each other?”
“You want a murder,” I said.
“It helps,” he agreed. “Aren’t you a little old for this kind of garbage?”
“Aren’t you a little old to still be a sergeant?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Wife thinks it’s the name. You know, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. Thinks the Captain won’t put me in for a promotion because he likes making the joke. I don’t contradict the wife, but the truth is I’m a mediocre cop waiting to collect pension. That’s just between you and me, right? I don’t want trouble.”
“Picked a strange profession,” I said.
“Poor vocational counseling,” he agreed. “Sunset should have been a ballplayer.”
We looked at the smiling Sunset wacking an imaginary homer into the right-field stands.
“But he took shrapnel in his shoulder back in the Battle of Midway,” Preston whispered. “He’ll just have to settle for being a cop.”
“Look,” Sunset said. “Mel Ott.” He set his feet wide apart and held the ax up high.
“You see where Branch Rickey just announced that the Dodgers were paying the Phils thirty thousand for Rube Melton? I could hit Melton. I could hit any right-hander last year.”
“I know,” Preston said. “Let’s get back to work. Crime is running rampant in the streets.”
That had been three hours earlier. They left, Lundeen sighed, then found Gwen and went down to interview the company and workmen.
It was a little after four when I left Lundeen, assuring him that the opera company was in good hands.
On the way down from Lundeen’s office I listened for footsteps, butterflies, and music, but heard none.
Raymond caught me in the lower lobby.
“Big nose and beard, little pointy red beard,” he said, stroking an imaginary beard under his chin.
“The Phantom?” I asked, walking on.
“Damned right,” he said.
“I thought you didn’t get out much?” I said.
“Not much,” he said, gangling after me as I hit the doors to the outside.
“That’s the description of the Phantom the opera director gives in the movie,” I said.
“Coincidence,” said Raymond.
“Why you wearing a shirt and tie and overalls, Raymond?” I tried.
He looked down at himself as if this were startling news.
“Want to look my best,” he said. “Make a good impression. Big things going on. Good-looking women. Want to keep working here when they pack up and leave.”
“You don’t think the opera is staying?” I asked, opening the door and looking down. One of the old lady pickets was gone, but the old man and the other woman were still holding their placards high.
“Nope,” Raymond said. “Smell funny in here to you?”
I sniffed.
“Plastery-like,” Raymond went on with a shiver. “Building liked itself the way it was. It was sleeping peaceful. Now they’re waking it up. It’ll get all this dust in its ducts and sneeze everyone out of here.”
“Except you,” I said.
“Probably,” he agreed. “I know places to get a good hold when the sneezing starts.”
“You’re a poet, Raymond.”
“Creativity runs in the family,” he said. “Father was a trumpet player. Got me my job here back when I came back from fighting Villa. Goin’ to rain.”
“Looks like,” I said. Raymond ducked back into the building, and I went down the steps right toward the old man with the placard.
“Got a question,” I said to him when I reached the sidewalk.
He was wary, but any attention was better than what he was getting from the departing workers. The old woman looked at me hopefully and put down her sign.
“Got an answer,” the old man said. “And the answer is quit this place and help convince others to do the same.”
“Wrong answer,” I said. “You mentioned a Reverend …?”
“… Souvaine,” the old woman piped in.
The old man gave her a look of distinct rebuke.
“I am the on-site spokesman, Cynthia,” he said to her.
Cynthia looked properly put in her place.
“I’m sorry, Sloane,” she said.
“The Reverend Souvaine is the spearhead of God in the battle against the godless,” said the old man, looking up to God with a small, knowing smile. God spat a few drops in his face.
“Getting God and politics a little mixed up, aren’t you?” I asked.
“They are, as the Reverend Souvaine points out, inseparable,” said the old man, looking at the woman, who nodded her approval.
“How do I find the Reverend?” I asked.
“He does not hide,” said the man.
“Amen,” said the woman.
A pair of women leaving the Opera looked over at us, then pretended to return to an absorbing conversation.
“Where doesn’t he hide? Where do I find him?”
“Church of the Enlightened Patriots,” replied Sloane. He reached into his back pocket and came out with a crumpled sheet of paper announcing an open meeting at the church. The date had passed, but the address and telephone number were there.
“Think it would be a good idea to get the lady off the street and get her a glass of iced tea?” I suggested. “It’s starting to rain.”
The man cocked his head to one side and looked at me with new eyes. The madness passed.
“The work of the church is Cynthia’s and my life,” he said softly. “It gives us meaning, purpose. Cynthia has not been well and doesn’t have … We will stay till there is no one left in the building whose mind and soul we might still touch by the truth.”
