Salvation Boulevard

by Larry Beinhart

  “What do you know about his book?”

  “Teresa told me. She called to see if there was a copy here.”

  “Is there?”

  “No, and it was an important book. Your people thought so, enough to destroy it.”

  “Why do you say my people?”

  “Who else?”

  “How do we know?” I said, trying to be reasonable. “We don’t know what was in the book.”

  “I know.”

  “How?”

  “I read it.”

  “How? When?”

  “He used to give me pieces to read for him, as a regular person, not an academic.”

  “But you don’t have copies?”

  “No. I would mark them up, whatever I didn’t understand or didn’t like, and give them back.”

  “Why do you think my people would destroy it?”

  “Because it explained what religion, your kind of religion, really is. A false answer to the greatest human need. And your people won’t stand for that.”

  “Look, I don’t know why MacLeod hated religion—”

  “He didn’t hate it. He wanted to understand, to bring it into balance. He wanted to do something to stop the madness before it’s too late.”

  “What madness?”

  “This insane, worldwide religious war you people are trying to have. What are you going to do, kill everybody who believes different than you? Nathaniel understood you can’t kill faith. Look at us Jews. You would think after five thousand years of people killing us we would say, ‘Enough already. Look, I’m wearing a cross. Leave me alone.’ But we don’t. As long as there’s faith, people will be willing to die for it. And whenever people of faith have power, they’ll kill for it. All you can do is try to balance it with sanity and humanity. And the way you do that is by understanding that a religious war is like killing someone over who has the better imaginary friend.”

  “That’s not what we want to do,” I protested.

  “I’ve listened to your Pastor Plowright. He wants to make this a Christian nation. When that happens, do I become a second-class citizen in my own country?”

  “Come on. No. We have nothing against the Jews,” I said. How could she think that way? “CTM is a big supporter of Israel.”

  “Oh, just the Muslims then. They’ll be the second-class citizens. And the Hindus and the atheists. We’ve seen this before. England expels the Jews. The Italians invent the ghetto. The Russians send the Cossacks. Hitler creates the Final Solution. And it always starts with the burning of the books.”

  “Look, wait a minute. I can’t argue all that with you. Let’s start somewhere else. Do you want to know who really killed Nathaniel MacLeod?”

  “You bet I do,” she said fiercely.

  “Alright then. I do too,” I said, figuring to get a point of agreement and then build on it.

  “And you’re a liar,” she said with contempt. “I guess that comes with the territory.”

  “Why . . . ”

  “Teresa told me you’re off the case. So what are you really doing, Mr. Investigator? Trying to clean up the details, make sure nobody finds the truth.”

  “Esther, you know Teresa,” I said, trying to calm her down. She’d already told me that she didn’t have the highest opinion of Nathaniel’s widow. “She has her own agendas. She called me at home, on a Sunday afternoon, three times, and my wife was looking at me like ‘who’s that?’ So I told Teresa I wasn’t working on the case. At least not for her. Am I right about Teresa?” I got a grudging look of agreement. “Can you understand why I would say that to her?”

  “Maybe,” she said grudgingly.

  Having opened the door a little bit, I thought I’d try to deal with the rest. I said, “And I think you’re wrong about, ‘us.’ I know those people. They’re good people, people who want to do good.”

  “Of course, they’re good people. Everybody wants to think they’re good. You can’t get thousands of people to do evil unless you first convince them it’s a good thing. Do you think the 9/11 bombers thought they were doing evil? No, they thought they were doing good. Your people scare me because they’re so damn sure they’re doing good.”

  “Esther, let’s bring it back to Nathaniel. Are you going to find out who killed him? Are you equipped to do that?”

  “That’s for the police to do.”

  “They have their suspect. He’s been arraigned. They’re done.”

  “But now Teresa can go to them,” she said. “With the new evidence, about the book, and they’ll . . . ”

  “Don’t kid yourself. Some detective has signed off on Nazami’s confession. And he’s not going to admit he’s wrong. The whole department, the whole system, is invested in that cop being right. They’re done.”

  “The university?” I went on. “A murder on campus, the quicker it’s over, the quicker it’s forgotten. No one cares. So, you know what? If you care about Nathaniel, I’m all you got.”

  “Why do you care?” she asked.

  The best way to question someone is by playing good cop, bad cop. Everyone’s seen it a million times on TV, but it works like a charm. There were plenty of bad cops in the room, five thousand years worth of them. I had to separate myself from them and become the good cop.

  What made them bad? Certainty, righteousness and certainty. Just like in the interrogation room.

  The way you reach out is by offering the person a piece of yourself so they’ll think you’ll understand. And Esther was right. I’d hardly ever met a suspect who didn’t want to think of themselves as good, and being understood allowed them that.

  What could I offer that would make me the good cop? Doubt, doubt and confusion.

  I sat down. I said, “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking and thinking about why, and I could give you a whole list of reasons, but the truth is I don’t know.”

  “Truth is,” I went on, “I have a whole list of reasons why I shouldn’t do this, why I should quit. I tried to. But I found myself going to my office and putting together some pictures. Voting with my feet. And here I am, in your office, trying to get you to pick one out . . . and really, if you won’t help, I’ll start asking questions around campus and find someone who will.”

  “And if it turns out that it is your people who did this? What then?”

  I shrugged. “Then it goes where it goes. If you’ll look at the pictures, we’ll find out if there’s a link between ‘my people,’ and MacLeod.”

  “And you’re not afraid of that? It doesn’t bother you?”

  “Yeah, it bothers me. It bothers me a lot. More than can I say.”

  “Alright, show me the pictures.”

  I gave her the DVD. She put it in her computer. It whirled around for a couple of seconds, then the pictures came up, and she began to click through them. Along about the fifth, she said, “They all look so alike,” and added, “That must be how your pastor likes them.”

  She looked to me for a reaction. I didn’t give her much of one, though maybe she was right.

  She peered at each one doubtfully, like she really couldn’t see much difference, and I began to wonder how good a witness she was. Suddenly she stopped and said, “That’s her. And there, there’s the little cross she wore. I thought I remembered that.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked her.

  “Absolutely, no question. Who is she? What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know yet.” I said. “That’s the next step.”

  “Find out. Find out the truth,” she said urgently.

  “Let me ask you something,” I said. “Before you said religion is a false answer to the greatest human need. What did you mean?”

  “Nathaniel said that our greatest need is to understand what the world means in relation to ourselves. It’s ahead of all the others because if we can’t figure what food is, what’s up and down, or what sex is, we’ll eat dirt, walk off cliffs, and try to do it with trees.

  “We come to a point where there are no answers.
Why are we here? Why do we die? Things like that. The real answers—‘I don’t know,’ ‘it’s just accident,’ ‘the universe doesn’t care; it’ll get along just fine without us’—don’t answer the question, which is, what does it mean in relation to me, me, me? That causes us pain. That’s how our needs work. They push with pain, and when they’re satisfied, we feel good.

  “But if there is no answer, what do you do with the pain? If a false answer kills the pain, you’ll take it, like any other pain killer. And it will feel good. So good we can’t ever give it up.”

  “And that’s from MacLeod?”

  “Yes, that’s what he said.”

  “And did he offer something better?”

  “He tried. I liked it. You might not. Find the book, and you can read it for yourself.”

  33

  Understanding that I had made a decision made me feel almost euphoric. It could turn out to be the wrong decision, even a disastrous one. But that didn’t seem to matter.

  Nathaniel MacLeod and his number one disciple, Esther Rabinowitz, might have explained it as brain chemistry. They might have said that a state of indecision creates chemicals that make us uncomfortable in order to push us into choosing, and then, when the choice is made, those chemicals go away, that pain goes away, and it’s replaced by a chemical reward. Everybody with their own internal dope dealer.

  Interesting theory. Whether it was right or not, when I sat down to dinner with Gwen and Angie, I looked at them and was filled with love. When we said grace, I felt the grace of God’s love and of having a family, and I felt gratitude for being together and having food and a home.

  “We have to spend more time together,” I said to Angie out of the closeness I felt.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “What’ll we do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” my daughter said in a kind of awkward but pleased way. What do you do with your dad?

  “Help you with your homework, with school projects maybe?”

  She didn’t look exactly thrilled about that. “Well, Mom helps me a lot,” she said. “And I’m doing pretty well anyway.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I never liked it when my parents, all four different ones, tried to help me with school. Which wasn’t very often and just turned into them telling me what I was doing wrong. Or them getting frustrated because they understood the material even less than I did.

  “We could play basketball together,” I said.

  The two of them looked at me as if I’d said the lamest thing in history. My only excuse was that she used to like basketball, and we did play together sometimes, but that had faded fast with the arrival of puberty. Now she was a cheerleader. Something I didn’t know how to do.

  “Alright, alright, alright,” I said.

  “And where are you going to find the time?” Gwen said.

  “It’s important,” I said. “I’ll find the time.”

  “And work?”

  Our mortgage, health insurance—which is huge—car payments, Angie’s school fees—in spite of the discount we get because Gwen works at CTM—the phones, the cable TV, the credit cards, my business expenses, tithing, and all the secular taxes—it goes on and on. We make it, but I have to put in a lot of hours to make it.

  “Hey,” I said, “you want to come to work with me sometime?”

  “Yeah, cool,” Angie said.

  “Do you think that’s actually a good idea?” Gwen asked.

  “Come on, Gwen, you know that what I do isn’t what’s on TV. I mostly look things up, deliver papers, interview witnesses, maybe find people.”

  Angie looked disappointed. She wanted it be exciting, of course.

  “She’d be in the way.”

  “We could try it some time and if didn’t work, then . . . ” I shrugged. We’d drop it. “But it might be fun.”

  “Yeah, Mom,” Angie said.

  “Fine,” Gwen said. “If it’s what you two want. But you’ll be careful?”

  “Of course,” I said. I would never take her out if I thought anything remotely dangerous would happen. Then I said to Angie, “The next day you’re off school, and I’m working, you’ll come with me. Alright?”

  “Yes, Dad,” she said to me with a smile that made me melt.

  “And besides,” I said to Gwen. “You do more than your fair share. I should do more.”

  “You do fine,” she said, but I could see that she was pleased.

  We had pie and whipped cream for dessert.

  I’d printed out the captured image of MacLeod’s “little angel.” I couldn’t go up to CTM and start asking, who’s this girl? In the circumstance, there was no one up there I could trust. But I could trust Gwen, who worked with the choir regularly and knew them all and most of the gossip.

  After we did the dishes, and while Angie was in her room doing her homework, I showed the picture to Gwen and asked, “Can you tell me who this is? I think she’s in the choir.”

  “Nicole Chandler,” she said instantly, with a tone of annoyance.

  “You don’t like her?”

  It was nothing that serious. “She missed her last four rehearsals and the last two services. Without a call, or a by your leave. Just didn’t show up. It’s inconsiderate.”

  “Do you know much about her?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Could you do me a favor? Get her address and phone and such for me. Even ask around if anything’s up with her.”

  “Is she the runaway?”

  “No. But she might have something to do with it. But she might not. And if I start asking around, people will immediately make more of it than maybe they should. I don’t want that to happen. For a bunch of reasons. So don’t say anything to anyone. Just, you know, ‘What’s up with Nicole? Is she ever going to show up for rehearsals?’ Just casual, normal, alright?”

  “Of course. I can do that. I’ve been dying to play PI with you. But I have to take Angie for her checkup tomorrow.”

  “Oh, let me do it. I have to go downtown anyway. It’s practically on the way. I can drop her off, take care of my business, and then pick her up. Give me a chance to spend time with her.”

  “That’s a good idea. I’m glad you want to do that.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “What do you have to do downtown?”

  “William Thatcher Grantham III of Grantham, Glume, Wattly, and Goldfarb called to inform me that my services are no longer needed. I mean on the Nazami thing. It was Manny’s case, and they’re dropping it. I have to give them my final bill. I figured it would be better to, you know, drop by, remind them that I’m friendly and useful. They pay top dollar.”

  “But you’re done working on it?”

  “I don’t have a client,” I said.

  “What if his new lawyer wants you to keep on it?”

  “He’s gonna get a court-appointed,” I said with a shrug. We don’t have public defenders here. The court appoints from a pool of lawyers willing to work for $35 an hour, $45 an hour in court. The quality of their work is related to the rate of compensation. People who know defense lawyers just from TV and books—super clever, fully strategic, with knowledge of the law, doing research and calling experts—have no idea of what the realities are. Most of those guys handle a case the way a cook at McDonald’s assembles your order, except if you asked them to hold the onions, they’d screw it up.

  If your life depends on it, rob a liquor store so you can pay a good lawyer.

  Indigent defendants are entitled to a defense. To do that adequately, if the facts are at all in question, means they are entitled to an investigator too. In recognition of that reality, the state will pay for one. The state has set our compensation rate at $10 an hour. You can do better working at a Cumberland Farms convenience store. At least that comes with benefits, sick days, unemployment insurance, and worker’s comp.

  There are some old guys who have full pensions from something else and do a decent job. But I can’t afford government wages. With
one exception: working as a licensed crime scene investigator, which I am. That comes under the expert witness category, and the rate is $125 an hour. And that’s just fine. But that wasn’t what was at issue in the Nazami case.

  “I mean, even if I were willing to work on it, who would pay me?” I asked. An excellent point. Who was going to pay me? “So that’s it. Kid meets with his new lawyer, five, ten minutes maybe. Lawyer calls the DA. They make the deal. And it’s all over. It’s gone and we can all forget about it.”

  34

  I was headed down the interstate with Angie beside me.

  I asked her who her favorite friends were in school. She named them, and I asked her what they were like. Her best friend, Cynthia, had started getting into trouble, challenging the teachers about biblical things. Her latest offense was passing around a list of the sex stories in the Bible. How Abraham passed off his wife as his sister and let other men marry her—twice! And the one about Lot and his daughters. My daughter couldn’t bring herself to say more than that since the story is that each of them, in turn, got their father drunk and then went and had sex with him and even got pregnant by him.

  “And she even said,” Angie was letting me in on something shocking, “that marriage in the Bible is not between one man and one woman. It’s between one man and as many as he can get.”

  “Well,” I said. “Well. Hmmm. Is she in a lot of trouble for that?”

  “Yea-ahhh.”

  “Making her parents crazy, is she?”

  “Yea-ahhh.”

  “Any other signs of rebellion in the ranks?” I asked.

  “Dress code,” she said, nodding wisely, as if to say, what can you expect from adolescent girls?

  “Um,” I said.

  Then she said, “Thanks, Dad.”

  “For what?”

  “Saying you would take me with you to work.”

  “Hey, I’m looking forward to it,” I said. “But you may find it boring.”

  “That’s okay.”

  We were close enough, and the moment was relaxed enough, that I decided to talk about something difficult that had been on my mind. “Your, um, mother . . . Jeanette.”

  “She’s not my mother. Gwen’s my mother.”