The Four Last Things

by Timothy Hallinan

“The study will be fine,” I said. Brooks nodded curtly.

  “It's such a lovely room,” Adelaide Brooks said. “So masculine. Merry calls it his Think Room.” Brooks colored slightly. “All right, then. You men run along and figure out a way to make lots and lots of money. Call me if you change your mind about a drink, Mr. Grist.”

  I said I would, and Brooks and I marched in silence down a short hallway and into a room that could have belonged only to a lawyer. The furniture brooded there in heavy conspiracy: a massive wooden desk, red leather chairs, mahogany end tables, and books of exactly the same size and color ponderously lining three of the dark walnut walls. Brooks started to sit behind the desk, but I shook my head and gestured him toward one of the armchairs. He sat sullenly and I closed the door.

  For a long time I just stood there looking at him. “Well,” I finally said. “Domestic bliss. The little lady. Embroidery. And Merry, no less.” His blush deepened. “So,” I said, “here we are in the Think Room, Merry. What do you think about it all?”

  “She doesn't know anything,” he said.

  “No, I don't imagine she does. She probably thinks you're a real lawyer.”

  “I am a real lawyer. May I take my hands out of my pockets now?”

  “It's your Think Room. Do what you like. No, you're not a real lawyer. You're a fungus with a wardrobe. You're running a gigantic blackmail racket, sucking blood out of people who need help. Poor, frightened, lost little people who don't know where to turn, so they come to you. And you squeeze them dry, don't you? You move them up the levels of Listening, pulping more money out of them every week. You tape everything they say and you file it for future use. You pervert little girls to turn them into ventriloquist's dummies because it's good show business. And you kill people.”

  “I guide the Church in its investments,” he said stubbornly, slouching deeper into his chair. “I provide legal advice. I serve on the board of directors. I serve on many boards of directors.”

  “Come on,” I said. “You run the money and Merryman runs the Speakers. You help out with the Speakers sometimes too, don't you?”

  “No,” he said tightly.

  “Caleb Ellspeth wouldn't agree with you.”

  Brooks sat up suddenly at the sound of Ellspeth's name. His eyes wandered nervously over the rows of law books.

  “Looking for a precedent?” I said. “There isn't one. This is about as shitty as it gets.”

  “I haven't killed anybody.”

  “No. You wouldn't have the guts. That's a fine point anyway. You've profited from their deaths. I imagine you'd qualify as an accessory.”

  He gripped the arms of his chair tightly and made an enormous effort to stand up. “I have nothing to say,” he said.

  I leaned over, put my fingertips on his chest, and pushed gently. He fell back into the seat. “Fine,” I said. “Let's call Adelaide in and we can continue our discussion.”

  His mouth opened and closed several times. He looked like a fish snapping at something. “You can't,” he said at last.

  “What did you think? Did you think you could swim through the scum all day and then come home and shower it off? Did you think nothing would ever come in through the front door with you? You've been tracking it across the rug for years, Merry. You're covered in it. That's why your face shines.”

  He rubbed his chin. “It's Merryman,” he said.

  “That's what everybody tells me. It's always Merryman. The really awful thing is that you might actually have gotten away with it if the two of you hadn't gotten even more greedy. Merry and Merryman, the Gold Dust Twins. Except that both of you wanted to run the whole show, didn't you? Like a couple of big blue horseflies dive-bombing each other over a pile of shit. And Sally Oldfield got caught in the middle.”

  Brooks slowly closed his eyes. He kept them closed while I counted to fourteen. Then he opened them again and looked at me.

  “What's your deal?” he said.

  “Who says I have a deal? Maybe I'm just God's flyswatter. I liked Sally Oldfield. I never talked to her, but I liked her. She should be in the living room right now, chatting with Adelaide. Adelaide would have liked her too.”

  “Keep Adelaide out of it.”

  “No way in the world.” I shrugged sympathetically. “Poor Adelaide,” I said.

  “If you didn't want a deal you wouldn't be here,” he said. “If you know all you seem to know, why not take it to the police? Why talk to me?”

  “I wanted to get a chance to see you up close. People like you don't come along all that often.”

  He turned his attention back to the books. He rubbed his chin in an abstracted fashion. “Who's your client?” he finally asked.

  It had taken him long enough. “Haven't got one,” I said. “I thought maybe you were.”

  He looked a little more self-assured. He rubbed his hands over his thighs and then straightened the crease in his pants. “What's your fee?” he said.

  I cocked my head and looked at him appraisingly. He returned the gaze.

  “One million dollars,” I said.

  He didn't blink. “For what?”

  “For keeping you out of it. For going away. What do you think it's for?”

  “For going away,” he repeated. “For closing down completely.”

  “In cash,” I said.

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  “Small bills.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said again. “Nothing bigger than a twenty.”

  “Fine,” I said. I put out my hand, and after a moment, he shook it.

  “I'll need some insurance,” he said.

  “For example.”

  “I imagine you have a license.” The Brooks I'd first met was back. He got up and began to pace. “I need to know what you've got and how you got it. Then I'll need a signed statement that makes it clear that you've violated a number of laws in obtaining your information and keeping it from the police. We may have to add a few things to it to give it weight, but you'll sign it anyway, for a million dollars. You'll have me, I'll have you. I go to jail, you go to jail.”

  “Fair enough. But one thing at a time. I tell you what I know tonight. We can draft the statement tonight. But you don't get a signature until you hand me the million and I've counted it.”

  He gave me a small, malicious smile. “Counting it will take quite some time,” he said.

  I returned his smile. “I figure it'll come out to about ten thousand an hour.”

  He went to the desk and took out a yellow legal pad and an automatic pencil. “Begin,” he said peremptorily. “I'll take notes and we can draft the statement from them.” He clicked the pencil twice and looked critically at the point. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Do you want that drink?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Bring it in a bucket.”

  “Scotch?” He was mein host to his fingertips.

  “Unblended.”

  “Of course,” he said. He went to the door, opened it, and left with a whisper of woolen slacks.

  I passed a few minutes looking at the spines of the law books. There it was, the law in all its indifferent, magisterial glory, referenced and cross-referenced, a legacy of protection for the individual that marched in a straight line from Athens and the Roman Codification through the Magna Carta, the Age of Enlightenment, the Revolution, and more than two hundred years of earnest attempts to right injustice. Human rights, citizens' rights, government's rights, property rights, equal rights, civil rights, women's rights, even animal rights. All of it printed and proofread, handsomely bound and numbered to fill the shelves of men and women who could defend it or destroy it. The books didn't care who used them. They were as indifferent as the law.

  Brooks came back in carrying a rattan tray with two large perspiring cut-glass tumblers on it. “Here we are,” he said, laying it carefully down on the desk to avoid scratching the surface. He picked up his drink. ”Tally-ho,” he said, clinking it against mine.

  I couldn't bring myself to say tally-h
o, so I just nodded and drank.

  Brooks put his glass down and picked up the pencil. “Let's start,” he said.

  I moved aimlessly around the room as I talked, picking up pipes, paperweights, awards, mementos, and the other flotsam and jetsam that bobs to the surface of a man's den. Other than my voice, the only sound in the study was Brooks's pencil gouging into the pad and an occasional muted expletive when the point broke.

  “Eight or nine years ago, you must have had it all pretty much your way,” I said. “However Anna did it, whether she really was a channel, or a schizophrenic or whatever, it was easy to manage. She pretty much did it on cue, and there was only Wilburforce to contend with. And we both know that Wilburforce was no match for you. He's all pressure points. He is that rarest of creatures, a total fraud. There's not a real thing about him.

  “But then Anna died, or Merryman killed her. That's one murder, if it was a murder, that I know you had nothing to do with. It put you into a real quandary, didn't it? The Church was up and running, cranking out money day and night, and you had no Speaker. Where was all the doctrine supposed to come from? What was the authority for Listening? Where was the glamour? Did Merryman kill her?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “This is your story.”

  “So it is. So there you are, with the best idea for making money since the invention of the printing press, and it looks like it's time to shut down. But a savior comes along in a bright-colored polo shirt. Dr. Richard Merryman—an internist, he says—proposes that he can create a new Speaker for you. His cut is half, or thereabouts.”

  “Not half,” Books said automatically. “Not until later.”

  “A substantial bite nonetheless,” I said. “Enough to wear a callus in your wallet. I would imagine that Merryman didn't tell even you how he made Jessica Speak. Or Angel later, when Jessica got too old to appeal to him.”

  Brooks looked up at me quickly. “Oh, that too,” I said. “This is going to make some story if it ever comes out. There's hardly a single disgusting aspect of human behavior that it doesn't contain. It'll fascinate Adelaide.”

  “She'll never hear it,” Brooks said serenely.

  “I think a million is a little cheap.”

  “We have a deal,” he said.

  “But the story is just getting good. I'm not sure I want to tell the rest of it for only a million.”

  “If I understand you,” Brooks said, “You're the only one who knows all of it.”

  “That's more or less true.”

  “You haven't bought yourself an insurance policy by sharing this with the police, because they'd act on it and you wouldn't collect your million. Other people, that little Chinese girl, for example, may know bits and pieces, but you're the only one who's got the big picture.”

  “The big picture. Admirably said. Yes, you could put it that way and not stray over the line into falsehood.”

  “Then consider,” he said, “two alternatives. One is that you get a million dollars. Two is that something happens to you, something from which you would not recover. Either way, as you yourself put it, you go away. Both alternatives pose risks for the Church. You might not stay bought. You would certainly stay dead, but someone might connect it with us. We, or at least I, would prefer simply to buy you. Which would you prefer?”

  “This is so civilized. Here we are, sitting in a book-lined study discussing my death as though it were a matter in which we were both only mildly interested. This is what I always wanted to do when I grew up.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Well, I'd prefer the million, obviously. Who wouldn't? The question was whether I could up it a little.”

  “You can't.”

  “Don't get huffy. I just wanted to clear it up. The free-enterprise system doesn't keep moving unless people push it. Where would you be if you'd settled for less?” I took a long swallow off my drink. “Gee, look at this swell house, and Adelaide and everything.”

  “You needn't mention her again. Go on with the story. I have to change for dinner.”

  “Okay. So Merryman gets Jessica up and yakking, and it's even better. You're not just selling a little girl who likes to talk, you're selling a spirit who speaks through a series of little girls. Things really take off. Membership grows and you begin to sell franchises, just like McDonald's, and everything is, as you might say, tally-ho. And Merryman gets tired of Jessica after her breasts begin to develop and he auditions new Speakers and comes up with Angel, who's just perfect. Great-looking, wonderful name, and she functions like clockwork.

  “Of course, there's a flaw in the ointment, as a friend of mine used to say, because it's not your show anymore. You literally can't do it without Merryman. Still, you guys are making millions of dollars every year between Listening fees, franchises, merchandising, and blackmail, and there should be plenty to go around. Except that there isn't. One of you, and let's concede for the sake of tact that it's Merryman, is a real pig. Plus he's a doctor, doesn't like lawyers anyway, and he figures that you are a very expensive piece of superfluous manpower. How are we doing so far?”

  He nodded. “Close enough,” he said.

  “You've got Merryman by the short hairs for the time being. You know where the money is. He can figure it all out eventually, but it could take years. Nevertheless, you're getting nervous. Years aren't really that long, not where millions of dollars are concerned. The problem is that Merryman can run the Church without you, but you can't run it without him. What you need is leverage. You need to be able to control him and keep him quiet somehow, running the little girls for the TV cameras while you sit back and work on your bank balance.

  “And, lo! the Lord in his infinite wisdom and mercy delivers unto you a very nice young lady named Sally Oldfield. Sally's just the kind of poor sap the Church was created to milk. She's got low self-esteem, she's lonely, she's got some disposable income. All the qualifications for enlightenment. She sees Angel and she's entranced. She goes through Listening and she actually finds out some things about herself. Happiness and fulfillment are dangled in front of her, and she goes after them. Paying for the privilege, of course.”

  I rattled the ice cubes in my glass. Brooks stopped writing and watched me, his tongue wadded into one side of his mouth.

  “And then she sees Dick, and it all falls apart. She knows who he is. She knows he's a dentist from Utica, New York, the home of religions based on the wisdom of little girls, and that he uses hypnotism as an anesthetic. And she sees his proximity to the Royal Family, and she knows all at once how it works. He wires her, doesn't he?”

  Brooks said nothing, but he'd stopped writing.

  “Her hair is always down when she's onstage and up when she's not. I'll bet that she's wearing a cute little Dan Rather button in her ear. He must have examined a lot of little girls, not that that would have been a trial for him, to find two who are as susceptible as Jessica and Angel. As their doctor he examines them in their dressing room before and after every Revealing. He probably puts them under while he's checking their pupils and installs the wire. Then she goes out onstage and he watches the TV set until it's time for the magic. He says her name five or six times into a headset, and off she goes. She repeats everything he says from then on, until it's over. Angel mimics him so perfectly she even loses her accent. Then he examines her again and takes out the wire. After that, he fools around with her for a few minutes, tells her to forget everything, brings her out of it, and everybody goes into the next room for the party. Of course, Merryman's already had his party.”

  Brooks still hadn't written anything.

  “No notes?” I said.

  “I'm not putting this on paper.”

  “That's probably a good idea. Sally knew Merryman but Merryman didn't know her. That means he must have been famous in some way back in Utica, some way that was vivid enough to make her remember him all those years later. My guess, knowing his habits, is that he was charged with child molestation. />
  “So Sally goes running. She believes in the Listening, even if she doesn't believe in Angel anymore. She goes to Wilburforce, who promptly turns her over to you in exchange for cash in hand and the promise to drop a lawsuit that was going to put him out of business. He tells her you're an honorable man and that Merryman is a disease you're trying to cure. What I don't understand is why you turned her over to Fauntleroy and that other creep.”

  He didn't say anything.

  “Or maybe I do. She wouldn't talk to anyone but a Listener.”

  His eyes flickered, and he looked down at the pad in front of him.

  “So you gave her to Fauntleroy and Fauntleroy gave her to Needle-nose—a Listener—whose name I'd really like to know. I don't suppose you'd like to tell me what it is, would you?”

  Brooks shook his head. His face shone in the lamplight.

  “You didn't want to lose sight of her and you didn't want anything to happen to her, so you had Fauntleroy hire me to follow her while she was having her Listening sessions at the Sleepy Bear Motel.”

  “No,” he said. “That was Ellis's idea.”

  “Anyway, the problem is that the Listener, who shall for the moment be called Needle-nose, is either already working for Merryman or else he gets the idea when he hears what Sally says that he could be on the way to becoming a very rich man. One way or the other, he cuts you and Fauntleroy out of the information Sally's giving him and passes it on to Merryman instead. When he's sure he's got it all and that no one else knows what it is, he kills her. On Merryman's orders, of course. Then he defects openly to the other side. Starts hanging out at the Borzoi, scrubbing the faces of the faithful with steel wool whenever they backslide a little. Is any of this new to you?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Is it worth a million dollars?”

  “What happened to Ellis?”

  “They killed him. More or less in front of me, to scare me off. They didn't think I knew much of anything. Hell, I didn't know much of anything. Then, I mean.”

  “Well,” he said, “You've certainly caught up.”

  “You didn't know what Sally had on Merryman.”