They began to walk back to the crèche.
“May I ask the basis for that happiness?”
“There’s no bullshit here,” she said. “No measuring by what neighbors you don’t respect think. No bowing and scraping to relatives.”
She stopped and faced Powder and said, “No archaic, irrational, self-righteous religious system that says my God is better than yours but means I am better than you. We don’t accept that there is anything important in people that survives death. If there is anything timeless about human beings, then we don’t accept that what we do in this life has any effect on it.”
“What do you do in this life then?”
“We work together. It’s all up front.”
“What are you working together for?”
She smiled. “Power!” she said. “Power!”
Powder stayed for lunch. He and Gale Heyhurst and Jacqueline Beehler ate sandwiches in the shade of a maple tree.
“I understand,” Powder said, “that you plan to take over the world.”
“Not the world,” Heyhurst said. “Just the country.”
“Come on. Gale! You told me the world,” Jacqueline Beehler said.
“Well, the country first.”
“And the object of taking over the country?”
“To make those in The Promised Land safe from the rest, as healthy as possible and physically comfortable.”
“You’ll be extending your boundaries, then?”
“Oh, yes,” Heyhurst said. “This property is only rented anyway.”
“I see,” Powder said. “Any special method planned for overthrowing the government?”
Heyhurst stared at him intensely. “We’re not revolutionaries or terrorists. We are not going to overthrow the government. We’re going in by the back door of the existing political system.”
“Which back door is that?”
“The idea is that if we can get together enough people of voting age and move them to a state with a small population, we can take it over.”
“Oh,” Powder said. “Which state did you have in mind?”
“Nevada,” Heyhurst said. “For a while we thought Alaska, but we’ve settled on Nevada.”
“It’s warmer in Nevada,” Jacqueline Beehler said knowingly.
“Of course,” Powder said, raising an eyebrow.
“And there’s all that gambling money,” she said brightly, “and the prostitution and the divorces!”
“With the right priorities,” Heyhurst said, “we can make one hell of a comfortable life.”
“How many people will it take?” Powder asked.
“A hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty thousand.”
“How many have you got?”
“We’re growing fast.”
Chapter Twenty Two
On his way back to town, Powder stopped at a phone and called Fleetwood’s house.
He was a little surprised when she answered.
She was annoyed. “I’ve been trying to find you. Where the hell have you been?”
He sat on a hard-backed chair. He held her hand.
She sighed tiredly.
Powder wrinkled his face. “No one saw him at all?”
“The only person I haven’t interviewed is the woman who lives directly opposite him. She’s visiting family or something. Nobody’s quite sure and they don’t know when she’ll be back.”
“All right,” Powder said decisively. “Take it to the detectives.”
Fleetwood snorted. “They’ll pass it straight back to us.”
“Not when I threaten to take Jules’s conclusions to the papers.”
She looked at him.
“We’ll give it till Monday,” he said. “We couldn’t get them to cross their legs for anything less than a bomb on the weekend.”
“All right,” Fleetwood said.
“Meanwhile I want to take you to bed.” Powder said.
“What?”
“Physiotherapy. See if you can feel anything.”
“I get my tingles. Powder,” Fleetwood said sharply. “And don’t you diminish them. They mean a lot to me. And things are being done with nerve regeneration too. I’ve got more than hopes for myself. I’ve got plans for myself.”
Powder chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’d like to take you to bed,” he said. “But you haven’t got time.”
“I haven’t?”
“You’ve got some questions to ask.”
“I do?”
“This woman you haven’t seen . . .”
“Yes?”
“Have you confirmed that she is with relatives?”
Fleetwood’s eyelids opened wider, then narrowed.
“Shit!” she said. She pulled her hand from Powder’s and rolled toward the door.
When Powder got to Tidmarsh’s house he was told that the acting head of the IPD’s computer section was having a bath.
“It’s something he does on Saturday afternoons,” Mrs. Tidmarsh said. “He spends a couple of hours in there. He looks forward to it. I really don’t want to disturb him.”
Mrs. Tidmarsh was a small woman, with bright blue eyes and an apparent abundance of energy.
Powder nodded, understandingly. But he said, “I need him,” and before Mrs. Tidmarsh could stop him, he walked past her.
He heard singing upstairs and followed the sound to find the bathroom.
Tidmarsh was stretched steamily in an oversized tub. A rack across its sides held bottles of scotch and milk, a large glass, a selection of soaps and brushes, and a stand that held a magazine so it could be read from a nearly submerged position. Tidmarsh’s singing voice was so-so.
“Come on,” Powder said. “We only have until Monday morning.”
Tidmarsh looked up. He saw Powder. He closed his mouth. He closed his eyes.
Mrs. Tidmarsh entered the bathroom after Powder. She began to explain, but her husband said only, “Don’t bother to send for the police, Charlene. I’ll deal with it.”
Doubtfully, Charlene Tidmarsh left the room and closed the door.
Tidmarsh pushed his bath rack away and sat up. He splashed at the water around his legs a bit. “You’re always making waves. Powder,” he said. “Downtown I find that endearing, because there are so many leaky canoes who think they’re battleships down there. But you’ve come into my house. You’ve interrupted one of my few private pleasures. When I stop speaking, you have five seconds to start an explanation. It will be spoken in simple English, with no games or riddles. If you fail to satisfy, I’ll break one of your bones for the pure enjoyment of hearing a simple, understandable sound come out of your body. And then I’ll throw you out.”
Powder began immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but . . .”
About 4:45, Powder went into the Missing Persons office. He called Robert Sweet. He offered to take the boy to the second game of the Indians day-night double header against Oklahoma.
To Powder’s ear Sweet sounded unexpectedly matter-of-fact about the invitation, but they agreed that Powder would pick him up a little after six-thirty.
While he was in the office Powder called the parents of Jacqueline Beehler. With one each on two extension telephones, he explained that he had been to The Promised Land, that he had seen their daughter, that there was no justification for a police involvement.
His report met with deep silence.
Continuing, Powder said that Jacqueline had struck him as entirely in control of her own life and under no pressure to remain with the group if she didn’t want to. He thought she clearly wanted to remain. He said that if they wanted his opinion, the group struck him as more open than the well-publicized cultish communities. As far as he could make out, the group’s main interests seemed to be secular rather than religious, primarily a plan to get themselves an easy life without having to do much work for it.
“Atheistical bastards,” Mr. Beehler intoned.
Mrs. Beehler cried.
Tidmarsh arrived at a quarter past five. Powder walked with him to the computer room, then left him to it.
Powder drove to Fleetwood’s house. When he found she wasn’t there, he left her a note suggesting that she join Tidmarsh. Then he went home.
Approaching his front door. Powder was momentarily startled when he saw something white in his mailbox.
But it was an envelope that had been hand-delivered and as he took it out Powder chuckled aloud. He entered the house musing on how quickly one developed, expectations, anxieties.
The note was from Martha Miles. It asked Powder to call if at all possible.
Powder put the note in his pocket. He went to his kitchen and made a cup of tea.
He reread the note while he drank the tea.
Then Powder called Martha Miles.
“I’m so grateful to hear from you, Leroy,” she said.
“What’s the problem?”
“You’re going to think I’m a dreadful bore and terribly forward, but I wondered if you might be able to come over this evening. I’ve been feeling low all day long and, well, I’d be grateful for a little company.”
Powder blinked. And thought.
“Are you there, Leroy? Hello?”
“Yes, I’m here,” he said. “I was just thinking.”
“You’re going to tell me you can’t come, aren’t you?” she said quietly.
“I do have something to do tonight.”
“Well, a handsome, charming, unattached man . . . I can’t seriously expect to walk into your life and take up an important place. I’ll be lucky to become one of the many, I suspect.”
“I will be finished with what I have to do by the middle of the evening. I could come over later on.”
“What time, exactly?” she asked.
“Ten, ten-thirty.”
After a moment she said, “That will be fine.”
“The exact time depends on whether there are extra innings or not.”
“You’re so humorous,” she stated.
After they had hung up. Powder sat, considering, wondering whether he had really heard moments of ice among the warmth.
He left to pick up Robert Sweet.
The boy was waiting in his Indians cap and showed some of the excitement Powder had felt to be lacking on the telephone.
They arrived at Bush Stadium a few minutes before seven. Powder bought box seats on the third-base line. They got settled just as the first Oklahoma batter came to the plate.
“Hey,” Robert Sweet said, “the Indians won the first game. It says so on the scoreboard.”
Powder turned to the boy. He expected him to have followed the first game on the radio and certainly to know the result. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?” Powder asked.
Sweet looked at him and said, “What do you mean?”
The umpire called a strike.
“I mean something has happened. Tell me what.”
The boy’s lips tightened.
“Now,” Powder instructed.
“I heard from my mom,” Robert Sweet said.
“When?” Powder asked.
“She called me this morning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sweet turned away and watched the batter, a stocky left fielder, take a ball.
“I thought maybe you wouldn’t, you know . . .” His voice drifted away.
“What?” Powder asked.
“I thought you wouldn’t talk to me anymore if you knew my mom was back.”
“She’s in Indianapolis?”
“She’s arriving on Monday,” the boy said sadly. “She said she would come to the house. She wants me to take the day off from school.”
“What time on Monday?”
“Noon. But she won’t come then.”
“She won’t?”
“She’s always late, my mom.”
“Oh,” Powder said.
They turned as the Oklahoma batter popped up to the second baseman. “I could have done that,” Sweet said, and Powder remembered that the boy was a second baseman too. Good glove, no hit.
“I want to talk to your mother,” Powder said.
“I don’t.”
They were silent for a moment. Then Sweet said, “Do you think she’ll have that guy with her?”
“Did she say anything about him?”
“Nope.”
“Did you ask?”
The boy shook his head.
They watched the next batter line a single to short left field. The man danced around the bag with first-inning energy as the ball came back to the Indians’ pitcher. He looked quick.
“Do you think he’ll try to steal second?” Powder asked.
“Maybe. But Ignacio’s arm is pretty strong.”
“You should have brought your glove in case we get a foul ball,” Powder said.
“Yeah,” the boy said, a little sadly. Then, “Am I going to have to go with her?”
“Do you think she’ll want to take you away?”
He shrugged.
“What exactly did she say to you, Robert?”
“She said, `Hello, Bobby. This is your mother speaking. Do you recognize my voice? Sorry I haven’t written. We’ve been real busy. But I heard that your old man has gone and deserted you. That’s a rotten trick, but what do you expect from a guy like that? I’ll see you Monday about noon. Stay at home, all right? Bye.’ ”
Powder smiled. “You’ve got that down word for word, huh?”
“I can remember stuff like that. It’s history I have trouble with.”
On a two-ball count Oklahoma played hit and run. The batter swung and missed and the Indians’ catcher, Ignacio, threw the runner out at second base. Sweet and Powder whistled approval. On the next pitch the batter fouled out, the play made again by the catcher, who was roundly patted on the back as his teammates cleared the field into the dugout.
“See,” Robert Sweet said. “You don’t have to be able to hit.”
As the Oklahoma pitcher was warming up. Sweet turned to Powder and said abruptly, “I told you some fibs about my dad.”
“What sort of fibs?” Powder asked easily.
“We hardly never did things together.”
“Oh,” Powder said.
“He always left the notes, like I said, if he wasn’t going to be in. And I saw him every day, mostly. And he liked the Indians and we talked about them, but he never came to see me play.”
“It sounds like you spend quite a lot of time alone, Robert.”
The boy shrugged. “I guess. I don’t mind though. And even so, he’s the only person I got.”
Powder nodded slowly.
“Or had. I suppose you’re going to tell me he’s dead.”
“I don’t know,” Powder said.
“But he might be?”
“I can’t promise you he isn’t. But that doesn’t mean that he is.”
The boy was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “I like you talking to me like I’m not stupid.”
The Indians’ lead-off hitter entered the batter’s box.
Chapter Twenty Three
As Powder parked in front of Martha Miles’s house, he saw the light silhouetting her head in a gap between the curtains of her front window. The shape withdrew and the curtains closed as he got out of the car.
Powder took a couple of deep breaths and walked to her porch.
She took a long time to answer the bell, but when she opened the door her face was a picture of smiling gratitude. “Thank you for coming, Leroy. Thank you so much.”
She took his hands and drew him in.
After closing the door, she stayed close and smiling and available. But when Powder did not move to kiss or fondle, she turned easily away and led him to her dining room. The table was set for a meal.
“I thought you might be hungry.”
“I could eat,” Powder said.
“Who won your baseball game?” she asked, slightly teasingly.
“The Ind
ians, four to three,” he said.
“I’m sure they did. Let me get you a drink. Scotch?”
“Do you have something soft?”
“You mean like beer or wine?”
“All right, a beer.”
“Good. You sit down and make yourself comfortable.” She went to her kitchen.
Powder wandered back to the living room, but did not sit.
Suddenly someone started banging loudly on the front door.
After a moment Martha Miles reappeared from her kitchen. She looked frightened.
“Leroy, what’s that?”
“Another late caller, it would seem.”
“But I’m not expecting anybody,” she said nervously.
The pounding continued.
“You want me to answer it?”
“Do you mind?”
Powder turned to the door and thought for a moment. Then he drew his gun.
Stepping up to the wall next to the door, he turned the knob with his free hand and yanked the door open.
A fist, caught irretrievably in a pounding downward flight, passed through the plane where the door had been. Powder jumped out. “Freeze!” he ordered.
The dark, moustached young man from upstairs stood before him. With hardly a pause he reached forward to try to push the muzzle of the gun away. “What’s that about?” he asked.
Powder stepped back and cocked the revolver.
“Hey, hey! Easy, old man!” The young man lifted his hands and leaned back.
“What are you trying to break the door down for?” Powder ordered.
“I was just knocking.”
Powder waited.
“I’ve got a plumbing problem. I came down to get Mrs. Miles to fix it. Is that a crime all of a sudden? And do you mind pointing that thing somewhere else?”
“You come down at eleven at night to get your plumbing fixed?”
“When you got to go, you got to go,” the man said. “She is my landlady, pop.”
“Is that the way you always knock on a door?”
The man waggled his head. “Yeah, pretty much. I had a neglected childhood. I crave attention.”
Powder relaxed from the “ready” position. He released the hammer of his weapon and bolstered it. He stood back. “Come in, Mr. Painter,” he said easily.
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