Sam McCain - 04 - Save the Last Dance for Me (3 page)

Jamie also can’t answer the phone

(“Uh, hello?”), type (my name usually gets typed as “Mcc-ain”; or, on

especially bad days, “Mr. C”), buy

office supplies (“I just thought pink typing paper would kinda brighten things up”), or resist the call of romance (her boyfriend, Turk, usually calls here four times per her two-hour after-school sessions), or keep her bathroom visits brief (“I guess I’ve just got a weak liver”).

How, you may ponder, did such an unpolished gem come to reside in my cramped little office, itself stuck in the back of a large building that keeps changing businesses?

Small-city lawyers are like small-city bankers. We get paid in a variety of ways.

I once got a side of beef for handling a divorce; and a used Tv, which I still watch at home, for a traffic case.

I got Jamie from her father, Lloyd, who couldn’t afford to pay me for an insurance case I handled for him. In exchange, he said, I’d get his daughter for an unspecified time as my secretary. I’d tried to give her back many times but so far had had no luck. “Nobody deserves her more than you do, Sam,” Lloyd always says when I tell him I can’t possibly continue to accept his largesse. Lately, I’ve begun to wonder exactly how he means.

This was two days before my appearance at John Muldaur’s church.

Jamie said, “He’s the snake guy.

Turk’n some of his friends snuck in there one night.

Turk says he heard some of them can turn themselves into snakes, like that girl in that movie at the drive-in a couple of summers ago? Did you ever see that one?”

“I think so.”

“I just don’t know how you could shrink yourself down into a snake.”

One of the questions Aristotle no doubt asked himself many times.

“I wonder what he wants, Mr. C.”

Came a knock.

“I guess we’re about to find out.”

She looked spooked. “God, Mr. C,

I just thought of something.” Stage-whisper.

“What?”

“What if he brought a snake with him?”

“He doesn’t carry snakes around with

him.”

“Well, maybe he can turn himself into a snake like that woman did in that movie.”

I sighed. “Just answer the door, please, all right?”

“I’m just trying to be helpful is all, Mr.

C.”

“I appreciate it, Jamie. But please just get the door.”

My office is one room. I got all the furniture at various county condemnations, mostly businesses that couldn’t pay their taxes.

Nothing quite matches but it’s all serviceable enough, I suppose. If you can overlook various dings, scratches, scrapes, and gouges. The books on the top two shelves of the bookcase are fine, imposing volumes dedicated to law. The bottom two shelves, hidden somewhat by my desk, run to hardbound novels and short-story collections. They get read a lot more than the law books.

I always kind of pose when people come in. I place myself behind my desk, put on a pair of reading glasses I got for fifty-nine cents at Woolworths, and pretend to be lost in my perusal of legal documents. “Torts, torts, torts,” I’ve been known to mutter, just loudly enough for my hopefully impressed client to hear.

Jamie opened the door.

Muldaur stood there in a faded work shirt and even more faded work pants. His thick, dark hair spilled over his forehead Elvis-style and his messianic eyes reflected both anger and fear. Oh, yes, I suppose, I should mention the pistol he was holding. It was the kind of handgun my grandfather had, some kind of Colt.

“If this is a stickup,” I said, “you’ve come to the wrong place. I’ve got exactly thirty-five cents and I’m planning to blow that on a soda when I get done working.”

“Turk gave me five dollars for my

birthday,” Jamie said. “But I already spent it on a pair of shoes.”

He remained in the doorway, huge and fierce. “I brought the gun so you’d take me seriously.”

“And why wouldn’t I take you seriously?”

“Because nobody else in this town does. They all think I’m kooky.”

“Kooky,” if you’ll recall, is the word of choice for Edd Byrnes, the male beefcake on “77 Sunset Strip,” one of those

realistic Tv crime dramas in which the private eyes all drive Thunderbirds and sleep with virgins. The word is irritating enough when the untalented Edd Byrnes says it; coming from a crazed and chiseled Old Testament madman like Muldaur, it was downright comic.

“Why don’t you come in and have some coffee and give your hand a rest? That gun looks pretty heavy.”

“I can make some coffee,” Jamie said.

She had apparently forgotten the day I pulled an exceptionally long afternoon in court. Turk stopped by and they got to necking and everything—I didn’t ask her to detail “and everything” when I grilled her later on—and wouldn’t you know it, somehow she forgot to check the coffeepot and the darned thing caught fire and gutted the pot so that I had to throw it away and buy a new one. I hadn’t gotten around to replacing the coffeepot since. The thing was, the burned-up coffee probably didn’t taste a whole lot worse than Jamie’s regular fare.

“That’s all right, Jamie. Why don’t you just run over to Rexall and buy us each a cup?”

“Gee, Mr. C, I thought you only had thirty-five cents.”

“Just tell them I’ll pay them later this afternoon.”

“Wow, you have a charge account there? That’s cool.”

Bliss comes easily to Jamie.

I watched Muldaur watching her as she disappeared out the front door in her tight blue skirt and even tighter summer-weight sweater, black-and-white saddle shoes with tiny buckles in back, bobby sox with discreet hearts on their sides. Wrapped around Turk’s class ring (from reform school, presumably) there was enough angora to knit a good-size sweater. She couldn’t tell you who John Foster Dulles was or what some guy named Khrushchev did, exactly. But she was well aware of her own considerable charms.

Turk, whom I’d never had the displeasure of meeting, was a lucky kid.

“Nice,” I said.

“What?” Muldaur whipped around as if I’d poked him with a sharp stick.

“She’s a nice-looking young girl.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“I noticed that you didn’t notice.”

He shoved his craggy face forward. “If I put a serpent in your hand, would it find you innocent or guilty of lust?”

I smiled. “Guilty.”

“Well, it wouldn’t find me guilty. I have cleansed my soul of fleshly pleasures.”

What was the point of pushing further? He’d taken more than a passing interest in Jamie’s shapely backside, but why argue about it?

“How may I help you, Reverend?”

“Somebody’s trying to kill me.”

“If that’s true, you should go to the police.”

“If you mean that fool Cliffie Sykes, Jr., I told him about it and he said he didn’t blame them. I’m being followed. I can feel it, sense it. Somebody took a shot at me as I was leaving the church. Can you believe that?

He’s supposed to be a lawman.”

“Any idea who might be trying to kill you?”

“You believe me, then?”

“I believe that you believe somebody is trying to kill you. So I’d like to hear you explain things a little more.”

“I appreciate that.” Then, “I think it’s the Catholics.”

“Ah,” I said, “The Catholics. I

see.”

“And the Jews.”

“Ah,” I said. “The Jews.” Then,

“Well, speaking as a Catholic myself, Reverend Muldaur, I doubt the Catholics I know would do such a thing, despite all the really vile things you’ve said about us. And as for Jews, there’re only a few Jewish people in town, and they’re just too nice to go around killing people. Or even threatening it.”

He watched me. “You’re a dupe.”

“A dupe of whose, Reverend Muldaur?”

“The pope.”

“Ah, a papist dupe.”

“You think this is funny?”

“No, what I think this is, is pathetic. You and your people are angry because a Roman Catholic may become president. I hope he does.

I plan to vote for him.”

“And you know how he’ll get in?”

“How?”

“The Jews and their money.”

“I hate to say this but my people haven’t ever treated the Jews very well. In fact, we’ve treated them very badly. Even murdered them. And refused to help them during Ww Ii. So why would the Jews and the Catholics be working together, exactly?”

He leaned back. For the first time, he smiled.

His smile was even scarier than his scowl. “You ever looked in the basement of your Catholic church?”

I returned his smile. “Now that’s always been one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I’ve ever heard.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“Of course I don’t believe it. I was an altar boy. I was in the church basement hundreds of times.”

“You ever hear of subbasements, Mr.

McCain?”

“Oh, the old subbasement routine, eh?”

“You find the subbasement and you’ll find the guns.”

It was an old theory often expressed on rightwing radio out here in the boonies. The international cabal of The Jews (note the capital letters) use the basements of Catholic churches to store their weapons. What weapons and for what reason? Because when the revolution comes The Jews and The Catholics, who have only been pretending to disagree at times, will then rise up and impose a One World government on all right-thinking non-Jews and non-Catholics.

I leaned forward on my elbows. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“You’re just like the others, aren’t you?”

“First of all, Reverend Muldaur, I’m a lawyer. I’m not a bodyguard.”

“You’re also a private investigator.”

“True.”

“So I’d like you to come to one of my services and just look around.”

“Look around for what?”

“Somebody who doesn’t seem to belong.”

“A spy?”

“Something like that. Dupes like you may not realize this, Mr. McCain, but the pope has his own assassins.”

“I see. And the first place these assassins would think of is Black River Falls,

Iowa?”

“Catholics aren’t known for clear thinking.

All that mumbo jumbo they believe.”

I realized then that the only way I was ever going to get rid of him was to agree to help him.

Besides, the service would probably be worth seeing. Much as I feared snakes, there’d be a certain repellent majesty to watching all the snake-handlers do their work.

“What time does it start?” I said.

He didn’t have a chance to answer. Jamie was back.

She should have asked for a sack. Instead she gripped the three soggy-hot cardboard containers in her hands. And as she approached the front of the desk where we sat, I saw what was about to happen. She stubbed the toe of her shoe against something and lurched forward. And in lurching forward the coffee went slamming down against the desk.

“Oh, shit!” she cried as the containers exploded, spraying coffee everywhere.

Muldaur leaped from his chair, avoiding the worst of the flying coffee. I didn’t do too badly, either, just got a shot of it on my right sleeve. My desk was the main casualty, papers soaked, coffee dripping off the desk edges.

“You let her talk that way?” Muldaur intoned.

“Talk what way?” I didn’t know what he was referring to. I was too busy assessing the damage.

“I used the word “shit,” Mr. C.”

“She did it again,” he said.

“I was just saying what I said is all,” she said miserably.

“Please go get some rags and start cleaning this up, Jamie.”

“I’m sorry I used the S word,

Reverend,” Jamie said earnestly, and I felt sorry for her. She looked very sweet right now.

Too bad Muldaur couldn’t appreciate her particular form of innocence.

“You wouldn’t be using words like that if you came to my church, I can tell you that.”

She glanced at me. Scared. She was

probably thinking he was going to turn her into a serpent or something. She rushed from the room.

“Two nights from now,” Muldaur said.

“Eight o’clock. I’m sure you know where it

is, the way everybody makes fun of us.”

“Strictly speaking, you’re breaking the law, Reverend. Bringing poisonous reptiles to a public place.”

“Your law,” Muldaur reminded me. “Not God’s law.”

That’s one thing I have against organized religions of all kinds. They have all of the answers and none of the questions.

I guess Kylie and I were sitting at the wrong angle. From our folding chairs in the back of the place, it sure looked as if the little girl had been bitten by the striking snake. Later on, we’d learn that she’d flung the baby rattler away from her before it could do any damage.

What we didn’t mistake was what then happened to Reverend John Muldaur. At the same time the little girl was screaming and holding her hands out for her mommy, Muldaur went into the kind of convulsions Jerry Lewis goes into for laughs.

But you could tell by the abrupt mask-like stiffening of his face, which was an expression of shock and horror, that whatever was wrong with him was for real.

His body went into spasms, an arm kicking out, a leg collapsing, the other arm flailing away from his body as if it wanted to tear free.

While one of the male members of the church collected the rattlesnake and put it back in its cage, the other members of the church formed a circle around the minister, who was now flat on his back on the platform, arching up every few seconds to allow his entire body to jerk and twist and convulse. We were part of the circle.

Prayers went up like flares; sobs

exploded. A lone woman

hurried-pushed-paddled the children out the door.

An older man in a T-shirt with a Dixie flag on it knelt next to Muldaur saying the same thing over and over, “You’re receiving the spirit of the Lord, Reverend, and you shouldn’t be afraid.”

Some spirit. Some Lord.

“Is there a phone in here?” Kylie asked.

“A phone in the house of the Lord?” a woman snapped back.

“There’s a pay phone down the road,” one of the more sensible women said.

“He’s receiving the Lord,” said the man in

the Dixie flag T-shirt, calmly.

“He’ll be fine in a minute.”