The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish (25 page)

The
Hideout

T
here
are so many things to say to a long-lost father. Things such as, “Oh, my God,” or “What are you doing here?” Yet when Mary Mabel saw her papa, all she could think to say was: “Can you hot-wire a car?”

T
hey stole Miss Bentwhistle’s limousine. Brewster bonked the chauffeur on the head and they were away. Nobody noticed or cared: those with cars were too busy scrambling for their own; those who’d come by train were running for the safety of their rooms. They tore out of the parking lot, past Bo Peep; she was on the ground, hoop skirt over her head, tangled in leashes and sheep.

Brewster’s recent adventures had taught him about getaways. He gunned the limo full bore, taking potholes head-on and riding the air currents as they bounced skyward. In what seemed like no time, they passed a railway crossing. There was no one ahead of them or behind. Brewster killed the headlights and turned off the road. For once he took care; he didn’t want to leave tracks.

They drove by moonlight for several miles, keeping parallel to the rail line as they manoeuvred around cactus, brush, and shadow. At last they came to a deep gully. “End of the road,” Brewster said. They got out and he pushed the car over the edge. It careened down, crashing on the dry riverbed beneath.

“This way,” he said. He led Mary Mabel to where the trestle track crossed the ravine. They sat together and waited for a train.

“I’ve missed you,” she said. It was a lie, but the truth would have been cruel. “How did you find me? Here? Tonight? Why did you come?”

“To rescue you from the opiate of the masses. Something like that.”

Mary Mabel squeezed his arm. He was Mama’s answer to her prayer, a sign of forgiveness and deliverance. She told him everything — all about the Heavenly Dwellings and Miss Bentwhistle being a baroness. She also told him how good it was to finally be free, to know she’d never be going back. It would be morning before they knew she was missing. There’d be search parties, but she’d have vanished off the face of the earth.

Brewster grunted and put his ear to the track. “She’s coming.” Five minutes later, the freight train passed. As he predicted, it slowed to a crawl crossing the bridge. They hopped a flatcar, no trouble. There were a couple of hoboes already on board, sleeping soundly at the far end. “Five hours to the crack of dawn,” he said. “Time for some shut-eye.”

She couldn’t sleep. She felt badly about leaving Doyle and his mother without a goodbye. Still, they weren’t in any danger. Neither were the Heavenly Dwellings nor Doyle’s reputation. She knew Brother Floyd and Miss Bentwhistle would turn her disappearance into a bonanza. They’d hawk her photograph, complete with forged signature, maybe even set up a miracle shrine at the entrance to the Dwellings where the faithful could light candles and drop cash.

“
Get ready. This here’s our stop.”

Mary Mabel barely had time to blink herself awake before Brewster had her by the hand, counted to three, and jumped. They landed in gravel and grass, no worse for wear save for scraped hands and a small tear in her dress. He led her over a hill and through a patch of forest to a clearing. There were four lean-tos around a burned-out campfire. Three of the lean-tos had a satchel under their thatched roofs and a few clothes airing on their supports. The fourth covered some pots, tin plates, assorted cutlery, canned vegetables, beer bottles, whiskey jugs, cans of lighter fluid, and a pile of old newspapers held down by a chunk of cement. A few yards from the site was a pit of food scraps and an old car seat.

“Where are we?”

“Two miles outta Hollywood.”

She froze. “I thought we were getting as far away from L.A. as we could.”

“You thought wrong.” He undid his belt, a double length of binder twine, and used it to tie her hands behind her back.

“What’s going on?”

“You’ve been kidnapped.”

“You said you came to rescue me.”

“How else was I to get you to go peaceable?”

He tied her legs with strips of green bark and told her how originally she was supposed to be turned into a Bolshevik mouthpiece. Now, with his partners gone, life would be simpler. There’d be a ransom note demanding a million bucks. He’d collect the cash and hand her over. She’d make up a story — say her kidnapper was a Swede or a Ukrainian — and he’d retire to Mexico where he’d buy up the Casa Mama Rosa and have a different girl every night of the week.

“I’ll be home-free,” he said. “Even if you tell the truth, they won’t come after me. Bad publicity.”

“There’s only one problem,” Mary Mabel replied. “How do you propose to send a ransom note? You’re illiterate.”

“That’s easy. You’re going to write it for me.”

“Not on your life.”

Brewster laughed and poured himself a whiskey laced with a dash of lighter fluid. “A hothead, just like your mother. She cooled off, and so will you.”

“How dare you talk like that?”

“She’s not around to care.”

“She was a saint. She died to save me. And look at you. A lecher. A kidnapper.”

“Spare me the violins. Your mama died because she was a nag, plain and simple. Always at me about my drinking. If I had it to do over, I’d toss her out again.”

“What?”

Brewster helped himself to another shot. “I was in my cups. She wouldn’t let up. So I threw her outside and locked the door. Then I passed out. I woke up freezin’ my butt, the door wide open. You were away on your errand of mercy, but she was long gone.”

Her mind reeled. “You let everyone think she ran off to save me. I grew up believing I killed her.”

Brewster shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? They wouldn’t hang a two-year-old for murder. It was her fault anyway for wandering off. She’d shoulda stayed put by the door. But hey, what’s past is past. You’re a rich bitch now and the truth don’t matter.”

“God forgive me,” Mary Mabel said, “but I wish she were alive and you were dead.”

He laughed. “Take a number, get in line.”

Bad News

T
he
Hearst press scooped the opposition. Police confirmed the front-page report that San Simeon had been overrun by a cutthroat army of Bolshevik anarchists. Though hopelessly outnumbered, a brace of Hollywood’s leading men had apparently beaten back the nefarious insurgents, one of whom was dead, another in custody. The rest of the Red Battalion, including a mysterious “third clown,” had fled to secret camps in the tunnels and caves of the Santa Lucia Mountains. The F.B.I. were combing the territory with tracking dogs.

It was also noted that the fanatics had snatched the limousine of the Baroness of Bentwhistle. Late editions reported that it had been found in a gully near some rail tracks. Authorities believed the cowardly ringleaders might have hopped a train to San Francisco.

The other front-page story concerned the disappearance of beloved healer Sister Mary Mabel McTavish. It was unknown whether she was in hiding or had been kidnapped during the melee. There were prayers for her safe return from Mr. W.R. Hearst, Mr. Jack Warner, Miss Marion Davies, and others connected with her upcoming biopic. Mr. Floyd Cruickshank of Holy Redemption Ministries urged her followers to send offerings to pay the expenses of volunteers mounting a round-the-clock prayer vigil.

D
oyle was worried sick. A week had passed with no sign of Mary Mabel. If she’d run off in panic, she could be lying at the bottom of a ravine with broken legs, either dehydrating and starving or prey for coyotes and mountain lions. Police said these scenarios were unlikely; if she were in the area, the tracking dogs would have picked up her scent. All the same, if she’d been kidnapped where was the ransom note?

So far there wasn’t even a lead.

Comrade Duddy refused to talk as he was laid up with a coma in the Alcatraz infirmary.
The Daily Worker
claimed brutality by prison interrogators, but the warden maintained that Duddy had deliberately beaten himself senseless in order to avoid questioning. The public was enraged: those damn Commie bastards would stoop to anything!

(Duddy’s subsequent trial for the murder of Leo Lapinsky created the biggest international furor since Sacco/Vanzetti. He was found guilty and sentenced to be electrocuted. However, by the time his case wound its way through the appeal courts, America was at war and Mother Russia was an ally. Duddy was pardoned and sent to Connecticut where he became head foreman in a munitions factory.)

Aside from Comrade Duddy, investigators had questioned the McConaghies. Belinda McConaghie had shown up in a cape, leotards, and turban, bearing her crystal ball. She claimed to have had a psychic vision: Mary Mabel had been kidnapped by her father and was tied up in a clearing outside Hollywood. Police said thanks and told McConaghie he ought to put Belinda in a home.

The other McConaghies were equally useless. “We can describe them perfectly, Officer. They had yellow fright wigs, red noses, and flowers that squirted water.” The McConaghies were released after being charged with keeping a rotting elephant on their premises and renting lions without a permit.

T
hree days later, the case broke wide open. Police made an arrest.

Doyle wept as he wrote the front-page story. Sister Mary Mabel McTavish wasn’t lost. She wasn’t kidnapped. She was dead.

B
rother Percy had been arrested at two in the morning trying to set a fire in the garbage bin behind WKRN. Satan had told him that his hour was at hand, and it very nearly was. The vigil volunteers who tackled him were in a surly mood. For over a week, they’d been praying in eight-hour shifts, taking turns in sleeping bags lined up on the radio station parking lot. There was no place to shower and only one sink and toilet to brush their teeth, shave, and et cetera. The last thing they needed was some firebug disturbing them with a rant about the joys of eternal damnation.

Percy hadn’t been sure that he was actually setting a fire. As far as he was concerned, it was a very live possibility that he was only dreaming that he was setting a fire. The last time he’d been able to distinguish between his waking and sleeping life was … well … a while ago. In fact, around the time he had his last decent meal. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford to eat. Rather, Satan preferred that he lift rocks and search for grubs.

The police took Percy to the station. He was happy to confess to whatever they wanted, providing they promised to spell his name correctly and get his story on the front page of the newspapers. He told them that he was world famous except that there was a conspiracy to hide this fact from the public.

The interrogators left him alone. Percy struck up a conversation with the fly buzzing around the bare light bulb and made faces at himself in the two-way mirror.

Police on the other side of the mirror were slack-jawed. Somehow they’d lucked onto Brother Percival Homer Brubacher, the escaped lunatic wanted for questioning in the case of missing evangelist Sister Mary Mabel McTavish. Brubacher’s little black books had been sent with the rest of his belongings from the Belvedere Hotel to the Bellevue Institute. Psychiatrists had been shocked to read his lurid fantasies of her death.

When the interrogators returned and confronted him about Mary Mabel’s disappearance, Percy didn’t blink. He knew about the incident at San Simeon from reading the papers. Indeed, the more he thought about it, the more he
thought
he knew about it, because, well, he was starting to be pretty certain that he’d been there. He might even have been the so-called mysterious “Third Clown.” Come to think of it, he
was
. He remembered a big crowd and everyone laughing at him. He also remembered driving in a car with Mary Mabel and wishing she was dead.

Satan stopped flying around the light bulb and landed on his shoulder. “Well done,” he buzzed. “Tell them the idea we laughed about on the bus. You know, the idea about the wood chipper.”

Percy giggled. The interrogators all had notebooks. They were taking pictures. He leapt onto the interrogation table and beat his chest. “I confess,” he exulted. “I killed Sister Mary Mabel McTavish.”

And then he told them how he did it.

M
iss Bentwhistle was astonished at the outpouring of public grief. Love offerings were pouring into the Sister Mary Mabel Memorial Fund. Superimposed photographs of the dead girl ascending into heaven were selling at a brisk clip, and manufacturers were competing for the rights to make plaster statues of the fallen evangelist in sizes ranging from paperweights to lawn ornaments. Best of all, sales of the Heavenly Dwellings were booming. Buyers had been assured of a complimentary lock of Sister’s hair; Miss Pigeon was next to bald.

Looking into the future, there appeared to be no end to Mary Mabel mania. Her death hadn’t even put a dent in new miracles. Patients were crawling out of hospitals convinced that the healer had cured them in a dream.

The Baroness wiggled her toes. Mary Mabel dead was more valuable than Mary Mabel alive. And a good deal less bother. Over crumpets and tea, she made a “to do” list for future projects.

Item: Market replica stationery from the desk of Sister on which the sick can write prayer requests.

Item: Consider collectibles. Commemorative plates and coin sets a must.

Item: Ask Miss Davies to donate dressing-room in which M.M. spent her final days. Ideal for bus tours.

Her labours were interrupted by an unexpected phone call.

“You’ve come up in the world,” said the voice at the end of the line.

“Excuse me, but have we made your acquaintance?”

“Damn right, Cuddles. Remember those feather dusters?”

“Mr. McTavish!?”

“I have your kitten. It’s alive. It’ll cost you a million bucks.”

“I’m afraid we no longer need it,” the Baroness demurred.

“It hasn’t eaten in ten days.”

“Quel dommage
.
”

“It’s starving.”

“Then be a dear and put it out of its misery.”

A pause. “Naw. I’ll just look for another buyer. The press, maybe. I’m sure they’d love to hear it purr. By the way, I’ll let them know you wanted it put down.”

The Baroness pictured the headlines. “You shall have your million.”

“That’s more like it. Ten o’clock tonight. Unmarked bills. I’ll be on Barclay Side Road, two miles north of Mulholland Drive, where the rail line takes the bend. Come alone. And don’t play games or I’ll blab your past to the world. Speaking of which, my silence will cost you extra. A hundred grand for starters.”

Brewster hung up the telephone outside the booze store and left with a cart of whiskey. He’d meant to send a ransom note made up of glued letters cut out of newspapers. It would have looked more professional. But after ten days without food, Mary Mabel still refused to spell, so he’d had to launch the operation himself.
On the bright side
, he’d figured,
my voice’ll put a fright into Horatia
.

The fear of God was more like it. The fact that Mary Mabel should be alive was bad luck; that her father should be alive, too, was Divine malice. What with demands for ransom and blackmail, Miss Bentwhistle was between a rock and a hard place. She had to admit that it was an appropriate location for one whose collateral was in bricks.

She took a glug of laudanum and fished Slick’s matchbook from her smalls drawer.

T
hat night, Miss Bentwhistle backed her new limo into an alley two blocks from Slick’s hotel. In case McTavish checked the back seat, she stowed Skinner in the trunk. She planned to follow McTavish into the brush, out of view. Her woodsman would follow.

As instructed, she turned off Mulholland Drive and drove two miles north along Barclay Side Road. McTavish appeared out of the darkness.

“Where’s the money?”

“In the trunk.”

“Let’s see it.”

“Not till I see my precious.”

“I thought I was your precious,” McTavish snickered. “This way.”

Miss Bentwhistle followed him through the woods that ran between the side road and the rail line. She walked slowly. Mr. Skinner had sworn he could follow a trail at night, but she couldn’t be too careful. Besides, her fortifications for the evening’s adventure had left her somewhat wobbly. “How much further?” she asked when they hit the tracks.

“Just over that hill.”

“Let me catch my breath.” Miss Bentwhistle sat on the rails and pretended to nurse an ankle. This was quite far enough, thank you very much. She couldn’t understand what was keeping her hit man. Honestly, whatever happened to the Protestant work ethic?

(As it turned out, Slick was back at the limo having an interesting conversation with police. A passing patrol car had pulled over when it came across the apparently empty vehicle. Officers had become even more curious when they saw the woodsman emerge from the trunk.)

Back at the tracks, McTavish got a glint in his eye as he watched his former sweetie stroke her ankle. He had a notion why she was lingering. Well, why not? They had the time. He sat down beside her. “You smell as pretty as a bag of potpourri,” he leered.

The Baroness wished she could say the same of him. Still, it’s amazing what a couple of drinks will do for a man’s looks, especially observed by moonlight. A wink and a tickle and she found herself reconnected to the handyman’s secret appeal. It was delightfully freakish. The biggest distraction she’d ever encountered. “Oh, Mr. McTavish,” she gasped as they thrashed about on the tracks, “All is forgiven. I appoint you the Head of my Privy Chamber!”

Her body tingled with vibrations. The earth moved. But it wasn’t because of McTavish. It was because of the rumble of an approaching train.

“Mr. McTavish, I believe a train is coming.”

“That’s not all that’s cummin’, dearie.”

“Mr. McTavish! A train! A train!”

Sadly, McTavish’s member had drained the blood from his brain. All he could think was: “YES, YES, YES, YES!”

Then, out of nowhere — BANG!

Miss Bentwhistle saw stars. Not stars from the explosion, but stars from the sky. They were shining through the hole in McTavish’s head where his face used to be.

Slick Skinner was ten feet away, his shotgun smoking.

Miss Bentwhistle wrestled with her lover’s body. How would she ever explain this to the cleaners? “Get this thing off me,” she exclaimed.

“Sorry.” Skinner stuck a toothpick between his teeth. “I’m in a hurry.” He bounded up the hill beyond the tracks.

Miss Bentwhistle heard a train whistle. She looked ahead. This time she didn’t see stars. She saw the moon. It was large and round and luminous. A lovers’ moon. A moon to inspire poets.

It was the headlight of the Santa Fe Express.