Instead of which, at first it slowed down, as though the driver were suddenly uncertain of his welcome. "Come on, come on!" shouted an attendant, and ran forward, still waving. The car was a new Caddy-a lot better than most of the cars here-and the driver had the narrow nose and bewildered expression that suggested to the attendants (cousins of the bride) that these people represented the groom's side.

"Park over there!" the attendant yelled, pointing at one of the few remaining slots.

The driver had lowered his window, the better to display his confusion. He said, "The church...?"

"That's right! That's right! There's the church right there, it's the only thing on this road! Come on, will ya, you're late!"

Someone in the car said something to the driver, who nodded and said, "I guess we might as well."

So then at last the Caddy was driven to its slot, all four of its doors opened, and a bunch of extremely unlikely wedding guests emerged. The attendants, waiting for them, exchanged a knowing glance that silently said, Groom's side, no question. Along with the sharp-nosed driver were a short fat round troll, a gloomy slope-shouldered guy, and a mean-looking old geezer. Shepherded by the attendants, these four made their way up the walk and into the now-full church, where the ceremony hadn't yet begun after all, having been delayed by both a sudden loss of courage on the groom's part (being treated now from an uncle's flask) and a screaming cat fight between the bride and her mother.

A tuxedoed usher approached the latecomers, while the attendants went off to the seats saved for them by other cousins. Leaning toward the new arrivals, the usher murmured, "Bride or groom?"

They stared at him. The sharp-nosed one said, "Huh?"

The usher was used by now to the wedding guests being under-rehea.r.s.ed. Patiently, gesturing to the pews on both sides of the central aisle, he said, "Are you with the bride's party or the groom's?"

"Oh," said the sharp-nosed one.

"Bride," said the mean-looking old man, but at the same instant, "Groom," said the pessimistic-looking guy.

This under-rehea.r.s.ed was ridiculous. "Surely," the usher began, "you know whi-"

"We're with the groom," the pessimist explained. "They're with the bride."

"Oh," the usher said, and looked around for empty seats on both sides of the aisle. "Here's two for the bridal party," he said, "and two over-"

He broke off, astonished, because the group seemed to be arguing fiercely and almost silently among themselves as to which of them was to be with which. Noticing him noticing them, they cut that business short and sorted themselves out with no further trouble, except for sharp looks back and forth. The usher seated the pessimist and the little round man among the bride's family and friends, then placed the mean-looking old man and the sharp-nosed fellow in among the partisans of the groom.

As he did so, the uncle with the flask (tucked away out of sight) emerged from a side door down by the altar and made his somewhat unsteady way (he'd been medicating himself as well, since the cap was off anyway) to his seat on the aisle down near the front on the groom's side. He was still settling himself and grinning his report on the groom's condition to his neighbors when the mother of the bride, rather red of face and grim of expression, but with shoulders triumphantly squared, came from the rear of the church, escorted by an usher, and marched down the center aisle to sit in the front row.

A moment of extremely suspenseful silence ensued, during which the minister's wife, out of sight in the vestry, placed the needle on the turning record, and a scratchy but full-throated version of Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" poured forth from the speakers mounted high in the four corners of the nave.

As the music swelled and the minister came out of the vestry to stand by the chancel rail, the mean-looking old guy with the bridal party gave a disgusted look across the aisle at the pessimist among the groom's people. The pessimist gave him the disgusted look right back, then shook his head and sat back to watch the wedding.

The music stopped. The speakers in the corners of the nave said, "Tick... tick... ti-" And stopped.

The minister stepped forward, crossing the front of the church behind the chancel rail, smiling bland encouragement at the parents and immediate family in the front row. He was a round-faced round-shouldered slender amiable man with a round spa.r.s.ely haired head and round highly reflecting spectacles, and he wore thick-soled black shoes like a cop and a long-sleeved black dress with a white d.i.c.key at the neck. The black dress showed off his round potbelly as he crossed to the pulpit and climbed the circular staircase.

On the bride's side of the aisle, the mean-looking old guy leaned forward and looked significantly across the aisle at the pessimist, who didn't seem to want to have his eye caught. But the old guy kept nodding, and widening his eyes, and waving his eyebrows, until finally everybody else in the immediate area was in on it, so then at last the pessimist turned and nodded-"I know, I know"-which didn't keep the old guy from pointing very significantly with his eyebrows and ears and elbows and nose and temples toward the general area of the pulpit and the climbing minister. The pessimist sighed and folded his arms and faced determinedly forward. The little dumpling beside him kept looking back and forth between the pessimist and the old guy, open-mouthed and eager. Next to the old guy, the sharp-nosed fellow ignored the whole thing, concentrating instead on the cleavage in the dress of the friend of the bride on his other side.

Meantime, the minister had attained the pulpit, from where he beamed out amiably upon his congregation. After pausing to adjust the microphone on its gooseneck stalk in front of him, at last he said, "Well, we all want to thank Felix Mendelssohn for sharing that wonderful music with us. And now, if you'll all rise."

Shckr-shckr-shckroop.

"Very good, very good." The minister's face and smile were at the pulpit, but his voice came from the four upper corners of the nave. "And now," he said, "we will all turn to our neighbor, and we will greet our neighbor with a handshake and a hug."

Embarra.s.sed laughter and throat-clearing filled the church, but everyone (except the mean-looking old guy) obeyed. The sharp-nosed fellow very enthusiastically embraced the friend of the bride next to him, while the pessimist and the dumpling hugged each other in a much more gingerly fashion.

"Very good, very good," the minister's voice boomed down at them from the four corners of the nave. "Resume your seats, resume your seats."

Schlff-schlff-fflrp.

"Very good." The minister's eyegla.s.ses reflected the interior of the church, creating gothic wonders where none in fact existed. Beaming around at the congregation, giving them back this much more interesting reflection of themselves, he said, "We have come here this evening, in the sight of G.o.d and man, mindful of the laws of G.o.d and the laws of the State of New York, to join in holy wedlock Tiffany and Bob."

He paused. He beamed his sweet smile into the farthest corner of his domain. He said, "You know, the blessed state of matrimony......."

His voice went on, for some extended time, but the words did not enter one brain in that church. A great glazed comatosity o'ercame the congregation, a state of slow enchantment like that in the forest in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Like the residents of Brigadoon, the people in the church drifted in a long and dreamless sleep, freed of struggle and expectation.

"....... with Bob. Bob?"

A slow sigh escaped the slumbering a.s.sembly, a faint and lingering breath. Shoulders moved, hands twitched in laps, bottoms shifted on the wooden pews. Eyes began to focus, and there was Bob, as if by magic, a bowed beanpole inaptly in a black tux at the head of the central aisle, standing with his look-alike best man-slightly heavier, grinning in nervous relief, left hand clutching jacket pocket (no doubt to feel the ring still safe within)-the two of them in profile to the crowd, Bob blinking like the terrorists' kidnap victim he was, the beaming minister descending the pulpit and striding toward the lectern set up just within the chancel rail. The speakers in the corners, said, "Tick... tick... tick..." and a slow, heavy-beated, orchestral version of "Here Comes the Bride" battered the people below.

Now it all began to move. Tiffany, on her father's arm, and her attendants made their uncertain way down the aisle, trying but failing to keep pace with the music, stumbling and tripping prettily along, concentrating so totally on their feet that they forgot to be self-conscious. Bob watched them as though they were an approaching truck.

Bride and groom met in front of the lectern and turned to face the minister, who beamed over their heads at the people and announced, "Bob and Tiffany have written their own wedding service," and everybody went back to sleep.

When they awoke, the deed was done. "You may kiss the bride," the minister said, and some smart-aleck pal of the groom said, "That's about the only thing he hasn't done to her," perhaps a little more loudly than he'd intended.

Bride and groom made their hasty grinning way up the aisle as the congregation stood and stretched and talked and cheered them on, and from the speakers high above came the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The mean-looking old guy turned to the sharp-nosed fellow and said, "If I had a gun, I'd shoot somebody."

"I wouldn't know where to start," the sharp-nosed fellow answered in agreement.

"How about with these two?" the mean-looking old guy said as the happy couple hurried past.

Across the aisle, the round troll dabbed his moist eyes and said, "Gee, that was nice. Better even than Princess l.a.b.i.a's wedding." The pessimist sighed.

Most weddings take place in daylight, but there'd been a certain urgency in the planning of this one, and all the potential daytime slots here at Elizabeth Grace Dudson Memorial Reformed Congregational Unitarian Church of Putkin Township had already been taken. The mother of the bride had been determined that her daughter would have a church wedding, and women who successfully name their infant daughters Tiffany do tend to get their own way, so an evening wedding it was. Exterior lights had been turned on at the end of the ceremony, so that when the wedding party emerged, laughing and shouting and throwing superfluous rice (it was unnecessary to wish fecundity upon Tiffany and Bob), the scene looked more like a movie than real life. Many of the revelers, becoming aware of this, started to perform wedding guests rather than be wedding guests, which merely increased the general air of unreality.

Inside, the church was nearly empty. The minister chatted up front with a small group of ladies, a few other relatives and friends drifted slowly doorward, and the four latecomers sat stolid in their pews, as though waiting for the second show. A departing aunt said to them, "Aren't you coming to the party?"

"Sure," said the pessimist.

She continued on. "Come along, now," said another exiting in-law.

"Be there in a minute," the sharp-nosed fellow a.s.sured her.

"It's over, you know," kidded a grandmother with a grandmotherly twinkle.

Twinkling right back, the b.u.t.terball said, "We're looking at the pretty windows."

The minister, pa.s.sing with the last of the ladies, smiled upon the quartet and said, "We'll be closing up now."

The mean-looking old guy nodded. "We wanna pray a little more," he said.

The minister seemed taken aback at that idea, but rallied. "We must all pray," he agreed, "for long life and joy for Tiffany and Bob."

"You bet," said the mean-looking old guy.

The pessimist slowly turned his head-his neck made faint cracking sounds-to watch the minister and the final few of his flock amble on to the door and out. "Jeez," he said. Which was a prayer.

TWENTY-THREE.

"Jeez," said Dortmunder.

Across the aisle, Kelp said, "Okay, Tom? Okay? Can we get it now?"

Sullen, Tom said, "It wasn't my idea to come to a wedding."

"It was your idea," Kelp reminded him, "to stash your stash in a church."

"Where's a better place?" Tom wanted to know.

Dortmunder rose, all of his joints creaking and cracking and aching. "Are you two," he wanted to know, "just gonna sit there and converse?"

So everybody else stood up at last, their knees and hips and elbows making sounds like gunshots, and Tom said, "Won't take but two minutes now that the G.o.dd.a.m.n crowd is gone."

He stepped out to the aisle, turned toward the front of the church, and a voice back at the door said, "Gentlemen, I really must ask you to leave now. Silent prayer in one's home or automobile is just as efficacious-"

It was the minister again, coming down the aisle at them. Tom gave him a disgusted look and said, "Enough is enough. Hold that turkey."

"Right," said Kelp.

As Tom walked down the aisle and Wally gaped at everything in fascinated interest-the true spectator-Dortmunder and Kelp approached the minister, who became too belatedly alarmed, backing away, his voice rising toward treble as he said, "What are-? You can't- This is a place of worship!"

"Sssshhh," Kelp advised, soothingly, putting his hand on the minister's arm. When the minister tried to pull away, Kelp's hand tightened its grip, and Dortmunder took hold of the sky pilot's other arm, saying, "Take it easy, pal."

"Little man," Kelp said, "you've had a busy day. Just gentle down, now."

The minister stared through his round spectacles at the front of his church, saying, "What's that man doing?"

"Won't take a minute," Dortmunder explained.

Up front, Tom had approached the pulpit, which was an octagonal wooden basket or crow's nest built on several st.u.r.dy legs. The underpart of the pulpit was faced by latticed panels inset between the legs, the whole thing stained and polished to the shade generally known as "a burnished hue." Tom bent to stick his fingers through the diamond-shaped holes in the latticework panel around on the side, half hidden by the circular stairs. He poked and tugged on this, but the last time that panel had been moved was thirty-one years earlier, and Tom had been the one to move it. In the interim, heat and cold and moisture and dryness and time itself had done their work, and the panel was now well and truly stuck. Tom yanked and pushed and prodded, and nothing at all happened.

At the other end of the church, the minister continued to stare at these suddenly hostile wedding guests, trying to remember his emergency-techniques training. He knew any number of ways to calm a person in a traumatic or panic-inducing situation, but they all worked on the a.s.sumption that he was an outside observer-a skilled and concerned and compa.s.sionate observer, it is true, but outside. None of the techniques seemed to have much relevance when he was the one in a panic. "Um," he said.

"Hush," Kelp told him.

But he couldn't hush. "Violence is no way to solve problems," he told them.

"Oh, I don't know," Dortmunder said. "It's never let me down."

From the front of the church, underlining the point, came a crash, as Tom, exasperated beyond endurance, stood up, stepped back, and kicked the pulpit in the lattice, which smashed to kindling. The minister jumped like Bambi's mother in Dortmunder and Kelp's hands. They held him in place, quivering, while Wally, excitement making him seem taller but on the other hand wider, waddled hurriedly to the front of the church to see what was going on.

Up there, Tom was on his knees again, pulling out from inside the pulpit an old black cracked-leather doctor's bag with a rusted-out clasp. "There's the son of a b.i.t.c.h," he said, with satisfaction.

"Gee!" Wally said. "The treasure in the pulpit!"

Tom gave him a look. "That's right," he said, and carried the bag down the aisle toward the others, Wally bouncing along like a living beachball in his wake.

"Is that it?" Dortmunder asked. "Can we go now?"

"This is it," Tom acknowledged, "and we can go in a minute. Hold on here." He put the doctor's bag on a handy pew and fiddled for a while with the clasp. "f.u.c.king thing's rusted shut," he said.

Shocked, the minister blurted, "Language!"

Everybody looked at him, even Wally. Tom said, "How come that's talking?"

"I really don't know," Kelp said, studying the minister with unfriendly interest. "But I don't think it's gonna happen again."

Taking a good-size clasp knife from his pocket and opening it, Tom said, "I hear from him again, I take his tongue out."

"Drastic," Kelp suggested calmly, "but probably effective."

"Very."

The minister stared round-eyed at the knife as Tom used it to slice through the old dry leather around the clasp, freeing the bag, opening it, and then putting the knife away. The minister sighed audibly when the knife disappeared, and his eyes rolled briefly in his head.

Tom reached into the bag, pulled out a wad of bills, peeled off a few, dropped the wad back into the bag, and turned to slap the bills into the minister's enfeebled hand. Since the minister couldn't seem to do it for himself, Tom closed his fingers around the money for him, saying, "Here's half a grand to fix up the pulpit. Keep your nose clean." To the others he said, "Now we can go."

Dortmunder and Kelp released the minister, who staggered backward against a pew. Ignoring him, the others headed for the door, Dortmunder saying to Tom, "You're a generous guy. I never knew that."

"That's me, okay," Tom said. "Ever surprising."

As they reached the door, the minister, beginning to recover from his fright, called after them, "Don't you want a receipt? For your taxes?" But they didn't answer.

TWENTY-FOUR.

All was quiet in East Amity, a tiny bedroom community on the south sh.o.r.e of Long Island. Well after midnight, and the commuters were all tucked between their sheets, dreaming of traffic jams, while out on the village streets there was no traffic at all. The village police car drove by, all alone, down Bay Boulevard, idling along, Officer Pohlax yawning at the wheel, barely aware of the boutiques and tire stores he was here to protect. Ahead on the left bulked Southern Suffolk Combined High School (yay!), from which Officer Pohlax himself had graduated just a very few years earlier.

How old it made him feel now, still in his twenties, to look at the old school and remember that feeling of infinite possibility back then, the absolute conviction that a determined fellow, if he kept himself in shape and didn't drink too much, could eventually sleep with every girl in the world. Various girls he had and had not slept with during those halcyon days drifted through his mind, every one with the same identical smile, and he and his police car drifted on past the high school, wafted by the gusts of imperfect memory.

Doug Berry, at the wheel of his black pickup with the blue-and-silver styling package, watched that G.o.dd.a.m.n slow-moving police car inch by and tapped impatient fingers against the steering wheel. He was parked on a dark side street across from the high school, engine running but lights off, waiting for the coast to be clear. He knew that would be old Billy Pohlax at the wheel-they'd gone to high school together, that very high school across the street, way back when-and he knew Billy wouldn't pa.s.s by here again for at least an hour. Which should be plenty of time, if his students showed up when they were supposed to.

Three blocks away, brake lights gleamed like rubies on the village police car, which then made a right off Bay Boulevard, heading down to the docks and marinas along the waterfront. Doug slipped the pickup into gear, left the lights off, and scooted across Bay and onto the driveway leading up to the big parking lot wrapped halfway around the school, on its left side and rear. Doug drove around to the back, the equipment in the bed of his vehicle thumping and clanking from time to time, and pulled in close up against the rear door to which he had bought the key, just the other day, from another old cla.s.smate, now an a.s.sistant building custodian (janitor) at this same school.