"She doesn't have the right to kill me," he said. His voice was tight and squeezed. "She can't kill me. I can't make it without her. I can't . . ." He shook his head. I knew he couldn't talk. There were tears in his eyes.

"I can't . . ." He tried again. "I . . ." And then he sat with his hands clenched together, and his body hunched forward. I felt like sitting that way too. I straightened up a bit to make sure I wasn't.

"They've taken her away from me," he said. "You can't let them."

He didn't look up. I didn't say anything. Across the room the dancers moved less, and their talk died down. Banks's shoulders shook.

I said, "I'll talk with her again, Tommy."

He nodded. The room was dead silent now. I stood up and walked away. No one said anything. Paul's face was serious as he looked at me across the room. I looked back at him and we both understood something at the same time. There was nothing to say about it, so we didn't speak.

I went on out and down the stairs to the street. It was a clean summer day, even on Huntington Avenue. I walked downtown, past Symphony Hall, toward Copley Square. At the Christian Science complex a few kids were trying to wade in the reflecting pool and an official was chasing them out. In Copley Square the unfriendly high rise of the Copley Place development loomed up over Dartmouth Street, the heavy equipment cluttered the area and had Huntington narrowed to one lane around the construction site. A lot of trouble. Well worth it though, it would eventually rival the Renaissance Center in Detroit for its sense of open ease and hospitality.

It was a market day in Copley Square and truck farmers were selling produce in front of Trinity Church. People sat on the low wall along Boylston Street and listened to Walkmans or drank beer or ate their lunch or looked at girls or smoked gra.s.s or did all at the same time. I moved on down toward the Common. I was trying to think. Never easy.

I didn't think Sherry had been kidnapped. I wasn't sure whether Tommy really thought she had been or not. What he couldn't do was accept that she'd left him voluntarily. I had seen the clenched refusal to let go in him and I had seen Sherry talk about the pressure he'd put her under and I could guess that she had not so much sought the church as fled Tommy. Escaped maybe was a better word.

My heart was with Banks. I knew how he felt. But the kidnapping was fantasy. Even on three hours sleep I was pretty sure of that. Still, Sherry didn't seem to be having a swell time in the church and the church seemed a little hierarchical to me. I had told Owens I'd check on Sherry periodically and I was going to do that anyway. No real harm in looking into it a little more. Maybe there was a better option for Sherry than the Reorganized Church of the Redemption. Maybe there was an option that would ease some of Tommy's pain, or help him through it. Maybe not. Maybe there was no way to ease pain. No harm to trying. It was something to do. Irish whiskey can only take you so far.

CHAPTER 17.

I drove up to Salisbury to see Sherry. There were purple field flowers in bright density all over the meadows along Route 1. I'd looked at them nearly all my life but I didn't know what they were called. That was nothing. I'd been with me all my life and had just started to wonder about that.

Sherry was feeding chickens when I got there. She was spreading something that looked like dry dog food pellets around an the ground and a bunch of white hens flurried about her, pecking at the food. I realized I didn't know anything about chickens either. She looked up at me and didn't speak.

I said, "h.e.l.lo, Sherry."

"h.e.l.lo."

"How are you," I said. She kept distributing the pellets. The chickens kept scuttling around after them.

"I'm fine. I told you that last time I saw you."

"I know. I just like to check. You don't seem especially happy."

"The point of this world is not happiness," she said. "It is salvation."

I nodded. "Tommy is in pretty bad pain," I said.

She stopped scattering the pellets for a moment. "I'm sure he is," she said. "But that is Tommy's pain. I won't take ownership of his pain."

"I don't argue the point," I said. "But it sounds like a recited answer. Tommy loves you."

"Tommy needs me," she said. "That's not the same thing."

"Tell me about life here," I said.

"We have a regular life. Exercise in the early morning, study and instruction in the afternoon."

"What do you do for money?"

"We need very little, the mission is largely self-supporting." She gestured at the poultry. "And we grow vegetables and preserve them. Each of us receives a small stipend."

"From the church?"

"Yes."

"Is there anything you want?" I said.

"No. I'm doing what I want to do. I am comfortable. There is structure without pressure. I have friends."

"Do you contribute money to the church in some way?"

"No. My work and my prayers are what I give the church."

"Where do they get the money?" I said. Sherry looked at me as if I'd spoken in tongues. She shook her head without speaking. I took a card from my pocket and gave it to her.

"Here's my name and address and phone number. If you need me for anything, call me. Or come see me. I'll stop by again. Do you mind seeing me?"

"No," Sherry said. "I kind of like you."

"Thank you," I said. "I kind of like you too."

Walking back to my car, I was startled to find that I kind of did like her and that I was pleased that she kind of liked me. How unprofessional.

Back in my office I called Father Keneally. "Where does the money come from in the Reorganized Church of the Redemption?"

"Bullard Winston."

"Where's he get it?"

Father Keneally paused. "Actually, you know, I don't know. I don't know if he's privately wealthy or if he has backers. My professional interest is more directly with the doctrinal aspects of religious organizations."

"He doesn't collect from the members," I said. "He pays them."

"Quite unusual," Keneally said.

"Does he do fund-raisers?"

"I don't know," Keneally said. You could tell it was not something he was used to saying. You could also tell that he didn't like getting used to it either.

After I was through talking to Keneally I walked over to the library and looked up BuiIard VVinston in Who's Who. It didn't tell me anything about his financial stability. His town house was certainly costly, and maintaining a string of church missions and paying stipends to all the church members was bound to be costly. And I didn't believe that stuff about the lilies of the field.

I wandered down to the Kirstein Business Library off School Street behind the old city hall and browsed among the exotica of corporate finance and munic.i.p.al bond issues for most of the rest of the day. I didn't find out where the Reorganized Church of the Redemption got its money, but I did discover in a copy of Bankers and Tradesmen Bankers and Tradesmen that the Bullies were financing the construction of an office park in Woburn. The church held a 500,000-dollar mortgage. The developer was listed as Paultz Construction Company, Inc. that the Bullies were financing the construction of an office park in Woburn. The church held a 500,000-dollar mortgage. The developer was listed as Paultz Construction Company, Inc.

Curiouser and curiouser.

I walked up School Street to the Parker House and had a couple of beers in the downstairs bar and thought about how Bullard Winston and his church could loan 500,000 dollars to a construction company. Maybe just the new kids got a stipend and after a while they had to start paying dues or making t.i.thes or whatever you did when you belonged to the church militant. There were 10,000 Bullies altogether, Keneally had said. Fifty bucks a head would cover the mortgage loan, but then there would have to be money to cover expenses. Not impossible. If you got 100 bucks a year from 10,000 people, you had a million. And since it was charity, you didn't have a tax problem. Still, Sherry said they didn't pay dues, they received a stipend. She said it as if all of them received one.

I looked at my watch, almost six. I thought of seeing Susan and then caught myself and felt that spasm inside that I always felt when it happened. I took in as much air as I could and let it out and stood up and went home to make supper for Paul.

CHAPTER 18.

The next morning I was at the Kirstein Library when it opened and I went through several years worth of Bankers and Tradesmen Bankers and Tradesmen. By noon I knew that the Reorganized Church of the Redemption had made construction loans to Paultz Construction Company for about three and a half million dollars. Christian charity. I left the magazines on the table and went out.

I walked up over Beacon Hill on Beacon Street with the Common on my left and the elegant eighteenth-century brick-front buildings on my right. I turned up to Commonwealth on Arlington at the bottom of the Public Garden and in fifteen minutes I was at Bullard Winston's door again. A man in the deacon outfit I was getting to know so well told me that Reverend Winston was not at home and wasn't expected soon. I said thank you and went back down the steps and crossed the street and leaned against a tree and waited.

I experimented with keeping my mind blank. It wasn't as hard for me as it might be for others, but it wasn't easy. If you weren't careful, you'd start thinking of things. And if you thought of things, then your stomach would hurt again. Maybe I could take up meditation, get into self-hypnosis. I shifted my other shoulder against the tree and refolded my arms across my chest and thought of blankness. Like carrying a very full gla.s.s of water up the stairs, Hawk had said. He knew things you wouldn't think he'd know. He seemed immune to pain, yet he knew about trying to balance it. He seemed immune to affection, too, except with Susan . . . I tightened my arms across my chest and got my mind back into its blank balance.

It was nearly quarter to five when the same chauffeur-driven rose-colored Lincoln I'd seen before pulled up in front of Winston's house and the good reverend got out. I walked across the street.

"Evening, Reverend," I said.

Winston frowned at me for a moment and then said, "Oh, Mr. Spenser. Did your chat with the young woman proceed satisfactorily?"

"Yes, sir, it did. But now I wonder if you could spare me maybe five minutes more of your time."

"Regarding?"

"Regarding the three and a half million in mortgage notes you hold on property developed by Paultz Construction."

"I hold no mortgages," Winston said. "The church does."

Winston looked at me for a good silent period. That was okay, I had my mind so blank I could have taken a nap while he stared. "Spenser, you are becoming a pest."

"Yes, I am," I said. "Thank you for noticing."

"I went out of my way to satisfy your curiosity about this young woman. Your curiosity is, I believe, satisfied?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then why do you concern yourself with the financial affairs of a Christian church?"

"Theological speculation, Reverend. I was wondering about whether it really was easier for a camel to pa.s.s through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."

Winston turned without a word and walked up his front steps.

"I take it that's your final answer, Reverend?"

The front door opened, Winston went in. The front door closed. Spenser, master of the probing interview. I walked back down Commonwealth, with the sun behind me. The matter of finance did not seem to be some thing Winston liked to discuss. Why not? If it was all on the up-and-up, why wouldn't he want to rap about it with a pleasant guy like me? The question contained its own answer Where did the church get three and a half million to loan to a construction company. And why to only one, and why that one?

I wonder if Susan is dating.

CHAPTER 19.

I always enjoyed a reason to go to the State House. The great gold dome gleamed in the summer sun and from the top of the steps you could look down across the Common and feel the density of the old city thickening behind you in time's corridor. I went in and found the Secretary of State's office and got sent to the Charitable Trust Division and without having to kick back to anyone got a copy of the yearend financial statement for the Reorganized Church of the Redemption.

I took the computer printout with me and walked from the State House, across the street past the Robert Gould Shaw monument at the top of Beacon Hill, and down the steps into the Common. There was a lot of skateboarding and roller-skating and Frisbee, and wino. Some Hare Krishna shucked and shuffled down near the Park Street subway kiosk. I found an empty bench and sat down and took off my sungla.s.ses. I put my sungla.s.ses into my breast pocket and looked around me. No one was watching. i put my hand un.o.btrusively into my inside jacket pocket and came out with a pair of half gla.s.ses and put them on. I looked around again. No one seemed to have noticed. I looked down at the printout. Ah-ha. There it is. I wear these only to see.

The physical a.s.sets of the Bullies were worth less than 300,000 dollars. Their income, from interest on mortgage loans, was 315,000 dollars. If they had three and a half million out, that meant it was loaned at less than ten percent. That was five or six points below market. Of course maybe it wasn't when the loan was made. I got out my small yellow notebook. Time was I could remember everything. Now I had half gla.s.ses and a notebook. Next thing I'd have a midlife crisis. A pigeon landed on the ground near my feet and waddled around looking for a kernel of peanut among the littered sh.e.l.ls in front of the bench. Why this is midlife crisis nor am I out of it. I looked at my notes. The loans were recent. Mortgage rates had not been under ten percent when the loans were made. The pigeon gave up on the peanut sh.e.l.ls and flew away on undulating wing. I watched him go. What the printout didn't tell me, and what the notebook didn't tell me, and what Reverend Winston wouldn't tell me was where the Reorganized Church got three and a half million bucks to lend out in the first place.

I took off my half gla.s.ses and put them back into hiding. Maybe I should have my sungla.s.ses made prescription and I could wear them all the time and people would never know. They'd think I was cool.

I stood and put on my nonprescription sungla.s.ses and walked back toward my office. In the Public Garden I stopped an the little bridge and leaned on the railing and watched the swan boats move about on the pond and the ducks in solicitous formation cruising after the boats, waiting for peanuts. They could not be fooled by sh.e.l.ls. I wondered how ducks knew so quickly the kernel from the husk. One of nature's miracles.

When I got to my office there were two thugs waiting in the corridor. I've spent half my life with thugs. I know them when I see them. They were leaning against the wall in the corridor on the second floor near the elevator just down past my office door. I unlocked the office door and went in. I left the door open. The thugs came in behind me. I walked over and opened the window and turned around and looked at them. One of them had closed the door.

The head thug was bald with squinty eyes and a longish fringe of hair in the back that lapped over the collar of his flowered shirt. There was a scar at the corner of his mouth as if someone had slashed it during a fight and the repair job had not been done by Michael DeBakey. The a.s.sistant thug was taller and in better shape. He had black hair in a crew cut and deepset eyes and long wiry forearms with blue dancing girls and twined snakes and daggers tattooed on them. There were four upper teeth missing in the front of his mouth and someone had somewhere in his life obviously deviated his septum.

We looked at each other.

"You guys in the Mormon ministry?" I said.

"You Spenser?" the bald one said.

"Mmm," I said.

We looked at each other some more. A small objective part of me noticed, from the far upper right corner of my consciousness, that I felt almost nothing. A faint la.s.situde, maybe. No more. Blankness is all.

"Look, you guys, I'm trying to get clammy with fear, and I can't. I know that disappoints you, and I'm sorry. I'm trying, but nothing seems to happen."

The bald one said, "You got nothing to be afraid of if you do like we tell you."

"Or if I don't," I said.