If you have the devil’ s music in your home bring it here labor day for our righteous fire!
– Reverend H. Dobson Cartwright
The sign was in black and white and strung between two small oak trees that sat on church property. If you were headed west through town, as I was, you couldn’t miss it.
The Church of the Sacred Realm was a one-story concrete building that had previously been a warehouse for an auto-parts supplier. A thirty-foot steel cross had been set in place on the roof. For special holy events, Cartwright rented a spotlight to shine on it. At least two people claimed to have been healed by the gleaming cross. I was surprised that athlete’s foot could be vanquished that easily.
Cartwright was a tent-show preacher no matter how hard he tried to disguise it. He dressed like a banker, spoke perfect English, and never harped about money at Sunday services. The harping he left to a cadre of “Visitors,” as they were called, who worked the homes of the flock. They were holy variations on Mob muscle.
Five or six times a year, he created a spectacle that got him on local and sometimes (much to the embarrassment of the Chamber of Commerce) national TV. He had burned sexy paperbacks (he never mentioned Kenny by name, but I was worried that one of his more zealous Visitors might try to burn Kenny out), chopped up Barbie dolls (scandalous attire), smashed in a brand-new 21” Admiral TV console to demonstrate how little he cared for sinful TV, sponsored a “Good Girl” modeling contest in which the winners looked as if they were in training to become Amish, and had one of his parishioners paint a fifteen-foot-tall portrait of Elvis as the anti-Christ. Elvis’s guitar was in flames, and a forked snake tongue sprang from his mouth.
Burning the Beatles was a good idea by Cartwright’s standards. Some parents were leery of the group, just as many parents had been of Elvis. They’d heard the news about Carnaby Street with all its promiscuity-my God, fashion models with their breasts exposed-and suspected the end was near. These were the parents who helped get Cartwright on TV for all his stunts. Most parents rightly considered him a joke. Grandma had had Sinatra, the parents had had Bill Haley and then Elvis, and now their kids had the British Invasion. There were plenty of other things more deserving of parental attention.
Thinking about Cartwright always made me smile. I got two or three minutes of amusement as a reward for passing by that giant steel cross.
The main drag was just now lighting up for the night. Most people had some time off to be with their friends and families. The Dairy Queen’s chill white luminescence showed lines that stretched down the block. The same for the two downtown movie theaters where The Ipcress File with Michael Caine was up against Help with the Beatles, the latter probably sending the good Reverend Cartwright into suicidal depression. Little kids held strings to the red and blue and yellow and pink balloons their parents had bought them from the vendor in front of the A amp;P.
Elderly couples sat on bus benches, the buses having stopped running at six o’clock. I wondered what they made of it all. Some of them had seen Saturday nights when horses and buggies had plied our Main Street. Now it was the predatory crawl of teenage boys in their cars searching for girls, me having been one of them for several years myself. I always watched for the black chopped and channeled ’49 Merc, the one even cooler than James Dean’s in Rebel Without a Cause. It was as brazen and sure of itself as only a classic car can be-it spoke of power and lust and longing; and now when I saw it pull into place with the parade of cars cruising the street, I felt better. Or maybe I just felt rational.
A breeze cooled me as I walked the final steps to the police station. I was calm now, and I wouldn’t shout at Cliffie as I’d planned. I’d methodically point out to him that by not giving me adequate time with my client, he might well jeopardize the trial and give me grounds for appeal. This was unlikely as hell, but Cliffie knew even less about law than he did about police work.
The lobby area was empty. The drunks and the fistfighters would fill up the eight cells starting in a few hours, and their loved ones would be out here in the lobby pleading for them to be released. Some would be embarrassed, some would be angry, a few-especially the women whose husbands pounded on them-would be secretly happy.
Mary Fanelli was behind the desk. Since we’d gone to grade school together, she was another one who disregarded Cliffie’s Hate McCain policy.
“How’s your dad, Sam?”
“Not any better. Maybe a little worse.”
“We did a novena for him at the early Mass yesterday.”
“Thanks, Mary. Is the chief around?”
“Softball game.” She brought forth a can of 7UP and sipped it. She was a slight woman with a sharp face redeemed by sweet brown eyes. “Bill Tomlin’s here. Want me to buzz him?”
“I’d appreciate it.”
She got on the intercom and told Tomlin I was here. She clicked off a second too late. I heard his “Shit” loud and clear. She smiled. “He knows you’re going to ask him to make a decision, and he hates making decisions. You know how the chief is. We all hate decisions because no matter what we do, it’s wrong according to him.”
Tomlin walked toward me as if he was expecting to be executed. “Chief’s not here.”
“That’s what Mary said. I’d like to see Harrison Doran.”
“Aw, shit, McCain, c’mon. You really want to put my tit in a wringer like that? No offense, Mary.” Mary grinned.
“I’m going to make it easy for you, Bill. I got permission from the DA to see Doran for half an hour. Your boss kicked me out after fifteen minutes. That means I’m owed another fifteen minutes.”
“You mind if I call him?”
“Who?”
“The DA.”
“You’re getting smart.”
“I’ve been listening to your stories for four years now, McCain. The chief didn’t believe you, and neither do I.”
“How about ten minutes?”
He glanced at Mary as if for guidance. To me he said: “How about five?”
“Five? What can I say in five minutes?”
“A lot, if you get right to it.”
“How about seven?”
“How about six?”
Mary had been swallowing 7UP and almost spit it out laughing. “You two sound like seven-year-olds arguing about marbles.”
“I’ll take you back to his cell. And I’m starting the six-minute clock as soon as my key goes in the cell door.”
He kept talking to me as we walked the corridors toward the back of the station where the cells were. I wasn’t paying much attention. I was thinking of seeing the smile on Doran’s face when I told him that I now had at least two more very possible suspects and would be telling the DA about one of them. Cliffie wouldn’t release Doran on his own, but his DA cousin could force him to. Doran needed some good news. It didn’t take long for most people to wither in a jail cell. Depression came fast; claustrophobia came even faster.
Like the rest of the station, the cell block was clean, well-lighted, well-windowed, even if the bars on them did spoil any thoughts of escape.
Doran was in a cell at the back. He sat bent over on his cot. I wondered if he was sick. If you haven’t had jail experience, your body can retaliate.
He wasn’t sick, though. He was scribbling on a yellow pad and when he turned his face up to mine, he didn’t look wasted at all. He half shouted: “Hey, man! Great to see you!”
What the hell was he so happy about?
Tomlin’s key made a scraping noise. “Six minutes, McCain. Starting now.”
He locked me in and left. I sat on the cot across from Doran.
“You doing all right, Doran?”
“This is so cool,” Doran said.
“What?”
“This-this is very, very cool, McCain.”
“This is cool? Being in jail is cool? The last time I saw you, you were terrified.”
“That’s before I had my idea.”
He was doing theater again. He was up on his feet and walking around as much as the cell allowed. He could have snapped. It’s not unknown for people in jail to have breakdowns. Or even try suicide. “Listen, Doran, I think maybe I’ve got a shot at getting you out of here.”
“Out of here! Are you crazy? You try and get me out of here, McCain, and I’ll get another lawyer.”
“Sit down.”
“What?”
“I said sit down. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I think we better get the city psychologist to have a talk with you. Of course you want to get out of here. You’re innocent-or at least I’m pretty sure you are.”
He sat down and leaned forward and snapped, “What the hell kind of book will that make?”
“Book? What the hell are you talking about?”
“My life story. All the people I’ve claimed to be. And how I wound up in jail falsely accused of a murder. And how a kind-ofdown-on-his-luck lawyer saved my bacon.”
No, he wasn’t crazy; I was crazy. The words were supposed to be that he hated it in here and that he wanted to get out before he killed himself-but for some reason my brain wasn’t tuned to the right radio station. I was hearing some insane bullshit about him writing a book and wanting to stay in jail.
“I’ve got to be in here for at least a week. So if you’ve figured out who killed the old man, you’ve got to keep it to yourself for at least five or six days. That’ll give me my ending-you know-how if I hadn’t been falsely accused, I wouldn’t ever have looked back on my life and realized that I should never have let all those women support me, even though-you know-I pretty much paid them back when bedtime rolled around. It’s the old Cecil B. DeMille stuff-fifty-five minutes of sin and five minutes of repenting at the end.”
“I quit.”
“What?”
“Unless you tell me right now that all this bullshit is a joke, I’m quitting.”
“This is my chance, man. I used to sleep with this older woman in New York. She’s a very important editor. I know she’ll go for this.”
I could hear Tomlin unlocking the door that opened on the jail.
“Look, you moron. They might convict you of this. They could get first degree. You could try diminished capacity because you were so drunk; but even if they knock it down to second, you’re in prison for a long time.”
“But you know I’m innocent. And you’re a lawyer and a private detective and-”
“It’s too much of a risk.”
“But I’m innocent!”
“That doesn’t mean I’ll be able to turn up the killer, dipshit. Innocent people get convicted all the time.”
I enjoyed seeing shock register on his pretty-boy face.
“Time’s up, McCain,” Tomlin said as he unlocked the cell.
I shook my head and started to walk out, but Doran grabbed me by the shoulder. “I still think the book’s a great idea.”
I was almost to the door when he shouted: “That editor’ll love this!”
I wondered if I had enough in the bank to get him a year’s worth of electroshock treatments.