Ancient of Days (29 page)

Adam approached him. “What has happened?”

“The bastard phoned,” Bilker Moody said, his upper arms straining the sleeve bands of his sweaty Banlon shirt.

“We’ve got a tape,” Le May said. “Come into the kitchen and we’ll play it.”

We filed into the kitchen. The tape machine, with two sets of headphones, was connected to the wall phone beside the door leading to Bilker’s pantry headquarters. Still, you could sit at the kitchen table while listening to or taping a call, and Adam and RuthClaire sat down there with Niedrach, Le May, and Webb. Hammond, Moody, and I found corners into which to wedge ourselves, and Le May turned a dial on the antique-looking recorder. Its milky reels began to turn, but at first all we could hear was the low hum of the refrigerator. Then Craig Puddicombe’s voice said, “
A whore and her hibber. For all the world to see
.”

“
Where’s Paulie?
” RuthClaire’s voice asked. “
Tell me how he is, Craig
.”

“
’S good’s can be expected, considerin’ what and where he came from
.”

“
We’re living apart, Adam and I. We’ve lived apart for nearly ten days now. You know that, don’t you?
”

“
No, ma’am. You’re standin’ right next to each other for all the fuckin’ world to see. That’s what you’re doing
.”

“
We had no idea that—
”

“
That you had your goddamn clothes off? Interestin’ defense, ma’am. Interestin’ goddamn defense
.”

“
That the photo would show up as a magazine cover
.”

“
Course you didn’t. And the spade who raped a troop of Girl Scouts said, ‘Sorry, angry white folks. I had no ideah I was gonna get caught. No ideah at all.’
”

On the tape, RuthClaire began to cry. “
What do you want me to do? The photo’s history. Adam and I can’t undo it. So what do you want from us now?
”

“
Who said I wanted anything, Missus Hibber Whore?
”

“
Then why have you called? Tell me about Paulie
.”

“
You’ve surprised the whole damn country, haven’t you? Well, everybody deserves as good as they give, don’t they? A big surprise all their own
.”

“
What surprise, Craig?
”

Puddicombe was silent a moment. Then he blurted, “
But I do want something. I want you and your hibber to get back together. Now. Today. This very evenin’
.”

“
Craig
—”

He broke the connection. On tape, RuthClaire’s voice hurried to ask, “
Was that long enough to do any good? Was that
—”

Le May turned off the recorder. “Telephone technology’s changing every day. If an exchange office has a computerized system, you don’t have to rely on taps and pin registers to trace calls. The computer will print out the number for you, then search its memory and identify the owner. This time we got lucky. The number Puddicombe called from belongs to a newly computerized exchange. We asked at all such offices and found an exchange with a recent call to this house. The time’s matched up exactly.”

“He phoned from College Park,” Webb said. “Not far from Hartsfield International.”

“Then you can catch him,” I said. “You can send people down there to stake out the place and grab him.”

Niedrach said, “If he were a complete dolt. But he isn’t. The number belongs to a pay phone in a public booth off Virginia Avenue. The College Park police checked it out, but Puddicombe hadn’t hung around long enough to say hello to them.”

“Then what the hell good does knowing where he called from do us?” I asked. “He’s gone, and we don’t know where.”

Investigator Webb, the agent with the Gus Grissom haircut, said, “We know he’s in Greater Atlanta. And we’ve got people in College Park asking questions of all the folks who might’ve seen Puddicombe using the booth. It’s on a sidewalk by a fast-food place, and the call came at a busy time in the afternoon. There’s a lead or two, Mr. Loyd. We expect something to break tonight.”

“And just what is it you expect to break?”

My question elicited embarrassed silence for an answer. No one in the Montaraz kitchen knew what to expect. Despite his Klan activities in Hothlepoya County, Craig was mostly an unknown quantity to these officers. The unpredictability of his behavior—the virulence of his racial and sexual hangups—could not fail to disturb us. My anxiety level was steadily mounting. That much I knew, but not a lot more.

Taking pedantic care with his phrasing, Le May said, “Seeing first that the perpetrator is still out there and, second, that his whereabouts aren’t fully pinpointed, we thought it best to have the Montarazes obey his last demand.”

“The bozo’s gettin’ ready to do something,” Bilker Moody said. “He’s just gettin’ everybody in place so the show can start. He
likes
theatrics, this guy does.”

“A surprise,” Niedrach said speculatively. “A surprise.”

Niedrach, Hammond, and Le May left the house to continue their investigative work elsewhere. Webb stayed to monitor the telephone and the recorder to which it was wired. Bilker and Adam went into the studio to play several tension-defusing games of Ping-Pong. Even in the kitchen, I heard the racket they made grunting, trading slams, and throwing their bodies across the table to return drop shots just over the net. RuthClaire, who might have been expected to want some time alone with Adam, approved their play. Just the simple act of spectating seemed to calm her nerves.

I stayed in the kitchen with Webb—Ping-Pong is not my game—and asked him what leads they had.

His mouth began to move even before any words came out. “Woman working at the fast-food place next to the phone booth. This gal says she saw a guy in a painter’s white coveralls go past the front window about the time our call was made. Bearded fellow. Young. She remembers because her boss had talked about repainting the divider lines in the parking lot. She wondered if the guy was there to do that. He must not’ve been, though, because there was only that one time he went by and the divider lines in the parking lot still haven’t been repainted.”

“You think Craig’s wearing a painter’s coveralls?”

“Her description of the fella sounds like Puddicombe.”

“Did your witness happen to see what he was driving?”

“Her position behind the counter didn’t let her, no.”

“That’s one helluva lead. If he keeps his coveralls on and walks around the city everywhere he goes, you’ll nab him before the year’s out.”

Webb smiled. “Touché.” His FBI affiliation had not gone to his head. Provincial rather than Prussian in his slacks-and-sports-jacket uniform, he had no trouble admitting that this investigation had him groping down one blind alley after another. His easy-going agreeability irritated me.

So I wandered down the hall to Bilker’s pantry headquarters.

If Adam likes you, you can’t be too big a turd
.

A comforting thought. I entered the pantry and sat in front of the TV monitors on the plywood counter. Why hadn’t the FBI set up in here? Well, Bilker had denied them access. The pantry belonged to him, and
he
was responsible for security, just as
they
were for the investigation of Paulie’s kidnapping. One of Bilker’s screens, I noticed, featured a continuous panoramic display of Hurt Street, while another had its eye on the well-lit MARTA station on DeKalb Avenue.

“Comfy, fella?”

I looked over my shoulder. It was Bilker, his T-shirt three different shades of dark green and his face as red and shiny as a candy apple. His expression was malevolent. I hoped that he remembered Adam’s good opinion of me.

The TV monitor came to my rescue. “Look.” I pointed. “Somebody’s coming.”

In fact, two cars were pulling up in front of the house: a late-model Plymouth glinting indigo in the actinic glare of the MARTA lamps and, right behind it, a blue VW beetle of older vintage. Caroline Hanna climbed gingerly out of the Volkswagen; then, as if they had taken a moment to settle a minor disagreement, Le May and Niedrach hatched from opposite doors of the Plymouth. All three people started up the walk to the house together, and another monitor picked them up.

“Whyn’t you go greet your sweetie ’fore I yank this here chair out from under your tail?”

“That’s a good idea.”

Only by coincidence had Caroline and the agents arrived at the same time. She was surprised to see me, even more surprised to see Adam. She had come to provide RuthClaire with female companionship for the rest of the evening. But face to face with me again, Caroline was shy. She hoped to let her entire greeting consist of a friendly pat on my arm, but I pulled her to me and brushed her forehead with my lips. Niedrach interrupted to say that he and Le May had to talk to me in private, and Adam led Caroline into the studio.

“What is it?” I asked the investigators.

“We want you to come with us,” Le May said.

“Where? What for?”

Adam returned as if to eavesdrop on the rest of our talk. Le May hesitated, afraid to proceed in front of the habiline, and my stomach clenched.

“You must tell me, too,” Adam said. “I am deserving to hear.”

Niedrach nodded. “We want to see if Mr. Loyd can make an identification for us.”

“What kind of identification?” I asked.

“Take a ride with us,” Niedrach said. “We’ll show you.”

“I am going, too,” Adam declared.

Le May started to protest, but Niedrach shook his head. So, after telling the others we’d be back shortly, the four of us went out into the muggy summer evening under smog-blurred stars and got into the FBI agent’s Plymouth. A mosquito was trapped in the back seat with Adam and me, and we listened to its faint but annoying whine until the habiline jerked his head and snapped his mouth shut on the insect. He settled back into his seat. Helplessly, I stared at him.

“Forgive me, Mister Paul. I am edgy this night.”

Le May spoke into a hand-held mike from under the dash. “We’re on our way.”

Static answered.

At the bottom of Hurt Street, Le May turned right on Waverly, part of a historic enclave dense with trees and Victorian houses in various stages of decay or renovation. From Waverly, we wound onto the southwest-to-northeast diagonal of Euclid Avenue, eventually creeping uphill past a row of shops to the brightness of Little Five Points. We crossed Moreland and dipped away from the bustle of the Points into a neighborhood of shabby clapboard bungalows and red-brick apartment buildings from the 1940s. I had no idea where we were going, but Adam seemed to.

“The Little Five Points Unaffiliated Meditation Center?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Niedrach replied. “How did you know?”

“Here, for many Sundays and a few troubled weekdays, Miss RuthClaire and I took our church before my surgery. I liked it. It had no rigid doctrines and welcomed anyone who had a spiritual hungriness.”

Presently, then, Le May let the Plymouth coast to rest behind a Fulton County police car and an ambulance parked beside the Little Five Points Unaffiliated Meditation Center. A host of people stood on the narrow front lawn. The blue-and-white flasher on the squad car picked these people out of the darkness, again and again. The door to the Meditation Center—once, I could tell, a single-story brick house like many other houses here—stood open. The stained-glass fanlight above the door was illuminated from behind by a cruel electric glare. Obviously, the police had been here a while.

Niedrach told Adam and me that when we entered the building, we would see just what the Meditation Center director, Ryan Bynum, had found upon entering its sanctuary at 8:47 P.M. for a routine check of the premises. The policemen working this crime had restored the scene to the physical conditions that had greeted Bynum.

Le May had already threaded his way through some of the teen-age gawkers on the lawn. He beckoned us after. Adam and I reluctantly obeyed. One of the young people, recognizing Adam, came forward with a copy of
Newsweek
and asked him to autograph its cover. Strutting uncertainly, the kid looked scarcely more than fourteen.

“You’re impeding a murder investigation,” Niedrach told him.

“Four letters,” the kid snarled. “Just his goddamn first name.”

Distractedly, Adam signed the magazine, printing ADAM beneath the image of his naked feet. The kid grumbled thanks and moved back into the crowd loitering nearby.

“He’s going to sell it to a speculator for two hundred or so bucks,” Niedrach said.

Adam shrugged.

In the church’s foyer, a man with a gold teardrop in his left ear lobe hugged Adam possessively. Tall but graceful, he had to stoop to do so. I knew without being introduced that this was Ryan Bynum, the Center’s director.

“Good to see you again, Adam,” Bynum said. “You’ve been away too long.”

Adam said, “I am not here to rejoin, but—”

“You can talk! My God, it’s a
miracle
, Adam!”

“—to accompany Mister Paul. These agents think he may be able to identify the victim.”

Bynum was beside himself over Adam’s ability to speak, but, upon receiving a condensed version of the events that had brought it about, began to discuss tonight’s untoward happenings: “Some churches get firebombed. Some get defaced with graffiti. But ours draws a more creative, more neurotic, kind of vandal.” Bynum was sidling along the foyer wall so that we could squeeze past him into the living-room-sized sanctuary. “Whoever did it, well, he ought to be a member. He
needs
us. If not us, then serious, serious therapy.”

The sanctuary, or main meditation room, was brightly lit—a departure from the way Bynum had found it only an hour ago, a departure from the aqueous gloom into which members had to tiptoe when they wanted to meditate or commune. Because of the lights, we could look across the sanctuary to the dais under a huge bronze mandala and see exactly what Niedrach and Le May wanted us to see, namely, the murder victim, who reposed in a leather lounger that someone had wrestled onto the dais so that it sat there like a laid-back throne.

Adam and I exchanged puzzled looks because a shaggy, orangish-red orangutan sprawled in the lounger. The creature wore a set of headphones, but its posture betrayed its lifelessness. Upside-down in its lap was a naked plastic doll: a black baby doll for a black child. It had fallen across the orangutan’s lap so that its head was wedged between one shaggy thigh and the lounger’s leather armrest.