Valediction Part 3

"That would help," she said. "But only if you were still wearing your little Harvard commencement badge."

"Yeah. I thought about it but was afraid I'd get caught. People would start asking me smart questions and they'd find out I'd never been."

"Yes," she said. "That is a danger."

She was a very large-boned, tall woman, and she had managed to keep her weight up. She was probably fifty-five and wore a loosefitting dress with a small gray print in it, and a large straw hat. For her to find a loose-fitting dress was something of a triumph, I thought. She wore a lot of makeup, badly applied. There was lipstick on her teeth. If she'd been a dancer, it must have been in Fantasia Fantasia.

"At the commencement, people were asking really tough ones," I said. "Who's your broker? Where can I get a deal on Volvo station wagons, that kind of stuff. I felt really humble."

She laughed. "I went to Wellesley," she said. "I could have answered those questions easily."

"And now you write for the Globe Globe? My G.o.d."

"Yes, plucky of me, I think."

The waiter took our order. I had lobster salad. Nancy had the minute steak. We had another round of drinks as well.

"What can you tell me about a dancer named Tommy Banks," I said.

"Ah-ha," Nancy said, "enough with the small talk."

"Yes," I said, "off with the clothes."

She smiled again. "Tommy Banks," she said. Outside our window, on Newbury Street, a man and woman were walking an Afghan hound. The woman's arm was through the man's. He was much taller than she was and occasionally she banged her head against his upper arm as they walked, then looked up at him and laughed about something. Maybe the dog. It's hard not to laugh at an Afghan hound.

"Tommy Banks," Nancy said. "If commitment were all it took, he'd have been Nureyev, or Fred Astaire."

"Talent?"

"Are you a baseball fan, Spenser?"

"Yes."

"His desire is Cooperstown. His talent is Pawtucket."

I nodded.

"He was in New York for a while, studied with Cunningham, danced as a chorus boy with some actress in a one-woman show, Debbie Reynolds, I think-you know, the star and four dancers who serve as context. He formed a tap company of his own, and got some grant money and did a few colleges and Summerthing kinds of appearances, Citicorp Center at noon, that kind of stuff; and then he packed it in and came back to Boston. I believe he felt New York commercialism was stifling. Here he has a school, and a company that instructs at the school and is drawn from it and he works at expanding the tap-dance form."

"Is he being successful?"

She smiled. The waiter brought my lobster salad and Nancy's steak. Susan would have had only an appetizer. Probably smoked salmon. Maybe one gla.s.s of white wine, which she wouldn't finish. Nancy ordered a beer. I joined her.

"Successful?" Nancy said. "No, not very. I can applaud his attempt to enlarge the narrative possibilities of tap, but his actual innovations are less successful than the conception, if you follow what I'm saying. Are you familiar with dance?"

"A little," I said. "I have a friend who dances."

"In some ways Tommy would be best in an academic setting where his experiments wouldn't have to be self-supporting. His imagination is limited."

"Do you know about him as a person?"

"Not very much. We've met but I don't know him well. I know he's very driven by an ambition that overleaps his skills. He is, I believe, a very tough disciplinarian with his dancers, and people in the business don't like him very much."

"How about one of his dancers, Sherry Spellman?"

Nancy shook her head. "No. I don't know her."

I had finished my lobster salad and my beer. Three whiskies and a beer at midday and I was feeling mushy. Nancy ate the last of her steak. "Why are you interested in all this?" she said.

"Off the record?" I'd always wanted to say that to a reporter.

"Deep background," Nancy said.

"Sherry's missing. Banks claims she was kidnapped by the Reorganized Church of the Redemption."

Nancy raised her eyebrows. "The Bullies kidnapped her?"

"That's what Banks said."

"You sound skeptical," she said.

"Not really skeptical, it's a deep-seated habit I've developed from spending the last twenty years talking with people who speak with forked tongue."

"Cynical," she said.

"More than that. The story doesn't make a lot of sense. First of all, it sounds just like the Hearst kidnapping, and second, Banks never called the cops. Says he doesn't want a media circus like the Hearst case."

"That may be the definition of ego," Nancy said. "Imagining yourself worthy of a media circus. The Hearsts maybe, but Tommy Banks?"

"I know. He also said he was ashamed that he hadn't died trying to save her."

She shrugged. "More convincing. I believe he has some kind of belt in karate. But . . ." Nancy shrugged and widened her eyes.

"Five people with automatic weapons-doesn't make much difference what kind of belt you have."

"I would think not," Nancy said.

The waiter took our dessert order. Nancy had apple pie and cheese. I had black coffee.

"Why would they take her," Nancy said.

"Banks says they want to make her one of them."

"Aggressive proselytizing," Nancy said. "But why her, why not me, or you? You look like you might be hard, but you see what I'm asking."

"Banks said she'd been involved before. 'A brief flirtation when she was in college,' he said."

"And once a Bullie, always a Bullie?"

"I don't know. That's my next stop. I'm consulting a specialist on fruitcakes."

"Fruitcakes? How unsympathetic a view of religion," Nancy said.

There was a small swallow of beer left in my gla.s.s. I drank it.

"Malt does more than Milton can," I said, "to justify G.o.d's ways to man."

CHAPTER 8.

The priest was an arrogant one, full of his own knowledge and the pleasures of his impending salvation. But he knew a lot about the Reorganized Church of the Redemption and if I had to suffer a certain amount of foolishness to get the information, I could smile and smile and be agnostic.

"The Bullies," he said, "are a macho subspecies of Christianity. They believe in the concept of Christian soldiers and worship the Christ who scourged the moneylenders from the temple, not He who suffered His own crucifixion."

I smiled and nodded. We were in Father Keneally's office at B.C., a big corner room in one of the handsome graystone buildings on the Quadrangle. On the walls there were pictures of Keneally with Cardinal Cushing, with a couple of former governors, and standing with an arm around the shoulders of a football player named Fred Smerlas. Smerlas was enormous and Keneally was not and the gesture looked strained. The opposite wall was covered with books on shelves and as Keneally talked I had no reason to doubt that he'd read them all.

"Would they kidnap somebody?"

Keneally raised his eyebrows. He was small and neat with an expensive black summer priest suit, and pink healthy-looking skin and crisp white hair cut short. He smelled of bay rum and his nails appeared to have been manicured. A decanter of wine, maybe port, stood on the windowsill and the afternoon sun slanting through it made a purple gleam on the beige Oriental rug that covered the office floor.

"Kidnapping is not part of most Christian rituals," he said.

I wanted to sigh. It was the kind of answer he'd give.

"Neither was the rack and the strappado, as far as I know," I said.

The priest steepled his hands and placed them against his lower lip and nodded, smiling slightly. "You might think of these people as a kind of Christian version of the Jewish Defense League. They are activist. They might use force to achieve the goals of the religion."

"Is it really a religion," I said.

"Are you asking me to define religion, Spenser? In one sense a religion is a religion if it says it is a religion. The Bullies believe in a supreme being and a system of conduct derived from that supreme being's teachings and precepts."

Sigh.

"Religious belief is rather like love," Keneally said. "It can manifest itself in various experiential forms."

"Is Bullard Winston a genuine religious leader?" I said. "Or is he a charlatan."

"Power corrupts, Spenser. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Winston certainly appeared sincere at the outset, but now I can't be sure. There was some talk of drug use once, but nothing more than ec.u.menical gossip. Few men are immune to the temptations that reside in absolute authority. Those who resist most successfully are perhaps the recipients of divine aid."

Keneally leaned back in his swivel chair and crossed his ankles on the desktop. A fortunate recipient of divine aid. His black oxfords gleamed with polish.

"How does the church feel about Winston's chances for divine aid?"

"There is, in my view, and it reflects the best thinking currently in the church, little justification for the Bullies' militancy in doctrinal sources, in patristic writing, or in scripture."

"How big," I said.

"Membership? Perhaps ten thousand nationwide. The founding church is here, in Middleton, and there are mission churches in a number of cities across the country and abroad-somewhere in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, I've heard. It seems to have a good funding base, and seems to be well managed."

"You have an address for the church headquarters?"

"No, but it is in Middleton and should be listed in the phone book."

"Okay," I said. "I'll go visit them. Any summation you'd care to give me before I go?"

"I don't know how much reason you have to be wary of these people," Keneally said, "but I have none. As far as I know the church leaders and membership are sincere, if doctrinally unsophisticated. The Bullies pose no threat to the established church or, as far as I know, to the established order. Its membership is probably disenchanted with more orthodox worship, and like so many other fringe religions, the Bullies provide a complete life, albeit a limited one. It is communal, rather rigidly ruled, and vigorously organized by a single purpose. Certain kinds of people find it a very attractive alternative to lives that have been chaotic or aimless."

"The Bullies are not the only source for that kind of satisfaction," I said.

"Indeed not." Keneally smiled. "Many in my calling are drawn by something not dissimilar. But the Bullies also, of course, represent an antiestablishment, and-for lack of a better word-revolutionary, option. The established churches are just that, established, and would thus be less inviting to a certain kind of person."

"A life with mission and without uncertainty," I said, "with some revolutionary zeal for frosting."

Keneally nodded. "One could do worse," he said.

"One often does," I said.

CHAPTER 9.

The founding church of the Reorganized Church of the Redemption was on the former site of an animal park and theme village off Route 114 in Middleton. There were about fifteen acres with a green, and a plain white church at one end. Several bungalows lined each side of the green and behind them some small outbuildings, and then gardens. The whole thing looked like a cut-rate version of Old Sturbridge Village.

I pulled in onto the gravel drive that circled the green and drove up and parked beside the church. It looked like any New England village church. In the gardens behind the bungalows a number of people were working.

I walked up the front steps of the church and into the foyer. A sign said OFFICE, and an arrow pointed left. I went left. There was a set of stairs and another arrow. I followed the arrow down and in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the church found a collection of office cubicles separated by frosted gla.s.s part.i.tions. There was air-conditioning and fluorescent light and the sound of typewriters. A young woman at the reception desk said, "May I help you."

She had a frizzy perm and some makeup. She wore a white blouse with a round collar and an olive skirt.

"Is there someone who normally talks to people with questions," I said.

"Questions about the church, sir?"

"Yes."