Parishioner (42 page)

“I see,” Ecks said. “Okay, Lou, I just need to know one more thing.”

“I’m listening.”

“If we do this thing together how do we protect ourselves from each other?”

“I been thinkin’ about that, Eggy. We don’t know each other and there’s already nearly a half dozen dead. I think we should just write it down.”

“What?” Ecks was really surprised.

“Simple note sayin’ what we plan to do. We both sign each note and then put ’em somewhere where the authorities can find ’em if one of us gets killed.”

“That might work.”

Lou grinned while Ecks nodded.

“If either one of us turns the note in, the other one will be in trouble.” Ecks said this thought aloud.

“And we could tell whoever’s holding the letter to burn it in six months’ time,” Lou added. “By then we will be no threat to each other.”

“You surprise me, Lou. Damn, man, they must’ve put brain vitamins in your chili dogs.”

“I’ll write up the letter and we could sign it this afternoon.”

“In a public place,” Ecks added, “where we can take it away and make sure the right person gets it.”

“Let’s meet at the Beverly Palms Hotel lobby at five. I’ll have the letters and we can sign them in the bar. Jerry’s law partner says that he can get around the assault beef they got against Lehman and have him out the day after tomorrow.”

“See you then.”

Driving away from Santa Monica, Ecks realized that the detective was serious about making the deal. He’d meet Ecks later that afternoon and sign and switch letters.

Two million dollars for killing a man who slaughtered his own family.

What would Swan have to say about that?

He arrived at the church outside of Seabreeze City at five o’clock, the hour that he agreed to meet Lou Baer-Bond.

“Brother Ecks,” Sister Hope said in greeting in the outside court of white stone tables.

“Can you bring her to me, sister?”

“Yes,” Hope answered with a tremor of uncertainty.

“I’ll be right here.”

Ecks sat down on top of one of the tables and laced his hands together as in prayer.

The sun came down on his back. He luxuriated in the warmth and the safety of his
church.

“Mr. Noland?”

She was wearing a simple white dress with a green ribbon in her blond hair.

“You look like an angel,” Ecks said, eliciting a smile.

Doris sat beside him on one of the benches while Sister Hope watched from the shadows of a nearby alcove.

“You wanted to talk to me?” she asked.

“I needed to know a few things.”

“Like what?”

“Why’d you lie to me about being able to read?”

“I … I didn’t.”

“Oh, yeah, you did. You can read like a college graduate. You know other languages too. Secret languages that only crazy old ladies speak.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t get me wrong, angel; I don’t think you’re all bad. You went to the surf shop to warn Henry. You maybe didn’t love him but you cared enough to go to him, to try to warn him. But you were too late.”

“I …”

“Those hundred-dollar bills in your bag. They came from a man who said his name was Ansel Edwards. Martindale got Sedra to sell you to Ansel and he paid you those bills for information on the boys.”

The denial in Doris’s eyes didn’t make it to her lips.

“I don’t doubt that Sedra was planning to kill you but you had been planning to kill her for a long time. And you probably thought that you could get away. Maybe Ansel gave you a phone number and promised to take care of you. Maybe you called him and realized that he was playing you.…”

Doris looked up and saw something coming from the doorway to the church.

Ecks knew what she saw. He understood the fear she registered.

Sister Hope came out of her alcove. She moved to block Guillermo Soto and the two uniformed cops behind him, but the wall of law enforcement pushed her aside.

“Gimme a minute, Guilly,” Ecks said.

“What’s happening?” Doris asked.

“The man who killed your young lover is being arrested at this moment in Beverly Hills. He has a confession neatly typed in duplicate in his pocket. He spoke a little too freely around a microphone hidden in a vase on a restaurant table. Guilly here is going to arrest you for the murder of Sedra. He assures me that the DA will make you a deal. You won’t spend more than five years behind bars—maybe not even that.”

“Why?”

“You were right about Ansel. His real name is Jerry Jocelyn. Him and that guy Martindale are in for killing and paying for hits. If you can give the names of the parents who wanted their kidnapped son killed, that will help you a lot.”

Sister Hope was running from the yard.

The uniforms flanked Doris and pulled her up by her arms.

“You didn’t have to do this to me,” she said to Ecks.

“Oh, yeah, baby, I really did.”

As she was being led away toward the front of the church, Guillermo Soto approached Xavier Rule.

“Why’d you give Baer-Bond to Tourneau?”

“That way he could feel that he was part of the case—that you and me weren’t in cahoots.”

“Frank won’t like it.”

“Fuck Frank.”

Three weeks passed.

Over the days the newspapers that Ecks and his kids delivered reported the half-told story of the criminals and their crimes. Foremost in the headlines was the murdered Sedra Landcombe, who had been dealing in stolen children for five decades from a peaceful-looking house in a quiet Culver City neighborhood.

Next to Sedra in villainy were Mortimer and Leslie Tarvo, who had hired gangsters to kill three kidnapped boys so that they would be certain to receive a twenty-million-dollar inheritance.

There was a bad-apple private detective who committed two murders and was planning more, and a young woman who had been so victimized by Sedra that she finally killed her and ran away.

All of those arrested made deals with the district attorney, avoiding trials and cutting down their possible sentences. Doris Milne actually got away with a suspended sentence and was reunited with her parents—Nancy and Roderick Calhoun. Doris walked into a ready-made family of two brothers and three sisters and was planning a memoir of her years of horror.

Every day during that period Frank called Ecks, but the onetime gangster from New York did not answer the calls.

He was interviewed by Andre Tourneau for fourteen hours one Tuesday.

“Tell me about this Benol Richards?” the cop asked, more than once.

“She had someone ask me to help her.”

“And did you meet this woman?” Tourneau asked at least seventeen times.

“No, sir. My minister asked me to talk to her on the phone.”

“And why didn’t you come to the police?”

“It was a very old case and she never gave me any facts. She wanted me to ask some questions and I did.”

“But Benol Richards was suspected of being the kidnapper.”

“I didn’t know that. Talk to Father Frank if you don’t believe me.”

“I could bring you up on charges, Mr. Noland.”

“I doubt that, Detective.”

On the twenty-second day the story broke that Clay Berber, the man whose house the three young boys were kidnapped from, was found strangled in his backyard with Rose, his demented wife, sitting next to the body—singing happily.

On that day Ecks got into his classic Edsel and drove up to Seabreeze City.

In the rectory he and Frank sat across from each other sipping tea.

“Is something troubling you, Brother Ecks?”

“Is something not?”

“You did a wonderful job with and for Benol.”

“Did she kill her uncle?”

“Brother Soto assures me that she did not.”

“It was the wife?”

“His skin and blood were under Rose Berber’s fingernails.”

“She waited a long time.”

“Justice doesn’t carry a watch.”

“How’s it goin’ with Lenny and George?”

“Lester is the heir to the Tarvo fortune so Lenny is broke. Mr. Ben has him going to school and working for the hardware store. George wants to bring him into the congregation, but we haven’t decided on that yet.”

“Why you been callin’ me, Frank?”

“The elders have decided it’s time for your baptism.”

“What’s that?”

“The final step in making you a part of our union. Once you are baptized you are truly one of us.”

“I thought I already was.”

“No.”

“Well … I got to go.”

“When shall we plan for the ceremony?”

“I don’t think I want to get in any deeper, Frank. I mean, I’m okay with the sermons and Expressions already. I don’t need any more.”

“No one has ever turned down the baptism.”

“Hey … what can I say? I’m an original.”

Ecks stood up and Frank gazed at him, at a rare loss for words.

“But …” the minister said.

“What?”

“You can’t just stop. You have to continue.”

“No, man. I don’t. If you’re tellin’ me that I have to get baptized or leave the church, I’ll accept that. If you wanna turn me in … well, that’s the chance I got to take.”