The Sunlight Dialogues (61 page)

We’re marching to Zion
Beautiful, beautiful Zion
We’re marching upward to Zion-n-n
The beautiful city of God.

Mormons, Shakers, Spiritualists, and Millerites; Covenanters and Brotherhooders and the Monroe County Lambs. And then came the Children of Physical Culture, and they too had their holy saints (Macfadden by name) and shrines and hymns:

A band of good fellows are we,

In this helpful club of P. C.

We pursue here our health

And our troubles they melt.

And orders we get to be slim or be fat.

Our consultant does guide us each day

The masseur rubs our toxins away.

And we all stick together

And we don’t care whether

The world is now round or is flat.

And there was money, O! and empire! Old Eastman’s house with its twenty-eight bathrooms and pipe organ, and the houses up and down from it on East Avenue—more Kodak profits, or Bausch Lomb, Hickey-Freeman, Adler Brothers, Stein-Block, or profits from Sibley Lindsay and Curr’s Department Store. All that was in Clumly’s father’s day, had been not his life but his model for life—no lord, Clumly’s father, but a dutiful servant who understood greatness by the complexity of its plumbing.

That was how it was in Western New York, in the Genesee Valley, where a longshoreman like Fingy Conners could get to president of Buffalo’s fanciest boating club, rise from the dead as surely as Jemima Wilkinson did in the Year of Grace, 1776, becoming the Publick Universal Friend (so Fred Clumly’s grandfather spoke, gray of beard and pale of eye, himself mysteriously no baron, no saint, a dutiful servant in plumbing, a keeper of other men’s sanctity) or as Joseph Smith rose from death-in-life to holiness in Palmyra, or like what’s-his-name Harris, prophet. Something about the land, or the York State land as it used to be—the near horizons lifting up their high-angled screens between folded valleys, the days full of clouds forever drifting, ominous and beckoning, sliding past green-gray summits and throwing their strange shapes over the tilted fields, sunny elms inexorably darkened by the march of shadow from the straight-edged slopes. “Stand up and seize,” the land said; “or rise and prophesy, cock your ears to the invisible.” At the edge of dark woodlots facing on swamps where no mortal trespasser could ever be expected, there were signs
KEEP OUT: THIS MEANS YOU.

Was he another of them, this Sunlight Man—called, driven—spooked, more like—a man compelled to speak out, having nothing to say? It was possible. A terrible thought, that after God’s withdrawal into silence the ancient mechanisms which made prophets arise should continue working, like machines left on in an abandoned factory: so that bearded wild men strode forth as before, howling, to any who would hear, their inarticulate warning.

“A master criminal,” Clumly said. “Prophet of the Devil.”

Clumly! Clumly! Where is my Devil’s prophet?

“Sh!”

I’ll tell you something. A man can’t run a universe if he doesn’t trust his men. I’ll tell you something. My job is Law and Order. That’s my first job, and if I can’t get that one done, the rest will just have to wait. You get my meaning? I’ll tell you something:

He sat at his desk, chin on his fists, musing.

“You ok, Chief?” Miller said.

He waved it away, a slight movement of his right hand.

“You need a rest,” Miller said. “How long since you took a vacation?”

“Too late for that.” He spoke without interest. “What’s the Word?” He smiled.

Miller shook his head, then sat down across from him. “Nothing on the Indian or the Palazzo woman. We went out to the Reservation, combed it. Talked to the old man, Chief Bailey, and he let us in. Nothing. Checked out the places the Indian might head for—lady he use to live with, in Byron, couple high-school girlfriends we found out about from his brother, the Hodge places. Nothing suspicious. Little run-in with Will Hodge’s ex-wife. Kid’s sick as usual. Gets headaches—really something I guess. Anyway, she wanted us out of there, you could see, so we scrammed. It was true about the headaches. The kid looked dead. It’s all in the report.”

“You look around?” Clumly said. He hardly bothered to listen to the answer.

“Combed the place pretty good. Clean, looks like.”

“The Indian wouldn’t go there,” Clumly said.

“No, or anyplace else, from the looks of it.”

Clumly nodded.

Where is my murderous Indian?

Miller looked up at the corner of the ceiling and drew out a cigarette. “You asked for a check on the Paxton boys—what they’ve done with themselves, where they were when the old man had his heart attack. We got it for you. There on your desk.” He leaned forward and pointed to the folder. Clumly picked it up. “Nothing there,” Miller said. “Oldest was out at some dude ranch, Colorado. Other two in New York. They’re small-time brokers, set up by the old man about fifteen years ago.”

“Right after their sister went bats,” Clumly said.

“Some connection, you think?”

“You’re sure the brothers were right where they say they were, August twenty-second?”

“The night the old man died. Right.”

“The sister?”

“Hospital in Palo Alto called Twin Pines.”

Clumly struck at it instinctively. “California?”

Miller lowered his eyebrows, studying him. “California, yeah.”

But Clumly was in a hurry now. “That where she’s been all along? I heard she was in Clifton. I thought—” He tried to think where he’d gotten that. Old gossip? Had Elizabeth Paxton said it?

“They move her around,” Miller said. “They had her in Phoenix for a while, later Detroit, St. Louis, place near Louisville …”

“Why?”

“They don’t say.”

“They don’t say! Well Jesus, Miller,
make
them say!”

He opened his hands. “What are you up to?”

“Come off it, Miller. You know what I’m up to. You also know I’m not telling you. I tell you what I’m thinking and I leave you no choice, you’d have to interfere. You follow me?”

“No.”

He fished one of the small white stones from his pocket, studied it a moment, then handed it across to Miller. “Find out what this is for me.”

“Yessir. State Police can do that in their lab, I guess.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Find out.” He skimmed the folder on the Paxton brothers, lighting the cigar as he did so. It was true. Nothing there. His eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe it, the part about the dude ranch. Listen. Phone ’em up. Get a description of Paxton, and after that—” He paused, letting the idea swell up through his belly and chest. “Phone up the place in Palo Alto. Find out when she left.”

“Left?” Miller echoed. He rubbed his ear.

“She’s here, Miller. Right under our noses someplace. Get ahold of Will Hodge’s son—the fat one, the lawyer. Get him back down here.”

“I’m lost,” Miller said. He was also skeptical, annoyed.

“Correct. Me too, it could be.”

“But why should it be connected? What signs are there?”

Clumly drew himself up, and the muscles of his face squeezed inward around his eyes. “Everything’s always connected, Miller. There can’t be order otherwise. It’s all some kind of Design.” He stretched his fingers as if holding an invisible ball. “It’s all one pattern. Find out the connections and
bam!
everything’s plain!”

Miller said, “That’s crazy as hell.”

“That may be,” Clumly said. His jaw tensed. “That may be.” At last he said, “Ok, Miller, what else?”

“Well, plenty of troubles one kind or another.” He was still thinking about the other things, Clumly’s hunches, but with an effort he brought himself back. “Damn jewelry store robbery. You heard about that.”

“What?” Clumly said.

“Jewelry store. Francis and Mead. Christ, Chief, you don’t even know about it? All morning we—”

“I got here late. And then Mullen was here …”

“Well ok. We went over it with a fine-toothed comb. Nothing. Professional job, out of town, most likely. Just unlocked the back door and walked in and unlocked the safe. Couple hundred thousand, it looks like, but they haven’t yet figured the loss exactly. Must’ve happened a little after midnight.”

“A little after midnight,” Clumly said. Then: “Nothing at all?”

“Not a trace.”

Clumly shook his head. “Anybody hurt?”

“Not this time.”

“It’s like trying to get hold of the Devil,” Clumly said.

Miller looked doubtful.

At last Clumly said, “Ok. That all?”

“Just about. Some funny business at the Presbyterian church—a firebug, maybe religious nut. We’re checking it out. Other than that just the usual minor stuff. Couple of bar fights, lady that thought she heard a prowler.”

“Where?”

“Over on Ellicott, by the Mayor’s.” Clumly gave no sign, and Miller went on. “And we picked up some kids last night. Four of ’em. Good families. Parents had no idea. The usual. Garage of bikes. Torn apart and reassembled. Been talking this morning to the Goddamned parents. Oldest kid’s twelve, youngest one eight. Couple of ’em—”

“Throw the book at them,” Clumly said.

“Well, sure. But you know how it is.”

“Makes no difference,” Clumly said. “At a time like this it’s important we set an example. Discourage …”

Miller nodded. “I know. I thought about that. But if you talk to ’em you’ll see that possibly, this time—”

“You want to let ’em go?” His voice shook.

Miller thought about it. “It depends,” he said. “You know how it is. It’s like you said to Kozlowski, you have to use your judgment.”

Clumly sat forward. “He told you that?”

Miller glanced at him, then grinned. “What’s eating you, boss? I overheard it, that’s all.” He jerked his thumb toward the door. “I was standing right out there and I heard you yelling it. What’s it matter?”

Clumly thought about it. He pressed his fingertips to his eyes and once more the memory of his dreams came back, and then something else, the footprints outside Mayor Mullen’s window. At last he said, “Ok. Do what you think. Anything else?”

“That’s about it,” Miller said. He stretched his neck, getting a crick out, then swung his hands to his knees and got up. “Out at the Reservation we heard Will Hodge was there before us—the old man. Asked a lot of questions, the Indians said.”

“Funny business,” Clumly said. He pursed his lips, studying the cigar. “He was out in front of my house this morning. He’d been sitting there. Had his motor off. When I came out he got out as if he’d stopped to mail a letter.”

Miller folded his arms and looked down at him, musing. At last: “Any ideas?”

Clumly said, “A lot of ideas.”

For a minute neither of them spoke, both of them conscious of something dangerous hanging between them: not a danger that some truth would be opened to the light, some admission pass between them, and not a danger from without, though that was part of it—the outside danger hanging there as surely as the dust specks dancing in the shaft of light that fell from Clumly’s window to the worn, oiled boards of the office floor—but more than that, an obscure and secret threat to their mutual past as much as to present or future. At last Clumly said, “All right. What?”

Miller met his eyes. “It was you outside the Mayor’s house, standing in the bushes.”

Clumly squinted.

“Why?” Miller asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Ok,” Miller said. He looked down. “I thought it was that.” Then: “What did he want this morning?”

“I’m going to be investigated.”

Miller said nothing.

“There’ll be questions,” Clumly said. He compressed his lips.

“Can I help?” It sounded reserved.

“Too late for that,” Clumly said. “I think I can beat them.” He did not, suddenly; but he was indifferent to that, for the moment.

Miller glanced at him, uneasy, then away. He said, “You want some advice?”

Clumly felt a sudden, absurd leap of hope, and his face showed it. But the sensation of freedom passed instantly, or rather gave way to a different freedom, and his jaw grew stubborn. He shook his head.

“I was afraid of that too,” Miller said. He was going to say—Clumly could see it in his eyes—
How long do you think we can cover for you?
But that was not Miller’s way. He too took an obstinate look, and after a moment he came over to the desk. He lifted the folders and manilla envelopes from the stack of papers, revealing, beneath them, a dozen neatly typed letters. He said quietly, “If you don’t mind, sign these before you go.”

“Who wrote them?” Clumly said. “What are they?”

“They’re mail,” Miller said. “Me and Einstein been working on it, a little. Einstein’s my son. Good writer.”

Clumly looked at them. The top one began,

YOUR HONOR:

I sincerely regret that pressing duties have necessitated my postponing immediate answer to your questions concerning the budget submitted to you 12 May 1966. I shall seek to reply to your questions point by point. …

Clumly said, “You expect me to sign these things?”

Miller took a deep breath. “You better, boss,” he said. He turned away. Halfway to the door he paused, then turned back slowly. “Listen. No more poking around like a crazy old woman. You keep this up you’ll hang us all.” Miller turned his back.

He’d felt panicky, knowing how much there was to do, yet he sat reading the letters over and over, imagining the writing of them—Miller and his son running over his mail, wincing maybe, or maybe laughing, who could tell? like a couple of ladies at the laundry sorting undershorts. The letters were not his voice, nobody would be fooled; but that was not all. The letters were his responsibility, a stupid responsibility he should never have been saddled with in the first place and should never bend to now. And yet he would bend, he knew that. It was merely a question of time, of aging endurance.

It was twelve-fifteen when the call from Marsh Niemeyer came. A prattler, one of those farmers who worked like the devil when alone in the field or the cowbarn and then talked on and on as though he could never get enough when some neighbor came around or he met some friend at church or made a phonecall. He said at length, “Well, Chief, what I called for was, we’re printing up the programs for the program. Ha ha ha.”