Revival (26 page)

Time bombs.

“So now you're going to find him.”

“You bet.” The obituary of Catherine Anne Morse was the last piece of evidence I needed, the one that made the decision final.

“And persuade him to stop.”

“If I can.”

“If he won't?”

“Then I don't know.”

“I'll go with you, if you want.”

But
she
didn't want. It was all over her face. She had started the assignment with an intelligent young woman's zest for pure research, and there had been the lovemaking to add extra spice, but now the research was no longer pure and she had seen enough to scare her badly.

“You're not going anywhere near him,” I said. “But he's been off the road for eight months now and his weekly TV show's into reruns. I need you to find out where he's hanging his hat these days.”

“I can do that.” She set her laptop aside and reached under the sheet. “But I'd like to do something else first, if you're of a mind.”

I was.

 • • •

Shortly before Labor Day,
Bree Donlin and I said our goodbyes in that same bed. They were very physical ones for the most part, satisfying to both of us, but also sad. For me more than her, I think. She was looking forward to life as a pretty, unattached career girl in New York; I was looking forward to the dreaded double-nickel in less than two years. I thought there would be no more lively young women for me, and on that score I have been proven absolutely correct.

She slipped out of bed, long-legged and beautifully naked. “I found what you wanted,” she said, and began rummaging through her purse on the dresser. “It was harder than I expected, because he's currently going under the name of Daniel Charles.”

“That's my boy. Not exactly an alias, but close.”

“More of a precaution, I think. The way celebrities will check into a hotel under a fake name—or a variation of their real one—to fool the autograph hounds. He leased the place where he's living as Daniel Charles, which is legal as long as he's got a bank account and the checks don't bounce, but sometimes a fella just has to use his real name if he's going to stay on the right side of the law.”

“What sometimes would you be talking about in this case?”

“He bought a car last year in Poughkeepsie, New York—not a fancy one, just a plain-vanilla Ford Taurus—and registered it under his real name.” She got back into bed and handed me a slip of paper. “Here you go, handsome.”

Written on it was
Daniel Charles (aka Charles Jacobs, aka C. Danny Jacobs), The Latches, Latchmore, New York 12561
.

“What's The Latches when it's at home with its feet up?”

“The house he's renting. Actually an estate. A
gated
estate, so be aware. Latchmore is a little north of New Paltz—same zip code. It's in the Catskills, where Rip Van Winkle bowled with the dwarfs back in the day. Except then—umm, your hands are nice and warm—the game was called ninepins.”

She snuggled closer, and I said what men of my age find themselves saying more and more frequently: I appreciated the offer, but didn't feel myself capable of taking her up on it just then. In retrospect, I sure wish I'd tried a little harder. One last time would have been nice.

“That's okay, hon. Just hold me.”

I held her. I think we drowsed, because when I became aware again, the sun had moved from the bed to the floor. Bree jumped up and began to dress. “Got to shake. A thousand things to do today.” She hooked her bra, then looked at me in the mirror. “When are you going to see him?”

“Probably not until October. Hugh's got a guy coming in from Minnesota to sub for me, but he can't get here until then.”

“You have to stay in touch with me. Email
and
phone. If I don't hear from you every day you're out there, I'll get worried. I might even have to drive up and make sure you're okay.”

“Don't do that,” I said.

“You just stay in touch, white boy, and I won't have to.”

Dressed, she came and sat on the side of the bed.

“You might not need to go at all. Has that idea crossed your mind? There's no tour scheduled, his website's gone stagnant, and there's nothing but reruns on his TV show. I came across a blog post the other day titled
Where in the World Is Pastor Danny?
The discussion thread went on for pages.”

“Your point being?”

She took my hand, twined her fingers in mine. “We know—well, not
know
, but we're pretty sure—that he's hurt some people along the way while he was helping others. Okay, that's done and can't be undone. But if he's stopped healing, he won't be hurting anyone else. In that case, what would be the point of confronting him?”

“If he's stopped healing, it's because he's made enough money to move on.”

“To what?”

“I don't know, but judging from his track record, it could be dangerous. And Bree . . . listen.” I sat up and took her other hand. “Everything else aside, someone needs to call him to account for what he's done.”

She lifted my hands to her mouth, where she kissed first one and then the other. “But should that someone be you, honey? After all, you were one of his successes.”

“I think that's why. Also, Charlie and I . . . we go back. We go way back.”

 • • •

I didn't see her off
at Denver International—that was her mother's job—but she called me when she landed, frothing with a combination of nerves and excitement. Looking forward, not back. I was glad for her. When my phone rang twenty minutes later, I thought it would be her again. It wasn't. It was her mother. Georgia asked if we could talk. Maybe over lunch.

Uh-oh
, I thought.

We ate at McGee's—a pleasant meal, with pleasant conversation, mostly about the music business. When we had said no to dessert and yes to coffee, Georgia leaned her considerable bosom on the table and got down to business. “So, Jamie. Are you two done with each other?”

“I . . . um . . . Georgia . . .”

“Goodness, don't mumble and stumble. You know perfectly well what I mean, and I'm not going to bite your head off. If I had a mind to do that, I would have done it last year, when she first hopped in the sack with you.” She saw my expression and smiled. “Nah, she didn't tell me and I didn't ask. Didn't need to. I can read her like a book. I bet she even told you I got up to some of the same doins with Hugh, back in the day. True?”

I made a zipping motion across my lips. It turned her smile into a laugh.

“Oh, that's good. I like that. And I like
you
, Jamie. I did almost from the first, when you were skinny as a rail and still getting over whatever junk you were putting into your system. You looked like Billy Idol, only dragged through the gutter. I don't have anything against mixed-race sweeties, either. Or the age thing. Do you know what my father gave me when I got old enough for a driver's license?”

I shook my head.

“A 1960 Plymouth with half the grille gone, bald tires, rusty rocker panels, and an engine that gobbled recycled oil by the quart. He called it a field-bomber. Said every new driver should have an old wreck to start with, before he or she stepped up to a car that would actually take an inspection sticker. Are you getting my point?”

I absolutely was. Bree wasn't a nun, she'd had her share of sexual adventures before I came along, but I had been her first long-term relationship. In New York, she would move up—if not to a man of her own race, then certainly to one a little closer to her own age.

“I just wanted that out front before I said what I really came here to say.” She leaned forward even more, the rolling tide of her bosom endangering her coffee cup and water glass. “She wouldn't tell me much about the research she's been doing for you, but I know it scared her, and the one time I tried to ask Hugh, he about bit my head off.”

Ants
, I thought.
To him, the whole congregation looked like ants
.

“It's about that preacherman. I know that much.”

I kept quiet.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“You could say so, I guess.”

She nodded and sat back. “That's all right. That's fine. Just from now on, I want you to leave Brianna out of it. Will you do that? If only because I never suggested that you'd have done better to keep your elderly prick away from my daughter's underpants?”

“She's out of it. We agreed on that.”

She gave a businesslike nod. Then: “Hugh says you're taking a vacation.”

“Yes.”

“Going to see the preacherman?”

I kept quiet. Which was the same as saying yes, and she knew it.

“Be careful.” She reached across the table and interlaced her fingers in mine, as her daughter had been wont to do. “Whatever it was you and Bree were looking into, it upset her terribly.”

 • • •

I flew into Stewart Airport
in Newburgh on a day in early October. The trees were turning color, and the ride to the town of Latchmore was beautiful. By the time I got there, the afternoon was waning and I checked into the local Motel 6. There was no dial-up, let alone WiFi, which made my laptop unable to touch the world outside my room, but I didn't need WiFi to find The Latches; Bree had done that for me. It was four miles east of downtown Latchmore, on Route 27, an estate home once owned by an old-money family named Vander Zanden. Around the turn of the twentieth century the old money had apparently run out, because The Latches had been sold and turned into a high-priced sanitarium for overweight ladies and soused gentlemen. That had lasted almost until the turn of the twenty-first century. Since then it had been for sale or lease.

I thought I would have a hard time sleeping, but I went under almost immediately, in the midst of trying to plan what I'd say to Jacobs when I saw him.
If
I saw him. When I woke early on another bright fall day, I decided that playing it by ear might be for the best. If I hadn't laid down tracks to run on, I reasoned (perhaps fallaciously), I couldn't be derailed.

I got in my rental car at nine, drove the four miles, found nothing. A mile or so farther on I stopped at a farmstand loaded with the season's last produce. The potatoes looked mighty paltry to my country boy's eye, but the pumpkins were wowsers. The stand was being presided over by a couple of teenagers. The resemblance said they were brother and sister. Their expressions said they were bored brainless. I asked for directions to The Latches.

“You passed it,” the girl said. She was the older.

“I figured that much. I just don't know how I managed. I thought I had good directions, and it's supposed to be pretty big.”

“There used to be a sign,” the boy said, “but the guy who's renting the place took it down. Pa says he must like to keep himself to himself. Ma says he's probably stuck up.”

“Shut up, Willy. Mister, you gonna buy anything? Pa says we can't shut down for the day until we get thirty dollars' worth of custom.”

“I'll buy a pumpkin.
If
you can give me some decent directions.”

She gave a theatrical sigh. “One pumpkin. A buck-fifty. Big whoop.”

“How about one pumpkin for five dollars?”

Willy and his sister exchanged a look, then she smiled. “That'll work.”

 • • •

My expensive pumpkin sat
in the backseat like an orange moonlet as I drove back the way I had come. The girl had told me to watch for a big slab of rock with METALLICA RULES sprayed on it. I spotted it and slowed to ten miles an hour. Two tenths of a mile after the big rock, I came to the turnoff I'd missed before. It was paved, but the entrance was badly overgrown and heaped with fallen autumn leaves. It looked like camouflage to me. When I'd asked the farmstand kids if they knew what the new occupant did, they had simply shrugged.

“Pa says he probably made his money in the stock market,” the girl said. “He must have a lot of it, to live in a place like that. Ma says it must have fifty rooms.”

“Why you goin to see him?” This was the boy.

His sister threw him an elbow. “That's rude, Willy.”

I said, “If he's who I think he is, I knew him a long time ago. And thanks to you guys, I can bring him a present.” I hefted the pumpkin.

“Make a lot of pies with that, f'sure,” the boy said.

Or a jack-o'-lantern
, I thought as I turned into the lane leading to The Latches. Branches brushed the sides of my car.
One with a bright little electric light inside instead of a candle. Right behind the eyes.

The road—that's what it was once you got past the intersection with the highway, wide and well-paved—climbed in a series of
S
-turns. Twice I had to stop while deer lolloped across ahead of me. They looked at my car without concern. I guessed no one had hunted these woods in a long, long time.

Four miles up, I came to a closed wrought-iron gate flanked by signs: PRIVATE PROPERTY on the left and NO TRESPASSING on the right. There was an intercom box on a fieldstone post with a video camera above it, cocked down to look at callers. I pressed the button on the intercom. My heart was beating hard, and I was sweating. “Hello? Is anybody there?”

Nothing at first. At last: “How may I help you?” The resolution was much better than most intercom systems provide—­terrific, in fact—but given Jacobs's interests, that didn't surprise me. The voice wasn't his, but it was familiar.

“I'm here to see Daniel Charles.”

“Mr. Charles doesn't see callers without an appointment,” the intercom informed me.

I considered this, then pushed the TALK button again. “What about Dan Jacobs? That's the name he was going under in Tulsa, where he was running a carny shy called Portraits in Lightning.”