Stuart Kaminsky - Poor Butterfly

“Picked a strange profession,” I said.

“Poor vocational counseling,” he agreed. “Sunset should have been a ballplayer.”

We looked at the smiling Sunset wacking an imaginary homer into the right-field stands.

“But he took shrapnel in his shoulder back in the Battle of Midway,” Preston whispered. “He’ll just have to settle for being a cop.”

“Look,” Sunset said. “Mel Ott.” He set his feet wide apart and held the ax up high.

“You see where Branch Rickey just announced that the Dodgers were paying the Phils thirty thousand for Rube Melton? I could hit Melton. I could hit any right-hander last year.”

“I know,” Preston said. “Let’s get back to work. Crime is running rampant in the streets.”

That had been three hours earlier. They left, Lundeen sighed, then found Gwen and went down to interview the company and workmen.

It was a little after four when I left Lundeen, assuring him that the opera company was in good hands.

On the way down from Lundeen’s office I listened for footsteps, butterflies, and music, but heard none.

Raymond caught me in the lower lobby.

“Big nose and beard, little pointy red beard,” he said, stroking an imaginary beard under his chin.

“The Phantom?” I asked, walking on.

“Damned right,” he said.

“I thought you didn’t get out much?” I said.

“Not much,” he said, gangling after me as I hit the doors to the outside.

“That’s the description of the Phantom the opera director gives in the movie,” I said.

“Coincidence,” said Raymond.

“Why you wearing a shirt and tie and overalls, Raymond?” I tried.

He looked down at himself as if this were startling news.

“Want to look my best,” he said. “Make a good impression. Big things going on. Good-looking women. Want to keep working here when they pack up and leave.”

“You don’t think the opera is staying?” I asked, opening the door and looking down. One of the old lady pickets was gone, but the old man and the other woman were still holding their placards high.

“Nope,” Raymond said. “Smell funny in here to you?”

I sniffed.

“Plastery-like,” Raymond went on with a shiver. “Building liked itself the way it was. It was sleeping peaceful. Now they’re waking it up. It’ll get all this dust in its ducts and sneeze everyone out of here.”

“Except you,” I said.

“Probably,” he agreed. “I know places to get a good hold when the sneezing starts.”

“You’re a poet, Raymond.”

“Creativity runs in the family,” he said. “Father was a trumpet player. Got me my job here back when I came back from fighting Villa. Goin’ to rain.”

“Looks like,” I said. Raymond ducked back into the building, and I went down the steps right toward the old man with the placard.

“Got a question,” I said to him when I reached the sidewalk.

He was wary, but any attention was better than what he was getting from the departing workers. The old woman looked at me hopefully and put down her sign.

“Got an answer,” the old man said. “And the answer is quit this place and help convince others to do the same.”

“Wrong answer,” I said. “You mentioned a Reverend …?”

“… Souvaine,” the old woman piped in.

The old man gave her a look of distinct rebuke.

“I am the on-site spokesman, Cynthia,” he said to her.

Cynthia looked properly put in her place.

“I’m sorry, Sloane,” she said.

“The Reverend Souvaine is the spearhead of God in the battle against the godless,” said the old man, looking up to God with a small, knowing smile. God spat a few drops in his face.

“Getting God and politics a little mixed up, aren’t you?” I asked.

“They are, as the Reverend Souvaine points out, inseparable,” said the old man, looking at the woman, who nodded her approval.

“How do I find the Reverend?” I asked.

“He does not hide,” said the man.

“Amen,” said the woman.

A pair of women leaving the Opera looked over at us, then pretended to return to an absorbing conversation.

“Where doesn’t he hide? Where do I find him?”

“Church of the Enlightened Patriots,” replied Sloane. He reached into his back pocket and came out with a crumpled sheet of paper announcing an open meeting at the church. The date had passed, but the address and telephone number were there.

“Think it would be a good idea to get the lady off the street and get her a glass of iced tea?” I suggested. “It’s starting to rain.”

The man cocked his head to one side and looked at me with new eyes. The madness passed.

“The work of the church is Cynthia’s and my life,” he said softly. “It gives us meaning, purpose. Cynthia has not been well and doesn’t have … We will stay till there is no one left in the building whose mind and soul we might still touch by the truth.”

“Sure?” I asked. “I could give you a ride to the church.”

“I’m sure,” he said, and the madness was back. “We are sure. Have we touched your soul? Is that why you wish to see the Reverend?” There was hope in his question.

“You’ve aroused my interest,” I said. “I’d like the Reverend to give me some more information.”

“Amen,” said Cynthia.

“Amen,” I added.

The old man gave me directions to the Church of the Enlightened Patriots and I headed for my Crosley.

I’d left the windows open a crack. The crack had been enough for the Reverend’s trio to stuff through a handful of leaflets. I put them in a pile on the seat next to me, started the Crosley, and went out in search of the church.

I found the Church of the Enlightened Patriots on an intersection just outside Chinatown. I was impressed. It was a red brick building with two sides curving down from a central clock tower. Above the clock was a carillon. At the top of the central tower were four crosses, one facing each direction, and a pinnacle with a bigger cross. I got out of the Crosley, waited for a streetcar to pass, and started up the stone steps before I saw that I had the wrong building. Above the door was written: OLD SAINT MARY’S CHURCH. I stopped a Chinese woman who was hurrying down the steps clutching a black patent leather purse to her breasts and asked her for the Church of the Enlightened Patriots. She pointed to the next corner and made a sharp gesture to the right to indicate a turn. Before I could thank her, she was gone.

I went down the street she had pointed to and found the church. It looked as if it had gone through a few changes. It was a wooden two-story building painted white, with a wooden sign with black lettering announcing that this was the church and the Reverend Adam Souvaine was the pastor. There was no parking lot next to the church, which was wedged in next to a second-hand bookstore and a four-story office building whose sign, twice as big as that of the church, announced that there were vacancies.

It was after five and the street was empty except for a few cars parked along the curb. It was raining lightly. I locked the Crosley and found a burger joint half a block away.

The joint was small and clean with white tile floors and swivel stools at the counter, where you could see the grill. A few customers were chomping burgers and downing coffee or cola. I sat at the counter, where someone had left a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle . I ordered a Pepsi and a burger from the old Chinese guy in the white cap and apron sweating at the grill and learned that the Allies were repelling new tank attacks in Tunisia and that our planes were hitting Naples, Turin, and Rouen. The British had opened a new drive in Libya, and the Nazis were admitting that their defenses had been pierced.