Bill Pronzini - Deadfall

I was just starting on the second library book, to see if it contained any information not covered in the first, when Eberhardt shouldered in. He saw me sitting there with my feet up, reading, and pulled a face. “Look at this,” he said. “I’m out all day busting my hump and here you are, sitting on yours reading a book.”

“I’m working, Eb.”

“Yeah. Sure you are.” He sailed his hat on top of one of the hideous mustard-yellow file cabinets and sat down at his desk.

“How goes the insurance thing?” I asked him.

“No sweat. Have it wrapped up tomorrow. You got my message, I guess.”

“Non-message, you mean.”

“Yeah, well, the whole thing’s kind of involved. You know I’m no good putting words down on paper.”

“So put ’em out in the air. What did Ed Berg say?”

He settled back and put his own feet up. “Man, I’m bushed. What say we close up early and go get a beer?”

“Not tonight, I’ve got things to do. Come on, Eb, talk to me.”

“Okay, okay.” He got out his little pocket notebook and flipped a few pages. “The Church of the Holy Mission is one of those fundamentalist Christian cults, but not your standard kind; this one’s got some organization and power. Couple of hundred people in the congregation and more joining all the time. They’re starting to make a few waves.”

“What kind of waves?”

“This Moral Crusade. Moral Majority stuff, like we figured, only even more hardline-strictly Old Testament, or so they claim. Pro-censorship, anti-freedom of choice, anti-sex, that kind of crap.”

“Who’s behind it?”

“Let’s see… Guy named Dogbreath-”

“Named what?”

“Wait a minute.” He squinted more closely at his notebook, turning it a little from side to side. “Can’t even read my own writing.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“Daybreak, that’s it. Clyde T. Daybreak.”

“That’s not much better, Eb. Are you sure?”

“Positive. I remember now.”

“What kind of name is Clyde T. Daybreak?”

“You’re asking me? I’m only relaying information here.”

“Well, who is he? Where’d he come from?”

“Used to be one of those traveling evangelists somewhere down South. Tennessee or somewhere. Came out here about ten years ago, got himself hooked up with the Holy Mission-Ed didn’t know the details-and eventually turned it upside down.”

“How so?”

“Church was founded about thirty years ago,” Eberhardt said, “by a dropout from the Rosicrucians. Doctrine back then was half Old Testament and half mysticism, not too appetizing to most people, so they struggled along on a membership of twenty or thirty until this guy Daybreak came along. He took over when the founder died, revamped the doctrine by getting rid of the mystical angle and going the authoritarian route.”

“Meaning strict obedience to him and his dictates.”

“Right. It cost him most of the old followers, but it didn’t take him long to line up plenty of new ones-enough so he was able to buy a big Victorian on Lanford Street, not far from downtown San Jose. He and his assistants live there now. They used to hold services in the basement; now they hold ’em in a new wing they built last year.”

“What’s this about assistants?”

“Ed didn’t know much about that part of it. Three or four guys that call themselves ‘Reverend’ and no doubt do what Daybreak tells them. He calls himself ‘the Right Reverend.’ Which makes the other guys ‘the Wrong Reverends’?”

“So Dunston is one of the assistants.”

“Seems that way. Name wasn’t familiar to Ed.”

“I wonder how he got involved with Daybreak and the church, coming out of that commune the way he did.”

Eberhardt shrugged. “Who knows how these types find each other? They just do.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Anything else I ought to know?”

“Just that Daybreak has been sucking around a couple of those religious cable-TV channels in the Bay Area, trying to go public with the Moral Crusade. Looks like he’s pushing to turn himself into another Falwell. Big noise with a big following.”

“Not to mention a big bank account.”

“Well,” Eberhardt said wryly, “that’s God’s work, too. Ask any capitalist.”

We sat there for a time, not saying anything. Pretty soon I thought to look at my watch, and it was a couple of minutes after five. I got on my feet.

“Quitting time,” I said to Eberhardt.

“So it is. You sure you don’t want a beer?”

“I do want one, but I’ve got to make a stop on the way home. And Kerry’s coming around six-thirty.”

We put the telephones on the answering machine and closed up. On the way downstairs Eberhardt said, “So what are you going to do? About Dunston, I mean.”

“I don’t know yet. Kerry and I have to talk it over.”

“Maybe you ought to go down to San Jose, have a talk with the big cheese himself.”

“Daybreak? Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

We split up at the garage down the street, where we had a monthly parking deal worked out, and I drove up to California and then over and up into Pacific Heights. The building where Alex Ozimas lived was on Laguna, across from Lafayette Park- one of the nicest parks in the city. It was newish and not half as attractive, to my taste, as some of the older apartment buildings in the area; but then, a lot of people prefer new to old. I parked illegally in a bus zone-legal parking in that area after five o’clock is next to impossible-and went into the building vestibule to look at the mailboxes.

Ozimas, I discovered, had the twenty-first and top floor all to himself-the penthouse, no less. The penthouse in a building like this had to go for at least three-quarters of a million. Some Alex Ozimas. Or Alejandro Ozimas, as he was listed on the brass nameplate above his mailbox.

But I was going to have to wait to get a look at him. I rang his bell three times, the last time for a good fifteen seconds, and nobody answered. Which figured. It had been that kind of day.

I made one business call when I got home. The maid or housekeeper at the Moss Beach house had told me Alicia Purcell would be back “after five”; it was after six when I hauled the phone out of the bedroom on its long cord, sat down with it on the living room couch, and rang up the Purcell number. A different woman answered this time: the servant apparently didn’t live in and was gone for the day. When I asked for Mrs. Purcell the voice said, “Yes? This is Alicia Purcell.”

I identified myself and my profession and said that I was investigating the death of her brother-in-law.

There was a pause. Then she said, “May I ask who is employing you?”

“Tom Washburn.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I don’t know how I can help you. I hadn’t seen Leonard for at least two months before he was… before he died. I told that to the police.”

“Yes, ma’am. But I’m following a particular line of inquiry, at Mr. Washburn’s request. I wonder if I could-”

“What line of inquiry is that?”

“That there is a connection between what happened to your husband and Leonard’s murder. That maybe your husband’s death wasn’t an accident after all.”

Silence for about five seconds. “That’s absurd,” she said finally.

“Maybe so. Mr. Washburn doesn’t think so.”

“There is no basis for such a supposition. None at all except for a ghastly coincidence-two brothers dying under tragic circumstances six months apart.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said patiently. “But Mr. Washburn wants the possibility checked out. I’d appreciate it if I could count on your cooperation.”

“I’ve already told you, the idea is preposterous. There is nothing I can do for you.”