Bill Pronzini - Deadfall

I said, “Huh?”

“You’re a fornicator-you lust after men’s wives. You stand on the brink of eternal damnation.”

I couldn’t have said anything then if my life depended on it. I just gawped at him.

“ ‘Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity,’ ”he said, “‘and sin as it were with a cart rope.’ The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, five: eighteen.”

“Listen,” I said, and then stopped because the word came out like a frog croaking. I tried again. “Listen, uh…”

“ ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ Galatians, six: seven.”

I opened my mouth, and closed it again. Eberhardt’s was hanging open like a Venus’s-flytrap.

The guy reached inside his suit coat. I thought for a second that he was going after a weapon of some kind and got ready to launch myself at him; but all he came out with was a business card. He put the card down in front of me. Then he folded his arms and waited stoically.

I looked at the card. And then stared at it. In blue letters on a virginal white background it said:

THE REVEREND RAYMOND P. DUNSTON

Church of the Holy Mission

THE MORAL CRUSADE

1243 Langford Street San Jose, CA. 95190

I put my eyes back on him and said, “Jesus Christ!”

“No,” he said, “merely one of His servants. You know who I am.”

I knew who he was, all right. Ray Dunston, Kerry’s whackoid ex-husband. What I had trouble believing was that he was standing here in my office, looking and talking the way he was. Five years ago, when Kerry had divorced him, he had been a woman-chasing, small-time criminal lawyer in Los Angeles. Two years ago he had taken a dive off the deep end: given up his practice and any number of normal activities, including sex, and joined one of those off-the-wall Southern California cults, where he had shaved his head and worn robes and spent his days chanting things like “Om mani padme hum.” Now here he was, wearing a three-piece suit again and with his hair grown back, calling himself the Reverend Raymond P. Dunston of the Church of the Holy Mission, involved in something called the Moral Crusade, quoting scripture and accusing me of being a fornicator. If that wasn’t enough to boggle a reasonably sane man’s mind I did not want to find out what was.

I said, “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“I’ve come to claim what is mine.”

“I don’t have anything that belongs to you.”

“Of course you do. My wife.”

“Your… you mean Kerry?”

“Kerry Anne Dunston.”

“For God’s sake, she divorced you five years ago!”

“For God’s sake,” he said piously, “she did not. Divorce is a pernicious invention of man. God does not recognize divorce.”

“He doesn’t, huh? Did He tell you that Himself?”

“Yes, He did.”

“He… what?”

“He told me so. We speak often, God and I.”

Oh boy. He had clear brown eyes that met mine steadily, all full of righteousness and calm reason, but behind them he was as mad as a hatter. I shifted uneasily in my chair and pushed back from the desk. I had figured him for a loony when Kerry first told me about the cult, and I had figured there might be trouble with him when she confessed that he’d been bothering her, trying to talk her into remarrying him and joining in a life of wholesome chanting in the commune. She had managed to keep him at a distance, and after a while he seemed to have given up and gone away for good: she hadn’t heard anything more from or about him in months. Or she said she hadn’t, anyway. What he’d been doing in the interim, obviously, was climbing another rung on the ladder of lunacy, and now he’d come in person to claim his soul mate. No commune this time, though. No sir. This time he expected her to live with him in San Jose, if not in the Church of the Holy Mission; to join him on the Moral Crusade, whatever that was; and to sit in on his fireside chats with God.

I stood up. He didn’t look violent, but with loonies you never know. God might have told him that if reason didn’t work, it was all right to murder fornicators.

“Have you talked to Kerry about this?” I asked him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Eberhardt was also on his feet. His mouth was still hanging open; he looked like a man trying to wake up from a confusing dream.

Dunston said, “No. She refuses to listen to the Voice of Truth. You’ve cast some sort of spell over her.”

“Spell?” I said. “What do you think I am, a witch?”

“Warlock,” he said.

“What?”

“She was never like this before you seduced her,” he said. “She always listened to me, obeyed me. But you enticed her, bewitched her, made her lie down in your bed.”

“I didn’t even know her when she divorced you!”

“ ‘How shall I pardon thee for this? Thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots’ houses. They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbor’s wife.’ Jeremiah, five: seven and eight.”

“Look, Dunston-”

“The Reverend Dunston. I am ordained.”

“Sure you are. Ordained.”

“But I do pardon thee, just as God will if you seek Him out. I forgive your sins and I forgive hers. I hold no animosity. I mean only to have her back.”

“She won’t go back to you.”

“She will. Yes, she will. God has decreed it.”

“He told you that too, did He?”

“Yes. That too.” Dunston turned abruptly and went to the door, opened it. At which point he looked at me again and said, “ ‘Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.’ The Song of Solomon, eight: seven. Those whom God has joined together, no man can put asunder.” And he was gone.

I stood there. Eberhardt stood there. Neither of us moved or said anything for at least fifteen seconds. Then Eb blew out his breath gustily and said with awe in his voice, “Now I’ve seen it all.”

“That makes two of us.”

“I thought he was in some kind of commune. The Hare Krishnas or something.”

“Yeah. Or something.”

Eberhardt came over to my desk and picked up Dunston’s card. “Church of the Holy Mission. The Moral Crusade.” He flicked a fingernail against the card and said, “From the Hare Krishnas to Jerry Falwell-that’s some leap.”

“You’re telling me?”

“You ever hear of either one, the church or the crusade?”

“No. You?”

“No. I can check ’em out, if you want.”

“I want. Thanks, Eb.”

He went back to his desk. I picked up the phone and dialed the number of Bates and Carpenter, the ad agency where Kerry worked as a chief copywriter. The switchboard put me through to her secretary, who said that Kerry was in conference, could she call me back in about an hour? I said, “No, she can’t call me back in about an hour. I don’t care what she’s doing, I want to talk to her now. Tell her it’s an emergency.” There was something in my voice that made the secretary decide not to argue; she went away meekly. I waited. A full minute went by. Then there was a clattering noise, followed by another clattering noise, as if the phone had been dropped, and Kerry came on sounding out of breath.

“What is it?” she said. “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

“That depends on your definition of all right. Your ex-husband just showed up here at the office.”

“What!”

“We had a nice chat,” I said. “He called me a fornicator and a witch, or maybe it was a warlock, and accused me of seducing you and then casting a spell on you to keep you from going back to him.”