Michael Bishop - Ancient of Days

I tapped the photocopy. “He says he’ll ask the organizations in question if the contributions have really been made.”

“A bluff, Mr. Loyd. Why have the canceled checks posted in a public place if they already know what posting the check is supposed to prove?”

“For publicity’s sake,” I said. “To humiliate RuthClaire and Adam.”

Adam looked up. “Would these organizations actually take our forced donations, Mr. Hammond?” His most fluid speech yet.

“Some are outfits of dubious probity. They might. It seems to be this character’s idea that we’re to keep the kidnapping hidden from the general public—at least for now. That being the case, the outfits receiving the checks would have no reason to suppose you’d sent them under duress.”

“Couldn’t they tell their directors in private?” I asked.

“Of course. But that would entail a certain risk. If Puddicombe has an informant in just one of them, he’d figure out damned fast we’re using the same line of approach with all the other organizations. The danger to the kidnap victim is clear.”

“Say nothing to any of them, then,” Adam directed. “We will send only genuine cashable checks.”

“After Paulie’s recovered, Mr. Montaraz, there are steps we can take to recover the money, too. It’s possible a few of these outfits, understanding the full situation, would hand it over willingly—but it’s also likely that a couple of them, maybe more, wouldn’t mind profiting from your ill fortune. We’d go after them via the state attorney general’s office, but it could prove a messy set-to. Even a loud public outcry against one of these goofy bunches—Shock Troops of the Resurrected Confederacy—might not make them relent. It might even strengthen their will to take on our mainstream legal apparatus.”

“About the money I have no care,” Adam said. “Let it go.”

Looking over his shoulder, I studied the list. In addition to Congressman Aubrey O’Seamons, the Klairvoyant Empire of KuKlos Klandom, and the Shock Troops of the Resurrected Confederacy (STORC), Craig had specified an odd array of praiseworthy, semirespectable, and doubtful groups. The Methodist Children’s Home in Atlanta was cheek by jowl with the National Rifle Association and the Rugged White Survivalists of America. Neither Adam nor I could help noting that the last organization on the list was Dwight McElroy’s Greater Christian Constituency. Ever helpful, Craig had provided up-to-date mailing addresses for each and every one of these organizations.

“You give twenty-three thousand to the Methodist Children’s Home,” I advised Adam. “Three thousand each to the other nine groups.”

Adam said, “We lack so much money in our bank account, Mr. Hammond.”

“If you’re sure you want to handle this by writing the checks,” he said, “we’ll deposit the amount needed to cover them—to fortify our case in seeking reimbursement from any really hard-nosed ransom recipient. Remember, though, that if you’d let us, our documents division could easily fake the canceled checks.”

“Craig Puddicombe would find out,” Adam objected.

“That’s a very real possibility.”

“Then I must ask the aid of state in making up the total fifty thousand dollars.”

“All right,” Hammond said.

For a time, we sat in silence in the narrow chute of the stairwell, stymied by the harsh reality of the letter in Adam’s hands. Is every vice a corrupted virtue, every evil a perverted good? I don’t know, but the anguish and pain that Craig Puddicombe, a mere boy, was inflicting on the Montarazes—and on me by my willing involvement in their predicament—stemmed entirely from his pursuit of a variety of justice that was not only blind but tone-deaf and unfeeling. Further, he had implicated Nancy Teavers in his militant passion for left-handed justice. How, I wondered, could one misguided person trigger such ever-widening chaos?

“What now?” I asked Hammond.

“Mr. Montaraz writes the checks, addresses the envelopes, and gives them to me to mail from a letter box in downtown Atlanta. And then you two fellas wait.”

“Two weeks?” Adam asked. “Another two weeks?”

When I reached the West Bank later that morning, Livia George came at me out of the kitchen with a section of Sunday’s paper rolled up like a rolling pin. She knocked me into a chair by the door with it.

“You tole me they was fine! You tole me Adam was healin’ up real pretty ’n’ evverthin’ else was hunky-dory too!”

“Hey, I thought it was.”

“Their marriage done broke and you think that’s a up-tight development? Where you get your smarts, Mistah Paul? A Jay Cee Penney catalogue?” She laid the newspaper down, flattened it in front of me, and read aloud the story of Adam’s decision to forsake his family for an intense period of study at the Candler School of Theology. “I nevah figgered him a no-’count, Mistah Paul. Not for half a minute. Whyn’t you talk him out o’ this scheme while you was up there?”

“He was bandaged from his operation. Neither let on they were having trouble.”

“Poo!”

“Livvy, they waited till I’d left town to divulge their story to the press. That was deliberate. They hoodwinked me—to spare me the agony of their agony.”

“You go ’phone that crab-walkin’ Mistah Adam and tell him to get his fanny on back to his woman ’n’ chile!”

“Nobody knows where he is, Livia George. He’s moved out.”

For the rest of the day, my cook behaved like a woman infinitely sinned against, slamming pots and pans around and muttering. Once, she came out of the kitchen to glare at a red-haired man who’d returned his Continental Burger as oniony and overcooked.

“Overcooked?” she said, loud enough for the patron to hear. “’F I had me a pasty face like that fella’s, I wouldn’t eat nothin’ that wasn’t burnt to a crumbly char. He get a taste of underdone raw evver time he bite his bottom lip.”

Only by natural charm could I herd her back into the kitchen, and only by waiving his tab could I mollify the red-haired man she had insulted.

In my heart, though, I blamed the whole situation on Craig Puddicombe.

To forestall Craig’s using the Montarazes’ failure to comply with all his demands as an excuse to hurt their baby, Adam wrote this letter to the Atlanta newspapers:

In your pages this past Sunday, a story suggests my wife and I have separated because of my interest in theology. Although in so saying, Miss RuthClaire says a partial truth, it is ONLY a partial truth. In whole truth, I have broken this marriage because a person of my subhuman species has no right to marry a Caucasian representative of Homo sapiens sapiens . I rue the bad example I have set the youth of this nation. I urge them very hard not to give in to the temptation to marry outside their species.

Further, Miss RuthClaire is too fine a person to continue sharing her bed with subhuman murderer such as I. The parents of the late E. L. Teavers of Beulah Fork, Georgia, know of what I speak, as do his Brothers, Sisters, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and unhappy Widow, Nancy, to all of whom I extend heartfelt apologies for surviving the murderous fall that for Mister Elvis Lamar was very fatal. I am sorry, I am sorry.

Finally, I hereby surrender myself to any police or government body that wishes to arrest and prosecute me for the evil homicide of E. L. Teavers. Please, O police chiefs, sheriffs, or special agents, publish in this Letters to the Editor column your desire so to do, and I will surrender myself to you in the lobby of the Journal-Constitution building at 9:30 A.M. on the day after this desire has been printed. This I solemnly swear and promise.