“Careful there,” he said. “We have to go down to the basement.”
Clutching the railing, I followed him. It would have been highly appropriate had he held a candle aloft rather than the flashlight he flicked on. He led me down a narrow hallway with overhead pipes and heating ducts to a small room.
A sleeping bag lay on an air mattress in its center. Next to it stood a low wooden crate which held a portable radio, a pile of books, and an ashtray filled with what looked like marijuana roaches. The candle I’d envisioned flickered atop a wine bottle on the floor. The room reeked of grass.
“Please have a seat,” Neverman said. “You take the couch.” He giggled shrilly.
I dropped onto the sleeping bag, and my host sat cross-legged on the floor. He reached for one of the roaches in the ashtray, lit it, and offered it to me.
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’ve got to keep straight tonight.”
He grimaced. “You must be a friend of Anya’s. She’s always straight. If that broad could ever get laid back... so what’s happening with her, anyway?”‘
“Her friend, Molly Antonio, got murdered.”
“I heard.”
“Anya says she prophesied it.”
“Shit! She can’t even lose a friend without claiming she saw it all with her precious powers!”
“I take it you don’t believe in them.”
Neverman glanced at the roach, which had gone out, and regretfully placed it in the ashtray. “Of course I don’t. I lived with that woman for five years, off and on. It’s nothing but a bunch of convoluted crap!” He looked at me slyly and added, “You don’t have any dope on you, by any chance?”
It wasn’t a commodity I normally carried. “Sorry, no.”
“I figured not. A friend of that broad’s wouldn’t.”
“I’m not really a friend of hers,” I said quickly. “But from what I do know of her, I’m surprised she’s married to somebody like you. Isn’t she a lot older?”
“Fifteen years. I’m forty, she’s fifty-five, but she likes to claim it’s only ten.”
“How come you married her, anyway?”
He shrugged. “Money. She had some, and I had a use for it.”
“I didn’t think fortune tellers made that much.”
“They don’t. Anya’s got a little inheritance squirreled away. I thought if I married her, I’d get the use of it. But that broad is as tight fisted as they come.”
“What were you going to use it for?”
“My business. I was going to start my own trucking line. ‘Neverman’s Intercoastal Trucking,’ it would of been called. I’d have gotten rich by now if she’d let me have the money.”
“It’s a good business to get rich in.”
“You can say that again!” Neverman’s face contorted with sudden anger, and he struck his fist against his thigh. “Damn that stupid broad! She’s saving the money for a rainy day, she says. So I end up here, living like some goddamned hippie, instead of owning my own company. That’ll all change soon. It’d better!”
“Exactly how did you end up here?” I asked.
His glance was veiled. “Anya didn’t tell you?”
“No,” I lied.
“Let’s just say I made some bad moves, then. I don’t want to talk about it. One thing I will tell you, it’s a hell of a lot better living like this than with her and her wax birds and that goddamn crow. I put up with it for over two years this last stretch, and then I couldn’t take it any more. Even prison was better.”
“Prison?”
“Figure of speech.” His eyes shifted away from mine.
“So what do you do here?”
“Handyman work. Drive the truck. Anything they need me for. You see the mural over the front door?”
“Yes.”
“Mine.” Momentarily, he looked pleased. “That was one of the things I liked doing. You should see the job I’ve got upstairs, though. That’s going to be a bitch.”
“Why?”
“Because of the fire they had, the roof’s burned out. I’ve got to put on a new one, or the Feds won’t renew one of our grants.”
Dimly, I recalled that St. Luke’s had sold out to the Blind Center after fire had destroyed part of the nave. It surprised me that it hadn’t been fixed long ago. To escape this oppressive little room, I asked, “Could I take a look?”
“Sure. Why not?” He rose, extending his hand to help me. In the candlelight, he looked less faded and down-and-out. I could understand how he would hold a certain scruffy charm for a woman like Anya.
The air in the upstairs vestibule was damp, the gloom as deep as in Neverman’s room. He groped along the wall and flipped on a light. I went into the main part of the church.
In the shadows, I made out the crouching shapes of the pews. Stained-glass windows glowed at the sides. Toward the front, where the altar presumably had been, I saw only darkness.
I went down the aisle. Neverman’s footsteps echoed behind me. Startled by a sudden rush of chill air, I stopped. Neverman’s body nudged mine. I looked up at the roof, but saw only stars and wispy, low-lying clouds.
“That’s where the roof’s burned out.” Neverman’s breath tickled my ear.
I stepped away from him. “Isn’t there a light in here?”
“Only over the altar. The fire wrecked the rest of the wiring.” He turned his flashlight on the ruined roof, shining it along the charred and jagged beams.
“Why hasn’t it been fixed before?” I asked. “The Center’s been in here a long time.”
He shrugged. “Government grants don’t give you that kind of money. Now Herb’s got the bright idea of having me do the work. That’ll be a trip.”
The darkness was making me edgy. “Why don’t you turn on that light so I can get a look at the altar?”
“What do you need a light for?” He turned the flash on my face, and I blinked and stumbled back against the first pew.
Neverman set the flash down and took hold of both of my arms, forcing me to sit. In the upward rays of the flashlight, his lean face looked like a bemoustached skull. He knelt in front of me.
“Hey, you know,” he said softly, “you’re really a pretty lady.”
Unlike Clemente’s flattery, Neverman’s words chilled me.
Letting go of one arm, he pushed up the sleeve of my sweater and began stroking me with his fingers. His nails were long and rasped on my skin.
“Cut it out, Jeffrey,” I said firmly.
“Aw, pretty lady, how about it? You and me, we could really get it on.”
I removed his hand and pulled down my sleeve. “I don’t think so.”
He snorted and stood up. “You may not be Anya’s friend, but you two would make a good pair.”
Relieved that my calm response had worked, I stood up too. “Now how about letting me see the altar?”
He shrugged angrily and strode up the aisle. In a moment pale light came up on the raised platform. It increased in intensity until it shone bright as daylight.
“It’s a dimmer switch,” Neverman called. “They probably used it to make the services more dramatic. Can’t you see Anya with one of these? She could use it like this.”
The light on the altar paled again.
“Your life up to this time has been happy, honey,” he mimicked in a harsh voice that sounded remarkably like the fortune teller’s. “But...”
The light increased several shades.
“I see great trouble ahead. This trouble, it is awful.”
Still brighter.
“Honey, I can’t begin to describe this awful trouble. But...”
The light flashed to full intensity.
“There is help ahead! I will pray for you, honey! And rip you off with my wax birds!”
It would have been funny, had his anger not been so fierce. I went up the aisle and joined him next to the round light switch in the vestibule.