I stood back from the station wagon and looked it over. Chrysler. This year’s model. White walls. Leather seats. Big tape deck. I thought of the two matching white Lincolns. “He sure must make a lot of money.”
“Our radio shows hit a lot of towns.”
“Enough to support everything the reverend owns?” I looked at him directly. “Where’s the reverend get all his money?”
“I told you. His radio shows.”
“Afraid you can’t sell me on that. Lincolns don’t come cheap. Especially not those models. And neither does a big boat like this one.”
“What’re you saying?”
“I’m saying that the good reverend must have some other source of income.”
“I’m going to tell him all this, you know. Everything you said.”
“I want you to.”
“You do?”
“Sure. Because then he’ll get nervous, and when people get nervous, they make mistakes.”
“Why’re you so interested in him?”
I laughed. “Because I’m a reporter, remember? And reporters are always interested in people.”
Kenny Deihl stared out the windshield a moment, then sighed. “He isn’t so bad, really.”
“He isn’t, huh?”
“He’s a hypocrite. I mean, if he believes all that religious stuff he says, you sure couldn’t prove it by me. But he’s been good to me. And good to Mindy. Neither one of us are exactly what you’d call a prize.”
“Oh?”
He shrugged. “I was in a halfway house when he found me. I’m a drunk — alcoholic, I guess you’d say. And Mindy—”
He shrugged.
“What about Mindy?”
“She’d gotten all beat up by this bar owner where she sang. The reverend found her wandering around on the street. She’s a cokehead. At least with the reverend we have some kind of life. We’ve each got rooms in the basement of the church, and he pays us enough to live on.”
“When you’re traveling, you ever see anything strange happen?”
“Strange? Like what?”
“Nothing special. Just anything strange.”
“Not really.”
“He comes in real late, I suppose?”
“Sometimes.”
“You ever notice any kind of blood or anything on his clothes?”
“Blood? Hell, no. What the hell kind of man do you think he is?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me.”
“Well, like I say, he’s a hypocrite and that’s for sure — but hey, we’re all hypocrites in some way. And you wouldn’t believe the hope the reverend gives to people. You should see the mail he gets from people who’re sick and dying. They love that man. They put him right next to Jesus Christ. They really do.”
This time he did put the car in gear.
“I’ve said enough.” He squinted up into the sunlight. “I really am going to tell the reverend everything I said. Otherwise I’d feel guilty.”
I nodded and stood back from the car so he could pull out of the parking place.
Just as he was ready to swing out into the street, he stopped the station wagon and said, “You’ve got him wrong. You really do. He isn’t perfect, maybe, but he’s basically a decent guy. He really is.”
And with that, he pulled away from the curb, finding his place in the lazy morning traffic.
I stood there watching him fade down the street.
A little old lady in a little old Ford gently tapped her little old horn to remind me that I was blocking her way.
I gave her my best boyish grin and stepped out of her way.
6
There were five of them, women between the ages of forty and sixty I guessed, and they sat in a worshipful circle around him, laughing when his inflection said he was being witty, asking questions when his inflection said he was being profound. He ran to type, a sort you see in university towns, the handsome professor in his post-hippie phase, striped button-down shirts and $150 chinos out of GQ, graying hair caught up in a sweet little ponytail. It went well with his sweet little earring. You don’t have to listen long to hear the sneer in the voice or see the arrogance in the gaze. Fifty years ago he would have been in Montmarte, seducing the frail daughters of European wealth while proclaiming himself a most serious artist. He was the sort of man Hemingway used to slap around when he was in his cups.
When he saw me, he looked as if he planned to have me arrested.
He had been standing in the middle of his front yard, right next to his easel and canvas, on the edge of which sat a huge monarch butterfly, demonstrating to the ladies the basic techniques of painting, when he heard me and looked around.
He frowned. “You’re Hokanson, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“I don’t have anything to say to you. But I do want you off my property and right now.”
“Maybe I came to see your wife.”
“Off. And right now. Do you hear me? Off!”
As one, the students turned to scowl at me.
Just then I saw Joanna coming down the stairs, looking thin and pretty in her designer denim shirt and designer denim jeans.
“I’ll handle it, Sam. You go on with your class.”
“I forbid you to talk to him,” Sam said, sounding very silly.
She waved him away, swooped over by me and said, in little more than a whisper, “The word’s out about you.”
“The word?”
“Everybody knows you’re not really a reporter. Even if you do have that business card saying otherwise.”
She slid her arm through mine, started steering me toward my car in the gravel drive, away from the Queen Anne Victorian and the students, most of whom were still glaring at me.
“They don’t like me.”
She giggled. “Of course not. They all have crushes on him. He doesn’t like you, therefore they don’t like you.”
“What’s he so angry about?”
“I wish I knew.”
“You really don’t know?”
She shook her head. “It’s strange. For the first time, I think he’s really hiding something from me. And I think it’s a lot more serious than just one of his little affairs.”
“But you don’t have any idea what?”
She shook her head again.
We stood by my car.
She was about to say something when Sam erupted again. “Get away from that car, Joanna, and go back in the house! Get away from there right now!”
If he’d had a bullhorn, he would have sounded like a cop talking a killer out of a building.
“What a jerk he can be,” she said, red daubing her cheeks suddenly. “I’d better go back inside.” She dropped her gaze and then suddenly raised it again, looking right at me. “Oh, hell, I may as well tell you. I had a fantasy about you, just like I said.”
“I hope it was a good one.”
“It was a great one!”
“Joanna! You heard me! Get away from that car and go back inside!”
She glanced at me and smiled. “I’m so proud to be married to him sometimes.”
Then, just as her Daddy had demanded, she went back inside.
7
That spring, one of the talk shows came to the prison — THREE LIVE SHOWS FROM THE MOST DANGEROUS PRISON IN AMERICA! as the announcer kept saying all week — and guess who one of the inmate-guests was?
He certainly hadn’t volunteered. Indeed, he hadn’t even wanted to do it... but when the TV lights came on in the big storage room where an impromptu stage had been set up... there he was.
The show itself way pretty bland. They even gave the cons fake names, to “protect” them. The host mostly wanting to know if any of his six inmate-guests had ever had sex with another inmate. The guy looked pretty faggoty himself, truth to tell.