The Temple of Divine Power announced itself in white letters against a large front window painted a vivid blue; the meeting hours were “2-6-8-10 P.M., Friday through Sunday.” The sign stuck in the window said “Closed,” with a phone number for “Personal Consultations” below, as well as the name “Rev. M. J. Marinelli.” Three steps led up to a similarly blue, painted-out door labeled in white letters, “Entrance.” The temple was only half a storefront: the other half was taken up by a small Italian deli.
Behind a couple garbage cans was a walk-down to a basement apartment; I went down the steps and knocked on the door and got no response.
I joined Evalyn on the sidewalk.
“You could try the phone number,” she suggested. “You could ask about them at that little food market next door.”
“Maybe they’re in the church, closed or not,” I said, shrugging, and went up and knocked on the narrow Entrance door. Nothing. I could hear something going inside, something that sounded like a motor. I put my ear to the door and there was definitely something going on in there. I tried a second time, knocking so hard the glass rattled. Then I could hear the motor stop.
And the door cracked open.
“Yes?” she said.
She was still very pretty, though she had a double chin now; the eyes were just as brown, flecked gold, the face creamy pale, the lips full and sensuous, though untouched by lip rouge at the moment.
“Hi, Sarah,” I said.
“Do I know you?”
“Yes. Just a moment.” I walked down the steps to Evalyn and said, “See that little cafe across the street? Get yourself a cup of espresso.”
“But Nate-Nathan!”
“I have to handle this one alone.”
Evalyn’s mouth formed a thin tight line; she wasn’t used to being told what to do. But she nodded, and I watched her cross the street, her heels clicking. A cabbie honked and she gave him the finger. A gloved one.
“That’s my girl,” I said under my breath.
I returned to Sister Sarah Sivella, watching me from the cracked-open door of her storefront temple.
“I remember you,” she said, and her smile was very faint. “I remember that night with you.”
I grinned at her. “I thought you might. Your husband home?”
“No.”
“Good. You want to talk in your apartment downstairs, or in the church?”
Her eyes tensed. “How did you know the downstairs apartment was ours?”
“Well, I could be psychic,” I said. “Or just a detective.”
She let me in. Pleasantly plump now, she was wearing a simple black frock, the sort of thing Evalyn might wear, if she had only a buck ninety-eight to spend and no jewelry. A Hoover stand-up vacuum cleaner leaned against the wall-that had been the sound I’d heard through the door. The walls were stark, as blue as the painted-out window, up to the chair rail, then whitewashed above. There were half a dozen rows of hard, stiff chairs, facing a pulpit, with a blue curtain behind. It looked more than a little like the death chamber at the New Jersey state prison.
She shut the door; locked it. “I didn’t expect to ever see you again.”
“Working the same old case,” I said, hat in my hands.
Her unplucked eyebrows met in thought. “The Lindbergh kidnapping…?”
‘That’s right. Let’s sit down, shall we?”
Rather tentatively, she did, pulling up one of the chairs. I pulled mine around so I could face her.
“But the man who did that is in jail,” she said.
“Is he?”
She moved her head to one side, to avert my gaze. “Actually-in the trance state, Martin says I’ve said otherwise.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I’ve said, in a trance, that this German is not the kidnapper. That there were many persons in this plot. Four who did the kidnapping. One of them a woman. One of them dead.”
“Is it the woman who’s dead?”
She shrugged shyly; her long dark hair bounced on her shoulders. “That’s all I know. I only know what Martin tells me. I have no memory of what I say, in that state.”
“Well, you could’ve meant Violet Sharpe.”
Her eyes flickered. She said nothing.
“Violet was in your congregation, wasn’t she?”
She swallowed.
I reached out and squeezed her arm; not quite hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make a point. “Wasn’t she?”
She nodded.
“Sometimes she came to services,” she said. “I’m not sure she was a member.”
“Who else?”
“So many people.”
I stamped my foot on the floor. The chairs bounced. So did she.
“Who else, Sarah?”
She swallowed again, shook her head. “That funny-looking little man, Fisch. He was a member.”
“Don’t stop now, Sarah. You’re getting hot.”
“There was a man named Whately. A butler, I think.”
“A butler, you think. Anyone else? Think hard, now.”
She shook her head, no. “I don’t think so.”
“Remember back in that hotel room, in Princeton? You mentioned a name.”
“I don’t remember what I said in the trance state…”
“You said ‘Jafsie.’ You said you saw the letters J-A-F-S-I-E.”
“I remember Martin told me I said that.”
“Was Professor John Condon a member of the One Hundred Twenty-Seventh Street church?”
“No…no.”
“No?”
“But…”
“But what, Sarah?”
“But…he did attend a few times.”
I felt myself trembling; I smiled at her-it must’ve been a terrible smile. “Tell me about it, Sarah. Tell me about Jafsie….”
A resonant male voice behind me said, “He was only an occasional visitor.”
I turned and Martin Marinelli, wearing a black turtleneck and black slacks, looking like a priest who lost his collar if not quite his calling, had entered through the curtain behind the pulpit. His head was as bald as ever, though his eyebrows had grown out and were wild and woolly, not plucked for effect; he still wore a devil beard. He had a small paper bag tucked under one arm.
He walked slowly to us and handed the paper bag to Sarah, who appeared on the verge of tears. “Here are the supplies you requested, my dear.”
I could see as she set it on a nearby chair that in the bag were various cleaning products, cleanser, disinfectant, soap flakes.
Marinelli pulled a chair up and made it a threesome. “We’re the janitors of this building, Mr. Heller. That’s how we keep our rent down.”
“You remember my name,” I said. “I’m impressed, Reverend.”
“I’ve had to keep an eye on the Lindbergh case,” he said, with a little flourish of a gesture. “We’ve been harassed so many times, it’s become a necessity to be well informed.”
“I like to be well informed, myself. Tell me more about this star-studded congregation of yours.”
“There’s nothing to tell. As far as Dr. Condon is concerned, he’s a philosophy instructor, with quite an avid interest in spiritualism. I’m sure we’re not the only spiritualist church he’s visited.”
“Condon taught school in Harlem,” I said. “Either one of you happen to attend Old Public School Number Thirty-Eight?”
Sarah closed her eyes; she began to rock back and forth slowly.
Marinelli put his hands on his knees; they were powerful-looking hands. “I don’t see that our schooling has anything to do with anything, Mr. Heller.”
“Then let’s change the subject. Tell me about Isidor Fisch, and Violet Sharpe, and Ollie Whately. They were in your congregation, Reverend. Surely you must’ve got to know them on a personal basis.”
“We had many parishioners on One Hundred Twenty-Seventh Street in those years. That was a larger church. People walked in off the street all the time. One night we had a Chinaman!”
“I’m not interested in the Chinaman, Rev. How did Violet and Whately wind up in your church?”
He shrugged. ‘They found their way to me. I never ask my flock about their pasts, unless they offer it. But one, or both of them, had been interested in spiritualism before coming to this country.”
“One of ’em, at least, had been involved in a spiritualist church in England?”