Divine Inspiration Page 19

As though they came by mine own hand.

  “Don’t screech, sopranos,” said Barbara. “One doesn’t screech a confession. Listen to the altos. Humility, that’s what the altos have got. Good for you, altos.”

  It was a strange doctrine of faith, thought Martin Kraeger, that God’s son should suffer a gruesome death in order to give human sinners a chance at paradise. He himself did not believe the doctrine, but Johann Sebastian Bach had been a devout follower of Martin Luther, and he had certainly believed it, and then he had poured all the intensity of his belief into his music. It didn’t matter a damn whether he was right or wrong.

  The rehearsal was over. Martin climbed up into the balcony and congratulated Barbara Inch. “The choir sounds wonderful. You certainly do a good job.” She seemed absurdly pleased.

  He took Harold Oates aside. “Look, Harold, we’ve done our damnedest to work up a concert schedule for you, but you’re undercutting our best efforts. You can’t interrupt services. You can’t sleep all night in another church.”

  Oates glowered at Kraeger. “Well, where the hell am I supposed to sleep?”

  “Well, why not go home and sleep in your own bed?”

  “Oh, shit, they threw me out of there. Lousy place, anyway.”

  “They threw you out? Why did they throw you out?”

  “Fire hazard. They told me I was a danger to public safety. Thought I’d burn down the house.”

  “Fire hazard? What were you doing?”

  “Repairing a four-foot pipe. It was Starr’s fault. He got the voicing stretched too far. I had to use a blowtorch to get it right. Curtains caught fire. My landlady blew a gasket, called the fire department, threw me out.”

  “Well, damn it, Harold, now we have to find you another place. Listen, if you’re going to sleep in a pew, sleep here.”

  Glumly he went back upstairs to his office to find Loretta Fawcett slapping down the mail on his desk. “I’m afraid some of this is old,” said Loretta. “I was so busy finishing my needlepoint pillow. You know, the broccoli. Now I’m starting the cabbage.” Loretta went back to her desk, and Martin sifted grimly through the mail.

  It was the usual thing, appeals for the homeless, the starving, the addicted, the orphaned, the lost. This morning the wretchedness of the world’s condition fell on his shoulders like cobblestones. At the bottom of the pile he found a week-old letter from his ex-wife, and he winced. Kay didn’t write often, only when she wanted to announce some weird grotesquerie. This one was hard to figure out:

  This time you’ve gone too far. I am going to sue.

  What was that all about? Martin shrugged and threw the letter in the wastebasket. To his surprise, tears were brimming under his eyelids.

  CHAPTER 43

  The devil, too, has his amusement and pleasure.

  Martin Luther

  Sleeping in pews was one thing. Vandalizing pipe organs was quite another.

  At first the disasters were random and unrelated. Barbara Inch’s trouble, for example, seemed to be her own fault. It was a Sunday in the middle of March. Alan Starr was sick with the flu, and therefore Barbara accompanied the choir and Pip Tower was hired as a substitute to play the prelude. In the middle of the anthem Barbara’s feet blundered on the pedals and the tenors were thrown off-key.

  She glanced down in horror, but her feet seemed to be in the right places. Then on the repeat the same thing happened. How could she be so clumsy? Normally her hands and feet were deft and nimble. Once she had mastered a passage it stayed mastered.

  After the service Edith Frederick hurried up to Martin Kraeger and professed herself deeply disappointed. “She had such excellent credentials. I feel myself responsible. We should have chosen someone else as interim choir director, the Throstle girl, or Arthur Washington.”

  “Oh, no, surely not,” said Martin, suddenly finding himself a partisan of Barbara Inch. “She’s never made a mistake before.” After shaking the hand of the last parishioner at the door, he went to look for her.

  In the balcony he could hear her voice from inside the organ. “You mean they’re all right, all of them? Well, then, it has to be my fault. Damn.”

  Kraeger put his head in the narrow opening and called out, “Hello, in there.” He had never looked inside before. He was astonished to see the organized complexity of the interior. It was like a city of pipes above a forest of wooden connecting rods, delicately hinged and jointed.

  “Is that you, Martin?” Barbara came out, bending her tall frame, acutely conscious of his hand on her side, helping her through. She was followed by the substitute organist. Barbara introduced him. “Martin, have you met Philip Tower?”

  “Good morning,” said Kraeger. “Were you expecting to find something wrong in there?”

  Pip shrugged his shoulders. “Barbara thought some of the pipes might have been switched by mistake, but they looked all right to me.”

  Barbara shook her head unhappily. “So it was my fault. I played a couple of wrong notes, that’s all.”

  “Well, nobody’s perfect.” Martin smiled at her, and the idiot words made her laugh.

  But in other churches the malevolence was more evident. At the Church of the Advent someone slit the leathers of the bellows with a knife. At Saint John the Evangelist hundreds of fragile tracker rods were crushed with a sledgehammer. At King’s Chapel holes were drilled in a whole row of Brustwerk pipes. Even the enormous electropneumatic organ at the Mother Church was attacked—the solenoids on the solid-state switchboard were smashed.

  A malicious vandal was at work. The alarm spread from church to church. And everybody said the same thing: Oates, Harold Oates.

  The rector of the Church of the Advent called the rector of Emmanuel. “Did Harold Oates give a concert there? He did, didn’t he? And he had a key?”

  The rector of Emmanuel called the minister of King’s Chapel. “Didn’t Oates play for you?” And then the King’s Chapel minister called the First Reader at the Mother Church. “You had a concert for Harold Oates, didn’t you? I thought so. Every place he plays, the pipe organ is seriously damaged. The man’s got to be stopped.”

  In the meantime the vandalized organs had to be fixed. Alan Starr rose from his sickbed, coughing and sneezing, and scrambled from one church to another, making emergency repairs. He had to cancel some of his afternoon excursions with Charley Hall, and Deborah Buffington was miffed.

  Three weeks before Easter he called Marblehead to order new pipes for King’s Chapel. “And, hey, how about my Contra Bombardes? You keep saying they’re nearly ready, and then they don’t come.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll be loading the truck in a day or two.”

  Alan hung up, and at once the phone rang again. This time it was Martin Kraeger, sounding troubled. “Alan, could you get over here right away?”

  He found Martin in another quandary about Harold Oates. “All those churches with damaged organs, they’re the same ones where Oates has been giving concerts. They’re blaming him. He’s got keys to all those churches and all those organs. He could have done it, that’s what they think. Well, you know what Oates is like. He doesn’t exactly ingratiate himself. I’m afraid his nuttiness has become notorious.”

  “Well, my God, no wonder.”

  “I can’t really say I put it past him.” Kraeger stared disconsolately into his crystal ball, which was glassy and blank, empty of prophetic advice. “I mean, the man’s so—” Kraeger held up his hands in a gesture signifying Oates’s flagrant eccentricity.

  “Oh, I know. But the fact that he has keys to those places doesn’t mean anything. All the organists in Boston have keys.” Alan looked out the window at the pale spring leaves on the trees along the avenue. “Castle had keys, I know that.”

  “Surely you don’t think Jim Castle—?”

  “Of course not. I don’t suppose you have any news about when he’ll be back? Pip Tower thinks Castle’s back in Boston. He said he caught a glimpse of him on Boylston Street. So I tried calling Castl
e at home, but his phone’s still disconnected.”

  “It sounds like those sightings of famous dead people. You know, the way Elvis Presley keeps coming back to father babies. Oh, excuse me.” Kraeger’s telephone was ringing.

  “Reverend Kraeger?” The voice on the line was loud and overbearing. “My name is O’Rourke. I’m a prosecuting attorney for Suffolk County. My office has been asked to investigate the vandalism of a number of pipe organs in the vicinity of Copley Square. Several people have mentioned the name of an organist named Harold Oates. Are you acquainted with Mr. Oates?”

  Martin raised his eyebrows at Alan. “Yes, I know Harold Oates.”

  “Can you tell us how to get in touch with Mr. Oates?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.” It occurred to Kraeger at once that his ignorance was lucky for Oates. The only way to keep the man out of jail was to prevent his being seen at all. An interview would land him in prison as a menace to civilized society. Martin summoned his stuffiest manner. “I can’t tell you where he lives, but I can tell you that Harold Oates is the greatest organist in the world.” He went on in this vein, implying that Oates was the living embodiment of Johann Sebastian Bach and Albert Schweitzer. “He has played for the crowned heads of Europe and for His Holiness in the Vatican.”

  “His Holiness?” O’Rourke was obviously impressed. “No kidding.”

  Martin suppressed his own doubts about Oates. “So you see, Mr. O’Rourke, he couldn’t possibly have done any of those criminally foolish things.”

  “Oh, right, I can certainly see that.” O’Rourke hung up, apparently satisfied.

  Alan grinned at Kraeger. “You got him off the hook?”

  “For now.” Kraeger shook his head ruefully. “Maybe I shouldn’t be protecting him. Maybe he should be locked up. Maybe the man’s a menace. Did you know he’s been thrown out of that place on Worthington Street?”

  Alan was flabbergasted. “He has? What for?”

  “He was using a blowtorch, repairing a pipe. He said you hadn’t voiced it right. Somebody’s got to keep an eye on him and find him another place to stay.”

  “Oh, God, I’ll try.” A solution to the Harold Oates housing problem arose in Alan’s mind, a vision of Rosie Hall’s beautiful apartment, but he squashed it at once.

  “One more thing,” said Kraeger. “All the clergy in the area are setting up vigils. You know, volunteers guarding the organs day and night, just until this thing blows over. Will you talk to Woody about it?”

  “Well, of course. Good idea. I’ll see him right away.”

  Alan found Woody in his basement office, adjusting the lights over his bushy little seedlings. He explained Kraeger’s suggestion about keeping watch over the organ.

  Woody was way ahead of him. “The night sexton’s already spending all his time in the balcony. And I plan to do the night watch on weekends.”

  “But that’s too much. Why don’t I take Saturday night?”

  “Well, okay, thanks a lot. That’s great.”

  Alan walked around Woody’s office, admiring everything, peering into the clear water of the fish tank. “Nice goldfish. What are those striped ones?”

  “Angelfish. The fluorescent ones are neon tetras.”

  “Oh, I see. They’re really pretty. Well, so long, Woody. I’ll be here on Saturday night.” Alan said goodbye and walked out of the basement office, his feet jingling the metal lids in the floor. Like Donald Woody he paid them no mind.

  CHAPTER 44

  When apples are ripe they must be plucked from the tree.

  Martin Luther

  “Look at this,” said Homer, handing his wife the Metro section of the Boston Globe. “Unidentified woman killed by a truck.”

  Mary took the paper and looked at the picture of a couple of medical corpsmen lifting a stretcher into an ambulance. There was a slight mound on the stretcher, under a blanket. “Poor old girl. Homeless woman sleeping on the street.”

  “The truck backed over her. The point is, she’s just what you would need if you were looking for a dead body to burn up in a car.”

  “Ah, I see. Unidentified, so nobody would miss her. That is, except the people who keep records in the medical examiner’s office. More coffee, Homer?”

  He held out his cup. “I can’t believe there isn’t some way to get around all the rules and regulations. Suppose you needed a body. Here’s one right here in the paper, nice and fresh, happened last night, just what the doctor ordered. What else would you need? A release from a fictional funeral home, requesting the body, signed by a fictional relative, who just happens to have turned up.” Homer took a large bite of English muffin. “Mmmmph. Documents can be manufactured. Nothing to it. You’d get somebody like George Beanbag to do it.”

  “Bienbower.” Mary blew on her coffee. “George Bienbower with his desktop publishing equipment. And you’d need something else. A hearse.”

  “Right, a nice cozy hearse. Now where would you borrow a hearse if you wanted to do a bit of body snatching?”

  “Back in the sixties,” said Mary dreamily, “young hippies lived in hearses. Maybe some middle-aged hippie would lend you one.”

  “No, no, it’s easier than that. Boozer Brown’s got a hearse. And he’s so easygoing, I’ll bet he’d lend anybody anything, including the hearse. Tell you what, after I teach my class this morning, I’ll go out Route One and speak to Boozer.” Jumping up, Homer crammed the rest of the English muffin in his mouth, licked his sticky fingers and pulled on his coat.

  Mary got up too. “Fine, and in the meantime I’ll go to the library and look through their newspaper file. Oh, God, I’ll bet it’s on microfilm, and I’ll get a headache from looking at all those pages whizzing across the screen. But we’ve got to find a nice serviceable unidentified dead woman. What was the date of the car fire? I’ll try to find somebody who turned up dead immediately beforehand. If there isn’t anyone, our whole theory’s no good.”

  “Well, Boozer, good morning!”

  “Oh, yeah! Hey, whasha know? Hiya!”

  “Say, Boozer, that’s a nice big limo you’ve got there. Used to be a hearse, right?”

  “A hearshe? Oh, right, thash right. Usheta be a hearshe.”

  “It’s in beautiful condition, I must say.”

  “Oh, sure. Only, shee, itsh got thish big dent on thish shide. Other shide’zh perfect.”

  “Nice inside, too. Mint condition. Beautiful.”

  “Oh, yeah, exshep for a few stainzh inna back. Embalming fluid. You know. Leaksh out shometimezh from the desheashed. You know.”

  “Of course. Common knowledge. Listen, Boozer, did you ever lend this thing to anybody? Say, back around the middle of January?”

  “In January? Shay, you know, thasha funny thing, it dishappeared lash January. Gone overnight. Kidzh, thash what I thought.”

  “Really! It disappeared? Did you call the police?”

  “Me? Call the polishe? No, no, uh-uh. Me and the polishe, we ain’t got much in common. I clozhe my eyes, they clozhe theirzh. Better that way. Anyway, I don’t need no limo. Plenty other good carzh around here. Shee that little Honda over there? All it needed wazh a new tranzhmission. And the Chevy, no kidding, itsh good azh new. And take a look at the Pontiac, honeshta God—”

  “Boozer, you’re amazing. It’s a vehicular resurrection studio you’ve got here. I’m really impressed. Well, I’ll be getting along. Tell me, did you get a look at the kids who borrowed the limo?”

  “Not a glimpshe. One day she wazhn’t there, nexsht day, zheezh! There she wazh, parked downa hill, can’t shee the playzhe from here.”

  “Well, thank you, Boozer, you’re a national treasure, that’s what you are.”

  “Sho long. Hey, watchit, Mishter Kelly, watchit. Oh, whoopsh, shorry about that. Gotta move that ole axshel. I trip over the louzhy thing myshelf, alla time.”

  Homer picked himself up, hobbled to his car and drove home, congratulating himself. He found Mary trying to wrench a leaf rake out of the to
olshed, where it was entangled in the coils of a garden hose. She was wearing a baseball cap and a long dragging skirt sprinkled with sequins.

  Grasping the rake, she watched him limp up the porch steps. “Homer, what happened to you?”

  “Tripped over bits and pieces of the starry heavens. You know that divine emporium of Boozer Brown’s. Barked my fool shin.”

  “Good grief, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. And somebody stole Boozer’s hearse in January, kept it overnight, brought it back.”

  “Really! Well, wait till you see my little collection of unidentified cadavers.”

  They sat at the kitchen table and looked at Mary’s list. “Three of them,” she said, “only a couple of days before the burning car was seen by that jogger, down in the ditch below the road.”

  “Three!”

  “One was a homeless man, he froze to death. Remember him? There was a lot of flak at the time. People were mad at the city for letting a citizen freeze to death on the street.”

  “I remember. Pitiful case. But a man won’t do. It’s got to be a woman.”

  “Okay, here’s a woman, but she won’t do either. She’d been lying in the woods since last fall. Here, look at the third one. A little note on the obituary page. It’s just what we’re looking for. She’s perfect.”

  Homer read it aloud: “‘An unidentified woman, about thirty, was declared dead on arrival in the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital. The cause of death was listed as unknown. She was found on that part of Washington Street known as the Combat Zone. No one has so far claimed the body, which has been transferred to the Mallory Institute of Pathology at Boston City Hospital.’”

  Homer glanced at his wife. “The Combat Zone. Probably a hooker.”

  “That’s what I thought too. Now suppose somebody read the paper, learned about the body at Boston City, borrowed Boozer’s hearse and somehow managed to steal the body from the morgue? Then it was shoved behind the steering wheel in Rosie’s car, the car was rolled into the ditch and ignited, and afterward the police came along and took the burned body back to the morgue, assuming it was Rosalind Hall. That’s all fine, but how did they avoid the autopsy? The medical examiner would surely have discovered it wasn’t Rosie, it was somebody else.”