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  Pickett wrinkled up his face. Roger stopped.

  “You've heard about Ed's ministry, and all that, right?”

  Pickett shook his head.

  “Jeez, you have been gone for a while, haven't you?” Roger settled back into his chair, stuck his legs out in front of him and took a deep breath. “You remember Edmund Ayers. Well, you know Ed—he'd always had too much money and too few brains.”

  Pickett's smile broadened. He looked at the floor, shaking his head. Roger didn't seem to notice, and continued.

  “Ed never could understand why everyone wasn't spending their summers on the river like he was, and riding around in thirty thousand dollar sports cars their parents gave them for Christmas. Jeez…” Roger shook his head. “I don't think he ever realized that the only reason we all wanted to bring him along everywhere was because of his car.”

  Roger chuckled. Pickett, still smiling, bit his lower lip.

  “Well, the beginning of Ed's junior year at Princeton—all the Ayers men go to Princeton, you know. Well, the beginning of that year, October or November or something, there was an accident.”

  Roger straightened his face self-consciously, and looked soberly at the other.

  “Ed's mother and father—both of them—they died out on I-four. The driver of a tank truck fell asleep at the wheel or something. Pretty horrible. According to the reports I got, there wasn't much left to bury.”

  Roger paused for a respectable moment, his mouth an inverted U. Pickett closed his eyes and sighed.

  “Come on, Roger. Is there a point to this?”

  “Yes, of course there is. It's just, well, both parents killed like that… Ed couldn't handle it.” The thought of Edmund Ayers not handling it seemed to cheer Roger Mooring. “Ed dropped out of school and came home for a while. Then he dropped out of sight—up and disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yeah, he just—” Roger's hands went “poof!” “-- disappeared. Ran away. Nobody knew where he was.”

  He paused with some satisfaction.

  “Must've been five or six months. Least when I came home for spring break, everyone was still worried about him. He reappeared again that summer. Never told anyone where he'd been or what he'd been up to. Looked a bit frayed around the edges when he came back, if you know what I mean.”

  Roger raised his eyebrows at Pickett. Pickett emitted a short burst of air through his nose. He opened his mouth to speak, but, before he could, Roger did.

  “Ed was a changed man after that, though, let me tell you. He went back to school. They let him back in because of his money, I suppose. Anyway, he found religion up there. Funny, huh? Told everybody he'd been born again—out of the flames of his parent's funeral pyre, or some such nonsense. They'd burned, you see. He'd quite a reputation. President of two or three student evangelical groups… Even ran a daily prayer breakfast or something. Anyway…”

  Roger exhaled sharply; he was beginning to look tired.

  “Ed came back here after he graduated, gathered together all the cash he could lay his hands on and bought himself a church.”

  “A church?”

  “Honest to god, Ed bought himself a church to preach in.” Roger looked at the other man, half smiling, eyebrows raised.

  Pickett sighed: “And… ?”

  “And,” mimicked Roger, “Ed attracted a following. A combination of the family name, which everybody in these parts knew, of course, and the Temple—the place itself. He just finished this new one. Jeez. Must've set Ed back a bundle. Only seen it from the outside but it's quite… Well, impressive.”

  “Roger… “

  “Okay—but it's a ritzy looking place. Anyway, Ed married some local girl from out near Sanford somewhere, and built an organization.” Roger laughed. “Organization, hell, it's a frigging empire. He gets thousands out there twice each Sunday. Does a weekly tee-vee and radio show. Jeez, they must be raking it in.”

  Roger looked down at his feet and shook his head—either in amazement or disgust.

  “And,” said Pickett, “your daughter's been going out there with Ed's son. Is that it?”

  “Right.” Roger kept his eyes on the floor. “Every Sunday. A-a-and Wednesday. For the tee-vee show.”

  Pickett placed his elbows on his knees and the palms of his hands to his face. He grimaced while his palms massaged his eyes. After a moment of this, he dropped his hands to his side, and straightened.

  “Look, I'm sorry, Roger, but I must be missing something. What's the problem? Young people are ripe for this crap. They outgrow it—most of the time anyway. And it doesn't sound like the sort of outfit that's going to brainwash her and change her name to Ananda-Banana and ship her off to some soybean farm in California. Just sounds like that good ol' time religion—God, Country, and pass the collection plate.”

  Roger's mouth opened and closed nervously, but no words came out. Pickett sighed.

  “Look, Rog, this is all real interesting; but what do you want from me?”

  “What troubles me—” Roger was talking to himself now. “-- is she doesn't seem to have time for Mark anymore. And he's upset about it too, in fact. I talked to him figuring that, well, maybe she'd talked to him.”

  He looked embarrassed, and added quickly, “You know teenagers, they don't always tell their folks everything.”

  “Look, it's too bad. But it doesn't sound like anything to get upset about.”

  Roger scowled. Pickett laughed and flicked the back of his hand toward the door.

  “It's not like there's anything you can do about it anyway. You just have to wait for her to outgrow it. That's all you can do. If she's got half a mind of her own, she will.”

  Roger rested his forearms on his knees and looked at the floor. He shook his head stubbornly.

  “She's—” He pursed his lips. “Something's the matter, something serious. I know it.” It's that simple, his hands said. Pickett bridled.

  “For Chrissake, what is it? What's she been doing that's so terrible?” Roger sat up straight, brow furrowed in thought. Then he exploded: “She's been staying away nights, whole weekends even. I thought it was Mark but he denies it. Got pretty angry. He must've talked to Amy about it because she started refusing to see him, too—except at the Temple. Brothers and sisters under God or something. Jeez—”

  Roger kneaded his brow with one hand and clasped the arm of his chair with the other.

  “Why don't you just talk to her, Rog?”

  “I did, day before yesterday. She starts crying and tells me to mind my own business. Tells me that I couldn't help her, that”—Roger looked down—”that she hated me. That she'd always wished I weren't her father, that… That God is punishing her.”

  “What?” Pickett's eyebrows came together. He looked up sharply.

  “She said that God was punishing her. And that no one could help but—but Jesus.”

  “Christ,” said Pickett under his breath.

  “Exactly,” said Roger deadpan. His eyes clouded over, but he continued as if unable to stop himself.

  “I even called the Temple. That's what Ed calls that place out there, The Temple of Glory. Yeah, right, I-I told you that already. I tried to talk to Ed but they wouldn't even put me through. Said Edmund was too busy. I-I…”

  Roger paused, looking down into his lap. “I think maybe she's seeing someone. She can't be spending all that time at the Temple—I mean, she's got to be sleeping someplace.”

  But Roger didn't like the way that sounded. He put a hand to his forehead and looked up at the other, his cheeks wet.

  “I-I-I just don't know. I mean, Amy's upset every time I see her. She's—she's in trouble, I know it. And I can't even help her. I love her so much and I can't even help.”

  Pickett exhaled, shaking his head. He looked through the office door. It was too dark to see the stain now. His eyes moved back to Roger, then past him to the window opposite the hall door. He stared down into the twilit park across the street. A bandstand
stood there, shaded by water oaks whose billowing masses were silhouettes against the darkening sky. Pickett closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with the first three fingers of his right hand.

  “What does Amy's mother think of all this?”

  Roger looked up, his eyes dull and hard.

  “Amy doesn't know her mother. She has no mother.”

  Pickett nodded quickly, his face blank. He waited a moment with the same expression on his face, then, relaxing, looked up at Roger. “What do you want from me, Roger?”

  “You could follow her.”

  “Come on—”

  “Look, you'll be in town for the next couple of days anyway, right? You have friends to visit, everybody wants to see you.…”

  Pickett smiled at this.

  “Can't you just—sightsee for a day or two? You know, the Old Home Town and all that. You could sort of… Well, be where she was.” Roger seemed pleased with this formulation. He gestured expansively. “You know, just casually be around. You must do this sort of thing all the time in your… profession.”

  Pickett laughed out loud, then as suddenly pulled a straight face.

  “Tailing her might be exactly what you don't want. It might drive her away completely. Anyway, I just can't go following her all over town. She's what, seventeen?” Roger nodded impatiently and began to say something. Pickett cut in. “I got twenty years on her—and then some. I'd probably get myself arrested.”

  “I wouldn't want that.” Roger looked crestfallen.

  Pickett covered his eyes with his left hand. After a moment, he looked up and, wearily, smiled.

  “Look, Rog, I do this for a living. If you can call it living. It's not much but it's what I know. Frankly, I can't spare the time right now. I've got a few skips I've traced as far as Opa-Laka, and… Well, I'm a little hard up at the moment. You know what I mean?”

  “Sure, sure—and I'll pay you. I mean, I wouldn't expect you to do it for free. I mean, I know you got to make a living, and I—uh…” He stopped. “How much are we talking about here?”

  “I'm talking three hundred front. That buys you satisfaction or three days work—whichever comes first.”

  “After that?”

  “Hundred a day after that.”

  Roger wrinkled his brow and thought for a moment. “And expenses?”

  “Within reason, comes with the per diem. Otherwise, I check with the client first.”

  For a moment, Roger stared into the space between them, his eyelids fluttering under the pressure of some inner effort. Finally, his eyes refocused, and he rose to his feet.

  “You'll take a personal check?”

  “Oh, for chrissake, Rog… It's a waste of good money—”

  “Will you?”

  “Okay—sure, it's your money. Christ, I'll look into it. But remember I told you it was going to be a waste of time.”

  Roger's cheeks flushed like a child's.

  “Oh, thanks, Bo, I mean it. I'd do it myself but… Well…”

  Roger rifled his pockets. While he found, opened, and began scribbling in a check book, Pickett frowned down at the floor. He stood, stretching as Roger tore out the check and handed it to him.

  Pickett studied it for a moment—more in disbelief than suspicion. “I'll take the three days, but no more. Agreed?”

  “Sure, what ever you say, Bo.”

  “Now, I mean it. Don't expect much—anything.”

  “Sure. Right.”

  Pickett smiled at Roger, shaking his head. “Where will Amy be tomorrow, do you know?”

  “I don't. She's not at home—hasn't been for the last two nights.”

  “What's your guess?”

  Roger looked away and let his shoulders fall.

  “Let's see, tomorrow's Wednesday…” He sighed and looked back at the other. “She'll be at the Temple. On Wednesday she's at the Temple.”

  “Okay, I'll start there. Where will you be tomorrow?”

  “Home.”

  Pickett looked a question.

  Roger's eyes avoided his. “I'm… taking a few days off.”

  Pickett nodded and guided Roger toward the hall door.

  “You know,” Roger said, stopping as he gazed wistfully down the dusty passageway, “all these years and I don't think I've ever been up here before. I guess the building's yours now, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Pickett smiled with half his mouth. “The building, the boat house, some bad debts and a worse name.”

  Roger turned, smiled himself, then shook Pickett's hand. He shuffled down the hall.

  “All these years…” he repeated to himself. He disappeared down the stairs.

  Pickett looked after him for a long while, a trace of that smile still on his face, fatigue in his eyes. He leaned his long back against the wall and drew a flat tin box from the side pocket of his seersucker jacket. He removed a thin black cigar from the tin box, and then a wooden match. He paused, staring at the grimed floor. His smile broadened, causing the cigar to hang almost vertically from his lower lip. He struck the match against the box and set the black tobacco aglow. Pickett drew deeply. He pushed off the wall.

  Back into the waiting room and on into the inner office, he went directly to the desk, switching on a green-shaded lamp there. He picked up the telephone, dialed seven numbers, and draped himself over the chair behind the desk. He waited with the phone to his ear. Smoke curled into the high shadowed ceiling.

  “Yeah, this is Bodie Pickett.… Uh-huh, this morning.… Yes.… No, that won't be necessary; no service.… I know.… Of course, but no service.… Do with them?… Oh, of course. No, I don't think so—”

  Pickett started. He began to laugh but cleared his throat instead. He composed his face and said:

  “At sea would be fine.… Yes.… That sounds very reasonable.… Uh-huh, I'm sure you are. We all are.… Yes, thank you.… To you, too.… Uh-huh. Goodbye.… Yes, of course. Goodbye.”

  Pickett leaned back in the swivel chair with the phone in his lap. He looked at the tip of his cigar, frowned, then leaned forward and reached for the dial. He dialed two numbers, made a sound like a growl, and hung up.

  He put his hands to the desk as if to rise, but instead sat back and reached for a dog-eared manila envelope that lay to the side of the desk lamp. He pulled it under the light. A spray of brown speckled it. On it was a white label bordered in red. It said: AYERS, CLAYTON (MARJORIE). Pickett bent over the contained papers.

  The fluorescent desk light cast his shadow sharply on the wall behind the desk. It cut diagonally across the brown stain already there.

  3

  Old man Otley bobbed his pink pate to Willie Nelson's guitar. Stringy grey hair swung back and forth across the back like the fringe on a movie musical's surrey. His elbows danced to the sizzling griddle as he worried raw materials into a breakfast.

  Bodie Pickett hefted a white china mug. He squeezed his eyelids together and swallowed, hard. He'd set the cup back on the saucer and pushed them both away from him when a piece of heavy white china clattered to a stop in front of him.

  Otley hadn't even turned around.

  In the center of the steaming platter a rubbery orange splotch in a milky pool bled yellow. Two blackened strips of rawhide intertwined to the right, and a two inch pile of small brown and grey cubes glistened with grease on the left. Pickett looked up.

  “Still ninety-nine cent, boy.”

  Pickett looked down. The yellow liquid was beginning to clot. He stood, threw back the sludge at the bottom of his cup, measured three quarters, two dimes, and four pennies into the saucer, and headed for the door.

  “Tax,” said the back of Otley's head.

  Pickett went back and dropped a dime onto the counter. He didn't look at the platter.

  “Thanks. See y'around.”

  The back of Otley's head grunted. “That boy never did eat right.”

  “This boy'll never eat again,” said Pickett under his breath.

  He stood in front of Otley's Rexall
and breathed deeply. The air was clear and bright. It had rained during the night, and the pavement was cool. The oaks in the park across the street cast long shadows.

  The fresh air turned stale with burnt grease. Otley's arm pushed through the door behind Pickett and thrust a nickel into his hand.

  “Change, boy.”

  Pickett stood without moving, closed his eyes, and took another deep breath, then turned left down Main. When he reached Palmetto, he turned left again. In front of Dumphrie's Sporting Goods, a tall kid in Levy’s, running shoes, and a pink T-shirt that said PEACHTREE ROAD RACE was cranking down the striped awning that hung above the display window. The kid admitted that he'd heard of Edmund Ayers and the Temple of Glory but didn't have the faintest idea where Pickett could find either of them.

  “I'm a vegetarian,” the kid explained.

  Pickett had better luck with the kid's mother inside. She not only knew where the Temple was and told him quite clearly how to get there, she tried to sell him a piece of the place.

  A “partnership” in the New Temple of Glory is what the woman called it. For 500 bucks Pickett could have his name engraved on the “Partners in Heaven” wall of the New Temple. For 25 he could receive daily “petitions in prayer” offered up in his behalf by brother Ed (or, the fine print read, one of Brother Ed's “Family in God”), and his name printed in the “Partners in Heaven” memorial booklet that was forthcoming. For a sawbuck Pickett would receive her undying gratitude.

  Pickett looked down at Otley's nickel, still in his hand, and smiled; but before he could say anything, three boys shucked in, each about four feet high. One carried a Zebco rod and reel, and a peanut butter jar full of nickels and dimes. He wanted to buy a fishing license. One. For the three of them. Pickett thanked the woman and left her lecturing the fishermen three on the laws of the great State of Florida.

  He walked across the street to a once white '65 Nova. After two tries, it started. He drove the Nova back to Main, and then onto Fairview, passing half a dozen fast-food bunkers and two Spee-Dee muffler shops. Pickett turned off Fairview onto I-4 West, toward Orlando.

  The traffic was heavy, every other car filled with two or more hysterical kids and two or less morose parents. A large green sign above the highway read: DISNEYWORLD 18/TEMPLE OF GLORY 1.”