Revival

IX

Brianna Donlin and I were scanning obituaries in bed on a Sunday morning in early August of 2009. Thanks to the sort of computer hocus-pocus only true geeks can manage, Bree was able to collate death notices from a dozen major American newspapers and view them as an alphabetical list.

It wasn’t the first time we’d done this in such pleasurable circumstances, but we both understood we were getting closer and closer to the last time. In September she’d be leaving for New York to interview for I-T jobs with the sort of firms that paid upwards of six figures at the entry level—she had appointments with four already penciled into her calendar—and I had my own plans. But our time together had been good for me in all sorts of ways, and I had no reason not to believe her when she said it had been good for her, too.

I wasn’t the first man to enjoy a dalliance with a woman less than half his age, and if you said there’s no fool like an old fool and no goat like an old goat, I wouldn’t argue with you, but sometimes such liaisons are okay, at least in the short term. Neither of us was attached, and neither of us had any illusions about the long term. It had just happened, and Brianna had made the first move. This was about three months after the Norris County tent revival and four into our computer-sleuthing. I hadn’t been a particularly tough sell, especially after she slipped out of her blouse and skirt one evening in my apartment.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I had asked.

“Absolutely.” She flashed a grin. “Soon I’ll be in the big wide world, and I think I better work out my daddy issues first.”

“Was your daddy a white ex–guitar player, then?”

That made her laugh. “All cats are gray in the dark, Jamie. Now are we going to get it on or not?”

We got it on, and it was terrific. I’d be lying if I said her youth didn’t excite me—she was twenty-four—and I’d also be lying if I said I could always keep up with her. Stretched out next to her that first night and pretty much exhausted after the second go, I asked her what Georgia would say.

“She’s not going to find out from me. Is she from you?”

“Nope, but Nederland’s a small town.”

“That’s true, and in small towns, discretion only goes so far, I guess. If she should speak to me, I’d just remind her that she once did more for Hugh Yates than keep his books.”

“Are you serious?”

She giggled. “You white boys can be so dumb.”

Now, with coffee on her side of the bed and tea on mine, we sat propped up on pillows with her laptop between us. Summer sunshine—morning sunshine, always the best—made an oblong on the floor. Bree was wearing one of my tee-shirts and nothing else. Her hair, kept short, was a curly black cap.

“You could continue without me just fine,” she said. “You pretend to be computer illiterate—mostly so you can keep me where you can nudge me in the night, I think—but running search engines ain’t rocket science. And I think you’ve got enough already, don’t you?”

As a matter of fact, I did. We had started with three names from the Miracle Testimony page of C. Danny Jacobs’s website. Robert Rivard, the boy cured of muscular dystrophy in St. Louis, led the list. To these three Bree had added the ones I was sure of from the Norris County revival meeting—ones like Rowena Mintour, whose sudden recovery was hard to argue with. If that tottery, weeping walk to her husband had been a put-up job, she deserved an Academy Award for it.

Bree had tracked the Pastor Danny Jacobs Healing Revival Tour from Colorado to California, ten stops in all. Together we had watched the new YouTube vids added to the website’s Miracle Testimony page with the avidity of marine biologists studying some newly discovered species of fish. We debated the validity of each (first in my living room, later in this same bed), eventually putting them into four categories: utter bullshit, probable bullshit, impossible to be sure, and hard not to believe.

By this process, a master list had slowly emerged. On that sunny August morning in the bedroom of my second-floor apartment, there were fifteen names on it. These were cures we felt ninety-eight percent sure of, culled down from a roster of almost seven hundred and fifty possibles. Robert Rivard was on that list; Mabel Jergens from Albuquerque was on it; so was Rowena Mintour and Ben Hicks, the man in the Norris County Fairgrounds tent who had torn off his neck brace and tossed his crutches aside.

Hicks was an interesting case. Both he and his wife had confirmed the authenticity of the cure in a Denver Post article published a couple of weeks after Jacobs’s traveling show moved on. He was a history prof at the Community College of Denver with an impeccable reputation. He termed himself a religious skeptic and described his attendance at the Norris County revival as “a last resort.” His wife confirmed this. “We are amazed and thankful,” she said. She added that they had started going to church again.

Rivard, Jergens, Mintour, Hicks, and everyone else on our master list had been touched by Jacobs’s “holy rings” between May of 2007 and December of 2008, when the Healing Revival Tour had concluded in San Diego.

Bree had begun the follow-up work with a light heart, but by October of 2008, her attitude had darkened. That was when she had found a story about Robert Rivard—no more than a squib, really—in the Monroe County Weekly Telegram. It said the “miracle boy” had been admitted to St. Louis Children’s Hospital “for reasons unrelated to his former muscular dystrophy.”

Bree made enquiries, both by computer and telephone. Rivard’s parents refused to speak to her, but a nurse at Children’s finally did when Bree told her she was trying to expose C. Danny Jacobs as a fraud. This was not what we were doing, exactly, but it worked. After being assured by Bree that she would never be named in any article or book, the nurse said Bobby Rivard had been admitted suffering what she called “chain headaches,” and was given a battery of tests to rule out a brain tumor. Which they did. Eventually the boy had been transferred to Gad’s Ridge, in Oakville, Missouri.

“What kind of hospital is that?” Bree had asked.

“Mental,” the nurse said. And while Bree was digesting this: “Most people who go into Gad’s, they never come out.”

Bree’s efforts to find out more were met by a stone wall at Gad’s Ridge. Because I considered Rivard our Patient Zero, I flew to St. Louis, rented a car, and drove to Oakville. After several afternoons spent in the bar nearest to the hospital, I found an orderly who would talk for the small emolument of sixty dollars. Robert Rivard was still walking fine, the orderly said, but never walked any farther than the corner of his room. When he did, he would simply stand there, like a child being punished for misbehavior, until someone led him back to his bed or the nearest chair. On good days he ate; during his bad stretches, which were far more common, he had to be tube-fed. He was classed semicatatonic. A gork, in the orderly’s words.

“Is he still suffering from chain headaches?” I asked him.

The orderly shrugged meaty shoulders. “Who knows?”

Who, indeed.

So far as we could tell, nine of the people on our master list were fine. This included Rowena Mintour, who had resumed teaching, and Ben Hicks, whom I interviewed myself in November of 2008, five months after his cure. I didn’t tell him everything (for one thing, I never mentioned electricity of either the ordinary or the special type), but I shared enough to establish my bona fides: heroin addiction cured by Jacobs in the early nineties, followed by troubling aftereffects that eventually diminished and then disappeared. What I wanted to know was if he had suffered any aftereffects—blackouts, flashing lights, sleepwalking, perhaps lapses into Tourette’s-like speech.

No to all, he said. He was fine as could be.

“I don’t know if it was God working through him or not,” Hicks told me over coffee in his office. “My wife does, and that’s fine, but I don’t care. I’m pain-free and walking two miles a day. In another two months I expect to be cleared to play tennis, as long as it’s doubles, where I only have to run a few steps. Those are the things I care about. If he did for you what you say he did, you’ll know what I mean.”

I did, but I also knew more.

That Robert Rivard was enjoying his cure in a mental institution, sipping glucose via IV rather than Cokes with his friends.

That Patricia Farmingdale, cured of peripheral neuropathy in Cheyenne, Wyoming, had poured salt into her eyes in an apparent effort to blind herself. She had no memory of doing it, let alone why.

That Stefan Drew of Salt Lake City had gone on walking binges after being cured of a supposed brain tumor. These walks, some of them fifteen-mile marathons, did not occur during blackouts; the urge just came on him, he said, and he had to go.

That Veronica Freemont of Anaheim had suffered what she called “interruptions of vision.” One had resulted in a low-speed collision with another driver. She tested negative for drugs and alcohol, but turned in her license just the same, afraid it would happen again.

That in San Diego, Emil Klein’s miracle cure of a neck injury was followed by a periodic compulsion to go out into his backyard and eat dirt.

And there was Blake Gilmore of Las Vegas, who claimed C. Danny Jacobs had cured him of lymphoma during the late summer of 2008. A month later he lost his job as a blackjack dealer when he began to spew profanity at the customers—stuff like “Take a hit, take a fucking hit, you chickenshit asshole.” When he began shouting similar things at his three kids, his wife threw him out. He moved to a no-tell motel north of Fashion Show Drive. Two weeks later he was found dead on the bathroom floor with a bottle of Krazy Glue in one hand. He had used it to plug his nostrils and seal his mouth shut. His wasn’t the only obit coupled to Jacobs that Bree had found with her search engine, but it was the only one we felt sure was connected.

Until Cathy Morse, that was.

I was feeling sleepy again in spite of an infusion of black breakfast tea. I blamed it on the auto-scroll feature of Bree’s laptop. It was helpful, I said, but also hypnotic.

“Honey, if I may misquote Al Jolson, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” she said. “Next year Apple’s going to release a pad-style computer that’ll revolutionize—” There was a bing before she could finish, and the auto-scroll came to a halt. She peered at the screen, where a line was highlighted in red. “Uh-oh. That’s one of the names you gave me when we started.”

“What?” Meaning who. I’d only been able to give her a few back then, and one had been that of my brother Con. Jacobs had claimed that one was just a placebo, but—

“Hold your water and let me click the link.”

I leaned over to look. My first feeling was relief: not Con, of course not. My second was a species of dismal horror.

The obituary, from the Tulsa World, was for one Catherine Anne Morse, age thirty-eight. Died suddenly, the obit said. And this: Cathy’s grieving parents ask that in lieu of flowers, mourners send contributions to the Suicide Prevention Action Network. These contributions are tax deductible.

“Bree,” I said. “Go to last week’s—”

“I know what to do, so let me do it.” Then, taking a second look at my face: “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said, but I didn’t know if I was or not. I kept remembering how Cathy Morse had looked mounting to the Portraits in Lightning stage all those years ago, a pretty little Sooner gal with tanned legs flashing beneath a denim skirt with a frayed hem. Every pretty girl carries her own positive charge, Jacobs had said, but somewhere along the way, Cathy’s charge had turned negative. No mention of a husband, although a girl that good-looking must not have lacked for suitors. No mention of children, either.

Maybe she liked girls, I thought, but that was pretty lame.

“Here you go, sugar,” Bree said. She turned the laptop so I could see it more easily. “Same newspaper.”

WOMAN IN DEATH JUMP FROM CYRUS AVERY MEMORIAL BRIDGE, the headline read. Cathy Morse had left no explanatory note behind, and her grieving parents were mystified. “I wonder if it wasn’t somebody pushed her,” Mrs. Morse said… but according to the article, foul play had been ruled out, although it didn’t say how.

Has he done it before, mister? Mr. Morse had asked me back in 1992. This after punching my old fifth business in the face and splitting his lip. Has he knocked other ones for a loop the way he knocked my Cathy?

Yes, sir, I thought now. Yes, sir, I believe he has.

“Jamie, you don’t know for sure,” Bree said, touching my shoulder. “Sixteen years is a long time. It could have been something else entirely. She might have found out she had a bad cancer, or some other fatal disease. Fatal and painful.”

“It was him,” I said. “I know it, and by now I think you do, too. Most of his subjects are fine afterwards, but some go away with time bombs in their heads. Cathy Morse did, and it went off. How many others are going to go off in the next ten or twenty years?”

I was thinking I could be one of them, and Bree surely knew that, too. She didn’t know about Hugh, because that wasn’t my story to tell. He hadn’t had a recurrence of his prismatics since the night at the tent revival—and that one was probably brought on by stress—but it could happen again, and although we didn’t talk about it, I’m sure he knew it as well as I did.

Time bombs.

“So now you’re going to find him.”

“You bet.” The obituary of Catherine Anne Morse was the last piece of evidence I needed, the one that made the decision final.

“And persuade him to stop.”

“If I can.”

“If he won’t?”

“Then I don’t know.”

“I’ll go with you, if you want.”

But she didn’t want. It was all over her face. She had started the assignment with an intelligent young woman’s zest for pure research, and there had been the lovemaking to add extra spice, but now the research was no longer pure and she had seen enough to scare her badly.

“You’re not going anywhere near him,” I said. “But he’s been off the road for eight months now and his weekly TV show’s into reruns. I need you to find out where he’s hanging his hat these days.”

“I can do that.” She set her laptop aside and reached under the sheet. “But I’d like to do something else first, if you’re of a mind.”

I was.

Shortly before Labor Day, Bree Donlin and I said our goodbyes in that same bed. They were very physical ones for the most part, satisfying to both of us, but also sad. For me more than her, I think. She was looking forward to life as a pretty, unattached career girl in New York; I was looking forward to the dreaded double-nickel in less than two years. I thought there would be no more lively young women for me, and on that score I have been proven absolutely correct.

She slipped out of bed, long-legged and beautifully naked. “I found what you wanted,” she said, and began rummaging through her purse on the dresser. “It was harder than I expected, because he’s currently going under the name of Daniel Charles.”

“That’s my boy. Not exactly an alias, but close.”

“More of a precaution, I think. The way celebrities will check into a hotel under a fake name—or a variation of their real one—to fool the autograph hounds. He leased the place where he’s living as Daniel Charles, which is legal as long as he’s got a bank account and the checks don’t bounce, but sometimes a fella just has to use his real name if he’s going to stay on the right side of the law.”

“What sometimes would you be talking about in this case?”

“He bought a car last year in Poughkeepsie, New York—not a fancy one, just a plain-vanilla Ford Taurus—and registered it under his real name.” She got back into bed and handed me a slip of paper. “Here you go, handsome.”

Written on it was Daniel Charles (aka Charles Jacobs, aka C. Danny Jacobs), The Latches, Latchmore, New York 12561.

“What’s The Latches when it’s at home with its feet up?”

“The house he’s renting. Actually an estate. A gated estate, so be aware. Latchmore is a little north of New Paltz—same zip code. It’s in the Catskills, where Rip Van Winkle bowled with the dwarfs back in the day. Except then—umm, your hands are nice and warm—the game was called ninepins.”

She snuggled closer, and I said what men of my age find themselves saying more and more frequently: I appreciated the offer, but didn’t feel myself capable of taking her up on it just then. In retrospect, I sure wish I’d tried a little harder. One last time would have been nice.

“That’s okay, hon. Just hold me.”

I held her. I think we drowsed, because when I became aware again, the sun had moved from the bed to the floor. Bree jumped up and began to dress. “Got to shake. A thousand things to do today.” She hooked her bra, then looked at me in the mirror. “When are you going to see him?”

“Probably not until October. Hugh’s got a guy coming in from Minnesota to sub for me, but he can’t get here until then.”

“You have to stay in touch with me. Email and phone. If I don’t hear from you every day you’re out there, I’ll get worried. I might even have to drive up and make sure you’re okay.”

“Don’t do that,” I said.

“You just stay in touch, white boy, and I won’t have to.”

Dressed, she came and sat on the side of the bed.

“You might not need to go at all. Has that idea crossed your mind? There’s no tour scheduled, his website’s gone stagnant, and there’s nothing but reruns on his TV show. I came across a blog post the other day titled Where in the World Is Pastor Danny? The discussion thread went on for pages.”

“Your point being?”

She took my hand, twined her fingers in mine. “We know—well, not know, but we’re pretty sure—that he’s hurt some people along the way while he was helping others. Okay, that’s done and can’t be undone. But if he’s stopped healing, he won’t be hurting anyone else. In that case, what would be the point of confronting him?”

“If he’s stopped healing, it’s because he’s made enough money to move on.”

“To what?”

“I don’t know, but judging from his track record, it could be dangerous. And Bree… listen.” I sat up and took her other hand. “Everything else aside, someone needs to call him to account for what he’s done.”

She lifted my hands to her mouth, where she kissed first one and then the other. “But should that someone be you, honey? After all, you were one of his successes.”

“I think that’s why. Also, Charlie and I… we go back. We go way back.”

I didn’t see her off at Denver International—that was her mother’s job—but she called me when she landed, frothing with a combination of nerves and excitement. Looking forward, not back. I was glad for her. When my phone rang twenty minutes later, I thought it would be her again. It wasn’t. It was her mother. Georgia asked if we could talk. Maybe over lunch.

Uh-oh, I thought.

We ate at McGee’s—a pleasant meal, with pleasant conversation, mostly about the music business. When we had said no to dessert and yes to coffee, Georgia leaned her considerable bosom on the table and got down to business. “So, Jamie. Are you two done with each other?”

“I… um… Georgia…”

“Goodness, don’t mumble and stumble. You know perfectly well what I mean, and I’m not going to bite your head off. If I had a mind to do that, I would have done it last year, when she first hopped in the sack with you.” She saw my expression and smiled. “Nah, she didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. Didn’t need to. I can read her like a book. I bet she even told you I got up to some of the same doins with Hugh, back in the day. True?”

I made a zipping motion across my lips. It turned her smile into a laugh.

“Oh, that’s good. I like that. And I like you, Jamie. I did almost from the first, when you were skinny as a rail and still getting over whatever junk you were putting into your system. You looked like Billy Idol, only dragged through the gutter. I don’t have anything against mixed-race sweeties, either. Or the age thing. Do you know what my father gave me when I got old enough for a driver’s license?”

I shook my head.

“A 1960 Plymouth with half the grille gone, bald tires, rusty rocker panels, and an engine that gobbled recycled oil by the quart. He called it a field-bomber. Said every new driver should have an old wreck to start with, before he or she stepped up to a car that would actually take an inspection sticker. Are you getting my point?”

I absolutely was. Bree wasn’t a nun, she’d had her share of sexual adventures before I came along, but I had been her first long-term relationship. In New York, she would move up—if not to a man of her own race, then certainly to one a little closer to her own age.

“I just wanted that out front before I said what I really came here to say.” She leaned forward even more, the rolling tide of her bosom endangering her coffee cup and water glass. “She wouldn’t tell me much about the research she’s been doing for you, but I know it scared her, and the one time I tried to ask Hugh, he about bit my head off.”

Ants, I thought. To him, the whole congregation looked like ants.

“It’s about that preacherman. I know that much.”

I kept quiet.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“You could say so, I guess.”

She nodded and sat back. “That’s all right. That’s fine. Just from now on, I want you to leave Brianna out of it. Will you do that? If only because I never suggested that you’d have done better to keep your elderly prick away from my daughter’s underpants?”

“She’s out of it. We agreed on that.”

She gave a businesslike nod. Then: “Hugh says you’re taking a vacation.”

“Yes.”

“Going to see the preacherman?”

I kept quiet. Which was the same as saying yes, and she knew it.

“Be careful.” She reached across the table and interlaced her fingers in mine, as her daughter had been wont to do. “Whatever it was you and Bree were looking into, it upset her terribly.”

I flew into Stewart Airport in Newburgh on a day in early October. The trees were turning color, and the ride to the town of Latchmore was beautiful. By the time I got there, the afternoon was waning and I checked into the local Motel 6. There was no dial-up, let alone WiFi, which made my laptop unable to touch the world outside my room, but I didn’t need WiFi to find The Latches; Bree had done that for me. It was four miles east of downtown Latchmore, on Route 27, an estate home once owned by an old-money family named Vander Zanden. Around the turn of the twentieth century the old money had apparently run out, because The Latches had been sold and turned into a high-priced sanitarium for overweight ladies and soused gentlemen. That had lasted almost until the turn of the twenty-first century. Since then it had been for sale or lease.

I thought I would have a hard time sleeping, but I went under almost immediately, in the midst of trying to plan what I’d say to Jacobs when I saw him. If I saw him. When I woke early on another bright fall day, I decided that playing it by ear might be for the best. If I hadn’t laid down tracks to run on, I reasoned (perhaps fallaciously), I couldn’t be derailed.

I got in my rental car at nine, drove the four miles, found nothing. A mile or so farther on I stopped at a farmstand loaded with the season’s last produce. The potatoes looked mighty paltry to my country boy’s eye, but the pumpkins were wowsers. The stand was being presided over by a couple of teenagers. The resemblance said they were brother and sister. Their expressions said they were bored brainless. I asked for directions to The Latches.

“You passed it,” the girl said. She was the older.

“I figured that much. I just don’t know how I managed. I thought I had good directions, and it’s supposed to be pretty big.”

“There used to be a sign,” the boy said, “but the guy who’s renting the place took it down. Pa says he must like to keep himself to himself. Ma says he’s probably stuck up.”

“Shut up, Willy. Mister, you gonna buy anything? Pa says we can’t shut down for the day until we get thirty dollars’ worth of custom.”

“I’ll buy a pumpkin. If you can give me some decent directions.”

She gave a theatrical sigh. “One pumpkin. A buck-fifty. Big whoop.”

“How about one pumpkin for five dollars?”

Willy and his sister exchanged a look, then she smiled. “That’ll work.”

My expensive pumpkin sat in the backseat like an orange moonlet as I drove back the way I had come. The girl had told me to watch for a big slab of rock with METALLICA RULES sprayed on it. I spotted it and slowed to ten miles an hour. Two tenths of a mile after the big rock, I came to the turnoff I’d missed before. It was paved, but the entrance was badly overgrown and heaped with fallen autumn leaves. It looked like camouflage to me. When I’d asked the farmstand kids if they knew what the new occupant did, they had simply shrugged.

“Pa says he probably made his money in the stock market,” the girl said. “He must have a lot of it, to live in a place like that. Ma says it must have fifty rooms.”

“Why you goin to see him?” This was the boy.

His sister threw him an elbow. “That’s rude, Willy.”

I said, “If he’s who I think he is, I knew him a long time ago. And thanks to you guys, I can bring him a present.” I hefted the pumpkin.

“Make a lot of pies with that, f’sure,” the boy said.

Or a jack-o’-lantern, I thought as I turned into the lane leading to The Latches. Branches brushed the sides of my car. One with a bright little electric light inside instead of a candle. Right behind the eyes.

The road—that’s what it was once you got past the intersection with the highway, wide and well-paved—climbed in a series of S-turns. Twice I had to stop while deer lolloped across ahead of me. They looked at my car without concern. I guessed no one had hunted these woods in a long, long time.

Four miles up, I came to a closed wrought-iron gate flanked by signs: PRIVATE PROPERTY on the left and NO TRESPASSING on the right. There was an intercom box on a fieldstone post with a video camera above it, cocked down to look at callers. I pressed the button on the intercom. My heart was beating hard, and I was sweating. “Hello? Is anybody there?”

Nothing at first. At last: “How may I help you?” The resolution was much better than most intercom systems provide—terrific, in fact—but given Jacobs’s interests, that didn’t surprise me. The voice wasn’t his, but it was familiar.

“I’m here to see Daniel Charles.”

“Mr. Charles doesn’t see callers without an appointment,” the intercom informed me.

I considered this, then pushed the TALK button again. “What about Dan Jacobs? That’s the name he was going under in Tulsa, where he was running a carny shy called Portraits in Lightning.”

The voice from the box said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’m sure Mr. Charles wouldn’t, either.”

The penny dropped, and I knew who went with that rolling tenor voice. “Tell him it’s Jamie Morton, Mr. Stamper. And remind him I was there when he did his first miracle.”

There was a long, long pause. I thought the conversation might be over, which would leave me up the creek without a paddle. Unless I wanted to try crashing the gate with my rented economy car, that was, and in such a conflict I was pretty sure the gate would win.

Just as I was about to turn away, Al Stamper said, “What was this miracle?”

“My brother Conrad lost his voice. Reverend Jacobs brought it back.”

“Look up at the camera.”

I did so. After several seconds, a new voice came through the intercom. “Come on up, Jamie,” Charles Jacobs said. “It’s wonderful to see you.”

An electric motor began to purr, and the gate opened on a hidden track. Like Jesus walking across Peaceable Lake, I thought as I got into my car and started rolling. There was another of those tight curves fifty yards or so further up, and before I was around it, I saw the gate shutting. The association that came to me—the original residents of Eden turned out for eating the wrong apple—wasn’t surprising; I had grown up with the Bible, after all.

The Latches was a vast sprawl that might have started life as a Victorian but had become a mishmash of architectural experiments. There were four stories, many gables, and a rounded, glassed-in addition on the west end that looked out on the valleys, dells, and ponds of the Hudson Valley. Route 27 was a dark thread running through a landscape that shone with color. The main building was barnboard trimmed in white, and several large outbuildings matched it. I wondered which one housed Jacobs’s lab. One of them did, of that I was sure. Beyond the buildings, the land sloped up ever more steeply and woods took over.

Parked under the portico, where bellmen had once unloaded the fancy cars of incoming spa-goers and alkies, was the unassuming Ford Taurus Jacobs had registered under his own name. I parked behind it and mounted the steps to a porch that looked as long as a football field. I reached for the bell, but before I could ring it, the door opened. Al Stamper stood there in seventies-style bellbottom trousers and a strappy tie-dyed tee-shirt. He’d put on even more weight since I’d last seen him in the revival tent, and looked approximately the size of a moving van.

“Hello, Mr. Stamper. Jamie Morton. I’m a big fan of your early work.” I held out my hand.

He didn’t shake it. “I don’t know what you want, but Mr. Jacobs doesn’t need anyone disturbing him. He’s got a lot of work to do, and he hasn’t been well.”

“Don’t you mean Pastor Danny?” I asked. (Well… sort of teased.)

“Come on in the kitchen.” It was the warm and rolling Soul Brother Number One voice, but the face said, The kitchen’ll be good enough for the likes of you.

I was willing, it was good enough for the likes of me, but before he could lead me there, another voice, one I knew well, exclaimed, “Jamie Morton! You do turn up at the most opportune times!”

He came down the hall, limping slightly and listing to starboard. His hair, now almost completely white, had continued to draw back from his temples, exposing arcs of shining scalp. The blue eyes, however, were as sharp as ever. His lips were drawn back in a smile that looked (to my eye, at least) rather predatory. He passed Stamper as if the big man wasn’t there, his right hand held out. Today that one was ringless, although there was one on his left: a simple gold band, thin and scratched. I was sure the mate to it was buried beneath the soil of a Harlow cemetery, on a finger that was now little more than a bone.

I shook with him. “We’re a long way from Tulsa, Charlie, wouldn’t you say?”

He nodded, pumping my hand like a politician hoping for a vote. “Long, long way. How old are you now, Jamie?”

“Fifty-three.”

“And your family? Are they well?”

“I don’t see them much, but Terry is still in Harlow, running the oil business. He’s got three kids, two boys and a girl. Pretty well grown now. Con’s still stargazing in Hawaii. Andy passed away a few years ago. It was a stroke.”

“Very sorry to hear it. But you look great. In the pink.”

“So do you.” This was a baldfaced lie. I thought briefly of the three ages of the Great American Male—youth, middle age, and you look fuckin terrific. “You must be… what? Seventy?”

“Close enough.” He was still pumping my hand. It was a good strong grip, but I could feel a faint shake, just the same, lurking beneath the skin. “What about Hugh Yates? Are you still working for him?”

“Yes, and he’s fine. Can hear a pin drop in the next room.”

“Lovely. Lovely.” He let go of my hand at last. “Al, Jamie and I have a lot to talk about. Would you bring us a couple of lemonades? We’ll be in the library.”

“Now, you’re not going to overdo it, are you?” Stamper was looking at me with distrust and dislike. He’s jealous, I thought. He’s had Jacobs all to himself since the last tour ended, and that’s just the way he likes it. “You need your strength for your work.”

“I’ll be fine. There’s no tonic like an old friend. Follow me, Jamie.”

He led me down the main hall, past a dining room as long as a Pullman car on the left, and one-two-three living rooms on the right, the one in the middle graced by a huge chandelier that looked like a leftover prop from James Cameron’s Titanic movie. We walked through a rotunda where polished wood gave way to polished marble, our footfalls picking up an echo. It was a warm day but the house was comfy. I could hear the silky whisper of air conditioners, and wondered how much it cost to cool this place in August, when the temperature would be a lot more than warmish. Remembering the workshop in Tulsa, my guess was very little.

The library was the circular room at the far end of the house. There were thousands of books on the curving shelves, but I had no idea how anyone could possibly read in here, given the view. The west wall was entirely made of glass, and I could look out over leagues and leagues of the Hudson Valley, complete with cobalt river shining in the distance.

“Healing pays well.” I thought again of Goat Mountain, that rich people’s playground that was gated to keep hicks like the Morton family out. Some views only money can buy.

“In all sorts of ways,” he said. “I don’t need to ask if you’re still off the drugs; I can see it in your complexion. And in your eyes.” Thus having reminded me of the debt I owed him, he asked me to sit down.

Now that I was actually here and in the presence, I hardly knew how or where to begin. Nor did I want to with Al Stamper—now serving as assistant-cum-butler—due with lemonades. It turned out not to be a problem. Before I could find some meaningless chit-chat to pass the time, the ex–lead singer of the Vo-Lites came in, looking grumpier than ever. He set a tray down on a cherrywood table between us.

“Thank you, Al,” Jacobs said.

“Very welcome.” Speaking to the boss and ignoring me.

“Nice pants,” I said. “Takes me back to the days when the Bee Gees quit the transcendental stuff and went disco. Now you need some vintage platform shoes to go with.”

He gave me a look that wasn’t very soulful (or very Christian, for that matter), and left. It would not be a stretch to say Stamper stamped out.

Jacobs picked up his lemonade and sipped. From the bits of pulp floating on the surface, I deduced it was homemade. And from the way the ice cubes clittered together when he set it back down, I deduced I hadn’t been wrong about the palsy. Sherlock had nothing on me that day.

“That was rude, Jamie,” Jacobs said, but he sounded amused. “Especially for a guest, and an uninvited one, at that. Laura would be ashamed.”

I let the reference to my mother—calculated, I’m sure—pass. “Uninvited or not, you seemed glad to see me.”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be? Try your lemonade. You look hot. Also, if I may be frank, a bit uncomfortable.”

I was, but at least I wasn’t frightened anymore. Angry is what I was. Here I sat in a gigantic house surrounded by a gigantic swatch of ground that no doubt included a gigantic swimming pool and a golf course—perhaps now too overgrown to be playable, but still part of the estate. A luxurious home for Charles Jacobs’s electrical experiments in his later years. Somewhere else, Robert Rivard was standing in a corner, probably wearing a diaper, because bathroom functions were the least of his concerns these days. Veronica Freemont was taking the bus to work because she no longer dared to drive, and Emil Klein might still be snacking on dirt. Then there was Cathy Morse, a pretty little Sooner gal who was now in a coffin.

Easy, white boy, I heard Bree counsel. Easy does it.

I tasted my lemonade, then set it back down on the tray. Wouldn’t want to mar the expensive cherrywood finish of the table; goddam thing was probably an antique. And okay, maybe I was still a little scared, but at least the ice cubes didn’t clink in my glass. Jacobs, meanwhile, crossed his right leg over his left, and I noted he had to use his hands to help it along.

“Arthritis?”

“Yes, but not bad.”

“I’m surprised you don’t heal it with the holy rings. Or would that qualify as self-abuse?”

He gazed out at the spectacular view without replying. Shaggy iron-gray eyebrows—a unibrow, actually—drew together over the fierce blue eyes.

“Or maybe you’re afraid of the aftereffects. Is that it?”

He raised a hand in a stop gesture. “Enough insinuations. You don’t need to make them with me, Jamie. Our destinies are too entwined for that.”

“I don’t believe in destiny any more than you believe in God.”

He turned to me, once more giving me that smile that was all teeth and no warmth. “I repeat: enough. You tell me why you came, and I’ll tell you why I’m glad to see you.”

There was really no way to say it but to say it. “I came to tell you that you have to stop the healing.”

He sipped more lemonade. “And why would I do that, Jamie, when it’s done so much good for so many?”

You know why I came, I thought. Then I had an even more uncomfortable thought: You’ve been waiting for me.

I shook the idea off.

“It’s not so good for some of them.” I had our master list in my back pocket, but there was no need to bring it out. I had memorized the names and the aftereffects. I began with Hugh and his prismatic interludes, and how he had suffered one at the Norris County revival.

Jacobs shrugged it off. “Stress of the moment. Has he had any since?”

“Not that he’s told me.”

“I think he would have, since you were there when he had the last one. Hugh’s fine, I’m sure. What about you, Jamie? Any current aftereffects?”

“Bad dreams.”

He made a polite scoffing sound. “Everyone has those from time to time, and that includes me. But the blackouts you suffered are gone, yes? No more compulsive talking, myoclonic movements, or poking at your skin?”

“No.”

“So. You see? No worse than a sore arm after a vaccination.”

“Oh, I think the aftereffects some of your followers have suffered are a little worse than that. Robert Rivard, for instance. Do you remember him?”

“The name rings a faint bell, but I’ve healed so many.”

“From Missouri? Muscular dystrophy? His video was on your website.”

“Oh, yes, now I remember. His parents made a very generous love offering.”

“His MD’s gone, but so is his mind. He’s in the sort of hospital sometimes referred to as a vegetable patch.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Jacobs said, and returned his attention to the view—midstate New York burning toward winter.

I went through the others, although it was clear he already knew a good deal of what I was telling him. I really surprised him only once, at the end, when I told him about Cathy Morse.

“Christ,” he said. “The girl with the angry father.”

“I think the angry father would do more than just punch you in the mouth this time. If he could find you, that is.”

“Perhaps, but Jamie, you’re not looking at the big picture.” He leaned forward, hands clasped between his bony knees, his eyes on mine. “I’ve healed a great many poor souls. Some—the ones with psychosomatic problems—actually do the healing themselves, as I’m sure you know. But others have been healed by virtue of the secret electricity. Although God gets the credit, of course.”

His teeth showed briefly in a cheerless spasm of a smile.

“Let me pose you a hypothetical situation. Suppose I were a neurosurgeon and you came to me with a malignant brain tumor, one not impossible to operate on but very difficult. Very risky. Suppose I told you that your chances of dying on the table were… mmm… let’s say twenty-five percent. Wouldn’t you still go ahead, knowing that the alternative was a period of misery followed by certain death? Of course you would. You’d beg me to operate.”

I said nothing, because the logic was inarguable.

“Tell me, how many people do you think I’ve actually healed through electrical intervention?”

“I don’t know. My assistant and I only listed the ones we felt we could be sure of. It was pretty short.”

He nodded. “Good research technique.”

“Glad you approve.”

“I have my own list, and it’s much longer. Because I know when it happens, you see. When it works. There is never any doubt. And based on my follow-up tracking, only a few suffer adverse effects later on. Three percent, perhaps five. Compared to the brain tumor example I just set you, I’d call those terrific odds.”

I was a turn back, on the phrase follow-up tracking. I’d only had Brianna. He had hundreds or even thousands of followers who would be happy to keep an eye on his cures; all he had to do was ask. “Except for Cathy Morse, you knew about every case I just cited, didn’t you?”

He didn’t reply. Only watched me. There was no doubt in his face, only rock solid certainty.

“Of course you did. Because you keep tabs. To you they’re lab rats, and who cares if a few rats get sick? Or die?”

“That’s terribly unfair.”

“I don’t believe it is. You put on the religious act, because if you did your stuff in the lab I’m sure you’ve got right here at The Latches, the government would arrest you for experimenting on human subjects… and killing some of them.” I leaned forward, my eyes on his. “The newspapers would call you Josef Mengele.”

“Does anyone call a neurosurgeon Josef Mengele just because he loses some of his patients?”

“They’re not coming to you with brain tumors.”

“Some have, and many of those are living and enjoying their lives today instead of lying in the ground. Did I sometimes display fake tumors when I was on the circuit? Yes, and I’m not proud of it, but it was necessary. Because you can’t display something that’s just gone.” He considered. “It’s true that most of the people who came to my revivals weren’t suffering terminal illnesses, but in a way such nonfatal physical failings are worse. Those are the ones that allow folks to live long lives filled with pain. Agony, in some cases. And you sit there in judgment.” He shook his head sorrowfully, but his eyes weren’t sorrowful. They were furious.

“Cathy Morse wasn’t in pain, and she didn’t volunteer. You picked her out of the crowd because she was foxy. Eye candy for the rubes.”

As Bree had, Jacobs pointed out that there might have been some other reason for Morse’s suicide. Sixteen years was a long time. A lot could happen.

“You know better,” I said.

He drank from his glass and set it down with a hand that was now visibly shaking. “This conversation is pointless.”

“Because you won’t stop?”

“Because I have. C. Danny Jacobs will never spread another revival tent. Right now there’s a certain amount of discussion and speculation about that fellow on the Internet, but attention spans are short. Soon enough he’ll fade from the public mind.”

If that were so, I’d come to batter down a door only to discover it was unlocked. Instead of soothing me, the idea increased my unease.

“In six months, perhaps a year, the website will announce that Pastor Jacobs has retired due to ill health. After that it will go dark.”

“Why? Because your research is finished?” Only, I didn’t believe Charlie Jacobs’s researches would ever be finished.

He turned to contemplate the view again. At last he uncrossed his legs and stood, pushing on the arms of his chair to accomplish it. “Come out back with me, Jamie. I want to show you something.”

Al Stamper was at the kitchen table, a mountain of fat in ’70s disco pants. He was sorting mail. In front of him was a stack of toaster waffles dripping with butter and syrup. Beside him was a liquor carton. On the floor next to his chair were three plastic USPS bins piled high with more letters and packages. As I watched, Stamper tore open a manila envelope. He shook out a scrawled letter, a photo of a boy in a wheelchair, and a ten-dollar bill. He put the ten-spot in the gin carton and scanned the letter, chomping a waffle as he did so. Standing beside him made Jacobs look thinner than ever. This time it wasn’t Adam and Eve I thought of, but Jack Sprat and his wife.

“The tent may be folded,” I said, “but I see the love offerings are still coming in.”

Stamper gave me a look of malevolent indifference—if there is such a thing—then turned back to his opening and sorting. Not to mention his waffles.

“We read every letter,” Jacobs said. “Don’t we, Al?”

“Yes.”

“Do you reply to every letter?” I asked.

“We ought to,” Stamper said. “I think so, anyway. And we could, if I had help. One person would be enough, along with a computer to replace the one Pastor Danny carted out to his workshop.”

“We’ve discussed that, Al,” Jacobs said. “Once we started corresponding with supplicants…”

“We’d never finish, I know. I just wonder what happened to the Lord’s work.”

“You’re doing it,” Jacobs said. His voice was gentle. His eyes, however, were amused: the eyes of a man watching a dog do a trick.

Stamper made no reply, just opened the next envelope. No picture in this one, just a letter and a five-spot.

“Come on, Jamie,” Jacobs said. “Let’s leave him to it.”

From the driveway, the outbuildings had looked trim and spruce, but closer up I could see that the boards were splintering in places and the trim needed a touch-up. The Bermuda grass we walked through, undoubtedly a hefty expense when the estate was last landscaped, needed to be cut. If it didn’t happen soon, the two-acre expanse of back lawn would revert to meadow.

Jacobs stopped. “Which building do you think is my lab?”

I pointed to the barn. It was the largest, about the size of the rented auto body shop in Tulsa.

He smiled. “Did you know that the staff involved in the Manhattan Project shrank steadily before the first A-bomb test at White Sands?”

I shook my head.

“By the time the bomb went off, several of the prefab dormitories built to house the workers were empty. Here’s a little-known rule about scientific research: as one progresses toward one’s ultimate goal, support requirements tend to shrink.”

He led me toward what looked like a humble toolshed, produced a key ring, and opened the door. I expected it to be hot inside, but it was as cool as the big house. There was a worktable running down the lefthand side with nothing on it but a few notebooks and a Macintosh computer, currently showing a screen saver of endlessly galloping horses. In front of the Mac was a chair that looked ergonomic and expensive.

On the right side of the shed were shelves stacked with boxes that looked like silver-plated cigarette cartons… only cigarette cartons don’t hum like amplifiers on standby. On the floor was another box, this one painted green and about the size of a hotel mini-fridge. On top of it was a TV monitor. Jacobs clapped his hands softly and the monitor’s screen lit up, showing a series of columns—red, blue, and green—that rose and fell in a way that suggested respiration. In terms of entertainment value I didn’t think it would ever replace Big Brother.

“This is where you work?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the equipment? The instruments?”

He pointed to the Mac, then to the monitor. “There and there. But the most important part…” He pointed to his own temple, like a man miming suicide. “Up here. You happen to be standing in the world’s most advanced electronics research facility. The things I have discovered in this room make Edison’s Menlo Park discoveries pale into insignificance. They are things that could change the world.”

But would the change be for the better, I wondered. I didn’t like the dreamy, proprietary expression on his face as he gazed around at what looked to me like almost nothing. Yet I couldn’t dismiss his claim as delusion. There was a sense of sleeping power in the silver cartons and the green fridge-size box. Being in that shed was like standing too close to a power plant working at full bore, close enough to feel the stray volts zinging the metal fillings in your mouth.

“I’m currently generating electricity by geothermal means.” He patted the green box. “This is a geosynchronous generator. Below it is a well pipe no bigger than the kind that might serve a medium-size country dairy farm. Yet at half power, this gennie could create enough superheated steam to power not just The Latches, but the entire Hudson Valley. At full power it could boil the entire aquifer like water in a teapot. Which might defeat the purpose.” He laughed heartily.

“Not possible,” I said. But of course, neither was curing brain tumors and severed spinal cords with holy rings.

“I assure you it is, Jamie. With a slightly bigger generator, which I could build with parts easily available by mail order, I could light up the whole East Coast.” He said this calmly, not boasting but only stating a fact. “I’m not doing it because energy creation doesn’t interest me. Let the world strangle in its own effluent; as far as I’m concerned, it deserves no better. And for my purposes, I’m afraid geothermal energy is a dead end. It’s not enough.” He looked broodingly at the horses galloping across the face of his computer. “I expected better from this place, especially in summer, when… but never mind.”

“And none of this runs on electricity as it’s now understood?”

He gave me a look of amused contempt. “Of course not.”

“It runs on the secret electricity.”

“Yes. That’s what I call it.”

“A kind of electricity that nobody else has discovered in all the years since Scribonius. Until you came along. A minister who used to build battery-driven toys as a hobby.”

“Oh, it’s known. Or was. In De Vermis Mysteriis, written in the late fifteenth century, Ludvig Prinn mentions it. He calls it potestas magna universi, the force that powers the universe. Prinn actually quotes Scribonius. In the years since I left Harlow, potestas universum—the search for it, the quest to harness it—has become my whole life.”

I wanted to believe he was delusional, but the cures and the strange three-dimensional portraits I’d seen him create in Tulsa argued against that. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe all that mattered was whether or not he was telling the truth about mothballing C. Danny Jacobs. If he was done with miracle cures, my mission was accomplished. Wasn’t it?

He adopted a lecturely tone. “To understand how I’ve progressed so far and discovered so much on my own, you have to realize that science is in many ways as faddish as the fashion industry. The Trinity explosion at White Sands happened in 1945. The Russians exploded their first A-bomb in Semipalatinsk, four years later. Electricity was first generated by nuclear fission in Arco, Idaho, in 1951. In the half century since, electricity has become the ugly bridesmaid; nuclear power is the beautiful bride everyone sighs over. Soon fission will be demoted to ugly bridesmaid and fusion will become the beautiful bride. When it comes to research into electrical theory, grants and subsidies have dried up. More importantly, interest has dried up. Electricity is now seen as antique, even though every modern power source must be converted to amps and volts!”

Less lecture now, and more outrage.

“In spite of its vast power to kill and cure, in spite of the way it’s reshaped the lives of every person on the planet, and in spite of the fact that it is still not understood, scientific research in this field is viewed with good-natured contempt! Neutrons are sexy! Electricity is dull, the equivalent of a dusty storage room from which all the valuable items have been taken, leaving only worthless junk. But the room isn’t empty. There’s an unfound door at the back, leading to chambers few people have ever seen, ones filled with objects of unearthly beauty. And there’s no end to those chambers.”

“You’re starting to make me feel nervous, Charlie.” I intended it to sound light, but it came out dead serious.

He paid no notice, only began to limp up and down between the worktable and the shelves, staring at the floor, touching the green box each time he passed it, as if to assure himself it was still there.

“Yes, others have visited those chambers. I’m not the first. Scribonius for one. Prinn for another. But most have kept their discoveries to themselves, just as I have. Because the power is enormous. Unknowable, really. Nuclear power? Pah! It’s a joke!” He touched the green box. “What’s in here could, if connected to a source powerful enough, make nuclear energy as insignificant as a child’s cap pistol.”

I wished I’d brought my lemonade with me, because my throat was dry. I had to clear it before I could speak. “Charlie, let’s say everything you’re telling me is true. Do you understand what you’re dealing with? How it works?”

“A fair question. Let me pose one in return. Do you understand what happens when you flick a wall switch? Could you list the sequence of events that ends with light banishing the shadows in a dark room?”

“No.”

“Do you even know if that flick of your finger closes a circuit or opens one?”

“No idea.”

“Yet that never stopped you from turning on a light, did it? Or powering up your electric guitar when it was time to play?”

“True, but I never plugged into an amp powerful enough to light the whole East Coast.”

He gave me a look of suspicion so dark it seemed close to paranoia. “If you have a point, I’m afraid I’m not taking it.”

I believed he was telling the truth about that, which might have been the scariest thing of all.

“Never mind.” I took him by the shoulders to stop his pacing and waited until he looked at me. Only even with his wide eyes fixed on my face, it was more like he was looking through me.

“Charlie—if you’re done curing people, and if you don’t want to end the energy crunch, what do you want?”

At first he didn’t reply. He seemed to be in a trance. Then he pulled away from me and began pacing again, reverting to the lecture-hall prof.

“The transfer devices—the ones I use on human beings—have undergone a number of iterations. When I cured Hugh Yates of his deafness, I was using large rings coated in gold and palladium. They seem hilariously old-fashioned to me now, videocassettes in the age of computer downloads. The headphones I used on you were smaller and more powerful. By the time you appeared with your heroin problem, I had replaced palladium with osmium. Osmium is less expensive—a plus for a man on a budget, as I was then—and the headphones were effective, but they’d hardly look good at a revival meeting, would they? Did Jesus wear headphones?”

“Probably not,” I said, “but I doubt if he wore wedding rings, either, being a bachelor.”

He paid no attention. He paced back and forth like a man in a cell. Or the paranoids who circulate in any big city, the ones who want to talk about the CIA and the international Jewish conspiracy and the secrets of the Rosicrucians. “So I went back to the rings, and created a story that would make them… palatable… to my congregants.”

“A pitch, in other words.”

That brought him back to the here and now. He grinned, and for a moment I was with the Reverend Jacobs I remembered from my childhood. “Yes, okay, a pitch. By then I was using a ruthenium and gold alloy, and consequently the rings were much smaller. And even more powerful. Shall we leave, Jamie? You’re looking a bit unsettled.”

“I am. I may not understand your juice, but I can feel it. Almost like it’s putting bubbles in my blood.”

He laughed. “Yes! You could say the atmosphere in here is electric! Ha! I enjoy it, but then, I’m used to it. Come, let’s step outside and get some fresh air.”

The outside world never smelled sweeter than it did as we strolled back toward the house.

“I have one more question, Charlie. If you don’t mind?”

He sighed, but didn’t look displeased. Once out of that claustrophobia-inducing little room, he seemed sane again. “Glad to answer if I can.”

“You tell the rubes your wife and son drowned. Why do you lie? I don’t see what purpose it can serve.”

He stopped and lowered his head. When he lifted it, I saw that serene normality had taken a hike, if it had ever been there at all. On his face was a rage so deep and black that I involuntarily fell back a step. The breeze had tumbled his thinning hair over his lined brow. He swept it back and then pressed his palms to his temples, like a man suffering a monster headache. Yet when he spoke, his voice was toneless and low. If not for the look on his face, I might have mistaken it for reasonableness.

“They don’t deserve the truth. You called them rubes, and how right you are. They have set aside what brains they have—and many of them have quite a lot—and put their faith in that gigantic and fraudulent insurance company called religion. It promises them an eternity of joy in the next life if they live according to the rules in this one, and many of them try, but even that’s not enough. When the pain comes, they want miracles. To them I’m nothing but a witch doctor who touches them with magic rings instead of shaking a bone rattle over them.”

“Haven’t any of them found out the truth?” My researches with Bree had convinced me that Fox Mulder was right about one thing: the truth is out there, and anyone in our current age, where almost everyone is living in a glass house, can find it with a computer and an Internet connection.

“Aren’t you listening to me? They don’t deserve the truth, and that’s okay, because they don’t want it.” He smiled, and his teeth appeared, the upper and lower sets locked together. “They don’t want the Beatitudes of the Song of Solomon, either. They only want to be healed.”

Stamper didn’t glance up as we crossed the kitchen. Two of the mail bins had been emptied and he was working on the third. The liquor box now looked about half full. There were some checks, but mostly it was crumpled currency. I thought of what Jacobs had said about witch doctors. In Sierra Leone, his customers would be lined up outside the door, bearing produce and chickens with freshly wrung necks. Same thing, really; all of it’s just the kick. The grab. The take.

Back in the library, Jacobs seated himself with a grimace and drank the rest of his lemonade. “I’ll have to piss all afternoon,” he said. “It’s the curse of growing old. The reason I was glad to see you, Jamie, is because I want to hire you.”

“You want to what?”

“You heard me. Al will be leaving soon. I’m not sure he knows it yet, but I do. He wants no part of my scientific work; even though he knows it’s the basis of my cures, he thinks it’s an abomination.”

I almost said, What if he’s right?

“You can do his job—open each day’s mail, catalogue the correspondents’ names and complaints, put aside the love offerings, once a week drive down to Latchmore and deposit the checks. You’ll vet gate-callers—their numbers are drying up, but there are still at least a dozen a week—and turn them away.”

He turned to face me directly.

“You can also do what Al refuses to do—help me along the final steps to my goal. I’m very close, but I’m not strong. An assistant would be invaluable, and we’ve worked well before. I don’t know how much Hugh is paying you, but I’ll double—no, triple it. What do you say?”

At first I could say nothing. I was stunned.

“Jamie? I’m waiting.”

I picked up the lemonade, and this time the melting remnants of the ice cubes did click together. I drank, then put it down again.

“You speak of a goal. Tell me what it is.”

He considered. Or appeared to. “Not yet. Come to work for me and get to understand the power and beauty of the secret electricity a little better. Perhaps then.”

I stood and held out my hand. “It’s been nice to see you again.” Another of those things you just say, a bit of grease to keep the wheels turning, but this lie was a lot bigger than telling him he looked great. “Take care of yourself. And be careful.”

He stood, but didn’t take my hand. “I’m disappointed in you. And, I confess, rather angry. You came a long way to scold a tired old man who once saved your life.”

“Charlie, what if this secret electricity of yours gets out of your control?”

“It won’t.”

“I’ll bet the people in charge at Chernobyl felt that way, too.”

“That’s beyond low. I allowed you into my home because I expected gratitude and understanding. I see I was wrong on both counts. Al will show you out. I need to lie down. I’m very tired.”

“Charlie, I do feel gratitude. I appreciate what you’ve done for me. But—”

“But.” His face was stony and gray. “Always a but.”

“Secret electricity aside, I can’t work for a man who’s taking revenge on broken people because he can’t take revenge on God for killing his wife and son.”

His face went from gray to white. “How dare you? How dare you?”

“You may be curing some of them,” I said, “but you’re pissing on all of them. I’ll leave now. I don’t need Mr. Stamper to show me out.”

I started back toward the front door. I was crossing the rotunda, my heels clacking on the marble, when he called after me, his voice amplified by all that open space.

“We’re not done, Jamie. I promise you that. Not even close to done.”

I didn’t need Stamper to open the gate, either; it rolled back automatically as my car approached. At the foot of the access road I stopped, saw that I had bars on my cell, and called Bree. She answered on the first ring, and asked if I was all right before I could even open my mouth. I said I was, and then told her that Jacobs had offered me a job.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. I told him no—”

“Well, damn, of course you did!”

“That’s not the important part, though. He says he’s done with the revival tours, and done healing. From the disgruntled demeanor of Mr. Al Stamper, formerly of the Vo-Lites and now Charlie’s personal assistant, I believe him.”

“So it’s over?”

“As the Lone Ranger used to say to his faithful Indian sidekick, ‘Tonto, our work here is done.’” As long as he doesn’t blow up the world with his secret electricity.

“Call me when you get back to Colorado.”

“I’ll do that, Swee’ Pea. How’s New York?”

“It’s great!” The enthusiasm I heard in her voice made me feel a lot older than fifty-three.

We talked about her new life in the big city for awhile, then I put my car in drive and turned onto the highway, heading back to the airport. A few miles down the road I looked into my rearview and saw an orange moonlet in the backseat.

I’d forgotten to give Charlie his pumpkin.