The door opens. Mr Hale is wearing a cardigan sweater over an openthroat shirt and corduroy trousers. The man sitting at the kitchen table is drinking a cup of coffee.
“Do you know Mr Hale’s son-in-law?” Kling asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“Was that who the man was?”
“Oh no.”
“Do you know who the man was?”
“No. Well, I’d recognize him if I saw him again. But no, I don’t know him.”
“Mr Hale didn’t introduce him or anything?”
“No.”
“What’d he look like?” Kling asked.
Walter Hopwell worked with at least a dozen other people on the top floor of the church. These people had nothing to do with church hierarchy. Up here, there were no deacons, no trustees, no pastor’s aides, no church secretaries or announcement clerks. Instead, these men and women were all employees hired by Foster to generate the personal publicity, promotion, and propaganda that had kept him in the public eye and the political arena for the past ten years. Except for three young white men and a white woman, all of them were black.
Here in Hopwell’s small private office, a room hung with photographs of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela, its windows dripping rainsnakes, Carella and Meyer talked to Hopwell while Fat Ollie stood by with a somewhat supercilious smirk on his face, as if certain that the man they were questioning was an ax murderer at best or a serial killer at worst. Hopwell looked like neither. A slender man with finely sculpted features and a head shaved as bald as Meyer’s, he wore black jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, and a fringed suede vest. A small gold earring pierced his left ear lobe. Ollie figured this was some kind of signal to other faggots. Or was that the right ear? “Danny Nelson was killed yesterday morning, did you know that?”
Carella asked.
“Yes, I saw it on television,” Hopwell said.
“How’d you happen to know him?” Meyer asked.
“He did some work for me.”
“Oh?”
“What kind of work?” Carella asked.
“Research,” Hopwell said.
Ollie rolled his eyes.
“What sort of research?” Meyer asked.
“Information on people who’ve been critical of Reverend Foster.”
A fuckin snitch researcher, Ollie thought.
“How long was he doing this for you?”
“Six months or so.”
“You knew him for six months?”
“Yes.”
“Came here to the church, did he?”
“Yes. With his reports.”
“What’d you do with these reports?”
“I used them to combat false rumors and specious innuendoes.”
“How?”
“In our printed material. And in the reverend’s radio addresses.”
“When I met with Danny yesterday morning,” Carella said, “he mentioned a card game you’d been in…”
“Yes.”
“… with a man from Houston.”
“Yes.”
“Who won a lot of money.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Did you have a conversation with this man afterward?”
“We had a drink together, yes. And shared some conversation.”
“Did he mention having killed someone?”
Gee, that’s subtle, Ollie thought.
“No, he didn’t say he’d killed anyone.”
“What did he say?”
“Am I getting involved in something here?” Hopwell asked.
“We’re trying to locate this man,” Meyer said.
“I don’t see how I can help you do that.”
“We understand you know where he is.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Danny said you know this man’s name…”
“Yes, I do.”
“… and where he’s staying.”
“Well, I know where he was on Saturday night. I don’t know if he’s there now. I haven’t seen him since last Saturday night.”
“What’s his name?” Carella asked.
“John Bridges was what he told me.”
“Where was he staying? Where’d you go that night?”
“The President Hotel. Downtown. On Jefferson.”
“What’d he look like? Describe him.”
“A tall man, six two or three, with curly black hair and pale, bluegreen eyes. Wide shoulders, narrow waist, a lovely grin,” Hopwell said, and grinned a lovely grin himself.
“White or black?”
“A very light-skinned Jamaican,” Hopwell said. “With that charming lilt they have, you know? In their speech?”
“He was white,” Mrs Kipp said. “About forty-five, I would say, with dark hair and blue eyes. Big. A big man.”
“How big?” Brown asked.
“Very big. About your size,” she said, appraising him.
Brown was six feet two inches tall and weighed in at a buck ninetyfive. Some people thought he looked like a cargo ship. For sure, he was not a ballet dancer.
“Any scars, tattoos, other identifying marks?” he asked.
“None that I noticed.”
“You said you only saw him the first time he was here. How do you know it was the same man the next two times?”
“His voice. I recognized his voice. He had a very distinctive voice.
Whenever he got agitated, the voice just boomed out of him.”
“Was he agitated the next two times as well?”
“Oh dear yes.”
“Shouting again?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
“Well, the same thing again, it seemed to me. He kept yelling that Mr Hale was a goddamn fool, or words to that effect. Told him he was offering real money here, and there’d be more to come down the line…”
“More money to come?”
“Yes. Down the line.”
“More money later on?”
“Yes. Year after year, he said.”
“What was it he wanted?” Brown asked.
“I have no idea.”
“But you got the impression…”
“Yes.”
“… that Mr Hale had something this man wanted.”
“Oh yes. Very definitely.”
