Preach No More Read online

  Preach No More

  A Nathan Shapiro Mystery

  Richard Lockridge

  For Hildy

  1

  It was Rachel Farmer’s idea, and Anthony Cook responded to it with no enthusiasm. His response was, “For God’s sake, why?”

  He had been on the four-to-midnight shift and it is a shift which inhibits. Lunch had now and then been possible, but lunch is not really a substitute. And painters, for the most part, work by daylight, so that Rachel, at hours suitable for lunch, was too often standing on a low platform in an underheated studio and trying not to shiver. Most of the painters for whom she posed grew fretful if she, to any noticeable degree, shivered. They were inclined to say, “Damn it, girl, stay still! Freeze it the way I showed you.”

  “And ‘freeze’ is the word for it, mister,” Rachel Farmer now and then told Tony Cook. “Because mostly I don’t have anything on, and studios are like barns. And skylights leak air. And in the end it doesn’t look like me anyway. It’s better with photographers, because with them I wear clothes. Only then it’s those damn lights.”

  Tony Cook had seen one or two of the paintings for which Rachel had posed and realized that they didn’t, on the whole, look like her. He thought this a pity—thought it a waste of long, delicately rounded grace. He had at first assumed it was because the men she modeled for could not draw. She had corrected him. It was not that they could not draw, she explained. It was that they had gone beyond drawing. “Drawing,” she explained, “is for illustrators. And that’s a dirty word.”

  It was a Wednesday evening in late March when Rachel had her idea. It was, as late March evenings go in Manhattan, a rather pleasant one. It had been a short walk from his new apartment to the apartment in Gay Street. It was much better to walk a few blocks than to take the long subway ride down from the West Bronx. From the new apartment he could walk to Gay Street and, in only a few more minutes, to West Twentieth Street. It worked out very well, especially when the walk was to Gay Street.

  He climbed the one flight to Rachel’s apartment in the short and crooked street and, outside her door, looked at his watch. It was six-thirty, which was the time appointed. He pressed a button and there were chimes inside, and the shield over the peephole in the door popped open and she looked out at him, using one brown eye. It was a large brown eye.

  “I’m not quite dressed,” she said through the peephole. “But hi, Tony.” The knob grated and the door partly opened, and he pushed it the rest of the way.

  “You’re sure not quite dressed,” he said, as he watched her walk across the living room away from him toward the bedroom.

  She was not dressed at all.

  She turned and smiled at him, and he thought for the several hundredth time, My God, have I got me something!

  “Oh,” Rachel said, “except for clothes. My face is all on.”

  She went on into the bedroom, long and slim and naked. He was about to tell her she needn’t bother; that she was fine as she was; that she was lovely as she was. But she closed the bedroom door, and he took his jacket off and unstrapped shoulder holster and gun and put his jacket on again and measured bourbon onto ice in a glass and went to the refrigerator, where La Ina and a glass for it were chilling. He did not pour La Ina into the sherry glass because, poured, it would lose its chill. He did not drink from his own glass but merely stood in the living room and looked at the closed bedroom door. It was fine to have an evening again.

  She was not long. It never took her long to dress when she thought of dressing. She came out of the bedroom in a pale yellow suit, with a white blouse under the jacket, and he thought, My God, have I got me something, and said, “Hi, lady,” and poured chilled sherry into the chilled glass. They carried their drinks to a sofa and sat side by side. They clicked glasses. They did not kiss. When they kissed it was not casually, between sips. A kiss was a beginning, not a token.

  “I want to go to the Garden,” Rachel Farmer said. “I want to hear this Prentis man.”

  It was then that Tony Cook said, “For God’s sake, why?”

  She looked at him with what appeared to be surprise.

  “Why,” she said, “I never have. And somebody told me I mustn’t miss him. And this is the last night he’ll be there. From here he goes on to save Chicago, and I don’t much like Chicago.”

  “You don’t need saving,” Tony told her. He was firm about it. “You wouldn’t really like being saved.”

  “Oh, it isn’t personal,” Rachel said. She sipped her sherry. “It’s just that I never saw one. Not Billy Sunday or anybody.”

  “Billy Sunday,” Tony said and took a rather large swallow of his drink. “Billy Sunday died years before you were born. Billy Graham?”

  “Clean-cut,” Rachel said. “And palsy with Nixon.” She spoke with finality.

  “Look,” he said. “The thing starts at eight or thereabouts. I thought a couple of drinks and then maybe Charles. Or uptown some place, if you’d rather.”

  “Charles Restaurant isn’t going to Chicago,” she said. “We can grab a hamburger.”

  “Well,” Tony said. “It wasn’t precisely what I had in mind.”

  When she is amused, Rachel Farmer’s smile is wide. It was wide then.

  “Mister,” she said. “I know what you had in mind. Or, I guess I do. We’ll go and be saved and then come back here and you can show me if I guessed right.”

  She raised her eyebrows. He looked at her for several moments. Then he smiled back at her. His smile was not as wide as hers, but it was what smile he had.

  “All right,” he said. “It’s a crazy way to spend an evening, but all right.”

  He finished his drink. For a moment he looked at the long slim legs below the short suit-skirt. He sighed. He went to the table which was the bar and poured himself another drink. He carried the sherry bottle back with him and poured into her glass. After a time he buckled his gun on again, and they walked the few blocks to Eighth and Sixth and sat on stools and ate hamburgers. His was too well done.

  Madison Square Garden once was near Manhattan’s Madison Square, but that was many years ago. It moved far uptown on Eighth Avenue; it came downtown again and replaced a gracious railroad station as part of a structure which towers above Seventh Avenue and is without any special grace.

  “I used to love Penn Station,” Rachel said. “When I was young, I used to go there and think about trains. There wasn’t a train I wouldn’t have taken, no matter where it was going. That’s Millay, sort of. There isn’t any more station and there aren’t any more trains.”

  “It’s still a station,” Tony said. “There are still trains.”

  “Not real trains,” she said. “I rode the Century once. It was a fine train.” She was on the curb side and slid out of the low, tight cab. “Even if it did go to Chicago,” she said and waited while he paid and struggled out of the cab. He said, “And taxis used to be built for people,” and they went into the entrance of Madison Square Garden. They went on elevators and up ramps. They passed ticket windows and all were closed, and over each there was a sign which read “Salvation Is Without Price.” They went up further ramps and into a vast and dimly lighted hall. It was almost filled with people who rustled in their seats.

  Organ music swelled through the enormous space. “Bach,” Rachel said, and they found seats. Anthony Cook made sure they were close to an exit ramp.

  At the far end of the amphitheater, a platform cut across the hall. It was draped in white. Centered in the rear of the platform there was a towering cross. There was nobody on the platform, but it was from that end of the hall that the organ music swelled. Then the music surged and the hall seemed to shake with it, and then the music stopped. For a minute or more, the crowd—must
be thousands, Tony thought—rustled in the quiet. Here and there somebody coughed.

  Then light slowly built on the stage, coming down on it from above. As the light grew, organ music began again. I ought to know that one, Tony thought, and Rachel said “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” her voice low. The sound of the organ lessened after a moment, and then singing began and, from the right of the platform, a choir of men and women marched to the beat of the hymn—marched in a double line. All were in white robes. A tall man, robed like the others, led the marchers and led in the singing. “Marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus Going on before.”

  The double line stretched across the platform, in front of the towering cross. They stopped and turned and faced the audience, and the leader stood in front of them, also facing forward. Then a spotlight leaped down on him, and he turned and faced the double line of choir. There was a silver cross on the back of his robe. He raised his hands toward the choir, and the organ stopped for a moment and then began again.

  It played softly and the voices of the choir rose over it, surging through the hall. “A mighty fortress is our God.”

  “They’re good, aren’t they?” Rachel whispered. “They’re very good.”

  Tony Cook nodded his head. They were good, all right. There must be a hundred of them, he thought. It’s quite a production, he thought. All right, it’s one hell of a production. Most of the members of the choir are young, he thought. The women have young faces. It is hard to tell when they are so far away, but some of the faces seem to be pretty faces.

  “A girl I know is in there somewhere,” Rachel said. “It’s too far away to tell which she is.” A gray-haired woman in the seat next Rachel’s said, “Shhh!” But Rachel’s voice had been very low, so low that Tony could hardly hear her. “She sings in nightclubs when she can get jobs,” Rachel said, her voice so softly low that he had to lean toward her to hear.

  “This is the house of God,” the gray-haired woman said, her voice louder than Rachel’s and most stern.

  “I’m sorry,” Rachel said, and they listened, with the rest of the hushed thousands, to the singing of the hymn. The hymn ended and the lights dimmed on the stage. When light came up again the choir singers were divided, half on either side of the stage. When the lights came up they shone on the great white cross. The choir leader stood in front of it. He came forward, almost to the edge of the platform and the organ began again.

  “Rock of ages, cleft for me,” the leader sang. His voice was baritone. It sounded to Tony Cook like a fine voice. He looked at Rachel and she nodded her head. She leaned toward him and whispered. “He was in grand opera a few years ago,” she whispered. “That’s what my friend tells me, anyway. He—”

  “Shhh!”

  The singer was a tall man with the spotlights shining on him, glancing from his white robe. Presence, Tony thought. That’s what he’s got. Along with a voice. No mike, either. But there’s amplification somewhere. There has to be. Above him somewhere, in the shadows, there’s a mike.

  The singer finished “Rock of Ages.” The lights dimmed again. Four Negro men in white robes, their faces startlingly dark above the whiteness, came from the right of the stage and the organ began again. “The old-time religion,” the quartet sang, spotlights playing on them. “It was good for Paul and Silas and it’s good enough for me.” There was beat in their singing. It was almost the beat of jazz. They finished that. They sang a spiritual, their voices softer, caressing. When they had finished it they parted, and two went to the right and two to the left, and they stood in front of the choir lines. The music followed them. Then it dimmed out and, with it, the lights dimmed again. When they came up they were again on the tall cross.

  The cross began slowly to rise into the air, the lights following it upward. As it rose, it exposed a white wall. A man in black stood in front of the wall and, when the cross was high above him, the lights dropped to the man. He moved forward, slowly, under the lights.

  He was tall and black-haired. He wore a black suit and a clerical collar. As he walked forward, his hands—long hands, white in the light from the spot—were clasped against his chest.

  He stopped near the edge of the stage and for a moment merely stood. Then he raised his arms, reaching out as if in benediction. He still did not speak. He waited, as if for silence. But the crowd was hushed in a kind of rapt intensity. He better be good, Tony Cook thought. With this buildup, he’d better be damn good.

  “I come as the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” the man said. He did not speak loudly, but his voice filled the auditorium. It was a deep voice, and silk threads seemed to run through it. Tony felt a shiver go through his mind. Perhaps it went through his body. And from the audience there was a faintly sibilant sound which was very like a sigh—a sigh of contentment, of relaxation.

  “The wilderness is yours,” the man said, his voice still low. “It is the wilderness of your city. O your wicked city. I come to reason with you. To caution you. Only through our Lord Jesus Christ can you—you of this city—find salvation. Let me show you the wickedness you—for all of you are guilty—have let engulf the city of New York.”

  He moved a little to his left, the light moving with him. Then he turned, so that he stood in profile, and raised his right hand and pointed toward the white wall.

  The lights dimmed, except for the spotlight which still beat down on the man in black, and there was a picture on the white wall, which had become a motion-picture screen. But there was no path of flickering light to the screen. Of course, Tony thought. Projecting from behind, through the screen.

  There was a picture of the New York skyline, and the camera had swept across it, slowly, pausing now and then to peer at the city’s towers. No sound came from the screen.

  “A city of beauty,” the man in black said. “A city of beauty and of evil. Look upon the evil of your city.”

  The towers of the city vanished from the screen. A street, crowded with traffic and with people, came onto the screen and grew closer as the camera zeroed toward it. The street, to Tony, became familiar. It was Forty-second Street; the block of Forty-second west of Times Square.

  The camera moved from side to side of the street. It stopped to stare at the front of a movie theater; to linger on the marquee sign. “Now Showing,” the sign read, “Strange Wedding.” The words, “Nakedest Show in Town,” followed the picture’s title and there were quotation marks around the words, although the comment was not ascribed to anybody.

  The camera dropped to the theater’s entrance, which was partly blocked by a framed poster on which the picture’s title was repeated and on which, also, there was a photograph of a woman who was, certainly, naked but had been photographed turned away from the camera. She faced into the lobby of the little theater, and the impression intended, Tony Cook thought, was that if one followed the direction her breasts pointed in, she would probably turn around.

  The picture on the screen moved down Forty-second Street. It peered at other theaters. It peered into the windows of bookshops. In one window it lingered on a book called The Human Form, which had, on its cover, a painting of a naked couple locked in each other’s arms. Or perhaps, Tony thought, it was a photograph, not a painting. Under the book was a sign which read: “In full color.”

  There were other books in other windows, and the camera closed on them and lingered. Strange Practices, one of the books was titled. On another, there were the words, Torture Through the Ages, and the lettering was in red and seemed to be dripping blood.

  The camera moved along the street, from shop to shop. Over one shop there was a sign which read, “Devices Unlimited.” Another shop offered “Novelties for All.” A movie was showing a picture called Kong’s Queen, and the poster the camera had centered on pictured a naked girl being, apparently, carried away by an outsized ape.

  The camera picked up people—picked up a somewhat too rounded girl in a skirt which reached a little below her hips and whose buttocks swayed alarmingly.
As she passed men she looked up at them, her whole body a question and an offer. The camera picked up two men—also walking away from it—and one of the men had his long hair caught with a ribbon at the back. He minced.

  The man in black did not comment on the picture. He merely stood, his arm raised and pointing.

  He’s made his point, Tony thought. It’s a bad block. The block beyond it’s bad too. We know it’s bad. This was shot in the daytime, and it’s worse in the evenings and at night. So, he’s made his point. He’s—

  The picture ended, after a brief concentration on a drunk asleep, his back against a building.

  The man in black walked back to the center of the stage and the light beat down on him.

  “This is your city,” he said, after a moment of standing with his hands stretched out toward the audience. “This sinful city is your city. You have let it become a sink of iniquity. Because you have not followed in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ. I come to you to caution and beseech. Turn to Christ. Together, with His guidance, you can cleanse this city. And through His grace—only through His grace—each of you can find salvation.”

  It’s the voice that does it, Tony thought, after some ten minutes of listening. The voice is a wonderful voice. He’s not saying what has not been said before; isn’t, I suppose, said every Sunday from pulpits across the country. We are all sinners before the Lord, in whom lies our redemption. It’s his voice which sends shivers. It’s the whole production.

  Sure, New York is a sinful city. All cities are sinful cities and always have been. And probably always will be. More open about it now, is all.

  He was, he found, listening with only a part of his mind. “Afraid to walk the streets at night. Because we have forgotten God.”

  And because people are jammed together more tightly, Tony thought. And because they don’t accept that as inevitable any more. And because the whole structure of society is changing and isn’t changing fast enough for some and is changing too fast for others. And because people can come to this sinful city and get almost enough to live on when they can’t get jobs, instead of staying where they were born and starving quietly. And because—