All The Bells on Earth Read Free Page B

He opened his mouth, sucking in air. The layers of cloth made it difficult to breathe, and he wondered suddenly if the man meant to kill him. The idea of suffocation terrified him, and he tore his mind away from the thought, forcing himself to visualize the picture in the stained glass of the windows.
    Dimly he heard repeated blows of the blackjack and of glass breaking, and it came to him that the man was destroying the windows too, hammering the leaded joints apart, breaking out the glass. Surely he was making enough noise so that someone on the street would hear. But it was late, and the church and its buildings took up the entire square block….
    Father Mahoney stood up, the chair legs coming up off the floor. He hunched away from the desk, bending his head to his chest to dislodge the cloth bag. “Stop!” he yelled. “In the name of God … !” He yanked at the ropes that bound his wrists, jerking up and down, full of fury now.
    There was a silence, and then the sound of ragged breathing again, coming from somewhere behind him. Father Mahoney tensed, waiting for the blow, for the man to hit him with the blackjack. The hair on his neck crept, and he imagined the intruder standing behind him, the goat mask regarding him now, the blackjack upraised….
    And then the sacristy door banged shut. He heard footsteps pounding across the tiles of the nave. The noise faded away, leaving the night silent again but for the sound of the rain.

2
     
    G EORGE N ELSON SAT IN his law office on the Plaza, waiting uneasily for the arrival of a business associate—Murray LeRoy. Through the window he could see the Plaza fountain and the small wooden nativity scene next to it. A lamp in the grass cast light on the nativity scene as a discouragement to vandals, but the light apparently hadn’t done its job, because the packing-crate manger was kicked to pieces, its palm frond roof scattered into the street, and the plaster of Paris figures knocked over and broken. It was almost ironic: Nelson himself represented a citizens’ group opposed to the display of nativity scenes on public property—the suit against the city was still pending—and here someone had come along in the night and done the job single-handedly.
    He picked up the phone and dialed LeRoy’s number. Nothing. LeRoy was already out, already on his way. There were only a couple of hours left before the arrival of Nelson’s secretary, and before then he wanted to be finished with LeRoy. There were a number of reasons for cutting LeRoy loose forever. Mostly it was because LeRoy was a little unsteady these days.
    In fact, if his behavior yesterday morning was any indication, the man was positively cracking up, and that was a dangerous thing. He had looked like he’d slept in his clothes, and he hadn’t shaved for days. He was half drunk, too, at nine in the morning, and his head shook with some kind of palsy that had made Nelson want to slap him. Six months ago the man didn’t drink except at weddings, and then he didn’t enjoy it and was always willing to say so in a loud voice. Nelson knew that there had been good reasons for LeRoy to keep his personal life private, but he had the public persona of some kind of scowling Calvinist missionary, and that’s what made his downhill slide so strange—he was making it so damned obvious. The thought wasn’t comforting.
    Nelson had no idea exactly what he’d do about it in the end, but this morning he intended to try to buy the man out. That was the simplest route—something he should have done two or three months ago when LeRoy first started to crack. He wondered suddenly if the business with the nativity scene had been LeRoy’s doing. It would certainly fit the pattern. If the man were arrested again, he’d probably babble like the nut he’d become.
    He heard a sound then, like the laughter of cartoon devils. “Murray?” He stood up out of his chair, listening. He opened his desk drawer and slipped his hand in,