Dead-Bang Read Free Page B

slacks and socks, I walked from my bedroom into the living room, feeling dressed to watch a tennis match, but probably not for what I was going to do. Probably not, because I still hadn’t the faintest idea what I was going to do.
    Dru and I had carried on a short question-and-answer session during the two or three minutes I spent in the bedroom—it did seem a shame that the first time I spoke to her in my bedroom she was in the living room—and I’d learned a little more not only about Erovite but of events immediately preceding her arrival at my door.
    She lived in a suite at the Westchester Arms in Los Angeles, her father in Monterey Park just a hop outside of L.A. Earlier this evening she’d spent some time with her father at his home. Near sundown he had received a phone call from a Mr. Strang and soon afterward left to meet him. Dru drove to her suite, where perhaps an hour later a messenger delivered the note she’d shown me. By the time Dru read the message, the boy who’d brought it was long gone.
    I sat by her on the divan, lit a cigarette, and said, “O.K., all we’ve got, so far, is the note and the call from this guy Strang. What did he want? He a friend of your father’s?”
    â€œNot exactly a friend. And I only heard Dad’s part of the conversation, then Dad told me he had to go meet André, Mr. Strang, at the church. If he hadn’t told me—”
    â€œAt the what?”
    â€œâ€”I wouldn’t have known where he was going. You see, until the FDA banned Erovite it was produced by the Cassiday and Quince Pharmaceutical Company here in Los Angeles, and Dave Cassiday is an old friend of Dad’s. When opposition to the sale of Erovite reached such ghastly proportions—it got really awful by early June, you know, just before that ding-dong preacher launched his SOS Crusade—”
    â€œThat who? Ding-dong … wait. SOS, that’s Save Our Souls, isn’t it? Ye Gods, don’t tell me—”
    My interruptions were ignored. But I was getting very suspicious.
    â€œâ€”Dave and my father discussed the situation and concluded it would be at least helpful and possibly essential to have some idea of what that ding-dong was likely to do or say next. Both my father and Dave Cassiday were acquainted with Mr. Strang and knew he’d expressed dissatisfaction with conditions in the local Eden, even hinted that he was on the verge of breaking with the Church entirely. So Dave managed to enlist him as a sort of, well, I suppose you’d call him an ‘undercover’ man, someone who could keep them informed—”
    â€œHold it.”
    I spoke rather sharply, and she managed to shut up. I didn’t really have to ask the question. My suspicions almost confirmed themselves.
    â€œChurch,” I said. “Ding-dong, SOS, Eden, I’ll bet a whole collection basket you’re referring to the Church of the Second—”
    â€œComing.”
    â€œYeah. And the ding-dong simply has to be Festus—”
    â€œLemming.”
    â€œYeah.”
    Well, it is already later.
    Festus Lemming was the founder, organizer, leader, and ding-dong—that was not his official title—of the Church of the Second Coming, a collection of ecclesiastical fruitcakes that had to be described as the major religious success story of the twentieth century.
    Seven years ago there had been no Church of the Second Coming. Seven years ago nobody except possibly his mum and dad had heard of Festus Lemming. But seven years ago the Church—and Festus Lemming—had been born.
    It was said that Festus Lemming had seen the light—quite literally. While out walking, he had fallen down, in what some later claimed was an epileptic seizure, on the road to Pasadena, and he was swept up into the Seventh Heaven where, among others, he met silent-screen stars Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, who told him they were swell; even