Read Online Grist 01 - The Four Last Things by Timothy Hallinan - Free Book Online

straight.”
    “No,” Skippy said shortly. He looked nervous. “Why?”
    “Somebody’s jerking me around. Somebody who said you sent him.”
    “Simeon, I didn’t send anybody.”
    “Somebody who maybe set somebody up to get killed.”
    Skippy’s eyes widened. Then a peal of bells rang out, a secular angelus floating through the mists of Big Sur.
    “That’s it,” he said. “Come with me?”
    “You don’t know anything about it.”
    “Zip,” he said, “nothing. I’m sorry. Come on, I want a decent seat.”
    “For what?”
    “The Revealing.”

Chapter 6
    “I t’s the best thing that’s happened to me since my second divorce,” Skippy said earnestly as he steered us between buildings toward a large lighted structure. He was making an obvious effort to keep his fervor in check, but his hammy hand clutched my arm as if he were afraid I’d try to make a break for it.
    The paths were full of people, young, old, and in between, mostly white, mostly prosperous-looking, clearly eager to answer the summons of the bell. Ever the gentleman, Skippy stopped to allow an old lady in a walker to make a wobbly right from a tributary path onto the main drag. Listener Simpson was helping her, to the old lady’s obvious irritation, and she flashed us a harried smile. Once they’d set off in front of us, Skippy hit his pedestrian’s overdrive and dragged me past them.
    “So why is it so great? Are your arteries any better? Is your blood pressure down?”
    “No and yes, in order. Even with all this blubber, my blood pressure is lower than it’s ever been. And without medication, too,” he added triumphantly.
    This was a revelation. Back when I’d known him, Skippy’s medicine cabinet had been bigger than my living room. “Your druggist must be furious,” I said.
    We were slowing now as the faithful converged into a couple of well-behaved lines in order to pass through the single open door. The light flooding through the door was brilliant. We’d walked a quarter of a mile, and despite the coolness of the night, Skippy’s face was filmed with an enthusiast’s sweat.
    “Calm down,” I said. “Bliss can kill. Orgasms claim many lives each year.”
    “That’s another thing,” he said, heedless of all the ears around us. “I feel much less compelled to womanize.” One of Skippy’s problems was that he didn’t have a subconscious. Like a character in a Dostoyevsky novel, he said everything, and usually to the wrong person.
    We were toddling slowly along in the line now. Skippy’s eyes shone and he licked his lips hungrily. I felt as if I were boarding an airplane for Akron or Duluth, someplace I’d never been and didn’t want to go.
    “It’s changed my life,” he said. “The Church has changed my life. And at my age, too.”
    He was so eager for me to ask him about it that I almost didn’t have the heart not to. But I managed.
    “Look at me, Simeon,” he finally said. “Do I look like a success?”
    “Do you want me to say no? You’re doing okay. Take away most successes’ Piaget watches and they look like shoe salesmen. Dress a bum in Armani and spritz him with cologne, and he looks like the CEO of Gulf and Western.”
    “Yeah, yeah, turn it into a joke. But do I look like a Hollywood success?”
    “Somebody has to play people who look like you.”
    “That’s what I did for years. Walked by in the background wearing a plaid shirt and carrying a bottle in a bag. Bumped into featured players in elevators. I had a three-year stretch where my longest line was ‘Oops.’ Now I’m a star. So what’s the difference?”
    “I give.” I hate guessing.
    “The Church.”
    “The Church made you a star?”
    “Sure it did. Of course it did. I’m only a TV star, I know that, but, Jesus, Simeon, do you know how much money I made last year?”
    “Skippy,” I said, disappointing the people nearest to us, “there are a few secrets a man should keep.”
    He clapped a hand guiltily over his mouth.