"Tell me exactly what she said."

"I told you before. Once was enough. I don't have to say it again."

"You better tell me Molly Wintergarten's exact words, Walter, or we are going to have a lot more trouble."

"It's a kind of sickness to want to hear that kind of talk."

"But you're sure it was her."

"Absolutely."

"So say it again, damn you!"

He sighed.

"She said to him on the phone, "Tink, I am going to fuck you blind today." ' "You told me you were going to try to get proof."

"After mature consideration, I decided it wasn't such a great idea. I decided it was better to wait for them to get careless.

People like that always do."

"And suppose they don't?"

"Alberta, dearest, I happen to know that another woman is being sent down from the same filthy magazine. And I am going to try to arrange for my trusted friend to make contact with her, making quite sure she will never know the information came from me."

"It's a disgusting situation. He is a disgusting man. Mr. Efflander and Charley Winchester and Mary Margaret have been protecting him for years. And so did the old man before his mind began to go." She bent closer to him, eyes narrow.

"If only you had more gumption, if only you had spoken out a few years ago. The years are going by and we're stuck here in this' "Hey," he said softly, noticing the new mottling of her face, the red blotches appearing.

"Hey, don't get all worked up again. Everything is going to work out just fine."

And she had quieted down at once, much to his relief. They then took an evening walk through the Settlements, making a point of speaking most pleasantly to everyone they met.

Now he had finished the work on the sermon. He knew it would go well. He was wondering what other chore he could begin, when Mary Margaret rapped twice and came in, smiling, and sat in the big chair across the desk from him. She was wearing another one of those cover-everything dresses she ordered from Honolulu, apparently by the dozen. Sometimes he found himself wondering what she looked like under all the fabric. Very moist and pink and rubbery, he suspected. Like a big baby fresh out of the bath.

For years they had been allies, she and Walter Macy and the old man against Finn and John Tinker and Joe Deets. They had tried to make allies of the Winchester brothers, but Charley was too clever to take sides in any factional split, and whatever Charley did, Clyde did. Walter Macy felt he had another ally in Walker McGaw, who produced and directed the talk shows, and who, with patient coaching, had managed to correct a lot of Walter Macy's mistakes. He had reduced the scope of the gestures, dropped the voice range, taught Walter how to speak to the lens as though speaking to a dear friend. And, of course, come right down to it, the affiliated ministers were on Walter's side. They thought they were on the side of Matthew Meadows, but they did not yet know that he was never going to be able to take the pulpit again.

"Walter, I hear you are off to South Carolina this Sunday."

"That's right."

"I know you plan pretty well in advance. Can you give me an idea of how far you're scheduled into the future?"

He found the folder in his drawer and took the top sheet out and handed it across to her. She studied it, biting her underlip.

"Way into November. Okay, you keep those dates, but don't make any more past that point."

"Why not? What do you mean?"

"I've talked this over with John Tinker and Finn. We've decided that we want you to drop the Bible lessons and the radio talk show and the cable panel show. We'll fill in with other personnel."

"Does somebody think I'm getting too much exposure?"

She stared at him.

"What an odd idea! Of course not!

Everybody knows how hard you work, Walter dear, and why.

This change of plans is contingent on our being able to convince a minister he should move here to headquarters and pick up a big share of the preaching load, especially in the Tabernacle."

"Who is he?"

"He's the Reverend Tom Daniel Birdy. He has a little church in a little town down near Pensacola. He's apparently self ordained He was born again before he was sent to prison and he spent a lot of years there and got out and started saving souls, in a little traveling tent show. He's really, really fabulous, Walter. You wouldn't have heard my father when he was young, as I did. But I know you heard Paul, those few years he preached. The Reverend Birdy is crude, but he's got it all. He's very dubious about joining in with us, but John says we really need him. And we thought the best thing to do would be to put him in your hands so you can groom him, knock off the rough edges. That is, if he comes with us."

"Why do we need him?" Walter asked in a harsh voice.

"He sounds like some kind of a hooligan to me, a man with no religious background or education."

She looked at him, and in a fraction of a second she saw a depth of purpose and ambition she had never before recognized. She had thought of him as a pleasant, bumbling, hardworking man. He was a big man, imposing enough, with a mild psoriasis that kept his face and forehead red and slightly scaly. He wore glasses with big black frames. He had big curving white sideburns and a pulpit delivery that could rattle the windows. He could preach a good rousing sermon and bring a reasonable number flocking up to the rail to be saved.

He was, of course, endlessly and unctuously political, as was his meechy little wife, Alberta, who looked as if she had selected every one of her three or four sedate outfits at a Salvation Army sale. Mary Margaret did not like Alberta, and she had tolerated Walter because she had good uses for him.

She had huffed upon the flames of what she had thought was a minor streak of ambition, letting him know she was on his side, arranging special sermons in the Tabernacle for him so that he would believe she was furthering his ambition to one day run the Church.

She had felt she could safely do this because he was no real danger to John Tinker or anyone. There was something in definably hollow about him. The ecclesiastical bombast of his sermons was too patterned, too mannered, his gestures too formal, and too practiced, his very tears too automatic. When the old man had been out of sorts, and when John Tinker was traveling, it was Walter who had shared the Tabernacle pulpit with her, and Walter who, in return for that great favor, had worked his head off on the scut work of the Church, making certain they stayed on the air and on cable twenty-four hours of every day in the week.

With this new awareness of what was behind the facade, Mary Margaret changed direction so rapidly she wondered if he could hear her wheels spinning.

"Well yes, of course, he is a bit of a barbarian, Walter dear, but we decided that with you to teach him how to give a decent sermon, we would have a very useful stand-in."

' "Stand-in?" he said blankly.

"Someone to help us out! Someone to help you and me, so that John Tinker will be free to attend some international meetings he has his heart set on. And in any case, if he proves to be impossible, you will just have to help us find someone else."

Though his eyes looked uneasy behind the thick lenses, she sensed she had relaxed him a little and lessened his alarm. She vowed she would be more careful with him in the future. She wondered if it was that desolate little Alberta pushing him from behind, keeping him dissatisfied with his lot. If they'd had any kids, all that ambition could've been focused on them instead of on Walter.

"It might be a good idea if John Tinker had a nice long rest," Walter said.

She frowned at him, thinking this an uncharacteristic boldness.

"What would make you say that?"

"I would say, from observing him, that he no longer takes the great joy in his calling that he once did."

"There is a lot of responsibility involved in running a multimillion-dollar enterprise. My brother has a lot to think about."

"I'm sure he does. And I'm sure he wishes he could lead a more private life. They know his face in every city in the land. I get a little of that, of course. But not the way he does." He shrugged.