"This isn't about anything else." He thought Walter looked bad. His colour was bad. His hand trembled as he went through a charade of sorting the opened mail on his desk.

His cheeks sagged and there were dark blotches under his eyes.

The skin of his forehead and cheeks looked mottled and scaly.

"Erskine, you said that you decided there was no point in continuing because it was all repetition. So it's over, isn't it?"

He gave him a longer count and then said, "Over?"

"Over! Finished! How else can I say it?"

Erskine stared at him with expressionless intensity, like a man looking into an aquarium.

"Do you have the pictures and the tapes?"

"Of course not! I destroyed them."

"When?"

"Well... as soon as I heard about Molly's accident."

"You had me collect those materials because you wanted to use them to force John Meadows out so you could be top preacher."

"No, no, no. Nothing like that. That's your conclusion. I told you nothing like that. He doesn't like me. He's made that clear.

I was afraid he would try to force me out sooner or later. So I wanted to have evidence I could show him. If he knew I could destroy his reputation, he wouldn't dare force me out."

This time Erskine gave it a very long count, and he allowed himself to look puzzled, troubled. Walter Macy said, "I really have a lot of work here."

"If that's why you wanted evidence, why did you destroy it?

Wouldn't it work just as well whether the woman is dead or alive? Maybe her being dead would make the case stronger."

"I... I destroyed it on impulse. I was upset about her getting killed that way."

"And have you regretted destroying it?"

"Well... I guess so. A couple of times."

"Then you can relax. I've got duplicates, Wally."

Walter went pale, then red with anger.

"I told you in the beginning there was supposed to be just the original, nothing else. You promised."

"What you had me do is illegal, Wally."

"Stop calling me Wally! It's... disrespectful."

"Okay, Reverend Wally. It was illegal and I did it. There is an old saying around every courthouse in the country, C.Y.O.A.

It means Cover Your Own Ass. You wanted that stuff because it might be useful against somebody. I wanted copies because they might be useful against you if you got to be top man somehow and tried to boot me out because of what I know about your methods."

"I order you to destroy the copies!"

The only person giving me orders is Rick Liddy, and what I would have to do is go to him and explain the whole thing, show him the stuff I've got and ask him if I should destroy them the way you have ordered me so to do."

"No, don't do that. Where are those copies?"

"In a safe place. Every set is in a different safe place."

"Every set?"

"Along with a little statement from me about how I came to take the pictures and bug the trailer, and who I gave the originals to. It's what's called a form of insurance."

"Oh my God!"

"Don't get so upset, Wally. I'm not going to peddle them. I had the whole operation figured wrong, I guess."

"What do you mean?"

"The way I had it worked out, once you had the evidence that would ruin John Tinker, you were going to try to slip it to somebody who'd give it a lot of exposure, like in newspapers and magazines. I thought you were going to get him dumped that way, and nobody would know you were the one behind it.

Except me, of course."

"I just told you why I wanted the pictures and tapes!"

"When that little blonde woman got in to see you that day in May, she acted so weird and I followed her in, remember?"

"In May? I see so many people every day."

"It turned out she was the one from that New York magazine outfit, they found her body in the well the other day."

"I spoke to that person?"

"Right here in your office. She had some kind of dumb story that didn't hang together about icons. I guess it was my imagination, Wally, but when I came in I had the feeling the two of you had suddenly switched the conversation to something else."

"Ridiculous."

"I guess I had that feeling because it seemed to me that if you could meet her on the sly and give her the materials, maybe she could use some of the stuff in the story she was writing about the Center."

"Absurd, Erskine!"

"It would have been an okay weekend to meet her, your wife being out of town and all. But I guess I'm letting my imagination run away with me. Because after that woman turned up missing, you still had me on stakeout picking up more stuff on Johnny and Molly."

"Maybe you have been watching too much afternoon television."

Erskine stood up slowly and smiled at Macy. It was his first smile of the morning.