"How could that be? Him and Ziggy, they shared a bed. How can Paul be all right and Ziggy dead?" Lynn's voice was loud, her disbelief echoing around the conservatory.
"Paul wasn't there. He was giving a guest lecture at Stanford." Alex closed his eyes at the thought of it. "He flew back in the morning. Drove straight home from the airport. And found the firemen and the cops poking through what used to be their house."
Silent tears sparkled on Lynn's eyelashes. "That must have been?oh, dear God. I can't take it in."
Alex folded his arms across his chest. "You don't think of the people you love being so fragile. One minute they're there, the next minute they're not."
"Do they have any idea what happened?"
"They told Paul it was too early to say. But he said they were asking him some pretty sharp questions. He thinks it maybe looks suspicious, and they're thinking him being away was a bit too convenient."
"Oh God, poor Paul." Lynn's fingers worried at each other in her lap. "Losing Ziggy, that's hellish enough. But to have the police on his back too?Poor, poor Paul."
"He asked me if I'd tell Weird and Mondo." Alex shook his head. "I haven't been able to do it yet."
"I'll call Mondo," Lynn said. "But later. It's not as if anybody else is going to tell him first."
"No, I should call him. I told Paul?
"He's my brother. I know how he is. But you'll have to deal with Weird. I don't think I could handle being told that Jesus loves me right now."
"I know. But somebody should tell him." Alex managed a bitter smile. "He'll probably want to preach a sermon at the funeral."
Lynn looked appalled. "Oh, no. You can't let that happen."
"I know." Alex leaned forward and lifted his glass. He swallowed the last few drops of brandy. "You know what day it is?"
Lynn froze. "Oh, Jesus Christ Almighty."
The Reverend Tom Mackie replaced the phone in its cradle and caressed the silver gilt cross that lay on his purple silk cassock. His American congregation loved that they had a British minister and, since they could never distinguish between Scots and English, he satisfied their desire for display with the most lavish trappings of High Anglicanism. It was a vanity, he acknowledged, but essentially a harmless one.
However, his secretary had left for the day and the solitude of his empty office allowed him space to confront his confused emotional reaction to the shock of Ziggy Malkiewicz's death without having to assume a public face. While there was no lack of cynical manipulation in the way Weird dealt with the practice of ministry, the beliefs that underpinned his evangelical regime were sincerely and deeply held. And he knew in his heart that Ziggy was a sinner, tainted irrevocably by the stain of his homosexuality. There was no room for doubt on that point in Weird's fundamentalist universe. The Bible was clear in its prohibition and its abhorrence of the sin. Salvation would have been hard to come by even if Ziggy had earnestly repented, but, as far as Weird was aware, Ziggy had died as he had lived, embracing his sin with enthusiasm. Doubtless the manner of his death would somehow connect back to the transgression of his lifestyle. The link would have been more obvious if the Lord had visited the plague of AIDS upon him. But Weird had already mentally created a scenario that would lay the blame at the door of Ziggy's own perilous choice. Perhaps some casual pickup had waited till Ziggy was asleep to rob him and then set a fire to cover his crime. Perhaps they had been smoking marijuana and a smoldering joint had been the source of the burning.
However it had happened, Ziggy's death was nevertheless a powerful reminder to Weird that it was possible to hate the sin and yet love the sinner. There was no denying the reality of the friendship that had sustained him through his teenage years, when his own wild spirit had blinded him to the light, when he truly had been Weird. Without Ziggy, he'd never have made it through his adolescence without ending up in serious trouble. Or worse.
Without prompting, his memory played a flashback sequence. Winter, 1972. The year of their O Grade exams. Alex had acquired a talent for breaking into cars without damaging the locks. It involved a flexible strip of metal