The Devil is Real

Dan Flynn went out on the road in the hot morning to finish interviewing people for his presentencing report on James F. Teal. He started at Runciman Wire & Cable in the Taunton Industrial Park, where he had a 9:15 appointment with Teal's former supervisor.

Amelio Marino was a middle-aged man with a barrel chest and iron-colored hair. He looked at Flynn appraisingly and said that Teal had been a satisfactory employee for his whole 11 years with the company: "Steady, reliable, honest." He said that all of Teal's colleagues on the sales force had been shocked by Teal's arrest and subsequent conviction.

"We all think it sucks, too," he said, "if that makes any difference."

Flynn wrote in his field notebook, "Spvsr. cites sympath. For Def. w/co-workers." Aloud he said, "It doesn't. It won't to the court, at least."

Marino snorted. "That's what I figured," he said, "but all the guys asked me to tell you that, and I said I would, so I did."

"Mr. Teal was well liked?" Flynn said.

"Of course he was," Marino said. "Hell, we all knew he was having trouble. The past couple years, naturally, we knew the guy was under some kind of pressure at home. Said his wife'd gone batty over religion. But it didn't seem like anything that couldn't be worked out. Everybody gets divorced, for God's sake. Over half the people in this plant've been divorced. I'm not saying it's fun, but it's done. He should've been all right."

"Our understanding," Flynn said, "is that his wife didn't want a divorce."

Marino gazed thoughtfully at Flynn. "She sure didn't," he said. "If what I read in the papers was true, what she wanted was his goddamned head. Got it, too, looks like."

"It's true," Flynn said. "That's how they found out. When he went to visit his kids, he took them out on the porch, where she couldn't hear them talk. Left his coat in the living room, samples in his pockets. She went through the pockets. She looked at the bills. All the numbers were the same. Then she made the call. After that, it was simple. All they had to do was have an undercover guy approach him and make the buy."

Marino had let out one rough laugh. "That's Jimmy for you," he said. "Natural-born salesman. Day or night, he's always ready, case there's a customer. How'd she know, though, to look? You wanna tell me that?"

Flynn snapped his notebook shut. "Would if I could," he said. "I don't know myself."

Marino snorted again. "Bullshit," he said.

"Think what you like," Flynn said, standing up. "Thanks for your trouble and time."

Flynn's second stop was Teal's former home in a development enclosed by tall pines east of Route 42 in Randolph. There he met Teal's estranged wife, Carol. She was petite and had short blonde hair. She had dark eyes, and she wore a divided denim skirt and a flowered-cotton blouse and white sneakers with sockies that had little pompons at the counters. She smelled of Ivory soap. With tight lips she introduced him to her two daughters, ages 14 and 12. To them she said, "Mr. Flynn is here from the Federal Probation to talk to me about Dad." To Flynn she said, "Do you want to talk to Molly and Jennifer, or is it just me?"

"Ah, just you, I think," he said to her. To the two girls he said awkwardly, "Nice meeting you." They did not answer but fled immediately to the second floor of the eight-room ranch.

"We can talk in the kitchen," Garol Teal said. She gave him instant coffee and assured him his visit was no trouble. She volunteered her explanation of Teal's problems. "James," she said regretfully, "is not a moral man. We were married very young. I was only nineteen. He had just turned twenty-one. We were very much in love--perhaps I should say infatuated--the way you are at that age, and we didn't think very much about how we should serve the Lord." She said she had counseled several times with her pastor and prayed with him and alone for guidance about how to bring her husband to the Way.

"What did you decide to do?" Flynn said.

She looked at him pityingly. "Mr. Flynn," she said, "the wife is as much the helpmeet of the Lord as she is of her husband before the Lord. And she must first, as the Lord's handmaiden, be His servant in enlightening her husband to the Way.

"When her husband will not hear the Lord," she said, "she must gain his attention. And you are a mature man. You know there is but one means to turn his eyes to Zion when he will not heed."

"I'm not sure I do," Flynn said.

She became severe. "The conjugal act, Mr. Flynn," she said. "The conjugal act between husband and wife is a sacred one and is the measure whereby he may be brought to the Lord."

"I'm still not sure," Flynn said.

She looked exasperated. "I told him I had counseled and that I had prayed. I told him that until he embraced the Lord, he would not again embrace me."

"I see," Flynn said.

"His neck remained unbent," she said. "I had fellowship and counseled and we prayed together, and James remained stiffnecked. He left me, Mr. Flynn," she said. "He left his family." She paused. She looked sorrowful. "I heard what he was doing. Stories reached my ears. I pondered those things in my heart.

"And I became sure," she said, "sure in my heart, and with Reverend May, that it was the Lord's will that James must bow to the secular arm before he would be reborn." She paused and nodded. "James is in the grip of Satan." She said it calmly, but her eyes glittered. "Satan in the form of the harlot that he keeps. Satan's whore, where he resorted after rejecting the Lord and me. The Lord told me what to do."

Flynn wrote in his notebook, "Wf. v. relig." He cleared his throat and said, "Uh, when you say 'the Lord,' Mrs. Teal, did you talk to anyone else?"

She gazed at him suspiciously. "What do you mean?" she said.

"Well," he said, "you told me you counseled with your pastor, and you prayed and so forth. But what exactly was it that prompted you to search your husband's coat?"

"The money," she said. "I said that at the trial. He was trying to buy the loyalty of the children from me and the Way of the Lord. Those big radios he bought them--awful things. And the music tapes they played. All about drugs and sex. That was Satan at work, Mr. Flynn. I knew that in my heart."

"Well, ah, yes," he said, "but what made you search his coat? How'd you happen to do that?"

She sighed and spoke slowly, as though addressing a limited child. "I testified at the trial, Mr. Flynn," she said. "I counseled with Reverend May and sought guidance through prayer. And I became sure that James was in the bond of sin. And I called the FBI."

"You called the FBI," Flynn said.

"Yes, I did," she said. "I told them that my husband was spending far beyond his means, that he was secretive with me and that he was consorting with a whore of Satan. And they asked me what evidence I had of these things. And I said I was sure in my heart. I knew he had been in Acapulco with the harlot, but I did not tell them that. And they told me they would need something more. And I said he no longer lived here. And they said without evidence, they could do nothing.

"So the next time he came," she said, "I went through his pockets, and I found nine fifty-dollar bills, which I knew he could not have gotten honestly. And I called the FBI. And they said that was not enough. And I believed, well, I was unsure. I believed that they might be laughing at me. And I asked them what would be enough, because I knew James was locked in sin, and they said the next time he came, I might do it again and write down the serial numbers, and they would check to see if the bills were stolen. And I did that. And there were six of the bills that time, and each of them had the same number. And they told me to wait for the Secret Service to get in touch with me, and that is what I did. They called that same morning." She took a deep breath. "It was God's will, the first step in his rebirth. I was the instrument. They were his instruments as well, the FBI men and the Secret Service. The Devil is real, Mr. Flynn. He roams the earth seeking whom he may devour. But God is not mocked. God is not mocked. We serve Him even when we know not, in our daily lives."

Flynn rewarded himself for enduring his morning with lunch at the Eire Pub on Gallivan Boulevard in Dorchester. By the time he got back to his office, late at 1:50, (continued on page 130)Devil is Real(continued from page 60) he was already regretting his decisions to have onions on his hot dogs and a second Bally ale.

There were four people seated in the reception area when he checked in at the desk. Two of them were men in their middle 60s. They sat stiffly and ostentatiously apart from each other on the green-vinyl couch, neither wishing nor needing to inquire of each other about their common shames. They would be in to confer about sons who might be middle-aged and therefore career offenders who had first embarrassed them many years before and taught them the routine.

The women uncomfortably occupied wooden armchairs opposite the couch. One of them was extremely attractive, about 20; she looked teary and was chewing her lip. Flynn figured her to be Veronica Richards, in to see him about Teal; but when the receptionist handed him his pink phone-message slips and said, "Miss Richards has been waiting for you," she nodded toward the other woman, who stood up at once.

She was in her early 30s. She had dark hair cut short and feathered at her temples. She wore small diamond-stud earrings and slightly too much blush make-up and a black-silk dress with a scoop neckline that Flynn would like to have seen his wife wear to a dinner dance and June would not have worn, because she said she knew what she had and he knew what she had and there wasn't any need to go around in public showing them to everybody else. The woman took a hesitant step toward Flynn and offered her right hand, which he took. "'Ronica Richards," she said, as though he and not she had been kept waiting. She had a small brownleather purse in her left hand. She wore black sandals with high heels. She weighed a little bit more than she had when she had bought the dress and the slightly overloaded bra underneath it.

Flynn accepted her hand and shook it and said as he ushered her to the door of the offices behind the counter, "Dan Flynn. I was held up in traffic." His stomach punished him for that half-truth by rolling audibly. He pretended that had not happened and, when the buzzer announced that the door was unlocked, took her down the marble hall to his cubicle. He asked her to sit down in the visitor's chair while he put his maroon blazer on the wire hanger on the hook behind the door.

He sat down at his desk and positioned a block of white, lined paper and three sharpened pencils precisely in front of him. He frowned. He picked up one of the pencils. He looked up at her. "It's all right," she said anxiously. "That you were late, I mean. The expressway, I mean. The construction? Half the people that I work with, and the ones that come in to see them, half of them're late all the time now, too. Nobody can get anywhere these days."

"Yes," he said. "Well, since I did keep you waiting and away from your job and all--"

"I didn't mind," she said quickly. "If it'll, you know, if this's something that'll help James, you know, it's all right."

"Because," Flynn said, "that's the reason generally we try to go around and talk to the people that know the defendant where they work, you know? Or see them at home, after they get through work. Because, you know, we don't like to impose on anybody any more'n absolutely necessary, and we know these delays'll occur. We can't help them. There's nothing you can do."

"I know," she said. "It's just that, well, you know, I mean, I'd rather come over here and see you, like I said on the phone, because it's just a short walk from where I work, really, and this way, the other people in the office, well, they know about Jimmy, you know, and me and him seeing each other, but I just didn't want them listening, you know? It's like, well, they all know about James, of course, and what happened to him, and I know they're all sorry for me. But still, you know, it's like they're too interested, you know? In what's going on and everything. Like they're sort of enjoying this, you know? And there really isn't any place there that we could talk without them doing that."

"I would've come to your home," Flynn said. "I told you I'd do that. We often, we make lots of visits to people's homes, after they get through work, like I said. I would've done that."

She shook her head. "That wouldn't work, either," she said. "I got neighbors, you know? In my building. Where I live. And they're really nosy, like the only thing they've ever got to think about's who I'm seeing or if he's staying over and like that. When I first started seeing Jimmy, well, it's been like that with anyone I had over, you know? Like, even for dinner, or maybe when they come to pick me up to go out someplace and I have them in for a drink. Or when we come back and they come in. The neighbors always, the next day they're giving me these looks, and the same with the guys I'm seeing, give them the looks, too. And it's, well, I don't like it, that's all. So I would rather come here."

"That's understandable," Flynn said. "Like I say, we know we're imposing, anyway, on people that just happened to know the defendant and really didn't have any part in what brought him to our attention, so we try to make it as painless as possible, and if coming here'll do that for you, well, we're flexible."

She opened her eyes wide and gave a short, incredulous laugh.

"Did I say something?" Flynn said.

"Well, yeah," she said, still looking startled. "Yeah. I mean, you saying 'painless' and all. It isn't like that, like it was painless. I can tell you that for sure."

Flynn felt very awkward. He rearranged his block of paper and selected a different pencil. "Well," he said, frowning as his stomach rolled again, forcing a cough to cover the sound, "it's not as though...nothing we can do is going to make this whole thing into, you know, something that the people we talk to in most cases are ordinarily going to actually enjoy. Or anything like that."

He looked up at her again. She had lots of small freckles on the tops of her breasts. June freckled like that when she sunbathed. He had been married to her for nine years before that summer, when he noticed that freckles had begun to cover her breasts. He did not say anything but became watchful, and when the next Saturday night came when each of the three kids was staying overnight at a friend's house, he didn't turn off the light, as she preferred, before she came out of the bathroom. He discovered she had freckles on her rear end, too, and well below the line where the top of her bikini would have shielded her abdomen. He did not tell her what he had seen. He did not tell her he had deduced why she had insisted that their back-yard swimming pool be installed above the ground, with an eightfoot fence of woven redwood slats surrounding it. He did tell her, as usual, after they had finished making love, that their only problem with sex was its infrequency, and she told him, as usual, that when the kids were in the house, sex made her uncomfortable, because he made too much noise. "And they would know, honey, and we would have to tell them something, and they're still too young for that." He could feel himself getting an erection. He squirmed in his chair and surreptitiously dropped his left hand off the top of the desk to adjust his shorts.

The woman sighed heavily. "Well," she said, "that's good. Because I can tell you right now, you know, that it isn't. Painless, I mean." She exhaled. "It isn't that at all. This's the worst thing I ever had to go through, and I thought I'd been around. This is just awful." She worked her facial muscles, and her eyes were very wet. "This's just about the worst thing that's ever happened to me, the absolute worst thing."

"You cared deeply about Mr. Teal?" Flynn said solicitously.

"Not that," she said. "He isn't dead, you know, even if this did happen to him. He's still going to come out someday, isn't he? Even though this happened? It's not like he's never coming back."

"You still care about him, then," Flynn said. He made a note: "GF obvious sincere aff. for Def."

"A lot," the woman said. "I care more about Jimmy'n anyone I ever knew before in my whole life. He was the best thing ever happened to me. I thought, like, you know, like I loved other guys I went with before I met Jimmy. And that was two years ago, almost, when he come in the office one day and just luck, really, that he got assigned to me, that I hadda straighten out what his problem was at the time, and it was like, you know, ka-boom, right? It was like from the minute he comes in and sits down at my station and I start taking his history, I couldn't keep my eyes off him, you know? And I'm sitting there and I'm asking him questions, and I'm praying, just praying, that this guy isn't married, and if he is, it isn't going to matter, and I know that already, because it don't matter to me when he's sitting there if he's married or not, or he really loves his wife, or he's already going with somebody, or anything, you know? Anything. It just isn't going to matter."

She took a deep breath and shook her head. "It was like, I don't know, like somebody'd just hit me on the head or something. Like I was out of my mind. That never happened to me before."

Flynn had to clear his throat. "Yes," he said. He wrote, "GF strng sxul attrac to Def." He said, "And did he tell you he was, in fact, married at that time?"

"Oh, sure," she said. "He told me all that stuff. Well, I mean, he hadda, didn't he? If he wanted us to process his claims, like when his wife or his kids went to the doctor or something, he hadda tell us the truth. And he told me that. That he was thirty-six at the time, and he'd been married to his wife almost fifteen years, and they had two kids, and they weren't getting along for about a year or so before that, and he was, he'd moved out and they're, they were probably gonna get a divorce, but they weren't in no hurry about it, and besides, the way things were going for him right then and everything, he couldn't afford it right then, anyway. But he told me. He told me everything."

"And what he told you was the truth," Flynn said.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "I mean, as far as I know, it was. It all checked out and everything. The stuff we checked, at least. Yeah, it was all the truth. He didn't lie to me that I know. That I found out, at least." She paused and managed a small, sad smile. "I might've fibbed to him a few times," she said. "I might've told him some things that weren't, you know, absolutely true. But if he ever lied to me, I didn't catch him at it. I never found out, if he did."

"Like what did you fib to him?" Flynn said absently. He wrote, "GF spks v. hi Def's verac."

"Oh," she said, "I don't mean I ever actually, you know, lied to Jimmy. But like that first day, when I met him, you know? I took all his history and said all the stuff you're supposed to say, when he'd be getting his card, and we'd send the bills to his place, his apartment where he was living since he got separated and all that stuff, you know? And then I said to him, I said, 'Look, all right? I mean, we're not supposed to do this, you know? And if you're some kind of one of them spotters we're always hearing rumors they've got going around and checking on us, you know, if we're following the rules and stuff, I'm going to be getting myself in a jam here. So I really hope you're not, because we're not supposed to get too friendly with the customers, you know? But if maybe you might be, you know, free for drinks after work, well, I never did this before and I'd like to see you someplace.' And that was sort of a whopper, you know, because, well, because it just was."

"How was it a 'whopper'?" Flynn said.

"Well," she said, twisting the small leather purse in her hands and looking down at her lap, "well, I mean, because it just was, that's all." She looked up defiantly. "I mean, like, I'd done it before. Tried to pick up customers. Not very much, maybe only two or three times. At the most. But I'd done it. And you know something? It's really a wonder I did it again. Because the guys I did it with before, I picked up like that before from a new membership or an adjustment or something like that, they turned out to be such jerks. And I made a promise to myself, I wouldn't do that again. And then, well, I did it again."

"I take it he was just as interested?" Flynn said.

"Oh, yeah," she said. She grinned. "He was very interested. I mean, I never been married or anything, you know? Me and Jimmy, before all this stuff went down, we're going to get married or something someday pretty soon, but I mean, like, he wasn't the first guy I ever went out with, all right? He wasn't the first guy I knew. I was twenny-nine years old, and I'd been out with a few guys, and sometimes, with a few of them it got pretty serious and I thought...well, you know. But that never happened. But I could still tell, I knew when a guy was interested. It's not that hard to tell." She giggled. "Soon's he stood up again, I knew he was interested. I knew that right off."

"So you started going out together," Flynn said. He underlined "strng sxul attrac" on his note pad.

"Yeah," she said. "After work that same night, I met him down the Ninety-nine, and we had a few drinks, and we talked, and we had a few drinks, and we talked, and we had something to eat, like a burger or something, and after a while, I just said to him, 'I hope you don't think I'm always like this, but I been doing all right with it so far today, so, you know, we go to your place or is it mine? Because I don't really care which one it is, so long's it's one of them and it's pretty soon, because I don't think I can stand it much longer.' And that was the truth, I can tell you, because it was, you know? And jeez, we went back to his place and I practically attacked the guy. Which, lucky for me, it didn't bother him. Me acting like some kind of rapist or something. Said it turned him on." Her eyes teared up, and she looked down at her purse again. She shook her head. "He said it...he said I turned him on."

Flynn wrote, "GF obv. feels v. strngly abt. Def." He said, "Did Mr. Teal, ah, did he ever tell you about what he was doing, this, that it might lead to the kind of problem he's got now?"

She looked up. Her eyes were full. "What do you mean?" she said. She snuffled. She opened her purse and took out a wad of tissues. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

"Did he ever mention to you," Flynn said, "what he might be doing?"

She put the tissues back into her purse. She shook her head. She snuffled again. "No," she said, "he didn't. I mean, it wasn't the kind of thing that somebody'd put down on a claim form, you know? Or to get benefits. That not only was he, did he have his regular job at Runciman, you know, wire-and-cable rep and all, but that he was also selling fake money."

She paused. She looked very worried. "Besides," she said, "I don't think, I don't think he was doing it then. Messed up in that stuff. Because he didn't have any money, you know? When I first started seeing him. The first thing I knew about that, the first time I was really sure, I mean, knew there hadda be something going on, was when all of a sudden he started having a lot more money and we're flying to Acapulco and he's buying me stuff and things. And I was, well, you know, I was afraid for a while it might be dope or something. But then I thought about it. And, like, I knew him, you know? And Jimmy wouldn't get involved in dope, not with his kids the way he's got. So I thought, Well, maybe he's just on a hot streak at his job. And I believed that. Which actually, well, I knew things didn't get that much better selling cable, not that fast, at least, but I didn't want to think about it. Where the dough was coming from. But the first thing I actually knew for sure what it was he'd been doing, it was when the Secret Service showed up and they arrested him." She paused. "I didn't know the Secret Service did that stuff," she said. "Counterfeiting. I thought all they did was be bodyguards, you know? For the President and them."

"Did you ever actually see any of the bills?" Flynn said. "Did he show them to you, or anything?"

"Well," she said, "you know, that's funny. Because, naturally, when this happened, I figured I must've, you know? Fifties? But then I start to think back, like, When did I ever see him using fifties? And I couldn't think of one single time I ever did. When we went away, like to Acapulco there, he always got traveler's checks. Or his MasterCard; he would use that to pay. I don't think I ever did, is what I'm telling you. I don't think I ever did."

Flynn wrote, "GF cnfrms Def's sty GF nvr persnly pssd bogus." He said, "Did you, have you ever asked him since the Secret Service came whether he kept any of the bills himself and used them to finance things?"

She stared at him. "No," she said.

"Would you tell me if you had?" Flynn said, staring right back. Her breasts heaved. He tried to keep his eyes on her face.

"No," she said.

"That's what I thought," he said. He wrote, "GF obvsly trthfl."

"Can I ask you some things?" she said. She twisted the leather purse.

"Sure," Flynn said, "fire away."

"What's going to happen to him?" she said. "I mean, I know he's probably going to jail, but...."

"Almost certainly," Flynn said, looking up. "The U.S. Attorney's office waits until it gets our reports before it decides on its recommendation for sentencing, so I can't tell you precisely what that'll be just yet. And then, of course, his lawyer makes a recommendation--or asks for the street, more accurately. And the judge decides then what it'll be. But in Mr. Teal's case, him getting himself involved with at least one operation where the undercover agents purchased four hundred thousand dollars in counterfeit fifties, the likelihood of him hitting the streets, well, it isn't very good. Not very good at all."

"But his first offense and everything?" she said wistfully. "Won't that help a little?"

"Oh, sure," Flynn said, "it'll help a little. But not very much, I'm afraid, for your sake. From your point of view, I mean. Or his."

"Like, what, then?" she said. "What's going to happen to him? Can you tell me that?"

He sighed. He shook his head. "Miss Richards," he said, "I hope you believe me when I tell you this is the part of my job, maybe the only part of my job, that I hate the most. Answering questions like that, from people like you. Because the only thing I can tell you, Pretty much for sure, is that James Teal is going to go to jail. For how long, I don't know. Mr. Teal refused to cooperate with the grand jury about where he got his bills. The U.S. Attorney usually doesn't like it when defendants, when that's the decision a defendant makes."

"But he was afraid," she said, almost wailing. "He was afraid if he talked. They know that's why he did."

"They do," Flynn said. "And they don't like it. They want people in his position to be more afraid of them than they are of other people, and when people in that position aren't more afraid, show that they're not more afraid of the U.S. Attorney than they are of somebody else, then the U.S. Attorney asks the judge to show them they made a mistake. Which in this case will most likely mean they'll ask for seven years."

She gasped. "Seven years?" she said.

He nodded. "They probably won't get it," he said. "The case's before Judge Goodman. She's no pushover for defendants, but she's not a rubber stamp for the prosecutors, either. My guess is she'll hit him with about five years. Which he'll probably end up doing about two years, maybe two and a half. If he's lucky, in Danbury. If he's not, in Leavenworth."

"Oh, my God," she said.

"I know it," Flynn said. "But it's a serious offense, even if it is his first. And he was obviously one part of a fairly sophisticated operation, which he refuses to testify about. I can't lie to you, Miss Richards. He's going to go away."

"And I'm going to go insane," she said. "He did this, I know part of the reason that he got involved with this, was because of me. He used to tell me, he used to say that I meant so much to him, you know? That he'd do anything for me. And I would tell him, I would say, 'Jimmy, all I want is you. Can't you understand that? That all I want is you? You don't have to give me things, take me places, stuff like that. All you ever have to do is tell me that you want me and show me in the bedroom, just like you've been doing, and that's all I'll ever need. You like to see me walking around naked? You don't think I don't feel the exact same way about you? You think, you think when you get in the shower with me, that all I'm doing, that the only thing that's going on is I am pleasing you?'"

Flynn had to drop his left hand and adjust his shorts again. "Uh, Miss Richards," he said, "did you, ah, did you ever tell this sort of thing to anybody else?"

"Somebody else?" she said.

"Yes," Flynn said. "Did you ever say to anybody else what you've just said to me?"

"I don't think so," she said. "That was just, you know, what I would say to him. I would tell him, you know," she said, "because sometimes he'd get worried, you know, he was asking too much? Because, like, we would do it every night, at least. And when we woke up in the morning, if he spent the night, we'd do it again. And I would say to him, 'Originally, James,' which is how he gave his name to me the day he came into my office, 'originally, James, I thought you were the best thing I ever saw. And I still think so, and you're everything I ever wanted. Nothing else. Just you.' And he didn't believe me."

"And you never," Flynn said, "you never said this to anybody else. Never told anybody else, how you felt about Mr. Teal."

"Uh-uh," she said. "Nobody." She paused and looked worried. "Unless you mean, like, well, I told his wife."

"His wife," Flynn said.

"Yeah," she said. "She called me one day at the office, you know? And I didn't know who this was. Like, I thought it was somebody had a problem with a claim. Because that is what I do. And she asked me, you know, she was very nice and everything, was I the woman that was seeing James? And I said, yes, I was. And she just started in on me. Did I know that he was married? Of course, I said, sure I did, because he told me. And if I realized, you know, that this was against God's will, what James and I were doing? It was a sin against God? Stuff like that."

"And what did you say?" Flynn said.

"Well," she said, remembered resentment showing on her face, "I naturally told her, 'No, it's not. Nothing that makes two people feel the way we feel, nothing that does that is wrong. We belong to each other. Don't tell me that's wrong.'"

"And what did she say?" Flynn said.

"Nothing," she said. "She didn't say a thing. She just hung up on me."

"And did you tell Mr. Teal about this, this call you had from her?" Flynn said. "So he might be on his guard when he visited the house?"

She looked down in her lap and shook her head. "No," she said. "I didn't. I was, you know, afraid, that he'd get all upset. Besides," she said, looking up, "I didn't think it mattered much that she had called me up. She knew we were together, I mean. It wasn't a secret. And I don't think that she believed me, any more than he did. Neither one of them believed me. Neither one of them."

"Oh, she believed you, all right," Flynn said, thinking of June lying naked on the deck of the swimming pool at home, sunbathing the body she did not want him to see, "and she had a pretty good idea of what God's will was, too."

"She wore too much blush make-up and a black-silk dress with a scoop neckline."