Leonard, Elmore - Touch

1
FRANK SINATRA, JR., was saying, “I don’t have
to take this,” getting up out of the guest chair, walking
out. Howard Hart was grinning at him with his
capped teeth.
Virginia was saying, “What’s Frank Sinatra, Jr.,
doing? What’s Howard Hart doing?”
Elwin sidearmed an empty Early Times bottle at the
TV set, shattering the sixteen-inch screen, wiping out
Howard Hart’s grin and Frank Sinatra, Jr., going out the
door. Elwin took down the presidential plates from the
rail over the couch—Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon
Johnson and Lady Bird, Richard Nixon and Gerald
Ford, all the portraits done in color—and sailed the
plates one at a time at the piano, trying to skim off the
silver-framed photograph of Virginia seated at the console
of the Mighty Hammond organ. He missed five out
of five but destroyed each of the plates against the wall
back of the piano. The Early Times bottle was still good,
so he smashed the photograph with that, looked around
for something else, and threw the bottle end over end,
like a tomahawk, exploding the big picture window for
the high ultimate in glass-shattering noise.
Then he grabbed Virginia, the real Virginia—
thirty pounds heavier than the smiling organist in the
photograph—and as she pushed and clawed at him,
trying to get loose, he threw a wild punch that grazed
her head and set her screaming. Finally he was able
to connect with a good one, belting her square in the
face, grazing that long, skinny nose, hitting her hard
enough that he hurt his hand and had to go out in the
kitchen and run water on it.
When Bill Hill arrived Elwin let him in and went
back through the living room to the kitchen, saying
only, “She called you, huh? When she do that?”
Elwin didn’t care if he got an answer. He reached up
to a top cupboard shelf and pulled a fifth of Jim
Beam from behind the garden-fresh canned peas and
cream-style corn.
Bill Hill had on his good light blue summer suit
and a burgundy sport shirt with the collar open to
show the heavy gold chain and medallion that was
inscribed Thank you, Jesus. He had his dark hair
swirled down over his forehead and sprayed hard,
ready to go out for the evening, almost out the door
when Virginia called. She was on the sofa now sobbing
into a little satin pillow. He bent over her and
said, “Here, let me see,” gently taking the pillow
from her face. The dark hollows of her eyes were
wet, her rouge smeared and streaked, one side of her
face swollen as though she had an abscessed tooth.
The skin was scraped, beginning to show a bruise,
but it wasn’t cut or bleeding.
“What’d he hit you with, his fist?”
Virginia nodded, trying to raise the pillow again
to her face. The satin material was probably cool and
it was a place to hide. Bill Hill held onto the pillow,
wanting her to look up at him.
“How long’s he been drinking? All day?”
“All day, all yesterday.” Virginia was trying to
talk without moving her mouth. “I called the Center,
it was about an hour ago, but nobody came. So I
called you.”
“I’ll get you a wet cloth, okay? You’re gonna be
all right, Ginny. Then I’ll have a talk with him.”
“He never was this bad, all the other times.”
“Well, they get worse,” Bill Hill said, “from what
I understand.”
It was hot and close in the house and smelled of
stale cigarette smoke, though the attic fan was going,
sounding like an airplane in the upstairs hall. Elwin
had a hip pressed against the sink, using a butcher
knife on the Jim Beam seal. His shirt was messy,
sweat-stained. His old-timey-looking slick hair hung
down on both sides of his face from the part that
showed white scalp and was always straight as a ruler
no matter how drunk he got.
Bill Hill said, “You’re a beauty. You know it?”
“I’m glad you come over to give me some of
your mouth,” Elwin said. “That goddamn woman, I
got her shut up for a while, now I got you starting on
me. Why don’t you just get the hell out of here. I didn’t
invite you, I know goddamn well.” He got the top
off and poured half a jelly glass full of Jim Beam and
added a splash of Seven-Up from a bottle on the
counter. The sink was full of dishes and an empty
milk carton. Elwin said, “You want a drink, help
yourself.”
“I want to know what’s wrong with you,” Bill
Hill said, “beating up on Ginny like that. You realize
what you did?”
“I realize I shut her goddamn mouth. I warned
her,” Elwin said. “I told her, Jesus, shut your mouth
for a while, give us some peace. She kept right on.”
Elwin’s voice rose, mimicking, as he said, “ ‘What’re
you doing, you drinking again? Getting drunk, aren’t
you, sucking on your whiskey bottle.’ I said I’m having
a couple for my goddamn nerves to lie still.”
“For a couple of days,” Bill Hill said. “But I
guess you know what you’re doing, don’t you?”
“I got her shut up,” Elwin said. “How many
times I said, Shut up! She kept right on, yak yak yak,
her mouth working like it’d never stop. Yak yak yak
yak, Jesus.”
“Well, you stopped her,” Bill Hill said. “You
gonna take her to the hospital or you want me to?”
“Hospital, shit, there’s nothing wrong with her. I
give her a little shove.”
“Well, what if she’s got a concussion of the
brain,” Bill Hill said, “you ever consider that? You
want to come out and take a look at your wife you
got up the courage to belt in the face with your fist.
You’re pretty brave, Elwin, I’ll say that for you.”
“You won’t be saying nothing you keep it up,”
Elwin said, “you’ll be spitting your teeth.”
“Okay, you’re tough, Elwin, and I’m scared,” Bill
Hill said. “But you want to talk to me a minute? Try
to explain to me what happened? See, maybe I’m
dumb or something. I don’t understand a man taking
a punch at his wife and tearing up his living room.
You remember doing all that?”
“I’ll tell you what the hell happened,” Elwin said,
“feeling that goddamn woman watching me, following
me around—”
“Now wait a minute,” Bill Hill said, “you’re
watching yourself is who’s watching anybody and
you know it. That’s called having a guilty conscience.
You hide those bottles you’re hiding them from yourself.”
“Bullshit, you think she can’t find them? She
feels all over this goddamn house, buddy, and she
finds them.”
“All right, you know what I’m saying,” Bill Hill
said. “You try not to drink for a while, you go to
meetings and you get along pretty good, don’t you?
Then you give in, and you know what happens every
time. You smash up your car. You run clear through
your garage wall out the back. You start punching
people—hitting guys, that’s bad enough. Now you’re
punching your poor, defenseless wife—”
“Poor, defenseless shit—”
“Listen to me, all right? Will you just listen a
minute?”
“Poor, defenseless mouth going all day long.”
“Elwin, what happens every time? You smash
something, don’t you? Or somebody. And you end
up in jail or back in the Rehabilitation Center. Is that
the way you want to live?”
“I got a good idea,” Elwin said.
“Okay, tell me what it is.” Bill Hill looked up at
him calmly. Elwin was several inches taller than Bill
Hill’s five nine and with big, hard bones and big,
gnarled hands that looked like tree roots, working
man’s hands.
“Why don’t you get out of here,” Elwin said,
“before I heave you right through the screen door.
You believe I can’t do it?”
“No, I believe you can,” Bill Hill said, “but
instead of that, why don’t we see if we can get Ginny
fixed up a little. What do you say?” He took a dish
towel that was fairly clean and ran it under cold
TOUCH 5
water and wrung it out and folded the cloth, trying
not to get his suit wet or mussed up, while Elwin told
him again how the woman never shut up from the
time she got out of bed in the morning to the time she
crawled back in at night and lay there bitching in the
dark, all day while he’d be trying to do some work
around the house or else reading the want ads in both
Detroit papers and the Oakland County Press, but
was there any construction work? Shit no, cause they
was letting the niggers in the union and giving them
all the jobs. Then Elwin dropped his drink on the
floor and had to make a new one.
Virginia looked worn out and in pain, a poor, battered
wife of a laid-off construction worker. Bill Hill
got her stretched out on the sofa with a pile of little
pillows beneath her head. She’d moan something as
he wiped off her face. He’d say, “What?” Then finally
realized she was just making sounds, down in
there being miserable.
He went out to the kitchen to rinse the dishcloth
and told Elwin why didn’t he, instead of standing
there getting shit-face drunker than he already was,
why didn’t he straighten up the mess in the kitchen.
That was a big mistake.
Elwin said okay, he’d straighten up the mess, and
began taking dishes out of the sink and dropping
them on the floor, saying to Bill Hill how’s that? Was
that straight enough for him?
Bill Hill went back to the living room and laid
the cool, damp cloth over Virginia’s eyes, hearing
Elwin dropping dishes and the dishes smashing on
the floor. Bill Hill had a date and was going to a
disco. He was thinking, Shit, he might never make it
and the girl would get mad and pout sitting home
with her hair done and her perfume on.
The young guy in jeans and a striped T-shirt and
sneakers opened the aluminum screen door and
walked in. Standing there with his fingers wedged in
his pants pockets, he said, “This is the Worrels’, isn’t
it?” Then seemed to smile a little as he saw Elwin in
the kitchen dropping dishes. He said, “Yeah, I think I
recognize somebody.” He looked at Bill Hill and
then at Virginia on the sofa. “What happened?”
“You a friend of the Worrels?” Bill Hill was
guarded. He didn’t know who this young guy was.
But maybe the young guy had seen this show before
and that’s why he wasn’t surprised or seemed disturbed.
“I know Elwin a little bit,” the young guy said.
“From when he was at Sacred Heart. They just called
me to see if I could stop by, maybe talk to him. I’m
Juvenal.” He was looking at Virginia again, frowning
a little now. “Is she all right?”
“Oh, you’re from the Center,” Bill Hill said.
“Good. You’re just the man we need.” Though the
young guy—Juvenal?—didn’t look anything like an
AA house caller, a man who’d been there and back
and could understand what the drunk was going
through. This one looked like a college student
dressed for a picnic. No, older than that. But skinny,
immature-looking, light-brown hair down over his
forehead, cut sort of short. He looked like a nice,
well-behaved boy that mothers of young girls would
love to see come to the house.
“You said your name’s . . . Juvenal?”
“That’s right.” The young guy raised his voice
and said, “Elwin, what’re you doing?”
“He’s breaking dishes,” Bill Hill said. What was
the young guy smiling about? No, he wasn’t smiling.
But he seemed to be smiling, his expression relaxed,
as though nothing at all was on his mind. He certainly
didn’t look like a drunk. He hardly looked old
enough even to get a drink. Bill Hill bet, though, he
was about thirty.
Elwin was hollering now, swearing goddamn it
he’d get the goddamn kitchen straightened, reaching
up to the cupboard to get more dishes. The
young guy, Juvenal, walked past Bill Hill out of
the living room to the kitchen. Bill Hill heard
Elwin’s voice again, then nothing. Silence. He
could see the young guy saying something to
Elwin, but couldn’t hear him. Elwin seemed to be
listening, nodding, the young guy talking with his
hands in his pockets.
Bill Hill said, “Christ Almighty.”
Maybe the young guy did know what he was
doing. Bill Hill walked over to the kitchen doorway
to see Elwin getting a broom and dustpan out of the
closet. The young guy, Juvenal, was picking up
Elwin’s drink.
Now he’ll pour it out, Bill Hill thought. Jesus,
help us. And Elwin’ll go berserk again.
But the young guy didn’t pour it out. He took a
good sip of the Jim Beam drink and put it down on
the yellow tile counter again.
What the hell kind of an AA caller was he anyway?
The young guy came toward Bill Hill but was
looking past him into the living room.
“Is she all right?”
“I think so. He belted her a good one, but I don’t
believe he busted anything.”
Now Elwin was leaning on his broom looking at
Bill Hill. “All done,” he said. “You gonna stand there
with your finger up your ass or you gonna help me?”
Bill Hill said, tired, “Yeah, I’ll help you.” He
started past the young guy.
“What’s the matter with her?”
He was staring at Virginia on the sofa with the
dishcloth folded over her eyes.
“He punched her in the face,” Bill Hill said.
“She’s got a big bruise, so I put a cold cloth on it.”
“No, I mean what else’s wrong with her?” the
young guy said. “Something is, isn’t it?”
“Oh,” Bill Hill said. “Well, yeah, she’s blind.”
“All her life?”
“Ever since I’ve known her.” Bill Hill glanced
over at the sofa, keeping his voice low. “Ginny got
hit in the head in a car wreck about fifteen years ago.
Yeah, in Sixty-two. It left her blind.”
Juvenal moved past him.
Bill Hill watched him go over and look down at
Virginia, his hands in his pockets, then the hands
coming out of the pockets as he sat down on the edge
of the sofa, his back to the kitchen. Bill Hill saw him
raise the dishcloth from Virginia’s eyes.
Elwin said, “You want to know something?
Virginia’s mother give us these dishes when we got
married and all that time, Christ, twenty-one years, I
hated those goddamn dishes. Got little rosebuds on
’em—”
Bill Hill turned to Elwin and took the dishpan
from the table.
“—but I never said nothing. All that time, you’d
get down through your mashed potatoes and wipe up
your gravy? There’d be these little goddamn rose-
buds looking at you. The only thing I said once, I
said it looked like a goddamn little girl’s tea set and
Virginia got sore and started to cry. Shit, anything I
didn’t like, if I said it? She’d start to cry, like I was
blaming her for it. I’d say goddamn it, what I think
has got nothing to do with you, does it? She’ll do it
again. She’ll reach up in the cupboard and say
where’s all my good dishes for heaven sake? And I’ll
tell her I got rid of those goddamn rosebud dishes
finally, I finally got the nerve to get rid of them.”
Still rough talking, but his tone had changed, the
meanness gone. Bill Hill noticed it.
He said, “Well, you might’ve bought some others
first, since you’re out of work and you got all this
extra cash laying around.”
“He come in here and says what’re you doing.
Juvie did,” Elwin said. “I told him I always hated
those goddamn rosebud dishes and I’m busting
them. And he said, you know what he said? He said,
‘I don’t blame you.’ ”
Bill Hill wanted to ask about the young guy, who
he was. Was he AA or not? Did he work at the Center
in rehabilitation? If he did, how come he took a
drink?
But Virginia began to call. She said, “Elwin?” In
a sharp little surprised tone. She said, “Elwin, my
God. Come here.”
Both of them went into the living room, Elwin
still holding the broom.
Virginia was sitting up, holding the dishcloth in
her lap and turning her head carefully, as though she
had a stiff neck, turning to the piano and then slowly
turning her head toward the kitchen doorway. She
looked different.
Elwin said, “Jesus, I cut her, didn’t I?”
Bill Hill said, almost under his breath, “No, you
didn’t. I’m sure you didn’t.” That was the whole
thing, why he was more surprised than Elwin;
because he had wiped off her face and looked at the
bruise closely. Except for a scrape and the swelling
there hadn’t been a mark on her. But now there was
a smear of blood on her face, over her forehead and
cheeks. At least it looked like blood.
Bill Hill said, “Ginny, you all right?”
Something scared him and kept him from moving.
He noticed now that the young guy, Juvenal,
wasn’t in the room. Though he might’ve gone up to
the bathroom. Or he might’ve left. But that would be
strange, coming here on a call and then leaving without
saying anything.
Elwin said, “Virginia, I got to tell you something.”
She said, “Tell me.”
“Well, later on,” Elwin said.
Bill Hill kept staring at her. What was it? She
moved on the sofa, turning now to look directly at
them. She looked worse than before. Battered,
swollen, and now bloody. She seemed about to cry.
But—what it was—she didn’t seem miserable now.
She was calm. She was looking at them out of dark
shadows and her eyes were alive.
“What’re you doing with a broom?” Virginia
said and seemed to smile, waiting.
Bill Hill didn’t take his eyes from her. He heard
Elwin say, “Jesus Christ,” reverently, like a prayer.
Neither of them moved.
“I can see,” Virginia said. “I can see both of you
plain as day.”

2
BILL HILL had to ring the doorbell to get into the
Sacred Heart Rehabilitation Center, then had to
explain why he wanted to see Father Quinn—about
his good friend Elwin Worrel who’d been here and
was drinking again—then had to wait while they
looked for Quinn.
It was not like a hospital. The four-story building
on the ghetto edge of downtown Detroit had once
been a branch of the YWCA for black women, before
integration, and that’s what he decided it looked like,
a YWCA.
He watched a man in pajamas, with slicked-back, wetlooking
hair and round shoulders, go up to the reception
desk where a young guy in a T-shirt and a good-looking
black girl were on duty. The man in pajamas, feeling his
jaw with his fingers, asked for some after-shave lotion. The
young guy handed him a bottle of Skin Bracer. The man
stuck his chin out, rubbed the Skin Bracer over his face
and neck, and walked away, leaving the bottle on the
counter. The young guy screwed the cap back on and put
the bottle away somewhere.
Bill Hill strolled over and leaned against the
counter. He said to the good-looking black girl, “Is
Juvenal around?”
She said, “Juvenal?” a little surprised. The young
guy in the T-shirt said, “I don’t think he’s here.” He
turned to look at a schedule of names and dates
tacked to the wall above the switchboard. “No,
Juvie’s off today.”
Bill Hill said, “What’s his last name again? I forgot
it.”
The good-looking black girl was quite thin and
appealing in a sleeveless knit top, her little breasts
pointing out. She said, “I don’t know he has a last
name.”
“Are you in the program?” the young guy asked.
“You mean in AA?” Bill Hill said. “No, but this
very close friend I mentioned is. Elwin Worrel? I met
Juvenal over at Elwin’s.” Bill Hill waited.
It gave him a funny feeling. The two behind the
counter seemed relaxed and friendly, not the least bit
guarded; but to them he was an outsider. To be “in”
here you had to be an alcoholic. The young guy said
he could have a seat in there if he wanted and pointed
to an empty reception room off the lobby where
there was a piano, a fireplace, and hotel-lobby furniture
that must’ve been sitting there thirty or forty
years.
Bill Hill moved to the front windows of the
reception room and looked out at the brewery that
was across the Chrysler Freeway but seemed as near
as next door. Above the red-brick complex was a
giant sign that lit up red at night and said Stroh’s
Beer for all the alcoholics to see. It could make them
thirsty, he bet. Or it could remind them of gutters and
weeds and cold, vacant buildings. Bill Hill was wearing
a yellow outfit today. Yellow-and-white-striped
sport shirt, cream-yellow slacks, white belt, and
white loafers. It was hot in here with no air conditioning.
A dim, depressing place.
There he was, all yellow. And the priest appeared
in a green-and-white warmup suit and sneakers. A
couple of rays of sunshine in the musty old room,
greeting each other by name, Bill Hill warming up,
glancing at the windows and asking if that big
Stroh’s Beer sign was a temptation or a warning to
the patients here. He meant to keep it light and chatty
for a few minutes.
“The residents,” Father Vaughan Quinn said,
“they can look at the sign and think whatever they
want, as long as they know they have three choices.
Die, end up in a mental hospital, or quit drinking. It’s
their decision.”
That wasn’t keeping it light. Bill Hill said, “I’m
afraid the only thing Elwin’s trying to decide is
which he likes better, Early Times or Jim Beam.”
Another bad sign: the priest pushed up his sleeve
to glance at his watch. He said, “Elwin’s trouble, he
knows he’s an alcoholic, but he hasn’t hit bottom
hard enough to feel it.”
That was a good lead. “Well, he’s sure hitting
other people fairly hard and doing a job on his
house,” Bill Hill said. He had a feeling he wasn’t
going to be asked to sit down, so he sank into a chair
next to the big empty sofa, saying, “You know
Virginia, Father?”
It was a mistake. The priest remained standing in
his green-and-white outfit, gazing down at him now,
a priest who played hockey and might’ve been a
street fighter at one time. He could be a mean bugger,
Bill Hill decided. A hip priest, graying hair over
his ears, and with the look of a guy who could tell
when you were bullshitting him, used to drunks lying
to him, making excuses.
The priest said, “Sure, Virginia’s been here.”
There was a scar, forty-two stitches in his chin,
from a blind-side meeting with a hockey puck, playing
with the Flying Fathers. Bill Hill remembered that from
the time he saw Father Quinn on a TV talk show.
“I understand she used to play the organ at your
church,” Quinn said.
See? The man knew things. Bill Hill smiled,
shaking his head. “That was years ago.”
“You’re an ordained minister, aren’t you?”
“I sell recreational vehicles, motor homes,” Bill
Hill said. “No, but I used to have a church—Uni-
Faith. Actually it was an outdoor setup . . . amphitheater
could seat fifteen hundred, we had a chapel, a
gift shop kinda like Stuckey’s . . . but what drew the
crowds, we had the world’s tallest illuminated cross
of Jesus, a hundred and seventeen feet high with
‘Jesus Saves’ at the top in blue neon you could see at
night all the way from Interstate 75.”
“Around here?” Quinn asked, interested.
“No, outside of Dalton, Georgia. I moved the
whole show up here and went bankrupt. But that’s
another story.”
“Fascinating,” the priest said.
“Virginia was our organist—yeah, you knew
that.” Bill Hill paused. “You must also know she
recovered her sight.”
“I understand you were there when it happened,”
Quinn said.
“And a fella from the Center here by the name of
Juvenal,” Bill Hill said. “Virginia thinks he performed
a miracle on her.”
Quinn didn’t seem startled or even change his
expression. He said, “That’s interesting, but what’s a
miracle? Some pretty amazing things happen around
here all the time.”
“I don’t know,” Bill Hill said, “it could’ve been a
jolt to her head. Unless you think this fella did it laying
on hands.”
“Is that what he did?” Quinn asked.
“Well, I’m using that as a figure of speech. We
had a young prayer healer at Uni-Faith, Reverend
Bobby Forshay, used to lay on hands, so to speak. He
wasn’t too good at it. But something touched
Virginia Worrel. Her face was clean before it happened;
I saw it. Then when I looked at her after there
was blood on it—around her eyes, on her forehead.
You hear about that part, the blood?”
“Maybe it was from her nose. She touched her
face and spread it around.” Quinn pushed back the
elastic cuff of his warmup jacket to glance at his
watch.
“She wasn’t bleeding from her nose. Virginia
says she didn’t have any cuts at all, not even in her
scalp.”
“How about a hemorrhage behind the eyes
somewhere—I don’t know, we’re out of my area,” the
priest said. “You wanted to talk to me about Elwin, is
that right?”
“Well, he’s part of it,” Bill Hill said. “This
Juvenal’s the other part. I wondered if you discussed
it with him, about Virginia?”
“Listen, we’re gonna have to make it another
time,” the priest said, starting to turn away. “We’ve
got a volleyball game scheduled and I’m late as it is.”
“Maybe I could talk to Juvenal—”
“Sure, any time.”
“You can understand, Father. A woman, a good
friend of mine, was blind fifteen years and now she
can see. Juvenal was there a few minutes—I saw him
sit down on the couch with her—then he was gone.
How come? Did he witness her sight restored and it
scared him or what?”
“You’ll have to ask him that.” The priest was
moving off. “He’ll be glad to talk to you.”
“They said he’s not here today.” Bill Hill was
pulling himself out of the chair now.
“Come back any time.” Quinn paused in the
doorway. “And, hey, if you’ve got any clothes you
don’t need, bring ’em along. You look like a pretty
snappy dresser.”
Shit, Bill Hill said, standing alone in that dim
reception room. A pretty snappy dresser.
He came back to the Center the next day with two
doubleknit leisure suits and a pile of sport shirts,
some hardly ever worn. He buzzed and they let him
in, glad to see him again. They were sorry though,
Father Quinn was in Toronto and Juvie was up in
detox with a new arrival. Bill Hill waited more than
an hour. When the switchboard checked detox, Juvie
was gone and no one seemed to know where.
On the third visit Father Quinn was back from
Toronto, but was out for the day, not expected to
return until late. Juvie was around somewhere, they’d
try to locate him. But somehow never did.
The place wasn’t that big. Four floors including
a gym and a swimming pool.
The day of Bill Hill’s fourth visit Father Quinn
was getting ready for a board of directors meeting.
Juvie was out on a call; it would be hard to say when
he’d be back.
Bill Hill said to the good-looking black girl,
“You know what it’s like, the feeling people are
avoiding you?”
“Tell me about it,” the black girl said.
“I don’t know what it is,” Bill Hill said, “everybody
here’s so nice and cooperative. But I don’t seem
to be getting anywhere.” He leaned against the
counter, tired.
“Some days are like that,” the black girl said. “I
know you been coming here—I’d like to give you
Juvie’s phone number but, you understand, anonymity
is part of the deal, why it’s called Alcoholics
Anonymous?”
“You know him very well?”
“I’m not gonna tell you anything,” the black girl
said, “so don’t ask.”
But why not? Waiting around, Bill Hill would
begin to lose interest and then something like this—
why all the mystery?—would perk him up. Why was
Juvenal hiding from him?
He said, “Let me ask you a straight question,
okay? How does a person get in this place? I mean an
alcoholic.”
“Put your name in, get on the waiting list.”
“The waiting list—what if you’re in bad shape?”
“They’re all in bad shape,” the black girl said.
“But we’re full up, hundred and thirty-seven as of
today.”
“How about, do you take women?”
“Yeah, there some women. Some young girls
even.”
“Is that right? How long’s the wait?”
“About three or four weeks. Unless somebody
comes and they’re desperate, I mean really in bad
shape,” the black girl said. “We don’t turn people
away, anything like that.”
“I hope not,” Bill Hill said.
Was he learning anything? Maybe. He was tired of
waiting around. What he felt like right now was a drink.
He stopped off at the Athens Bar in Greektown and called
Lynn Faulkner. The phone rang seven times. When she
answered, Bill Hill said, “You know something, this is the
first time I haven’t had to talk to that recording. You know
what it’s like talking to somebody that isn’t there?”
“Say it,” Lynn Faulkner said, “I’m in the tub. I
wasn’t even gonna answer.”
“You got a phone in there with you?”
“Listen, you want to call me back? I’m afraid
I’m gonna get electrocuted.”
“Get dressed and I’ll take you out to dinner.”
“Can’t do it. I just got finished with Artie and a
bunch of shitheads from L.A. and I’m not putting
shoes on for anybody.”
“Well, you’re gonna have a couple, aren’t you?
Help you relax?”
“How come those guys in the business, no matter
where they’re from they all sound like they’re
from New York?”
“What guys?”
“You can bring some Asti Spumante if you
want,” Lynn said. “Cold, okay?”
“Now you’re talking,” Bill Hill said. “I got something
interesting to tell you about. In fact, listen, it
could even change your life.”
Bill Hill thought he was kidding.

3
LYNN MARIE FAULKNER left Uni-Faith in 1968,
a few months before Bill Hill moved the 117-foot
cross of Jesus from Dalton, Georgia, to Flat Rock,
Michigan. Lynn didn’t think too much of living up
north. Burrr, she said, too cold for a Miami girl.
Lynn had a lot of cute ways about her then.
The reason she left Uni-Faith though, age nineteen
and at the peak of her baton-twirling career, was to
marry Doug “Whiz” Whaley, veteran saddle bronc
rider with the Longhorn World Championship
Rodeo. It was funny that when she finally divorced
Doug last year—1976 being a year she would always
remember—the rodeo was in Michigan, performing
at the Pontiac Silverdome.
Doug Whaley, one-time saddle bronc rider turned
calf roper, should have known the day would come.
All he said, stepping into the Li’l Hobo travel trailer
2:30 in the afternoon and seeing no dishes and bread
on the table, was, “Where’s my dinner? You know
I’m competing tonight.”
He should have looked at his little girl first and
tried softer words to get his chuck on the table.
Instead, he walked into it dumb arrogant, head
fuzzed with booze, and his peevish tone set off the
charge.
Lynn said, “That’s all, buddy. You get the trailer
and I take the car. That’s the division of property, and
if you don’t like it come by Oakland County Circuit
Court for the hearing. You can listen while I tell the
judge what a first-prize asshole you’ve been eight
out of the past eight and a half years.
Lynn already had a lawyer and the prospect of a
job in the music business; so she decided to stay
around and get a no-fault Michigan divorce. Once
she’d made up her mind, there was no reason to
change it or feel guilty. The situation was clear-cut.
Doug drank and he fooled around, not saving a
whole lot for Lynn. He sat a horse and could look at
a young girl and make her shiver. But behind that
rawhide hell-rider image was usually a half-drunk,
stove-up Absorbine Junior freak. Whiz the fiz in the
sack, all talk and no action. Doug could take his limp
pecker and his Li’l Hobo trailer and see if he could
connect them up somewhere else; Lynn was through.
A lot of little things broke down their so-so marriage,
nearly all under the heading of Doug’s immaturity.
While Doug was looking at himself in backbar
mirrors, Lynn was growing up. She read all the
time: back issues of National Geographic, popular
novels, Ms, Viva, WWD, Rolling Stone, books on
self-improvement—how to free yourself of guilt,
fear, resentments and find the real you—and, by
some lucky turn, The Portable Dorothy Parker, the
pages becoming limp and dog-eared as she learned,
with relief, it was all right to laugh at most serious
things. She found out she was a pretty bright girl
besides having a nice nose and a perky little behind,
TOUCH 21
way smarter than Doug and too alive and eager to be
his Dale Evans. Lynn had to get out while she still
had a future.
A PR man at the Pontiac Silverdome, a really
nice guy, got her a job in the advertising department
of Creem, “America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll
Magazine,” located above some storefronts in
Birmingham—a swanky little Detroit suburb—and
not like any business offices she had ever seen or
heard of, with people walking around barefoot in
cutoffs and tank tops. It was fun being in the world
of commerce and rock and roll. Lynn sold KMA
Records on a third-cover, four-color, twelve-insertions
deal, and KMA hired her away from Creem as
their Detroit-office publicist and record plugger at
seventeen five a year plus a car and expenses. She
called up her old buddy and former boss, Bill Hill,
told him about it, and said, “Hey, not bad for a little
Uni-Faith baton twirler who didn’t know her ass
from a hymnbook. Neat, huh?” Bill Hill said, “Not
bad at all, honey. It’s nearly as much as I make and
I’m old enough to be your uncle.”
That was nine months ago, when Lynn Whaley
first got the job with KMA Records out of L.A. and
was using her maiden name again, Lynn Faulkner,
without the Marie.
Seventeen five plus a car and expenses, it sounded
great. Except there was no KMA Detroit office.
She’d have to work out of her own place, with an
answering service or message recorder.
Well, that was all right. Maybe even better. She
got an apartment in Somerset—a suburban complex
with swimming pools, tennis courts, and a golf
course, supposedly full of swinging singles—two
22 ELMORE LEONARD
bedrooms and a balcony overlooking the ninth fairway
for three ninety a month, half of which she could
write off as a business expense.
The car was a dull green Chevy Nova they must
have bought second-hand from the post office. Lynn
had to buy an AM-FM radio out of her twenty-centsa-
mile allowance.
Lynn said to Artie Rapp, the KMA publicity
director in from L.A., “I’m supposed to take DJs out
in that turd?”
Artie Rapp said, “Take them where? To your place?
They have cars. All you got to do is see that KMA
releases are played on the air. Check Peaches, Harmony
House, Korvettes, see that KMA releases get good display
and’re selling. Meet the different KMA artists
when they come to the Motor City, get them interviewed
and fixed up and all, and do a little advance
work on concerts and special promotions. What do you
need for that, a Rolls Silver Cloud?”
“What do you mean ‘fixed up and all’?”
“Sources. A band comes to town, say the
Nightstalkers,” Artie Rapp said, “they got their roadies,
their groupies, all that. But say they want some
good Colombian. That’s all I’m talking about. Or
they need some equipment or where’s the best ribs in
town—shit like that, nothing big. A group’s in town
you spend a little extra time with them. Otherwise
you’re what, twenty-seven hundred miles from the
home office working out of your own pad with a
generous expense account. You know how many
people in the business would trade places with you?”
“How many?” Lynn said.
“I’ll tell you what. There any good places to eat
in this town I’ll treat you to a nice dinner,” Artie
TOUCH 23
Rapp said, with his feet on Lynn’s glass coffee table.
“But since we’re here—huh?—and we’re gonna be
working together . . .”
Lynn could handle Artie and she got along fine
with people in the business, the station music directors
and DJs, because she came on straight and didn’t
waste time giving them a lot of shuck and jive to
get a KMA release on their play lists. If she really
liked the record she might hustle it with a little extra
effort, but without ever getting hyper about it. Any
payola arrangements, if they were made, were left to
Artie. Lynn kept her nose clean, offered no inducements,
and was not sleeping with any of the local
DJs. At twenty-nine going on thirty she was older
than most of the rock and roll DJs in town, but didn’t
seem to turn any of them off, not even in this
youth-oriented business. Lynn had a neat nose, bedroom
eyes, and a slim little figure.
She wore her blond hair layered back and feathered
fairly short, pasted on twenty-dollar eyelashes,
rubbed in a cheek gloss for that natural look, and
painted her nails light brown. Artie told her she had
a killer body, wishing he could see it in person
beneath the hip-huggers and India cotton shirt. He’d
demonstrate that she was just the right size. See, at
five eight he was the average height of the American
fighting man in World War II and his mouth, look,
was just even with Lynn’s nose when she had her
clogs on. Artie maneuvered for nine months and
never made it.
DJs who wanted to get it on with Lynn would
give her a sleepy look in a hang-out bar and say, “You
want to get it on?”
Lynn might say, “I better tell you, I’m a very
24 ELMORE LEONARD
religious person basically and when I do it I have to
be in love or it just doesn’t work. I guess it’s the way
I was brought up.”
If the DJ pressed and said, “So let’s fall in love,”
Lynn would say, “You know where it is? It’s in the
grooves. That’s the bottom line. If my record’s any
good you’ll play it and it’ll sell and my balling you
won’t make the least bit of difference, will it?”
The guys in the business found out the platterchatter
hip approach wasn’t going to make it with
Lynn. She was a very laid-back young lady, not some
trendy little chick who was easily impressed. Though
she did have her weak moments.
Lynn had an affair with a TV news man until his
hairdo, which was like a brownish-gray helmet,
finally unnerved her. They would smoke grass and
thrash around in bed half the afternoon and the guy
would come out of it with every hair still glued in
place for his six o’clock newscast. Lynn felt either
she couldn’t bring out the real person beneath the
hard charm or there was none there to begin with.
She had an affair with a married station manager
who was real. He’d stop by her apartment Monday
and Thursday evenings and tell her about the crises
at work and his tragic situation at home, married to
an alcoholic. Lynn thought she liked him pretty
much; but after a few weeks of listening to his troubles
as he got half smashed and then going through a
speedy routine in bed, she decided that real didn’t
necessarily mean interesting. What the guy needed
was a mother or a psychiatrist.
Was she happy as a record promoter?
Well, she had this suburban apartment and a telephone
extension cord that reached from the second-
TOUCH 25
bedroom office all the way out to the balcony overlooking
the golf course. She had a lot of crushed velvet
and chrome and a six-by-six-foot blowup of
Waylon Jennings’s outlaw face over the couch (he
wasn’t even a KMA artist, he was RCA). And Artie
had raised her after six months to twenty grand a
year.
She did wish she represented more black funk—
and maybe a little country on the R and B side, not
the heartache country or the green-hills-down-home
country—instead of all the punk rock KMA was putting
out.
She wished she didn’t have to smile so much.
Being nice in business when you didn’t feel like it
made your face ache, not to mention being a terrible
pain in the ass.
And she could easily pass on all the waiting
around when KMA artists came in to do concerts.
First, they very seldom arrived when they were
supposed to—especially the rockers, who had
absolutely no sense of time—and she’d spend hours
at Detroit Metro waiting for flights.
Then more waiting in motel suites, lobbies, waiting
backstage in a squeeze of groupies and roadies,
tripping over power cables, being ignored by the
managers and reps, waiting for a door to open and
stoned musicians to come out—
Yes, but how many ex-baton twirlers with only
high school, two seasons with a religious revival
show, and a nine-year hitch in a rodeo trailer made
twenty grand a year and expenses?
Maybe not any. But maybe because that’s the
way ex-baton twirlers were. They couldn’t stand
waiting around for something to happen.
26 ELMORE LEONARD
4
“EVERYBODY’S SO SERIOUS AND
UPTIGHT,” Lynn said, “like somebody in the next
room’s dying or having a baby and, Christ, all they’re
doing is representing a rock and roll band. I kept
thinking, what am I doing here?”
“Making money,” Bill Hill said. He stood by the
sliding screen door to the balcony, looking out at the
ninth fairway, empty, everybody probably in having
their supper. “You know what my view is? The parking
area out back of the building. How much you
pay, about four hundred?”
“Three ninety.” Lynn, on the couch, had her telephone
on the glass coffee table next to the $4.99 bottle
of Asti Spumante Bill Hill had brought. Lynn
liked the $7.99 one better, but would probably be
going back to Gallo white before too long.
“See, I could tell myself I was where I wanted to
be. I could, you know, rationalize. But my stomach
kept giving me signals. What’re you doing here? Get
out. Leave.”
“Your stomach,” Bill Hill said.
“My gut reaction, with all the hotshots, the
agents, the road managers—they walk in a place,
they take over. I’m the one set up the hospitality
suite. I got the Heinekens, the vodka and mix,
scotch, a nice cheese tray—”
“Where was this?”
“The Sheraton out by Pontiac. If they’re playing
at Pine Knob usually we get them in the Sheraton, if
the group isn’t on the hotel’s shit list.”
“What one was this? The group.”
“The Cobras. Bunch of little shitheads, I think
they were invented.”
“I don’t believe I ever heard of them,” Bill Hill
said.
“You have to be just into puberty,” Lynn said.
“They wear, you’d love them, they wear skintight sort
of snakeskin jumpsuits open in front practically
down to their pubic hair to show their white skinny
bodies, I mean white, and platform shoes. Two brothers,
Toby and Abbott, and four other creepy guys I
think they got from an institution.”
“Jesus,” Bill Hill said.
“They’re bad enough, but wait.” Lynn took time to
sip Spumante, light a cigarette, and ease back into the
cranberry crushed velvet couch. “Artie’s there, but I’m
the one that arranged everything. I’ve got a few people
I know from record stores. I’ve got the press—I think
some kids from a school paper, but who knows. Several
disc jockeys, not big names, but good guys. And my
prize, I’ve got Ken Calvert, the ABX music director, I
had to beg to come. ‘Please, Kenny, tape an interview
and make me look good in front of all the L.A. shitheads.’
The first time I’ve ever begged anybody in my
life. Kenny says—he can’t stand the Cobras, he throws
up you even mention their name—but he says okay,
he’ll do it as a favor.”
“Jesus,” Bill Hill said.
28 ELMORE LEONARD
“Ken’s there, a couple of DJs, the retail people,
the press, all the reps and roadies standing around
drinking, eating the cheese—and the band, the fucking
Cobras, won’t come out of their room, this suite
adjoining the hospitality suite. Toby, or it was
Abbott, I don’t know, comes out once in his bikini
Jockeys scratching his balls, picks up about half the
cheese on a fork and goes back in the room. I go over
and knock on the door and this guy I’ve never seen
before goes, honest to God, he goes, ‘They got all the
head they need, doll, come back later.’ I go, ‘Wait a
minute. Who’re you? I didn’t even invite you.’ This
guy’s got the half-assed ’fro and the beads and all—
you can’t tell anybody apart. They all look like sword
fighters. Their road manager goes, ‘Oh, Lynn? This
is Marty Hyphen’—or Hyman, something like
that—‘he’s with William Morris.’ Like hot shit, the
guy’s with William Morris. I tell them, ‘Look, I’ve
got all these people here. You see them? Those are all
people who, believe it or not, came here to meet the
Cobras. That’s Ken Calvert from ABX; he’s even
gonna do an interview.’ And the guy from William
Morris goes, ‘Fuck Ken Calvert, the guys don’t want
to talk to anybody.’ Not their manager, their agent.
The road manager, all he says is, ‘Strokes and pokes,
uh? It’s the business.’The band, they’re in there picking
their toes and getting stoned, and you know why
they won’t talk to anybody? Because last night in
Toledo their back-up band blew them off the stage.”
Bill Hill said, “Really?” He followed only part of
what Lynn was saying, but he paid attention, seated
comfortably now in crushed velvet and chrome with
a vodka and bitter lemon, letting Lynn get it all out
before he eased into the reason he was here.
TOUCH 29
“They’re pissed and arrogant,” Lynn was saying,
“because the band that opened the show played louder
than they did. I said to the road manager, ‘So cut the
back-up band’s power. I assumed you’d do that anyway.’
See, the Cobras have to overpower, put the amps way
up, since they have absolutely no talent at all. The
William Morris guy goes, ‘Don’t worry about it. All
you have to do, see about the grass and some candy.’
What? I go, ‘Candy?’ He goes, ‘Nose candy, dummy.
They like to have a little gig after, you understand?’ A
little gig. ‘Few grams of candy and some presentablelooking
chickies, okay?’ I can’t believe it. Artie’s nodding,
‘Right, don’t worry about it.’ I go, ‘Wait a minute.
What about all these people here?’ The William Morris
guy goes, ‘Did I invite them? Check with us first, doll,
before you make any plans.’ The road manager, Artie,
neither of them say a word. Grown men worried about
these spoiled kids in the next room. I look at Artie. He
goes, ‘Well, they do have a sound check they got to
make. Explain it to them, okay?’ All these people waiting
around, some of them hearing everything we’re saying.”
“Terrible,” Bill Hill said.
“They don’t care. For some reason, in this business,”
Lynn said, “they all get egoed out. The band,
especially punk rockers, the least thing happens they
get little bugs up their ass and then they’re pouty and
arrogant. Either that or they’re so wired you can’t
even communicate with them. I’m saying to myself
all this time, what am I doing here?”
“I’d quit,” Bill Hill said.
“I did.”
“Come on.” Bill Hill straightened, then relaxed,
not wanting to look eager.
30 ELMORE LEONARD
“Not in so many words. I said to the William
Morris guy, ‘You want some dope for a little gig after
and presentable-looking chickies? You want interviews
and appearances you can cancel and limos every place
they go and somebody to talk to pissed-off hotel managers
when they bust up the furniture and explain to
people when the freaks aren’t gonna show? Well, you
handle it, asshole,’ and I walked out. Artie followed me
out to the car—‘Where you going? Come on, I need
you. You can’t leave now.’ I go, ‘Artie, you’re all set. You
got William Morris,’ and drove away. If he fires me, I’ll
tell him I already quit. If he doesn’t, I don’t know, I’m
gonna rest before I think about it.”
Bill Hill came over and poured Lynn more
Spumante, waiting on the tired girl beneath the giant
face of Waylon Jennings. She looked small, helpless.
She had on cutoffs to show her slender legs and a
blousy, scooped-neck T-shirt that said Bob Marley
and the Wailers across the front.
He said, “Money isn’t everything, is it? If your
job irritates you.”
“If you let it,” Lynn said. “I read you don’t have to
worry or feel guilty or irritated if you don’t want to.”
“You can hide in the closet and not talk to anybody,”
Bill Hill said.
“No, it means some people aren’t happy unless
they’re unhappy. If you know that, it’s like it isn’t the
job that irritates you, it’s fighting the job. I mean I
shouldn’t blame the job. As that road manager says,
strokes and pokes. If I can’t cope then I should get
out. Unless I like being unhappy and irritable.”
“You know who’s a happy girl?” Bill Hill said,
going out to the kitchen with his empty glass.
“Virginia Worrel.”
TOUCH 31
“I know. She called me.”
“She did?” Bill Hill stood at the see-through
counter with the vodka in his hand, looking out at
Lynn, tiny in that crushed velvet, no more than a bite
for big Waylon behind her. “I didn’t know you two
were close.”
“I think she called everybody she knows.
Getting your sight restored, that’s pretty heavy.”
“She tell you about the guy, Juvenal?”
“When she wasn’t asking me about makeup. She
thinks I’m an expert. I told her all I use is a little
gloss—”
“What’d she say about him?”
“—Show Stopper pink lipstick if I’m wearing
light colors, I told her to try a little mascara. I
remember Virginia had nice eyelashes. Then I tried
to tell her how to apply it without mentioning, I don’t
know why, her eyes. Like if I said, ‘Your eyes,’ she’d
be blind again. It was weird.”
“What’d she say about Juvenal?”
“She said he was cute, very clean-cut looking.
That’d be a switch, after all the freaks with the hair
and the beads.”
“You want to meet him?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Virginia tell you she went to see him?”
“Yeah, they had coffee.”
“I tried to see him four times,” Bill Hill said.
“But it was like they were keeping him hidden. Then
right after I called you? I thought hell, I bet Virginia’s
seen him. So I called her. Sure enough, she went to
see him and they had quite a talk about one thing and
another. But you know what’s funny? See, Virginia
believes he healed her—”
32 ELMORE LEONARD
“Why not?” Lynn said. “That’s more exciting
than thinking it was your husband beating on you.
That’s one thing Doug never tried; he knew better.”
“What I’m saying,” Bill Hill said, still patient,
“Virginia believes it, but this Juvenal never claimed he did
or he didn’t. She said he avoided it, but without being obvious.
He was sort of funny and never got too serious.”
Lynn was nodding. “She said he was cute and
she said he made her feel good.”
“She mentioned that. Made her feel good—”
“Like he was very warm and sensitive and cared
about her,” Lynn said, “how she was. Not from the
words he used especially, I mean what he said, but it
was the feeling she got. She felt like, alive.”
“That’s interesting, isn’t it?” Bill Hill said. “She
said she had the feeling he knew things about her she
hadn’t told him.”
“She mentioned that,” Lynn said.
“She tell you he spent some time in a
monastery?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He was a Franciscan monk for about ten years.
She tell you he was a missionary down on the
Amazon River in Brazil?”
“Never mentioned it.”
“Came back after about four years,” Bill Hill
said, “spent some time in a seminary here and then
quit the order.”
“He did?”
“Quits the Franciscans and goes to work at an
alcohol rehabilitation center. He wasn’t a priest, he
was a brother, so I guess it was easier for him to quit.
But if he’s into this brotherhood work, being a missionary
and all, why would he quit the order?”
TOUCH 33
“I don’t know,” Lynn said. “Maybe something
about it irritated him, you know? Maybe they were
real strict and didn’t let him do what he liked doing.
Say, he wanted to work in the hospital and they put
him in an office or something. Like Audrey Hepburn
in The Nun’s Story finally got pissed off at the mother
superior or somebody and left.”
“I was thinking along those lines,” Bill Hill said.
“Like what if down in Brazil he was healing people
and they didn’t want him to, so they sent him home.”
“Why wouldn’t they want him to?”
“If the head Franciscan was jealous of him, or
they thought it would cause too much of a commotion.
People coming from all over to get cured, it
could interfere with the work they’re doing converting
natives. Pretty soon they’re setting up stands to
sell Juvie religious items—”
Lynn started to grin.
“What’s the matter?” Bill Hill said.
“Now we’re getting to it, aren’t we?”
“I’m saying they could’ve been afraid of commercializing
religion or a cult developing, the ignorant
natives holding him up as a saint, even worshipping
him. You see what I mean?”
“I ought to. I worked for you long enough.”
“I’m talking about something different.”
“I know,” Lynn said, “you’re talking about the real
thing, not Reverend Bobby Forshay down out of the
piny woods. God, Bobby used to make me nervous. He
was always trying to get me in his motel room or off
someplace. He was spooky, you know it?”
“You asked me— All right,” Bill Hill said,
“maybe just maybe, this Juvenal is the real article.
What would you think of that?”
34 ELMORE LEONARD
“I don’t know,” Lynn said. “What if he is?”
“Do you believe he can actually heal people?”
“I guess. I don’t know, funny things happen I
don’t understand. I believe, I don’t know how, but I
believe even Bobby Forshay actually healed a few
people, once he got it in his head he could do it.”
There, that’s what he wanted to hear. Bill Hill sat
back on the couch nodding thoughtfully, not so much
agreeing with what Lynn said, but happy to see she
still believed in basic stuff, even after spending nearly
a year in the world of rock and roll. She was still
little Lynn Marie Faulkner beneath the Bob Marly Tshirt
and the jive talk, your basic Florida Orange
Bowl pageant girl and onetime Fundamentalist.
He said, “You believe in miracles?”
She said, “Sure. I think they’re a good idea.”
“How’d you like to get to know this Juvenal?”
“For what reason?”
“See if he’s real.”
“And if he is?” Lynn paused. “He was in the religious
life once and he quit.”
“Don’t get ahead of me,” Bill Hill said. “Right
now I’m just curious. Aren’t you?”
“You want to get out of the r.v. business, wasting
your talent selling motor homes.”
“Are you curious or not?”
“Maybe a little. I haven’t met him yet.”
He liked that word yet. Bill Hill said, “You understand
why I can’t do a study on him. The priest there at
the Center knows all about Uni-Faith from Virginia, so
he’s suspicious, without coming right out and saying it.
You got the anonymous part of AA to contend with; so
nobody there’ll give you even his last name. They’re
cheerful, very friendly, and they sound like they’re try-
TOUCH 35
ing to help you. But you get the feeling you’re not
gonna learn a thing unless you’re in the club.”
“What club?” Lynn said.
“AA.”
She didn’t see it yet and he wasn’t going to rush
her.
“I was thinking, how’d you like to join for a few
days?”
Lynn said, “You know what I drink? Maybe two
of these a week,” nudging the Spumante bottle with
her toe.
Bill Hill had his answer ready. “Yeah, but you
got to watch Doug Whaley get smashed for ten years
almost. How was he in the morning, pretty bad?”
“He was a mess. Carried on like he was gonna
die till he had that first one.”
“You could fake it, couldn’t you? Act hung over,
shake a little bit?”
“I’d never be able to throw up as well as Doug
could.”
“I was thinking,” Bill Hill said, “you might even
pretend to have some kind of ailment you tell this
Juvenal about. See what he does.”
He took his time, letting Lynn fool with the idea.
It was still early, still quite light outside at twenty to
eight, a restful time of the day.
“I don’t know,” Lynn said, “it seems like it’d be a
waste of time. I find out he’s a faith healer, so what?
You’re not in the business anymore.”
“Does he have the power?” Bill Hill said. “If he
does, why’s he hiding, keeping it a secret? That’s
what intrigues me about it. Like Virginia says, there’s
something there you feel when you’re with him, and
I want to know what it is.”
36 ELMORE LEONARD
Lynn was thoughtful, off somewhere. “Pretend I
have some kind of ailment? Like what?”
“Well, if you’re an alcoholic it could be gastritis,
I suppose ulcers, a bad liver. Didn’t Bobby Forshay
cure you one time?”
“That was sugar diabetes. But I couldn’t pull
something like that, I mean that they could check on
and see I don’t have.”
“We’ll think of something.” Bill Hill wasn’t worried
about a detail. He had thought it was going to
take more persuading and convincing, but he was
almost home.
“It might be kinda fun,” Lynn said. “Different
anyway, huh?”
“Say, intellectually interesting,” Bill Hill said,
“even if it doesn’t make us a dime.”
She was silent again.
“What’s the place like, a rest home?”
“You could say that.”
“How would I get in, just tell them I’m an alcoholic?”
“It takes a little more than that. Usually there’s a
wait—”
“How long?”
“—unless the person that comes is in really bad
shape.” Bill Hill smiled at Lynn. “Have another
drink, honey. Finish the bottle and we’ll get you
another. Though I think it’d be quicker if you
switched to vodka, and you won’t be so thirsty in the
morning.”
“You mean tonight?” Lynn was pushing herself
up out of the crushed velvet. “You want me to go in
there smashed?”
“They won’t think anything of it,” Bill Hill said.
TOUCH 37
5
AUGUST MURRAY said later that outside of himself
and of course the twenty from the Gray Army of
the Holy Ghost, practically everybody in the courtroom
was black. He said, “You want to see a profile
of Detroit, go down to Recorder’s Court in the Frank
Murphy Hall of in-Justice.”
The court clerk, sitting at a counter in front of
the judge’s bench, was black. A police sergeant, the
bailiff, next to the clerk, was black. There were black
probation people and skinny black policewomen
with shoulderbags, three black defense lawyers, a
young white-girl defense lawyer trying to prove
something, another blond girl recording the cases,
and a two-hour line—while August Murray waited
his turn—of black prostitutes, black shoplifters,
black guys who beat up their common-law wives,
black people charged with larceny under a hundred
dollars, assault and battery, indecent exposure—
maybe there were a few white people. Judge Kinsella
was swarthy turning gray, supposedly white. The
assistant prosecutor under all the hair looked like
some kind of hybrid. Black voices—a girl saying,
“I’m already doing sixteen to two out to the House.”
Sullen or half asleep, very few of the voices
addressed the court as “Your Honor” or had much to
offer in their defense. The voices made sounds.
August Murray—waiting through all that, until the
court clerk called file number 7753047 and his
name—would have a few things to say.
He stood at the microphone facing the clerk’s
counter and the judge’s bench and waited another
five minutes, at least, staring at the judge, trying to
get his eye. The judge was talking to a black policewoman,
signing a paper, having her swear to something
with her hand raised. A black lawyer was leaning
on the counter talking to the clerk now. The
police sergeant next to the clerk said, “You people
back there, take a seat.”
Murray wanted to look around, but kept staring
at the judge, waiting for the judge to look up and
notice all the young white men in the courtroom,
twenty of them among the black relatives of the
defendants, all wearing light gray armbands and six
of them carrying cardboard signs, turned in, they
would hold up at the right time. August Murray wore
a long-sleeved brown sport shirt, a white T-shirt
showing beneath the open collar. He carried a silver
pen and pencil set and two Magic Markers, a red one
and a blue one, clipped to his shirt pocket. Around
his left bicep was the armband of the Gray Army of
the Holy Ghost, a soaring white dove appliquéd on a
field of light gray felt. He kept waiting for the judge
to notice his armband and become aware of all the
other armbands in the courtroom.
But when the judge did look up he didn’t seem
to notice.
August Murray stood at parade rest, his brown
crepe-soled shoes exactly eighteen inches apart,
TOUCH 39
right hand holding his left wrist behind his back. He
would maintain this stance throughout the proceeding.
The court clerk said, “Mr. Murray, you’re
charged with assault and battery—” He looked down
at the counter again and said something to the police
sergeant next to him. Their heads remained together
looking down at the file, the clerk turning a page and
turning it back again.
August Murray, staring at the clerk now, was
sure they were doing it on purpose. He said to the
clerk in his mind, Look at me. Look at me.
Dark hair in place, combed straight back; no
sideburns or excess hair on his face. Clean. Serious.
Not about to take any second-class treatment or be
shuffled, pushed aside. The clerk would know immediately
when he looked at him—
“Albert—Father Albert Navaroli,” the clerk said.
“Is Father Navaroli in the courtroom?”
He was here. Murray had seen the little guinea
priest in the hall. The hippie guinea priest and another
priest.
The police sergeant held up his hand. “Come up
here please, Father.”
Please, Father— The cop had said to Murray,
“Stand right there.” Judged before a word was said,
who was right and who was wrong. Nothing had
changed at the Hall of in-Justice.
The clerk said to Murray, “Are you represented
by counsel?”
Murray said, “I represent myself.”
Then a conference between the clerk and the
judge before the clerk sat down again and the young
assistant prosecutor with his hair touching his suit
40 ELMORE LEONARD
coat said to the hippie, curly-haired street priest,
“Father Navaroli, would you tell us what happened,
please?”
Murray glanced at the priest then. He was shorter than
August Murray’s five seven and a half, even with all his
curly hair. The priest was wearing a black suit with a
Roman collar. At his mass the priest had worn vestments
that looked like they’d been made for some kind of an
Indian ceremony, with fringe and a beaded stole.
The priest said, “Well, it was during the ten
o’clock mass, right after the offertory. We were
singing the Sanctus—”
“The what?” August Murray said. “You were
singing Holy, Holy, Holy.”
“Mr. Murray—” the assistant prosecutor began.
“I’m asking him a question as the right of counsel,”
Murray said.
The judge spoke for the first time, calmly. He
said, “If you’re representing yourself you can crossexamine.
But when your turn comes.”
A quiet putdown. Murray stared at the judge and
watched him look away.
There were other interruptions. People coming
up and whispering to the clerk, to the judge, the
judge talking to someone and not paying any attention
as the priest continued.
“This man, Mr. Murray,” the priest said, “came
in with several others and began distributing pamphlets
right up the main aisle when I saw them, disturbing
the people hearing mass—”
“Mass?” August Murray said. “That was a
mass?”
“Mr. Murray,” the assistant prosecutor said,
“you’ve already been told—”
TOUCH 41
“It didn’t look like a mass to me,” Murray said,
staring at the judge. “Guitars, tamborines. I thought
maybe it was a square dance.” He smiled a little now,
testing the judge. “You know what I mean, Your
Honor? Some kind of a new-wave Vatican II hoedown.”
The judge didn’t smile or respond and the prosecutor,
as though in pain, shook his head and told
Murray to be quiet during Father Navaroli’s testimony.
Not please be quiet. Murray kept his hands
behind his back, not moving, knowing his people in
the audience, scattered through the semicircle of
benches, were there waiting.
The curly-haired priest said he addressed Mr.
Murray and his group from the altar, asking them to
kindly take a pew or else leave the church, as they
had not been authorized to distribute literature.
Murray approached him, the priest said, and began
yelling, using abusive language.
“What exactly did he say?” the prosecutor said.
The clerk looked at the wall clock above the door
and then at his watch. The judge seemed deep in
thought.
“Did he place his hands on you?” the prosecutor
added.
The priest cleared his throat. “He said, Mr.
Murray said, ‘This is not the holy sacrifice of the
mass. This is a clown show, a mockery, and a sacrilege.’
Then he pushed his pamphlets at me, trying to
get me to take them. The pamphlets fell—”
“He knocked them out of my hands,” Murray
said.
“He grabbed my stole and tried to pull it off,” the
priest said. “I caught the end of the stole and pulled,
42 ELMORE LEONARD
like a tug-a-war, and that’s when he pushed me with
both hands, hard, knocking me down.”
“He tripped on his microphone cord,” Murray
said.
The judge was looking at him now, finally, about
to get into it. He said, “One more interruption, Mr.
Murray, and I’m holding you in contempt of court—
”
“Sir?”
“You’re trying for one hundred dollars or ten
days in the Wayne County Jail.” The judge seemed to
pause, finally noticing Murray’s armband.
Murray grinned, giving the judge a sheepish, little-
kid look. “You mean just for saying, ‘Sir,’ Your
Honor?”
“If you interrupt testimony again.” Now the
judge was studying the file in front of him. He
looked up, saying, “Have you been in trouble before
this?”
Murray shook his head. “No, Your Honor.”
The assistant prosecutor said, “He’s got two priors.
Assault and disorderly conduct.”
The judge was looking at Murray, waiting.
Murray said, “You asked if I’d been in trouble,”
trying the little-kid grin again. “I didn’t consider
those charges much trouble, Your Honor. I was put
on probation.”
“For the assault,” the clerk said. “He violated his
probation with the disorderly and was fined two hundred
dollars, November 1976.”
“You don’t consider that being in trouble?” the
judge asked.
“Your Honor,” Murray said, “are you asking me
to testify against myself?”
TOUCH 43
The clerk saw it coming. He looked at the clock
again and sat back in his chair, glancing at the police
sergeant. The young assistant prosecutor made a little
turn with his hands in his pockets, walked over to
his table. Judge Kinsella seemed tired, though it was
only 11:15 in the morning.
He said, “The court requests you answer questions
that are a matter of record.”
“If it’s in the records,” Murray said, still calm
though not grinning now, “why ask the question?
Unless it’s to trap me. You asked if I’d been in trouble
before. I said no, I didn’t consider it trouble. Did
I answer your question or not?”
The clerk turned, half rising to have a conference
with the judge. Murray didn’t mind the wait now; he
had them irked and edgy.
He said, “Your Honor?”
But the judge didn’t look up.
“Your Honor?”
Now he did. “Wait till we’re finished here.”
“I just want to say I think it’s open to question
whether you’re qualified, Your Honor, to sit in judgment
on this particular hearing—”
The judge was staring now, yes, eyes fixed,
brought to attention; the clerk turning back again as
Murray delivered his statement in a dry, unhurried
tone.
“—considering the fact you’ve been excommunicated
from the Church, Your Honor, following your
recent divorce and, if I’m not mistaken, remarriage?
Since this is basically a religious question we’re talking
about here—”
The judge seemed to be getting hold of himself,
formulating his words, or counting to ten. He said,
44 ELMORE LEONARD
then, “No, the question is whether or not you are in
contempt of this court—”
“Your Honor, I feel the judgment of an excommunicated
Catholic layman could be prejudicial in
examining my right to defend my church and its
sacred traditions from a carnival atmosphere that one
not in the Church any longer might fail to recognize.”
Murray paused, giving the judge a chance to
speak.
“I’ve been patient with you. I feel I’ve indicated
sufficient warning—”
That was enough.
“Let me say, Your Honor,” Murray began again,
“I believe you should disqualify yourself on prejudicial
grounds and appoint a judge not subjectively
concerned.”
“Mr. Murray”—the judge’s tone was brittle, controlled
with an effort—“this is a misdemeanor court
hearing on a charge of assault and battery. You will
not open your mouth again unless I give you permission.
Is that clear?”
“I want the record to show, Your Honor, that you
are now speaking in a subjective and emotional fit of
anger—”
“You’re in contempt!” The judge cut him off,
straightening as if to rise out of his high-backed
leather chair. “And will be remanded to the custody
of the bailiff!”
“I want a jury trial,” Murray said. “God help me,
in another court. It’s my right and you know it.”
Now. Murray unlocked his hands, bringing them
to his sides. He saw the judge’s gaze rise suddenly
and the police sergeant come to his feet, hand going
to his holstered revolver.
TOUCH 45
“You gonna shoot them?” Murray said.
The signs were up now, he knew, he could feel
them before he glanced over his shoulder to see the
words, red on white squares of cardboard, OUTRAGE .
. . OUTRAGE . . . OUTRAGE . . . OUTRAGE . . . OUTRAGE
. . . OUTRAGE, six of them held high, scattered
through the courtroom, and the twenty members of
the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost standing now,
silently facing the court.
“Go ahead,” Murray said to the police sergeant,
“shoot them.”
46 ELMORE LEONARD
6
A LITTLE GRAY-HAIRED WOMAN in a sleeveless
yellow blouse brought Lynn a breakfast tray at
7:30. She said, “How you doing? I’m Edith, I’m your
Big Sister.”
Lynn could smell oatmeal. She said, “Where am
I?”
“You’re in detox. Don’t you remember coming
here?”
“I mean where am I?”
Lynn was still wearing her scooped-neck Bob
Marley and the Wailers T-shirt and cutoffs. She sat
up in the single bed, thinking of an orphanage, not a
hospital. She had pictured white walls and hospital
beds. The walls were pale green and needed paint.
The two empty beds in the room, made up, were covered
with faded summer spreads. Sunlight came in
the window through a heavy-gauge wire screen. The
place was old, an institution.
“Few days, once you get dried out, they’ll move
you up to four,” the little gray-haired woman said.
“I’ll take you around, help you get some other things
if you want. I don’t see a suitcase anywhere—”
“I’m at Sacred Heart, huh?” Lynn said, practicing,
trying to sound foggy and vague. Her head was
fairly clear though it throbbed and she was nauseated.
She could remember one hangover before this,
years and years ago, and hadn’t had anything to drink
for weeks.
“There was a bar—I was sitting there talking to
a friend about getting straightened out—”
She had not worn her eyelashes or skin gloss, but
had rubbed on a dark red shade of lipstick Bill Hill
said would make her look pale, left the apartment
about 2:30 A.M. after two and a half bottles of
Spumante—giggling, telling him she was going to
walk in naked, liven the place up—and had been
dropped off in front of the Center with Bill Hill’s
parting words, “Ring the bell then quick see if you
can throw up a little.”
“Your friend done you a favor,” the little grayhaired
woman said. “You don’t look too bad except
maybe your eyes.”
The doctor asked how long she had been drinking.
Lynn said, oh, about ten years. She said lately she’d
been drinking about a gallon of wine a day and carried
a pint of vodka in her purse just in case. The
doctor didn’t seem impressed.
The nurse, taking blood samples, asked if she’d
been eating regularly. Lynn said, oh, you know, now
and then. The nurse said well, she didn’t look too
bad, considering.
What was this, not too bad? Compared to the
other women wandering around here, with their
bruised white skin and circles and oily hair, she
looked like a homecoming queen.
The nice woman counselor, sitting at her metal
desk smoking cigarettes (everybody here, Lynn
48 ELMORE LEONARD
decided later, smoked two packs a day) asked if she
remembered coming. Lynn said, vaguely.
“Have you experienced blackouts?”
“Some.”
“For extended periods or just the night before?”
“I guess both.”
“Do you think you’re alcoholic?”
“I guess I must be, all I’ve been drinking.”
The woman counselor said it wasn’t the quantity
that counted, it was the dependency. The first step
was to realize she was powerless over alcohol, then
learn to accept it, and finally substitute an entirely
new attitude for the dependence.
“How?”
That would come. She’d see films on alcoholism,
hear talks by recovering alcoholics working
in the field and, once through orientation, take part
in group sessions twice a day during the seventeen
weeks of the program.
Seventeen weeks?
The woman counselor asked about her moods—
any feelings of depression or anxiety?—to the point
that Lynn was afraid the woman suspected something
and was trying to trap her. When the phone
rang and the woman counselor walked over to the
window with the receiver, looking out as she spoke,
her back to Lynn, Lynn looked at the steno pad on
the desk and saw the notations, “Natural but somewhat
evasive . . . Underlying feelings of guilt . . .
Appearance not too bad.”
When the counselor returned to her desk Lynn
asked if she could use her phone after. The counselor
explained that in order to concentrate on her immediate
problem and not be concerned with anything
TOUCH 49
else, Lynn would have no contacts outside the Center
for the first five weeks.
“You mean I’m trapped here?”
“You can leave anytime you want,” the counselor
said, “but if you stay you have to play by the house
rules.”
“I thought the door was locked.”
“To keep friends and relatives and all their good
intentions, and all your old problems, out,” the counselor
said, “not to keep you in.”
Lynn felt better, but tried not to show it.
* * *
She studied a crucifix on the wall: a pale plaster
Jesus on a varnished cross, the figure contorted, eyes
raised in agony. Dramatic, but was it necessary? She
liked plain crosses better, without the figure.
Lynn’s gaze moved to a blown-up photograph of
an empty room littered with old newspapers and
junk, the hall or lobby of a condemned building
where street bums would find shelter.
Lynn said, “Is that this place before it was fixed
up?”
The man sitting next to her in the booth, stirring
his coffee, said, “I don’t know what it’s supposed to
be. Looks like some dump on Michigan Avenue.”
Maybe the photograph hung on the wall as a
reminder, or an option. Huddle in that filthy place
sweating or shivering, or both; or relax here in the
coffee shop of the Sacred Heart Center, second floor,
across from the TV lounge. There were tables,
booths along the windowed wall that looked down on
the backyard and the volleyball court; soft-drink,
50 ELMORE LEONARD
cigarette, and candy vending machines and a pair of
sixty-cup coffee urns with trays of cups, cream pitchers,
and packets of sugar. The coffee was free, very
strong, and all you wanted.
Lynn had eaten lunch, sat through an orientation
session, watched a film called Bourbon in Suburbia,
and had been in the coffee shop nearly an hour, wondering
if she should ask about Juvenal, look for him,
or wait until they happened to meet. It was kind of
interesting watching people, sizing them up.
They used a lot of cream and sugar and ate
candy, passing around a box of butter mints, and
smoked cigarettes. Some of the men rolled their own
and, at first, Lynn thought they were making joints,
but it was Bugle pipe tobacco, a blue package they
rolled up and shoved into their back pockets. People,
the residents, sat around awhile and left and others
came in—
Considerably more men than women, a few
black people, which, for some reason, surprised
Lynn. A good-looking black girl with a cute figure.
Two tables of bridge. It was hot in the room, even
with the windows open. Looking down at the yard
she saw a younger group sitting in the sun, on a
bench and the grass nearby, four boys with their
shirts off—actually young men in their twenties—
and a girl wearing cutoffs and a halter top.
The little gray-haired woman, Edith, sitting
across from Lynn, said, “They got the problem, you
know it? Oh, there’s plenty of others, I don’t mean
you have to be a hippie or anything. But drugs and
booze, that’s the killer. You notice they don’t give you
any tranquilizers here unless you’re climbing up the
wall.”
TOUCH 51
The man next to Lynn told them how many
Valium he used to take a day; sometimes six, eight,
plus a couple of fifths.
Lynn said she wondered if the Stroh’s Beer sign
across the freeway bothered anybody, tempted them.
The man sitting next to her said it didn’t bother
him none; beer always gave him a headache.
Edith would stop people and introduce them to
Lynn, saying, almost proudly, “She only come in last
night.” As though look, she’s better already. “I’m her
Big Sister.”
A skinny, hunch-shouldered man said he came in
three days ago, fella told him he was his Big Brother
and he hadn’t seen the son of a bitch since. Edith was
concerned and told him he should talk to a counselor.
The skinny, hunch-shouldered man said he wanted to
call Wayne County Social Service, but they wouldn’t
let him. He said how was he supposed to get his
check if they didn’t know where he was?
There were a number of those skinny, hillbillylooking
guys, recent skid-row graduates who still
looked soiled and wore second-hand clothes that hung
on them. What happened to guys’ asses who drank too
much? But there, playing bridge, was a man who had to
be an executive of some kind, distinguished, even with
his florid Irish face and little slit of a mouth. Now there
was an alcoholic. But if that was the look, what about
the black guy with the beard and the yellow tank top?
Or the fat girl in the Big Mac bib overalls, awful hair,
sitting with the blond lady in the designer blouse and
white earrings? There was no obvious type, and yet all
were aware of something Lynn would never understand.
No matter how well she faked it she would still feel left
out as they smiled and shook their heads and talked
52 ELMORE LEONARD
among themselves, passing time, hopefully saving their
lives.
It was interesting. Then less interesting, thinking,
What am I doing here? Quit fooling around and
go look for the guy, Juvenal. Except she didn’t want
to appear to know anything about him. She didn’t
want to ask for him—
As it turned out, she didn’t have to.
Lynn had a feeling—it was strange—the
moment she saw him come in and begin talking to
people, touching shoulders, moving from table to
table on his way to the coffee urns, she knew it was
Juvenal: not from Virginia’s or Bill Hill’s description,
but as if she had known him from some time before,
when they were little kids, and recognized him now,
grown up but not changed that much.
He had a boyish look, light brown hair down on
his forehead, slim body in a blue-and-red striped knit
shirt and jeans. Very friendly, the outgoing type—
and yet he seemed a little shy. Was that it? No, not
shy. What it was, he seemed genuinely glad to see
everybody but was quiet about it, natural. Maybe a
little naive? No, it was more like he was unaware of
himself. That would be a switch, Lynn thought, a guy
who’s the center of attention not trying to act cool or
entertaining or anything. People were getting up and
leaving, but stopping to say hello to him.
Edith, her Big Sister, said, “Oh, shit, I got to
meet with my group. I shouldn’t say that, it’s doing
me a world of good, but I get tired of thinking all the
time, trying to say how I feel.”
The man next to Lynn said, “Quit your bitching,
you’re sober, aren’t you?” He got up with his empty
cup and left.
TOUCH 53
Lynn was alone in the booth by the time Juvenal
got his cup of coffee, looked around the room, and
came over to her.
He said, “Can I join you?”
“Sure.”
“You’re Lynn, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
He slid in across from her. “I’m Juvenal—on the
staff here. You came in this morning early . . .” He
paused, staring at her with a warm expression, nice
brown eyes, super eyelashes.
She wanted to ask him if they were real.
He said, “You look great. You know it?”
It stopped her. “Oh—do you think so?”
“How do you feel?”
“Not too bad. A little, you know, fuzzy.”
“Your eyes are clear.” He smiled and there was
the innocent look. “You have very pretty eyes.”
“Wow,” Lynn said, “all the compliments. I’m not
used to it.”
“You don’t look like you’ve been drinking, I
mean too heavily.”
“I thought the amount isn’t what you go by.”
“No, but after a while it shows.” He smiled
again. “What’re you doing here, hiding?”
“From what?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
Lynn hesitated. “I thought you were being
funny.”
“No, I’m curious. What’re you doing here?”
“Isn’t this a place you dry out?”
“You’re not an alcoholic,” Juvenal said.
“That’s funny, the doctor didn’t question it, or
the nurse, or my counselor.”
54 ELMORE LEONARD
“Come on, tell me.”
Looking at his eyes, into his eyes, she felt
strangely moved and wanted to say, I can see you in
there, I know you.
What she said was, “You’ve got it turned
around,” not believing she was saying it, but knowing
she had to be honest with him and not play games
or try to put something over on him. “You’re the one
that’s hiding. I came here to find you.”
“Oh, no. Oh, Christ,” Father Quinn said. They had seen
him and there was nothing he could do but continue
along the short hall to the lobby where the right-winger
was waiting, the right-winger with a folded newspaper
under his arm and a seedy old priest it looked as though
the right-winger was delivering.
Father Quinn did not like August Murray. He
considered him a pain in the ass and a humorless
bore; Christ, anyone who could get excited about
bringing Latin back to the Church. But August
Murray—since the first time he had visited a few
months ago—had been bringing bundles of used
clothing, showing an interest in the Center, though
he seemed to have little or no understanding of
drunks. He was weird, but he was a do-gooder, so
Father Quinn tolerated him, let him do some good.
August said, “Father, I want you to meet Father
Nestor. He’s a Franciscan. Or he was until recently.”
An old man in an old black suit, a limp fringe of
gray hair and practically no grip to his handshake.
The priest said, “How do you do.” The corners of his
mouth looked sticky.
“Father Nestor’s pastor out at Saint John Bosco
in Almont. You know where Almont is, Father?”
TOUCH 55
Quinn said no, but he was happy to meet Father
Nestor. It was a part of the work he had to put up
with, being civil.
August said, “It’s out toward Lapeer, northeast.
Father Nestor—I’ve been telling him about the
Center and he took up a special collection last
Sunday at mass he wants to give you.”
The old priest was holding a manila envelope
with both hands.
Strange. Quinn said, “Well, we certainly appreciate
it, Father.” But it was strange, a contribution from
a parish he’d never heard of.
“We collected eighty-two dollars,” Father Nestor
said.
And Quinn was thinking, That must be some
parish. August Murray was saying, “I told Father
you’d take a few minutes of your time to tell him
about your work here. I’m gonna run upstairs and say
hello to Juvie.” He was already moving away.
“He might be out,” Quinn said.
“No, I called. He knows I’m coming.” Going
toward the stairway now that rose next to the elevator.
“August”—trying to sound pleasant—“don’t
bother him if he’s in detox, all right?”
“I know where he’ll be,” August Murray said. He
went up the stairs, past an empty bird cage on the
landing, and made the turn to the second floor.
“Let me ask you something first,” Lynn said. “Did
you ever live in Miami?”
“Uh-unh.”
“Dalton, Georgia?”
“Nope.”
56 ELMORE LEONARD
“And you were never with the rodeo—I don’t
know why, I have a feeling we used to know each
other. I don’t mean we met one time, I mean we knew
each other.”
“You’re a friend of Virginia’s,” Juvenal said.
“Another friend of hers’s been coming here.”
“That’s Bill Hill. Virginia and I both used to
work for him.”
“And he put you up to it,” Juvenal said. “Why?”
“See if you’re real.”
“I’m real. I’m sitting here with you.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You want to know if I can actually heal people,
perform miracles?”
“I don’t have any reason to doubt it,” Lynn said,
“but it’s a lot to believe, isn’t it? See, the last miracle
worker I knew was always trying to get me in his
room.”
Juvenal, grinning, seemed to appreciate that.
Then, for a moment, looking past her, the smile left
his face. It was gone and then back again, though not
with the same warmth and intensity, and he raised his
hand to wave someone over.
Lynn looked around, surprised to see the room
nearly empty. A man with his hair combed straight
back was coming toward the booth. He had a row of
pencils or pens in his shirt pocket and was carrying
a newspaper, taking it from under his arm.
Juvenal said, “August, this is Lynn. Have a cup
with us.”
“I don’t drink coffee,” August Murray said. He
glanced at Lynn, nodding, and laid the newspaper
open in front of Juvenal.
“Now what’d you do?” Juvenal said.
TOUCH 57
“Right there, with the picture.”
“Doesn’t look like you,” Juvenal said.
“It was taken four years ago at Kennedy Square.
We were counterdemonstrating against some hippie
peace march.”
Lynn moved over. Juvenal was studying the paper
spread open on the table and August didn’t seem to
know where to sit. He slid in next to Lynn, but didn’t
look at her. He watched Juvenal reading the news story,
Juvenal smiling a little. Lynn was thinking that August
was about the squarest-looking guy she’d ever seen. She
hoped he wasn’t a good friend of Juvenal.
Lynn said, “How’re you doing? August, is it?”
He said that’s right, showing absolutely no interest.
She could be sitting at another table.
Juvenal brought her in. He looked up and said,
“August is head of a group called Outrage and they
demonstrate a lot. This is about him getting arrested.”
He looked down at the paper again. “What was
it, disturbing the peace?”
“Assault,” August said.
“Yeah, I see it. You hit this . . . Father Navaroli?”
“I didn’t hit him, I tried to hand him some pamphlets.”
“And you told the judge he wasn’t qualified?”
“He’s a dumb guinea fallen-away, excommunicated
Catholic. What does he know? It was like they
were having a trial instead of a hearing. I said, ‘Wait
a minute. Nobody’s bothered to ask me, but I want a
jury trial.’ You understand, when it’s just a misdemeanor
they don’t like to take time, but I knew I
could demand it and I did, a twelve-man jury trial.”
Lynn looked from one to the other, from August,
very serious, to Juvenal, amused.
58 ELMORE LEONARD
Something didn’t seem right. If Juvenal had been
in a religious order, not a priest but close to it, why
did he think this was funny? Look at it another way,
if Juvenal thought it was funny, why didn’t August?
Lynn said, “Outrage is the name of your group?”
“Organization uniting—” Juvenal began. “What
is it, August?”
“Organization Unifying Traditional Rites As
God Expects.”
“They go around breaking up guitar masses,”
Juvenal said.
“That’s quite an oversimplification.” August
seemed offended. “Our purpose, as you well know, is
to restore traditional forms of worship.”
“As God expects,” Juvenal said.
“As handed down for two thousand years from
Christ and the Apostles,” August said.
Juvenal looked at Lynn. “Are you Catholic?”
“No, but I was married to sort of one,” Lynn
said. “Except he never went to church. I know what
you’re talking about, but I don’t know much about
it.”
“August likes Latin,” Juvenal said. “He doesn’t
like the mass in English. Or peace marches or
Communists.”
“I don’t know any Communists,” Lynn said, “but
I met a guy from William Morris who’s a fascist.”
“They’re different,” Juvenal said. “I’ve met some
fascists myself, in some pretty unexpected places.”
“They’re very serious,” Lynn said. And made a
face, hunching her shoulders, aware of August next
to her.
Juvenal caught it, smiling, shaking his head.
August didn’t react, or wasn’t listening. He said,
TOUCH 59
“You say I don’t like the mass in English. Listen, we
have at least two hundred thousand followers in the
United States we’re sure of. Several thousand—I’ll
bet ten thousand here in Detroit.”
“Followers of what?” Lynn said. She felt brave
with Juvenal across the table.
August turned and looked at her for the first time
as he said, “The Society of Saint Pius X, the traditionalist
movement to restore Latin to the mass and
sacramental worship.”
He meant it too. God, Lynn thought, you don’t
fool with August. It was funny Juvenal could get
away with his remarks, his amused expression.
Juvenal said, “How about the Gray Army of the
Holy Spirit, August? How’s that doing?”
“The Gray Army of the Holy Ghost,” August
said. “We have currently over two hundred active
members. Most of them, incidentally, will be out at
Saint John Bosco Sunday. Did you get your invitation?”
Juvenal was looking down at the paper again.
“Yeah, I did, but I don’t know if I can make it.”
“What’s the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost?”
Lynn said.
“I told Father Nestor I was sure you’ll be at the
dedication,” August said. “You can imagine how
important it is to him, his first parish.”
“I’d like to—” Juvenal said.
Lynn watched him. No, he wouldn’t. He didn’t
know how to lie and it showed.
“—but things come up around here. Sometimes
Sunday’s a bad day.”
“I would think you’d feel obligated,” August said,
“a former religious giving support to a brother—”
60 ELMORE LEONARD
“You’ll have a lot of people, won’t you?”
“Father Nestor and I both assume with your
background and what you’ve experienced, ten years
in the order—”
“Eleven,” Juvenal said.
Something was going on. Lynn could feel it,
something passing between them. August seemed to
be quietly putting him on the spot, with even a subtle
hint of blackmail.
“Eleven,” August said. “How many, four years at
Sao Pio Decimo.” He leaned close to the table. “You
think that’s a coincidence? Pio Decimo, Pius the
Tenth. Father Nestor said the children would ask you
if you’d seen ghosts and witches—”
“I told them no ghosts, a few witches,” Juvenal
said. “They’d hustle guys in the back of the church.”
August didn’t smile. He said, “How can you dedicate
eleven years of your life to God, then throw it
all away?”
“I haven’t thrown it away,” Juvenal said. “I was
into that, now I’m into something else.”
“Taking care of drunks—It doesn’t seem a waste
to you?”
“What should I be doing?” Juvenal said.
And August said, “I don’t have to tell you.”
Very dramatic, almost grim. Lynn glanced at
August. So serious he was weird. While Juvenal
leaned on his arms and was patient. She should probably
get up and leave them alone; but that seemed
dumb after going to all the trouble to get here. Now
in a front-row seat. If they wanted her to leave somebody
would have to push her out.
It wouldn’t be Juvenal—her new buddy, already
feeling close to him and not knowing why. He said to
TOUCH 61
her, “What did you want to know? Oh, you asked
about the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost.” And looked
at August.
“The Gray Army is the task force corps of
Outrage, our activist group,” August said.
“They’re the demonstrators,” Juvenal said.
“They wear armbands and pass out literature and get
arrested. Isn’t that right, August?”
August was giving Juvenal a silent, dramatic
stare. “I think we should have a few words in private.”
Lynn began to move, picking up her cigarettes;
but Juvenal said, “Listen, I’m gonna have to get back
to work, but why don’t you two stay and talk?”
August got up, taking the newspaper, folding it
as he said, “Father Nestor’s waiting for me. I’ll tell
him you’ll be there Sunday, all right? In fact I’ll pick
you up.”
Juvenal shrugged and said fine. Maybe to get rid
of the guy, Lynn wasn’t sure. She watched August
walking away and called after him, “It was nice
meeting you!” But August didn’t look back. She said
to Juvenal, “You were gonna leave me with him?”
“Why? August is fun. Don’t you think so?”
“He’s a spook,” Lynn said. “In fact the whole
thing was spooky. What’s going on Sunday?”
“A church dedication. I used to know the pastor
and, I don’t know, he’d like me to be there.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Lynn said.
Juvenal was looking at his watch. “I’ve got to get
going.” He slid out of the booth, taking his cup.
Lynn said, “Can I talk to you later on?”
“Let’s see what happens,” Juvenal said, again the
mystery man.
62 ELMORE LEONARD
7
IN THE CAR, August Murray’s black Dodge
Charger, Father Nestor said, “I should have talked to
him if you’re not sure.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t sure, I said at first he
tried to get out of it. He was different,” August
said. “He wasn’t as . . . like humble as he was the
other times.”
“He practiced humility. As I remember he was
very humble, obedient, as we all were . . . poor, and
I presume, chaste. Poverty, chastity, and obedience—
now, I don’t know.” Father Nestor’s head nodded with
the motion of the car. He said then, “Oh, my, I think
I have to go to the toilet.”
“Why didn’t you go while we were there?”
“I did. I have to go again.”
August didn’t say anything for a minute or so.
He was thinking of a headline for a pamphlet he’d
print—also use it as a news release—when he got
back to the shop. The Brother Juvenal Story. No—
The Miracle-Working Missionary.
The Miracle Worker of the Amazon.
“I have to go bad,” Father Nestor said.
In the Footsteps of Saint Francis. A modern-day
Franciscan friar . . .
“Once the urge comes,” Father Nestor said,
“there isn’t much I can do. The doctor says a parasite
in my intestine causes the dysentery. I could have it
for years.”
“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” August said,
moving the Charger north on Gratiot Avenue, shifting
lanes in the homebound traffic, blowing his horn at cars
poking along. “Half asleep,” August said. “They stop
off for a shot and a beer and can’t see their way home.
End up in a drunk tank. I don’t know, I can’t figure it
out why he’s working in a place like that. I said, ‘Don’t
you think it’s a waste?’ ”
“I hope we’re almost there,” Father Nestor said.
August Murray’s Zippy Printing was on Conner,
across from the Detroit City Airport, within a few
blocks of De La Salle, where August had attended
high school, and less than a mile from Saint David,
on East Outer Drive, where he had gone to grade
school. August Murray was thirty-seven, had never
been married, did not date girls, and had been a
member of Saint David Parish all his life, except for
a year and a half in the seminary. His parents had
moved to Tampa, Florida. He lived alone now in the
apartment over his shop, above the black-and-yellow
sign that said ZIPPY PRINTING and, smaller, WHILE-UWAIT.
August parked in back, off the alley, hurried with
his ring of fifteen keys, and pointed to the lavatory as
he went in through the back hall. Father Nestor
walked in stiff-legged behind him.
August’s own father would have walked in here
and had a fit—the shop silent in half light that
showed through the storefront venetian blinds. A
quiet printing shop was a sin. Offset presses, A.B.
64 ELMORE LEONARD
Dick 360’s, doing nothing. The IBM copier sitting
there; the camera, the cutter and folder at the end of
the worktable—the room close, smelling of ink. His
father had printed parish bulletins and napkins and
matchbooks and kept his accounts at the blondwooden
desk against the wall. August dropped his
newspaper on the desk and turned on the electric fan
that sat on the file cabinet.
With all that was happening, August wasn’t
going to waste his time on cocktail napkins and
matchbooks.
He wished the priest would hurry up. Old priests
in shiny black suits, withered necks sticking out of
round Roman collars, seemed more useless than old
laymen in sport shirts and straw hats. What did you
do with them? Let them say six o’clock mass at a
side altar somewhere—
Unless you were lucky enough to find one like
Nestor and you saw the opportunity to squeeze a little
more use out of him.
Father Nestor Czarnicki, OFM, fifty-two years a
priest, nineteen years of it served in Santarem,
Brazil, on the Amazon River. Returned with amebic
dysentery and a story about a Franciscan brother
who performed miracles.
Nestor Czarnicki—uncle of Greg Czarnicki,
member of the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost—invited
to a meeting to tell about his life as a missionary.
And August stunned by what he heard (“And with
the healing of the child, the manifestation of the
blood; this, to me, the unmistakable sign . . .”) and
the opportunity he saw before him.
Father Nestor, who said mass in a mixture of
Latin and Portuguese, never in English, no, he could
TOUCH 65
never do that. If he had to he would leave the order,
move to France and join Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre, God’s champion in returning the use of
Latin to sacred rites.
“Wait,” August had said to him. “Talk about
signs—don’t you see it? You come from Seminario
Sao Pio Decimo and find, already established here,
the Society of Saint Pius X.”
A society with the same name whose direct purpose
is to reinstitute the Latin tradition?
And the Franciscan Brother Juvenal, also
returned from Sao Pio Decimo on the same plane—
Wasn’t that another sign?
August had to remain calm, keep himself from
trying to do everything at once. Meet Juvenal, cultivate
a relationship, but not bring him into the picture
just yet. The plan, first, was to establish a new parish,
put Nestor in as pastor, and invite Archbishop
Lefebvre over to consecrate the church, the same
way the Pius the Tenthers down in Texas did it.
Five months later Outrage had leased the empty
Covenant Baptist Church in Almont, rechristened it
Saint John Bosco, and they were on their way. A
minor problem—correspondence with Lefebvre
indicated it would be at least a year before he could
come for the consecration. In the meantime Father
Nestor might give one last grunt and expire on the
toilet. So the plan was revised. Instead of consecrating
the church, they would officially “dedicate it to
the accepted traditions of the Catholic Faith as established
by Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” A series of
pamphlets was run off at Zippy Printing and distributed
at parish masses throughout the Archdiocese of
Detroit, inviting Catholics to “Come to Saint John
66 ELMORE LEONARD
Bosco in Almont, the Seat of Traditional Catholic
Worship.” Pamphlets appeared with the titles:
WITHOUT TRADITIONS WHERE ARE WE?
WE WILL NOT ABANDON OUR TRUE FAITH.
WHY THE HOLY GHOST FLEW VATICAN II.
And August’s favorite, WHY DO PRIESTS TODAY
THINK THEY KNOW MORE THAN GOD?
The appeals brought them in gradually, a few
dozen more traditionalists each week, until last
Sunday August had estimated well over two hundred
at the ten o’clock High Mass and Benediction.
(Many commenting after that it’d been years since
they had sung good old Genitoris and Tantum Ergo.
And, boy, was it good to hear Latin again instead of
those boring Protestant hymns.) They had also
announced the dedication to be this coming Sunday
and sent out invitations to parishioners, friends, and
the press.
What August had to do now, with Father Nestor’s
help, was prepare a press release to be handed out
after. “The Juvenal Story” or “The Miracle
Worker”—something like that, basic information
about Juvenal. Because if it worked out the way he
hoped it would the newspapers would have to feature
it on the front page and they’d be asking all kinds of
questions.
Father Nestor—out of the lavatory, sitting across
the desk from August—said, “Newspaper reporters
will be there? You think so?”
“I know they will,” August said, “because I’ll be
there and it happens that I’m news.” He nodded to
the paper on the desk. “I’m in there, aren’t I? I staged
a demonstration in court to make sure I’d be.
Whatever I’m involved in is news. And what we’re
TOUCH 67
involved in together, specifically, what they refer to
as church disunity and schism, that’s news too.
Reporters will be there, take my word. That’s why I
want to get this news release ready.” August took the
silver pen from his shirt pocket and released the
point. “There’re a few facts I don’t think you told me,
like where he was born, first.”
“In Chicago,” Father Nestor said. “You see,
everyone who goes to Santarem is from the Chicago
Province. Before I went, though, I served at Saint
Paschal Friary in West Monroe, Louisiana, and also
at Saint Joseph in Bastrop, Louisiana—”
August said, “Father, we’re talking about
Juvenal. His parents still live in Chicago?”
“He doesn’t have parents that he knows of,”
Father Nestor said. “He lived in foster homes and at
Our Lady of Mercy, a home for boys. You’ve heard
of Father Kelly? He’s dead now—”
“Father—” August began.
Father Nestor waved his hand at him. “All right,
I know. He was at the home—let me see—he went to
work at a hospital and shortly after that he entered
the order.”
“You were in Santarem a long time before he
came—”
“It’s pronounced Santareng,” Father Nestor said.
“Oh, yes, many years.”
“So that you helped him along, showed him the
ropes maybe?”
“No, you see I was at Sao Pio Decimo and he
was, most of the time he was at Convento Sao
Raimundo. Or, let me think, he may have been at
Convento de Nossa Senhora Nazare.”
“You knew him though.”
68 ELMORE LEONARD
“Yes, I met him. And we came home together on
the same flight.”
“Wait, first I want to stay down there.”
“You want to go to Santarem?”
“No—no, I want to talk about the time you met
him,” August said, “when the miracles started, how it
came about, and the first time you saw the blood.”
“Wait,” Father Nestor said. “I think I have to go
to the toilet.”
TOUCH 69

8
JERRY SAID he’d close his eyes and see this guy
coming right through the wall at him.
The man next to him said he saw these slimy
things like lizards crawling all over the room and
jumping on the bed and he’d scream and try and
knock them off but they kept coming. Like lizards.
Jerry said this guy who came through the wall
had a knife raised, ready to stab him with it.
Edith, Lynn’s Big Sister, said, “I know, sometimes
I’ve heard them screaming clear up on four.”
Lynn stared at the wall, at the crucifix and the photograph
of the room in the condemned building. It was dark
outside; bright with fluorescent lighting inside, showing
sticky spots and cigarette ashes on the formica.
Edith rapped her knuckles on a wet stain of coffee
saying, “Well, I never had no d.t.’s, thank the
Lord for that.”
The Lord, on that varnished cross holding his
hip-cocked pose of agony.
“Excuse me,” Edith said. “Lynn, hon, you want
another cup?”
Lynn’s gaze came away from the crucifix. “I’ll
get it.” She slid out of the booth, taking their cups
over to the twin urns.
Something to do. She didn’t need more coffee
and she wasn’t too keen on listening to more stories
about alcoholism. She had watched television for
nearly four hours after supper, on and off, looking
around for Juvenal between programs. There wasn’t
anything to do but go to bed or sit and listen. She
came back to the table with two coffees.
Jerry was saying, yeah, he used to hide them in
the garage different places, even in the shrubs. That’s
why he was always out cutting the grass.
The man next to him said in his apartment, when
he’d clean it up about once a month, he’d reach under
the couch and drag out all these empty bottles.
Jerry said, “You ever reach under there and come
out with a full one you forgot about? Put it on the table
next to about half a fifth you got left? Man, knowing
you’re set for the day? Jesus, that was a good feeling.”
Lynn said to Edith, setting the cups down, “I’ll
be back in a little bit.”
* * *
“They usually don’t talk that much about drinking or
d.t.’s unless a new resident’s asking questions, or
sometimes you’ll get a person who maybe wants to
impress you,” Juvenal said.
“I was impressed, but I got tired of it,” Lynn said.
She paused. “I was looking for you earlier.”
“I had to go out on a call.”
“This is your office?” It was exactly like the
woman counselor’s office she had been in this morning.
In fact, from the hall, seeing the light on inside,
she had thought it was the same one and thought of
the telephone on the desk.
TOUCH 71
Juvenal had a phone too.
He nodded, sitting back in the chair with his
pleasant expression, wearing the same red-and-bluestriped
knit shirt. “I use this one if I have the duty; I
can hear better if anyone starts to freak out. My
room’s way down the end of the hall.”
“I won’t bother you,” Lynn said, starting to turn,
but giving him time to stop her.
“No, sit down. You want to ask me something,
don’t you?”
Lynn eased into the chair next to the desk, facing
him. “Well, when you put it like that, and since I’ve
blown my cover—”
“Your cover wasn’t that red hot to begin with.
Quinn already suspected you’re straight.”
Lynn was surprised. “I only talked to him for a
minute. The first time I saw him he came roaring into
that big room that’s like an auditorium on a motor
scooter. Got off and gave the most fascinating talk
I’ve ever heard.”
“He makes an entrance,” Juvenal said. “Have
you seen the fire engine? . . . It’s a real old one. He
gets a bunch of residents on the back end and they go
for a ride downtown, ringing the bell, waving at people—
it’s part of the therapy, get the alcoholic out of
his shell.”
“Maybe before I leave—” Lynn said.
“You don’t need to be brought out,” Juvenal said.
“You’re fine.”
“Aren’t you a little irritated? I mean I tell you
I’ve come here to find out about you— But you
aren’t mad or anything.”
“I haven’t told you anything either,” Juvenal
said. “You hear a story and you wonder about it, you
72 ELMORE LEONARD
and your friend Bill Hill— That reminds me. You
were a baton twirler in a religious service?”
“What were you doing, checking on me?”
“I spoke to Virginia today, so I asked about you.”
“It wasn’t exactly during the service,” Lynn said.
“I twirled a little while the choir was singing, just the
opening part and the close.”
“I’d like to’ve seen that.”
“The part of the service that was the feature,
Reverend Bobby Forshay’d come out and heal people.”
Was Juvenal grinning a little? She wasn’t sure.
He said, “What do you want me to ask you, how he
did it?”
“No, it was fake,” Lynn said. “At least I think
most of it was. I’m not sure.”
It was a nice expression—not amused, but
almost a smile—interested and open, glad to be talking
to her. Could that be?
“Bobby might’ve healed some of them. You
think it’s possible?”
“Why not?” Juvenal said.
“Do you heal people?”
“I guess so.”
“How do you do it?”
“I don’t know. I mean it’s not something I can
explain.”
“Wow,” Lynn said, “this is weird, you know it?
You’re actually telling me—like if I had something
wrong with me, a disease or something, you could
cure it? Or do you say heal it?”
Juvenal hesitated, though he continued to stare at
her—nice brown eyes and those long lashes—
“Is there something you’re worried about?”
TOUCH 73
“Well, I’m not sure,” Lynn said. “I guess I’m
worried, yes; but I don’t know if I should be or not.”
He reached across the corner of the desk, brushed
her right shoulder, the scooped neck of the loose-fitting
Bob Marley shirt, and put his hand on her breast.
She couldn’t believe it, feeling his hand on her,
the gentle pressure of his fingers, through the
bleached cotton, as they stared at each other. She
thought of pulling back, with some kind of horrified
expression, but realized the time to do that instinctively
had already passed.
Juvenal said, “You were going to tell me you
have a lump, maybe a tumor, and if it’s malignant
would I do something.” His hand came away. “Was it
to test me or shock me?”
Lynn hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe both.”
“If you’re worried,” Juvenal said, “take my word,
your breasts are okay.”
Now, instinctively, she almost said, Just okay?
But in her mind it sounded dumb instead of funny;
typing herself with a smartass comeback; or he
might even think she was on the make. She wasn’t at
all, and knew he wasn’t. And yet the touch hadn’t
been clinical either. He wasn’t a doctor, he wasn’t a
lover—what was he?
“I don’t know,” Lynn said. “This’s a new one I’ll
have to figure out.”
“Figure what out?” Juvenal said.
“I plan something, it looks simple, to see if
you’re real or not. Then I get more confused than I
was before.”
“Don’t try so hard,” Juvenal said. He got up from
the desk—striped shirt and faded jeans, white sneakers,
the drunk counselor. “I’ll be back.”
74 ELMORE LEONARD
“Where’re you going?”
“I think it’s Arnold. He’s been having a bad
time.” Juvenal left.
To get away from her? Lynn hadn’t heard a
sound. She remembered Arnold, though, a man with
a nose like a walnut, broken blood vessels in his face,
his eyes barely open—she remembered him this
morning groping his way into the lab, moving stiffly
in sagging wet pajama pants, and the nurse calling
out, “Somebody take care of Arnold!”
Lynn looked at the phone on the desk. Earlier in
the evening, searching for Juvenal, she had tried the
different counselors’ offices, found them all locked.
Now a phone was sitting within reach. Make a quick
call—
She heard the sound then from down the hall, a
scream, or someone calling out, and thought of
Juvenal again, curious, wondering about him, then
anxious.
Lynn stepped out of the office and followed the
sound down the dimly lighted hall, a man’s voice
wailing in agony, or fright. There was a worn-out
easy chair in the hall where, they had told her, residents
sat in shifts throughout the night on “heavy
duty,” to help anyone in detox who might begin hallucinating.
But tonight Juvenal had been alone on the
floor . . .
Juvenal standing next to Arnold’s bed now—she
could see him through the open doorway, light from
the hall across the chenille cover—Arnold sitting up,
his back pressed against the headboard, screaming,
holding himself, trying to hide inside himself.
Juvenal moved. Past Juvenal’s arm she saw
Arnold’s face, the man’s eyes stretched open, his chin
TOUCH 75
glistening with saliva. He was saying something,
though she wasn’t sure, that sounded like, “Don’t
don’t don’t—don’t let it don’t let it—” Sobbing, convulsing,
as he cried out . . . then stopped as Juvenal
moved in front of him and she could no longer see
Arnold’s face . . . stopped that suddenly and seemed
to let his breath out in a moan as Juvenal sat on the
edge of the bed and took Arnold’s head and shoulders
into his arms.
God—
Lynn could feel the chills-and-thrills on the back
of her neck and down her arms, giant goosebumps.
But aware and thinking at the same time, seeing her
chance.
There was no sound as she turned and hurried
back through the hallway to Juvenal’s office, hesitated
with her hand on the door, left it open—what difference
did it make?—picked up the phone and
dialed Bill Hill’s number.
* * *
“I’m getting out of here tonight. Pick me up.”
“Wait a minute,” Bill Hill said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I want to get out of here.”
“You talked to him already?”
“I talked to him and he’s real. I don’t know what
he is, but he’s real. He knows things. I’ve done my
job and now I want to leave.”
“Wait, okay?” Bill Hill said. “You see him heal
somebody?”
“Not exactly, but I think I know why he’s here.
Pick me up in front. What’ll it take you, about a half
hour?”
76 ELMORE LEONARD
“Little more’n that, I got to get dressed,” Bill Hill
said. “Tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened. Well, it did, but not something
you’d say is proof he heals people.” She paused
a moment. “I told him why I’m here.”
“You told him—”
“He knew anyway, I could tell. He knew I wasn’t
an alcoholic.”
“Didn’t you act it out any?”
“I tried but . . . it’s different. They don’t act like
drunks. Listen, he’s not the only one. Everybody here
knows something I don’t. I don’t fit in.”
“Tell me what he said to you.”
“He said lots of things. I mean in a way he did. But
you look at it another way, he didn’t say anything.”
“Well, can you talk to him some more?”
“For what?” Lynn said. “What do you want me
to do with him?”
“Just tell me what his game is, okay? What’s he
doing there, hiding or what?”
“It isn’t something—” Lynn paused. “Look, I
can usually relate to just about anybody, no matter
what kind of trip they’re on. You just sort of get
involved and find out where their head is. But
Juvenal isn’t on any kind of trip that I know of. He
isn’t off somewhere or playing a role, trying to
impress you, he’s right here. But there’s something .
. . not strange, different about him.”
“Different how?”
“It’s like he’s so natural he’s different.”
“Natural, huh?” Bill Hill didn’t sound too
enthused.
“He doesn’t lay anything on you, any funny
words or mystic-sounding bullshit you think about
TOUCH 77
later, ‘What was he talking about?’ That’s what I’m
trying to say, he absolutely doesn’t bullshit you or try
to make you think he knows something you don’t
even though he does. Earlier today I thought he was
putting a guy on, a real weird guy, a religious freak,
but now I think about it—no, he was being straight
with the guy. He knew I knew the guy was a little
weird, maybe the way I rolled my eyes or something,
but he accepted the guy. I mean this guy came across
as a really serious asshole of the worst kind. You
could see Juvenal didn’t agree with the guy, but he
seemed to be interested in him as a person and kidded
with him. That’s another thing; he doesn’t seem
to take serious things serious.”
“He doesn’t, huh?”
“Only one time Juvie tried to bullshit the guy a
little, you could see he didn’t know how—”
“About what?”
“Listen, I’ve got to get off the phone. Pick me up
in forty minutes, okay? And get a bottle of
Spumante—”
78 ELMORE LEONARD

9
LYNN WAITED about ten minutes. When Juvenal
didn’t come back she got up and walked down the
hall again, past the empty chair.
There was the sound of someone snoring now, a
soft, faint sound; it made her aware of how quiet it
was on the floor. People sleeping . . . people down on
the second floor having coffee, watching television .
. . she wondered if she should say good-bye to Edith
and some of the others. If she did, she would have to
make up a story, a crisis at home, or she couldn’t take
the program or she was going nuts cooped up here
and they’d plead with her to sit down and talk, or talk
to Juvie or Father Quinn. She wouldn’t go down to
two, she’d stay up here. She didn’t have anything to
pack—
Arnold’s door was still open. Juvenal wasn’t in
the room.
Lynn stood in the opening, then moved aside to
let the light from the hallway fall across the bed.
Arnold was lying on his back, eyes closed, hands
relaxed on the light chenille spread covering him.
She could hear Arnold inhaling gently and letting his
breath out in a wheeze that was not quite a snore. But
no Juvenal. He could have gone to get Arnold a
sleeping pill—no, Edith said they rarely use them
here, or tranquilizers—but he could have gone to get
him something. She began to turn away, still looking
at Arnold, then turned back again and very carefully,
quietly, approached the bed, moving aside, staying
out of the light, so she could see Arnold’s face clearly.
There was something on his cheek, something
dark. Lynn stooped, then went to one knee next to the
bed, looking at the dark streak that crossed from
Arnold’s cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. Her
hand went to the bed lamp, felt beneath the shade
and found the button. Looking at Arnold she turned
the lamp on—saw the mark on his face become red
in the light, a smudge of something red, wiped and
streaked; saw the stains on the pillow, blood red, and
thought of Virginia, Bill Hill telling about the traces
of blood on Virginia’s face—and snapped off the
lamp. She knelt there a moment, her hands on the
edge of Arnold’s bed, as though in prayer.
Two doors away a light was on in the lab. No one
was inside. Lynn moved past the lab and several
rooms, looking at closed doors, to the end of the hall
where the carpeted floor joined a short, perpendicular
hallway with a door at each end. The overhead
light was dim, not more than 75 watts, but she could
make out the metal nameplate on the door to the left,
JUVENAL—hesitant now approaching the door, afraid.
She said to herself, Afraid of what? He’s nice. He’s a
very nice guy. She knocked lightly on the door—
God, and saw the mark, the stain on the knob, and
almost drew back. The door was open several inches.
She knocked again, holding back, tapping lightly the
way she would enter a sickroom and said, “Juvenal?”
Silence.
80 ELMORE LEONARD
Lynn pushed the door open. She stood looking in
at a desk and soft light reflecting on French doors
that were partly open and led to a rooftop porch. The
light came from a reading lamp next to a dark leather
couch. There were bookshelves to the ceiling and
grass mats on the floor, a crucifix over the desk.
She could hear running water.
“Juvenal?”
The sound of the water stopped. Lynn walked
into the room. To the right was a short hallway. She
waited; but she was curious and anxious again, with
the same feeling she had experienced before, wanting
to know what he was doing. She told herself he
was good and wouldn’t hurt her, he healed people—
She stepped into the hallway. The light was on in
the bathroom, on the left, and she glanced in. There
were red stains on the rim of the basin, traces of red
not washed into the drain.
She said again, “Juvenal?”
His voice came from the bedroom, tired, a quiet
sound. “I’m in here.”
“Can I come in?”
There was a silence.
“If you want to.”
Lynn walked into the bedroom.
He stood in white undershorts by a dresser, his
chest and legs bare. He stood on a white towel, his
feet bare.
Lynn said, “Oh, my God—”
She saw his mild expression, his eyes. She saw
his hands raised at his sides, palms up, as if holding
small pools of blood.
She saw the crucifix on the wall in the coffee
shop.
TOUCH 81
She saw the blood on his hands. She saw the
blood oozing out of his left side, staining the waistband
of his shorts. She saw the blood on his bare
feet, red gouge marks on his insteps, the blood trickling
to the towel.
She saw the crucifix again, the agonized figure
of Christ on the cross.
She saw Juvenal standing in his bedroom, bleeding
from the same five wounds.
82 ELMORE LEONARD

10
ON FRIDAY Greg Czarnicki, member of the Gray
Army of the Holy Ghost and Father Nestor’s nephew,
said to August, “Wait a minute. How many people
you think ever heard of it?”
August said, “Everybody’s heard of it one time
or another. Padre Pio—he just died. Theresa
Neumann, they’ve been some very famous ones.”
“You’ve got Padre Pio and Theresa Neumann,
but I’m saying outside of Catholics who ever heard
of them?” Greg said.
“Padre Pio got five thousand letters a week,”
August said. “They lined up, you had to wait two
months to go to confession to him.”
“Yeah, devout people,” Greg said. “But how
many even Catholics are really devout?”
“Saint Francis of Assisi,” August said.
“Okay, Saint Francis,” Greg said, “but how many
people know he had it?”
“Maybe you’re right,” August said.
“How do you know Juvie’s even gonna get it?”
“We don’t,” August said, “but you’re right.
Maybe I’ve been assuming too much. Greg? . . .
Thanks.” August sat down at his father’s desk in the
print shop and wrote a pamphlet that would be hand
ed out Sunday in the event everything worked the
way he hoped it would. The pamphlet was entitled:
STIGMATA
The Wounds of Christ Crucified . . .
The Marks of Sainthood!
And told the reader:
The stigmata is a phenomenon observed in a
number of Christian saints and mystics for which
there is no natural explanation. Therefore it is
assumed the stigmata is of supernatural origin or
inspiration. It consists of the appearance, on the
body of a living person, of wounds that correspond
to our Lord Jesus Christ’s wounds on the
cross—the nail wounds in his hands and feet and
the wound from the Roman soldier’s spear thrust
into His side.
321 KNOWN STIGMATISTS
A study conducted by Dr. A. Imbert-Gourbeyre
(La Stigmasation, 2 v. Clermont-Ferrand,
1894–95; 2nd edition, 1908) contains the names
of 321 people who have manifested the stigmata
since the time of St. Francis of Assisi
(1181–1226), the Church’s first recorded stigmatist.
Pope Pius XI has stated that the stigmata
of St. Francis is an historical fact proved by
irrefutable testimonies. The list includes a number
of the more recent stigmatists who have been
written about, such as: Catherine Emmerich of
Muenster, Germany (1774–1824), Mary von
Moerl of Kaltern, Tyrol (1812–1868), Louise
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Lateau of Bois de Haine, France (1850–1883),
St. Gemma Galgani of Lucca, Italy
(1878–1903).
BLED FROM HER EYES
One of our most prominent stigmatists was
Theresa Neumann of Konnersreuth, Germany,
born on Good Friday, April 8, 1898. Her first
stigmatization appeared on Good Friday, April 2,
1926, when her eyes began to bleed profusely, a
phenomenon that would occur whenever she
meditated on Christ’s suffering. Theresa
Neumann’s stigmata brought pilgrims from all
over the world. It was seen by thousands of people
and subject to intensive investigation. She
died in 1962 after virtually living on no other
nourishment than Holy Communion.
PADRE PIO—MOST FAMOUS OF ALL
There is no question that the most celebrated stigmatist
of any time is Padre Pio, the Capuchin monk
of San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy, who
received the stigmata one day in September 1918,
three days after the feast of the stigmata of St.
Francis. While at prayer in the chapel of Maria
delle Grazie, he was found in a faint, blood pouring
from his five wounds. He experienced fresh bleeding
every day of his life for the next 50 years.
Over 100 biographies have been written about
Padre Pio, describing his wounds, the miracles
performed through his intercession, and offering
medically attested evidence that his stigmata was
not a natural phenomenon.
TOUCH 85
ODOR OF VIOLETS
Drs. Festa and Romanelli, who examined Padre
Pio, stated that all five wounds had a characteristic
odor of violets and that the one in the saintly
man’s side was in the form of a cross seven
centimeters in length. Their report could offer no
explanation of the cause of the lesions nor of
their refusal to heal.
MIRACLES
Padre Pio was famous for performing miracles,
curing the sick and infirm, and for his gift of
“bilocation,” being able to be in two places at
once. There are accounts of his actually appearing
to soldiers during World War II and saving
them from death, while he remained in the
monastery at San Giovanni Rotondo.
“He received 5,000 letters a week and about
1,500,000 visitors a year. (National Review, Oct.
22, 1968) There is a library full of testimony by
sane, well-educated, unprejudiced people to the
effect that he was really gifted with an odor of
sanctity, that he was often reported in two places at
the same time, and that he continually, but especially
in the confessional, displayed intimate
knowledge of the secret thoughts, sins, prayers,
temptations and devotional lives of the people he
spoke to. . . . He died September 23, 1968, having
carried the open wounds of the stigmata longer
than anyone else in history; for 50 years he had not
taken a step without the slow, painful gait of a crippled
man. When they wanted to call a doctor he
86 ELMORE LEONARD
said, ‘Be good fellows, don’t call anybody. Those
whom I ought to call, I have already called.’ ”
AND NOW . . .
A decade has passed since anyone has been
blessed with the mystical gift of the stigmata . . .
a period of time in which Holy Mother Church
has been besieged and buffeted by false doctrines,
liberal attempts to make the bastion of our
Faith a lukewarm, lackadaisical, Protestant-like
symbol of “all things to all men.”
One wonders if it is not now time for the stigmata
to appear again on a person of devotion and
dedication . . . a person bearing the Marks of
Faith, the Symbols of Sanctity, who would stand
before us as a present-day St. Francis . . . to lead
us ’round the quicksand of heresy and reestablish,
reaffirm the traditional teaching ministry of
the Church of Jesus Christ and His Apostles. We
await the Sign crying:
ORGANIZATION
UNIFYING
TRADITIONAL
RITES
AS
GOD
EXPECTS
!!!
August read the pamphlet to Greg Czarnicki.
Greg said, “How come you don’t mention
Juvie?”
TOUCH 87
“Because nobody knows about him yet,” August
said. “Don’t you see what I’m doing? I’m setting it
up, like saying we need a symbol, a sign, and there
he is. Can you imagine the impact? I still can’t
believe it—no, I don’t mean that, I don’t want to
infer a lack of faith. But it gives me the chills thinking
about it. Like there’s no question God has His
hand on me and is using me. Do you feel it?”
Greg nodded, yes, he did. He would have felt it
more, though, if August said “us” instead of “me.”
Like something miraculous was happening to
August.
88 ELMORE LEONARD

11
“I HATE TO SAY IT,” Lynn said, “but the last time I was
in church was at Uni-Faith in Dalton. No, I take that back,
I went with Doug when his sister got married in Fort
Worth. But you know what I did today? I bought a dress.
And I haven’t owned a dress I bet since I was a little girl,
a regular dress. At first I thought it was a housedress
because it’s just a print, you know. But, God, it was eighty
dollars because it’s a Diane Von Furstenburg.” Lynn
paused. “I guess it’s kind of cute really.”
The phone rang inside, sounding far away.
Lynn and Bill Hill were on the balcony, outside
but private on the second floor, behind the railing
and the hanging plants. Lynn didn’t move, slumped
low in a red canvas chair, bare legs stretched out. Bill
Hill was on the matching red chaise looking down
the quiet twilight fairway, seeing himself loft an
approach to number seventeen that dropped within
inches of the cup. He looked over at Lynn.
“You don’t have the phone with you.”
“Shit,” Lynn said. She drew her legs under her,
but didn’t get up. “No, I quit carrying it around from
room to room. Two days, I’ve pretty near forgotten
all about the business.”
“How do you know it’s business?”
“Who’s gonna call me eight o’clock Saturday
night? The guys’re out with their wives. It’s Artie,
from the Coast.”
The phone continued to ring.
“I asked you one time, you never told me. How
come all those guys sound like they’re from New
York?”
“Like gangsters talk in the movies,” Bill Hill
said. “I don’t know, I guess it’s supposed to impress
you. . . . You gonna answer it?”
Lynn got up, barefoot in white shorts and a white
shirt hanging out hiding the shorts, looking like a little
girl, scrubbed clean and not wearing her eyelashes.
She took her time going inside, hoping the phone
would stop ringing.
Bill Hill was always nice to Lynn. He liked her a lot.
There was a time, after finding her divorced and living in
Detroit—couple of old buddies up here six hundred miles
from home—he’d thought about making the moves to get
her in bed. But when he pictured himself doing it, he knew
he’d be self-conscious and both of them would probably
laugh. That was it, they were buddies—even with a twenty-
year difference in their ages—they told each other
things and confided; they were like kin.
She had certainly been in a state Thursday night,
come running out of the Sacred Heart Center,
jumped in the car saying, “God, you’re not gonna
believe it,” and hadn’t told him clearly, in words that
made sense, until they were out on the Chrysler
Freeway and past the Ford interchange, midway
through Detroit going north.
He had tried to keep his eyes on the road and not
ask questions, trying also to picture what she was
telling him, finally saying, “You mean nails were in
90 ELMORE LEONARD
him?” And Lynn saying, “No, wounds like from nails
and a cut in his side like he’d been stabbed.”
“Jesus.”
“Yes, Jesus,” Lynn said. “Standing there like
him. Honest to God, if he had a beard—you know
like the pictures you see of him, the brown hair? His
hair’s the same color.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He just looked at me.”
“Was he in pain?”
“No, I don’t think so. He seemed, like he was
sad. I don’t know, he was just—quiet.”
“And he didn’t say anything.”
“No. Well, yes, he did. He said my name, I
remember now hearing it as I ran out. God, why’d I
do that?”
“I can understand,” Bill Hill said.
“He didn’t yell it out I remember, going out, I
heard him say it. ‘Lynn?’ ” She tried it again— “
‘Lynn?’ ”—trying to get the right tone.
“You think he wanted you to help him?”
“Help him? Help him what, put Band-Aids on?
He had the same wounds as Jesus on the cross and he
hadn’t been crucified and he didn’t do it himself.
There weren’t any nails or a knife or anything; he
wasn’t showing it off, but—well, yes he was too—he
was showing it to me.” Lynn was silent. “You think
he did want me to help him? God, and I ran out;
turned and ran like a little kid.”
“He must know what to do,” Bill Hill said, “if he
had it before.”
“But why’d he show it to me?”
Bill Hill said, “Maybe the people there know and
he felt it didn’t matter, one more. Remember my
TOUCH 91
telling you I thought they were keeping him hidden?
Very friendly and helpful, except they didn’t tell you
a thing. If a man wanted to remain anonymous that’d
be the place, wouldn’t it?”
“But people leave there,” Lynn said. “They’d tell;
somebody would.”
“I mean the staff,” Bill Hill said. “I can’t imagine
that priest not knowing.”
“Father Quinn,” Lynn said, thoughtful. “I suppose
the doctor—”
Bill Hill said, “Did you happen to notice his
hands before? I mean when you were talking to him
earlier?”
Lynn thought about it, picturing him in the coffee
shop, then in the office, seeing his hand reaching
for her breast. She hadn’t told Bill Hill about that
part and didn’t think she would.
“I didn’t notice anything special. Like you mean
if he had scars?”
“I think he’d have to,” Bill Hill said. “If a wound
keeps opening up there’s got to be a scar. Wouldn’t
you think?”
“I don’t know. If it’s a miracle why does there
have to be anything natural about it?”
“Who says it’s a miracle?”
“That’s right,” Lynn said, “you see people every
day walking around with crucifixion wounds.”
There had been a lot to think about in the dark
interior of Bill Hill’s Monte Carlo, heading out the
Chrysler Freeway that night, the radio off, Lynn, for
the first time not skipping around on the AM-FM to
see if her records were getting any play. No, it was
quiet, and the fluorescent glow of light beneath the
overpasses added to the feeling—something happen-
92 ELMORE LEONARD
ing they couldn’t explain no matter how hard they
thought about it. Juvenal’s blood on Virginia’s face
and on the man with d.t.’s. Like it happened to him
when he was healing somebody . . . maybe when he
was in an emotional state, feeling compassion or
something so intensely he began to bleed?
Lynn asked Bill Hill if he’d ever heard of anybody
having it before. He said yes, he’d heard of it
but had never read much about it or knew of anyone
who’d had it lately. He believed it was something a
long time ago saints used to get.
“God, saints,” Lynn had said.
“I guess not all saints,” Bill Hill had said, “just
some.”
Lynn came out on the balcony and sank into the canvas
chair.
“Hey, thanks.”
Bill Hill had filled her wine glass and made himself
a fresh vodka and bitter lemon. He sat on the
chaise with his white loafers crossed, the crease in
his yellow slacks straight and sharp up to the lump of
a bony knee, then on to the bulge of his body shirt
that was like blue-flowered wallpaper, three buttons
undone to show his silver chain and Thank You, Jesus
medallion that his former wife, Barbararose, had
given him years ago, way before neck ornaments for
men became popular. He liked the feel of it there and
sometimes liked to hook two fingers over the medallion
and hang onto it. Maybe for security, though Bill
Hill usually didn’t analyze his moves or try to interpret
his body language. He believed in Almighty
God and His Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, but did
not believe in most traditional forms of worship or
TOUCH 93
fundamental methods of propagating the faith. Not
since his Uni-Faith days. It had been great stuff . . .
The World’s Tallest Illuminated Cross of Jesus,
117 feet high . . . the Chapel in the Pines, the
Pilgrims’ Rest Cafeteria and Gift Shop, where they
sold Heavenly Hash candy, ten-inch battery-operated
replicas of the World’s Tallest Illuminated Cross of
Jesus, WTICOJ T-shirts . . . There were college-girl
hostesses, fresh young things direct from the Florida
campus at Gainesville, three state-champion baton
twirlers including fabulous Lynn Marie Faulkner of
Miami Beach, who had twirled in five Orange Bowl
pageants before she was eighteen . . . And for the
main attraction there was the Reverend Bobby
Forshay, who would appear from way off coming
down out of the piny woods like a 1960s John the
Baptist. Bobby Forshay would mount the stage of the
amphitheater in his raggedy jeans and polyester
wolfskin sleeveless jacket and say, “Hi. I was up yonder
talking to my old buddy Jesus. And you know
what he told me? . . .” Bobby Forshay would preach
and then he would invite the sick and the cripples to
come up with their crutches and walkers and faith in
their hearts and let him lay his hands on them and, as
an instrument of the Lord, heal their infirmities. He
healed a bunch of them . . .
Bill Hill’s ex-wife, Barbararose, who was a hardshell
Baptist out of Nashville, where there were 686
different Fundamentalist churches, had called the
whole Uni-Faith setup “a mockery in the eyes of
God.” (Where did people find those special words
for talking about religion? Mockery.) “You call yourself
a born-again Christian,” Barbararose had said,
“asking people to reverence a ten-story hunk of
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wood and a Bible school dropout who can no more
heal’n I can.”
“It’s the end result that counts,” Bill Hill had
said. “How it makes people feel.”
Barbararose said, “Do you know what the Lord
thinks about all this?”
“He told you but He hasn’t told me yet,” Bill Hill
said.
Barbararose said He would call it an abomination
unto His name. For thou shalt not make unto
thee any graven images, etc.
Bill Hill said to his wife, “You know why
Baptists never fuck standing up, Barbararose? They
don’t want God to think they’re dancing.”
Barbararose had left him, taking along little Bill,
Jr., eventually got a divorce and was now married to
a fruit shipper down in Stuart, Florida. Fine. (Little
Bill, Jr., now a teen-ager, visited summers and they’d
take off for a month in the latest r.v. equipment.)
As for getting back in the religion business—
well, there were boys who still did all right with the
old methods. Billy Graham filled the Astrodome and
Oral Roberts had a university going for him and an
AP top-twenty basketball club. Rex Humbard was
still on TV Sunday morning and had his Cathedral of
Tomorrow in Akron, Ohio. But those boys had
become established over the years and worked hard
to keep up their ratings.
No, there was another way to sell God and His
blessings and he’d give Lynn a hint the next time she
shook her head and said Juvenal wasn’t salable or
wasn’t the kind you could use in a religious show.
He’d say, “What did David Frost sell those Nixon
interviews for?” She’d say what? Or she’d say she
TOUCH 95
didn’t know. He’d say, “Something like six million,
that’s what. You see it?” She’d say no. He’d say, “Sell
the package and get out, that’s how you do it.” That’s
all he’d tell her today and only if she asked. Bill Hill
wasn’t sure yet how to go about it; but it was an idea
that felt good, fooling with in his mind, one of those
ideas you think of and say, “Of course. How else
would you do it?”
Lynn said, “It was Artie. I told you. He’s taking
the red eye and’ll be here in the morning. Has to see
me.”
“I thought you quit.”
“I did, sort of. But I’ve got to give him my
records and things.”
“Wait a minute,” Bill Hill said, “tomorrow’s
Sunday.”
“He says he’s got a presentation first thing
Monday and if it doesn’t come off right it’s my fault.”
“Well, tough. You told him, what, four days
ago—”
“I know, but at least I’ve got to pick him up and,
you know, get him squared away. He comes here, he’s
lost.”
Bill Hill was sitting up straighter, frowning. “All
you’ve been talking about is going up to Almont tomorrow.
You’re dying to see Juvenal—see what’s going on
with this weird guy and his Gray Ghosts—”
“I’m gonna be there. We’re going, right. But I’ve
got to meet Artie first, that’s all. I’m definitely gonna
be there. I have to, at least I have to apologize for
running off, God, like I was scared of him. He must
think I’m awful.”
Bill Hill was shaking his head now. “You witnessed
something few living persons have ever seen.
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You saw a miracle with your own eyes, and now you
tell me these rock and roll records you have to give
Artie are more important.”
“The business records,” Lynn said. “I’m not giving
him record records. Look, it starts at eleven,
Saint John Bosco in Almont. I got a road map—I’ve
got a new dress, haven’t I?—I know exactly how to
get there and I’m going, we’re going. But I’ve got to
see Artie first.”
“I’ll pick you up,” Bill Hill said.
“Fine.”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Fine. Only, just in case I’m not back you go
ahead and I’ll meet you there.”
Bill Hill was staring at her, hard. “You’re afraid
to see him, aren’t you?”
“I’m not afraid, and I’m gonna be there,” Lynn
said. “Maybe I’m a little nervous, that’s all.”
“What’re you gonna say to him?”
“I don’t know—how are you? What do you say?
I’m gonna apologize, ask if I can come and talk to
him sometime. . . . What do you keep looking at me
like that for?”
“I’m concerned about you,” Bill Hill said. “You
feel all right?”
“I feel fine.”
“There’s something about you that’s different.”
“Well, what do you expect? I just got out of an
alcohol treatment center.”
That was better.
He didn’t want to see her tighten up and lose her
sense of values, get too serious. He needed Lynn
with him all the way if he was going to make his million
dollars.
TOUCH 97

12
AUGUST MURRAY planned the dedication ceremony
around Father Nestor’s contaminated bowel.
He knew the old man would never last two hours
away from a toilet, so he planned it: procession,
Solemn High Mass, break; second procession,
Benediction, impromptu announcement and . . .
whatever happened after that.
Following the break, Greg Czarnicki would
remain outside. He wanted to be sure to tell Greg to
have his camera with him at all times.
Bill Hill waited in front of Lynn’s apartment until
almost eleven; gave up, irritated, got lost on the way
to Almont, and didn’t arrive at Saint John Bosco
until the second procession was moving up the walk
to the church. Bill Hill didn’t know he had missed
the first procession, mass, and Father Nestor’s halting
sermon on the true spirituality of the Latin tradition.
He thought the show was just beginning, and in
a way he was right.
He recognized Juvenal, thinking at first he was
dressed as a priest. No, more like a tall altar boy in
his cassock and surplice, showing about six inches of
tan cotton pants and white sneakers below the hem of
the black gown. Juvenal carried a cross straight up in
front of him, like a staff with a crucifix mounted on
top. Behind him came two real altar boys, about
eleven or twelve, one of them swinging a silver thing
of incense—a nice touch, Bill Hill thought, the
sound of the canister swinging on thin chains—then
another guy about Juvenal’s age in black cassock and
white surplice (August Murray) and then an old
priest in gold vestments flicking holy water out of
what looked like a flashlight—flicking it at the men
in white shirts and gray arm-bands who lined both
sides of the walk and were holding lighted candles.
Bill Hill hung back until the Gray Ghosts, or
whatever Lynn said they were called, fell in behind
the priest; he followed them into the church.
The Detroit Free Press had sent a writer by the name
of Kathy Worthington, twenty-nine—eight years on
murders, drug busts, city politics, fish with mercury
and milk laced with PBB—to cover the Saint John
Bosco dedication. She didn’t ask why; she had covered
August Murray activities before and knew
something at least worthy of page 3, local news,
could happen.
The paper had not assigned a photographer—
they had several shots of August Murray on file, both
wild-eyed and composed—and Kathy didn’t see anyone
from the News or any of the television stations;
which was fine. She wouldn’t have to stand around
with them being cynical. So this is where the action
is, huh? Four and a half million people either doing
something or getting ready to on a summer morning
in August . . . while here at Almont, at the dedication
of Saint John Bosco . . . and tie it in with Tremors in
TOUCH 99
the Church of Rome . . . Catholic, universal, the
French Archbishop Lefebvre’s traditionalist movement—“
This attitude of the Vatican against us is not
come from the Holy Ghost”—and you have August
Murray’s white-shirted ghosts . . . bring August into
the story, grim defender of right-wing causes . . .
though she didn’t see how he could swing very militantly
today and get busted for anything. August
among his own kind: play it straight and hope that at
least he’d insult the pope and call him a Communist.
Kathy Worthington’s note pad remained in her
canvas bag while she sat through her first mass since
graduating from Immaculata High School. So far,
what did you write about a mass said by an old priest
who sprinkled his Latin with Portuguese? Even if
Rome found out, would they give a shit?
* * *
Lynn was only about ten minutes behind Bill Hill
once she was able to shake Artie loose, trying to be
nice, then raising her voice and telling him no, definitely,
she would not help him with his presentation
or discuss any part of the business with him for two
weeks; she was on her vacation, and if he didn’t like
it he could get somebody else; she had to go, she was
late for church. Artie said, “You going to church?
Who’s getting married?”
She arrived to see all the cars parked along the
gravel road in front of the typical white frame basic
church she had seen on county roads all her life, feeling
they were the same dusty cars and pickups, the
same people attending—just like when she was little
and would hang around outside with her friends until
100 ELMORE LEONARD
they heard the organ playing and the people solemnly
joining in the first hymn. Lynn parked and walked
down the line of cars in her blue-green eighty-dollar
print, a little awkward in heels after years of sandals
and wedgies—it was the gravel, and wanting to
hurry but still look neat and fresh when she entered.
The organ sounded like an accordion, tinny, the
notes dull, repetitive. The words were different though.
“Tan-tum air-go-oh, sac-ra-meh-en-tum . . .”
Mournful, a slow chant.
“Vay-nay-ray-mur cher-nu-ee-ee . . .”
She paused on the steps before the open doorway,
looking over to see a yellow school bus, Lapeer
County Schools, pulling up to the house or rectory
next door. A young guy in a choir or altar boy outfit
stood in the drive with both hands raised, guiding the
bus toward him past a line of parked cars. The door
opened, a little boy wearing a baseball cap jumped
out of the bus, and a voice called to him to wait.
Lynn didn’t know if this was mass or what. She
couldn’t remember if she’d ever heard Latin before.
The church was packed. A line of men in white shirts
and gray armbands, holding lighted candles, extended
up both sides of the middle aisle. The priest on the
altar in gold vestments— She saw Juvenal then, the
tallest altar boy up there, and August Murray, also in
an altar boy outfit.
“Sol-us hon-on-or, vir-tus quo-oh-quay . . .”
The song was so sad; she wondered what it was
about—looking around for Bill Hill now, her eyes
seeking color.
“No-vo say-dat rit-too-ee . . .”
The congregation didn’t appear much different
than any other. They could be Baptist, Pentecostal,
TOUCH 101
Church of God . . . the guys with the armbands, she
decided, must be the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost.
Fundamentalists didn’t have anything like that. She
wasn’t even sure if they had a Holy Ghost.
“Gen-ee-tor-re-is, gen-ee-toh-oh-quay . . .”
Everybody singing and they weren’t even reading
it from hymnbooks. They actually knew the
words.
Juvenal was facing the congregation, he and
August Murray flanking the old priest, maybe holding
him up. Juvenal moved aside and Lynn had the
feeling he was looking at her, past all the heads and
hats, picking her out where she stood in the back of
the church. Smiling? Lynn wasn’t sure if he was
smiling at her—actually, she wasn’t sure if he was
smiling at all—a boyish face up there beyond all the
hats.
Yes, hats—it dawned on her that all the women
seemed to be wearing summer straws or little hats
with veils she hadn’t seen in years, or scarves over
their heads, all of them . . . except the blonde in the
last pew, just a little over from Lynn, a girl about her
own age with long, straight blond hair, green shirtdress,
and canvas bag.
Something something “doe-que-men-tum,”
something else and “la-ouw-da-ah-tsi-oh—” And
then a sustained “Ah-men.” There was a long silence.
She couldn’t see what they were doing up there.
Then everyone knelt down and Lynn felt exposed,
the only one standing.
She saw Bill Hill, squeezed in at the end of a
pew over on the far left, wearing his yellow outfit
two days in a row. Black hair slicked down in
place—she was pretty sure he used Grecian Formula.
102 ELMORE LEONARD
He looked out of place, though not because he
claimed to be a Fundamentalist. He looked too studied-
slick to be among the Latin-lovers.
A little altar boy was swinging something silver on
a chain, thin wisps of smoke rising. Lynn realized it was
incense—they actually used it in their religious ceremony.
There was a faint odor, too, but it wasn’t the
sweet smell of incense in dark rooms with cool jazz
playing. The priest turned to the congregation, raising a
gold statue that was like an arty sunburst with a little
round window in the center and something white showing
through the glass. Bells rang several times. There
was a hush inside the church, not a sound. The members
of the Gray Army were down on one knee. It was
moody, very dramatic, the incense, the thin little sound
of the bells, the gold sunburst raised high. Bill Hill was
half sitting, half kneeling, watching, not moving a muscle—
the expert on God, religion, and church administration.
Lynn watched him begin to turn, looking
around with his head raised. She waited. When he saw
her, finally, she gave him a motion to come on back.
The priest was saying, in English, “The Divine Praises
. . . Blessed be God.”
And everyone in the church said, “Blessed be
God.”
“Blessed be His holy name.”
Everybody: “Blessed be His holy name.”
She wanted to ask him what was going on and if
she’d missed anything. Bill Hill was coming down
the side aisle now—heads turning to watch him as
they answered, “Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God
and true man.” Lynn waited as he crossed the back of
the church.
“Blessed be His most sacred heart.”
TOUCH 103
She stage-whispered, “You see him? Juvenal?”
Bill Hill nodded, reaching her. “I think he saw
me, too, but I’m not sure.”
“What’s going on?”
“How should I know?” Bill Hill took her arm.
“Let’s go out and grab a smoke.”
Lynn hesitated, the little girl again. Was it all
right? She wasn’t going to have much choice the way
he was pulling her. She said, “You should quit if you
have to leave church to have one.”
He said, “Come on,” starting for the vestibule,
sunlight showing in the open doorway.
The priest was saying, “Blessed be Jesus in the
most holy sacrament of the altar.”
The congregation said it again.
The priest began, “Blessed be the name of
Mary—”
“Blessed be the name of Mary, virgin and mother,”
the congregation said.
There was silence.
Then another voice said, “Blessed be her holy
and immaculate conception.”
As the congregation repeated the words, Bill Hill
stopped to look over his shoulder at the altar.
The priest was walking stiff-legged yet hurrying
to leave the altar. For a moment Juvenal stood watching.
He went after the old priest then, close behind
him as they went through the door into the sacristy.
The other adult altar boy, August Murray, glanced
after them, saying, “Blessed be Saint Joseph, her
most chaste spouse.”
Bill Hill felt Lynn’s hands on his arm.
“Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste
spouse.”
104 ELMORE LEONARD
He turned back to go out with her, feeling her
close. But she didn’t move and he bumped against
her, saying, “What’s the matter?” as he saw her
expression.
“Blessed be God, His angels and His saints.”
“Blessed be God, His angels and His saints.”
Silence.
Lynn stood rigid, facing the vestibule.
The sunny area between the inner and outer
doors of the church seemed to be full of children.
Children on crutches, children with metal leg braces,
children wearing padded helmets, children in wheelchairs
. . .
TOUCH 105

13
FATHER NESTOR had said yes, he saw it with his
own eyes, the healing of the crippled boy.
“How was he crippled?” August had asked.
“His spine was deformed. The little boy used
crutches and dragged his legs. It was very difficult
for him.”
“Then Juvenal touched him?”
“The boy was in the road where other children
were playing. Juvenal was walking by them, ahead of
Brother Carlos and I. He looked at the boy and then
stopped. The boy looked at Juvenal. Something
passed between them; or it might have, I don’t know.
The boy hobbled over to Juvenal—yes, and then he
touched him, dropped to his knees, and held the boy
against him. The boy seemed to be taller, his crutches
fell—”
“The boy was happy, smiling?”
“I don’t remember. I believe he was . . . stunned,
very surprised. He looked down at his legs—”
“He ran off then?”
“He walked a few feet away, then in circles,
looking down at his legs.”
“What about the other children—was it at the
same time, the others?”
“There was a little girl with tumors on her body,
very ugly sores. He took her into his arms also.”
“And they disappeared, the tumors?”
“No, it was not like that. But the next day they
were talking about her in the village, everyone very
excited. The doctor examined her, there was nothing,
no tumors on her, not even scars, and he questioned
if it was the same little girl.”
“What about other children?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps.”
“Did he restore anyone’s sight?”
“Yes, a young man. He left the village and went
to Santarem and was injured very severely in a barroom
fight and died soon after. This is what they say,
I have no proof of it.”
“I thought it was just children.”
“No, I told you, the two children I know of and a
few others, a very old woman I believe with tuberculosis.”
“An old woman?”
“Yes, I remember some of the people saying why
would he waste this gift on an old woman who was
worth nothing.”
August Murray had been thinking the same
thing. “How many did he heal?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps seven or eight.”
“Why didn’t he heal more?”
Father Nestor seemed to smile. He said, “Yes,
send him to the hospital, uh? Heal everybody. But
they brought him to Convento Sao Raimundo, where
he stayed until he was sent home.”
“That’s the part I don’t understand—keeping
him hidden. Why?”
“You talk to him, ask him.”
TOUCH 107
“Not yet,” August Murray had said. “If I talk
about it and seem too interested—well, he might not
agree with our way of doing things. What I like best,”
August had said, at that time, months before, beginning
to form his plan, “is the part about the children.”
August could picture the brown-skinned little
boy dropping his crutches and would see him, very
clearly, running through a jungle junkyard village of
old adobe and rusting Coca-Cola signs, the boy
shouting excitedly and with dogs chasing after him
in the muddy street. A cute little Walt Disney native
boy. On the screen or in advertising they said kids
and dogs were the number-one attention getters and
emotional motivators, right? Sex also, some halfnaked
woman. Well, there was no place for dogs or
women in August Murray’s plan. But kids—yes, kids
could do it. Kids could put them on the front page of
every newspaper in the country. The right kids at the
right time. And, if it worked.
But if it worked down on the Amazon, why not
assume it would work here? It would be the same
person involved. It would be a setup and he would be
taken completely by surprise, if the timing was right.
But still the same person, so why wouldn’t it work?
If it didn’t, well, it could still get press.
108 ELMORE LEONARD

14
AUGUST MURRAY’S favorites were Scott Lenahan,
eight, with cerebral palsy, who had been last year’s
Torch Drive poster boy; a cute little girl by the name of
Betty Davis, nine, blind since birth; and Kenny
Melkowski, also nine, who had spinal meningitis.
There was another kid August had liked at first,
a good-looking kid named Richie Baker, age ten,
who wore a Detroit Tigers baseball cap all the time.
But Richie’s ailment wasn’t acceptably visual. He
had acute lymphocytic leukemia and when he took
off his baseball cap he was completely bald.
August told Greg Czarnicki to get candid shots
of the kids before—you know, like before and after—
coming off the bus; and try to maneuver them so that
Scotty, Betty, and Kenny would go up the aisle first,
right after the Divine Praises—though any of the
dozen kids August had rounded up would probably
work okay: unfortunate little kids who belonged to
friends of friends . . .
(Why had God done that to these nice Catholic
kids?)
. . . and had been invited to the Saint John Bosco
Dedication Day Picnic following the special blessing
by Father Nestor.
(So their suffering could be used for a greater
good? August decided that must be the reason.)
The priest’s unscheduled trip to the toilet,
Juvenal running after him, had given August a sinking
feeling, but only for a moment. He’d picked up
the Divine Praises, finished them . . . saw Greg in the
back of the church with the kids and some of the parents,
Greg waiting for the cue . . . saw Juvenal coming
back on the altar, Juvenal out of it just long
enough and completely unaware . . . and August felt
both relief and excitement, more certain than ever
God was helping him.
He said to the congregation, at least 250 packed
into the little church, “Father Nestor will be right
back and we’ll proceed with the dedication. While
we have a moment though, I’d like to take this opportunity
to introduce you to a very remarkable man
who’s dedicated a good part of his life to the foreign
missions, having served down in the jungles of
Brazil on the Amazon River—”
Juvenal was staring down the main aisle, past the
Gray Army to the vestibule.
“—and let him say a few words to us about his
experiences in witnessing God’s mercy and miraculous
blessing on those less fortunate than we are.”
Lynn saw Juvenal’s expression.
She had turned her back to the children and
stood rigid, feeling them behind her, watching
Juvenal now, knowing what August Murray was
doing. Juvenal knew it too; of course he would. His
expression seemed composed, almost bland, but with
a dreamy hint of something she had seen before, a
look of sadness, resignation. She wanted to be with
him, help him. She wanted to stop August, shut him
110 ELMORE LEONARD
up. She wanted to turn around and the children
would be gone.
There was the sound of a camera shutter, a repeated
sound, buzz and click. Greg Czarnicki, the altar boy
she had seen outside by the bus, was backing past her,
a Minolta pressed to his face, aimed at the children.
“I’m going to ask our special little guests to
come forward,” August said, arms raised high, beckoning,
“and receive the blessing of our good friend
Juvenal, who has demonstrated his compassion and
love of children in ways that are truly miraculous.”
The girl with the long blond hair and green
dress, in the last pew, was looking around now at the
children.
The two lines of the Gray Army made a half turn
to face each other across the middle aisle, like a
guard of honor.
Greg Czarnicki, backing up the aisle, clicked the
shutter of his Minolta and the children came in their
clean Sunday clothes, in their braces and on crutches,
the little blind girl holding onto a wheelchair, a
few with no visible signs of disease or prosthesis—
parents remaining behind—the children following
Greg as if drawn by his camera.
Bill Hill said, “Jesus Christ,” awed, close to
Lynn.
She saw the blond girl in the green shirtdress
stand up on the seat of the pew. People on both sides
of the aisle were turning now, faces raised, trying to
see the children past the line of white shirts.
Lynn’s gaze held on Juvenal—a tall altar boy, a
gentle person being used, not knowing what to do,
cornered, being made to perform in the name of
God’s mercy.
TOUCH 111
This was not the way he did it.
The authority—how did she know?
She did though, somehow.
And yet she thought, But if he can do it, why
wouldn’t he? Right now. All these children—
She was fascinated by the spectacle of it, the
prospect of what could happen. Still, she felt sorry
for him and wanted to hold onto him and help him.
“Suffer the little children,” August said, and she
thought, Oh, God, wondering then if he could be sincere
. . . the straggle of children well into the aisle
now, inching along, dragging, bumping, pushing aluminum
aids, August saying, “Come on, that’s it,
come right up here” . . . Juvenal staring at the children
. . .
Juvenal with his hands folded in front of him, his
hands moving apart, then touching the white surplice
that hung past his hips, lowering his eyes briefly,
glancing at his hands, folding them together again
and raising his eyes to the children.
She had to be closer.
Bill Hill said, “Hey—”
Lynn was gone before he could ask where she
was going—across the back of the church—then
caught a glimpse of her moving up the side aisle on
the left.
The girl standing on the seat of the last pew,
Kathy Worthington, ignored the people who had
noticed her and were staring. She watched the scene
developing: the children approaching the altar where
August Murray waited, arms folded now, hands in
the sleeves of his surplice, striking a very churchy
pose. Official dignitary. The guy next to him stared
at the children and didn’t move, not a muscle. His
112 ELMORE LEONARD
hands were somewhere beneath his surplice: probably
another churchy pose, though she wasn’t sure.
Juvenal—she would remember the name.
She would also recall, later, the first time she
saw Lynn Faulkner: glancing over to see the girl in
the blue-green print dress hurrying up the aisle.
* * *
Richie Baker was pushing Kenny Melkowski’s
wheelchair, trying not to bump the blind girl who
was hanging onto the side or run into the kid ahead
of them, Scotty, dragging along in his braces and arm
crutches.
Richie had planned to stay in the back of the
church with his baseball cap on, wait for the picnic
to start—until he noticed the tall guy on the altar
who looked like Al Kaline. He wondered if it was.
He had not been to mass in over two years, since
starting his chemotherapy. He wasn’t going to go
anyplace where he had to take off his baseball cap
and show his Kojak skull, which is what the kids
called him and wasn’t funny anymore. They called
him Kojak and sometimes Lollypop and once in a
while Yul Brynner. One time he cried—only once, he
got so mad—and said, “You try cobalt sixty sometime
and see how you like it!” But they didn’t know
what he was talking about. The little shitbirds. That’s
what his mom called them.
She’d said, “Oh, Richie,” in that voice like she
was in pain, “why don’t you go to the picnic with the
kids; it’ll do you good.” She was always reminding
him he was sick. They’d say, “You don’t look sick
except your head,” and laugh and ask him over and
TOUCH 113
over what he had. He’d say, “How many times I have
to tell you? Acute lymphocytic leukemia.” And
they’d say, “Big deal.”
The guy could be Al Kaline, except what would
Al Kaline be doing here? He wasn’t even sure if Al
Kaline was a Catholic. He hoped he was. Out of his
1,132 baseball cards, 27 of them were Al Kaline,
though none of them said what religion he was and
now you couldn’t get them anymore; Al Kaline was
announcing Tiger Baseball with George Kell and Joe
Pellegrino. They were really good.
The blind girl had her face raised. She bumped
into the side of Kenny Melkowski’s wheelchair and
Richie said, “Lookit where you’re going, will you?”
He could feel everybody staring at his head. It
was like he didn’t have any clothes on. Just below his
gaze, Kenny had so much hair—blond hair curling
under, like a girl’s.
The guy in the altar boy clothes was not as big as
Al Kaline. He looked different now. But he looked
familiar and Richie wondered if he was somebody
else, on one of the other baseball cards. He thought
of Fred Lynn and then Rick Burleson, both of them
Red Sox—except this guy had lighter hair. Lighter
than Al Kaline’s too. Burleson was hitting .286.
The one taking pictures would shoot Kenny and
the blind girl and then look past him, deciding, and
then snap another picture.
The kid Scotty was so slow. The blind girl looked
like she was staring at the ceiling.
Richie thought of Frank Tanana of the Angels,
because Tanana was from Detroit and had gone to
Catholic Central. Then Soderholm, White Sox third
baseman, hitting .294. But Soderholm had a mustache.
114 ELMORE LEONARD
The guy on the altar was looking at him. Richie
didn’t get it. Was he supposed to know him? The
other man—altar boy on the altar was trying to
motion to the one with the camera, finally stepping
down into the aisle and pulling at his surplice, getting
him out of the way.
Richie was looking directly at Juvenal. He wanted
to go up and say something to him. But what?
He wanted to run up there and laugh with him—
God—about what?
He wanted to jump on him. . . . Really?
Yeah, that’s what he felt like. For no reason he
could understand but simply feeling the urge very
strong, in front of all these people, too, and with his
bald, shining head, it didn’t matter. And that’s what
he did.
Richie gave the wheelchair a little push, moved
around it, and was past the blind girl and Scotty before
he knew it, in front of everybody, running up on the
altar and seeing the guy’s hands coming out from under
his surplice red—red?—it didn’t matter, wet red, the
hands taking his shoulders and the guy going down to
become no taller than he was as he felt the guy’s arms
go around him. He was thinking something, thinking
what was he doing here? But he felt good. For no reason
he felt so good he wanted to jump up in the air, not
even worrying about the people watching, and then run
somewhere, run as fast as he could, not to get away but
to be running; but he began to calm down and felt
something sticky wet on the back of his T-shirt, on his
arms, God, his head, and a sound, voices, voices getting
louder in a sound like oooooooohhhhh or aaaaaaaaahhh
and a voice saying very loud, “Lord Jesus Christ,” and
another one saying, “My God,” and a sound like breath
TOUCH 115
being sucked in and feet moving on the wooden floor,
Richie Baker right in the middle of it looking up at the
guy’s face now, way up, the guy standing again, so
Richie moved back and that’s when he saw the hands
held out from Juvenal’s sides palms up, the hands full
of blood.
August was saying, “Get him! Get him!” pulling
Greg around, grabbing the Minolta from him and
hurrying glancing at it to get his finger on the button
and then pressing the camera to his face.
Lynn came across the front of the first pew, coming
but holding back because she didn’t know what
she was going to do.
A woman had cried out. Words, Jesus and God, had
come from the crowd, an eruption of hushed sound and
now silence as Juvenal stood with his hands extending
out to both sides, blood on his hands, blood on the white
surplice, blood on the boy standing before him,
posed—no, the pose of a man crucified but not purposely
posing; he didn’t know what to do with his
hands, with himself, he didn’t know what to do.
He stood waiting.
Nailed, if he was nailed at all, to where he stood.
Unable to move. Then seemed about to say something,
looking at the people.
What? Tell them what? Explain it—how?
Still the mild expression, but a flush of pain,
holding something in. Trying to be composed, to
explain it. Listen, I’m just—I’m no different—I’m—
No one in the church was going to move, perhaps
ever. They stared.
Lynn walked up to him. She heard the snick of
the camera and looked at August. August hesitated,
then lowered the camera.
116 ELMORE LEONARD
She looked at Juvenal, saw his eyes.
Help me. I don’t know how to do this. But in the
same expression, wonderment. Do you believe it?
Look.
Lynn reached out.
She would not look at anyone or think of anything.
She would simply do it, take Juvenal’s hand . . .
August said, “The children.”
What did that mean? Lynn felt the blood in her
own hand now, leading Juvenal down the aisle past
the children and the Gray Army and the layers of
faces, past Bill Hill and the girl standing on the seat
of the last pew, past everyone and out the door.
Bill Hill said, “Jesus Christ.”
Kathy Worthington said, “What’s her name?”
getting her note pad out of the canvas bag.
Within a few minutes August was distributing
his pamphlets entitled “Stigmata.”
People were beginning to file outside, looking
around, wondering where Juvenal and the girl had
gone.
TOUCH 117

15
KATHY WORTHINGTON told August at the
church she’d look at his pictures, sure, bring them
down; but she couldn’t promise anything. He asked
her how she was going to write it. She said, write
what? What happened? August said here, and gave
her three copies of the stigmata pamphlet plus his
Juvenal story, “The Miracle Worker of the Amazon,”
and, for a little Outrage background, “Without
Traditions Where Are We?” and “Why the Holy
Ghost Flew Vatican II.”
Kathy was glad to get away from the church and
everybody standing around talking excitedly, blowing
up what had happened bigger and bigger in their
minds.
Later on, August drove downtown to the Free
Press building on West Lafayette and walked into the
city room at ten after four, surprised at all the empty
desks. He had imagined reporters pausing, looking
up as he walked by—“That’s August Murray”—and
a hush coming over a roomful of typewriter and telephone
noise. But it was Sunday, with only an assistant
city editor and four reporters among the wall-towall
desks piled with files and binders and books,
magazines—it looked like they were saving up for a
paper drive. Kathy rose from where she was talking
to some guy and led August back to her desk. He
handed her a thick manila envelope.
“How can you work in a place like this?”
“What’s the matter with it?” Kathy said. She
opened the envelope, pulled out a stack of black-andwhite
eight-by-ten glossies and began going through
them—crippled children outside the church . . . crippled
children inside . . . Juvenal . . .
Too fast for August. He wanted to slow her
down; raised up out of his chair to lean on the desk.
“There he is. Look at the hands.”
Kathy studied the close-shot of Juvenal, cropped
at his hips, hands raised from his sides. “It doesn’t
look like blood.”
“It’s blood,” August said. “You saw it on him,
you saw it on the kid.”
“I don’t know—in the paper it’s gonna look like
a dark blob.”
“Tell them it’s blood, that’s what blood looks
like. ‘Suddenly his hands began to bleed, blood pouring
out as though nails had been driven through his
palms. His side began to bleed, as though from a
spear—’ ”
“I didn’t see his side bleed. Did you?”
“It bled,” August said. “When he gets the stigmata
he bleeds from all five wounds, hands, side,
and feet.”
“Where is he now?” Kathy said.
August hesitated. “He’s okay. Look, the reason I
gave you the literature—read ‘Miracle Worker of the
Amazon,’ it documents the first appearance of his
stigmata when he was down in Brazil and gives the
doctor’s report, wounds bleeding from no natural
TOUCH 119
cause, the same wounds suffered by Jesus Christ on
the cross. Read the one, ‘Stigmata.’ ”
“I did,” Kathy said. “Who was that with him, his
sister?”
“He doesn’t have a sister.”
“I thought there was a resemblance. Her name’s
Lynn something.”
“Look,” August said, “if it’s not a natural phenomenon
then it has to be supernatural. What else is
there?”
“Unnatural,” Kathy said.
“What do you mean, like from the devil?”
“Let’s keep it simple,” Kathy said. “No natural
cause means they don’t know. It could be psychosomatic;
he believes it—” She paused.
“Yeah?” August waited.
Kathy had to think. “He concentrates so hard,
like a mystical experience, hallucinating—”
“Yeah?”
“—that he thinks it’s happening to him.”
“But it is. We saw it,” August said. “If he’d taken
his clothes off, his shoes, we would have seen the five
wounds of Christ crucified. He wasn’t meditating or
hallucinating, he was showing us that he’s been singled
out by God and given this special sign. You saw it, real
blood. It wasn’t ketchup, it wasn’t some kind of trick.”
“Most readers—”
“What?”
God, he was annoying. Sitting there, all his pens
and pencils in his shirt— “Most readers won’t
believe it.”
“You know that for a fact,” August said, “or you
going by some pseudo-sophisticated idea of your
own? Write what you saw, that’s all you have to do.”
120 ELMORE LEONARD
“I’ll write something,” Kathy said. “It’s up to the
city editor whether it gets in or not.”
“Long as you don’t slant it with all that alleged,
would appear to be . . . put down what you saw. You
want to quote from my stigmata pamphlet you have
permission, use as much as you want.”
“I’ll say, according to August Murray, an unbiased
source,” Kathy said.
“An honest source, interested in the truth.”
“As you see it.”
“I’m talking about absolute truth, standards of
morality—” August paused. “What we’re suffering
in this country, and I don’t mean just the Church, is
a . . . pandemic erosion of ethical standards and feelings.”
“Where’d you read that?”
“Write it down, they can read it in the Free
Press.”
“A pandemic erosion—”
“Listen,” August said then, “you’re the one mentioned
it, using me as an unbiased source, thinking
ha-ha, that’s pretty funny, like you’re talking over my
head. I’ve read you people, everything you ever said
about me you have to put snide little jabs in. You
think the people out there buy your bullshit? They
say, the good honest people, they say, ‘Who’s that
broad? Who does she think she is?’You want to do a
service for the people who read this opinionated
piece of shit you put out?— and I’ll tell you the only
thing it’s good for too—start writing the facts for a
change and quit acting like you’re smarter than
everybody else. That’s what I advise you to do. You
saw a man with the stigmata, the marks of Christ,
which haven’t appeared on a living soul in ten years,
TOUCH 121
and go back to Saint Francis of Assisi himself, the
first one to ever have it and only three hundred and
twenty people since him. Three hundred and twentytwo
now. You saw it—I’ll give you that, you were the
only person from the news media who came; not
even the Michigan Catholic was there, for Christ
sake—but that means you have a responsibility to
report exactly what you saw and tell the implications
of it.”
“What implications?”
“The fact it’s a sign from God and a very probable
indication of sainthood.”
God, Kathy was thinking, any God; get me out of
this. “I’ll write something,” she said, “and we’ll see
what happens. But it’s up to the editor.”
“Okay,” August said, “write it, keeping in mind
you have three different stories to tell.”
Kathy didn’t ask what they were. She knew
August was going to tell her as he held up a finger
and took hold of it with his other hand.
“You got your stigmata story, miraculous marks
of Christ appear the first time in this decade on a
humble man, a one-time missionary by the name of
Juvenal.”
“That’s his real name?”
“That’s the name he took as a Franciscan.”
“Why’d he leave the order?”
“You’ll have to ask him that.”
“Did they throw him out?”
“He left of his own accord.”
“What’s his real name?”
August hesitated. “That’s up to him, if he wants
to tell you.”
“Do you know it?”
122 ELMORE LEONARD
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s up to him.” August was irritated
now. “It’s his name. If he wants to tell you, he will.”
“Okay,” Kathy said, “if I see him, I’ll ask.”
August settled back. He crossed his legs, resting
a brown sandal with heavy straps and studs, on his
knee.
“Second, you’ve got you’ve got your Outrage
story. The rapid growth of the traditionalist movement,
a counterrevolution, a renaissance, rebirth of
time-honored ecclesiastical and sacramental rites as
they affect the more than one million Catholics in the
Greater Detroit area.”
Kathy scribbled something on her note pad.
“I’ve got my stigmata and my traditionalist movement
. . . what else?”
August gave the smartass reporter a tight-jawed
stare, taking his time. “And you’ve got the miraculous
healing of little Richie Baker.”
“Who’s Richie Baker?”
“A ten-year-old victim of acute lymphocytic
leukemia, a terminal illness he’s had for two years . .
. until twelve twenty-five this afternoon.”
Kathy said, “You mean the bald-headed kid?”
“Richie Baker lost his hair from cobalt treatments,
Children’s Hospital. He goes there every
week for therapy. Check it out.”
“Who says he’s cured?”
“Talk to him; talk to his mother.”
“I mean how do you know?”
“Check it out.”
“There’s no way to tell by looking at him, is
there?”
TOUCH 123
“Check it out. Richie’s been healed, not cured.
Medical science had nothing to do with it. Go on,
check it out.”
If he said it once more—Kathy laid her ballpoint
on the desk. “Okay, let me get to work.”
“There’s your three stories,” August said.
“Maybe you’ll need some help.”
“We’ll manage,” Kathy said, “somehow.”
Actually, she was thinking, there were four stories.
The stigmata, the movement, Richie Baker, and a
profile of a guy who carried five pens and pencils in
his shirt pocket and wore socks with his Roman sandals.
She thought, How would you like to go out with
him? Do the Stations of the Cross. Maybe take in a
perpetual novena somewhere . . . as she began looking
at the photographs of Juvenal . . . the hands . . .
the face, the mild expression even as he held the
blood in his hands . . . the eyes that seemed to be
looking at her . . .
Kathy said, “Hey, what’re you doing?” Not sure
then if she was talking to herself or the photograph.
The good-looking black girl turned from the switchboard
and came over to the desk. “No, he doesn’t
answer. I know he went out this morning.”
“I picked him up,” August said.
“Well, you know where he went then.”
“And I know he came back.” Because where else
would he be? August held her gaze, hard-eyed, to
make her tell the truth.
The good-looking black girl said, “If he did, he
didn’t check in and that’s something he always does.”
“I’ll go up and look around.”
124 ELMORE LEONARD
“I’m afraid you won’t. Less you get permission
from Father Quinn.”
“Call him.”
“He’s not here either.”
“He’s told me, I can go anywhere I want in this
place.”
“He hasn’t told me.”
“You know you’re gonna be in serious trouble,”
August said, “as soon as I talk to Quinn. I hope you
realize it.”
“Yeah?” the good-looking black girl said, leaning
on the counter now. “I never been in trouble
before. Tell me about it.”
August walked out and got in his black Charger
standing in the no-parking zone . . . thinking of a new
pamphlet he’d write.
The problem of proselytizing minorities.
He should have written it a long time ago. Trying
to reach the unreachable . . . the unteachable.
Hell, tell it like it is.
Why there are so few niggers in the Catholic
Church.
August was tired, feeling the great weight of all
the work he had to do.
TOUCH 125

16
“NO, IT’S NOT MY REAL NAME,” Juvenal said.
“My real name’s Charlie Lawson.”
“Charlie? Come on,” Lynn said. “Guys named
Charlie don’t have things like that happen to them.
God, can you see it? This big statue in church—
someone says, ‘Who’s that?’ And someone else says,
‘Oh, that’s Saint Charlie.’ ”
“There was a Saint Charles,” Juvenal said.
“What did he do?”
“I don’t know. He probably got martyred.”
“How’d you get Juvenal?”
“You pick three names when you go in,” Juvenal
said. “I liked Raphael or Anthony. They said, ‘What
else?’ and showed me a list of names. I said, ‘I guess
Juvenal,’ and that’s the one they gave me, Brother
Juvenal.”
“Why didn’t you become a priest?”
“I think I was sort of edging in, because I wasn’t
that sure, I mean of a vocation. I thought if for some
reason I left the order as a brother it wouldn’t be as
bad.”
“Maybe you should never have entered.”
“But how else would I find out?” He seemed to
shrug. “It wasn’t wasted. It’s still part of my life.”
“Saint Juvenal,” Lynn said. She paused, looking
at him sitting in the cranberry crushed velvet with
Waylon’s face above him. He was barefoot and wearing
a “shavecoat,” a little blue-striped thing like a
short bathrobe the TV anchorman with the hair had
left behind. Juvenal didn’t ask whose it was. He
showered, put it on, and handed her his pants and
shirt and socks to throw in the washer. There was an
odor of flowers she thought was a new Oxydol scent.
She had said, “Do you think it’s all right?” The idea
of stigmata blood going down a wash drain, remembering
the scent of flowers; it was strange. He said,
“It’s my blood. I don’t see anything different about
it.” She threw in the Dacron cassock and surplice,
too, the scent lingering. Then washed away the blood
that stained her left hand, his blood . . . and changed
from the eighty-dollar dress to tight jeans and a cotton
shirt, leaving the two top buttons open, answered
the phone twice while he was in the shower—Bill
Hill and then Artie—and unbuttoned the third button
before Juvie came out.
Juvie, when she was thinking about him; Juvenal
when they were talking.
He was easy to talk to, interested, he listened,
looking right at her while she told him about Bill Hill
and Doug Whaley and KMA Records, Artie, the
Cobras, the guy from William Morris; he grinned
and was like a little kid. He seemed to know without
having things explained to him, savvy and yet naive.
God, and he was a very good-looking guy, the first
good-looking guy she had ever met who didn’t come
on with a lot of bullshit, working up to a little sack
time. This one—he had an innocence about him, no
pretense; like he didn’t even know he was good-
TOUCH 127
looking. Thirty-three years old, eleven of them spent
in the Franciscans, either in a monastery or a
Brazilian mission.
Could he still be a virgin? The thought hit her
cold. My God, it was possible. Even with all the singles
bars and casual sex, girls carrying their toothbrushes
and nighties in their handbags—he had been
away from all that, sheltered, protected. And if he
had known before that he was going in—gotten the
religious call when he was younger—he might have
avoided girls. She wondered if she could ask him. By
the way, are you still a virgin? The possibility
intrigued her more than his stigmata. Incredible.
Looking at him on the couch—was he the same person
as the one on the altar? That seemed a long time ago.
She said, “Do you suppose by any chance you’re
a saint?” (Was it all right to fool around with saints?
It was getting heavy.)
“I don’t think so,” Juvenal said.
Amazing. Not laughing or saying oh, no, horrified
at the thought; simply, he didn’t think so.
Lynn sat on the floor looking at him across the
coffee table, past the ice-cold wet Spumante bottle,
watching him reach for his glass, take a sip, and ease
back again in the shorty shavecoat, bare legs, bare
feet— He seemed comfortable. But he always
seemed comfortable. Even on the altar when he didn’t
know what to do. He had waited quietly for whatever
would happen next.
“This is really weird, you know it?”
“You mean sitting here?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Lynn said. “I mean your being
here considering, well, you’re a little different than
most people I know. Like a celebrity.”
128 ELMORE LEONARD
“Not freaky?”
“No, actually, if you saw some of my friends, they’re
the freaks. That’s what’s weird, you and I sitting here—I
mean after what happened, and all those people and what
they must be thinking—we sit here and it seems so natural.
I think to myself, How am I supposed to act with you?
Should I act reverent, real serious, or what? But we just
talk like, you know, it was nothing. I go, ‘You suppose
you’re a saint?’ And you go, ‘I don’t think so.’ All this
blood pours out of you, you don’t even get excited.”
“I’m getting used to it,” Juvenal said. “The first
few times, I was scared to death.”
“I can’t imagine you being scared.”
“I was numb.”
“Really? How many times has it happened?”
“Twenty. No, twenty-one now.”
“In how long?”
“Next month will be two years.”
“And you healed somebody each time it happened?”
“I think so, I’m not sure.”
“What was the first time like?”
“Well, it was a little boy who was crippled. He
came up to me in the street—”
“This was in Brazil?”
“Uh-huh, in a village near Santarem. The boy—
I don’t know why he came to me or why I touched
him, but in that moment I knew something was going
to happen and I wanted to run.”
“God,” Lynn said.
“I felt something wet—I thought the boy was
bleeding. Then I saw my hands, the marks in my
palms, and I saw my feet, I was wearing sandals. I
couldn’t believe it. Then a little girl came over—”
TOUCH 129
“Can I look at your hands?”
She rose to her knees and leaned over the coffee
table as he offered his hands, palms up, lined, calloused,
pink, with faint purple scars in the hollows,
like marks from an indelible pencil.
“Wow. Do you always have those?”
“No, they go away.”
“Well . . . what do you think?”
“What do I think? I told you about the stigmata,
what I know.”
“I mean, do you really think that’s what it is?”
“What else? All five wounds—”
“Do you, like pray and think about being holy all
the time?”
“I pray, yeah, but not the way I used to, or for
anything in particular. It’s more like talking to God.”
“Do you think He hears you?”
“Sure, or I wouldn’t pray.”
“How do you know He does?”
“I don’t know it, I believe it.”
“Do you ever pray to a crucifix?”
“Not to. You pray before a crucifix,” Juvenal
said. “Sometimes I do, but not as a regular thing.”
“Well . . . do you believe God’s doing this to
you?”
“He could be. Or it could be psycho-physiological,
I don’t know. Like when we’re sad, we cry. We
get mad or upset, there’s a physical reaction. If my
mind’s causing it, then it’s psychosomatic. If God’s
doing it, it’s supernatural.”
“Which do you think it is?”
“I have no way of knowing. But when you get
right down to it, what difference does it make? It
seems to do some good.”
130 ELMORE LEONARD
“You’re awfully cool about it.”
“I accept it, that’s all. Do I have a choice? I’m
not gonna pretend it’s something mystical and then
find out I’m psycho and should be put away.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No, not really. Even trying to keep an open
mind.”
“What did the other Franciscans say about it?”
“Down there? Nothing really. There wasn’t any
need to make a formal statement; most of the people
believe in magic and witchcraft anyway. Some of the
friars were turned on by it—Christ, a real stigmatic;
let’s see. The others, I guess the general reaction was
stigmata, huh? No shit. And went about their business.
You have to know Franciscans.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, I think for the most part they’re childlike,
in a good way.”
“What about your superiors?”
“They said to keep quiet. They didn’t want
another Lourdes or Fatima on their hands, the carnival
atmosphere, all the religious hucksters moving
in.”
“That’s what Bill Hill said. Pretty soon they’re
setting up stands to sell Juvie dolls, or something
like that.”
“I’m gonna have to meet him,” Juvenal said.
“He already called while you were in the shower.
He wanted to come over but I told him to wait. I
said I didn’t know what happens next in something
like this.”
“Nothing happens; it’s over.”
“Until the next time,” Lynn said. “Do you feel it
coming?”
TOUCH 131
“No. Sometimes I think it’s gonna happen and it
doesn’t.”
“Have you ever healed anybody and you didn’t
bleed?”
“No. That’s why I’m not sure which comes first.
Or if they both happen at the same time.”
“Does your Church know about it?”
“My Church? You mean Rome? I doubt it,”
Juvenal said. “But when I came home from Brazil I
was sent to Duns Scotus, over on Nine Mile, west of
here.”
“I’ve seen it,” Lynn said. “Gorgeous place, like a
monastery.”
“Yeah, it’s a seminary really. I got there, I thought,
fine. But then I was told not to have any communication
with the students. They put me to work as a gardener. I
said, Why don’t you send me someplace where I can do
some good? I wanted to work in a hospital.” Juvenal
grinned, the way Lynn’s eyes opened wider. “No, not to
heal anybody, I like working in hospitals, I always have.
They said wait. I waited, asked a few more times, waited
seven months, and walked out. Which was not the
way to do it, but I did.”
“Then what? You went to the alcohol center?”
“Yeah . . . but not right away.”
She expected him to continue, describe what
happened next, before going to work at Sacred
Heart, but he didn’t. Juvenal sipped his wine and sat
back; he seemed tired.
Lynn said, “You must wonder a lot, why you?
Huh?”
“Once in a while. I used to all the time.”
Now, she thought. And said, “You mind if I ask
you a question?”
132 ELMORE LEONARD
“No, go ahead.”
But as he looked at her, waiting, she chickened
out. “I’ve been asking too many questions as it is. It
can wait.”
“I don’t mind,” Juvenal said, “but I’ve got to be
getting back pretty soon.” He smiled at her. “You
coming to finish your cure?”
“I’ve dried out,” Lynn said, “but I’ll take you.”
They drove down Woodward instead of taking the
freeway—Juvenal’s idea—from the suburbs down
through the wide, main inner-city street that was
going to seed. Not something you’d show the out-oftown
visitor. But look, there’s life, Juvenal said.
People. What would you rather look at, people or
cement? He said he liked big cities and all the crap
and confusion. He’d spot things out the car window—
a black hooker propositioning a white guy in
front of the Cathedral of the Most Blessed
Sacrament—and smile and make mild comments.
She liked his smile, because she knew it was real. He
wasn’t pretending to be happy or smiling to show his teeth.
His teeth were all right, but not great. When he smiled he
seemed to know something. But it wasn’t an I-know-something-
you-don’t smile. Like a shit-eating grin. Or like the
wavy-haired Baptist preachers on TV who smiled talking
about Jesus and made you nervous. That was a Bobby
Forshay grin—gee, just so goddamn happy because he’d
been saved and knew something you didn’t. Juvenal’s
smile was good because he wasn’t aware of it. He seemed
not to be aware of himself at all.
After five hours at Lynn’s place, talking about all
kinds of things, they seemed to be talked out on the
ride downtown.
TOUCH 133
Until Juvenal said, “You were gonna ask me something.
I’ll bet it had to do with . . . did I ever go out with
girls, or do I like girls or am I sort of strange or celibate
for religious reasons . . . something like that?”
“God,” Lynn said, “is that part of it? You know
what people are thinking?”
“Yeah, ESP,” Juvenal said. “You know how you
do it? You listen to the other person instead of thinking
of what you’re gonna say next. That’s all, and you
learn things.”
“Like the other night in your office,” Lynn said.
“Like the other night,” Juvenal said. “We’d
talked earlier—I don’t know, I just had a feeling you
were gonna say you were worried about breast cancer.
I mean to test me.”
“Why, because you think I’m sex-oriented?”
“Because you’re sort of earthy. I said, ‘Your
breasts are okay,’ and I’ll bet you were gonna make a
remark; only you didn’t.”
“I was gonna say something like, ‘Just okay?’
and give you a look. I mean kidding.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want to sound like a smartass.”
“It wouldn’t have been smartass; it would’ve
been funny.”
“Why’d you touch me?”
“Why not? We were talking about your breasts.”
There was a silence. Lynn drove, looking straight
ahead.
“Well, okay, I’ll ask you. Do you have a hangup
about girls, or what?”
“No, I like girls,” Juvenal said. “But the idea of
being attracted to a girl, you know, is something new.
You were married, what, nine years?”
134 ELMORE LEONARD
“Eight and a half.”
“Well, you know something I don’t,” Juvenal
said. “I bleed from five wounds and heal people, but
I’ve never been in love. Isn’t that something?”
TOUCH 135

17
THE MONDAY, August 15 edition of the Detroit
Free Press carried the story on page 3, which was
like a front page of local news. There was no picture.
Miracle Claimed in Almont Church
By Kathy Worthington
Free Press staff writer
Almont, Mich.—Blood appeared on the hands of
a former Franciscan missionary, known only as
Juvenal, as he stood on the altar Sunday. He was
about to give a special blessing to a number of
crippled children in the congregation.
The bleeding was spontaneous, without an
apparent cause, and was immediately acclaimed
a miracle, a form of stigmata.
The scene was the dedication of St. John
Bosco church as a place of worship for traditionminded
Catholics who favor the mass in Latin.
They oppose, in general, Vatican-approved
changes in Catholic forms of worhip. About 200
were in attendance and witnessed the spontaneous
hemorrhaging in the palms of Juvenal’s
hands.
Juvenal, about 30, had been a Franciscan
brother 11 years. He served at a mission in
Brazil before leaving the order last year.
Many in the church believed the phenomenon
to be a true stigmata, which is described as
the appearance of the wounds of Christ’s crucifixion
on the body of a living person. Fr. Nestor,
the pastor of St. John Bosco, said, “There is no
doubt in my mind, it is stigmata.”
A pamphlet entitled “Stigmata” was distributed
following the occurrence. Juvenal, however,
was not available for questions or comments.
Theories explaining the stigmata are conflicting.
Some assume it to be a miracle, a sign
from God attesting to the saintliness of the one
who bears the stigmata. Others claim it to be
psychogenic, an emotional state of mind that
causes a physiological reaction.
The last publicized stigmatic was Padre Pio,
a Capuchin monk in Italy who gained world
recognition as a faith healer and confessor. He
died in 1968.
There was no mention of August Murray,
Outrage, the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost, or the
miraculous healing of little Richie Baker.
* * *
Bill Hill called Lynn first thing Monday morning
and said, Okay, tell me what happened. Lynn said,
Nothing, really, in a tired voice. He told her he was
coming right over. Lynn said she was going to wash
her hair, clean the apartment, and then go out shop-
TOUCH 137
ping. He said have dinner with him then. Lynn said
okay, if she felt up to it.
“Look. I’m the one brought you into this. Right?
I want to know what you two did, spend the whole
day at your place.”
“What do you mean, like did I seduce him or
something?”
“What’d you talk about?”
“We talked about all kinds of things—I don’t
know. He’s a very normal person.”
“Yes, that’s very normal, a person’s hands start to
drip blood.”
“Not just his hands. I washed his clothes.”
“Jesus Christ,” Bill Hill said, “you washed his
clothes—you didn’t save ’em?”
“What was he supposed to wear, something of
mine?”
“We’re gonna have a talk,” Bill Hill said. “I don’t
think you understand what you’re into.”
“I’m not into anything,” Lynn said, “and if you
think I’m gonna help you put him into some kind of
religious freak show you’re full of shit, buddy.”
“I’ll pick you up at noon. We’ll go out and have
lunch.”
Lynn said, “Hey, Bill? Stuff your lunch. I don’t
work for you and I don’t have to take your tone of
voice either.” She hung up.
What tone of voice? For Christ sake, what had he
said to her? Nothing.
He got August Murray’s address from the stigmata
pamphlet, “The Holy Ghost Press,” which turned out
to be Zippy Printing, across from the Detroit City
Airport.
138 ELMORE LEONARD
August looked up from his desk and said, Yeah?
Like, What do you want? He seemed to be a very
sour young man.
Bill Hill told him he had been at the church
Sunday and witnessed the miracle of the stigmata—
not there as a parishioner but because he was a friend
of Virginia Worrel’s. August had never heard of
Virginia, and Bill Hill sat down and told him how he
had witnessed her sight restored . . . and how
Virginia would be happy to give public testimony to
Juvenal’s healing power, if August would like to have
her out to the church sometime, even though Virginia
wasn’t Catholic. Bill Hill said he wasn’t either, but
after that service Sunday he was thinking of converting.
August was a little friendlier, though still sour.
He said, “The paper never used one of the pictures I
gave them or even said a word about Richie Baker,
after all that kid has gone through.”
Bill Hill didn’t know any Richie Baker. He said,
“Well, what surprised me most, your name wasn’t
mentioned, after bringing it all about, so to speak.”
August said, “Well, that didn’t surprise me.
Either paper—hell, any paper, they only write about
me if it can be done in a putdown derogatory way,
slanted.”
Bill Hill said, “You have prints of the pictures
you took?”
All kinds of them, eight-by-ten glossies. August
showed him, good shots of Richie Baker and the kids
as well as Juvie. And press releases. August had written
and printed stories of exactly what happened
Sunday at 12:25 P.M. in the Church of Saint John
Bosco, Almont. He had sent a “press kit” this morn-
TOUCH 139
ing to both Detroit dailies, all the suburban weeklies,
and the Michigan Catholic, daring them to print it.
Bill Hill said, “Maybe if I took a kit . . . and some
of these other pamphlets you’ve got—”
“What for?” August said.
“I was thinking of TV,” Bill Hill said. “I’ve got a
pretty good in at WQRD. You think these pictures
would show up on TV? Say next Saturday night on a
nationally televised program that goes out to millions
of people across the U.S.?”
* * *
Monday morning Richie Baker woke up with hair, a
fine downy fuzz covering his entire skull.
His mother, Antoinette Baker, said, “Oh, my
God!”
“See?” Richie said. “I told you. You didn’t
believe me, did you?”
His mother called Children’s Hospital and talked
to Richie’s doctor for fifteen minutes, finally raising
her voice saying, “Remission your ass. I can tell by
looking at him, I’m his mother!” And, “I’m not raising
false hopes. There’s nothing false about them.”
She hung up hard and went out to the kitchen to get
the morning Free Press and find the name of the person
who had written “Miracle Claimed in Almont
Church.”
Claimed. They hadn’t even said anything about
the real miracle.
Antoinette Baker looked up the Free Press number,
dialed it, and asked for Kathy Worthington.
Waiting, as the phone rang, an idea came to her, and
when Kathy answered Antoinette said, “I don’t want
140 ELMORE LEONARD
you. Let me talk to the editor, or whoever your boss
is.”
It happened that Jack Sheehan, an assistant city editor
at the Free Press, was looking through August
Murray’s press kit when he got the call from
Antoinette Baker. He said, “Yeah, I’m looking at a
picture of Richie right now as a matter of fact.”
Sheehan liked the photos and the press releases. He
liked religious revolts, conflicts in the church, and he
liked alleged miracles. To get them all in one story, and
a call from Richie Baker’s mom at the same time,
seemed a small miracle in itself, worth about three days
of follow-up stories: human-interest personal reactions,
interviews with the kid and his mom; their doctor’s
opinion; an interview with the healer, Juvenal—Christ,
Juvenal? It kept getting better—medical opinions of the
stigmata, preferably some smartass Jewish psychiatrist;
a theologian’s opinion of both the healing and the stigmata;
brief history of people who are said to have had
it; and what does August Murray, that asshole, have to
do with all this? It might even be worth four or five
days plus a feature on Sunday.
Sheehan said to Kathy Worthington, “You were
actually there and saw it and you give me this onecolumn
piece?”
“You cut it,” Kathy said. “There was a little
more.”
“I see there’s a lot more,” Sheehan said. “The
kid’s mother says he was healed.”
“The bald-headed kid?”
“The bald-headed kid isn’t bald-headed anymore,”
Sheehan said. “You started this, you get your
choice. You want the kid or Juvenal?”
TOUCH 141
“I’ll take Juvenal,” Kathy said, “and the theologian.”
Bill Hill took his press kit and photos out west
Twelve Mile Road to WQRD-TV, Channel 3, in
Southfield (which was one of 137 affiliates of
USBS, the young, upstart United States
Broadcasting System), and waited an hour and a half
to see Howard Hart.
When he finally got in Bill Hill said, “I can
understand how busy you are. Your program’s a
honey and I sure appreciate your taking the time.
Man, a lot’s happened since I first called and called
and you couldn’t see me.”
“What’ve you got?” Howard Hart said.
Bill Hill wanted to tell the man, first, he ought to
shove his hairpiece back farther on his head instead of
wearing it like an overseas cap. Jesus, all the money the
man made and his rug looked like it came from Kmart.
Bill Hill had watched “Hartline”—or, subtitled,
“Getting to the Heart of It with Hart”—many a
Saturday evening from ten to twelve on Channel 3 and
he knew the man had absolutely no sense of humor,
though he grinned once in a while to show his caps.
But, my God, the man had a loyal following, was seen
coast to coast, and got letters from all parts of the country
telling him what a loyal American and wonderful
person he was, which he often read on the air. Howard
Hart asked his guests embarrassing questions and his
viewers ate it up. He got transsexuals to talk about their
love life, then told them they were sick. He asked
female authors if they actually did all the filthy things
they described in their novels. He insulted, cajoled, misquoted,
called General Motors “Degenerate Motors”
142 ELMORE LEONARD
and Ford the “Bored Motor Company,” claiming neither
gave a damn about the common good of the “little people.”
He had a masked man on who told how he broke
into Greta Garbo’s apartment and stole all her underwear,
not touching her furs or jewels. A Chicano girl
claimed she had gotten it on with Ozzie Nelson “a pretty
lot of times” in Bakersfield—until Howard Hart
accused her of being a lying wetback, bore in and got
her to deny it finally, in tears. That kind of stuff. Some
guests had walked out of Howard Hart interviews right
in the middle of the program, one of them being Frank
Sinatra, Jr. Bill Hill heard about it but had not seen it
happen.
He showed Howard Hart the photos, making
brief but hard-pointed comments.
“He raised his hands like the crucified Christ”—
Bill Hill extended his—”and the blood poured out on
the altar.”
“And on the kid, it looks like,” Howard Hart said,
bent over his big kidney-shaped desk studying the
photos.
“On that poor little boy,” Bill Hill said, and
paused. “Who was going to die of cancer until
Juvenal touched him.”
“Who says?”
“They believe it. I talked to his mom,” Bill Hill
said, “a lovely woman name of Antoinette . . .
divorced, working hard to raise her boy and get him
his treatments—”
“What’s she do?” Howard Hart asked.
Bill Hill had him and knew it. He sat back, looking
across the expensive desk at the man’s $49.95
hairpiece and said, “Would you believe it? His
mom’s a topless go-go dancer.”
TOUCH 143
Howard Hart reached over, flicked a button on
his intercom and told his girl to hold the calls.
Work, work, work. But damn, he felt good. Bill Hill
was promoting people again and not some dead-ass
technical specs, which camper body to put on your
GMC pickup bed.
Down at the Sacred Heart Center he handed
Father Quinn a certified check for two hundred dollars,
saying just a little something in the fight against
alcoholism.
Quinn said, “You can’t buy your way in here.”
“I just want to see him a minute,” Bill Hill said.
“The line forms up in the coffee shop,” Quinn
said.
The priest took him up and showed him, pausing
to glance in through the doorway. There was August
Murray. There, a girl from the Free Press. Bill Hill
said yes, he knew her from church. The guy with her,
a photographer. The others were from the News, the
Michigan Catholic, the Oakland County Press, and
International News Service.
“My purpose,” Bill Hill said, “unlike theirs, is
not to beat on him with embarrassing personal questions.
I’ve had my own faith ridiculed in the press
and I know why he’s skittish.”
“I know when I’m getting conned, too,” Quinn
said, “but at least you don’t act bored and cynical. I’ll
see what he says.”
Once your luck gets a little momentum, Bill Hill
believed, there was no telling where it could take
you.
Like outside to the Center’s rooftop sundeck and
a panoramic sweep of downtown, from Stroh’s
144 ELMORE LEONARD
Brewery to the tall glass tubes of the Renaissance
Center rising 700 feet in the air.
He said to Juvenal, who was sitting in a striped
canvas chair with his shirt off, “I know what you’re
going through.”
Juvenal said, “I doubt it. I’m not going through
what you’re thinking.”
His body was white, his arms tan. Bill Hill didn’t
see a mark on his side, or on his bare feet, either.
“Maybe I can still help you,” Bill Hill said.
Juvenal looked up at him. “You know why I said
I’d talk to you?”
“Because you’re considerate.”
“Because you’re a friend of Lynn’s.”
“She’s a sweetheart, isn’t she,” Bill Hill said.
“I wondered how close you two are.”
“Like—” Bill Hill started to hold up two crossed
fingers. He let his hand drop. Jesus—the guy staring
at him, serious, waiting to hear what he’d say.
“I’m like an old uncle,” Bill Hill said, “interested
in what she does, protective— Why?”
“I just wondered,” Juvenal said.
“She’s certainly taken with you,” Bill Hill said.
He was thinking on his feet now, feeling his way
along. “She told me how . . . natural you two are
together. She said, though, ‘How come he hides
instead of coming out and revealing himself. If God
has given him this special gift, why would he keep it
a secret?’ ”
Bill Hill was also taking a chance. What if
Juvenal had already given her an answer? But he
didn’t have time to fool around. He had to get to the
point, and quick, with all those newspaper people set
to jump on the poor guy.
TOUCH 145
“I tried to explain it to her,” Bill Hill said. “I told
her you work here because it’s an ideal place to remain
anonymous; the word is understood and respected here
. . . if that’s what you want. If you don’t, if you want to
reveal yourself, so to speak, well, you could let August
Murray represent you and issue statements and whatnot,
act as your press agent.”
“Why would I want a press agent?”
“I wouldn’t think you would. But I have a feeling
that’s the way somebody like August would handle it,
as a promotion, and catch a ride himself for whatever
he can get out of it.”
“Why can’t I stay the way I am?” Juvenal said.
“Because the news people won’t let you. They’ve
caught a glimpse of you and they won’t let go till
they’ve seen the whole thing, and picked you apart.”
He tried something else then. “I would think you’d
like to step out into the world more, maybe see all
you’ve been missing the past eleven years . . . get a
taste of life, so to speak. I could be wrong.”
“I’m curious about some things,” Juvenal said.
“But if you’re gonna be out there you’ll want a
true image of yourself preceding you, not sly rumors
and accusations that you’re some kind of freak.”
Juvenal said, “Quinn suggested he and I go down
and talk to them, make some kind of statement.”
“That’s fine, you’re gonna have to do something
like that just to be nice,” Bill Hill said. “But then
after they run their stories, that’s when you get reactions.
See, people will have a feeling it isn’t the
whole story—is this guy a fake or what?—or necessarily
both sides of the story if it’s controversial;
because your great majority of people haven’t heard
it from you, what you feel and think.”
146 ELMORE LEONARD
“And you have a way to solve that,” Juvenal said,
sounding a little tired.
“Maybe,” Bill Hill said. “See, you read a newspaper
account, you say, ‘Hey, I didn’t say that. They
turned it around.’ Or they quote you out of context
and you sound dumb. What I was thinking, what if
you were in a position to tell your story personally to
everybody, and I mean millions of people, and take
as long as two hours if you want.”
“What’s my story?” Juvenal said.
“Touching people,” Bill Hill said. “You touch
people and they change. I don’t mean just the sick
and infirm.” Bill Hill paused. “Didn’t you know
that? Take Lynn for instance—”
TOUCH 147

18
TUESDAY, feature stories appeared in both the
Detroit News and the Free Press. Lynn got out her
scissors.
“Miracle at Almont?”
The basic story of what had taken place Sunday
now emphasized the fact August Murray had distributed
a pamphlet entitled “Stigmata” following the
supposedly “unscheduled incident on the altar.” The
story cited August Murray’s record of arrests as a
right-wing religious activist, but did not delve into
the purpose of traditionalist movement.
“Former Missionary Describes Mysterious
Bleeding.”
With a three-column cut of Juvenal, hands
raised, eyes staring out from the photo. The news
story was from the Sacred Heart Center press conference
and interview. It presented the facts accurately,
Lynn felt, though some of the quotes didn’t
sound as though they came from Juvenal. Words in
there like viable and preternatural.
“Stigmata: The Church’s View.”
An interview with Father Dennis Dillon, SJ,
Associate Professor of Theology at the University of
Detroit. “There exists no intrinsic relationship
between sanctity and stigmatization, though God can
confer charisma on anyone He chooses, even one
outside the Church or in the state of mortal sin . . .
according to Pope Benedict XIV.”
Lynn thought that was big of him.
“. . . but is generally attributed to purely natural
causes, as long as the contrary has not been proved.”
The Church, therefore is “cautious in attributing
stigmatization to a miracle . . . for psycho-physiological
sciences may, in the future, show such attribution
to be untenable.”
So that, Lynn decided, the guy really didn’t say
anything.
“Stigmata: A Psychiatrist’s Appraisal.”
An interview with Dr. Alan Kaplan, M.D., Ph.D.,
author of Psychoanalysis: Trick or Treatment.
According to Kaplan stigmatization was the result of a
highly emotional, hyper-ecstatic state. “Hey, the
Catholics don’t have a corner on stigmata,” said
Kaplan. “The wounds Mohammed received, battling for
the spread of his faith, have appeared on Moslem ascetics.
And how about, a few years ago, the little ten-yearold
girl in Oakland, California? She woke up Good
Friday morning with the stigmata, after reading about
the crucifixion and seeing a TV movie on it. The little
girl’s a Baptist, and she’s black.” Kaplan cited other
examples of spontaneous hemorrhaging, each case
involving a person “of strong hysterical disposition.” It
was like saying, What else is new?
But Juvenal didn’t have a hysterical disposition.
Did he?
“‘I Was Too Healed,’ says Richie.”
In the three-column photo Richie was touching
the fuzz that covered his head, eyes raised, while his
TOUCH 149
mother smiled proudly. “As soon as we saw Richie’s
hair we knew it was a miracle,” said Mrs. Antoinette
Baker of Clawson. “We got right down on our knees
to thank the good Lord for what He had done for us.”
The news story told that Richie had returned to
Children’s Hospital, where a complete physical
failed to reveal any trace of leukemia cells lurking in
his blood or bone marrow. Said an attending physician
in hematology, “We would not state categorically
the impossibility of a remission not lasting indefinitely—”
Lynn read that part over three times.
“—but we strongly advise the continuance of
chemotherapy at this point in time. A relapse is usually
fatal.” That was plain enough. But Mrs. Baker
insisted, no more treatments, convinced there was no
need “for Richie and I to keep going down there
every Thursday when he’s been healed.” She added
yes, she would like to meet this Juvenal sometime
and thank him personally for the precious gift of life
he has given them.
Then a final word from the doctor stating that
no, observing the amount of hair that grew in on
Richie’s head overnight could not be considered
usual.
In the “Accent on Living” section of the News
was a story Lynn read through twice—beneath a
four-column shot of Antoinette Baker in a bikini
striking some kind of a jivey pose.
“Go-go Dancing Pays . . . Barely.”
How does the divorced mother of an elevenyear-
old leukemia victim, with talent but no formal
training in a profession, get by these days?
150 ELMORE LEONARD
“Barely,” says Toni Baker, “but we make it and,
gosh, now, it seems too good to be true. With
Richie healed I’ll be able to sleep in Thursdays,
my day off, and get some much-needed rest.”
Toni dances at the popular Caprice Lounge on
Grand River, “interpreting” today’s disco beat as
she feels it, to the hearty approval of the gentlemen
in the audience. . . . But how does a go-go
dancer feel about miracles and divine intervention?
Can she handle it all right? “Easy as pie,”
says Toni. “God gave me my body, I’m not
ashamed of it. As for miracles, well, who knows
what God’s plan is for us here on, you know,
earth. I believe like if a certain person has the
power, like in Star Wars, you know, the ‘Force,’
then they can do all these neat things to help
humanity.” Toni said she and Richie were supposed
to meet Juvenal soon . . .
Which was different than the other story, Lynn
noticed, where the mother had said she’d like to meet
him.
. . . and she was looking forward to it. She
thought he had nice eyes and was real cute,
“especially for a person who performed miracles.”
When Lynn read it the second time she made
comments to herself. After “. . . no formal training
in a profession . . .” she said, You didn’t need training
peddling your ass. “God gave me my body, I’m
not ashamed of it.” Lynn’s thought was, And this
mother’s giving it to everybody else.
TOUCH 151
She was irritated, she thoroughly disliked the
woman, and had to stop and analyze the feeling. Was
it resentment? The book—one of the how-to-behappy
books—said if you were disturbed or felt
resentment, it was your own fault. You didn’t have to
feel that way. No—
But how come all of a sudden this Antoinette
Baker—Toni now, with everybody getting to know her
and love her—was becoming the star of the show? She
didn’t have a thing to do with what was going on.
Nothing. But there she was hanging out of her string
bikini—way too old to be wearing something like that,
she had to be thirty-two at least—on the front page of
the Detroit News “Accent on Living” section.
It burned Lynn up.
It made August Murray sick to his stomach. He said,
“Look at her.”
Greg Czarnicki said, “She’s a little old, but not
too bad.”
“Look at all this,” August said. He swept the
newspapers from his father’s desk, sweeping with
them the start of a pamphlet he was writing entitled
“You Claim to Be a Catholic . . . Prove It!” and a
twelve-inch plaster statue of the Infant of Prague.
August and Greg looked down at the broken figure,
the crowned head rolling away from the robed
body of baby Jesus.
“Look what she made me do!”
“Who?” Greg said.
“That cunt”—Richie’s mom in the bikini—“and
the other one, at the Free Press. I gave her everything,
the entire story. Do you see one word about
Outrage or Pius X?”
152 ELMORE LEONARD
“I thought this Juvenal might mention it,” Greg
said, “if he’s supposed to be so tuned in, or whatever
you want to call it, and sympathetic.”
“It’s not his fault,” August said, “you can’t even
get near him. That alcoholic priest, he actually
pushed me away. I said, ‘I have to talk to him.’ He
said, ‘Come back some other time, he’s got work to
do.’ I said, ‘Yes, he’s got work to do, for the Church,
not for a bunch of drunks.’ ”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know—he walked out, took Juvie with
him. Tomorrow you’ll be reading all about Sacred
Heart Rehabilitation Center and the great job they’re
doing—that guy Quinn, you can see it, he’s gonna
use Juvie, get all the publicity he can for his drunk
tank.”
Greg Czarnicki was picking up the newspapers,
piling the sections neatly on the corner of the desk.
“You want to save these?”
August wanted to but said no.
Greg was studying a section of the paper, holding
it as he read something on the page. “There was
a robbery at City Airport—you see it? They caught
the guys.”
“There robberies all around here,” August said.
“Look at them, they get their pictures in the paper with
their big hats on, punk nigger kids grinning at you. You
know why they’re grinning? They know they’ll be back
on the street in a few days, looking around . . . what’s a
good place to break in next? You know what I hope? I
hope they try to get in here sometime.”
August pulled open the middle desk drawer, took
out a revolver, and laid it on his writing paper, his
notes and starts of pamphlets.
TOUCH 153
Greg looked at it.
“It’s my dad’s,” August said. “Thirty-eight Smith
and Wesson Commando. You think this wouldn’t
stop them?”
“Just scare them,” Greg said. “You wouldn’t
actually shoot anybody, would you?”
“If he was coming in here to take something that
belongs to me?” August said. “I’d shoot to kill. And
if God wants to have mercy on his soul that’s up to
Him. You bet I’d shoot.”
On Tuesday, Bill Hill went back to WQRD-TV and
had to wait forty minutes this time to see the mighty
Howard Hart, Bill Hill thinking, as he sat there, Go
ahead, chickenfat, keep me waiting.
Boy, he hated to wait for people, especially a
man who had a bloated opinion of himself, no sense
of humor, and a fourth-place rating among Saturday
night shows.
Howard Hart had newspapers open on his desk.
Even the Michigan Catholic. He said, “Now what?”
“This Juvenal is a simple, honest man,” Bill Hill
said, “maybe even a little naive, not used to the bright
lights.”
“I think I’ll have Richie and his mother on first,”
Howard Hart said, “then bring the doctor on. Maybe
give a full hour to them. But that’s something I’ll feel
as I go along. Then bring Juvenal on with the psychiatrist
and let ’em tangle asses.”
“He’s a gentle person,” Bill Hill said. “I think he
deserves your full attention.”
“The theologian, I don’t know,” Howard Hart
said. “What side’s he on, the guy’s?”
“He’s not on either side.”
154 ELMORE LEONARD
“Then I don’t need him. I want to see the guy
and the psychiatrist mano a mano.”
“Why don’t you leave the psychiatrist out of it,”
Bill Hill said, “just talk to Juvenal.”
“Why don’t we leave you out instead,” Howard
Hart said.
“No, I got it,” Bill Hill said. “Why don’t you talk
to the kid and his go-go mom, the doctor, the psychiatrist,
and the theologian all this Saturday. Set it
up, set the stage. Then next Saturday have Juvie on
for the entire two hours.”
“What do I talk to him about for two hours?”
“Anything you want. But with about fifteen minutes
to go, you know what happens?”
“Tell me.”
“In front of you and fifty million people, if your
network’s any good and can do its promotional work
. . . Juvie will get the stigmata, bleed from his five
wounds, and heal a cripple of your choice . . . live on
national television.”
Howard Hart had to think about that a minute; he
had to try to picture it.
As he did, Bill Hill said, “Queen for a night. The
chance to see your ratings shoot up from fourth place
to first. It wouldn’t hurt you, would it?”
“What do you know about ratings?”
“Nothing. But I read in the TV column in the
paper you’re about to get canceled if your audience
doesn’t pick up.”
“What if the guy doesn’t produce?” Howard Hart
said.
“What if you had Neil Diamond on and all of a
sudden he couldn’t sing a note?” Bill Hill said. “This
is what Juvie does, he performs miracles. If you’d
TOUCH 155
rather watch him on another network, let me know
right now.” Bill Hill started to get up.
“Let’s say I agree,” Howard Hart said, thoughtful,
as though he were still undecided.
“Then you hand me one of your standard contracts,”
Bill Hill said, “stating you’ll pay me one million
and forty thousand dollars for the delivery of
Juvenal the miracle worker.”
Howard Hart threw his head back and laughed
and laughed, then shook his head and pretended to
wipe tears from his eyes.
Bill Hill waited until he was through.
He said, “You got a whole bunch of commercials
on your two-hour show. I counted thirty-one times
including the station breaks, and I understand the
network sells its time for about a hundred and twenty-
five thousand dollars a minute. That’s a lot of
money. I want a million forty thousand of it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,”
Howard Hart said. “It isn’t that simple.”
“Then it’s up to you to make it simple,” Bill Hill said,
“so I can understand it. We won’t get into residuals on
reruns, I’ll talk to my lawyer and let you know what kind
of a cut we want. But as it stands now, I sign for a million
forty thousand or you don’t get your miracle worker.
Somebody else does. Or, if you try to tamper with Juvie or
reach him except through me, the deal is automatically off
and you’re out. You want him or not?”
“What’s the forty thousand for?” Howard Hart
said.
“Waiting in the lobby while you read the paper.
A thousand dollars a minute.”
“Well—” Howard Hart sighed. “It’s gonna take a
few days.”
156 ELMORE LEONARD
“That’s all I’m giving you,” Bill Hill said.
“Signed by Friday or no deal.”
He walked out, certain of getting his contract.
The secret, he’d tell Lynn, was knowing how to talk
to big shots. Give them the same shit they gave
everybody else.
Something else happened that Tuesday, August 16,
1977. Elvis Presley died.
TOUCH 157

19
“ ‘STOP IT,’ shrieked a grandmother in a wheat-colored
pantsuit. ‘I can’t take any more.’ The radio
clicked off but her weeping didn’t stop.”
Bill Hill sat on the couch reading aloud from the
paper.
“It says he was laid out in a simple white tuxedo
with a silver tie.”
Lynn was in the kitchen. She said, through the
counter opening, “I read Harmony House sold out
his albums, three hundred and fifty of ’em, by tenfifteen
yesterday morning.”
It was 2:35 P.M. now, Thursday.
Lynn was trying to act natural: in the kitchen cutting
up celery and carrot sticks, opening a bag of
corn chips and putting some in a bowl . . . finishing
what she had been doing when she heard the door
buzz and jumped, then had gone in to buzz the downstairs
door and waited, and must have looked surprised
when she saw it was Bill Hill. (“No, I’m not
mad at you. No, nothing’s wrong. . . . Yes, as a matter
of fact, I am expecting somebody. . . . None of
your business, if you don’t mind.” With a snippy tone
that didn’t even sound like her. Then, trying to be
nice, “You want to sit down for a minute?”) Bill Hill
had been sitting in there at least fifteen minutes now
and it was almost twenty to three.
“ ‘Michele Leone, thirty-two, of East Detroit,
called the White House and urged President Carter to
decree a national day of mourning.’ ”
He wasn’t dumb, Lynn was thinking. If he knew
somebody was coming and she didn’t want him
here— But he kept reading to her.
“Here’s one. ‘ “I got goose pimples,” said Jane
Freels of Livonia. “I felt numb. But I didn’t cry till I
played ‘Love Me Tender’ and heard his voice. My little
girl, Shannon, stared at me like she was frightened and
kept saying, ‘What’s wrong, mummy?’ ” ’ ”
Just tell him to leave, that’s all.
“ ‘ “I was talking to my other married girl friends
today and they said nobody feels like doing anything.
They’re just numb. We just watch TV waiting
to see if they’re going to show anything about him.
We just can’t get over this.” ’ ”
I can’t either, Lynn thought, if he doesn’t get the hell
out of here. Doesn’t call or anything, just walks in—
“ ‘ “He was the king of rock and roll,” Jane concluded,
with tears in her blue eyes. “He started it all.
He made us what we are today.” ’ Is that a tribute,”
Bill Hill said, “or is that a tribute? You imagine the
money they’re gonna make on his records and stuff?
They’re selling Elvis Presley memorial T-shirts, pennants—
the guy that’s making them says, ‘I know he
would’ve liked them.’ ”
“Too bad you’re not down there.” Lynn put the
carrots and celery in the refrigerator, looked around
the kitchen, and came out to the living room.
Bill Hill was saying, well, things were happening
up here, too. “For us, anyway, you and I. But you bet-
TOUCH 159
ter sit down if I’m gonna tell you about it, because
you’re not gonna believe it at first and when you do
you’re liable to faint.”
“You didn’t bring a hat, did you?”
“You’re cute,” Bill Hill said. “Call whoever it is
and tell him you’re busy. Jesus, I hope it isn’t the guy
with the hair on Channel Seven. You got more class
than that.”
“You mind if we don’t discuss my personal
affairs?” With the snippy tone again that she didn’t
like. It was hard to keep her voice natural.
“If you want to be that way,” Bill Hill said. He
watched her walk over to the sliding glass door and
look out at the fairway, then turn, restless, gather up
the newspapers from the coffee table, then not know
what to do with them. “If you don’t want to be partners
again—”
“We were never partners before.”
“—and together find success and happiness, not
to mention a whole lot of money.”
“Leave him alone,” Lynn said. “That’s all I’ve
got time to say to you right now. Leave the poor guy
alone and let him do what he wants.”
“You just said it, ‘the poor guy,’ ” Bill Hill said. “For
him to be poor and left alone is not only dumb, it’s a sin;
because when you’re gifted and you don’t take advantage
of the gift and use it, you know what that’s like? It’s like an
insult to Almighty God, telling Him you don’t want the
gift. ‘Keep it, Lord, I want to be left alone and hide out in
some monastery or alcohol center.’ ”
“Bill, leave. Okay?”
He got up, studying her with a relaxed, confident
expression, straightening his tan trousers and shortsleeved
safari jacket.
160 ELMORE LEONARD
He said, “You look nice, you know it? You ought
to dress up more.”
“I’m not dressed up.”
“Those are good-looking slacks, nice fit—nice
starched white blouse. You ought to throw those cutoffs
and that Bob Marley T-shirt away. And take
Waylon down, get a nice painting.”
“Bill?”
“I’m going. Have a nice time with your
boyfriend.”
* * *
Lynn’s two-bedroom-with-balcony apartment was on the
second floor of a four-unit tan brick building that was less
than ten years old. In the mile-square complex of the
Somerset Park Apartments—with its curving streets,
sweeping lawns, its golf course, tennis courts, swimming
pools—all the buildings were two stories, beige, tan, or
gray, cleanly styled with sort of mansard roofs. The front
door of each building was always locked. A visitor pushed
the button opposite one of the four names and the front
door was buzzed open from inside the apartment.
At ten after three, Lynn heard the sound and
jumped—again, even though she was expecting it—
as anxious, excited, as she had ever been in her life.
She buzzed the door and went out into the hall to
wait, facing the stairway, the wrought-iron railing,
the cathedral window that rose from the landing—
the turn in the stairway—all the way up to the ceiling.
The sun was streaming in through the window. It
was quiet. It was perfect.
Juvenal came up the stairs, smiling. Not looking
around, smiling right at her.
TOUCH 161

20
“HOW’D YOU GET HERE?”
“They let me use a car.”
“You found it all right?”
“Sure. I was here before.”
“But I drove. You know, unless you were paying
attention—”
“I remembered.”
“Well, you look good.”
“So do you.”
“I was surprised when you called—”
“I had to get out of there. All the people coming
to see me, even Time magazine and Newsweek, I
couldn’t believe it. It got so the news people were
taking over the coffee shop.” Juvenal paused, waited,
looking at her. “That’s not the reason I came though.”
“I know,” Lynn said.
“I came because I wanted to see you. In fact—do
you want to know the truth?”
“Tell me.”
“I was dying to see you.”
She wasn’t sure who moved first. Her arms went
around his body and his arms gathered her in close,
around her shoulders; she could feel his hands on her
back. They held each other very tightly, standing in
the hall, the sun coming in. They had reached this
point almost immediately, after only brief moments
of looking at each other, making opening remarks,
barely able to wait, because they both knew and felt
it and didn’t have to hint or fool around or be coy
about it. They both knew. They wanted to hold each
other as tightly as they could and that’s what they
were doing. For the moment there was nothing else.
“I was dying too,” Lynn said.
“I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t get out of there fast
enough.”
“Let’s go inside, okay?”
He said, “Just a second.”
She raised her face. His face was there, eyes looking
into eyes, to see the person in there. They began
kissing each other’s mouths, moving their heads and
sliding gently and getting the soft fit, trying to get
inside and be lost in each other. Was it possible?
They held and kissed again, without moving,
standing in the living room.
They held and kissed on the cranberry couch
with Waylon above them and the newspaper
accounts of Elvis on the coffee table . . . Lynn a
young girl again kissing, necking—no, it wasn’t
necking, it was kissing and feeling it as though for
the first time, kissing for kissing, not to lead to
something else, though it was going to, she knew.
There were things she wanted to say to him but didn’t
want to speak now unless she could whisper very,
very quietly and not interrupt the mood or the
silence. For a moment, a split moment, she saw herself
alone again, after, and was afraid.
He said to her, very close but looking at her, both
of them low on the couch, half sitting, half lying, he
TOUCH 163
said that he loved her. He said, “I love you,” in a way
she had never heard before in her life. “I love you.”
Lynn said, “I love you.” And then tried it again,
“I love you. Either way, it’s true. Any way you can say
it. But I wasn’t prepared. I mean I knew I loved you,
but I wasn’t prepared to say it. I don’t want to talk
yet.”
He said, “Boy, it’s good.”
She said, “I want to feel you. I’m dying to. Can
I feel you?”
He said, “I want to feel you. I want to see you.”
She put her hand on his groin, on the tight, hard
bleached denim. “I feel you. There you are, right
there. Part of you.”
He put his hand on her breast. “I feel you.”
“You felt me before.”
“No, I wasn’t feeling you then.”
“I know you weren’t.”
“I’m feeling you now. You feel so good. That’s
you, isn’t it?”
Her hand moved up to unbutton the buttons of
his shirt and slid into the opening, her fingers brushing
his side that had bled, moving up to his chest. “I
love your body. I saw your body and I loved it and
now I love it more.”
He said, again, “I want to see you. Where are
you?”
“I’m here.”
He unbuttoned her blouse and opened it.
“You said my breasts were okay.”
They were smiling at each other.
“Your breasts are beautiful. Your breasts are the
most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. They’re not
things, but I can’t think of a good word. The most
164 ELMORE LEONARD
beautiful breasts I’ve ever seen—no, because that’s
not right.”
She was looking at him with a question, a doubt,
hesitant.
He said, “Don’t think. Don’t talk now.”
She said, “I love you so much. But I don’t want
you to feel—you know, after, that I’m making you do
something.”
He said, “What I feel, I feel good. Listen, do you
want me to tell you exactly how I feel, if I can, how
much I love you and how I feel when I’m with you?”
He was brushing her face with his mouth. “Do you
want to talk about what we’re doing or do you want
to just be here and that’s all, because I think it’s
enough. I can say I’ve never said this before to anyone.
I have no practice, no moves . . . let’s take our
clothes off . . . do you say that or do you just take
them off or do you say something romantic first? . .
. No, don’t tell me, because what difference does it
make . . . if you’ve never done this before you think,
well, there’s only one way to do it, not several ways.
How many ways can you take off your clothes? You
can tell me that.”
Lynn said, “Come on with me.”
She said, “God, I love you.” She said, “I love you so
much, I don’t believe it. Like it can’t be happening.”
They were lying on her double bed with the top sheet
and the spread thrown back, the window shade
pulled, the bedroom dimly more light than dark.
He said, “It’s happening. I’m pretty sure it is.”
Lying on his back he moved his right hand to her
thigh and brought it up slowly between her legs.
“Yes, it’s still happening, I can feel it.”
TOUCH 165
“We’re lucky,” Lynn said. “Right now we are.”
“You sound very solemn.”
“You’re right, I’ve got to watch that,” Lynn said.
“The most important thing you can do in life is not
take it too seriously. I wrote that down once.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s true.”
“Who said it?”
“It was Errol Flynn in a movie called Escape Me
Never, with Ida Lupino.” When Juvenal turned his head
to look at her, Lynn said, “I’m not trying to be funny. It
was in the movie and I remember it. On television.”
“On television,” Juvenal said. “Well . . . I think
it’s all right to take serious things seriously. As long
as you don’t wail and gnash your teeth. Or kick and
scream. The problem is figuring out what’s serious
and what isn’t.”
She was looking at him now, her head turned on
the pillow. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
He said, “I think what I’m saying is, being in
love is serious and making love to the person you
love must be the best thing there is. You lose yourself
completely. It’s awesome when I think about it.” He
smiled, moving against her. “But it’s also a lot of fun
it’s so good. What I’m trying to say is that being serious
doesn’t mean you have to be solemn.”
“My instant reaction,” Lynn said, “I want to say,
But it’s too good to be true.”
“Or, it’s so good that it’s true,” he said. “Unless,
for some reason, you want to be sad.”
“Did you read that?”
“No, I didn’t read it. I don’t think I did.”
“I have a terrible feeling that when something good
happens it’s not gonna last,” Lynn said. “But when I
166 ELMORE LEONARD
look back, the good things that’ve happened to me
haven’t been all that good. So it doesn’t matter they didn’t
last. But now—do you know what I mean?”
“Well, you told me you’re not in love with anybody
else.”
“God, no.”
“You don’t have any binding commitments.”
“None.”
“I don’t either,” Juvenal said, “so what’s the
problem? I haven’t read any book on this, I’m feeling
my way along”—and smiled at her as his hand
moved gently into the hollow of her stomach and
down to the patch of soft hair between her legs—
“you might say, going by instinct. But are you supposed
to worry about it? Why can’t we just accept
what’s happening and say fine?”
She said, “But you’re not just someone, some
guy—”
“Sure I am. I’m Charlie Lawson—and I haven’t
heard that in a long time. You want, you can call me
Charlie.”
“You’re more than that, a name.”
“How should I act then?”
“You were in a religious order—”
“I came out. Priests come out now, get married,
it doesn’t seem to bother anyone.”
“You’re different.”
“Right, I wasn’t even a priest.”
“You know what I mean, you bleed. God, I’m
lying here with you—from the same as Christ’s
wounds—do you realize, would you like to try to
look at it from over here? Put yourself in my place.”
“I bleed from my own wounds,” Juvenal said.
“They aren’t even wounds. I bleed from my mind,
TOUCH 167
who knows? Or God makes it happen. Maybe. But
there aren’t any conditions, rules of behavior. It happens
to me, so how do I handle it? What do I do? I
accept it—I told you that—because I don’t have any
other choice.” He paused. “What else? I touch people—”
He paused again. “And you touched me. You
took my hand—”
“I want to be with you,” Lynn said, “but I don’t
want to be in your way. This is something, it’s way
over my head and I guess that’s part of what I mean
I don’t believe it’s happening. You have to understand,
I was married to a saddle bronc rider.”
“You want me to pretend to be pious?”
“You act like it’s nothing.”
“If it’s mine, if it’s happening to me—” His voice
was very quiet as he said, “How do you want me to
act?”
“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes, to rest or
run away for a moment.
He waited until she opened them again.
“I don’t know either. But if there aren’t any rules,
why can’t I be myself?”
“Maybe . . . your Church won’t let you.”
“You mean a person in the Church? Who?”
“Well, what if—and I’m serious—what if it turns
out you’re a saint?”
“What if I am? What if we both are? We’ll be
canonized in two hundred years and young girls will
pray to Saint Lynn. Will you intercede for them, take
their petitions to God?”
“Is that how it works?”
“Who knows? What do we know that we’re sure of?
I’ll tell you the only thing I know and can feel and believe,”
Juvenal said, “I love you, I want to be with you.”
168 ELMORE LEONARD
“But why?”
“Because I’ve known you all my life and maybe
even before that and I feel good with you. I’m beginning
to know what it means to feel one with another
person. I don’t mean making love, and that’s an
unbelievable experience, making love with someone
you love; but it’s part of it, trying to be physically one
with your bodies”—looking at her body now—saying,
“I love your body,” and smiling at her. “I’m talking
more than I’ve ever talked in my life. Let’s make
love to each other again.”
It was in Lynn’s mind to say, “You’re really
something,” or “You’re too much.” But she didn’t.
She smiled back at him and said, “Okay.”
He slept. Lynn lay awake. She would look at him and
slowly look away from him and catch glimpses of the
other two, the ones from the TV channel and the
radio station. But it wasn’t the same thing, what she
did with him and what she did with them. He said
you lose yourself in each other and that’s what it was
like, being with-him in-him while he was in her, feeling
him and feeling herself as one, not wanting it to
end it was so good—and it didn’t end because they
clung together after for a long time, mouths touching,
brushing, and the after was another experience
in itself and could go on for a long time, as long as
they wanted, until they smiled and touched places
and began at the beginning again. But it wasn’t like
that with the other two. It was an act with the other
two with a beginning and an end and awareness of
where she was and what she was doing and what they
were doing—“Do you like that?” “Uh-huh”—every
step of the way. She had never closed her eyes and
TOUCH 169
fantasized, imagined the man was someone else. She
could have done it with the other two, because there
was room in her mind to fool around with fantasies
or think of appointments or movies. But not with the
man lying beside her now, who knew nothing of pretense
or that men must appear to excel at this and
leave the girl exhausted as they lay back or rolled
over—there, that’s done. She thought, What did you
expect from them?
And then thought, Don’t put them down.
See? She felt different with Juvenal, being with
him. His kindness rubbed off on her, his innocence . . .
But he had said something . . .
Talking about it being an unbelievable experience,
making love to someone you love. And he’d
said it before that, in the living room, about the seriousness
of it, loving someone and making love to the
person.
As opposed to making love to . . . someone you
didn’t love? How would he know the difference?
In the kitchen, reading the Jiffy Pop label, she was
wearing bikini panties and an apron that covered her
breasts in front but left them bare on the sides . . .
where his hands slipped in from behind and took
hold of her after pulling open the tie strings.
“I like your outfit.”
She relaxed against him, dropping the Jiffy Pop
on the counter and reached around to feel his bare
legs. “What do you have on; nothing?”
“My drawers.”
“Nuts.”
“You’re close.” He said then, “I’ll ask you one
question, okay? Is this how people talk?”
170 ELMORE LEONARD
“It’s how we talk.”
“I feel like I can say anything I want to you and
you won’t laugh or think it’s dumb, even if it is.”
“I don’t think there’s a book on it,” Lynn
said. “I don’t think people who write how-to
books say goofy things. I don’t know, maybe
they do. When you’re alone you can say anything
you want, nobody’s listening to us. But
even if they were—”
“You’re right. Who cares?”
“Can I ask you one?”
“Sure.”
She hesitated, then said, “Have you met
Antoinette Baker yet?”
“Yeah, she and Richard came—you know everybody
calls him Richie and he doesn’t like it. I had a
feeling—I called him Richard when I met him and
saw him light up a little bit. Then when we were talking
he told me, he hates Richie, the name.”
“Did you like her?”
“The mother? I didn’t dislike her. But that’s not
what you were gonna ask me.”
“You’re scary, you know it?”
“Have I ever made love before to anyone. Why
couldn’t you ask that?”
“It’s none of my business.”
He turned her around to face him, his hands on
her hips, fingers touching the elastic top of her pants.
“I did. Sort of.”
“It’s not something you do sort of. But, listen,
you don’t have to tell me.”
“I do now. Who knows what you’ll imagine.
Right?”
“Did you like her?”
TOUCH 171
He hesitated now. “I liked her, yes. Her name
was Annie, twenty years old—we spent the night in
a motel.”
“How did you meet her?”
“In a bar downtown. She was a prostitute.”
“Oh—”
“I didn’t know it at first. We were talking—I
liked her because she seemed very open, she was
funny, a nice-looking girl.”
“You spent the whole night together?”
“Uh-huh. I was drunk. I don’t mean that as an
excuse—I was very curious about the girl, about
going to bed with her and all, finding out what it was
like—but the being drunk, during that period, right
after I left the order and walked out of Duns Scotus,
I was drunk most of the time for about three weeks.”
“I can’t imagine you drunk.”
“That’s why I finally went to Sacred Heart. I
thought I was an alcoholic.”
“But you weren’t.”
“I was a third-rate amateur. Do you know what
alcoholics call New Year’s Eve? Amateur night. I was
thinking too much, going around in circles, beating
on myself for leaving the order and trying to work up
a good feeling of guilt, because that’s what I thought
I should feel, guilty. Quinn straightened me out in
about three days. He said I could stay if I wanted, as
long as I wanted and . . . here we are.”
“It didn’t take you long.”
“I wasn’t that bad off. I just had to resolve the
guilt thing.”
“You don’t feel it now?”
He smiled. “You mean with you? No. There
might’ve been more to it than guilt; I suspect there
172 ELMORE LEONARD
was, anyway. But I have no reason to dig around in
the past to find out what it is.”
“Do you think about the girl?”
“No. I barely remember what she looked like,
except she had dark hair, she was small, pretty.”
“A pretty whore.”
“What’s the matter with that?”
“Nothing. See, that’s a prejudice coming out, a
little smart-assness. The thing is, I’m really glad you
told me, because then I don’t feel like the only one
who’s fooled around, but I don’t like to think of you
with someone else.”
“Then don’t.”
“I’ve never been jealous before,” Lynn said. “It’s
a new feeling, having something I want more than
anything—that’s why I’m afraid it’s gonna end,
something will happen.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, something.”
Serious, in a see-through apron and panties . . .
Then both dressed, in the living room again with beer
and wine, corn chips and dip, popcorn and the celery
and carrots, and they were smiling again and saying
whatever they wanted, dumb or not, because it didn’t
matter, they were playing, having fun . . . Lynn
telling him about the 117-foot World’s Tallest
Illuminated Cross of Jesus and the battery-operated
replicas and the WTICOJ T-shirts and what a hotshot
promoter Bill Hill was in his day.
They might have stayed up there, talking about
goofy things.
But Juvenal said, “In his day. He’s still at it, isn’t
he?”
TOUCH 173
And Lynn said, “Don’t listen to anything he tells
you.”
“I already have.”
There, and they were off again. Juvenal got comfortable
on the couch with his beer and a bowl of
popcorn and told her Bill Hill’s plan for nationwide
TV exposure, the Juvenal message—apologia,
Juvenal’s word—entering millions of Christian
homes. Juvenal grinning as he told it, Lynn not grinning,
shaking her head.
“Why not?”
“He’s a con artist.”
“He’s your friend.”
“He’s still a con artist. You’ll end up with nothing.”
“He hasn’t offered me anything.”
“See? You think he’s getting you into this for
free? He sold them a package and he’s making all the
money. I know it, because he asked me to be his partner.”
“Tell him you’ll do it.”
“I don’t understand you at all,” Lynn said. “He’s
using you and you want me to help him.”
“He’s not using me if I let him. I’m agreeing to
it.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Come on, you don’t hide out for years and then
decide to go on national television.”
“I wasn’t hiding, I was doing what I was told. Up
to a point. Now I’ve got a choice,” Juvenal said. “All
right, here I am. This is what happens to me. This is
what I think about it. I’m not ashamed of it, am I?
And I’m not self-conscious especially. So why not? I
174 ELMORE LEONARD
don’t make any claims, I don’t say I’m an instrument
of God . . . even though I might be.”
“There,” Lynn said. “Though you might be. Tell
me something. What do you think about when you
heal people?”
“I don’t try to think about anything.”
“Do you ask God to heal them?”
“No. I feel . . . sad, I guess. I feel sorry for whoever
it is.”
“Somebody’s gonna call up—or Howard Hart,
that asshole’ll say, ‘All right, smart guy. You think
you can heal people, why don’t you visit hospitals
and heal everybody?’ ”
“I don’t say I think I can heal people. I say it’s happened.
That’s the whole point. I make no claims, so why
would anybody try to shoot me down? From where?
I’m here on the ground, I’m a realist, I accept everything
that happens. I’m not trying to change the world.”
“Maybe you should,” Lynn said.
He said, still mildly, almost always mildly,
“Make up your mind.”
“You get me confused,” Lynn said. “I don’t have
any trouble at all talking to people, communicating,
but I get with you, I don’t know what to think or what
I’m saying sometimes. I’ll tell you, it’s not like getting
your record in the top forty.”
“I’m sorry,” Juvenal said, “really. We’re talking
about, what? You’re worried about people taking
advantage of me. I say, but how can they if I know
they’re doing it? You’re afraid people will challenge
me, try to tear down my—what?—my veracity. But
how can they if I make no claims?”
“You don’t know people. If you rock their boat,
their safe beliefs, they’ll come after you.”
TOUCH 175
“Then they’ll be worrying the same as you are,
over nothing. If I disturb people, if they say I’m a
fake, a phony, I say, believe what you want. What difference
does it make? If they say go to the hospital,
buddy, let’s see how good you are, I’ll go to the hospital.
I’ll heal people or I won’t. Either way, it’ll be
done. So what’s the problem?”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“Outside of maybe running out of blood.”
“Could that happen?” Like a wide-eyed little
girl.
“That’s a stigmatic joke. You don’t hear too
many.”
How do you want it? Lynn thought.
Go from the hairdo hotshots to the nice innocent
guy and say to yourself perfect, no sham, no bullshit,
great—to always know exactly where you are.
Except that being close to him was not as simple as
it looked. Or maybe it was only simple in principle:
to be straightforward, honest; never lie or play roles
or pretend or worry or get upset or angry. Only if it
was momentary, controlled . . . or for fun, kidding
around. Don’t think so much, or feed on resentments
or hangups. Be you and responsible for you. “You
make me mad” was the same as saying, “You make
me weigh a hundred and five pounds.” The choice
was yours. Don’t say, “This is awful. Why is it happening
to me?” Say, “Why do I think it’s awful?”
And find out the real reason, not the apparent one.
Say, “Why shouldn’t it happen to me?” And look at
it quietly, objectively. Simple. But not easy. Get rid
of years and years of crap cluttering your mind.
Treat serious things seriously, but don’t get
heavy about it.
176 ELMORE LEONARD
She said, “What is it you want to be, a TV star?”
He said, “Well, I’ve got to do something, and I
don’t think saints are making it these days. What do
you think?”
“No, your saints are a little too low-profile.”
“Unless I was a martyr—”
“That’s a short run,” Lynn said. “How would you
like to be a record promoter? I can see you with the
Cobras.”
“I might like them.”
Lynn thought about it. “You know what? You
probably would. Or what you could do, you could
heal them. Straighten them out.” She liked that idea
and began to smile, thinking about it, thinking of
others then . . . August Murray. She said, “What if
you just devoted your life to healing assholes?
Turning them into human beings.”
They discussed it in serious tones, Lynn supplying
names, all kinds of names, and they seemed to be considering
it, until the buzzer buzzed. Lynn said they didn’t
have to answer it; ten to one it was Bill Hill back
again. Juvenal said, but if he’s here and we’re here—
Lynn said all right, he can stay fifteen minutes, and
buzzed the door, knowing it was Bill Hill. It wasn’t.
It was Kathy Worthington with her canvas bag, her
note pad, and a flat little GE tape recorder: Kathy
here to interview Lynn Faulkner (friend of Juvenal’s
or what?) and walking into what looked like a typical
Somerset hot setup. (If the place wasn’t famous
for it, at least there was talk.) But even better than
that, Juvenal himself was here, involved in popcorn,
beer, and, obviously, the little KMA record promoter.
Kathy said hi and they said hi.
TOUCH 177
Kathy said to Juvenal, “You know, I caught your
act Sunday and it wasn’t bad.” Trying to get a rise.
They laughed and she didn’t know why, until she
became aware of the glances at each other, the grins,
and began to feel the off-center, free-form mood, a
couple of little kids playing house, or doctor, the
barefoot miracle worker and the record promoter
with her blouse half open, no bra, both of them subdued
but still glowing, trying to suppress the feeling
of whatever they had been up to in a dim, comfortable
room on a sunny afternoon. It looked like a halfpage
Sunday feature, Women’s Section, if she could
get a few admissions rather than weasels or phony
indignation.
Kathy took out her tape recorder. They said nothing.
She turned it on. They still didn’t say anything.
She began to ask questions, slipping into her no-bullshit
reporter role:
KATHY: Have you known each other long?
JUVIE: We sort of grew up together.
KATHY: You did? Where?
JUVIE: Right here.
KATHY: No, really . . .
LYNN: Isn’t he cute? I could eat him up. Actually
we’ve been trying to figure out what he’s gonna
be. Like what he should do with his, you might
say, particular talent.
KATHY: What did you decide?
LYNN: We’re thinking he could hang out backstage at
rock concerts and heal . . . well, certain performers.
KATHY: Heal them? Of what?
LYNN: I guess you’ve never met the Cobras.
178 ELMORE LEONARD
KATHY: Do you know what she’s talking about?
JUVIE: I have no idea.
KATHY: Then what’s so funny? No, forget it. Tell me,
are you two living together?
LYNN: We’re dating.
KATHY: You’re serious?
LYNN: Boy, are we.
JUVIE: We’re getting married.
LYNN: We are?
JUVIE: Isn’t that what you do?
LYNN: I haven’t even thought about it.
JUVIE: What’ve you been doing?
LYNN: I guess when we have time to talk, make some
plans. Yeah, why not?
KATHY: You don’t think it would be, well, strange,
being married to a stigmatist? Is it stigmatic or
stigmatist?
JUVIE: I think either one.
LYNN: Strange? Are you kidding? But he’s really a
neat guy. He’s kind, considerate . . . absolutely
honest. I just hate to think what’s gonna happen
when he gets on TV.
KATHY: On what, a talk show?
LYNN: On Howard Hart.
KATHY: Oh . . . Do you know what you’re getting
into?
JUVIE: Is it like Mike Douglas?
KATHY: You mean you’ve never seen Howard Hart?
JUVIE: I don’t think so.
LYNN: The only thing good about it, Howard hasn’t
seen Juvie either, so they’re even.
KATHY: Aren’t you being a bit naive? In fact, I was
going to ask you anyway . . . Why are you allowing
yourself to be used, exploited?
TOUCH 179
JUVIE: Am I?
KATHY: Are you a traditionalist, a member of August
Murray’s group?
JUVIE: No, I’m not.
KATHY: Then you’re being used.
LYNN: He isn’t if he knows it. He knows what’s going
on.
KATHY: Then you have to be awfully naive.
JUVIE: Why does that make you mad?
KATHY: I’m not mad.
JUVIE: You seem upset.
KATHY: Because you’re so fucking naive about all
this.
JUVIE: Yeah, but why does it make you mad?
KATHY (pause): I don’t know.
JUVIE: You like what you’re doing? Your work?
KATHY: Not especially.
JUVIE: Then why don’t you do something else?
KATHY: I’ve been with the paper ten years . . .
JUVIE: And you like to write.
KATHY: Yeah, it’s what I do . . . Let me turn this goddamn
thing off.
Silence.
End of tape.
180 ELMORE LEONARD

21
WHEN AUGUST MURRAY was a teen-ager he
read how Saint Agapitus at age fifteen was brought
before the governor of Palestrina, condemned for
being a Christian, flogged, placed in a foul dungeon,
had hot coals put on his head, boiling water poured
over him, his jaw broken, and thrown to the lions.
When the lions refused to eat him the governor had
a seizure and died on the spot. “Agapitus was finally
beheaded, but not before the example of his resolution
had converted the tribune Anastasius.”
He read about Saint Agatha, who, upon resisting
the advances of the governor of Sicily, was arrested
on suspicion of being a Christian, had her flesh
ripped by iron hooks, her breasts cut off, and was
then thrown onto burning coals, “whereupon a violent
earthquake shook the town of Catania and the
governor, Quintian, fearing the people would rise up,
ordered her taken back to prison.” (August decided
they would have raped her if they hadn’t cut her
breasts off..)
August could tell you about Calocerus and
Parthenius, who were burned alive; Sebastian, shot
through with arrows; Victor, Nicephorus, Claudian,
Dioscorus, Serapion, and Papias, pounded to death
or hacked to pieces; Fabian, Florian, Dismas, of
course, Justa and Rufina and Iraneus of Sirmium, all
executed; old Nestor, lynched by a mob in Gaza,
along with Eusebius, Nesturbus, and Zeno; about ten
Theodores or Theodoras who were put to death; the
triplets Speusippus, Eleusippus, and Meleusippus,
martyred with their grandmother, Leonilla; Gregory
the Wonder Worker, also a martyr, who moved
mountains, changed the course of rivers, and
appointed Alexander the Charcoal Burner, in spite of
his rags and dirty face, bishop of Comana in Pontus;
and, of course, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Andrew,
Peter, Laurence, Cosmos and Damian and Victor of
Marseilles.
It was too bad Saint Augustine was not a martyr.
He took a concubine and had a son by her. In fact,
from what August could find out, Augustine screwed
a lot of women in North Africa before deciding to
dedicate his life to Christ. Thereafter he was continually
engaged in the defense of the Catholic faith
against schismatics, heretics, and pagans. He died
August 28, 430, “in a spirit of great courage, humility,
and penitence.”
The first important paper August Murray ever
wrote was entitled “What the Church Needs Today Is
a Good Persecution.”
The paper wasn’t the reason he was kicked out of
the seminary; his English teacher, Father
Skiffington, agreed with him. But it was an indication
of August’s problem. He had trouble with rules
of conduct, blind discipline, all the no-questionsasked
humility shit. He believed the Church needed
fighters—anybody could see that—and not the
bunch of good little mama’s boys the seminary was
182 ELMORE LEONARD
turning out. It was true that Saint Augustine had died
in a spirit of humility (and courage and penitence),
but he was seventy-six years old and humility could
be a wise move at that age; but not when the Church
needed men who weren’t afraid to stand up and
defend their faith against the cowards within and the
Communists without (the sons of bitches).
August transferred to the University of Detroit,
majored in sociology, minored in philosophy, and
graduated cum laude.
He joined the Catholic Laymen’s League, which
was dedicated to rooting out Communist fronters
from the Church and clergy. But the CLL was never
active enough for him. He left to found Outrage,
along with the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost (membership,
a hundred dollars a year), and began writing
and distributing pamphlets. The first one he printed,
and still his favorite, was the one about the Church
needing a good persecution.
August wasn’t afraid to be persecuted. He had
demonstrated against demonstrators, commie peace
makers, political left-wing cowards, lesbian ERAers,
fags of all kinds, marijuana creeps in Ann Arbor,
equal housing, the right to work, and what’s-hisname,
the nigger mayor. He’d been arrested a half
dozen times and finally convicted of assault, disrupting
a Lenten service at Our Lady of Lasalette in
Berkley, sentenced to a year probation and ordered to
undergo psychiatric examination, which he ducked
and they forgot about. Then a disorderly conduct
arrest: distributing political literature within three
hundred feet of a church, for which he was fined two
hundred dollars by a chickenshit colored judge. And
right now he was out on a five-hundred-dollar bond
TOUCH 183
awaiting his jury trial in the assault on the guinea
priest, Father Ravioli . . . Navaroli.
The Romans used to take Christians, dip them in
tar, and set them afire to light up the Colosseum.
They threw them to lions, into boiling oil, crucified,
decapitated, stoned, roasted alive, pressed them
between boards, and tore them limb from limb.
August had been fined two hundred dollars one time,
put on probation another.
In a daydream he used to serialize when he was
younger—and still imagined from time to time—
August was Augustus, a Christian of ancient Rome.
He lived in the catacombs at a time when all the
Christians were scared to death of getting caught and
thrown into the arena, except Augustus. He always
carried one of those short swords beneath his toga
and made a specialty of avenging martyred
Christians. He killed gladiators who killed
Christians. He killed the guy who imported the lions.
He killed soldiers who raped Christian girls and sold
them into slavery. In one of his favorite sequences,
Augustus would slip into the villa of a wealthy
Roman, free the slaves, and assassinate the master as
he lounged in his atrium eating sweetmeats and
hummingbirds: see the guy cowering, whimpering,
begging for mercy, and drive his sword into the
Roman’s fat body. One day Augustus would be captured—
after killing about twenty of them—and crucified
atop one of the seven hills of Rome. He would
take three days to die and people would come out
from the city to marvel at this heroic martyr with the
calm look on his handsome face. (August had always
thought it would make a good movie, but could not
decide who should play his part.)
184 ELMORE LEONARD
He’d be playing himself on television this Saturday,
featured on Howard Hart’s “Hartline” as Juvenal’s closest
friend and adviser and . . . maybe suggest to Howard
something like, “the Ralph Nader of the Church.” “. . .
And now I would like to introduce a man I consider the
Ralph Nader of the Church, a man whom, no doubt, you
have read about in the paper numerous times as the firebrand
leader of Outrage, but who possesses, I found in
talking to him backstage”—continues Howard Hart—
“a cool demeanor and what you might call a razor-sharp
analytical mind. I give you the man who has given us
Juvenal, Mr. August Murray.”
August didn’t see why Hart had to have all those
other people on: the kid and his mother, the psychiatrist,
the priest—that was a lot of bullshit. Unless
they were going to be there just in case.
But if he went on first, yes, they could easily
keep talking for two hours. Then he could suggest he
be brought back on with Juvenal next week, right,
and save the standbys for some other time.
Otherwise Hart wouldn’t even need them.
August had enjoyed talking to Howard Hart on the
phone—he had always respected the man—and was looking
forward to the meeting and possible videotaping this
afternoon. Hart had said they’d tape it unless he decided to
go live for phone-in questions, audience participation.
August hoped it would be live; there was less chance of
getting edited, important words cut out. But he’d play it by
ear. He wasn’t worried about thinking on his feet, getting
into a little give and take, with Hart playing devil’s advocate
to keep it lively. August was ready.
He’d have to give Bill Hill credit for coming up
with the TV idea. It had surprised him at first, the
man didn’t appear to have the brains of a used car
TOUCH 185
salesman. But by now August had analyzed Bill Hill
and had a clear reading: a hanger-on type, one of
those people who liked to be seen with celebrities
and hang around the edge of the limelight. Fine, as
long as he didn’t get in the way.
Okay, things to do today, Friday, August 19:
Be at WQRD at 3:00 P.M. sharp.
Call Greg, get about twenty guys from the Gray
Army lined up to be in the audience if the show was
broadcast live tomorrow night. No armbands, no
demonstrating; but with prepared questions in case
Hart opened it up to the audience.
Try Juvenal again.
August dialed, sitting at his dad’s desk in the
print shop, and the snotty colored girl on the desk at
Sacred Heart answered. She tried to disguise her
accent, but August could tell it was her.
(Had Saint Augustine, before he was a saint,
fooled around with colored girls in North Africa?)
“I called all day yesterday and he wasn’t there.”
Like it was the girl’s fault.
“And I kept telling you he wasn’t, didn’t I?”
“Where is he today?”
“He’s on his vacation.”
“On his vacation? What do you mean he’s on his
vacation?”
“I think I mean he went on a vacation. Isn’t that
what I said?”
“Where’d he go?”
“Up north somewhere.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’ll take a polygraph,” the girl said, “and send
you the results. He’s not here, he picked up his suitcase
and he’s gone.”
186 ELMORE LEONARD
“When’d he pick it up?”
“I have no idea,” the girl said. “There’s a little
three-by-five card here says, ‘Juvie on vacation.
Gone up north. Back eight twenty-six.’ Now what
else can I tell you?” She blinked at the sound of
August hanging up his receiver and added, under her
breath, “Motherfucker.”
It was annoying, agonizing, frustrating . . . infuriating—
he’d get the right word—to try to do something
intrinsically meaningful and have a bunch of
mindless . . . pretentious people always in the way . .
.
Thinking this as he went to the front door of the
shop, opened it, and picked up the Friday morning
Free Press.
Thinking, he had to get Juvenal away from
everybody, under wraps, so he could prepare him,
condition him, get him in the right frame of mind . .
. as he brought the paper back to the desk, glanced at
the front page, turned it and saw, jumping out at him
from page 3, Juvenal and the girl, the girl, grinning
at each other like two little kids above the headline:
Says the Woman in Juvie’s Life:
“He’s Really a Neat Guy . . .”
By Kathy Worthington
Free Press staff writer
“Isn’t he cute?” said Lynn. “I could eat him
up.” Don’t be surprised at anything you read
these days. Neither Lynn nor Juvenal is the least
bit bashful on the subject of love and their intention
to marry “once we have time to talk about it
and make plans.”
TOUCH 187
Charlie Juvenal Lawson is the former
Franciscan brother who, day by day, gains more
national notoriety as mystic faith healer and the
world’s only known stigmatic. Or is it stigmatist?
“Either is accepted,” said Juvie.
“Oh, God—” August groaned. And missed what
Kathy wrote about Juvie’s boyish charm belying his
ability to empathize, a gift that appeared to border on
extrasensory perception. August missed it as his eyes
dropped like a stone to:
“Lynn Faulkner, who makes her home in fashionable
Somerset Park, digs cranberry crushed
velvet, chrome and Waylon Jennings, was a
career-minded pop-record promoter, until she
met Juvie. “He’s really a neat guy,” said Lynn,
“kind, considerate . . .”
“Noooooooooooooo!” August shrieked. “God!
What are you doing to me!”
He crushed the section of the newspaper together,
squeezing, squeezing with all his strength to compress
it into a ball, a limp rag of paper. Then stopped
and sat absolutely still, staring at the venetian blinds
on the front window, hearing the faint sound of
morning traffic. He began to open the ball of paper,
flattening it on the desk, trying to smooth out the
creases, looking for page 3 again and the picture . . .
There.
Lynn Faulkner . . . fashionable Somerset Park.
What did she do to him?
Put something in his coffee, some kind of drug.
Paraded naked in front of him.
188 ELMORE LEONARD
Enticed him, lured him, appealed to his libido . .
. ambushed him! Assaulted his purity! Seduced him!
Dragged him down to her depths!
“God, please help me,” August prayed, not in a
toga now, not with one of those short Roman swords
either. No, with something way better than a sword
right in the desk drawer. His dad’s .38 caliber Smith
and Wesson Commando.
TOUCH 189

22
TWENTY-TWO FIFTY-SEVEN GOLFVIEW.
There it was, Faulkner, the fourth name; upstairs.
August rang. There was no response.
No one on the street or the walks leading up to
the cluster of apartment buildings. Everybody away
or at work or in out of the sun. He walked around to
the back—or the front of the building, whichever it
was—where two cement-slab patios and two balconies
above looked out on the golf course and two
people way off on another fairway. One balcony
stripped, empty, the people obviously away. So it
wasn’t hers.
The other balcony was hers, with the porch furniture,
August reasoned, because he knew the colored
girl had lied to him. Juvenal wasn’t away on vacation,
he was being seduced by the little blond cunt
who wasn’t answering her doorbell and was up there
right now “maneuvering, manipulating, contaminating
him with her body, shoving it in his face”—lines
for a pamphlet—“draining his will, which was innocent,
unsuspecting, and tragic ally, treacherously”—
check The Word Finder— “weakened or sapped by
the determined thrusting of her sex at him.” Or, “the
relentless thrusting.”
It would never occur to August that he was
sometimes dumb-lucky, that he made the right move
for the wrong reason. Half right, anyway. Yes, it was
Lynn’s apartment. But no, there was nobody home.
To find it out he took two metal chairs from the
downstairs patio, piled one on top of the other, tested
them, climbed up, caught the toe of his goddamn
sandal in a chair rung, fell with the chairs and hit his
forehead on the cement; climbed up again, reached
the balcony railing, and pulled himself over—not
wasting any time now—wanting to punch a hole in
the glass door with his gun butt, Christ, and shattered
the whole pane, hunching his shoulders at the sound,
but it was done; he slid the door open and rushed
through the apartment to the bedroom, revolver
ready, like he was raiding a whorehouse.
Shit.
He stood there looking around.
August had never been in a girl’s apartment
before. It was quiet. He felt strange. He wondered
what was in here, if she had sexual objects, picturing
a garter belt and a black vibrator. He began opening
drawers. He looked at her panties. He looked at a box
of Tampons and read the directions. He looked at
bras that were so flimsy he could hold them up and
see light through the cups. He found a little enema
behind the bathroom door; good, she was constipated.
There were jars and tubes in the bathroom bearing
names like Elancyl and Ethera, which August
believed were applied, somehow, to female reproductive
organs, but he didn’t find a garter belt or a
vibrator. He went out to the front room and looked at
Waylon Jennings, studying the giant face, having no
idea who it was. August wanted to do something to
TOUCH 191
that face. Mess it up, throw something on it. But
what? His hand came up and rested on the row of
pens and Magic Markers in his shirt pocket.
“There’s more about Elvis,” Lynn said. Then, after a
few minutes, she said, “Oh, my God.”
Juvie opened his eyes—“What’s the matter?”—and
raised his head from the towel, seeing a glare of sky and
sand and the high dunes of Sleeping Bear way off where
the beach curved out into Lake Michigan . . . and Lynn
in the yellow bikini sitting cross-legged on a towel. She
was looking down at the newspaper on her lap, the
Chicago Tribune, holding one temple of her sunglasses
so they wouldn’t slip off.
“Something terrible happened to Waylon.”
“What?”
“Poor guy. He was picked up on a dope charge.
Coke. I guess possession.”
“Oh.” Juvie lowered his head and closed his eyes
again.
“Yeah, possession,” Lynn said. “One gram, that’s
all. They arrested him in Nashville.”
“Is that a lot, a gram?”
“Hardly more than a small party, depending who
your friends are. He could get fifteen years and a fifteen-
thousand-dollar fine. God, one gram.”
“Do you use it?”
“I have, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it.
It’s okay,” Lynn said. “But listen, you know what I’d
like to do? I mean when we have time. Go down to
Luckenback, Texas.”
“Okay.” Juvie’s eyes remained closed. He wore
red swimming trunks and a glaze of suntan lotion.
“You know where I mean?”
192 ELMORE LEONARD
“In the song,” Juvie said. “What’s there?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Then what do you want to go for?”
“It’s got one fireplug, one store, two houses, a
shade tree, and a lot of cold beer, and you know
what? Everybody’s going there to see it on account
of Waylon’s song . . . to get back to the basics of life.
If it was spring we could go down for Mud Dauber
Day. It’s an annual event; people go down there and
drink beer and wait for the first mud dauber wasps to
show up. But you know what? I like ‘If You See Me
Getting Smaller’ better than ‘Luckenback, Texas.’ ”
“I like ‘Lucille’. . . in a bar in Toledo,” Juvie
said. “The place I’d like to see is Nashville.”
“You ain’t ever been to Nashville?” Lynn would
get more down-home at the mention of it. “I’ll tell
you what. We go Interstate 65 to Nashville, turn
right, head over to Texas and pick up 35 south to
Austin and it’s eighty miles to Luckenback.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Uh-unh, but I know the way.”
They ate smoked chub they bought on the dock in
Leland where the fishing boats came in . . . went for
a thrill ride in a dune scooter, a trip across the Sahara
on the shores of Lake Michigan . . . returned to the
motel and made love in the afternoon and slept in
each other’s arms, it was so good.
Look at it now, calmly, Lynn thought. Why
should it end?
She read their horoscopes in Town & Country
and felt encouraged; read his first, Aquarius, aloud,
beginning with, “ ‘Saturn has put you through the
mill the last couple of years . . .’ ”
TOUCH 193
He said, “That’s who it was.”
“ ‘ . . . but it has also in some way refined you.
So what you experience this month may be no more
than a total and final truth session.’ Neat? ‘You also
enter a completely different phase in your career now
and over the next few months.’ Really, I’m not making
it up, that’s what it says.” There were also references
to “matters of a partnership nature” and deciding
“whether or not the bonds are strong enough to
hold a relationship together.”
“Are they?”
“They’re awful strong,” he said.
That was good because Lynn, a Libra, wasn’t
going to “have much time for friendships and close
involvements,” she’d be “preoccupied with your
career.”
“What do they know?” Lynn said. “But wait.
‘The New Moon on the fourteenth’—that was last
Sunday—‘heralds an entirely new chapter and one in
which you will want and certainly be required to
present quite a different face to the world.’ Now that
part’s true, isn’t it?” Lynn said. “I just read it for fun,
I don’t believe in it. But every once in a while it
comes pretty close; like a new beginning on the fourteenth,
that’s certainly true. Town & Country and
Cosmopolitan are the best. The ones in the paper, I
think they make them up.” She paused. “Are you
okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sad?”
“Maybe; I don’t know.”
“It’s all right to be sad,” Lynn said. “There are
sad things.” She waited a moment, lying on the
messed-up twin bed with the magazine, Juvenal on
194 ELMORE LEONARD
the made-up twin after popping open cans of beer
and lying down there to listen to their horoscopes.
“Are you thinking about the little boy on the
beach?”
“I was.”
The boy, about six years old, with withered stick
legs, had been with his family, his two sisters, his
mother and father, at a campsite of beach chairs,
blanket, picnic basket, rubber rafts. His father had
carried him down to the water and held him while the
boy waved his arms, screaming happily, and splashed
and pretended to swim . . . Juvenal sitting on his
towel watching them.
“You can’t just . . . heal everybody, can you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did anybody ask Padre Pio, you mentioned, or
any of the saints that healed people?”
“Ask them what?”
“If they could heal everybody.”
“Not that I know of.”
“What you said before—doesn’t the person have
to feel something? Like want to be healed?”
“I don’t know. I thought so, but I’m not sure.”
“Did you want to? I mean with the boy today.”
“Yes. But I was afraid it wouldn’t happen, I
wouldn’t be able to.”
“Have you been afraid before?”
“No. In the times before I never thought about it.
It just happened,” Juvenal said. “Except in church
last Sunday I was beginning to think about it—I
remember now—and be afraid, with the children
coming up the aisle. What was gonna happen? What
was I supposed to do? But then the boy ran up to
me.”
TOUCH 195
Lynn waited again. “You’re not responsible for
everybody.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Do you think you are?”
“No. I mean I don’t know. Tell me what I am
responsible for.”
She said, “It isn’t something you can think about,
is it? Or you can’t say, if I’m this . . . if I’m a house
painter I should paint houses, it’s what I’m supposed
to do. It isn’t like that, is it?”
“No,” he said, “it isn’t clear. It seems to be, but it
isn’t.” He was silent a moment. “I grope, feel my way
along.”
“Who’s being dramatic now?” Lynn said.
He looked over at her and seemed to smile; but
it was like someone trying to hide grief or pain. “A
time comes every so often, I say to myself, why me?”
“Like the little boy on the beach will say to himself
one day,” Lynn said.
He kept looking at her with the expression of
concealed grief until she came over to his bed to lie
close to him and hold him.
“I need you,” Juvenal said.
Howard Hart spoke to a man from Garden City who
had been a few years older than Elvis when they
were both growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi. The
man said Elvis was always following the older boys
around and they’d have to yell at him to go on home.
“He was just a snot-nosed regular boy,” the man from
Garden City said.
Howard was told by an educator from Bob Jones
University, Greenville, South Carolina, that Elvis was
“morally debauched” and contributed to the ruin of
196 ELMORE LEONARD
America’s moral fiber and the breakdown of the family
unit. Howard asked the educator if he’d say that on the air.
He read in the paper about Elvis pulling a gun
and shooting out his TV set the time Robert Goulet
was singing, as described by one of Elvis’s bodyguards.
Howard told his secretary to see if she could
reach the bodyguard by phone.
He spoke to a girl who said her name was Peggy
Chavez and claimed to be Elvis’s real girl friend and
not that Ginger somebody who was supposed to have
found him dead. Peggy said, “Sure, I was with him
plenty times in Vegas and L.A.” Howard wondered if
it was the same girl who once claimed to have been
with Ozzie Nelson plenty times in Bakersfield.
It didn’t matter. He invited the boyhood friend
from Garden City, the educator, and the girl friend—
he couldn’t reach the bodyguard—to be on the program
this Saturday, Howard Hart’s Elvis Presley
Memorial Show, and had his secretary go out and tell
the “miracle crowd” waiting in the lobby he’d get
back to them in a couple of weeks.
The psychiatrist said, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,
uh? What’s he got, some hermaphrodites? Forget it.”
He walked out. The hematologist and the theologian
sat there not knowing what to do, the theologian
lighting another cigarette. Bill Hill said, well, they
could go over to the Perfect Blend and have a twofor-
one happy hour drink. Antoinette Baker said fine
with her. August Murray, tense, said he was going to
“get some straight answers out of Howard Hart if he
had to break the man’s arm, or worse.”
Bill Hill and Antoinette were on their second
round of dry Manhattans, four for the price of two,
TOUCH 197
when August walked in, sat down with them in the
empty side of the booth, and ordered a ginger ale.
Bill Hill said, “No luck?”
“They tried to keep me out,” August said. “I went
in his office, looked around the studio; he wasn’t
there.”
“I meant to ask you,” Bill Hill said, “what you
did to your head.”
“I bumped it.”
“That’s a mean-looking bruise.”
“Poor Richie,” Antoinette Baker said.
“Everybody’s calling him fuzz-head now, the other
kids. I told him”—pouting as she said it—“don’t you
pay any attention to the little shitbirds.”
She was a stylish woman and she smelled nice,
had on turquoise Navajo earrings and a low V to her
white dress, giving Bill Hill a glimpse of healthy
breasts with little blue veins. She wore her nails long,
polished a deep red, and a big turquoise ring, the
hand holding a cigarette and tapping off the ash
every few seconds. She had told them Richie was
back “on the ward” again, but just for observation.
That’s why she hadn’t brought him. He was healed,
she knew it; and he’d be fine on the TV program if
they ever went on the air. She said she had told
Richie to just act natural and say yes, sir, and no, sir,
which he would because he was a little gentleman.
But it sure pissed him off when the kids called him
fuzz-head.
Antoinette talked a lot, but was not hard to steer,
Bill Hill found. He had been suggesting he could
contact the National Enquirer for her. Maybe she’d
like to sell them a copyrighted interview as the working
mother of a boy miraculously healed. But he did-
198 ELMORE LEONARD
n’t want to talk about it in front of August, who sat
hunched over the table holding onto his glass of ginger
ale—in case anyone were to come up and try to
grab it away from him. Dumb shit. He was going to
get round-shouldered. Down there stewing, smoldering,
instead of holding his head up, alert to opportunity;
yes, and all kinds of young happy hour secretaries
coming into the place now, eyeing the young
hotshots in their three-piece business suits.
He said to August, “There’s a lot of talent
around, if you’re interested.”
August looked past his shoulder at the secretaries;
he didn’t say anything.
Antoinette said, “I was really surprised to read
about Juvenal and his girl friend. That kinda surprised
the hell out of me. I mean a holy person—you
don’t, you know, think of them making out or even
being interested in girls. He was very nice and Richie
liked him a lot—”
“I guess he would,” Bill Hill said.
“—but he didn’t strike me as being that way, you
know, even though you read about priests all the time
now running off with nuns”—flicking ashes—
“which is fine, I mean I’m not gonna judge or condemn
anybody as long as they’re not hurting other
people.”
Bill Hill let her talk, because he wasn’t sure if he
wanted to discuss Lynn and Juvenal. If he decided he
didn’t, he’d switch Antoinette onto something else,
like herself, which was a foolproof way to switch a
person.
What did Bill Hill think of the new Lynn and
Juvenal, as reported by Kathy Worthington? Well, at
first he hit a ceiling inside his head and wanted to
TOUCH 199
storm over to Somerset and shake Lynn and tell her,
“Look, for God sake, at what you’re doing to a holy
instrument of the Lord.” Or, “Well, what’s it like
knowing you’ve fucked up a young man’s entire
life?” On the other hand, after calming down and
looking at it again, he could say to her, grinning,
“You son of a gun. You . . . son . . . of . . . a . . . gun.”
Bill Hill could go either way. And the more he
thought about it, the more he was convinced he
should ride with it. Ride with it? Hell, drive it home.
Face the realities of life with neither fear nor loathing
and you’ll come out ahead. Nothing was ever as bad
as it seemed. You could go to a man like Howard
Hart, after he came out of hiding in the toilet from
August, and say, “Well, how do you like the setup
now? You get not only a miracle-working faith healer,
but one that’s in love and living with a popular
young Detroit record promoter. Now then, how’d you
also like to have on your show—”
“What’s her name?” Antoinette said. “Lynn
something?”
“—Lynn Marie Faulkner,” Bill Hill said. “Sweet
little girl used to work for me. We’ve been close
friends eleven and a half years.”
“I think it’s real cute,” Antoinette said. “A man
like that should, you know, get out more and find out
what life’s all about. I’m a Catholic, went to Catholic
schools and all—”
“You mean you were a Catholic,” August said.
“Maybe when you were little.”
“I still am. I was baptized one.”
“You go to mass on Sunday?”
“Sometimes.”
“You make your Easter duty?”
200 ELMORE LEONARD
“God, I haven’t heard that in years.”
“You dance naked in a beer garden and you say
you’re a Catholic?”
“Beer garden?” Antoinette said.
“That’s one I haven’t heard in years,” Bill Hill
said. “I believe they’re all lounges now.”
August said, “You say you’re a friend of hers, but
you didn’t speak to her?” When Bill Hill looked at
him he said, “I’m talking about Lynn, or whatever
her name is.” Like August didn’t want to say the
name aloud or even think it. “Where is she?”
Bill Hill said, “What do you mean, where is
she?”
“She isn’t home. She must’ve gone somewhere
with Juvenal.”
“I think that’s nice,” Antoinette said. “Get off by
themselves. I was going to say, being a Catholic—”
“You’re not a Catholic,” August said. He couldn’t
let it go.
“Being a Catholic,” Antoinette said, “I’ve always
thought that priests, that people would listen to
priests more if they had a little experience instead of
talking about sex and marriage and things and not
knowing a goddamn thing about it—”
August said, “You don’t have to jump in mud to
know it gets you dirty.”
“I knew you were gonna say that,” Antoinette
said. “That’s exactly the kind of reasoning they use
on you; fucking priests, you know why they join up?
Because they’re afraid of women.”
“And you’re gonna tell me you’re a Catholic?”
Bill Hill let them argue, thinking about Lynn and
Juvenal. If they had gone off together, this was the
first he’d heard of it. It was a job managing people,
TOUCH 201
trying to keep them from messing up or wasting their
talent; hoping Lynn wasn’t right now nibbling on
Juvie’s ear and telling him he shouldn’t be on TV. He
wished there were more Antoinettes and fewer
Augusts getting in the way, August sitting there with
a fiery cross up his ass. What did anybody need
August for?
The man was easy to dislike. You wanted to pick
at him, gang up on him. Probably he’d had the same
effect on other kids when he was little, being a born
asshole, so that ducking rocks and getting depantsed
and his face washed with dirty snow had turned him
into the beauty he was today, with his tight ass and
all his pencils.
Bill Hill said, “August, excuse me. What do you
do for fun?”
“I work,” August said. “What do you think I do?”
“I just wondered,” Bill Hill said. “I’d like to
watch you demonstrate sometime. You got any good
demonstrations coming up?”
“When we demonstrate,” August said, “you’ll
hear about it.”
He was hard to antagonize because he was so
dumb and didn’t have a sense of humor. Bill Hill said
to him, “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“What?” Sullen and guarded.
“How come you aren’t married?”
“How come you aren’t?” August said.
“I had a lovely wife, Barbararose, and her memory
is all I can handle. Really, how come you
aren’t?”
“I haven’t had time for anything like that,”
August said.
“Women, I imagine though, are attracted to you.”
202 ELMORE LEONARD
“Jesus,” Antoinette said.
August gave her his cold killer look and Bill Hill
said, “I’m serious. Don’t you get a certain number of
women attracted to your cause?”
“We don’t allow women in Outrage,” August
said. “You have priests and you have nuns; we have
our organization and the women have the Daughters
of the Holy Ghost Society.”
“With a silent ‘h,’ ” Antoinette said, having a
good time. “The D-O-G-S.”
She wasn’t bad, Bill Hill had to admit; he’d have
to tell her so later.
Right now Antoinette was saying, “That’s the
whole goddamn trouble in the Catholic Church, all
that boy-girl shit, keeping them separated so they
won’t have impure thoughts and get aroused. You
ever get aroused, August? Come on by the club
sometime and we’ll check you out.”
August was being cool now; he gave her a look
and finished his ginger ale without saying anything.
Yes, she was quick all right. Bill Hill was thinking
he might check her out himself, see the professional
side of Richie’s mom. He liked friendly, open
women who wore perfume and Navajo jewelry.
August had taken a handful of coins out of his
pocket and was selecting some of them. He was a
dumb shit and there was nothing anyone could do
about it. Bill Hill said, “I got it, August. Put your
money away.” He did, without any insisting. Bill Hill
looked at his watch. “Well, if you don’t have any
demonstrations planned—”
“I’ve got something I’m gonna do,” August said.
“Is that right? Whereabouts?”
“You’ll read about it.”
TOUCH 203
“You mean we can’t watch?”
“You’ll read about it,” August said, “and you’ll
remember we sat here talking while you and”—he
looked at Antoinette—“this one were making all
these clever remarks, trying to put me on. You know
what you were doing and so do I. But just remember
one thing. I warned you.”
“About what?” Bill Hill said. “You haven’t told
us anything.”
“I told you you’ll read about it,” August said,
pausing as he slid out of the booth. “And there won’t
be a thing you’ll be able to do to me, either.”
“Like what?” Bill Hill said. “August?”
But August was walking away.
Bill Hill watched him. “He doesn’t make any
sense.”
“Because he’s a little shitbird,” Antoinette said.
Days later, six days, their last day on the beach near
Glen Arbor, Michigan, south of Leland, Lynn said,
“Have you decided, definitely?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna do it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Why’re you so nervous?”
“Because I’ve seen his program. He’s a rotten
guy. He’ll deliberately try to make you look bad.”
“Not if I don’t make any claims,” Juvie said.
“Who me? Look him right in the eye and keep the
facts straight. Why shouldn’t it work out?”
“Like the write-up in Time.”
“That wasn’t so bad.”
There were copies of Time and Newsweek in
Lynn’s straw bag with straight-fact stories about
Juvenal. Time described him as “the boyish mission-
204 ELMORE LEONARD
ary out of Brazil with the sometime gift of grabbing
children with crippling diseases, turning on with the
stigmata and performing a sanguine healing rite that
leaves Juvenal emotionally drained and the children,
according to eyewitnesses, jumping for joy. Not
since Padre Pio . . .” And speculation as to whether
or not he had the makings of a saint. There was no
mention of the fact the would-be saint had a girl
friend.
Juvenal had called the Center the day before to
let them know he’d be back in town Friday. There
were messages waiting from local television stations,
from the National Enquirer, Midnight, People, and
Us. Lynn told him to wait till Family Circle got in
touch.
She said, “What’re we going back to? Are you
starting to get an idea?”
He said, “I told them I’d be on the program, otherwise
we wouldn’t even have to go. We’re not committed
to do anything we don’t want to.”
She was hesitant watching him closely, waiting
for the catch. “What do we do after that?”
“Whatever you want.”
“We don’t even have to live in Detroit, do we?”
He said, “No, we could move to Cleveland if we
want.”
They stared at each other, straight-faced. She
said, “Or East St. Louis.”
He said, “What would you think of Gary,
Indiana?”
“Akron,” Lynn said.
“Rock Island?”
“Where’s that?”
“Right next to Moline.”
TOUCH 205
“How about Canton, Ohio?”
“Calumet City.”
“Dubuque.”
He said, “What’s the matter with Dubuque?”
When they were in the motel room for the last
time, packing to leave, she said, “We actually can
live anywhere we want, can’t we?”
“Anywhere,” he said.
She waited for him to say, “But,” or “Except
that,” or put it off by saying, “We don’t have to talk
about it right now”—but he didn’t. So whatever it
was that would mess them up would have to come
from the outside. Something waiting at home.
Something hidden in all he was involved in. A legal
or ecclesiastical voice saying, “Oh, no, you don’t.
Forget it.”
She said, “You could grow a beard.”
“Yeah, I guess I could.”
“We could change our names.”
“How about Lynn Lawson?”
See? It was simple, right there, nothing to force. He
held her and looked at her, she could see he loved her.
There was enough love between them—it was spilling
over, giving her a good feeling about everyone she met
and all the people she knew; good old Bill Hill . . . even
August Murray didn’t seem so bad. She kept saying to
herself, in sort of a semiprayer, If it’s good, then it
should happen. If God wants us to be good and also
wants us to be happy, then . . . and then the words in her
mind, the reasoning, would go around in circles though
the meaning to her was clear. If God didn’t want them
to make it, then He wouldn’t have let them get this far.
Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair. And if God wasn’t fair
then there was no reason to believe in Him.
206 ELMORE LEONARD
Juvie said, “What does God have to do with it?”
She said, “He knows everything that’s gonna
happen, doesn’t He?”
Juvie said, “Knowing isn’t causing.”
Strange. For a man so close to God he didn’t
sound very religious. But it wasn’t something to
worry about. There was nothing to worry about,
nothing specific that she could picture. He’d appear
on television, answer all questions, be insulted and
misquoted—there, that would be done. They’d stay
on the move until the publicity died off and then get
married at downtown Saint Mary’s . . . stay in Detroit
and keep their jobs, or . . .
On the way home, she said, “We don’t have to be
poor, do we? Like in poor but honest?” Thinking,
God, I hope not.
He said, “No. Why should we be poor?”
For a moment she saw herself in an inner-city
ghetto mission, a repainted and repainted storefront
place with a high tin ceiling and a lot of old black
people lined up to get something.
She said, “You know, I wasn’t kidding. I think
you’d make a really good record promoter.”
TOUCH 207

23
EACH AFTERNOON August Murray returned to
Lynn’s apartment, picked up the paper in the upstairs
hall, let himself in with the extra key he’d found in
the kitchen, and dropped the paper on the growing
pile of morning editions on the coffee table. If she
hadn’t stopped delivery, August reasoned, they
wouldn’t be gone long; maybe a few days.
On the second visit he was going to pick up the
broken glass all over the carpeting, but changed his
mind. He’d leave it to look like the work of the burglar
who came in, was surprised by the girl . . .
Sometimes he would see people on the golf
course, but never anyone close by or coming into the
building. If he was ever stopped and questioned, he
was her brother, checking on the place while she was
gone.
On the third visit he found a pair of men’s undershorts
and the shavecoat. He looked around again
thoroughly during the next visits but didn’t find anything
else incriminating or any sexual objects;
though he was sure—sitting in the living room looking
around, thinking of places—there were sexual
objects in the apartment somewhere. “I know!” he
said to himself one time, jumped up and went to the
kitchen to look in the refrigerator, thinking that
maybe some sexual objects had to be stored in a cold
place. There wasn’t much in the refrigerator: a nearly
empty bottle of wine, one can of beer, milk,
yogurt, wilted celery and carrot sticks, Cool Whip . .
. Cool Whip. Maybe.
He waited every afternoon and into the evening
from August 20 to August 26, a few times returning
a little later, around midnight, to check the apartment
from the golf course side, see if there was a light on.
Waiting in an apartment . . . waiting in a Roman
villa, gun instead of a short sword. There was little difference.
The purpose, the intent, was the main thing.
He rehearsed it and pictured it.
The girl comes in, stops, surprised to see him sitting
in the chair. “What do you want? What are you
doing here?” Juvenal, if he was with her, would say
something in that lethargic way of his—which could
be a result of his bleeding so much, a chronic weakness
associated with stigmata.
It didn’t make sense that someone like Juvenal,
who seemed so indifferent, so wishy-washy about it,
would be given the stigmata when, Christ, if August
had it he’d know exactly what to do. First he’d vow,
unequivocally, it was an act of God and describe
apparitions and quote voices he heard during his passion.
He would use the stigmata as a stamp of divine
approval on the movement to restore traditional rites
“as God expects.” And he would specialize in healing
crippling, nationally recognized diseases and
overnight become a bigger name than Albert
Schweitzer and Jerry Lewis combined.
If Juvenal was with her he’d tell him to stand
aside. If Juvenal tried to say anything, he’d tell him,
TOUCH 209
“Stay out of it!” Then, calmly, “You’ve been contaminated.
As you rid the cripple of his disease, I rid you
of yours.”
Then shoot her.
Take Juvenal out to Almont and keep him in the
rectory. Talk to him, quietly, rationally, with indisputable
arguments to justify the removal of a malignant
member. Juvenal would gradually, passively
begin to understand and ultimately accept the
inevitability of the girl’s death. “My friend, as God is
my witness, I had no choice.” Juvenal would nod
docilely and accept, because he seemed to be a better
accepter than anything else.
But it didn’t work that way. On Friday, the twenty-
sixth, August had to wait for a shipment of paper
stock. He called the plant, threatened, railed, but still
had to wait; so that by the time he got in his Charger
and headed for Troy and the Somerset Park
Apartments, Lynn and Juvenal were already there.
Lynn saw the newspapers on the coffee table first.
Then the broken glass. Then Waylon, with the
word Outrage written across his face in red Magic
Marker, gone over again and again, the word
scribbled on in a tasteless lack of style and composition.
She did think that for a moment; if somebody—
not somebody, he, August—was going to
mess up Waylon, he could have tried a little harder
to make it look good. The guy had no class at
all. He broke in—for what?
“Our friend August,” Lynn said. “Do you believe
it? I don’t know why, he reminds me of Toby and
Abbott, guys I told you about with the Cobras? They
get a bug up their ass they have to wreck something.”
210 ELMORE LEONARD
Juvenal stood holding the suitcases; he looked
from Waylon to the shattered glass door and back
again before putting the bags down.
Lynn pushed pieces of glass out of the way with
her foot. The door frame had been slid aside, the
screen door in place. She opened it, went out on the
balcony, and stood there. Looking over the rail she
said, “The people downstairs go away all the time.
All these people living here, but you don’t see anybody.”
After a few moments she came back in. “You
ever live in an apartment?”
Juvenal shook his head.
“It’s like living way off by yourself,” Lynn said.
“What would he have against Waylon, for God
sake?”
When she walked out of the living room to the
hall, Juvenal took the suitcases into the bedroom.
Lynn looked in her office, then came through the
bedroom to the bath. “I don’t know, a few things’re
out of place. I can see him nosing around. The guy’s
really weird.”
“I guess he is,” Juvenal said, sounding resigned.
“Did he take anything?”
“Probably my panties,” Lynn said. “He looks like
a guy who’d be into girls’ panties.”
August had a feeling they were both here; but at first,
opening the door quietly and looking into the living
room from the hall, he saw only Lynn and thought,
Perfect. Because she was on the floor with newspapers
spread all around her, sitting with her back to
him . . .
August reached inside his light poplin jacket and
drew the .38 Commando from his belt.
TOUCH 211
. . . and when he shot her she would fall on the
newspapers and it would be neater that way. There
were scissors on the coffee table, stories with pictures
she had cut out of the papers, narrow newsprint
columns hanging over the chrome edge of the table.
August raised the revolver and aimed at her short
blond hair. He wanted to say something to her, wanted
her to see it, but was afraid if she did she might
scream and try to run and then the newspapers on the
floor wouldn’t do any good. He could see her bare
knees and thighs; she was wearing a short little
sleeveless sundress or something, the hem pushed up
and bunched between her brown thighs because of
the way she was sitting, cross-legged, hunched over
the papers.
She said, “Listen to this,” and August jumped. “
‘It occurs at first glance these two could be sister and
brother, the resemblance is that striking . . .’ Did you
know we look alike?”
August glanced toward the kitchen, the opening
above the counter.
“ ‘But any suspicion of kinship is forgotten
immediately once you see the way they talk to each
other with “inside” straight-faced remarks, and
notice their lingering looks and glances.’ Did you
know we did that?”
“I didn’t think anyone noticed,” Juvenal said
from the kitchen.
August looked that way again, then back to
Lynn. He saw the glass had been picked up.
“You want mustard?”
“A little,” Lynn said.
“The lettuce isn’t any good.”
“Just mustard’s fine.”
212 ELMORE LEONARD
August listened to it: Juvenal in the kitchen; she
sits on her ass letting him wait on her, because she
can make him do anything she wants. Raises up her
dress and makes him do things.
Juvenal came in from the kitchen carrying a
plate of sandwiches and a bowl of potato chips.
He stopped. After a moment he said to August,
“What you have there, that’s more than disturbing the
peace, even if you’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding,” August said.
Lynn said, “Oh, my God,” looking around, and
August swung the gun back to her, seeing her scrambling
to her feet. He yelled, “Don’t move!” But too
late. She was standing, holding her hands against her
thighs. Now Juvenal was moving.
August swung the revolver on him, not wanting
to but had to. “Stay where you are!” They were too
far apart; yet he didn’t want them close together.
Juvenal placed the sandwiches and potato chips
on the counter and walked past August, not looking
at him, to Lynn and said something to her—August
unable to hear the words—and put his hand on her
shoulder. It was easier to cover them, but they were
too close together, standing by the glass coffee table.
August could see her falling, smashing the table, and
began to think, What’s wrong with that? In fact,
good, smash it. Found in broken glass in a pool of
blood— A burglar, someone caught in her apartment,
killing her spontaneously, wouldn’t worry
about being neat.
Juvenal said, “August?”
August said, “You don’t have to explain anything
to me. I know what’s going on, I can see what she’s
TOUCH 213
doing to you.”
Juvenal said, “All right,” showing August he was
calm and relaxed so August would be calm and
relaxed. “Tell me what you have in mind?”
A question along the line of questions August
had anticipated. He had rehearsed several replies, but
liked his first one as well as “Rid your life of a
malignancy,” or any of the others. He said, “I’m
gonna get her out of the way once and for all.” Plain
and simple.
Lynn said, “Out of the way? Out of whose way?”
“His,” August said.
“How am I in his way? He can do anything he
wants.”
Juvenal said, “August, I think you’ve got a mistaken
idea about what’s going on. We haven’t done
anything wrong. Or else I’d realize it, wouldn’t I?”
“You’ve examined your conscience?” August
said. “I doubt it. I don’t see how you could as long as
you remain in an occasion of sin. It’s impossible.”
“That’s what I mean,” Juvenal said. “We’re talking
about my conscience, aren’t we?”
“Not hers,” August said. “She’s past having a
conscience.”
“Well, just to keep it simple,” Juvenal said, “if
we’re talking about mine, then let me say, let me
assure you my conscience is in good shape and isn’t
trying to beat on me or tell me anything.”
“That’s what happens,” August said. “Ignore
your conscience and after a while it ceases to function
and you’re cut off from your moral guidelines.
I’ve seen it happen, a good, scrupulous conscience
becoming lax, then losing every bit of its fiber and
finally it becomes limp, worthless.”
214 ELMORE LEONARD
“For Christ sake,” Lynn said, “why don’t you
think I have a conscience?”
“You don’t,” August said. “You’re . . . hollow,
without a spark of spiritual life left in you.”
“How do you know?”
“You can protest all you want, it won’t do you
any good. But what you’re looking at now is the summation
and conclusion of your life.” He extended the
revolver. “This is what it’s added up to.”
“Jesus, August, come on,” Lynn said. She felt
helpless and wasn’t even sure she understood what
August was talking about. She said to Juvenal, “Tell
him we’re okay. We’re really nice and we’re not
doing anything bad. Christ—”
Juvenal said to him, “You’re talking ethics with
a gun in your hand. You realize that?”
“I certainly do,” August said. “We can talk about
it later. I’m taking you up to Almont for a few days
of recollection; a retreat, you might say. You can talk
to Father Nestor or myself, or not speak at all if you
feel silence, contemplation, might be better. I’ll give
you some pamphlets.”
Juvenal said, “August, why don’t we sit down
and talk now?”
“After, we can talk all you want.”
Juvenal started toward him. “Put the gun down,
okay?”
August backed up a step. “You have nothing to
do with this; stay out of it.”
Juvenal continued toward him. “If I weren’t here,
you wouldn’t be either.”
August moved back again. “You have nothing to
do with this, right now. Your time’s coming and we’ll
prepare for it.”
TOUCH 215
Juvenal, stepping toward him, almost within
reach, said, “Let me have the gun, August. Okay?”
August moved back again and stopped as his left
shoulder bumped against the edge of the sliding
door. He put the gun on Juvenal, aiming pointblank
at his chest.
Lynn said, “August, for God sake, give him the
fucking gun, will you?”
She saw August past Juvenal, part of him; saw
him look toward her and then at Juvenal and then
saw him push Juvenal hard with his left hand and
swing the gun toward her in the moment that he was
able to aim directly at her.
And fired—the noise, the awful sound ringing close in
the room—and fired again and fired again, the third shot
into the ceiling as Juvenal came in under August’s arm,
raising it with one hand, grabbing August’s collar in his fist
and twisting the fist into August’s throat as he rushed him
backward onto the balcony, drove him against the rail and
over the rail, arms and then legs in the air, August screaming,
and then gone.
Lynn could still hear the ringing, her eyes on
Juvenal. His back was to her, hands on the iron railing,
looking down. When he didn’t turn she went out
to him and stood close, taking his arm and pressing
her body against his hip.
“He hasn’t moved,” Juvenal said.
She looked over the railing to see August lying at
the edge of the cement-slab patio below. Two metal
porch chairs, tipped over, were on either side of him
where he lay on his back, arms spread above his
head, as if looking up at them with a gesture of surrender.
Juvenal said, “I think I killed him.”
216 ELMORE LEONARD

24
HOWARD HART spoke for twelve minutes on chicanery,
legerdemain, apparent miracles, oracles, sensitives,
Lourdes, Fatima, faith healing, bending
spoons, Uri Geller, the old Oral Roberts, God—
using the words psychogenesis, psychobiological,
psycho-physiological, psychosomatic, almost every
psych but psychedelic to give his remarks little rings
of authority; though none of it made much sense to
anyone listening for a topic sentence.
There was a packed house of more than 150 people
in the studio audience, including the “miracle
crowd” sitting down front: Lynn Faulkner and Bill
Hill; Antoinette Baker and Richie’s doctor from
Children’s Hospital (where Richie was still under
observation and, Antoinette hoped, watching on TV);
Kathy Worthington and Kathy’s theology expert
from U of D, Father Dillon; Dr. Kaplan, author of
Psychoanalysis: Trick or Treatment; twenty-seven
young men from the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost,
in white shirts but without arm-bands; Father Nestor,
sitting in the last row, on the aisle; about forty parishioners
from Saint John Bosco; and the rest, fans of
“Hartline,” sitting, standing, extending out into the
WQRD hallway and lobby.
All those people in the studio audience and “all
you out there” watching Howard Hart rub the side of
his nose and talk about psycho-hyphenated things,
half of Howard showing behind the giant
Mediterranean desk—bookshelves in the background—
the buttoned-up top half in double-breasted
silk and big Windsor; the nationally televised star
acting natural, caressing the side of his nose, touching
his hairpiece. Look at the smile; a regular guy
but, hey, brilliant . . .
“. . . as we attempt to reconcile our guest’s mystical
claims with metaphysical reality . . .”
The psychiatrist sitting behind Lynn and Bill
Hill said, “He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking
about.”
Lynn was looking way up at the grid of lights
and cables high against the studio ceiling, crisscrossed
rows of at least a hundred lights to shine
down on Howard Hart’s little fake-library set in the
corner of the studio.
Bill Hill said, “He doesn’t know how to smile
either. Look at him, he clenches his jaw and shows
his teeth.”
“As opposed to his natural shit-eating grin,”
Lynn said. “He’s a honey.”
“I’m told,” Howard Hart was saying, “the boys at
the network expect this evening the biggest audience
response we’ve had since a son of a . . . famous
singer”—pause, shit-eating grin—“walked off the
show a few weeks ago.” Pause, smile. “Now, if
you’ve got questions for our guest, keep your phone
handy and call them in. Or if you have comments to
make, come on, let’s hear from you. I guarantee our
guest is going to be controversial, to say the least.
218 ELMORE LEONARD
I’ve put a dozen extra operators on duty just to handle
your calls and I know, at least my regulars out
there”—pause, smile—“won’t let me down. So right
now, let’s bring on our guest.”
The floor manager, wearing a headset, standing
midway between the two Ampex cameras on the
stage, turned to the audience clapping his hands. The
audience picked it up, maintaining the applause as
Juvenal came out from somewhere, took Howard’s
extended hand—Howard reaching across his giant
desk—and sat down in a swivel chair that was a
scooped plastic shell on a chrome base.
Bill Hill said, “Jesus, he looks like he just got out
of the hospital.”
“It’s from the Center,” Lynn said, “the clothes
room.”
The suit, a gray-striped seersucker, hung on him,
lifeless, at least a size too large.
“I tried to get him to buy a new one. He likes it.”
Howard Hart was leaning on his desk staring at
Juvenal, letting the silence lengthen dramatically.
Finally he said, “Your name is Charlie Lawson and
you’re sometimes referred to, affectionately I presume,
as Juvie. Well, I’m going to be noncommittal
this evening and call you Juvenal. How’ll that be?”
“The only way he could be noncommittal,” Lynn
said, “is if you cut his tongue out.” In a moment, staring
at Juvenal, her mood changed and she said,
“Awww, look at him. Isn’t he neat?”
Howard Hart was saying, “What I’d like you to
do first is explain your stigmata in your own words,
exactly what it is, and then tell us how you do it. But
first, this word from one of our sponsors.”
TOUCH 219
Lynn said, “You see what he’s doing? The first thing
he says, for God’s sake.”
“Just take it easy,” Bill Hill said.
“I don’t do it,” Juvenal said. “It just happens. I’d like
to add that I don’t say it’s mystical, either, as opposed
to your reference to metaphysical reality. What do
you mean by that?”
“You believe in God,” Howard said, ignoring the
question.
“Yes.”
“You believe in miracles.”
Juvenal settled back, resigned. “Yes.”
“You were a Franciscan, which is a particularly .
. . mystic-orientated order, weren’t you?”
“I was a Franciscan brother. I don’t know how
mystical they are.”
“You believe God can work wonders, if He
chooses, through you.”
“If He wants to.”
“Would you say you’re quite impressionable . . .
suggestable, perhaps naive?”
“I probably am,” Juvenal said.
“So that your five so-called wounds are not a
miraculous mystical representation of Jesus Christ’s
wounds, divinely given to you by God, but are very
probably caused by your own psychic suggestion.”
“It could be,” Juvenal said.
“What do you do, squeeze your eyes closed, concentrate
on a crucifix, and hold your mouth a certain
way?”
“No, I don’t do any of that.”
“You pray? Say, come on, God, give it to me?
Let’s show ’em I’m a holy Joe, a living, breathing
220 ELMORE LEONARD
saint, a miracle-working mystic right out of the
Middle Ages?” Howard Hart waited. “Well?”
“Would you repeat the question?”
(Lynn laughed.)
“Why do you think God would single you out for
this . . . wondrous gift? What’s so special about
you?”
“I don’t know that He does.”
Howard Hart smiled at the camera. “Well, you’re
modest. Is that part of the image? Oh, my goodness
gracious, why me, Lord? Let me ask you a question.
Why’d you come on my show?”
Juvenal hesitated. “You invited me. I thought it
might be a good opportunity . . . well, I thought, why
should I hide? If I have this . . . it isn’t something I’m
ashamed of.”
“Wait a minute,” Howard said. “Hold it just a
cotton-pickin’ minute. “I invited you? I seem to have
the impression your manager came to me.”
“He’s not my manager.”
“—and made a deal stating that you, a so-called
servant of God, self-proclaimed instrument of His
mercy, would not appear on this show for less
than”—looking directly at the camera—“one million
dollars.”
Juvenal was sitting erect in his chair, holding
onto the curved sides. “I’m supposed to be paid for
this?”
“You didn’t sign a contract?”
“I signed something, I don’t know what it was.”
“You didn’t read it?”
“No. I glanced at it.”
“So you’re telling me you know nothing about
receiving one . . . million . . . dollars? You want peo-
TOUCH 221
ple to believe you’re appearing here as a public service,
an act of charity?” A laugh came out of Howard
Hart’s shit-eating grin. “We’ll be right back after this
message.”
Lynn said, “You son of a bitch.”
Bill Hill glanced around, putting his hand on her
arm. “Take it easy, okay? How many times did I try
to talk to you? You refused to hear anything about it,
right?”
“You made a deal?”
“It’s not anything like he’s saying it is.”
“How much?”
“He’s using it, trying to make him look dumb,
that’s all.”
“How much?”
“Guaranteed four hundred thousand,” Bill Hill
said. “Juvie signed the contract in Howard’s office; I
saw him looking at it.”
“But you didn’t tell him about the money,” Lynn
said. “You didn’t say, ‘You’re getting four hundred
thousand dollars.’ Did you?”
“The amount isn’t definite till we find out how
many stations put it on. So . . . we get the check, I
was gonna surprise him.”
“We—” Lynn said.
“You’re in on it.”
“I don’t want to be in on it.” Very tense, biting
off the words.
“I’ll tell you the whole thing after. Have we had
a chance to talk? You go away, you don’t even tell me
you’re going.”
“How much do you get out of it? Since it’s his
money.”
222 ELMORE LEONARD
“Well, I set it up and everything. I had to sell
Howard.”
“How much?”
“Half sound about right?”
“Tell me,” Howard Hart said, “how much have you
made so far as a professional stigmatic and miracle
worker?”
“Nothing,” Juvenal said.
“This’ll be your first million then. What’re you
going to do with it?”
“I didn’t know I was getting anything.”
“Uh-huh,” Howard said. “Well, now that you
know, what’ll you do with it? A million dollars. By
the way, as a religious miracle worker, are you a taxfree
entity?”
Juvenal was frowning a little, thoughtful, swinging
very slowly from side to side on the swivel.
“I don’t know what I am.”
“Well, I’d say you’re rich, for one thing. So what
do you do with all your money . . . spend it on your
girl friend? Which brings up an interesting facet . . .
the miracle worker’s what, lady friend? I’d like to
know a little more about that side of your life—what
do you call her, your mistress? The stigmata’s
inamorata?”
(“Oh, my God,” Lynn said.)
As Juvenal said, “Lynn?”
“Lynn Marie Faulkner, who, I believe, lives out
in sin city, I mean Somerset Park.”
(“Jesus,” Bill Hill said.)
(“Rotten son of a bitch,” Lynn said.)
“But first—let’s save that,” Howard said. “I don’t
want to get ahead of myself and open up too many
TOUCH 223
cans of worms at once, uh?” Pause. “Off the record
though, you aren’t by any chance working on some
kind of a religious sex manual, are you? I understand
that’s a lucrative new field.”
(Lynn stood up.)
“But first—as I mentioned—I want to bring out
someone whose appearance alone will give testimony
to still another facet of your life-style and very
mysterious, I might add, personality . . . right after
this message.”
* * *
Bill Hill said, “Where you going?”
Lynn didn’t answer, she pushed past him to the
aisle. Bill Hill thought she was leaving and got up to
follow, thinking she was going to run out, emotionally
unstrung or something, and he’d have to calm
her down and try to get her back in.
But Lynn wasn’t running out. God no—as Bill
Hill stood watching—she was marching up on the
stage past the cameras and the floor manager over to
Howard Hart’s fake-library set. Now Lynn was talking
a mile a minute, Howard standing, trying to calm
her down, and the floor manager was bringing over
another swivel chair.
In a close-shot of Howard Hart, leaning comfortably
on his desk, confiding straight out to his millions of
viewers, he said, “Well, if you haven’t come to expect
the unexpected on ‘Hartline’ by now . . . we were
speaking about a young lady by the name of Lynn
Marie Faulkner . . . well, speak of the devil”—grin—
“and I mean that figuratively, because here she is
224 ELMORE LEONARD
live, and I might add, very much alive . . . Miss
Faulkner.”
As the second camera was cut in, Howard Hart’s
millions of viewers saw Lynn sitting right there next
to Juvenal in the same kind of chair, legs crossed—
nice legs—arms folded, jaw clenched? Maybe. The
viewers saw a good-looking girl who was doing
everything she could to remain in control and not go
over the top of that giant desk for Howard Hart’s
throat.
Great stuff. Howard had two rings going here, on
his library desk set. He rose, the camera following
him, and took his viewers over to the third ring at
center stage, to a figure encased in plaster lying on a
narrow, mobile hospital bed. Curtains served as a
backdrop.
Howard said, “If Lynn Marie can hang on just a
minute, first I want to introduce somebody to you—
” Howard began turning a crank at the foot of the
bed. As he did, the head of the bed began to rise,
bringing with it . . .
“—Mr. August Murray,” Howard said.
. . . lying on his back, presented to the camera
and the audience with his arms extended straight out
to the sides, August immobile in a body cast that
reached from head to hips, revealing only his face,
peering out of an oval opening, and his hands hanging
limp from the ends of the outstretched cast. A
white plaster crucifix on a hospital bed, August in
there, somewhere.
“Mr. Murray,” Howard said, “is, or I should say,
used to be, a good friend of Juvenal’s. But it seems
there was a misunderstanding, for which Mr. Murray
cannot be held blameless, no. In fact, according to
TOUCH 225
the Troy Police, who arrested Mr. Murray and
released him on a five-thousand-dollar bond, he did
intend to do great bodily harm to one Lynn Marie
Faulkner, sitting right over there. That’s how the
charge against Mr. Murray is worded. Also something
about carrying a gun in the commission of a
felony, which is a no-no and an automatic two years.
Though I would say from looking at him the great
bodily harm was performed on Mr. Murray. Would
you agree with that, sir?” Howard Hart, holding his
mike, leaned in close to August.
“He says yes, he’d agree. Now, what happened
was Juvenal, in protecting his . . . lady friend from
Mr. Murray, who it seems was in a fit of temper, a little
p.o.’ed, so to speak . . . threw Mr. Murray bodily
off a second-story balcony. Now listen to this.
Breaking both his arms . . . his collarbone . . . four
ribs . . . and cracked a vertebra on two in Mr.
Murray’s neck. The doctors say he’ll be in that body
cast about five months, maybe longer, due to our
miracle worker laying his hands on him. Hey, wait a
minute. Which makes me wonder, hey, if I should
have risked shaking hands with Juvenal when he
came on. Man, oh, man. But seriously, I’d like to
confront Juvenal with the question, does he have the
same power to harm as he does to heal? And . . . we’ll
talk to Lynn, our miracle worker’s special
squeeze”—winking at her—“as soon as we come
back.”
Lynn said, “Let’s go.”
Juvenal was staring at August.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“It’s too late,” Juvenal said. “We’re in it now.”
226 ELMORE LEONARD
“Listen, people walk off his show all the time.
You can see why.”
“He’s amazing, isn’t he?”
“Amazing? He’s crucifying you.”
“You were right, he’s a rotten guy; and he enjoys
it. That’s what’s amazing.” Juvenal’s gaze moved to
August. “There’s a lot going on, huh?”
“God,” Lynn said. When Juvenal got up she said,
urgently, “Where you going?”
“I want to tell August something.”
Howard Hart said, “Well, we’re starting to get phone
calls, and what all of you out there seem to want
most is not a lot of claims, but to actually see Juvenal
heal someone. As one fella said, ‘Let’s see his act.’
Hey, I couldn’t agree with you more. You say you can
do something; prove it, let’s see it happen. But the
network boys, who’re all lawyers at heart, said definitely
no. You get an unfortunate cripple on the show
who expects to be healed—what if it doesn’t come
off? I said, then we’ll be exposing a fraud. But they
said uh-unh, we’d be exposing ourselves to a lawsuit.
So there you are. We are going to talk to people,
however, who claim to have witnessed Juvenal’s
healing power.” Howard paused, raising his gaze to
the glare of lights. “There’s a Father Nestor in the
audience . . . Father Nestor, are you out there? . . .
Father Nestor was also a missionary in Brazil and
witnessed a number of the so-called miracles on spiritual
healings. Father Nestor? . . . Well, we’ll see if
we can locate him. Meanwhile . . . I see Juvenal’s
over there chatting with Murray the mummy—
Kenny, can we get a mike over there? No, I’ll tell you
what. First I’ll talk to Miss Faulkner, who seems just
TOUCH 227
a little bit edgy . . . What’s wrong, Lynn? . . . and find
out what it’s like to shack—oops, just a slip—I mean
live with a miracle-working stigmatic and prospective
twentieth-century saint. Lynn? . . . What’s it
like?”
Lynn said, “You know what you are?”
“I’m a bleep,” Howard said, “because if you say
what I think you’re going to say, that’s the way it’ll
come out. But seriously, tell us about Juvenal. What’s
he like?”
“You’re a rotten whoop-whoop,” Lynn said to the
millions of television viewers.
Howard looked up at the floor manager. “Kenny,
are we using bleeps, whoops, on wipes?”
“On the five-second delay, whoops,” Ken said.
Howard smiled at Lynn. “You were saying?”
She took her time, trying to adjust, relax.
“Go on, I’m not going to hurt you.”
Quietly she said, “I saw him bleed. At least two
hundred people saw it.”
“I’m not questioning that,” Howard said. “I
accept the fact he has this bleeding act.”
“It’s not an act.”
“All right, this phenomenon. But what I want to
know about is your relationship. Are you living
together?”
“No, we’re not living together.”
“But the two of you were away for a week. Did
you sleep in the same room?”
Lynn was tense again. “What does our personal
life have to do with it?”
“Honey, you walked on my show uninvited. If
you choose to sit there, I can ask you anything I
want. Do you and Juvenal sleep together?”
228 ELMORE LEONARD
“I’m not gonna answer that.”
“What do we do,” Howard said, “all the viewers
out there—just look at you? You come up here, you
want to protect him—” Howard paused. He said
then, gently, “Lynn, are you in love with the guy?”
She hesitated, suspicious, then nodded. “Yes, I
am.”
“Then what’s wrong with talking about it? And
he’s in love with you?”
Still hesitant. “We love each other, yes.”
“Hey, it’s beautiful,” Howard said. “You’re
young, you’re in love. Heck, then what’s wrong with
sleeping together?” He paused. “Unless you’re
ashamed to admit it, feel it’s something dirty,
obscene.” Howard frowned. “If you’re in love, why
would you feel guilty about sleeping together?”
“I don’t feel guilty. I haven’t said anything about
. . . our relationship.” The son of a bitch, he was even
worse than she thought.
“You haven’t denied anything either. Hey, I’m
not judging. If you’re having an affair with him,
that’s your business—
“—but if you bring it on my show then it becomes my
business because, honey, I can talk to you about anything
I want—” Juvenal heard Howard say, as he was
trying to hear what August was telling him through his
clenched teeth, painfully, with a great effort.
“. . . kill you, ruin you and everything we work
for. Get her off. Get rid of her. Tell him bring the
microphone here. I’ll tell him what I said, I don’t
blame you, even what you did. It isn’t your fault. It’s
her.” The effort of speaking made August close his
eyes for a moment to rest.
TOUCH 229
Lynn was telling Howard Hart he didn’t talk to
people, he made speeches, fascinated by the sound of
his own voice; he didn’t misquote, as she had suspected,
he quoted things that were never said; he
implied things with a lot of shuck-and-jive innuendos.
Juvenal was looking at Howard’s clenched-jaw
smile on a TV monitor that was beyond the hospital
bed, on the other side of the stage. Howard reminded
him of August, who’d lie healing in his plaster shell
for five months and then break out to become . . .
Juvenal leaned closer to the bed. “August?”
August opened his eyes.
“Listen, I’m very sorry it happened,” Juvenal
said. “But you’re still full of shit.”
He returned to the library set as Howard was
introducing another important message from a sponsor.
A girl walked up with a handful of notes, sheets of
paper, and laid them on Howard’s desk—off-camera
now to the millions of viewers watching a detergent
salesman getting a housewife to rip her husband’s Tshirt
in half. Howard got busy with the notes, grinning
as he looked through them.
Lynn stared at him.
Juvenal said, “He’s right. You can’t appear on
something like this and hide.”
Lynn didn’t say anything. Juvenal looked over at
August and back to Lynn.
“What’s your book say? You don’t have to be
mad or upset unless you want to.”
“Well, I want to,” Lynn said.
“He makes it look like we’re hiding something.”
230 ELMORE LEONARD
“You want me to tell him everything, get clinical?”
“I think you ought to use your words instead of
his.”
“And get whooped off the air?”
“What difference does it make?” Juvenal said.
“Is it that important?”
“Isn’t it? What people think of you,” Lynn said,
“God, the difference between what you’re really like
and the way he makes you look?”
“That’s what I mean,” Juvenal said, “let’s just be
ourselves.”
“And come off looking like a couple of yo-yos.”
He smiled at her. “It’s the chance you take. But
in the light of eternity, who gives a shit?”
“I’ll tell you something,” Lynn said, “I really
love you.”
“Will you do something for me?”
“Sure, what?”
“Go over and sign August’s cast.”
See how simple it was? Just be yourself.
* * *
Simple maybe, but not easy, listening to Howard
Hart.
“ ‘How . . .’ ” Howard read with dramatic pauses,
“ ‘do you reconcile religion . . . the claim that
God is using this man as His instrument of mercy . .
. with raw sex? The two are totally incompatible.’ ”
Howard lowered the sheet of paper to his desk. “Well
first, let me remind you, statements made on this
program do not necessarily express the opinions of
myself or the network. However in this instance I
TOUCH 231
would ask the same question. . . . Lynn? How do you
reconcile religion and sex?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lynn
said, “and I don’t think you do, either.”
“Well, my viewers seem to feel—and I’m referring
to the majority of calls we’ve been getting—that
you and Juvenal are talking out of both sides of your
mouth at the same time. He pretends one thing, but
you prove the opposite.”
“What have I said?”
“Let me read another one. ‘Mr. Hart . . . you
approach dangerously close to sacrilege when you
submit to us a man of God who openly admits consorting
with an unmarried woman.’ ” Howard looked
at Lynn.
She said, “What’s the matter with being an
unmarried woman?”
“Consorting with, I believe the caller said, a holy
man, or a man of God.”
“Yes, we consort quite a bit,” Lynn said. “We’re
very big on consorting.”
Howard waved a note at her. “A woman called to
say she let her eleven-year-old daughter stay up to
watch the show, but had to send her off to bed as
soon as you began telling about your affair.”
“She could’ve switched to ‘Starsky and Hutch,’ ”
Lynn said.
“Another one,” Howard said. “Listen to this.
‘What’s in his mind? What can he be thinking of? To
bear the marks of Christ crucified and yet submit his
flesh to lust. There is reference in the Bible to the
Anti-Christ coming and appearing in the guise of the
Lord. Could it be that this man is the direct opposite
of what he says he is?’ ”
232 ELMORE LEONARD
“What do I say I am?” Juvenal said.
“It seems to me”—Howard leaned heavily on his
desk, studying Juvenal—“in what I’ve been reading
about you, you’ve not only implied but stated categorically
you have some kind of a divine pipeline,
God working through you in mysterious ways . . .
that is, when you’re not messing around with Miss
Faulkner here. Would you say that’s a fairly accurate
appraisal of your claim? Some kind of a messiah?”
“I know what you are,” Lynn said. “You’re an
opinionated little man with a dirty mind and a twenty-
nine-dollar hairpiece and if this excuse for a show
ever gets more than a ten share I’ll kiss your whoop.”
Howard grinned, because he loved it and couldn’t
be insulted or hurt. He said, holding up the handful of
notes, “And how about all these people? We’ve gotten
some two hundred calls already and the majority of
them, by far, question your illicit relationship—”
“Illicit?” Lynn said.
Juvenal got up from his chair.
“Don’t leave without saying good-bye,” Howard
said.
He wasn’t leaving. One of the cameras followed
Juvenal across the stage to August Murray’s hospital
bed.
Lynn and Howard Hart both watched him until
Howard said, “Illicit . . . we’ll get back to our miracle
worker, he’s going to check on his friend . . . yes,
I call it illicit and it seems hundreds of others do too.
An illicit conjugal affair made more promiscuous by
the circumstances—”
August could not hear very well or turn to face the
voices or get anyone’s attention. He was nauseated
TOUCH 233
and his eyes and nose itched. He was miserable. He
told himself several times he wanted to die and
remembered, in that moment just before he saw
Juvenal’s face in front of him, that tomorrow was the
anniversary of the death of Saint Augustine and he
knew something was going to happen to him.
Juvenal said, “August?”
“What?”
“August—”
“What!”
Staring at the face, the eyes, sorrowful eyes, as
Juvenal leaned very close, as if to take him in his
arms.
August felt strange. Like he was floating, dreaming.
He saw Juvenal’s face again, the eyes. He saw
Juvenal’s hands. He could see and feel the fingers—
pressing his eyes downward—he could see the
knuckles, fists. My God, he was here but his body
had no feeling. There was no itching or nausea.
There was a sound. The audience? The audience was
standing up and sounds were coming from the audience.
But the other sound was different and wasn’t
from people. It was close around him, part of him,
and not from out there where everybody was standing,
or from the camera with the red-dot light that
was moving in toward him. My God—he could feel
hands on his body. On his chest. On his ribs.
He could hear. He could move.
He could lower his arms and raise them and
lower them. He could swing his legs off the hospital
bed.
The body cast, the plaster crucifix, was gone.
234 ELMORE LEONARD

25
THEY WOULD TALK WITH PAUSES, seeing it
again.
Antoinette Baker said, “It was like red paint. You
know it? It didn’t even look real.”
“It was real,” Bill Hill said.
“I know it was real, but it didn’t look real. That’s
what Richie said too, at the church. I want to call
him, but—you think it’s too late?”
“It was real. The way it was coming through his
shirt?” Bill Hill said. “You notice that?”
“I mean it didn’t look real on the plaster cast, on
the white,” Antoinette said. “How’d he do that? Take
it off.”
“How did he do it? He pulled it off. Took it by
the neck part—I think that’s what he did. You want
another drink?”
“Are you kidding? There’s our waitress, there.”
“If he can do what he did—” Bill Hill said. He
signaled the Perfect Blend waitress in her black outfit,
holding up two fingers and nodding. “That part
was different than at the church.”
“It was the same thing,” Antoinette said.
“But it was different because you could see it,”
Bill Hill said. “If he can do what he did—I mean,
Jesus, the man had two broken arms, a broken neck,
broken ribs—then he can pull off a cast. What difference
does it make how? You know how a doctor
does it, he uses an electric saw.”
“I had a fractured ankle once,” Antoinette said.
“I slipped and fell off the goddamn bar. Where some
beer was spilled.”
“You believe it?” Bill Hill said.
“What?” Antoinette said. “Do I believe it? I saw
it. Everybody did.”
“No, they didn’t,” Bill Hill said. “They were
looking at it—I mean people watching TV—but I’ll
bet they didn’t really see it. Even Howard Hart and
he was right there.”
“That shitbird,” Antoinette said. “He had to’ve
seen it.”
“But you notice how he got the camera back on
himself right away?”
“I was watching August. I thought he was gonna
take off.”
August, waving his arms, turning his head,
moving his arms up and down, flexing his wrists,
standing in his Jockey shorts with the hospital
pajama pants down around his ankles; then kicking
them off. Jockey shorts, white socks, and sandals.
Howard Hart standing up and then sitting, standing
again, waving to get a camera and yelling at
Kenny, the floor manager, “Kenny, get the fucking
camera over here!” for millions of viewers to hear
without a bleep, whoop, or a wipe.
“See, that part happened fast,” Bill Hill said.
“Even looking right at it—hey, what’s going on?”
Howard Hart talking to a camera.
236 ELMORE LEONARD
Juvenal standing there a moment, holding out his
bloody hands. His coat open, blood showing on the
front of his shirt.
Lynn going over to him.
Howard saying, “Come on and sit down. Tell us
how you did it.”
And Lynn saying, “Your ass, Howard.” Still
without a whoop or a bleep. “Take your show and eat
it.”
Lynn and Juvenal walking through the curtain
backdrop. Gone.
But blood on the edge of the curtain.
Howard saying, “I did invite Mr. Murray, but
without the least suspicion anything had been prearranged.
Mr. Murray? Come sit down here. Tell us
where you got the cast.”
And August Murray saying, “My bones were
broken, my body, look”—holding up his arms—
“and now it’s whole.”
A subdued August walking off the set in his
underwear and socks, streaks of blood on his face, on
his body, as Howard Hart called after him. Howard
sitting down then and saying to the camera, “How’d
you like to follow an act like that?” Smiling.
Bill Hill said, “Something was different about
him. You don’t know him, but something was different.
He was a different person.”
“August?” Antoinette said. “I talked to him last
week, here. He seemed different, I know what you
mean. Other people wouldn’t know it; but Christ,
they saw him waving his broken arms, his healed
arms.”
“But they listened to Howard,” Bill Hill said,
“almost another hour. You heard it.”
TOUCH 237
“I couldn’t believe it,” Antoinette said.
“That’s what I’m saying, they were looking at it,
all the TV viewers, but what did they see? What, we
come to find out, made the biggest impression on
them?”
For thirty-eight minutes, not counting commercials
and station breaks, Howard Hart took selected phoneins
directly and chatted with members of his network
audience. Some wondered, “What was that all about?”
And Howard would say, “You saw it. What do you
think?” Reply: “I think they ought to work on their act.”
Or: “The cast was a good touch. What was it, open in
back?” But the great majority of the callers, and the
telegrams that came in, said things like:
“Where do you find them? Even better than your
transvestite interview, a saint who’s living in sin.
Wow.”
“You should have warned everybody you were
going to have an X-rated show.”
“Your language on the air is in extremely poor
taste, unpardonable.”
“Next thing you know we’ll find out the pope
has a girl friend.”
“If that isn’t sacrilege, the flaunting of sex by a
so-called religious person, what is?”
“Her guilt was obvious. You could tell by the
brazen way way she showed her legs.”
“To disguise promiscuous sex as love was the
worst lie of all.”
“Again your show condones and glorifies
immorality.”
“And he calls himself a messiah.”
“The shocking fact is not that he’s a fraud—he
may be sincere—but that he has feet of clay.”
238 ELMORE LEONARD
“What can God be thinking?”
And so on.
Howard Hart saying to each of his callers, “Hey,
it was nice talking at you.”

The USBS network received, at final count, 273,484
letters, postcards, wires, and phone calls in regard to
the Juvenal telecast, a record number of responses.
Still, “Hartline’s” Nielsen for that Saturday evening
came in a poor fourth behind (1) the CBS Movie,
Shark’s Treasure, starring Cornel Wilde; (2) NFL
Preseason Football, Detroit at Seattle; and (3) a rerun
of “Starsky and Hutch.”
Bill Hill read about it in the paper and said,
“Jesus Christ.”
August Murray read about it and said, “So be it.”
Antoinette Baker read about it and said,
“Wouldn’t you know.”
Lynn and Juvenal never did read about it. They
drove out to L.A., stopping in Nashville and
Luckenback, Texas.