Deadfall(27)

As for snuff bottles and boxes, I knew that they had been painstakingly handmade from any number of substances, the most popular of which were gold, silver, ivory, horn, wood, glass, and tortoise shell; that they were sometimes decorated with precious and semi-precious stones; that they came in myriad sizes and shapes (miniature caskets, for one shape; Napoleon’s hat, for another); that the most valuable ones from an artistic point of view, and therefore the most sought after by collectors, were those created by notable artists that had repoussé or raised patterns engraved or incised on their surfaces, or which were festooned with intricate hand-enameled scenes, or which had been made of plane-tree wood in the Laurancekirk region of Scotland. I knew that the prize creations were bottles done in China by Yip Chung San, who had plied his craft during the Manchu dynasty and whose specialty involved painting scenes on the inside of the bottles, somewhat like mirror writing; and gold, silver, and ivory boxes by such European (and in particular, French) artists as Hainelin, Petitot, Watteau, Fragonard, and the von Blaren-berghes, father and son. And most interestingly of all, from my point of view, I knew that in 1904 a British collector, Sir Joseph Duveen, had paid the equivalent of thirty thousand dollars for what was said to be the rarest of all gold boxes by Hainelin, reputedly made as a special gift from Bonaparte to one of his lieutenants.

I was just starting on the second library book, to see if it contained any information not covered in the first, when Eberhardt shouldered in. He saw me sitting there with my feet up, reading, and pulled a face. “Look at this,” he said. “I’m out all day busting my hump and here you are, sitting on yours reading a book.”

“I’m working, Eb.”

“Yeah. Sure you are.” He sailed his hat on top of one of the hideous mustard-yellow file cabinets and sat down at his desk.

“How goes the insurance thing?” I asked him.

“No sweat. Have it wrapped up tomorrow. You got my message, I guess.”

“Non-message, you mean.”

“Yeah, well, the whole thing’s kind of involved. You know I’m no good putting words down on paper.”

“So put ’em out in the air. What did Ed Berg say?”

He settled back and put his own feet up. “Man, I’m bushed. What say we close up early and go get a beer?”

“Not tonight, I’ve got things to do. Come on, Eb, talk to me.”

“Okay, okay.” He got out his little pocket notebook and flipped a few pages. “The Church of the Holy Mission is one of those fundamentalist Christian cults, but not your standard kind; this one’s got some organization and power. Couple of hundred people in the congregation and more joining all the time. They’re starting to make a few waves.”

“What kind of waves?”

“This Moral Crusade. Moral Majority stuff, like we figured, only even more hardline—strictly Old Testament, or so they claim. Pro-censorship, anti-freedom of choice, anti-sex, that kind of crap.”

“Who’s behind it?”

“Let’s see…. Guy named Dogbreath—”

“Named what?”

“Wait a minute.” He squinted more closely at his notebook, turning it a little from side to side. “Can’t even read my own writing.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“Daybreak, that’s it. Clyde T. Daybreak.”

“That’s not much better, Eb. Are you sure?”

“Positive. I remember now.”

“What kind of name is Clyde T. Daybreak?”

“You’re asking me? I’m only relaying information here.”

“Well, who is he? Where’d he come from?”

“Used to be one of those traveling evangelists somewhere down South. Tennessee or somewhere. Came out here about ten years ago, got himself hooked up with the Holy Mission—Ed didn’t know the details—and eventually turned it upside down.”

“How so?”

“Church was founded about thirty years ago,” Eberhardt said, “by a dropout from the Rosicrucians. Doctrine back then was half Old Testament and half mysticism, not too appetizing to most people, so they struggled along on a membership of twenty or thirty until this guy Daybreak came along. He took over when the founder died, revamped the doctrine by getting rid of the mystical angle and going the authoritarian route.”

“Meaning strict obedience to him and his dictates.”

“Right. It cost him most of the old followers, but it didn’t take him long to line up plenty of new ones—enough so he was able to buy a big Victorian on Lanford Street, not far from downtown San Jose. He and his assistants live there now. They used to hold services in the basement; now they hold ’em in a new wing they built last year.”