Festival of Deaths(41)
“Why?” Gregor was thoroughly confused.
Ira was exasperated. “How could I know why? Because they have IQs in the single figures, Gregor, that’s why. I’m not kidding. I’ve been in this job, what now, seven years, maybe, and you know what I’ve found out? The guys who pull this shit are dumb. Not mentally retarded, Gregor, dumb. Stupid. It’s incredible. We pulled this one guy in here, he’s set fire to a black Baptist church in Tupelo, Mississippi. That was maybe the tenth church he’d set fire to, in maybe the third state. So we haul him in here and we ask him what in damn hell he thinks he’s doing, and do you know what he tells us?”
“No.”
“He tells us he’s got to stop the black people from taking over the Christian churches before they feed poison to any more women and turn the women into feminists, which they won’t stop doing because—”
“Wait,” Gregor said.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ira snorted. “These things never make sense. You listen for more than twenty minutes and your brain turns to mush.”
“Oh,” Gregor said.
“You ever read The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion?”
“No,” Gregor said.
“It’s the original anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. You could get better intellectual coherence from The National Enquirer.”
“Oh,” Gregor said.
“Never mind.” Ira sighed again. “I could go on and on like this all day. These assholes would be funny if they weren’t so dangerous. What was the name of your guys again?”
“White Knights, Defenders of Faith and Race,” Gregor repeated. “Are you sure about the ‘guys.’ Aren’t there women involved in these things?”
“There are women in the Klan,” Ira said, “and on the fringes of most of the other organizations, yeah, but they don’t lead any of them. For one thing, most of these groups are chauvinist as hell. They get to the part where St. Paul says wives should be subject to their husbands, and they don’t bother to read the rest of the passage.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, women don’t go out and spray paint people’s synagogues,” Ira said. “They’ve got more sense. Just a minute now. Let’s see what we’ve got on the White Knights.”
Gregor’s coffee mug was empty. He put the kettle back on to boil and listened to the tapping of keys on a computer keyboard. The water boiled in no time at all. He’d drunk his first mug of coffee quickly. The water in the kettle was still hot. He dumped another teaspoon of instant coffee into his mug and watched while the hot water made it foam.
On the other side of the line, Ira had started to grunt. “Philadelphia,” he was saying. “Philadelphia, Philadelphia, I don’t have anything on them in Philadelphia.”
“You mean they’re not known to operate in this city?” Gregor asked.
“I mean we’ve never had any reports on them from the Philadelphia office. But you know that. You called the Philadelphia office.”
“That’s right.”
“This is a very minor league group, Gregor. Tiny. These people are nobody important.”
“They’re important enough to have spray-painted this synagogue,” Gregor pointed out.
“Spray paint doesn’t make them important,” Ira said. “Never mind. I know what you mean. Look, last April these people had a convention of sorts down in Kisco, Oklahoma. In a trailer park, no less. With beer. God, it’s incredible. Anyway, I’ve got a notation here, we’ve got a file report on this thing. We must have had an agent there. I could talk to him and see what he has to say. And I could look up the file report.”
“Would you?”
“Sure. We’re having a reasonably slack time around here. That’s why I could take a vacation. What are you going to do? Get the names and then stake them out?”
“Something like that.”
“Best way to go about it. Of course, you can’t if you’re official. Not unless you’ve got some way to cover your ass—”
“Claim you had an informant?” Gregor suggested.
“Oh, that’s good,” Ira said. “That’s very good. You always were good. I can get back to you in about two hours, how about that?”
“I’ll be out. Why don’t you try this evening? Or tomorrow morning, if it’s more convenient.”
“I’ll interrupt your dinner. It’s too bad the lady isn’t more than a friend, Gregor.”
“No it’s not.”
“You must be getting old.”