lives of comfort and authority.
217
Norman Matthews had been described to me as-an
aggressive and ambitious man. A hustler. As
Matthias he’d tried tocome across a holy man but
there was enough cynicism in me to wonder if he
hadn’t simply traded one hustle for another.
The Touch was a gold mine: offer the prosperous
simplicity amid lush surroundings, remove the burden
of personal responsibility, substitute an ethos
that equated health and vitality with righteousness,
and pass the collection plate. How could it
mis s ?
But even if the whole thing was a scam it didn’t
spell kidnapping and murder. As Seth had pointed
out, loss of privacy was the last thing Matthias
wanted, be he prophet or con man.
“Let’s take a look around,!’ said Houten, “and be
done with it.”
I was allowed free access to the grounds, permitted
to open any d.oor. The sanctuary was domed
and majestic, with clerestory windows and biblical
murals on the ceiling. The pews had been removed
and the floor covered with padded mats. There was
a rough pine table in the center of the room and
little else. A woman in white dusted and swept,
stopping only to smile at us maternally.
The sleeping rooms were indeed cells–no larger
than the one in which Baou! was confined–tow-ceilinged,
thick-walled, and cool, with a single window
the size of a hardbound book and grilled with
wood. Each room was furnished with a cot and a
chest of drawers. Matthias’s differed only in that it
had a small bookcase. His literary taste was eclectic–the
Bible, the Koran, Perls, Jung, Cousins’s Anatomy
of An Illness, Toffler’s Future Shock, the Bha-
gavad-Gita; several texts on organic gardening-and
ecology.
I took a tour of the kitchen, where cauldrons of
broth simmered on industrial stoves and bread baked
sweetly in brick ovens. There was a member’s library,
its stock leaning toward health and agriculture,
and a conference room with textured adobe
walls. And everywhere people .in white working,
smiling, bright-eyed and friendly.
Houten and I traipsed through the fields, watching
Touch members tend the grapes. A black-bearded
giant put down his shears and offered us a freshly
picked cluster. The fruit was moist to the touch
and it burst electrically upon my tongue. I complimented
the man on the flavor. He nodded and returned
to’ his work.
It was well into the afternoon but the sun continued
to rage. My unprotected head began to ache
and after cursorily inspecting the sheepyard and
the vegetable plots I told Houten I’d had enough.
We turned and walked back toward the viaduct. I
wondered .what I’d accomplished, for the search
had been symbolic, at best. There wasn’t any’tea-son
to believe the Swope children were there. And
if they were, there’d be no way to find them. The
Retreat was surrounded by hundreds of acres, much
of it forest. Nothing short of a bloodhound pack
could cover it all. Besides, monasteries are secret
places, designed for refuge, arid the compound might
very well ‘harbor a maze of underground caverns,
secret compartments, and hidden passages that only
an archaeologist could unravel.
It had been -a futile day, I thought, but if it
helped Raoul confront reality it was worth it. Then
I realiZed what reality meant and craved the balm
of denial.
Houten had Bragdon bring Raoul’s personal effects
in a large manila envelope. In the end he’d
agreed to accept the oncologist’s check for six hundred
eighty-seven dollars worth of fines and while
he recorded the amount in triplicate, I walked
around the room restlessly, eager to get going.
The county map caught my eye. I located La
Vista and noticed a back road to the east that seemed
to skirt the town, allowing entry to the region from
the outly’mg woodlands without actually passing
through the-commercial district. If that was the
case, avoiding Houten’s scrutiny was easier than
he’d let on.
After some hesitation I asked him about it. He
fiddled with a piece of carbon paper and continued
writing.
“Oil companybought up the land, got the county
to seal off the road. There was big talk of deep
deposits, prosperity just around the corner.”
“Did they strike it rich ?”