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"I sent Dora to school. By this time I was making big, big money. I had to put lots of miles between me and my daughter. I switched Dora among three schools overall before graduation, which was hard for her, but she didn't question me about these maneuvers, or the secrecy surrounding our meetings. I led her to believe I was always on the verge of having to rush to Florence to save a fresco from being destroyed by idiots, or to Rome to explore a catacomb that had just been found.

"When Dora began to take a serious interest in religion, I thought it was spiritually elegant, you know. I thought my growing collection of statues and books had inspired her. And when she told me at eighteen that she had been accepted to Harvard and that she meant to study comparative religion, I was amused. I made the usual sexist assumption: study what you want and marry a rich man. And let me show you my latest icon or statue.

"But Dora's fervor and theological bent were developing far beyond anything I had ever experienced. Dora went to the Holy Land when she was nineteen. She went back twice before she graduated. She spent the next two years studying religions all over the world. Then she proposed the entire idea of her television program: she wanted to talk to people. Cable had made possible all these religion channels. You could tune in to this minister or that Catholic priest.

" 'You serious about this?' I asked. I hadn't known she believed it all. But she was out to be true to ideals that I had never fully understood myself yet somehow passed on to her.

" 'Dad, you get me one hour on television three times a week, and the money to use it the way I want,' she said, 'and you'll see what happens. ' She began to talk about all kinds of ethical questions, how we could save our souls in today's world. She envisioned short lectures or sermons, punctuated by ecstatic singing and dancing. The abortion issue¡ªshe makes impassioned logical speeches that both sides are right! She explains how each life is sacrosanct yet a woman must have dominion over her own body. "

"I've seen the program. "

"You realize seventy-five different cable networks have picked up this program! You realize what news of my death may do to my daughter's church?"

He paused, thinking, then resumed as rapid-fire as before.

"You know, I don't think I ever had a religious aspiration, a spiritual goal, so to speak, that wasn't drenched in something materialistic and glamorous, do you know what I mean?"

"Of course. "

"But with Dora, it's different. Dora really doesn't care about material things. The relics, the icons, what do they mean to Dora? Dora believes against impossible psychological and intellectual odds that God exists. " He stopped again, shaking his head with regret.

You were right in what you said to me earlier. I am a racketeer. Even for my beloved Wynken I had an angle, what they call now an agenda. Dora is no racketeer. "

I remembered his remark in the barroom, "I think I sold my soul for places like this. " I had known what he was talking about when he said it. I knew it now.

"Let me get back to the story. Early on, as I told you, I gave up that idea of a secular religion. By the time Dora started in earnest, I hadn't thought about those ambitions in years. I had Dora. And I had Wynken as my obsession. I chased down more of Wynken's books, and managed through my various connections to purchase five different letters of the period which made clear mention of Wynken de Wilde and Blanche De Wilde and her husband, Damien, as well. I had searchers digging for me in Europe and America. Rhineland mysticism, dig into it.

"My researchers found a capsule version of Wynken's story in a couple of German texts. Something about women practicing the rites of Diana, witchcraft. Wynken dragged out of the monastery and publicly accused. The record of the trial, however, was lost.

"It had not survived the Second World War. But in other places there were other documents, caches of letters. Once you had the code word Wynken¡ªonce you knew what to look for¡ªyou were on the way.

"When I had a free hour I sat down and looked at Wynken's little naked people, and I memorized his poems of love. I knew his poems so that I could sing them. When I saw Dora for weekends¡ªand we met somewhere whenever possible¡ªI would recite them to Dora and maybe even show her my latest find.

"She tolerated my 'Burnt-put hippie version of free love and mysticism,' as she called it. 'I love you, Roge,' she'd say. 'But you're so romantic to think this bad priest was some sort of saint. All he did was sleep with these women, didn't he? And the books were ways of communicating among the others . . . when to meet. '

" 'Ah, but Dora,' I would say, 'there was not a vicious or ugly word in the work of Wynken de Wilde. You see for yourself. ' Six books I had by then. It was all about love. My present translator, a professor at Columbia, had marveled at the mysticism of the poetry, how it was a blending of love of God and the flesh. Dora didn't buy it. But Dora was already obsessed with her own religious questions. Dora was reading Paul Tillich and William James and Erasmus and lots of books on the state of the world today. That's Dora's obsession, the State of the World Today. "

"And Dora won't care about those books of Wynken's if I get them to her. "

"No, she won't touch any of my collection, not now!" he said.

"Yet you want me to protect all these things," I said.

"Two years ago," he sighed. "A couple of news articles! No connection to her, you understand, but with her, my cover was blown forever. She'd been suspecting. It was inevitable, she said, that she'd figure out my money wasn't clean. "

He shook his head. "Not clean," he said again. He went on. "The last thing she let me do was buy the convent for her. One million for the building. And one million to gut it of all the modern desecrations and leave it the way it had been for the nuns in the 1880s, with chapel and refectory and dormitory rooms and wide corridors. . . .

"But even that, she took with reluctance. As for the artwork, forget it. She may never take from me the money she needs to educate her followers there, her order or whatever the hell a televangelist calls it. The cable TV connection is nothing compared to what I could have made it, fixing up that convent as the base. And the collection¡ªthe statues, icons¡ªimagine it. 'I could make you as big as Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell, darling,' I said to her. 'You can't turn away from my money, not for Jesus' sake!"

He shook his head despairingly. "She meets with me now out of compassion, and of that my beautiful daughter has an endless supply. Sometimes she'll take a little gift. Tonight, she would not. Once when the program almost went under, she accepted just enough to get it over the hump. But my saints and angels, she won't touch them. My books, my treasures, she won't look at them.

"Of course, we both knew the threat to her reputation. You've helped by eliminating me. But there'll be news of my disappearance soon, has to be. 'Televangist financed by cocaine king. ' How long can her secrecy last? It has to survive my death and she has to survive my death. At all costs! Lestat, you hear what I'm saying. "

"I am listen

ing to you, Roger, to every word you say. They aren't on to her yet, I can assure you. "

"My enemies are a ruthless lot. And the government . . . who knows who the hell the government is or what the hell the government does. "