Sins of the Fathers by James Scott Bell Page A

Jew. Only Jews are funny.’ He said, ‘I am the producer and you will say what I write.’ I told him, ‘No,’ and he fired me. And I never worked again.”
    “Not a very happy dream.”
    Klinger leaned toward her with a glint in his eye. “But there’s more. I went out to the street and started telling my own jokes. I got a million of ’em. And people started laughing. All over the street. And soon there was thousands of people, all laughing at my jokes. And Satan looks out the window of the fancy office building and tells us all to shut up. But I kept telling my jokes, and people kept laughing. And he screamed until he lost his voice.”
    He paused. “So I figure our job here is to make people laugh when we can. Make life easier for the guy next to you. That’s our job. And when we do that, Satan loses his voice.”
    Lindy got up and kissed Emil Klinger on the forehead. “I think God made you just right, Mr. Klinger.”
    He looked at her wide-eyed. “My blood pressure just went from almost dead to whoopee. ”
    Lindy picked up his pill dispenser, sitting on a small table, and opened it. “Don’t forget the blue one before bed. Good night.”
    She kept thinking about God as she spooned out Cardozo’s food and waited for Roxy to show up to discuss the case. Something was eating at her, like a little ferret gnawing at the wires in her brain.
    Maybe it had to do with the way Darren looked at her when he talked about God. Like he had some sort of special knowledge about things divine that she didn’t. Like he was some kind of thirteen-year-old prophet with a hidden message from on high.
    Of course that was absurd. How much can a thirteen-year-old know about anything?
    But then, how much did she know? She told him she believed in God, but what did that really mean? She did have a back-of-the-mind belief, a nonthreatening corner of her mind where she could park God, leave him there to fiddle on his own.
    Then there was Roxy, who was so into the God thing now. When she arrived, and the two of them settled down with Diet Dr Peppers, Lindy brought the subject up first.
    They sat in the front of the trailer, looking at the lights of the Valley. The hot and dry night air blew down from the Santa Susanna Mountains, reminding Angelinos to be thankful for water.
    “Did you go to church on Sunday?” Lindy asked.
    “Yeah, of course.” She seemed fascinated that Lindy would even ask. “You want to come with me again?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Are you thinking about it?”
    “Here’s what I’m thinking about.” Lindy turned slightly on her lawn chair, facing Roxy directly. “What makes Christianity any better or worse than any other religion?”
    “Well, Jesus, for one thing. The main thing.”
    “You think he really happened? Like in the Mel Gibson movie?”
    “Oh yeah.”
    “But the part about rising from the dead. That’s kind of hard to buy.”
    “But without that, there really isn’t any difference. I mean, otherwise Jesus is just a guy who died.”
    “Maybe just being good to people is what God cares about, you know?”
    “Jesus was God. Is God.”
    “That’s kind of outlandish.”
    “That’s what it says in the Bible.”
    “The Bible is just one book.”
    “It’s the revelation of God.”
    “What kind of revelation? People hear God all the time in different ways. It’s—”
    “What? What were you going to say?”
    Lindy paused. “Darren says God told him to shoot those kids.”
    “So?”
    “So there you go,” Lindy said. “Maybe sometimes God makes you crazy.”
    “You think I’m crazy?”
    “I didn’t say that. I said sometimes, in this case, maybe Darren.”
    “You’re going to use a God-made-him-crazy defense?”
    “What else have I got? He’s got to be crazy, or he’s going to be fish fried in prison. What do you suggest I do?”
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Hey—”
    “What are you putting me down for?”
    “I’m not, Rox—”
    “God