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other way.”
    “Then you are wise,” he said. “That’s all I’m looking for.” He stood up. “And now I’ll get ready to head down to the Sip with
     you.”
    He went back to his trailer. A man comfortable in his own skin. Something I was not. Did he really have a bead on the truth?
     Or was it all just a happy illusion?
    And is there anything wrong with that? If an illusion gets you through the day, big deal. If it puts an ice pack on the groin
     kicks of life, why not?
    I tried to argue myself into believing that, but something about illusion bothers me. I always want to know the truth.
    They say the truth shall set you free. But sometimes it just elbows you in the chops.

7
    L ATER THAT MORNING , Father Bob and I entered the Ultimate Sip.
    Pick McNitt’s place is in a strip mall on Rinaldi. Pick spent some time in a sanitarium, where Father Bob first visited with
     him by walking into the wrong room.
    They argued then and have been friends ever since.
    I pay Pick a little chunk each month for the use of the Sip as an office. And for a P.O. box in the little franchise Pick
     owns next door.
    “Well there they are!” Pick shouted as we walked in. “The two most misguided men in the city and county of Los Angeles and
     perhaps in the whole of civilization.”
    He was spoiling for a debate, as usual. He was wearing his standard Hawaiian shirt, double X. With his bald head and full
     white beard, he could have been a Santa too. The Christmas spirit was getting a real going over with Pick and Carl Richess
     as reps.
    “Two specials,” Father Bob said.
    Pick said, “There is no greater business than knowing thyself, as the divine Socrates said.”
    “Didn’t Socrates commit suicide by drinking your coffee?” Father Bob winked at me as he took an Arturo Fuente cigar from his
     shirt pocket. He doesn’t wear the collar on the street.
    Pick himself smokes a pipe. Inside. He is on a one-man resistance effort against L.A. County smoking ordinances.
    The Sip is adorned with scads of framed political cartoons Pick has drawn over the years. He did an especially wicked Nixon,
     but his Bill and Hillary Clinton make me crack up every time.
    Pick delivered two Gandhi Lattes to our table. He sat, putting down his own cup of joe. He slid it toward us.
    “Smell that,” he said. “It’s Joan of Arc.”
    “Joan of Arc?” Father Bob said.
    “French roast,” Pick said. He took out his pipe and packed it from a leather pouch. As he lit up he said, “Anything more on
     the death of God?”
    And so it began once again. Wimbledon. I leaned back in my chair and listened.
    “Greatly exaggerated,” Father Bob said.
    “It’s in all the papers,” Pick said. “Just look at the evil out there.”
    “The acts of evil men prove only the existence of evil, it doesn’t—”
    “Then God cannot be good,” Pick said.
    “At least now you admit God exists.”
    “I admit no such thing.”
    “Of course you do,” Father Bob said with a glint in his eye. “You are arguing that the existence of evil isn’t compatible
     with a good God. Okay, then it may be a bad God, but there is a God. We can argue about his character, but not his existence.”
    Pick blew a plume of smoke my way. I fought it off with my hands and a few coughs.
    “I’m with Bertrand Russell,” Pick said. “If I face God after death I will tell him, ‘Sir, you did not give us enough evidence!’
     ”
    “To which he will reply,” Father Bob said, “ ‘You chose to ignore the evidence you had.’ ”
    “And then what? God sends me to hell for that? For eternity? Because I didn’t see enough evidence?”
    “It is not good to ignore evidence. Any decent lawyer will tell you that.” Father Bob smiled at me.
    “When you find a decent lawyer,” Pick said, “send him over.”
    “Aren’t all the lawyers in hell?” I asked. “Isn’t that the old joke, where is God going to find a lawyer?”
    “Better to reign in hell,” Pick said, “than serve in