Something More Than Night (12 page)

And the MOC, of course. Always the MOC.

That’s the long version leading to what happened next. Short version? I had to rebuild my apartment from the quarks up before I could have the luxury of waking up with the worst hangover since the discovery of alcohol.

So I did. And then I passed out again.

Sometime later I rolled out of bed while a vengeful mariachi band tested the acoustics inside my skull. My options were an ice pick behind the eyes or two aspirin and a glass of water. I opted for the latter. The bathroom was closer and besides which I hadn’t an ice pick handy because I don’t take my rye on the rocks. So I chewed a couple of tablets and chased them with enough water to drown a fish. The mariachis fired their trumpet player and found somebody who knew how to stay on beat. Those kids had promise.

By the time I wobbled to the kitchen and got the percolator going I felt halfway human. Which should tell you just how bad it was. The Voice of God really takes it out of a person. And my pals the Cherubim took pride in their work; I still had the marks to prove it. But the bacon grease was popping along and I’d just cracked a couple eggs into it when the phone rang. It didn’t take a green label shamus to finger the caller.

What’s a guy to do? She had a habit of flinging herself into trouble. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried to drill just the tiniest bit of common sense into Molly’s head, she was having none of it. Stubborn as a mule, that cluck. I told her to stay buttoned, so what did she do? Apparently she made a beeline for METATRON to poke it in the all-seeing eye. And now that things had gone sour she was calling me again.

Dames.

I took a steadying breath and reminded myself I carried some of the blame for this flop. After failing to find somebody suitably passive, as I’d been strong-armed to do, I compounded the mistake with my eagerness to put some distance between us. Maybe—maybe—I cut a few corners when reading her the headlines.

So it wasn’t without sympathy when I contemplated the hole she’d dug for herself. The Choir would lay this at her feet sooner than later. She was the new kid, and this mess had her fingerprints all over it. She was in trouble.

But so was I, no thanks to her.

So I decided to let flametop simmer. Couldn’t give her the cold shoulder forever; I’d have to tell her about the Trumpet and what I found at Gabby’s place. Plus, if I wanted to get through this mess with my skin intact, I needed to know what kind of stunt she’d pulled to arouse METATRON. But that conversation could wait until I wasn’t full of no coffee.

It takes some effort to get on the bad side of the Voice. Far as I knew, it took a major violation of the Mantle of Ontological Consistency. Something you couldn’t hide under a fresh coat of paint. Like making thermodynamics nonlocal, or putting a dent in causality. I tried to figure how she might have pulled that stunt, but the sums came up short.

Meanwhile the phone kept ringing, and I kept not answering it. It rang while I ate. It rang while I rinsed the dishes in the sink. It rang while I had a second cup of joe, lit a pill, smoked it, and emptied the percolator. It rang while I glanced over the chess problem arranged on the board under the window; it rang while the mariachis ensured today wouldn’t be the day I found that elegant mate in seven. It rang while I scraped my face. It rang while I donned a clean shirt and collar. It rang while I slipped out and locked the door. I could hear its ring echoing through my digs when I plucked a hair from my head and stuck it high in the door frame where any casual thieves weren’t likely to spot it.

Figured it was only a matter of time before they tossed my place, too. I could try to keep my distance from Molly, but the hard boys already had us together. I’d told them as much. Careful, Bayliss, you’re getting soft.

Gabby had been keeping an eye on Molly, but I couldn’t get my arms around that one. Not yet. He’d also put the bee on a priest, though, and I figured that was gravy. I’d drop in on the guy, brace him a little bit. If he clammed up I’d play the miracle card and turn his communion wine into communion water. That one’s always a big hit with the godly types.

I pulled the priest’s memory fragment from my wallet. Thing of beauty, the way Gabriel had lifted it; damn thing was still going strong on its short little loop. I let it unfold around me until I sank into that vast empty space behind the eyes that the monkeys call, with no small amount of self-delusion, their subconscious.

Father Vincent Santorelli’s flock liked him because he was a product of the same Chicago neighborhood. His family had been there for generations going back to the time of speakeasies and tommy guns. His brother was a firefighter. He’d given the Last Rites to his very own mother, not five blocks from the church where he’d given the homily every week for the past ten years. He coached Little League games in the summer, worked with a local youth choir, and donated the rest of his spare time to act as a chaplain at the army hospital up near Oak Park. A real pillar of the community. But the kid thing gave me pause. When I first sensed that pride in overcoming temptation, and the hidden guilty secret, I figured I knew where this was headed. Figured it wouldn’t take much digging to find a history of trying to make it with the altar boys. I’d seen this story too many times to expect anything else. But I was wrong.

Near as I could tell, Father Vince was the real deal. The man wouldn’t hurt a child if you pressed an iron to his temple. He considered himself a failure because he struggled to find loving forgiveness in his heart for the creeps who did like the little boys. His recent brush with temptation had involved the wife in an estranged marriage he’d been trying to counsel. Nice figure, gentle words, a hand on the knee. He reacted the way any red-blooded man would. As propositions went, it was about as chaste as you could imagine, but he berated himself for it. Some guys need to loosen up.

Santorelli was solid. Didn’t agree with his choice where the lonely frail was concerned, but that was between him and his conscience. I liked him.

But something had him wound tighter than a moneylender on a bank holiday. I sank deeper, feeling around for a thread of awareness that might have swirled through the back of Santorelli’s mind while he laid a communion wafer on a fat pale tongue and tried not to recoil from the stench of an abscessed tooth. A lingering worry like that usually finds room to fester at the edges of the subconscious; that’s why it lingers.

Took a bit of digging because the loop was just a few seconds long. It’s tricky getting your fingers on something that slippery. But then I found it. And you could have knocked me over with one swipe of the racing forms.

Santorelli was worked up over a bit of simony.

The Plenary Indulgence predated the Middle Ages, in one form or another, but the Catholics had resurrected it at the turn of the millennium. A piece of paper with the power to bleach the stain of sin from a man’s soul. A Get-Out-Of-Purgatory-Free card, certified (in theory) by the pope himself. Say a few Our Fathers, do a few rosaries and a few good deeds, donate a bit to the ol’ church coffers, and that roll in the hay with the hotcha babysitter gets expunged from the scroll on Saint Peter’s desk. Got her pregnant, jack? What’s that about an abortion? Better buy the triple pack.

As rackets went, it was a thing of beauty. The monkey who dreamed up this one back in the day must have been so bent he tied his shoes with his tongue. But this had been business as usual for decades. They’d revisited the Indulgence racket long before Santorelli had taken his vows. So what was his angle?

That detail was too complex, tied in with too many other things, for me to pull it from a few seconds of memory. Even one lifted as cleanly as Gabriel had done. If I wanted the rest, I’d have to speak with the good father in person. But now at least I had a bead on why Gabby had been shadowing the priest.

Santorelli heard confessions on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Figured it was the perfect time to pay him a visit. The poor lug didn’t get much traffic, but I still bet he’d be happy for a break from the usual litany. Most monkeys share a few things in common, chief among them impure thoughts and a tendency to spit on the golden rule. After ten years of listening to that twice a week he’d be more than ready for a little grace from yours truly. Sure, I was rusty, but so what? This guy was a believer. A real hard case. He’d eat it up with a spoon. And he seemed a solid sort. We’d be fast pals, him and me.

So when a congregant coughed and Santorelli glanced toward the narthex, I rode the slipstream of his gaze from the memory fragment into the flickering shadows near the votive candles. Then I skipped ahead from that blustery December morning to the present, a few days after flametop squiffed it. Felt like a few years at most, but that was a guess because the good father hadn’t been giving thought to the calendar when Gabby lifted the memory fragment.

The church smelled like incense, candle wax, cheap wine, and old people. In prouder times, the joint had boasted an imitation pipe organ; its reverberations were etched in the atmosphere. The arches and stonework gave the place decent acoustics. (The monkeys had done their best, but compared to the Pleroma it still sounded like two cats fighting over last night’s blue plate trout special.) Somebody had fixed the broken window. Sunlight cast prison-shadows from the grille over the replacement glass. Other windows depicted the stations of the cross; dust motes swirled in the cross fire between the Stripping of Garments and the Crucifixion. A fresco behind the altar depicted some joe who looked like the model for the Shroud of Turin as envisioned by a Hollywood focus group. The jasper was attended by a flock of little angels, none of them remotely correct. If the scene up there hadn’t been so repressed, with everybody clothed and nobody grinding anything, I might have fingered the artist for a
penitente.

It was quiet as a nun’s boudoir. But for an old bat in the rear pew who mumbled while she fingered her beads, the place was deserted. So much the better. I lit a candle for flametop and dropped a few beans in the donation box. Then I crossed the nave heading for the confessionals. My footsteps shattered the reverent silence. The old bird gave me the evil eye until I doffed my hat. Some bluehairs know how to make a decent guy feel like a creep.

A pair of confessionals sat in the wings of the transept, a bit behind the altar, but in plain view of an electroplated crucifix. I figured this was accidentally on purpose. Maybe the theory was nothing got people’s tongues wagging like the sight of a little torture. Silly monkeys. A bottle of hooch was the quickest way to a man’s heart or a roundheel’s sheets. That had been the case since the invention of hooch.

A mugg wearing a leather jacket over a shirt that might have been respectable a dozen Easters ago tiptoed from a confessional. He wore clunky boots, but he stepped more quietly than me. Just about jumped out of his skin when he saw me waiting. He gave me a quick, jerky nod as he passed. His eyes were a little red and a lot unfocused. He reminded me of whatshisname. Molly’s brother.

He moved stiffly. The jacket rode a little too high on his shoulders. The breeze of his passing gave me a whiff of wet iron and fresh antiseptic. I wondered what fresh wounds lay beneath the leather.

“Hey, mac. The father in?”

He spun around. “What’s that?”

“Santorelli. He on the clock or were you just sawing logs in there?”

“Oh.” He looked around. “Nah. He stepped out. I think he went to the can. I dropped my wallet. Just went back to grab it.” He held it up where I could see. It was one of those old black leather things with the chain; the clasp on the chain had slipped open. Then he jammed the thing back into his trousers, winced, and rubbed his shoulder.

“You don’t say? What’s the going rate for coveting an ox these days? If it’s more than a double sawbuck I’ll have to roll someone in the parking lot.”

The
penitente
frowned. “What?”

“Been a while since I’ve been to confession.” I pointed at the pocket with the dangling chain. “Guess times have changed. Didn’t used to pay up front.”

“I’m not paying nothing to nobody. The father gave me a card. For some guys I should talk to.” Reflections of stained glass melted together in his wet eyes. Yeah. Definitely reminded me of whatshisface. Though he might have gotten piffled just to deal with the pain from his recent surgery. Maybe he wasn’t a hard case.

But maybe he was. I nodded, like I’d been down those same mean streets. “Counselor?”

“Up yours,” he said. “I’m not an alkie.” Off he went, no longer caring about the noise. I didn’t shush him. The bird with the rosary would cut the twerp down to size with one frown.

Santorelli still hadn’t shown. I hate waiting. I lit a pill. Drawing deep, I tipped my head back, and jetted the smoke at a window depicting a newly beheaded Saint John. The poor lug looked surprised. Like he’d been minding his own business, making no trouble for nobody, when the axman came calling.

I gave him a sympathetic shrug. “You and me both, pal. You and me both.”

I’d waited about half a cigarette and was looking for an ashtray when another old bag came squeaking into the transept on a pair of denim tennis shoes. She wore a thin gold necklace over her sweatshirt. Built like a cannonball but without the personality. You know the type.

“Sir!” she hissed. “This is a church!”

“Yeah, but don’t worry. It’s my day off.”

“There is no
smoking
in a
church.
”

“That’s queer. Play your cards wrong and it’s nothing but smoke and flame forever and ever amen. Ain’t that so, sister?”

“You are smoking. There is
no smoking
in a church!” I had never heard anybody pack so much self-righteousness into a stage whisper.

“All right, all right. Don’t flip your wig.” If it had been handy, I would’ve doused my pill in the little birdbath full of water. But that was back by the front door. So I ground the butt under my heel. “Say, is Father Santorelli still in the can? It’s worth some cabbage if you send somebody after him. I don’t have all day.”