Fat Tuesday (16 page)

She enumerated a few minor offenses, but she was stalling, trying to garner enough courage to confess the Sin. She hadn't been willing to share it with anyone, not even a priest. She sensed him on the other side of the screen, waiting patiently.

Finally he coughed softly and cleared his throat."Is there something else?"

"Yes, Father."

"Tell me about it."

Maybe if she talked about it, she would know some peace. But the thought of confiding it caused her throat to compress and her heart to pound. Tears clouded her eyes. Swallowing dryly, she began."A few months ago, I conceived. I haven't told my husband about it."

"That's a lie of omission."

"I know," she cried softly."But I ... I can't. I'm conflicted, Father."

"About what?"

"The baby."

"The Church is very clear on this. A child is a gift from God.

Don't you want the child?"

Staring at the large diamond on her left ring finger, she whispered through her tears,,"There is no child. Not anymore."

She had hoped that finally speaking the words out loud would provide instant relief from her guilt, but she didn't experience any such release. Indeed, the pressure inside her chest increased until she thought her ribs might crack. She had difficulty breathing. Her short, choppy breaths sounded loud in the enclosure.

Quietly, the priest said, "You also know the Church's position on abortion."

"It wasn't an abortion. I miscarried in my tenth week." He assimilated this, then said, "Then what is your sin?" "I made it happen," she said in a broken voice."Because of my ingratitude and uncertainty, God punished me."

"Do you know God's mind?"

"I wanted my baby." Sobbing, she rubbed her abdomen."I loved it already. But I was afraid ..."

"Afraid? Of what?"

Afraid Pinkie would stick to his word and force me to have an abortion.

That was too ugly to confess, even to a priest. Pinkie had made it clear to her when they married that she would not be having children.

Period. End of argument. The subject was closed. He didn't want the competition. Nor did he want her to be disfigured, even temporarily.

He had said that if she felt the urge to nurture, she could nurture him without becoming grotesquely misshapen.

So when her contraceptives failed her and she accidentally conceived, she didn't tell him. She feared that he would insist on an abortion.

But she was just as fearful that he wouldn't.

What if he had mellowed on the subject of children and changed his mind? What if he had reversed his thinking and welcomed the idea?

Did she want her child to be reared under Pinkie's control?

While she was still debating the dilemma, the problem had been solved for her. One terrifying afternoon, when she felt the tearing inside her womb and saw the blood trickling down her legs, she knew in her heart that she had willed it to happen. A precious life had been sacrificed to her cowardice.

The priest repeated his question, asking what she was afraid of.

"Of Hell, Father. God knew I was ambivalent about having a baby, so He took it from me."

"Did you do something that caused you to abort?"

"Only in my heart. Please pray for me, Father."

Desperate for understanding and forgiveness, she reflexively reached out, pressing her palm against the screen. Head bent, she wept.

Suddenly, against her palm and fingers, body heat, as though the priest had aligned his hand with hers on the opposite side of the screen It was a fleeting sensation, and when she raised her head, only her hand was silhouetted against the mesh.

But whether physically or spiritually, she had been touched. A peace she hadn't known for months stole through her. The bands of guilt around her chest dissolved, and she took several cleansing breaths.

Speaking with quiet reassurance, the priest granted her absolution and gave her a penance, which seemed moderate when compared to the enormity of her sin. It would take more than this penance to assuage her guilt, but it would be a start, a move toward redemption, a way out of the morass of guilt in which she had been floundering.

Slowly lowering her hand from the screen, she wiped the tears off her face and left the confessional with a soft, "Thank you, Father."

The scent of her perfume lingered for as long as Burke remained inside the confessional.

It was time to get out. He mustn't still be in the booth when the priest appeared to begin scheduled confession. Each second counted.

Nevertheless, he was reluctant to leave. In that small confessional chamber, he had shared a strange sort of intimacy with the woman of his fantasies, the moonlit woman in the gazebo.

Who just happened to be Pinkie Duvall's cheating wife. And Pinkie Duvall was the enemy he had sworn to destroy.

Prompted by that thought, Burke forced himself to move. When he stepped from the booth, his eyes swept the sanctuary, hoping for a glimpse of her, but she wasn't in sight. He glanced toward the door.

The bodyguard he'd seen her with in the French Market was no longer at his post. She was gone.

He took a handkerchief from the hip pocket of his black trousers and blotted perspiration from his forehead, then from his upper lip, which felt naked without the mustache. A stranger had gazed back at him from his shaving mirror this morning.

Without further delay he left the church through a side exit.

Gregory lames was already in the car, waiting for him. Burke said nothing as he got behind the wheel and drove away. The car seemed excessively warm. He switched the air-conditioning system from heating to cooling and turned it on full blast. The black shirt was sticking to his back beneath his coat. The reversed collar was bugging him.

He tugged at it irritably.

"Didn't it go well?" Gregory asked nervously.

"It went fine."

"The lady showed up?"

"On schedule."

After following Remy Duvall for a few days, it had become clear to Burke that she was never alone. Either she was inside the mansion and completely inaccessible, or in the company of her husband, or with the bodyguard. She never went anywhere unaccompanied. The only time she was by herself was when she went to church to pray.

"Pray?" he had exclaimed when Ruby Bouchereaux told him of the occasions on which she saw Mrs. Pinkie Duvall.

One of the madam's carefully penciled eyebrows arched."Which surprises you most, Mr. Basile, that she goes to church to pray, or that I do?"

"I didn't mean any offense," he'd muttered abashedly."It's just that "

"Please." She raised her hand to indicate that she hadn't taken umbrage at his shock."I frequently see Remy Duvall at prayer. I've never spoken to her. Nor does anyone. She's not there for show. She appears very devout and is always the first one there to go to confession."

After following Pinkie's wife into the cathedral for several days in a row and verifying Ruby Bouchereaux's information, he had thought, Perfect.

What better way to get inside someone's head and learn what she's about than to hear her confession? Did she do drugs like her mother, Angel?

Would she confess her affair with Bardo? What sordid sins would she cite to her priest that would be useful to someone out to destroy her husband?

Come Saturday, Burke determined to be in the booth waiting for her. It was a ballsy plan, but brilliant. Except for two hitches: how to sound priestly, and how to forestall the real priest. The last time Burke had been to confession was the day following his mother's funeral, and then he'd gone only to honor her memory He was a little rusty on the drill, although, once trained in Catholicism, one never completely forgot. But even if he could do a passable job, that still left him with the problem of delaying the parish priest. That's when he'd thought of using Gregory James, who'd been trained both as a priest and as an actor.

"Did you say everything right?" Gregory asked him now.

"You'd been over it with me a dozen times." Burke cursed a slow driver as he whipped around him."I said everything right."

"She didn't guess?"

The tearful remorse he'd heard in her voice couldn't have been faked.

"She didn't guess."

"Good thing she couldn't see that scowl on your face. It hardly looks saintly."

"Well she didn't, so relax."

"I'm relaxed. You're the one who's sweating and driving like a maniac." Having said that, Gregory sat back, smiling. He tapped his fingers on his knees in time to a tune inside his head."I did my part great.

Waylaid the priest outside the rectory, just like you told me to.

I told him I was trying to hook up with Father Kevin, that we'd been seminary students together.

"He'd never heard of him, of course. Are you sure?" I asked. I'm positive his mother told me that he'd been assigned to Saint Michael's in New Or-leens." Those voice classes I took in New York sure helped cover my accent," he told Burke in an aside.

"Anyway, the priest says that my friend could very well have been assigned to Saint Michael's, but I was at Saint Matthew's. So then we laughed. I said the taxi driver must've gotten his churches mixed up.

Or his saints," says the Father. And we laughed some more.

"To keep him occupied a while longer, I asked if he was a New Orleans native, and he said he'd been here ten years. But he knew all the good restaurants. Not that he could afford them, he rushed to say, but some of his parishioners could, and they were generous enough to invite him out frequently. Duh-da-duh-da-duh-da. So we killed maybe ten minutes.

Enough?"

"Plenty. Now will you shut up?"

He didn't want to chat with Gregory. He wanted to reflect on those few minutes he'd been separated from Remy Duvall by only a thin wall and a screen. He'd been close enough to smell her perfume and to hear her soft sobs as she confessed a sin Burke hadn't expected.

Drugs, drunkenness, adultery none of that would have shocked him But guilt over a miscarriage? He hadn't expected that, and it had knocked him for a loop.

All the same, he would use it to his advantage. Even while her perfume was making him damn glad he'd never taken a vow of chastity, he'd been in his policeman's mode, wondering how he could apply this confidential information to the job that must be done. In a burst of inspiration not necessarily divine inspiration he'd dreamed up a penance that fit her sin and worked nicely into his overall plan.

But he wasn't all that happy about it.

He wished he didn't know about the baby she'd lost. That made her human. He wished he hadn't touched her hand through the screen.

That made him human.

"Say, Basile, did you undergo a religious experience or something?"

Drawn from his thoughts by Gregory's question, Burke shot him a dirty look.

"Because you're acting really weird. You came out of the cathedral looking like you'd seen God." Again, Burke gave him a disparaging glance."Okay, forget it. I guess I'm just not used to you sans mustache, and with your hair slicked back like that. I don't think your own mother would recognize you. The glasses are a nice touch, too."

Realizing that he'd forgotten to remove the square, horn-rimmed eyeglasses, he did so now, dropping them on the console between him and Gregory. The lenses were only clear glass, but it was strange that he hadn't thought to take them off. A guy could get himself killed overlooking a detail like that. Cop or criminal, it was the small stuff that tripped you up.

He ordered himself to snap out of it, whatever it was. If he started second-guessing his decision, he might waver in his determination to avenge Kev's death. If he couldn't go through with it, he couldn't go on breathing. It was something he had to do or die trying. His right hand flexed around the steering wheel.

When they reached Gregory's townhouse, he wheeled into the driveway and applied the brakes with such resolve that the car rocked to a halt.

Gregory reached for the door handle."Reluctant as I am to admit it, it was fun. See you around, Basile. But only if I'm very unlucky."

To his consternation, Burke got out of the car along with him and accompanied him up the brick walkway."I'm glad you had a good time.

Because you're not finished yet, Father Gregory."

Pinkie cut into his rare filet mignon."What's it called?"

K} Remy looked away from the blood-red juice oozing across his plate.

"Jenny's House. Named in honor of a three-year-old girl whose mother abandoned her. She was starving when they found her. They couldn't save her."

"That's incredible," Flarra exclaimed."In America, a nation of overweight people who spend fortunes dieting, a kid actually starved to death?"

"Horrible to think about, isn't it?"

Remy had carefully chosen a night when Flarra was joining them for dinner to broach this subject with Pinkie. She knew Flarra would rally to her side. Her sister was a crusader against any social injustice.

Pinkie swirled his stem of Merlot."This priest, Father?"

"Gregory," Remy supplied."He called and asked if he could meet with me to discuss the special needs of the facility."

"Needs, meaning money." She conceded with a nod."He said they're struggling financially to get Jenny's House open and operative."

"Places like that are always begging for donations. How come you're not eating?" he asked, motioning down at her plate.

"I'm not very hungry."

"Your appetite was spoiled by all this talk of starving little girls.

My wife, the soft touch." He reached across the table and stroked her hand."If it'll make you feel better, I'll have my secretary send Father Gregory a check tomorrow." "That's not good enough," she said, sliding her hand from beneath his.

"I want to become directly involved."

"You don't have time to become involved."

Believing that he'd put an end to it, he went back to his steak.

But Remy couldn't let the matter drop. This was more than just a need for a hobby. It was a spiritual matter. The priest had said, "Maybe if you did something to benefit children ..."

Jenny's House had been a direct answer to her prayers. She'd asked for an opportunity to atone, and it had come in the form of Father Gregory's telephone call this morning. If this is what God wanted her to do, not even Pinkie Duvall could deter her.