Harlot's Moon (9 page)

Then he was coughing again. Violently.

Felice looked down at me, nodding her head angrily so I'd talk to him.

"Vic?"

"Just a minute, Bobby," he managed to say between hacks.

"Vic, you want some Kleenex or something?"

"God dammit," Felice whispered fiercely in my ear, "you go over there and sit by him."

I knew her moods well enough to know that this meant something to her. This wasn't an idle threat. Right now she saw me as a total shit and if I didn't extend myself at least a little bit to Vic she was going to take some permanent points away from me.

I'd never heard or seen anybody cough this way. He was totally caught up in it, as if in the throes of a seizure.

He dug a bottle of dark liquid out of his coat pocket and took two big swigs of the stuff.

He laid his head back against the couch and closed his eyes, apparently waiting for the liquid to take effect.

Felice was waving urgently for me to move closer to him. I leaned over and said, "You all right, Vic?"

His head came up slowly. Another store-bought smile. "The doc said this stuff would help and I guess it does."

Then he sat up straight and I went back to my own chair again.

"I guess I should come to the point, huh?"

"You just take your time," Felice said. Stray puppies, cats, even raccoons, Felice had taken them all in at one time or another. Now she was taking in my stepfather. Or he was taking her in. Depends on how you mean the words.

He said, "I have lung cancer and the docs give me about five, six months to live."

"Oh, Lord, Vic. I'm sorry." Then she said what most of us say in such situations. "But you can never tell with those diagnoses they make. I mean, I know lots of people who're alive ten years after the doctors said they were going to die."

We say things like that to make the sick person feel better. And we also say it to make ourselves feel better. It's a form of denial. Sure they've given you a terrible diagnosis but you're not going to die. And neither am I.

"I've seen the X-rays, kiddo," he said gently. "I think their diagnosis is probably pretty accurate." He talked about going through chemo, and how lonely and scared and weak he'd been.

And then he started sobbing. And somewhere between the sobs, he started coughing again, too.

He buried his face in his hands.

Felice went over and sat on one side of him then gestured wildly for me to come over and sit on the other side of him, which I did only reluctantly.

"Oh Vic," she said, as he continued to cry. She held him like a baby, rocking him back and forth, back and forth.

I still couldn't feel anything but a kind of abstract sympathy for him. I wanted to. You couldn't look at the poor bastard and not feel sorry for him. But I couldn't open myself up. I was still a teenager missing his father, and he was still my swaggering, arrogant stepfather.

I wanted to say something comforting, but I couldn't. Maybe I really was a shit after all.

N
ot a fun night.

For one thing, both Felice and I were intimidated about making love with Vic right down the hall in the den.

For another, Felice spent her time, in between kisses, telling me how I had to be nice to Vic.

She'd definitely found another stray to adopt.

When the alarm woke me at seven, I was groggy, muscletired and cranky.

Male PMS, as Felice would call it.

The bed was empty.

I put on a robe and walked down the hall.

At the edge of the living room, I paused, listened.

The kitchen. Conversation. The morning radio show I usually listened to.

And the delicious smell of breakfast.

Apparently sensing that I was nearby, Vic leaned out of the kitchen doorway and saw me.

He wore street clothes and one of Felice's frilly aprons, and waved a good morning spatula at me.

"Speak of the devil, Felice. Look who's here."

Then Felice appeared in her buff blue robe. She's one of those women who looks pretty damned good in the morning.

"Hi, hon," she said. "Vic's making us breakfast."

And he's also making himself at home
, I thought.

But that was obviously the plan. His plan. And most likely her plan, too.

I almost said something to him about being so presumptuous. But then he started hacking, and what the hell was I going to say to that? At least he turned his head away and didn't cough on our food.

We ate at the dining room table that Felice had decorated brightly. "Was the rollaway comfortable?" she asked Vic as we ate the scrambled eggs and French pancakes he'd made. He'd always been a good cook. I remembered being twelve and resenting him for that particular skill. My father had been one of those guys who couldn't even successfully navigate a hamburger. But there was my mother swooning over Vic's prowess with the grill and the hibachi.

"Just great, Felice. You fixed it up real nice for me."

Every time Vic put his head down to eat, Felice'd do one of her nodding jobs again. Like: go ahead, talk to him. I knew I'd be in trouble if I didn't.

"So," I said, "can I give you a ride somewhere this morning, Vic?" I was hinting that I wanted him to settle in someplace else. She kicked me.

And I mean, she kicked me. Hard.

"Vic and I plan to go to the city market and get some fresh vegetables for tonight," she said. "Vic knows this great casserole recipe."

"It's vegetarian, Bobby," he said.

Another kick. "Isn't that nice, honey? The fact that it's vegetarian?"

"Yeah," I said. "That's nice."

"You all right, Bobby?" Vic said.

"Huh?"

"You keep wincing."

"Oh," I said, "just a little pain I have in my leg."

Not to mention the pain in my ass, I thought, looking over at the beaming Felice.

"We're also going to do a little clothes shopping," Felice said.

"We are?" Vic said.

"Uh-huh. Your clothes are a little too big for you."

"Aw, Felice, I don't have that kind of money. Fact is, and I may as well be honest about it, I spent all my money right before I was diagnosed. After Bobby's mother died . . . well, I kind of went through a second childhood again. I bought a Vette and started hitting the bottle pretty hard and . . . well, anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I'm broke and it's not anybody's fault but mine, and I certainly didn't come here looking for charity."

"It isn't charity," Felice said. "I get tired of hanging around here all the time alone. You can be my paid companion."

He smiled. "Like a gigolo?"

"Exactly like a gigolo," she giggled. "It'll be fun, won't it, Robert?"

She was able to find the exact same spot on my leg three times in a row. She had a foot that was as accurate as a heat-seeking missile.

"Oh yeah," I said, "you two'll have a great time."

He gave me one of his ad-man winks. "I have to warn you, Bobby, I'm going to do everything I can to steal her away from you."

I don't know why but it pissed me off, what he said, and the way he said it. He was always the slickie, always the hustler, even when his lungs were giving out on him.

Felice seemed to sense how unhappy I was. She touched my hand and looked at me and said, "I'm afraid you don't have any chance of stealing me, Vic. Robert here's my one true love."

I appreciated what she said — she was a tender and loving woman, Felice was — but it didn't make me any happier about this whole situation.

I took a quick shower and kissed Felice goodbye.

Vic was in her bathroom.

She walked me to the door. "This'll work out, hon. You'll see."

Then she kissed me and it was a warm and wonderful kiss.

But it didn't change my feelings any.

"No, it won't," I said. "I hate that prick and I always will."

In the car, I called the police department and asked for Detective Judy Holloway.

After I identified myself, she said, "I still can't get over a priest using a French tickler."

She had herself a war story that she'd be able to tell for years.

"So how can I help you this morning, Mr. Payne?"

"There are two murders I'm interested in."

"Oh?"

I described the murders and gave her the dates. "I wonder if you could fax me the preliminary reports."

"I suppose I could, Mr. Payne, but now you're making me curious."

"Oh?"

"Why would you suddenly be interested in these two cases?"

"Monsignor Gray asked me to just sniff around a little."

"'Sniff around' meaning what exactly?"

"Exactly, I'm not sure. I think he just needs to feel that everybody is doing everything they can to find the killer."

"We are doing everything we can, Mr. Payne."

"I'm aware of that. I really am. And I told him so."

"Let me ask you something, Mr. Payne."

"All right?"

"Is there any evidence you're withholding?"

I thought about the earring. I hadn't been expecting a question like this. If I told Detective Holloway about the earring now, I could have some legal difficulties on my hands.

"Nothing I can think of," I said.

"Now there's a forthright answer."

"I'm just trying to help my friend."

"And I'm just trying to help your friend." She sighed. "Do you have a fax number?"

I gave it to her.

"The preliminary report is the only thing I can release."

"I understand and I appreciate it."

"It'd be fun to get you under oath some time, Mr. Payne."

I laughed. "Fun for you, maybe."

"It's only in movies that private eyes get involved in murder investigations, Mr. Payne."

"Not anymore, Detective Holloway. One of the first people a good criminal attorney hires these days is a field investigator. And most of us are licensed by the state as private operatives."

"And yours was issued three-and-a-half years ago following the death of your wife and your resignation from the FBI."

"You checked me out."

"Just doing my job, Mr. Payne."

"I don't blame you at all."

"That's nice of you." Then: "Chew around the edges if you want to, Mr. Payne, but don't try to hide anything from me. Understood?"

"Understood."

"You wouldn't want to piss me off. Believe me."

"I believe you."

"I'll fax those reports over to you. Have a nice day, Mr. Payne."

I
t took me most of the morning but I eventually located Paul Gaspard.

He lived in a red-brick six-plex in the middle of a block that had started turning black a few years ago. A variety of dirty words had been painted on the west wall of the apartment building and most of the windows were cracked and several of the cheap aluminum doors showed dents where burglar bars had been used to jimmy them open.

Gaspard lived on the second floor. Two little black faces peering around the edge of a curtain stared at me all the time I stood in front of Gaspard's door and knocked. I waved at them and grinned. They looked at each other as if they weren't sure how to respond. Then one of them waved at me.

And then the other one did, too.

Gaspard opened the door on three different chain locks.

"Yeah?"

"I'd like to talk to you about finding Father Daly."

"I already talked to you fellas. You woke me up."

"I'm sorry I woke you, Mr. Gaspard. But I'm not police. I'm a legal investigator working for Monsignor Gray."

"Legal investigator? What the hell's that?"

I explained it as cogently as I could.

"Shit," he said. "I guess you might as well come in. You got me woke up now."

The apartment was small, cluttered and smelled of cigarette smoke and greasy food. For most of the time I was there, a tiny Pekingese stood in front of me and yipped. He had a cute little collar with his name, MIGHTY MIKE, spelled out on it with fake rubies.

Gaspard looked to be in his mid-sixties, a balding man with liver spots on both his hands and his face. He was thin but it was an unhealthy thin. I wondered if he'd been sick. He wore a once-white T-shirt, gray work pants and felt slippers with the toes cut out.

He said, "He was dead when I got there."

"All right."

"And I didn't see anything or hear anything."

"You checked him in?"

"Uh-huh."

"When?"