Harlot's Moon (5 page)

I got her going with just one jerk on the propeller. Then I climbed in my cockpit.

"Here we go!' I said.

Susan's exultant laugh was silver music.

W
e flew for forty-five minutes. Below us, farmers did their early-season plowing and rivers were alive with a variety of boats. It was spring, or soon would be anyway, and it made everybody a little crazy. I swept low over one farm and the wife stood next to the silo and waved at me as if I were the Beatles about to land.

Susan especially liked tracking the limestone cliffs, so we spent at least half the time coming in low over the ragged jutting rocks above the river. She'd told me once about the early Indians who'd lived in limestone caves and how they'd been vegetarians and not meat-eaters at all.

When we were driving back to the hospital, Susan said, "Have you ever had something you dreamed about come true?"

"Hmm," I said. "I guess I'd have to think about that. I'm not sure. Have you ever had something you dreamed come true?"

"Sister Ellen says maybe it's going to happen. She said that God does that sometimes, puts dreams in your head and has them come true."

"So what dream're you having?"

"That I won't be sick anymore."

I was glad she couldn't see the tears in my eyes. "Maybe it will come true, honey," I said. "Maybe it will come true."

W
hen I got her back to the hospital, she leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

"You think we could do this next week, Robert?" She asked this every week.

"I don't see why not."

"Ooo goodie, I'll tell Sister Ellen." Then, "I really had fun today. Thank you, Robert."

This was the formal part of the afternoon, the part that came directly from Sister Ellen straight through the mouth of nine-year-old Susan. Good manners.

"You're most welcome, my dear," I said in my best Dracula voice.

She giggled. She loved the Dracula voice.

I delivered her unto Sister Ellen, who said, "Did she tell you about her dream?"

"She certainly did."

"You be sure and say a couple of prayers for her, Robert."

"You bet I will."

And I would, too. I prayed all the time. I just hoped there was somebody listening.

But I guess we all hope that, don't we?

I gave Susan a little more of Dracula and another kiss on the forehead, and then I was back in my car.

T
he rectory was built of the same soaring native stone as the church itself. It was also built in the days when great vaulting spires were mandatory. St Mallory's had been here for more than a hundred years now, the neighborhood changing from Czech to Irish to its present mix of black and Hispanic. Because of its south-east side location, it was the church of wealthy Catholics for the past seventy years. Even today, parked near garages defiled with graffiti and old black men who sat patiently on crumbling back porches waiting for their dreams to come true — even today you found Cadillacs and BMWs and Mercedes Benzes here.

Five generations of Irish Catholics had trooped through this venerable rectory, and sometimes it was fun to imagine them standing on the front steps, talking to the priests, the women of the last century in their bustles, the men of the early 1900s in their straw boaters, the men and women of WWII in their uniforms, and the hippie parents in tie-dyes and beards.

Right now, there were vans from two of the local TV stations parked at the curb, and the rain was back

A woman of about sixty opened the rectory door to me. She wore a Lycra jogging suit and a buff blue headband that complemented the deeper blue of her suit. She had an angular face and white hair, but she exuded enough energy to charge up a generator. She was one of those wily, wiry older women who could probably put away a couple of boxers.

"Hello. I'm Robert Payne," I told her. "I'm here to see the Monsignor."

"You're not a reporter, are you?" she asked.

I smiled. "I haven't sunk that low yet."

She smiled back. "Careful, they might hear you. They're everywhere. I'm Bernice Clancy. Come on in. They're interviewing the Monsignor in his study," Bernice said, leading me to the back of the place. "Bob Wilson is with him."

The rectory was old but impressive, with heavy drapes and carpeting, woodwork and wainscoting that would cost thousands of dollars today. The furnishings ran to formidable leather couches and chairs. The framed paintings were the biggest surprise, for they consisted of very nice prints of Van Gogh, Chagall and Picasso. Except for the paintings, the rectory recalled a gentler time — old Irish priests spending their nights in armchairs with pipe and slippers and western novels.

I followed Bernice down the narrow hallway that smelled of floor wax. We ended up in a large kitchen with a small breakfast nook in the corner. A slight and very pretty girl in a white sweater, jeans and sandals was dumping spaghetti into a colander.

"Will he be eating with us?" she asked. "There's plenty."

"Jenny, this is Robert Payne. He's a friend of the Monsignor's. Jenny's one of our housekeepers."

She walked over to me, wiping water from her right hand on the leg of her stonewashed jeans.

She had a hard little hand. She also had freckles and about the most seductive blue eyes I'd ever seen. I'd taken her for maybe late teens but up close I could see a few streaks of gray in the dark hair she had cinched back in a pony tail.

"You're the FBI man the Monsignor mentioned this morning," she said.

"Former FBI man, I'm afraid," I said.

"Well, we're all "formerly" something, aren't we? I'm formerly a topless dancer."

Her gaze was impish as she said this. She watched Bernice's reaction. I sensed some tension between them.

Jenny went over and slipped her arm through Bernice's. "I like to shock her sometimes. She's so cute when she blushes."

There was a lot of real affection in her voice, but it was not an affection shared by Bernice. She remained embarrassed, stiff and immobile.

"I like her, but she doesn't like me."

"I just don't see why you have to keep dredging up the past is all, Jenny," Bernice said. "I don't believe in washing your dirty laundry in public."

Jenny nodded and said to me, "Seven years ago, one of the priests here got a high-school girl pregnant. With the publicity and all, a lot of parents took their kids out of school. Monsignor Gray and Bernice are always worried there'll be some new scandal."

I said, "I'm sure the situation with Father Daly isn't going to help. By the way, I'd like to talk to Father Ryan, too, if I could."

Bernice smiled. "You'll find him in his favorite place."

"Oh?"

"The bell-tower. Here, I'll show you."

Jenny put out her hand again and we shook. "I hope I'll see you again, Mr. Payne."

"Me, too."

Her hand lingered longer than it needed to and this was not lost on Bernice. She looked at our hands and then her gaze rose to rest, disapprovingly, on Jenny's face.

In the hall, Bernice said, "She's too fresh."

"Jenny?"

"Yes. In my day, young women knew their place, especially around priests. But not her. She flirts with them."

"With Father Daly?"

"Yes. And with Monsignor Gray."

We walked to a side door and then out to the sidewalk between the rectory and church.

She paused. "You know, there's something that's been bothering me since Father Daly died. As you're a former FBI man and all, maybe I should tell you about it."

"Tell me what?"

"The night before he died, Father Daly called me at home. He said that he had something he wanted me to have."

"He didn't say what?"

She looked at me and frowned. "No — no, he didn't. And now that I think about it, it's kind of mysterious, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said. "It is."

The church was empty, the altar dark, our footsteps echoing off the vaulted ceiling.

She led me to the back of the church, past the Stations of the Cross, past the confessional to a door beneath the bottom of the choir-loft.

"This is Father Ryan's favorite place," Bernice said.

"This?" I said, puzzled. All I could see was the door.

"The bell-tower."

She opened the door. I saw wooden stairs that climbed steeply and curved abruptly.

"After you," I said.

We climbed.

I remembered how high the bell-tower appeared from the outside. It seemed even taller from the inside.

The staircase was narrow and dusty.

"You pooped yet?" Bernice said.

"Just about," I said. My breath was coming harder, no doubt about it. The stairs seemed ever steeper, the dusty concrete walls ever narrower.

By the time we reached the bell-tower, a fine sweat had broken out on my back and arms, and my breath was coming in tiny gasps.

There was a square hole cut in the floor of the bell-tower.

This was where the stairs ended.

"Mr. Payne would like to talk to you, Father," Bernice said when we were all standing in the tower.

The tower gave the feeling of being wide open to the sky. There were large square cut-outs in each of the tower walls. If a person got careless, he could easily fail to his death.

"Nothing to be afraid of, Mr. Payne," Father Ryan said. Apparently he could sense my discomfort.

Bernice said, "You haven't given him the speech, Father."

Father Ryan smiled. "Bernice is of the belief that I am overly attached to this bell and this tower." He put a hand out and touched the huge bell. "This is a special bell brought from Ireland sixty years ago. Do you know anything about bells, Mr. Payne?"

"Afraid not, Father."

Bernice was right. There was a pride and passion on the priest's face that hadn't been there before.

"This is real bell metal, Mr. Payne," Father Ryan said. "A mixture of copper and tin — thirteen parts copper to four parts of tin. Bells of this type date all the way back to early Christianity. The Chinese used bronze for their bells. The Early Christians couldn't afford bronze, but ironically the copper and tin produced a better sound."

"And you ring it by pulling the rope?" I said.

He nodded. "The rope is attached to the metal clapper — and when the clapper strikes the bell, the ringing sound is produced."

He walked over to one of the large open areas and pointed to the city below. "On a beautiful day, this is like an eyrie up here, Mr. Payne. It makes me feel a little bit like God." He smiled subtly at me. "You can admire humanity from afar — and sometimes that's the best way."

While he spoke, I looked straight down to the darkness below. You could easily fall between the bell and the floor. And if you did fall, you'd never survive.

Then he said, "I take it you came to see me about Father Daly, Mr. Payne."

"Yes," I said. "I wondered if you could show me his room in the rectory?"

"His room?"

"The Monsignor's busy so I thought I'd ask you. I'll probably have some questions for you, too."

He looked out at the sky again. Even with the overcast and mist, it did feel like an eyrie up here — safe from all the grief and sorrows of the human soul.

"He didn't care about his room," Father Ryan said.

"Oh?"

"Just dumped stuff here on the way in and out of the rectory."

"He was a counselor, you said."

"Right."

"Where was his office?"

"Over in the school behind the church."

"Why the school?"

"He said he wanted to be comfortable. Personally, I think the Monsignor intimidated him."

"Oh? In what way?"

"You know, sort of like having your parents home when you had your girlfriend with you."

The rose-colored wallpaper and the brass bed and the heavy mahogany bureau gave the room the feel of a hotel room of fifty years ago. On Father Daly's night-stand were paperbacks by Freud, Sartre, Martin Buber, and Proust.

"He read much fiction?"

"That was his dream," Father Ryan said. "To be a writer. He was real hung up on Proust and Sartre."

"No popular fiction?"

"He hated popular fiction. He was something of a snob, in fact."

He picked up a stack of CDs next to a small CD-player. "All classical music."

I watched him a long moment. "I'm trying to figure out if you liked him."

"Not much."

"Why?"

"I told you he was a bully, and he was. He didn't think so, of course." He smiled, and suddenly looked much younger. "He just thought he was a member of a superior species. I always thought he should've been a Jesuit. He didn't like being a parish priest much. I saw him in a sick room once and he was pretty callous. He looked irritated that the wife of the dying man was crying so much."