Sometimes you don’t know who your real friends are.

            After Vandy left my place, I was having one of those moments.  I was thinking about what a good friend he was.  He’d arrested me four times.  He’d punched my ear bloody once.  He’d scared me to death a hundred other times.  I was going to have to steal him something nice for Christmas.  Just so long as he he didn’t stop me doing what I knew I had to do.

            I picked up his cell phone from the designated dirty sock depository.  It was under an argyle.  I clicked it on.  It searched for service and then trilled; another call.

            “Hello….Yes, seven a.m. at the country club….Well, we appreciate your help…. Yes, bring the whole church group….O.K., goodbye.  I hit end.  It chirped once.  I waited.  Maybe it was done.  I reprogrammed the ring to play “Love Me Do” for incoming.  I also slapped in a code that would block all incoming calls from helpful citizens.  I’m good with electronics.  Ask the guys at the alarm companies around town.  Then I punched in Ahmed’s number.  He’d be awake.  It was his busy time of the day. 

            “Wha zup?”  He answered on the first ring.

            “Hey bro, it’s Tools.  I need another ride.”

            “Dere’s a party gone down right now, bro.”  Something in the back room probably.

            “It’s important.”  Ahmed didn’t like long stories on the phone.  I never told him something was important unless it was..

            “Solid.”  It was just like talking to the ghost of Curtis Mayfield.  “I’ll sen’ Crew.  Be out front yo crib.”  He disconnected.  Good old Yablonski.

            I slipped the cell in my pocket, zipped up the black windbreaker, and closed my apartment door behind me.  Despite Vandy’s “warning”  I didn’t lock it.  Locking things only protects you if there’s a mob of lawless toddlers loose.  Preteens and up will get in.  It might be messy, they tend to break things, but they’ll get in.  If you lock up your house or your car, whatever, you might as well hang a sign that says “Break this please.”  Leave stuff unlocked and the thief can take it without having to destroy anything.  You get to file a claim, and you don’t have to waste time sweeping up. 

            There are some smart people I know who even leave a note on the dashboards of their cars.  “It’s unlocked.  The stereo is a pile of factory shit.  Don’t smoke while you’re shopping!”  That’s the mark of a knowledgeable customer.  We foot-pads will return such courtesy in kind.  Consider that a friendly tip from a pro.

            Crew showed up in ten minutes.  He was driving a rusty ‘90 Buick Park Avenue.  I can’t tell you what color it was.  Besides the middle of the night dark and the rain, the car was filthy.  I jumped in.  The interior was spotless.  It smelled like a new baseball glove, all leather.  Crew was no dummy.  Being as black as he was, driving a beat up Buick was the perfect camouflage.  Put Crew in a Mercedes and he’d have more flashing lights around him than Kid Rock on tour.  The Buick was perfect.

            I have to say I liked his taste in music, too.  Early Simon and Garfunkle played softly but clearly.

            “You got a Blaupunkt in here, Crew?”

            “Yes, sir, I do.”  I loved his English with the Sudanese lilt.  Even arcane technical terms had a certain musicality.  “As a matter of fact, it’s a Blaupunkt CD player, Blauplunkt 6X9’s and a 4, with a two hundred amp Fosgate, MTX subs, and a Bazooka bass tube.  I do believe you brought this in eleven months ago, on a rainy evening just like this.”  His memory was encyclopedic.

            That was excessive power for the pseudo-folk drivel that S&G produced early on.  “I robbed a liquor store…” they harmonized.  It was vapid, fake teenage angst, sung by middle class Dylan wannabes.  But I loved it, because when I first heard it, back when I fell in with a dangerous folk gang, I was just as vapid.  The music had a luke-warm, pee-in-the-pool emotional resonance.  It was the first CD I ever stole from a car.  I still get misty whenever I see an old Toyota with a “Save the Whales” bumper sticker.  Memories.

            We didn’t talk much.  I think Crew had seen some things in the Sudan that had taught him to maintain a certain distance from other human beings.  He knew what people were capable of when the thin veneer of civilization peeled away.  Even here in the U.S.A. where things seemed safe, he always remembered that veneers are, by definition, very thin.

            I told him where I needed to go.  We listened to the boys “…run down the alleyway…”  We were there.  I thanked him and he was gone.

            The rain was letting up.  Now it was just an occasional spit.  St. Philomena’s stained brown stone was almost invisible against a hillside of bare trees.  I went in through the old gate.  The ancient lock I had popped a couple days ago remained open.  That was a courteous gesture.

            The church was supposed to be bathed in light from some spots set in the haggard landscaping, but the bulbs were covered with leaves, and only the slightest glow, oddly patterned, illuminated the facade.  I passed it like a cat…scratch that, like a dog with big padded paws.  I wear size thirteen if you’re shopping for me.

            I went to the side door of the rectory.  It was very dark there.  My eyes do very well in what some people consider inky blackness.  Most people are never really in the dark.  In this modern age, folks live with nightlights, glowing clock radios, radioactive blue watches, streetlight seeping through blinds, illuminated microwaves, cable boxes, and security spots with motion detectors.  Their eyes have forgotten the dark.  Mine haven’t.  I’ve grown to love total dark.  I’m safe there.  I see very clearly there.  It’s my element.

            The door was old.  That pissed me off.  New storm doors are so much easier.  I’ve already said that they call me “Tools” because I don’t need any.  I’ll make a small admission; that’s not quite true.  Now this is a secret, so keep it between us.  I never go anywhere without some nail clippers and an old nut pick that used to be my grandma’s.  I was inside in thirty seconds.

            Most old doors don’t squeak if you lean some pressure into the hinges as you close them.  I stood with my back to the door.  There was a kitchen in front of me, bathed by the tiny red light on a cordless phone set.  There were some bowls in the sink with dark flecks stuck on the edges.  Doug was living on Wheaties, and like most men, didn’t rinse his dishes well.  A normal person would have been banging their way around, bouncing shins and knees off chairs and counters.  To me, it was noon.

            A swinging door opened into a parlor.  Only priests have parlors these days.  The ceiling was high — about sixteen feet.  Illumination was supplied by a stereo left on in the corner, yellowish light.  The furniture was formal but threadbare.  The overstuffed chair and ottoman were rumpled.  A book was pages down, spine up, open on the end table; “God Bless You Mr. Rosewater.”

            An open arch, all oak as hard as marble, led me to the next room — a large reception area.  There were three couches against the far wall.   French high back chairs and low tables lined up around the open space in the middle of the chamber — anyway, it felt like a chamber.  Old houses are so much more interesting than the new cracker boxes, even when the cracker box costs a couple million.  The front door was to the left through an eleven-foot-tall, etched glass door that opened from the foyer.  It was all dark wood, and the indicator pin lights on two smoke detectors were all I needed to see it was dusty in here.   Bright light actually hides some things.  Intense light can overwhelm fine dust, but in a dim room sometimes it glows like radon powder.  I could see the tables hadn’t been used for a while.  They looked like they had been sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar.  Terri hadn’t been much of a housekeeper.

            But one table was different.  It was right past the open, carved staircase to the second floor.  It was right in front of a double paneled door.  That table was clean.  It had been dusted, waxed, wiped, and the carpet nearby seemed freshly vacuumed, all so neat and clean.  Too clean.  Something had happened there.  I’m not a member of CSI so the “what, how, and who” were beyond my expertise, but I knew it.  I could feel it through my shoes.

            I opened the double door.  There was the welcoming blue glow of an LCD display on a counter on the far side.  The LCD said, “SLP 0:00:00.”  A Sony VCR — I could almost give you the model number, I know Sonys so well.  They used to be very popular in my marketplace.  Now DVDs were all the rage.  I don’t steal the VCRs anymore; nobody wants them.

            I let my eyes adjust.  This was an awful lot of light.  It took a second or two.  The room, like the rest of the house, was oak.  The walls were papered with a European flocked design.  On one wall was a large hideous painting.  Like something from “Night Gallery,” only worse.  Mishapen heads of children morphed into twisted adults, all cringing in the shadow of a bloody crucifix.  The disembodied eye of God shot rays of damnation across the multitude.  There was a small engraved brass plate at the bottom on the frame:  “Man’s Separation from the Divine, ‘03, J.F. Kensington.”  It made my eyes hurt.

            Large bookcases on three sides were full of — what else — books.  Nice ones;  I recognize class when I see it, and I always recognize saleable swag.  These were leather, and some were quite expensive, I’m sure.  When you steal books you need to be very specific.  You need to know exactly what your target is.  It’s not efficient to carry a box of books out of a job.  They’re too heavy.  Given time to browse…wait…I pulled out a slim volume.  Beautiful blue polished calf with golden gilt pages,  I recognized it — “Poetical Works of John Milton,” the 1901 edition.  It was probably worth a grand to the right person.  I knew the right person.  I slipped it in my jacket.  Listen, I’m a working guy.  I never pass up free boiled shrimp or an easy score.

            When I made it to the shelf, actually a long narrow table where the VCR glowed, I could see a tall built-in cabinet.  I pulled on the handle.  It was locked — how rude.  Half a minute later I was in a virtual Blockbuster when the lock clicked open.  There were maybe two hundred videotapes arranged like books, forty to a shelf, five shelves high.  They were perfectly arranged, with no gaps.  None were obviously missing.

            People are all the same.  They always hide things so predictably.  All the homemade tapes were labeled.  The others were commercial types —  popular movies: “Indiana Jones,” “Star Wars,” “Harry Potter,” “The Terminator,” “Star Trek,” “Batman,” “Spiderman,” and on and on.  They were exactly the kind of movies young boys love.

            The homemade tapes were on the top shelf.  That’s where I centered my attention.  The labels were printed by computer, and they included sermons, videos of psychological lectures on childhood trauma, PTSD – I knew about that — and adolescent emotional development, stuff like that.  I stood on the table.  I move lightly for a big guy.  I removed four tapes from the outside rank.  There behind the front row of boxes were some others.  They weren’t labeled.

            If you think I’m Sherlock Holmes, forget it.  Guys always hide stuff behind other stuff.  Since by nature, we can never find anything — like a can opener, hammer, our favorite shirt, or the decency not to lie about the trivial.  Without really thinking, we assume no one else can find anything, either.  Men always hide things in the most obvious places.  Women, being the opposite of men, simply hide things in the least obvious places.  Both are easy to find, especially if that’s your job.

            I brought the tapes down and put them on the table.  There were six of them.  My hands were sweaty.  That’s unusual.  In my line of work, prowling around is a mundane activity.  If it makes you nervous, you oughta’ apply for that job at Krispy Creme.  But I was nervous and I wasn’t at my best. 

Maybe that’s why I was a little clumsy when I pulled the tapes off the shelf.  I accidently knocked something loose.  It rolled off the edge and clattered onto the table below.  The plastic top popped off and about twenty bright white little, football shaped pills scattered on the table, and beyond onto the rug.  I knew Ativan when I saw it.  I froze.  The noise was a bad thing, so I didn’t move a muscle – listening.  The house stayed quiet.

Slowly, I set the tapes down.  Looking at those black cassettes just plain scared me.  I couldn’t get the thought of Torey being… it was just too hard to think about.  I wanted to know what was on these tapes.  I had to know.  But I didn’t want to know.  It’s a classic double bind situation.  I did know that I had to find out the real truth.  I had to confront Doug Hunter.  He had to know where Torey was.  He had to.  All of that desperation was coursing through me.  I had to consciously control my breathing.  I remember that.

            Off to the right, behind an accordion cabinet door, was the screen — also a very nice and unfortunately very heavy Sony.  I put the first tape in the VCR and hit play.  I was terrified of what I might see.  The screen flickered as the tape began to play.

            The nice thing about old houses like this is they are solidly built.  Sound does not travel very far when the walls are thick and the carpet is plush.  The bad thing about old houses like this?  Sound does not travel very far.  When the walls are thick and the carpet on the stairs is plush, you don’t hear people coming down them.  I didn’t.  I was clueless, pardon the expression, until he stepped into the room.

            The light snapped on.  I turned away from the screen just as an indistinct image started to form.   The sudden bright illumination hurt my eyes.  The gun he held could hurt even more.

            “Hello, Doug.  Don’t you recognize your old seminary pal?  Longtime no see.”

            I’ve always hated high school reunions.

            Don’t you hate it when people drop by unexpectedly?

            You never have enough of the good coffee.  You don’t have any fresh sponge cake.  You know, the place is a mess.  Why don’t they call first?  People always show up at the worst possible time, too, right in the middle of a fourth quarter come-from-behind drive, just as the high-fiber cereal kicks in, during the best parts of an HBO documentary about cheerleader camp, or just as the cops and a well-meaning mob are engaged in a glorious futile clusterfuck, and you’ve got an open field to find a lost kid. 

My strategic plan to keep everyone out of my way was ticking like clockwork.  The cops were going to be doing crowd control up north, Val was safe.  Nobody messed with Jazz Moore’s prisoners.  It just wasn’t done.   

I was free to have some quality time with Father Doug Hunter.  The whole thing seemed like another “great” idea.  I hoped it would stay this side of “idiotic.”  And I was busy convincing myself that it would, right up to the moment I walked into my apartment and saw Detective Carl Vandy on my aforementioned laundry.

“Carl, you should have called first.”

            He threw his cell phone at me.  It hit me right in the sternum.  That really hurt.  Maybe I shouldn’t have given out his number.  The phone bounced into a pile of socks in the corner.  It started ringing.  Those things are sturdier now-a-days.

            “Yeah, I shoulda’ called.  The problem is, my friend, ever since I stepped out of the Chancellery I can’t call out because my friggin’ phone won’t stop ringing!”  He was not happy.

            You really have to respect the power of the media.  I had been on around six o’clock, and now five hours or so later, people were still dialing up the good detective’s number.  The ringing, actually a musical trilling, continued from the direction of the socks.

            “Sorry, Carl.  I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

            “Oh, you were thinking.  You’re always thinking.  What the fuck are you up to?” 

            “This isn’t a social visit, then?”  My smartass kicked in.  It was natural, I couldn’t help myself.

            “You poor son-of-a-bitch.  I should put you out of your misery.”

            Whew!  I was O.K.  When Vandy verbally threatened you, nothing was going to happen.  If Vandy decided to hurt you, he did it without warning.  I think he actually enjoyed this kind of witty give and take.  I was hoping, anyway.  There’s a first time for everything.

            “I am pretty miserable, Vandy.  What can I do for you?”

            “You can explain what that charade on the tube was all about…”  The phone in the socks trilled again.  I went over and shut it off.  There was no reason to keep waving that red flag.

            “I was helping out an old friend.  You know I’m close to the family.”

            Vandy snorted.  It actually sounded like a bull.  I hoped I didn’t look Hispanic.  “My achin’ butt!” He was colorful in his own charming way.

            “Do you really want to know?”  I was stalling.  You don’t lie to Vandy.  There’s no upside.  He’s got one of those built-in bullshit detectors, or so I once heard someone say about him at one of those AA type meetings.  I needed time to figure out my angle here.  I had to tell him at least some of the truth.  I needed a little time.  I took off my jacket, tossed it on the jacket pile.  I started unbuttoning my shirt.

            “Yes, I really want to… What the fuck are you doing?!”

            The shirt went on the shirt pile.  I unbuckled my belt and moved on to the zipper. 

            “Now wait a fucking’ minute!”  Men, even men like Vandy, are really thrown by another man inexplicably shedding his clothes in their immediate presence.  It does not compute.

            The pants went on the pants pile.  Boxers come off easy and quick.  My manliness filled the room.

            “Got a little skid mark there, partner.”  Vandy was looking down at the newest addition to the underwear pile at his feet.

            Men always speak comfortably about some classifications of bodily functions.  We talk about taking a piss or taking a dump.  We spit and belch around each other.  It’s natural to us.  Women just say they’re going to powder their noses, and if we even burp quietly they look at us like we work for Atilla the Hun.  On the other hand, women talk about menstruating or worse, childbirth, like they’re chatting about their last round of golf at Augusta.  It’s disgusting.

            I looked down at the stain on my shorts.  The whole thing with Lonnie had been close indeed.  So standing there naked, I told Vandy about my adventure on James Street.

            He just laughed, but he shook his head like he was sad.  He was feeling a little more comfortable now.  My apartment was taking on the feel of a men’s locker room.  Inequality of clothing is acceptable there, even among manly men.

            “Poor Lonnie.  I put his dad in the chair, you know.”  He was neither proud nor regretful about it.

            “Yeah, I heard about that.”  I remembered the story.  Lonnie had found his mom with a steak knife in her neck on the kitchen floor.  The nearest breathing body was his dad, just sitting at the table working on some hash browns.  Vandy had arrested him.

            “Now, what are you up to?”

            “A shower, want to join me?”  I headed past the dirty socks for the bathroom.

            “You know damn well there isn’t room in that phone booth for the both of us.”  He had to raise his volume at the end to be heard over the water.  The steamy spray felt awfully good.  I started looking for the sliver of Irish Spring.  He shouted something.

            “Hang on, Vandy, I can’t hear you over the water.  I’ll be done in a sec.”  I was really pushing my luck.  Why was Vandy being so patient?  It wasn’t like him.  I found the soap and lathered up good, especially in some delicate places.  It felt good to be clean.  After the cleaning chores were done I just let the hot water pelt my skin.  I cranked it to “boiling” and turned the tiny bathroom into a sauna.  The steam was like a tranquilizer.  After ten minutes, I shut off the water and grabbed a towel off the bottom of the towel pile.  They were drier on the bottom.  I wrapped it around me.  It was a Barbie beach towel.  I went back into the living area to look for some clothes.

            Vandy was asleep.  The poor dear was having a tough week.  I quietly found some moderately clean blue jeans, a burgundy T-shirt, a dark flannel shirt, and a black sweater.  It was chilly out.  I retrieved a waterproof windbreaker, navy blue I think. The light’s not good in my place — it was hard to tell, it might have been black.  I was getting a headache trying to discern the exact color, when Vandy snorted again and sat up suddenly.

            “So, where you heading, cowboy?”

            “I have to talk to somebody, Vandy.  Please don’t try and stop me.”

            “Or what?  Listen, if I want to stop you, you’re stopped.  You know that.”

            I knew that.

            “Why don’t you cool your jets and tell me all about it?”

            It was time to tell the truth.  Or at least the version I could get away with.  I settled down on the Lay-Z-Boy after I cleared off the pile of tennis shoes.  I wasn’t going anywhere until Vandy said so.

            “Mikey didn’t kill Terri, Vandy.”

            “I thought so…you’re out to clear your brother.  Touching.”

            “He didn’t molest Torey.  Mikey’s innocent.”

            “Usually your jokes are funny, Tools.  You on a bender?”  He only called me Tools when he was in a friendly mood.  I still had a chance.

            “He didn’t do it.”

            “You know I’ve got him cold.  I’ve got witnesses to his threats at the Palomino.  Hell, I’ve even got your statement.  I’ve got his kum, twice.  I’ve got the videotape, which gives me motive.  I’ve got his skinny ass.  He is the lawn and I am the lawn mower.”  Now that was the old Vandy I knew and loved.

            “You said you’ve got his kum twice?  What’s that mean?”

            “The blood type matches the semen on the blouse and from the rape kit vaginal swab.”

            “Vaginal?’

            “You know what a vagina is, you asshole.  He got sperm everywhere.  He must have one of those high pressure cocks.  You got one, dear boy?  Just like your slimy brother?”  I told you, Vandy takes these things personally.  It’s hard on him, but he does.

            Mikey’s sperm in her vagina?  Had he lied to me?  He’d been up front about the friendly blow-job.  But Mikey hadn’t said anything about an old-fashioned fuck.  What was the world coming to if I couldn’t even trust my meth-dealing slimeball brother?  The whole house of “Mikey’s innocent” cards I had built was teetering again.  If one part of his story was a lie, then… Did he do that shit to Torey?  What was what?  What was the plan now?  I needed a drink.  I needed to fire up Bobby Blue Bland on the CD player and have a big fucking drink.  And I would have done just that except that Carl Vandy was still sitting there in my apartment, brimming with bad vibes. 

            “He did it and you know it.  You’ve always known it.  I’m going to sit his speedy little butt down and feed him some juice from Consolidated Power.  You know that’s the deal.  You know it,” Carl insisted.

            He was making a strong case.  Vandy never did that.  No, when Vandy was right, he knew he was right.  He never sold anything…unless …unless he wasn’t sure… Hold that drink.

            “Why aren’t you sure, Carl?”

            “Whatta you mean?  I’m sure.”  He was too quiet by half for Detective Carl Vandy.

            “What’s bothering you about this thing?”  I was going to press him.

            “The video tape…fuck… it’s awful shit.  It makes me want to kill somebody.”  He was turning red.  He was getting louder.  Vandy did want to kill somebody.

            “You want to kill Mikey?”

            “That’s just it.  I watch the video.  I get pissed.  Beyond pissed.  I get Mikey in the interview room and I cover the one-way mirror… I turn off the cassette recorder… and I can’t… I don’t want to kill him…I can’t even…”  his voice drifted.

            “Because you know, Vandy.  That’s it!  You don’t think it’s Mikey’s hand on the tape.  Do you?!  You don’t think it’s Mikey!”  I was reaching for some driftwood.  I couldn’t drown now.

            “It’s the videotape… I can’t shake it… It’s a terrible thing to watch but…”

            “But what?”

            “I watch the scenes of Mikey and the kid on the roller coaster.  They’re kinda’ fuzzed up.  They’ve tracked through a VCR quite a few times.”

            “Torey watched that tape of Mikey and him a thousand times.”  I remembered catching the kid watching that day at the amusement park over and over.  Like if he played the video enough he could make Mikey a real dad.  “I shot the part with him and Mikey, you know.”

            “Really.”  Vandy considered that.  “All that stuff is kind of typical dysfunctional family fun and all.  It’s what comes after.”

            “It isn’t Mikey’s hand, Vandy.”

            “Shut up and let me finish.”  Vandy rubbed his face in his hands.  Then the kid and the sex shit… that footage is fresh, different quality altogether, but because it’s laid on top of this old beat up tape it breaks up and distorts on the edges, top and bottom… You see the hand touching the poor spaced-out kid… but you can’t really see the hand clearly.  But what I can see…”  He looked at me almost like he was begging me, of all people, to help him.  “What I can see is a hand with thick fingers.  What I can see anyway.  It could be the distortion… I’m not sure.  But my gut doesn’t feel right.  I don’t know.”

            “You don’t know.”  I was alive again.  “It’s not Mikey’s hand, is it?”

            “I don’t know.  But I look at his hands and they’re like a skeleton’s.  And if…”

            “If the hand is somebody else.  The video is just…”

            “Too fucking convenient.”  Vandy liked neatness, but he knew things were never this neat in real life or real murder.

            “They’re setting him up, Vandy.  The body was staged.  The tape is a plant.  They’re setting him up.”

            Vandy picked a piece of something awful out of his teeth.  “Holy dog dicks, Tools is a detective.”  He flicked something brown and chewed off his finger onto my designer carpet.  “It’s a butt fuckin’ frame.”  Vandy sniffed hard and cleared his nose on the arm of the couch.  “And just who is in the evil conspiracy, Tools?  Where’s the proof.  It better be tighter than a nun’s pussy.  You’re dealing with the top of the heap here, Tools.  Tell old Uncle Carl who to arrest.”

             “You know who…”

            “Fuck that.  I’m a detective, Tools.  My dad was a bus driver.  Nobody cares what the fuck I know.  I gotta’ prove shit.  Welcome to the real world.”

            “God damn it, Vandy.  I don’t have to prove anything.  All I have to do is know.  And when I do know for sure, Vandy, I’m going to…”

            “Stop right there, dumb fuck.”

            “You know what they did to Torey.  You know what they did to Terri.  Motherfuckers.  If they killed Torey…”

            “Don’t tell me, Tools.  Don’t tell me.  Because if I know what you’re going to do.  I’ll know what you did.  And I’ll have to prove it, my friend.  I will prove it.”

            “Shit, Vandy.”

            “I know.  I know.  These people are untouchable.”

            “I’ll touch them.”

            “Shut the fuck up.”  Vandy sat back and closed his eyes.

            I shut the fuck up and tried to get a hold of that cool center of mine.  There was a long silence – maybe a whole minute.  I concentrated on my breathing.

            Vandy sat up a little, stirring up the microscopic skin mites in my laundry.  “You got anything to drink?”

            “I might have a can of Sunny D in the fridge.  I’ll look.”  I started to get up.

            “I mean a real drink.”  Vandy meant it.

            “Carl, Carl, Carl,  you can’t drink, you’re an alcoholic.”  As I finished standing up, I dislodged a half-full pint bottle of J&B from under a wrinkled pair of cargo pants.  It’s terrible swill that most winos, like me, only hit as a last resort.  That bottle was from last week’s last resort.  It tumbled onto a stack of old Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues.  I save them all.  I never know when Valerie’s going to cut me off.

Vandy’s eyes followed the bottle all the way to the floor.  There was a pause in the conversation.  He looked up at me.  I understood perfectly.

            “No, Carl, I give you the bottle.  You get drunk.  You give back your fifteen-year chip, and then you track me down and feed me to a car crusher.  No, thank you.”

            Vandy laughed and stood up.  He looked me up and down.

            I waited for him to speak.

            “O.K., you want us out of your way.  We’re out of your way.  Like I could do anything about it now, anyway.  I’ll go join the search party, Jesus Christ.”  He was acting almost human.  I hoped there was an opening for one more question.

            “Did you talk to Father Hunter?”

            “You know I did.”

            “How’d you read him?” I asked.

            “What you think, I’m going to give you inside stuff?  You think I’m going to make a drunk kleptomaniac part of the investigation?”  Vandy was smiling, sort of.

            “Yes, I do.”  It was my boyish charm.

            “When I told him about the girl’s death, he almost cried.”

            “Like he was nervous, or guilty, or both?”

            “Like he was sad, really sad.  Everyone gets nervous when big beefy cops show up at their door.  He was mostly just sad.”

            “I don’t think so.”

            “You don’t think he was sad?”

            “I don’t think you’re beefy, Carl.”  I lied.  “How’d he act when you asked him about Torey?”

            “Everyone gets sad when you ask them about a missing kid.  He was mostly just nervous.”  Vandy’s eyebrow, the left one, raised slightly.  Vandy was letting me know.  Hunter knew something. 

            “Are you going to talk to him again?”

            Vandy started for the door.  He was buttoning his coat with his back to me.  “Probably not.”

            “You’re not?”  This was hard to swallow.

            “Oh, I want to.  I really want to.  You know the story.  Terri worked for Hunter.  Somehow, when she got out of detox, she landed a job as housekeeper at St. Philomena.  Sorry, Marty, but from druggie to parish employee is a bit abrupt.  How’d she get that job?”

            I knew how she got the job.  I kept it to myself.

            “And dear Father Hunter seems really sad she’s dead — too sad.  Why did he fire her?  If he did fire her.  We find her body practically in Hunter’s backyard.  All laid out like a rape with Mikey’s sperm all over and a video of Mikey’s kid Torey spliced onto a scene of Torey being sexually assaulted.  All of it like a big neon sign saying, ‘Go get Mikey.’  Then, when Father Corleone, the unpopular priest, tells me Torey was probably hangin’ out down at St. Phil’s, and he gives me a different scent, what happens?  Suddenly, I get a bunch of fag files about Corleone from a Diocese that won’t even give me a zip code the day before.”

            “They close ranks fast, don’t they?”

            “Yeah.  You were at the Chancellery.  You saw.”  He turned to look back at me.  “It’s all Mikey.  Then when I ask a couple easy questions…  You were there.  You heard them all in serious cover-their-ass mode.  Hell, I guess I mussed the Monsignor’s flat top a bit.”

            “The Chief talk to you?”

            “He called me within five minutes of my little visit with the Monsignor.  The D.A., the Chief, what I wouldn’t give for a Baptist in charge of something around here.  Seems the Bishop’s office is sensitive about who talks to his priests.  There are a lot of rumors going around about some sexual abuse.  All I get is a stone wall.  If I hear the word ‘confidential’ one more time I’ll puke.  As for Father Hunter, if I talk to him I’ve got to do it at the Chancellery with the Diocesan Attorney in attendance.  But they act like they’d give me Corleone in less time than it takes to microwave some Chef Boy-Ar-Dee.  It’s like they’re daring me to do my job.”

            “Like pissing in the Texas A&M bonfire.”

            “Precisely, my friend.  My dick doesn’t like getting that warm.”

            “Now what?”

            He opened the door and stepped into the hallway.  The only bulb burning was one landing up.  His face was shadowed like a character in “The Big Sleep.”  He glanced at his hands, then up at me.  As his face came up, the light hit his brows, his nose, and finally his chin. 

            “You know, Tools, I noticed that you don’t lock your apartment door.  That’s risky.  I hear there are lots of burglars around this part of town.  What with all the action up north, there won’t be many cops around to serve and protect.  You might want to lock up.  Thieves will have a free hand tonight.  Try to be safe, will you?”  He didn’t close the door.  He just left.  He looked tired.

            I turned on the fluorescent in the kitchen.

            A voice welled up from the bottom of the apartment stairwell.  “Keep the fucking phone!”

            Good night, Carl.  Thanks for the green light.

            The light flickered on. Yeah, now I could see.

            The jacket was black.  It was perfect.

            I have a talent for being too clever by half.

            Take that little interview thing I’d done on all the TV stations earlier that day.  Or was it yesterday?  Shit, it was one thirty in the morning.  It was Thursday already.  Torey had been missing for more than three days.  My gut felt like it was full of cockroaches.  My brain buzzed like a toaster with a fork in it as I wildly ran through scenarios, plans, schemes, plots.  I was half a “p” short of panic trying to figure out how to save my kid.

            Valerie hadn’t asked me about the stunt except to mention her disapproval right after the mock press conference.  She knew me.  She knew I was crazy but that I rarely did anything without a reason, even when I was drunk.  I did have my reasons.

            For one, it was a chance to put one over on the news jackals.  It was way too good to pass up.  For another, I’m an American, and every American has a God given right to be on TV.  It’s in the Bill of Rights, I think.  But besides being able to brush up against Liz Nice, there was another, more important reason I did what I did.

            I didn’t know where Torey was, but I did know he wasn’t in the Northland woods.  If I could keep everybody including the police force busy up there, they’d be out of my way.  With all the crowds likely to show up at the country club for the search, and the guaranteed media pack presence, the cops had no choice but to commit a lot of their personnel.  If for no other reason than crowd control, they had to be there.  Even though they knew of no reason to search there,  I had committed them.  It was almost like being the Chief himself.

            Chief of Police Armand Davis would be there.  He was pathologically attracted to cameras.  Knowing him somewhat, I’d bet he’d be taking credit for the whole thing by the time his flunkies brought him his morning blueberry bagel.  By the way, a personal note — if it’s blueberry, it’s not a bagel.  That’s just a pet peeve.  This country screws up everything with blueberry flavor or lemon scent.  No wonder we feel alienated from any real ethnic roots.  Blueberry bagel, my ass!

            Anyway, I seemed to have gotten away with my sleight of hand distraction.  Like I’ve said, I don’t dislike cops.  I just do better work when they are not around.  Thief, law school drop-out, alcoholic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Club member that I am, I’m wired to be a control freak.  The chemical wash in my brain demands that I direct all the action on stage.  This act in the play would feature my arcane, devious skills and my paternal instincts.  No cops. 

Besides, Father Doug Hunter was more likely to talk to me about Terri’s murder and Torey’s disappearance in the absence of authority figures.  As to citizen search mobs, no matter the motive, they’re still mobs.  I didn’t want any do-gooders “helping” me find my son.  I’m always more efficient solo. 

            The terrifying incident with Val and Redlands at the accident scene had made me realize that the stakes were higher than I had admitted to myself.  As for Redlands, well he was turning out to be a bit more than just a zealot.  He was a crazy bundle of muscle, that was clear.  But I wondered if even his puppetmasters realized how frayed his strings were.  It was a good thing that Val was headed downtown.  I considered it protective custody.  That was good.  Things were about to get a little dicey.

After I watched Sgt. Moore put Val in the squad car and everything seemed under control, I stepped out down Nineteenth at a pretty good pace.  The stretch for my legs, after being crammed into the tiny Neon like an illegal Honduran heading for Dallas, was a relief.  I like staying in shape, and I don’t smoke.  I may have mentioned that.  I was setting a pretty good pace.

            The rain was picking up, but I didn’t really mind.  I hadn’t been getting much sleep lately, and it was waking me up.  I planned a quick change into my dark prowling clothes at my place and then a visit to the church.  Wherever Torey was, the key had to be there.  I was doing everything on the fly.  Planning is overrated in my book.

            I turned left and headed down Jesse James Lane.  Here in the Midwest we love Jesse.  In his day, he was a major celebrity.  There’s a historical marker right there on the corner of James and Nineteenth, the building where the First National Stockman’s Bank used to be.  Legend has it, Jesse and the gang held it up back in 1883.  The city still celebrates Jesse James Day with a parade, rodeo, and civic festival every year.  The celebration itself has been moved up north though, to a nicer, safer place.  The town fathers don’t want anyone robbed during Jesse James Days.

            The fact that the legendary outlaw had been plugged in the back by that dirty little coward, Robert Ford, in 1882, a year before the alleged celebrated crime, didn’t faze anybody concerned.  In America, history is easily adjusted, especially if you can make it fit into a three day weekend that encourages folks to spend money. 

            James Street is always dark, even at noon.  I extend my apologies to Arthur Koestler…never mind.  Ignore the reference.  They just pop out unbidden.  I’m sorry for the distraction.  The streetlights always seem to get shot out all the way down to Tenth.  The further down the numbers you go, the more interesting things get.

            Vaporville used to be called the Southside.  Times are different now.  The rules have changed.

              Now, the people are the same as they have always been.  They love their kids.  They work hard.  They don’t like bullets bouncing off their front porch Christmas decorations.  They prefer to eat ground beef without fecal matter in it.  True, the last names are Jackson instead of Hruska, and the hair care products are different.  But the place is really still the same — working people trying to get by.

            They are good people.

            I was just about to Thirteenth, within four blocks of my pad, when I met one of the good people.  He stepped out from behind a rusty Econoline and squeezed off a shot.  It missed — although, for a second I wasn’t sure.  There was no time to check.

            I froze like a Bomb-Pop.  “Damn!”

            “Give me your wallet!  Fuckermother!”  He was skinny.  No, he was a meth freak.  That goes beyond skinny.  Not only does your body get rail thin, when you’re on Meth your brain loses weight, too.  Psychosis is the desired high.  This was a very dangerous citizen.

            “Fuckermother?”

            “Give me the money, wipe ass!”

            “Wipe ass?  Is that you, Lonnie?”  I knew Lonnie.  He had once been a pretty girl.

            Let me explain.  Lonnie had once believed he was a she, trapped in the body of a, well, you know the rest.  There’s a lot of psycho babble to explain it, but I just always figured that Lonnie knew. If Lonnie said she was a she not a he, then Lonnie was probably right.  Like Ahmed, whatever trips your trigger is my motto.  Lonnie was a slim five foot ten when he/she started taking hormones.  She/he grew breasts.  They were gorgeous.  Lonnie loved to show them off like a new car.  More women should share that trait.  But the poor girl could never get enough money together to finish up.

            The thought of what “finishing up” meant always freaked me out.  But that’s my problem, not Lonnie’s. Lonnie’s problem was – the world. That’s a big problem.  The world didn’t want to let Lonnie be right about who she was. That must have been hard… damn hard. For whatever reason she/he just became what I called “a pronoun problem.”  Her/his drug use accelerated, and Lonnie wasn’t very attractive anymore.  I assumed she/he still had tits, but I didn’t want to see them anymore. The haters had eaten Lonnie up with their ignorance and their drugs. Fuck the world.

            Lonnie also had a curious dyslexic style of profanity.

            “Lickercunt, give me the cash, you eatershit!”  Lonnie was still waving the gun.  It went off again.  There was a ricochet off the sidewalk that kicked up some sparks and sounded like a Roy Rogers episode.  Trigger was nowhere in sight.  I was on my own,  face-to-face with a monster who was, in all likelihood, created by my own dear enterprising brother.  Mikey had sold lots of meth to Lonnie.  He’d sold him some Sunday night at the Palomino.  The stash must be gone by now.  There was enough irony in the situation to hold up a dozen refrigerator magnets.

            “Lonnie!  Knock it off, somebody’s going to get hurt!”  It was likely to be me.

            “I need the money,”  she whined.  He shouted, “Dammit God!”

            “Lonnie!”  The gun spit at me.  I heard that curious vibrating hiss bullets make when they whiz by your ear – too close.

            “Moe-nay!  Moe-nay!  Give me the Moe-nay!” 

            “Monet?”  Did he say “Monet?”  The freak wanted to talk about French impressionists now.  It hardly seemed relevant.  Besides, all those pastels and flowers didn’t do it for me.  Valerie had a Manet, not Monet, so confusing, in her bathroom.  I’d sit there on the throne with my knees nearly pressed up against it.  It’s entitled, “A Bar at the Folies-Bergere.”  I like bars, but this one is too bright.  A woman dominates the center.  She’s waiting for your order.  Bottles of champagne, brandy, and absinthe are in the foreground.  Whiskey’s in the back.  The colors seem wrong to me.  There are no shadows.  It’s as flat as a playing card.  I don’t care for the Impressionists.

            Funny how your mind wanders when you’re about to die, isn’t it?  At least I assumed that.  I hadn’t died yet.  Who can really say?  My mind wanders all the time.

            Lonnie pushed the gun into my stomach and pulled the trigger.  Nothing happened.  I wished I hadn’t been thinking about Val’s bathroom, because I almost…  It looked like I’d need that shower after all.

            I grabbed Lonnie’s wrist and twisted the blue metal revolver away.  I could breathe again.

            “God damn it.”  I knew the proper syntax.  “God damn it, Lonnie, what are you doing?”  I was thankful I’d run into someone I knew.  I was grateful she/he had run out of bullets.  If this had been a stranger, or anyone other than the addled Lonnie, they might have made sure the gun was fully loaded. 

            Lonnie crumpled to the sidewalk and sobbed.  “What… me… I… had… no… please…”  It made no sense.

            I’m sure no missionary, but I tossed Lonnie a twenty.  “Get out of here and stop being an idiot.”  That was the whole sermon.  I knew the poor lad/gal would spend it unwisely, and it wasn’t like I had a big bank roll but, well, it seemed like the right thing to do.  It was one of those story things.  I knew Lonnie’s story.  I knew how it would end.  Even if it was misguided, it was the only way I could show I cared.

            Lonnie melted away, talking out loud to her/himself.  If I prayed anymore, I would have prayed then.  I should have prayed for Lonnie, but I didn’t.

            I just shuffled off down the street headed home.  It took a few blocks but my pulse rate dropped, and my breathing got a little less jerky.  About that same time downtown, Jasmine Moore watched as Valerie was printed and booked.  I was reasonably certain that Val would understand.

            While Val was wiping ink off her fingertips, I was taking the stairs up to my apartment two at a time, but when I hit the landing on my floor, I stopped cold.  My apartment door was open – just a crack, but it was clear — I had a guest.  I wished I’d gone ahead and stolen Redlands’ shotgun at that point.

            I considered just hightailing it back into the night.  But a voice came from inside.  “Nasty weather, hey Tools?”  When it rains cops, it pours.  I pushed the door open and stepped into my humble abode.

            Carl Vandy was sitting on my dirty laundry.  There was a couch somewhere under it.

            “You should have called first, Carl.”

            That was exactly the wrong thing to say.

            Normally, I try to avoid witnesses.

            I don’t like orgies, curious guys at the next urinal, or friends who keep detailed diaries.  Eyewitnesses are a particularly bothersome bunch.  Besides the fact that they end up on the stand misidentifying honest working-class thieves, they also confuse hubcaps with flying saucers.

            Still, at the moment the lights went out under that cottonwood tree, I was willing to toss an egg or two at Mr. man boobies myself if only he’d stay in the window – if only he’d look down on the scene like some warped Olympian god and by his mere witnessing presence protect Val.  Unfortunately, Bacchus had gone back to his grapes.  Fun was busy turning into tragedy.

            Redlands had turned off the spotlight, the blister lights on top of the squad car, the headlights.  Val was standing there puzzled in the dark.  The Neon’s broken radiator was sissing.  The steam caught a little ambient light from a dirty streetlight shadowed behind the trunk of the tree. 

            I was crouched down by the scraggly hedge five feet from the side of Redlands’ prowler.  It took a second for my eyes to adjust, but only a second.  My night vision is extremely good and my hearing is, like I said, acute.

            First I heard his shoes on the loose gravel of the crumbled sidewalk, then I saw his sillhouette against the mist.  He walked towards Val.  It was a slow, deliberate walk. 

“I know who you are.”  Val’s voice was trembling.  She was angry, but there was fear mixed in on the edges.

“Oh,” said Redlands.  The words came out of his mouth as cold as the November rain. “And I know who you are.”

            “Jesus, you’re crazy.”  If I could have, I would have stood up and warned Val not to provoke him.  I started looking around me for a big rock.  I had a sick feeling about the situation.  Val was starting to comprehend the danger.  “Jesus Christ,” she muttered.

            “Watch your language!”  James Redlands did not like foul language.  He was a religious man.  We all know that by now.

            Valerie finally caught something in his voice that warned her to keep quiet.  It was an important signal.  She was a smart woman and never wrong about these things.

            “I know who you are.”  He was back to that.  “You’re that lawyer.”

            Val wondered if that was it.  Cops don’t like lawyers.  It’s a natural rivalry.  They especially don’t like defense lawyers.  That’s O.K., just a little professional feud here.  No big deal.

            “You’re the lawyer who works for Planned Parenthood.  They told me about you.  I saw your bumpersticker.”

            Val tensed.  “Yeah?”  This may be more than she first thought.  “I do some pro bono work for them.  Legal advice.  Volunteer work.”  Val tried to sound chatty.  “I have some pals who work down there.”

            “You help the baby killers.”

            I wanted to psychically tell Val to keep her mouth shut.  I’ve dealt with crazy people.  Hell, I’ve been a crazy person.  The best tactic was to stay quiet.  Arguments like this one were never winnable.  Maybe Val heard my silent warning.  She kept quiet.

            “You help them kill babies, don’t you?”  He was still walking towards her slowly, too slowly.  He was only six feet from her.  The space between them shrank away in small, almost imperceptible segments – half of halfway, an inch, a millimeter, the thickness of a human hair.

Redlands touched her head.  Val was frozen.  He wound her red hair in his fingers, and he pushed her down on her knees in front of him.

            Later, after all this was over, Valerie told me she could smell him — that it was one of her most vivid memories of that night – that moment.  It was a rich mix of the world James Redlands worked in — vomit, sweat, beer, acetone, tears, snot, Armour-all, and fear.  It was anti-aroma therapy.  The stench was loud.  Val said she could hear it.  The perfume was bright.  She could see it.  It made her very afraid.

            I remember  everything getting darker.  I moved up towards them.  I had to be careful.  If Redlands heard me, he might be surprised.  Surprised psychopaths tend to explode.  I made it to his squad car, and I crouched there behind the driver’s side door that he’d left open.

            “You kill babies.”  He sounded cold.

            Valerie did work for Planned Parenthood.  She believed in it.  She believed women needed birth control.  It was clear to her that girls whose mothers had produced children like they were breeding stock needed to be educated.  They needed a choice and a chance.  Most of what they did at the center was birth control, pills, diaphragms, IUD’s and the like.  They had classes.  They helped with prenatal nutrition to fight birth defects. New mothers were given counseling to make the first months of their babies’ lives good ones.  Val tried to give them a little support in her area of expertise, that’s all.  Of course, Planned Parenthood was also a social lightning rod.  They did abortions, too.  It was the only place in the state that did abortions legally.  But rules seemed to be changing again.

            “Why do you kill babies?”  There was almost a singsong quality to Redlands’ voice.  It had the sound of a question from a wounded child.

            Valerie wanted to stay silent, but fear was pushing at her throat.  “Please…”

            “Please?  You say please, and babies keep dying.”  Gravel crunched as he shifted his weight.  His hand rubbed against his leather holster.  It sounded like an old, creaking door.  Redlands was breathing loudly through his mouth. 

            She choked out another word.  “Don’t…”

            Officer Redlands sighed.  “My wife should have a baby.  She’s been trying to get pregnant for three years.  But no matter how hard we pray, she fails.  There’s no forgiveness for her taking those pills.  No forgiveness.   I should have a son.”  Redlands paused three heartbeats.  “And you kill babies.”

            It was personal.  Val held very still.

            Looking inside the patrol car, I could see the shotgun in the front seat bracket.  I was trying to remember if I’d ever seen a cop snap the riot gun free.  I couldn’t think.  I wasn’t sure how much noise it would make if I tried to jerk it free.  And the safety – was the safety on?  How would I know?  How many tenths of a second would I have?

            “I think it’s because she used to take birth control pills.  They fucked her up somehow.  The Pope warned us, but she didn’t listen.  No forgiveness.  I warned her. Now she is barren.”

            Barren?  Was he madder at his wife for her sin than he was at the baby killers?  Barren?  It had an Old Testament feel.  The Old Testament can be very bloody.  I was on the edge of panic.  My thoughts were flying with no place to land.  We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

            “We want a baby, and you help them kill babies.  How does that make you feel?”

            Good girl, Val.  Stay quiet.  Don’t say a word.

            There was a snap.  That’s when Redlands took his black nine-millimeter gun out of the holster.  It was almost invisible in the dark.  Like a black hole, it sucked up what little light was sneaking in under the cottonwood.  He grabbed her hair again with his left hand.  Val made a tiny sound.  And then, oh so gently, he placed the muzzle of the gun against the side of her head.

            Val had taken a deep breath.  Then nothing.  I think she stopped breathing at that moment.

            “How does it make you feel?”

            No answer.

            “How do the babies feel?”

            Be invisible.

            “Do you pray?”

            I was praying to Abraham’s pal.  That nomad’s God we all knew as children.  In extremis we always return to the old gods.  I needed Yahweh to help me.  I wasn’t getting an answer.

            “You are going to hell.  God will punish you.”

            I hoped Redlands wasn’t hearing God in his head that moment — that moment that seemed to last forever.

            He cocked the gun.

            Val sucked in air.  Finally.

            “Tell your friends to stop.”  Nothing moved.

            I was almost crying.  I couldn’t figure out how to save her.  If I rushed him, he’d kill us both, and he’d do it right that moment.  I was gambling that I had a little more time.  Just a minute or two.  Surely there was some answer.

            “Stop killing babies.”  James Redlands repeated. He wanted no misunderstanding.

            “Stop,” she repeated in a whisper.

            There was a long silence then.  I was out of time.  I started to reach for the shotgun.  I had no choice.  Then just as my hand closed over the stock — just as I was ready to pull it free…

            “You’re going to hell now,” he said, then something else, quietly – a prayer?

            That’s when I made my move.  It was a sudden inspiration.  I let go of the gun and grabbed the portable radio Redlands had left on the driver’s seat.  I hit the talk button.  “Shots fired!  Shots fired!  Officer down!  Officer down!  Twentieth and Greely!  Twentieth and Greely!”  As I yelled into the radio, I broke into a run, away from the tree, back across the street, and into an alleyway.

            “Hey, stop!”  I heard Redlands shout.

            “Shots fired!  Dead cop!  Help!  Twentieth and Greely!”  I let go of the transmit button and the radio squawked back at me.  “All units.  All units.”  Help was on the way.  I tossed the transmitter into a trash can and slammed the steel lid shut.  I could still hear the chatter.  “All units.  Twentieth and Greely.”  It wasn’t two seconds until I heard sirens to the west, then to the north and south.  There were sirens homing in on the cottonwood from every direction.  I ducked back through the alley.  Then I doubled back and crossed the street again.  I was a block south of the tree now behind a parked car.  I could see Redlands standing in the middle of Twentieth looking north towards the flashing red lights of the first cars to respond.

            “Damn!”  Officer James Redlands was forgetting his manners.

            Within two minutes, there were seven cars on the scene.  Including the shift commander.  She was easy to recognize.  What a beautiful figure.  Even the bad lighting and the flack vest couldn’t hide her shape.  Sgt. Jasmine Moore was on the scene. 

            I whispered to myself.  “I’m going to give you some really good tips next time, Jazz.  And maybe a big wet kiss.”

            I couldn’t hear exactly what was said from where I was, but the drift was clear.  The good Sargeant was laying into Redlands.  I’m sure he was having trouble explaining the situation.  He was gesturing and pointing off in the direction I’d taken with his radio.  Another pair of policemen emerged into the street with Val.  She was handcuffed.  That was good.  If Moore was arresting Valerie, she’d be providing the ride.  Besides, Redlands was in trouble.  A false shots fired report and a disabled cruiser.

            Over behind the parked car, I stifled a laugh.  I thought I’d just run along home.  It was only a few blocks.  A soaking rain would substitute for a shower.  I could change and head over to St. Philomena’s.  I needed some dark clothes for the visit.  Val was safe for the moment.  I needed to talk to Father Douglas Hunter.

            I figured we had a lot of catching up to do.

            My kid was in a cave full of monsters.

            I was sure of it.  I could sense it.  The image was vivid in my head.  Eventually I found out how right I was.  I had been in that same cave once.  When I was twelve… I’ll leave it there.  For the sake of my own sanity.

            Knowing where all this was going when I started telling you the story, it’s been impossible not to let the end peek out from time to time.  So don’t think you’re smarter than me just because you’re a bit ahead of where I was at that particular point.  Stories have a way of turning when you least expect them to.   “The journey not the destination,” as a schizophrenic on a long smelly bus ride to Albuquerque told me once.  All endings are the same really; blouses get stained, mad captains are swallowed by the sea, and people we love get hurt.  Stick with me.  I’ve still got a lot of story to tell.

            “So, Father, you say there’s a big meeting at the Chancellery tonight?”

            Kenny had a mouthful of cookie.  “Yes.  The monthly gathering of the faithful.  Shuldik will be giving a big speech.”

            “If I went over there, could I get to the Monsignor?”

            The young priest stopped mid-chew.  “Get to?”

            Val jumped in.  “Marty, you can’t kill him just because you suspect that…”

            “Relax.  I just want to see the guy.  He lives over there doesn’t he, Father Corleone?”

            “Yeah, he has a big house next to the bishop’s…”

            “Bigger house?”  I said.

            “…Yeah, next to the bishop’s bigger house.  There’s a compound on the property next to the Chancellery.”

            “You just want to case the joint.”  Valerie had an accusatory tone, and rightly so.

            “Well, as long as we’re in the neighborhood.”

            Valerie had a coughing fit.  She was chain smoking.  The whole time we were there, she was inhaling every burning object in sight.  Kim would light up a fag — excuse me, Father Corleone — then set it down in the ashtray every time the phone rang.  Val would snatch the ciggie up and finish it before Kim noticed a thing.  The house smelled like an old-line AA meeting.  It was making me uncomfortable.

            So I understood why Kim was happy to see us go.  She wanted to talk to Father Kenny.  She wanted to talk on the phone.  She sure didn’t want me sitting there conspiring to commit a felony burglary.  And mainly, she wanted to protect her last two cigarettes.  Kim was trying to do all three, when Val and I slipped out the back. 

We hopped the fences again and got in the car.  After Valerie started it up and just missed a mailbox within ten feet of where we started, I wished I had stolen at least two of Kim’s Ativan.  Valerie had her nicotine.  I was unarmed.  I hadn’t had a drink since Monday.  Worse, it seemed unlikely that I’d be able to clear my calendar and make it to Honkers’ Wednesday tradition, “They Ain’t No Ladies’ Night.”

            We got lost three times trying to get out of the suburban maze.  At night the street signs are nothing but vague, dark shapes in the bushes.  On almost every corner shadows mask their numbers. Mercury vapor light blocks out the stars and turns Caucasian skin into wax.   Streets, Terraces, Circles, Places all double back on one another.  There are no landmarks.  The planners didn’t want strangers here.  I really expected to come face-to-face with a Minotaur after every wrong turn.  It wouldn’t stand a chance against Valerie’s mad Neon.  Her alternate tapping of the gas pedal and brake was positively abusive.   Her foot moved like Twyla Tharp listening to La Vida Loca.  Eventually we escaped and emerged onto streets that actually led somewhere.

            The Chancellery sat off a wide, tree-lined boulevard.  Val pulled the Neon into a parking spot between a mini-van and a schoolbus.  She was able to keep the bright yellow paint scrapings to a minimum as her front quarter panel brushed the bus so very delicately.  When we stopped, there was less than two inches of clearance and I had to crawl out of the car on the driver’s side.

            The entrance to the conference hall was illuminated in the bright yellow glow of fake antique globe streetlights.  A row of trees to the right framed a walkway leading up a small hill towards the bishop’s mansion.

            “Let’s go,”  I said to Val.  “We can go right by the conference hall.  Looks like everyone’s inside for the big speech.”

            “No way, Marty.”  Val had an irritated tone in her voice.  “I drove you here, but I’m not about to help you break and enter.”

            “O.K., you be the wheel man.  Wait here.”  It was just as well.  Val was next to useless as a second-story man.  Plus she had already lit up a cigarette.  She sat down on the warm hood of the Neon and puffed away.

            “Don’t take too long,” she said.

            “Sure.”  I was already moving towards the walkway.

            “And be careful.”

            I didn’t try to sneak.  Sneaking always looks sneaky.  The sneakiest way to sneak around is not to be sneaky.  Does that make sense?  Well, it’s true.  I just walked straight on up to the entrance to the conference center like I belonged there.

            That’s when I saw Detective Vandy’s unmarked car parked at the curb.

            “Shit.”

            “Excuse me?”  A uniformed security guard stepped out of the walkway shadows.  “May I help you, sir.”  He had a lovely German Sheppard on a short leash at his side.

            “No.  Just stubbed my toe.  Good dog.  I mean, yes, you can help me. Is the conference in here?”  I pointed at the big glass doors with the big sign that read, “Conference 7:30” posted on the lintel.  The big dog growled when I pointed.  I stopped pointing.

            “Yes, sir.  Been going on a while now.  Believe it’s almost over now.”  The man was starting to reach for his walkie-talkie.

            “Well, I’ll just head in and catch the good part.”  I moved slowly so that his furry partner with the big yellow teeth wouldn’t think I was a Milk-Bone treat.  Any chance of checking out the Monsignor’s place was off.  I wondered why Detective Vandy was there, and I figured at that point that I might as well just mosey on in and see what was up, so that the jaunt over wasn’t a total loss.  I ducked inside and saw the detective right away.  There wasn’t really anyplace to hide in the big open lobby.  So I just froze.

            Detective Carl Vandy was pacing back and forth in the foyer.  Carl was clutching a white Styrofoam cup.  That was hard to see.  The cup was so small, and his beefy hand so big, it disappeared.  Now I know institutional coffee, and it’s usually a very light brown.  It was my guess that it had taken Vandy six cups just to get slightly irritated.

            “Anymore on the videotape, Valasquez?”

            Valasquez’s face looked like it was the tenth time Vandy had asked the question that night.  “Nothing, Boss.  All the tech can tell me is it’s old and full of edits.”  Valasquez knew enough to just answer the question as if it were the first time it had been asked.

            Vandy kept pacing.  The plastic cup was deformed in his hand by the constant squeeze of frustration.  When he abruptly handed it to Valasquez, it was an exaggerated oval shape.

            “Get me another cup.  See if you can find something close to black,”  Vandy snorted.  He pulled out his cell phone, flipped it open, then cursed, “Shit.  Can’t get no signal in this damn tomb.”

            “You gotta call somebody?”

            “No.  But the damn thing keeps vibrating like there’s an incoming call.  Then when I try to pick up, no signal.  Fuckin’ thing just keeps vibrating.”

            Valasquez headed to the other side of the large lobby where a row of stainless steel coffee urns sat on a long cafeteria style table.  Above the urns on the wall was a mural dominated by a large Jesus extending his arms above a cartoonish style globe rendered in finger-paint hues of brown and blue.  Jesus’ skin was impossibly white, the color of a picket fence in suburbia; Albino Jesus.

            The speakers inside the meeting droned on and on.  There were occasional small waves of reverential applause, like a golf gallery, restrained, not too loud.  The voice of Monsignor Shuldik leaked out of the hall.

            “…these lawsuits elsewhere in the country are baseless.  Thankfully we have no such legal persecutions here in Tirawa.  I have worked hard to make sure our position remains pure.  But there are problems.  The Church is under attack, and the situation is being exploited by the press and the atheistic forces of humanism and relativism that have finally come home to roost.  That said, we have to take some of the responsibility, too.  For too long we tolerated those same forces in the Church itself.  To this very day we allow our Church to be subverted from within.  How long until we say again, Vade retro, Satana!  Get thee behind me Satan!  There are some among us who are not pure.  The laxity of modern culture must always be guarded against.  We must be vigilant.  We must turn back to the tested ways of our faith.  We must drive the evil out like our Saviour did at the Temple, for the Saviour lives in each of us.  I am the Saviour.  You are all the Saviour.  Let Him live inside you…”

            Vandy heard the Monsignor and cringed.  He was an old fashioned guy, but his opinion was clear on his face.  “Fucking ridiculous.  I am the fucking Saviour?”  That’s when he saw me.  “Tools?  What the hell are you doing here?” 

            I just looked up at the big mural of Jesus, and made the sign of the cross.  “Detective Vandy, please.  Your language.  Can’t you see we are in the lobby of the Lord?”

            “I’ll send you to the Lord’s lobby.”  He came towards me.  “Get outa’ here.”

            “I have every right to attend.  I’m a Catholic.”

            “Yeah, and the pope shits in the woods.”  He took a deep breath.  He’d been working the case for a couple days by then.  Vandy isn’t totally stupid.  Maybe he knew about Torey and me.  For whatever reason he backed off – a little.  “Yeah, maybe you’ve got the right to be here.”

            “I just want to talk to the Monsignor.”

            “Listen, Tools.  I’m the detective here.  You’re just the slimeball.  I’m going to talk to the guy, and you just stay out of my way.”

            I could see it all in his eyes. Vandy was Catholic, and he was sick in his heart about what he was beginning to suspect.

            “You going to ask about Father Hunter?”

            “Back off, Tools.”

            “Sure are a lot of arrows pointing at the pastor of St. Philomena.”

            “I’ll do it my way, Tools.”  Vandy sighed.

            Valasquez returned with the oddly shaped Styrofoam cup.  Vandy took it and looked inside.  An expression of disgust covered his face.  “Light brown!  I’ve seen snot with better color than this piss!”  He was over-mixing his bodily fluid metaphors.  Vandy took a gulp anyway.

            “Best I could do, Boss.”

            “Yeah, yeah… Shame what these cretins are doing to the Church.  Don’t you think, Valasquez?”

            “Wouldn’t know, sir.  I’m Presbyterian.”

            Vandy smiled, then he remembered I was standing there and he frowned again.  We all stopped talking.  The only sound in the lobby was the drone of the Monsignor’s sermon in the background and the almost steady humming vibration of Vandy’s cell phone.

            Vandy checked his watch.  “Two fucking hours!  Two fucking hours we been here!  Valasquez!”

            “Yeah, Vandy.”

            “I want you to go in there and take hold of the Monsignor’s stiff white collar, and drag his holy ass out here!”

            Valasquez had to know that his career was over if he did as Vandy had ordered.  He loved being a cop, and he wanted to be a good one like Vandy.  He admired Vandy.  I could tell.  Now he was presented with a stark choice.  Vandy had told him to go into a meeting of prominent people and bodily remove the most important of them.  Bottom line, he feared Vandy.  That outweighed everything.  He took a deep breath.  Looked up at Vandy.  There was no reprieve there.

            “O.K., here we go,” he muttered.  “Traffic beat won’t be so bad…”

            Events saved the young detective.  Another bit of polite clapping, and people began to emerge from the hall.  A few women with stiff over-sprayed hairdos from the sixties, but mostly men emerged, with the quiet light of inspiration and certitude on their faces.  There was a low murmuring as they shuffled for the doors.  One of the men stood out above the others.  He was tall. 

            “Son-of-a-bitch, Redlands!  Did you get that piss off your shoes?”

            Redlands nodded.  Two blue-haired women covered their mouths in shock at the earthy language.  Redlands stared straight ahead and bee-lined out of the lobby.

            “Aren’t you supposed to be on duty?”  Vandy yelled after him.  “And here you all in uniform and everything.”  He’d report Redlands tomorrow.

            Redlands didn’t look at Vandy, but he did make quick eye contact with me.  It was an evil look.  I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew that I didn’t like this guy knowing who I was.  But it was too late to worry about that.  The flea-ridden cat was out of the smallpox-infested bag, so to speak.

            Vandy smiled sweetly at the offended matrons, tossed down the last of the weak brew and crumpled the cup.  He tossed it in a nearby wastebasket and headed for a small knot of people surrounding the figure of Monsignor Shuldik, looking at him like he actually was the fucking Saviour — kissing his big red ruby ring and other basic fuedal behaviors. 

Vandy shouldered his way through all the fervid faithful straight up to the priest.  I tagged along trying for my best unobstrusive facial expression again.

            “I need to talk to you, Father.”

            “So you said earlier, Detective.  Give me a minute to finish talking to these dear people, and I’ll speak with you.”  Shuldik was treating Vandy like a bothersome servant.  Bad approach.

            “Sure, Father.  Take your time.”  Vandy was sounding reasonable.  That was a bad sign.  Shuldik didn’t pick up on it quick enough.

            “Thank you, Detect…”

            “I only wanted to talk to you about some child pornography.  And the connections to one of your priests…”

            “Good night.  Good night.”  Shuldik was frantically shaking hands and bidding farewell to the shocked group he had been talking to.  Within five seconds they were hustled off and Shuldik turned to face the caffeine-enriched Detective.

            “Do you realize what you were saying?  What were you thinking to mention that here?”

            “Oh, excuse me, Father.”

            “That’s Monsignor!  I act in the Archbishop’s name.  How dare you…”

            “Excuse me, Father.  I mention this distasteful subject here only because you wouldn’t meet with me in your office.”

            Shuldik was calming down a little.  Or maybe it’s more accurate to say he was regaining control.  Control was very important to him.  He saw me out of the corner of his eye and turned to give me a quick once over. 

            I didn’t much like the stare he was giving me.  I tried to back up behid the refreshment table.  It was covered in little white foam plates full of treats for the faithful.  The aroma was strong – fresh-baked cookies.

Shuldik’s eyes narrowed.  It was clear that he knew he’d seen me somewhere.  Still pondering that disquieting fact, the Monsignor turned back to Vandy.  “What exactly do you want from me, Detective?”

            “A good cup of coffee would be a good start.”

            There was a pause.  Shuldik didn’t get the jape, so he ignored the comment.  “What can I do for you, Detective?”

            Vandy moved close.  He invaded the Monsignor’s space.  He was leaning.  “You have any, shall we say, complaints about Father Hunter at Saint Phil’s?”

            “All those sorts of matters are extremely confidential, Detective.”  Shuldik had backed up.  He had reached the wall and run  out of room to maneuver.

            “I could subpoena your files.”

            “You could try.  And you would fail.”  Shuldik sounded ninety-five percent sure.  The other five percent bothered him though, and he showed it.

            “I will.”  Vandy leaned in.

            “Whenever we get any credible complaints, we turn them over to your Department.”

            Vandy chewed on that one.  It was true.  The pedophile cases involving the Church would be turned over to a division of Internal Affairs.  The run-of-the-mill lay pedophiles were handled by the vice cops.  In Tirawa, the Internal Affairs Division was under the supervision of the D.A., Kensington. “Shit!”  Kensington could head off any mess.

            “Pardon me, Detective?”

            “Listen, Father, I’ve got a missing kid.  This could be a lot more than sexual abuse.  I’ve already got one murder.  If I get another, well, guess what?  You’ll be playing in my ballpark.”

            A quick tremor hit Shuldik’s right eye.  It was a little loss of control. Shuldik was thinking, weighing the situation.

            “Have you talked to Father Corleone, the boy’s pastor?”

            “Funny you should ask.”  Vandy wasn’t laughing.  “I’ve gotten all sorts of information about Father Corleone.  This morning on my desk a big folder of stuff.  Pages and pages of confidential church documents about Father Corleone.  All the pages add up to the fact that he’s a fag.  Then this afternoon, I hear from the D.A.’s office.  I get more stuff about Father Corleone.  They think he’s a fag, too.  So I go down to the AIDs Outreach office, and sure enough, there’s Father Corleone.  I figure everybody’s right. He’s a fag.”

            “I suggest you follow up on that, Detective.”

            “Are you suggesting he’s messing around with kids?  Because if you’ve got any information..”

            “All of that would be confidential.”

            “Of course, of course, confidential.  Like all that confidential shit on my desk.  Do you know how all that helpful stuff about Corleone got to me, Father?”

            “I will investigate the unauthorized release of confidential material from this office, I assure you.”  Shuldik ducked under Vandy’s arm and headed off down the hall.  It was an athletic move for a man of his years.

            For a big man, Vandy was no slouch either.  He was alongside the Monsignor in a heartbeat.

            “You do that, Father.  You do that.  I’ll be talking to Father Hunter, too.  Got a file on him anywhere?”

            “Easy, Detective Vandy.”  It was the stentorian voice of our well-bred D.A., Joseph Kensington.  He had popped out of an office just ahead of the parade.

            “Mr. Kensington, so good to see you.”  The Monsignor was at his side grasping the proffered chubby hand of the noble patrician.  “So good to see you.”  Funny, Kensington didn’t kiss the Monsignor’s ring.  Maybe he wasn’t Joe’s type. Obviously Kensington’s cash was Shuldik’s type.   “And how’s your wife, Joe?”  Kensington’s wife, as publisher of the Star-Register newspaper, provided what they used to call “a mouthpiece.”  Now they call it “synergy.” 

Kensington didn’t answer Shuldik’s little social inquiry.  He turned immediately to the detective.  “Detective Vandy, so good to see you, too.”

            Vandy was now the underdog.  “Mr. Kensington, good evening.  I’m working on the Header case and the missing kid.  I’ve got a few more questions for…”

            “And you’re doing a great job, Detective Vandy.  I hope the evidence my office supplied you with today will help locate the unfortunate youth involved.  And,  Mr., Mr….?”   Kensington was looking straight at me. 

            I reached out and shook his hand.  “Mr. Jimenez, sir.  So nice to meet you.”

            Kensington froze for half a beat.  He couldn’t place me.  There was a quick tremor in his left eye, then he grabbed Vandy’s styrofoam cup right out of his hand and downed the last of the weak brew.

            “What the…”  Vandy was not ready for that move.

Kensington had his balance back again.  “And good evening Sergeant Valasquez, great future for you, Que linda noche, eh?  Just watch and learn from your legendary partner.  You will excuse us, gentlemen.  Church business.”   He put his arm around Shuldik’s shoulders and pulled him into the office.  The door shut.  Vandy and Valasquez were, as they say, standing there with their dicks in their respective hands.  Game over.

            Vandy was beyond pissed.  If he’d been drinking real coffee while he waited for his shot at the Monsignor, the top of his head would have exploded.  There would have been brains all over the ceiling.

            I took that as my cue to leave.  I headed for the door.  So did my cop friends.

            Valasquez was laughing quietly.

            Vandy didn’t like that.  He could spread his new partner’s brains overhead as a substitute.  “What’re you laughing at?”

            Valasquez didn’t seem scared.  “Que linda noche.”

            “Que linda noche?”

            “What Kensington said — Que linda noche.’”

            “So?”  Vandy was getting red in the face.

            “What’s that mean?”  Valasquez smiled.

            “How the fuck should I know?  I don’t speak Spanish!”

            Valasquez tapped Vandy on the shoulder.  “Neither do I.”

            Vandy stopped and looked at him, amazed.  “Your name is Emilio Valasquez, and you don’t speak Spanish?”

            “Nope.  I took German in High School.”

            The two cops laughed all the way to the car.  I shuffled along right behind them.  Then Vandy’s cell phone, free of the conference center’s interference reaquired signal and started ringing.  It was the Chief.  The conversation was one-sided.  I would have stayed to eavesdrop…

            But I heard Val screaming.

        I think conversation is a dying art, don’t you?

        I also think that milk and cookies can help set the right mood for a friendly little chat.  Valerie, still puzzled by my star turn in front of the cameras, read my suddenly different mood, bit her tongue, and went into the kitchen.  I can have a “mood” too, and she knew it.  She returned with the cookies.  I sent her back.

        “Get some milk, would you please, Valerie?  I’m sure Father Core-lee-o-knee would like some milk with his cookies.”

        That interesting girlfriend of mine took it all in stride.  “Yes, dear.”  She was transformed into a housewife. 

        I could almost see her in a nice cotton dress, white pumps, and an apron.  We’d live in a little Tudor brick house full of the aroma of fresh baked cherry pie.  There would be two kids, a boy and a girl.  I’d call them  Punkin’ and Sport.  We’d have a nice Volvo station wagon and a goofy neighbor named Ethel.  I’d have a rec-room in the basement with a big oak bar.  Life would be perfect.  We rejoin our exciting program, already in progress.

        The priest’s eyes were darting around the room, from me to Val to the front door.  Was he looking for a way out?

        The phone was ringing.  Kim literally shook herself and followed Valerie back into the kitchen.  She picked up the cordless by the refrigerator.

        “Hello? … Thank you so much… Yes, it’s been terrible… The search? …I’m not sure, just a minute…”  God bless her, but Kim was so stupid.  “Tools!…” she yelled like a hockey fan.

        I didn’t take my eyes off our new friend.  “Yes, Kimberly, what is it?”

        “Where are the volunteers for the search supposed to meet?”  I’m telling you the story just the way it happened.  Don’t laugh, I’m not in the mood.

        Nothing was going to throw me now.  I was in the zone.  “The Further Creek Country Club parking lot.  They’re starting to organize at seven tomorrow morning.”  That should fuck up the Thursday morning ladies’ bridge club and the Tirawa Police Department’s staffing plans.

        Kim went along blissfully,  “They’re meeting in the parking lot at the country club… Seven… Yes, in the morning…”  I tuned out the rest.

        Valerie brought in the milk, on a tray, no less.  She even had little plates for the cookies, and napkins.  I was going to have to buy her a string of pearls.  She set the tray down on the coffee table next to a big, you guessed it, coffee table book entitled, “The Big Book of Nazi Atrocities:  A Photographic Testament.” Charming.  Personally, I preferred the one under it, “A Child’s Guide to the Black Death.”  I should note, in fairness, my memory of Kim’s preferred large format photo essays may be somewhat distorted.  I’m just trying to give a sense of the setting.  The books may have been more akin to “Twenty-five Years of Cat Fancy Magazine Covers.”  I can’t be sure now.

        I spent a little time just checking out Father Ken.  He was short.  Valerie says I label everyone as short because I’m tall, and she’s right.  So, I’ll be more specific.  He was about five foot eleven.  It’s always a bit tricky to measure when someone’s sitting down, but I had seen him standing earlier and could visualize him leaving a Kum & Go.  You’ve seen the strips by the doors of those convenience type places?  They’re green with yellow graphics marking off feet and inches, so that when a crazy meth freak sticks them up, the petrified Pakistani clerk can report the perpetrator’s height to the responding officers.  I have often wondered why the measurements start at three feet.  Do dwarves rob these places that often?

        I figured Father Corleone was about five foot eleven.  He had a slight build.  He looked like a runner.  He had no body fat.  He was lean, and his grip, when I shook his hand, had been strong.  It wasn’t as strong as mine, but it was firm, and he hadn’t been trying to hurt me.  He had long fingers and wore some kind of class ring with a blue stone on his left hand.  His hair was gray at the temples, parted on the right, and perfectly in place.  I got the feeling he was about my age, thirty-five or so.  I had to admit he was a good looking guy.

        All right, you’re saying to yourself.  “Tools stole money from this guy’s car, parked outside a gay bar.  Now he says he’s good-looking.  Is there some homeoerotic sub-text here?”

        No.  But don’t let that give you the wrong idea, either.  Some of my best friends are gay.  O.K. then, I have one gay friend.  Let me explain.

        He owns a club called “David’s” and his name is obviously, Ed.  Well, you wouldn’t expect him to call the place “Ed’s,” would you?  If it was “Ed’s”  the place would be full of truck drivers.  As it is, only about five percent of the clientele are truckers.  I’ve known Ed since we were in prison together.  He was my cellmate at Indian City, and the only guy I talked to for almost three years.

        Yes, I had a gay cellmate.  I was lucky.  Do you think he would attack me?  Well, thanks for the compliment, but I’m not his type.  Ed likes dark Latin men with a little romantic fire.  I just don’t fit the bill.  The freaks who rape you in prison are not gay.  They are simply predators.  If they’re on the street, they prey on anyone they I.D. as weak.  They do the same thing in prison.  Homosexuality has nothing to do with it.  The puke who raped me when I was a kid?  Call him a pedophile, a psycho, whatever, he was a predator, and I was the weak target.  He wasn’t gay.  Gay guys like gay guys.  Isn’t that obvious?  I have never figured out why so many people are confused about this.

        Ed was doing six years for selling stolen whiskey.  After I took care of that guy who was hassling him, the Frito Bandito gang banger, he owed me a little, too.

        When he got out, he opened “David’s.” I stopped in every blue moon.  I could get guys to buy me drinks every once in awhile.  Then they’d find out I wasn’t gay, and that was the end of that.  Hey, why should women get all the free booze?  It was all in fun, and all the regulars took it that way.  When a stranger would come in, some of them would bet on if I could score a freebie or not.   Other than a stray lesbian couple or two, there were no women to make me act stupid.  It was a pressure-free environment.

        The night I saw that black Lincoln Town Car with the Christian fish outside David’s, I knew it was a stranger.  The car spoke to me, “I don’t belong here.”  The Jesus fish on the bumper marked it as fair game.  There was two hundred twenty-five dollars in a church deposit bag on the front seat, and that’s when I saw the name tag hanging from the rear view mirror and the whole “Core-lee-o-knee” thing happened. 

        It was a priest at a gay bar.  The priests who go to gay bars are hiding something; the fact that they go to gay bars, for one thing.  Then they go back to their pulpits and put down homosexuals.  In my book that deserves punishment.  I admit it — I have my prejudices, too.  I hate hypocrites.  I realize I do a little rationalizing to justify my own career choice.  That’s the way it is in every industry.  At least I don’t work for R. J. Reynolds.

        So, as I sat there looking at Father Ken, I was judging him, and I had formed an opinion based on my own unique life experience.  “Do you like milk and cookies, Father?”  Always open with an easy question.  You want the subject to get in the habit of answering before the walls go up.

        “Yes, I do.  Thank you.”  He had slipped into his pastor persona.

        “Did you see Torey Sunday night?”  The easy part of the test was over.

        “No.”   That was a simple answer.

        “Kim says Torey went up there for a meeting.  Didn’t he show?”

        “There was no meeting.”  My built-in stress meter did not register any effort to deceive.

        “No meeting for the altar boys?’

        “That’s on the first Sunday of the month.  Last Sunday was the second.”  He was holding a cookie in one hand and a frothy glass of milk in the other.  There was a napkin  on his Core-lee-o-knee.  Sorry.

        “I could check on that.”

        “Yes, you could.”  He took a bite of the cookie.  That’s the bad thing about black, it shows crumbs.  It’s another reason I was glad I had left the seminary.  Sartorial neatness ranked behind women, but it was on the list.

        “How often did you see Torey?”

        “Maybe a couple times during the week and then Sundays when he served Mass.”

        “Were you ever alone with him…ever?”

        Father Ken took another bite of cookie and a big pull on the glass.  You could see his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. He had a skinny neck.  It would be easy to snap. He looked like a “got milk” ad when he was done.

        “I said, were you ever alone with Torey?”

        “Yes, I’m sure I have been…”  He was giving it some thought.  “in the sacristy, maybe… In the hall at school.  Yes, I’ve run into him there.  I might have been alone with him on the playground.  We sat out there on the jungle gym and talked sometimes.”

        “That’s it?”

        “Yes.”

        “He was never at the refectory?”

        “I’m sure he…yes, he was.  But we were never alone there.  Priests have to be very careful about that sort of thing these days.”

        “You live alone there?”

        He laughed.  “No, my mother lives there as the housekeeper.  She’s an Italian widow.  I’m her only child.  There is no ‘alone’ there.  Though I wish there were, sometimes.” 

        “You talked?”

        “Yes, Torey’s an interesting kid.  He told me about his family situation….some other things…”  Ken glanced towards the kitchen where Kim was talking on the phone.  It had been ringing incessantly since the live shot on the news.  She was busily spreading the word about the search party.

        “That’s what you talked about?”  I was thinking he was being too forthcoming.  He was either very honest or very good at lying.  I’ve met more of the former than of the latter, very few of either.

        “Well, sometimes I talked to him about stealing.  He would take things from some of the other kids, even some teachers.  Drugs.  I talked to him about that.”

        “He was doing drugs?”

        “I thought he acted like he was – a couple times.  Never could be sure.  I might have been wrong.”

        “Did you punish him?  Make him do anything to make it up?  What did he have to do to stay in your good graces, Father?”  That was a bit harsh.  But I was still in a harsh state of mind.

        “He had to return everything and apologize.  I didn’t let him serve Mass for awhile.  That had an impact.  Torey really seems to love being an altar boy.  But he started stealing again…he’d confess to me without being caught.  We talked about that.”

        It was ringing true.  It made some sort of sense.  And it sounded like something a son of mine would do. 

        “You know Torey’s friend, Greg Jackson?”

        “Yes, I did.  He was a nice kid.  Greg and Torey used to be friends.”

        “You did?  He was?  Is Greg dead?”  Kim had said that Torey went to Greg’s, didn’t she?  I was a little off balance.

        The priest’s little honest laugh again, “Oh, no.  Greg moved to ah… yes, San Diego about five months ago.  Why?”  It was the first question he had asked.  Liars always ask more questions than he had.

        “Because he told his mom he was spending the night at Greg’s house.”

        “That’s impossible.”

        “Yeah, he’s a smart kid, but he hasn’t built up nearly that many frequent flyer miles, that’s for sure.  Do you know where he might have been going all those nights he said he was at the Jacksons?”

        “No… not that I can… well…”

        “What?  Just tell me, Father.  Even if you’re guessing, tell me.”  I was asking like I had believed him so far.  I think I had.

        “He talked a lot about his old parish.  How he hated it, but he loved it.  He was really confused about his feelings.  They were strong, too.  He would refer to his time there as “the old days.”  It seemed funny when a twelve-year-old used a term like that…but…”

        “What?  Go on.”

        He finally wiped off his milk mustache.  He hadn’t been aware of it.  He had not been thinking about himself.  No excessive self-awareness; how he was appearing to others, how his voice sounded, his gestures. He wasn’t thinking.  He was just talking, just answering me.  He wasn’t lying.

        “He’d usually call it ‘the old days,’ but sometimes when he talked, it was like he had just come from there.  I just thought.. funny…I just thought he had trouble with chronology, with past tense, present tense… Some kids are kind of dyslexic with tense.”

        “Like he’d been there recently?”

        “Yes, exactly.”

        “Son-of-a-bitch!”  I would have thrown the untouched glass of milk at the wall, but it wasn’t mine.  I’d already caused enough damage in Kim’s life.  But… ”Son-of-a-fucking-bitch!”

        The priest continued, “I told that Detective Vandy all about Torey this afternoon.  He’s an interesting man.”

        “You talked to Vandy?”

        “Yes, he was tough but, I don’t know, I liked him.  When he was leaving, Detective Vandy muttered something about Father Hunter at Saint Philomena’s to that Hispanic partner of his.”

        “Torey’s been back there!  God, how many times has he gone back there?”  I was losing it. I screamed.  “Motherfucker!”  Vandy was on the Hunter trail.  I was pissed that my diversion might be too late.

        Corleone flinched, and Valerie dropped her cigarette in her milk.  What a filthy habit.  She came towards me.

        “What is it?”  She’d just listened to the whole conversation without butting in.  She’d heard everything but she didn’t get it?  What was wrong with her?

        I reached for my pocket.  Father Ken sat up straight.  Did he think I was going for my gun?  Did he think I was going to plug him?  I probably did look like a mad man.  I guess I understood his apprehension.  I pulled out my wallet and counted out two hundred and twenty-five dollars.  I offered the money to the priest.

        “What’s this?”  He was just a little on edge.  I wonder why.

        “Relax, Father.  It’s your money.”

        “My money?”

        “Count it.  It’s all there.  Let’s just say I found it.”  When I made a mistake, I always tried to make it right.

        He took the bills. He didn’t count them.  His face fell.  “In my car, right?”

        “Yeah, I found it in your car.”

        “You know I’m gay.”   It wasn’t a question.  He sighed and surprised me by smiling. 

        “Are you afraid I’ll tell the Bishop?”

        His smile turned into a laugh.  A light laugh that lasted ten or fifteen seconds.  Valerie laughed, too.  I turned to her.

        “You knew he was gay all along?”

        “Of course, you dolt.  I’ve worked with Ken on some Gay Rights issues.  I even did some legal work to help him set up the AIDS outreach program he runs at the hospitals.”

        “Why didn’t you tell me…”

        “Because, honey, you had the bit in your teeth.  You needed to case him yourself.  I know you.  Besides, we needed to find out about Torey’s doings Sunday night.  I didn’t know what Father knew, either.  You were kind of rough on him.  I always get excited when I see my big strong man at work.”

        “Stop it.”  She could be merciless.  “Sorry, Ken.”

        “He’s your son, isn’t he?”

        “She told you?”

        “No, but when you were grilling me, I … I talk to a lot of people with a lot of secrets.  It just seemed obvious to me.”  He wasn’t cocky about being right.  In fact, he seemed sad.  “You’re going to find Torey?”

        “Yes, we will, Father.  We will find him.”  I liked the guy.  He reminded me of Ed.  “So what were you doing at ‘David’s,’ Father?”

        “Having a drink with my significant other.  It was our fourth anniversary.  You ruined the party by stealing the money I was going to use on his present.”

        “Now I feel great.  So the Archbishop knows.  What with you doing all that public work, right?”

        “Oh, yes, he knows.  And he doesn’t like me one bit.  He’d defrock me if he could, but priests are in short supply, and my parishioners support me.  Well, half of them support me.  He leaves me alone most of the time.  Heck, most of the time he doesn’t know what year it is.  Archbishop Kunkler is getting on in years.”

        “Well, the good die young, don’t they?”  I shouldn’t have said it, but I did.  I flashed on Torey.

        “It’s the Chancellor who really runs things.  Though it’s rarely mentioned, Shuldik is what you call an auxiliary bishop.  He has the ring, as they say.”

        “The ring.  The big ruby ring,”  I mumbled.

        “Yeah,  it’s a ruby.  A symbol of his power.  He harasses me every once in awhile.  Shuldik’s very conservative.  I think my case is edging up on his ‘to do’ list. I suppose he’ll eventually get me.  It’s a matter of time.”  He looked sad, and he was right.  Feudal systems like the Church Hierarchy gobble up individuals.  That’s a fact of life in the Twelfth Century.  If you don’t believe me, check the calenders in the Bishop’s mansion.

        “The Chancellor?  Monsignor Shuldik?”  The image of D.A. Kensington with his arm around Shuldik’s shoulder at the courthouse flashed.

        “None other,” said Father Ken.  “Monsignor Shuldik, leader of the Catholic Life League, doesn’t seem to like me much.  As a matter of fact, he’s probably using my name in vain at their monthly meeting tonight over at the Chancellery.  I believe I’m on the agenda.”

        “Because you’re gay?”

        Father Ken sighed, “Oh, that’s only one of my problems.”

        “Tools!”  It was Kim on another phone call.

        “What, Kim?”

        “Do you have Mr. Cey’s number?”

        I laughed.  Valerie and Ken didn’t get it.

         They must have been football fans.

            If I couldn’t laugh at almost everything, I’d be dead.

            Valerie nearly ran over a cat.

            “Damn, Valerie, that’s the first thing you’ve missed all day.  You know I hate cats.  Put it in reverse.  He’s still out there.”

            “Shut up.”

            We were on our way to see Kim, my lovely former breeding partner in the lovely suburb of North Park.  It was five steps above Vaporville, a hundred below Northland.  Little frame ranch style houses mostly, with Village Inn restaurants and Piggly Wiggly grocery stores mixed in, it looked like every other bedroom community in America.  Except for the snow in the winter and the deadly humidity in the summer, if you were dropped there by a UFO, there was nothing about the place that would tell you where you were.  The place had no place.

            Let’s say I dumped you in Philly.  You’d see row houses, three feet from stoop to street.  Maybe you’d see some real colonial buildings.  You’d have some clues.  Beamed into NYC, the middle of lower Manhattan, even monkeys would know where they were.  Pop out of a cake in the valley near L.A. and you’d be lost.  It’s the source of the sprawl infection that kills cities and makes every place look the same.  Same houses, same Home Depot, same Outback, same bad traffic, same smell, same Tommy Hilfigger on the same teens — in America, most of the time, we don’t know where we are. You’re in Indianapolis, Dayton, Oklahoma City.   Look around.  See the Holiday Inn?  You might be in Northpark.

            Val turned left off Pudd at the Holiday Inn.  One Hundred Twentieth Street ran east about a mile before it hit Burr; not Aaron, Raymond.  We took Burr two blocks to One Hundred Twenty-second, then left on Hamilton; not Alexander, George, one block to One Hundred Twenty-second Terrace, which started curving around until it morphed into One Hundred Twenty-third Terrace Place.  We were going slowly now, trying to read the signs.  That was good news for all the kids on their Big Wheels.  If Valerie hit one at this speed they wouldn’t even bruise.  Finally we turned up One Hundred Twenty-third Terrace Place Circle.  It was a cul-de-sac.  Four-five-six-three-nine was a John Cougar song.  A little pink house with a bright yellow Ford Focus in the drive, it was the American Dream with plastic siding.  There were also three TV satellite trucks and the K-Mad News Bronco out front.  Shit.

            I had Valerie circle back down One Hundred Twenty-third Terrace Place to Lee; not Robert E., Harper, to One Hundred Twenty-fourth Terrace Boulevard to One Hundred Twenty-fourth Terrace Boulevard Circle.  We parked in front of a pink house with a blue Ford Focus in the drive.  I boosted Val over a  white plastic privacy fence.  We casually walked past a woman mowing her backyard.  She was still trying to think of something to say when we hopped another fence and walked towards the back of Four-five-six-three-nine One Hundred Twenty-third Terrace Circle.  We were almost to the deck when somebody closed the drapes on the sliding door.

            I had a feeling Kim didn’t want to talk to me.  But I knocked on the glass anyway.  “Kim.. Kim.. It’s me!”  I’m sure that helped. After a minute of knocking I was beginning to think she had some resentments.  But I’m persistent.  Valerie sat down on a beige plastic chair by a round beige plastic table with a beige and slightly darker beige umbrella.  She was in it for the long haul, too.

            “Kim… Kim… Kim…”  I was almost chanting.  I was knocking in a monotonous rhythm.  A sharp knock with my knuckle that made the steel frame of the sliding door start to resonate.  Tat… Tat… Tat… Tat… Tat…Tat… Tat… Tat… Tat… Tat… Tat… Tat.

            “Kim… Kim… Kim… Kim…”  Chants have great power.  In Tibet when the monks chant you can see God.  Kim was beginning to see red.

            “Go away!”  Well, she was glad to see me after all.

            “Kim… Tat… Kim… Tat…”

            The curtain swooshed to the right.  The door slid open a crack.  Kim’s face popped out.  She looked awful.  She used to dress like a tasteful Motley Crue groupie; now she was on the softer side of Sears, and she had been spending too much time in tanning booths.

            “Kim, you’ve frosted your hair.  It looks great.”  And they say men don’t notice things like that.  I can be so thoughtful.

            Her expression changed from dismay to disgust.  Her head withdrew back into the house like a frightened turtle.  The door snapped shut. Watch your fingers!  The curtain closed.  O.K., maybe my approach had been ill-advised.  Maybe pity would work.

            “Tat… Tat… Kim, I smell ginger snap cookies.  Can I have a couple?  I just got out of jail, and I haven’t had real food in days.”  I walked over to the Sears gas grill, swung up the cover, turned the valve, and hit the ignite button.  “Got any hamburger, Kim?  I could grill some up.  You always loved my burgers.  Kim?”

            Valerie had seen enough.  “Sit down and shut up, idiot.”

            There was a wasp-like sound in the air..  I obediently took her place in the beige chair.  She went to the door.

            “Kim, it’s Valerie.  I know he’s an asshole, but we need to talk.  We might be able to help find Torey.  Kim?  Please open the door.  We can find him, Kim, but we need your help.”

            I really thought that was a lame-brain approach.  I knew Kim and she wasn’t going to…  The door slowly slid open.  Kim walked back into the kitchen.  We followed her.

            Val gave me the “Keep your mouth closed or I’ll get out the pinking shears” look.

            Kim slumped down at the kitchen table.  She held on to a coffee mug with both hands and looked for an answer in the milky brown contents.  Val joined her at the table.  I tried to blend in with the yellowish, flowered curtains.

            “What do you want?  Do you really think you can help?”  She was torn between her natural disdain for me and her frantic maternal instincts for her missing child.  Kim sounded tired, very tired.

            “We want to find Torey, Kim.  All we want to do is find Torey.”  Valerie was good.  I almost thought she cared.  And, of course, she did.  It’s just that I didn’t want to think about caring.  That would only remind me how much I cared, how desperate I was.  I have two ways of dealing with feelings.  Avoidance and total immersion.  Right then I couldn’t let go and go under.  I had to stay on my game.  Torey was depending on that.  I only ask that you understand why I was acting the way I was.

            “What can you do?  The police told me they’d find him.”  Kim’s voice didn’t have any brass.

            I couldn’t help myself.  “The police?  They’ll find him?  They’re not…”

            I was about to say that the cops were looking for a dead boy.  I was about to say that Valerie and I were looking for a live one… but Val held her hand up.  Stop in the name of love!  Before I break your…

            “Kim,” Val continued like I hadn’t said a thing, “I know we can find him. I’m not sure the police can.  Kim,”  Val touched her lightly on the arm, “you know the cops have their own list of things to do.  Torey’s on the list, but he’s not at the top.  You know we can help.  Give us a chance.”

            “I’m going crazy,”  she sobbed.  If she started to cry we’d be here for a week. I admit it.  I can be pretty thoughtless.  “The press won’t leave me alone.  You saw them out there!  I don’t know what to do.  Jeff just left, I’m all alone.”

            Jeff was obviously the current flame.  When shit like this hits, you find out who’s lovin’ you and who’s fuckin’ you real quick.  Kim had found out.  It was a familiar feeling for her.  Standing there in the corner, it sank in for the thousandth time; I was no Alan Alda, either.

            “I just want Torey back.”  She was a little girl whose kitten had wandered off.  No, it was deeper. I had to admit it to myself.  She was a mother and her kid was gone.  Her feelings were indescribable.  Just like mine. 

            Sometimes you watch one of the news channels and they’ve got a story on about a missing kid.  You think how terrible it is.  You shudder inside, your stomach tightens, and your vision almost blurs imagining how you would feel.  Then you see an interview with the mom and dad, and maybe they look like Mr. and Mrs. “Grapes of Wrath.”  Or maybe their house looks filthy.  Or maybe they have strange braided hairdos.  Whatever, you make a judgment.  You don’t like them.  They don’t speak well.  They say something stupid.  They aren’t telegenic, and they blink too much in the bright lights.  They are flawed, you decide.  They are not like me.  They don’t feel the same way I would feel if my kid were kidnapped or trapped in a hole or killed.  It must be their fault.  You may never say it out loud, but you think it.

            I hope you aren’t thinking that now. Maybe Kim and I aren’t what you’re used to.  But don’t even imagine that the feelings we have aren’t the same horrifyingly primitive ones you would feel.  Don’t judge us, yet.

            “Tell me what happened, Kim.”  Valerie sounded like a priest offering absolution.

            “Torey told me he was going over to the church.  They had some kind of meeting for the altar boys or something.”

            Damn, he was an altar boy.  I hadn’t even known that.

            “He said he was going to spend the night at Greg Jackson’s house.  He went over there all the time.  I didn’t think…”

            “What church, Kim?”  Val was cool, not cold, just cool.  She was still touching Kim’s arm.

            “Infant of Prague, up by the Mall on Parker.  He always rode his bike.  It’s not very far.  Greg lives about a block from there.  I thought he was safe.  He’d spent the night there almost every weekend.  I never let him do stuff like this until we moved here.  I thought this was a better neighborhood.”

            “When’s the last time he saw Mikey?”

            A cloud passed over her face.  “Mikey…”  She almost choked on his name, “Mikey… Torey never saw him, except on that damned videotape.  He was always watching that video you made him of Mikey and him at Fairyland.  I hid it from him, but he always found it and put it back in his backpack.  I was going to throw it away, but I couldn’t.  I gave up.  And now they say there were some terrible things on that old tape?  That Mikey was molesting….”  She couldn’t go on.

            “I don’t think it was Mikey, Kim.  I really don’t.”  Val needed her to believe that.  I needed to believe that.

            “I just don’t know.  The police think he did it.  But I don’t know.  Detective Vandy showed me part of the tape they found by that whore’s body.”  I let that remark go by. 

            Kim choked up, cleared her throat, and went on.  “He held a manila folder up to block Torey’s face.  I couldn’t watch that and see Torey’s face.”  I wondered how I’d react.  Kim went on, “The detective wanted me to see the hands that were… that were… well you know, the hands.”

            “They weren’t Mikey’s,” I blurted out.  Val silenced me with a “shut-the-fuck-up” look.

            Kim hesitated.  “I don’t know.  The tape was so old and beat up.  The Tilt-a-Whirl stuff was grainy.  Hell, Tory’s watched it so many times he’s almost worn it out.  He…”  Kim struggled to keep control.  “The part with the hands is real foggy-like.  I couldn’t really tell about the… the… the hands.”

            I got the feeling that Kim didn’t think Mikey did it either.  She knew Mikey’s shortcomings, who didn’t?  But she just couldn’t think he had done what they said.  He couldn’t have…even with that small flickering doubt…she wouldn’t believe he did it… yet.  What I did know for sure was that I had to go see my old friend, Doug Hunter.  In child abuse circles they say victims can become perpetrators;  I’d read that in Time magazine.  It was more than a guess that Carl Vandy might even get over his Mikey fixation.  I wanted to talk to Hunter before the cops did.  I didn’t want any competition at St. Philomena’s.  I’d have to move fast.

            There was a knock at the door.  It was even ruder than my tapping on the patio door.  It sounded like the KGB, or the FBI, or the Prize Patrol – they’re all the same.  “I’ll get it,”  I volunteered.  It was one thing I could do.  And getting out of Val’s hair would probably help her with Kim.

            The knock boomed again.  The doorbell rang, “Ding Crackle …Ding Crackle.”  Kim needed to fix that.  I opened the door a crack and came face to face with a celebrity.

            “Hello, sir, sorry to bother you at a time like this, but I’m Liz Nice from Eyewitness Six.”  As if being Liz Nice excused her from normal human courtesy. 

            “Are you the step-father?”  She was so close, so right and so wrong.  I was a bit irritated.  “Can we talk?  I’ve got a live shot coming up in five minutes.  Will you go on camera?”  What a journalist.

            “Just a minute, please.”  I had to close the door carefully because she was oozing forward slowly like the Blob.  Another second and she’d have been inside.  I started back into the kitchen, but as I got closer, I could see Kim and Valerie’s heads close together.  Val’s arm was around her shoulder.  I decided not to interrupt them.  There was no need. I was sure my intentions were good.  I’d already decided where I was going next.  I needed a solo shot at Doug Hunter.  My gut said that my old pal was the key to Terri and the key to finding Torey.  Forgive me for usurping the Charles Bronson trademark, but I didn’t want any Constitutional niceties slowing things down.  There was a bunch of TV cameras outside.  I had a great idea.  Why check it out with Val or Kim?

            I went back to the door and eased my way out so that Liz couldn’t ease her way in.  She did not respect my personal space.  Lint brushes don’t get as close as she did.  Her perfume smelled like a produce aisle.  In person she was malnourished, and either padded or altered.  Her proportions were all wrong.  And her eyes — up close they were a beautiful light, light blue.  Wait, those were designer contacts.  I’ll bet she had different pairs for different lighting conditions on her makeup table.  All the kids wear them now days.  It wouldn’t surprise me if she had some cat’s eyes lenses to match some twisted Fredericks of Hollywood outfit.  My imagination was too good.  I felt a little nauseous.

            “Are you the step-father?”

            “No, I’m a friend of the family.  Ms. Janus’ spokesman.”  This was going to be fun.  I hoped it would work.

            “And your name?”  I hadn’t thought of that.  She asked for my name… my name is…

            “My name is…”  I scratched my chin.  “…my name is…Jose Jimenez.”

            Jesus Christ, did I really say that?

            She didn’t blink.  It might have been impossible for her to blink.  She scribbled the name in her notebook.  “Do you have a statement?  We go live in three minutes.”

            “Yes, I’d like to read a statement from the family.”  Did I say read?

            “All right, step right over here.”  She led me out a bit onto the front sidewalk.  It was a tactical mistake.  The other crews saw it and rushed forward like a school of land piranha.  In seconds, cameras were being set on tripods, and a forest of microphones on sticks was pointing in my direction, like English pikes at Agincort. 

            Liz was pissed.  She’d lost her exclusive.  She’d get even later.  We were live in one minute.  If I was going to read a statement, I needed a statement.  Words were flying around my brain, clumping, separating, and re-clumping again, like the protein building blocks of life in the primordial soup.  I searched my pockets and found a piece of paper.  I pulled it out.  It was a page from a Chicago Cubs program, a line-up insert from the last time I’d been to Wrigley, June 23rd, 1984.  It had the Cub batting order on one side, the other was blank.  I might be able to fool the cameras.

            It was the greatest baseball game I had ever seen.  Cubs versus Cardinals, a sunny day, and the team was actually in the race.  Willie McGee hit for the cycle for the Cards and gave them a six run lead.  Five, four, three… the Cubs fought back.  St. Louis put in Bruce Sutter, the best reliever going, but Ryne Sandberg, the All-Star second baseman, homered in the bottom of the ninth to tie it.  And then facing Sutter, the best closer in the league mind you, he homered again in extra innings to win it.  I got so drunk at Murphy’s.  It was one of the best days of my life.  The Cubs lost in the first round of the playoffs.

            Sure, the lineup wasn’t going to help.  But thinking about baseball helps me control myself.  You should know that.

            One of the camera “guys,” a good looking blond chick fresh out of Get-a-Job College, or Pay-Your-Loan University said, “We go in ten seconds.”  I could tell she liked me. “Five…four…three…”  Two fingers, one finger and a point, I was on.  No I wasn’t.

            Liz Nice stepped in front of me and did a lead-in holding her mike with the big “Six” logo up high on all four channels in town at once.  I thought her expression was almost orgasmic.  But I always think in sexual terms.  For Liz it might have been closer to seeing Yahweh face to face.  The expressions on the faces of her colleagues from the other news departments was a mixture of horror, anger, and indigestion.  I really didn’t hear what Ms. Nice said, exactly.  It was something that contained the words  “tragedy,” “lost boy,” “stunned city,” “fearful parents,” and “lost hope” — stuff like that.  The only thing I remember clearly was the term, “The deadly daddy.”  God she was good.  It was almost my turn.

            “…Now, speaking for the family is family spokesman, Jose Jimenez.”

            I saw a faint hint of recognition and panic in the face of the only old, by that I mean over forty, reporter there.  He wasn’t quite sure if he had heard what he had heard, but it was too late to stop now.

            I stepped to the microphone.  “Good evening.  My name Jose Jimenez…”  I glanced back at the “old” reporter.  He wasn’t running yet.  But he might have been contemplating packing up.  “..First I want to thank all of you for being here today…”  Like even a neutron bomb would have kept them off the lawn.  “The family, Ms. Janus, little Torey’s mother, has asked me to read the following statement…”  I looked down.  I saw the names.  Gary Mathews…the Sarge is in Charge!  Thank you baseball.

            “All of us who care so deeply about Torey make a plea.  If you have any information about his disappearance, call the Police Department with your information at 290-0988.”  It was Detective Carl Vandy’s cell phone number.  He gave it to me once at an AA meeting.  I work with safes.  I have a great memory for numbers.  “Any information, no matter how unimportant you think it is, will be appreciated.  We hope and pray…”  Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a priest duck into the house behind me.  I lost my train of thought…”We hope and pray Torey will be safe at home with us soon.  Also, we would like to thank…”  I looked down.  “We would like to thank Mr. Ron Cey for organizing the search of the Northland Woods area.  We would also like to thank all our friends and neighbors who have volunteered to join that search starting at eight A.M. tomorrow morning.  Finally, Torey, if you are listening, we love you.  We pray you will be back in our arms soon.”  That last part was the only true thing I had said.  I honestly did get a catch in my voice at the end.

            I put the paper back in my pocket.  “Thank you again, ladies and gentlemen.  No questions please.”

            They all shouted questions at once.  The bleacher bums were more restrained than this pack.  I ignored them, slipped past Liz and in the door. I locked it, and I hooked the security chain, like that really would help.  When I turned around, Kim and Valerie were looking at me like I was Rasputin.  You could tell they thought I had gone completely mad.  And they were right.

            I was crazy.  It couldn’t have gone any better.  Now I’d just have to see if media mobs behaved like regular mobs.  Or was it just another of my “great” ideas.  I’d done my part.  Though in retrospect, I wish I hadn’t used Ron Cey’s name.  I hated Ron Cey.  Every time the Cubs needed a big hit that year, Ron “the Penguin” Cey popped out.  Maybe that’s why they were looking at me like that.  Maybe they hated Ron Cey, too.

            Val shoved me back into the door.  “You stupid, insane, piece of….of….of…”  It was a rare day when she was at a loss for words.  But here we were.  “I saw most of that.  What are you doing?”

            I gave her my best Robert Redford “The Sting” finger to the side of my nose and smiled.  Kim looked like she’d been poked with a cattle prod, and hell if there wasn’t a priest standing behind her just looking a bit baffled by the whole thing.  I walked right past Val, who was still off balance.  I extended my hand and grabbed the padre’s.  I pumped him like a dry well.

            “So glad to meet you, Father.  You must be from Infant of Prague, right, Father?  You must have seen Torey Sunday night, Father.  What’s your name, Father?”  I was smiling but I must admit, I wasn’t feeling friendly.

            He snatched back his hand and rubbed it with his left.  I might have been squeezing it a little too hard.

            “Yes.  I mean, yes, I’m from Infant of Prague Parish.”  He wasn’t so much baffled as  slightly afraid now.

            Kim spoke up.  “This is Father Corleone, the pastor.  He’s been real good to Torey.”

            Now I was off balance.  Father Corleone?  A name straight out of “The Godfather.”  Vito Corleone, you recall that, don’t you?  Doesn’t everyone?  If you met someone by the name of Corleone, wouldn’t you think it funny, or weird, or unfortunate?  Even if you were bad with names, you’d remember his from then on, wouldn’t you?  I remembered the name, and not just from the movies.

            Let’s say you were at work.  Let’s say you were down by “David’s,” the gay bar on the East side of Vaporville.  Suppose you broke into a car.  Let’s say it was a black Lincoln Town Car, with a Christian fish symbol on the trunk.  Let’s say you found some cash and a Hospital chaplain’s badge inside labeled, “Father Ken Corleone.”  You’d remember that, wouldn’t you?  You’d think, “Ken…Ken Corleone?  I’d change my first name to Sonny, buddy.  A guy named ‘Ken’ doesn’t belong in ‘The Godfather.’  Ain’t that a hoot!  Kenny Core-lee-o-knee, hah!   What’re you doin’ at the gay bar, padre?”  You’d remember that wouldn’t you?  I did.  I’d been in that car.

            I was thinking about Torey.  This was his priest, his friend.  I was thinking about a friend I had when I was twelve.  My stomach felt like I’d swallowed a flashlight battery.  I also remembered a guy dressed in black running down a fourth floor hallway.  Maybe my Great idea had turned to Idiotic in record time.

            “Have a seat, Father.  With all the recent tragic events, I feel like I need some spiritual counsel.  You can help me, can’t you, Father?”

            He only nodded.  But I already felt better.

            I knew he could give me some comfort.

            “Valerie, give Father Corleone a chocolate chip cookie.”

            I had never been ordained, but I was about to hear confession.

            Memories are always subjective.

Shared remembrances are especially fraught with danger.  Sitting down with an old buddy and babbling on about “that day so long ago when we…” is a recipe for a screaming argument, psychologically debilitating ego assassination, or a real-life, up-close, bloody knife fight.  It all depends on how trivial the memory is being discussed.  The less important the event, the higher the likelihood of gory mayhem.  The number of frosty pitchers of margaritas involved also may be a significant factor.

That’s why I never talk to Val about anything in our common past.  I’ve seen her carve up a holiday turkey or two and prefer to keep my own giblets in a functional location.  But if she asks about something in my lonesome “long-ago” — shit, that’s easy.  I can tell my version without fear of contradiction.

“So why did you want to be a priest?”  Val asked.  Both her hands were on the wheel.  There was, so far as I knew, no cutlery in the car, and I could detect no traces of rock salt on her lips.  I’d been in the seminary years before I’d met Val.  It seemed a safe road to travel — at least as safe as anyone can be when Val’s driving.

“I look great in black,” I said.

“It shows your dandruff.”  Val either ran over a small man or a large squirel at that point.  I bumped my head on the passenger side window.

“I like dressing up in neat costumes,” I said. 

“Don’t start that again.  I won’t do the nun fantasy again, Marty.”  We were drifting towards a shared – and unpleasant for Val – experience.  “I don’t understand this costume thing you’ve got in your sick little mind.”  Val looked like she might start rummaging in the glove compartment for a Swiss Army scalpel or something.

I quickly pushed things back to my side of the past.  “Something wrong with costumes?  I had a Superman outfit when I was a kid.”

“You told me about that.  That wasn’t a costume.  That was a ratty, old, red bath towel that you safety-pinned around your neck.”

“You’re missing the point.”  Just as the words came out of my mouth, Val grazed a pedestrian as if to illustrate how literally she could interpret a conversation.  I raised my voice over the fading shouted obscenities of her near-victim.  “The red towel made me feel invincible.  In my Superman costume I could fly.”

“You broke an arm and a leg ‘flying’ off your roof heading for Susie Harlow’s window.”  Val had a good memory.  I’d only told her this story once, and she even remembered the names involved.  “You just wanted to fly over and peep in her window.  Pervert.”

Val was right, of course.  I had been using my powers for evil instead of good.  “Vaaaal…” I used the little boy voice, kind of a whine, actually.  “It was a pivotal day in my young life — my bones… my innocence… shattered.”

“Well, that’s profound.”  Val’s eyes went back to the road – finally.

            I babbled on, “It’s just that costumes have a certain power.  Like when I was an altar boy.  With the black cassock and the pure white surplice on, I felt close to God.”

            “You mean you felt like you were better than everybody else.”

            “Yeah.”  I had to admit it.  “There was that.  Plus I was the one who rang the little bells that let everybody know that Jesus had arrived.”

            “What an egomaniac.”

            When she’s right – she’s right.  I ignored her.  “The coolest thing was being all dressed up and helping the priest give out communion.  I’d hold this gold plate under everybody’s chin, and if there was a fumble, I’d catch the consecrated host.”

            “Always with the sports metaphors.”  Val cranked the wheel left and almost missed a pothole the size of Crater Lake.

            I ignored her smart ass quip, bounced off the seat when the oil pan bottomed out, and let my stream of conciousness flow.  “I liked communion.  I got to look at everybody’s tongue.  All the tongues in the parish.  Mr. Jasper’s bumpy tongue.  Mrs. Burnham’s paper thin tongue.  Tammy Pepper’s purple tongue.  Rusty Culp’s two-toned tongue. Eighty-five-year-old Mr. Cardiff’s tongue looked new, like a baby’s.  Fourteen-year-old Frances Thedinger’s was crevassed like an ancient glacier. I used to dream about tongues.”

            “You are sick,” she said.

            “I’m a product of my upbringing,” I replied, in my defense.

            “Yeah, your upbringing.  How old were you when mommy dearest shipped you off to the seminary?”

            “Thirteen.”

            “Fucking crazy.”  Val took her eyes completely of the road and lit up a cigarette. 

I closed my eyes.  Believe me, I didn’t want to watch if she wasn’t.  “I was a mature thirteen.”  God, I was even defending my mother.

“At thirteen a kid needs mothering, not a bus ticket to Monk-Land.”  Val blew a thick cloud of smoke in my face.  “A mom should be making her kid hot cocoa.”

I rolled down the window for some air.  “My mom made me hot cocoa.”

“With schnapps.”

“Yeah, peppermint schnapps.”  I was getting all nostalgic just thinking about it.

“So you went to the seminary when you were thirteen.  Did you take your red towel cape?”

            “No.”  I was lying.  I still keep the threadbare thing hidden in the bottom of my trunk.  Val didn’t need to know.

            “So what was the place like?”

            “Assumption Semminary?”

            “Yeah.  It was north of here, right?”

            “About fifty miles north in a little town called Optimism.”

            “Ironic.”

            “Antebellum.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean Optimism was like a little piece of the pre-Civil War south right here in the midwest.  Way back when slave owners moved west and wanted to bring their ‘property’ with them, some of the old gentlemen built big houses up on the river’s edge bluffs.  That’s how the town started.”

            “Can’t grow cotton here.”

            “Precisely.  Farmers took over.  Up there on the bluffs, looking down on Main Street, the old families kept faith with another time.”

“Jesus Christ,  you  must have read too much Faulkner between sitcoms.”  Val’s sarcasm setting was on “11,”  but she was listening. 

“Assumption was supposed to pump out crispy new priests.”

“Nice image.”

“The seminary started in high school and went right through college.  All the students on one ivy covered campus.”

“Let me guess.  No girls.”

“God forbid.”

“And so he did.”

“It was an old campus; brick buildings, huge cottonwoods, backwards ideas.  You know.  But the education was good.  I studied classic Greek, Latin, Plato, Socrates, Aquinas, all the K-Tel greatest hits of Western Civilization.  I read Melville, Swift, Milton, Shelley, Jefferson…”

“All the dead white guys,” Val interupted.  “Thought you told me that you got beat up a lot.” 

            “Yeah, it was  great education punctuated with an occassional ass whupping.”

            “Is this story going somewhere?”

            “Of couse it is.  Just listen, Val.”  I was getting the feeling that this remeniscence, started so unintentionally, was getting me somewhere I needed to go.  That’s the way the subconscious works.  You start out talking about drowning kittens and end up finding your car keys.

            “Well, cut to the chase.”  Val was getting impatient – not unusual.

“The last time I had the shit kicked out of me was the end of term my junior year.  Everyone was packing to go home the next day.  The weird thing is, I wanted to stay.  For all the school’s drawbacks, it was better than living with my mom.  My Dad had left her by then.”

“Lucky guy, your dad.”  Val snickered.

As the old saying goes, it was all coming back to me.  For a guy who spent most of his time trying to supress the past, it wasn’t pleasant, but I was convinced it was important. 

            “I had just left the washroom in the old dormitory when I heard a kid crying in the stairwell.  I followed the whimpering sound all the way up to the fourth floor landing.  Nobody ever went up there.  This was the high school underclassmen’s dorm.  It had been built in 1905 — terrible old place with tiny windows.  It was always full of this rusty colored dust from the old bricks, and poorly lit.”

            “Appropriately spooky.”

            “Yeah, it was spooky.  Always smelled like old candlewax, too.”

            “So you heard the kid crying, and you ran up the stairs to save him.  Did you put on your superman towel first?”

            “Very funny.  I did run up to see what was up, and that’s when I saw him all curled up in the fetal position, sobbing.”

            “The kid?”

            “The kid – Doug Hunter.”

            “Doug Hunter?  Father Doug…”  Val interupted again, but I interupted back.  I didn’t want to lose my momentum.

            “Yeah – Doug Hunter.  I knew him a little, so I recognized him.  He was a puny little guy.  Anyway, when I got to him, I touched him.  He was hot — like he’d just run a mile.  He couldn’t catch his breath.  He grabbed my hand and held on like a baby having a nightmare.  I saw that his belt was undone.”

            “Shit, his belt was undone?  Shit!”  Val looked pissed.  “So you knew right then… no, wait.  You were just an innocent kid yourself.  You didn’t know what was going on, did you?”

            “I knew, Val.  I wasn’t that young anymore.”  A memory came to the front of my head.  No, not a repressed memory, not a recovered memory — I don’t have those.  I almost let that damned memory loose.  “I knew, Val.  I knew.  I knew, because when I was twelve…”  I shut my mouth.  I didn’t want that truth out there — not then.

Don’t know why I ever mentioned what happened to me when we started this story.  But you see, at that moment in the car, talking to Val about the day so long ago at the seminary, I had one of those “flashbacks.”  I remembered what had happened to me when I was twelve in every detail.  Every second became real again.  All the smells and the choking and the pain became real.  Damn.  Buy me another drink.  I already told you and your tape-recorder about it way back when I started this spiel.  I didn’t go into detail then.  I won’t go into detail now.

Just know that I remembered it all – riding in Val’s car, talking too much.   See, I started telling Val the story about what happened to Doug Hunter, and in the midddle of the telling, my own story started to butt-in.  I had to slam all the watertight doors in my head to keep the past in its proper compartments. Well that’s trauma for you.  It has a nasty way of popping up whenever the truth is loose.

I picked up the conversation as if I’d never started to explain myself to Val.  I was hoping she’d let my little slip go by.  She lit another cigarette as I went on with the story.

“Doug was there at my feet, and in the darkness, off to my left, I saw a man.”

            “What happened to you when you were twelve?”  Val was looking straight at me.  Her Neon was going 45 mph in heavy traffic, and she didn’t look away from me.

            “Let me finish, Val.”

            “Sure.”  She turned back to her driving and switched lanes just miliseconds before she rear-ended a rusty flatbed piled high with crushed Ford carcasses.  “Go ahead.  You saw a man?”

            I took a deep breath, half because of the near-death experience and half from the vividness of the flashback I was still having.  “It was dark, but I saw him.  I didn’t know who it was.  A dark figure was turning away from me and Doug’s prone pathetic body.  It was a dark silhouette in a dark hallway…black on black…”

            “Now you’re Richard Kimble?”  Her sarcasm was back.  I ignored it.  When Val gets sarcastic, it means she’s listening.

            “I attacked him.”

            “Just like that?  You attacked him?”

            “I think it was the first time I ever really understood the word ‘fury.’  You know what I mean?”

“Biblical stuff,” said Val.

“Yeah, biblical.  The guy was trying to get away down the hall that led to the other stairwell when  I hit him in the back of his knees with all my strength.  He didn’t buckle.  He wasn’t tall but he was strong.  His legs were solid.  He straight-armed me and started down the stairs, almost running.”

            “Jesus.”

            I might have been punching the dashboard at that point — totally sucked into the past,  I was back at the seminary.  “I picked myself up.  I flew after him and jumped up to grab him around his neck.  I smelled ginger.”

            “You smelled ginger?”

            “Yeah.  I was hanging onto him and I smelled ginger.  I’ll never forget it.”

            “So you choked him?”

“I tried.  He stumbled two or three steps down to the landing on the third floor.  It was like trying to strangle an oak tree.  I just held on.  It was all I could do.  Somebody grabbed me from behind and pulled me off him.  I was spun around and came face-to-face with Gerry Reese.”

“Gerry Reese?”

“A mean upperclassman jock-type who picked on me from time to time — he was close to graduation by then.  He finished up at Assumption College – played football.  Think ol’ Gerrry is a bishop somewhere in Indiana now.”

“And…”

“And Gerry hit me.”

“He hit you?”

            “Must have knocked me out cold.  I think he hit me more than once.  But I wasn’t around consciously, so who knows — other than his excellency, Bishop Reese.”

            “So Reese beat the shit out of you?  You never lose fights.  You usually run away.”  Val was right.

            “ Didn’t have a chance to run that time. Looking back, I think after the knockout I dreamt about whole wheat toast.  Isn’t that strange?”

            “Whole wheat toast?”  She looked at me like it was the oddest thing I’d ever said to her.  “Yeah.  Strange.”  Val took a deep drag.  “So what happened to Doug Hunter?”

            “When I woke up, Doug was wiping my face with a wet washcloth.  ‘You’re going to be O.K.  Don’t worry.  It’s all over now.  This shouldn’t have happened to you.  It’s all my fault.’  He said shit like that — all in a monotone.  ‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ he said.  He helped me stagger into the tiny third floor chapel. I felt a little safer there – some instinctive sense of sanctuary.  People were rarely beaten in the chapel.  It was just eight rows of pews and a small altar.  Above, on the wall, was a fresco of Mary, standing on a cloud, surrounded by cherubim.  She was being assumed body and soul into heaven — The Assumption.  I had hidden in there before.”

            “When you got beat up.”

            “Exactly.  Oh, and back behind the altar was this little sacristy with a big old rod set way high on the wall in this little dressing nook.  There was a whole bunch of old cassocks,  surplices, and some fancy old vestments hanging there.”

            “We’re back to that.”  Val had that disgusted look on her face again.  I stopped, thinking I’d lost her attention, because of that shared dress-up debacle.  “Go on.”  No, Val was still with me.  “Go on.”

            “Anyway, me and Doug were just sitting there on one of the pews, staring up at Mary.  ‘You shouldn’t have done it.  Haven’t you been in enough trouble?’  He was warning me, almost pleading with me not to say it, but I did.  ‘I know what happened.’  That’s what I said, because it was true.  I knew.  ‘I know what happened,’ I said – or something like that.  But he had to deny it.  He had no choice.  ‘Nothing happened.  You don’t know what happened.  You can’t say anything,’ he said.  It was all shit like that.  We were both scared.  Maybe I was more frightened than he was.  I knew he’d been…”  I stopped talking.  The word is hard for me to say.

            “Abused.”

            “Stupid word.”

            “Abused?”

            “Yeah, you abuse privleges.  You abuse a friendship.  You abuse chemicals.  Abuse is a stupid word.  The nuns used to call beating off ‘self-abuse.’  What the fuck is that?”

            “So use the right word, Marty.”

            “You know what I mean.”

            “Say it, Marty.”

            “O.K., he was raped.  Raped.  ‘Rape’ is the word.”  I said it again, like I thought repeating the syllable would take the sting out of it. “He was raped.” 

            “Who do you pray to when something like that happens?” Val asked.  She understood.  She knew.

            “Raped.”

            “You O.K., Marty?”

            “No.”

            “What happened next?”  Val probably figured it was best to just keep me talkng.

            I took a shallow breath.  It was the best I could do.  “I had to ask him,  ‘Who was it, Doug?  Who did it?’  Gerry Reese hadn’t done it.  He was just a dumb-fuck.  Doug was really scared.  I’d ask, and he’d just sit there.  I’d ask again, ‘Who was it?’  He’d flinch.  No answer.  I asked again and again, ‘Who was it?’

            “Who was it?”  Val was right there in that moment with me.

            “Doug just said,  ‘No one.  Forget it happened.  Thank you for trying, but you’ll only make things worse.  If I say anything he’ll…’  Of course that’s all he’d say.  Was I supposed to beat it out of him?  I just put my hand on his shoulder.  We sat there for about an hour like that.  Then he put his hand over mine and patted it three times, stood up, and left the room.  I remember wanting to go home.”

            “Jeeze, you wanted to go home to your mother?  That was bad.”  Val had slowed the car to about twenty.  People were honking.  She paid them no attention.

            “We were friends of a sort after that.  Doug and I would meet up in that chapel every once in a while and talk.  We chatted about studies – bullshit like that.  We never mentioned the time we first met.  Near the end of my junior year, I went up to the old chapel for the last time.  I was supposed to meet Doug.  I was late.  I had been arranging vestments in the main church.  That was one of my favorite jobs at the seminary.”

            “Costumes again,” Val said.  This time there was no accusation in her words.

            “Anyway, like I said, I was late.  I hurried up the stairs and into the chapel.  Only the Virgin was there, surrounded by naked babies — but no Doug.  I heard a scraping noise.  I didn’t know what it was or where it was coming from.  I followed the sound into the sacristy.  Doug was hanging from the rod.  He had knotted three surplices together and made a noose.  He was dying.  His feet were kind of twitching, making the scaping sound.  Then his feet were still.  I was sure he was dead.”

            “Jesus.”

            “Jesus wasn’t there.”  I realized I hadn’t been breathing myself.  I took a deep breath and continued.  “I grabbed at him.  I was just tall enough to lift him with one arm, holding him against my body and pushing with my legs.  I ripped the rod out of the wall.  We ended up on the floor.  Doug wasn’t breathing.  I shouted for help, and I did CPR.  I shouted and shouted and shouted.”

            “Jesus,” Val said again.  “You saved Doug Hunter’s life.”

            “Sure.  Saved his fucking life.”

            “You regret it.”

            I had to think about that for a second. “Maybe… I don’t know.  I really don’t.”

            “And you didn’t become a priest.”

            “Yeah, decided to quit the clerical career track that very day.  He lived and became a priest.  Does that count as a save?”

            “What happened to Doug isn’t your fault.”

            “That’s not what the Chinese say.  They think if you save a guy’s life you’re responsible for him from then on.”

            “Fuck the Chinese.”

“That’ll keep you busy.”

“I like Asian men.”  Val laughed.  So, what did dear old mom say when you told her that you were cancelling her womb’s gift to the church?” 

“She tossed back a big pitcher of martinis.”

“A real guilt barrage in the Hutchence household?”

“Precisely.”

            “Well, fuck your mother.”  It was a disturbing sentence, but I knew what Val meant.

            “I was allowed back for my senior year as a non-vocational student.”

            “What’s that mean, non-vocational?”

            “Means I wasn’t studying for the priesthood.  I was just a regular student then.  I saw Doug just a few times after that.  He recovered physically. The last time I saw him, we muttered a few social niceties.  Then I remember him grabbing my arm. ‘Thank you for trying,’ he said.  I hadn’t seen him since — until that night when he stood in the rectory door at St. Philomena, and you and I watched from the shadows.”

            “Did you get raped when you were twelve?”  Val’s question snapped me back into the present.  I turned and looked at her.  There was a long silence.  “Well, did you get raped?”

            I didn’t answer her.

            After another silence, punctuated by the honking truck behind us, Val stopped the car.  She turned and looked at me, and maybe she was even crying a little.  “You would have made a great priest, Marty.”  Then she kissed me.

            “We’ve got to find Torey, Val.”

            “I know, Marty.  I know.”

            “We have to find him.  Help me find him.”

“I’ll help you, Marty.  We’ll find Torey.

I think I might have cried a little bit then.  I remember looking out the window as we drove north to Torey’s house.  I remember how every little boy on a bicycle, or in a driveway, or playing in a yard – every kid we passed — looked like Torey at first.

            I knew what happened to Doug that day in the dormitory.  In the back of my mind, maybe I was starting to guess even then where all of this got connected to Terri and everything else that happened.  But that’s all hindsight, isn’t it?  Memories are subjective, after all.

            I do remember that little boy, Doug Hunter, and the man who smelled like ginger.  And I do remember the day I gave up on that school and all the costumes.

            I remember leaving Optimism behind me.

            Never open your mouth when you’re surrounded by wasps.

            That’s just a fact of life.

            When Valerie is mad at you, do not, I repeat, do not say a word.  Remember when I got hit with the steel pipe?  Even if blood is squirting out of you like you were a walking arterial fire hydrant, do not speak.  If you can’t control yourself, have a straight razor handy so that you can slice out your tongue before it damns you to hell.

            There was a night back a few years, right after Val had found out about my innocent association with Terri, when she was somewhat irritated with me.  Her manner was abrupt.  Her affect was sullen.  The poor girl was like a polar bear who had had it up to here with not being able to get through the big plexiglass wall to eat all the cute children on the other side.  I was sure she was being tormented by the issues of her sad past. All I had to do to fix things was say something wise.  “Now, sweetheart, don’t do this to yourself.”

            The plexiglass shattered.  The freezing water poured out.  White death was upon me.  I was face-to-face with Thalarctus Maritimus unbound.  That’s Latin for polar bear. 

            Suffice to say, my words of wisdom were not well-received. Never open your mouth when you are surrounded by wasps.  I was getting that vibe very clearly as I walked out of jail, a free, doomed man.

            Looking at her face as I approached the Neon on that sunny afternoon, I saw all the warning signs.  Furrowed brow, biting on lower lip, rubbing her fingers with her thumbs, it was clear that Valerie was not to be trifled with.  I kept my mouth shut.

            “Hello, darling, did you enjoy the slumber party?” Val said.

            I smiled weakly, my lips together.  I would have rolled onto my back, exposing my vital organs in submission.  But we were in public, and my reputation was bad enough.

            She was standing on the far side of the car.  I couldn’t see if she had a gun in her hands.  I stepped to the passenger door, my hands at my sides.  I did not reach for the door handle.  Assume nothing.

            She examined the lamb.  She was deciding whether or not she was hungry.  No, it wasn’t time to feed…yet.

            “Get in.”

            I did.  I put on my seat belt without being told.  She started the car,  reached over and turned on the radio.  A song came on – Nat King Cole was singing, “There was a boy…”

            “Marty, On television…  I saw…  Hell, Marty, Torey’s missing,”  Val put her hand on my knee.  “I’ve up all night trying to figure out how to tell you.  I don’t know…”  Val started crying.  I’d misinterpreted her mood.  Typical.  She wasn’t mad, she was worried.

            “I know, Val.  I saw it on the tube last night, too.”  I’m not good at reading my own feelings.  At that moment they were boiling – or freezing, I couldn’t tell.  Was I sad, or was I angry?  The whole rush is uncomfortable for me and people like me.  There are a lot of us.  We passed a carload of happy people.  I remember that I wanted to kill them.  That’s kind of the way my emotional life goes – sideways.

            “What are we going to do?”

            “We?’

            “Tools, don’t shut me out of this.”

            “You don’t understand, Val.  You know that porno tape Kensington said they found under Terri’s body?”

            “Yeah, perverse stuff he said.  Jeeze, what did Mikey say it was?”

            “It was child-porn, Val.”

            “Shit, Mikey was…”

            “No Val.  Torey was the child.  Torey was on the tape naked and…”

            Val froze staring out the windshield.  A dump truck went by, but I didn’t hear its rumble.  Nat King Cole was singing,  “There was a boy…”   I couldn’t quite focus my eyes.

            “We have to…  We have to… Fuck!”  Val screamed.  Then her face got that polar bear look again.

“I have to find him, Val.”

            Valerie almost killed a bus load of retirees.  My spleen hurt.

            “I’m going to help, Marty.  We’ve got to find him.  We’ve got to…”  She killed the radio.  “Do you want to know what I found out?”

            “Did you find out where Torey is?”  That’s all I wanted to know.

            “Stop it, Marty.  I know it’s terrible.  But you’ve got to focus on what we can do here to help Torey.  You being all pissed isn’t going to help.  The only way we’ll find him is by figuring out this thing with Terri — step by step.  Now stop being the avenging angel, or suicidal dad.  The roles don’t fit you.  Now do you want to know what I found out?”        

            She was right.  I had to be Tools all the way.  Totally Tools.  I have some talents.  It was time to use them for my son.  I knew Val wanted to help.  And she would.  Just maybe not the way she figured.  My brain was starting to go into fantasy mode.  No, not sexual or anything like that.  It’s a vizualization thing.  I start putting pieces together.  This bit, that bit, do this, do that, push him, use her – whatever was going to get me to my goal.  My goal was to find Torey.  I’d use Val if it helped.  With or without her permission.  See, that’s the cold bit I was talking about.  I’m not proud of it, but that’s the way I work.  And when I’m doing my best work, nobody sees what’s going on inside – nobody. 

“Sure.  What did you find out.”  The emotion was out of my voice.

            “I checked out Kensington.”

            “I just saw him inside the courthouse with the Chancellor.”  I was doing a lot of thinking about those guys.  They had a curious relationship.  I was curious about more than just that.

            “The Chancellor?”

            “Monsignor Shuldik.  Archbishop Kunkle’s keeper.”

            “Not surprising.  Kensington is the biggest of the Catholic boosters in town.”  She was half smiling despite herself.  A booster is a supporter or a thief – me for instance.  Val had made a little joke.

            “I found out there is a sealed conviction.”

            “From way back in his pubertyhood?”

            “Yeah.  Sally’s going to dig it out for me if she can.”

            I shuddered at just the mention of Sally Rosemond’s name.  “Suppose she’s got a girlfriend on the inside.”

            “Marty, you shouldn’t say things like that.”

            “I know.  Sorry.”  I was just a little sensitive about Sally and Val’s friendship.  Val was sensitive about it, too. 

There was a slight pause in the conversation.  Then… “Yeah.  She does know a girl who works for old Judge Fantabula.  He handled the case.”

“Love will conquer all,”  I quipped.

“Funny man.”  Val’s smile had faded.

            I changed the subject.  “Do the cops know Torey is my son?”  You knew I’d told Valerie about this long ago, didn’t you?

            “I don’t think so.  They are too busy painting a picture of this ‘dad from hell’ persona to hang on Mikey.  They already think they know the story.  Why should they open any other books?”

            “Yeah.”  I was stuck figuring out our next move.

            “They’re not asking about Torey’s true parentage.  They talked to Kim, but apparently she didn’t volunteer that tidbit.  It’s the same way they’re so unconcerned about how the body got up to the farm.  Could Mikey explain why his St. Christopher was on the path up?”

            “Yeah he… wait, I didn’t tell you about the medal…  How?  Do the cops know? … What?”  I ran our night together at the Albino Farm over in my head.  Dinner.  Sex.  Jail.  I hadn’t told her.

            “You are such an innocent.  Listen, after we left the church that night, you acted funny.  You didn’t criticize my driving all the way back to my place.  You were in one of your ‘secret’ modes.  I could tell.  I can always tell.  So after our little interlude in the kitchen, I waited until you were asleep.  It was about, oh, two minutes.  I rifled your pockets and found the medal.  Were you ever going to tell me?”

            “Don’t I always?”

            She gave me a look for an answer. 

            “Mikey’s story made sense.  Terri stole it from him.”  I was thinking hard.  I needed a drink.

            “That would fit.”  She was working with me again.  The team was back together.

            “But the video… that I can’t figure.  And where is Torey?”

            “A cop I know told me that…”   She hesitated.  Now she was being careful.  “…He might be dead.”  She didn’t want to say it, but it had to be said.

            This is where you would expect me to emote, to react, to plunge into a father’s despair contemplating the loss of his only son.  I’ll admit that all that stuff started to burst into flame in my psychic Weber, but I put the lid back on the kettle.  Val had already reminded me.  I needed to focus to save Torey.  Feeling this or that would only get in the way.  So I tried to just be Tools.  That’s how I handle stuff.  At least, that’s how I handled it then.  Wait until you hear everything, then judge.

            “We’ve got to talk to Kim.”  That had to be the place to start.

            “That’s where I’m going,” Val said.

            Sure enough, we were just crossing Dumpe headed north on Pudd.  Don’t laugh.  I didn’t name these damned streets.  Val hit a pothole and cut off a Happy Cab changing lanes.  “And you saw the DA and the Chacellor together.”  Val was thinking hard.

            “Twice.  So?”

            “Monsignor Shuldik and Kensington are thick as thieves.”

            “That’s not much of a revelation.”

            “Isn’t it just a bit odd for a layman like Kensington to have so much pull in the Church? 

            “Val, you really don’t know church history, do you?”

            “I mean even considering history, Marty.  Kensington gives bucketloads of cash for buildings, property, programs.  Shuldik funnels some back for Joe’s campaigns – all through legal secular comittees, of course.  The Pope gives Kensington a big honking purple star garnet.  Shuldik gets to run the diocese and even gets a ruby bishop’s ring.  Meanwhile, Kunkle drools on his crozier and talks about demons to grade school kids.”

            “I heard about that.”

“Kensington keeps claiming that he only knows Father Hunter casually.  Says he only met him once, underline once, at an art show opening.”

            “But he was at Saint Phil’s the other night with Redlands.”  I did have some short term memory cells left.

            “Precisely.”  She let Kensington’s little unsolicited lie sink in.  “St. Philomena’s is supposedly in financial trouble.  Hunter is the pastor but the diocese is running the place direct.”

            “Monsignor Shuldik.”

            “He’s the real boss there.  And Kensington is giving the Monsignor all the cash he needs to keep that old church going.”

            Being the clever shamus I am, I replied, “Oh.”

            “It doesn’t make since.  An old property like that, pretty much out of living parishoners.  Why would Shuldik keep it open at all?  The Monsignor must have a leash around Kensington’s neck, high-heeled boots, and a big black whip to get all that money.”

            “God, Valerie, I don’t want to know that!  Spare me the details.  Until later anyway, when we’re alone.”  I like those kind of details when we’re alone, all the graphic details whispered in my ear.

            “You’re a sick puppy.”

            “You’ve told me that before.  What else did you turn up?” I asked.

            “Redlands is officially a rookie cop, right?”

            “Right.  And he’s not very popular with his peers.  Jasmine Moore hates his ass.  Vandy would just as soon shoot him as look at him.”

            “So why does Redlands work so close with Kensington?  Why would a big important DA associate himself with such an obviously whack-o incompetent?”

            “One man’s wack-o is…”

“… Another man’s errand boy.”

“The muscle in the conspiracy.”

“Bingo.  And meanwhile, Terri had been working at St. Philomena’s as a housekeeper for Father Hunter.”

            “Fuck me running.”  I’d never actually tried that one.

            “What exactly does that mean?”  She hit a squirrel.  Neither Val nor the flattened animal noticed — consciously.

            “It means, I find that interesting.”  My God, she’s not even looking where she’s driving!

            “So Douglas Hunter – troubled priest – kills Terri and…” Val was thinking out loud.

            “Father Hunter?  Douglas Vincent Hunter?  No way.”

            “Why not?  Catholic priests are above all that?  Haven’t you been reading the papers, lately?”  Val was starting to argue her case.

            “Oh, they’re capable of that and more.  They organized the Crusades, didn’t they?  Ran the Inquisition?  Oh, they’re capable of anything, as a class.  As an individual, Doug Hunter is incapable of almost everything.  Remember, I went to seminary with him.”

            “You would have made a hell of a priest.”  She was being sarcastic.

            The thing is, I would have made a hell of a priest.