ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) (6 page)

_____

This time when the sinner marched up to the hostess station, Roxy greeted him with a smile. He didn’t smile back. Why give her another opportunity to reject him? “I’d like the booth down there,” he said, pointing with his finger. “The one you gave me last time, beside the restroom.”

Her smile faded to a sulky pout. “No problem, sir.”

He followed her down the aisle, scanning the crowded restaurant. His groin ached with a fierce and desperate longing, but he saw no sign of Patti. What if she wasn’t here? God had presented him with another sinner. Completing the mission was his responsibility.

He slid into the booth facing the service bar and saw a waitress come out of the kitchen. Was it Patti? No. The woman was taller than Patti. With unseeing eyes, he stared at the menu, his mind racing with dire possibilities. What if Patti was sick? What if she’d found a better paying job and quit?

This morning he’d made himself do three dozen pushups, resisting the impulse to watch the news which was sure to be full of stories about Dawn. To no avail. Unable to resist, he had gone out and located Patti’s apartment, an ugly cement-block structure with no off-street parking. He left his car three blocks away and walked to her apartment, acting as if he knew exactly where he was going, which he did, climbing the stairs to the second floor, then to the third. He noted the time and returned to his car, avoiding eye contact with people along the way. The return trip had taken five minutes. If necessary, he could probably do it in two at a dead run.

He set aside the menu and rubbed his eyes. The shameful urge had returned, invading his mind every waking moment, rendering him incapable of the simplest task. If Patti wasn’t here, how could he prepare for her Absolution? If only God would send him a sign . . .

His heart surged as Patti hustled down the aisle, balancing two bottles of Abita beer on a tray. She stopped at the booth opposite his, took the couple’s order and turned to face him. Her mouth sagged open when she saw his Roman collar and short-sleeved black shirt.

Sweat dampened his armpits. “Hi Patti, how are you today?”

“
I didn’t know you were a priest.” She seemed flustered, staring at him, wide-eyed, her face flushed. “Last time you were here you didn’t . . .”

He smiled to ease her discomfort. “Sometimes I wear civvies.”

“
Gee, I would never have guessed you were a priest.” She giggled, covering her mouth to hide her buck teeth. “I mean, you look so young.”

She seemed disappointed, which rather pleased him. If he was a priest, she couldn’t fantasize about seducing him. Well, she could, but she would feel guilty about it.

“
I came in so we could talk, Patti. About your situation.”

After a nervous glance around the crowded restaurant, she said, “Uhh, that’s nice, but we’re real busy on Saturdays.”

“
Okay, tell you what, let’s talk after you get off work. Are you working late tonight?”

“
Till midnight. What did you want to talk about, Father?”

Your sinful ways, Patti. I want you to tell me about all those men you tempted
.

“
Your financial situation. You need money for nursing school and my dad—” The word stuck in his throat. Never in his life had he called that monster “dad.” He began again. “I know some businessmen, Patti, and I think I can help you find a better job.”

“
Well . . .” She shifted her feet and tucked her bottom lip under her snow-plow front teeth.

“
Are you working late tomorrow?” His groin throbbed with a pounding erection.
Please don’t be working late tomorrow
.

“
Uh, not tomorrow. I’m off at seven on Sundays.”

“
Perfect. Let’s meet tomorrow night. Eight-thirty, say?”

“
But I don’t have a car and the buses—”

“
No problem. I make house calls.”

“
Oh. Okay, Father . . . ?” She looked at him expectantly.

Elation surged through his body, a swift infusion of heat that stiffened his erection. He smiled, gazing at her with wide-eyed innocence.

“
My friends call me Father John.”

She recited her address and added apologetically, “I hope you don’t mind the stairs, Father John. I live on the third floor.”

_____

To the tune of Sinead O’Connor’s plaintive voice, Frank finished his corned beef and cabbage dinner. Irish comfort food, his mother called it. He ate at the Hibernia Diner at least once a week, sitting alone in a window booth with shamrock-green plastic seats.

With no woman to confide in, he had to settle for corned beef, not bad, but not as good as his mother’s. Colleen Sullivan Renzi, dead five years now, and he still missed her. She had always been his emotional anchor, never judging or telling him what to do, the perfect sounding board.

Sinead finished singing and Irish fiddle music erupted from the speakers as a young guy with a ponytail fed quarters into a jukebox at the far end of the room. The diner was built like a railroad car, the entry door bisecting a row of booths overlooking the parking lot, all but two—his and Ponytail’s—empty now that the dinner rush was over. Along the counter to his left, two older men in plaid shirts were gabbing over coffee and pecan pie.

He drank some Harp ale and took out his notepad. Earlier he had phoned the third victim’s parents to obtain the name of her parish priest. When he identified himself, Lynette Beauregard’s mother asked if he’d found her daughter’s killer. When he said he hadn’t, her initial euphoria morphed into tears. After giving him the priest’s name, Father Sean Daily, she had begged him to find the killer, a heartbroken woman, grieving for a daughter who’d been murdered one week shy of her twenty-first birthday.

His daughter was only three years older, living alone in a strange city. What would he do if Maureen were murdered? His throat constricted. For twenty years they’d been as close as a father and daughter could be, but after Evelyn filed for divorce and dropped the adultery bombshell, a chasm deeper than the Grand Canyon had opened between them.

He couldn’t begin to count the times he’d heard grief-stricken parents tell him they never got the chance to tell their kids they loved them: gunshot victims, car crashes, drug overdoses, it didn’t matter. Every parent wanted to say a last goodbye to the kid they loved more than anything in the world.

On impulse, he took out his cellphone, punched in Maureen’s number and waited, hoping he wouldn’t get her machine. He didn’t want to leave a message. The last time he did—a month ago—she hadn’t called back.

His pulse quickened when she answered. “Hey Mo, how you doing?” he said, picturing her long chestnut-brown hair and her emerald-green eyes.

“
Oh hi, Dad. I’m okay, how are you?” she said, her tone distant.

“
Ah, the usual. You know, busy, but I was thinking about you and decided to call you on the spur of the moment,” he finished lamely. Why was he apologizing for calling her?

“
Mmm, well, I’m pretty busy too.” The line crackled with silence.

He drained the last of his Harp ale. “I miss you, Mo, haven’t seen you since Christmas. How about coming down for a weekend? I’ll pay your airfare.” He put his heart and soul into it, hoping she’d agree.

More silence. He realized someone was standing beside his booth, his waitress, a young woman with a curvy figure and long brown hair.

“
How about another Harp?” she said, chewing gum, gazing at him, her eyes bright with interest. She angled her jaw, snapped the gum.

He shook his head and motioned for the check.

“
I can’t, Dad. I don’t get much time off, and when I do, I go to the riding rink.”

He scratched his jaw, wanted to say:
You’d rather spend time with horses than with your father
. But he didn’t. Hell, he wasn’t going to beg.

“
How about dessert?” said Gum Girl, sending a clear invitation with her flirty eyes.
Pop!
went the gum. He almost laughed. He was horny as hell, but a gum chewer? She couldn’t be over twenty-five, probably listened to Garth Brooks, didn’t know Billie Holliday from Billy the Kid. If they wound up in bed, what would they talk about afterwards?

“
Dad? Listen, I have to go get my laundry out of the dryer.”

“
Mo, hold on a second.” He covered the phone with his hand and said to the waitress, “No dessert, thanks, just the check.” A headache was building behind his eyes. He got back on the phone. “Sorry, Mo, I’m in a restaurant, got interrupted.”

“
Have you talked to Mom lately?”

Mom. The bone of contention. “Yeah, she called me last night.”

In fact, Evelyn had jolted him awake at two A.M. It had taken him twenty minutes to calm her fears and convince her some rapist wasn’t about to climb in a window and attack her.

“
We’ve got Key Lime pie,” said Gum Girl, putting her hand on her hip, smiling at him. “It’s the best in town. Our pastry chef makes it.”

“
Maybe you could call
her
sometimes, Dad.”

“
Mo, hold on, okay?” His gut roiled with acid. He counted to five and said to the waitress, “I don’t want dessert. I don’t want Key Lime pie. What I want is the check, got that?”

“
Whatever,” said Gum Girl, her eyes suddenly frosty. She slapped his check on the table, flounced down the aisle to the booth by the jukebox and began talking to Ponytail.

“
Sorry, Mo. The waitress wanted to sell me some pie and—”

“
Dad, if I don’t go get my laundry they’ll dump it on the floor. I really have to go. But thanks for calling.”

Meaning:
Go fuck yourself
.

“
Right,” he said, “talk to you later.”

He punched off, hurt and disappointed and, he had to admit, angry. Maureen had no right to blame him for the divorce. She had no idea what the problems were. Evelyn had wrapped it in a neat package: adultery. As if that explained everything.

He drove home to his apartment, his heart a lump of lead in his chest. But he couldn’t stay angry at Maureen. She was the innocent bystander. He dropped his keys on the coffee table and wandered to the bookcases on the wall opposite the sofa. Bracketed by freestanding stereo speakers, they held his books and his ridiculously large CD collection. Before moving to New Orleans, he’d converted his vinyl to CDs but kept the record jackets. Jammed into the bottom shelves of two bookcases, they reflected his music preferences: jazz instrumentals, except for Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, a few oldies by Frank Sinatra and several classical recordings.

Other shelves held paperback thrillers, books on jazz, biographies of jazz players, and hardcover tomes on criminal psychology, but his most cherished possessions—photographs—stood on top of the shelves: Maureen at ten, atop a chestnut mare, beaming with joy at her first riding lesson; another six years later when she won the riding competition for her age group. His favorite: Maureen with her arm around him at her college graduation, both of them beaming, thrilled that she’d been accepted to John’s Hopkins med school. Taken one month before Evelyn filed for divorce.

His computer and file cabinets were in the spare room upstairs, along with an extra bed in case Maureen came to visit. Maybe someday they would regain the closeness they’d shared for twenty years. But judging from tonight’s conversation, it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. That left work.

He got on the phone and called Kenyon Miller.

“
Hey Frank, what’s up? No date on a Saturday night?”

“
Nah, I’m saving myself for the right woman.” After Miller’s guffaw died away, he said, “Do you know a Catholic priest named Sean Daily?”

“
I know the name, not much else. Why?”

“
He was Lynette Beauregard’s parish priest and I want to talk to him. He’s at St. Elizabeth’s near South Carrolton.”

“
I think Charlie Malone goes to St. Elizabeth’s. He’s a rookie, just joined NOPD last year. I’ll dig up his number if you want.”

“
That’d be great. Did you get a sketch artist to work with Kitty?”

“
Yeah, Monica said she could do it Monday afternoon at one. I didn’t tell her it’s related to the serial killer case.”

Frank fingered the jagged scar on his chin. On his sixth birthday the kid next door had dared him to ride his new bike down a steep hill no-hands, a thrilling trip that ended when the bike hit the curb and pitched him headfirst into a stone wall. The doctor that sewed up his chin had told him he was lucky he didn’t break his jaw. Living dangerously, then and now. They were skating on thin ice, not telling Norris about Kitty.

“
You think Rona will keep her mouth shut?” he asked.

“
She’s got a rep, you know, super-intense, won’t take no for an answer, but as far as I know she’s a straight shooter.”

“
I hope so,” he said. “If she burns us, we’re in trouble.”

CHAPTER 5

Sunday night at eight-thirty, carrying his tools in a satchel, the sinner walked three blocks to Patti’s apartment, anticipating his little Iowa farm girl’s eager welcome, and her confession, a long litany of sexual sins. Somewhere off in the distance a dog barked,
yap-yap-yap,
agitating the steamy night air. A pale yellow moon shone down on her ugly cement-block building, and lights glowed behind a curtain in the first floor apartment.