Harlot's Moon (21 page)

She tried to smile but it didn't quite work. Not tonight. She just looked weary.

I put a hand on her shoulder and nodded good night.

W
hen I was finished working on the computer, I called Gilhooley.

Even before I heard him say hello, the receiver was filled with the ear-pounding noise of Cream playing
White Room
.

The only records Gilhooley owned dated from the late sixties and seventies. By now the surfaces of those records sounded as if they'd been worked over with steel wool. The hissing was louder than the music, but this didn't seem to bother Gilhooley any. Night after night, the ghosts of Janice and Jimi and Jim Morrison appeared in his book-littered living room.

"You think you could turn that down a little?" I said. Gilhooley can irritate me as few other people can. I have the same effect on him.

"I can hear you just fine," he said.

"Well, I can't hear you."

"Just a minute," he said

I heard him pad away. I heard the music turned down. I heard him pad back to the phone.

"That's better. Thank you."

"You're getting to be an old lady, Robert."

"Well, hopefully an old lady with her hearing still intact."

"I wish Cream would reunite," he said.

"I wish the Monkees would reunite."

"I know that's supposed to be a joke, Robert, but all that bullshit commercial music you listen to, I wouldn't be surprised if you did wish the Monkees would reunite."

To him, Steely Dan is bullshit commercial music.

I said, "I just wonder how your background checks are going."

"Well, I'm mostly picking up odds and ends."

"I'm listening."

"This Father Ryan?"

"Uh-huh."

"Very bad temper. Yells at people in the confessional."

"That one I'm aware of."

"You were kidding about the Monkees, weren't you?"

"I'm not even going to answer that stupid question."

"Wow. You had me worried." Then: "And your friend, Monsignor Gray?"

"What about him?"

"Last year at this time, he sold his brand-new Chrysler — that he'd just bought a few months earlier — to raise cash."

I thought of what Ellie Wilson had told me about Father Daly "having something" on Steve.

"Any idea why he needed to raise cash?" I said.

"Not that I've been able to find so far."

"Anything else?"

"The housekeeper Bernice?"

"Uh-huh."

"Both she and this Father Ryan wrote letters to the Archbishop about Father Daly."

"How the hell'd you find that out?"

"Got an uncle who works for the Archbishop."

"You know what the letters said?"

"No, but I assume they didn't have the desired effect."

"What desired effect?"

"Well, presumably, the only reason they'd write to the Archbishop was to get rid of Daly, right?"

"Right."

"And this was nearly a year ago now."

"Right."

"So," he said, "if they were trying to get rid of Father Daly, they obviously didn't succeed."

I wondered why neither Bernice nor Father Gray had told me about the letters they'd sent to the Archbishop.

"One more thing."

"All right," I said.

"This Ellie Wilson? Last four months she's been quietly liquidating a lot of her stock and other holdings."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. Got a good friend at one of the stock brokerages downtown."

"Does her husband know about this?"

"No idea. But the way my friend explained it, the Wilson woman's keeping all of this very quiet."

A quick scenario crossed my mind. Wife tired of bullying husband. Liquidates considerable holdings. Kills somebody and frames husband for it. After husband sentenced to prison, wife has plenty of money for travel and lavish lifestyle. Wife has freedom and money.

But then what did the previous murders have to do with this?

I didn't like flying blind.

"You're doing great work, Gilhooley. I appreciate it."

"You know, the more I think about it, the more you probably did like the Monkees."

"Very funny," I said. "Ha ha."

When I got home, Felice was asleep. I knew better than to wake her.

POLICE DEPARTMENT

Frank Earle Mason

Age: 43

Race: Caucasian

Occupation: Paint-store owner

Marital Status: M

Military Service: Army, 1973-78,

Honorable dis.

Mason:
This is about money and nothing else.

She's got herself a lawyer, doesn't she? People see you have a little cash stashed away and they want part of it. And as for me "coercing her" . . . that's total bullshit. This little gal has been around, believe me. This virginal bit is bullshit. For one thing, you'll notice that she doesn't say we ever actually screwed because we didn't. Now, I'll admit that maybe in fun a couple of times I said, "Marie, you got a couple kids and no husband at home, it sure would be terrible you lose your job down here." So she gave me a few blow jobs, what's all this sexual harassment horseshit anyway?

Frank Mason

T
uesday the blue Ford is there again, parked up on the hill behind the trailer park.

Sixteen-year-old Frank Mason stands at the bedroom window of his own trailer. Frank's a big kid, lots of shaggy yellow hair and a snotty grin for everybody he feels superior to — which means just about everybody he crosses path with — and now Frank's got his binoculars to his eyes and he's watching the guy hurrying down the path from the hill to the last row of trailers back near the creek.

Guy obviously thinks he's being real cool and sneaky.

Like nobody's aware of what he's doing.

Well, big Frank is aware of what he's doing, and in fact Frank's got plans that aren't going to make the guy happy at all.

"What the hell you doin', Frank?" his old man says from the hallway, echoes of the toilet flushing still filling Frank's ears.

No living thing can approach the toilet now for a good twenty minutes. The stench is just something terrible, Camels and turds, the old man's specialty,

"I'm lookin' through your binoculars."

"You give me those right now."

He puts his hand out, palm up. Like Frank is really going to hand over the binoculars.

Yeah, right.

"You know the trouble you got into watchin' Dottie with those damned things," the old man says.

Dottie being this babe who lives two trailers away. At night, Frank used to spy on her, look right in her window when she was undressing, till one night one of the kids playing night-tag around the trailers saw Frank . . . and told Dottie. She came over all red-faced and pissed, screaming she was a decent woman, and screaming she was going to call the cops, and screaming that Frank was nothing but a bully, the way he treated everybody in the trailer park but he wasn't gonna treat her that way, no sir he wasn't.

It was worth all the hassle, Dottie's tits being what they are, but the old man and the old lady really got on him about it, and in fact the old man hid the binoculars from him once and for all.

But last week, Frank found where the old man had put them — up in the closet with all the porno playing cards he got back in his Navy days — and he's had the binoculars ever since.

"You give me those."

Frank grins. "How about you take 'em from me?"

"You think I can't, you mouthy little prick?"

Frank throws the binoculars on the bed and then puts up his dukes, in a parody of the way they did back when boxers went at each other bare-knuckled.

He starts boxing around the old man, feinting left, feinting right, grinning, laughing, enjoying watching the old man come all undone, finally shooting a roundhouse right that makes the old man jerk scared out of the way.

"C'mon. Just two rounds." Frank is laughing his ass off. "Just two rounds. C'mon, Dad, put 'em up."

The old man is wheezing all of a sudden. Emphysema. That was the diagnosis six months ago. And it's getting worse all the time.

The old man falls against the frame of the doorway, panting now.

"Aw, shit," Frank says. "You aren't any fun anymore."

He takes the old man's right arm and gets under it and helps carry the old man into the living room and lay him down on the couch. The old man is coughing now, too. The coughing drives Frank nuts. All day, all night. Coughing. The old lady spends as much time at her sister's as she can. Can't take the old man's coughing.

"You stay there now, hear me?"

"You don't be lookin' at Dottie anymore."

"You leave Dottie to me," Frank grins, trying to give the old man the impression that he just may take another gander at Dottie's naked tits after all.

The old man lapses into cursing again.

Frank goes back to his window. And his binoculars.

L
ater that same day, Frank takes a shower and splashes on some Old Spice and tip-toes past the old man. He's snoring.

Frank goes outside and stands smoking a Lucky. Nice, warm summer day. Ninety-two degrees. Takes another deep drag, enjoying himself. The little kids playing in the sandy road between the rows of trailers watch him warily. To them, Frank is the scariest guy in the trailer park.

Frank stamps out his cigarette then turns around and starts walking between the trailers, back to where the creek runs. The guy in the blue Ford left an hour ago.

Frank reaches the door of the trailer and knocks. Jinny, that's the seven-year-old daughter, stands in the screen door, saying nothing, just watching Frank. A country-music singer cries out on the radio.

"Whyn't you come out and play, Jinny?" Frank says. "There's a lot of kids in the road out there."

"My mom don't want me to. Says I should stay inside when it's this hot." She's tugging on her pigtails idly.

Then he hears her mother coming. "Who is it, Jinny?"

"Frank says I should go outside and play, Mom."

Then she's there. Technically, she's a little too old, Sandy Thompson, thirty-six her last birthday. Too old for somebody Frank's age anyway, but she has a wonderfully fleshy body, one he's seen several times in a two-piece bikini when she lies out by the creek sunning herself. While her hubby Sam puts in his eight hours down at the paint factory.

Frank says, "Whyn't you let her go play?"

"It's too hot. And it's not your business anyway."

Frank smiles. "Is it the business of the guy in the blue Ford?"

She freezes. Just for a moment. She is wearing a pink polo shirt with a bra and a pair of Levi cut-offs. In addition to her sumptuous tits, she's got silken legs.

Frank stares at her steadily. "You sure you won't change your mind and let her go play? Seems like you and me ought to have a little talk."

Jinny looks up at her mom. "Can I, Mom? Frank says there's a lot of kids in the road."

Sandy sighs. "All right. But not for very long."

"Goody!
”
Jinny says, clapping her hands together. She bolts from the door.

The door slams after her. Sandy just stands on the other side of it, staring at him.

"You gonna tell Sam?"

"Who is he? The guy in the Ford?"

"My first husband. Jinny's father."

Frank grins. "Now isn't that cozy."

"He dumped me and I never got over him. Loved him ever since second grade, if you can picture that." She shakes her head. "Now he got dumped by the woman he left me for. He's real heartbroken. So I do what I can for him."

"I bet you do."

"But I feel shitty about it. Sam's a good man. He works hard. Don't miss a day of work even when he's sick as a dog. He knows I don't love him and he don't even care. He just says that someday I'll love him. And now I'm doin' this to him, sneakin' around like some whore, I mean."

"You going to invite me in?"

"You said your piece. You're going to tell Sam and there ain't much I can do about it." Tears glisten in her eyes.

"Oh, there's something you can do about it, all right."

Just now she's figured out why Frank is here. He never did plan to tell Sam.

T
hey're in her bedroom, lying on her bed. He can't take his eyes off her breasts beneath the polo shirt.

"You do for me, I do for you, that's the way these things work."