Harlot's Moon

by Edward Gorman

  "Oh, God, Tina, please, please give me another chance." Now to his headache and nausea, add panic. She really sounds serious. She really is dumping me. Forever.

  Oh my God.

  "Goodbye, Michael."

  "But I love you, Tina. Doesn't that mean anything?"

  "Yeah, you love me all right. You've hit me six different times in the past six months, Michael. You get these paranoid fantasies that I'm making it with somebody behind your back, and then you think you have the right to beat me up. No more, Michael. No more."

  Then she does the worst thing of all: hangs up quietly.

  If she'd yelled at him . . . or banged the phone down in his ear . . . that would mean she was mad, and that she'd likely get over it.

  But hanging up quietly . . . it has a finality about it that makes his arms break out in goose bumps.

  She's gone from him and he knows it . . . gone.

  Then there's a sudden and terrible pounding on the door. "Hey, man! I gotta piss!"

  And it's the one little thing that pushes Grady over the edge . . .

  Oh, he opens the door all right but as soon as he sees Todd 'John Travolta' McGrath . . . Grady goes berserk

  In blinding seconds, he smashes a right hook into McGrath's face, then delivers a cracking left to the stomach . . . and then he slams the lard-ass back against the wall and puts two more punches into his face.

  McGrath is crying and screaming like a girl, all hunched over in this pathetic posture that he thinks will stop him from being punched again.

  But Grady is done with McGrath and turns back to the bathroom and the black telephone resting on the white sink.

  He picks up the phone, jerks the cord taut, and then rips the cord from the wall.

  Then he takes the phone and hurls it into the shower. Somewhere out there, McGrath is still blubbering like a girl. But Grady doesn't give a shit. All he can think of is how Tina just broke up with him.

  All women are bitches. Every fucking one of them. Every fucking one.

  Then suddenly he's bending over the toilet bowl and barfing his guts up.

  Fucking bitches.

  Every fucking one of them.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the last century, we were a nation of boarding houses. Read any literature on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and you'll find that many of the people alleged to be involved lived in urban boarding houses. Such places offered an almost perfectly anonymous place to live. The cities were a maze of such places, and living in one of them under an assumed name, and in a minor disguise, meant that you were difficult for law-enforcement agencies to find.

  The equivalent these days is the cheap motel. Right after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the FBI turned up several good leads from people who lived in surrounding motels. As one reporter put it, "Such places are one step up from homelessness." These days when you see a run-down motel, it's a fair bet that it's mostly inhabited by drifters and people on the run. The saddest thing about all this is that more and more children are being raised in these circumstances, drifting across America with their parents.

  In the sunshine, the Palms looked no better than it had in the drab rainy morning of yesterday.

  The same woman with the dentures and the too-vivid red hair was behind the desk again.

  "You missed him this time, too," she said.

  "Missed him?"

  "Paul. The night man."

  "Ah."

  She hugged her brown cardigan sweater tighter to her birdy body. "Wish it'd warm up."

  "Do you have regulars who stay here?"

  "Renters, you mean."

  "Yes. I guess that's what you'd call them."

  "They pay a special rate. They come and go," she said. "Sometimes we'll have quite a few of them, sometimes not."

  "You had any over the past week?"

  "This about that priest?"

  "Yes."

  "They're really playing it up on TV."

  I smiled. "You noticed that, huh?"

  Ever since the O. J. Simpson trial, it had become respectable for even the most staid of broadcasters to hype murders. And what could be more incendiary than a priest found murdered in a cheap motel room?

  She looked at her log. "We've got one. Tommy Hubbard."

  "A renter?"

  "Yup."

  "How long's he been here?"

  "Since Sunday."

  The night before the murder.

  "He usually around here during the day?"

  "Usually. You want his room number?"

  "Please."

  She gave it to me and I said, "You think he's around?"

  "He usually is. You want me to call him?"

  "That's all right."

  A call like that might warn him off. He could be gone by the time I got there.

  "I appreciate the help," I said, and walked outside.

  The afternoon was heating up. Seventy-eight, according to the car radio on the way over. Looked as if spring was finally here. Maybe I'd run up and down the street in my boxer shorts or something.

  As I walked down to Tommy Hubbard's room, I thought about the incident in the restaurant a while ago. Now I could produce all sorts of bright and witty things to say when Bob Wilson grabbed me by the necktie. But now was a little late.

  I just kept thinking about Ellie Wilson's earring in Father Daly's room.

  I found the room and knocked. Behind the door, a country western singer was bleating the hell out of a sad twangy tune. I heard a distant toilet flush. I knocked again.

  I guess the name 'Tommy' had misled me into thinking that he'd be a relatively young man. He wasn't. He was white of hair, slouched of shoulder, palsied and liver-spotted of left hand. He wore a cheap jaunty red shirt and a pair of jeans low on his narrow hips. He was probably seventy. The tattoos on his knuckles were as faded as his dreams.

  "Guy can't even take a dump in peace anymore," he said. "You want something, mister?"

  "My name's Payne. I'm investigating the murder of the priest the other night."

  He smiled toothlessly. His clackers were no doubt still in a glass somewhere behind him. "I always figured those priests were grabbin' themselves a little pussy on the side. I sure as hell would."

  "Were you here the night of the murder?"

  "Oh no," he said.

  "’Oh no,’ what?"

  "No way I'm gettin' involved in this. I don't want no cops swarmin' down on me."

  "Were you here the night of the murder?"

  "What if I was?"

  "You might have seen something, heard something."

  "I heard what I heard and I seen what I seen." He fixed me with a pirate's eye and said, "You thinkin' of givin' me money?"

  "I don't believe in that. You can never trust information you had to pay for. People will say anything for money."

  He cackled. "I sure as hell will, I'll tell you that. You want me to tell you I seen a Martian, mister, you pay me enough money and I'll tell you I seen two Martians."

  "I'm with a law firm, by the way. Not with the police. Even if I wanted to check you out, see if you had a record or anything, I'd have a tough time doing that."

  "I didn't say I had no record."

  "Right. I only meant if you had a record."

  "It might be different if there was some money involved."

  "Sorry. Can't help you."

  I reached inside my suit coat, dug out a business card and handed it over to hint.

  "Bet these cost you a pretty penny," he said, looking the card over.

  "Not really. Just a little black type on a little white card."

  "Funny that you'd spend money for a card but not pay for information."

  "No, it isn't. The card is a legitimate business expense. Bribe money doesn't fall into that category"

  "I didn't see jackshit the other night. Or any other night."

  "All right," I said. "Sorry I bothered you."

  I turned and started back down the wal
k to my car. From behind me, he said, "I'll tell you what. I'll think it over."

  I just kept walking. Silently.

  "Big important man," he said, getting worked up again. "Can't even spare a couple fucking bucks for a poor little fella like me. Big important man."

  Then his door slammed like a gunshot.

  "Tommy any help to you?" the desk woman said.

  "Not much, I'm afraid."

  "Kind've a strange little guy." She laughed. "But then you'd have to be to stay in a dump like this."

  "I'll tell the owner you said that."

  She laughed again. "Hell, son, I am the owner."

  This time I laughed with her.

  "If Tommy would happen to come and talk to you about the other night, would you give me a call?"

  I handed out my second business card in five minutes.

  "Sure," she said. "Be happy to." Then: "But he isn't much of a talker. Not unless he's had some beer."

  "Does he drink very often?"

  "Every chance he gets. I always see him in the dumpsters back there looking for cans and bottles to take back for money."

  I pulled out my wallet and laid a snappy new twenty on the counter.

  "That enough to get him drunk?" I said.

  "That's enough to get both of us drunk."

  "Since you're the owner, I take it you live here."

  "Got my own room, if that's what you mean. The mister and I used to live in a nice house out on Ellis Boulevard. But after he died, I just moved in here."

  "Well, why don't you treat yourself to some ice cold beer on me? And then see if Tommy has anything to tell you."

  "Be happy to."

  The twenty quickly disappeared.

  "Talk to you later," I said, and went back out into the day that was fuming with furious green spring. That's the real time machine, the way a spring day can make you feel twenty years younger. You're almost brand-new again.

  Chapter Twelve

  Bernice answered the door. She wore a different Lycra jogging suit today, but the same headband that complemented the pink hue of her suit.

  "I'm looking for Jenny."

  Bernice smiled. "Nuts. I was hoping you were looking for me." Then, "Some of the people are still giving us static about Jenny."

  "Static?"

  She shrugged. "She's from the halfway house nobody wanted in this neighborhood. Some of the older parish ladies are miffed at the idea of somebody like Jenny living here in the rectory. I suppose if I liked her a little better, I'd feel sorry for her."

  Bernice leaned forward. I was her confidant now. "But between us, I worry about Jenny, too."

  "Oh?"

  "A drug addict like that . . . she's liable to steal something."

  A drug addict? I thought. Jenny grew more mysterious by the minute.

  But I didn't say anything to Bernice.

  "I guess I thought priests took the vow of poverty," I said, feeling inexplicably defensive about Jenny. "I wouldn't think they'd have that much to steal."

  "Well, they have families, don't they? And families send them stuff, isn't that right?"

  "I guess that's a good point."

  "So, sure they have stuff worth stealing." Then: "You wait here, Mr. Payne. I'll go get her for you."

  "I'd appreciate that."

  Then she looked at me and said, "Oh, dear Lord, just listen to what I've turned into."

  "Ma'am?"

  "What I said about Jenny. And here I work in a rectory, too." She shook her head. "You know what my problem is?"

  "No, I guess I don't."

  "I'm just jealous of the attention the Fathers give her. And why wouldn't they? She's an attractive young woman and I'm like an old shoe to them. Sorry I sounded off. She's actually a very decent young gal."

  After Bernice Clancy returned and escorted me to the kitchen, I watched as Jenny bent over the stove and peeked in at something in the oven.

  "Be with you in a sec," she said.

  She wore stonewashed jeans that hugged her slender body lovingly. Her starchy blue man's button-down shirt gave her the same crisp air as her small no-nonsense pony tail.

  "Like a cup of coffee?" she said.

  "That sounds good, as a matter of fact."

  She nodded to a large window where two tall wooden stools sat. "I like to sit there and watch the bunnies and the raccoons. They come down from the park about this time of day."

  She got us coffee and we sat and watched the bunnies and raccoons. Mid-point in the floorshow, a tiny but determined possum also showed up, figuring out a way to walk wide of the other guests, and snatch some bread for itself.

  "I put out about six or seven slices a day," she said. "They love it." She smiled. "They're like my little kids."

  Her gentle voice contrasted with the pinched, hard look of her face.

  She seemed to sense what I was seeing. "I didn't sleep so good last night."

  "I didn't think sleep disorders started until you were about my age."

  "Till you're about your age or a junkie," she said. Her lips closed tight around the word. "The halfway house, every night people are up and walking around like zombies. I should know — I was one of them." She nodded to me. "I heard Bernice talking to you, again. I was a bad girl. When I heard somebody at the door, I snuck up to the front of the house. Bernice is always talking about me to somebody."

  I laughed. "You didn't eavesdrop long enough. Bernice took back everything she said and then told me you were a nice young woman."

  "Honest to God?"

  "Honest to God."

  "Well, that's sure kind of her."

  "I didn't get a chance to ask you last time. How'd you end up here? Did the priests call the halfway house?"

  "I found them. I really wanted out of the halfway house, so I started looking around for some kind of job my parole counselor would approve of. What could be a better gig than a rectory, right? Father Ryan was the one who convinced the Monsignor to actually hire me. Anyway, I have a nice little room in the basement. Bernice doesn't actually live on the premises — she's got a husband and everything — so she thinks I have these special powers because I spend more time with the priests. I tried to tell her once that they depend on us both but she wouldn't listen to me."

  She stared at one of the waddling, older raccoons who was watching a golden butterfly flutter past. "I feel kind of sorry for her. Honest. I mean, someday I'm probably going to be old and I don't want some kid like me coming in and taking over. It was the same way in the halfway house. The older junkies'd make friends with the counselors and everything and then they'd sort of resent it when new residents came in and hogged all the attention. You know what I'm saying?"

  I nodded. "Was Father Daly your favorite of the priests? Since he got you in here and all?"

  She'd still been staring out the window but now she turned back to me. "Somebody told you, huh?"

  "Told me?"

  "About me and Father Daly."

  "No. I was watching your face when you talked about him."

  "My counselor, one thing he warned me about was getting too dependent on people, especially people I think I'm in love with. I get very possessive."

  "I'm like that too."

  "Really? But you used to be an FBI guy."

  "What does that have to do with being possessive?"

  "Well, FBI guys, so starched and everything, you know. So are you really like that — possessive?"

  I smiled. "Former FBI guy. Not so starched and everything now. And yes, I really am like that."

  "Cool," she said. "Then you know what I'm talking about. I was here maybe a week and I really developed this thing for Father Daly. I couldn't help it. He was a very good-looking guy and he really knew how to handle himself around women. He'd put himself out there a little bit and then pull himself back. That really gets to me."

  "You said he ‘put himself out there.’ You mean he'd flirt with you?"

  "Oh, no. It wasn't like that at all. I just meant that he'
d get in these real intense conversations with you — a lot of them were about religion — and you'd think, "Hey, I'm really getting tight with this guy" and then all of a sudden he'd be really distant. And you'd feel like it was your fault or something, like you'd done or said something to offend him. You know? Off-balance, I guess you'd say. That was how I felt around him most of the time."

  "You said you were in love with him."

  "Yeah, pretty much."

  "You ever tell him that?"

  Her cheeks tinted red. "A few times, I guess."

  "What did he say?"

  "Do I really have to go into this?"

  "Maybe not with me, Jenny. But the police will eventually get around to asking you the same questions."

  She went back to watching the animals in the hedge-boxed back yard. The raccoons had gone over to the snake-pile of garden hose and were sniffing around that.

  "He treated me like a little kid," she said.

  "So you never had a physical affair with him?"

  "One night I thought we might. I mean, he took hold of my shoulders and really looked in my eyes and I got all excited but then he started shaking me."

  "Shaking you?"

  "He said that I had to quit following him around all the time."

  "Did you follow him around all the time?"

  "Yeah. Pretty much."

  "You have any idea who might have murdered him?" I said.

  "I've been thinking about it."

  "And come to any conclusions?"

  "Not really. He saw a lot of women in his counseling gig. Some of them developed a real thing for him."

  "Anyone in particular?"

  She shrugged. "I always noticed the way Ellie Wilson got kind of fluttery around him. You know what I'm saying? Like she couldn't stop touching him. Just little touches, but sometimes they mean a lot, right?"

  "Right."

  "But I saw that in a lot of them. How they'd get real weird around him like high-school girls or something. I was the same way. I'd get real fluttery and possessive." She shrugged. "I'm kind of possessive myself." Apparently she'd forgotten she'd already said that.

  "Yeah?" Then: "How did he respond to all this?"

  "Oh, you could see he enjoyed it sometimes. Guess it depended on who was being fluttery."