Rourke opened the door of the clubhouse to the smack of a fist hitting leather and the squeak of rubber-soled shoes on the old puncheon floor. The priest steadied a punching bag that was almost as big as the scrawny boy facing it. The boy's arms were skinny as broom handles and the big padded leather gloves made his hands look too heavy to hold up.
“You're pulling back on your punches soon as they land,” Father Ghilotti was saying. “Push your fist all the way through the bag and do it like you mean it.”
The boy cocked back his gloved hand and was about to let fly when he heard Rourke's footstep and whirled.
“Cheese it, it's the cops,” Father Ghilotti said.
The boy's eyes widened and he backed up until he knocked into the punching bag. “I didn't do nothin',” he cried. “Honest, I didn't.”
Both men laughed, and the boy jumped in the air as if he'd been goosed with a hot poker.
“Now there speaks a guilty conscience if ever there was one,” the priest said. He touched the boy lightly on the shoulder. “The policeman is here to see me, Bobby Lee, so why don't we call it quits for today.”
The boy nodded, swallowing hard. He gave Rourke a wide berth and then took off for the door, running.
“He was nabbed not too long ago trying to lift a ham at the Poydras Market,” the priest said. “The butcher let him off with a warning, but with a threat to bring in the law next time he caught the boy stealing. They've five kids in that family and their daddy's gone.” He held out his hand to Rourke and then realized there was a boxing glove at the end of it. “Sorry,” he said, smiling a little, shrugging. “I have this theory that it helps boys like Bobby Lee, boys who are angry at the world and hurting inside, to hit on something that won't hit back and can't be hurt in turn.”
He looked Rourke over, as if reassessing his first impression. Or confirming it. “You look like you might do a bit of boxing yourself,” he said.
“I do some sparring at the Athletic Club as many times a week as the job'll let me.”
Father Frank Ghilotti made an incongruous picture himself, with the sleeves of his cassock rolled up to reveal the fat, padded gloves, and yet once again Rourke was struck by a sense of the man's inner toughness. Having a couple of homicide detectives appear at his rectory so early this morning with the news of Father Pat's death might have put the pastor off his stride, but he seemed to have regained his balance.
“Father Pat was hurt,” Rourke said, trying to throw him off again. “He was crucified.”
Genuine anguish, or so it seemed, filled the priest's face. “Yes, I know. Archbishop Hannity telephoned a little after you all left this morning and gave us the details, but to be honest I had a hard time believing what I was hearing. How could such a thing have been done to him? And why?”
“Most killings are done out of greed or fear or passion,” Rourke said. “Likely the why will end up being one of those.”
He looked around the clubhouse, a temple to emerging manhood with its canvas sparring ring and barbells. The place smelled like a gymnasium—sweat and damp towels. “Did Father Pat help you teach the boys how not to pull their punches?”
In the silence that followed his question, Rourke could hear water dripping somewhere, and the bounce of a basketball on the pavement outside.
“Was he a chicken hawk?” Father Ghilotti finally said. “Is that what this is all about?”
Rourke's gaze came back to him, but he saw on the priest's face only pain and a kind of wary distaste. It would be a clever, disingenuous question to pose, though, if you were the killer and you'd known all along that Father Pat was a woman.
“Do you have reason to think he was?” Rourke said.
The pastor took his time answering, as if he were picking his words out of a minefield. “Father Pat was a well-loved priest, very popular, and because he was human that popularity gave him a certain pride and made him ambitious. I would have sworn, though, that he was chaste.”
“And yet now you're wondering.”
He lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. “It's just that when your archbishop does the kind of soft-shoe shuffle that I got from His Grace this morning, it's usually because one of your own has been caught diddling little boys. Or girls.”
“What kind of soft-shoe shuffle?”
“The don't-tell-anybody-anything-and-don't-ask-any-questions kind.”
“Yet here you are, telling me stuff and asking questions.”
Behind the thick lenses, the priest's eyes blinked once, twice. “Baseball ruled spitballs illegal back in '08. That doesn't mean they still don't pitch them.”
They shared a smile, and Rourke found himself liking the other man. He seemed an odd, yet, genuine, mixture of spiritual devotion and that street toughness. Rourke thought it was possible that under extraordinary circumstances Father Frank Ghilotti could kill, but it was hard to imagine him doing it any other way but cleanly.
“You said Father Pat was ambitious,” Rourke said. “Did his ambitions clash with yours?”
Something that seemed to be amusement flickered across the priest's face. “I want to be archbishop myself someday. Father Pat wanted to save the world.”
“And what were some of the ways he went about trying to do that? Saving the world.”
The priest tapped the punching bag with the nose of his gloved fist, hard enough to make it swing with a squeak. “In some ways, being a priest isn't a whole lot different from being a cop. To get ahead you need an angel, and a knowledge of where the bodies are buried. So how about a trade? A body for a body.”
“You go first,” Rourke said.
A half smile pulled at the other man's mouth. “A few months ago, Father Pat had this thing going. It was a kind of club. He called it the Catholic Ladies Social, but its purpose was to help wives work through the troubles in their marriages. I'm not sure what all went on in those meetings, but some of the husbands complained to the archbishop, and that was the end of Father Pat's experiment with female self-determination.”
“Only you don't think he ended it.”
“On the contrary, Detective. If I had thought he was disobeying the archbishop, it would have been my responsibility to do something about it.”
Rourke felt a little tug in his guts that was a hunch taking root. There was something going on here. It was too soon to tell just what yet, but there was something…something…
“Now it's your turn,” the pastor said.
“Okay. We don't know what Father Pat was doing in that macaroni factory last night, but we think he may have accidentally stumbled onto something he shouldn't have. We're liking a bottom-of-the-rung hood by the name of Tony Benato, either for doing the killing himself or for having ordered it done.”
Rourke saw nothing on the priest's face, no telltale flicker in the eyes behind their thick lenses, no tightening of the muscle along the jaw. Which meant either that Frank Ghilotti's father had trained him well, or that he had no idea who had been using his confessional for a private meeting with Tony the Rat.
Rourke had lied to the pastor, anyway, for he didn't really like the loan shark for the killing. It was out of Tony Benato's league, or should have been. It seemed, Rourke thought, as though he was being given puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly, but the picture he got made no sense at all.
As Rourke was leaving the clubhouse, he paused at the door and looked back. The priest was laying into the leather bag now with a blizzard of punches, his shoulders bobbing and weaving, his feet dancing.
Outside, Father Delaney was deadheading the tea roses that climbed the trellises framing the rectory's kitchen stoop. “Mornin', Father,” Rourke said, passing by him on the path.
The old priest looked up and smiled at Rourke from beneath the frayed brim of a floppy straw hat. “I know you,” he said. “You're Father Paul's brother. The policeman. And you've come for the book.”
“Yes, I've got it now, Father. Thank you.”
The old priest dropped the corpse o
f a brown, withered blossom into a basket between his splayed feet. “I hope there won't be more trouble.”
The tea roses were the pink of a girl's blush, and Rourke got a sudden rush of their scent as he came closer. “What sort of trouble do you mean, Father?” he asked.
“More trouble between Father Frank and Father Pat—they were arguing. Shouting. Only Father Pat's dead now, so I suppose…” The old priest's head began to tremble and his gaze jittered away. “I get so confused anymore.”
“Did you hear what they were saying?” Rourke pressed, although he kept his voice gentle and easy. “When they were arguing?”
“Devil's bargains—that's what he said. He wouldn't make any more devil's bargains.”
“Who said that? Father Pat?”
“We thought he was a saint and he was afraid he might be, but all of us were wrong. There wasn't any miracle. It was all in his head.”
“Father Pat thought he was a saint?”
The old priest's head shook harder and his mouth opened as he tried to grasp on to the sliding memory. “I don't know…I get so confused anymore.”
He reached for another dead rose and jammed his finger down hard on a thorn. He exclaimed and thrust the finger in his mouth, sucking on the wound. He looked at Rourke, blinking hard, and Rourke could see the vagueness settling over his mind like a fog. “My mother grows roses,” he said. “American Beauties as big as soup bowls. She's coming to my ordination tomorrow. She wasn't happy when I chose to become a priest, but she's reconciled now…I'm sorry, but have we met before?”
“I'm Father Paul's brother.” A pair of gloves lay next to the basket of dead blossoms, and Rourke stooped to pick them up. “Here, let's put these on,” he said, “so you don't get pricked again.”
A Solano Ice Company wagon had pulled up to the curb in front of the rectory, and a man in green overalls was wrestling a block of ice onto the tailgate with a giant pair of hooked tongs. Across from the church, a handful of reporters had gathered on the green of Coliseum Square.
Rourke walked to his car. The old priest had said something, and now it was dancing on the edge of Rourke's consciousness, a little inkling that was about to become a full-blown thought, when one of the reporters called out, “Hey, Mr. Rourke. I got a question for you.”
And the thought was gone.
The reporter jogged across the street, taking awkward, hitching strides. He dodged the ice man, who was setting his feet, getting ready to swing the block of ice up onto his shoulder. “Hey, Mr. Rourke. Garrison Hughes of The Movies here. I got a question for you. Remy Lelourie and Alfredo Ramon are supposed to have some hot love scenes in this latest flick of theirs. How do you feel about that?”
Rourke's answer was to jab his middle finger into the air.
Garrison Hughes of The Movies here showed his yellow corn teeth. “You do know he slashed his wrists when she jilted him after their first picture. The studio hushed it up, but next time you get a chance take a look at the scars.”
Are you scared yet, Remy?
Rourke turned and went after the guy. The letter Remy had gotten, the threat implicit in it, had been in the back of his mind all morning long, like a nerve-jangling whine. He wasn't going to hurt the reporter, only ask the man some questions of his own, but he wanted to hurt somebody, and that desire must have showed on his face, because Garrison Hughes whirled to run and smacked hard into the ice man.
The reporter took a flailing step backward, tripped on the curb, and landed on his butt in the gutter. The ice man, off balance under his load, staggered backward as well, knocking into the tailgate of his wagon and sending another block of ice sliding off the end of it. The ice block fell with a vibrating thud onto the reporter's sprawled left leg, and Rourke heard a crack, like a hickory stick breaking.
“God almighty,” the ice man said. “His leg just got busted.”
The reporter, his leg pinned under the block of ice, was trying to push himself up onto his elbows.
“Lie still,” Rourke said.
“My leg's busted,” the reporter said. Rourke was impressed that the guy wasn't screaming.
“His leg is really busted,” the ice man said.
“Lie still,” Rourke said. With the ice man's help, he was able to lift the block of ice off the reporter's leg and shove it aside. He was relieved to see no blood or jagged bones. Because, Jesus, after the way it had cracked…“I'm going to call an ambulance.”
“Naw, no need to bother with that. I got another one in the trunk of my car.”
“Huh?” the ice man said, then, “Whoa,” when the reporter reached up his pants, gripped himself by the ankle, and pulled off the splintered bottom half of his leg.
“I lost the original in the Argonne,” he said. “Now I got myself a wooden one and a spare.”
Rourke helped Garrison Hughes hop to his battered Model T and strap on his spare wooden leg.
“Is there a list somewhere,” Rourke asked him, “of all the movies ever made and who starred in them?”
Hughes thought about it a minute, then shook his head. “Naw, I don't think so. Why? What are you on to?”
“Nothing you're ever going to know,” Rourke said. “And you're going to quit following me around with that fuckin' camera, or I'll bust your balls next time, instead of your leg.”
Rourke didn't laugh until he got back to his own car and then he thought about the wooden leg and the way it had cracked when the ice fell on it, and he laughed so hard his ribs hurt and he had to lay his head on the steering wheel.
It felt good though, the laughter, so that he was still smiling when he punched on the ignition and pulled away from the curb. He drove a little too fast down Race Street and turned uptown at the corner of Coliseum. He needed to hook back up with Fio at the hospital, but first he wanted to have a talk with Floriane de Lassus Layton.
Well-off, old family, so she'd have connections and all the social graces. Chairwoman of Holy Rosary's Catholic Charities, which put her in the Church's inner circle. She'd know of some scandals, maybe know where some bodies were buried. Rourke wasn't acquainted with her personally, only by name, but he remembered the impression he'd gotten of her daughter last summer, when he'd interviewed the girl for the Titus Dupre murder case. What was her name? Darla…No, Della. An astute girl, with one of those effervescent personalities that had a little tartness underneath it. Like lemonade. Pretty in a wholesome way, with big hazel eyes, but trying too hard to grow up fast. A handful then, maybe, for her mother.
“Flo,” he said aloud. Getting a feel for her.
Chapter Ten
She had already heard about the murder. News, especially news of the gory or scandalous sort, could spread through New Orleans faster than the yellow fever had done in the old days.
She had been about to host a mah-jong party when the first telephone call came, and so she was wearing a red dragon robe and elaborately embroidered Chinese slippers when she met Rourke in her parlor. She had been crying.
The Laytons lived in a handsome Greek Revival raised villa on Prytania Street. Albert Payne Layton was a stockbroker and he had recently made a killing in the market, but the house had the look and smell of old money. De Lassus family money, from sugar refineries going back to before the Civil War.
Floriane de Lassus Layton was in her late thirties, perhaps only seven or eight years older than Rourke, and her face while not beautiful was smooth and round and full of warmth. She had deep mahogany red hair, magnolia-white skin, and an air of eggshell delicacy that couldn't be cultivated or affected. You had to be born to it.
Rourke thought her eyes had a look of shame in them, though, dark as a bruise, that you didn't often see in women of her kind with their heirloom homes and bell jar lives.
“Mrs. Layton,” Rourke began, after she'd offered him coffee and they'd settled across from each other in matching green and cream silk chairs, “I wonder if you could tell me what time Father Pat left y'all last night, and if he told you where he was g
oing afterward?”
She stared at him for a moment, as if uncomprehending, then she folded her arms over her belly and bent over, holding herself as if she'd just been gutted. “Oh, God. It's really true, then. I couldn't bear to believe…”
She held herself tighter, rocking back and forth, and a good while passed before she straightened and wiped the wetness off her cheeks with the back of her hands. “I am so sorry—where are my manners? And what must you think of me, to be indulgin' in such a shameful display of weeping?”
“I'm thinking,” he said, “that you've just lost a very good friend.”
Her mouth quirked up in a pained smile, as if she thought his sympathy nothing but a policeman's ploy but was too polite ever to say so. “Father Pat was here last evenin', of course,” she said. “We had red snapper because it was Friday, and then afterward we played Gilbert and Sullivan on the phonograph and he sang along. He has a beautiful countertenor voice…had. It was ten o'clock when he left. I remember the clock in the hall striking the hour while we were saying our goodbyes at the door.”
“Did Mr. Layton have supper with you all?”
Her fingers, which had been making little pleats of the kimono in her lap, stilled. “Albert? Yes, of course, he did. He's…” Her gaze fell to her hands. She toyed with her wedding ring, twisting it around and around on her finger. “He isn't here right now, though. He always plays golf on Saturday mornings.”
“Did you belong to Father Pat's club?”
Her hands clenched together hard in her lap. “Club? I don't know…”
“The Catholic Ladies Social.”
“Oh, that.” She relaxed some, lifting her shoulders in a little shrug. “I did for a while. But I got so busy with other things, I had to quit it. The Charities takes up so much of my time.”
Rourke asked nothing more, and after a moment she lifted her head and her gaze met his, and a faint blush crept up her neck.
She jerked to her feet, turning away from him. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms as she walked to the French doors opening out onto the wraparound gallery. The purple wisteria that climbed the columns trembled in the wind. A pair of mockingbirds flicked in and out of the sunlight.
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