by Cook, Lori
It’ll be “Your Grace” soon enough! his smile said, clearly enough.
With that he busied himself with the drinks, returning with a whisky tumbler for himself, three fingers of neat liquor swilling about in it, and a glass of sherry for her, almost to the brim.
Taking a gulp of whisky, he popped the cigar back in his mouth and sat on an old damask armchair close to the fire. In front of the chair was a velvet footstool, and he lifted both feet onto it, until his body was reclined.
“Please,” he said, indicating a similar chair on the other side of the fire.
As she sat on the edge of the armchair, he shifted in his seat, and the cassock came apart slightly at the front. He had slipped off his shoes and he wore thin black socks, but nothing else. Up to his knee, at least, his legs were bare.
“Now, someone has told me that you found yourself in a spot of trouble up at the Slaves of the Lord.”
“Yes, Father.”
“It falls to me to oversee the convent, as I’m sure you know. The church is a family, and we try as we might to protect those who belong. If, of course, they have faith.”
He looked directly into her eyes.
“Do you have faith, my child?”
She nodded.
He smiled, took another drink, and encouraged her to do the same. She drank a little sherry, but no more than that. She was already appalled by this fat, unappealing sack of pomposity. Bishop? Yes, he no doubt wanted that, plus everything that went with it, including her.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “a man is dead, in the most distressing of circumstances. Really, the reports of it seemed to me so strange, almost incomprehensible. It pains me even to imagine it.”
The cassock inched further apart, revealing his pale, hairy legs past the knee. He looked down, made a half-hearted attempt at covering himself up, and continued:
“I will protect you, my child. A death like this is very serious, especially on sacred grounds, and in a country like this...”
As he spoke, the music seemed to glide by under them like running water, fast and unstoppable, just as what was about to happen seemed unstoppable.
“... I will protect you. But I must know, my child, I must know the truth. Trust me, this is the only way.”
She nodded solemnly, her eyes fixed on his face as he spoke, cigar in one hand, whisky in the other, lying back in his chair like a Roman emperor.
Then he struggled slowly up, putting both cigar and glass down as he got himself settled on the edge of his chair. He reached down the side of the cushion and brought out a small bundle of black fabric.
Straight away she recognized the panties and bra that Raúl had brought for her. No doubt they had been delivered into Father Bonavente’s safekeeping by someone at the convent, eager that the police be kept away from the worst details of the scandal. Only a man as pure as Father Bonavente could be entrusted with such sordid evidence.
He now took the panties and pushed them into his face, inhaling deeply several times.
“Here,” he said, leaning forward and passing her the panties, “put them on. I want to see exactly what this odd-job man saw.”
He shuffled back into his armchair and raised his legs once more as she stood there, feigning surprise.
“Don’t be shy,” he said, grinning as he puffed on his cigar, “you will do as you are told, girl. You are safe here. No one will ever know.”
With that he lay back, whisky in one hand and cigar in the other, and waited for Carol to do as she was told.
Reticently, she moved further off, behind a chair close to the archway, and began removing her clothes. She removed her blouse, and, looking down at her new lace-edged bra, removed that too.
“Exactly as before,” came the priest’s voice from over by the fireplace.
So she carefully put on the black bra, then eased both her tits out of the cups and let them sit there. She then leaned forward to take off her skirt, and her breasts toppled forward and hung down. For a moment she had to stifle a smile. The way the woman’s tits had looked in that magazine of Raúl’s had been sexy, but hers? They were a little less developed, and they looked kind of naughty, as if they’d escaped from the bra and were having fun.
Making sure Don Bonavente didn’t see her smiling, she slid off her panties and pulled on the far skimpier black ones. She ran her finger along the gusset, feeling her sex beneath, cold and unresponsive, as the nerves took over and she fought against the urge to run.
She tried not to think about the horrible man waiting for her over by the fire. For so long she’d dreamed of sex, relishing the feelings it stirred within her, the thought of all the world outside the convent just waiting for her. Then, a few weeks ago, she had discovered the intense pleasure of showing one’s most intimate parts to someone else, to a gentle, modest man who watched, patient, unseen. Now this...
“Closer,” the priest said, between mouthfuls of whisky.
She moved to within a couple of feet of his chair, keeping her eyes down to the floor. Her tits were hanging down over her bra, and despite her best efforts to look away from him, she caught the priest staring wide-eyed at them. Right then she told herself: she was not going to let this obnoxious man touch her.
With that, she turned and bent right over, until she felt the black panties riding up between her butt cheeks, her ass pointing directly at him.
“He liked me to do this for him,” she said, weakly, apologetically.
“Very good,” came the reply. “Continue.”
“And this,” she said, whimpering as she pulled the panties away from her sex and let a finger inch itself way inside her. “He forced me, sir.”
“Do everything he forced you to do, my child.”
Raúl had never forced her to do anything. She had loved every second of it, there in the heat of the bulb room, the delicious frisson of being watched, and of knowing that it would be a filthy, joyous secret between them.
For several minutes she pretended to pleasure herself for Don Bonavente, emitting little whelps of pleasure and hearing the priest’s breathing getting heavier behind her.
Then she turned and pulled the panties down and handed them to him.
By now his cassock was unbuttoned up as far as the waist, his pale white legs set slightly apart. And between them stood his prick, erect but not very large, at least not as large as the one she had seen in Raúl’s magazine.
“I saw those images that he brought you,” Bonavente said, holding her stare as he spoke, “so don’t pretend to be shocked, you slut. Do everything you did to him, or I’ll call the police and tell them you tried to seduce me, just as you did to that stupid odd-job man, damn his soul!”
His words drove her to distraction. Raúl’s death had been nobody’s fault, although her desire to fulfill his deepest desire had led him to his death. A sweet man, lonely, perhaps, and suddenly finding a young woman not only willing to show him exactly what he wanted to see, but apparently enjoying every second of it, letting her self-lust sweep her away until she forgot he was there, just outside the door, peeping in.
She was not ashamed of what she had done for Raúl. She was proud, it had been a profoundly intimate sexual awakening, and it had been done with delicacy and respect. Then the poor man died.
There were tears rolling down her cheeks now as she moved right up to the priest until her shins pressed against the little footstool on which his feet were resting.
She lifted one foot and let it rest on the stool, and began masturbating. To her right she heard a sound, but she forced herself not to look.
Her soft vagina was unresponsive under her fingers, but she continued, wincing and gulping with fake pleasure as the man beneath her drained his whisky and puffed on his cigar.
Leaning forward a little, she moved from side to side, letting her tits swing. It seemed to arouse the priest.
“What else?” he said, laying down his cigar and putting his hands behind his head.
His cassock
now fell completely away from him on both sides, having been completely unbuttoned. His fat, hairy belly sat there like a dead animal, and his penis, the foreskin pulled forward, was swaying gently.
“Come on,” he said, reaching down and retracting the foreskin, the shining head of his revolting organ coming into view.
She masturbated faster, spreading her legs and turning slightly until she was side-on, her nakedness on full view to anyone who might chance on them from the archway to her right.
Again, there was a sound. Come on, the priest was murmuring, a hand down at the base of his cock, pulling the skin right the way back, urging her to take him in her mouth.
Keeping her legs wide, she leaned down, mouth open, eyes closed, ready to take his full shaft in her mouth. There were still tears on her cheeks. His body smelled of soap and tobacco and his helmet was glistening.
With her mouth open wide, just inches from his horrible cock, she paused.
Flash. Flash.
Immediately she was fully upright, fingers spreading her sex, astonished eyes staring at the camera, tits hanging down. The perfect whore.
Only, she wasn’t a whore.
She was a seventeen-year-old convent girl.
And Don Bonavente would never be bishop now.
In a second she was dressed. The priest was shouting, cursing, struggling to his feet. There were more flashes. It happened so quickly she hardly saw the photographer at all, just a figure in black in the archway.
Then a gunshot. Father Bonavente had grabbed a pistol from somewhere. He let loose two, three rounds, and the photographer twisted, spun on his heels, and lunged for the door.
In the process he dropped the camera. Another bullet smacked into the archway, shattering the plaster. By that stage the photographer was gone.
Carol found herself crouched behind an armchair, the camera over on the floor close to the door. Bach’s B minor Mass now reached its finale. And from the mirror of a dresser on one side of the room she watched as the priest slumped down onto the footstool, his head in his hands, his big white belly between his knees.
She was out of the door in a moment, racing down the building’s emergency stairs, avoiding the lift. Someone would have heard the gunshots. In seconds, she knew, there would be people in Father Bonavente’s apartment.
As she burst out onto the street, forcing herself to slow down as she walked calmly away, she gripped the camera close to her chest.
The guy on late-night duty at the first class desk looked her up and down a couple of times, surprised to see such a young woman turning up at midnight with no luggage other than a camera. There was an air of suspicion in his manner, but also something admiring, as if he recognized that she was special, a girl her age capable of being in Mexico City in the dead of night yet looking fresh and confident.
She met his stare and returned it defiantly. And in doing so she realized that she deserved his admiration. What she had just done had taken real courage, the kind that leaves your guts twisted and your mind in a spin. But she hadn’t faltered. That’s what the Cardinal had recognized in her, an inner steel, a will that could not be bent or turned against her. She had finished the job. Better still, she had gotten the camera.
As she wandered into the First Class Lounge of American Airlines, she knew she’d done it. She’d escaped the convent, and the country.
Grabbing a coffee, she went and sat over by the TV in the corner, which was on low. A couple in their middle years were there, well dressed, expensive hand luggage. They invited her to join them, sensing that a woman girl would not want to be alone all night in a Mexican airport lounge.
They’d missed their flight, they told her, didn’t want the hassle of checking into a hotel again. It was only six hours until the first flight to New York. What was her story?
Story?
Carol had no idea.
Her story was ahead of her.
Chapter Thirteen
A couple of houses down a man was mowing the front lawn. They sat in the Cardinal’s large black Mercedes and watched. The man had taken off his shirt and his torso was honed and well worked, but a little full, the kind of body a naturally stocky guy gets when he hits forty, no matter how many hours he puts in down the gym.
He was around five-eight, and his hair was thinning, cropped short to try and disguise the fact. Handsome? Hard to tell. The sun was beating down on him, and his face was screwed up against the glare as he pushed the mower up and down the small, neat lawn.
“A lawyer,” the Cardinal said with just the hint of a smile.
He lifted his arm and tapped his wristwatch.
“Two thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, you see?”
Carol nodded.
The street they were on was modest but pretty. The houses were not very large, and were in a vague colonial style, each one with the exact same small yard in front. There were trees all the way down the sidewalks on both sides, and in the air was the faintest hint of birdsong.
You could just imagine a kid on his pedal bike every morning weaving down here at a hundred miles an hour, flinging newspapers onto porches; then, people in dressing gowns shuffling out to pick them up, grumbling that they’d landed on the grass again, that the kid should take more care... Any more suburban and you’d have needed Dick Van Dyke to put in an appearance.
“Is this one of his regulars?” she said, her eyes fixed on the guy doing the mowing.
“One of several on his busy schedule today.”
“And every day it’s the same?”
“Some days he never makes it into his office. He has an extraordinary number of lawns to mow. Quite extraordinary. He also fixes dishwashers and replaces light bulbs.”
Carol watched as the guy finished up and wheeled the mower over to his car on the drive. In a second it was in the trunk, and he was coiling up the extension cable as he walked slowly up to the front door of the house.
A lady with neat white hair was already there, waiting for him with the unplugged end of the cable. They talked for a minute or two, laughing like old friends. Then she pulled out a bill and tried pushing it into his hands. He gesticulated in a friendly way, shaking his head, his hands waving an earnest “no.” There was something warm and protective about his manner, like she might have been his grandma or an old aunt.
Finally, he put an arm around her narrow shoulders, gave her a kiss on the forehead, and was off, talking over his shoulder as he jumped into his car and reversed out into the street. A toot of his horn and he was gone.
“With any luck,” the Cardinal said, watching the guy’s dark blue Ford disappear, “he’ll be going home. Gets up late. Lunches late. You know the type.”
Not long afterwards, the Merc pulled up outside a substantial suburban villa. They were only twenty miles away, but the house prices had more than doubled. Each dwelling now had its own trees, and the front yards were bigger, landscaped, the kind of yards that really did need regular mowing. Right there was the blue Ford, up by the front door. Next to it was a black Porsche Cayenne.
“Jerry Hobbs,” the Cardinal said. “Friend to the old and needy. One car for them, the other for him. Nice touch, don’t you think?”
She said nothing, already admiring the house, which was in the modern Mexican-suburban style, perhaps four or five bedrooms. I bet it has a monster kitchen, she told herself, wondering whether she’d get chance to cook something up for Mr. Hobbs. Because she was about to find out whether mower-man was good company. And, well, everyone gets hungry from time to time.
They waited until he’d disappeared into the house.
“Have you had any thoughts about the other thing?” she said, quietly. “The thing I mentioned?”
The Cardinal grinned, something that suggested he was rather pleased with himself, or with her. With both of them. For a moment she was taken aback. It wasn’t often you saw the Cardinal smile, not in that way, at least.
“Yes indeed. I have looked into Mr. Alex Strange in considerable deta
il, especially into his dealings with young programmers over the years.”
He left it at that, toying with her, amused at the obvious personal interest she had in the case.
“Let us deal with Mr. Hobbs here,” he added, sliding the Merc into gear and moving off. “Then we’ll talk more about your little project.”
*
Jerry Hobbs, Attorney at Law, had an office on the fourth floor of a corner block downtown. Not the fanciest location, but a decent business address. There were more lawyers’ name on the wall of the lobby as she ran her eyes down the brass plaques and found Hobbs, among insurance brokers, graphic designers, and one or two consultants who offered “solutions” of an unspecified kind.
His office was number 14. That, she told herself as she rode the elevator alone, was a pleasing coincidence. According to the Cardinal, Mr. Hobbs had fourteen interesting cases to his name spanning a little over five years, and that was just in-state. One more and there would have been no coincidence. Or was it more than coincidence? Sweet justice?
Down the corridor she went, still trying to work out what kind of solutions were on offer in this particular block. The carpets were drab and gray, and smelled intensely of pine, as if someone was trying too hard to keep hold of the cleaning contract.
Number fourteen. A polite knock on the mahogany door and it opened right off.
“Mrs. Denvers,” he said, a broad, welcoming smile on his face. “Come in, please.”
He led her through a small ante room, just enough space for a sofa and a low table, stacked with pristine copies of Golfing Today and Departures. His office was larger, but not huge, and there wasn’t a window. Why pay for a corner spot when you’re hardly ever there?
“Please, take a seat,” he said, as he slipped behind a steel and glass desk, almost nothing on it, just a phone and a yellow legal pad.
He busied himself with his pad as she got comfy opposite in a leather chair. She could see how he was conscientiously keeping his eyes off of her, playing it formal and serious. This despite the fact that she was in a black silk blouse that was extremely flattering, plus a skirt that rode way up her thighs as she sat and crossed her legs.
