Harlot's Moon Read Free Page A

or something crazy would be done to them, and they'd start drifting again. You see the kids sometimes, peering out the back windows of rusty old cars. They can break your heart.
    Just before we reached the office, I said, "What was Father Daly doing here?"
    "I don't know."
    I stopped and looked at him. With his pugged nose and curly dark hair, his face would always look younger than his years.
    "You wouldn't lie to me, would you, Steve? I'm trying to help you, remember?"
    He looked away from me. Big semis pushed into the sheets of rain marching down the nearby interstate. All the cars had their lights on, fragile prayers in a world of thunder and lightning and darkness.
    He turned back to me. "I think he was having an affair."
    "Who with?"
    His smile was sour, his tone defensive. "Despite what the tabloids have to say about us, most priests have affairs with women, not other men or little children."
    Steve hadn't given a name. I decided to ignore that for a while.
    "Couldn't he get in trouble for having an affair?"
    Steve nodded. "Yes, and especially in this diocese. Bishop Curry doesn't put up with anybody breaking the vow of chastity. He has also been known to turn pedophile priests over to the police. He's a tough guy."
    "Was Father Daly a nice guy?"
    He shrugged, glanced up at the line of raindrops dripping from the edge of the overhang that kept us dry. Everything smelled cold. Everything looked drab and sad.
    "I'm not sure anybody would have called him nice."
    "He have any enemies?"
    "A couple, as a matter of fact."
    "Any idea who they might be?"
    "Well," he said, "for starters I'd say the husbands of the two women he had affairs with while he was supposed to be counseling them on their marriages. The husbands weren't at all happy about that. In fact, one of them was going to sue Father Daly for alienation of affection." He smiled bleakly. "I guess there are some things we can forgive as priests that we can't as men. Father Daly caused a lot of trouble in his time, I'm afraid."
    "I take it you'll tell the police this?"
    "I won't have any choice, will I?"
    We went inside. When Steve saw the woman behind the counter, he said, "Oh, where's Paul?"
    "Paul left," she said. "His shift ended twenty minutes ago." She nodded to an ancient dusty wall clock. She was maybe sixty with dentures that clicked and an angry snarl of hair that a beautician had tinted an impossible orange. "Help you gentlemen?"
    "May I use the phone here?"
    She pushed a black phone toward me. "Long as it's local."
    "He's calling the police," Steve said. "There's a dead man in Room 154."
    "Oh Lord, not another one," she said calmly.
    "Another one?" I asked as I dialed.
    "Couple years ago they found some hooker with her throat cut. There must've been cops here for two weeks, traipsing in and out. Scared the heck out of our customers. I mean, a lot of them don't want anybody to know they're here."
    I talked to a homicide detective and gave her all the information I had. She said that a black and white would be there within a matter of minutes, and that she herself would follow shortly afterwards.
    Steve was over by the door. "Father Ryan and Bob Wilson just pulled in. I'd better go back to the room."
    "I'll come with you," I said. I pushed the phone back. "Thanks."
    "You know the guy personally?" the woman asked me. "Yes," Steve said, and I could see the pain it caused him to say this. "He was a priest."
    "You're kidding me," the woman said. "A priest!" Her dentures clicked and she made a grim face. "Boy, you just don't know who to trust these days, do you?"
    We walked back to Room 154.
    Father Ryan was a tall, slender man with thinning blond hair and thick eyeglasses. He was dressed in priestly black, and a white Roman collar. He had a steel handshake.
    Bob Wilson was big, beefy, whiskey-faced, and blustery. He had the air of a good bar-room brawler that his gray business suit, white shirt and blue tie couldn't quite offset. While he was still shaking my hand,