The Confession of Joe Cullen Read Free

bed. I don’t need to be satisfied, I’m not your wife.”
    â€œI want to talk.”
    â€œThen talk,” pulling back from him. “Talk. What’s eating you?”
    â€œI’ll tell you what’s eating me,” Cullen said, spacing the words so that each word stood by itself, the way some drunks speak. “I murdered a priest. That’s what’s eating me.”
    At first, Sylvia Mendoza did not react. She stood facing Cullen, her mouth slightly open, and that tableau, the two, the man and the woman, facing each other, staring at each other, silent, maintained itself for at least ten or fifteen seconds, and then she whispered, “Say that again, what you just said.”
    â€œI murdered a priest.”
    Now she reacted, her voice shrill, almost a scream. “Get out of here! Get out of here, goddamn you, you crazy motherfucker, you crazy bastard, get out of here or I call the cops!” She ran into the kitchen and returned with a ten-inch butcher knife in her hand. “Don’t come near me, motherfucker, or I’ll cut your heart out.”
    Cullen staggered to his feet, his hands spread, palms down. “Hey, take it easy. Be cool. I’m not going to hurt you.” He shuffled to the outside door, opened it, and she followed him, the knife outthrust, for all the world like a bullfighter going in for the kill.
    â€œJesus God,” Cullen begged, “get that damn knife away. I ain’t going to hurt you.”
    The door slammed. A moment later it opened, and his hat and coat were flung out into the hall. Other doors were opening now in response to the shouting. Heads peered out, but no one came out of a door and into the hallway. Shocked back into a sort of sobriety, Cullen kept his finger on the elevator button until the car appeared. When at last he left the building to stumble out into the rain, he breathed a sigh of relief.

The Second Confession

T HE CATHOLIC CHURCH of Saint Peter the Rock, in the West Twenties, had long since fallen on hard times. The docks that had once been a base for the loading and unloading of the goods of America, and the world too, had moved across to the Jersey shore, and the stevedores, the Irish and Poles and Italians who had made their living as longshoremen on the downtown docks, had drifted away to other places. Saint Peter the Rock had never placed among the great Catholic churches of New York, but it had been built with love and care out of the same brownstone that had built thousands of New York houses, and its stained glass windows were the gift of an Italian immigrant who had made a small fortune in the ice business, and who went to Verona himself to order the windows and supervise their construction. But that was a long time ago, and now Saint Peter the Rock served only a handful of old people who clung to the neighborhood.
    None of this was known to Joe Cullen, who had spent most of his childhood in Broad Channel on the edge of Jamaica Bay, where you see the towering skyscrapers of New York in the misty distance; but he had some recollection of seeing a church not too far from his apartment on Eighteenth Street. On this day, some three days after his encounter with Sylvia Mendoza, he found himself in front of the old church, standing there and staring at it for at least five minutes, after which he sat down on the steps, lit a cigarette, and smoked it until the heat of the butt touched his fingers. He then snapped it away, shook his head, closed his eyes for a long moment, and entered the church. Once inside the doors, he stood still, blinded by the dark shadows, waiting for his sight to clear.
    His eyes focused now. The only light in the church came from a few candles and the glow from the stained glass windows, and in this dim light an old woman was straightening out the hymnals on the backs of the pews. Cullen took a few steps and then stood in the aisle, watching the old woman approach him. All unconscious of his