Peeper (6 page)

When he came to, he was on his back on the carpet. Neal was sitting on the desk corner Ralph had vacated, sucking his knuckles.

“What do you want, Ralph?”

“You been working out.” He sat up, tasting blood. “You didn't used to knock me all the way down.”

“You weren't so fat and slow then. Don't get up yet; I've got another hand. What do you want?”

“I think somebody's out to kill me.”

“Tell whoever it is I said good luck.”

“I ain't kidding.”

“Me neither.”

“You know that hooker got blown up this morning?”

“The gas explosion? I read about it.”

“Well, it wasn't no accident.”

“You blew up a hooker?”

“Hell no. What do I look like?”

“Right now, a pile of shit on my rug.”

“It was in my building. Somebody let himself in, monkeyed with the wall switch so it'd throw a spark, and filled the place with gas on his way out.”

“Brainy. What was the hooker into and what was your angle?”

“It's more like who was into the hooker.” Ralph told him the rest, beginning with Lyla Dane's call and finishing with the discovery of the arc switch. He left out the part about the photographs.

“This the same Monsignor John Breame the
News
said was found by an altar boy counting angels in his bed at the St. Balthazar rectory this morning?” Neal asked.

“Thanks to me and this bug Carpenter.”

“So?”

“The blowup was meant for me, ain't that obvious? Carpenter assumed I'd be going back to that same apartment and rigged it while I was waiting for him down on the street. Only I didn't go there. I went back to my place and went to bed.”

“Bishops don't kill people over priests that can't keep their vows in their pants.”

Ralph sucked on his split lip. “What world you living in, Neal? Shape the Catholic Church is in, he might do just that to keep it quiet.”

“Count yourself lucky, then. Justice passed you by this time. You've screwed more people than any ten hookers.”

“Thing is, I got an appointment with the bishop in less than an hour. Could be he wants to finish the job.”

“Don't go.”

“I got to. Could be I got some business there.”

Neal slid off the desk. “Get up, Ralph.”

“You told me not to.”

“I changed my mind. Get up.”

“If I do you'll just knock me down again.”

“That's the idea. Scamming the Church, Jesus. What'd you do, take pictures?”

“Just half a roll. They got all the money in the world, why shouldn't I get some of it?”

“Ask the hooker.”

“All I want you to do is hold the film for me. It could be what keeps me alive.”

“That's not an argument in its favor.”

“Come on, Neal. I always said you had a heart as big as your ass.”

“I've been working out, remember? They're neither of them as big as they used to be. But I'll hold the film.”

Ralph grinned. “Hey, I knew you would.”

“Just cut me in for half.”

“Half of what?”

“Half of whatever the bishop pays you for the film. If I think you're cheating me I'll drop a dime on you, tell him you squirreled away extra negatives to squeeze him with later.”

“He'd have that bastard Carpenter chop me down for spite!”

“Good a reason as any. Half's the price; take it or leave it.”

“Come on, Neal. That ain't your style.”

“It is today.”

“You ain't the only friend I got.”

“You don't even have me. If you had anyone else to go to, you wouldn't be here bleeding all over your shirt.”

“Half. Don't nobody in this town know any other fractions?” He dug the container out of his pocket and held it up. Neal took it.

“Can I get up now?”

“Sure.”

Ralph got up. Neal hit him with his other fist. Ralph fell back against a wall, knocking loose a framed bar graph depicting the probable life spans of men and women based on environment, ratio of height to weight, and number of vices. Ralph stood at the low end. He put a hand to his nose and looked at the blood. “What the hell was
that
for?”

“Old times' sake. When you going to check in?”

He found his handkerchief and dabbed at his nose. “Around eight. I'll call from my place. They got the fire out before it reached my floor.”

“That was lucky. Gin flames are the hardest to put out.”

Ralph left, tipping his head back with the handkerchief wadded under his nostrils. He drove across town with one hand on the wheel and the other at his nose. His lip had begun to swell.

Outside the city limits, his route took him around and between steep hills with houses set into them like precious stones on green felt. The rain had let up and the sun had come out, making the smooth lawns sparkle. Bishop Steelcase's street was a winding cul-de-sac lined with ranch houses, colonials, and large rambling English Tudors, at the end of which stood a big house built of gray stone with a slate roof and coach lamps flanking the front door. Blood-red firebushes grew to the sills of the ground-floor windows.

His nose had stopped bleeding. Waiting for someone to answer the bell, he scrubbed the last traces from his nostrils and folded the handkerchief into a pocket.

“Poteet.”

Standing in the open doorway, Carpenter looked even more like a martyr than he had that morning in Lyla Dane's apartment. He had on the same black coat buttoned to the neck and the light behind him haloed his stubbled head.

Ralph shrank back. “I didn't think you'd be here.”

“His Excellency is expecting you.”

“People know where I am.”

“I'm glad for you.” He stepped aside.

Ralph entered a foyer hung with medieval tapestries and followed Carpenter down a hallway paneled in worm-eaten oak that looked as old as the Crusades. At the end Carpenter knocked on a cherrywood door. A voice invited them inside.

The bishop was a tall old man, nearly as thin as Carpenter, with white hair brushed back in creamy waves and a face dark as hickory and falling away to the white shackle of his clerical collar. He rose from behind a mahogany desk, wearing a black cassock that swept to the floor and made him look like something not bound to the earth. The room was large and square and smelled of pipe tobacco and leather from the books on the built-in shelves. A large crucifix carved from a single block of wood hung on the wall behind the desk. Carpenter entered behind Ralph and closed the door.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Poteet,” said the bishop. “Please sit down.”

“Thank Ben Franklin.” But he settled into a deep leather chair that gripped his buttocks like a big hand in a soft glove. He kept his hat on.

“Have you been in an accident?”

“Just my face.”

The bishop lowered himself into the big swivel chair behind the desk, his back as straight as the crucifix.

“I'm grateful for this opportunity to thank you in person for your discretion this morning,” he said. “The Church has few enough friends this season. Are you by any chance Catholic?”

“Nope. Too much kneeling.”

The bishop nodded as if in agreement. “I'm very disappointed with Monsignor Breame. I'd hoped he would assume my post at the head of the diocese.”

“I guess he thought he found a better place to put his post.”

“Yes. Well, now I must begin the process all over again.”

“You bucking for cardinal?”

He smiled. “I suppose you've shown yourself worthy of some confidence. As a matter of fact, His Holiness did say something about the red hat in my presence during his visit here last month. Of course, it's far from official.”

“I bet you got your plane ticket and everything.”

“Don't interrupt His Excellency.”

“It's all right, Carpenter. If I weren't patient I'd hardly be a candidate.”

Ralph said, “Your right bower cashing in his chips in some hooker's bed wouldn't sit so good with Rome, I bet. I guess that's why you tried to croak me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Carpy there didn't do his homework. Thought I was Lyla's pimp or something instead of her neighbor and that I shared her apartment. Which he rigged to blow up in my face, only it blew up in hers instead.”

“What is he talking about?”

“There was a fire after I left,” Carpenter said. “The woman was hurt. I heard it on the news.”

“Do you know anything about it?”

“Oh, Christ,” Ralph said. “Excuse my French.”

“The building is a firetrap, Your Excellency. Anything could have started it.”

“Cops found the arc switch.” Ralph crossed his legs, drawing a farting noise out of the leather. “I took pictures. They're with a friend. You know how that goes.”

“Extortion, Mr. Poteet?”

“Let's just call it blackmail. I ain't dressed good enough for extortion.”

One corner of the desk supported a silver tray containing two long-stemmed glasses and a cut-crystal decanter half-filled with ruby liquid. The bishop removed the stopper and filled both glasses.

“This is a good port. I confess that the austere life allows me two mild vices. The other is tobacco.”

“What are we celebrating?” Ralph didn't touch either glass.

“Your new appointment as chief of diocesan security. The position pays well and the hours are regular.”

Ralph had a sudden urge to rub his hands together. He resisted it. “Who do I answer to, Carpenter?”

“Carpenter works for me. The security chief works without supervision. You would have a separate office in the St. Balthazar rectory.”

“In return for which I come down with amnesia?”

“And entrust all related material to me, naturally.” The bishop sipped from his glass.

Ralph lifted his then. “What's to stop me from becoming Shake 'n' Bake like Lyla?”

“Neither Carpenter nor I had anything to do with that. You have a very dark view of religion.”

“Must be all them pictures I seen of eyes getting put out and Protestants burning at the stake.” He gulped off half his wine. It tasted bitter.

“Do you know Bibles, Mr. Poteet?”

“I knew my old man's pretty good.”

The bishop laid a bony hand atop an ancient ornate Bible on the desk. Ralph thought he was about to swear his innocence. “This one belonged to St. Thomas. More, not Aquinas. I have a weakness for religious antiquities.”

“Thought you only had two vices.” Ralph's fat lip was getting in the way of his speech.

“I would call it more of an obsession. My colleagues think my ambition is motivated by power, or piety, if they are charitable. Neither assumption is correct. When I think of the Vatican, its glorious age and awesome history, of enjoying access daily to Constantinople's manuscripts, the pallet where Hadrian the First laid his head, the Sistine ceiling—”

“Careful there, Reverend. You're getting drool on the Gideon.”

Bishop Steelcase lifted his hand in a gesture almost of benediction. “Do you accept the position?”

“Trouble with church offices is they all smell like galoshes. Tell you what: you put me on retainer, say a couple of thousand a month, and I keep the pictures.”

“That won't do. They must be part of the package.”

“Well, you're shit out of luck. 'Scuse my Flen—French.” The air in the room was thickening. He could scarcely breathe through his sore nose.

“Your Excellency?”

“Not yet, Carpenter.”

Ralph's grin seemed to spill all over his face. He dumped the rest of his wine into it. “Don't feel too bad, Parson. You ain't the first Holy Joe somebody's had over the altar.” His vision was blurring. He was beginning to think there was something to that business about not mixing the grape with the grain.

“The crucifix on that wall is said to have hung in Charlemagne's palace at Constantinople,” the bishop was saying. “In any case, the experts I had examine it agree that it dates back at least as far as the tenth century. Are you all right, Mr. Poteet? I fear my collection is putting you to sleep.”

Ralph could no longer see the crucifix. Both the bishop and Carpenter were shimmering shadows. He leaned forward to return his glass to the tray and kept going, to the floor.

He thought, shit, I bet this means no job neither.

Chapter 8

He awoke feeling pretty much the way he did most mornings, with his head throbbing and a tongue the size of a ham. His eyes were painted shut.

When he got them open, he thought he'd lost the sight in his good eye. Then, as the pupil let in light from a corner streetlamp, he saw the dashboard in front of him and realized that night had fallen and he was sitting on the passenger's side of the red Riviera. Then he felt a tug and a chill and looked down to see that his pants were down around his ankles. Something in three sweaters and a man's felt hat was on the floor trying to work them off over his shoes.

“Hey.”

The brim of the hat came up. Under it was a face fashioned from dirty clay, vaguely female, with large nostrils, eyes shot pink, and six amber teeth in a black hole of mouth. Gray hair straggled down on either side. Ralph smelled half-digested gin.

“I figured you was dead,” said the creature.

“Well, I ain't.”

“You sure? I seen dead cats get up and walk away 'cause nobody told them.”

“Not between bottles you didn't. You want to let go of my pants?”

“You don't need pants if you're dead.”

“Old lady, you don't neither.”

She sat back on her heels. “Well, why'd you park here if you ain't dead? This ain't no place to be alive in.”

“What place is it?”

“Mount Elliott Cemetery.”

“Jesus. You sure it ain't Farmington Hills?”