“The rush is I’ve got better things to do with my life,” Phan said, stepping into the room. He was young, maybe nineteen, perfect skin and black hair pulled into one of those little ponytails in the back. Spector wondered how he’d look with his hair like that. Phan put his gun back into its shoulder holster. The Uzi was slung across his back, magazine empty. “Where’s the shit?”
“Over by the table. Blue duffel has the money. The little suitcase thing has the horse.”
“Where?”
“Right over… um. Fuck.”
The patch of floor was empty, just a dead Gambione leg. Phan walked over to the spot, frowning. Spector stood beside him. Two oblong shapes were outlined in blood, but the bags were gone.
They glanced at each other, Phan remembering at the last minute to focus on Spector’s nose. No eye contact if he wanted to live. Spector suppressed a little smile and shrugged. “It was right there.”
“You take it?” Phan asked.
“No.”
“Well I didn’t take it. Check the bodies. See who’s missing.”
“How would I know who’s missing?” Spector said. “I didn’t take roll call. I just got in the door and started killing them, same as you.”
Phan wasn’t listening. He locked his hands behind him and began walking through the corpses, his lips pursed, his eyes shifting, searching like someone working a jigsaw puzzle. Spector scratched his moustache and sighed.
“The whore,” Phan said.
Spector thought back. He’d come in the room, interrupting the meeting. The bags had been there, by Zebra’s chair. Yeah, there had been a nat girl-black hair, pale skin-rubbing up against the joker. Then Phan had started spraying the room with Uzi fire and the whore had ducked under the table.
Spector hunkered down, peering over the dead bodies, hoping for a thin, pale-skinned corpse with a half-open blouse. He looked up at Phan and shook his head.
“I can’t fucking believe this,” Phan said.
“Hey, you were the one in the front room. You were supposed to be watching for people coming out.”
“She didn’t come out the front.”
“Well, there isn’t a back way,” Spector said.
Phan moved back into the little kitchen without a word. Spector followed him. It was small-too small to hide in. But it did have a window; an open one with a thin ledge beyond. Spector poked his head out. It was eight stories down the street, but the ledge-thin as a sidewalk curb-led along the side of the building to a black metalwork fire escape.
“Oh,” Spector said, pulling his head back in the apartment. “Well, that sucks.”
Father Henry Obst watched Quasiman stir the sauce. The steak sizzled on the grill and the scent of the meat and the fried onions in the sauce filled the small kitchen in the church basement. Father Henry’s spiral-bound notebook lay open before him on the table. He tapped the pages impatiently with his pencil.
“I was off my stride is all,” Father Henry said. “I should have come in a day or two earlier, just to get my bearings. It’s long drive from Alabama, and I ain’t the young man I once was. Threw my timing off.”
Quasiman looked thoughtfully over his shoulder as his leg flickered in and out of existence, but didn’t speak. Father Henry took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and thick, pale finger.
“Dammit, though, I have never in my life had anyone boo a homily. It’s rude, sir. It’s just plain rude.”
The hunchback blinked, considered him as if they were meeting for the first time, then smiled ruefully, nodding his head in sympathy. “Jokertown makes for a rough audience, even in church,” Quasiman said.
“I’ll do better next week.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I will. I’ve got better material. Y’all are always listening to Father Squid. Now he’s a fine man, but somber, if you see what I mean. No sense of humor. I’m pulling out my Age of Empty Miracles sermon. Usually hold that one off for Easter, but I don’t imagine many of these fella’s will be coming down to Selma.”
“He is a killer, risen from the dead,” Quasiman said, his tone light and conversational. “Before that I think he sold insurance.”
Father Henry put his glasses back on and the hunchback swam into focus. His expression was placid and helpful, like he’d just passed on some interesting piece of Jokertown history. Father Henry closed the notebook and considered for a moment what to say to his caretaker and guide.
“What in Christ’s name are you talking about, boy?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head like he was trying to sober up. “I thought you said something.”
With an apologetic shrug, the hunchback vanished. The spoon he had been stirring with slid into the sauce with a low plop. Father Henry looked at the sudden absence, shook his head, and went over to turn off the flame before the steak burned.
When Father Squid had called him with the news-the world tour with Senator Hartmann, the chance to see the fate of jokers in third-world hellholes around the globe-Father Henry had been half-afraid that the tentacled padre was going to ask him along. The request that he come up to New York and perform the Mass for a couple weeks had been such a relief that he’d agreed to it without really thinking. Now he found himself hundreds of miles from home preaching to a bunch of New York jokers and trying to keep a barely-present hunchback from scorching dinner.
He grabbed a fork and trawled the sauce until he pulled out the stirring spoon. It was too hot to hold. He found out by trying and dropped the spoon back under the surface.
The sauce wasn’t quite right. Stirring with the fork with his left hand, he took a glass off the sideboard with his right, reached over for the faucet and started a thin stream of water flowing. He set his mind to the clear ribbon until his wild card surged down his arms, through his fingers, and the water blushed, bloodied, and became a cheap Merlot. He filled the glass and poured half of it into the sauce to let the alcohol cook off. The faucet was running clear again when he closed the faucet down.
He hesitated before emptying the glass, but he did. A thirteen-year-old Alabama boy, finding he can change water to wine, never took it as a sign he should become a priest. Like any right-thinking Southerner in the situation, he became an alcoholic. A thirty-six-year old recovering drunkard and closet deuce, on the other hand, had been known to hear the call of the Lord. Even cooking with wine was actually against the rules, and tempting as it was to scootch a little farther off the wagon, Father Henry held to his resolve and had a pop with his dinner. The steak was good-juicy with just a little blood-and the sauce was tart and sweet, just enough to season the meat without drowning it. He’d give the hunchback that-the man could cook.
He cleaned his dishes when he was done and left the remains in a Tupperware box, in case Quasiman showed back up hungry. He looked over his notes one last time, sighed, and hefted himself up the stairs and out the rear sacristy door into the cool night air. Father Squid had lent him the use of the cottage for the length of his stay, and he strolled through the small herb garden and up to the locked metal door.