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"No matter what avenue we take, I think it's going to lead back to Lejeune."
"Maybe because you want it to."
"Say again?"
"You hate rich people, Dave. You can't wait to get into it with them."
"No, I just don't like liars."
"Can you do me a favor?"
"What?"
"Go somewhere else. Now."
That afternoon Father Jimmie Dolan was at a basketball practice in a Catholic high school gymnasium not far from his church, when his cell phone rang inside his gym bag. "Father Dolan," he said into the receiver.
"I need only a quick word. Don't be hanging up on me now," the caller said.
"How did you get this number?"
"Told the secretary at the rectory I was your grandfather. I need something from you."
"What could I possibly have that you want?"
"I was paid to take out this fellow Ardoin. But I'm not going to do it."
"You didn't answer my question. What is it you want?"
"There's an open contract on me, Father. That means I'm anybody's fuck. But they messed with the wrong fellow, you get my drift?"
"No, and I don't want to."
"I'm going to loosen some people's earthly ties."
Father Jimmie stared listlessly across the gym at the boys who were taking turns laying up shots under the basket. He had a sore throat and fever and wanted nothing else in life at that moment except a glass of whiskey and a warm bed to lie down in.
"You know what I'm asking from you, don't you?" Max Coll said.
"I think you want absolution for your sins, Max. But you can't have it. Not over the phone, certainly. And perhaps never, not unless you give up your violent ways."
The cell phone was silent.
"Did you hear me?" Father Jimmie said.
"I think I've misjudged you. Under it all you're a hard-nosed bastard of a kind I remember only too well, one whose cassock and collar come before his humanity. Shite if you're not a disappointment to me."
The transmission went dead. Father Jimmie's cheek stung as though it had been slapped.
Chapter 9.
That evening I fixed a bowl of milk for a stray cat and watched him drink it on the gallery. He was a hard-bodied, short-haired, un-neutered white cat with chewed ears and pink claw scars inside his coat. His tail was as thick as a broom handle. When I petted him he looked at me blankly, then went back to his milk.
Theodosha Flannigan pulled her Lexus into the driveway and parked under the pecan tree by the side of the house. A guitar in an expensive case was propped up in the backseat. She wore loafers and a blue terry cloth blouse and jeans low on her hips so they exposed her stomach. The wind gusted and leaves swirled around her, and a single band of dusky sunlight cut across her face.
"What's the name of your little friend?" she asked, sitting down on a step next to the cat.
"He didn't say," I replied.
