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"Max Coll is behind this, isn't he?" he said.
"Who cares? Those guys deserve anything that happens to them," I said.
"I thought New Orleans was tough. Y'all have death squads over here?" Clotile said.
I started to make a flippant reply, but saw the troubled expression on Father Jimmie's face. "I have to get my car from the pound," he said.
"We'll see you at the house. Let it slide, Jimmie," I said.
"One of those men may be dead," he replied.
He walked down the street, his black suit rumpled and stained from sleeping overnight on a cement jailhouse floor.
"Your friend isn't easily consoled, is he?" Clotile said.
"Ever hear about the Jewish legend of the thirteen just men who suffer for the rest of us?"
"No. What's the point?"
"Some people have to do life in the Garden of Gethsemane," I said.
She picked up my left hand and looked at it, her fingers cool on my skin. "This is where those grease balls put the pliers to you?" she said.
"Yes."
She patted the top of my hand and released it. "Take care of your own ass for a change," she said.
Chapter 20.
Father Jimmie had not been back at my house ten minutes when the phone rang in the kitchen. He picked it up but did not speak, his breath audible in the silence.
"Ah, you're a clairvoyant as well as a spiritual man," the voice on the other end said.
"Leave me alone. Please," Father Jimmie said.
"I got you, didn't I?"
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, you know what I mean, sir. It took a bastard like me with blood on his hands to get you out of the slams. Now it's you who owe me."
"What did you do with those men?"
"They're both alive and probably enjoying a cool drink in a warm climate by now. I think one of them mentioned Ecuador. Have to say, though, I was tempted to release them from their earthly bonds."
Father Jimmie sat down in a chair and tried to think. "Perhaps you mean well, but you cannot use violence to solve either your problems or mine," he said.
"What do you know of violence, sir? What do you fucking know of it?"
"You're full of hatred, Max. Get it out of your life. You injure yourself with it more than others."
"If I came into your confessional, would you give me absolution?"
"Yes."
"There are a couple more house calls I'd like to make."
"You don't negotiate the terms of forgiveness.. .. Max? Did you hear me?"
