"Not really," Matt said carefully. ''I just work late."
"Luckily, so do I. Sometimes."
Matt could have sworn that a smile touched the voice, but the man was all shadow, and still a stranger.
"Why are you tracking me down?" Matt asked.
"You wanted me to."
Matt shook his head in annoyance. This conversation was going nowhere. "Who . . . ?"
''How soon they forget." The man stepped into the brighter light near the window, nearer to Matt than he liked.
Matt studied a lean, fit figure, one not to mess with, but an older man, he sensed. Was this was an associate of his late stepfather's, who had heard Matt was looking for Cliff Effinger and wanted to know why now that the man was dead? Maybe this person thought that Matt had something to do with that death. . . .
"Hey," the man prodded, ''I can't decide if you're too trusting, or too wary. Which is it?"
"Unless you want to find out, don't come any closer until you identify yourself."
"Ah, Matthias, and I was supposed to be such a permanent influence on your life . . ."
Stupefaction froze Matt just when he should be most alert.
The voice, the use of his full given name evoked a mental snapshot of a bland office, of cluttered bookshelves, of a tree dotted campus outside the single window, quite beautiful really.
"It's Bucek," the man said abruptly, ending Mattes misery in racking his memory.
"My God, Father, I forgot! I left a message at St. Vincent, but they were so unforthcoming, I didn't expect to hear from you."
"You wouldn't have, except business brought me to Las Vegas, of all places, and your message had been forwarded. Why don't we keep on walking; the Circle Ritz isn't getting any closer."
''You know where I'm going?"
''You left your address."
"My home address, yes, but not ConTact's. How did---"
"I travel a lot, so I check things out rather thoroughly. For my job."
Matt fell into step with the slightly taller man, his mind flashing between similar walks on that bucolic Indiana campus and this shadow stroll some ... ten years later.
Despite the other seminarians' edgy discomfort at Father Bucek's acerbic manner and stern intellect, Matt had always admired him. Until ...
"You left," Matt said. Accused.
"So did you," Bucek shot back. "I must say I was surprised, Matthias. Surprised and sad."
"It's Matt now, and save the guilt trips for somebody with a ticket to ride."
"Humph. Back there just now. I couldn't decide if you were up to facing off a possibly dangerous stranger, or just a nice Catholic boy about to get creamed."
"I can take care of myself. No one's ever bothered me on my walks home. Before."
"Martial arts. You were a veteran even in seminary. What was it? I didn't pay much attention then. Tae Kwon Do? Karate?"
"Whatever feels right at the moment, and I don't mean just that I've had martial arts training. I had that then. I mean I can take care of myself now." Bucek nodded.
Father Bucek, Matt's mind kept insisting. You expect certain things to stand: the parish church you grew up near; the Pope in Rome; the priest who was your spiritual director in seminary. You might fail, might deny like Peter, might end your oath at the ironic age of thirty-three, but these things stood. Bucek the sometimes terrifying, the always-wise, with his intellect so acute he seemed to see through excuses. Father Furtive, who knew what every seminarian was afraid to confess.
"There's a Burger King a couple blocks down," Bucek said now. "Want a cup of coffee?"
'I don't drink caffeine this late at night."
"There's a bar three blocks down."
''You do check things out, but I don't want a drink.'*
"The Burger King then. It's a more wholesome arena for a couple of ex-priests than a bar, anyway."
The fast-food joint was also more brightly lit than a bar.
Matt almost cringed under the interrogation-level lighting, but he stood in line with Bucek like a good prisoner, collected his tray, and ordered the usual burger and fries.
Bucek had a chicken sandwich, which he liberally sprinkled with pepper and smothered in mustard.
They sat at the sleek table and seats, designed to slide people in and slide people out in endless rotation.
Around them customers chatted and chewed, clattered and came and went. Want privacy?
Go slow where everybody's in a hurry.
"You look good. Matt." Bucek had immediately adopted Matt's preferred civilian form of Matthias, as if glad to inter one more reminder of their former relationship. He slowly masticated his chicken sandwich, his forehead corrugated, not with worry, but by his upward glance and perhaps by curiosity.
''It seems ... sacrilegious to call you Frank."
"Do it. We spent all those hours dissecting theology, vocation, holiness, ethics ... I guess I never knew you very well, did I?"
"Nor I you." Matt dragged a limp French fry through a puddle of ketchup he had squeezed out of several small plastic pouches, like coagulated blood. "When did you leave? Are you . . .
married?"
Frank's mouth twisted as if he had just bitten down on a chicken bone. "Oh, shortly after you left seminary. I'm a veteran ex.' Yup, married. Eight years now."
"Is she--"
"Catholic? Yes. A high school music teacher. Widow. Three teenaged sons." Bucek laughed, as Matt had seldom seen him do in seminary, loudly and at himself. "I'm still a spiritual director, Matthias--Matt. I guess."
"You have no children of your own?"
"No." He spoke abruptly, subject closed.
Can't? Matt wondered. Or won't? None of his business, no >more than the ins and outs of his own life--and soul--were Frank Bucek's business anymore. They both had graduated.
"And you?" Frank sucked on the straw spearing his plastic- topped paper cup of Diet 7-Up.
"I left within the year. The phone counseling job is the first thing I qualified for. I've been at it for six months. I like it. It's not so different from confession, especially the way it was done in the old days, in darkened booths with veiled shutters. I hope I'm doing some good. What kind of job did you end up doing? We're puzzlers for employment agencies, we ex-priests, you know.
Over-educated and under-experienced."
"I managed something," Frank said gruffly. "But tell me what you wanted to talk to me about."
"It's . . . ah--" Matt shoved his brown plastic food tray aside, leaned his elbows on the slick, Formica tabletop. "Private. It's none of my business, really, except my conscience is kicking up.
It's about Father Rafael Hernandez."
"Good man. Pretty good priest."
"Glad to hear it. Unfortunately, I had to hear something else about him, from a compromised source, but still. . . the charge of child molestation has been made."
"Publicly?"
"No. That's my problem. Father Hernandez obviously knows about it. And the man who made it does. And I do.''
"That's all?"
Matt nodded glumly.
"Surely the man's bringing charges, if he's a victim."
"That's just it. He's not a victim. He's a blackmailer, an embittered blackmailer who hates the church and anyone who's a part of it. He killed his elderly great-aunt to get her estate, crucified a convent cat, made obscene phone calls to an ancient, and luckily stone-deaf nun--"
Frank Bucek winced at this litany of evil-doing. "But he won't press the molestation issue against Father Hernandez?"
"No. He's in jail, awaiting the outcome of a sanity hearing. He seemed rather viciously sane to me when I saw him, hoping to wring the truth out of him."
"Bitter people don't tell the truth. Matt, not even to themselves... They have too much to lose."
The wisdom of that struck Matt like a breath of fresh menthol. He leaned closer, lowered his voice even more.
"That's just it. This man won't admit that these charges were part of his harassment tactics against his aunt's parish. I saw him in jail, and ... I tell you, Frank ... it was like interviewing the Devil. I can't claim the church is perfect, or that any one of us in its service is without sin, but such anger and enmity, such scalding . . . despise. I know the man's half-mad. I know he's violent, and vicious. I just don't know if he's a liar in this case. And he taunted me with that uncertainty. He wants me to squirm."