He knew about all these things as an academic knew about gin-drinking in eighteenth-century England. The Blue Ruin, gin was called then, and it mostly ruined the already discarded, the penniless, the poor. Why was it easier to consider impoverished people as one great unwashed mass, no capital letters necessary? The poor. Too large, undifferentiated and inhuman a problem to address. As "the rich" were too faceless to envy and overthrow, "the poor" were too vague to do anything for or about.
But the tenants at this motel under its mantle of Virgin Mary Blue weren't only unfortunates. Some were criminals. Molina could probably spot signs of a lot more than drugs and sex, were she here. Drugs and sex happened in the best of parishes nowadays, and priests weren't quite the unworldly shepherds that they had been a couple generations ago. If some priests and preachers had abused children in the recent past, they had done it in the Iron Age. Still, holy innocents had abounded in the good old days. Matt had known and admired many of them, who would be shocked and saddened by his presence here, by his purpose here.
And what was that purpose? If he found Effinger, he would find out. When he found Effinger, he would find himself.
In the dim light, he paused to jot down what numbers remained on the doors. Some rooms were obviously unrented. Some were just empty, occupants out, or only there for a couple of the twenty-four hours paid for. Some units sounded like whole slums in a bottle, fussing children, whining adults, whimpering animals competing with the scratchy blare of a television set tuned to some show as unhappily hyperactive as they were.
Matt settled against a dim doorway near the street with a view of the entire U. One thing. Effinger's western getup made him a silhouette to remember. Maybe another urban cowboy or two roomed here, but not a whole herd of them.
The night wasn't cold for a Chicago native, thirty-something degrees. He braced a hip against the doorjam, kept his hands in his empty pockets and blended into the ambience. He remembered glimpsing his face in the smoky bar mirrors. Why the mirrors, anyway? To see other people come in, or to make sure one's self was there?
He couldn't deny his outer aspect now, his conventional good looks. But what should he do about them? He recalled T.S. Elliot's famous poem about J. Alfred Prufrock, a man as indecisive as his era. Like Prufrock, Matt found himself dwelling on minor decisions more than major ones.
Should he do something different with his hair? Grow it longer, cut it shorter in the monk-cut so popular among the trendy but ignorant young punks? Spend his hundred bucks on a haircut rather than a bribe for a bartender in a sleazy joint? Should he buy motorcycle boots to go with the Hesketh Vampire? Maybe enroll in a photography class. Subscribe to a magazine, but which one? Go into group therapy? He had preached enough to Temple about group therapy, and there was one for ex-priests, called Corpus. The next word that came to mind nowadays was "delecti." And how should he accessorize his new red couch the length of Long Island?
In his old life, he had few personal choices. He worried about values, not minutiae.
What did he hope for from Effinger? Because, no matter how much young Matt still hated the man's guts, not-so-young Matt must still need something from him. Confirmation of his worthlessness? Whose? Effinger's or Matt's, the failed priest so unfit for a secular world? Closure. The truth.
Just plain revenge?
Matt winced as the cold sank into his bones, and wished for a boiler-maker. It didn't matter which part you drank first, he decided. They both would be bitter medicine.
Something shuffled over the refuse. Crushed aluminum cans scraped along the concrete. Papers hissed as they were scuffed along.
Matt's head drooped, his eyes were shut. He was the next thing to sleeping upright, but the sound had awakened a memory from the past. A fact seen and heard then, and not noted.
But now ... That loping walk, the hip, affected shuffle of a fifties high-school hoodlum with cleats on his shoes. Click, shuffle, click, click. Ducktail greased. Short T-shirt sleeves (and they were white message-less undershirts then) rolled around a soft cellophane-wrapped pack of Camel cigarettes. Jeans tight and sagging low. Engineer boots with cleats. Click, shuffle, clickety-click.
Matt could still hear Cliff Effinger coming home, no cleats in the seventies, but the gait always threatened cleats, moving past the living-room rug and then echoing dully on the pitted kitchen linoleum. Matt had stared at that linoleum a lot, a graphic tenement of little windows, a Mondrian pattern boiled down to its cheapest, ugliest incarnation, only Matt hadn't known Mondrian from Matisse then.
His head lifted. His breath held.
A figure shambled toward a dark door across the way.
It wore a hat.
Hats were still worn in the sixties, by some. Fedoras shaded Sinatra's lean and cunning cinematic face. Age had filled in Sinatra's hungry angles, softened his flesh into a moon of Dutch cheese, all runny and forgetful. Like Brando's godfather, about as benign as a tumor. Las Vegas had been his beat, he ran with the Rat Pack here. The mob ran Las Vegas then. Not now. But somebody was dumping dead men in the ceilings of major hotel-casinos. If not that old-time religion, who?
Maybe he should ask Effinger.
Matt lurched away from the wall like a drunk. His ankle had gone to sleep.
He had to stop and wait for the pins and needles to jab the bloodless flesh to life. Waiting on pins and needles. And above, the Blue Mermaid, watching in her saccharine-blue gown.
Blessed Virgin Mary, star of the sea. Matt moved slowly so he didn't shamble like the man he was following. It was all too easy to turn into what you hunted.
Effinger fumbled at a door midway up the U's opposite upright.
Holy Virgin Mary, rose of memory.
Matt was catching up. Quietly for a lame man.
The door creaked ajar.
Most Holy Virgin Mary, rose of forgetfulness.
A light weaker than a drink at the Gilded Lily pulsed on.
Blessed art thou.
The man in the Western hat pushed the door open farther, paused, lit a Cigarette. A spark cursed the darkness and went out.
Full of grace...
Smoke, acrid and pure nicotine.
Now and at the hour of our death...
The door was shutting, the room closing, the Bible falling shut, the confessional door unlocked but inescapable.
Matt's hand and foot wedged between door and frame.
"What?" someone asked irritably. "I don't owe you a thing."
Amen.
Matt was shutting the door behind him, searching for the light.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Who the hell are you?" Matt demanded in turn.
The face under the wide western shadow said nothing.
Matt took the hat off.
"You're crazy, man! You're on something. I ain't got no dough, no way."
The voice was... not loud and roaring. Matt tilted his head to see the face at a different angle.
The skin wasn't so much wrinkled as scored. Too much sun and sin in Las Vegas.
And he seemed . . . shrunken. Small. So small.
"Oh, Lord! Holy shit! What're you doin' here? You're gone. You're as good as dead."
"I'm not dead, and I'm not as good as I used to be."
"Look. I was a prisoner in that damn town. Damn icebox. I hada get outta there, all right? I did, didn't I? Didn't I go? Like a lamb when you got ugly. What's your gripe after all this time? You're supposed to be in some Holy Roller place, wearin' black like a damn nun. You're not here. Naw. Can't be here. Who the hell are you?"