‘You’re not a hooker, Reg,’ he said.
‘I like that. Reg. Only one who ever called me Reg was my kid brother, who couldn’t pronounce Regina. Which name I hate, by the way. Do you like being called Charles? It sounds so formal. Have you always called yourself Charles?’
‘Well, different names at different times of my life.’
‘What’d they call you in the Army?’
‘Charlie. Though we also called the enemy that. Charlie. The Vietcong. They were Charlie to us.’
‘And other times? Before you went in the Army?’
‘Chuck.’
‘I like that. Come dry my back, Chuck,’ she said, and stepped out of the tub.
‘That was in junior high and high,’ he said, taking a towel from the rack, beginning to work on her back. ‘I should’ve kept it in the Army, huh? Differentiate me from the enemy.’
‘How come you didn’t?’
‘I dunno. In Basic, they just started calling me Charlie. So I accepted it. You accept lots of things in life.’
‘Side effects,’ she said.
‘Yes. I suppose.’
‘What’d they call you when you were a kid?’
‘Carlie.’
‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Definitely not.’
‘My mother hung that on me.’
‘Is she still alive?’
‘Yes.’
He hesitated a moment, and then said, ‘She left when I was eight.’ Hesitated again. ‘I lost track of her.’
‘Left?’
‘My father, the family. She abandoned us. Later married the guy she’d run off with, I didn’t even know his name, my father never talked about it. I was just a kid, my brother and I were just kids when she left. I was still called Carlie then. They only started calling me Chuck in junior high.’
‘Do you still see your brother?’
‘No, he died of cancer twelve years ago. Funny the way things turn out, isn’t it? I was in a war zone, I came out alive. But cancer takes my brother when he’s only forty-eight.’
‘Side effects,’ she said, and nodded. ‘Has anyone ever called you Chaz?’
‘Chaz? No.’
‘May I call you Chaz?’
‘Sure.’
‘Starting right now, okay? That’s your new name. Chaz.’
‘Okay.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Yes, I think I do.’
‘What do we have planned for tomorrow, Chaz?’
‘I thought I’d let you decide.’
‘Let’s take the Jag out again. I really enjoyed that.’
‘Head upstate maybe.’
‘Yes. Maybe stay overnight at a little bed and breakfast…”
“Well, no, I can’t do that. Not tomorrow night.’
Her face fell.
‘There’s someone I have to see tomorrow night. But it’ll be the last time, I promise. After that, I’m free.’
‘I thought maybe you didn’t like my singing,’ she said.
‘I love your singing.’
‘Shall I sing for you again?’
‘I would love you to sing for me again.’
So now, at close to midnight, she sat up in bed, the sheet below her waist, her cupcake breasts dusted with freckles, and she sang to him about Natchez to Saint Joe and moonlight and music and not knowing if you can find these things and about there was a strange enchanted boy and about it being quarter to three and no one in the place except you and me.
And when she finished singing, she cuddled in his arms again, and said, ‘I love you, Chaz.’
And he said, ‘I love you, too, Reg.’
* * * *
‘Well, well, well,’ Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks said. ‘Another dead priest.’
This as if a dead priest showed up every day of the week. Last one he could remember, in fact, was the one over in the Eight-Seven, years ago, young priest snuffed while he was at vespers. This one was an old priest.
‘Ancient, in fact,’ Detective Monoghan said.
‘Got to be ninety-six in his bare feet,’ Detective Monroe said.
The two Homicide detectives were looking down at the body as though it were a wrapped mummy in one of the city’s museums, instead of a fresh corpse here on the stone floor off the church’s garden. The nun who’d found him was still trembling. She was no spring chicken herself. In her fifties, Ollie guessed, more or less. She’d told the responding patrolmen she’d been a nun for the past twenty years. Would’ve made her around thirty when she joined the Church. Both Homicide detectives were wondering what she looked like with no clothes on. Ollie was wondering the same thing.
‘Two in the face,’ Monroe said.
‘Do dee M.O. strike a familiar note, Ruby Begonia?’ Monoghan said.
‘Six-to-five a Glock was the weapon.’
Ollie didn’t know what they were talking about.
‘The Glock Murders,’ Monroe explained.
‘The Geezer Murders,’ Monoghan said.
‘All over the newspapers.’
‘Television, too.’
‘This makes what? Number Three?’
‘Four,’ Monoghan said. ‘If it’s the same Glock.’
‘Let me in on it, okay?’ Ollie said.
He hated Homicide cops. Hated the dumb regulations in this city that made their appearance mandatory at the scene of any murder or suicide. Their role was quote advisory and supervisory unquote. Which meant they stood around with their thumbs up their asses, demanding copies of all the paperwork. Besides, both Monoghan and Monroe could stand going on diets. So could the two patrolmen who’d first responded. Not to mention the nun. When you were in love, the whole world could stand losing a little weight. Not that Ollie was in love.
‘Guy’s been running all over the city killing old farts,’ Monoghan said.
‘With a Glock nine,’ Monroe said.
‘Should be an easy one then,’ Ollie said, and turned to the first overweight uniform. ‘What’s the nun’s name?’ he asked.
‘Sister Margaret.’
‘How’d she come upon the priest?’
‘Came out to see if the garden gate was latched.’
‘She live here, or just visiting?’
‘Got a room over on the other side of the church.’
Ollie nodded.
‘You think the old priest was banging her?’ Monroe asked his partner.
‘Would you bang her?’ Monoghan said.
‘He’d bang anything that moves,’ Ollie said.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Monroe said, but the thought of having sex with a nun was stimulating in a primitive pagan sort of way. Monoghan found it vaguely exciting, too. So did Ollie, for that matter. The nun stood there trembling, saying her beads, poor soul. Ollie walked over to her.
‘Sister Margaret,’ he said, ‘I want to tell you how sorry I am for your loss.’
Actually, he didn’t give a damn one way or the other, one priest more or less in this vale of tears, especially a guy had to be a hundred years old.
‘But I have to ask a few questions, if you feel up to it,’ he said.
The nun nodded, whimpering into her beads.
‘What time was it that you found the victim… by the way, what is his name?’
‘Father Michael Hopwell,’ she said.
‘I understand you came out here into the garden to lock the gate
‘To see if it was locked.’
‘And was it?’
‘I didn’t check. I found Father Michael and ran right back inside.’
‘So if it’s unlocked now, it would have been unlocked then,’ Ollie said.
‘Or vice versa,’ Sister Margaret agreed, nodding.
One thing he couldn’t stand was a smartass nun.