Strangers

In the same instant, Father Wycazik and Father Gerrano perceived the locus of the noise: Brendan Cronin's room. They moved swiftly to that door, which was directly across the hall from Father Gerrano.

Incredibly, Brendan was fast asleep. In spite of the thunderous explosions that made Father Wycazik flash back to the mortar fire of vietnam, Brendan dreamed on, untroubled. In fact, in the pulsing light, there seemed to be a vague smile tugging at the young priest's lips.

The windows rattled. Drapery hooks clicked against the rods to which they were attached. On the dresser, a hairbrush bounced up and down, and several coins clinked together, and Brendan's breviary slid first to the left and then to the right. On the wall above the bed, a crucifix jiggled wildly under the picture hook from which it was hung.

Father Gerrano shouted, but Stefan could not hear what the curate said, for now there were no pauses between muffled detonations. With each tripartite beat, Father Wycazik retreated further from his initial mental image of a huge drum and became increasingly convinced that what he was hearing was the throbbing of some enormous and immeasurably powerful machine. But it seemed as if the sound came from all sides, as if the machinery was hidden within the walls of the house itself, laboring at some mysterious and unknowable task.

As the breviary finally slid off the dresser and the coins began to spill to the floor, Father Gerrano backed to the doorway and stood there wideeyed, as if he might flee.

But Stefan went to the bed, bent over the dozing priest, and shouted his name. When that had no effect, he grabbed Brendan by the shoulders and shook him.

The auburnhaired curate blinked and opened his eyes.

The hammering stopped abruptly.

The sudden cessation of thunderous noise jolted Father Wycazik as badly as the first boom that had shattered his sleep. He let go of Brendan and looked around the room, disbelieving.

“I was so close,” Brendan said dreamily. "I wish you hadn't wakened me. I was so close."

Stefan pulled aside the covers, took hold of the curate's hands, and turned them palmsup. There was an angry red ring in each palm. Stefan stared at them in fascination, for this was the first time that he had seen the stigmata.

What in God's name is this all about? he wondered.

Breathing hard, Father Gerrano approached the bed. Staring at the rings, he said, “What're those from?”

Ignoring the question, Father Wycazik spoke to Brendan: "What was that sound? Where did it come from?"

“Calling,” Brendan said in a voice still thick with sleepand with a soft, excited pleasure. “Calling me back.”

“What was calling you?” Stefan demanded.

Brendan blinked, sat up, and leaned against the headboard. His eyes had been out of focus. Now his gaze cleared, and he really looked at Father Wycazik for the first time. “What happened? You heard it, too?”

“Somehow, yes,” Stefan said. "It shook the whole house.

Amazing. What was it, Brendan?"

“A call. It was calling me, and I was following the call.”

“But what was calling you?”

“I . I don't know. Something. Calling me back ”Back where?"

Brendan frowned. "Back into the light. The golden light of the dream I told you about."

“What's this all about?” Father Gerrano persisted. His voice was shaky, for he was not as accustomed to the miraculous as were his rector and his fellow curate. “Will somebody clue me in?”

The other priests continued to ignore him.

To Brendan, Stefan said, "This golden light . . . what is it? Could it have been God calling you back to His fold?"

“No,” Brendan said. "Just ... something. Calling me back. Next time, maybe I'll get a better look at it."

Father Wycazik sat on the edge of the bed. "You think this will happen again? You think it'll keep calling to you?"

“Yes,” Brendan said. “Oh, yes.”

It was Thursday, January 9.

7.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Friday afternoon, Jorja Monatella was at the casino, working, when she learned that her exhusband, Alan Rykoff, had killed himself.

The news came by way of an emergency telephone call from Pepper Carrafield, the hooker with whom Alan had been living. Jorja took the call on one of the phones in the blackjack pit, cupping a hand over one ear to block out the roar of voices, the click and snap of cards being dealt and shuffled, the ringing of slot machines. When she heard that Alan was dead, she was shocked and sickened, but she felt no grief. By his own selfish and cruel behavior, Alan had ensured she would have no reason to grieve for him. Pity was the only emotion she could summon.

“He shot himself this morning, two hours ago,” Pepper elaborated. "The police are here now. You've got to come."

“The police want to see me?” Jorja said. “But why?”

"No, no. The police don't want to see you. You got to come and clean his stuff out. I want his stuff out of here as soon as possible."

“But I don't want his things,” Jorja said.

“It's still your job, whether you want them or not.”

"Miss Carrafield, it was a bitter divorce. I neither want nor-',

" He had a will drawn up last week. He named you executor, so you got to come. I want his stuff out of here now. It's your job."

Alan had lived with Pepper Carrafield in a highrise condominium, a ritzy place called The Pinnacle, on Flamingo Road, where the callgirl owned an apartment. It was a fifteenstory white concrete monolith with bronze windows. Surrounded by undeveloped desert land, it appeared to be even taller than it was. And because it stood alone, it looked oddly like a monument, the world's largest, swankiest tombstone. The grounds were lushly planted with sprinklertended lawns and flowerbeds, but a few dry tumbleweeds had blown in from the bordering plots of sand and scrub. The chill and desolate wind which stirred the tumbleweeds also fluted hollowly under the condominium's portico.

Two police cars and a morgue wagon stood in front of the building, but no cops were in the lobby: just a young woman on a mauve sofa near the elevators, forty feet away; and at a desk near the entrance, a man in gray slacks and blue blazer, who was security guard and doorman. The travertine marble floor, crystal chandeliers, oriental carpet, Henredon sofas and chairs, and brass elevator doors contributed to a decor that strained too hard to convey classbut conveyed it nonetheless.

As Jorja asked the doorman to announce her, the young woman on the sofa rose and said, "Mrs. Rykoff, I'm Pepper Carrafield. Er ... I think you use your maiden name now."

“Monatella,” Jorja said.

Like the building in which she lived, Pepper strained for Fifth Avenue class, but her efforts were less successful than those of the interior designers who had worked on The Pinnacle. Her blond hair had been cut in an excessively shaggy carefree style that hookers preferred, perhaps because when you spent your workday in a series of beds, shaggy hair required less grooming. She wore a purple silk blouse that might have been a Halston, but she'd left too many buttons open, revealing a daring amount of cleavage. Her gray slacks were well tailored but too tight. She wore a Cartier watch encrusted with diamonds, but the elegant effect of the watch was spoiled by her indulgence in flashy diamond rings: She wore four of them.

“I couldn't bear to stay upstairs in the apartment,” Pepper said, motioning for Jorja to join her on the sofa. "I'm not going back up there until they've taken the body away.“ She shivered. ”We can talk right here, just so we keep our voices low." She nodded toward the doorman at the desk. "But if there's going to be a scene, I'll just get up andwalk away. You understand? People here don't know what I do for a living. I intend to keep it that way. I never do business out of my home. I'm strictly outcall. " Her graygreen eyes were flat.

Jorja stared coldly at her. "If you think I'm a scorned, suffering wife, you can relax, Miss Carrafield. Anything I ever felt for Alan is gone now. Even knowing he's dead, I feel nothing. Nothing much. I'm not proud of it. I was in love with him once, and we created a lovely child together. I should feel something, and I'm ashamed that I don't. But I'm definitely not going to cause a scene."

“ Great,” Pepper said, genuinely pleased, so involved with herself and her own concerns that she was oblivious of the domestic tragedy Jorja had just described. "There're a lot of highclass people live here, you know. When they hear my boyfriend killed himself, they're going to be standoffish for a long time. These kind of people don't like messy scenes. And if they found out what I do for a living . . . well, there'd be no way I'd ever fit in here again. You know? I'd have to move, and I sure don't want to. No way, honey. I like it here a lot."

Jorja looked at Pepper's ostentatiously diamondencumbered hands, looked at her plunging neckline, looked into her avaricious eyes, and said, “What do you suppose they think you arean heiress?”

Astonishingly, missing the sarcasm, Pepper said, "Yeah. How'd you know? I paid for the condo with hundreddollar bills, so no credit check was necessary, and I've let them all think my family has money."

Jorja did not bother to explain that heiresses did not pay for condominiums with bundles of hundreddollar bills. She simply said, "Could we talk about Alan? What happened?

What went wrong? I would never have thought Alan was the type to . . . to kill himself."

Glancing at the doorman to make sure he had not left his post and drifted nearer, Pepper said, "Me neither, honey. I'd never have pegged him as the type. He was so . . . macho. That's why I wanted him to move in and take care of me, manage me. He was strong, tough. Of course, a few months ago he started acting a little weird, and lately he was downright creepy. Weird and creepy enough that I was thinking about maybe finding someone else to look after me. But I didn't expect he'd screw things up for me by killing himself. Christ, you just never know, do you?"

“Some people have no consideration,” Jorja said. She saw Pepper's eyes narrow, but before the hooker could say anything, Jorja said, "Am I to understand that Alan was pimping for you?"

Pepper scowled. "Listen, I don't need a pimp. Whores need pimps. I'm no whore. Whores give fiftydollar blowjobs, screw eight or ten johns a day for whatever they can get, spend half their lives with the clap, and wind up broke. That's not me, sister. I'm an escort for gentlemen of means. I'm on the approved escort lists of the finest hotels, and last year I made two hundred thousand bucks. What do you think of that? I got investments. Whores don't have investments, honey. Alan wasn't my pimp. He was my manager. In fact, he managed a couple of my girlfriends, too. I fixed him up with them because, at first, before he started getting strange, he was the best."

Dazzled by the woman's selfdelusion, Jorja said, "And Alan took a managerial fee for handling your careerand theirs?"

Her scowl fading, somewhat placated by Jorja's willingness to use euphemisms, Pepper said, "No. That was one of the best things about our arrangement with him. He was still a blackjack dealer, see; that's where he made his money. He had all the contacts needed to manage us, but all he wanted for his trouble was free trade. I never knew a man who needed so much pussy. He couldn't get enough. In fact, the last couple of months, he seemed obsessed with pussy. Was he like that with you, honey?". Repulsed by this sudden intimacy, Jorja tried to stop the woman, but Pepper would not be quiet. "In fact, the last few weeks he was so horny all the time that I started to think maybe I should dump him. I mean, there was something a little crazy about it. He'd do it and do it and do it until he just couldn't get his pecker up to do it any more, and then he'd want to watch Xrated videotapes."

Jorja was suddenly angry that Alan had made her executor, forcing her to witness the moral squalor in which he had passed the last year of his life. And she was angry because she would have to find a way to explain his death to Marcie, who was already treading a psychological tightrope. But she was not really angry with Pepper Carrafield; not angry but appalled, yes, because even Alan deserved a little mourning and respect from his livein lover, more than this shark could ever give him. But there was no point in blaming the shark for being a shark.

One of the elevators opened, disgorging uniformed policemen, morgue employees, and a gurney bearing a corpse in an opaque plastic body bag.

Jorja and Pepper rose from the sofa.

Even as the stretcher was being rolled out of the first elevator, the doors of the second opened, and four more cops appeared, two in uniform plus a team of plainclothes detectives. A detective came to Pepper Carrafield and asked a few final questions.

No one asked any questions of Jorja. She stood rigid and suddenly numb, staring at the body bag that contained her exhusband.

They rolled the gurney across the travertine. The wheels squeaked.

Jorja watched it moving away.

Two cops held the lobby doors while the morgue attendants pushed the gurney outside. It moved past the lobby windows. Jorja turned to observe its progress. She still felt no grief, but she was swept by a powerful wave of melancholy, a profound sadness at what might have been.

From the nearest of the elevators, where she was holding a door open, Pepper said, “Let's go up to my place.”

Outside, they closed the doors of the coroner's van.

In the elevator on the way up, and in a discreet whisper in the fourteenthfloor hallway, then continuing in a normal tone of voice as they entered her big living room, Pepper insisted on describing Alan's peculiar sexual hunger. He had always had the carnal appetite of a gourmand, but apparently sex had become a sick obsession with him as his life had wound down through its last couple months.

Jorja did not want to hear about it, but stopping the hooker seemed more difficult than simply enduring her chatter.

In recent weeks, Alan's days had been devoted to erotic pursuits, though it all sounded feverish and desperate rather than pleasurable. He had used sick leave and vacation time to spend longoften frantichours in bed with Pepper or others whose “careers” he managed, and there was no variation or perversion that he failed to explore to excess. The hooker chattered on: Alan had developed a fascination with lascivious substances, devices, appliances, and clothingdildos, penis rings, spikeheeled shoes, vibrators, coc**ne ointment handcuffs. . . .

Jorja, already weakkneed and dizzy since seeing the body bag, grew queasy. “Please stop. What's the point? He's dead, for God's sake.”

Pepper shrugged. "I thought you'd want to know. He threw away a lot of his money on this . . . this sex thing. Since you're the executor of the estate, I thought you'd want to know."