Grief Street

But will it keep you from asking?”
    “Supposing I find this pervo,” Kowalski said, licking his fingertips, ignoring my answer. “I take him into my little parlor downtown. You know the one I mean?”
    “The janitor’s closet.”
    “That’s right. I take this one into my parlor, I do the number on this nun-raping pervo... Which by the way, I hear this nun, she was a teacher of yours when you were a little kid at Holy Cross.”
    “What’s your point, Kowalski?”
    “The point is, I torture the shit out of this particular mutt, like I have done before to some deserving others. So now-you going to rat me out to IAD I took care of a sick-ass who stuck it to this nun of your youth?”
    “All right, so you hypothetically catch this mutt,” I said after thinking for a long moment. At least Kowalski had me thinking of something besides whisky. “Let’s suppose you dickprint him. Would your conscience be clear?”
    “Damn straight.”
    “That’s what makes you and me two different kinds of Catholics.”
    “How’s that?”
    “You, Kowalski, are the type that delights the moralists of the world. You’ve got a talent for inflicting cruelty with a clear conscience. That’s how they invented hell.”
    “That’s one smart freaking mouth you got on you, Hockaday, but it don’t make you better than me. Want to know how come?”
    I said nothing, which of course did not keep Kowalski from doing the same.
    “I seen your Sister Roberta over to the Roosevelt emergency room, right? I seen her there in a bed with that bloody stump at the end of her arm the mutt left her after doing what he did. She’s in freaking shock from all the blood she lost. Nobody can get nothing out of her—not me, not the croakers, not even this old priest they scare up to give her last rites, okay? All she does is talk delirium. You don’t want to know details like what the pervo done to her when he jumped her and tore off her habit? Okay, you’re the sensitive type. But you really ought to know what Sister’s saying in her delirium, at least what we can make out.”
    “What?”
    “She’s calling you out, Hockaday. She’s spitting on your name. All my life, I ain’t ever heard a nun so pissed off. Over and over she keeps gasping out the same thing— Oh, what betrayal! And here I was little Neil’s own teacher! How do you freaking like that? How’s your freaking conscience, Hockaday? All clear on that?”
    Betrayal? What could I say?
    “You think my kind of a Catholic heart ain’t about cut out of my chest when I got to hear that? But it don’t end re, Hockaday, you arrogant mick. The priest that come, it turns out he’s a friend of yours, too. Jesus, I feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for anybody’s got you for a friend.”
    “What priest?”
    “Another mick—Declan Byrne.”
    “He gave Sister Roberta last rites?”
    “Not so far as he’s concerned, on account of Sister’s completely out of it. This priest, he’s doing all he can, but she don’t understand him. She can’t respond. All she’s doing is spitting on your name. The priest, he’s all broken up. Maybe he thinks if Sister don’t make it through the night she’s going to wind up with all the unbaptized babies in limbo or something. You being a real good type of Catholic, you know what that means—don’t you, Hockaday?”
    How many times as a boy at Holy Cross had I heard it explained in religion class? I knew...
    Limbo is worse than hell itself. It’s packed with heathens and pagans flying around and crying for their mothers because they’ll never be admitted to the ineffable presence of Our Lord and the glorious company of saints, martyrs, and virgins.
    ... And vengeful Kowalski would now have me know that Sister’s worst fate would be my fault.
    But at that moment—a terrible moment—Johnny Kay walked past the butler in the doorway. Finally, I had a fix on him.
    Finally, after three days in which I felt as if I were bumping around in total darkness, I saw in the stricken faces of Johnny Kay and Joseph Kowalski something that made sense; a terrible sense, but only the beginning of it.
    “I’ll be heading inside now, Sergeant,” I said as Johnny Kay walked up, as King Kong Kowalski’s mighty jowls trembled. “I have the feeling there’s nothing better I could do now than hear that play.”

    I made it back in time for the final scene of Grief Street…

SETTING: the parlor bar of Annie Meath’s bawdy house on West Fortieth Street,