Free The Book of Murdock by Loren D. Estleman

Esther. It’s a debt I can never repay. No other mortal in Creation has been permitted to take an angel unto himself.”
    â€œHave you said as much to Esther?”
    â€œIt would be superfluous. Angels know they’re angels.”
    I didn’t wander any deeper into country where I had no jurisdiction. He might have been able to address a churchful
of people as if he were talking to one, but when it was just one he was wretched.
    Our session ended and I went back to my room to look through the bundle. The undated pages were tanned and brittle and threatened to fall apart at the folds when I cut the cord. He’d filled them with a bold round hand with few crossouts and corrections and not a single blot. At first it seemed like poetry and I nearly gave up because I can’t recite verse without sounding like a bored railroad conductor announcing the next stop, but when I tried one there in the privacy of my own quarters it came as easily as breathing. He’d found the difference between writing to be read and writing to be heard; what looked like broken pieces of sentences to the eye sounded like natural conversation when read aloud. Not surprisingly, because the Christian God is not the wrathful ogre of the Old Testament, there was little about flames that burned without consuming and much about forgiveness and mercy; but Eldred Griffin’s Jesus was not the bearded lady I’d seen in picture books and in pasteboard frames on people’s walls. Virile, decisive, and committed, his was the authority that hurled the money changers out of the temple and told the devil to go to hell with his kingdoms of gold. He reminded me of Griffin himself, who if he had not remade God in his own image had certainly placed his stamp upon Him.
    I made my selection finally, and from sundown to well past midnight sat at the narrow drop-front desk that came with the room, transcribing the text onto a separate sheet, making small changes that suited my inferior breath control, and burning the phrases deep into my memory until
my eyes gave out and I couldn’t turn up the lamp any more without smudging the glass chimney. I retired then and spent the rest of the dark hours dreaming I stood naked at the pulpit before pews packed with my enemies. It made for a full house.
    Griffin greeted me at the door of the Cathedral of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and remarked that I hadn’t slept well. I held up my pages of notes by way of answer.
    â€œYou’re prepared, then. I expect much.”
    Thus pressed, I crossed the cavernous room up the center aisle, with the sensation that I was following the echo of my footsteps rather than the reverse. The morning sun leaning in through the tall stained-glass windows cast colored reflections on the oiled pews, and the sparrows Griffin had predicted fluttered between the rafters, looking for a place to perch and take in the performance. The place smelled of candle wax and varnish.
    I mounted the steps to the pulpit. Father Medavoy, the pastor, was tall, and had directed a volunteer to raise it with planks for his comfort, bringing it to the top of my sternum. I felt like an altar boy serving out some kind of humiliating punishment. Griffin, no help, took a seat in the very back, nearly out of pistol range from where I stood arranging my pages on a slantboard with a pencil rail at the base.
    I cleared my throat and began.
    â€œLouder!”
    I started again, raising my voice.
    â€œLouder!”
    I shouted.
    â€œNot so loud! It’s a sermon, not a roll call.”

    I made two more tries before he fell silent long enough for me to get to the body of the text. It was a parable of his own creation, about a boy whose brother had died before he was born, and who through a misunderstanding thought him an angel, to whom he prayed for an end to his parents’ grief. It was guaranteed to wring tears from listeners, but acting upon some instinct I kept them from my own