Free Harlot's Moon by Edward Gorman Page A

cigarette smoke and greasy food. For most of the time I was there, a tiny Pekingese stood in front of me and yipped. He had a cute little collar with his name, MIGHTY MIKE, spelled out on it with fake rubies.
    Gaspard looked to be in his mid-sixties, a balding man with liver spots on both his hands and his face. He was thin but it was an unhealthy thin. I wondered if he'd been sick. He wore a once-white T-shirt, gray work pants and felt slippers with the toes cut out.
    He said, "He was dead when I got there."
    "All right."
    "And I didn't see anything or hear anything."
    "You checked him in?"
    "Uh-huh."
    "When?"
    "You want some instant coffee?"
    "No, thanks."
    "I'm going to have one. I just can't get started without a little coffee."
    The kitchenette, as they are called, was just big enough to fit a small stove and refrigerator in the corner. Gaspard took a battered saucepan, filled it with water, then stood there to wait while it boiled.
    "I checked him in just after midnight."
    "Had he checked into your motel before?"
    He paused. Then shook his head. "That priest got more ass than a toilet seat as we used to say."
    "So you'd checked him in before?"
    "Usually once or twice a week. He usually wore a hat and dark glasses and kept his collar up, but I always knew who he was."
    "You ever see any of the women he was with?"
    Gaspard shook his head. "He was real cagey about that. He'd have them park in back so they could walk right to his room without me seeing them."
    "But you're sure he always had somebody with him?"
    "Why would a man rent a room to be alone?"
    You ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer.
    Gaspard brought his coffee over and sat back down in his recliner. His lime-green recliner. The couch I sat on was orange crushed velvet. The crushed velvet ottoman was light blue. Being color blind was apparently one of Gaspard's virtues.
    "Did Father Daly act any different than usual that night?"
    "Different how?"
    "You know, scared or more talkative or less talkative or—" He sipped his coffee. "He looked — nervous or something."
    "Why do you think that?"
    "He walked over to the window a couple of times while I was getting him his key. He stared outside like he was trying to see if somebody had followed him."
    "Maybe he was looking for his woman."
    "Don't think so."
    "Oh?"
    "Like I said, the women always came around back."
    "You ever see him nervous like that before?"
    "Huh-uh. And it gave me a funny feeling."
    "Funny feeling?"
    "Yeah. I used to get that in Nam. And I mean Nam when it was rough. Sixty-four and sixty-five. Before Johnson decided to give the grunts any air cover."
    I looked at the framed photographs hanging above the dusty Formica table that had been shoved against the living-room wall. Gaspard young, with and without his parents; Gaspard in his thirties, in uniform and in Nam; and Gaspard in a bowling shirt about to roll an important ball. Most women seem able to make a hovel appear home-like. But not men. This place writhed with loneliness and boredom and drift. No matter how many years he lived here, it would always feel temporary. I guess that's why the dog kept yipping. The place was getting to him.
    "Anyway, six, seven guys I went over with got killed there. And right before they did, I always got this funny feeling about them. You ever see any TV shows about ESP?"
    "A few."
    "I think that's maybe what it was. That funny feeling, I mean."
    "And you had the same sort of feeling about Father Daly?"
    "Exactly."
    "As if something bad was going to happen to him?"
    "Uh-huh."
    "You say that to him?"
    "Say it to him?" He looked at me as if I was profoundly stupid. "I never let him know I knew who he was."
    "I see."
    "He gave me Communion sometimes over at St Mallory's Church, but if he knew who I was, he never let on."
    "But the other night—"
    "I know what you'd like me to say but I can't say it because it wouldn't be true."
    "You didn't see or hear—"
    "I didn't see or hear anything."