Free Wages of Sin by Penelope Williamson Page B

concealed in the confessional.
    And now, because of what had happened, because of what he had done, what he was
doing,
his sin would be found out.
    He had heard the slam of the kitchen's screen door and footsteps on the flagstone path, and still he jumped when his pastor laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.
    “What are we going to do now, Paul?” Father Ghilotti said.
    Paulie wanted to laugh, but he was afraid that if he unclenched his throat he'd start to bawl like a child. “Pray?” he finally said, his voice breaking on the word.
    “We're going to have those detectives snooping around us for a while, and we know what-all they could find. If something isn't done.”
    Paulie shook his head, and this time he did laugh, although it was more of a gasping noise. “What
something
are you suggesting that we do, Father? One thing you ought to know about my little brother—our daddy used to beat on him with a bicycle chain and he could never break him. Day won't back down before anyone or anything.”
    Father Ghilotti's words were nearly overcome by the rush of the wind through the mimosa branches above their heads. “We've got to trust, then,” he said, “that God will give us the grace for every possible circumstance. Foreseen or unforeseen.”
    “With God's grace,” Paulie repeated obediently, but he didn't believe it. There would be no grace, no expiation for him now. No forgiveness.

Chapter Seven
    T he crack of billiard balls and the strum of a banjo leaked out the rotting shutters of the speakeasy on the corner as Daman Rourke passed by on his way home from the garage where he parked the Bearcat. He lived in a Creole cottage on Conti Street in the Faubourg Tremé, an old New Orleans neighborhood where white plantation owners had once kept their colored mistresses.
    This early in the morning the street was cool beneath the scrolled iron colonnade, and the wet sheets hanging over the iron balcony of the brothel next door flapped in the wind. As Rourke walked along the brick banquette, he thought about his brother…His brother, who seemed more than happy to break bread with the families of his church, had never accepted any of Rourke's supper invitations.
    Paulie had refused even to set a foot inside the cottage because it was the place where their mother had come to live after she had deserted them. Where she had come to live in sin for thirty years with her married lover. Their mother was gone now and the cottage was Rourke's, and he supposed that meant he must have found a way to forgive her. Not that she'd ever asked for his forgiveness. In one of the last conversations they'd had together, she told him she regretted nothing.
    The colored woman who lived across the street and dabbled in voodoo was scrubbing down her front stoop with powdered brick and water. “You goin' to spend all night long at the
bourré
tables, you,” she called out to Rourke, “you better be buyin' some of my good-luck
gris-gris.
”
    “How do you know I didn't pass the night with a lady?” Rourke called back.
    “I got somethin' for that, too. Make that bone o' yours stand up tall and salute the flag.”
    Rourke laughed and blew her a kiss as he pushed open the cottage's lacy iron gate. He walked down a domed brick carriageway and entered into the courtyard, where Remy Lelourie was showing a little girl in a blue jumper and a Pelicans baseball hat how to make a yo-yo walk the dog.
    Rourke paused within the purple shadows of a bougainvillea vine to watch. Sunshine splashed yellow puddles on the cobblestones around them, and their laughter made melody with the rattle of the banana leaves and the water ringing in the iron fountain.
    The little girl saw him first. Her full mouth burst open wide, and her smile, as it blew through his chest, was devastating.
    “Daddy!”
    She ran at him full tilt and he scooped her up into his arms, hugging his daughter, Katie. Hugging her tight. She smelled sweet, like crushed strawberries.
    Remy Lelourie