9

Anthony Dansk was attending early evening mass when the cellular phone buzzed in his pocket. He shut it off at once, but not before it had drawn the attention of other worshippers, some of whom turned to stare. The priest heard it and frowned across the faces of his congregation.

Dansk slid out of the pew and walked up the aisle. In the vestibule, he pressed a button on the phone and said, ‘I can’t talk now, McTell. I’ll get back to you.’

Dansk severed the connection and glanced at leaflets tacked to a bulletin-board. Hot-line numbers for manic depressives, alcoholics, battered wives’ support groups, a schedule for a kindergarten class. He also noticed dust on ledges and an old cobweb with a skeleton of an antique fly hanging under Christ’s armpit.

He stuck the phone in his pocket, re-entered the church and slipped quietly into a pew at the rear. Churches impressed him: he liked the majesty and the mystery. His mother used to tell him he was a mote in Jesus’s sunbeam. For years he’d thought of himself as a fleck floating in mid-air, with only Christ keeping him from falling. The things you believe.

He watched the priest, the rose-coloured scalp glowing under subdued light. Dansk pondered the concept of chastity, what it would be like not to get laid. Unreal. Pecker forever in your pocket, unless you had a taste for choirboys and indulged yourself with much fumbling of cassocks in the quiet of the sacristy.

When Mass was over Dansk walked outside and lingered on the sidewalk. The other worshippers drifted out. They were a well-scrubbed crew: wives with sculpted hair, men in suits. These people had homes to go to, kids to look after.

The priest appeared on the steps and looked at him.

‘Visiting?’ the priest asked.

‘Yeah, more or less,’ Dansk said.

‘I thought your face was new.’

‘New? It’s thirty-five years old.’

‘Pardon?’

Dansk said, ‘A joke. You said new.’

‘Oh, right. Yes. Forgive me.’

‘Me forgive you? Shouldn’t that be the other way round, Father?’

The priest laughed this time, but uneasily. Dansk often had an unsettling effect on others. He’d recognized this in himself long ago. People he met sometimes sensed a nebulous danger in him, a dark core. It was as if they were receiving vibrations that unhinged them a little. He considered it a kind of power he had. He fingered the Swiss Army knife in his pocket.

‘Good Mass,’ he said.

‘We have a nice bunch of people here,’ said the priest. ‘My name’s Father Hannon. Brian Hannon.’

‘Anthony Dansk.’

‘Are you staying long in our city?’

‘It depends on business.’

‘Ah. A man of commerce.’

‘Commerce, right.’

‘Well, if you decide to worship with us again, Anthony, you know where to find us. Just remember to switch your phone off next time.’ The priest wandered off to chat with members of his congregation.

Dansk walked to the end of the block where he’d parked his rented car. He sat behind the wheel, took out his phone and punched the button that connected him with McTell.

‘OK,’ Dansk said. ‘Talk.’

‘We traced her.’

‘You traced her before, I seem to remember,’ Dansk said.

‘This time’s different.’

‘It was different before,’ Dansk said.

‘I know, I know. But this time. I swear.’

‘What are you swearing to, McTell?’

‘She gassed her car on Thunderbird about forty-five minutes ago.’

‘Thunderbird. What is that?’

‘Name of a road. The guy filling her tank said she was unglued. Dropping coins, crying, the shakes, talking to herself. The guy figured a loony.’

‘And?’

‘Pasquale is on her.’

‘Even as we speak?’

‘Yeah,’ McTell said.

Dansk considered this. ‘I don’t want you calling me later just to hum the same old tune, McTell. Don’t get in touch unless you can sing me a lullaby.’

Dansk cut the connection. Through the windshield he watched Father Hannon shake hands with his departing flock. Dansk thought about white suburban houses and morning newspapers landing on porches and cookies baking in ovens and kids laughing in backyards. This life he led was one of hotels and endless highways and greasy spoons open all hours and lonely demented strangers.

He changed the angle of the rear-view mirror and looked at himself, the thick red hair, grass-green eyes, lips almost cherubic, pale skin. Thirty-five. He could pass for twenty. Baby face.

He twisted the mirror away, shoved the phone inside the glove compartment, then locked it. What he’d do was go back to his hotel downtown and wait for McTell to call again.

He glanced along the sidewalk at the priest. Commerce my ass. You don’t know, Father, he thought. You probably think computers or life insurance or hotel supplies.

Wrong. My commerce is darkness without end.