Part 40 (1/2)
”What about?” Fiona asked.
”s.e.x and religion.”
”Oh, that.”
”Yeah.”
”Welcome to the club.”
”You too?” I asked.
”About religion, sure. s.e.x? Not so much.”
We were sitting at opposite ends of a brown leather couch in her parlor, she with a calico cat in her lap and I with a rolled-up copy of the Dispatch in my left hand. An autographed photo of Fiona getting a peck on the cheek from Barack Obama stood on the mantel in the spot where a photo of Joseph Ratzinger in his white-mitered, postHitler Youth incarnation used to be. The log fire she'd lit when we came in from the cold had burned low. The red coals hissed and popped.
”Vanessa Maniella gave me the 'oldest profession' speech,” I said.
”Let me guess,” Fiona said. ”She claims prost.i.tution is older than the Bible, that women have a right to sell their bodies, and that all she's been doing is providing them with a clean, safe place to do it.”
”Pretty much,” I said, ”although somehow she made it seem a little more convincing.”
”Taking your moral guidance from a madam now?”
”Better her than Reverend Crenson. Besides, my old confessor Father Donovan is no longer handy. The bishop s.h.i.+pped his pedophile a.s.s off to Woonsocket.”
”There are other priests.”
”I prefer a lifelong friend to a stranger in a white collar.”
She took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. ”There's no denying that prost.i.tution is as old as mankind,” she said, ”but so are stealing, abortion, and murder.”
I didn't want to get sidetracked by the abortion argument, so what I said was, ”I see your point.”
”I've seen how troubled you are by the child p.o.r.n you've been exposed to,” she said.
”What's that have to do with prost.i.tution? Men who l.u.s.t after children have no interest in grown women.”
”It all flows from the same sewer,” she said. ”The commercialization of s.e.x debases and dehumanizes us all. It leads people to think of one another as pieces of meat instead of creatures with immortal souls.”
I must have looked doubtful because she added, ”And if you don't believe that, there's always 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.'”
”Says who?”
”I can't believe you just said that.”
”As I understand it,” I said, ”those words were written three thousand years ago by the Hebrew elder of a tribe that treated women as property.”
She shook her head sadly and fell silent for a moment. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper.
”I don't deny that my faith in the church has been shaken,” she said. ”The doctrine of papal infallibility is tyrannical bulls.h.i.+t. The church's medieval views on AIDS and contraception have gotten thousands of people killed. The bishops who protected pedophile priests for decades are f.u.c.king criminals. If I had the b.a.l.l.s, I'd indict the sons of b.i.t.c.hes. But I've never turned away from the Word of G.o.d.”
”Good for you, Fiona,” I said. ”Good for you.”
56.
”The publisher specifically requested you, Mulligan,” Lomax said.
”How come?”
”Apparently he liked the way you handled the Derby Ball story last September. Besides, this soiree is right up your alley.”
”How so?”
”It's a fund-raiser for the Milk Carton Crusade.”
”What the h.e.l.l's that?”
”Another one of those groups dedicated to finding missing children.”
”What's the publisher's interest?”
”I gather he's a contributor.”
”Do I have to wear a monkey suit again?”
”You can put in for it.”
”Hotel?”
”No. We need to keep expenses to a minimum. You can drive down and back the same night, or if you want you can stay at Mason's place. He already offered.”
So Tuesday night after work, I found myself riding shotgun in Mason's restored 1967 E-Type Series 1 Jaguar as it zoomed over Narragansett Bay on the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge, Providence a cold glance over our shoulders.
”Hungry?” he asked.
”I could eat something.”
So he slipped down a few side streets and parked in front of the White Horse Tavern.
”It's on me,” Mason said as we settled into a booth; so I ordered the prime tenderloin beef appetizer and the b.u.t.ter-poached New England lobster, the most expensive items on the menu. For Mason it was the White Horse clam chowder and the chanterelle mushroom risotto. He ordered wine; I wanted beer but figured it was safer to stick with water.
”Still no developments on the missing girl?” he asked.
”Julia Arruda?”