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head. “I didn’t know.”
    “Bill, I told you.”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    “I’m not. She was ninety–three and in pain and it was a blessing.’’ Dyer looked aside. The jukebox had come to life in the bar and he looked toward the sound. He saw students drinking beer from thick steins. “I guess I’d had five or six false alarms,” he said, returning his gaze to Kinderman. “A brother or a sister calling me over the years to say, ‘Joe, Mom’s dying, you’d better get up here.’ This time it happened.”
    “I’m so sorry. It must have been terrible.”
    “No. No, it wasn’t. When I got there they told me she was dead–my brother, my sister, the doctor. So I went in and I read the Last Rites by her bed. And when I finished she opened her eyes and looked at me. I nearly jumped out of my socks. She said, ‘Joe, that was lovely, a dear, nice prayer. And now could you fix a little drink for me, son?’ Well, Bill, all I could do was just tear downstairs to the kitchen, I was so damned excited. I poured her a scotch on the rocks, brought it up to her and she drank it. Then I took the empty glass from her hands, and she looked me in the eye and said, ‘Joe, I don’t think I ever told you this, son, but you’re a wonderful man.’ And then she died. But the thing that really got me–” He broke off, seeing Kinderman’s eyes welling up. “If you do your blubbering act, I’m leaving.”
    Kinderman rubbed at his eye with a knuckle. “I’m sorry. But it’s sad to think that mothers are so fallible,” he said. “Please continue.”
    Dyer leaned his head across the table. “The thing I can’t forget–the thing that really struck me more than anything– was that here was this wasted ninety–three–year–old lady with her brain cells shot, her vision and her hearing half gone and her body just a rag of what it was, but when she spoke to me, Bill–when she spoke to me, all of her was there.”
    Kinderman nodded, looking down at his hands clasped together on the table. Black and unbidden, an image of Kintry nailed to the oars hit his mind like a bullet.
    Dyer put a hand on Kinderman’s wrist. “Hey, come on. It’s okay,” he said. “She’s okay.”
    “It just seems to me the world is a homicide victim,” Kinderman answered him morosely. He lifted his drooping gaze to the priest. “Would a God invent something like death? Plainly speaking, it’s a lousy idea. It isn’t popular, Father. It isn’t a hit. It’s not a winner.”
    “Don’t be dumb. You wouldn’t want to live forever,” said Dyer.
    “Yes, I would.”
    “You’d get bored,” said the priest.
    “I have hobbies.”
    The Jesuit laughed.
    Encouraged, the detective leaned forward and continued. “I think about the problem of evil.”
    “Oh, that.”
    “I must remember that. A very good saying. Yes, ‘Earthquake in India, Thousands Dead,’ says the headline. ‘Oh, that,’ I say.
    “Saint Francis here is speaking to the birds, and in the meantime we have cancer and Mongoloid babies, not to mention the gastrointestinal system and certain aesthetics related to our bodies Audrey Hepburn wouldn’t like we should mention to her face. Can we have a good God with such nonsense going on? A God who goes blithely shtravansing through the cosmos like some omnipotent Billie Burke while children suffer and our loved ones lie in their waste and die? Your God on this question always takes the Fifth Amendment.”
    “So why should the Mafia get all the breaks?”
    “Enlightening words. Father, when are you preaching again? I would love to hear more of your insights.”
    “Bill, the point is that right in the middle of this horror there’s a creature called man who can see that it’s horrible. So where do we come up with these notions like ‘evil’ and ‘cruel’ and ‘unjust’? You can’t say a line looks a little bit crooked unless you’ve got a notion of a line that’s straight.’’ The detective was trying to wave him