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upset?"
    "Yes." I twisted the wedding ring on my finger, absently.
    Father Rattigan noticed.
    "Does your wife know all this?"
    "Approximately."
    "That sounds like delicatessen morality."
    "My wife trusts me."
    "Wives do that, God bless them. Does my sister seem worth saving?"
    "Doesn't she to you?"
    "Dear God, I gave up when she claimed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was a Kama Sutra pose."
    "Constance! Still, Father, if she shows up again, could you call my number and hang up? I'd know you were signaling her arrival."
    "You do know how to split hairs. Give me your number. I see in you not so much a Baptist but a fair Christian."
    I gave him my number as well as Crumley's.
    "Just one ring, Father."
    The priest studied the numbers. "We all live on the slope. But some, by a miracle, grow roots. Don't wait. Your phone may never ring. But I'll give your number to my assistant, Betty Kelly, too, just in case. Why are you doing this?"
    "She was heading fast off a cliff."
    "Watch out she doesn't take you with. I'm ashamed I said that. But as a child she skated out and stopped in mid-traffic to laugh."
    He fixed me with a bright needle eye. "But why do I tell you this?"
    "It's my face."
    "Your what?"
    "My face. I look in mirrors but never catch myself. The expression always changes before I can trap it. It's got to be a blend of the Boy Jesus and Genghis Khan. It drives my friends crazy."
    This relaxed some of the priest's bones. "Does idiot savant sound right?"
    "Almost. The school bullies took one look and beat the hell out of me. You were saying?"
    "Was I? Yes, well, if that screaming woman was Constance, and her voice seemed different, she gave me orders. Imagine, orders to a priest! Gave me a deadline. Said she'd be back in twenty-four hours. I must give complete forgiveness for all her sins, twenty thousand strong. As if I could assign such mass-market absolution. I told her she must forgive herself, and ask others for forgiveness. God loves you. 'But He doesn't,' she said. And then she was gone."
    " Will she come back?"
    "With doves on her shoulders or lightning bolts."
    Father Rattigan walked me to the front of the cathedral. "And how does she look? Like a siren singing to lure damned sailors to drown. Are you a poor damn sailor?"
    "No, just someone who writes people on Mars, Father."
    "I hope they are happier than we are. Wait! Good Lord, there was a thing she said. That she was joining a new church. And might not come back to douse my ears."
    "What church, Father?"
    "Chinese. Chinese and Grauman's. Some church !"
    "To many it is. You've been there?"
    "To see King of Kings, I found the forecourt superior to the film. You look as if you're about to break and run."
    "To the new church, Father. Chinese. Grauman's."
    "Stay off the quicksand footprints. Many sinners have sunk there. What film's playing?"
    "Abbott and Costello in Jack and the Beanstalk?
    "Lamentable."
    "Lamentable." I ran.
    "Mind the quicksand!" Father Rattigan called after me as I raced out the doors.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

    ON the way across town I was a hot-air balloon full of Great Expectations. Crumley kept hitting my elbow to make me calm down, calm down. But we had to get to that other church.
    "Church!" Crumley muttered. "Since when do double features sideline the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?"
    "King Kong! That's when! 1932! Fay Wray kissed my cheek."
    "Holy mackerel." Crumley switched on the car radio.
    "—afternoon—" a voice said. "Mount Lowe—"
    "Listen!" I said, my stomach a chunk of ice.
    The voice said, "Death . . . police . . . Clarence Rattigan . . . victim ..." A flare of static. "Freak accident. . . victim smothered, smothered . . . old newspapers. Recall brothers in Bronx? Saved stacks of old papers that fell and killed the brothers? Newspapers . . ."
    "Turn it off."
    Crumley turned it off.
    "That poor lost soul," I said.
    "Was he really that lost?"
    "Lost as you can get without giving it the old heave-ho."
    "You want to drive by?"
    "Drive by," I