Read Prayer for Free Online Page B

we arrived back at Driscoll Street, Ruth made meat loaf. After dinner, I played an Xbox game with Danny and put him to bed; then I watched TV and fell asleep in my chair. I didn’t hear the telephone ring, but Ruth answered it in case it was the Bureau. It wasn’t uncommon for the office to ring on the weekend given the DT caseload, but it wasn’t the office, although I might have wished it was.
    “It’s Bishop Coogan,” she said, handing me the telephone.
    It had been months since Eamon Coogan and I had spoken, and while I was surprised to have him call me, I tried to look more surprised than I was. This little pantomime was for Ruth’s benefit as I hoped to avoid a scene with her the moment the call was over; I guessed she would assume his call was connected with my earlier declaration of disbelief and that I had already tried to bring my doubts about God to the bishop. I pressed the speakerphone button on the handset so she could hear all of our conversation in the hope it might save me the trouble of a denial.
    “I’m sorry to interrupt you on a Sunday evening, Gil. I was hoping I could ask you to come and see me. In private. There’s something important I’d like to discuss with you. I know it’s short notice, and you’re probably very busy, but would now be possible?”
    I glanced instinctively at my watch. It was already seven-thirty.
    “Nothing’s happened back in Boston, has it?”
    “No, no. Nothing like that, Gil. It’s something I need to ask you about in your capacity as a federal agent.”
    The bishop was South Boston Irish and, despite his having lived in Houston for several years, some of his vowels sounded as wide as the Charles River. When he said “ask,” he sounded like JFK.
    “Yes, sir. But would you mind telling me what it’s about?”
    “It’s hardly a subject for the phone, I think. Come over to the bishop’s residence in an hour. Just sound your horn and I’ll come out. I was thinking, perhaps, we could go over to O’Neill’s.”
    It was just like Eamon Coogan to suggest that we go to an Irish bar.
    “All right. I’ll be there in an hour.”
    I rang off and looked at Ruth.
    “What do you suppose that’s all about?”
    “If you ask me,” said Ruth—much to my irritation, she could always mimic a Southie accent perfectly—“it’s perfectly obvious what it’s about.”
    I shrugged.
    “It can only be about pedophile priests.”
    “What?”
    “You don’t think it goes on here, just like in Boston and Chicago?”
    I put my arms around her waist and kissed her back. For a while, she let it happen and then pushed me gently away.
    “God, I hope that’s not what it’s about,” I said, wrinkling my nose with disgust. “It’s really not something I feel comfortable talking about. He’s my mother’s oldest friend.”

FIVE
    B rian O’Neill’s bar was the only Irish pub I’d ever seen with two palm trees out front, but inside things were more authentically Celtic, with the best draught Guinness in the city and perhaps the worst service anywhere west of Dublin. The place was popular enough, although, even by Texas standards, most of the bar’s customers looked as if they could have survived a couple of Irish potato famines.
    No less in size was Bishop Coogan, who made any room he was in look small. He was sitting in a very fat-old-womanish way, all chubby-fingered and splay-legged, with the sleeves of his huge black jacket rolled up over his forearms and the waistband of his equally enormous black trousers riding just under his armpits. The priest’s collar around his neck was almost invisible under his chins. He looked like a sumo wrestler at a wake.
    I set a second tray of drinks down on the table in front of him and one of the whiskies instantly disappeared. Now that our small talk about Scotland and Northern Ireland was exhausted, I was impatient for him to get to the point. I was especially intrigued by the old duffel bag he had brought with him.
    “So,