“Pallorino,” Winston yelled as Angie reached the door. “Don’t think you can scare me into stopping doing my job, either!”
CHAPTER 35
“What do you guys want now? I told you everything I could last time,” Pastor Markus said, stepping outside into the street and closing the Harbor House door firmly behind him.No access this time,thought Kjel.
“You didn’t tell us yous had a criminal record, now did you, Gilani?” Kjel said.
“I did my time. It’s no longer relevant.”
“Yous was busted for driving drunk with your fly open and some minor female sucking on your cock, Gilani. You ejaculate before, during, or after you killed that mother of two young kids?”
A weird kind of calm overcame the man’s face, and all he said was “I’d like you to leave now.”
“Or what?” interjected Leo.
He gave a shrug. “Or I guess you’ll get even wetter standing out here in the rain.” He turned his back on them and reached for the door handle.
“What kind of vehicle do you drive, Gilani?”
“I take public transit. Or bike,” he said, his back still to them.
“Do you own or have access to a vehicle?”
Slowly Gilani turned to face them. “If you detectives had done your homework properly, you’d have learned that not only did I do my time, I had my driver’s license pulled. I never applied for another.”
“So they kept yous off the road, yet they let you work with minors,” Kjel said. “Soooo many vulnerable, transient young women coming through here, who, like you pointed out, won’t go to the cops when they run into trouble. You could do anything to them. Trust, you said. They trust you like a father figure, eh,Pastor? Yous promise them a bed and warmth and comfort and even lets them sit on your lap while you play Santa Claus, eh?”
“Mine was not a sex crime, officers. Part of my restitution was to go into rehab. Part of my twelve-step rehab program brought me to God, and that in turn brought me here, to this haven, this parish, these children. I found my purpose here, and I work every day to atone for what I did, and yet, I know that as much as I ask God for forgiveness, the only peace I will ever find is to help others, selflessly, every minute of my life, repenting for my sins every second of the way. Because the moment I stop ...” His voice faded for a moment as nightmares haunted his eyes. He cleared his throat. “Alcohol and subsequent loss of inhibition, bad judgment, was my problem. I was an addict. I’m not an evil person. And I’m certainly not a sex offender.” He paused and met their eyes in turn. “We all have them—coping mechanisms, addictions, ways of running from things too uncomfortable to face. One man drinks. Another buys sex in the streets. Another falls prey to crystal meth. Another runs ultra-marathons. Or climbs one mountain higher than the next. My life is now one of sobriety, and my salvation is charity work here.”
As they left, Kjel and Leo drove in silence for a while, an odd weight hanging between them.
“You buying it?” Leo said finally.
“Yeah, I thinks I’m buying it,” Kjel said, smoothing his goatee. “He’s not saving them kids. He’s just trying to save himself.”
Leo lit a smoke, and Kjel responded by opening the window to a blast of wet air.
Exhaling a cloud of smoke, Leo said, “So what’s yours—your addiction, your coping mechanism?”
“I’m celibate.”
“What—why? You got some disease I should know about?”
“Gives you control, you know? If yous can manage to master that most basic drive for sex, you can control all the other things in your life.”
Leo stared at him. “You have gotta be kidding me? Youarea fucking freak, you know that?”
“At least I don’t go getting my cock sucked off by some tweaker in a back alley.”
“What are you trying to say?”
Kjel gave a half shrug. “Nothing.”
Leo smoked in silence for a while, then said suddenly, “Half the guys down at the station do it, you know? A blow job. Blows off some steam. Keeps all the work crap away from the missus. No harm, no foul. For Chrissakes. Don’t tell me you’ve never even thought about it.”
CHAPTER 36
The atmosphere crackled in the heavy silence between Maddocks and his partner as she drove them to the apartment of Jon Jacques Jr.He’d gone to interview Rick Butler solo while she’d abandoned him to confront Merry Winston against his orders as her senior partner in this duo.Ifone could call it a duo. They were in her Crown Vic now, because he’d managed to drop his Impala off to be detailed now that Jack-O had a sitter.
