Fat Tuesday(42)

"I didn't mean any offense," he'd muttered abashedly."It's just that "

"Please." She raised her hand to indicate that she hadn't taken umbrage at his shock."I frequently see Remy Duvall at prayer. I've never spoken to her. Nor does anyone. She's not there for show. She appears very devout and is always the first one there to go to confession."

After following Pinkie's wife into the cathedral for several days in a row and verifying Ruby Bouchereaux's information, he had thought, Perfect.

What better way to get inside someone's head and learn what she's about than to hear her confession? Did she do drugs like her mother, Angel?

Would she confess her affair with Bardo? What sordid sins would she cite to her priest that would be useful to someone out to destroy her husband?

Come Saturday, Burke determined to be in the booth waiting for her. It was a ballsy plan, but brilliant. Except for two hitches: how to sound priestly, and how to forestall the real priest. The last time Burke had been to confession was the day following his mother's funeral, and then he'd gone only to honor her memory He was a little rusty on the drill, although, once trained in Catholicism, one never completely forgot. But even if he could do a passable job, that still left him with the problem of delaying the parish priest. That's when he'd thought of using Gregory James, who'd been trained both as a priest and as an actor.

"Did you say everything right?" Gregory asked him now.

"You'd been over it with me a dozen times." Burke cursed a slow driver as he whipped around him."I said everything right."

"She didn't guess?"

The tearful remorse he'd heard in her voice couldn't have been faked.

"She didn't guess."

"Good thing she couldn't see that scowl on your face. It hardly looks saintly."

"Well she didn't, so relax."

"I'm relaxed. You're the one who's sweating and driving like a maniac." Having said that, Gregory sat back, smiling. He tapped his fingers on his knees in time to a tune inside his head."I did my part great.

Waylaid the priest outside the rectory, just like you told me to.

I told him I was trying to hook up with Father Kevin, that we'd been seminary students together.

"He'd never heard of him, of course. Are you sure?" I asked. I'm positive his mother told me that he'd been assigned to Saint Michael's in New Or-leens." Those voice classes I took in New York sure helped cover my accent," he told Burke in an aside.

"Anyway, the priest says that my friend could very well have been assigned to Saint Michael's, but I was at Saint Matthew's. So then we laughed. I said the taxi driver must've gotten his churches mixed up.

Or his saints," says the Father. And we laughed some more.

"To keep him occupied a while longer, I asked if he was a New Orleans native, and he said he'd been here ten years. But he knew all the good restaurants. Not that he could afford them, he rushed to say, but some of his parishioners could, and they were generous enough to invite him out frequently. Duh-da-duh-da-duh-da. So we killed maybe ten minutes.

Enough?"

"Plenty. Now will you shut up?"

He didn't want to chat with Gregory. He wanted to reflect on those few minutes he'd been separated from Remy Duvall by only a thin wall and a screen. He'd been close enough to smell her perfume and to hear her soft sobs as she confessed a sin Burke hadn't expected.

Drugs, drunkenness, adultery none of that would have shocked him But guilt over a miscarriage? He hadn't expected that, and it had knocked him for a loop.

All the same, he would use it to his advantage. Even while her perfume was making him damn glad he'd never taken a vow of chastity, he'd been in his policeman's mode, wondering how he could apply this confidential information to the job that must be done. In a burst of inspiration not necessarily divine inspiration he'd dreamed up a penance that fit her sin and worked nicely into his overall plan.

But he wasn't all that happy about it.

He wished he didn't know about the baby she'd lost. That made her human. He wished he hadn't touched her hand through the screen.

That made him human.

"Say, Basile, did you undergo a religious experience or something?"

Drawn from his thoughts by Gregory's question, Burke shot him a dirty look.

"Because you're acting really weird. You came out of the cathedral looking like you'd seen God." Again, Burke gave him a disparaging glance."Okay, forget it. I guess I'm just not used to you sans mustache, and with your hair slicked back like that. I don't think your own mother would recognize you. The glasses are a nice touch, too."

Realizing that he'd forgotten to remove the square, horn-rimmed eyeglasses, he did so now, dropping them on the console between him and Gregory. The lenses were only clear glass, but it was strange that he hadn't thought to take them off. A guy could get himself killed overlooking a detail like that. Cop or criminal, it was the small stuff that tripped you up.

He ordered himself to snap out of it, whatever it was. If he started second-guessing his decision, he might waver in his determination to avenge Kev's death. If he couldn't go through with it, he couldn't go on breathing. It was something he had to do or die trying. His right hand flexed around the steering wheel.