The phone was one of those little lozenge-shaped ones. Joey guessed it had started out the usual colorless beige, but someone had painted it black. He scooped it up and dialed.

“What?” Mazzuchelli snapped after the second ring.

“Boss. It’s Joey.”

“What’ve you got?”

“I went to check out the place you told me about. Nothing there. I was thinking, though. You remember how you got those phone records on that guy in Soho?”

“How’d you hear about that?”

“I was there when you braced him, boss,” Joey said, trying to keep his voice from sounding hurt. “I helped you break his knees.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“I was thinking maybe you could do the same for this joint. See who’s been talking to them, see who they been talking to.”

There was a long silence. Joey shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“Okay,” Mazzuchelli said. “Where can I get hold of you? You’re not calling me from there are you?”

Fuck, Joey thought.

“Of course not, boss. I’m at a payphone. The number, though. It’s all scratched out.”

“Joey. If you’re lying to me, it’s going to be on the records that I’m just about to go get for you. You know that, right?”

“I’m sorry, boss. I’m at the apartment. I wasn’t thinking.”

Mazzucchelli muttered something that Joey couldn’t make out, but the tone of voice alone was enough to make him wince a little.

“Call me back in an hour. I’ll let you know what I find.”

“Okay. Sorry, boss.”

Mazzucchelli sighed. “You’re a good guy, Joey. Just stop being such a fuck-up, all right?”

Gina snuck out a little before eleven. Father Henry watched from the cottage as she slipped out the sacristy door and started down the street. She’d picked out an old black Navy jacket, but she had the same blue wrap-around skirt and a weathered black purse. With her hair pulled back and no makeup, she looked totally different than the young whore he’d taken in off the street.

He watched as she strode calmly to the street, heading north. Once she was out of sight, he leaned back, took off his glasses and pressed the bridge of his nose. Eyes closed, he waited for a moment, giving the Lord one last chance to come to him with the sign or insight he’d prayed for most of last night and a fair part of the morning. All he saw was the dark back of his eyelids.

He sighed, finished his sandwich in two quick bites, and headed over to the church. A flock of pigeons took wing as he walked past. She’d left the door unlocked, and he closed it carefully before going down the stairs.

The cot was neatly made. A towel hung in the bathroom, still wet from her shower. He felt like a nosey parent sneaking into a child’s room to go through her dresser. And if it seemed like a betrayal of trust, well, she wasn’t playing perfectly straight with him either.

He found her bags stowed under the cot. Now there was a question. She’d been borrowing clothes from the donations, so that couldn’t be what she’d brought with her. With a sinking feeling in his belly, Father Henry pulled out the blue athletic duffel bag, its slick plasticized cloth hissing against the concrete of the floor. He crossed himself and undid the zipper.

The money was in rolls a little bigger than his fist-worn hundred dollar bills wrapped by thick red or beige rubber bands. At a guess, there were maybe seventy or a hundred rolls. He sat on the floor and hefted one, trying to estimate the sum, even just roughly, but his mind rebelled. When he put it back and closed the bag, he noticed the black-red stain on the cloth.

So that’s why they call it blood money, he thought, and had to stifle giggles even though he knew it wasn’t really funny.

The little suitcase had a cheap lock, and Father Henry forced it with a penknife. Inside were nineteen small packages with a space where the twentieth had clearly been. They were white powder in carefully taped cellophane bags. Father Henry had seen enough movies to know that this was where he was supposed to poke his knife into one and taste the contents from the blade, and he even felt a slightly disembodied urge to go through the motions. Not that he had the first damn idea what drugs tasted like, but it was what they always did.

Still, it was pretty clear that Gina wasn’t carrying around baking soda. The rolled up bills were drug money, and these right here were the drugs-cocaine or heroin or something else. He couldn’t see as the exact chemistry mattered all that much. The question was still the same-what to do.

He crossed his legs uncomfortably and considered the packages. The obvious thing to do was call the police. (“I’m a Jokertown whore and the police won’t help me,” she’d said. Well it was clear enough now why that was, and it wasn’t about someone being an informant.) Yes, that was the right thing. There was no call for a simple man like him to go getting involved with this kind of thing. The police would know best what to do.

But it would mean that Gina went to prison, at the very least. Or maybe she’d get killed. It didn’t sit right. She was only seventeen, after all.

When he was her age, he’d been on a permanent drunk, so adept with his wild card talent that he could turn the water to wine when it touched his lips and the backwash wouldn’t even pink what was still in the glass. He’d been kicked out of school for being drunk in class, kicked out of the house to live in the apartment over Uncle Elmore’s garage.

He’d branched out a little after that-a few light narcotics and such, Valium especially being in fashion. If someone had come to him then with cocaine or heroin, Father Henry knew he would never have made it to twenty alive. He’d been at the age when you were supposed to be stupid and self-destructive. And with as low as he’d been, it was hard to say that Gina deserved a tougher break just because she was young and foolish here and now instead of thirty-odd years ago in Alabama.

Hard enough, in fact, that he couldn’t do it. Let he who is without sin, and he’d racked up a lot of mileage sinning when he’d been young and addicted.

His right leg was falling asleep, tingles shooting down his thigh to the foot. He shifted his weight, but it only hurt worse so he stood.

Something had to be done though. Whatever else, nothing right or good would come from the drugs. And so maybe that was why God had sent Gina to him.

He pressed his lips together, leaned down, and closed the suitcase.

“Well, Lord,” he said aloud as he walked to the bathroom. “I hope this was more or less what you were aiming for.”

It took longer than he’d expected to flush all the powder down the toilet, but he managed it.

The west end of the park butted up against the New York Public Library, the north end against 42nd street. Just about where the two met, there was a small building-a walk-in public restroom. They left the corpse of the British guy there, sitting in one of the stalls with a surprised expression and his jeans around his ankles.

The day was cold with low scudding clouds that seemed barely higher than the skyscrapers, but the foot traffic down 42nd was still thick. Demise sat in a chair on the brown, winterkilled grass conspicuously wearing an Aerosmith t-shirt and reading the Wall Street Journal. He had gooseflesh up and down his arms, and the chill would have been uncomfortable if the sick pain of his death hadn’t dwarfed it. The t-shirt, on the other hand, couldn’t be forgiven. He looked like a fucking idiot.

The girl showed up at noon. She cleaned up pretty nice-long black hair pulled back from her sharp features, a blue skirt that swirled a little around her ankles. She looked better without makeup. She was walking across the park toward him with a studied casualness that was about as subtle as blood on a wedding dress. An amateur.