Parishioner Read Online Free

Santa Monica.”
    “How much they pay you for that?”
    “Why?”
    “Are you going to answer me or do I walk away right here, right now?”
    “Thirteen dollars an hour,” she said. “That and overtime. I’m just doing it until I find those boys.”
    “And why would you want to do that?”
    “Because it was wrong.”
    “It’s been wrong for twenty-three years. Why look for them now?”
    “I came to stay at Theodora Martino’s shelter in South Miami. She had a storefront church and a shelter. One night I … I went to her office and told her what I’d done. She didn’t judge me or anything like that. She just said that I had to make amends. After a while I realized that she was right, that the only thing that mattered was to … to try and make up for what I did. I came here to put things right. I still know the names of the parents. I owe them something. When the detective didn’t work out, I called Theodora. That’s when she told me about Father Frank.”
    Xavier wondered about the caramel woman in the blue dress—about her worry dreads and sudden repentance. The truth was rarely as neat as it seemed in words. But who was he to say? Frank was his spiritual guide and therefore had to be trusted.
    “I want you to write down everything that you’ve done and that has to do with those children,” he said. “Brayton’s names, anything about this Sedra woman, the detective you hired … everything. Bring them to my place in LA.” He brought out an eel-skin wallet and produced a simple business card. “That’s my address and phone. I need it all before tomorrow morning. I go to sleep very early, so you don’t have to knock; just slide it under the door.”
    “I don’t really want to write it down. I mean …”
    “You trust this Theodora?”
    “Yes.”
    “And does she trust Frank?”
    “Completely.”
    “I will destroy the file when I’m through with it. You got my word on that.”

    Xavier drove a restored Ford Edsel. It was salmon pink and lime green, edged in chrome. Heleaned against the front hood in the parking lot and waited until Iridia came out. She saw him standing there and walked his way, her yellow and green silk robes hissing like the scale-over-scale rub of a coiling snake.
    “Ecks,” she said, approaching him demurely.
    “Ire.”
    “Did you want something?”
    “What did you think of Ms. Richards?” Xavier Rule asked.
    She gazed into his eyes. Her skin was the color of red earth that had been lovingly smoothed and then burnished to a medium glow. Xavier knew that the longer he looked at her the more beautiful she would become—like some dispassionate Hindu deity that would take your soul from reflex without the slightest enmity. Over her shoulder he could see a fire red pickup truck pulling into the parking lot.
    “She was guarded,” Iridia Gallo said. “If it was the old days I’d either let her alone or make sure that she was on my side.”
    “She on the con?”
    “Some of us are always working,” Iridia said with a brilliant smile. “It’s like being an alcoholic or under a nature bequeathed by God.”
    The truck pulled up next to Xavier’s fancy two-toned-and-chrome car. A tall white man with big muscles under a red-and-cream-checkered shirt leaped out from the driver’s side.
    Xavier and Iridia ignored him.
    “You believe in God?” Xavier asked. His voice was neutral but there was sharpness to his eye.
    “I didn’t before I met Frank.”
    “You think Frank believes in God?”
    “It doesn’t matter what he believes in.”
    The powerful young man walked up and put his arm around the woman.
    “Hey, Ecks,” Colt Chapman said.
    “Why not?” Xavier asked Iridia.
    “Niagara Falls doesn’t believe in electricity but those dynamos run twenty-four hours a day.”
    “Chapman,” Xavier said in greeting. “Just getting a professional reading from yourgirlfriend.”
    “We’re engaged,” the russet-haired white man said, trying his best to make the