Sins of the Fathers Read online

SEVENTEEN

  EVENING DRIFTED OVER the grounds like a cosmic afterthought, warm with a touch of breeze. Cicadas droned, biomechanical sirens in the trees along the garden path. The sky slid from Oriental cornflower to Occidental cobalt and Mars hung like a single drop of blood over the shoulder of a spreading oak. The moon swam the depths below the horizon. Tiesha skipped from flagstone to flagstone, crossing a pond of Kentucky bluegrass on frozen lily pads.

  Strictly speaking she wasn’t allowed to walk the grounds of the massa’s grand estate, but after he’d done his business with her earlier that afternoon, Mason had attended to business elsewhere. So, while the cat was away, his pretty mouse would go wherever she damn well wanted. He never came out here anyway. Said the outdoors didn’t much appeal to his sense of—she squinted up at Mars, thinking—cleanliness. That was it. Like Mason couldn’t control nature enough, so he just stayed out of it altogether. Tie swung her bare arms through the humid air, a strap of her white sundress slipped from one round shoulder. Hell with it, hers was not to question why. Hers was but to blow the boss and die.

  “Sometimes I wonder why I don’t disgust myself more,” she mused aloud.

  A low voice came from just off the path. “Sounds familiar.”

  Tie spun and tried to make out the speaker. If one of Mason’s goons caught her outside of his rooms, she’d be in deep shit. Especially if it was Finch. That sludgy bastard hated her. ‘Course she did have a tendency to tease him as much as was humanly possible. Now, if it was Sinclair lurking over there in the dark, she’d be okay. Quickie on the bench and he’d never tell. It’d worked before. But she hadn’t seen him around in a while.

  “Who’s that?” she said, and then took a quick step back as a man she’d never seen before stepped onto the path. “Who’re you? You don’t work for Mr. Mason, do you?”

  “In a sense,” Calvin said. “I’m kind of on loan from another company right now.” He caught sight of her feet and was surprised by a tremor in his chest. The toes were painted white to match the dress. Little pieces of perfection on the flagstone walk. Too much ugliness had increased his sensitivity to beauty. It’s what had driven him out here in the first place. After his first encounter with Jeremy, Calvin had needed to get away and get his mind degreased.

  He didn’t recognize this girl from any of the files. He supposed she could be part of the housekeeping staff, but something in her stance didn’t fit with that. She was rough, but regal at the same time. Calvin decided it was the length of her neck and the manner in which she held her head. Then he got it. “Do you work for Mr. Mason?”

  “I waitress at his restaurant. Mancy’s? You been there?”

  “No,” he said. “Any good?”

  “I guess,” she said, unconsciously peering into the dark, looking for a point in his eyes she could lock onto. “It costs enough. I s’pose it’s good.” She put her hand on her hip. If she stood in front of a light source her entire body would be visible through the gossamer fabric. Calvin sent a tiny prayer to the moon.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Father Calvin.”

  He caught a flash of the white around her eyes. “Shit, you a priest? What you doin’ for Mr. Mason?”

  “His boy’s sick. I’m trying to help out.”

  She sighed, shifted her center of gravity, looked away. “Yeah, kid’s been sick a while now. What’s the deal anyway? He got polio or some shit?”

  Calvin chuckled. She obviously wasn’t privy to much intel from her employer outside of bedroom talk. “He’s had something of a breakdown.”

  “What, like he nuts?”

  Calvin didn’t say anything for moment, then nodded. “Something like that.”

  Tie tipped her head to one side. “What you doing out here? Almost nobody but me ever come out here.”

  Calvin looked up at the sky. A smattering of stars had joined Mars. “I just needed to clear my head, do a little thinking.”

  “Yeah,” Tie said, not listening. “So, what’s the kid like?”

  “You’ve never met?”

  She pursed her lips and blew a dismissive sound. “I don’t think his daddy wants to take the risk of dirtyin’ his pretty little prince with the likes a’ me.”

  Calvin was too tired to keep pussy footing. “So what else do you for Mason? Other than waitressing, I mean.”

  Tie found his eyes, pinned them. “Anything he wants.”

  “You and I are a lot a like.”

  She smirked, threw a hip to one side. “Think so, Father?”

  Somewhere off the path, a cicada peeled high and faded slow, a sonic shooting star.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tiesha.”

  Calvin extended his hand. Tie eyed it for an instant before taking it in her own. Their skin sang against each other in the gloom. Calvin held her hand just long enough to force her to focus on him. “Don’t go upstairs, Tiesha.” He dropped her hand.

  She took a step back. “Why not?”

  “It’s dangerous. The boy’s dangerous. Someone’s already been…hurt.”

  “Sinclair?” she asked. “It was, wasn’t it?”

  “Think so?”

  “Ain’t seen him ‘round for a while.” She looked at her feet, the ivory toenails looked like teeth. “He dead?”

  “Think it’s a good idea, askin’ me that?” Jesus, he was doing it again, matching his verbal expression to hers.

  She squinted. “Where you from?”

  A wrought-iron gas lamp flickered to hissing life a few feet down the path, outlining the bench beneath it. Calvin glanced at the flame, orange and blue, upside-down liquid. It cast a cozy pool of light and chased shadows from the bench. He imagined himself and Tiesha, or someone like her, sitting there, holding hands. What would it have taken, to move his life in that direction instead of the one in which he found himself, sitting under the light instead of standing in the dark outside it?

  “Hello?”

  He looked back at her. “Sorry, wool gathering. I’m tired. What’d you ask?”

  Her voice softened. “Where you from?”

  Twenty different cities and twenty different accents presented themselves in Calvin’s mental holding pattern. He panicked for a moment. Shit, he’d forgotten who he was supposed to be today, and then it came back. He was being himself. He sighed and it turned into a yawn.

  “Detroit,” he managed.e Hep

  “You?”

  “Toledo ‘riginally.”

  “You like it here? Think it’s a nice town?”

  “My daddy thinks so.”

  “But not you.”

  She smiled. “It’s okay if you like boring as hell.” A dream flashed behind her eyes. “Art museum’s good.”

  Calvin kept his smile to himself. Everyone had a secret. Tiesha, waitress and mob concubine was a closet art lover. “Who’s your favorite?”

  “Matisse.” No hesitation. She caught his expression and the blood rushed to her face. “What, a nigger can’t dig on no high paintin’, right?”

  He held up a hand. “Relax.”

  She crossed her arms. “What then?”

  “Nothing,” Calvin said, feeling sloppy for offending her. “I really hate Matisse is all.”

  “Oh.” Tie rolled her eyes at herself. “Sorry.”

  “S’alright.”

  She brightened. “I think his stuff’s so pretty. Like if the way I felt about things could come outta’ my body and be colorful, they’d look like his paintings.” Her face clouded and she looked at the ground. “Maybe not so pretty, though.” Another thought and her eyes narrowed, sparked. “Maybe sometimes.”

  “How’d you end up here?” Calvin blurted. Maybe it was because he was exhausted or due to the continual slippage of his mental grip, but the question got past his lips before he could think to clamp them shut. “I’m sorry. I didn’t m
ean anything by that.”

  “Yeah you did,” she said. “You meant how’s a black waitress slash ‘ho end up with a taste in fine arts and deep thinkin’.”

  “Not like that,” he said. “I just meant…”

  She glared at him.

  “I think I just meant that you seem out of place.” He looked up at Mars. “Better than this.”

  Tie reached out and grabbed his left wrist. Calvin killed a nanosecond impulse to shatter the bridge of her nose with the edge of his right hand. She was just looking at his watch. She smelled like lilacs and something warmer, her own. There were a few strands of silver-white in her black hair. She dropped his wrist and made eye contact before stepping back.

  “It’s late. Mr. Mason’ll get home soon.” She didn’t actually believe that, but the priest made her nervous. He was so intense. Tie realized that in their entire conversation he had not lied to her once. She could just tell. She had the feeling that this man could convince the devil to sell his own soul, but he hadn’t used any of that shuck and jive with her. Tie got the idea he wasn’t used to not putting on a front. More than anything, she needed to get away from him because he drew her. That was something she wasn’t used to. Tie went to the men she sensed were drawn to her, the reverse had yet to happen.

  It wasn’t attraction, just curiosity mixed with a sense of safety. Maybe it was just that he was a man of the cloth and spawned some kind of shame in her. Except, she didn’t feel bad. She didn’t know what was going on in her head right now. She glanced over at the bench, the little pool of light. She wanted to sit there with him and ask more questions.

  “I gotta’ go,” Tie said.

  Calvin looked at his watch, nearly nine-thirty. He could feel potential spin out beneath his feet. Meeting Tiesha had created a schism in his life, another strange path.

  “Would you like to talk about art sometime?” he stammered. “With me?”

  Ridiculous, how difficult that had been. Had he been in character, on an assignment when procuring a few hours of her time in the near future was requisite to completing his objectives, it would have been child’s play. But he was trapped in himself now, and John Calvin’s palms had grown damp. He’d been trained to be anyone at a moment’s notice, anyone except himself. “Maybe even later tonight?” he added.

  Tie’s head tipped to one side. He wasn’t hitting on her. She would have smelled that one already. She couldn’t quite pin it down. “You lonely?” she asked, saw his expression. “Not that way. Just…lonely.”

  “Tonight I am.”

  “Why you wanna’ talk with me?” she said, baiting him for the insult that would release her. “You gon’ save my soul, preacher?”

  Calvin looked at his feet. “You’re the first true person I’ve met in a while.” His shoes were dirty. When he looked back up she was smiling at him. He smiled too, couldn’t help it. “I don’t really know what that means,” he brushed off.

  “S’okay,” she said. “Think I do.”

  “You’ll come?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” His shoes were really dirty. “Listen, I didn’t mean anything—“

  “I won’t come tonight, Father. And not here. There’s a coffee house across from the University. It’s near the school building looks like a big a church tower. You know what one a’ those looks like, right?” She half-turned, threw a look over her shoulder, the strap still askew. “You meet me there tomorrow afternoon and we can talk about art.”

  Calvin wondered for a second what kind of schedule one kept around an exorcism. Hell with it, he wasn’t billing by the hour. “Three o’clock work for you?”

  “That’s fine,” she said and turned back to face him. “You know better ‘n to say nothin’ ‘bout meetin’ me, right?”

  “’Course.”

  She stared at him, small and fierce. “He’ll hurt me, you get that?”

  “Never saw you.”

  She nodded, turned, and ran down the path. Calvin watched her feet, the soles flashing like wings as she receded into the gloom.

  He’ll hurt me…

  Calvin imagined a movie with the sound muted: Mason would stand over Tiesha, gesturing wildly, his face all sharp angles, his lips peeled back, his eyes dead. He would strike her with the back of his hand, her fine cheekbone snapping like a wet stick where his ring struck. She would go down. Calvin’s blood pounded in his hands so hard his fingernails pulsed.

  He shook his head to clear it and walked over to the iron bench, settling himself in the cozy glow of the gas lamp. Two weeks ago he’d been in peak mental condition, a human weapon working the will of its master without fear or remorse, without question. Now, here he was pretending at being a regular priest, and doing a rather poor job of it. And what was this shit he was feeling for the girl? Was this a crush for Christ’s sake?

  “Jesus,” he said, pushing his face into his hands. “I really am losing it.”

  Footsteps thudded down the path from the house.

  Calvin was up and fading into the shadows out of habit before he heard the shout.

  “Father Calvin! Father? Father Calvin! You gotta’ come quick! You out here, Father?”

  Horton plowed from the darkness. Calvin stepped into the circle of light from the gas lamp. “There you are!” Horton panted. “You gotta’ come like right fucking now, Padre. Finch’s lost it.”

  They started running for the house and Calvin asked, “What’s happened?”

  “He tried to quit,” Horton barked between gulping breaths. “Mr. Mason said…he was in too deep for that.” He sucked wind. “That he knew…too much.”

  Calvin’s pulse skipped. “Mason’s home?” Tiesha. “How long?”

  “Never left…been in his office the whole time. Finch just busted in on him.”

  Maybe he didn’t know she’d been away then. Maybe. “Let’s go,” Calvin said and put on a little speed.

  * * *