"So there was no political connotation when you used the word surface?"

"Well, Doctor, if s.e.x is politics..."

"s.e.x is not politics. s.e.x is s.e.x, although undoubtedly it is used as a means to political as well as any number of other ends."

"Okay, but politics wasn't what I had in mind. I mean she's bright enough, but she isn't old enough..."

"Where did the third-world diplomat business come from?"

"That was fantasy. She made it up."

"Fantasy proceeds from awareness."

"I was just thinking, sixteen's how old I was when I went on that peace march I'm always talking about."

"She told you she was sixteen?"

"Going on seventeen, she said."

"And you believed her, of course."

"Actually, I thought she was even younger."

"Which pleased her even more."

"I guess it did. She said she'd been away from home for over a year which I figured was supposed to make me think she'd had a lot of life experience."

"Or to shock you with the extent of her life experience-for one so young?"

"Could be," Julie said.

"Why would she want to make that particular impression on you?"

"I don't know. It would turn most people off."

"That's right," the doctor said.

"And I don't think she could read me all that well. It even turned me off a little when you come right down to it. Which would not have been what she wanted at all. Would it be some kind of masochism, some kind of self-punishment?"

"Couldn't it be simpler than that? What was your main, overall impression of her?"

"I've got to say it again, how young she was."

"Yes?"

"Hey, maybe she isn't that young at all, is that what you mean? Maybe she's some kind of Peter Pan who isn't ever going to grow up. Doctor?"

"I think there is a distinct possibility that she is rather older than she wanted us to believe."

"Oh, boy... That throws the merry-go-round into reverse."

"It is only conjecture on my part," Doctor said.

"I wonder how old that little brother is she bought the teddy bear for. She did buy a teddy bear on Thursday, and she did go to the bus station about five o'clock. n.o.body knows if she took a bus."

"Did she purchase a ticket?"

"I don't think the police know that either. Did she tell you about the brother?"

"Yes."

"Did she tell you he was r.e.t.a.r.ded?"

Doctor was slow to answer. "No."

"I think she made that up too-at the thrift shop. It's run for the benefit of severely r.e.t.a.r.ded children. What a put-on Rita, I mean."

"I've been put on many times," Doctor said. She changed position and the chair creaked. "Have you written to your husband?"

"Twelve pages, single s.p.a.ced. From the day I moved into Forty-fourth Street. He already knows about my interest in the Tarot. I didn't tell him you'd fired me. That's about the only thing I didn't tell him."

"Why not?"

"Because I think you made a mistake, and I don't see why he has to know it."

Doctor laughed aloud, one of her rare comments. She brought her chair upright. "All right. Friday as usual."

"There's a lot I've found out about Pete that I didn't get to tell you."

"I'm not sure it belongs here," Doctor said.

"But it does, if I do."

"Then we'll go into it next time, and into why you think it does belong here. What about Paris?"

"If this adds up the way I think, Paris could be awfully important to me. Have you noticed, Doctor? I'm not just drifting."

"I have noticed."

"In fact I'm working very hard."

"Good," Doctor said, without even a touch of skepticism in her voice.

Julie said, "I make a copy for myself of everything I write to Jeff. It's a kind of log. Would you like it if I made you a copy?"

"Perhaps you had better, since you're determined to involve me." Doctor sounded fairly cheerful about it. At the very least, reconciled.

"Wouldn't it be funny if we turned out to be a kind of female Holmes and Watson?" Julie said.

"Hilarious," Doctor said without a smile. "Wouldn't Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin be better models?"

"I don't think I know them," Julie said.

"That is the most depressing thing I've heard today."

22.

THE ONE THING JULIE was determined not to do was to take off in all directions at once. She now carried a pocket notebook, and on the bus downtown after her session she added to the things she had already set down to be explored. She decided then to ensure order by numbering them in what she saw as their degree of urgency. She left the bus at Fiftieth Street and while drinking an Orange Julius realized that she was close to St Malachy's where, she presumed, the Father Doyle Helen Mallory had mentioned was on the staff. She tackled number seven on her list first and composed a hidden logic to the procedure. Seven was the numeral she considered most important to her personally, and it had to mean something that without her having even thought of it at the time, she had a.s.signed the number seven to Father Doyle.

Father Doyle was a round-faced, high-complexioned man who would have looked like a cherub when he was an altar boy. Now he was forty or so, a little seedy-looking and missing a back tooth. The vacancy showed when he smiled. Which had to be often, Julie figured, since she was so much aware of the missing tooth. He was not the authority figure she had expected. Nevertheless, she remained on guard from the moment the priest joined her in the tiny square parlor furnished with chairs about as comfortable as Early Inquisition.

"It's a great mistake," the priest was saying, "to think the church belongs only to the craw-thumpers, as my mother used to call them." He gave himself a couple of pats on the chest by way of ill.u.s.tration. "And my own experience suggests that the louder the thump, the more hollow the heart. Mind now, I'm not gossiping. You asked if Miss Mallory was a terribly religious person, and I would say she likes to think herself such, a little of the Christian martyr. To be sure, I've had but the two telephone conversations with the woman, that and bits and pieces her brother dropped along the way."

"Being lame and all," Julie said, "maybe religion's all she's got."

The priest smiled. "It's no small thing to have. If I'm not mistaken, you'd agree to that, Mrs. Hayes?"

How in h.e.l.l had she left herself open to that? "It's not my thing, but sure, I do think religion's great for people who go along with it."

This time the priest laughed aloud.

"What?" Julie said.

"I wasn't trying to make you commit yourself."

"Is Helen younger or older than Pete?"

"Two years his senior."

"Father Doyle, would it be very expensive to arrange a memorial Ma.s.s for Pete?"

"It doesn't have to cost a cent when you put it that way. I'll arrange it and you can give what you like. I think it's a fine idea. I've been remembering him in my own Ma.s.s."

"Twenty dollars maybe?"

"C.O.D.," the priest said with gentle mockery.

"I didn't mean to be insulting. I know it's customary to give something."

"If you can afford the twenty that will be fine. I'll go and get the book now. Is there any weekday you would like especially?"

"Just so there's time to put a notice in the papers and on the bulletin board at the Actors Forum."

"And there'll be an announcement from the altar on the previous Sunday."

While he was gone from the Room Julie took a good look at Pope Paul. You couldn't exactly call him jolly. On the opposite wall was the jolly one, John the Twenty-third who every Catholic she had ever known considered their kind of pope. 1958-1963. It would have been his predecessor who was on the throne when she lost a father. You couldn't lose a father. He'd lost a daughter.

Father Doyle returned. "How about Thursday, the twenty-fourth."

"That's fine," Julie said.

"Twelve noon. I'll attend to the newspaper notice and I'll inform his sister."

"All right."

"I brought along an envelope for the offering. You can mail it to me any time."

Julie thought of Madame Tozares and leaving the ten dollars on her table. "Okay."

"Is there anything from a poem or a play you'd like me to incorporate in my memorial-something especially fitting to his life work?"

"He was fond of the poet Yeats," Julie said. "I'll have to think about it, Father Doyle."

"I'm a simple man, remember. I don't speak with the tongues of angels. But I would like to pay tribute."

Suddenly there were a hundred things Julie would have liked to talk about with this man who was missing a tooth and who wore a suit going green about the cuffs. But not a word would come to her lips.

He took her to the door of the rectory. "I'll expect to hear from you by the end of the week, shall I?"

Julie nodded and on impulse extended her hand.

He gave it a brief, warm shake. "Come around and see me any time you want. If I'm not here, I won't be far."

Julie walked along Eighth Avenue and thought of the wh.o.r.e singing hymns; she imagined Father Doyle throwing back his head and laughing if she told him about it. Oh, boy. Now she was romanticizing a priest. Well, Doctor...

As she neared Bourke's Electrical Shop she caught sight of Goldie prancing across the street in advance of the oncoming traffic, apparently intent on catching up with her. Okay. She stopped and retied a lace on her sneaker: non-commital cooperation. When she straightened up there he was, his feet spread, his chest out, the cap perched on the back of his head and his very white teeth gleaming.

"You're back," she said.

"Did you miss me?"

"You wouldn't know where Mack is?"

"Now, Miz Julie, you know better than that. We're compet.i.tors."

"All the more reason."

"Fact is, I'd like to see him on the street. His 'ho's begging me to take 'em. I got more girls now than I can take good care of. I'm not talking about fresh talent, of course." His tongue explored his cheek.

"Was Rita fresh talent when Mack picked her up?"