Peeper by Loren D. Estleman Page B

Tino, if you can’t pay your tab.”
    â€œNext.”
    â€œBlind pig on St. Antoine. It’s a Christian Science reading room out front. I left there around midnight. They’ll remember me. I was the only white raisin in the box. I called Lucille Lovechild at home just before I went out, to settle a bet with a guy named Slade.”
    â€œSlade what?”
    Ralph shrugged.
    O’Leary looked at Mileaway. “We got anyone in the mugs named Slade?”
    â€œThey’re all named Slade.”
    â€œâ€™Kay. Next place.”
    â€œRichard’s, on John R. Richard remembers me, also a geek named Andy. Buy him a Pepto-Bismol and he’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
    â€œWhen’d you leave there?”
    â€œAround one.”
    â€œWhere’d you go?”
    â€œStraight home.”
    â€œSo who were the two guys your neighbor Mrs. Gelatto saw you with at four?”
    Ralph had a sudden urge—most unfamiliar—to tell the truth. So far he was guilty only of withholding evidence, the kind of charge that got lost in the shuffle whenever the cops cracked a case. Possibly there was a city ordinance against improper disposal of a monsignor; but he could beat that too. Vinnie getting dead made him wonder about how good the photographs he had taken were for insurance purposes. At the same time, the fact that Carpenter (for he was sure it had been no other) had strangled Vinnie while in pursuit of the photographs convinced him of their value. Ralph sighed involuntarily at this near brush with good citizenship.
    â€œI don’t remember,” he said.
    â€œHoly shit. How come?”
    â€œWhat do I know how come? I forgot.”
    O’Leary was one of those cops who scribbled notes on folded sheets of paper. He brushed ashes off his and unfolded to an old section. “Yesterday you didn’t even know where you’d been the night before. Today you remember places, times—Christ, even the butterfly on some broad’s ass—”
    â€œIt might of been a gypsy moth.”
    â€œâ€”everything but the names of the two guys who might alibi you out of an attempted-murder beef. Tough break.”
    â€œWhat makes you think old lady Gelatto seen what she says she seen? She’s as blind as an elbow.”
    â€œCome on, Poteet. What were they, fags? You some kind of Dutch door?”
    â€œDo I look like I swing both ways?”
    â€œNo, but neither does my brother-in-law, and he marched on Washington last year. You might’ve seen him on the news, dotting the second i in ‘Alternative Lifestyle.’” He snapped his butt at the rubber tree and missed. A little curl of smoke rose from the carpet. “Personally, I don’t think you did it. You couldn’t change a light bulb without frying your dick.”
    â€œThanks. Sarge.”
    â€œDon’t call me Sarge.”
    Ralph put on his hat. “How’d the memorial Mass go? I forgot to ask.”
    â€œToo many candles. Those cathedrals are firetraps.” O’Leary stepped out of the way of an intern rushing to empty a pitcher of water over the smoldering carpet. “But it was nice, as those things go. My wife says they ought to make a saint out of Monsignor Breame.”
    â€œI think somebody already made him.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI said maybe he’ll get made one yet,” Ralph said.
    â€œYeah. At the Temple of Lard. After the rosary they’ll have to hire a U-Haul to take him to the cemetery. He must’ve been a tight squeeze in the confession booth.” He put away his notes. “Oh, this was on the sidewalk where you fell out of your car. I guess you dropped it.”
    Ralph stared at the item in O’Leary’s hand. It was the notepad from the St. Balthazar rectory, with its gold-and-pigskin cover. “Thanks.” He reached for it. O’Leary examined it.
    â€œPretty fancy. What was it doing in your