K Jeter - Noir

Mechanically, the bishop went about his pastoral duties, hand shifting back and forth across an old-fashioned clickpad, hitting the download-confession button on the screen and waiting as the communicant’s compressed file zipped over the wire. McNihil wondered where it went from there; maybe to the bishop’s storage unit, or passed along some fiber-optic trunk line to the Vatican bunkers. Surely nobody actually read or listened to these monotonous litanies of transgressions. Maybe the anonymity of the confessional booth was maintained by the wire terminating nowhere, the PVC sheath exposing bare metal at the end, connected to nothing, coiled or slackly dangling in the waste-flow conduits below the Gloss. Maybe , thought McNihil, that’s okay, too . A ubiquitous deity would be able to listen in the sewer as well as anywhere else.

The rest of the communion clicked by. On the terminal screen, the bishop moved the chalice icon over to the cartoon face’s open mouth, then the consecrated-host icon. A final tap on the blessing button- log off in peace -and the communicant’s face disappeared, replaced a split-second later by the next one in the queue.

“Did you come here to ask me something?” The bishop didn’t glance around from the terminal. “It’s all right-we can talk while I’m doing this.”

“Yeah,” said McNihil. “I need some information. Something I need you to take a look at.” He held out the little metal cross, the one he’d palmed off the corpse, dangling from his hand. “This one of yours?”

The bishop turned his head just enough to see the cross. “Probably.” He tapped the clickpad again, and another of the faithful was made one with his or her God. At least for the time being. “I don’t know of any other franchises that’ve been allowed to open up in this area. I wish there were-I could use a smaller congregation.”

“Could you check it out?”

Host halfway to communicant, the bishop paused. He raised one gray-specked frowsy eyebrow as he glanced back at McNihil. “You know,” said the bishop, “that’s not strictly… umm… kosher. The faithful are enjoined to keep their devotions private.”

McNihil shook his head. “This guy isn’t private anymore. He’s dead. And I already know his name. I just want to know a little more.”

“In that case, then, it’s just expensive.” The computer terminal beeped impatiently; barely glancing at the screen, the bishop maneuvered the chalice image to the waiting mouth. “I imagine you expected that, though.”

With the cross’s chain wrapped around his hand, McNihil extracted several hard-currency bills from his wallet. “This’ll have to do,” he said. “I’m on a budget.”

The bishop looked both hungry and disappointed. “Your employers?” His voice arched hopefully. “Maybe they can be approached regarding unforeseen expenses?”

“There are no employers,” said McNihil. “I’m acting on my own, this time.”

“How unusual.” The bishop regarded him thoughtfully. “I didn’t think that was something your kind did. You’re an asp-head, aren’t you?”

“I used to be.” He still was, technically, but it tended to stop questions cold if he said he wasn’t.

The bishop’s face grew heavy with his deliberations, as if his thoughts were some grainy sedimentary substance collecting in the bags under his eyes and in the folds of his throat. “I wonder about that…” He rubbed the bristles of white hairs on his chin. “About that ‘used to be.’ I wonder if it’s as easy as that.” One hand gestured toward the terminal. “You see, I deal a lot with the sinful and the guilty.” The screen crawled with flashing lights, the line into the confessional stacking up. “I’ve gotten so I can smell it on people.” One black-nailed hand patted the top of the monitor. “Even through something like this.”

“Then you should blow your nose,” said McNihil. “People who don’t care for the Collection Agency… they might enjoy imagining people like me suffering all sorts of mental racks. But we don’t. So sniff for what you want somewhere else.”

“Well… it was worth a try.” The bishop brought his gaze back around to the terminal and clicked through a couple more on-line communicants. He held out an open palm for the cross. “Lemme see what you got.”

McNihil dropped the tiny bit of metal into the other’s hand, the fine chain-links piling into a little glistening hill between the ragged life and fate lines.

The bishop swiveled his chair around, holding the crucifax beneath a goose-necked worklamp. “Oh, yes…” He nodded. “Definitely one of mine.”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s a discontinued model-see the little beveling on the ends of the arms?” The bishop dangled the cross from his thumb and forefinger, as though letting McNihil admire it. “Nice touch, but the manufacturer figured the tooling was too expensive for his profit margin. I got a good deal on ’em, down at one of the big trinket liquidators over on La Cienega. I bought all they had; it was a couple gross, complete with mailing envelopes and these little holy cards of Saint Sebastian with the arrows poking out of him. The scriptures on the flip side of the cards were all in some kind of mid-West cracker pidgin-Nebraskonics, I believe-but I didn’t think anybody would mind.”

With one fingernail, McNihil tapped the cross so it swung back and forth on the chain the bishop held. “What’s it say on it?”

“ Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum …”

“Not that. The other bit, on the back. The personal code.”

The bishop laid the crucifax in his cupped palm, running the index finger of his other hand across the scratch-blurred area. “Shut up,” he said irritably; the computer terminal had started beeping again. He reached over and three-fingered a group of keys, silencing the machine. “Excuse me,” he said to McNihil. “I haven’t done this in a while.”

“Take your time.” McNihil thrust his hands into his coat pockets. “As I said before, I’m not on the clock.”

As he waited, the bishop rummaged through the nailed-up plastic shelves above the computer terminal, finally taking down a can of WD-40. The bishop sprayed the tip of his index finger, then started to rub away the accumulated dirt and grease with a not-much-cleaner rag.

Personal hygiene held no fascination for McNihil. He looked away, over to the terminal screen. The confessional and altar-rail images had been replaced by numbers. Percentage statements, in a column headed TRAN and another headed CON; as he watched, the numbers following the decimal points shifted, TRAN going up to fifty-three, CON dropping to forty-seven.

“That’s the direct line from the College of Cardinals,” said the bishop as he scrubbed his fingertip. “Well, except that anybody really can log on and vote. The church has gotten very democratic that way. You have to change with the times.”

McNihil nodded toward the screen. “What’s the big debate?”

“Oh, the transubstantiation versus consubstantiation thing.” The bishop held his index finger close to his eyes, dabbing at it with the wet part of the rag. “It’s been going on for a while.”

“Yeah, I guess so. It was on the last time I was here. And that was years ago.”

The bishop shrugged. “Well, the doctrine of the E-charist is a big issue. Personally, I think the consubstantialists are coming pretty connectin’ close to being Protestants; I mean that’s essentially the Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence. To say that the body and blood of Christ are present ‘in, with, and under’ the electrons moving down the wires…” His voice had risen in anger, before he managed to calm himself. “I suppose you can see where I stand on the issue. I mean, it has to be transubstantiation. The electrons are changed into the holy substance, and the communicant is downloading the actual body and blood of Christ.” The bishop waved the solvent-damp rag in his excitement. “If that’s not the case, then really, it’d mean we were just connecting around here.”