"What did you do?"

He picked up his drink, sipped it, and put it down.

"The day I left I killed four young guys, Hums. They were in the church that time five years ago. I killed them because one of them bragged about it and said they were gonna do it again. They were sitting at a table in the beer lady's house drinking banana beer and I shot them with my housekeeper's pistol."

There was a silence.

Debbie drew on her cigarette, patient.

"You're not kidding, are you?"

"No, I killed them."

"Did it help?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Like now you've done something? Struck back?"

He said after a moment, "It didn't seem to have anything to do with what happened in the church."

"You weren't arrested?"

"The military are Tutsi. One of them helped me get away."

He was solemn about it, his expression, his tone. Still, he seemed at ease with what he had done. Debbie moved closer and touched his face, feeling his beard and cheekbone. She said, "Tell it that way, the scene in the church. That's your sermon." She gave his cheek a pat, brought her hand down and picked up her drink.

Terry said, "Yeah, well, that's the idea. Visit parishes and get permission to make a special appeal at Sunday Mass. Fran got me a directory of the Archdiocese and I wrote down the parishes I want to visit and the names of the pastors. I'll start on the east side, the ones I'm familiar with."

"You'll work your tail off," Debbie said, "and it's nickel-anddime."

"I've got pictures of little kids, orphans."

"Are they heart-wrenching?"

"They're alone in the world and they're hungry. I have shots of them digging through garbage dumps-"

"The only way to do it," Debbie said, "and score big, you buy a mailing list of Catholics. Start with one area, a few thousand. Send a brochure that features your story, your pitch, pictures of the starving kids, flies crawling around on their little faces, in their mouth"

"I'm not sure I have any with flies."

"That's all right, as long as they're heart-wrenching. And, you include a postage-paid return envelope."

Terry said, "The cost of that alone"

He stopped, Debbie shaking her head.

"There's a little note on the envelope that says, 'Your stamp will help, too.'"

"What's all that cost?"

"A lot. Way too much. And it's work." She said, "Wait," and stubbed out her cigarette. "You get a Web site on the Internet and do it, paganbabies dot com."

"There aren't that many pagans anymore. They've all been converted to something. A lot of Seventh Day Adventists."

"Orphans dot comMissions or missionaries dot com." Debbie stopped. "It's still a lot of work. You know it? I mean like stoop labor, no fun in it. We could get into it and find out the Web sites are already taken." She said, "I don't even like computers, they're too… I don't know, mechanical." She went into the refrigerator for another tray of ice, turned with it to the counter, to Terry, the face she thought of as saintly, and said, "What's the matter with me? You're not raising money for orphans."

He said, "That's what you thought?"

"You're using them."

He said, "I don't like the idea especially, but do you think they care?"

Debbie levered open the ice tray. "Well, if all you're looking for is a score, to get you back on your feet-"

He said, "I thought you understood that, once you had me unfrocked."

She dropped ice cubes in their glasses saying, "You know, that gives me an idea," taking her time, as though the thought was just now creeping into her mind. "I'll bet if you helped me out-"

"Yeah…?"

"You could make more than you ever would with your sermon, as good as it is."

"Help you get Randy?"

She said, "Would you?" and watched him grin and shake his head in appreciation, bless his heart, at times appearing to be a simple soul.

"Get him to hit you this time? I think I might've suggested that."

"You did, but I don't want to be seriously injured. Like settle but never walk again. Accidents, you never know what might happen."

He said, "Yeah, but it's your specialty. You must have all kinds of ways to fake it, you little devil."

Debbie let that one go. She put a fresh hit on their drinks and turned to Terry with his.

"You said, 'They were sitting at a table in the beer lady's house drinking banana beer and I shot them with my housekeeper's pistol.'

Your exact words. I may never forget them."

She watched him sip his drink.

"Were you scared?"

She watched him shake his head.

"In my mind it was done before I stepped inside."

"Didn't they.., come at you?"

"I didn't give them a chance to."

"You walked in and shot them?"

"We exchanged a few words first. I asked 'em to give themselves up. I knew they wouldn't. So you could say I knew going in I was gonna kill them."

TERRY, IN HIS PARKA, WAITED as Debbie drove off past hedges and old shade trees. No palms or eucalyptus, no banana trees in sight, or hills rising out of a morning mist, only manicured lawns like fairways and homes Terry saw as mansions. Debbie gave her horn a toot and he waved with a lazy motion of his arm, raised it and let it fall.

He turned to see Fran standing in the entrance, one of the double doors open, and followed the brick walk up to the house; a wide expanse of limestone blocks painted beige, the windows and twin columns of the portico trimmed in white. "Regency," Fran had told him, "copies from a picture Mary Pat clipped out of Arctitectural Digest."

"Another five minutes," Fran said, "I'd be out of here. You wouldn't be able to get in the house."

He had on white poplin warm-ups that gave him a puffy look, Terry seeing a snowman in elaborate tennis shoes.

"I thought you were going to Florida."

"I am, I got a limo service takes me to the airport."

He didn't seem happy about going. Or something else was bothering him.

"That's what you wear on the plane?"

"For comfort," Fran said, "it's a three-hour flight. You have your breakfast?"

"I wouldn't mind a cup of coffee. All Debbie has in the house is instant."

"She's a kid," Fran said. "Her idea of coffee is cappuccino, in a restaurant."

"How old would you say she is?"

"I know exactly how old, she's thirty-three, still a kid."

"What're you trying to tell me," Terry said, following Fran inside,

"even if I wasn't a priest she's still too young for me?"

Fran brought him from the foyer past a curving staircase, through the formal dining room and butler's pantry to the kitchen before he spoke, Fran facing him now from across a big butcher-block table.

"Somebody sees you leaving her apartment, seven in the morning, what're they supposed to think?"

"We grilled hot dogs last night, kosher," Terry said, "with the skin.

After that we sat around talking. It got late, I could see she was tired-"

"I told her on the phone, call me, I'd pick you up."

He thought Fran would ask where he'd slept it was a one-bedroom apartment-but didn't seem to want to touch that. So Terry said, "You worried I might've gotten laid?"

No smile, Fran's tone almost grim saying, "I'm talking about appearances."

No, he wasn't, but Terry went along. "I appear, seven in the morning or whenever, who knows who I am? Do I look like a priest in this?"

"You told me you bought a suit."

"I did." Fran had given him his Brooks Brothers credit card and he'd driven to the mall in Mary Pat's Cadillac-Fran having a fit when he found out and had to inspect the car for dings. "I pick up the suit today, after five."

Fran said, "Aw shit," sounding worn out. "Your meeting with the prosecutor's at one o'clock."