A Man Called Milo Morai

IV

As he slumped in his train seat on his way to Indianapolis, Indiana, Milo looked to be asleep, but he was not. Rather was he thinking back to the night of Irunn Thors-dottar’s return to the O’Shea house from Wisconsin, when all pure hell broke loose and some hard truths were finally voiced.

A taxicab had deposited Irunn at the front door at about eight p.m., while Maggie and those of the household not working night shift were seated around the radio console in the parlor and Pat was facing Milo over the chessboard. Aware that Maggie disliked being disturbed when a favorite program was being broadcast, the returnee had climbed the stairs with her bag after only the briefest of greetings to the household in general.

She had no way of knowing, of course, that immediately she could be heard walking down the second-floor hallway, Maggie pushed herself up out of her chair and made for the telephone in its nook under the stairs.

When at last Irunn came back down to the parlor, walked across to the chessplayers and said sweetly, “Milo, love, please come upstairs. We need to talk, don’t you think?”

At the words, a sound that could have passed for a bestial growl or snarl came from Rosaleen O’Farrell, but Maggie O’Shea laid a hand on the cook’s tensed arm, then turned off the radio set and came up out of the chair once more.

“I agree, Miss Thorsdottar, there is talking to do, but it all will be done here, where as many witnesses as there are at home tonight can hear and remember. There have been more than enough lies and prevarications from, you concerning Mr. Milo Moray and what he was supposed to have done or not done. I, who have known you and worked with you and lived with you for years, would never have thought you capable of such terrible wickedness had the evidence not been placed in my hands. Now, tonight, I will have the full and unvarnished truth out of you. if truth can ever come out of the mouth of a lying harlot such as you. I also have summoned your priest, Father Rüstung, and the deputy administrator of the hospital, Dr. Guiscarde, along with a policeman friend of Mrs. O’Farrell’s, so that all of them can hear the truth and know the immensity of you* crimes against this poor man.”

As Maggie had spoken, Irunn had turned first red, then white, her face seemingly drained of blood. She never spoke a word, but immediately Maggie had ceased to speak, the woman spun about and dashed up the stairs and down the hallway. A minute or so later, everyone heard her hurried descent of the rear stairs and a rattling and banging at the door at the foot of those same stairs, a few shrieked curses in both English and Norwegian, then a rapid reascent of those same rear stairs.

Rosaleen showed a set of worn yellow teeth in a grin. “It was thinkin’, I was, that she might try to skedaddle when faced down she was, Mrs. O’Shea. Beware, now the front she’ll be tryin’.”

With her still-packed bag in hand, a purse in the other and a bundle of uniforms and dresses under one arm, Irunn came pouring down the stairs like a spring freshet in flood, to not halt or even slow until she abruptly became aware that Maggie O’Shea’s not inconsiderable hulk loomed between her and the door that led to freedom.

“Get … get out of my way!” she gasped, fear and anger plain on her face and in her voice. “You got no right … no right at all not to let me out.”

“If any of us needed any further proof of Milo’s innocence in this sorry matter, you’ve just supplied it, you brazen hussy. You’re not going out this door until I say so!” snapped Maggie.

“The hell I’m not!” Irunn screamed, dropping her travel case and armful of clothes to swing a powerful roundhouse right at Maggie’s head.

But Maggie O’Shea was ready. She caught Irunn’s telegraphed buffet easily on her left forearm even as she sank a paralyzing punch into the younger woman’s solar plexus. A ready follow-up was not necessary. Irunn staggered back across the foyer, wide-eyed, gasping for breath, clutching with both her big hands at the point of impact, until her heels struck the first step of the staircase and she lost her balance and landed hard on her rump on the lower landing.

Between the two of them, Maggie and Rosaleen got the woman up and into a chair in the parlor to await the priest, the doctor and the policeman. As soon as she could breathe almost normally and talk again, Maggie and Pat and the cook began to throw hard questions at her, intuitively recognizing the lies she attempted and continuing their relentless probings until they got the truth out of her.

The three were merciless. When once they had what they took to be the truth or near to it, they drilled her, asking the same questions over and over in slightly differing forms. By the time Dr. Gerald Guiscarde arrived to be ushered into the parlor, Irunn was in tears, sobbing, all the defiance and fight drained out of her.

Coldly, efficiently, Maggie took her through the whole of the sordid story for the benefit of the physician, ending by asking, “Doctor, is this the kind of woman that we want nursing at the hospital?”

“Good Lord, no!” was his immediate reply. “It’s … it was diabolical … almost unbelievable. And all of this misery and trouble and sorrow simply so that she could get her greedy hands on Milo’s couple of thousand dollars? And knowing Milo as Sam—Dr. Osterreich—and I have come to know him, he would probably have given, or at least made her a long-term loan of the money, had she been truthful with him at the start.

“No, the hospital wants no part of a woman like this … and I doubt that the Board of Examiners of Nurses will look with any degree of favor upon this evidence, either. Let her go back to Wisconsin or somewhere else—anywhere else, and nurse there if she can. She’s a disgrace to a fine and noble profession.”

A police lieutenant and a sergeant were next to arrive. They were greeted warmly by Rosaleen, had whiskey pressed upon them by Pat O’Shea, and Maggie put Irunn through her paces once more for their benefit. Then Rosaleen brought out trays of cupcakes and little chess pies.

By the time the priest and his effeminate subordinate drove up to park their ornate Daimler beside the doctor’s Mercedes-Benz and the plain black city-owned Ford, leaving their chauffeur outside to keep warm any way that he could, Irunn was well drilled and resigned to the utter ruination of her nefarious schemes, her professional career, her life. She went through the recitation of her multiple misdeeds with but little prompting from Maggie. Irunn did not once raise her gaze from her lap and the hands clasped there.

Looking even grimmer than Milo remembered him, Father Rustung spoke not one word until the tale was completely told, then he said, “And you told all of these lies to me and to others, you defiled your chastity and forged a letter simply in order to gain for your family a sum of money owned by Mr. Moray, Irunn Thorsdottar?”

In tones of dull apathy, she answered, “Papa has said so often that if only he had a thousand or two dollars he could do so much with the farm and the barns and the herd and have a bequest of real value to leave to my dear brother, Sven. And besides,” she went on, a degree of animation returning to her voice and manner, “Milo had no need of the money—it was just lying useless in his lockbox under his bed. The Jews were paying him more each week than even I, a graduate nurse, make in a week.”

With a curt nod, the priest said, “Yes, my child, another instance of the fierce love of family that is but a hallmark of the Aryan race and folk. I, of all here assembled, can fully understand why you did what you did, the lies and the … the far more heinous sins, the mortal sin of fornication, even. But mere understanding and even a degree of sympathy does not in any way justify your transgressions. The penance I shall lay upon you will be heavy, child, awesomely heavy, and as hard or harder to bear than what the hospital and secular authorities will likely do … although I shall strive to afford you as much protection from them as my office permits, of course, when once I am certain that you truly repent your sins.

“It were probably better that you depart with me, this night, for after all of this, I doubt that you would be happy or even welcome for any longer under this roof. I will take you to the home of a good German family for the night, and tomorrow you can first make a true confession, receive penance and absolution, then I will do what I can to help you out of these difficulties.”

He turned to the younger man. “Father Karl, please fetch Fritz and have him take this child’s things out to the auto.”

Then Rüstung stood up and, pointing a forefinger “at Milo, demanded, “You did use this child’s body, you did take her flower, you did have carnal knowledge of her?” His voice quivered slightly with the intensity of his emotion, his cold blue eyes fairly spitting sparks.

Milo had not liked the man from minute one of their meeting and now could think of no reason to dissemble or mask that dislike. “You know damned well that I did, priest! Yes, I slept with her, but it was she that came to my bed, night after night, despite a locked door on one occasion. And she was no virgin from before the first night!”

Father Rüstung nodded another of his curt, grim-faced nods and turned to the police lieutenant. “Well, lieutenant, you heard him damn himself out of his own mouth. Where are your handcuffs? I want him arrested this instant for criminal carnal knowledge and-fornication.

“You should also know that he is a dangerous radical who will divulge nothing of his past life to anyone. He may well be a Bolshevik, for I am reliably informed that he speaks excellent Russian and Ukrainian, and his overt employers are a clique of Jews, mostly of Russian extraction. If you don’t take him into custody tonight, now, here, you’ll probably have no second chance to take him easily or without a gun battle. You know how these Bolsheviks and Jew Anarchists are.”

The lieutenant arose and looked about uncertainly, his left hand hovering in the vicinity of his cased handcuffs, the voice of authority, but ecclesiastical authority only, ringing in his jug ears. The sergeant stood up too, but made no other move, watching his superior.

Old Rosaleen had heard enough and more than enough, however. “It’s prayin’ for your forgiveness I am, fither, but you should be ashamed of yourself, and you a holy priest of God and His Mither. That poor, weak mortals like us all be easily tempted, you of all people should be a-knowin’, and if crawlin’ mither-naked into a man’s bed of nights be not temptin’, I’d like to know what is. It’s that—that scarlet woman you should be after the punishin’ of, not poor Mr. Moray.

“And although he’s not of the True Faith, I’ll warrant he’s no Jew, nor yet a godless Bolshevik or whatnot. He’s a good man, a decent man and godly in his own way … far and away more godly than some who’ve sheltered under this roof.”

She stared pointedly at Irunn, who met that stare for a brief instant, then hung her head and began to sob again.

Turning to the police lieutenant, she said flatly, her hands extended before her at a little over waist level, “Terence, if it’s taking in Mr. Moray you’re thinkin’ of, then you’ll be takin’ me, as well, so put the cold steel chains on me old wrists. They cannot be more cold than the Christian charity of this holy priest, I’m thinkin’, I am.”

Milo thought that the lieutenant looked as if he would rather be in hell with a broken back than here and now in the warm, comfortable furnished parlor of IVfaggie and Pat O’Shea. He could almost hear the wheels turning, the gears grinding madly as the tall, lanky redhead tried to think of a way out of his dilemma that would not offend either the priest or his old friend’s widow. And Milo felt a stab of pity for the much harried man.

Then Gerald Guiscarde chimed in, “Lieutenant Grady, Milo Moray is not, no matter what this priest claims to have heard, a Bolshevik or an Anarchist. He’s not a Jew, either. I’ve physically examined him thoroughly, and believe me, I know.

“Yes, he speaks Russian, but he also speaks German, French, Spanish and a plethora of other languages, as well. His work for Dr. Osterreich’s group is that of a translator, and I am told by Dr. Osterreich and others that he does his job in a good, thoroughgoing manner, that he’s the best translator they’ve ever had in their employ.

“And if there are truly any radicals in this room just now, my vote would be for Father Rüstung. Were he as truthful as he demands others be, he’d register himself with Washington as an agent of a foreign power. That’s what he really is, you know—he and his precious German-American Bund would sell out this country in a minute to Adolf Hitler and his gang of German thugs.”

“Be very careful what you say of me, doctor,” said the priest in icy tones. “A day of reckoning will come for you and your kind … and it may well come far sooner than you think.”

Then, turning back to Terence Grady, the priest demanded, “Well, what are you waiting for, lieutenant? Are you going to arrest him and put him in jail where he belongs, or not?”

Ignoring on this rare instance the snap of command in the voice of the German-born priest—whose accent had become stronger and more noticeable in the last few minutes—Lieutenant Terence Grady drew himself up and said, “No, fither, I ain’t. I’m a lieutenant of patrolmen, a harness bull, not a vice cop or even a detective, and taking Mr. Moray in would be a job for one of them guys, not for me. It wasn’t like he was caught in the act or nothin’, and not even a warrant for him, either.”

“A warrant you want, lieutenant? Well, a warrant you will have, the first thing tomorrow morning, over the signature of Judge Heinz Richter. Do you recognize the name of my good, good and old friend, eh? Of course you do. And please to be warned that he will also hear quickly of your impertinence to me, your failure to follow my orders, to do the duty which I pointed out to you and arrest a malefactor who had publicly confessed his guilt to a terrible crime against God and man.

“Come, Irunn,” he snapped and stalked toward the foyer.

With Irunn, the priests and their chauffeur gone, Rosaleen fetched in more food and a bowl of punch, to which last old Pat O’Shea promptly added a half-quart of Irish whiskey.

They all had eaten and imbibed in silence for some time when Fanny Duncan spoke, hesitantly.

“Mr. Moray, you said that she … that Irunn, that is … wasn’t a … a virgin when … when you … when you and she … well, anyway, it all makes me think back to our training days. Irunn and me, we were roommates in training for a couple of years of it, and … and I’ve always wondered. The way she talked about her brother, Sven, and some things she said sometimes in her sleep and the way the two of them behaved when they thought nobody else could see them one time when she and I went up to the farm in Wisconsin for a week and …”

Maggie paled and hurriedly signed herself. “Fanny! Hold your tongue, as you love God. Incest? It’s a nauseating thought. Only degenerates and idiots do such things.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, Mrs. O’Shea,” remarked Gerald Guiscarde, adding, “Certain events in my own practice, plus confidential conversations I’ve had with other professionals, incline me toward the belief that incest is not anywhere near as rare a thing as most people, even medical people, seem to think or aver.”

Maggie just shook her head in disbelief, but Milo could and did fully believe it all, for he recalled that on two separate occasions in a transport of passion Irunn had called him Sven and whispered endearments to him in Norwegian.

After finishing off the trays of foods and most of the strengthened-punch, almost single-handedly, Lieutenant Terence Grady addressed Milo. “Mister, I don’t want to take in no friend of Rosaleen O’Farrell’s, and besides, you strike me as a good guy, but if that Kraut priest does get a warrant from that squarehead judge in the mornin’, it ain’t gonna be no like or not like to it, you see. I’m gonna have to bring you in or send some other cop to do it. It might be a good idea if you get out of this precinct—or, better yet, this city—before morning. I’ll give you a ride as far’s the train depot, but I can’t do more’n that for you. I got my wife and kids to think about, see, and my pension, too.”

“You’re a very brave man, lieutenant, a good man, too, to offer help in the face of a vindictive and powerful man like Father Rüstung,” said the doctor. “And I am certain that Mr. Moray recognizes and deeply appreciates your generous offer. But no, it would be just too much needless risk for you to undertake. Leave it to me. I have a motorcar, too, and I am not, thank God, in a position where that most unsaintly man can do me any harm.

“But I do agree with you that Milo must leave the city or even the state tonight. Technically, he is guilty of a so-called crime that could get him, if convicted, as much as fifteen years in prison. So, if you and the sergeant will leave now, the rest of us will make plans and save you the discomfort of having to arrest a friend of Mrs. O’Farrell’s.”

As prearranged, Milo descended from the train in South Bend, Indiana, and found an all-night diner near the depot, where he sat, drinking terrible coffee at a nickel the chipped mug and reading a day-old newspaper until the old wall clock said that it was nine a.m. He then made his way back to the deppt, found a telephone and placed a reverse-charges call, person-to-person to Patrick O’Shea, giving him the name they had decided upon, Tom Muldoon.

“Tommy, lad? Yes, operator, this is Patrick O’Shea. Yes, I’ll accept charges for the call. Tommy, I can’t talk to you but a minute. The whole bloody house is full of cops. Some feller used to room here, they’re after him, two carloads of them just come in and they’re after searching this house from cellar to attic. Anyhow, that guy I told you about, he’s been told you’re coming and he’ll be expectin’ you and he’ll take good care of you and if he don’t you let me know lickety-split… . A’right, lootenant, a’right, it’s just a old buddy from the War is all, and I ain’t talked to him in a coon’s age. What in hell you expect me to be able to tell you, the man’s gone is all. I’m closes’ thing to blind from gas, you know, I can’t see the damn street from the front stoop, not any kind of clear, so how can I tell you which way he went, huh? … Bye-bye, Tommy, I gotta go.”

By nine-thirty, Milo was aboard a train bound south for Indianapolis. As the engine picked up speed and the car began to sway, he settled down into the seat and closed his eyes and thought back to his last few hours in what had been for not quite a year the first home of which he had any memory.

“First of all,” said Gerald Guiscarde,” we need to figure out how you’re going to live after you leave here, your job and us, your friends. The last thing you want to do is seek a job as a translator. That would be a sure giveaway of just who you are, and if that priest is as dead set to clap you in jail as he gives every indication of being, he’ll probably have his Bund people all over the East as well as the Midwest looking for you and ready to have you picked up and extradited back here.

“Jobs of any kind are damned hard to find anywhere in this country, and if you live anything like well with no ^evident job you’re going to stand out like a sore thumb and attract the Bund. So where to tell you to go, what to tell you to do, Milo? I must confess, I can’t just now come up with an answer.”

“Well, I can, by cracky!” said Pat O’Shea.

“You always have the same thing on your mind,” snapped Maggie peevishly. “Maybe Milo doesn’t want to join the Army.”

“Well, it’s the bestest place for him, the way things is, Maggie. Look, doctor, I’s a perfeshnal soldier back before the war. I soldiered for twelve years, made staff sergeant, too, afore my folks all died and I had to come back home to try and run the brewery. And if it’s one thing I knows, it’s the Army.

“If Milo enlists—and I can get him enlisted, I still got frinds from the old days is recruiters, two of them—the Army ain’t gonna turn him over to no civil police for nothin’ he done as a civilian, not unless he’d murdered or raped or kidnapped or robbed banks or somethin’ really bad. Them bugtit feather merchants do try to come after him for fornicatin’, for the love of mud, Army’s gonna perlitely tell them where to go and what to do to theyselfs when they gets there, is all. Just as long’s a man don’t fu—ahhh, mess up as a soldier, the Army don’t give a hill of beans what he done before.

“And as for them Kraut-lovers, that Bund and all, it’s more’n enough old soldiers what fought in France in the War is still around to make short shrift of any them comes sniff in’ around after Milo.”

“You know, Mrs. O’Shea, your husband may be right. The Army may well be the answer we so desperately need to keep Milo out of that priest’s clutches. I think the minimum enlistment in the armed services is three years, and by that time surely all of this sorry business will be ancient history. But the question now is, how are we going to get him down to the recruiting office and signed up before the police pick him up on that warrant and clap him behind bars?”

Pat chuckled. “I got the answer to that one, too, doctor. I knows thishere recruiter in Indianapolis, see. Milo can get on a train and get out of Illinois, tonight, see. I can call my old buddy firstest thing he opens up in the morning and tell him enough of what’s going on to get him ready for Milo when he gets there, see. Milo’ll just have to kill some time somewheres till the right time to go to the recruitin’ office is all, but we can work that out in jig time.”

At Pat’s suggestion, Milo packed only his razor and a few toiletries, a few days’ worth of underwear and socks, a couple of shirts and a few books. As an afterthought, the old soldier suggested adding the fine, strong padlock from off the moneybox chain, saying that such would be useful for the securing of issue lockers in the barracks. Milo threw in a wad of handkerchiefs, then closed and locked the thick briefcase which was the sole piece of luggage of any description he owned.

It was while he was packing that Rosaleen bore up the stairs to his room a picnic basket packed well-nigh to bursting with food “for your journey, love.”

Reopening the briefcase, he managed to make room for but three of the thick sandwiches. But then Rosaleen took over, emptied the case and repacked it so competently that she was able to add two more sandwiches, a slab of cheese and a half-dozen hard-boiled eggs, a small jar of pickles and a brace of red apples.

“Do you have a pocket knife?” inquired Pat. When Milo shook his head, the old man dug deep into his pants pocket and brought out an old, worn, but razor-edged Barlow. “A soldier needs him a good knife, Milo; I don’t, I can’t even see good enough to whittle no more. Mrs. O’Shea, she’ll be damn glad I give it to you, she’s plumb sick and tired of fixin’ up my cut fingers as it is.

“I’ll pack up the resta your clothes and things, Milo, and put them in a old cedar chest is up in the attic with some mothballs, too. You can send for them whenever you wants them, see.”

“No, Pat, thank you, but no,” Milo told him. “Sell them for whatever you can, or give them away. One thing, though. Rosaleen, can you find me a legal-sized envelope and a sheet of blank paper?”

While the woman was gone, Milo opened his strongbox and emptied it onto the small writing table. He quickly divided the couple hundred dollars in smaller bills between his billfold and several of his pockets, then tucked a couple of fifties from the sale of the gold into each sock. The rest of the stack of bills he divided, and when the old cook returned with the stationery, he placed a thousand dollars into the envelope and dashed off a quick note.

“Sol, I am leaving town for good. Where I’m bound, I won’t need all this cash, so I want you and your family to have it. With this for a nest egg, you might be able to finish law school, and I think you should. No, you can’t give it back to me, for not even I know where I’ll be when you get it. Milo Moray.”

Adding the folded note to the contents of the envelope, he sealed it and put it in his coat pocket. Handing the rest of the cash, uncounted, to Pat, he said, “Now this, Pat, you can hold until I send for it, whenever. Okay?”

Then he looked up from the chair at old Rosaleen. “Mrs. O’Farrell, if I give you something, do you promise to take it without a lot of argument?”

“It’s not one red copper I’ll be taking from you, Mr.

Moray,” she declared forcefully in a tone that brooked no nonsense or demur.

He shook his head. “No, it’s not money, Mrs. O’Farrell. Will you promise to take it? Please, I haven’t much time left.”

“Well… if it’s not money, love,” she said uncertainly, “then, yes, I promise to take it.”

“You heard her promise me, Pat?” Milo demanded.

“That I did,” was the old soldier’s quick answer. “She promised, indeed she did.”

Picking up the ring box of dark-green velvet from the top of the writing desk, Milo pressed it into the old cook’s hand. Opened it that she might see the carat of blue-white emerald-cut diamond in its setting of heavy, solid red gold.

“Oh, no, no, Mr. Moray, sir, I can’t be taking sich a treasure! No, why it must be worth every last penny of … of fifty or sixty dollars.”

Milo just smiled. “Actually, a bit more than that, Mrs. O’Farrell. But remember your promise—I hold you to it.”

Old Rosaleen looked at him, then back at the stunning ring for a moment. Then she buried her wrinkled face in her work-worn hands and ran from the room, sobbing loudly.

Milo stood up and took From the tabletop the last two bills, a twenty and a five. “Pat, this is the twenty-five dollars that Irunn paid the jeweler, Plotkin, to hold the ring. If she or anyone else comes around demanding its return, you are to give them this. Your wife has the receipts. Understand me?”

Pat nodded briskly. “You damn tootin’ I does, Milo. It’s like I’s said for a helluva long time—you some kind of a man, you is. You gonna make a damn good soldier, too, I can tell you that right now. You got the kinda style it ain’t much seen of no more.”

The leavetaking was an emotional one, to say the least, what with all of the women crying, save only old Rosaleen, who had done with her crying for the occasion and who now wore Milo’s gift on a thumb, her other fingers being too small to give it secure lodgement.

As the old cook reached up to hug Milo’s neck, she stated, “It’s gettin’ this lovely, lovely present of yours sized to my finger, I’ll be doin’, Milo Moray, and then it’s I’ll be wearin’ it until the day I die and buried with me it’ll be. God and His Blessed Mither guard and keep you, now, and it’s my prayers you’ll be havin’ of me that you fare well.”

In the Mercedes-Benz, Milo took the sealed envelope from the pocket of his greatcoat and passed it to Dr. Guiscarde, saying, “The name of the young man this is intended for is on the envelope. Sam Osterreich can put you in touch with him. And make him take it, hear? He’s way too bright a boy to waste his life peddling door-to-door.”

“The old sarge, now, he was some kinda sojer, some kinda sojer, I tell you, mister!” stated Master Sergeant Norrnan Oates between and through mouthfuls of Rosaleen O’Farrell’s hearty homebaked bread and butter and roast beef or country ham, sharp cheddar cheese and home-canned mustard pickles. “Won’t no reason for him to get gassed like he did, you know. ‘Cept of he put his own gas mask on that young lootenant who was layin’ there wounded with his own mask shot fulla holes, is all. An’ then the one what he took off a corpse won’t workin’ right, see.

“Naw, Sarge O’Shea, he was a real, old-time sojer, the kind like you don’t hardly see no more in thishere newfangled Army. You want some more coffee?”

Milo accepted, holding out his white china mug for a refill, for it was the best coffee he could recall ever having tasted, its flavor being the equal of its aroma.

Taking another hard-boiled egg in his thick fingers, the stout, balding, jowly soldier cracked it with the flick of a thumbnail, then expertly peeled off the shell, showered it with salt and pepper and bit off the top half before continuing.

“Yeah, I tell you, mister, it was plumb good to hear old Sergeant Pat’s voice again, this mornin’. Way he tells it, you kinda on the run, like, right?” He chuckled, then added, along with the rest of the egg, “Didn’ need to tell me that, even, none of it, ‘cause I’d’ve knowed. If it won’t important like for you to make tracks, he’d’ve got ole Castle in Chicago to ’list you up ’stead of me. So you tell me, what’s the law want you for? Better level with me, Moray, ‘cause I got me ways of findin’ out and I don’t cotton to being lied to.”

When Milo had related an encapsulated version of the story, the sergeant pushed back from his desk, threw back his head and laughed and laughed and laughed, his huge beer belly jiggling and bouncing to his mirth. His already florid face became an alarming dark red, his eyes streamed tears, and he finally had to hold his sides and breathe in wheezes. At last, he was able to exert enough self-control to straighten up, pull himself back to the desk and wipe at his eyes and face with a wadded handkerchief, following which, he used the same cloth to loudly and thoroughly blow his nose, before jamming it back into a pocket.

Still grinning, he said, “Christ on a crutch, Moray, it’s high time they took shit like that out’n the friggin’ law-books. Goddam, man, fuckin’s the most natcherl thing in the world. I don’t go ’long with rape, see, but if the woman’s willin’, hell, the goddam cops shouldn’t have no place in it a-tall. As for the damn preachers and priests and all, bugger the sour-faced lot of ’em, folks has got the right to some pleasure, no matter what they say or claim the Bible says. You ever read the Bible, Moray—I mean, really read it? Well, you should—it’s chock-full of more begats than you ever saw in your life, and the onliest way to begat a kid is to fuck a woman.

“As for your trouble, don’t you worry none about it no more, hear me? That shit back in Chicago, that is the damnedest bum rap I ever heard tell of.”