Thomas Godfrey (Ed) Read Online Free Page B

Homicide.
    “You still looking for God?”
    “Yeah.”
    “An all-powerful Being? Great
Oneness, Creator of the Universe? First Cause of All Things?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Somebody with that description just
showed up at the morgue. You better get down here right away.”
    It was Him all right, and from the
looks of Him it was a professional job.
    “He was dead when they brought Him
in.”
    “Where’d you find Him?”
    “A warehouse on Delancey Street.”
    “Any clues?”
    “It’s the work of an existentialist.
We’re sure of that.”
    “How can you tell?”
    “Haphazard way how it was done.
Doesn’t seem to be any system followed. Impulse.”
    “A crime of passion?”
    “You got it. Which means you’re a
suspect, Kaiser.”
    “Why me?”
    “Everybody down at headquarters
knows how you feel about Jaspers.”
    “That doesn’t make me a killer.”
    “Not yet, but you’re a suspect.”
    Outside on the street I sucked air
into my lungs and tried to clear my head. I took a cab over to Newark and got out
and walked a block to Giordino’s Italian Restaurant. There, at a back table,
was His Holiness. It was the Pope, all right. Sitting with two guys I had seen
in half a dozen police line-ups.
    “Sit down,” he said, looking up from
his fettucine. He held out a ring. I gave him my toothiest smile, but didn’t
kiss it. It bothered him and I was glad. Point for me.
    “Would you like some fettucine?”
    “No thanks, Holiness. But you go
ahead.”
    “Nothing? Not even a salad?”
    “I just ate.”
    “Suit yourself, but they make a great
Roquefort dressing here. Not like at the Vatican, where you can’t get a decent
meal.”
    “I’ll come right to the point,
Pontiff. I’m looking for God.”
    “You came to the right person.”
    “Then He does exist?” They all found
this very amusing and laughed. The hood next to me said, “Oh, that’s funny.
Bright boy wants to know if He exists.”
    I shifted my chair to get
comfortable and brought the leg down on his little toe. “Sorry.” But he was
steaming.
    “Sure He exists, Lupowitz, but I’m
the only one that communicates with him. He speaks only through me.”
    “Why you, pal?”
    “Because I got the red suit.”
    “This get-up?”
    “Don’t knock it. Every morning I
rise, put on this red suit, and suddenly I’m a big cheese. It’s all in the
suit. I mean, face it, if I went around in slacks and a sports jacket, I couldn’t
get arrested religion-wise.”
    “Then it’s a hype. There’s no God.”
    “I don’t know. But what’s the
difference? The money’s good.”
    “You ever worry the laundry won’t
get your red suit back on time and you’ll be like the rest of us?”
    “I use the special one-day service.
I figure it’s worth the extra few cents to be safe.”
    “Name Claire Rosensweig mean
anything to you?”
    “Sure. She’s in the science
department at Bryn Mawr.”
    “Science, you say? Thanks.”
    “For what?”
    “The answer, Pontiff.” I grabbed a
cab and shot over the George Washington Bridge. On the way I stopped at my
office and did some fast checking. Driving to Claire’s apartment, I put the
pieces together, and for the first time they fit. When I got there she was in a
diaphanous peignoir and something seemed to be troubling her.
    “God is dead. The police were here.
They’re looking for you. They think an existentialist did it.”
    “No, sugar. It was you.”
    “What? Don’t make jokes, Kaiser.”
    “It was you that did it.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “You, baby. Not Heather Butkiss or
Claire Rosensweig, but Doctor Ellen Shepherd.”
    “How did you know my name?”
    “Professor of physics at Bryn Mawr.
The youngest one ever to head a department there. At the midwinter Hop you get
stuck on a jazz musician who’s heavily into philosophy. He’s married, but that
doesn’t stop you. A couple of nights in the hay and it feels like love. But it
doesn’t work out because something comes between you.