Wages of Sin Read Online Free Page A

of them seemed wide as the mouth of a tunnel, impossible to miss. Rourke flipped the wheel hard over and the Bearcat slewed, fishtailing violently. Moss slapped at the windshield, the tires screeched, and Rourke laughed.
    He barely missed hitting two more trees before he pulled out of the skid, and then they were careening across the lawn, back onto the drive, and by the time they passed through the wrought iron gate, he had the Bearcat's roaring engine back down to a purr.
    He turned up Esplanade Avenue, and they rolled along in silence a couple of ticks before he stole a look at his partner.
    Fio had hair sparse and stiff as salt grass and at the moment it seemed to be sticking straight up. “Don't ever do that again,” he said.
    “Okay.”
    “'Cause if you do it again, I'm going to have to seriously hurt you.”
    Rourke began to sing. “Let a smile be your umbrella…”
    Fio gave him another wild-eyed look. “I'm stuck in a car with a fucking maniac.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Rourke's blood was strumming a high note now, as he felt the first razor-edged rush of the hunt. “So where are we going, and who's dead?”
    Fio let his breath out slowly and let go of his white-knuckled grip on the dash. “Someone came upon a dead priest in an abandoned macaroni factory down on Ursulines and Chartres.” He lifted his big shoulders in a shrug. “The desk sergeant said…I don't know, I must have heard it wrong. He said the guy had been crucified.”

Chapter Four
    T he macaroni factory was in a bad block, between a hookshop and a flophouse, where you could rent a cot for two bits a night. Across the street, sagging, rusting chicken wire fenced off a hot car farm that had been raided and shut down only last week as part of the mayor's latest crusade to cut down on crime in the City That Care Forgot.
    Rourke got out of the Bearcat and paused to look around. His face felt cold and his chest hurt as if someone had just beaten on him with a baseball bat. He was scared of what he would find inside this place. He told himself that there were two hundred and seventy-five priests in New Orleans, and so the victim didn't have to be his brother, Paulie.
    He'd be somebody's brother, though.
    A uniform cop sagged against the factory's brick wall, staring down at the puddle of vomit between his feet. As Rourke came up, he lifted his head and peered at Rourke's detective shield with bleary eyes.
    “You the one called it on the signal box?” Rourke asked.
    The young cop swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “My partner did. He's inside. We were ordered to stay by the body until you detectives arrived, but I couldn't…” The bile rose up again in his throat and he gagged. “Oh, God.”
    “Breathe through your mouth,” Rourke said.
    The cop nodded and gulped down a big gobful of air.
    Rourke waved his hand at Fio, who was getting the cameras, fingerprinting kit, and an electric torch out of the trunk. “Maybe if you can give my partner a hand?” he said, thinking it would give the kid something to do besides dwell on what he'd seen.
    The young cop nodded again and gulped at more air. Some of the green was starting to leave his face.
    Rourke looked around the entrance to the factory. The wind had blown scraps of newspapers, dead leaves, and tamale wrappings into a pile in one corner of the arched portico. Glass from the broken fan light in the transom littered the stoop. The hasp on the door's lock was broken.
    “Did y'all do that to the lock?” he asked.
    The boy shook his head. “No, sir. It was like that when we got here. The kid who found the body…We were in a speak around the corner, uh, taking a leak, when this kid came running in, yelling about a crucified priest. Maybe he was the one busted it.”
    “Yeah, okay.” Rourke covered his hand with his handkerchief before he pulled the door open, even though the beat cops and God knew who else had already left their fingerprints all over it.
    The factory