Secret Honor (Honor Bound 3)

“That’s great,” Clete said. “So what happens now?”

“I think we can have the wedding next Saturday.”

“Why not tomorrow?”

“Because things aren’t done that way. Arrangements have to be made.”

Clete snorted.

“I’m also here as your confessor, my son,” Welner said. “To hear your confession.”

“You know what you can do with your confession, Father,” Frade said.

“Marriage is a sacrament,” Welner said. “You are required to confess, and be granted absolution, before taking those holy vows.”

“I’ll give you ‘marriage is a sacrament,’” Clete said. “But you can put your absolution in the same place you can put my confession.”

“Nevertheless, having concluded that you do in fact heartily repent your sins, and intend to go and sin no more, I grant you absolution. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

He made the sign of the cross.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Clete said, no longer smiling. “It makes me uncomfortable.”

“But on the other hand, I am now comfortable with assisting in celebrating the nuptial mass.”

Clete shook his head in resignation.

“Let me have one more crack at this sonofabitch, and then I’ll buy you a beer,” he said.

“Unless it would strain your hospitality beyond the breaking point, I’d really rather have a glass of Champagne.”

“My vino is your vino, Padre,” Clete said.

Welner chuckled, and followed him down the cement stairs into the work area beneath the huge automobile.

El Coronel’s Garage—Welner wondered how long it would take before it became known as “Señor Cletus’s Garage”—was better equipped than most commercial garages. One wall was completely covered with tools, each in its own place, outlined in red paint.

Jorge Guillermo Frade had truly loved his Horch touring sedan, and had insisted on maintaining it himself, although there were more than a dozen mechanics on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.

From the moment it had arrived in Argentina until Cletus had suddenly appeared there five months before, only two people had ever been behind the wheel of the enormous German convertible touring car, el Coronel and Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodríguez.

Father Welner looked up at the car’s undercarriage, where Clete, standing on a wooden footstool, was illuminating the lower side of the engine with a work light.

“What exactly are you doing?” he asked.

“I’ll be damned,” Cletus Frade said.

“I was thinking in terms of mechanics, rather than your spiritual condition.”

Clete chuckled, reached into his pocket for a wrench, and began to unbolt something.

He’s obviously a skilled mechanic. Why should that surprise me?

In a moment Clete dropped off the footstool, clutching an eighteen-inch-long piece of metal tubing, bent into a contorted shape. He started to show it to the priest but was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a thin stream of lubricating oil. He quickly found a bucket, arranged it to catch the oil, then motioned for the priest to follow him out of the work pit. He headed for Enrico, then stopped and turned to the priest. “I had entirely too much oil pressure,” he said. “The needle was almost off the dial. I couldn’t figure out why.”

“And now you can?”

He showed the priest the length of tubing. “Here,” he said, pointing to a spot near one end, close to the connecting fastener. “See?”