Bless the Child (22 page)

“Come on, Cheri. It’s your life, too.”

Cheri ran her fingers through her already disheveled hair, nervously.

“She’d heard some things from the johns and the other girls. About how these guys were part of some exclusive club that worshipped the Devil. She said she thought it was all a crock . . . you know, like those guys who join the Moose Club and dress up in funny hats and think they’re hot shit? She thought it was the same kind of thing for rich guys.”

Garibaldi saw Devlin’s lips twitch a little at the corners. “So what’d she do next?” he asked.

“She tried to run away, but they caught her before she got very far, and dragged her back. She was pretty sure they’d kill her or something, but instead, they told her they could see she’d make a great mother. They said the other girl she’d heard screaming had been a real bitch who wouldn’t have loved the kid. Anyway, they said Allie could keep her baby, as long as she did what they said. She was too scared to do anything else.”

“How long did that last?”

“Almost a year. I’d gone into Areba—”

“The rehab on Fifty-seventh Street?” Devlin interrupted.

“Yeah,” Cheri said, “so I was straight by the time I saw Allie again. Then one night she called, hysterical, and begged me to meet her in SoHo, on the corner of Spring and West Broadway. I hadn’t seen her in so long, I’d thought maybe she was dead, so I was glad to get a chance to see her. Only she looked like dead would have been better . . . I mean, I couldn’t believe what she looked like. Skinny and crazed. She kept looking right and left, like she was scared out of her mind. She said they’d used Stacy—that was the baby’s name—in some kind of sacrifice like a Black Mass. She said they made her watch, while they skinned the kid alive.” Devlin’s eyes met Garibaldi’s.

“She showed me a place on her belly, where they pulled her skin off too, so she’d know what it felt like. It was about four inches square and really grisly.”

“How’d she get away?” Devlin asked, wondering how much of this could possibly be true. If there was one thing a cop knew, it was that everybody lies.

“Like I told you, Allie was a dancer. She could do all these acrobatic things—practically turn herself inside out—she was double-jointed or something. Anyway, she said they stuck her in this room on the top floor, with only a tiny little window, but she was able to squeeze herself out of it by dislocating her shoulder. So she climbed down some vines and a drainpipe that was at the end of the roof, and hitch-hiked into the city.

“She got that place on Great Jones, where you found the blood, from an artist guy she knew. But she was scared to death. She said they’d find her eventually because they were all witches, and they told her that skin they pulled off her would keep them in contact with her, no matter what.”

“When did Jenna contact you, Cheri?” Devlin’s voice was dead serious.

“After she moved to Greenwich . . . maybe six weeks ago. She wanted to show off the house and the guy, I guess?”

“And was it only the tattoo that made you think she’s involved with Maa Kher?”

“That was part of it . . . Allie said they all have that. And besides, the whole Jenna scene was too bizarre. I mean, why would a guy like that marry her? Even if she came from a good family, she was still a junkie . . . and then all of a sudden she’s rich and going to Europe? Maybe if she was straight, I could believe a fairy tale could happen—but she’s still on dope.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. She offered me some while I was there. She said all her upper-crust friends use.”

“Have you got any idea how Jenna’s baby could have been saved from being born an addict? Mrs. O’Connor’s had the child since she was ten days old, and she says she didn’t have to be detoxed.”

Cheri frowned. “Yeah maybe. Allie told me, they take the Breeders off heroin, and put them on meth while they’re pregnant. Maybe Jenna did that, too.”

“Methadone?” Dev repeated, surprised. “Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. They don’t kill all the kids right away, she said. Maybe they’d be more of a problem if they had to withdraw.”

“One more thing, Cheri,” Dev said, before closing the notebook. “Do you remember any of the names Allie mentioned. The johns who worshipped the Devil”

Cheri smiled crookedly, some of the pressure relieved by letting the story out. “Yeah. I remember some names. How much protection can I get if I give them to you?”

After they’d driven the girl to the home of an aunt for temporary safekeeping, Devlin and Garibaldi sat in the car and looked at the list of prominent names she’d provided, then at each other.

“Couldn’t be . . .right, Lieutenant?” Garibaldi said finally. “The kid’s an ex-junkie, with an overactive imagination, and she figured she’d better spin us a good one, or we wouldn’t protect her. Right?”

“We’ll never find out sitting here,” Dev said, throwing the car into gear, and backing out of the parking space. “At least they won’t be hard to find. We can just read the
Times
every morning to keep track of their whereabouts”

“You know, Lieutenant, I always figured you had to screw somebody to get that rich and famous,” Garibaldi said musingly, “but I didn’t think you had to fuck the Devil himself.”

D
evlin brooded overnight about how much to tell Maggie of what he’d learned; under ordinary circumstances, he would have kept most of it to himself. But this was not an ordinary departmental matter; he couldn’t offer her protection of any kind, other than information. At least, if she knew what she was up against, she could watch her flanks.

He saw the shock register on Maggie’s face, saw her struggle to control it. “That poor, poor girl,” she whispered. “Dev, do you think she’s dead?”

The lab guys said the amount of blood on the bed would be consistent with a mortal wound, and it’s the right type—beyond that we have no proof it was Allie’s. But the good news is this may mean I can get some cooperation within the department.”

“If any of Cheri’s story is true, these people aren’t even human,” Maggie said, searching Malachy’s eyes for confirmation. “And they’ve got Cody, Dev. She could be dead already for all we know . . . or tortured . . .” He saw she could barely bring herself to say the words.

“And Jenna . . . Oh, God! What about her? I alternate between being scared to death for her safety, and wanting to kill her, for placing Cody in such danger.”

Maggie was up and pacing now.

“It tears at me, Dev!” she said, too agitated to sit still. “How could I have failed my daughter so badly, that she could ever stoop this low? I lie awake nights, going over and over every act of my life. What did I forget to say? What did I forget to do?” She raised her face to his, eyes flooded by grief and self-doubt.

Devlin steeled himself not to put his arms around her. No fair taking advantage of such vulnerability. He’d seen so much of this corrosive guilt that ate away at the souls of parents of drug addicts. In the old days, every family had a relative somewhere in the bushes who was an alcoholic—they were as common as crabgrass, just an ordinary fact of life. Nobody blamed their parents or their spouses; nobody compounded their sorrow by heaping psychiatric hogwash on their long-suffering loved ones. But now it was a new ballgame, full of rehabs that didn’t rehabilitate, and theorists who didn’t have to live with the selfishness and the emotional holocaust addicts left in their wakes.

“Look, Maggie,” he said firmly, “I’ve got something to say about this, and I want you to hear me out.” He pulled a chair close and made her sit in it, so she couldn’t avoid his eyes.

“I’ve seen a lot of drug addicts in my work—enough to entitle me to an opinion on this subject. The way I see it, Maggie, they make their own selfish choices—and their families and society, and the whole frigging country, suffer the consequences of those choices. Sure, there are addicts out there who were damaged by their families—beaten, abused, raped, pillaged, you name it. But that’s not the way it was for Jenna, and that’s not the way it is in a helluva lot of the cases I see. Sometimes you can chalk it up to weakness, sometimes it’s laziness, sometimes it stupidity. But it’s always a
choice.

“I know you wish you’d been able to do everything right for your kid. All the time, every minute of her life. But that’s an impossible dream. Because to do that you’d have had to be in charge of Fate and luck and heredity, and everything else that ever touched her, for Christ’s sake! You’d have to be in charge of what ambitions she was born with, and how many shortcuts she saw her friends take to fulfill their dreams. You’d have to be on top of whether or not a drug war was being fought on the streets of New York, and what deadly temptations her particular century had to offer.

“Don’t you
see,
Maggie, you can only do your best. I know you, now. I see evidence of your character every time we meet. You’re good, and hardworking, and smart, and loving, and you fucking well did your best for Jenna! For Christ’s sake, Maggie, you’re willing to go to the mat for your granddaughter, do you really think you would have purposely shortchanged your daughter?”

Maggie looked so uncertain, so sad, it spurred him on.

“So you gave it your best shot,” he said, his voice tough and unrelenting, “and it didn’t work out. That’s the way life is sometimes. Lousy and unfair. End of story. You’re not God, Maggie. And she’s not the Virgin Mary. If you’re so good at cataloging your own faults, why don’t we just take a good hard look at Jenna’s. So, life wasn’t just the way she wanted it—what’d she choose to do about that? Go out and work her ass off to make the world a better place, maybe? Did she combat her dissatisfaction with a sorry world, by bringing meals-on-wheels to some ninety-five-year-old granny who’s too old and worn out to cook her own oatmeal? No! She took drugs. She prostituted herself. She blotted out her conscience with a chemical that stole her soul. And then she sold her baby daughter to Satan.

“Give me a fucking break here, Maggie! If you and I are responsible for our actions, then by God so is Jenna. And Eric, and Sayles, and all those other bastards who are willing to cut somebody’s heart out just to get another yacht, or a little more power.”

Maggie stared into Malachy’s face, shocked by the vehemence of the outburst.

“The time to feel guilty is when you
didn’t
do your best,” he said, in an emotion-husky voice. “When you could have, and you fucking well didn’t.” She looked at him sharply; there was more to this than Jenna.

“What is it, Dev?” she whispered. “What are you telling me . . .”

“We had a son, Maggie,” he said, finally, his voice taut. “His name was Daniel.” The past tense riveted her, Devlin’s head was turned away and she couldn’t see his face.

“I wasn’t home a lot in those days,” he said, almost to himself. “I was young . . . I thought I could change the world singlehandedly. Bring all the bad guys to justice, erase corruption . . . The Caped Crusader of the South Bronx . . . I was going to do it all.” He shook his head, painful memories needing to be shaken free. “I made a lot of enemies on the streets—“

“You don’t have to tell me this, Dev,” Maggie interrupted apprehensively. He just shook his head gruffly, and continued.

“My wife Jan and I had a fight one night, about the hours I was keeping—we both had tempers and pressures were immense. She said I was a hotshot, that I spent more time with the criminals than I did with her and Daniel. She wasn’t wrong . . . it just made me mad that she didn’t understand how hard I was trying to make a difference.

“Anyway, I pretty much told her to go fuck herself . . .” He stopped, his eyes unfocused, looking backward. He took a deep breath and let it fill his cheeks, then dissipate, before continuing.

“So we had this stupid fight, and I got my Irish up . . . ‘You want me to play more with the kid?” I yelled—‘then you gotta have him up when I’m home from the job.’” He looked at Maggie like a sinner seeking absolution. His voice was soft, almost a whisper when he said, “You know the weirdest thing was, I adored him, Maggie. Danny was the greatest little kid in the world. I would have liked to be with him all the time. I mean, I had these dreams of teaching him to throw a ball, ride a bike, you know, how the fantasy goes . . .” His voice trailed off into history.

“Anyway, I was so pissed off after this donnybrook with Jan, I got Danny up out of bed. He was in his pajamas . . . Christ, I remember those little footy-things were too big, and he was floppy as a clown when he got up, all sleepy-eyed, and so happy to see me.” Devlin bit his upper lip, as if to hold the offending words in. “I put a jacket on him and stuck a hat on his head, and I slammed out of the apartment . . .” Terrible apprehension lapped at Maggie watching him.

“We never made it to the street,” he said in a relentless monotone. “The brother of a kid I’d put away was standing on the stoop waiting for me, and I was so caught up in my own anger and self-righteousness, I never even saw the piece in his hand. He was high on crack . . . he only hit me once. The slug went through my boy before it hit my shoulder. Danny made this little gasping sound like a bird . . . I still hear it sometimes in my head . . . and there was all this blood . . .” Devlin clenched his fists and then opened them, staring at his hands. “It didn’t take him long to die, and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it. So I just kept on holding him, and seeing those eyes of his, pleading with me to help him . . .
Christ!
I can still see his eyes. He was so sure I could fix it . . .” He turned his head away from Maggie, but she could see his tears. She handed back her handkerchief he’d given her, and he swiped at them.

“Oh, my dear Dev,” she whispered, “forgive me for ever intruding on such sacred ground.”

“No!” he said quickly. “Don’t say that. I
wanted
to tell you. I’ve known a lot of women since Jan, Maggie. I tried to use them to fill up the holes in my life, after she left me. I didn’t blame her for never wanting to lay eyes on me again, but I missed them both so
goddamned
much.” His voice broke and he covered his embarrassment with a cough.

So, this was how he would seek to redeem himself, she thought . . . a child for a child. One lost, one yet to be saved.

Maggie, stricken by the enormity of his grief and guilt, put her arms around him, and they sat wrapped in an embrace of mutual sorrow, like two refugees from a cosmic torrent they could neither hold back, nor understand.