Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel) (16 page)

Wondering done, the priest said, “Yes, family came first with Angie. She had a little plan to get her brother through a computer-science course.” He stared at the mug shot on the table. “I didn’t know she was still selling herself, not till I posted bail for that arrest.”

“But that wasn’t her last time out as a hooker.” Mallory laid down the autopsy photo of the nun’s naked thighs. “Check out the tattoos. She didn’t have them when she was booked. You’ve already seen them, right? The pictures at the station house? And maybe you saw them before that? Do you like red roses, Father? Are they your favorites?”

—

“
YEAH
,
YEAH
.” Cigarette Man had soured on the topic of roses. “What about dreams? You gotta see somethin,’ or what’s a dream for?”

“The blind can see in dreams, but only if they had years of sight before they lost it. That’s not me,” said Jonah. “I was born this way, and I can’t even tell day from night, not with my eyes. Some can.
I
can’t.”

“But when you’re asleep—”

“I dream voices, other sounds.” And there was a sense of place, even when he was dreaming of a plane in flight or being on a train to somewhere else. His dreams came booted up with maps inside his head. No need of a cane. “I smell things in dreams, touch them. And people touch me. The feel of—”

“Naw, you can’t feel nothin’ in a dream. It’s like watchin’ a movie.”

“You only think that because the picture’s all you remember when you wake up.” Aunt Angie had once believed in that movie idea. She had no memory of touching anything in her sleep—or of anything touching her, not before Jonah had told her about his Granny dreams of pinches and worse things. After that talk, his aunt had discovered that her own dreams could hurt, and that had made him sorry for telling her his nightmares.

“Sometimes,” said Jonah, “when you’re asleep . . . you feel
pain.
Things can
get
you.”

“That’s nuts. I never got hurt in no dream.”

Maybe you will tonight.

—

THE PRIEST
would not look at the photograph of the nun’s tattoos.

Mallory held it up in front of his face. “You don’t think they’re beautiful, Father? Our medical examiner does. His theory? She fell in love. The ME’s seen a million tattoos. Hate and love are big themes on his dissection tables. We’re looking for one of her johns, a freak with a thing for roses. Now, how bad do you want us to find that little boy?”

Father DuPont lowered his eyes and spoke to his wineglass. “I don’t know how many men she— Angie was a prostitute till her brother finished school and got a decent job. Then she rented an apartment. Home and a job, that was the criteria for Child Protective Services. Without that, they’d never get the little boy away from Mrs. Quill. Once Harry got custody . . . well, then it was Angie’s turn to have a life. She became a nun.”

Another lie. She knew Harold Quill’s first job would not have supported an apartment and a child. Angie had been the breadwinner for two more years before joining up with the nuns. “I checked out the website for her monastery. Angie didn’t have the qualifications to—”

“No, they prefer a college background, and Angie didn’t even finish high school. But the monastery’s prioress was satisfied with the interview. And I provided references from very influential—”

“Let me get this straight,” said Riker. “You politicked a
hooker
into a
nunnery?”

“Detective, you overestimate me.” The priest drained his wineglass and raised one hand to signal the waiter for another. “Monastic nuns are hardly swayed by church politics. Angie sold her body on the street to protect a child. And the prioress didn’t see this as a contradiction to the girl’s religious calling.”

That shut Riker down for the moment.

Mallory was less impressed by the wisdom and compassion of some old prioress, a jumped-up
nun.
And she read the priest as a player. “You’re not one of the banking DuPonts. You didn’t come down from socialites. Your family wasn’t even middle-class. Do you bother to mention that to your superiors . . . while they’re moving you up the church ladder?”

“Yeah, your job had a few perks.” Riker looked down at his notebook of illegible ciphers. “More than just the pretty hookers. You milked the church for a pricey education. Wound up with a Ph.D.
from Columbia University. Is that why you signed up for the priesthood? The free ride?”

Father DuPont did not take offense, but he took his time. Running his options? In Mallory’s experience, truth came quickly. Lies took longer.

“A free education—then ditch the church? Yes, that was my original plan.”

It was rare for New York City detectives to be taken by surprise when it came to confessions. Well,
Riker
was surprised. Mallory was only suspicious. This was too damn easy.

“But Angie changed all of that,” said the priest. “She changed
me.”

Mallory folded her arms in a silent comment of
Yeah,
right—
just to let him know that charm and bullshit was not a good game plan tonight. The priest sat up a bit straighter to say he got her meaning, clear as a gunshot to the head. A waiter appeared at his side to exchange the empty wineglass for one that was full. Fresh anesthetic. DuPont sipped it—leisurely. Stalling again.

“Here’s something your research won’t tell you—because I never got caught. I wasn’t a very nice guy in my younger days.” All the nicely modulated tones of higher learning had fallen away. “Tell me about the worst screwup you ever knew, and that was me. Selling dope, snatching purses, you name it. Breaking commandments was like a hobby with me. . . . I was no virgin altar boy when I entered the seminary.”

“You slept with her,” said Mallory, as if he had
fed
her these words.
Had
he?

“Not when she was a kid,” said DuPont. “I never touched her then. Did I love the girl?
Yes.
But Angie and me . . . we were a twisted pair. She never loved one man she screwed. By her code, she could only do it for money. . . . So I paid her . . . because I loved her.”

“She seduced you?”

“No, it just happened. . . . In psych circles, we call it transference. . . .
But that’s not it, not all of it. I was the one who came on to
her
 . . . when she was seventeen.”

Finally, Mallory was surprised. What was the priest’s angle for this confession?

—

EIGHT YEARS AGO
, a large flat-panel television had replaced the long mirror on the wall of Iggy Conroy’s front room. The matte material of the plasma screen reflected nothing but dull points of light when lamps were lit.

Tonight, he stood before the mirror over his bathroom sink, the only one left after the purge, a wild night of breaking every looking glass in the house. Instead of destroying this one eight years ago, he had blacked out his reflection with a coat of paint on the medicine cabinet’s door. Mirrors were traps for
things
—like the thing that had once passed for his dead mother. On the shelf above the sink was Ma’s old plastic compact for face powder. Its round mirror was so small it could only capture his own skin when he shaved—nothing behind him, nothing scary.

Iggy passed through the doorway to enter his bedroom, and he raised the window sash to let in the breeze from his backyard. When had he ever been so tired? He had little red pills to keep him awake, but he would not trust any drug to make him sleep, no pills that could dull his brain to noise of an intruder, nothing to slow down his reflexes. Ah, but the mistakes, the loose ends that had cost him sleep were all behind him now. The reporters were pitching the old man’s drowning as a suicide. The cops had nothing.

He closed the window and locked it. The scent of roses remained in the room with him as he laid himself down on the side of the bed that was closest to the door. Angie had slept on the side by the window. In those days, the girl had her own key to the house so she could come
to him when she needed money—and go away again days later, or only hours afterward, whenever she had earned enough to suit her.

Not his typical arrangement with whores.

Sometimes she had shown up late at night, off the last bus out of New York City. Over time, she had dulled his instinct to reach for a gun when the mattress dipped on her side of the bed. And maybe he could backtrack all his mistakes to that first one—giving her a key, putting that kind of trust in a whore.

—

PEOPLE LINGERED
in the restaurant after closing time. The manager pulled down the shades on the street window, and ashtrays were carried to the tables that were still occupied, signaling that the smoking lamp was illegally lit. Little fires from matches and lighters flared up all around the room. The priest, solidly behind this outlaw activity, fired up a cigar and then handed a credit card to the waiter, saying, “A round of drinks for my friends.”

Riker pulled out his pack of cigarettes and lit up, always happy to smoke, happier to drink.

Mallory left her listening device under a cocktail napkin as she rose from her chair. She walked toward a customer seated at a nearby table, a man whose three-piece suit outclassed even the priest’s fine tailoring. And Charles Butler had other outstanding features. The small blue irises afloat in the whites of a frog’s eyes, heavy-lidded and bulging, gave him a perpetually startled look. Oh, but the large hooked nose was incomparable. It could roost a pigeon.

He saw her coming and gave her the wide smile of a simpleminded loon, belying his huge brain and a long string of graduate degrees. That unfortunate smile was another accident of birth. Charles’s face was simply made that way, and so he was forced to play the fool each time they met. He rose from his table, unfolding his well-made body to a
height of six-four, and the quintessential gentleman pulled out a chair for her.

He was also a psychologist, but one with better skills than DuPont’s. Charles played the liars’ game of poker once a week, and it was only his famous blush that genetically kept him from winning by telling lies of his own. But no one in Mallory’s acquaintance was better at reading the poker tells that told Charles who was holding and who was running a bluff.

He pushed back his curly brown hair on one side to remove the earpiece that had allowed him to listen in on her conversation with the priest. In the role of police consultant, he had been invited here tonight because Mallory thought it might take a shrink to catch a shrink.

—

CHARLES BUTLER
glanced at the table where Mallory’s partner drank and smoked with the suspect. Father DuPont, a fellow psychologist, had abandoned that profession years ago and without making any significant mark in the field.

“I read one paper he published. The subject was juvenile runaways, but nothing on child prostitution. It centered on—” He could see that he was losing Mallory’s interest. So on to the fruits of his eavesdropping—all that she really cared about. “I’m sure he did love Angie Quill. That part seemed very real to me. He covers the notch in his clerical collar when he’s being less than credible.” Even if he had not caught this gesture twice with Mallory’s early trip-up questions to net lies, it would have been a noticeable tell.

That priest would be dead meat in a poker game.

“I already know he lied about the girl’s age the first time he raped her,” said Mallory. “Too convenient that Angie Quill was seventeen.”

“Because he hesitated too long on that one? That’s not a liar’s tell, not for him. He also did that when he was being truthful. He was just
trying to figure out what you wanted to hear. I guessed that when he confirmed every bad thing you thought of him . . . so you’d believe the truth as well.” That had not been a good strategy for dealing with Mallory, who also practiced the art of mixing truth with lies. Her toolkit for deceit was extraordinary. Poor priest, he had no idea with whom he was dealing.

Though it was always risky to oppose her point of view, Charles said, “I suspect DuPont of behaving decently. Nothing carnal at all. I think he lied about that part. I
do
believe he cared for the girl. But apparently, Angie Quill only loved God.”

Mallory gave him a look that said,
No sale.
“You’re feeding me the saintly priest routine? That’s as bogus as the hooker with a heart of gold, and I didn’t buy that one, either.”

“Too cliché?” He would concede that a one-sided love affair for the priest had been perhaps too fanciful. Charles had fashioned it upon his own scatterbrained heart that had never loved wisely. “You’re right. Obviously DuPont’s no saint. He’s ambitious—that’s in the career track he’s chosen.”

“And he’s a liar,” she said. “What’s his plan here?”

“The
child—
finding that little boy. He’s playing to your sympathy.” Poor fool. “Toward that end, he would’ve told you anything you wanted to hear. Not necessarily the truth, but what you
wanted.
So he painted himself in the worst possible light. Not a bad strategy if he—”

“He’s worked with lots of kids,” said Mallory. “If he wanted to be convincing, he would’ve told me Angie seduced
him.
Even the baby hookers barter that way. She wanted help from him, and she got it. I say the girl was thirteen years old when she made the first move on the priest.”

“I see the problem.” Charles smiled. “You’re faulting the man for lying badly. Well, that’s fair. He
is
a pretender. But he only lied at his own expense—never hers. I’m sure, at some point, she did come on to
him. Sex was currency for her. Nothing to do with transference. He lied about that. During counseling, her advances would’ve been a problem for—”

“Count on it. When Angie Quill checked into a monastery, who do you think she was hiding from?”

“Not the priest. He didn’t register any off notes on that point.” He could tell that she did not care for this observation. Always a mistake, when choosing up sides, to pick any side but hers. She seemed withdrawn for a moment, and so he was unprepared for the sudden anger. Mallory pulled a photograph from the pocket of her blazer and slammed it down on the table. Now Charles was staring at front and profile poses of a girl’s police mug shot. The bruised bare shoulder spoke to the violence of Angie Quill’s life on the street. The thick mascara was running. The girl had been crying when—