Mortal Sin (14 page)

“Hard to find anybody with my kind of warmth. Prostitution?”

“Probably.”

“Vince Paoletti. Give him my name, tell him I said to treat you with respect. Something special going down?”

“I’m on a fishing expedition, looking for a sixteen-year-old runaway. I have a description of somebody she might be with. He feels like a pimp, but he’s not anybody who rings a bell with me. I was hoping somebody from your end might know something I don’t.”

“Give Paoletti a try. There’s not much happening out there that he’s not intimately acquainted with.” Conor paused for a half beat. “When are you coming to dinner? Caro’s been hounding me. And you know how Caro can be.”

He knew how Caro could be, like a gorgeous blond pitbull. “Tell her to call Melissa and set it up on a night when I don’t have a committee meeting. Melissa keeps my entire life in that little black book of hers.”

“You going Hollywood on me, Donovan? Having my people call your people?”

“Absolutely. Thanks.”

He cut across the Back Bay, circled the Common, and wove his way down the backside of Beacon Hill to Dock Square. There, he picked up the Expressway north, took the Route 1 exit that wound precariously around Boston Sand and Gravel and under the new Leonard Zakim Bridge, and shot into the tunnel.

When he came out the other end and rolled up onto the Tobin Bridge, he dialed police headquarters again. To his amazement, Paoletti was in. Two for two, an almost unbeatable record.

“Father Clancy Donovan,” he said into the phone. “I’m a friend of Conor Rafferty’s. He said if I used his name, you’d tell me everything I want to know.”

“Oh, he did, did he? I guess that depends on what you’re looking to know.”

“The identity of a possible pimp.”

“In connection with?”

High above the Mystic River, he watched a red tugboat chug toward the harbor. “I’m looking for a sixteen-year-old girl, a runaway from Revere. Chances are good she’s with him.” Rattling off the description Jamal had given him, he shot past a lumbering tour bus, zigged and zagged around a ten-year-old Taurus wagon that was blowing blue smoke out the tailpipe.

At Paoletti’s end, there was a long, thoughtful silence. “Christ,” Paoletti said. “I thought I knew everybody out there, but this dude just isn’t ringing any bells.”

“Same here. I know most of the pimps working downtown. He’s not one of them.”

“You got a visual? Might be worth checking out a few mug shots.”

“All I have is a description. On the other hand—” He passed the scenic slums of Chelsea and squeezed into a tiny opening in the far right lane while he considered the possibility. If he could find Jamal again, maybe the kid would be willing to spend a couple hours at the police station, playing show and tell. “There’s a kid,” he said into the phone. “He’s seen the guy. Maybe I can convince him to come in.”

“Bring him in. Ask for me at the front desk, I’ll see what I can do for you.”

He hung up, took the Revere exit, and merged with the flow of traffic. Calculating the distance to the Northgate mall, he measured it against the speed of the traffic, then picked up the phone again and dialed Melissa.

“I’m running late,” he said. “I got sidetracked. How much time do I have before my next appointment?”

“You’re free until two-thirty.”

“It’s almost noon now… all right, that should do it. I’ll be back by then. Take a long lunch. Go shopping. Get your hair done.”

“What if somebody calls?”

“They can talk to the machine. If it’s an emergency, my cell phone number’s on the recording. I’ll see you around two-thirty.”

He could have phoned Sarah Connelly instead of talking to her in person. But there was no sense in hiding from the woman. He wasn’t some libidinous schoolboy, tripping over his words and his feet. He was a grown man who was quite capable of dealing with something as trifling as being attracted to a woman there was no possibility of getting involved with. Avoiding her wouldn’t make the problem go away. He would simply have to work around it. He’d spent enough years running away from his problems. This one he would face like a man.

When he entered the bookstore, a bell rang over his head. The young woman behind the counter glanced up with a smile, studying him with open interest before she noticed the clerical collar. The wattage of her smile dimmed and a flush crept up her cheeks at her realization that she’d been ogling a Catholic priest.

“Hello,” he said. “Is Sarah in?”

“She’s in the office. Straight back, just behind the rack of Cliffs Notes.”

He felt her eyes boring holes in his back as he strode to the rear of the store. He found Sarah in the cramped closet that passed for an office, the phone to her ear and her back to the door. One hand was buried in the tangle of soft brown curls. While he watched, she slid the hand southward and began leisurely massaging her neck, then tilted her head back and moved it from side to side in a slow and sinuous roll. With an interest that wasn’t entirely academic, he studied the long, corded length of her throat.

“Oh, I understand,” she said into the phone. “But I also have a business to run here, and if shipments don’t come in when they’re expected, I might as well just wave bye-bye to my whole little operation.”

She swiveled around to face the door. When she saw him, she froze. He gave her a reassuring smile, watched her facial muscles relax. “Fine,” she said into the phone. “What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

Trying not to eavesdrop, he wandered a few feet away, picked up a book at random, and began thumbing through it. “Look,” she said, “this book is scheduled to hit the streets tomorrow. It’s already number fourteen at Amazon, and it hasn’t even been released yet. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to have me a flood of people in here asking for it. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to try Stop & Shop?”

He held back a smile. This woman took no prisoners. “You do that,” she said. “While I’m waiting, I’ll just sit here and whistle ‘Dixie.’” She replaced the telephone receiver in its cradle with surprising gentleness before she muttered, “Rat bastard.”

A moment later, she appeared from around the end of the aisle. With her tousled hair and her huge blue eyes, she looked stunning in the blue V-neck sweater. “Good morning, Father,” she said.

“Sarah. Having a bad day, are we?”

“I wasn’t, until I got that bozo on the line. What can I do for you?”

“I thought you might like to have lunch with me.”

Although her face remained impassive, she wasn’t good at masking the thoughts that went on behind those vivid blue eyes. His words had been as much of a surprise to her as they’d been to him. They weren’t at all what he’d planned to say, but it seemed his mouth had taken on a life of its own, one his head wasn’t wholly in agreement with.

Instead of answering, she glanced at the book in his hand. A deep dimple appeared in her cheek, and those blue eyes twinkled as she returned her gaze to his. “Learn anything useful?”

He looked down at the title of the book he’d been mindlessly thumbing through.
Childbirth the Natural Way
. “Well,” he said, “I think it’s important for a priest to have a broad knowledge base.”

“Slick,” she said. “Very slick. I’ll get my coat.”

He took her to Fuddruckers, a few miles up Route 1 in Saugus, because he believed everybody should enjoy the Fuddruckers experience at least once. The place was humming, the lines lengthy, the burgers worth the wait. “Is that not the best hamburger you ever wrapped your mouth around?” he asked as she bit into a bacon cheeseburger dripping with ketchup.

It took her a minute to answer because her mouth was full. A glob of ketchup dribbled down her chin, and she set down the burger, picked up a napkin, and wiped it away. There was nothing of the oh-so-proper shrinking violet about her. Sarah Connelly was warm, earthy, and genuine. It was one of the things he liked best about her.

“It’s absolute heaven,” she said, still dabbing at her mouth. “But I thought you were kidding about the name until I saw it myself.”

“Strange but true. It’s a coast-to-coast chain. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of it before.”

“Now that I know about the place—” she studied the burger on her plate with immense appreciation “—I’ll be back again.”

“I want to apologize,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, back at the bookstore. I could read it on your face when you first saw me. You were afraid I was bringing bad news.”

Some of the light left her eyes. “You get used to that after a while. Everything strikes fear into your heart. Every time the doorbell rings.” She picked up a French fry. “Or the phone.” She dipped the fry into her ketchup and bit into it.

“Or when a thoughtless priest barges into your office in the middle of your workday without calling first. I’m sorry.”

“Never in a million years would I call you thoughtless. Look, Father, I know my Southern charm is utterly devastating, but you didn’t drive all the way to Revere just for the pleasure of my company. Since you’re not bringing bad news, why are you here?”

He picked up a French fry, dipped it in the ketchup, and popped it into his mouth. Licked a drop of ketchup off the tip of his thumb. “I wanted to give you that information on the support group.” He brushed off his hands, pulled a folded paper out of his pocket and slid it across the table. “Adrienne Thibodeau is in charge of the meetings. Give her a call and she’ll fill you in.”

“Thank you. I think.” She took the paper, opened her purse, and tucked it inside. Closing it again, she propped an elbow on the table and rested her chin on her palm. “What’s the real reason you’re here?”

He abandoned all pretense of eating. “I talked to a kid named Jamal today. He knows Kit, thinks she might be with a man he saw her talking to in the T. Just under six feet tall, snappy dresser, blond hair, wears a gold earring. Does that sound like anyone you know? Someone she’s talked about? Maybe a friend she brought home?”

“Kit never brought any friends home, although God knows I tried to encourage it. I kept telling her they’d be more than welcome. She told me flat out that she didn’t have any friends.” She paused, stared off into space. “This boy,” she said, “this Jamal—do you think he’s telling the truth?”

“I have no reason to doubt him. Of course, you have to realize there’s no guarantee she’s with this person he saw her talking to. But Jamal says he’s seen him there before, hitting on pretty young girls.”

“A pimp?” she said.

“That would be my guess.”

She pursed her lips, exhaled sharply through them. “Shit.”

“It may turn out to be a dead end, but at least it’s a jumping-off point. It’s more than we had this morning.”

“Or not.”

He picked up a French fry. “Or not,” he conceded.

“So what do we do about it?”

He chewed thoughtfully. “I’ll put feelers out. I have contacts everywhere. Contacts on the street, contacts within the religious community and the community at large. The girls at Donovan House. Maybe somebody can help us identify this guy. It might be a good idea for you to poke around the high school again. There’s a possibility this could be somebody she already knew. Somebody there may recognize his description.”

When he dropped her off in front of the bookstore, she paused, hand on the door handle, before getting out of the car. “You’ll keep in touch,” she said. “If you hear anything, I want to know.”

“I’ll let you know if I learn anything new. Call me if you turn up anything at the high school.”

She strode briskly toward the building, the wind stirring her hair, golden strands mingling with brown in a riotous sea of curls. At the entrance, she paused to hold the door for an elderly woman with an armload of shopping bags. She said something to the woman, smiled, then glanced quickly in his direction. He lifted a hand, and she returned the greeting before closing the door and disappearing behind plate glass windows turned opaque by the glare of the midday sun.

Melissa was at her desk when he came in whistling some old Hootie and the Blowfish tune in a heretofore undiscovered key. “What’s with you?” she said, following him into his study and watching as he took off his coat and hung it on the coatrack.

He neatly arranged his scarf on the hook beneath the coat before he turned to look at her. “What do you mean?”

She crossed her arms, leaned against the door frame, and gave him a long, speculative glance. “You’ve been so chipper lately, I barely recognize you.”

He ran fingers through his hair, shoved it back into some semblance of order. “Chipper?” he said. “Me?”

“I haven’t seen you throw anything at the wall in weeks.”

He stared at her, realized she was right. Since he’d begun searching for Kit Connelly, his longstanding black mood had gone through a sweeping color evolution. He might not be quite Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, but it had been weeks since he’d gone on a rant or written a letter to the bishop. “Spring is almost here,” he said in his own defense. “The sun is shining, the sky is blue—”

“The wind chill is nine degrees.”

“I’ll have you know, I saw a robin this morning. On the sidewalk in front of the rectory.”

“Poor little thing. I hope he was wearing a winter coat.”

“He was. And I think his suitcase had a baggage tag that said Aruba.”

Those big gray eyes of hers, usually so solemn, warmed with humor. “I’m not complaining,” she said. “Whatever it is, I hope it lasts. You’re certainly easier to live with when you’re like this.”