Mortal Sin (9 page)

“That’s better than I did. For me, it was about fifty-fifty.”

“It’s the clerical collar. People are intimidated by it.” He put the cover back on and peeled back the tab. “Sometimes I can use that to my advantage.” Closing his eyes, he took a hit of steaming-hot coffee. Reverently, he said, “Nectar of the gods.”

She watched him with bemusement. He opened his eyes, caught her watching, and flashed a rueful smile. “My one addiction,” he admitted.

“And here I was, thinking you were perfect.”

“Far from it, I’m afraid. But I have a bit of news that might interest you. There’s a little Thai restaurant about five blocks from here.” He took another sip of coffee. “The owner recognized Kit’s picture. He says she was in there yesterday, looking for a job.”

Her heart lurched, and she cupped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered.

The priest leaned to the right, stretched a lanky arm toward a nearby condiment station, pulled a couple of napkins from their dispenser, and handed them to her.

She hadn’t realized she was crying. “I’m sorry,” she said, dabbing at the corner of her eye. “I’ve just been so scared. So afraid she was dead. Is he absolutely certain it was her?”

“He says it was Kit. That’s not the name she gave him, but he insists it was her.”

She dropped the wadded napkins onto the table. “Do you think she’ll come back? Did he offer her a job?”

The priest shook his head. “She refused to give him an address or a phone number, and that made him suspicious. He figured she must be a runaway, and he didn’t want to get mixed up with that kind of trouble. So he told her the job was filled.”

“A real Samaritan.”

“Sarah, this is good news. It means Kit’s somewhere nearby, and now that we’ve wallpapered downtown Boston with her picture, more people will come forward to say they’ve seen her.” He set down his coffee cup, reached across the table as though to take her hand, then seemed to think better of it, retreating an instant before flesh would have touched flesh. “Sooner or later,” he said, returning his hands to his coffee cup, “we’ll catch up to her.”

Discouragement, heavy and dank, flooded her. “In the meantime, what are we supposed to do?”

He picked his cup back up, his long fingers wrapped around it. “We’ve cast our bait,” he said. “Now we do what every good fisherman does. We sit back and wait for a nibble.”

Kit spent seven fruitless days looking for a job, seven days of aching feet and dashed hopes and continual rejection. She got absolutely nowhere with any of the theaters. Discouraged, she moved on to the restaurants and fast-food outlets, the dry cleaners and the copy shops. But they weren’t interested, either. After several potential employers refused to even look at her application because she hadn’t included a phone number or a home address, she wised up and fabricated them.

She lied about her experience, said she had waitressed for two years and that she knew how to type, and how to run a cash register. After all, how hard could it be? Any idiot could make change or find the right letters on a computer keyboard. She could probably type forty words a minute with two fingers.

But she hadn’t counted on how many other people were also looking for work, most of them overqualified and as desperate as she was. She didn’t stand a chance against some twenty-four-year-old with a master’s in English and six years of waiting tables while he put himself through school. And there wasn’t much call for unskilled labor. For even the dumbest of jobs, they wanted you to have either a college degree or experience, experience, experience.

So with sixty-two bucks left in her pocket and a trail of rejection behind her, Kit reluctantly packed her things and checked out of the Sir Charles. It might be a dump, but it had begun to feel like home. The noisy plumbing and the paper-thin walls had become familiar. Now her stomach was empty, her money was almost gone, and she had no place to sleep tonight. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out she had a big problem.

It was about to get bigger. As she passed a downtown restaurant, her eyes were drawn to a flyer tacked up in the window. Beneath the word MISSING, printed in huge, bold type, her own face smiled cheekily back at her.

Kit stopped abruptly, nearly causing a multi-pedestrian pileup, and gaped in amazement at her likeness. When she recovered her wits, she ducked into a nearby alley, away from the crowds of tourists jamming the sidewalks. Heart thudding, she shoved her hair up under her knit cap and scrabbled through her backpack for her Ray-Bans. With her hair and her eyes hidden, nobody on the planet would recognize her as the kid in the dorky ninth-grade school picture.

It didn’t take long to discover that the flyers were taped to windows from Kenmore Square to the waterfront. Kit wanted to cry. She’d never get a job now, not with her face plastered all over the city like some kidnapped kid on a milk carton. She’d have to wear a Halloween mask if she didn’t want to be recognized. How could that dried-up old witch do this to her? What the hell was she supposed to do now?

One thing she knew for sure. She wouldn’t go back to the house in Revere, back to Aunt Sarah sticking closer to her than a flea on a bluetick hound. She’d rather starve to death here on the streets. Besides, it wasn’t as though Sarah wanted her there. Nobody wanted her. Her aunt had only taken her in because they were blood relatives and she didn’t have a choice. Sarah’d never had any kids of her own, and she didn’t have a clue how to treat one. She ran the household like a boot camp, and Kit had experienced all of the military life she intended to take.

She was used to being alone, anyway. She’d always been alone. Right from the time she was a little girl, she’d known she was nothing but excess baggage to Daddy. She could see it in his eyes, could see it in the eyes of every new girlfriend who came sniffing around. None of them wanted some nosy little girl getting in the way of their big romance. They always pretended to be nice to her, but she could see straight through their lies. In the end, she always got shoved aside. They would put her to bed on a strange couch in a strange living room in a strange house, with nothing familiar except Freddy. Even the bedding smelled foreign. Daddy would go into the bedroom with the new girlfriend and close the door, and she’d be alone.

She’d lie there in the dark, clutching Freddy, terrified by the sound and feel of an unfamiliar house. Sometimes she’d have bad dreams, and wake up crying for Daddy. But Daddy never came. The bedroom door stayed shut. At other times, the noises she heard coming from behind that closed door frightened her, until she got old enough to understand what was going on. Then she just wrapped the pillow around her head, pulled Freddy tighter, and tuned it all out.

Sooner or later, every one of Daddy’s relationships went south. Just about the time she started getting used to being there, the big silences would begin. Then came the sharp words. Eventually, even that would deteriorate into shouting and throwing and breaking things. About that time, Daddy would pack their suitcases, his and Kit’s, and they’d be back on the road again, looking for a new place to crash.

She knew it was stupid, but for some crazy reason, every time they moved into a new place with a new “auntie,” there was a part of her that hoped this would be the one who liked her, the one who’d become her new mother. Even with Aunt Sarah, at the beginning, she’d hoped. Until their first big go-round, when she’d realized her aunt was no different from the rest of them. Sarah just tolerated her because she didn’t have any other choice.

The bouncing from place to place might have gone on forever if Daddy hadn’t married Melanie. His new wife detested Kit on sight, and the feeling was mutual. Which meant that in Daddy’s eyes, Kit had become an even bigger liability. He was madly in love with his new wife, but he couldn’t very well dump his daughter on a street corner. So he did the next-best thing: he dumped her on his sister’s doorstep and slunk back into the night.

Fuck Melanie. Fuck all of them. She didn’t need anybody. She’d show them all. She’d become a famous actress and live in a gorgeous house filled with beautiful things, just like in the magazines, with a maid and a butler and a Jaguar in the driveway. And when Daddy and his snotty little bitch of a wife came to call, she’d tell the butler to send them away.

Kit Connelly was going places. Just as soon as she figured out where she’d be sleeping tonight.

“Woo-hoo! Father! Hold up, I want to talk to you.”

Clancy paused at the door to the meeting room and waited for Ruth Steinman to catch up to him. The sort of woman others described as handsome, Ruth could have been anywhere between the ages of fifty and seventy. Her silver hair looked as though it had been lopped off with a dull Boy Scout knife. She wore sensible flat-soled shoes and the same brown tweed suit she’d been wearing for as long as he’d known her. Ruth was opinionated, fiercely outspoken, and highly formidable. In the five years they’d served together on various boards and committees, he’d watched countless times as she reduced some junior board member to a quivering mass of jelly.

She was also a born leader, and indefatigably devoted to her pet causes. When Ruth chaired a committee, things got done. She had no patience for incompetence, no patience for endless theory or analysis. In her frequently stated opinion, talk was cheap, and action was the only valid solution to a crisis. When presented with a problem, she grabbed the bull by the proverbial horns and mapped a route directly from Point A to Point B to effect a solution.

Which was why he could imagine just how crazy tonight’s board meeting must have made her. Tempers had flared hotly when the group failed to reach a consensus after Dickie Forsythe’s painfully detailed presentation of the financial problems plaguing the downtown soup kitchen that Forsythe was struggling to keep from crashing and burning.

“You young people are always in a hurry,” Ruth scolded as she caught up with him. “Running around like you’re headed to a fire. When you get to be my age, you’ll realize that every step you take is one step closer to the grave, and that’s a place even you won’t be in a rush to get to.” She thumped him soundly on the chest. “If you don’t have anywhere else you’re supposed to be, I’ll buy you a drink.”

It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Hiding a smile, he held open the door for her and they stepped outside into a raw
March night. “Where to?” he said, adjusting his coat collar as the wind sliced through him.

“The Parker House. It’s only a couple of blocks.”

The sidewalks were treacherous, and he took her arm as they made their way up Tremont Street to the elegant nineteenth-century hotel. The bar was quiet on this weeknight, soft jazz serving as a backdrop to muted conversation. Ruth flung off her coat, and was peeling off her gloves when the waiter appeared. “Maker’s Mark, straight up,” she said before he could ask. “Father?”

“I’ll take the same, thanks.”

The waiter left. “Beastly cold night,” Ruth said. “Tell me, Clancy, how do you perceive our role as board members?”

He solemnly considered her question. “To set policy,” he said.

“And?” She furrowed her brow and studied him as though he were a fourth-grader who’d been given a particularly telling exam.

“To allocate budget. And to see that both policy and budgetary matters are carried out in a satisfactory manner.”

“Precisely. Which is why you should be managing the damned soup kitchen instead of that idiot Forsythe. You have a brain, and you’re capable of using it. It’s his job to deal with day-to-day problems. They shouldn’t be left up to us. If I thought we could find a suitable replacement for him, I’d recommend to the board that we fire him for incompetence.”

“You know as well as I do how hard it is to find somebody who can manage a nonprofit without running it into the ground.”

“Which is why Forsythe still has a job.”

“But it’s obvious the money’s being mismanaged. Somebody needs to find out why. And how. It might behoove us to send in an auditor.”

“Or a board member,” she said thoughtfully, “who can function as one.”

“Is that your way of asking me to look over the books?”

“You have enough on your plate, already. I’ll delegate the job to Tom Adams. The esteemed senator’s always complaining that his position on this board is too static. This will give him something to do. He’s sharp as a tack when it comes to business dealings. If something’s funky with the books, he’ll find it.”

Their drinks arrived, and he watched as Ruth upended hers. “Better,” she said when the glass was empty. “Much better. Father Donovan, I have a proposition for you.”

He took a slow sip of bourbon. It blazed a trail of warmth all the way to his stomach. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and waited.

“A few months ago, I applied for a federal grant to create a new after-school program for at-risk inner-city youth. So many kids get into trouble because they have no focus, no goals, no self-esteem. No caring adult to help them make sense of their lives, to help them figure out who they are and where they’re going. This program would address that problem. I just got word yesterday that my grant’s been approved. Now I need somebody to run the program. Interested?”

He turned his glass in idle circles on the table. “I already have a job.”

“Oh, hogwash. You’re wasting your potential with the Church, and you know it. You have so much to offer, but the Catholic Church isn’t interested in letting you use your God-given talents. You’d be a natural for this job. You’re smart, you’re creative, you’re dedicated, you have charisma up the ying-yang. You’re great with kids and you don’t take any bullshit from anybody. I need you, Clancy. The kids need you.”

“Appealing to my Catholic guilt, are you?”

“If that’s what it takes.” She leaned over the table. “We could build the program together. I’d give you carte blanche to take it in any direction you see fit. I have absolute faith in you. The salary wouldn’t be huge, but it would be better than what you’re making now.” She leaned back in her chair. Smugly, she said, “Tell me you’ll ever get another offer as good as this one.”