Sons (17 page)

Pytór Krevchenko studied Louis’s sweaty face. He offered a reassuring smile to his agitated cohort and said, “Believe me, Louis. No one is going to prison. Do not give the girl another thought. She was nothing, my friend, a bit of fun, that is all. Although Yuri told me she was a fighter to the end. She tried to scratch him, and the poor man had no choice but to cut the girl’s hands off, just so he could keep her an extra day without having his eyes gouged out. He said it was messy but effective.”

Louis turned as pale as the white shirt he wore.

Words from a Bible story he had read as a child kept jumping around in his head. Fragments, bits and pieces that didn’t mean anything, jabbed his memory. Gradually, they coalesced into “Woe be unto him who harms one of these innocents. For I tell you their angels in heaven always behold the face of My Father.”

Louis began to sweat even more.

Great, just fucking great, now I’ve got an angel mad at me!

Once more, Louis turned his back to the Russian. He couldn’t bear to look at the man who so calmly discussed murder for fun.

“What kind of people are you?” he whispered.

Krevchenko reached around Louis’s shoulder and handed his partner in sleaze, and now
murder
, a large whiskey.

“Here, drink this. You look as if you can
use it. You know, my friend—you worry too much. No one will ever find her.”

“I wouldn’t bet the farm on that,” Louis said shakily. “She wasn’t just some throw-away street kid. Mike Bocalora is a big man in this town. These people have deep pockets, Pytór. Money is no object. They’ll never give up looking for her.”

Cloudy from multiple washings, the stubby glass still looked dirty. Louis stared at the amber drink and then downed it in one gulp. He went to the tattered sofa and slumped onto the worn cushions. Every aching nerve in his body seemed to bypass the alcohol’s dulling effect.

Pytór tried to mitigate his partner’s distress.

“Well, my friend, they will have to look very hard and very long. She’s buried in a radioactive waste dump in a place called Utah. It will be nine hundred years before anybody will look for her there.”

The Russian’s words melted into meaningless noise as Louis’s mind sawed back and forth, trying to see a way out.

Unable to reason the facts away, he admitted, “I don’t like this, Pytόr. I don’t like it at all. This is going to bring us all down!”

Pytόr shrugged and said, “Louis, you take this sort of thing too seriously. Children die every day, especially in Russia. I prefer to think of us as assisting in the process of natural selection.”

“Christ, you’re one sick bastard, ya know that? A
monster.
That’s what Yuri is, a
monster
, and… and you’re no better!” Louis spat.

Pytόr Krevchenko walked to the sofa, leaned in, looked the frightened man in the eye, and whispered, “Go to the mirror, Louis. Take a good look at yourself, my friend. We are
all
of us—monsters.”

From throat to butt, Louis’s guts were in full revolt, much like a man on death row in his last hour of life. He was sick, and the whiskey didn’t help his jittery stomach. He reproached himself silently as he poured out the last of the cheap alcohol.
Why did I let Pytór talk me into getting the Bocalora girl for Yuri Barsukov? I should have known he’d do something like this, and now Barsukov is safe in Mother Russia, and my ass is left swinging in the wind!

Louis stared down into his glass for a moment. He put the untouched drink on a rickety side table and stood up. He staggered a few steps and headed to the bathroom. “I’m gonna be sick.”

Twenty-Seven

The Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul

V
ICTOR
C
AREW
knelt in the half light of the tiny box, which to him felt like a coffin turned on its end, and said, “Bless me Father for I have sinned.”

Victor stumbled on the next line of the old rubric,
it has been X number of days, months, years since my last confession.

A tense pause folded over him as he struggled to recall the last time he had ventured into a church, any church, much less a confessional.

“Go on, my son,” the voice behind the cloth-covered grill soothed.

No response.

“Are you there, my son?”

Victor whispered a quiet, “Yes. I’m here.”

“How long has it been since your last confession?” the voice prompted.

“I can’t remember.”

“A year?”

“More.”

This time the priest’s comforting tone carried a mild reproach.

“Two years?”

Victor Carew groaned.

“I said I can’t remember. Let’s just say it’s been a long time.”

“Then, my son, we’re going to be here for a while.”

The minutes stretched into a half hour, and Victor was still reciting a litany of wrongdoing that would have made a Mafia hit man look like a church social worker. His mouth was dry. His words faltered, finally fading into fractured phrases.

“My son, you’re stalling.”

“What!” Victor shouted his indignation.

He couldn’t see the priest’s indulgent smile through the thin black cloth that separated sinners from absolution.

The priest said, “I do this for a living, my son. I can tell when a penitent is confessing something in order to avoid a more urgent problem.”

“I see… yes, you’re right, but what I have to say may take a while longer,” Victor said, hoping the priest was as tired as he was and eager to end his soul-wrenching session.

“I have all the time in heaven,” assured the priest.

Victor’s hopes collapsed into a final admission.

“I’m here about my son… I mean, the two of us.”

“What about the sins you just confessed. Are they real, or not?”

“Yes, I’m ashamed to say they are.”

“Tell me about you and your son.”

“His name is Louis.”

Victor Carew slid back on his haunches. His thoughts tumbled backward into a maze of hazy memories, deformed by sadness. He wondered how to portray his son. Where should he start?

How do I compress a lifetime of care and loving a child so devotedly opposed to that love and care
?

“You know, Father, when your children are little they step on your shoes. When they start to grow up, they step on your heart.”

“Is that how it is? Your son has hurt you?” said the priest.

Victor let out a sad chuckle.

“I’m sure if you asked him, he’d say it was the other way around.” Victor’s voice trailed off with a sigh.

The priest considered this for a moment, then said, “Go on.”

“My wife nearly died in childbirth. As it was, the pregnancy wrecked her health… I mean she never fully recovered… not the way she was before. Anyway, I took care of Louis most of the time. We loved each other then, I mean when he was a youngster. Football games, Cub Scouts, then Boy Scouts, trips to the Baseball Hall of Fame… that sorta thing. Ever been to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Father?”

“No, I’ve never been there.”

Victor’s smile went unseen in the gloom of the confessional.

“It’s nice, real nice,” he murmured.

“I’m sure it is,” the priest said.

“Yeah, well anyway, I adored my boy. But then… there’s always a
but
in these things, isn’t there? Louis started to grow up, and he began to change, slowly at first. I guess I didn’t notice. After all, I was in a business expanding every day, which took up a lot of my time. It’s hard to know for sure. I ask myself if it was a combination of my work and having to take care of his mother at the same time, or his being a teen and not wanting the old man around that pulled us so far apart. Anyway, when he was around fifteen he got into trouble with the law. It was a minor thing. By that time, I had made a name for myself, so I was able to get him off without any arrest.”

“What was the trouble about?” the priest said.

“Oh, umm, he met some girl in Chinatown. He got fresh with her, and she made a complaint. I thought it was just a misunderstanding. Then it happened again with a different girl, but that time it was more serious. He, umm, got her naked.”

Victor hastily added, “He didn’t do anything, though. He said he just wanted to see what a girl looked like… you know, naked… and all.”

“What’s going on with him now? I assume something is very wrong with the two of you, or you wouldn’t be here. By the way, how old is Louis?”

Victor shifted around on his knees, trying to get more comfortable. The air in the confessional was stale. He began to perspire.

“Uh, Louis is thirty-six now.”

“Thirty-six!” The priest said, his tone clearly echoing his annoyance. “I thought we were talking about a child!”

“We are talking about a child!
My
child. A baptized child. A child of God and an heir to heaven,
Father
!”

Silence swamped the small space like a tidal wave.

Victor waited for the priest to respond.
He probably thinks just because I’m here confessing I’ve forgotten my catechism!

The priest was unaccustomed to being lectured on the foundations of Catholic dogma. Usually it was he who retreated to such lofty rhetoric to prop up an argument.

“We’re both tired,” he said, chagrinned. “Can you come back tomorrow? I….”

“No.” Victor said flatly.

Earlier, he would have welcomed a reprieve from baring his heart, but now he had the bit in his teeth, and he wasn’t going to let go.

“Father, I need you now, and you know that I know you can’t refuse me confession, so let’s get this done.”

“Very well,” the priest said calmly, “you talk, and I’ll listen.”

After another heavy pause Victor continued, “I tried everything to reach Louis. The more I poured money and resources on him, the lower he sank into corruption. First, it was sex, then sex mixed with violence, and then drugs. Now he’s running a pornography studio! God help him, I’m sure it’s more than just movies.”

Victor looked around as if to assure himself no one was listening at the door.

“I’m no saint, Father. You don’t get to be as rich and as powerful as I am by playing Mother Teresa. But Victor Carew was always on the up and up. No illegal stuff. Never.”

Victor waited a moment to see if the priest recognized his name, or if he would offer a remark, something like… well done! Good for you, Victor.

When no affirmation was forthcoming, Victor said, “Father, I love my son more than my own life, more than all the money I’ve got or will ever have. He’s all I have in the world, all I truly care about. How can I help him? You’re a man of God. You pray to God all the time. Tell me what I have to do!”

The priest remained silent. Victor began to wonder if he had fallen asleep.

“Father? Are you there? Fath—”

“Have you
told
Louis you love him?” the priest said. “I don’t mean when he was a child, I mean recently, say, in the past month?”

Victor settled into a shamed quiet, answering in a voice barely audible, even to himself, “No, no.”

“Well, I’d say that’s the place to start. I don’t suppose he goes to Mass.”

“No.”

“If you came to Mass, do you think he’d come with you?” asked the priest.

“I don’t know. I could ask. I guess it would be a start, as you say. I’ll do anything to save my boy.”

“Well, you don’t have to make coming to Mass sound like torture.”

Both men laughed, breaking the tension that had grown between them.

Then the priest said, “You aren’t going to turn your son’s life around with one Mass. You have to leave that to God. And, Mr. Carew, don’t wait until it’s too late to tell your son you love him. He needs to know that now.”

“I will. I will.”

Satisfied, the priest raised his hand in blessing and said, “May the Almighty and Merciful Lord grant you absolution and remission of your sins, both known and unknown.”

Buoyant with renewed hope, Victor prayed, “Amen.”

Twenty-Eight

V
ICTOR
C
AREW
left the basilica, hailed a taxi, and ordered the cabbie to take him to 13th and Samson Streets, where he walked the short block to McGillin’s Ale House. Victor was tired, weary in his mind and soul. Since the death of his wife, Alma, two decades before, he had dedicated all his energies to two things: creating a business empire, and keeping his wayward son out of prison. Many times, he tried to persuade himself that jail was just the thing Louis needed to sober him up and set him on a path to healing. In his heart of hearts, Victor knew his son was emotionally unbalanced, or perhaps even mad. Still, according to the priest, he had reason to hope everything would work out between him and his son.