VC03 - Mortal Grace
Mortal Grace
A Vince Cardozo Mystery
Edward Stewart
For Bunny Dexter—because this time she didn’t
Contents
ONE
I
T WAS DARK IN
the confessional. Cold. Staying awake was an agony.
If only I could sleep
, Wanda Gilmartin thought. It seemed she had never closed her eyes in all her sixteen years.
“Is there anything else, my child?” The priest was an ash-colored stirring on the other side of the grille. “Make a full confession.”
Her head slammed groggily into a wood panel. “I stole some stay-awake pills from a friend.”
“Have you taken them all?”
She sneaked one into her mouth. “I have two left.”
“You must give them back and admit what you did.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Anything else?”
“No, Father.”
The priest pronounced the formula of absolution. “Ten Hail Marys. Ten Our Fathers.”
Wanda groped in the dark for her crutches. She found a wobbling balance and stumbled out of the confessional. Her ankle ached as though a spike of ice had been driven through it.
The priest led her to the altar rail. The crutches clacked to the marble floor. She knelt. White and gold vestments slid through light and shadow. A voice intoned.
Wanda turned her head. The church was a vaulted, echoing emptiness behind her.
Why aren’t there other people here? Why is it so dark? So cold?
“The body of Christ.” The priest laid the wafer into her cupped hands.
She had been cold and alone, justifying herself to strangers, going through other people’s rituals, for all the sixteen years of her life.
“The blood of Christ.” The priest tipped the chalice toward her lips.
She felt as though she were falling into the wine. She realized she still had a buzz on from all the drugs—especially that pink pill. She could no longer follow what was happening.
Hands helped her up onto her crutches. Helped her along an endless aisle. The cast on her left ankle weighed like a concrete block. Hands helped her through a door and up into a van.
A voice was asking her questions, oily with caring. “Tell me, my child, how long have you been a runaway?”
Wanda didn’t know what answer was desired.
Always give the customer what he wants.
“A long time.”
Now they were driving. On the other side of the windshield bloated flakes of snow drifted weightlessly in and out of the headlight beams. Her fingers played with the gold chain she had braided into her hair.
“Tell me, my child, how long have you been prostituting yourself?”
“A long time. Since I was eleven.”
The van passed through iron-barred gates and into a garage. Hands helped her out of the front seat and up a narrow flight of stairs. Her crutches thumped on each creaking wooden step. She reached the top and had to rest a moment to catch her breath.
A parchment-shaded lamp clicked on. She saw a small apartment with Gothic-lettered mottoes hanging up on the walls:
Bring me young sinners.
Suffer the little children to come unto me.
My kingdom is not of this world.
The kingdom of God is within you.
You must become again as a child.
He who dies with forgiveness of sins…wins!
The air carried a suffocating reek of incense.
“I need the bathroom.”
“Right in there.”
Wanda propped her crutches against the cold white tile wall. She knelt at the toilet and tried to throw up. Her throat could produce nothing but empty retchings.
She hobbled back into the other room. Darkness was coming at her in waves. She had to force her eyes to stay open.
The priest stood lighting incense in a small copper bowl. “Tell me, my child, how long have you been taking drugs?”
“I don’t know—a long time. I’m sorry, Father, I’m fogging out. Could we finish this talk later? I really need to sleep.”
“There’s just a little bit more of the ceremony.”
Something in his face was wrong. Something in the moment was bent. It was as though time had taken a right-angled turn.
“I thought the ceremony was over,” Wanda said.
“Almost. This is the last part. You’ll feel better if you atone.”
“I thought I did atone.”
Christ, I’ve been atoning for one person’s sins or another’s since I was born.
“No, my child, you confessed. Now you atone.” Father lifted off his pectoral cross. He kissed it and laid it with a soft thunk on the table beside a highball glass that was still half full. Ice cubes rattled as he raised the glass. He took two long swallows. The rum sent a chilled, 150-proof sting down his throat. He stood a moment, savoring the sensation of icy heat. Then he removed his embroidered stole and draped it neatly over the back of the chair.
The zipper of the black cassock required care: it had been sticking the last several times he’d worn it. With patient, coaxing tugs he finally freed himself. He arranged the cassock on a hanger and the stole over the cassock, adjusting them so there would be no wrinkles. He hung the vestments in the closet.
Now he took the transparent waterproof smock from its peg. He slipped into it.
He returned to the table and swallowed the rum remaining in the glass. He poured a fresh drink from the bottle. The young girl, leaning back in the peach-colored leather chair, watched him with a drowning gaze. She did not make the obvious comment about his drinking.
The second glass went stinging down the hatch. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
The smock squeaked as he bent to lift her. She moved easily into his arms. He centered her weight on his shoulder and made sure she wasn’t going to slide. Walking sideways, he carried her carefully down the narrow stairway.
She gave a little bounce at every step. Faint puffs of air parted her lips, and with each puff the smock sent out a mousy little squeak.
He crossed the cellar and laid her in the galvanized laundry tub. He moved the braids away from her pale, high-domed forehead. Her dark eyes showed surprise, flecked with something else.
He closed each eye, kissed each eyelid, kissed her lips. She did not flinch from the rum. The inside of her mouth had the salty taste of a spent firecracker. He gazed at her, stretching the small, personal moment.
“God loves you, Wanda,” he whispered. “So do I.”
He slipped a tape of Maurice Duruflé’s ineffably beautiful
Requiem
into his Walkman. He put on his earphones.
The “Kyrie” surged into his head. He started the electric saw, braced himself against the vibration, and began his work.
Kyrie Eleison.
Christe Eleison.
Two hours later he had finished one bottle of rum and begun another. Wanda lay neatly arranged in a basket—large pieces on the bottom, smaller pieces on top. He took a deep, slow breath and pushed the basket up a steel ramp into the rear of the van.
He drove slowly into the glassy New York night. The sky overhead had the color of an old bruise. He sat slightly hunched at the steering wheel, squinting, keeping the city streets in focus. Singing along with the “Agnes Dei,” he swung into Central Park.
The looping half-lit roadways were deserted at this hour. He ignored the
PARK PERSONNEL ONLY
sign and eased off the main road, driving around a sawhorse onto an unlit service road. Fifty yards up he pulled into the shrubbery.
Twigs snapped and bare-limbed bushes trembled. He cut the motor.
It was a peak moment and he sat there, losing himself. The “Sanctus” surged through his earphones. A powdering of snow drifted down through the air. The silent city was asleep.
He took the flask from his breast pocket and sat sipping rum.
Work to be done
, he reminded himself.
He screwed the top back on the flask and reached behind the seat for the pickax.
TWO
O
N A SMALL OUTDOOR
stage, a group of young clowns and ballerinas were dancing for the crowd. Their movements took on a sassy snap as the Dixieland band kicked into the final bars of “New York, New York.”
Arms linked. Feet fell into smartly synchronized step. Legs high-kicked à la Radio City Rockettes.
A-one. A-two.
Top hats and canes arced into the air.
A-one-two-three-four.
Sock-it-home kick-spin-kick jump-split-leap-spin hold-it-absolutely-still take-a-deep-sharp-bow. Two thunks on a cow bell.
A current of excitement fused the crowd into a clapping, screaming applause machine. The air jingled with we-love-you vibes.
Twenty bows later, the dancers exited the proscenium.
Behind the canvas drop, Johanna Lowndes pulled off her Columbine cap. She stood near the corner of the wooden stage, catching her breath. She leaned her head on the shoulder of her Pierrot. He wordlessly slipped an arm around her.