VC03 - Mortal Grace (51 page)

There was a rush of sirens from the west. Cardozo crossed to the taxi rank.

Ellie Siegel sat in front of a scarred wooden desk in the Third Street headquarters of the Hoboken Cab Company, smiling her prettiest smile while the dispatcher held a three-way argument with a telephone and a radio mike.

“Weehawken,” he told the mike for the second time. This time the radio didn’t talk back. He told the phone, “Three minutes.” He slammed down the phone and grimaced at Ellie. “Sorry for the interruption. Where were we?”

“I was asking if any of your drivers might have picked that young man up at the ferry yesterday. Probably around eight or eight-thirty. He would have had another young man with him.”

The dispatcher churned papers on his desk top and found the photo she had given him. He stared a long moment at the young man with long blond hair gathered in a ponytail. “What did he do? Kill someone?”

The dispatcher was wearing an imitation fifties Hawaiian shirt, khaki slacks, and loafers. Ellie knew he was wearing loafers because he had one foot propped up on the desk.

She made a sound that wasn’t quite yes and wasn’t quite no. “We’d like to question him.”

“Any idea where he was headed? I could check the sheets.”

“Possibly to church.”

“Church?” The dispatcher fixed his brown-eyed gaze on her. “Nine o’clock at night?”

“It was a social call.”

The dispatcher reached behind his ear and scratched. “How many of these photos can you give me? I’ll show them around.”

Ellie opened her purse. “How many can you use?”

In the armchair, Father sat drifting. The air conditioner gave a soft forward pulse to the silence. It was a long moment of floating contentment.

And then something prodded.

He became gradually aware of Sandy’s hand touching his, reminding him. Father opened his eyes. “I just need a moment and I’ll pull myself together.”

Sandy’s answer was silence.

Father tried to ignore the silence. He hated to be rushed. He raised his glass to his lips and drained the last drops of rum. A warmth spread through his body. He tried to enjoy the warmth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

Again he felt the pressure of Sandy’s fingers, that nagging urgency.

“Young people.” Father shook his head. “You’re a paradox. Nothing to live for—and always rushing.” He wondered what it must be like to be Sandy—to be a generation shaped by material poverty, spiritual neglect, drugs, violence.

Thank God I’m not Sandy. Thank God I have an anchor.

The empty glass made a soft click as he set it back down onto the table. He pushed himself to his feet, centering himself. He gave Sandy’s hand a squeeze.

“Okay, kiddo, I’m taking you home.”

Father moved steadily now, down the stairs and straight to the van, undeflected, energized by a will that had added itself to his own. He swung open the van door. Hinges squeaked softly. He lifted the lid of the Styrobasket.

Sandy stared at him with quietly startled eyes, his mouth a little round O.

Father placed Sandy’s hand with the other parts of him, neatly aligned with the forearms. He closed each eyelid, kissed each eyelid. His lips touched Sandy’s mouth.

“God loves you,” he whispered. “So do I.”

SIXTY-FOUR

C
ARDOZO REREAD THE 1:30 A.M
. entry. According to the log, Bonnie Ruskay came out of her building. She was in a hurry and she was wearing a raincoat. She crossed the street, engaged in a five-minute discussion with a security guard, and spent almost an hour inside the rectory. At 2:25 she returned to her apartment.

Cardozo phoned Empire Security and identified himself. “You sent a guard to St. Andrew’s rectory on East Sixty-ninth Street at one-thirty this morning. Could you check that call for me?”

“One moment.”

The phone broke into “New York, New York”—the Liza Minnelli rendition. Cardozo held it away from his ear till the woman came back on the line.

“That building was entered at 1:22
A.M.
The security code was not transmitted. A guard was dispatched.”

“And what was the matter?”

“No break-in. The lady forgot to reset her alarm.”

Cardozo lowered the receiver. His ballpoint rapped out a bolero rhythm on the edge of an open desk drawer. After a moment he tapped a number into the phone and waited through seven rings.

“Henahan.” The voice of a mean-tempered zombie.

“Did I wake you up, Jack?”

Cardozo took a swallow of lukewarm coffee while Henahan grumbled.

“Sorry. Look, I’ve been checking your log and I see a security man was dispatched to the rectory. The company says there was an entry but no break-in. Did you see anything?”

“I wasn’t watching the rectory, Vince. I was across the street guarding Ruskay.”

“It looks like someone had a key but didn’t know the alarm code. Did anyone come out with Ruskay when she went back to her apartment?”

“She was alone.”

“What about later?”

“You didn’t tell me you wanted the rectory watched too.”

“I know, but did you happen to see anyone?”

Henahan sighed. “Let me think. It must have been an hour, three quarters of an hour later—the light was already out in her apartment—I saw that van drive out of the gate.”

“A man was driving?”

“I don’t know if a man was driving, but a man opened the gate.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Sorry, Vince. It was dark and I didn’t know it was important.”

Cardozo phoned Harry Thoms at the D.A.’s office. “Any luck tracking down Father Montgomery?”

“Not a trace. What about you?”

“Nothing so far.”

The gray morning promised rain. Cardozo pressed the doorbell. Through the curtained rectory window he could see a shadow approach and he recognized a gliding quality in the way Bonnie Ruskay moved.

She opened the door and something startled showed in her eyes. She covered with a smile. “Don’t tell me you’re still worrying about me.”

“Always.”

“Come in.”

He accepted the invitation. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Father Joe?”

She was busy tapping the code into the alarm box. “He hasn’t phoned.”

Cardozo realized that the question she’d answered was not exactly the one he’d asked. “Has he been here?”

“This is his home.”

Cardozo had a sense she was playing with tiny verbal distinctions, like a lawyer. “Recently?”

“I don’t stand guard over the manse.”

“Is he here now?”

“I’d be very much surprised.”

“Would you mind if I look?”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“Unless you’ve looked yourself, you can’t be sure.”

“Can you do the job alone or do you need to call for a crew?”

“I can manage by myself.”

She stepped aside with a kind of light dancing twirl. “Why don’t we look together?”

The desk in Father Joe’s office was bare except for the penholder and the blotter, the crystal bud vase with its single yellow hyacinth.

“A fresh flower,” Cardozo said.

She nodded. “One of the cleaning woman’s little rituals.”

The coffee table was neatly stacked with books and current magazines. The air conditioner was running full blast, yet the air was warm, almost muggy. The window was open a crack, and he realized the machine had been set on exhaust.

“Airing out the place?”

“These old New York houses get musty.”

There were traces of ash and curls of blackened paper beneath the cedar log in the fireplace.

She opened the closet door. “Well, he’s not hiding here.”

Cardozo followed her up the stairs. As he climbed he could feel that his white shirt needed a pressing. Today was the kind of muggy day where everybody’s white shirt needed a pressing.

She clicked on a table lamp in Father Joe’s room, and Cardozo had the momentary sense of standing in an immaculate hotel suite. The bed had been made and heaped with silk throw pillows. The air had a lemony smell of furniture polish.

“Someone certainly did a good job here,” he said.

“I’m very happy with the new cleaning woman’s work.”

The tour ended in the garage.

“Where’s the van?” Cardozo said.

“Today it’s doing Meals-on-Wheels. Have you heard of them? Hot lunches for shut-ins.”

Solomon Jones knew when he needed a break and he knew when his family needed a rest. So he took a sick day he had coming, and he picked up a bucket of arroz con pollo at the corner bodega and he brought his wife and daughter to the Ramble in Central Park.

It was a weekday, and it had rained that morning, so no one else had claimed the picnic table on top of the wooded hill. Solomon and Phoebe clinked iced cans of Coors and sat feeling the air and the sun on their skin.

He looked over to the woods where his little girl was exploring the bushes behind the oakwood gazebo. Mineola was wearing her birthday dress; she had just turned six, and she was a bright bouncing splash of yellow against the green foliage.

Solomon sighed. “This is it. This is what life ought to be. Except who is that bitch on the radio, and why is she making me listen to Beethoven?”

Before he could reach the portable radio and change to a rock station, Phoebe swung her hair off her shoulder and leaned to kiss him. She was wearing thin white pants and a thin white blouse knotted at her waist and they glided over her like silk, and Solomon could feel his mind taking another direction.

Over in the woods, something made a cracking-open sound and Mineola let out half a howl. That was funny—Mineola holding on to the other half of that howl.

Solomon opened one eye.

“What’s she done now?” Phoebe murmured.

“Mineola,” Solomon shouted. “Get over here.”

The little girl came fluttering through the bushes. Her dress was smeared red.

“Damn it, honey,” Phoebe said, “what have you done to your new clothes?”

The little girl stood twisting her fists, making the stains worse. “There’s a box over there.”

“Don’t you be messing with other people’s boxes.”

Solomon felt something ripple through the trees like a whisper of alarm. He got up from the table and took Mineola’s left hand. The girl was shaking badly. Her fist was jammed so tightly shut that he had to pry the fingers open one by one.

Her palm was smudged red. The red was dried blood, but it wasn’t hers, thank God.

Solomon spoke gently. “Show me where you found this box, honey.”

The usher unlocked the door to the grand tier box. The cardinal stepped in.

District Attorney William Kodahl and his guests had already arrived. Kodahl made introductions. The cardinal acknowledged each with a slight inclination of his head. No business with hands: the ring-kissing was too awkward in a small space.

A lady by the name of Samantha Schuyler tried to force him to accept a seat at the front of the box. “Please, your Eminence, I’ve been keeping it warm just for you.”

The cardinal demurred pleasantly but firmly. “One of the burdens of office is that I can’t be seen at the opera. If no one minds, I’ll take the backseat—and move it a little further back.”

Wallingford Amory, president of the Americas Trust Company, yielded the seat. “Think of the poor pope, your Eminence. He loves classical music, and he can’t even go to the symphony.” Amory shifted the position of the velvet-cushioned chair so that it was completely sunk in shadow. “For the sin of rising to the top of the Church, God has condemned him to hear the Vatican choir.”

“Ouch.” The cardinal sat.

The others sat.

The district attorney’s wife turned around in her seat to hand him a book. “I hope you don’t mind, your Eminence—I’ve taken the liberty of inscribing it to you.”

The cardinal had an instant of wariness when he saw the cover.
Symphonie Fantastique: The True Love Story of Society’s Most Enticing Heiress and Music’s Most Fiery Maestro.
When he opened it and found neither imprimatur nor
nihil obstat
, he felt a jolt of alarm. By the time he reached the title page and saw that it was only a handwritten dedication, his brain cells had gone into a mild uproar.
Do I dare inscribe this book to Barry Cardinal Fitzwilliam? With deepest admiration, Pamela Proulx-Martin Kodahl.

“Why, thank you.” The cardinal put on his mask of smiling gratitude. “I look forward to relaxing with it. It’s light fiction?”

“Light, I hope; but fiction, not at all. I’ve researched every word.”

The crystal chandeliers, dimming to darkness, rose to the golden ceiling. The Russian maestro hurried into the orchestra pit. Applause broke out. Jeweled wrists flashed in the blackness.

The conductor’s baton flicked out a smart, sharp upbeat, and the Bolshoi orchestra thundered out the
Carmen
overture. The familiar music enclosed the cardinal like a comfortable rising tide. Thoughts drifted through his head.
Oh, that
Carmen.
Now, there’s a piece of work….

He discovered that if he sat on top of Pamela Proulx-Martin Kodahl’s book he could see beyond the ladies’ hairdos. A gypsy-wigged Bulgarian mezzo stood framed in a Sevillian arcade. Shafts of light streamed in behind her.

The dark shadow of the madonna. Very dark. I’d swear she was Irish. In fact, I’d swear she was my sister.

During the habanera, the door to the box opened. A man in a dark suit leaned past the cardinal and whispered to the district attorney. Grave-faced, Bill Kodahl rose and beckoned the cardinal. They stepped back into the vestibule.

“What is it?” the cardinal whispered.

“Bad news. There’s been another killing.”

The cardinal felt himself sink into a freezing hollow at the heart of the moment. Behind him, Carmen was singing that love was a wild bird, that no one could trap it. “Our man again?”

“Our man again.” The line between Kodahl’s lips was as thin and straight as a blade. “This makes two since Father Romero died. We may not be able to keep this secret much longer.”

SIXTY-FIVE

D
AN HIPPOLITO PULLED BACK
the black sheet, just far enough so Nell could see the face, not far enough for her to see that the head had been severed.