VC03 - Mortal Grace (59 page)

“Paula Moseley.”

“You’re right.” Cardozo snapped his fingers. “Paula.”

The private security guard at Operation Second Chance asked if Cardozo had an appointment. Cardozo flashed his shield. The guard glanced dubiously at Cardozo’s rumpled suit jacket and slacks but let him pass.

The elevator was busy, so Cardozo took the marble stairway two steps at a time. He knocked and opened Paula Moseley’s office door.

She was sitting at her desk in a dress the color of salmon mousse and her eyes shot him a glance of icy green.

“Mrs. Moseley, we’ve got to talk.”

“Can’t you see I’m busy?” She rose. Her voice crackled with impatience. “This is hardly the time or place.”

“You’ve been treating Eff Huffington.”

“What of it?”

“Where is he?”

An anorectic-looking black girl sat in one of the leather chairs. Paula Moseley tossed her a tight, reassuring smile. “I’ll only be a moment, Sharlene.”

She backed Cardozo into the hallway and shut the door.

“You have no right to barge in here.” Her words were a whispered hiss.

“I’ll leave as soon as you tell me where I can find Eff.”

“I’m not going to tell you that.”

“When’s his next appointment scheduled?”

“There happens to be a tradition in this country known as civil liberties.”

“You might be interested to know that during the time you’ve been treating Eff and safeguarding his civil liberties, he’s raped a female Episcopal minister.”

Cold sparks shot from Paula’s eyes. “I can’t believe that—he must have stopped taking his antidepressant.”

“Do Eff’s antidepressants explain why he was pimping kids for a priest in your therapy group? Or why those kids ended up dead?”

Paula Moseley reared back from him. “Are you crazy or just on drugs?”

“Who was that priest, Mrs. Moseley?”

“There’s no way you can compel information from me.”

Cardozo had had it with overpaid social engineers like Paula Moseley who thought there was no law or boundary they couldn’t bend. “How well did Eff Huffington and Pablo Cespedes know one another? Were they partners in crime, or just fuck-buddies?”

Paula Moseley’s eyelids came down, marking a pause, an indrawn breath. Cardozo sensed that they also marked a sort of class boundary.

“That’s a vicious, homophobic slur. I refuse even to dignify the question with an answer. And you’d better get out of here, because I’m calling the mayor right now.”

She about-faced and slammed the door behind her.

Three blocks away, Cardozo found a cigar store with one of its four pay phones still working. He dialed Sy Jencks’s number. “Sy, it’s Vince Cardozo. This is an emergency. Did Eff ever mention a priest who was in his therapy group for eight weeks?”

“I don’t recall Eff ever talking about a priest. Anyone in Operation Second Chance has to go through the juvenile court system—but a priest sounds a little old for juvenile court.”

“I need the priest’s name. And fast.”

“There might be a way.” Sy’s tone was thoughtful. “I could go through sentences and see who drew eight weeks in Paula Moseley’s therapy group.”

“Could you start right now? I’ll be there in two minutes.”

SEVENTY-FIVE

“I
WENT THROUGH OUR
Operation Second Chance records.” Sy Jencks had his tie off, his shirtsleeves rolled up, and one foot on the open bottom drawer of his desk. “Eff joined his psychotherapy group three years ago. It’s a twelve-member group. Over the last three years, what with dropouts and drop-ins, a total of fifty-one probationees have been assigned to that group. I’ve been over the list, and not one of them is a priest.”

He leaned to punch up a file on the computer.

“But one offender—and only one offender—was sentenced to eight weeks in the group. A guy called Damien Cole.”

“Damien Cole?” Cardozo sat forward to squint at the print glowing on the monitor. “You’re sure that’s not
Father
Damien Cole?”

“There’s no
Father
here and there’s no mention of any profession. Which isn’t unusual for our probationees—robbery and drug-running are not considered professions by the state labor board. Why, do you know a Father Cole?”

“No, but I’ve been hearing a lot about a Father Damien.”

“Nothing here rules out his being a priest. For one thing, his age was thirty-one—thirteen years over the juvenile limit.”

“Thirty-one and he was tried as a juvenile?”

“Says here. Obviously special treatment was involved.”

“What was the crime?”

“He harassed a female gay activist.”

Puzzle pieces began snapping together in Cardozo’s head. “Was her name Jaycee Wheeler?”

“The file doesn’t state the victim’s name.”

“Is that by any chance because the harassment took the form of rape?”

“The file doesn’t state the nature of the harassment. This priest of yours raped a lesbian activist?”

“She didn’t say he was a priest in so many words. But she did say he had church connections—and the sentence was a kiss on the wrist—eight weeks in a kiddie-therapy program.”

“So it would fit.” Sy Jencks scrolled the print up the screen. Despite the marine haircut, he looked like a playful monkey working the buttons on the computer. “Reading between the lines, the offense could have been a date-rape situation. But a priest wouldn’t date.”

“Not a normal priest. But your man Damien somehow sounds like a good possibility to me.” Cardozo took out his notebook. “Why don’t you give me his phone and address.”

Sy Jencks shook his head. “There’s no address, no phone. Damien came in on the honor system.”

“Who’s his probation officer?”

“There’s no probation officer listed.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“Highly unusual.”

“How the hell did a rapist get a deal like that?”

“Well, if he’s a priest, he’s connected, right?”

“Connected to who?”

“You have to ask?”

“I take your point.” Cardozo thought for a moment. “Then the only way to Damien is through Eff. But Eff’s not with his foster parents and Paula Moseley wouldn’t tell me when he has his next psychotherapy.”

“Tuesdays and Thursdays at three
P.M.
But he hasn’t shown up in over a week. I have a hunch he’s gone AWOL.” Barry Cardinal Fitzwilliam did not answer. He simply stood there staring out the window.

Cardozo said it again. “I know the name the communion killer is using.”

The cardinal turned. “You say he’s using a false name?”

Cardozo had a sense that everything the cardinal had ever wanted in his life was on the other side of that glass. “Yes, your Eminence. But your people would know his real name.”

The cardinal crossed to his desk. He took a sheet of diocesan stationery from the drawer and a ballpoint from the marble pen holder. He sighed and looked over at Cardozo. “What name is he using?”

“Damien Cole.”

“Lieutenant, I appreciate your zeal.” The cardinal laid down the pen. “But that information is far too general to be of any use to you or to us. The name
Damien Cole
is an agreed-upon code. We use it to save embarrassment when a priest is put into detox. At any given moment, there are up to nine hundred Damien Coles affiliated with the church in this country.”

“What do you do when you have a priest whose name really
is
Damien Cole?”

“The problem hasn’t yet come up.” The cardinal rose. It was a signal that the interview was over. “Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you for your time, your Eminence.”

As Cardozo left, the monsignor with different-colored eyes handed him back his revolver.

It was 4
A.M.
Cardozo still could not sleep. Too much was running through his mind. When raindrops began falling on the air conditioner, pinging and ponging like a talentless neighbor rehearsing drum riffs, he got up and went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of warm milk.

He paced the darkened living room. Light from the street slanted through the curtained window, throwing a glow across the stillness. He stood a minute watching drizzle fall on the cars parked below him.

A car alarm somewhere started yelping.

He dropped into the easy chair and picked up the remote and flicked the TV on. A woman in a red beehive hairdo was selling a kitchen gadget. With the sound turned off, she seemed to be a mental patient mocking him. The image threw a flickering spillover onto the piano.

Cardozo’s eye went to the music that Terri had left on the stand. She had laid a Chopin nocturne on top of another volume, and all he could read of the second cover was the right-hand half:
ubert / sitions / Four Hands
and beneath that a portion of an owner’s label:
operty of / W. / erbrook

Then he saw it—W. Erbro, hiding in plain sight.

He crossed to the piano and picked up the thick soft-cover album.
Franz Schubert, Compositions for Piano Four Hands. Property of W. Vanderbrook.
W. Erbro wasn’t a person, it was a name on a directory with half the letters knocked off and never replaced.

Cardozo knocked and opened Terri’s door. She moaned, blinking in the sudden spill of light from the hallway.

“Did Wright Vanderbrook have a place of his own?”

She sat up groggily. “Huh?”

“Did he have a loft on Broadway?”

She rubbed her eyes, shook her head. “He had a studio.” She covered a yawn. “We used to practice there.”

“What was the address?”

She pulled herself out of bed, brushing wrinkles from her nightgown. “Do you need it right now?”

“Can you find it?”

She switched on the desk lamp and pulled open a drawer. She sat, darkly pretty and silent, and searched through boxes of coins and bracelet charms. She held up a set of keys, frowning, and brought the tag into the lamplight. “The address was 474 Broadway.”

“He gave you the keys?”

Terri shook her head at her father, smiling. “We were practicing piano duets—period.”

“I need to borrow them.”

SEVENTY-SIX

O
VERHEAD, DAWN WAS BEGINNING
to streak the eastern sky. Except for two street people passed out in a doorway, the block was deserted.

Cardozo stood on the sidewalk across the street from 474 Broadway. He counted up from the shuttered window of the Mystic Bookshop to the windows of the eighth floor. They were both dark.

He crossed to 474. The outer steel door was locked. There were three keys on the ring Terri had given him. The first key that he tried was sticky, but it turned and he stepped into the little vestibule.

The smaller of the remaining keys got him into the tiny, clanking elevator. Its ceiling light threw just enough illumination for him to see the door at the end of the eighth-floor hallway.

He knocked. When there was no answer, he used the third key. He stepped into an unlit cave of undivided loft space. He stood listening. Something was breathing softly in the dark, with an occasional hiccup. It took him a moment to realize it must be a refrigerator.

Two windows were pale rectangles in the far wall. He closed the curtains, found the light switch on the wall, and flicked it. A lamp went on behind a decoupage screen, filling the loft with a lattice of light and shadow.

He surveyed the place.

Comforts were minimal. A Steinway concert grand stood lid-up against the wall. There was a set of four mission chairs grouped around a mission table.

He examined the closet that served as a bathroom. The toilet had an old-fashioned overhead tank, and the makeshift shower had obviously been built in by an amateur. There were towels, a washcloth, soap, a toothbrush, a razor—all recently used.

He explored behind the screen. There was a small bedroll, neatly rolled, and a waist-high refrigerator stocked with mineral water, yogurt, and salad greens. The greens had wilted, but according to the dates stamped on the containers, the yogurt had ten days to run.

Three books had been placed on top of the refrigerator: a book of common prayer in modern English, a book of common prayer in King James English, and a very tattered copy of
Winnie the Pooh.

Beside the books lay a thick packet of letters bound with a pale pink silk ribbon.

Cardozo riffled through the letters. They were all in the same childish handwriting.

He untied the ribbon.

“Gracious me,” a woman’s voice said. “Are you a thief?”

The voice came from the shadows, and it took him a moment to recognize the Vanderbrook daughter crawling out from under the piano.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I knocked.”

“I must have been dozing.” Pierrette stood rubbing her eyes like a sleepy little girl who’d hidden all night in hopes of catching Santa Claus. “I see Mother gave you keys. She must trust you.”

“Your brother gave the keys to my daughter two years ago.”

“Really?” She came barefoot across the floor. “Why are you using them? And who are you?”

“Vince Cardozo. NYPD. We’ve met.”

“Have we?”

“I thought Bonnie Ruskay or a friend might be here.”

“That’s no reason to housebreak.”

“When you have keys it’s not housebreaking.”

“But it’s still trespass. You must want to see Bonnie very badly to break the law.” She was wearing a black silk shimmy and a rope of pearls so long that it almost tripped her. “I won’t ask questions. But you won’t find Bonnie here, because she only comes when Mother needs counseling.”

“And how much counseling does your mother usually need?”

“Now, isn’t
that
a personal question.”

“You don’t have to answer.”

“But of course I’ll answer. I love to gossip. By the way, I do remember you now. Nice to see you.” She went up on tiptoes. Her lips brushed his cheek. “How much counseling does Mother usually need? Lately, a lot.” She saw he was holding the letters. “Speak of the devil.” She pulled one from his hand. “Mother shouldn’t leave the family jewels lying around.”

“Why does she?”

“Too much trouble to lock them up and get them out again. Besides, she likes to sit here in her pied-à-terre and reread them. They make her miserable. She loves being miserable. Did you enjoy them?”