Where the Dark Streets Go (11 page)

“He can talk.”

“But will he? That’s the question. Don’t worry, Father. I’ll wait him out. Got time for coffee?”

“I don’t actually. I’ve got to make the rounds while I’m here.” He had taken over from Father Gonzales in this, and Gonzales would take his church history class that afternoon. He had fallen behind in his work with the chorus and the recital was a week off.

Brogan walked down the hall with him. “I was going over your statement again, that crazy conversation with Muller? And you know what I think, Father? That part about taking the knife away from his killer—that could be pure Freud.”

“I suppose it could,” McMahon said with heavy solemnity.

“I made the mistake of trying it on Traynor. Oh, man. You know what they’re calling me now at the station house?”

“Doctor Freud.”

“I still think I’ve got something.” He jerked his head in the direction of the ward. “Why won’t he talk to us? You don’t spend twelve hours sleeping off a drunk someplace you can’t even find the next day. No, sir. When you wake up after a night out, you know where you are. Ask me.”

McMahon had no such intention. “Brogan, I agree. The man who wants to go home can generally find his way there. And the man who doesn’t want to go home needs help. That’s where I’d call on Doctor Freud if I were you.”

“Me?” Brogan said.

“I wasn’t thinking of you. That’s your connection.” McMahon walked on down the corridor.

He had scheduled an extra hour with the girls’ chorus after school that afternoon. He was now wishing that he had chosen a less ambitious program.
The Bells
just weren’t swinging: because he wasn’t, he knew that, and for that reason, he tried to be more patient than usual with the girls. It crossed his mind that Sister Justine could do as well with them as he was doing, and her programming would be more to the monsignor’s liking, and more to the tastes of most of his audience.
His
audience. His audience was not the majority. His was an audience of one, himself. That bit of self-scrutiny out of the way, he went after the beat he wanted. He illustrated at the piano, going through the crescendo passage, accenting with his own baritone voice the preciseness, the mounting excitement he wanted.

“You’ve seen it in the movies, on television,” he said, getting up from the piano. “The pioneers trapped in the stockade, the Indians creeping up on them, closer and closer, and then
Voom!
the soldiers, the United States cavalry racing to the rescue. Now, sopranos, you’re the pioneers, you’re scared, you feel it in the scalp of your head. Every note is a cry for help, urgent, more urgent. Mezzos, you’re the Indians. You move in softly, carefully, but you keep coming on. These people have taken your land, your buffalo, your way of life. And nobody, but nobody has to tell the United States cavalry what to do.” He motioned Sister Justine back to the piano and murmured, “May Rachmaninoff lie quiet in his grave.”

After conducting the passage once from the podium, he went down the steps and up the raked aisle to hear what it sounded like from the back of the auditorium. There in the last row, flashing a broad smile, was Nim Lavery. After the surprise of seeing her, he was both pleased and angry. The anger was a throwback. He would have spent it in sarcasm on any other intruder.

She sensed this instantly. “I’m sorry. One of the sisters brought me here.”

“The sisters,” he said, rather enjoying Nim’s discomfiture, “are not in charge of the choir.” He turned back to the stage. “All right, take it from the beginning.”

“I’ll wait outside for you,” Nim said, about to get up.

“No. It’s too late to leave the stockade now.” He sat down beside her, slouched in the seat and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on the music. The girls, bless them, were good. They rose to an audience of more than one, and so did he, after all.

“That was just fine,” he said, his voice ringing through the auditorium. “So let’s quit while we’re ahead. Choir dismissed.”

“I’m sorry I came in here,” Nim said.

“Are you?”

“For intruding on your privacy, yes. I didn’t realize it until you came down the aisle.”

“Did you like what you heard, at least?”

“Very much. If I closed my eyes it was like the Vienna Choir Boys.”

“Better,” he said. “These kids know what life’s about. And that’s where real singing comes from.”

“Cowboys and Indians,” Nim said.

He grunted, caught.

“Forgive me again,” Nim said.

The auditorium was empty except for the girl who collected the music and Sister Justine who seemed uncertain of whether she should go or stay.

McMahon got up. “Come back to the rectory and maybe Miss Lalor will give us a cup of tea.”

In the courtyard, Nim said, “Father McMahon…”

He looked at her sidewise.

“I can’t call you Joe in that.” She traced the shape of his collar, her hand at her own neck. “I wanted to tell you—I don’t know if it will mean anything, but after you left yesterday, I was thinking about Stu and the things you and I had said. I remembered there was a showing of Tchelitchew drawings at the Burns Gallery. I went there at noon. Gustave Muller signed the visitors’ book the day of the opening, a week ago Tuesday.”

“So you see,” McMahon said slowly, “he
had
begun a new phase of work.” It did not necessarily follow, but he wanted her to believe it.

“But what you said about someone’s finding him, that’s where it could have happened, don’t you think?”

“Yes. How many people signed the book?”

“Eighty or so. And not everybody who goes to an opening signs in. Especially when it’s not new work.”

“Still, I suppose we ought to tell this to the police.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” She threw her hair back from her shoulders.

“What have you got against the police?”

“Prejudice.”

“If you were in trouble, wouldn’t you call them?”

“Yes.”

And that seemed to be that until at the school gate she added: “Then maybe I’d be in more trouble.”

On the rectory steps she hung back. “Are you sure it’s all right, bringing me home to tea?”

McMahon laughed. “Miss Lalor is not my mother, though to be sure, she sometimes thinks so. There’s nothing she likes better than to serve tea—unless it’s to be asked to join the party.”

“Please don’t ask her.” A smile fidgeted at the corners of her mouth. “I might call you Joe.”

“I won’t ask her,” he said, and touched the bell as he opened the vestibule door. He took Nim into the study where he had been working when he saw Carlos.

“Ah, it’s the young lady,” Miss Lalor said, coming to the door. “I’m glad you found him, miss.”

“Miss Lalor, this is Miss Lavery. She was a friend of the man who was murdered.”

Miss Lalor gave Nim her most sincere look of sympathy. Her commiseration was rarely in words, only sounds and attitude. Like the priests she served, she sometimes tired of the tools, but never the materials. “Sit down, dear, and I’ll bring you and Father a nice cup of tea.” On her way out, she paused. “Lavery—that’s a North of Ireland name, isn’t it?”

“My great-grandfather came from Londonderry,” Nim said.

“I’ve seen people from the North before with black eyes,” the housekeeper said. “I’ve been told it’s the Spanish, a long way back. Well, I’ll get the tea.”

When she was gone, Nim said: “My grandmother was Italian. My mother’s people were Jewish.”

“As long as there’s a bit of Irish in there somewhere, to Miss Lalor you could be Greek, Gallic or Phoenician, and you’d still be Irish.”

“Unless I were black. Am I right?”

“I’m afraid so. Except that the North are black Irish,” McMahon said and grinned.

Nim studied the room with open curiosity, the crucifix, the framed blessing of the parish by Pius XII, the pictures of Popes Paul and John. “He’s the one,” she said of John.

“Ah, yes. As Miss Lalor would say, he’s the one of them all. Mind, she’s a Pius the Twelfth woman herself, but she’s trying her best to catch up.”

Nim, her hands behind her back, and with a childish sort of swagger continued to tour the small room. Again she stopped at the crucifix.

“It can’t be all that strange,” McMahon said, “Irish and Italian.”

“My father was an agnostic, a physicist.”

“Is he dead?”

“To me—almost from the day I was born.”

“And your mother?”

“She was going to one of those rejuvenation farms the last I heard, and Dad had just been made a director in Dow Chemical.”

“I see,” McMahon said.

“You’d be pretty blind if you didn’t.” She found a straight chair, not that there was any in the room that wasn’t, but she chose one without arms. She tugged at the short skirt, a hopeless gesture. “I didn’t expect to be invited to tea,” she said.

“I like them,” McMahon said of the skirts girls were wearing now.

“For shame, Father!” Then she laughed. “There’s a story, but I’ll tell you another time. Something more important: it’s been going through my mind all afternoon. It’s Tchelitchew again. In a way he’s passé now. Forgive me if I talk to you the way I’d expect you to treat me about music. I asked Mr. Burns why the exhibit. You know, so many good artists can’t get a gallery, and he said it was because a collector, a friend of his, wanted it and was willing to offer some of his Tchelitchew drawings for sale. His name is Everett Wallenstein. The name is familiar but I can’t place it. I’m sure Stu never mentioned it, but he didn’t mention anybody, except maybe painters he thought important to me. I’d like to go and see this man, just to talk to him. But I don’t want to do it alone. I don’t think I could.”

“All right,” McMahon said. “Make the appointment and I’ll go with you. Or have you done it already?”

Nim shook her head. “I wish you’d do it.”

After tea they went into the office and McMahon looked up the name in the phone book. When he dialed the number he got an answering service from whom he elicited the information that Mr. Wallenstein would not be home until after six.

“Let’s just go and camp on his doorstep, surprise him,” Nim said.

“You’re making an adventure of it.”

“I don’t know what I’m making. It’s all instinctual. It’s not like me to crash the gate. Or wasn’t. I did that this afternoon too, didn’t I? And me brought up on the nicest amenities.”

McMahon glanced at the parish calendar for the day. He was free between six and eight o’clock if he was willing to take his supper cold after nine. “Why not?” he said. “Meet me at six-thirty in the Whelan drugstore on the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue.”

T
HE HOUSE ON CHARLES
Street had been beautifully restored, outside and presumably inside, the black shutters freshly painted, the brass knocker and the mail slot polished to a high gloss. McMahon lifted the latch on the gate. A hip-high fence of wrought iron bordered a garden of tulips and iris.

“I wish I’d worn my uniform,” he said, in the sport jacket again.

“I almost wish you had too,” Nim said. “I feel like we ought to be peddling
The Watch Tower
.”

“Not in my uniform.”

The doorbell chimed deep within the house.

No one came. No sound from inside. Only the rumble of traffic on Greenwich Avenue.

“The bells,” Nim said nervously, “the tintinnabulation of the bells, bells, bells.”

“The Bells of St. Mary’s, that’s what Monsignor Casey thought we were doing. ‘There’s a tune to that, Joseph.’” He mimicked the old man’s accent.

“You’re a snob,” Nim said. “Did you see
La Plume de ma Tante
? You know, the monks ringing the bells and getting carried away. Literally, all hung up on the ropes. Wild. I was in college then. I met my father in New York and he took me to see it. That was one of our few good times together.”

The door opened without their having heard the man approach. He was a tall young man, quite handsome and at the moment, sweating, as though he had been interrupted in the midst of some strenuous exercise. His hair was tousled from his having pulled on a velure sweatshirt.

“Forgive the intrusion, Mr. Wallenstein,” McMahon said. “We came on the chance that you might know an artist who was a friend of ours. I’m Joseph McMahon and this is Miss Lavery.”

“And who is the artist?” the man asked coldly.

“That’s the trouble. We’re not sure of his name.”

“Then how can you be sure he’s an artist?” The man looked annoyed and McMahon did not blame him. But after a second or two of indecision, he said, “You may as well come in.”

It wasn’t camp, or what McMahon thought of as camp, but it was pure Victorian, the small, high-ceilinged parlor into which he led them. The lamp he turned on was the real Tiffany. It occurred to McMahon that he knew more about fashion and furnishings than he had been aware of knowing.

“I don’t have a telephone,” Nim said, an uneasy attempt at explaining why they had come without forewarning.

“That is understandable,” their reluctant host said with a sudden turn of gallantry. His eyes reinforced his intention of compliment in a frank appraisal of her, head to toe. “Excuse me a moment while I get a towel.” He touched his brow where the sweat was glistening. “I have a gymnasium of sorts in the basement.”

When he was gone Nim said: “I really dig this place.”

“I’m trying to figure out whether I do or not,” McMahon said. He went closer to one of the paintings, a pastoral scene. The signature surprised him. He covered it with his hand. “Who would you say, Nim?”

She turned on another light and studied the painting for a moment. “It’s way out, but I’d say…” She hesitated. “All right, I’ll say it, early Kandinsky.”

“Very good,” Wallenstein said from the doorway.

“Am I right?” She was delighted with herself.

“My father bought that in 1912,” Wallenstein said. He wiped his face and neck in the towel. His having combed his hair, the gray streaks in it showed up. Again McMahon had misjudged age. Wallenstein was in his forties. “Now about your friend.”

McMahon told him of Muller’s death. “I’m a priest, by the way.” He had to add that, explaining why he had been taken to the dying man.

“Are you? No one turns out to be what he seems these days. I’m sorry, but I’m at a loss to know why you’ve come to me: I’m afraid I have not heard of Gustave Muller.”