Brides Of The Impaler (14 page)

“Church business?” Vernon asked.

“Police business, I would think,” the woman said. She crossed her arms beneath her bosom. “That was the school’s secretary, letting me know that earlier today a Mr. Mills called the school to report a curious observation. You see, Mr. Mills’s ten-year-old daughter, Grace, is a student here.”

“Yes?” Vernon said, scribbling notes.

“Last night at shortly past nine, Mr. Mills was driving Grace home from the skating rink and their journey happened to lead them right past the school.”

“Yes, yes?” Vernon tried to hurry her along.

“And they both happened to notice several homeless women loitering in front of the school.”

Vernon and Slouch looked at each other.

“That could be very helpful. I’ll need Mr. Mills’s phone number, ma’am,” Vernon said.

“The secretary will be happy to oblige,” the woman said. “Mr. Mills and his daughter took note of this because it seemed uncharacteristic and a bit odd.”

“Um-hmm.”

“But that’s not all,” the woman continued as if unfolding a great puzzle. “You see, it wasn’t only these homeless women they saw loitering. They said they also saw a woman who appeared to be a nun.”

“
A nun
?
” Vernon questioned. “So it could be someone connected with the school?”

“No, no, Inspector. For
this
nun, according to them, was dressed in the old pre-Vatican II habit and wimple, something most orders were allowed to dispense with a long time ago—since 1965 as a matter of fact. You simply don’t see it much these days, not in America, at any rate. Only
the most austere orders still subscribe to the old dress codes. What I mean is it’s very unlikely that a nun dressed specifically in these sorts of raiments would be seen near the school, especially at such a late hour.”

It’s something
, Vernon thought.
Now if I only knew what
to do with it
. He frowned when he caught Slouch’s eye cast toward the woman’s bosom. “If you don’t mind my asking, ma’am…are
you
a nun?”

Her aquamarine eyes glittered. “I’m a Bride of Christ, yes. But if you’re inquiring as to
my
whereabouts at the time this other nun was seen, I was attending a blessing at the Cathedral last night—”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant. I was just curious. When I was a kid, we always addressed a nun as ‘Sister,’ yet you introduced yourself as ‘Miss.’”

“The old formalities are fading, sir,” she said. “In church, I’m Sister Mabille Lancre but at school I’m Miss. It’s considered less authoritarian, for the students, though I’m not sure what to think about the efficacy of such modern liberalizations. We simply do as the Holy Father bids. But I’m pleased to know that you’re a Catholic, Inspector.”

How’d I get into this?
Vernon wondered. “Well, to be honest I was raised that way but…”

She gave a knowing smile. “It’s easy to lose sight of God in this wicked age; however, once you start looking again, the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven will be back in your hands.”

Jesus
. Slouch was grinning at him over the woman’s shoulder.
Get back to business
…“Who was the first person to discover the break-in, ma’am?”

“The janitor. If you’d like to speak with him, just ask the secretary.” She looked back at the denigrated altar linens. “Regrettably, the school’s chancellor, Father Bosch, has not yet been notified. He’s out of town. He’ll be repulsed when he hears of this offense.”

Vernon tilted his head. “I’m not belittling what happened here, Ms. Lancre, but it’s really not that serious. Just some light vandalism and one pried-open window.”

“A crack gang would’ve torn the place apart,” Slouch commented.

Ms. Lancre looked slapped in the face. “Not that serious? Really, Inspector, and with you raised in the Faith.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am but I’m not sure what you—”

“Something much more grievous than mere vandalism has occurred here, sir.”

“Really?”

She looked at him, yes, like a nun scolding him in school. “You’re not very observant, are you?”

Slouch silently hee-hawed at him behind her back.

“Come here!” She led them to the other side of the altar. On the floor lay several pieces of—

“Wax paper?” Slouch guessed.

“Not quite,” she said, effusing sarcasm, “but I’m sure Inspector Vernon knows, being the stalwart Catholic that he is, hmm?”

Vernon did know what the papers were; he remembered from when he was an altar boy. “The wrapping from the rolls of Communion wafers, right?”

“For the
Host
, yes,” the woman explained as if sickened. “And seeing that the wraps are empty we can only come to the most repugnant conclusion…”

“The homeless girls ate the wafers?” Slouch assumed, confused. “Since you call that repugnant, I guess the wafers taste pretty bad, huh?”

“That’s not what she means, Slouch,” Vernon told him.

“Indeed not,” she snapped, “and please remember that they’re not merely wafers, Officer. They represent the Body of Christ.”

“Transubstantiation and all that,” Vernon said.

“Yes, the ultimate mystery of Faith. For the Host to be
consumed beyond the act of Holy Communion is to represent the most appalling offense. They hadn’t yet been blessed, of course, but still, the very
idea
.”

“Of course,” Vernon tried to accommodate her, “but where there’s the
Body
of Christ, isn’t there also the Blood—in other words, the wine?”

“Most certainly.”

“If they consumed that, too, there’ll be some really good fingerprints on the bottle,” Vernon informed her.

She walked to the opposite side of the altar, to a wooden cabinet mounted to the wall. “But as you can see…” She opened the cabinet to reveal several unopened bottles of wine. “They haven’t been touched.”

Fuck
, Vernon profaned, then felt a little guilty when the figure of Christ aloft seemed to frown at him. He bagged the empty wrappers.
Iodine fuming
, he thought impulsively. “Ma’am? And where are the wafers
stored?
”

She walked to an identical cabinet on the other side, began to reach for it, but—

“Don’t touch that,” Vernon commanded. He put another evidence bag over his hand and opened the cabinet. “Nothing left,” he said. “May I take this knob temporarily, Ms. Lancre?”

Slouch stepped up. “You have his stalwart Catholic promise that it’ll be returned after we tape it for prints.”

“By all means,” she said.

Vernon unscrewed the knob inside of the bag, then inverted it. Now, however, the woman stooped over, hands on knees. She seemed to be peering at something in the back of the cabinet.

“Ms. Lancre?”

“My great Lord.
More
despicable vandalism.”

Vernon took out a cheap penlight on his keys and shined it inside.

“What
is
that?” the woman asked. “It’s hardly Latin, like the other writing. It looks
Slavic
.”

The backing board at the rear of the cabinet was white foam-board, and on it, in the same alternating black, green, and red, the words appeared:
TARA FLAESC
WALLKYA.

“The hell is that?” Slouch asked.

Ms. Lancre stared at him, outraged.

“Sorry.”

Vernon transcribed the words in his notebook. “What ever it means, I’ll find out.”

“If it really means anything,” Slouch amended. “Homeless schizos like to write and talk in imaginary languages sometimes.”

This was true but…
Not this time
, Vernon felt. “I’ll be in touch, Ms. Lancre,” he said, his mind cluttered now. “I’ll have vehicular patrols stepped up in this area for the time being.”

“Thank you. Godspeed in catching these corrupted souls. I’d very much like to meet them once they’re apprehended.”

Vernon half-smiled. “To give them a tongue-lashing?”

“Of course not! To remind them that God forgives all.”

Vernon stalled. “Right. Good-bye.”

Slouch stole a last glance at the woman’s bosom, then followed Vernon toward the door.

“Oh, and Inspector?” she called back.

Vernon turned back. “Yes?”

“You’ll find God again, one day.” She smiled very thinly. “I feel certain.”

Vernon got a chill and left the chapel.

Doke was the Man on the Scene, black and bad, and no shit for brains. He never touched his product.
Never get
high on your own supply ’cos if you do, you fuckin’ die
. He
knew the score. And just as fast as he could bust a move, he could bust a cap in a froggy junkie’s coconut. Business was business.

He was the main bagman on Broadway, from 79
^th
to Columbus—or…at least he thought he was. He’d started out as a clocker at six, and had been dealing rock and black tar for five years, mostly rock. Twenty-three now, but he had the nose for the street like a player twice his age. He knew how to
work
the trash out there, he knew how to get someone to need his product, and he could always tell when someone was ready to tip.

He sold for the Kings. Z-Mob had been moving on their turf but so far, tough shit. The Kings knew how to take care of their gig; couple of times they’d caught Z-Men punks selling in the zone and these poor fuckers were found a week later in some cubed cars.
Boo-
yah
, Doke thought, hitching up his baggie pants.
I’m with the right
crew, not these poo-
put motherfuckers
. He had $120 sneakers that blinked. Cool. Doke was a cliché and didn’t even know it.

Lotta dime-dealers and assholes said working West Side was a ball-buster ’cos so many people here were rich. “Ain’t no good crackheads Upper West Side, man,” a fence told him once and he’d pronounced crackheads as “crackhades.” “They all rich, man. They all
pill
junkies, man. Oxy, Vyky,
that
shit, man. They ain’t on the
pipe
or the
needle
. Don’t you know nothin’?”
Shee-
it
, Doke thought, laughing.
WHO don’t know nothing?
He sold to a
lot
of rich white house wives, as a matter of fact, but of course, he’d sell to anyone. Fuckers coming right out of rehab gave Doke some quality satisfaction in employment. He was always there waiting with a free bag, get ’em right back on the Devil’s Dick. Kids were fun, too,’ cos he liked the idea—he liked the
ideology
. Tip ’em with a few free rocks and next thing they knew they were ripping off cash out of their rich parents’ wallets and selling shit in the
house. They’d take the $80,000 Audi and sell it to a chop shop for five grand and just say some “bad man” stole it, then every penny of that five would wind up in Doke’s kick. Kids tipped the quickest, see, and the earlier you got the hook in ’em, the harder it was to get out and the more it cost the
motherFUCKIN
’ U.S. taxpayer in the long run.
Fuck them
, Doke thought, bopping.
What they ever do for
me?
But the rich house wives were always the best.
While
Hubby’s busy with his job on fuckin’ Wall Street, his squeeze is
chipping away at the checking account, lying about the bills,
selling the jewelry, and next thing you know Hubby comes
home from work one day to find out Junior’s college fund is
bone-
dry and his “high-
c
lass” wife has been a closet crackhead
for the last two years
. Doke nodded as he continued down the sunny street.
Shit-
yeah
.

And Doke considered himself an equal opportunity drug dealer. He did not discriminate.
Rich, poor, young, old,
niggers, spics, kikes, white trash, whoever you are—I got what
you need
…

Worst customers, however, were longer-timers on their way to what they called Rock Bottom. Get it? Mostly chicks who’d been working the street ten or twenty years but by now they looked like such shit they couldn’t snag a john in a million years. Next stop? Homeless City. Lot of ’em were moving over this way ’cos—shit—try being homeless in a crack hood. You’d be dead in two minutes. They
kill
bums there, cut your throat just for the dirty clothes on your back. Doke had a couple packs of these girls who were sleeping in the closed buildings ’cos it was safer here. They were always a harder sell but if you roughed them up, sometimes you could motivate them. Then give ’em all a free toke on the pipe to remind ’em what they’re missing. They’d find ways to get money. It was never much but Doke’s point guy with the Kings? Dude named Archie. One time Archie told him this: “The
smart
businessman pursues all profit, large and small.”
Straight up. Come on, Doke wasn’t some piece-of-shit player dealing on the street.

He was a
businessman
.

Cop gave him the eye as he was turning off 72
^nd
, near where some guy he never heard of named Lennon got shot. Doke would’ve given him the eye back ’cept he was carrying so he just went on his way ’cos, thank God, it was a free country and a dude shouldn’t be shook down for walkin’ the street just ’cos he
looked
like a crack-dealing scumbag.
I’ll fuckin’ SUE, and win!
It happened all the time these days.
I got my rights, motherfuckers
. Then, a couple blocks later:

Well, well, well, well, well
, he thought.

Up the street two familiar faces turned into an alley, a pair of the same homeless trash he was just thinking about.
Haven’t seen those two in a while nows that I think about it.
Thought they must’ve croaked by now
. If they had, that would be fine with him,’ cos if you asked Doke, white hoes too beat to make crack money had no right to exist. But then he remembered what his main man Archie had said…

Doke picked up his pace.

“Yo! You two!” he called right after he stepped into a side alley. “Hold up!”

The two girls turned. Big eyes in drawn faces showed something like terror. When they turned again, Doke shouted with authority.

“Hold UP, I said. Don’t MAKE me have to run.”

They stopped, leaning against the alley wall.