Deadly Blessings (33 page)

“
That’s not a net. That’s
unnecessary killing.”

“
I was being
symbolical.”

Symbolical? “Bass, you never cease to amaze
me.”

“
Anyway, we’re talking
about fish.”

“
We’re talking about
people!” I said, my voice a notch below shouting. I moved in closer
to his personal space. I knew he hated that.

He backed up. “We’d mask the girl’s face
…”

“
Didn’t you hear what she
said? They’d kill her. She wasn’t play-acting when she freaked out
like that. She was terrified. Even if we mask her face, then what?
She gets nailed because somebody recognizes her outfit? That
pitiful jacket of hers?” Angry, I headed back toward my car. Bass
stood at the passenger side, waiting for me to finish, I
guess.

I shrugged, looking up at the night sky to
quiet my frustration. The stars and moon were in sharp focus. Too
bad my mind wasn’t. “I’ll talk to my friend Maria at the police
department. She’ll give us some idea of where to take this.”

“
Sure. I’ll tell you
exactly where the story will go, then.” He blew out a breath so
loud and forceful that its wispy grayness traveled across the
entire top of the car before it dissipated. “Cops are gonna laugh
you outta the station. What? You think they’re going to give a shit
about some Polock hustler?”

He was right, as much as I hated to admit
it. In the darkness I couldn’t read his expression. Not that it
mattered. I felt annoyance. At him, at myself, at the situation. At
William for leaving so abruptly. “Well then, I don’t know. I don’t
know anything.”

That wasn’t entirely true. An idea bubbled
in my brain, but I didn’t have the words for it, yet.

Bass got back in the car before I did.
“Hurry up, would you? It’s cold in here,” he yammered at me as I
stopped, just for a moment, before lowering myself into the
driver’s seat, giving my idea a chance to congeal.

Snapping the car door shut, I suppressed a
chilly shudder. Bass had his leather-gloved hands wedged between
his knees for warmth, like a little kid. It was cold, but not that
cold.

I blew out two cloudy puffs of air, but
didn’t start the car.

“
What are you waiting for?”
he asked.

“
What are you going to do
with the footage we just recorded?”

He shook his head and looked out the window.
“I don’t know,” he said with just enough resignation in his voice
that I knew he understood that we couldn’t air it. “Jeff’s already
headed back to the station. I’ll get it from him Monday. I’ll hold
onto it, I suppose,” he said, turning toward me again. “She might
change her mind, you know.”

“
She might,” I said. Not a
chance, I thought. And even if she did, she’d thrown the phone
numbers back at William. No way for her to contact us.

“
And you’re gonna work on
getting Sophie to cooperate, right?”

“
I’m going to work on the
story, Bass. But I’m not guaranteeing that Sophie will be part of
it.”

He looked over at me and I saw weariness,
anger, and shrewd impatience in his eyes. “You got till Tuesday. To
wrap this one. I think you better start leaning on her.”

Dejection settled over both of us. I felt it
in a physical way, like a blanket of lead draped over my shoulders.
Bass didn’t push me to get moving, and I don’t know how long I sat
there before keying the ignition to head back.

Chapter Twenty-One

I spent a restless night wrangling with my
covers. Too hot, too cold, too bumpy—the bed provided no comfort as
memories from the night’s adventure mingled with snippets of
dreams, flickering through my brain like a poorly edited movie. Odd
combinations: Candy’s walk, Bass’s shouts, William’s face. My own
feelings of disquiet where he was concerned.

The late night daydreams finally dissolved
into sleep. But not a restful one. My mind replayed all the
evening’s images, and went on to create some new ones of its own. I
woke up in the dark: alone, disoriented, and not knowing where I
was. It had been so real.

Bass’s warning still rang in my ears when
the morning dawned. I went out to the back porch, my feet chilled
on the cold linoleum, making quiet sticky noises as I walked. My
neighbor’s backyard tree, now nearly bare, stood staunch in the
late October wind. It reminded me of a scary movie, where branches
come alive to reach in and grab and snatch and steal.

Lucy had always wanted a tree house there.
With it not being our tree, my father had taken time to explain
that we couldn’t build a tree house. She claimed she understood,
but I’d seen her wistful looks. That memory tugged at my heart,
reminding me I hadn’t called her. Worse, I hadn’t even planned to
see her this weekend. I knew she missed me. I missed her, too.

When she went to live there last month, I
vowed that she’d never become a statistic—one of those poor souls
sent to live in a home, by well-meaning relatives who never managed
to visit. And yet, despite my best intentions, I only made it there
once, so far. This goddamn story, Bass’s goddamn pressure, and my
own driving need to see it through was blinding me to everything
else.

Conjuring up ambitious resolve, I decided I
would spend next weekend down there. Once this story wrapped.
Allowing my guilt to snowball, I toyed with the idea of taking a
week off from work, bringing her home. Like old times. It would be
a high energy, high tension week for me, but I knew Lucy would love
it.

I leaned on the windowsill with the heels of
my hands, elbows locked. Stretching, I stared at the tree.
Everything was screwed up. I needed to regain control. Cloudy
grayness cast a pall over the orange and yellow leaves caught in
mini-vortices near the ground. Brown, gray, cold. The world felt as
bleak as it looked.

After my second mug of coffee, I called
Sophie.

A nun answered. “Just a moment.”

A well-being check, I told myself. But not
the truth.

Confession, they say, is good for the soul.
I wanted to come clean, to tell her what we’d done the night
before; but I also half-hoped that Katrina’s story would spur
Sophie to action. Action that could include her helping me with the
story.

Guilt and unease made me chew my lip while I
waited. I’d gotten involved because I wanted to help Sophie, I told
myself. But that wasn’t entirely true. I’d gotten involved because
I couldn’t let go of the Milla Voight story. I needed to push.
Calling her now seemed like just another exploitative move. I
cringed at what that said about me.

Sophie had tried to get out of the
organization, but had been beaten up for her efforts. Like a fly
caught in a web, the sticky snare tightened around her with every
move, keeping her unable to extricate herself. Everywhere she
turned, she faced those who would be her friend, but only for a
price.

Maybe I was no better, after all. I wanted
this story. So badly, I could taste it. Cradling the phone on my
shoulder as I rinsed my mug under the spray of warm water, I had a
disturbing notion. What if this was it? What if this was as good as
I got?

She came on the line, interrupting my mental
self-flagellation.

“
Alex,” she said, in a
breathless voice. “I going to Mass now, over here. I call you back
later?”

A quick glance at my watch. I remembered the
Sunday schedule from the days I used to attend Mass at Good
Shepherd. Next one was at eight-thirty. About fifteen minutes from
now. Father Trip usually said this one. I’d be late, even if I left
this minute, but, what the heck.

“
I’ll meet you there,” I
said.

* * * * *

There was something almost soothing about
the rote responses my mind directed my body through during the
Mass. This early service had no choir, no music at all. Father Trip
led the sung responses and hymns himself, and he winced at the
flatness of his own voice at every opening note, exactly the way
he’d done for as long as I could remember.

Afterward, he stood in the church’s narthex,
shaking hands with the thirty or so elderly parishioners. Sophie
and I hung back, waiting for the small crowd to disperse.

If Father Trip had been shocked to see me,
he gave no indication. Afraid of scaring me off from future visits,
perhaps.

“
You have a few minutes?” I
asked him.

Sophie looked at me.

“
Sure. Let me get changed
out of my vestments,” he said, holding his arms out to indicate the
long, embroidered tunic he wore. “And I need to check on the altar
servers. I’ll be right back.”

“
Okay, we’ll be in
there.”

I moved toward the “crying room,” a small,
sound-proof enclosure that could seat about ten devoted parents and
their wailing babies at any given time. The cry room boasted a wide
picture window view of the entire church and sound piped in through
big speakers overhead. With the neighborhood demographics having
changed so drastically over the past decade, I wondered if the room
ever got used anymore.

I snagged one of the
squeaky folding chairs and sat, more to calm my restlessness than
anything else.

Sophie reminded me that she planned to
return to her apartment the next morning and I was in the midst of
trying to convince her otherwise when Father Trip returned.

Talking fast, I brought them up-to-date on
the undercover operation gone wrong last night, and Katrina’s
reaction, which I knew would hit a nerve.

Father Trip took a seat. The three of us
faced one another in a skewy triangle, on creaky chairs that echoed
in this semi-darkened room. With all of us speaking in low tones, I
felt the familiar tingle that always hit me when I used to kneel in
the confessional and tell the good father what I’d done wrong that
week.

Three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys.
Standard penance. Less than that, and you felt pretty good about
avoiding all those venial sins all week; more than that and you
knew you’d blown it.

Right now, having told him all about the
prostitution ring, and having him realize that he’d been harboring
a hooker in the parish convent without knowing it, made me believe
that I was going to get the Good Book thrown at me. But Father Trip
didn’t react. Not outwardly, though I thought I detected sadness in
his eyes.

“
She tell you her real
name?” Sophie stooped in her chair, as though the news had punched
her in the gut.

“
She did, and her story is
perfect. It can make all the difference. Help you and all the other
girls break free. If we can just get her permission to air
it—”

Sophie’s fingers massaged her temples. She
stared at the floor, talking to herself. “If anyone ever find out
that she give her name …” Sophie stood, glancing up toward the
door. Exactly the way Katrina had the night before. “Oh, Alex,” she
said, her voice dropping, full of despair. “How could you do
this?”

“
Sophie, listen, you were
right. They killed Milla. They killed your brother. I’m sure of it,
now. But we need to prove it.”

Sophie sat down again, as though all the
bones in her body had turned to rubber. I decided to press.

“
Do you know this Katrina?
She’s small. Tiny actually. Blond hair?”

A sigh. “I meet her coupla time.”

Trying to keep anticipation out of my voice,
I prompted. “You did?”

“
She work for Lisa as
cleaning lady. When she need hair done she come in. No charge. That
how we know she one of Lisa girls.”

“
Can you talk to her?” I
kept my voice low, as gentle as possible. “If we can just get her
to agree to come on camera—”

Sophie shook her head, with vehemence. Her
large teeth bit hard on her lower lip. “She will never.”

“
What
about you, Sophie?” I said, in measured tones, “Maybe
you
could?”

“
I wrong, Alex. How you no
understand?”

“
After hearing Katrina, I
know you were right.”

Sophie looked like an animal, trapped and
panicked. Nowhere to run. “Please,” she said. “Please, you don’t do
no more.”

I turned to Father Trip. “Were you able to
find out anything about Father Bruno?”

Sophie asked, “Why?”

I pretended not to hear her. She leaned
forward, to tap me on the arm—Father Trip hesitated before he
answered, “I don’t know what you were looking for, Alex. Bruno
Creighter is well-respected, well-known, and every person I spoke
with couldn’t say enough about the man.”

Sophie stopped tapping. Now she grabbed my
arm, at the wrist. “Why you ask about Father Bruno?”

The time had come to lay my cards on the
table. Even though I knew neither of them would like what they
saw.

“
Katrina said that a priest
had come to her village. …” I let the thought hang.

Sophie said nothing, but Father Trip fixed
me with a stare. I forgot how piercing his gaze could be. There
were times he actually stopped a weekday Mass to chastise
misbehaving school kids. Worked like fast magic to whip them back
to attention.

I forged ahead. “This priest convinced her
to return to America with him.”

“
So?” Sophie said, in a
high voice. I could see her sit straighter, her back getting up.
She wasn’t a dumb girl, she knew where this was going.

I tried to keep my voice gentle. “She was
talking about Father Bruno, wasn’t she?”

Father Trip interceded. “Alex, everyone in
the Archdiocese knows of Father Bruno’s work to help bring young
people to the States for a better life. He’s sponsored more people,
and achieved so much success, that they’ve created an award for
him. For his work on behalf of humanity.”