Gideon (50 page)

The Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was situated across Cathedral Street from the Pratt Library, had the distinction of being the first Roman Catholic cathedral ever built in the United States. Construction had begun in 1806. It’s architect, Benjamin La Trobe, was the very same man who had designed the U.S. Capitol. A native Philadelphian, Cardinal O’Brien had presided here since 1987 and had come to love Baltimore in the process. It was a city of great grit and humor. A city that loved its past and embraced its future. And, of course, no other city had O’Brycki’s Restaurant, which would specially deliver the world’s best hard-shell crabs right to the cardinal’s door. He was the thirteenth prelate to preside at this see and, according to O’Brycki’s manager, the one with the heartiest appetite.

Suspended from the arch above Our Lady’s altar at the front of the sanctuary was the biretta of James Cardinal Gibbons, who had died in 1921. It would hang there until it crumbled. Just as his own would hang there when he passed on. Cardinal O’Brien stood there a moment, gazing at it thoughtfully, his hands clasped behind him.

Suddenly he heard a rustling nearby. And was startled to find that he was not alone.

A young man lurked by the wall in the semidarkness, wearing a black raincoat. Its collar was turned up, partly shielding his face. But not his eyes. His eyes were wide with fright.

“It is very late, my son,” the cardinal said gently, moving a step closer to him.

The young man scurried deeper into the recesses. He seemed very skittish, like one of the stray cats they took in every autumn to keep the rodent population down. He was trembling.

“How did you get in here?” the cardinal asked.

Outside there was a clap of thunder. It felt far away here inside the basilica’s massive stone walls.

“I hid,” came the breathless whisper of reply. “I’ve been hiding for hours and hours. I must speak with you, Father. I simply
must
.”

The lightning was directly overhead now, flashing brightly through the stained-glass windows. Briefly it illuminated the young man’s face like a shaft of white-hot sunlight. It was a handsome face. The forehead was high and smooth, the features delicate, the mouth soft and vulnerable. It was a very young face. He did not yet need to shave.

“H-He’s been here,” the boy gasped at the cardinal. “I know he’s b-been here.”

“
Who
has, my son?”

“Father Patrick. You’ve seen him, haven’t you?”

Cardinal O’Brien stiffened at the mention of his troubled friend’s name. “What is it you want?” he said guardedly. And when the boy hesitated, he said, firmly but gently, “You had better tell me.”

It was the thunder that rumbled first in response. The cardinal could feel it under his feet.

“Not here. Please,” the boy hissed, his eyes flickering about wildly.

“Where, then?”

“I-I want to confess my sins. I need to. Take my confession,” he pleaded desperately. “You must. You
must
.”

“And I will,” the cardinal replied. “Of course I will.”

They went inside the polished rosewood booth. Cardinal O’Brien sat, winching from the pain. He pressed his knees tightly together and waited.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” the young penitent began in a whisper. And then the whisper turned into a tortured wail. “Did he tell you, Father? Did Father Patrick
tell
you?”

Cardinal O’Brien hesitated. “I only know he was in great torment—as you appear to be.”

“I
am
the torment, Father.”

The cardinal sat in anxious silence. He was trying to stay calm, but he did not like where this was heading at all.

“I was an alter boy,” the young man blurted out. “In service to Father Patrick. And … and we are in love, Father. Deep, passionate, beautiful love.”

The cardinal tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. There was a sour, bilious taste in the back of his throat and a burning in the pit of his stomach. Scandal! It was the last thing the Catholic Church needed now, when there were already so many doubters. When there was so much whispering and scrutiny. So much hurt. Countless good, decent young candidates were being scared off. Indeed, there were a third fewer parish priests in America than there had been a generation ago. Many of them were being forced to serve three or more communities at once, driving from parish to parish like traveling salesmen, their vestments stowed in overnight bags. All because of one or two bad eggs around the country who could not resist temptation. And who should never have been allowed in the priesthood in the first place. Those were the ones who got the publicity. Not the hundreds upon hundreds who worked tirelessly and selflessly in service of God and their communities. Was that what Father Patrick was—just another bad egg? It seemed so hard to believe. And yet … what else could have caused such torment the other night? Father O’Brien had thought he was seeing doubt and fear. But perhaps all he was seeing in his friend’s eyes was a terrible guilt and shame.

This boy was handsome, to be sure, but how could such a fine priest abuse his privilege this way? The cardinal shuddered. The details were too horrifying to contemplate. But he had to know them. If he had learned anything over the years, it was that Father Patrick was wrong—knowledge was essential, no matter how painful. All solutions came only with knowledge.

Clearing his throat, he said, “And have you … consummated this passion?”

“I have knelt at his feet and swallowed his mortal seed, Father,” the boy sobbed in reply. “I-I have gotten down on all fours on his office floor and received him from above.”

The cardinal’s head was spinning, and his anger at Father Patrick began to boil full-fledged rage. But he needed to know the rest. “It was … consensual?”

“God, yes.”

“Let us keep God out of this for the moment,” the cardinal snapped. “How old were you when this … this … relationship began?”

The boy was silent for a moment. “Is that so important?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“I was thirteen, Father …”

Cardinal O’Brien gulped.
Dear God—help me. Please help me
… The boy was speaking again. The cardinal did his best to focus.

“… and now my
parents
have found out! They want to go to the authorities. My father’s a very powerful man. He has connections to the m-media. He can make this into a very bad thing!”

The cardinal’s horror was increasing. It could not get any worse than this. He had harbored a sexual felon. He had helped him escape to North Carolina. And he had lied to the police about it. How would that look? How
could
it look? Like a church-orchestrated cover-up, that’s how.

“Help me, Father,” the boy pleaded. “Please, help me. We love each other. We really do. And we can help each other. I have some money. A passport. We can make a start together somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Amsterdam, maybe. We can be together. Otherwise …” The boy trailed off, breathing heavily. “Otherwise I don’t know what will happen. I must see him, Father.
Please
take me to him.”

“I can’t,” the rattled cardinal murmured. “I can’t do that. I’ve sent him away.”

“Where?” the boy pressed urgently.

Staggered, the cardinal felt his mind racing. He was ruined. His career was over. Surely they would ask him to step down. After all these years of service, he would simply be discarded. Where would he go? What would he do? How could Father Patrick have done this to him, used him and lied and run off to North Carolina? “What … what’s that?” he finally said, rousing himself.

“
Where
in North Carolina?”

Dear God, had he said it aloud? What was wrong with him? How could he have just told him where Father Patrick was? He was in too much pain, that was it. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Suddenly Cardinal O’Brien felt terribly old.
Where will I go? What will I do?

“To the retreat?” the young boy asked. “To St. Catherine’s?”

Had he said
that
aloud, too? No, he was sure he hadn’t. A jolt of pain ran through his body, starting in his groin like before but now grabbing at his chest.

“How do you know about the retreat?” the cardinal manged to ask.

“I know everything about Father Patrick,” the boy said, only now he sounded different. Less frightening.

“I’d like you to go now,” the cardinal said as another blast of pain coursed through him. “Please … just go.”

“I will, Father. But first I have to be sure that no one will know we’ve talked about this.”

The cardinal raised his head and shook the fog away. “Young man, how dare you say such a thing to me?” he demanded. “Ours is a sacred confidence. I am God’s right hand.”

“And I am his left,” said the Closer, shooting the elderly cardinal directly through the forehead.

For a brief instant, as he pitched forward onto the floor, Cardinal O’Brien felt an entirely new agony.

And then the thirteenth cardinal felt nothing at all.

Carl squinted out at the utter darkness of the country night as he steered them down the narrow, bumpy dirt road from Momma One-Eye’s house back into Warren. Amanda rode next to him in grim, troubled silence. Payton’s Suburban felt like a luxury condo on wheels after so many days bouncing along on the road in the little beer can of a Subaru. The air-conditioning worked. So did the shock absorbers. And the ignition. This would take some getting used to.

There was also a loaded Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum in the glove compartment. This too would take some getting used to.

Payton wouldn’t be needing the big Chevy anymore. So they had ditched the old rickety pickup they had stolen, and now this road hog was theirs. That was the law of the jungle.

And the jungle was definitely where they were living right now. A jungle that was growing ever denser.

According to the vehicle registration form in the glove compartment, the Suburban was registered to none other than Astor Realty Management on Amsterdam Avenue in New York City. Astor realty was the outfit that had managed Carl’s apartment building. He had made his rent checks out to Astor Realty every month.

At one point in his life Carl used to believe in coincidence. But no longer. There was no way that this was a coincidence. He didn’t know what it was or what it meant. Or where it would lead them. But, as he had quickly learned to do over the past week, he added this new bit of information to his mental checklist, then turned his focus away from the theoretical and back to the here and now. That meant getting back to Luther Heller’s office in town without being seen.

Momma was taking car of Luther’s body. And the little skeleton of the baby Gideon. “You two don’t be worryin’ none,” she had assured them after she made sure they were properly stuffed with smothered pork chops, black-eyed peas, macaroni and cheese, mustard greens, and pecan pie. “Momma, she always takes care of what need doin’.”

That she had, Carl reflected. No matter how long he lived, he would never, ever forget the sight of that frail little old black woman calmly blowing Payton away. The harshness and cruelty that she had endured in her long life had given her an inner strength, a toughness that Carl could barely even comprehend. It wasn’t often that he met someone he desperately wanted to get to know better and to learn from. He felt that way about Momma One-Eye.

Warren’s little Main Street was shut down, the handful of offices and stores dark and silent. On the side streets there were a few house lights on, here and there the insidious glow of a television set. But mostly the small delta town was asleep for the night. There were no other cars out on the road.

Carl pulled around in the parking lot behind the redbrick town hall and killed the engine. As they got out, a wave of heat and humidity instantly enveloped them. The smell of the river was strong here, yeasty and rank. He heard a dog barking somewhere and, off in the distance, a freight train. Amanda fumbled with the alderman’s key until she found the one that unlocked the back door. They let themselves in and closed the door behind them. They flicked on a light.

If anyone happened to pass by, Momma had told them, they would just think that Luther was working late hours. He often had.

They found themselves in a storeroom stacked with office supplies. There were two doors. One led to a lavatory, the other to a hallway. The hallway led them up front to Luther’s office, the one where the walls were lined with those ghostly drawings of Harry Wagner. Carl had been so overwhelmed by the alderman’s artwork that he had observed nothing else about the office.

It was Amanda, ever the trained journalist, who had taken note of the computer.

It was not located on Luther’s desk, which was very neat—every pencil in its place, every paper neatly filed. I was set up on a table in the corner of the room, under a bulletin board. There were hand-lettered signs tacked to the board.
Please remember to turn off the machine. Please no food or beverages
. Below those was a sign-up sheet for town hall workers who wanted to reserve time on the computer. Latwanna Brisbee of the clerk’s office had it the next day from 9 to 10 A.M. There was another sign-up sheet for introductory lessons in computer skills, taught every Tuesday evening by Alderman Heller himself. Three people were signed up for next Tuesday’s class.

“He was a good man,” Carl said tightly as he gazed at the signs. “He didn’t deserve to die.”

“No one deserves to die,” Amanda said. “Certainly not that way.”

Carl said nothing. But he remembered the pain of Payton’s kick to the ribs. Remembered the son of a bitch’s sheer animal delight at inflicting that pain. And his own pure pleasure at seeing him go down and stay down. And he thought:
Yes some people do deserve it. They most definitely do
.

Amanda sat down at the computer and fired it up, her eyes flickering up at the on-line access codes that were neatly printed on a piece of tape affixed to the monitor. “The newsroom will be virtual insanity right now,” she said as she logged on. “A presidential suicide … it’s almost incomprehensible. That is pure dope for action junkies.”