Two Jakes (46 page)

“My
parishioners bring it back from the old country.”

Scarne
looked at the array of liquors behind the bar.

“Your
parishioners get around.”

“He’s
got a better selection than most of my joints,” Mack said.

Jarecki
laughed and said, “This used to be a speakeasy in the 30’s, with an entrance on
Jersey Street, right out that door over there. Prohibition was against the laws
of both God and nature. The police agreed. Particularly those that drank here.”
He poured another round. “We’re not open to the public, of course. That door
was sealed closed years ago. But after parish functions people are allowed down
here. And, of course, certain friends.” He nodded at Mack. “I trust you will
keep our secret, Jake.”

“Who
would I turn you in to, the bishop?”

“That
bastard loves coming here. Why do you think my church survived the last round
of diocesan cuts?”

“Do
you always have a bartender?”

Jarecki
laughed.

“No.
The Rosary and Altar Society is meeting later.”

“Listen,
padre,” Mack interrupted, grabbing a cigarette from the priest’s pack. “I’d
love to stand here all day and talk religion, but why don’t you tell Jake why
you called me.”

CHAPTER
6 – ONE FOR THE AGES

It
had been a typical Saturday. Fewer people came to confession nowadays, but
Jarecki, a stickler for tradition, put in the time: 2 to 4 PM. Of course, it
was now called the “sacrament of reconciliation,” which didn’t help matters.
The more the church compromised the less respect it got. Jarecki had revered
the first Polish Pope and still mourned his death. He had a hard time getting
past the fact that his new leader was a German. But, he acknowledged
grudgingly, the fellow was made of the same stuff as his predecessor, and would
protect the sanctity of the church’s teachings.

Jarecki
had heard only a half dozen confessions in almost two hours. Thank God for Mrs.
Dumbrowski! Without a little comic relief, he’d go stir crazy. (“Is it a mortal
sin, Father? I mean, it’s the only thing that makes it bearable. Joe is so fat
now, he hardly moves anymore, let alone vibrates. Only thing, does he have to
be there when I use it?”) Ethel would have a stroke if she knew he’d recognized
her voice. As head of the Rosary and Altar Society, she spoke to him almost
daily. At least he hadn’t laughed out loud.

The
priest looked at his watch, barely making out the numerals in the light from
the tiny 15-watt bulb in the ceiling:
3:50
. Ten more minutes. It was a
gorgeous fall day, temperature in the mid-60’s. Maybe he could slip out for a
couple of holes at Silver Lake and get back in time for the evening mass.
Jarecki opened the confessional’s door and peeked out. The church was empty.
I’m in like Flynn, he thought. The Lake’s “twilight” golf rate was the best
kept secret in the city. Not that it mattered for him. The God-fearing woman
behind the cash register at the club never charged a man with a collar.

A
fanatic golfer, Jarecki’s initial disappointment with his transfer to Staten
Island from Pittsburgh evaporated when he found out the borough contained four
of the six golf courses in New York City. He was flirting with a single-digit
handicap (well, 14 is flirting, he told himself) but his putting needed work.
Until recently the weather had been lousy and he had been restricted to a
makeshift putting green in the sacristy, where the carpet, while not much
bumpier than the greens at Silver Lake, was a poor substitute for the real
thing. Besides, the sound of a golf ball rolling into a chalice
(unconsecrated!) just didn’t cut it.

He
looked at his “atomic” watch again.
3:55.
It was a gift from his sister,
who was always ordering gadgets from in-flight airline catalogues. The damn
thing was accurate to one second every thousand years, or some such nonsense.
If it said
3:55
, then, by God, it was
3:55
. He got up and stood
outside the confessional and stretched.

Jarecki
was a bullet of a man, tough-looking even in a cassock; with a sloping nose
that seemed to push down on his upper lip. His coarse dark brown hair was
styled in a modified flat top that gave him the look of a Roman centurion, a
visage that served him well in his other sporting avocation, the touch football
he played with reckless abandon in the Staten Island Flag Football League. His
team, Flynn’s Inn, had a fair number of tough Poles representing the tavern –
thanks to his recruitment efforts after Sunday mass. Jarecki asked – and gave –
no quarter on the field. He was known as “Last Rites” Jarecki for asking
flattened opponents if they needed them. Now, he was halfway through an
imaginary golf swing when the front door to the church opened and a hunched
figure walked in slowly. He returned to the confessional, hoping whoever it was
just wanted to light a candle.

A
moment later someone slumped heavily into the seat on one side of the
confessional. Jarecki looked at his watch:
4:00
. Damn it! He sighed,
pulled back the slide and waited. He heard heavy, labored breathing. His nose
twitched. No stranger to visiting hospital rooms, Jarecki recognized a faint,
but distinct, odor, more medicinal than unpleasant. Whoever was in the booth
was getting to a priest in the nick of time. The silence dragged on.

Finally,
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned….” That was followed by, “I can’t believe I
just said that.”

Jarecki
heard rustling. The man was apparently leaving. Jerry Jarecki was a hard case,
but he was still a priest.

“Wait,
my son. I can help you. What is it you want to say?”

There
was no response, so he started to repeat himself in Polish, but a raspy voice
cut him off, in English.

“I
haven’t been inside a church in a long time.”

“It’s
never too late to come back. God doesn’t….”

“Listen,
Padre. I don’t have time for the religious speech.” The man coughed again. “I’m
covering my bases. Always felt comfortable here. Used to come before I left the
Island. Hasn’t changed much in 40 years. I don’t really believe in this crap,
but no atheists in foxholes, right? So let me cut to the chase. I want to get
something off my chest. So just sit there and listen.”

“You’re
in the wrong foxhole, my friend.” Jarecki always had a short fuse. “I’m not a
psychiatrist. Unless you are sorry for what ever it is you’ve done, I can’t
help you. Go to Sacred Heart. Father Duffy is a rum ball. He’s probably still
asleep in the confessional. He’d give you three Hail Marys if you told him you
were the second gunman on the grassy knoll.”

The
man was silent. Shit, the priest thought, now I’ve done it.

“Son
of a bitch,” the man said, laughing. The laughter dissolved into hacking
coughs, but he finally continued good-naturedly. “You’re sure nothing like
Father Krupinski. The fat bastard would give me absolution if I brought him a
dozen of my old man’s pączek. Can we start over?”

They
did. After the man finished, they sat in silence for several minutes.

“For
I have sinned,” Jarecki thought. Mother of God! The understatement of the
century. The shocked priest was the first to speak. He told the man what had to
be done. They argued. The man was adamant. Finally, a compromise, of sorts, was
reached. Not one Jarecki would like to run by the Vatican’s Ecclesiastic
Office, but probably the best he could do under the circumstances, given his
vows. This was not an instance for a “three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys”
penance. Or a boxcar of pączek. There might not be a penance short of
Hell. But Jarecki insisted on one thing.

“C’mon
Father. Give me a break. What good will it do?”

“Just
humor me. Do you remember the words?”

“I
was in Vietnam, padre. I said it daily. Sometimes twice. I’ll never forget the
words”

The
man began in rote, but ended subdued:

“O
MY GOD, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins
because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell; but most of all
because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my
love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do
penance, and to amend my life. Amen.”

***

After
the man left, Father Jarecki sat quietly in the confessional for a full half
hour, all thoughts of golf gone. He needed a drink badly, but he’d have to wait
until after the evening Mass.

Later,
the sparse crowd that attended the Saturday vigil mass noticed that Father
seemed distracted. His sermon was perfunctory, if a bit harsh. What had they
done? After the service, Jarecki stood, as usual, at the back of the church and
shook hands with parishioners. There was little of his famous small talk.

“Must
have missed his tee time,” the widow Grabowski said to her friends.

As
the congregation filed out, the priest whispered something to a burly man who
told his wife to wait in the car and then drifted back into the vestibule.
After the last parishioner departed, Jarecki went over to the man.

“Do
you still do some work for Dudley Mack?”

CHAPTER
7 – PATHS NOT TAKEN

“I
can tell you that the man wasn’t particularly sorry for most of his murders,
but this was an exception. It had really gotten to him. It was undoubtedly the
imminence of death that stirred what little conscience remained in him. That
and the fact that his partner raped the Pearsall girl before killing her. I
tried to convince him that all his murders were mortal sins and must be
repented to gain forgiveness from God. He vigorously argued the point, only
reluctantly admitting that perhaps some of his previous victims hadn’t deserved
to die. With that much of a breakthrough, and with his genuine remorse for the
girl’s murder, I felt comfortable enough to grant him absolution.”

Of
course, it hadn’t been that easy, Jarecki thought.

“I’m
warning you,” he told the man. “God’s forgiveness is based on your contrition.
You should turn yourself in to the police. The crime in ongoing, even if you
won’t be.”

That
was blunt, but Jarecki, bound by the sanctity of confession, knew his options
were limited. Deep in his heart, he had always thought it a weakness of his
Church that sinners were let off the hook so easily. He suspected that it had
more to do with keeping people in the pews, and the collection plates full,
than genuine theology. But he had taken the vows, and Jarecki, though cynical,
was a man of his God, and his word.

“Don’t
push it, Jarecki,” the killer had replied. “I’m not going to rat anyone out.
What do you think I am? That’s got to count for something with the man
upstairs. I’m banking on that. The cops? In this borough? You must be hitting
the communion wine a little too heavy. Haven’t you heard anything I said?”

But
then he threw the priest a rope, frayed at best, but it was something.

“I’ll
make you a deal that shouldn’t bend you collar out of shape. You don’t know my
name, and I’m not giving you anyone else’s. But this might have had something
to do with that proposed stock car track they’re planning out by the Goethals
Bridge. I ain’t even sure about that, but it’s all I’m saying. Whatever it is,
you figure a way to stop these bastards, be my guest.” The man groaned.
“Listen, I ain’t feeling so good. You want me puking in the confessional? We
got a deal? For the girl, and, uh, some of the others?”

***

“So
you called Dudley,” Scarne said.

“If
you can’t go to the cops,” Mack said, “try the robbers.”

The
priest poured them all more shots. They were on their fourth.

“I
would have thought it was connected to the nursing home story,” Scarne said.
“Pearsall must have frosted a lot of people with that story.”

“Water
under the bridge,” Mack said. “Those guys are in enough trouble. This must be
bigger.”

“Do
you think NASCAR is that big a deal? Who stands to gain the most? The mob?
Unions?”

“Yeah.
Sure. Contracts. Jobs. Patronage. All the usual suspects. But I know a lot of
these people and I can’t think of anyone who would pull a stunt like this for a
project that might not get approved even if the
Register
supported it.
There’s a new dynamic out here. Hell, even the Russians wouldn’t risk it.”

“So
it’s something else entirely and the killer was wrong.”

“He
said he wasn’t sure,” Jarecki said. “I got the impression that it was an
informed guess. All he said specifically was that the killing was designed to
stop something from happening. The people who gave the orders thought it was
too dangerous to go after the girl’s father directly, because of his position.”

“As
bad as killing a cop,” Mack said.

“I
imagine you feel that you’re pretty close to the line on this,” Scarne said.

“But
it’s a line I won’t cross, Jake. He gave me some leeway with the sanctity of
confession, but made me promise I won’t go to the police. So, this is where it
ends for me. The crime was an abomination. I hope justice is done. But I can’t
do more. Are we clear on that?”

“Sure,
padre. I know the drill. I had the benefits of 16 years of Catholic education.”

“A
lot of good it did you,” Mack remarked. “Do you think the guy still lives here,
Jerry?”

“No.
He said he was brought in for the job, or hit, or whatever you call it. Even
mentioned how much the Island has changed in 40 years.”

“Did
the scumbag tell you what kind of cancer he had?”

“Pancreatic.”

“That
might not leave us much time,” Mack said under his breath. Scarne caught the “us”
and decided to let it lie.

“I
agree,” the priest said. “The son of a bitch said he went to the best doctors
in the city but the disease is very advanced. He’s on the back nine.”

Scarne
shook his head.

“Is
that all you know about this guy? He lived on Staten Island 40 years ago and is
presumably Polish?”

“And
his father was probably a baker.”

Scarne
and Mack looked at each other.

“He
said he used to get absolution for a bag of pączek,” Jarecki explained.
“It’s Polish pastry, like a jelly donut, only deep fried and filled with a
sweet filling like Bavarian cream or custard. He said it was his father’s
pączek. It’s not something you make at home.”

“I
didn’t know there was such a thing as a Polish bakery,” Mack said. “Italian,
German, Jewish, maybe, but not Polish. At least on Staten Island.”

“There’s
none that I know of now,” Jarecki said. He looked down the bar. “Stash, you
ever hear of a Polish bakery in the neighborhood? In the old days.”

“My
grandmother used to talk about Gadomski’s out in Travis. Been closed for years,
I think.”

“Well,
it’s a start,” Mack said.

Jarecki
walked them out the front of the church.

“Good
luck. I think I’ve done all I can. Maybe more than I should have.”

As
Mack and Scarne got into the car, the priest called out to them.

“One
more thing. If you come across any place to get some good pączek let me
know. I’ll give you more than absolution.”

***

“What
did you think of Pontius Pilate’s story back there?”

They
were back on Richmond Terrace, heading to Brooklyn. Despite Scarne’s protests,
Dudley had insisted on taking him back to Manhattan, with a stop for dinner at
Peter Lugar’s in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

“That’s
not quite fair, Deadly. The guy’s in a tough spot.”

“Yeah,
I know. I’m just pissed that they killed the girl to get to the old man.
Fucking animals. You remember Bobby Pearsall? He was a lot older than us. I
know you remember his wife. Ronnie. Ronnie Kane? Used to hang around with my
sisters.”

“Cute
blonde? Pearsall married her?” Scarne could picture Ronnie Kane immediately.
She was one of those girls a boy of a certain age never forgets. “She was quite
a catch. Thought she’d go for a jock, not the bookish type.”

“Bobby
was a real good baseball player in his day. Star pitcher on the Wagner College
baseball team. Sneaky little lefthander. Played into his 30’s in the local
leagues on weekends. Used to humiliate me with his curveball. Couldn’t touch
it.”

“You
couldn’t hit a fastball, either, Duds. I don’t think I ever faced him. You ever
see Ronnie? I seem to remember you were sweet on her.”

Mack
looked out the window.

“Died
two years ago. Cancer, of course. Like everyone on this goddamn Island.” Scarne
knew that Mack, like many people, was convinced that Staten Island’s high
cancer rates were the direct results of its being downwind from northern New
Jersey’s chemical plant belt, and half a century of hosting the world’s largest
garbage landfill. But he was surprised by the bitterness in his friend’s voice.
“That’s why Pearsall was vulnerable. Bastards counted on that.”

“What’s
got you so riled? You of all people know what goes on out here.”

They
were driving over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Mack lapsed into silence,
looking out the window. Finally, he turned to Scarne.

“I
liked Bobby. In fact, I helped him win his Pulitzer. Those nursing homes were
rivals of mine. I supplied him with a lot of dirt on them. Not that they didn’t
deserve to get hammered. Goddamn cesspools. Gave him a second wind after Ronnie
died. I liked his kid, too. I thought maybe you could look into this thing, if
you’re not too busy.”

This
last was said casually, but Scarne caught the dig. Dudley had been bugging him
in recent months to get his act together after the Ballantrae case.

Scarne
bridled, but then said, offhandedly, “I don’t know. It’s a crappy situation,
I’ll admit, but I don’t like working on Staten Island. I know too many people.”
He left unsaid what Dudley Mack knew: Staten Island, with its pleasant
memories, was a refuge for Scarne. In fact, he was surprised his friend even suggested
that he get involved. “Besides, why don’t you let the cops handle it? I’m sure
they’re not taking the murder of a young girl lightly.”

“What
are you the fucking CIA, Jake? Can’t work domestically? The Island isn’t a
foreign country.” Mack relented. “Hell, maybe it is. I know how you feel. But
there is something else going on here I can’t put my finger on. The cops are
stumped. Even if they weren’t pissed off by the nature of the crime – and I
know they are – it would be a coup for them to solve the murder of an editor’s
kid. They found DNA. Nobody in the system. I’ve asked around. Pulled some
strings. Nada. Brick wall. Be a miracle if they get anybody for it.”

“We
could tell them what we know now. We’re not priests. We’ll leave Jarecki out of
it. You could say some lowlife told you.”

“They’d
pump me for info, and then hit me with an obstruction charge when I clam up.
I’m one of the bad guys remember.”

“I
could let them know. Tell them I got an anonymous phone call. Just doing my
civic duty.”

“If
it comes to that, do it, if you think it will help. But I doubt it will.
They’ll probably file it under crank calls.”

“Then
what could I reasonably do that they can’t?”

“Maybe
nothing. But listen, I know you think you fucked up on your last case, or
whatever that colostomy bag was, but you took some real maniacs off the board.
I got a feeling that one of your creatively destructive investigations is just
what this deal needs. Besides, there’s something else. Personal.”

What
came next surprised Scarne.

“I
was more than just sweet on Ronnie. We had a thing going, back in the day.
While she and Bobbie were dating. He never knew. I guess she wasn’t sure about
him. Sometimes women get cold feet and warm them with a final hot fling. At
least that’s been my experience” He smiled, and shrugged. “But, hey, what the
fuck do I know?”

Scarne
couldn’t help but smile back. Dudley ’s conquests were the stuff of legend. One
day he finally felt compelled to ask him how he did it.

“Assuming
they are of legal age,” Mack told him blithely, “I ask every woman I meet if
they would like to fuck. Sometimes I phrase it more delicately, although my
experience is that the word ‘fuck’ works best, especially if there is booze
involved. I figure that I’ve asked way more than a thousand broads. I
occasionally get slapped or have a drink tossed in my face, which to tell you
the truth I find refreshing – not the drink – but the morality. But I have
about a 10 percent success rate. Do the math.”

Scarne
had wished he’d never asked. Now, Mack read his mind.

“I
know what you’re thinking. But Ronnie was different. She turned me down at
first – a woman of rare taste – but called me when she and Bobbie were going
through a rough patch. I really fell for her. Pulled out all the stops.
Flowers, dinners, stuff I don’t do. But she saw through me pretty quickly. She
made the right choice. Married Bobbie a month after we broke up and never
looked back. I never forgot her, though.” Mack looked away again. “You know I’m
not exactly the romantic type, but there was something about Ronnie. I think I
would have married her, given the chance. Maybe we would have had a daughter
that age.” He saw the look on Scarne’s face. “Yeah. I know. It’s possible the
kid is …. was mine. The timing would be close. Not likely, but possible. But it
don’t matter. Paths not taken and all that bullshit.”

The
two friends were again quiet for a moment and then Dudley said, “You know the
worst thing in the world is to love someone who only likes you. Anyway, I
wouldn’t mind sticking it to the pricks who killed the girl. An Act of
Contrition may cut it for the Church, but not me.”

Nothing
else was said until they pulled up to the famous steakhouse abutting the
Williamsburg Bridge. The East River glimmered in the moonlight.

“So,
what do you say? A little pro bono sleuthing to get your act together after
your recent vacation? You must be getting tired of snooping around hotel
lobbies trying to catch some hedge fund guy with his zipper down.”

Scarne
and Mack had been close since their college days at Providence, where, after
trying to beat the hell out of each other, they learned they had a lot in
common. And like most good friends, they knew how to push each other’s buttons.
Which what was Mack was doing now.