VC03 - Mortal Grace (17 page)

Her footsteps echoed on the bare floor of the empty corridor. She rapped on the study door. There was no answer. She nudged it open, clicked on the light with her elbow, set the tray down on the desk.

She noticed that Father had left several photos and a 3” x 5” card out. She glanced at the photos. They were pictures of young people sunbathing. The card had a name written on it in Father’s big block printing:
SALLY MANFREDO
, followed by an address and phone number.

The front door slammed. She carefully replaced the card and the photos exactly as she had found them.

Father came into the study mumbling to himself. He seemed just a little bit startled to see her there.

“Must have been a long meeting tonight,” she said.

“Yes, it was long.”

She felt something close itself off in Father. He was in one of his moods. “I fixed your snack.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Quigley.” He stood still, polishing the right lens of his bifocals.

“I’ll let you be. Just ring when you want me to take the tray.” Mrs. Quigley closed the door quietly behind her.

She was in her bedroom watching the midnight movie—Debbie Reynolds tonight—when she realized Father hadn’t rung or made so much as a peep in an hour and a half. She crept back to the study.

Father had set his reclining chair all the way back. His head was lolling to the side and his mouth was hanging wide open and he was snoring.

She sniffed the half-empty teacup and smelled alcohol. A bottle of 150-proof Jamaican rum sat uncapped on the desk. She shook her head. Father Romero was turning into a drinker. Father O’Malley before him had been a boozer and drink had killed her husband Jack, and she knew the signs.

As she placed the dishes on the tray, she noticed a pyramid of ash in the ashtray. She paused to examine it. Poking with the teaspoon, she discovered half a photograph and part of a card with the handwritten block letters
ALLY MANFR
.

TWENTY-TWO

W
ITH THE EDGE OF
his hand, Collie flipped unruly waves of dark hair from his forehead. “Logically speaking,” he said, “the highest test of love isn’t whether you would die for another person.”

“This is a dinner party.” Anne stared across the table at him with hazel-eyed impatience. “Do we have to speak logically?”

“It’s whether you would live for them,” Bonnie said.

“No.” Collie pushed a last knifeload of risotto onto a last forkful of osso buco. “It’s whether you’d kill for them.”

Bonnie clanked her fork down onto her plate. “That’s not funny, and it’s not even logical.”

“It is logical, and I’ll prove it. The soul is the most sacred part of the person. When you sin—and do we agree that killing is a sin?”

“Hear! Hear!” Bonnie’s brother Ben rapped a butter knife on his wineglass full of mineral water. A high, clear note rang out.

“When you sin, you endanger your most sacred part. To risk losing what is most sacred, to actually lose it for the sake of another person—that has got to be life’s highest sacrifice.”

Bonnie couldn’t help getting furious when men talked like that: put a penny in the logic machine, and out popped ethical sanction for murder. “But there’s always another way. No one can avoid dying, but anyone can avoid killing.”

“That’s not the issue,” Collie said.

“What is the issue?” Anne said.

“The issue is, what’s the most you can give for love?”

“But giving the most when the most isn’t required is wasteful.” Bonnie felt her voice rising. “Nothing sanctions waste.”

“That’s well and good,” Collie said, “if you see morals as a subdivision of ecology, but I could point to some relevant passages in St. Paul—”

Completely forgetting her responsibility as hostess, Bonnie shot to her feet. “Paul was an anti-Semitic, homophobic, epileptic cult groupie. He was not a saint, he was not Paul, I seriously doubt he was a he, and I know he was not rational.”

Anne rose from the table and began clearing dishes. “Coffee, everyone?”

Heat climbed to Bonnie’s cheeks. She felt rotten and embarrassed, as if she’d lost her temper at a child. “Please, Anne. You relax. I’ll take care of it.”

In the kitchen, she filled the espresso machine and scraped plates. Fiddling with her Hammacher Schlemmer gadgets and utensils, she had the sense of being safe in a space she could control. “I shouldn’t start dinner this late,” she said. “We always get into arguments.”

“It was a delicious dinner.” Anne worked a corkscrew into a chilled cabernet sauvignon and yanked the cork. “And it wasn’t an argument. It was only a game. I enjoy these evenings of ours—I wish we could manage to get together more often.”

“You’re sure you don’t feel outnumbered? We must come across as such church nuts, the three of us.”

“You’re like lawyers. I love it when conversation gets caught in a theological tangle.”

“You couldn’t mean that.” Bonnie held out two wineglasses and Anne filled them.

“Admittedly, a little of this would help.” Anne raised her glass. “But you can’t have everything.”

They clinked glasses.

Bonnie took a cool, tangy swallow. “Remembering how those two used to attack a bottle, a little of this would probably start a war.”

At one time both Collie and Ben had had drinking problems. Ben had licked his three years ago, when he had joined A.A. Collie had been an off-and-on binge drinker until the year before last, when he finally managed to sober up. Bonnie had not seen him touch a drop of alcohol since. She admired both men’s sobriety. She sensed that it had taken enormous courage.

“It’s odd.” Anne swirled her wine. “You’ve wound up being the priest, and Collie and Ben are—well, they’re Collie and Ben.”

“If they were priests you might not have a boyfriend.”

“If they were Catholic priests. But I don’t know. You hear stories. A lot of priests play around. Even Catholics.”

Bonnie held a pitcher of milk to the steam spout of the espresso machine. “Everybody likes cappuccino, right?”

She was sitting on the mossy velvet Victorian sofa, stirring the beige froth in her cup with a teaspoon, when she felt the faint pressure of Collie’s weight settling on the cushion beside her.

“Didn’t mean to get your goat,” he said.

“Yes, you did.”

“Angry?”

“No.”

“Hurt?”

“Envious.” She set her cup down on the coffee table neatly stacked with books and magazines. “I’ll never have your debating skills.”

“A priest doesn’t need debating skills. They’re the roundtable equivalent of an Uzi. Only troublemakers need them.”

“You’re not a troublemaker.”

“I used to be. But no more. You’ve focused me.”

“Have I?”

He nodded. “Now it’s my job to look after you and the kids. I won’t let anything happen to them—or to you.”

They sat there, not talking. She felt herself wanting to pull back and wanting to reach out at the same time. There was a need in him that was suffering and solitary and confused.

Thirty seconds passed.

“You’re sweet, Collie. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

He sighed.

She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I do love you. I hope you know that.”

She was rinsing dishes and placing them in the dishwasher rack when her brother sauntered into the kitchen. “You’re worried, Sis.”

“No. It’s nothing.”

He took off his glasses. He slid a forefinger under her chin and tipped her face up till her eyes had no choice but to meet his. “You have that look.”

“What look?”

“Enough priestly evasion. Spill.”

She poured soap powder into the detergent dispenser and swung the dishwasher door shut. “The police are asking questions.”

“That’s one of the ways police earn a living.”

“Sonya Barnett told them about the Hitchcock case.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she called me up afterward. It’s a safe bet the police went straight to the Hitchcocks. And the Hitchcocks don’t like us.”

“Aren’t you being a tad paranoid?”

“They’d slant things. Look how they claimed Joe was abusing his performers.”

“And they never convinced the judge. He threw that lawsuit out of court.”

“But they may have convinced the police. A detective came back asking more questions. It’s the third time.”

She set the controls to
heavy load
and
hot dry
and twisted the dial to
start.
The dishwasher began making sounds like a Lebanese massacre.

“What kind of questions?” Ben said.

“He wanted to know about our old van that got wrecked.” Just talking about it, she felt a dull, nervous something in the pit of her stomach. “I can’t even remember the number of vans we’ve owned, so of course he wanted an exact number.”

“Why does it bother you so much?”

“I get the feeling he’s looking for ways to tie Joe into that dead girl’s murder.”

“How in the world does that van reflect on Joe or the dead girl?”

“I’m not sure.” She dried her hands on a dish towel. “He wanted to know if Father Joe owned a golf hat.”

Ben laughed. “A golf hat? You’re making that up.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I gave Joe a golf hat three years ago for Christmas—he still wears it.”

“You gave everyone golf hats. Joe’s the only person silly enough to wear his.”

“Don’t you think it’s an odd question?”

“Out of context, it certainly is. But this cop must know what he’s doing. He wouldn’t have made the grade to detective if he didn’t.”

TWENTY-THREE

A
SHADOW FELL ACROSS
stacks of reports and interdepartmental memos that littered the desk, and Ellie Siegel stepped into the cubicle. “I’ve been on the phone to Judge Myers. She says any warrant she gives us to search a priest’s possessions has to be very narrowly drawn.”

“How narrowly?” Cardozo said.

“So a cockroach couldn’t crawl through. We have to describe each item we’re looking for.”

“Father Romero’s papers.”

“I tried that. She says absolutely not. Too general.”

“His papers relating to his theatricals.”

“You talk to her, Vince—or ask another judge.”

“None of my judges get to the office before eleven. But we might as well wait. Montgomery’s going to keep us busy today.”

Ellie’s glance flicked around sharply. “What have you found?”

“Point one.” Cardozo handed her the report on her Lanner interview. “The actor says Father Joe came on to him in a quasi-closety way. Forgive me, Ellie, I know Father Joe has won your heart, but that is not innocent, naive behavior. Point two.” He handed her the DD5 on his interview with the Ninth Avenue hookers. “Father Joe has an interest in transvestite prostitutes, and this interest extends to photographing them, and possibly further.”

“Possibly.” Ellie’s tone was dubious.

“Point three.” Cardozo ignored the tone and handed her the medical examiner’s report. “Dan Hippolito thinks the victim could have been involved in s/m sex. Connect the dots, and what have we got?”

“I’m not sure we even have dots.” Ellie smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt. “That s/m suggestion of Dan’s is pretty iffy. The kid could have been wearing leather boots and no socks.”

“Very tight leather boots to leave that much abrasion and residue.”

“A kid who’s picking her clothes off a garbage pile is not going to be too choosy about fit.” Ellie threw the files back onto the desk. Her body language was almost in attack mode—arms on hips, head down as though she were ready to charge into him. “How about digging up some halfway credible evidence before we decide Father Montgomery is Joe the Ripper?”

“We’ve already got probable cause. Your actor. Eyewitness to misdemeanor.”

“Come on, Vince. At worst Lanner’s statement makes Father Joe borderline sleaze.”

“Without the borderline.”

“It’s still a pretty mild accusation.”

“The D.A. has gone to grand juries with milder accusations.”

Ellie frowned at a fingernail. “And what if a grand jury won’t buy Lanner’s testimony? What if—for example—he has a rap sheet?”

“Give me a break. How many wannabe actors have rap sheets?”

“One way to find out.”

They went into the squad room. Detective Monteleone was using the computer to track down a license plate from a hit-and-run.

“Are you going to be needing that thing for long?” Cardozo asked.

Monteleone shot him a dark-eyed look. “Forever.”

Ellie arched an eyebrow and motioned Cardozo to come with her down to the second floor. Over in the corner of the squad room, the detention cage was filling up with the first haul of the day—four ratty, bummed-out-looking kids.

“What have you got over there?” Cardozo asked the duty lieutenant.

“Two pickpockets, public urinator, car break-in.”

Cardozo thought of the aggravation and bullshit paperwork involved in even the simplest arrest and he couldn’t see why a sane cop would bother busting a street person for pissing. You couldn’t fine them, they had no money; you couldn’t give them a summons, they had no home; you couldn’t lock them up, there was no room in the jails. “Urination’s been upped to a priority misdemeanor?”

“The captain says we’re making it a quality-of-life issue.”

Which, translated, meant the commissioner was worried because an election was coming up and the mayor needed the swing votes in Manhattan’s silk-stocking district.

“Can we use the computer?” Ellie asked. “It’ll only take a second.”

The lieutenant shrugged.

Ellie crossed to the computer. “Hi.” She smiled at the sergeant whose desk space she was invading. “This’ll only take a minute.”

She called up criminal records and tapped Lanner’s name into the keyboard. Print began rushing up the screen.

Cardozo frowned.

Lanner’s misdemeanors covered two years and they came in chronological order. Shoplifting, Bloomingdale’s; sentence suspended. Possession quarter gram cocaine, Limelight disco; sentence suspected. Petty larceny, theft videocassette recorder, complainant Joseph Montgomery; sentence suspended.

A silence oozed like squid ink.