VC03 - Mortal Grace (37 page)

The boy held out his hand. “Hello, sir.”

Cardozo took the hand. “Hello, young man.”

The boy looked him in the eye. “It’s a pleasure meeting you, sir.”

“Likewise.”

FORTY-SEVEN

“E
VERYONE WAS THERE—DINAH
and Bianca and Betsy and Jackie and Bruce and Bob and Oscar. Lord only knows how Samantha is able to corral the cream of the A-list, but time after time after time she pulls it off.” Whitney Carls stopped short. “But if you wanted to hear about a silly old party you’d have gone to it yourself.”

“I want to hear about anything that concerns you,” Bonnie said. “Why don’t you tell me how you’re doing? You personally?”

They were sitting in her office, in the easy chairs by the window. The herbal tea they were drinking had grown cold. She could remember when Whitney had been a heavy drinker, a towering presence at dinner parties, a large man and one of the most sought-after in New York society. She could remember when ten minutes alone with Whitney had been a treat, a tonic, when women had fought one another for a piece of his time.

A lot had changed.

“I’m doing
rotten
.” He looked at her. His eyes bulged through thick glasses, not wise-owlish, but sad-owlish. “This damned wig looks stupid and all evening long the guests were staring at me.”

She had to admit, the wig looked clownish. Yet she understood the impulse behind it. He’d had thick, beautiful hair until chemo had robbed him of it. With everything slipping away from him, he needed to hold on to some echo of the past. But she wasn’t sure this was the right echo.

He was waiting for a comment. She couldn’t think of one to offer.

“Everyone saw I’d lost weight. I could feel them wondering, Why the hell did Samantha have to invite this old corpse? I hate dying, I hate being a drag on the party, I just
hate
it!”

“You’re not dying.”

“Well, I sure as hell am not
living
.”

“But you
are
, Whitney.”

“Oh, I suppose, if you mean literally.”

“Don’t overlook the literal truth. And don’t believe you can know what other people are thinking.”

Any more than I can know what Vince Cardozo is thinking
, she reflected.
He seems urban redneck, right-wing, no more in sympathy with my beliefs than I am with his.

“I hate hospitals,” Whitney was saying. “I hate sickness. Why does this have to happen to me?”

“It’s normal to feel that way. And you’re doing fine.”

“If this is fine, I’m sick of it! Three weeks of these chemicals, and then three months’ waiting, and then six weeks of chemicals. When will it all end? Christ, don’t answer that.”

Bonnie wondered what a man like Vince Cardozo would do in Whitney’s situation. Would he feel sorry for himself and crumble?

No. He’s built that cop facade to survive earthquakes and hurricanes.

She tried to analyze Cardozo’s strength. She sensed defiance, estrangement from God and love. Negative strength.

Could I bring Vince Cardozo around? Could I help him see good in all people, God in all people?

She smiled at the presumptuousness of her ideas—St. Bonnie saves the world. Today, it was a daunting enough task to see God in Whitney Carls.

“While you’re waiting for the next round of treatment,” she told him, “maybe you should focus your thoughts on something else.”

He sighed. “Could I tell you the awful truth, Bonnie? I’m broke. All I have is the monthly check from Mama’s trust, and what with the bond market, it’s next to nothing.”

When all else fails, try giving them some pastoral theology.
“Have you considered prayer?”

“I feel like such a fraud praying. I don’t believe in it.”

“What about just talking to God?”

“What have I got to say that God would be interested in hearing?”

It seemed strange to Bonnie how few people realized that the purpose of prayer was to transform the person who prayed, not to persuade God.

“You could discuss something you’ve thought, something you’ve seen that gives you joy.”

“Like the platinum cuff links in Tiffany’s Fifth Avenue window?”

“Why not, if you think God would like them.”

“God’s got better taste than that.”

“Whitney, listen to me. Nothing in this world is beneath God. No thought, no deed, no fear.”

“You sound like some sort of spiritual Marxist.”

“You could offer your feelings to God…. You could say, ‘Lord, I make you a gift of my sorrows that they may fall back upon me in joy.’”

“It isn’t very me, Bonnie.” He pulled back his starched cuff to look at his watch. “Goodness, I’ve got to be going. Tina Vee wants me to take her dog to the vet. Can you believe it, I’ve gone from being that woman’s walker to becoming her dog’s errand boy.”

Bonnie walked Whitney to the front door. “I’m sure she’s very grateful to you for all your help.”

“No, she’s not. She’s an astonishingly selfish old woman. Well, thanks for listening.” He gave Bonnie a good-bye peck on the cheek.

She watched him go. The sky had darkened and it felt like rain was coming. Halfway down the block he turned, a brave childish smile on his frightened old-man face, and waved to her.

She waved back.

When she returned to her office, the phone was ringing. It was Imogene, Tina Vanderbilt’s social secretary. “Mrs. Vee has been waiting a half hour for Whitney Carls. Is he there by any chance?”

“He just left.”

“I hope he’s coming here. Mrs. Vee’s counting on him to take Lulu to the vet.”

“I’m sorry, but he didn’t tell me his plans.”

Bonnie replaced the receiver. She sat there. Silence poured in like a tide and she realized that at that moment she was alone in the rectory.

It baffled her how uncentered she felt with Father Joe away in the hospital. She wondered how he had managed to run the parish and give the sort of caring and counseling that these people needed. She thought of them as the affluent poor—choked with riches and still starving.

Her thoughts drifted to her own riches: her children. She picked up their photo from the desk. She gazed at their faces and felt a skip in her heart.

Behind her, a pigeon cooed. She saw that the window had been left open a good four inches.

That’s odd, I should have closed that window when I turned on the air conditioner….

She got up and closed the window and stood looking out into the courtyard. A breeze stirred the leaves of the pear tree. Shadows and light dappled the brick wall. The iron gate that led out to the street was ajar.

There should be a padlock on that gate.

She held herself without moving for a moment, focusing her thoughts.

Maybe the sexton took the padlock off. Anyway, it’s still afternoon; it’s too early for ghosts to be lurking….

She turned back to the desk to check the time. The little Tiffany clock wasn’t there.

Everything else—the pen holder, the letter opener, the stacked correspondence—was exactly in place. Beside the phone, her coffee trembled in its cup.

She crouched down and looked along the carpet. There was no fallen clock—but the closet door had swung partway open.

She felt the first whisper of alarm.

Five minutes ago that closet door was shut.

She had the sensation of falling over a precipice.

Oh, God, someone took the clock; they’re hiding in that closet, watching me right now.

The phone gave two rings. The answering machine clicked on; a dowager voice came on the line. “Bonnie, are you there? My secretary told me you just spoke. It’s Tina—are you there, darling?”

Bonnie seized the phone. “Hello, Tina.”

“Bonnie, darling, where on earth is Whitney? Isn’t he feeling well?” Tina was obviously trying to sound concerned—no easy task for her. “He’s been so strange lately.”

Bonnie’s eyes swung back to the closet. It seemed to exhale darkness.

“I’m sorry, Tina, could you hold on one moment?”

Braver now with Tina on the line, Bonnie laid the receiver down on the desk. She crossed to the closet and yanked the door all the way open.

Nothing moved.

She pushed raincoats aside.

There were no feet hiding among the galoshes and track shoes, no crouching intruder.

Nothing seemed out of place.

She should have felt relief. Instead she felt an inexplicable sense of wrongness.

She returned to the phone. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. If you have questions about Whitney’s state of mind, I’m sure he’d be happy to answer them. I know he’d be touched by your concern.”

“My dear, one doesn’t simply ask a friend—why are you being so idiotic and moody?”

“Why not?” Bonnie turned to the window. She was surprised to see the courtyard gate shut now, the padlock back in place. “It’s more direct than asking me to tattle, isn’t it?”

Tina Vee’s sigh came across the line. “Bonnie, dear, are you feeling all right?”

Bonnie focused her stare beyond the gate. In the shadow of a doorway across the street a figure stood slender, motionless. There was a cockiness in the stance that spelled young, male.

I’m imagining it.

She blinked. The figure was still there.

“I think you’ve picked up some bug from Whitney.”

Bonnie took a deep, shaky breath and blew it out slowly. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Talk to you soon then.”

She couldn’t see the figure’s face, but he seemed to be watching her. He patted the pockets of his jeans. His hand took out a pack of cigarettes and shook one loose. He brought a lighter up to his mouth.

She saw the New York Mets cap, the blond ponytail. Her stomach turned to jelly.

The receiver in her hand was making check-your-extension-there-seems-to-be-a-receiver-off-the-hook sounds. She pressed the cradle and got a dial tone and dialed Vince Cardozo’s number.

Thunder burst outside. A shock passed through the floor. In the street, a car alarm went off.

A voice on the phone said, “Cardozo.”

“It’s Bonnie Ruskay—I’m sorry to bother you.”

“You’re not bothering me.”

She felt flustered. “I think I just saw him—that teenager—he’s standing across the street.”

“What’s he doing?”

“I think he’s watching the rectory.”

“Has the rectory got a burglar alarm?”

“No. Father Joe doesn’t believe the church should hold private property.”

“You mean, he doesn’t believe the church should
keep
its private property.”

She sensed that this police lieutenant knew some things about the world that she did not—and that he was making fun of it and of her.

“It wouldn’t make any difference. I think he’s already broken in.”

“I’ll be right up.”

FORTY-EIGHT

“I
APPRECIATE YOUR ARRANGING
for the alarm.” Bonnie Ruskay had to shout over the sounds of the workmen. “You certainly got them here fast.”

“No trouble,” Cardozo said. “I called in a marker.”

A workman had pushed four straight-backed chairs into the middle of the hallway. The seats were upholstered in the green that’s found on very old dollar bills. The workman was standing on a stepladder, drilling into the paneled ceiling. The electric lights had begun flickering.

Cardozo could see that the wiring in the rectory needed checking. He could also see that now was not the time to mention it. Bonnie Ruskay had an overloaded expression: too much was going wrong at once. “How do you suppose your intruder broke in?”

“He could have gotten in through my office.” Her tone was embarrassed, almost apologetic. “I was letting a parishioner out the front door.”

She led Cardozo to her office.

“That window?” Cardozo said.

She nodded. In her eyes he saw confusion flecked with fear. He felt sad for her. Something good and decent in her life had ended. This rectory had once been a haven where nothing bad could ever happen; now it had turned into a very different place.

Cardozo crossed the study. He took an atomizer from his briefcase. It was designed for perfume, but he had filled it with gray print powder. It had been an April Fool’s gift from Ellie three years ago, but he found it worked as well as a spray gun and was far less bulky.

“Did the kid threaten you?” he said.

“No.”

“Speak to you?”

“No. We were never close enough.”

He passed the beam of a penlight over the window ledge. A small grease stain glimmered faintly. He sprayed the area, then bent to blow off the excess powder.

“Did he take anything?”

“I’m not sure. A clock is missing—that little desk-top model from Tiffany. It’s not valuable, except sentimentally.”

Three concentric ridges of a partial print showed.

“He was standing in a doorway over there.” She pointed, out the window to the row of storefronts across the street.

“You’re sure it’s the same kid who held you up in the cab.” Cardozo fitted a 90-mm lens to his 35-mm camera, focused, and flashed.

“No, not a hundred percent sure. All I could really see was a blond ponytail and a blue baseball cap.”

In a generic way, the description reminded Cardozo of the kid who slashed the limo driver on the West Side docks. Not the kind of person you needed breaking into your office.

He shot four exposures, just to be safe.

His eye went to the iron gates shutting off the courtyard. “Did you remember to change that padlock?”

“I’m sorry…” She gave him an apologetic look, as though she had let him down. “I forgot.”

He wasn’t certain what to make of Reverend Bonnie or her apologetic looks. “I’m not asking you to do me favors. Safety is in your own interest. I don’t mean to frighten you, but…”

Instinct whispered,
Go ahead. Frighten her. It may be the only thing that will wake her up.

“If this is the same kid, he’s stalking you.”

She gave him a look. He could see he had startled her and she was doing her best not to react. It was as though she needed very much to prove she could be a calm, unflustered hostess.