VC03 - Mortal Grace (46 page)

“The papers never gave his name,” Cardozo said. “He was too young to be named, but not too young to name others.” He explained Eff’s accusations against Father Romero. He explained the D.A.’s cover-up. “Barth’s confessions were supposed to be the end of the story. But there’s been another killing since—Tod Lomax. The Lomax killing throws the other three into question again. The D.A. realizes he’s made a mistake. He needs someone to take the blame for Lomax and if possible for all four. Obviously, it can’t be Father Chuck, and it obviously can’t be Barth.”

There was something fiercely concentrated in the quality of Bonnie’s attention. “And then a housebreaker is accidentally killed in St. Andrew’s rectory, and the district attorney realizes he has just the man for the job—Father Joe. That’s what you’re telling me?”

“The D.A. doesn’t discuss his strategies with me—but something is obviously going on.”

“Does this mean you’re changing your opinion of Joe?”

“Just because a person gets framed doesn’t mean they’re innocent. The rightly accused can get the same short shrift as the wrongly accused.”

She looked at him as though she was trying very hard to get a reading on him. “So you think the D.A. is going at the right man the wrong way.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then I need a hearing aid.”

“I’m saying Father Joe had better be ready to defend himself.”

“Thanks for the advice, but how?”

“If he was in on the original cover-up, now’s the time for him to say so.”

“Joe wasn’t involved in any cover-up.”

“He counseled Barth to confess.”

“Joe sincerely believed Martin Barth was guilty.”

“Barth confessed to three identical killings. How many of those did he admit to Father Joe?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can we find out?”

“We can’t. Confession is privileged.”

“Even if it’s a lie?”

She didn’t say anything.

“If Father Joe can produce records that show discussion of a cover-up, the D.A. won’t risk going against him.”

“No priest keeps records of confessions.”

“This was counseling, not confession. Under state law he’d have to keep records.”

A kind of wariness edged into her eyes, as if she knew exactly what he was going to ask next.

“Can you search Father Joe’s papers?”

“Without his permission? Absolutely not.”

“You can get his permission. You can at least ask him what Barth admitted.”

“I have no right to ask that.”

“Look, we’re both on the same side.”

“Are we? You think Father Joe could have killed those runaways.”

“I’ve never said that.”

“You don’t need to—it’s been clear in every question you asked from the very beginning. But I know Father Joe’s innocent.”

A silence passed.

“I have to ask you something,” he said quietly.

“As long as it’s not to betray someone else.”

“Olga Quigley found a videotape here.”

There was a change in Bonnie’s expression. She looked puzzled and hurt, as if he’d criticized her unjustly. “Olga didn’t find that tape—she broke into my desk and stole it.”

“She says it showed—”

“I know what it showed.”

“Why did you have that tape?”

“A child brought it to us. A child who performed in it.”

Cardozo watched her, motionless in her armchair by the window. One of her earrings caught a wink of light.

“We were trying to get the city to pass a mayoral ordinance against child pornography—we needed proof.” She raised her eyes. There was a melancholy distance to her gaze. “You’re not thinking that Joe had anything to do with—” She broke off.

He felt a darkness between them, and a deep-down unknowability in her.

“I can prove Joe’s innocent,” she said suddenly. “I can even prove it to you. If Barth’s confessions are false, and Eff Huffington knew enough to implicate Father Chuck…then Eff knows who killed those children. Eff can tell us.”

“Unfortunately, Strauss and the D.A. have built a protective wall around Eff.”

“I know how to break through that wall.”

“I wish you’d tell me.”

“Use me for bait.”

“No way.”

She shot him a defiant look. “Eff thinks I’ve cheated him out of what’s rightfully his. He wants the reward money and he’ll risk arrest to get it.”

“I want Eff to get justice, too, but not like that.”

“You’re a fool not to play the cards you’ve been dealt.”

He sat staring at her, wondering about her, not understanding a thing about her. “Then I’m a fool.”

“They told me to knock and walk right in.”

Cardozo looked up. It took him a moment to recognize the dark-eyed man in his doorway as Ben Ruskay from the Fish and the Lamb.

“Hi, Ben.” Cardozo offered the straight-backed chair. “Have a seat.”

Ben sat. “I ran off the list of wafer charges over the last three years. Most of the charges are to churches. Three are to convents.”

He took an envelope from the inside pocket of his gold-buttoned blue blazer. Cardozo had the impression that he had put on his best clothes to come to the precinct. Some people did.

He handed Cardozo the list. Cardozo studied it. Arrows had been inked in beside the names of eleven individuals.

“I’ve cross-checked the other purchasers against the national registry of Catholic priests. Only one name doesn’t match up with the registry.”

Cardozo saw two arrows beside one of the names. “J. C. Wheeler?”

Ben nodded. “The diocese has asked us not to sell Wheeler any more liturgical items.”

“I’ve been to three other church suppliers in the area. Wheeler has made one-time wafer buys at all of them, and their computers have the same memo—
Don’t sell.
What do you know about him?”

Ben took a moment to reflect. Voices and ringing phones floated in from the squad room.

“She’s a zealot,” he said. “And a Catholic-basher.”

“Wheeler’s a she?”

Ben shot a glance that was so world-weary it was almost comic. “She runs an anti-Catholic magazine. She prints some pretty irresponsible things.”

“Such as?”

“She accuses clergy and church personnel of hypocrisy. Immoral behavior. If you talk to her, I’m sure she’ll be glad to give you back issues.”

“I intend to talk to her.”

Ben’s eyebrows went up, dark circumflex accents over his eyes. “One request. Please don’t mention the shop or my name. She’s capable of sending her minions to blow us up.”

FIFTY-EIGHT

“M
S. WHEELER—” CARDOZO BEGAN.

She raised a finger. “Ah-ah. The term
Ms.
is sexist and classist. At
OutMag
we use first names. Mine is Jaycee. Yours is…?”

“Vince.”

“Okay, Vince, now that we’ve got that straight, how can I help you?”

Jaycee Wheeler was sitting cross-legged on an ancient sofa in a fifth-floor loft on West Twenty-second Street.

Cardozo had the rocking chair, and he was doing his best to keep it from rocking. “Are you an ordained priest of any Christian denomination?”

“Fuck it, no.” Her big pale blue eyes, glowing over sculpted cheekbones, seemed to laugh at him. “I sure as hell am not.”

“Did you buy five hundred communion wafers from the Calgary Shop?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you buy five hundred communion wafers from Hofbauer and Swayze?”

Her hand went up to push blond bangs back from a young, unlined forehead. A ring glinted on the fourth finger. It was made out of interlocked flip-tops from aluminum soda cans. “Right again.”

“And five hundred from the Fish and the Lamb?”

“Yes, I did. And I’ve bought wafers from a dozen other church supply houses and I can give you the list if you want.” She uncrossed long legs, stood, gave her blue jeans a shake, and went to a rolltop desk with two hundred paper-stuffed pigeonholes. She began searching through a sheaf of bills.

“Would you mind telling me why you’ve stocked up on communion wafers?”

“Believe me, we’re not stocking up. We use them as fast as we can get our hands on them.”

“How do you use them?”

She tipped an armload of paper into his lap. “Do you know anything about
OutMag
?”

He smiled. “Only that you’re troublemakers.”

“Right. We’re also a gay-interest monthly magazine. We see ourselves as gadflies on the body politic. One of our projects is to shake up the Catholic hierarchy. We’ve found we get the biggest bang for our buck throwing wafers on the cathedral floor during Mass. By the way, contrary to what the diocese tells the press, the wafers are not consecrated.”

Cardozo carefully transferred the lapful of paper to the bare wood floor. “Consecrated or not, why such resentment against the Church?”

“Oh, God, we have seminars on this and I have to give it to you in thirty seconds?”

“Sixty seconds.”

“I resent the Church because it oppresses me. It oppresses you, too, though as a cop you’re probably not aware of it.”

“You look pretty unoppressed to me.”

“Thank you. That’s because there’s never been any choice for me. I’m a dyke. In America, that makes me a gender-deficient Barbie doll. Which means I have to fight for the rights you take for granted.”

“What rights?”

“Come on, Vince. Mobs can roam American cities at will, they can overturn cars and trash stores. They can torch and murder to their hearts’ content. But my people can’t even hold hands, let alone peacefully protest. I’ve been whipped on by the police—treated like a dog—snatched out of a picket line, laid on the street and truncheoned. When I go to the corner deli for milk, I never know whether or not some heterosexist is going to throw a brick at me. Or rape me.”

She struck him as too sassy and far too savvy to buy in to such a limp, standard-bleat victim rap.

“Have you ever been raped?” he said.

Her face went tight around the eyes. “Have you?”

“No.”

“Well, I have been. Three years ago. He raped me because I’m a lesbian and the cardinal says lesbians are unnatural and evil. Raping an unnatural woman doesn’t count as rape because rape is what she deserves.”

“The cardinal never said that.”

“Not in so many words, but his Eminence is creating a climate of violence with that mouth of his. But why should he worry—he whips around the city in a bulletproof car with a police escort.”

Her hands balled into fists. Beneath the loose-hanging denim work shirt, her body had a hardened compactness that suggested she worked out at women’s self-defense classes.

“Do you call that Christianity, Vince? I call it democracy on hold.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“You don’t need to. You’ve got a gun.”

“It’s less help than you’d think.”

“It may not help, but it evens the score. Which is more than the laws of this land do.”

“Was your rapist ever caught?”

“The cops were able to trace him—I ID’d him.”

“Was he sentenced?”

“There was no trial. My lawyer worked out a deal: I agreed never to discuss the rape; the record was expunged. In exchange, my attacker made a large cash contribution to the magazine. Which I hope to hell is still ticking the bastard off.”

“Your attacker is a rich man?”

“It may not have been his money. The Church may have helped him out. They have that hush-money fund for child-molesting priests.”

“Is he a priest?”

“Am I a child? I’ve said too much.”

“Who’s your lawyer?”

“His name is Pierre Strauss.”

Cardozo made a face.

“I like Pierre,” she said. “He goes for that pound of flesh and he gets it. You know what he got the judge to do? Sentence my rapist to eight weeks in a reorientation program for juveniles.”

“So you got revenge on your rapist by-humiliating him. And you want revenge on the Church because you think they sanctioned the rape.”

“Not just the rape. Not just me. They contribute to a public mind-set that no one who disagrees with them has rights. No right to dignity. No right to safety. No right to life. Unless you’re not born yet.” She dropped back onto the sofa. She sighed. “Or are you one of those cops who thinks God is a Catholic and the Church can do no wrong?”

“No comment.”

“Because the Church does plenty of wrongs. Priests preach against consenting gays, and then they molest altar boys. And the Church covers it up. Or didn’t you know?”

“No comment.”

“Maybe you feel the Church is justified. In that case you probably feel the Church has a right to cover up the communion killings too.”

She gave him a quiet, steady look. She had lobbed her bombshell and she was watching him now to see whether she’d scored a hit.

He didn’t speak, didn’t react.

“You’re not going to sit there and pretend you don’t know about the communion killings.”

“I’ve heard rumors. Nothing credible.”

“Believe me, there’s more to it than rumor.” She drew her legs up beneath her. “I’m in touch with a small-time hustler. He works the lower West Side docks—deals dope, pimps the runaways to chicken hawks. He knows pretty much everything that’s going down. He’s heard about a priest who’s cruising the docks. The priest claims to be a vigilante taking action against the Church’s enemies. He’s confessing teenage male and female prostitutes and giving them communion.”

“Why is that vigilante action?”

“The runaways are disappearing.”

On the other side of an unpainted composition-board partition, a phone was ringing. A man’s voice answered.

“What’s the priest’s name?” Cardozo said.

“He calls himself Damien.”

The first association that sprang up in Cardozo’s mind was Jonquil’s friend Damien, the anticondom, prochastity, prostitute-proselytizing priest. The second association was the etching on Bonnie Ruskay’s wall—Father Damien giving communion to the lepers. “Is that his real name?”

“My information’s sketchy. My guess is, he’s a closeted bisexual priest getting his rocks off and using a false name. He’s also high up enough in the Church to get away with this shit.”

A dark-haired young man came into the office with a lightly lumbering step. He handed Jaycee a set of cover proofs. He had a soft cast on his right forearm and hand.