VC03 - Mortal Grace (47 page)

“See if the printer can bleed the yellow.” Jaycee handed the proofs back. “Vince, meet the other half of
OutMag
, Scott Rivera. Scott, meet Vince Cardozo. Vince is with the police.”

“I heard. I was in the other room.” Scott sat on the window ledge. He took out a patterned blue handkerchief and polished his rimless spectacles.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” Jaycee said.

“I’m doing it.”

“How did you hurt yourself?” Cardozo said.

Scott’s dark eyes came around coolly. “I didn’t hurt myself. Some guys from New Jersey did it for me.”

“Scott got bashed,” Jaycee said.

“Sorry to hear that.”

Scott put his glasses back on. “So tell me, Vince, are you part of the Damien cover-up?”

“You’re a real son of a bishop of Kerry,” Jaycee said. “You know that? Damien is my story. I’ve done the leg-work, I’ve done the spadework. Vince came to me, not you. If he has information, it’s mine.”

Scott looked again at Cardozo. “Do you have information, Vince?”

“Wish I did. Do you?”

“Jaycee does.”

“You bastard.”

“It’s coming out in the next issue.”

“Fuck you,” Jaycee said.

Cardozo had the impression that these two were suffering a severe case of cabin fever. Either that or a dangerously high overdose of one another. He hoped the magazine was worth it.

“What’s your information?” he said.

Jaycee snapped a pencil in two. “There isn’t any. My contact hasn’t been able to set up a meeting.”

“With Damien?” Cardozo said.

She nodded.

“Watch out. Damien sounds dangerous.”

“No one said he’s a lamb,” Jaycee said. “He’s killing kids, after all.”

“How do you know?”

“She doesn’t know,” Scott said. “Damien claims the sacraments save these teenagers and that’s the reason they vanish from the streets.”

“Don’t give me that,” Jaycee said. “He’s killing them.”

“All we need is the proof. Vince, you got any proof? Care to help us win our first Pulitzer?”

“If I were you two,” Cardozo said, “I’d be very careful.”

“
OutMag
doesn’t scare,” Jaycee said.

“In fact,” Scott said, “if you’d like to catch
OutMag
do a profile in courage, come to St. Pat’s this Sunday.”

“Scott, you dumb shithead!”

“Take it easy,” Scott said. “Vince isn’t going to tell—are you, Vince?”

Cardozo shook his head. “Why should I? It’s not my department.”
Besides
, he thought,
the cops probably already know.

FIFTY-NINE

B
ARRY IGNATIUS CARDINAL FITZWILLIAM
climbed the eight winding steps to the pulpit. Silence fell, like the hush before a curtain rises in the theater. The pews of the cathedral were a sea of expectant faces.

He unfolded the notes for his sermon and laid them on the lectern. They were a blur. He reached beneath his chasuble and alb. He took his bifocal glasses from the pocket of his cassock and fitted them to his nose. The sheet of neat, tiny handwriting leapt into focus.

Today, taking a text from II Corinthians as his jumping-off point, the cardinal preached on “our duty and our privilege, as Catholics, to avail ourselves of the supernatural and healing power of the sacraments.”

He raised his eyes to his congregation. The distance prescription of his lenses was off. Faces and clothing lost their boundaries and softly overflowed into one another.

“It is our duty, also, to promote the public morality of our entire civil society on the basis of fundamental moral values. Above all, we must support the government in its efforts to promote the traditional family.”

Somewhere in the rear vaulted space of the cathedral, there was a stir, a surge of sound. The pews seemed to tremble in glassy ripples.

The cardinal nudged his spectacles low enough to peek over the rims. A disturbance was sweeping the congregation. Heads whipped around.

“We must not be afraid to speak out against those who oppose traditional family values.” The cardinal leaned nearer to the microphone, enunciating sharply. “We must support legislation curbing the activities of those who would defy God’s ordained social order.”

Murmurs and cries swelled. Brightly colored sails dotted the sea. The cardinal pushed his glasses still lower.

Protesters in the pews had silently raised placards. The messages flew at him:

STOP CHURCH HOMOPHOBIA.

DON’T JUST PREACH LOVE—PRACTICE IT.

CATHOLIC MEANS UNIVERSAL. OPEN THE CHURCH TO WOMEN AND MINORITIES OR CHANGE THE LABEL.

The lettering on one placard assaulted him like a fist in the eye:

CATHOLIC CHURCH—STOP HUSHING UP THE COMMUNION KILLINGS!

The protesters began tossing wafers into the air. Forty plainclothes cops rushed down the aisles to arrest them.

The cardinal covered the mike with his hand. He leaned to shout to an assistant: “That young woman with the communion killer placard…Tell the police I want to speak to her.”

In the vesting room, a priest lifted the miter from the cardinal’s head.

The cardinal shuddered. “Terrible scene out there. The worst yet.”

“Yes, your Eminence.” The priest helped the cardinal out of his chasuble. “You’re very tense, your Eminence.”

A knot had formed in the cardinal’s shoulders and he couldn’t shrug it loose. His hands trembled as he undid his cincture.

The priest lifted off the alb. “Very tense, your Eminence.”

A knock sounded at the door. The priest’s eyes asked the cardinal’s permission.

The cardinal nodded. He practiced his face. He was about to need it.

The priest opened the door. Two plainclothes cops pushed a young woman into the room. Her hands were cuffed in front of her. The cardinal looked at her, and his stomach became a sick wad of pain. Her hair was cut spiky, like a boy’s, and she wore jeans and work boots.

“Young lady,” he said, “I couldn’t help but notice your placard.”

“I’m glad I accomplished something.” She had an educated voice, but defiance crackled off her like electricity.

“Where did you get your information on the so-called communion killer?”

“As a reporter, I’m protected by the First Amendment. I’m not going to reveal my sources.”

“You could be of great service to the people of this city and instead you’re making a grave mistake.”

“Making mistakes is a civil right in a democracy.”

“But not a moral right.”

“Your Eminence, I was raped by one of your followers.”

“I have no followers.”

“Then you haven’t looked in your rearview mirror lately. He raped me because I’m a lesbian.”

A shiver went to the roots of the cardinal’s hair. The incredible thought came to him that this person was of the same sex as Our Blessed Savior’s mother.

“He believed the experience would set me straight.” Her lips pulled back in a rictus of hate. “He didn’t use a rubber, because you say condoms are immoral. Which is how I was exposed to the AIDS virus. Which is why I’m HIV-positive. Thank you for sharing your morals with the people of this city, your Eminence.”

“My child, I understand your bitterness, but I pray to God you won’t let it harden your heart.”

A scream came out of her. “Then don’t send your minions out to maul my people!”

One of the plainclothesmen seized her by the collar of her sweatshirt. “Show a little respect there.”

“Let her go.” The cardinal sighed.

“She’ll go all right,” the plainclothesman said. “Straight to women’s detention.”

She whirled on him. Her face was a mask of unbelievable malice. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll enjoy myself there a little too much?”

The cardinal turned away in shock and sorrow.

From his office, he phoned the district attorney. “Bill, word has gotten out—there were placards about the communion killer this morning in church.”

“Those are just rumors spread by that nutty
OutMag
outfit.” Bill Kodahl’s voice, as always, brimmed with a kind of watch-out-world-get-off-my-runway confidence. “Those people are bluffing; they don’t know a thing.”

“He says Martin Barth confessed to three killings. Not just the girl in Vanderbilt Garden. Two others—very much the same. Runaways packed in reinforced baskets.”

Bonnie was sitting in a chair drawn close to the hospital bed. She brought her eyes around to Father Joe.

“He asked if you knew.”

It took her a moment to realize that Joe wasn’t going to answer. She felt a darkness in her stomach.

“He says Martin Barth’s confessions were phony—a trick to close the cases. He wonders if you knew.”

Father Joe stared at her. The eyes seemed to see her, to judge her even, yet she knew they saw nothing beyond the raw contrast of light and dark.

“There’s been a fourth dead runaway. He says they can’t blame Barth this time. He says you may be charged with the killings.”

“All of them?”

“That’s what he says.”

“Really.” Father Joe seemed quietly amazed, but not the least troubled. It was as if he’d been awarded an unimportant honor.

“He asked if you kept any records of your discussions with Martin Barth.”

Father Joe pushed a button to crank himself higher in the hospital bed. Gears hummed softly. “Why does he want to know?”

“Barth’s confessions have been lost. He says they’ve been lost on purpose.”

She glanced toward the half-open door. A nurse passed in the corridor. She lowered her voice.

“But if you have records, and they show there was an attempt to redirect blame, the D.A. won’t dare prosecute you. At least that’s what Cardozo thinks.”

She couldn’t be sure how much Father Joe had understood of what she’d been telling him. He seemed lethargic, sedated.

Father Joe reached for her hand. “And what do you make of all this?”

On the other side of the window with its spotless view of the East River, a tugboat hooted.

“I’m not sure.”

“Poor, dear Bonnie. It’s a lot for you to face alone. Are you holding up?”

She didn’t believe in lying, and not lying required a kind of wary compromise with the truth.

“I’m fine.” She smiled, as though a smile would be proof.

Damn it
, she thought,
why am I smiling
?
Why am I even pretending to smile? He can’t see me.

“You don’t have to smile,” he said. “Not for me.”

“Joe.” She turned. “Are you starting to see again?”

“I know when you’re smiling.” He patted her hand. “And I know when you’re not. You’re very, very tense. I can feel it in your fingers.”

Hospital noises flowing from the rest of the floor seemed suddenly quieter.

“Would you do me a favor?” she said. “Just hold me for a minute?”

He pulled her toward him, put his arms lightly around her.

SIXTY

I
NTERESTING THING ABOUT THE
photos of the dead kids,” Lou Stein said. “There’s a light leak.”

At the far end of the darkened room, Wally Wills smiled out of the screen. Cardozo hunkered forward in his chair. Squinting, he could see an odd, faint gap in the coloration of the wall behind the boy.

“You can see it with a magnifying glass, but it’s really obvious in enlargement.”

There was a click as Lou pressed the control. The carousel projector rotated to the next slide. The upper right quadrant of the Wills photo, softened by enlargement, now filled the screen: Wills’s brush-cut brown hair, his squinting right eye, a corner of his ear.

A lightning zigzag of pure white snaked down from the upper right-hand corner, crossed the wall, and touched his ear.

Another click, and Wanda Gilmartin popped up on the screen.

Click again. Enlargement of the upper right quadrant. Same lightning, sparking through the wall behind her.

“Hairline fracture in the lens casing.”

Lou continued through the photos of Cespedes, Lomax, and Vegas. Always the same zigzag in the upper right.

“Now, the interesting point about the other photos in Father Joe’s box is, they don’t have the light leak.”

Click. Harlequin and Columbine tap-dancing with top hats balanced on cane tips.

Another click. Enlargement. No zigzag.

Click again. Harlequin lindy-tossing Columbine over his shoulder.

And again. No zigzag.

“The dead kids weren’t photographed with the same camera as the tap dancers. It’s the same model Minolta, but it hasn’t got the lens fracture. Since there’s no reason a photographer would have duplicate low-tech Minoltas, two different cameras probably means two different photographers. Now I’ll show you another interesting point about the runaway photos. There are scratches on all of them except for Pablo’s.”

Lou flashed the runaway series again. Cardozo could see marks on Vegas and Wills that might have been faint indentations in the glossy surface of the print.

“The scratches are hard to discern, but some of them show benzene-derivative traces—like you’d get if a sheet of paper was placed over the photo and someone wrote in ballpoint on the paper. I tested two working hypotheses. One: each of the four scratched photos was put into an envelope. The envelope was then addressed to be sent through the mail. Since there are no scratches on the Cespedes photo, that one probably wasn’t mailed. The benzene in ballpoint dye penetrates paper—but it’s colorless, so it doesn’t bother people who use ballpoints. However, provided there’s a sufficient density, the derivative shows up green under ultraviolet.”

Lou projected another series, the same photographs reshot under ultraviolet radiation. Now the runaways glowed with spearmint-colored hen tracks.

“The pattern appears to be random, and it’s different on each face. So here comes working hypothesis number two: all four photos were sent to the same addressee. In that case, at least some of the scratches should reinforce one another.”

The next series showed successive superimpositions of the four photographs, again under ultraviolet. Lou had rotated the photos with respect to one another, producing a maelstrom of detailed confusion.