Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (25 page)

He felt as if his dog collar were choking him suddenly. “That verges on blackmail.”

“Then I guess you have to decide what you are, a fine upstanding citizen of Southie or a priest? Today I’m afraid you don’t have the luxury of being both.”

“Do you hear yourself, Pamela?”

She shook her head angrily, color flooding the hothouse skin. Even now, when he felt appalled and terrified by what she was capable of, he was astonished by her beauty. Beauty of such a price that men had, and were going to, die for it. Suddenly he had an instant’s pity for Love Hagerty. The man had been outmatched from the moment he’d laid eyes on this woman, but had never had the wisdom to understand it. And now he was going to pay with his life.

“Men think they understand love, but they don’t.” Her eyes were fixed on some point beyond him, words uttered with a strange ferocity that only deepened the chill he felt. “Men will die for freedom, they’ll sacrifice their last breath for something that’s only a theory, but they won’t do it for love. Men look at women and see soft creatures, but do you really think anyone who’s been a mother is soft? The first time you hold your child in your arms, you suddenly understand the darkness you’re capable of. Life becomes very black and white. You know you’d kill and do it without a second thought should someone even threaten your child. And sometimes if you’re lucky, you love the father of that child enough to do the same for him.”

“Lucky? You call that lucky?”

“Cursed or blessed, when it comes to love I think you’ll find it’s the same thing.” She sighed. “Why waste your morals on a man who’d kill you for merely crossing him once, even if you never intended to?”

“Pamela, two wrongs don’t make a right, you know that.”

“Save your platitudes for someone who still believes in a system of checks and balances, Father. I don’t care if this is wrong in the eyes of your God or even the world. It’s simple, it’s black and white, either he dies or my husband does. Normally I wouldn’t get a choice in this, perhaps the fact that I do is the hand of your God. After all, He’s a God of vengeance and justice, there’s dozens of Bible verses to back me up on that score.
‘I come not in peace but with a sword’, ‘an eye for an eye’
and all that, does that sound like a God who tolerates fools?”

He looked at her, saw features that had become familiar and knew he was seeing a complete stranger. The realization caused a hurt he’d not expected.

“I never knew you, did I? I wonder if Casey even half knows you.” He laughed, a harsh, choked sound. “It’s a certainty that Hagerty never knew what he was buying himself.”

“Please Father, have the grace to call me a whore instead of implying it. It’s only a name. Did you really think that if I could crawl into his bed to keep him from killing Casey that I’d shirk from finding a way to see him dead, should it come to it? It’s easy compared to what I’ve already done. I told you a man wouldn’t understand it.”

“But Emma would have.”

“Choose your arrows more carefully than that, Father.”

“I’m sorry, that was unnecessary.”

“Don’t apologize. I can hardly blame you for your anger. I as good as killed her.”

“And would again if it saved your husband’s life,” he said, tasting a horrible bitterness on his tongue.

“I won’t apologize for loving him,” she said softly, “but I wouldn’t have wished Emma dead, not ever.”

“Maybe I’m jealous,” he said, more to himself, speaking of the man who seemed inextricable just now from the priest.

“Jealous?” She raised an eyebrow in question.

“To love someone that much, to the point of sacrificing everything right in order to preserve that love.”

She held his look without flinching. “Shouldn’t a priest love his God that much?”

“Pamela,” his voice was gentle, “He’s your God as well, that bears remembering right now.”

“Not today He isn’t,” she responded in a flat voice. “You didn’t answer my question, Father Kevin. Shouldn’t a priest love his God enough to sacrifice all?”

“I suppose he should,” Kevin said, feeling a surge of resentment towards this woman who seemed intent on extracting honesty at any price, “but I don’t happen to.”

“Then I’m sorry for you,” she said softly, “I truly am.”

“And who am I in this? The one who’s left to mop up the blood?” he asked quietly.

She gave him an odd smile. “Isn’t that what priests do? Clean up the messes of humanity. Now please, shake my hand and let me go.”

He looked at the hand and suddenly realized that she needed him to touch her, and by doing so to tell her she wasn’t untouchable. He felt a wave of pity but suppressed it quickly. He took the hand. It was cold but steady.

“Will you—will you,” he stumbled briefly over his words, “tell him I said Godspeed and blessings on the rest of his days?”

She nodded, “I think he’d say the same, in less poetic terms, but with much the same feeling. I think he’d also tell you he’ll miss you terribly. You’ve been a good friend to him, Father Kevin.”

“Have I?” he said, “Perhaps. But not to you, I’ve failed you totally, haven’t I? A friend would have realized a lot earlier that some secrets are too dangerous to be kept.”

“I’m doing what I must, so I can hardly ask less of you.” She took a deep breath, “If you feel you must go to the police about this, will you at least give me enough time to get Casey out of here?”

“I can’t break the seal of the confessional Pamela, you said it yourself—it’s sacrosanct.”

“I won’t hold you to that; you’ll have to do as your conscience dictates.”

“I appreciate that,” he said wryly. Then asked the one question he knew the answer to, but that must attend this ending.

“Where will you take him?”

She smiled wearily, and he could see the cost of the last few minutes written plainly in her eyes.

“To Ireland, of course.”

“You know what that will mean.”

“I do, but he’ll never be whole anywhere else. He’s not a man for a life half lived.”

Father Kevin shook his head, admiring her courage and yet not understanding it in the least. “No, he’s not.” Suddenly he realized he still held her hand and was slowly crushing it in his own.

“You’re wrong, you know.”

“About what?” She tried to pull her hand from his, but he refused to let go.

“When you said men won’t kill for love. He would kill to keep you safe.”

The air between them suddenly seemed charged with ice-cold particles. Her nails dug into the flesh of his palm. He could feel tension singing through the bones that he held in his strong grasp. This time he had chosen his arrow well and could not, at present, find it within himself to regret it.

“How can you be certain?” she asked, body very still as if by not moving she could prevent his answer.

“Because I wasn’t only his priest,” he replied, hearing the past tense in his words with pain, “I was also his friend.” He let her hand go and felt the welling of blood in his own.

He turned from her, eyes alighting on the statue of Christ bleeding for the sins of man. The irony was almost unbearable. Not a God who tolerated fools gladly she had said, not a God of infinite love and understanding but an avenging spirit who had come, not in peace, but wielding a double-edged sword. For such a love would always cut both ways. Was she right? Had he based his entire life’s work upon a fallacy?

Oh my Jesus,
he cried silently,
you bore the weight of the world on your shoulders and I am bowed by the sins of a few, my own included. Is this how gall tastes in a man’s mouth? Do I turn a blind eye to things I cannot prevent?

Unbidden an image came to his mind of the tiny finch Casey had carved for him last Christmas. He had been touched beyond measure by the simple gift, seeing in it the hand of a master craftsman, the hours of patience and love it had represented. And it seemed as if Emma were like that finch, something small, golden, and unable to sing. Broken by a God who knew how to bear too much.

He closed his eyes and turned from the sight of the body of Christ. His words were softly spoken but in the dark air, they carried with the force of a hammer blow.

“He eats at Papa Cuccione’s on Monday nights.”

The slender figure halted in its tracks, but didn’t turn. The one word came back to him quietly.

“Who?”

“Guilio Bassarelli. They close the place down on Monday nights and he eats there alone— relatively—there are always guards with him. But it’s your best chance to see him without being seen yourself.”

“Kevin—”

“Do not thank me,” the words exploded from his throat with the force of sickness, echoing harshly off the vaulted pillars and stone arches. “Because surely to God I’ve just helped you commit murder.” He tore the dog collar from his neck, dragging in a ragged breath.

She paused a moment longer, pale linen form insubstantial as a moth in the gloom. Then she turned and he caught his breath at the sight of her face. For once, he knew, the masks were all down. A ceaseless cataract of tears poured down her face, making her appear terribly young and fragile.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered and then fled down the length of the aisle, past the font and out the heavy doors.

“God have mercy on you,” Father Kevin whispered in reply, and wasn’t certain if he spoke for her or the man he’d believed himself to be only an hour ago.

IT WAS SNOWING WHEN SHE EMERGED from the back door of Papa Cuccione’s. Big creamy flakes that melted the instant they landed on the glistening cobblestones. She took off her pumps and walked barefoot, the wet soaking her stockings before she’d gone ten steps.

It was quiet in the North End, families tucked away behind lace curtains through which soft lights bloomed above her head. The light dusting of snow was already muffling the noise of cars and trucks. She might have been the only person in the streets. It made it difficult to believe that right now there were men—many men—dispatched in cars to the pretty little apartment in Brookline. That within minutes they would pull their dark-colored sedans to the front and back entrances of the building and would alight from their stealth chariots well muffled against the chill, and looking entirely civilized, would draw their sabers against the man who even now waited for her key in the lock, her step in the hallway, the drift of her perfume in the bedroom doorway.

She walked on feeling light and empty, the way one feels at the beginning of a high fever. Her senses were heightened and she could smell bread baking and espresso brewing, and overlaying it all, the smell of snow falling into the Charles River.

She walked for what might have been a long time or no time at all. At one point a cabbie pulled up and asked if she was lost.

“No,” she said, “I was, but I’m not anymore.” He gave her a look that told her he clearly thought she was crazy and pulled off into the night, red lights a blur in the thickly falling snow.

Without realizing where she was walking she’d ended up behind the weathered spire of the Old North Church, beneath the upraised knees of Paul Revere’s trusty steed. The square was empty, dimly lit by mock gas lamps and the odd luminescence of a snowy night.

The trees soared above her into the snow-burdened sky, flakes whorling down between bare, wet branches.

She stood, snow feathering in her lashes and hair, soaking through the wool of her coat and tilted her head back tasting the fresh flakes on lips and tongue. Above her, a soot-smeared Paul Revere cried his eternal warning. Had he understood that freedom always has a price attached? Would he have appreciated the coin she had just paid in?

It was so still that she thought she might have heard the hiss of a passing feather, or maybe in the distance, where the Charles began to narrow in its snaking path, maybe—if you listened very carefully—you might hear the rattle of drawn sabers, you might feel the anticipation of a lover, you might smell the ghost of lime-scented aftershave, or the hotter copperpenny tang of blood. You might know the breathless slice when betrayal was understood. You might taste the last breath of a man who had loved you, despite the tragic mistake of it. You might see very clearly that there were some things that were bought so dear, you would never finish paying for them.

In her pocket she could feel the smooth glowing surfaces of the emeralds Love had put around her neck six months ago. The clasp had broken when she tossed them on the table in front of old man Bassarelli. It was all she had of worth with which to barter.

The man, gray eyes narrow, had inspected the stones, declared them beautiful and told her he didn’t take bribes from women. Then he had thanked her for the information she’d given him, asked her if she was certain she wouldn’t take a ride home. After all it wasn’t pleasant weather, perhaps a glass of the house red—he recommended it himself—to warm her blood before going out into the night? It had all been formality, for she could see that he no longer saw her in front of him, his mind had already moved to the red brick building in Brookline to the man she had promised would be waiting. He was impatient to get on with the task at hand. So she had excused herself and taken her leave.

So civilized and that, perhaps, had been the hardest part.