Mortal Sin (10 page)

She was right. An offer like hers didn’t come along every day, and he found the idea of working with kids immensely appealing. But leave the priesthood? Inconceivable. The Church was his life, his family, his identity. Despite his patient and frequent reminders to that effect, Ruth persisted in looking at him as little more than a glorified social worker.

“Ruth,” he said, “it’s an extraordinary offer. I’m flattered to know you think so highly of me.”

“But? I hear a but in there, don’t I?”

“But. Although I’m frequently frustrated with the hardheaded Church bureaucracy, I don’t really believe the grass would be any greener on the other side. Government funding also means government regulations. We all have to answer to somebody. I’d just end up answering to Uncle Sam instead of the Vatican. Plus—”

“Pffft.”

“—plus,” he continued, “the priesthood isn’t the kind of thing you just walk away from. We’ve had this discussion before. It’s a lifetime commitment. A higher calling. I’m serving God. Keeping watch over his flock.” He smiled to soften his words. “Or at least a small portion thereof.”

“I don’t understand why a man like you would choose to stay. We won’t even get into the celibacy issue.” She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “I’ve never understood that one. But I’d think you’d be disillusioned by all the hoopla that’s gone on lately. Pedophile priests coming out of the woodwork. The Church admitting it spent years shuffling them from parish to parish. Doesn’t it bother you to be associated with that?”

He took a sip of bourbon. “For every two of them, there are a hundred like me. You just don’t hear about us because we’re too boring to make good copy for the evening news.” Setting down his glass, he said with genuine affection, “How many years have you been trying to steal me away from the Church?”

“As long as I’ve known you. And I don’t intend to stop trying until you say yes.”

“I’d be happy to help you get the program up and running. I’ll serve on the board, I’ll volunteer as much time as I can possibly give you. I’m spread thin right now, but for a friend like you, I can spread a little thinner.”

“You’re a good man, Clancy Donovan. I suppose you realize you’ve taken the wind right out of my sails. Nobody else could do with this program what you could.”

He patted the back of her bony hand. “You’ll find someone.”

“I don’t want someone,” she said petulantly. “I want you.”

He walked her back to the lot where she’d left her Buick Park Avenue and made sure she was safely on her way before he turned back in the direction of Downtown Crossing, intending to catch the red line back to Southie. Instead, he changed his mind and took a leisurely detour through the theater district and down LaGrange Street into the heart of the Combat Zone.

There wasn’t much left of the Zone. There’d been a time, not so many years ago, when walking here alone at night had been an open invitation for a mugging. But as the expansion of Chinatown and the opposition of neighborhood residents had forced most of lower Washington Street’s sex trade out to the suburbs, the area had lost its sharp teeth.

There were a few holdouts: Liberty Books sat brazenly in the shadow of the historic Liberty Tree building, currently home to the city’s Motor Vehicle Registry. The Erotic En-ertainment Center was squeezed in between a Malaysian resaurant and an Oriental gift shop. The Glass Slipper and the Golden Pussycat, for years the only strip clubs left on LaGrange Street, had recently acquired a controversial new neighbor amid a clamor of disapproval. Prostitution and drugs were still a problem, although less noticeable than in years past. He’d heard talk of Chinese gangs, but the Chinese were an oddly insular people. They warred with each other, but pretty much left everybody else alone.

Nowadays, the odds of being mugged here were about the same as on any street corner in downtown Boston. He’d never been afraid of the streets anyway, no matter how late the hour. After all, he had God on his side. And he considered the disenfranchised—the homeless, the working girls, the teenage runaways—as much a part of his flock as any pious congregant who knelt in the pews at Saint Bart’s on Sunday morning.

It was barely ten o’clock, a little early for the working girls to be out, but the street people were here if you knew where to look. He walked down Beach Street, with its neon-blazoned restaurants, past the Chinatown arch and through a maze of dark, narrow streets. Here and there, the homeless huddled in doorways or slept in alleys. Ragged and dirty, some sought warmth from tattered blankets, others from bottles held close against bony chests. On a night as cold as this, none of them should be on the street. But the homeless shelters could take only so many, and some of the old-timers, wary of the city’s largesse, refused to seek sanctuary. Charity too often came with a price tag attached.

There was no telling where the man he sought might be. Or, for that matter, whether he would even be here. Willie Slattery might currently be a guest of the county, or of the state mental hospital. It wouldn’t be his first time in either place. For all he knew, Willie could be dead by now. The man had to be in his sixties, and life on the streets wasn’t conducive to longevity.

But he should have remembered what a tough old bird Willie was. He found the old man hunched in the entryway to a travel agency, wearing a ratty and aromatic raccoon coat he’d probably filched from somebody’s trash.

“As I live and breathe,” Willie said, his rheumy eyes reflecting the light from the overhead streetlamp. “How’s it going, padre?”

“Hello, Willie. How’ve you been?”

“Can’t complain too much. Rheumatism’s acting up a tad. This cold weather don’t do nothing good for my hands.”

“I haven’t seen you around for a while.”

Sheepishly, Willie said, “I been inside. Just got out last week.” He shrugged. “It ain’t all that bad. At least you get clean clothes and three squares a day. Hot showers. And a bed that’s indoors, out of the cold.”

Clancy took the old man’s gnarled hand in his. Even through his leather gloves, he could feel Willie’s bone-deep cold. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

The old man shook his head. “I’m getting by, Father. Seems like the good Lord ain’t ready for me yet.”

“He’s not done perfecting you, Willie.”

Willie nodded keenly. “I guess you’re right about that.”

“There is something you can do for me,” Clancy said. “I’m on a fishing expedition. I’m looking for a girl.”

Willie’s grin revealed a big gap where his front teeth should have been. “Looks like you’re in the right place, then. There’s plenty of girls to be found around here.” He chuckled at his own joke.

“You’re probably right. But I’m looking for a specific girl. She’s sixteen years old, and her name’s Kit. I’m trying to find her before she gets into trouble.”

Willie’s expression sobered. “She one of your girls, Father?”

“No. As far as I know, she’s not working the streets yet, and I’d like to keep it that way. She’s a runaway. Listen, Willie, I know there’s not much happening out here that you don’t see or hear about. Will you keep your eyes and ears open for me? I have a picture of her—” He paused, patted his pockets, finally located a flyer in the breast pocket of his suit coat. He handed it to the old man. “My cell phone number’s on there. If you hear anything, anything at all, give me a call.”

“Will do, Father.”

He paused for an instant, then gave in to the inevitable and pulled off his leather gloves and handed them to the old man. He’d paid fifty dollars for them, a small fortune for a man on a priest’s salary, and he’d probably kick himself later. Altruism wasn’t always everything it was cracked up to be. But Willie Slattery was an old man, and priorities were priorities.

“Here,” he said. “Take these. They’re fur-lined. They’ll help with your rheumatism.”

Willie didn’t even offer a pretense of argument. He snatched the gloves and tugged them on, then held up his hands to marvel at his good fortune. “These are great,” he said, turning his hands from side to side to admire them from all angles. “You even warmed ‘em up for me ahead of time.”

“Next time I come by,” Clancy said sternly, “you’d better be wearing them. If I find out you sold them—”

“Oh, no,” Willie protested. “I’d never do that, Father.”

“If I find out you sold them—” he said again, then gave up, knowing any threat he made would be empty. By tomorrow night, somebody else would probably be wearing his fifty-dollar gloves while Willie sucked on a bottle of Old Duke. It was the way of the world. But for tonight at least, Willie Slattery’s arthritic hands would be protected from the cold.

Some days, all Kit did was walk the streets. She walked until her feet were on fire and her fingers and the tip of her nose were numb from the cold. She was almost out of money, so she only ate once a day to stretch her meager funds as far as possible. She spent a lot of time in Cambridge, hanging around the Harvard campus, trying to blend in with the students, pretending she lived here, in an ivy-covered brick dorm, studying economics or engineering or law, and meeting her friends after class for coffee and sticky buns at
Au Bon Pain
across the street.

She spent her nights sleeping in a shadowy corner of the Harvard Square T station, her head propped on her backpack and her coat wrapped around her like a blanket. The floor was hard and damp, and when the trains stopped running for the night, she could hear the scurrying of small animals on the tracks. But it was preferable to the very real possibility of freezing to death. Or it was until the morning when fate intervened in the form of a man who worked the drink stand near the escalator. Bent on taking a furtive leak before he opened for the day, he ducked into the corner where she was sleeping and nearly fell over her in the darkness.

She awoke to a pair of smelly boots parked a half-inch from her nose. The stranger grabbed her by the elbow, yanked her roughly to her feet, and dragged her out into the light.

“Well, well,” he said as a lascivious smile played about his mouth. “Look what I just caught.”

The guy had to be forty at a bare minimum, and the way he was looking at her gave her the heebie-jeebies. She jerked her arm away from him in disgust and said, “Leave me alone, creep. I was just sleeping.”

He beetled thick, black brows. “Well, you can’t sleep here, girlie. After hours, it’s called trespassing.”

“Yeah? Well, bite me!”

He turned to whistle for MBTA Security, and she snatched up her coat and backpack and bolted for the stairs. “Hey!” he yelled. “Get back here!”

But she didn’t waste any time. She took the escalator two stairs at a time and burst out into the early morning dimness of Harvard Square. Behind her, the footsteps of the MBTA cop echoed like gunshots. Kit never paused, just kept running, block after block, until her screaming lungs finally forced her to stop for breath. She slumped against a light pole and sucked in oxygen until her heartbeat slowed. The cop had long since given up on her, but it had been a close call. From now on, she’d have to be more careful.

She’d run all the way to the Charles River. Cambridge was just beginning to come to life, and across the river, the tips of Boston’s skyscrapers were afire with sunrise. Behind her, a sanitation truck lumbered along the curb, trolling for last night’s refuse. A
Boston Globe
truck, green with gold lettering, passed by, tires scrunching on the icy street. Walking briskly because of the cold, she passed MIT, crossed Memorial Drive, and took the Harvard Bridge back to Boston.