Mortal Sin (13 page)

Leaning back in his chair, his pen tapping idly against the edge of the desk, Father Clancy Donovan was brooding.

He’d come close to driving out to Revere last night, had nearly shown up at Sarah Connelly’s door with a rental video, something light and frothy that would make her laugh. Make her forget, for just a couple of hours, how worried she was about her niece. She probably would have welcomed the company. There’d been something in her voice on the phone. She’d sounded tired and frightened. Frustrated. Above it all, there’d been an aura of loneliness that had driven straight through him.

But he had to remain ever mindful of his position. As a priest, he was forced to take propriety into consideration. Helping the woman track down her niece was one thing. Spending time alone with her, inside her house, late at night, undoubtedly fell somewhere on the wrong side of that narrow line he was expected to walk. No matter how innocent the situation, there were those who would easily misconstrue it. Especially when the woman in question was a three-time divorcee. Especially when she was as attractive as Sarah Connelly.

So he hadn’t gone. Instead, he’d closed himself in his study, cranked Springsteen loud enough to rattle the stained glass windows of the old stone building, and spent two hours working on his homily for Sunday-morning Mass.

Odd, he thought, that this particular woman should raise his yellow caution flag. It had happened before, but usually only if a woman had made advances toward him, or clearly established her availability, just in case he should be interested. He’d never understood why, but he’d been a priest long enough to know there were certain women who viewed the robes and the Roman collar as a challenge.

But Sarah wasn’t like that. She’d come to him out of desperation, and he seriously doubted she’d ever really even looked at him. Not as a man, anyway. It was a blessing, because if she ever had looked at him that way, he would have been obligated to make a swift but graceful retreat. Sarah Connelly was as straightforward as they came, a genuine example of what-you-see-is-what-you-get. If she had designs on a man, any man, she would undoubtedly come right out and say so.

Which left him right back where he’d started. If the problem wasn’t with her, then it had to be with him.

She was a lovely woman, no argument there. There was a lush softness to her, a womanly quality that camouflaged a backbone of steel. He’d have to be dead not to notice. But he knew any number of beautiful women, none of whom had ever set off flashing amber warning lights inside his skull. Take, for instance, Carolyn Rafferty. Caro was a knockout, quite possibly the most beautiful woman he knew. He’d spent countless hours alone with her, had even helped wallpaper her apartment last fall after she’d married Conor. Bedroom, bathroom, the whole nine yards.

Yet never once had the issue of propriety crossed his mind. Caro was simply there, a part of his life since they’d both been toddlers, riding their tricycles up and down the sidewalks of South Boston. He was as comfortable with her as he would have been with his own sister if he’d had one. It was only Sarah who left him keyed-up and jittery, only Sarah whose voice, with its honeyed Southern accent, made the soft hairs on his forearms stand rigidly at attention.

He was pondering this unexpected calamity when the phone on his desk rang. It was Ruth Steinman. “I know you’re a busy man,” she said, “but I thought I’d take a chance you might be free. I have an appointment in a half hour to look over a space on Huntington that sounds ideal for the new center. What I know about plumbing and drywall could fit on the head of a pin and still leave room to go square dancing. I thought maybe you could find time to come with me and offer a man’s perspective.”

He agreed to meet her there, shrugged into his coat, and stopped by Melissa’s desk on his way out. “I’m leaving for a couple of hours,” he said, looping his scarf around his neck. “If anybody calls, I should be back by noon.”

He’d hoped to escape without getting the third degree, but he should have known better. Those keen gray eyes missed nothing. “Gloves,” Melissa said. “Where are your gloves?”

“I can’t imagine. I must have left them somewhere.”

It was only a small lie, but it pained him that the words had slipped so effortlessly from his mouth. “Your hands will freeze,” she protested. “Don’t you want to borrow mine? They’re a little small for you, but they’ll stretch.”

Sometimes, her mothering got to him. This was one of those times. “Thank you,” he said firmly, “but no. My hands are fine. The gloves will show up sooner or later. Besides, in a couple of weeks we’ll be seeing leaves popping out everywhere, and I won’t need them anymore. Even in Massachusetts, winter can’t last forever.”

He left her to reflect on this gem of wisdom and made his escape. Outside, the air smelled like spring, but the wind funneled between buildings with the force of a freight train. He drove across town and parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant near Symphony Hall. A block away, Ruth and the real estate agent, Benjamin Harris, waited on the sidewalk in front of a three-story yellow brick building with a For Lease sign taped to the window.

“Excellent timing, Father,” Ruth said when he joined them. The wind caught the tails of her scarf and sent them flapping about her face, and she batted them away. “We just got here ourselves.”

The building had the square and uninspired appearance common to structures built during the mid-twentieth century. In its original incarnation, it had probably been utilized as office space, but in more recent times it had been converted to some sort of storefront business with two floors of apartments overhead. Cheap plate glass windows with aluminum trim had been installed at street level, destroying whatever character the original structure might have possessed.

Harris opened the door with his key and they stepped inside. The space yawned dark and cavernous, in spite of the bright sunlight making a valiant attempt to filter through the grimy windows. The agent tried the wall switch, but nothing happened. “Power’s off,” he said.

Rubble littered the floor: a stack of cardboard boxes in one corner, an empty Coke bottle, looking forlorn in the middle of all that vacant space, a pair of sunglasses with one bow missing. Hands tucked in his pockets, Clancy crossed the room, his footsteps echoing in the emptiness, and poked his head inside an open office door at the rear. The room was small but cheery, bright sunlight blasting through a high window embedded with chicken wire. A decapitated telephone cord lay coiled on the floor, last year’s phone directory tossed carelessly beside it.

“Weil, Clancy,” Ruth said at his shoulder, “what do you think?”

“The space is certainly adequate. What year was it built?”

“Sometime in the thirties,” Harris said. “Thirty-six, thirty-seven. They built things solid back then.”

“If unimaginative. It’s not cold in here. Single boiler system for the entire building?”

“That’s right. Owner pays the heating costs. Electricity’s up to the tenant.”

“I don’t suppose the wiring’s been updated?”

Harris consulted his clipboard, flipped through a couple of pages. “The owner claims a full update was done in ‘74.”

“How does he feel about renovations? Partitions, additional bathroom or kitchen facilities, that kind of thing?”

“You lease the space, short of burning down the building or manufacturing designer drugs to peddle to kiddies on the playground, what you do with it is up to you.”

Inside his hip pocket, Clancy’s phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said, stepping away to answer it. There was a faint crackling on the line, then silence. “Hello?” he said. “Is anybody there?”

More crackling. Then a few garbled words, “… calling… girl… poster.”

He made a mental note to write a letter of complaint to the FCC about the pathetic state of the cell phone industry. “Hold on,” he said. “I can’t hear you. Let me take the phone outside.”

On the sidewalk, huddled against the wind, he tried again. “Go ahead. I’m still here.”

There was silence at the other end, but he was pretty sure he could hear breathing. “All right,” he said. “How about I wait until you’re ready to talk?” His hands, holding the phone to his ear, were freezing. He hated it when Melissa was right.

“I’m calling about the girl. The one on the poster.”

The voice was young, male, probably black. He hunched over, turned away from the wind. “Do you know where she is?”

“You a cop?”

If he had a nickel for every time he’d heard those words, he’d be on vacation in Tahiti right now, instead of freezing on a downtown street corner. “No,” he said. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know. But I seen her.”

“Where?”

“Park Street T station.”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t want no trouble. Who are you, anyway? Her old man?”

“I’m a friend of the family. We just want to get her back. What’d you say your name is?”

“Jamal.”

“Listen, Jamal, can we talk face-to-face? I’m on Huntington right now, and my car’s just down the block. I’ll meet you anyplace you want. You tell me where.”

“I don’t know, dude. I should stay out of it.”

“This is important, Jamal. You know that, or you wouldn’t have called.”

For an instant, he thought he’d lost the kid. He stood there, shivering, as the seconds ticked away. Then he heard a slow exhalation of breath. “Yeah, okay. Meet me at the corner of Washington and Beach. What kind of car you drive?”

Relief washed through him. “A blue Saturn.”

“A blue Saturn?” Jamal snickered. “My granny drive one of them things.”

“Maybe we can start up a support group. Ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes, Bwana.” And he was left holding a dead phone.

He navigated the narrow streets of Chinatown, squeezing between a double-parked produce truck and a silver BMW Z8. At Harrison, he ran the light, ignoring the angry blare of horns, and zipped past a string of Vietnamese restaurants. The light at Beach and Washington was red. He stopped this time, tapped his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel as he scrutinized his surroundings. On the corner to his right, a scrawny black kid holding some kind of instrument case slouched with deliberate nonchalance against a lamppost. Their eyes met, and the kid strolled in the direction of his car. Clancy popped the lock and Jamal opened the door and peered inside. “Yeah,” he said, “this just like my granny’s.”

Behind them, a horn beeped. Jamal slid into the seat and closed the door, and Clancy stepped on the gas and cleared the intersection. “Where to?” he said.

“Don’t matter. Hey, you some kind of priest or something?”

“Or something. What’s that you’re carrying?”

“Balaphon. From deepest, darkest Africa. Sorta like a xylophone, only made out of wood.” Jamal checked out the interior of the car, found the button for the window, and lowered and raised it three or four times.

Clancy cleared his throat. “So… “

Jamal glanced up. “So?”

He turned left, driving aimlessly. “You’ve seen her. Kit. You’re absolutely certain she was the girl in the picture.”

“Kit, yeah, that her name. She liked to listen to me play.” Jamal thumped oversized knuckles rhythmically against his instrument case. “We used to shoot the shit, there in the train station. But she stopped coming around a few days ago. I didn’t think nothing of it at first. People come and go. Then I seen her picture on that poster, and that’s when I started thinking maybe she went with that dude I see her talking to.”

Clancy’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “What dude?”

“Flashy white dude wears an earring. Don’t know his name, but I seen him around before. Hitting on the girls, talking trash, making ‘em tee-hee and giggle and turn five different shades of red. I see him talking to her one day. Couple days later, she gone. And I ain’t seen him since.”

Jamal reached down and turned on the radio, punched a button. Tom Jones filled the interior of the car, reminding them that it wasn’t unusual. Jamal grinned. “Dude, you about as honky as it gets.”

“Guilty as charged. Back to this guy. What else can you tell me about him?”

“Youngish. Pretty face. About five-ten, five-eleven. Blond hair, look like a surfer dude. He dress real slick. Leather coat, expensive watch. Great teeth.”

“Let me guess. You have a photographic memory.”

Jamal leaned back against the seat and clasped his hands behind his neck. “Nah. Just good at reading people. Like you, for instance. I say boxers. Plain white cotton.”

He leveled a gaze at the kid. “How old are you? And why aren’t you in school?”

Jamal grinned. “Old enough. And school’s for people ain’t got no place better to be.”

He dropped Jamal off on lower Washington Street with a business card in his hand and an extra twenty in his pocket. As he drove back toward familiar territory, Clancy pondered what the boy’s story might be. Jamal was cheeky, quickwitted, and eloquent, despite the occasional side trip into late-twentieth-century Ebonics. Not the kind of kid you’d expect to see walking the streets in the middle of a weekday carrying his balaphon from deepest, darkest Africa. What was keeping him out of school? Poverty? Boredom? Peer pressure?

He knew the depressing statistics, knew the kind of future lying before a kid like that, knew the odds of a young black male like Jamal winding up in a pool of blood on a street corner somewhere in Dorchester. Inexplicable sadness welled up in him at the thought. He shook it off, fought his way back, hardened his heart against his own too-tender emotions. He wasn’t a superhero; he couldn’t save all the lost kids. Nobody could save them all. He could only do what he could do, and right now, he needed to concentrate on one kid he might actually have a chance of saving.

He pulled out his cell phone. Steering one-handed, he dialed police headquarters and asked for Lieutenant Rafferty in Homicide.

“I need to pick somebody’s brain,” he said when he had Conor on the phone.

“Sounds appetizing. Any particular somebody?”

“Somebody from Vice who’ll treat me with the same warmth and compassion I always get from you.”