Mortal Sin (36 page)

“Look, I’m only helping out Donovan because Rafferty asked me to, and I owe him a couple of favors. But if you have any intention of going out looking for these two, I’m not about to contribute to your stupidity. The District 7 guys have better things to do than hose your blood off the sidewalk.”

“Trust me, sugar, I’m not that crazy. This is strictly for informational purposes.”

“You get in trouble, don’t come running to me. Gonzales lives with his mother at 5 Bay Street, first-floor apartment. Listen, you tell your buddy Donovan that I don’t care how long and intimate his association is with Rafferty, I’m done feeding him information. My lieutenant catches me at this, I’ll be back in uniform, walking the streets of Chinatown.”

At noon, she left the store in Josie’s capable hands, with a promise to return eventually, and took a taxi to the repair shop to pick up her car. The mechanic assured her that with the alternator replaced, she should have no further troubles. She paid him and drove to McDonald’s, where she picked up a salad and ate it in her car. Then she drove to the health clinic, where she filled out three pages of new patient information and submitted to the indignity of a pelvic exam before the doctor would renew her Depo-Provera shot.

Then she went in search of Jamal.

She found him around the back of her house, working among the arborvitaes, slapping butter-yellow paint onto the clapboards with a huge brush. His painting technique had grown exponentially since he’d started, but he still had a tendency to get more paint on his clothes than he got on the house. “Are you tired of painting yet?” she said.

Those chocolate eyes studied her with suspicion. “Why?” he said. “You got something else for me to do?”

“I’m headed to East Boston to stake out a house. I thought you might like to come along to keep me company.”

His mouth fell open. Heedless of the paintbrush that dribbled yellow droplets all over her shrubbery, he gaped at her.

“You shitting me,” he said. “You mean we going spying? Like that James Bond dude?”

“Not spying, sugar. Surveillance.”

His grin was sudden, wide, and gleeful. “And Father Donovan just happen to be conveniently out of town. He ain’t gonna like it one bit, you being his woman and all.”

“I’m not his woman,” she said. “Will you come with me? I’d feel safer with a man along.” Even if said man was only sixteen years old.

“You kidding?” He set down the paint can and covered it, pulled a rag from his pocket and wiped the spillage from the rim of the can. “You think yours truly gonna miss something this good?” He carried his paintbrush to the outside water faucet and turned it on. While the water ran in a pale yellow puddle around his feet, he said, “Just promise me one thing. I get to be there to watch the fireworks when he find out about it.”

He’d forgotten what it felt like to live in the company of men.

As a parish priest, he worked daily with a variety of people. Old and young, male and female. The faithful and the sinful, the good and the bad. But in this priestly convocation, he was plunged solely into the company of others who shared with him the distinction of possessing a Y chromosome. He’d grown accustomed to it during his days in seminary. As a patriarchal institution, the Catholic Church reserved its hierarchy for the male of the species. For years, he’d taken it for granted. But over the last two days, in this hotel and conference center in a small town on Cape Cod, he’d found himself longing for the companionship, the tenderness, that only a woman could provide. Camaraderie was all well and good, but it seemed so monochromatic. Everything and everybody here was either black or white. Nothing and nobody possessed any of the vivid and brilliant colors that fell between the two extremes.

And he seemed to be the only one who noticed.

After an exhausting four-hour afternoon session, he escaped early and drove to the beach, where he spent an hour walking in solitude. He’d thought this retreat might recharge his batteries, renew his energy and enthusiasm for his chosen vocation. Instead, it had just the opposite effect. He felt distant, separate. A hummingbird in the midst of a flock of crows. He’d thought coming here would ease his doubts, but it had magnified them instead.

The ocean lay calm, shimmering and serene at this time of day. As always, its vastness overwhelmed and humbled him. It reminded him of his bond with God, the slender golden thread that kept him connected to his Creator. Reminded him of the boundless possibilities God had bestowed upon humankind. Each man’s life an open slate, vast as the ocean before him, waiting to be written upon. In genuine perplexity, he considered the strictures of the priesthood which man had bestowed upon himself in the name of God, and wondered how the two could be so far apart.

He pondered the nature of his feelings for Sarah, the inherent lightness and wrongness of them. Did his love for her reflect a purity of soul? Or was it a dark carnality that drove him? He’d told her their relationship wasn’t about sex, but he’d lied. To himself, to her. For the two—the purity and the carnality—were so closely interwoven as to be inseparable. It was impossible to have the one without the other. It had been that way between man and woman since Eden, and would remain that way until the end of time. Heart, soul, and body, all distinct parts of the same whole.

After a soul-wrenching hour of prayer, reflection, and brooding, he drove back to the hotel, showered and changed into street clothes, and met Michael Santangelo for dinner. There in the hotel restaurant, bolstered by a double Glenfid-dich on the rocks, he dumped the whole bloody mess in Michael’s lap.

His friend listened in silence while he poured it all out. When he was done, Michael leaned forward in his chair, propped his chin on his hand, and said, “Need I remind you that I told you so?”

“Not the answer I was seeking, my friend. It’s the one I expected, but not the one I was looking for.” He picked up a dinner roll from the basket in the center of the table and tore it in two. “I don’t suppose you’d care to remind me again about the significance of priestly celibacy?”

“Aside from the fact that it’s supposed to be good for the soul?”

“Hah!” He buttered the roll and ate half of it in a single bite.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Michael said, “but I believe the original concept had something to do with purity. That at certain times of the month, a woman was deemed unclean, and therefore a man who had relations with her, by virtue of that contact, also became unclean. Since it wouldn’t do for an impure priest to be conducting Mass and serving the Eucharist, the concept of priestly celibacy was established.”

“For God’s sake, Michael, don’t tell me you believe all that misogynistic claptrap. Tell me, have you never had a relationship with a woman?”

“I’m committed to my promise of celibacy.”

“Before you were a priest,” he said impatiently. “Have you never been in love? Have you never had a physical relationship with a woman?”

Michael eyed him balefully, then picked up a roll and began buttering it. “Of course. But that was before I was ordained. Before I entered the seminary. Before I got the calling.”

Clancy leaned over the table. “Do you honestly believe that relationship tainted your purity? Do you believe it im-paired your ability to celebrate the Liturgy? Or rendered you unfit to serve the Eucharist?”

“That’s a ridiculous question.”

“It’s an honest question, and I’m looking for an honest answer.”

Michael pointed the butter knife at him. “That was then, my friend, and this is now. I’ve been absolved of my sin. It’s a nonissue.”

“Then I suppose you also don’t believe love can make you a better man? You don’t believe that the love of a good woman can take half a man and make him whole?”

Michael snorted. “Do you want to know what I believe, Father? I believe in God. I believe in the Sacraments. I believe there are things in this universe that we aren’t meant to know. And I believe that you’re a fool if you allow a woman to sway you from the course God intended you to follow.”

“But what if it’s not the course God intended me to follow? What then, Michael?”

“Damn it, Clancy, what you’re doing is wrong!”

“I haven’t done anything except fall in love. Are you telling me there’s something wrong with that?”

Michael picked up his fork and studied him thoughtfully. “Has it occurred to you that God might be testing you?”

“It’s occurred to me. It’s also occurred to me that He might be giving me a second chance at something I thought I’d left behind years ago.”

“You’ll do what you’re determined to do,” Michael said. “I know better than to try to stop you. Just let me go on record as saying that if you give in to temptation with this woman, you’ll be making a terrible mistake.”

“But it’s my mistake to make. Not yours, not Bishop Halloran’s, not the Church’s. Mine. I’m the one who’ll have to live with the consequences.”

Michael studied his face, then sighed. “You’re right,” he said. “Just be sure you’re prepared to face those consequences, because nobody gets a free ride.
Nobody
.” He picked up his knife and fork and cut into his steak. “Right or wrong,” he said, “no matter what you decide, there’ll be consequences.”

“Stakeouts never this boring on TV,” Jamal complained.

They’d spent most of the last five days parked near a hydrant in Maverick Square, where they had a bird’s-eye view of the front door of 5 Bay. So far, the highlight of their outing had been watching an old woman hanging laundry to dry in an alley outside her second-story window. They’d listened to enough noisy car mufflers to last a lifetime, they’d watched a stray dog do his duty on the fire hydrant, and they’d seen two pretty young girls, both with babies in strollers, court further trouble by flirting with a couple of neighborhood punks. What they hadn’t seen was any activity at 5 Bay Street. Nobody had come in, nobody had gone out. All in all, it had been a pretty unproductive stakeout.

Sarah tapped her fingernails against the steering wheel. “Read the newspaper if you’re bored.”

“I already read it twice through. This be Boring with a capital B.”

“Stop whining and remind me once again why you’re not in school.”

“That be part of payback. It being so late in the school year, our mutual friend Father Donovan say it best if I work for him until fall and start fresh in September. Besides—” he stretched his endless legs as far as they could be stretched within the confines of a 1965 Mustang “—if I be in school, then who be here protecting you from the bad guys?”

While she pondered a suitable reply, the front door of number 5 Bay Street opened and a man stepped out. He was of average height, compactly built, with dark hair and a swarthy complexion. Around his neck, he wore a phalanx of gold chains. “Bingo,” she said.

Jamal straightened and peered intently. “That him?”

“Who else could it possibly be? Don’t let him see you looking.”

Jamal ducked back against the seat, and they both watched Luis Gonzales walk briskly down the sidewalk to a black Camaro parked at the curb. He unlocked the car, got in, and started it up. “We following him?” Jamal said.

“Of course we are. Fasten your seat belt.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She turned the key and started the Mustang. Gonzales stopped at the end of the street before pulling out into traffic. Sarah eased away from the curb and pulled into the line of traffic behind him. “I got one question,” Jamal said.

“What?”

“We following this dude. I got that part down. But what we gonna do if we catch him?”

“I’m not trying to catch him. I just want to find out where he’s going.”

“Then I got a even better question. What we gonna do if he catch us?”

“Oh, be quiet,” she said. “Bodyguards aren’t supposed to express their opinions. You’re here for the purpose of protecting me from the bad guys. Remember?”

“I remember. But I be sixteen years old. I ain’t ready to die just yet.”

Gonzales led her on a circuitous route around East Boston that ended at the mouth of the Ted Williams Tunnel. Sarah scrambled to find a few loose bills in her purse. She paid the toll and dropped into place a couple of cars behind the Camaro. They exited the tunnel in South Boston, where she immediately got stuck behind a lumbering cement truck and nearly lost Gonzales in the confusing crisscross of streets.

Ahead of her, Gonzales turned right. Trying to look inconspicuous, Sarah did the same. They were in a commercial section of town, following some sort of truck route that twisted through an inhospitable piece of real estate near the docks. Gonzales maneuvered the tangle of streets without hesitation. He obviously knew where he was going. Sarah looked around, thankful it was daylight. In a place like this, after dark, the rats came out. Both the two-legged and the four-legged varieties.

Four cars ahead of her, the light turned red. A white SUV gunned it and ran the light. Behind the SUV, Gonzales did the same. “Shit!” she said.

When the light turned green, she shot through. But Gonzales and his Camaro had vanished into the maze of empty lots, chain link fence, and deserted warehouses. Kit had said Rio lived in a renovated warehouse. Could that be where Gonzales was headed? She drove around for twenty minutes, hoping she might get lucky and run across either the Camaro or Rio’s BMW. But all she got for her efforts was a leering grin from some off-duty dockworker standing on a corner with his lunchbox, waiting for the walk signal.

“Don’t look so sad,” Jamal said when she dropped him off at the Rafferty house. “We know where he live, we know what kind of car he drive, we know he hang out in bad neighborhoods.”

“All of which leads to a big, fat zero.”

“Sometimes shit happen when you least expect it. Wait and see. After all, tomorrow be another day.”

In spite of her disappointment, she grinned. “The Scarlett O’Hara of Boston,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”

“You bet. I be the one carrying the paintbrush.”

She found Josie in the sci-fi/fantasy section, stocking shelves with new books from a rolling cart that she pulled along behind her. “How’s business been?” Sarah asked.