Mortal Sin (7 page)

“So what’s the problem?”

“There is no problem. It just would have been nice to be forewarned that the man is charming and erudite and way too easy on the eyes for a man of the cloth. Not to mention he has the subtlety of a steamroller and the edge of a freshly honed razor blade. I’ve never seen anybody ooze that much energy. Just being around him is exhausting. My head’s still spinning.”

“While we’re on the subject of charming and attractive men,” Josie said, “you missed a distinguished visitor. State Senator Thomas Adams IV stopped by to pay us a visit.”

“I’ve never heard of him. Is he somebody important?”

From his perch on the floor, Steve said, “Don’t you ever watch TV?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“His face has been splashed all over it for months. Claims he can trace his family tree all the way back to
the
Adams family.”

Sarah raised both eyebrows. “Morticia and Gomez?”

Steve grinned. “John and Samuel. Heroes of the American Revolution. I suppose you’ve never heard of them, either?”

“Are you kidding? I’m from the Southland. The only heroes they taught us about were Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Everybody else was a filthy Yankee. So what was the esteemed Mr. Adams doing in our humble establishment?”

“He’s running for the U.S. Senate,” Steve said. “He’s out shaking hands and kissing babies and flashing his pearly whites at little old ladies. The man’s terrifying. He’s conservative enough to make Rush Limbaugh look like Dennis Rodman.”

“Oh, come on,” Josie said. “I like him. He’s polite, he’s clean-cut, he’s good-looking. He has a bit of a Kennedyesque aura to him.”

“He’s a politician,” Steve said. “They all have a Kennedyesque aura while they’re on the campaign trail. It isn’t until after they get elected that the forked tail and the little red horns start to grow. I’ve seen his type before. Good family man, pillar of the community. Wants to bring strong family values back into our lives. He’ll probably get elected. Who among us is against family values? The minute he gets to Washington, he’ll start lobbying for censorship, the overthrow of Roe versus Wade, and the return of women to the kitchen. It’ll be 1950 all over again.”

In spite of herself, Sarah grinned. “Are you telling me you’re an enlightened man who doesn’t believe women belong in the kitchen?”

Steve pulled another stack of Pepto-Bismol pink books from the box at his side and stacked them on the floor. “Are you kidding? I’m all for women’s rights. I can’t wait to play Mister Mom while my wife goes out to slay the dragons of corporate America.”

Sarah glanced at Josie, who raised a single elegant eyebrow. Leaning to pat Steve on the shoulder, she said, “Good luck finding her, son.”

The North Shore wasn’t his home territory, but Clancy had visited Revere often enough to be familiar with the working-class town that hugged the shore just north of Logan International Airport. Josie lived nearby. He’d been to her house numerous times over the years, for backyard barbecues and family get-togethers. When she was still married to Ed Porter, he’d been a regular at Ed’s Saturday-night poker parties, until the stakes had climbed too high for a man living on a priest’s subsistence salary, and he’d dropped out of the game for good.

He turned right at the liquor store, his stereo speakers thumping to a driving rock rhythm as he drove past a neighborhood convenience store that was closed for the night, past the darkened K of C hall, past a storefront funeral parlor that looked more like a restaurant than a place you’d take Aunt Greta or Uncle Giovanni to be dispatched to eternal rest. A block short of the garishly lit biker bar that was a local landmark, he hung another right, following Sarah Connelly’s directions with unerring instinct. As a creature of the night, he was accustomed to navigating unfamiliar streets after dark. He found Chestnut Street easily and took a sharp left onto the short dead-end street lined with modest single-family dwellings.

Her house was the last one on the right. The swaybacked single-car garage snugged up close against a chain link fence that separated her property from the tracks where the blue line train ran day and night. He pulled into the driveway, headlights illuminating the Depression-era bungalow painted an alarming, eye-popping blue. He sat for a moment drinking it in, then turned off the ignition and opened his door, spilling vintage Springsteen into the crisp winter darkness.

The wind had died with the sunset, and the night was clear and cold. Stars swirled in a milky trail across the sky. He waded through drifted snow to the front door, illuminated by a single weak lightbulb. The porch steps were spongy, the framework sagging.

He rang the bell and waited. Light streamed from a window onto the plywood flooring, and he fingered a strip of curling blue paint that had peeled from the door frame. Hands in his coat pockets, he leaned back to study the house, admiring its old-fashioned lines and angles, the wide roof overhang that punctuated the upstairs windows. The place was a wreck, but it had potential, a charm and character missing from most new architecture. It wouldn’t take much to restore the house to its former glory. A little paint, a little lumber—

“You think it looks bad now, you should see it in the daylight.”

He fell back to earth with a thud. Sarah Connelly stood in the doorway, soft brown waves spilling over her shoulders as she leaned against the frame. There was something refreshing, something immensely appealing about this woman who was three times divorced but definitely not a floozy. He bit back a smile and cleared his throat. “Actually, I wasn’t thinking that at all. I was admiring it.”

“I thought you said priests weren’t allowed to lie.” In the dim illumination from the overhead light, her eyes were a vivid blue, and right now they sparkled with mischief.

“I’m not lying. This house has marvelous lines. Lovely bone structure. It just needs the right cosmetics to enhance those bones. Right now, it’s just a little… ” He trailed off, looked up at the roofline as words eluded him.

“Blue?” she suggested.

“Tired,” he said. “A coat of paint would take care of most of your problems. A little lumber would fix the rest.”

“That’s what I keep telling Kit, every time she complains. It belonged to my Aunt Helen. The black sheep of the family. She was a political radical who taught English lit at Harvard. After her last stroke, she couldn’t do the upkeep on the place, so she let it go to hell. It doesn’t take long for neglect to do ugly things to a house. When she died, she left it to me.”

“Well. I’m not sure whether to offer you congratulations or condolences.”

When she smiled, a single deep dimple appeared in her left cheek. “Just keep remembering those great lines. I fixed us a thermos of coffee. Let me get my coat.”

He followed her through the snow to his car, held the door for her. As she climbed into the passenger seat, he caught a faint whiff of something—shampoo, perhaps, or perfumesweet and wispy and feminine. Sometimes Carolyn Rafferty, his friend Conor’s wife, smelled that way, like spun sugar, some sweet confection you’d find in a gift box wrapped with a red velvet ribbon. It had been over a decade since he’d buried his face in a woman’s hair just to drink in her honeyed scent. Meg had been the last. Circumstances no longer allowed him to think of women in that way. But he hadn’t forgotten.

He realigned his thoughts as he climbed into the car and popped out the Springsteen CD, replacing it with something less raucous, one of Dave Grusin’s mellow jazz albums. Sarah picked up the stack of flyers he’d left on the passenger seat and studied the top sheet.

“Melissa did a good job with them,” he said.

She glanced up, and her blue eyes softened. “I’m so sorry, Father,” she said. “Dragging you out this late at night. It’s not right for me to disrupt your life this way.”

He backed out of her driveway and shifted the car into gear. “It’s all right. I don’t have much of a life, anyway.”

As he drove down the darkened street, he was aware of her lengthy appraisal. “You look different in your civvies,” she said. “Less… “

She trailed off, and he glanced down at the burgundy cable-knit sweater and jeans he’d worn instead of basic black. “Less what?”

“I don’t know. Austere.”

Austere
. That was the last word he would have used to describe himself. Father O’Rourke had been austere. Bishop Halloran was austere. They’d been cut from the same mold, the two of them, dour of face and bleak of spirit. Clancy
Donovan was anything but dour. “It’s not me,” he protested. “It’s the clothes.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

How could she possibly know? He’d only just met her this morning. He glanced suspiciously at her, wondering what else she could see, but he knew better than to ask. Women were odd creatures, intuitive in ways men couldn’t begin to understand. Better he should simply accept her words at face value, and not question what lay beneath.

Route 1A was calm at this time of night, and they were both silent, soft jazz flowing around and between them as they passed parking lots and oil tank farms, weathered hangars and fuel trucks and jets lined up twelve deep, waiting for permission to take off. “Lovely scenery,” she said dryly.

“Isn’t it? Logan just keeps expanding, hacking away at East Boston a piece at a time.”

He left the airport behind, stopped at the mouth of Sumner Tunnel to pay the toll, and then the tunnel swallowed them up. At this time of night, inbound traffic was light. He accelerated to cruising speed, heedless of the speed limit signs posted every quarter-mile. Like most natives, he considered them little more than a suggestion.

They emerged from the tunnel into the turmoil that was the Big Dig. “Lord in heaven,” she said. “What a mess.”

“I believe we’re now in year eleven of a five-year project, with a budget that ran into the red several billion dollars ago. You have to admire the people of Boston. We’re audacious, if nothing else. We leveled hills and filled swamps to hold up skyscrapers and boulevards and a high-speed highway. Now that we’ve recognized the monster we created, we’re excavating to bury the ugliness and the exhaust fumes underground.”

“Now I know why I stay in Revere.”

He paused for a red light. Beside him, a bright red BMW raced its engine. The light turned green and the BMW shot forward. He followed at a more sedate pace, maneuvering through the maze of crooked streets and centuries-old buildings that was downtown Boston. “The city’s not so bad,” he said. “It has its moments.”

“I daresay this isn’t one of them.”

He held back a smile. “Are you always this straightforward?”

“Only since my last divorce. I made a pact with myself.”

She leaned over the dashboard and raised her face to gaze up at the silver monolith that was Exchange Place, the slender column of her neck turned alabaster by the moonlight. She had the most exquisitely flawless skin he’d ever seen.

“What kind of a pact?” he said, turning right onto State.

“The day I divorced Remy, I told myself that for the rest of my life, I’d be brutally honest in all my relationships. Most especially my relationship with myself.”

“You were dishonest with yourself?”

“For six years, I lived with a man I didn’t love. I kept telling myself it didn’t matter, that I’d already been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. I came pretty close to convincing myself it was security that counted, above all else.”

“What happened to change your mind?”

She leaned back in her seat, braced her head against the headrest. “Kit came to live with us. Remy’d already raised one family, and becoming instant daddy to a belligerent teenager at that particular point in his life simply wasn’t on his agenda. I had to make a choice.” She tilted her head, and he caught a glimpse of a wry smile. “The divorce was quite civilized.”

He circled around the Common and picked up Commonwealth Avenue on the other side. It was broad and lovely, lined with ancient and majestic trees, and deserted at this late hour. “This is a big city,” Sarah said. “She could be anywhere. How do you know where to look?”

“I grew up here. And it’s not all that big. Girls work the streets in relatively concentrated areas. I thought we’d try Kenmore Square first. There are dozens of bars in the blocks that surround Boston University, not to mention scores of testosterone-laden college boys with wads of disposable income.”

It was past midnight and five below zero, but Kenmore Square was in full party regalia, brightly lit and heavily populated. The bars and most of the restaurants remained open until 1:00 a.m., and on Saturday nights they swarmed with college students and young singles right up until last call. He cruised the Square slowly, his gaze methodically and thoroughly scouring the sidewalks as he drove. They passed a young couple striding briskly, heads down and coat collars turned up against the frigid night, bare hand clasped in bare hand. A mixed-gender group clustered on a street corner, cigarette smoke rising in a cloud above their heads as they talked and laughed, expending the youthful energy they’d spent all week reining in.

He stopped for a red light, sat idling while a half-dozen drunken college students crossed the intersection in front of him. Pinpointed in his headlight beams, a heavyset blonde staggered and would have fallen if her giggling companions hadn’t caught her and guided her to the other side of the street.

“A lot of college boys,” he said, “get lucky before they leave the bars. They’ve learned that most girls, if you pour enough alcohol down their throats, will follow you anywhere. The boys who don’t pick up a girl in a bar are stuck making do with the hookers who wait outside to snare the less fortunate souls in their traps. Over there.”

He nodded in the direction of a slender black girl with bare legs and spike heels who leaned casually against a lamppost. His stomach soured as a lanky young man walked up to her. They carried on a brief, intense conversation before she shook her head and went back to leaning. The boy walked away, shoulders slumped in disappointment.

“How do you pick them out?” Sarah said. “I wouldn’t have even noticed her. The way young girls dress nowadays, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.”