The City Below (33 page)

Frank did not look down at it. "What the fuck is this?"

"Page forty-seven," Doyle said.

Tucci did not move for a moment, then he sat forward and flipped the magazine open. After backing and forthing, he found the page.

A large color photograph of a rail-thin Negro dunking a basketball. The headline,
NICOLSON LEADS BC INTO THE BIG TIME.

Tucci read the captions and the story down to the end of the page. Then he looked up. "So what?"

"Boston College. Irish Harvard. And soon to be Irish UCLA A shoe-in for the NCAA this year."

"So fucking what?"

"I can give you their biggest game."

"How so?"

Squire nodded at
Sports Illustrated.
"I own Bean Nicolson."

Frank smiled briefly back at his lieutenant. Yeah, sure.

Doyle took an envelope from his pocket, withdrew a photograph, and dropped it on the table. The picture showed Bean and Squire, Molly in his arms, the tower of a BC building in the background.

Frank looked but did not touch it.

"My brother's one of his coaches," Squire said. My fucking brother, he thought. It wasn't true anymore that Terry was Nicolson's coach. The photo had been taken by a passerby the day Terry went to tell Nicolson he wouldn't be working with him after all. At first Squire had thought Terry had screwed everything up, but then he'd realized that as far as Bean went, it would work better having Terry out of the picture. As for the rest of what Terry had done —Jesus, what an asshole.

The man behind Frank said, "Knowing the kid isn't
owning
him."

Squire removed half a dozen more photos from the envelope and spread them on the table. "These are black-and-white," he said, deadpan.

Bean Nicolson, those mile-long arms and legs, naked, entwined with the arms and legs of a naked white woman. One photo showed her with her face bent to his genitals, another with his face at hers. "Liquor in front," he said, "poker in back"

Another photo had Bean on his knees, fucking her from behind. The woman had her face buried in the sheets, her fists coiled around a bed rail. None of the pictures in which she was paired with the black man showed Ginny's face —which had been Squire's promise to her. But there were several of her alone, lewdly sprawled, various ruttish expressions twisting her eyes and mouth and flaunted tongue.

"Jesus," Tucci said, "it's Rubber Man."

"Rubbers are against God's law, Frank."

Tucci grunted.

"So what's the gig?" the second man asked. "The cunt threatens to say he forced it on her? She doesn't look too unhappy."

"No need of rape charges. She's underage, but we don't need that either. If we had to press, all we say is he was modeling for pornography, which the girl has been known to do. He's in her portfolio now."

"What's a little night baseball? Who gives a shit?"

Doyle looked at him, answering coldly, "BC is a Jesuit school. These pictures would finish him there."

"So one way or the other, you blackmail the fucker, is that it?"

"No." Squire smiled. "Anyone could do that.
You
could. What I do is
rescue
him from blackmail, save his ass. I swear
not
to tell my brother, or the other coaches. I adopt the kid."

"That's right," Tucci said, "I forgot. You're a sweetheart."

Squire shrugged. "I get him helping me out at the Boys' Club in Charlestown. The Jesuits love that. I start giving him pocket money. Then I make it bonuses, a friendly incentive, for scoring high. Ten bucks, say, for every point over twenty. He starts taking my money for doing what he wants to do anyway, winning. The season goes well. BC gets the tournament bid. By the time of the NCAA, what with the pictures in the background and a history of taking money from me, he has no choice when I tell him it's Burma Shave time. Time to score
under
twenty."

"You'd do that to the guy?"

"Nobody's wise if he comes along. Nobody but him."

Tucci said nothing for a long time. Then, with sudden animation, he exclaimed, "Sweetheart? Shit, you're more of a prick than I thought."

Squire blanked him. "We wait for the heavy game, national television, BC the favorite, high on the Vegas boards. I own the nigger, and I hand him over to you. You set up Jimmy the Greek if you want. After that, all over the country, your selected friends all know who runs Boston. Everything in Boston."

Frank and his lieutenant exchanged another look, not smirking now. The man behind Frank nodded once, and Squire knew he was home again.

***

A few weeks after Cardinal Cushing ordained his new deacons, Jacqueline Kennedy married a divorced man. The Vatican issued a statement branding her a "public sinner." Cushing replied with a statement of his own: "Leave the poor woman alone!"

Despite his reputation as a liberal, Cushing hated dissent. He would never have done to Rome what his seminarians did to him. But unlike birth control, Jackie's fate was no moral abstraction to him. If the old archbishop had ever loved a woman, he loved her. In the weeks before her marriage to Aristotle Onassis, Jackie had sought him out repeatedly. She knew the rules as well as he did, but, perhaps thinking of his own sister Dolly, who'd married a Jew, Cushing simply could not reassert them. Finally he had told her the very thing he was at that moment chastising his seminarians for: she should follow her conscience. And he promised her that, should anyone deny her Holy Communion, all she had to do was come to him.

When the message came down from the gargoyles in Vatican City that, as the woman's Ordinary, he was solemnly required to condemn the marriage, Cushing thought of the oath he'd made to the dead president. The hell I will! He shut up those wop monsignors by immediately calling a press conference and announcing his retirement —a full two years early.

And when Terry Doyle read of it, he thought back to Cushing's stunning gesture at the ordination ceremony. That event had been, in turn, the most numbing and the most charged experience of his life. His memory had quickly fogged over, but there were certain things he would never forget.

The arrival of his family at the cathedral, for example. It was a few minutes before the ceremony's scheduled start He had mounted the pulpit for one last look at the Scripture he was to read, the third chapter of Paul's first letter to Timothy: "In the same way, deacons must be respectable men whose word can be trusted. They must be conscientious believers in the mystery of faith. They are to be examined first, and only admitted to serve as deacons if there is nothing against them."

In front of Terry, people were entering the vast church and filing into the pews. It was a child's crying that drew Terry's attention to the arches of the entranceway. Though he'd had no experience of it in such a setting, he knew Molly's wail. He saw them coming in, Molly in Didi's arms, Didi wearing sunglasses, Nick, and Gramps. Terry wished at once that they would take their places far in the rear, but he watched as the knot of his loved ones moved up the nave, driven by his grandfather's K of C need to sit in front.

The figure of his grandfather pierced Terry's heart, the old man bent, walking with a hesitant shuffle, clinging to Nick's arm. Nick himself seemed more erect than ever, a handsome, tall Irishman in his prime, with his brown tweed suit, his dark hair long, brushing his collar. It struck Terry how grown-up and prosperous looking his brother was. The swagger of a Townie punk was gone, replaced by an impressive and appealing air of personal authority, what the old man was leaning on.

Gramps did not recognize the man in the pulpit as his Terry, vested in an alb, amice, and cincture, the white garments priests and deacons wear under their chasubles and dalmatics.

Nick's eyes floated through the space right to Terry's, Nick who never missed a thing. Terry saw the click of recognition in his brother, who then whispered in their grandfather's ear, pointing. And once Gramps saw him, his hand fluttering shyly, Terry felt obliged to go down, which was what ruined everything.

Didi, with Molly in her arms, was wearing sunglasses, as if she were Jackie Kennedy. Terry instinctively took the shades as a signal —but of what? He hugged his grandfather, who squeezed Terry for all the juice of his daughter's dream come true. "Gramps," Terry whispered, "if you want me to get ordained, you'll have to let me go."

When Gramps did, Terry turned to Didi. Molly had squirmed out of her arms and was scooting ahead. Didi and Terry embraced. He felt the bulge of her pregnant belly, was surprised at its firmness. He kissed her cheek, then looked at her, but he couldn't see her eyes. Was she crying?

He reached up and took her glasses off, brushing her cheek as he had once when they were pressed against the cold wall of the Lincoln Memorial. "What's this?"

Not crying. Her left eye was dry as a stone, but the right one was swollen shut, the flesh around it puffy and purple. "What happened to you?" Terry asked.

Didi's good eye was thickly lined with Maybelline, which, juxtaposed to her bruise, seemed ludicrous, like her spike heels holding up her lumpish, swollen body. Didi quickly put her glasses back on, turning away.

But Terry repeated, "What happened, Didi?"

Nick took Terry's arm, squeezing it hard. "She bumped into the door."

Didi nodded. "In the night, in the dark, going to Molly." She forced a smile, glanced toward the altar. "Now can we call you Charlie?"

"Sure," Terry answered, but he locked his eyes on Nick's. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

They moved down the aisle a few paces, toward the sanctuary, Squire gripping Terry's arm all the while. Terry turned so that his back was to the others. "What did you do to her?"

"You heard Didi."

"Yeah, I heard. But what's the truth?"

"Truth? What is truth? Isn't that the quesdon Jesus asked?"

Terry shook his head. "Not Jesus, Nick. Pilate. Pontius fucking Pilate."

"Mind your own business, Terry."

"You hit her, Nick?" Terry shook his brother's hand off. "You hit your pregnant wife?"

"Look, Terry. She is my wife, okay? The mother of my children. I love Didi. You know that Do you really think I'd hit her? Is that what you think?" Squire stared at his brother so fiercely that he had to look away.

Terry's gaze went automatically to the ornate crucifix hanging above the altar. Who am I fighting with here? The twisted Christ suddenly seemed an enemy. What is my faith in? Who?

"Terry?"

Terry shook his head. He looked at his brother. "I'm sorry. I take it back. Christ, if I can't believe you, who can I believe?"

"Exactly." Squire was thinking of Nicolson, how he would have to make sure the kid never entrusted himself to this poor, conscience-ridden bastard.

Terry turned and blew a kiss to Didi. He waved at Gramps, who now seemed not to recognize him, then started up the aisle. But Squire grabbed him roughly and hugged him. "I love you, Charlie," he said.

"I love you too, Nick." And for a terrible moment, Terry thought he was going to cry. Instead, he walked quickly away.

In the sanctuary, at the sacristy door, he paused to look out across the church one last time. And it was then he saw the figures of Bright McKay and his mother and father coming in the great door. They looked lost. Bishop McKay wore the distinctive high collar of an Anglican divine, and that was more than enough to set him apart. He carried a small suitcase in which his episcopal vestments would be neatly folded.

Terry nearly started back, but then, would he have to introduce them to his family? He was rescued when one of the seminary professors came in from the vestibule to escort them. Bishop McKay followed the professor to the near side aisle, toward the sacristy, while Mrs. McKay, a large, regal woman whom Terry linked with Coretta Scott King, took Blight's arm. Bright. His eye patch was always a surprise. Terry could never see that patch without his memory slamming open for a second on the image of a man viciously driving his polished shoe into Blight's face, but now Blight's eye called back Didi's. Nick. Squire.

Terry pushed the thought away, hard away. Genius that he was, Bright sensed Terry's distant, brooding presence, and he raised a hand in a cheery wave. Terry waved back, relieved to feel such uncomplicated affection. But then Bright did something that staggered Terry: he clenched his fist and stiffened his arm, turning his wave into a defiant salute.

They put Bishop McKay on a velvet padded chair on the gospel side of the sanctuary, next to Monsignor Loughlin. A plush double prie-dieu stood like a railing in front of them. At the parts of the Mass that called for kneeling, they came forward side by side, their elbows nearly touching, which pleased Terry because he was sure Bishop McKay's presence offended Loughlin.

Through the early prayers and readings, every time Terry found the nerve to look over, the bishop's gaze was fixed upon his prayer book. When the time came for Terry to approach the lectern, he followed the emcee dutifully, then read the passage as if in a trance: "...respectable men whose word can be trusted."

He resumed his place in the long line of men kneeling on the lowermost sanctuary step. He watched as acolytes brought the carved oaken cathedra forward, placing it in the center of the top step. Then the two chaplains, one of whom was Father Collins, led Cushing to the chair. Instead of sitting, the cardinal removed his red skullcap and knelt at the chair with his back to the people. That was the
ordinandi
's cue to prostrate themselves. The cantors began the Litany of the Saints. "Lord have mercy," they sang, and everyone replied, "Lord have mercy." The soft music floated into the dark air. "Holy Mary, Mother of God," the choir sang, and all joined in "Pray for us..."

He lay prone on the cold floor surrounded by three dozen others in the same posture, like war protesters pretending to be napalmed Vietnamese.

"Saint Stephen ... pray for us. Saint Perpetua ... Felicity ... Francis ... pray for us ... Saint Dominic ..."

His mind was blank, his chest empty of feeling at last To lie prostrate at such a time was, ritually, to be dead to the world, but he was dead to everything.