The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two (22 page)

“I remember it clearly. We were still in the car and it had started to snow and your father repeated the monsignor’s words, ‘You’ve been called upon to do something of significance.’ And then he added, ‘That’s both of us, you know.’ Me, a two-bit waitress? And here’s the odd thing. I believed him. I didn’t even know the whole story back then, but your father’s faith, his conviction, was irresistible. You follow people like that in life. Then, as we were getting out of the car, he said again, ‘God will guide us!’ Oh, sure he will! I thought. I recall making a joke. ‘God may guide you, father, but I don’t think he’s got too many plans up his sleeve for me!”

Mano laughed out loud. It was the first time Teri had heard him do that. “And that’s what I believed, too. Hell, I’d bumbled my way through my whole life, screwing up left and right. But now that I’m sitting here looking at you, I see that maybe I was wrong. Maybe He did have a plan for me, after all.”

2:44

It looked as if a tornado had torn through 14 Winona Street, turning the modest bungalow into a pile of wreckage. All that remained intact was the mailbox by the side of the street and the fireplace chimney, which the flames had been unable to bring down, although the red bricks were now black with soot and ash. Otherwise, it was impossible to tell where the front porch had been or the kitchen stove. A few charred timbers suggested that they might have once been a back door. The basement emitted a foul odor akin to burning rubber.

Teri slowed the car to a standstill, and she and Mano stared as the desolation in disbelief. All Jimmy had said was that there had been a fire and a picture of Mano had been discovered the house. Nothing had prepared them for this. Three people had died in the conflagration and a life’s worth of belongings had been reduced to a gray powder that blanketed all the nearby vegetation. Except for a swatch of lemon yellow fabric that once might have been a bedspread or curtains, everything was devoid of color- black, dingy, depressing.

“Holy shit!,” exclaimed Teri. “This is one crazy, screwed up world we live in, kid. The solution to everything in ‘Blow it up!’ Who is responsible for something like this?”

“I am,” Mano thought to himself. “I’m responsible. I caused this to happen. This is what my presence on earth means. And it’s just the beginning.”

“It looks like the end of the world to me,” whistled Teri. “At least, it’s the end of 14 Winona Street, that’s for sure.”

The rest of the neighborhood seemed normal enough with all the signs of middle-class life – bicycles lying in driveways, swing sets out back, the token bid here and there to establish a flower garden. “That must be your uncle’s place over there,” she said, inching the car forward. “Yup. Number 19.” She pulled the car into the driveway, while Mano scrutinized the house for signs of activity.

The side door opened and a middle-aged man stepped out – heavy-set, beginning to bald, but with the bright, blue eyes that seemed to be the hallmark of the Wilde clan. He had on khaki pants and a plaid sports shirt and looked like he should be coaching a Little League team. “You must be Manning,” he said, approaching Mano’s side of the car. He extended his hand formally, as if he were sizing up a prospective business acquaintance, not the son of his brother. Mano noticed that Billy’s wife had chosen to remain inside the screen door and felt the awkwardness of the moment.

“This is my mom’s friend, Teri Rizzo,” he said.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Teri replied. “Lovely neighborhood. Except for that mess across the street.”

Billy coughed uncomfortably. “Yes, um, nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Rizzo. Why don’t we all go inside? By the way, this is my wife, Susan.”

Susan Wilde was as modest as the house she tended with a single-minded concern for cleanliness. “Hello,” she said, avoiding any physical contact with these visitors who roused in her an ill-concealed suspicion. “Perhaps you can prepare some fresh coffee for our guests,” Bill prompted, and Susan seemed grateful for a chore that momentarily relieved her of any conversational responsibilities,

“I know there’s a lot of catching up to do, but maybe it’s best if we get business out of the way first. I’d like to talk to Manning in private if you don’t mind, Mrs. Rizzo.”

“No problem. I can wait outside, if you’d like.”

“That’s not necessary,” he said. “Susan?
Susan!
” The woman jumped at the mention of her name. “Maybe Mrs. Rizzo would like some of your carrot cake. Susan makes the best carrot cake in the world.”

“I’ll bet she does,” chimed in Teri, good-naturedly.

“Well, it’s my mother’s recipe,” admitted Susan in the first flush of confidentiality. “We can stay in the kitchen, while the men talk.”

“The men!” thought Teri. “What is this, ‘Father Knows Best’?” as she watched Manning follow Bill into another part of the house. Funny, she’d felt protective toward the boy – the boy! - since she’d first spotted him in the parking lot. Then in her house last night, he’d seemed so lost, yet determined, if that wasn’t a contradiction. So similar to Hannah all those years ago.

She turned her attention to Susan and the carrot cake. “So what’s the secret ingredient, Susie?”

Billy and Mano passed through the tidy living room, which was filled with family pictures. Mano stopped in front of one, partially hidden by the others. It was a snapshot of him and his family, taken in the garden in Querétaro. He even remembered when it was taken – just before his father left last year for the U.S. to attend his grandmother’s funeral. There was Little Jimmy, holding their dog Porfirio and forcing him to look into the camera. And Teresa trying to appear as coquettish as the stars in the TV magazines, while his parents stood tall and proud behind them. He missed them more than ever.

“That’s how I recognized you,” Billy said. “From that picture. Let’s go in here.”

He introduced Mano into a small study, shut the door behind him and took his place behind a wooden desk with a computer on it. Mano, sitting opposite him on a straight back chair, found the atmosphere reminiscent of a police station.

“Did you bring your passport?”

Mano handed it to him.

“So you say you were in Spain, when this happened?”

“Yes.”

“And when did you go there?

“On the 17
^th
. From Mexico City.”

“And you returned?”

“Yesterday.”

Billy examined the stamps in the passport closely. This was not how Mano had expected to meet his relatives for the first time. This was no family reunion. It was, for all the apparent civility, a police investigation.

“Don’t suppose you ever heard of this Anderson woman, Olga Anderson?”

“Not until now.”

“Strange woman! Alienated a lot of people … I’m sorry to be so formal, but since you are my brother’s”—- there was just a hair’s breath of a pause—- “son, I wanted you to have the chance to explain yourself privately. No one knows about the photograph except me. If it had been found, you would have been taken in for questioning. And with all this other stuff flying around the Internet, I imagine it would have been quite a freak show.”

“Freak!” Mano had been waiting for the word to surface. He hadn’t expected to hear it here.

“Not just a freak show for you and your family,” Bill continued. “But for me and mine. I’m not sure Susan could take it. But you were obviously not in the country, when this happened, thank God, so no one needs to know about the picture other than us.”

“I appreciate that,” said Mano. “May I see it?”

Billy hesitated, then withdrew a charred photograph from he desk drawer and handed it to Mano. The spots of dried blood on his face jarred him, as if he were somehow looking into his own future.

“The blood?” he asked.

“Seems to be that of one of the caregivers who died in the house. She was holding this in her hand, when I found her.”

“What was her name?”

Billy consulted a piece of paper that looked like an official report. “Sally. Sally Wilson. Say anything to you?

“No. “

“Did she have any children?”

“A grown son. About your age. Why?”

“Just wondered.” More people had been dragged into this tragedy because of him. “I know who took this picture.”

“You do?”

“The same person who took those pictures that are on the Internet.”

“Are you sure?”

“Check them. This picture is there. Same angle. Same background. That’s our town square in Querétaro - the Plaza de Armas. I’m wearing the same shirt.”

“And you know who took it?”

“Claudia. She followed me to Spain.”

“Why’d she do that?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Shit!” Bill expostulated.

“So what happens now?”

“Well, if we’re lucky, no more pictures will surface in the rubble.”

There was a timid knock at the door. “Bill?” Susan’s voice could barely be heard. “I think you should come out here. There’s someone in the house across the street.”

Billy pushed open the kitchen screen-door and sprinted across the lawn toward the ruins left by the fire. Yellow police tape cordoned off the area, but that hadn’t stopped a woman from entering the prohibited area and scavenging for any surviving treasures.

“Hey, lady,” he called out. “This is a crime scene. You’re not allowed to be there.”

The woman paid him no attention and continued to dig through the rubble with her bare hands, like a hungry dog in single-minded search of a bone.

“You hear me?” Billy stopped in his tracks. It was Claudia. A Red Sox baseball cap protected her hair, but her face and clothes were caked with soot. Even the filth, he thought, couldn’t entirely conceal her beauty. But the glaze in her eyes indicated he was a stranger to her.

“It’s Bill Wilde from across the street,” he explained, approaching her slowly. “I’m sorry, Claudia. We can’t have you going though the property just yet. Maybe in a few days, when the investigation is over.”

Her eyes widened in bewilderment. “But this is my house. I live here.”

“I know you do, Claudia, but we need a little more time. So come with me, will you?”

But she had already gone back to her digging. She pulled a silver vase from the wreckage, examined it closely, then threw it aside. “They’re here,” she muttered. “They’ve got to be here.”

“What, Claudia?”

“Things of mine. Important things my mother was saving. Somewhere in the house. For later.”

“If we find anything we’ll return it to you,” Billy said comfortingly. “But we need you to leave the premises now, so we can get on with the investigation and find the people who did this.”

Claudia stood up abruptly, her eyes blazing. “You’ll never find them! You are way out of your league here, Mr. Wilde. The power that caused this to happen is not within your jurisdiction.” She laughed hoarsely and threw him a look of scorn. “So you get the fuck out of here. You can’t order me about in my own house.”

“I’m afraid I can,” Billy said, his patience fraying. “The sooner you leave, the sooner we can solve this crime.”

“It’s your job to
stop
crime from happening.” Claudia spat the words at him. “You live right across the street and you couldn’t prevent this. What on earth makes you think you can solve it?”

She picked up a frying pan, its shape distorted by the intensity of the fire, and then threw it aside with disgust. “My mother was right from the start. She told me how mighty the spirit of evil could be. I didn’t really understand until now. But look! Look what they did to her!” Her eyes were wild with hysteria, no longer a young woman’s, but those of the mother herself, enflamed with bitterness. “Do you think it ends here, Mr. Big Deal Policemen? A few people dead. A house burned to the ground. Well, it doesn’t! This is just the beginning. And you won’t be able to do anything to stop it.
Nothing at all!”

All at once she fell silent and her body froze. The transformation stunned Billy. It was as if a movie projectionist had stopped the film, cutting off the actress in the midst of her big scene, leaving her speechless, reduced to a single motionless frame. Claudia stared so intensely at something over Billy’s shoulder that he turned to look. It was Mano. He was crossing the street. She seemed alternately hypnotized and petrified by his approach, as she would by a cobra.

“She warned me,” she mumbled to herself. “She said only bad would come from him. She was right.”

“Who? Who warned you?” asked Billy, bewildered. Claudia ignored the question.

“See what you’ve done,” she yelled toward Mano, her eyes blazing up again. With a sweeping gesture, she indicated the remains of the house. “This is all your fault.”

“Claudia, I wasn’t here. I was with you!”

She let out a wail that could be heard across the street. “Don’t say that! I don’t want her to know.”

Billy frowned. “Who is this ‘she’”?

Mano stopped closer to Claudia. “You’re not to blame, Claudia. We were together when this happened.”

“Stop saying that!” Claudia turned her gaze away. “But, of course, she knows everything now.” She picked up a charred piece of wood in the vague form of a cross. And began talking to it. “I’m sorry I never believed like you did. How could I have been so stupid? So weak! Give me the courage that I lacked before. The strength. The resolve.”

She seemed to be rambling, caught up in the flow of words, and unconscious of the presence of either man. “I see now what she meant. There is only deception and duplicity, deceit and betrayal in this world. We are just pilgrims here. Our real home lies beyond this one. And there will never be any security as long as we live in the flesh.” Merely saying the word flesh appeared to sicken her. She backed away from Mano into what was once the kitchen area. Tripping over a beam, she fell backwards into a sitting position. As Mano approached to help her up, she pulled a knife out of the wreckage beside her and stared at it, as if it were a foreign object and had only now just understood its use.

“Put the knife down, Claudia. No one is here to hurt you,” cried Billy.