Brothers and Bones (24 page)

“If I’m right and the tape’s here,” I said, “I doubt it’s here in the nave, or any public area of the church, I guess, where anyone might stumble on it. But we can’t rule out that possibility. Maybe under a loose floorboard or a panel in the wall.” I pointed to the five-foot-high wooden panels lining the walls, rising from the floor to the bottoms of the stained-glass windows. “Let’s just search and be as thorough as we can be.”

Bonz and I split up. He took the left half of the church and I took the right. While the center aisle and the outer aisles were carpeted, the floor beneath the pews was hardwood. We walked through each pew, tapping quietly at the floorboards with our feet, looking for loose ones, listening for a hollow sound. We checked under each pew, in case Jake had secured the tape there, as unlikely as that seemed.

“So what’s your deal?” I said to Bonz. He ignored me. Though I’d spoken quietly, sound carried well in the church. I knew he’d heard me clearly. “Bonz?”

He looked up, irritated. “What?”

“What’s your story?”

“What do you mean?” He kicked at the floorboard beneath his foot.

“Well, you’re not just typical mob tough, a muscle-bound ape in an Italian suit with a gun under your jacket.”

“No?”

“No. I’ve seen you fight. You’ve got moves those guys have never seen.”

Bonz nodded but said nothing as he moved to the next pew.

“Come on, I’m standing waist-deep in shit here. I’d like to know who’s standing next to me.” I immediately felt a feather-touch of regret for cursing in a church, but it passed.

As Bonz knelt and felt beneath a pew, he said, “Why don’t we search now and talk later?”

“I already know you worked for Carmen Siracuse. You probably beat people up, broke some legs, threatened little old ladies, kicked dogs, stuff like that. You say you never killed anyone—well, at least not under orders,” I added, remembering the story of his escape from the mob. “So what are you hiding?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute or so, then he spoke in a quiet voice. “I was in the military. A damned good soldier, too, one of the best. I was born for that. I wanted to be in Special Operations, Delta Force. I was a good fighter. I could do anything those guys could do. Whoa, what’s this?”

I paused in my search, trying to keep myself from getting excited, as Bonz lowered his candle to the floor.

“Forget it,” he said. “Thought a board might be loose.”

I returned to my search. I was about two-thirds of the way finished with the pews on my side of the church. Bonz looked to have made similar progress. I heard a thump followed by Bonz spitting out an obscenity. “If I kick another one of these goddamn kneelers…” He was referring to the little padded benches that tilt down on hinges, allowing worshippers to kneel during certain parts of the Mass. I could sympathize. I’d already banged my ankles or shins several times on them.

“Bonz? You were saying?”

“Yeah, okay. Where was I?”

“You wanted to join Delta Force.”

A pause, then, “They turned me down. Said I wasn’t psychologically cut out for it, whatever that meant.” I waited. It looked like one of Bonz’s facial tics might have lurched quickly across his features. “I think they thought I was too violent,” he added. “We were soldiers, for Chrissakes. You
have
to have violence in you.”

I nodded. I can’t say I was thrilled to be teamed up with someone who the macho fighting machine Delta Force considered too violent. After a minute or so, when Bonz hadn’t continued his story, I said, “So you left the military?”

He snorted. “You could say that.”

“Well, what would you say?”

“I was dishonorably discharged. Remind me why this is your fucking business. Why I should tell you any of it?”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “They booted me out. Didn’t like me selling their equipment and supplies on the gray market. Not weapons or anything like that, but just about everything else. Fuck ’em. I wanted to be a good soldier. They wouldn’t let me.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed with Bonz’s take on his military history, but I wasn’t about to voice that disagreement.

He said, “So I came back home.”

“And knocked on Uncle Carmen’s door and said, ‘Hey, you need someone to beat people up for you?’ ”

Perhaps that hadn’t been a prudent thing to say. It had just slipped out. I wish I could have slipped it back in.

Bonz looked at me across the dark church, then went back to his search. He was in his final pew, the one closest to the altar. After a minute or so, he said, “Just try getting a decent job after the Army tosses you out on your ear. I had no options. A buddy of mine knew someone who knew someone. You get it.”

I nodded. Bonz and I finished with our respective groups of pews at the same time.

“Now what?” he asked. “Up there?”

We were standing in front of the altar.

“Let’s give a quick look at the wall panels and the confessionals over there, then move to the altar.”

Bonz nodded and walked over to one of the side walls. Rather than start on the other side of the church, I went with him. He walked to the other end of the wall. I’d start at this end and we’d meet in the middle. I began to check each four-foot-wide, five-foot-high panel to see if it was loose, or if it looked as though it had been pried off and replaced at one time. After a couple of minutes, we finished one wall and moved to the opposite one. Starting at separate ends again, we were close to meeting in the middle when the electric chandeliers hanging from the rafters blazed to life, flooding the church with light.

A man’s voice came from behind us. “I’ve got a phone in my hand. I’ve already dialed nine-one-one.”

TWENTY-SIX

“I’m on the line with the police,” the voice behind us said. “If you don’t want to be arrested, you should leave right now.”

I turned to see a portly man, wearing dark pajamas and a well-worn terry cloth bathrobe, stepping down off the altar. He walked toward us down the side aisle and stopped a dozen feet away from me. He had a phone to his ear. He looked sleepy. He also looked ugly. Really ugly. One of the ugliest faces I’d ever seen. He was possibly the only man Hammer Grossi and his freakishly wide-set eyes and triangular head would finish ahead of in a beauty contest. The man’s nose was pug, but so severely upturned he seemed to be on the other side of a window, pressing his nose hard against the clear glass. His upper lip was arched in the middle, exposing his top teeth, as if the invisible force that was pulling his nose up was trying to take the lip with it. The effect gave the impression of a groundhog smelling a scent on the air, frozen forever in midsniff. Though he looked to be less than forty years old, there were age bags under his mud-colored eyes. He had the pale skin of the Irish, but almost the entire right side of his face, from his eye to his neck, was covered with a purple port-wine stain. His red-orange hair was touched with gray. It was also sticking up on one side in a moderately severe case of bed hair. Despite his unfortunately striking appearance, my attention was drawn again to the phone at his ear.

“Yes, they’re right here,” the priest said into the phone. “Hold on, I’ll ask them.” He said to us, “Are you armed?”

“Father,” I said, assuming he was a priest. My mind desperately tried to come up with something to add. All I could think about was that the purple covering half of my own face—the bruises given to me by the Chinatown thugs—were temporary, while this man was cursed forever with his unusual coloring.

Bonz appeared at my side. “Come on, Charlie.”

I looked at the man in his pajamas. Something about the way he was watching us struck me as being not quite right. I looked at the phone in his hand.

“Father?” I repeated.

“Yes,” the priest responded hesitantly, confirming my suspicion. “Father Sean.”

I studied him a moment. Uncharitably, I wondered whether he had become a priest because, given his looks, he despaired of ever finding someone to love him. While undeniably ugly, however, his face wasn’t unfriendly. His eyes, though dull in color, were bright with intelligence, and they looked kind to me on second glance. More importantly, they didn’t seem to recognize me. He didn’t know I was a murder suspect. We could leave now. Or we could take a chance on the priest.

Bonz started for the front doors of the church.

“Sorry to disturb you, Father,” he said. “We came in through a window in the back. Can I unlock these big doors from the inside?”

I stayed where I was, facing the priest. “Father, my name is Charlie Beckham. I’m wanted by the police for a murder I didn’t commit.”

Bonz groaned. Maybe it was a growl.

Father Sean seemed surprised by my revelation but he didn’t give us away to the 9-1-1 dispatcher. Nor did he call lightning down from heaven to smite me. “I see,” he said. “Why have you come here?”

“As you can imagine, I don’t have a lot of time to waste. I can’t give you the whole story, but I need your help. When I was young, I used to attend this church with my parents. My brother, Jake, was an altar boy here.”

Father Sean was nodding, so I kept going.

“Jake was murdered thirteen years ago. I think he may have left something here before he died. Given it to someone, or perhaps hidden it. That something could save me. At the very least, it could put an extraordinarily bad man in jail.”

The priest was still nodding.

“You’re not really talking to the police, are you?” I asked.

Into the phone, Father Sean said, “Everything’s okay. Thanks, Murray.” He ended the call.

“Murray?” Bonz said.

“A rabbi friend of mine.”

“A priest and a rabbi?” Bonz said. “What’s the punch line?”

Father Sean studied me for a moment. Finally, he said, “Your brother would have left this item here thirteen years ago?”

“Sometime around then, yes.”

“I wasn’t here then. The pastor would have been Father O’Connell. He was—”

I said, “Father O’Connell was here when I was a kid!”

Father Sean smiled. “I’m sure he was. This was his church for almost fifty years. My understanding is that, on several occasions, the archdiocese offered him what it deemed to be more desirable parishes, but he never wanted to leave Saint John’s.”

I allowed myself the beginning tingle of excitement. Someone like that, a priest, one who had been in the same church for decades, a rock in the church and the community…Jake might trust a person like that. If Father O’Connell had been in the same place for that long, Jake might have given him the tape, figuring he’d still be around when I finally went looking for it. Then I remembered Father Sean’s use of the past tense when referring to the old priest.

“I take it this is no longer Father O’Connell’s church,” I said, my heart beginning to sink.

Sean shook his head gently. “God called Father O’Connell to heaven six years ago.”

The priest must have mistaken the look in my eyes for sadness at Father O’Connell’s passing, because he said, “It was his time. He was, I believe, eighty-eight years old.”

That would have put him in his midseventies when Jake was looking for somewhere to hide his tape. Would Jake have assumed that a seventy-five-year-old man would still be around to pass the tape on to me years later? I doubted it.

I said, “Is there anyone else, anyone who is still here, that would have been here thirteen years ago? Someone who was a real mainstay? You know, been around forever?”

Father Sean shook his head and the flesh at his neck swayed. “No, the priests other than Father O’Connell spent, at most, a few years here, I think. A few of the clerical staff had fairly long tenures, but no one like you described.” He gave me a look. “No one to whom your brother likely would have entrusted the item you’re looking for.”

I nodded. “I think he hid it here then. Somewhere.”

“In the church?”

“I don’t know.”

“It might help if you told me what you’re looking for.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bonz shaking his head.

“A cassette tape,” I said. “Maybe some papers, too.”

“Oh, well, I can’t imagine anywhere in the church where something like that could remain hidden for very long.”

“Not unless it was hidden very well. What about the rectory?”

“The rectory was renovated from top to bottom shortly after Father O’Connell passed. It was completely gutted. If your tape was there, it would have been found. Or inadvertently destroyed.”

I thought about that for a moment. Intuition told me Jake would hide the tape in the church rather than in the rectory. Plus, his clue seemed more apt that way.

I looked the priest in the eye. “Would you let us finish our search in here then? Maybe look around the basement, too, just in case?”

Father Sean was silent, thinking.

“My life depends on it, Father.”

He looked into my face, maybe into my soul, if I have one. “Of course,” he said. “I’m awake now. I might as well help you.”

* * *

With Father Sean at our sides, we finished examining the last of the wall panels, coming up empty, as I expected.

“Next?” Bonz said.

“How about the confessionals?” Father Sean suggested, not without enthusiasm. Despite his apparent sympathy for our plight, he seemed to be finding the adventure interesting.

“Lead the way,” I said.

We followed the priest to two wooden confessionals near the back of the church and searched inside, but, again, found no possible hiding place for Jake’s tape.

“Have you checked the balcony yet?” Father Sean asked.

“That’s next,” I said.

Father Sean led Bonz and me to a stairwell tucked into the right rear corner of the church and we ascended to the balcony. There wasn’t much up there—five pews, a storage closet, and a small, outdated organ on the back wall beneath a circular stained-glass window depicting a trumpet-blowing angel emerging from gray-white clouds. We began to search. I poked around the organ, looking for a hidden compartment or drawer. Bonz went at the pews again. I reminded Father Sean to be extraordinarily thorough as he ducked into the storage closet.