Brothers and Bones (25 page)

As I gently thumped the sides of the organ, I said to Bonz quietly, “So what do you think is on the tape?”

Bonz looked up. “Maybe we should talk about this when we’re alone, huh?”

“Father Sean’s okay, Bonz. I mean, he could have called the cops when we first showed up.” Bonz looked less certain than I felt, but he just shrugged.

“So,” I said, “if the tape implicates Carmen Siracuse, and it’s got him this scared, it must be huge. Murder, maybe.”

“Carmen Siracuse?” Father Sean said. I hadn’t noticed him come up behind me. “Isn’t he the one they say has all the Mafia connections?”

Bonz glared at me. His pupils looked like the ends of gun barrels. “He
is
the Mafia, Father.”

I said, “Father, you really don’t want to know what we’re talking about. It’s dangerous information.”

“Can you repeat to anyone what we say here?” Bonz said to Father Sean.

“If I want to.”

“But don’t you vow not to talk about things you talk about with people? Aren’t you supposed to keep it to yourself?”

Father Sean spread his hands and said, “That applies to confession.”

Bonz walked over and stood in front of the priest. He looked down at the pudgy little man.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I’ve killed people. I’ve done a lot of other bad shit, too. Hurt people, crippled some of them. I’m a very bad man. Oh, also, there’s something about a tape and Carmen Siracuse, which doesn’t really apply to me, but which I’m including in this confession.”

He towered over the priest. I held my breath. Father Sean looked up at Bonz, smiled, and said, “That works for me. Everything you’ve said here tonight will be held in the strictest confidence.”

Bonz hesitated, then nodded.

“Aren’t you going to give him penance?” I asked.

Father Sean said, “Would you if you were me?”

“I guess not.”

“We done up here?” Bonz asked.

The balcony was a bust.

“Almost,” I said.

I stood for a moment at the balcony railing, looking back at the pews, the organ, into the open closet, my gaze moving slowly over everything once, then again.

“What are you doing?” Bonz asked.

“I’m remembering this. I’m filing this all away in my mind. Something I see here now might strike me later, might spark a thought in me, a revelation. Maybe while we’re driving, maybe when I’m sleeping. You never know.”

Father Sean said, “I don’t understand.”

I kept looking at my surroundings for a moment, then, when I was finished taking my mental pictures, I turned to him. “I have something like an eidetic memory.”

“What’s that?” Bonz asked.

“You might have heard it called a photographic memory, the ability to see something and remember it later in almost exact detail. I don’t necessarily think I have it to that degree, but I do seem to be able to recall things very accurately after seeing them only briefly. All I need is a good look, really, and I remember. Saved my ass, uh, I mean, my butt, studying in law school.” I shrugged. “People have different talents. I can do this. So I’ll store everything I see here in my mind and something might come to me later.”

Bonz looked doubtful but said nothing as we returned to the church floor and walked very slowly up the center aisle toward the altar. As we did, I took everything in, as I’d done in the balcony, tagging everything I saw, cataloging it in my mind, remembering it for later. Bonz watched me, dubious. Doubting Thomas.

Above the altar hung a twelve-foot-high, wood-carved Jesus Christ. He was nailed to the cross, his head hanging to his right, his face turned up toward heaven, his eyes infinitely sad. I didn’t see any place to hide the tape way up there. Plus, though no longer a religious man as an adult, I didn’t think Jake would use such a sacred statue for his own purposes.

Below the huge image of Jesus, a wooden altarpiece, draped with a white cloth embroidered with a golden cross, sat in the center of the altar. On the right-hand wall there was a shallow alcove with a set of dark wooden drawers taking up the bottom half of the space. On top of the drawers sat a little golden vault where the items used in the Eucharistic sacrament were stored.

“You think it’s somewhere on the altar?” Bonz asked.

“Unless it’s hidden under the altarpiece itself, which I seriously doubt, the only place I can see would be in those drawers, or hidden in that alcove somewhere.” I turned toward Father Sean. “Father, any chance it’s in there?”

“None at all,” he replied. “But go ahead and look if you’d like.”

I did, and thoroughly, but found nothing. Then I stood back for a moment, letting my eyes drift over every object I could see on the altar, including Jesus on his cross, trying to remember every detail, not knowing which, if any, might later be the key to unlock Jake’s mystery. When I finished, I said, “It’s got to be in the sacristy then, or the basement. Lead the way, Father?”

We followed the priest onto the altar and back through the door through which we’d first walked after breaking into the church. It led to the sacristy, a small room that looked almost like a locker room in a country club. Carpeted floor, wooden lockers, a small closet, a full-length mirror.

“With your permission, Father?” I said.

The priest nodded and the three of us each moved to a locker and opened the door. I searched among the priestly garments inside, looking for any place Jake could have hidden the tape, checking for false backs, hidden drawers, things like that.

After checking the lockers, we searched the rest of the room, looking behind mirrors, knocking on wooden surfaces, opening drawers. Together, we even rolled up the large area rug and looked for hidden compartments in the floor. When we finished with this room, I stood in the center of it, once again going through my mental recording process, burning images of the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the furniture, into my mind. Bonz and Father Sean waited for me with differing levels of patience.

After clearing the sacristy, we went down into the basement using a back stairway. Though it had the musty smell most basements have, the place was remarkably clean, free of clutter. There were some folding chairs, an extra pew, a large but empty wooden chest, and a few boxes containing office files, which Father Sean allowed me to thumb through, and two orderly storage closets, neither of which contained a secret compartment we could find.

It took only a few minutes for us to pronounce the basement as clear of Jake’s tape as the rest of the church. After I studied the room, storing the information in my brain for later conscious or even subconscious retrieval, Father Sean led us back upstairs.

I couldn’t understand it. I was so sure the tape would be here. It’s the only way Jake’s clue made sense.

In the narthex, the priest unlocked the front doors and pushed open one of the massive slabs of oak. He took my hand between his soft, fleshy hands, and said, “I’m sorry.”

“So am I, Father,” I replied. “We may be back. Thank you for your help. And for believing me and not turning us in.”

“How do you know I won’t call the police after you leave?”

“Yeah,” Bonz said, “how do we know that?” He looked at the priest and shrugged. “Sorry, Father.”

“Faith, I guess,” I said. Father Sean smiled. Bonz scowled.

As we descended the stairs outside, I heard the huge door swing closed behind us. The locked engaged with a sharp
clack
.

Before we left, just to be thorough, we checked the exterior foundation of the church, looking to see whether any of the sections of bricks were loose and could have concealed the tape. Our bad luck was holding. And we saw nowhere else in the small church lot where Jake likely would have stashed the tape. In short, we crapped out at church.

I was disheartened. But still, in my mind, I was flipping through the mental pictures I’d taken inside—pictures of each room, of each item. And I’d continue to do so until I had a revelation. I’d missed something in the church. I had to have. The tape was in there somewhere. It had to be.

TWENTY-SEVEN

After leaving Saint John’s, we walked under the dark canopy of the trees lining the sidewalk toward the pizza place where we’d left my Corolla. My mind was still on Jake’s clue, on the church, on everything I’d seen there. Mostly out of habit, probably, my thoughts turned fleetingly to the Redekov trial, the second day of which was to begin in a few hours, but recent events had obviated the need for me to concern myself with it overly much. Seeing as I was wanted for murder, I doubted anyone truly expected me to show up in court later that morning.

The streets were deserted. I looked at my watch. Four thirty a.m. Jessica would still be asleep. If I didn’t call her first, she’d wake up in a couple of hours, make herself some coffee, drop a bagel into the toaster, turn on the morning news, and find out that Angel Medina’s dead body was found in her fiancé’s apartment, that witnesses had seen me flee the scene covered in blood, and that I was wanted for murder. And her life would be turned upside down. The cops would want to talk to her, maybe seek her permission to install a wiretap on her phone. Her friends and coworkers would either overwhelm her with sympathy, or they’d very carefully but too obviously step around the subject of me, or perhaps they’d avoid her completely. Her father would smother her with concerned, fatherly advice. And, of course, she’d worry about me. Knowing how all this was likely going to affect her, I wanted to speak with her before she learned what happened. But the fact was, I couldn’t call her just then, because I’d fled my apartment earlier without my cell phone, and it seemed an imprudent time to search for a pay phone. But I planned to find a phone and call her as soon as it made sense to do so.

As we walked, I turned to Bonz. “That guy, the one who killed Angel in my apartment.”

“Grossi.”

“Yeah, Grossi. He’s the one who tortured you and Jake?”

Bonz kept his eyes straight ahead. He nodded.

I swallowed, took a breath, and said, “In my apartment, he told me about this thing he does with nails, when he’s interrogating someone.”

Bonz nodded. I couldn’t read his face.

“Did he…did he do that to Jake?”

Bonz shook his head and relief washed over me like a cool breeze. “I don’t think he risks doing that if he really needs the information. Otherwise, he could make the guy unable to understand or answer questions. It would be stupid, and Grossi’s not stupid. Maybe he’ll do it at the very end, when he’s gotten all he wants, or if he realizes he’s not going to get what he needs. I don’t think he ever reached that point with your brother, though.”

I blew out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I’m not sure what difference it should have made to me exactly how Jake was tortured, but the thought of that bastard driving nails into my brother’s skull was more than I could have taken. I almost asked whether Grossi had done his little nail trick with Bonz, but decided against it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bonz’s head twitch once involuntarily, then again, and then it was still.

A car came down the street and Bonz and I averted our faces casually, trying not to look suspicious, until it passed. A minute later we reached the pizza joint and I turned into the parking lot. Bonz kept walking.

“We can’t keep your old car, Charlie. The police are looking for it.”

I sighed. I’d already been an accomplice to the vandalism of one car today, as well as the theft of a tool kit from its trunk. I was guilty of B and E at Aunt Fannie’s. Oh, yeah, and I broke into a church. And all that didn’t include the murder I didn’t commit, but with which I’d surely be charged. Stealing another car wasn’t likely to add many years to the sentence a future judge would give me.

I followed Bonz south along Common Street for a few blocks until we found a cross street where numerous cars were parked in front of the houses. There were also cars in some of the driveways. We walked the street, with Bonz trying doors until he found one unlocked. A Ford F-150 pickup. In a blur of movement, he opened the door, slid inside the truck, and snapped off the dome light. Then he was on his back, the tools we’d stolen in his hands, playing with the wiring under the dash. I thought I should be doing something, so I played lookout. A moment later, the engine kicked over and Bonz sat up, positioned himself in the driver’s seat, and said, “Move it.”

I ran around to the passenger side and jumped into the truck. As we pulled away, Bonz said, “Wiley? Where’d that come from anyway?”

“There was this test I took in school, an IQ test…all the kids took it…but, well, I…I scored off the charts. Perfect score. I guess it had never been done before on this particular test. So the school told Charlie and he started calling me Wiley because of Wile E. Coyote.”

Bonz stared blankly at me for a moment.

“Wile E. Coyote,” I repeated. “From Bugs Bunny.”

“I know who Wile E. Coyote is, but I still don’t get it. He wasn’t smart. The Roadrunner always made him look like a dumb-ass.”

“Yeah, but he referred to himself as ‘Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius.’ ” I said it in the same deep voice the cartoon coyote used, with the same inflection.

Bonz actually chuckled.

“But listen,” I said, “I’m not the genius Jake made me out to be.”

“You couldn’t be. You’d have to have a brain the size of a wrecking ball.”

I smiled to myself. That sounded like Jake. I looked over at Bonz, maybe hoping to share more about Jake, when, as I watched, a shadow descended on his face, draping its dark folds over his eyes. His mind was moving into rough territory again.

“So what happened?” I asked. “You escaped but decided to stay in Boston even though the Mafia wanted you dead? Didn’t you realize you were in danger?”

“I think I knew that. Deep down, I mean. Even though what they did to me made me a little…nuts, I think I knew the city was more dangerous for me than for the average bum. I always kept one eye on the lookout for trouble. Probably looked to most people like a typical, crazy, paranoid homeless person—which I guess I became—but I think I was always looking for Siracuse’s men.”