VC03 - Mortal Grace (13 page)

Father Montgomery shot a look toward his lawyer.

David Lowndes sighed. “Could I trouble you to produce a warrant for the file? I know it means a delay, but it might be a good idea if we observed the legal niceties from this point on.”

“It’s no trouble.” Cardozo smiled. “And it’s no delay.” He took the executed warrant from his pocket and handed it across the room.

Lowndes was clearly startled and just as clearly trying to show no reaction at all. His pale blue eyes examined the warrant. After a moment he nodded.

Father Montgomery opened the drawer, brought out the file, and placed it on the desk top. “Will that be all, Lieutenant?”

“Can’t think of another thing.” Cardozo tucked the shoe box under his left arm.

“Bonnie, be a dear and show the lieutenant out?”

Reverend Bonnie Ruskay led Cardozo into the hallway. The door closed softly behind them.

“David Lowndes told me I should be scolded,” she said.

“What for?”

“For giving you the run of the rectory the other day. Apparently I should have known better.”

“You’re in the business of trusting people. He’s in the business of not trusting them.”

“And you’re in the business of locking them up?”

“That’s the court’s business, not mine.”

“That shoe box looks fragile. Do you want a shopping bag?”

“Thanks. A bag would help.”

She took him through the kitchen into the garage. The air still smelled faintly of ammonia. There was a pile of empty bags on the backseat of the green sedan. “Hammacher Schlemmer or Zabar’s?”

“Whatever.”

She handed him a plastic shopping bag from Nobody beats the WIZ. “Are you looking for evidence against us? Because you won’t find any. We’re human beings, but we’re not evil.”

“I’m trying to find out why some kids grow up and some vanish.” He slid the file into the bag. “Why some wind up adults and some wind up skeletons in a box.”

There was a sad look in her eyes. “A lot of disturbing and ultimately unfathomable events happen in this life.”

“Sorry. That’s not good enough.”

“What is it you want, Lieutenant?”

“I wouldn’t mind getting out of here.” He went to the garage door. “May I?”

She shrugged.

He bent down and gave the handle a twist and a yank. The door rolled noisily upward. He stepped into the courtyard. It was a walled space of cobblestones and ivy and flower beds. An orange fish was gliding in a dark green rock pool and a bird was singing in the branches of a pear tree.

He crossed to the rosebushes. Tight green embryos clung to thorny stalks. He reached out a hand and quickly snapped off a stalk of unborn roses. He dropped it into the shopping bag.

In his cubicle, Cardozo sat staring at the shoe box for five minutes before he lifted the lid.

The photographs had been arranged alphabetically—smiling young people with a name, address, phone number, and brief bio paper-clipped to the back of each picture.

Every one of them somebody’s kid.

He braced for the worst and walked his finger through to the M’s.

She was there—the very first M—Sally Manfredo.

He tugged the photo out and looked at her. It was like returning to the embrace of a familiar old song. Memories broke through the surface—that last dinner, coffee growing cold in two cups, the sixteen-year-old face across the table from him, the air faintly touched with the scent of her mother’s jasmine perfume.

She was wearing makeup in the photo, the same makeup she’d worn that night. There was a kind of raw determination in her eyes, something unstated and dark.

Sally
, he thought,
where did you go
?
Why did you go? Did you even mean to go?

He turned the photo over and studied the typed sheet. The address and phone were her mother’s. There was nothing more recent.

The bio stated:
The Boy Friend
—chorus.
Zip Your Pinafore
—Emily. Excellent comic timing.
The Pajama Game
—replaced. No contact since.

A handwritten notation followed:
present address unknown.

There was a soft rap at the door. He looked up and saw Ellie standing there with a sort of unintentional grace.

“They say good news comes in small boxes.”

He shook his head. “Not this box. We’ve got sixty kids to interview.”

SEVENTEEN

F
ATHER CHUCK ROMERO HELD
the drawing of the girl’s face at arm’s length. He sat staring and frowning. “No, I can’t say she’s familiar. Not offhand. How long ago would this have been?”

“A year and a half,” Cardozo said, “maybe two years.”

“No.” Father Romero shook his head. He had graying dark hair, beginning to thin at the top. His face was deeply lined and it seemed twenty years older than the hair. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe you recognize this young girl?” Cardozo handed Father Romero a photo of his niece.

The priest’s eyes betrayed an instant’s confusion, quickly covered over. “She’s lovely. But I can’t say I recognize her either.”

“Her name’s Sally Manfredo. She wanted to be an actress.”

“So many do.”

They were sitting in armchairs in St. Veronica’s rectory in Queens. Bookshelves lined the walls. Leather-bound sets of Aquinas and Thackeray and Dickens had been pushed back to make room for Victorian pillboxes and small silver-framed photographs of young people.

“She did some amateur work,” Cardozo said. “She played in two of Father Montgomery’s shows six, seven years ago.”

“That’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“That’s why she looks familiar.”

“Then you
have
seen her before.”

Cardozo could feel Father Romero give an infinitesimal recoil.

“It must have been in one of Joe’s shows.”

“Is it possible she worked in one of yours?”

“No, that’s not possible.” Father Romero didn’t look away, but at the same time he was definitely not looking back. “I’d remember.”

“You must work with an awful lot of young people. Maybe she’s in your files and you forgot.”

“I don’t keep records. Not of the theatricals.”

“Really.” Cardozo tried to gauge the nervousness that radiated from Father Romero. The hands trembled. The eyes blinked with the rapidity of a hummingbird batting its wings. There was a surprised, pained expression, as though everything in the universe was new to him and not necessarily friendly. Cardozo sensed something more was involved than mere state of mind. Some chemical agent.

“But I do have a memory for names and faces, and the name Sally Manfredo isn’t familiar.” Father Romero handed back the photo. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help.”

“What do you do for relaxation?”

“Relaxation?” Father Romero seemed startled. “Very little, actually. I pray…I meditate.”

“No exercise?”

Father Romero patted his oversize tummy. “Not as much as my doctor would like, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t you play golf?”

Father Romero glanced over with a noncomprehending frown. “What gave you that idea?”

“Father Joe mentioned you were golf partners.”

“Long ago.”

“But you two still socialize.”

“We see one another at ceremonial occasions—like the openings of one another’s shows.”

“And the Vanderbilt Garden ceremony?”

“Yes, that too.”

“You were with the group that went in first.”

“That’s right. The four representatives of New York’s major faiths. Joe seems to think Islam is a major faith locally. I believe there are fewer followers of the Prophet in the metropolitan area than practitioners of Santeria.”

“Do you recall when this photograph was taken?” Cardozo handed Father Romero the shot of Sonya Barnett and the four clerics.

“I don’t recall.” Father Romero’s face was perplexed.

“The odd thing is that you’re all looking away from the stage at the same moment.”

“There was a crew from TV right behind us. They may have asked us to turn around. Does it matter?”

“It just struck me as curious.” Cardozo took back the photo. “Did you drive to the ceremony that day?”

“Driving’s a nuisance in Manhattan. I prefer the subway.”

“But you do drive?”

“I have a license.”

“And a car?”

“I don’t have a car, but the church has a van.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“Certainly.” Father Romero led Cardozo across the lawn to the unattached two-car garage. He swung the door open and Cardozo realized he was a powerfully built little man.

It took Cardozo’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness. Half the interior space served as a storehouse for dusty stacks of old furniture and cardboard cartons.

Father Romero thumped the front fender of the van. “She’s a pretty beat-up old thing, I’m afraid.”

Black paint was flaking off, and patches of blue peeked through. “This van is secondhand.”

“Yes, indeed.” Father Romero gave a laugh. “As a matter of fact, it was a gift from Father Joe.”

“You’ve repainted it.”

“We had to.”

Cardozo studied the driver’s door. Something had left an almost circular ridge under the paint. “Some kind of design was painted here?”

“A smiling sun.”

“Why did you paint over it?”

“No particular reason.” Father Romero stood shifting his weight. “The van needed repainting and it was too much trouble to restore the sun.”

“Your name and badge number showed up in the report.” Cardozo laid the flimsy copy of the three-month-old summons on the Formica-topped table.

Zondralee James glanced at the offenses:
driving through traffic signal, driving without corrective glasses, driving with expired insurance.

“I made the report, all right.” She bit off a mouthful of English muffin. “But I write two dozen of these a day.”

“Was this the driver?” Cardozo placed the photo of Father Montgomery beside Officer James’s coffee cup. “He may not have been wearing the clerical collar.”

Officer James sat chewing. The diner was crowded. There was a lot of bustle around their table, but she didn’t let it distract her. After a thoughtful moment she shook her head. “Sorry. I see a lot of faces in a workday.”

Cardozo folded the St. Andrew’s outreach newsletter open to page four and laid it on the table.

Zondralee James’s eyes flicked from the shot of the van to the shot of Father Montgomery. They were golden eyes set deep in a narrow, fine-featured African face. “Okay, it’s coming back. That rising-sun on the door. And there was some kind of writing. It doesn’t show in this shot. ‘God is love,’ something like that.”

“How did the accident happen?”

“It wasn’t even a yellow light, it was
red.
This idiot drove right through—collapsed his hood into the side of a movers’ truck.”

Cardozo frowned. “I thought the truck hit him.”

“Believe me, he hit the truck. Hard.”

“Was there anything left of the van? Anything to salvage?”

She gave Cardozo a smile that said, you probably believe in the miracle of trickle-down economics too. “That van was beyond destroyed. Lucky he didn’t kill himself.”

She signaled the waitress for another cup of coffee.

“The license said he couldn’t drive without glasses. So, of course, he was driving without them. He has time to put on his floppy tweed cap, but he can’t take the time to find his glasses. I meet people like him every day. Think they’re special—laws don’t apply. They’d rather run down a pedestrian than admit they’re blind.”

The word hung in the space between them.

“Blind?”

She nodded. “I asked him, read the street sign over there. Broad daylight. He couldn’t. He should be grounded, and I mean for good.”

“According to the records, he’s still driving.”

“Then he must have friends at the department of motor vehicles. And they don’t care if a killer’s loose on Madison Avenue.”

Cardozo fixed himself a cup of hot dregs from the squad room coffeemaker, closed the door of his cubicle, and put his feet up on his desk. He opened his notebook to a page headed
Wheelwright Vanderbrook
with the subheading
roses.
The facing page was headed
Father Romero
with the subheading
van.

He lifted the phone and tapped in the number of St. Andrew’s rectory. Bonnie Ruskay answered.

“Hi, it’s Vince Cardozo. Sorry to keep bothering you.”

“It’s no bother.” She said it so pleasantly that he almost believed her.

“Would you know if Father Montgomery gave a van to Father Romero at St. Veronica’s?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Why?”

After a long, considering pause, she finally spoke. “A parishioner gave us a new van, so we didn’t need the old one anymore. Father Chuck needed a van.”

“And was the new van the one that Father Joe totaled?”

“The driver of the other car totaled it. Father Joe wasn’t at fault.”

“All right, so we’re talking about two vans.”

“
You’re
talking about two vans.”

“How many vans has St. Andrew’s owned?”

“I know of at least three since I’ve been here.”

“That’s counting the van you’ve got in the garage right now.”

“That’s right.”

“How many of these vans had the beaming sun painted on them?”

“They’re all supposed to—and when we get around to it, the new one will too.”

Cardozo placed a check mark in his notebook beside the word
van.
“Thanks for your help, Reverend.”

The moment he touched the receiver to the cradle the phone rang again.

“The roses in the two bouquets are the same.” It was Lou Stein at the lab. “Americana Linda Porter.”

Cardozo made a check mark beside
roses.
“What about the rose in that woman’s hair in the photo?”

“Also Americana Linda Porter.”

“And the stalk I gave you yesterday?”

“Also Americana Linda Porter.”

“Can you tell if they come from the same bush?”

“I can if you want to pay twenty-four hundred dollars for a DNA analysis.”

“How much for an educated guess?”