A detective from England. Well, Scotland, actually. Investigating the killing of an Irishman. In America. I know, I know, it’s very multicultural. Might I ask, am I right in thinking you’re Mr. Molony?”
Molony? That’s who’s been sitting here? Sitting here talking all that shite about idolatry and repentance and the good deeds that extinguish the burning in the soul. That voice. That whining monotone, page after page, psalm after psalm, Scripture after Scripture . . .
“Might I see your warrant card, Sergeant? I do believe it would serve as much purpose as a metro card in terms of your authority to make inquiries in the U.S., but that is not a matter of any concern to me. Of course, I should be delighted to assist. McAvoy, you say? An Irish name. County Wexford, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You’re a student of Irish history?”
“I’m a student of all things, Detective Sergeant. I am a great believer in the importance of continually expanding one’s mind.”
Prick! Fucking slimy prick! Hit him, McAvoy. He answers better when you hurt him.
“That’s a nasty bruise, Mr. Molony. Have you been in the wars?”
“The curse of growing old, Sergeant. I missed my footing and took a tumble.”
“It’s kind of you to spend this time with Brishen. Am I right in thinking you met at Saint Colman’s?”
“Indeed. Saint Colman’s has an excellent relationship with the community in Galway of which Mr. Ayres is such an important part. He came to light a candle in honor of my friend Father Whelan, who, as I’m sure you are aware, was once a young pastor at the church where I am so honored to be sacristan. We shared a brief moment of pleasantries, and then he and his friend expressed a wish to see the almost as splendid Saint Brigit’s, so I showed them the way. The next I heard was that they had met with tragedy. I felt compelled to sit at his bedside and try to bring him some comfort.”
Lying bastard. Lying bastard!
“Am I right in thinking you’re also a lawyer?”
“Of sorts. I am not a regular in courtrooms, but I represent clients whose situations are not always as straightforward as the world would like them to be.”
“Very cryptic. Could you elaborate?”
“Forgive me, Detective, but I wonder whether you have considered the consequences of poking around in a strange country into things that are so very complex. If we were to consider poor Brishen here as an example—his handsome face has been butchered. The lesson would seem clear—some things are best left alone.”
I can hear the copper breathing. He sounds like a big guy. Lungs like a bear. He’s leaning over me. I can feel him. Feck, Brish, wake up. Wake up and tell him what this lying bastard did to you . . .
“I’m here to try and find a young man who was an associate of Brishen and Shay Helden. Valentine Teague. Does the name mean anything to you?”
It does to me! Punch that could shatter your chin, but no fecking discipline. No self-control . . .
“I’m afraid not, though I recognize the name. I believe the Teagues are travelers, as you would call them.”
“Yes. My wife was a Teague.”
“A traveler married to a policeman? How delightful.”
That fella! Roisin’s man. Valentine’s brother-in-law. Took Giuseppe down like he were made of bread. Feck, they’ve sent the cavalry. Wake up, Brish. This one might actually listen . . .
“We’re very concerned for Valentine. Look at this picture. Do you recognize him?”
“He has your coloring, Sergeant. But fewer scars.”
“Do you know him?”
“I have not had the pleasure.”
“Might I ask what chapters you are reading to Brishen?”
“I allow the Lord to open the pages at random. He selects what Brishen most needs.”
“And today?”
“I believe this is a private communion, Sergeant McAvoy. You will forgive me if I do not feel compelled to share it with a stranger, however well intentioned he may be.”
Movement. The sound of rustling fabric and the sudden smell of crushed flowers and damp earth.
“Don’t go on my account, Mr. Molony. I came to see Brishen. I had planned to call at your office to ask you a few questions . . .”
“I work from my home, and I do not enjoy visitors. I apologize if this seems rude, but I have learned to enjoy solitude.”
“So when can I see you for a proper discussion?”
“I think it would be best if you did not.”
“Best for whom?”
“‘Whom’? How delightful. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Why are you being so evasive?”
“The police and I have differing views. I do not wish to go into any more details.”
Don’t let him go, big man. Drag him down the ground by his fecking jaw.
“I’m here on behalf of friends and family in Galway. Friends and family who are being sustained during this difficult time by Father Whelan—your friend. I would not wish for news to reach him that you are being so obtuse.”
“Good-bye, Sergeant. Do give my regards to your delightful traveler girl.”
He’s gone. The smell’s fading. I can hear the temper coming off the Scotsman. He’s looking down at me and shaking his head. Muttering, muttering . . .
“What did you learn, Brishen? Why did you need to get out of the city so fast? Where were you going?”
I want to wake up, big man. Christ, I do. I want to tell you the lot. But I’m just a dream, floating between places, a fog of half-remembered things and whispers that cannot be real. I remember arms growing cold against my skin, the taste of dust and dirt and something sour. And the ground shifting. Fissures opening up at my ankles as they broke with the shifting ground . . .
“Aector. You didn’t listen. You’re supposed to be gone.”
Another man. Local, from the sound of him. Smells of last night’s whiskey and expensive aftershave.
“Ronnie. I couldn’t.”
“Shall we talk?”
“Here?”
“No. We don’t know what he can hear.”
“You think he can hear anything?”
I can! I fecking can!
—
You’re redder than usual. You okay?”
McAvoy presses the can of Coke to his forehead, imagining the contents starting to bubble, spit, and steam. Molony has angered him. He kept giving little twitches with his nose, as if trying to reposition a pair of spectacles without using his hands. He looked as though he could smell something faintly distasteful.
“Molony,” says McAvoy. “He spoke to me like I was a fool.”
“He’s a lawyer. That’s what they’re good at.”
“But he had no need to be that way. And why was he even here?” McAvoy considers Alto. “He looked ill. That yellow look to him. There was a smell coming off him I can’t place.” He stops talking and looks at Alto. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
Alto sips at his espresso. They have a seat by the window in the hospital cafeteria but neither man particularly wants the beverages or bag of potato chips on the plastic table in front of them. Outside, despite the hour, the sky is slowly darkening and it looks to McAvoy as if someone is leaching the color from the city with a straw.
“I didn’t feel I could let you go with so little reward,” says Alto, scratching his hairline. “I understand that you didn’t come here wanting to stir things up or cause trouble. New York must seem like a different world to you. Maybe I’m being naïve here but I get the sense that in your world you know who the villains are and who the good people are, and the villains go to jail.”
McAvoy looks at him with the tiniest flicker of contempt. “You think that, huh? Believe me, no one place is more rotten than the next. Some places are just bigger.”
Alto is not really listening; stirring a second sugar into his drink. “You don’t think about it,” he says, more to himself. “Cops, I mean. Cops here. You get used to how things are and then you just become a part of it. It’s only when you have to explain it to somebody else you realize how bad it all is.”
“How bad what is?”
“All this,” says Alto bleakly, gesturing with his spoon. “You tell yourself that if you catch enough bad guys then the streets will be safer, but that’s so much bullshit. I’m a garbageman but I can only pick up the shit that falls out the top of the trash cans. I can’t rummage all the way to the bottom because the stench is too goddamn strong.”
McAvoy considers his companion. Alto looks energized but tired, as if somebody is running a battery through a corpse.
“What is it you want me to know?” asks McAvoy gently.
“The feds are all about headlines,” says Alto through a sigh. “They want to bring down the people that voters have heard of. They want seizures worth a hundred million. They want to be able to say they’ve smashed a cartel or brought down a corrupt senator, rescued a hostage or saved a little girl’s life.”
McAvoy nods. He understands. He’s familiar with the same pressures.
“They don’t give a damn about Brishen and Helden and it’s not their responsibility. It’s not even mine. It’s a case for the upstate police and they’ve been told to give it to me and back off. Some of the suits think the Chechens are making a move on the Italians. The others think it’s the other way around. There are some who think the Irishmen were connected to the Boston Mob and that we’ve got some sort of three-way to look forward to. Then there’s the other theory—this was all a gigantic fuckup and everybody involved is trying to find out if they’re being messed with. In among all that, the lives and deaths of the Irish boys kind of get forgotten. Every department head is trying to use the escalation of events as an excuse to get more budget and resources for their departments. That’s what this is to the people who authorize the overtime—an opportunity to further their own agenda. Nobody really wants to know what happened to the Irishmen, Aector. Just you.”
“And you, too,” says McAvoy hopefully.
Alto smiles ruefully and finishes his coffee. “Everything will change inside the next twenty-four hours. Now that word is spreading about Luca Savoca’s body, this is all most definitely a federal case and it will be folded into their investigation into organized crime. The Italians will have known for days that their boy’s dead but now the body’s been found they can’t be seen to do nothing. They’ll already be asking questions in their own way. It’s about to get very loud. You don’t have long.”
“Long for what?”
“To find out what actually happened before the powers that be concoct a lie that everybody can live with.” Alto sighs, unsure of where to start. “We all tell lies, Aector. That’s part of our job. We tell little ones and big ones and they fold into one another and overlap and nobody ever knows the whole truth. I sometimes don’t know when I’m keeping a secret. I was asked to assist the feds on their Chechen investigation because I have some associates who can help. I was asked to look after you because when I’m not drinking I can be relied upon to not cause any trouble. But since you arrived, I swear, my reflection seems to keep telling me that I’ve got a chance to do something good. There are things you need to know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Read this,” says Alto, and he passes a manila folder across the table. “This is the investigation that got me transferred. The one that was shut down the second I found anything interesting. I wasn’t sure it mattered. Now I think it does. Here’s the inside track on your new friend Mr. Molony.”
McAvoy does as he is told. He opens the file and acquaints himself with the man who has been sitting praying at Brishen Ayres’s bedside, and who has made McAvoy’s spine twitch in frustration.
McAvoy looks up, eyes wide. “He trained as a priest?”
“Thrown out, but ask me why and I’ll tell you to spend ten years caught up in legal wrangling, because that’s what it would take to get the seminary to open its files.”
“And this offense . . . ?”
Alto nods. “Occurred in ’seventy-two. He was arrested for the attempted abduction of an eight-year-old boy from a park in Yonkers. He’d been playing with his friends and Molony started talking to them. Asked them about whether they were good children or bad children. Told them if they were good they would get candy. This little boy, he wanted candy. Went off with him and didn’t come home. Molony was caught with him in the back room of a Bible wholesaler in Tribeca. Said he wanted to read the Scriptures together. Case was dropped when the little boy’s family withdrew his statement. Molony was still a seminarian at the time. It wouldn’t be a leap to suggest the Church leaned on them.”
“This is why he was kicked out?”
“Not long after that he was back living with Mother. Worked in soup kitchens. Joined Catholic charities that would have him. Took a beating that could have killed him. But this lost lamb was picked up by a shepherd. Somebody helped him find a job and find a better use for his brain. Started him on a different road. He never fell out of love with the Church.”
McAvoy purses his lips and stares at the words on the page. He scans the text but finds no physical evidence or witness testimony. “Do you think he did anything to the boy? Really? I mean, a mistake could be forgiven . . .”
“Absolutely.” Alto nods. “I’m not huge on forgiveness, but I’ll accept that he may have done a terrible thing and felt bad enough about it not to do it again. But take a look at what happened to him in nineteen seventy-six.”
McAvoy turns the page. His face falls.
“The ambulance was called by his mother, with whom he was living at that time. She found him in the bathtub. He’d castrated himself. Nearly died from blood loss.”
“There’s a statement here. From his mother.”
“Yep. Says that her son had run himself a bath after having been out with his friend Jimmy. Jimmy had said his good-byes and her boy went about his ablutions.”
“But there’s no statement from Jimmy?”
“No. And in the statement that Molony made before he was discharged from the hospital, he didn’t mention him, either. It was only in the psych report that the name came up again.”
“Psych report?”
“Standard practice. You can’t just be stitched up and sent home when you’ve cut your own balls off.”
“And you have the report?”
“I spent a lot of the department’s money to get hold of this when I first got interested in him,” says Alto.
“That’s what got your superiors asking questions?”
“I’ve had it in my drawer for a while,” says Alto, looking uncomfortable. “It was compiled when he was allowed home.”
“Home from?” asks McAvoy.
“A state facility,” says Alto, examining the backs of his hands. “I’m sure it was luxury compared to the seminary. Either way, he said that his visits from Jimmy had helped him a lot.”
McAvoy presses the warm can to his head and closes his eyes. “They’ve still got visitor records, haven’t they? You’re going to tell me that Jimmy was James Whelan.”
Alto smiles. “I am. Father Whelan, then and now. A regular visitor, like you say. But he wasn’t just there for Molony.”
“No?”
“You remember we spoke about Paulie Pugliesca? The guy whose son was blown up during the Mob wars in nineteen eighty-one?”
McAvoy nods. “Salvatore was his son, yes? And his friend died, too.”
“The friend was called Tony Blank.”
“Right,” says McAvoy, waiting for more. “And?”
“And Tony was also a patient at Saint Loretta’s. He was there at the same time as Molony.”
McAvoy considers this, looking for connections. “So, who’s Tony Blank?”
“The godson of Pugliesca.”
“So he’s Mafia, too?”
Alto produces a piece of paper from a back pocket and hands it to McAvoy as if he is performing a magic trick. It shows the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, dated March 1961. The picture is pixelated and hard to make out, but there is no mistaking the shape of two human corpses beneath white blankets. Nor can McAvoy take his eyes off the wide, staring eyes of the five-year-old boy being carried from the scene in the arms of a tall police officer clad in blue. The eyes look as though they have watched another person’s nightmares.
“This is Tony Blank. He saw it,” says Alto. “Everything they did to his mother and father.”
McAvoy screws up his face, wishing he were making notes. His head is spinning.
“Somebody killed his parents.”
“And he saw it all.”
“Who did it?”
“Nobody was ever charged. But he was released into the care of his godfather.”
“Paulie Pugliesca?”
“The same.”
“So when Salvatore was killed, it was like Pugliesca lost two sons.”
“I doubt that. I don’t think the old man ever did particularly right by the boy. He had him put away without much of a fight—the sort of institution you have nightmares about. He went back to Pugliesca in his teens and things seem to have been happy enough for a couple of years. But Tony ended up at Saint Loretta’s when he attacked a dental assistant during a checkup. Bit two of her fingers off when she pressed on his gums. Pugliesca no doubt used some influence to ensure he went into a facility rather than a prison. Either way, he was sent to Saint Loretta’s, which was a holiday home compared to where he’d been before. Molony was there at the same time, for eight months between ’seventy-four and ’seventy-five. Saint Loretta’s had a connection with the Church. They had techniques for helping people deal with their urges, though I think he’d kind of taken care of that himself.”
Alto stops and gives McAvoy an appraising glance. “I don’t know what he’ll make of you.”
“Molony? He didn’t think much of me at all.”
“No, the old man. Pugliesca.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“He’s been asking questions. Doesn’t know what to believe. Mean old bastard needs to have his mind put at ease and in this particular matter, you represent the Irish involvement. You’re Valentine’s family. It can’t hurt to answer a question or two and ask some of our own. Finish your drink. Straighten your collar. He likes us smart.”
“Ronnie, I don’t . . .”
“His driver’s outside.”