Chapter Eleven
Julia’s nonstop flight landed at Charles de Gualle Airport at 11 a.m. local time. She’d already arranged to have a private car pick her up outside the international terminal so she could drive directly to her mother’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés apartment in Paris as soon as she cleared customs.
Julia had been surprised to realize that she’d actually managed to sleep on her lie-flat seat. She supposed that she’d nodded off someplace over the mid-Atlantic, about two hours into the flight. She woke up when the plane began its initial descent into de Gaulle. She was still bone tired, but relieved she wouldn’t be a complete ghoul when she finally reached her mother’s home.
She deliberated about whether or not to call her mother when she landed. What if she’d traveled all this way and her mother was not at home? It had been a reckless impulse just to jet off and show up this way, but she was determined to carry through with the plan once she’d set her mind to it. Besides, Katherine Donne was a creature of habit, and Julia knew her habits. She wouldn’t be leaving the city until she traveled to Annecy to spend Christmas with Binkie and Albert.
After passing through customs without incident, Julia opted to compromise: she’d send her mother a text message to tell her she’d just arrived in Paris on business. Her mother would know the real reason for her sudden appearance soon enough.
When she exited the airport terminal and crossed over to the island where private cars were queued up, she spotted a placard bearing her name right away. The old-fashioned, hand-lettered sign stood out in stark contrast to the sea of iPads other drivers were displaying. For some reason, she found that comforting. It was a folksier and more genuine welcome than she could ever imagine getting from her mother.
The driver snapped to attention as she approached.
“Miss Donne?” he asked in nearly unaccented English.
“Yes. Thank you for your promptness.”
He looked dismayed. “Your luggage?”
“No,” Julia tried to dispel his concern. “C’est bien. I don’t have any.”
He appeared confused.
“I keep things at the apartment in Paris,” she stated. “J’ai d’autres choses.”
“Oui, Madame.” He opened the car door on his Peugeot sedan for her. “Of course.”
Julia settled into the luxurious backseat for the ride into Paris. With good luck and no traffic jams, they should make it to the 6th Arrondissement in about forty-five minutes.
She withdrew her quad-band travel phone from her bag so she could message her mother. Once her phone successfully connected, she received a barrage of alert tones informing her that she had new messages. Several of them were from Evan.
This absurdly large bed is pretty empty without you.
Julia smiled. That was followed by four more messages, sent at different times during the night. Apparently, Evan had spent some time awake, too.
I don’t suppose you have any frozen waffles in this joint?
Hey there. You should be landing soon. I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you let me know how you’re doing? Just whenever you can? You know I’ll worry. It’s a thing.
One other thing. I know it doesn’t feel like it from your vantage point right now, but I promise everything will get better. I promise. We’ll survive this.
Oh. Forgot to add I love you.
Julia sat holding her phone with what she knew was a ridiculous smile on her face.
Evan was right. They would survive it all—and not just because they loved and supported each other, although that reality certainly sweetened the odds and made the inevitability of the process a lot more enjoyable. But it was more than that. They survived because surviving was what their species was programmed to do. It was how they were made—to keep going against any kind of odds or any set of obstacles thrown up in their paths by hostile environments. They’d keep going and persevering until old age, disease, or a stronger predator finally took them.
Yes. She would survive this. She knew that. What she didn’t know was what shape that path to survival would take, or where it might lead her.
She wrote a quick message back to Evan.
Landed at 11 local time. Now in the car, headed for Paris. I’ll take you out for waffles when I get home. I love you, too.
Before putting her phone away, she sent a second message—to her mother, this time—announcing her arrival and ETA. After that, she spent the remainder of this final leg of her journey watching the scenery along the A3 slowly dissolve into the outskirts of Paris.
◊ ◊ ◊
By the time Evan got back to Chadds Ford on Tuesday morning, Stevie was all packed and ready for her stay with Dan and Kayla.
Evan was sad that she’d be gone for the next few days, but brightened up when she realized that Stevie had left a hefty portion of her cookies behind.
“What’d we do to earn these?” Evan asked.
“I felt bad about interrupting your reindeer games the other night. I figured you and Julia could make good use of them while you have the house to yourselves.”
“Okay . . . that’s just kind of creepy.”
“You think having sex with Julia is creepy?” Stevie asked.
“No. I think talking about it with you is creepy.”
Stevie huffed. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”
“Trust me. I know exactly when you were born. If you’ll recall, I was there.”
Stevie made a capital W with three fingers on her right hand. “What-ever.”
“I see you’ve learned the alphabet. It’s good to know those tuition payments are being put to good use.”
“Very funny, Mama Uno. Oh,” she seemed to remember something. “Tim called. He left a message for you on the house phone.”
“You didn’t talk with him?”
“No. I was on the phone with Des, and didn’t get to it in time.”
“Okay,” Evan said. “What time is your Dad getting here to pick you up?”
“He said around 3:30.”
“I need a few minutes to talk with him when he gets here. Privately.”
“You’re not gonna make him throw a rod again, are you?” Stevie asked.
“I promise I’ll try to behave.”
“Cool.” Stevie shifted gears. “Did you two have fun on your date last night? What’d Julia say about your outfit?”
“I think it was a hit,” Evan said. “I gave you all the credit.”
“I’d be flattered if I didn’t know that you’d also give me all the credit if she said you looked like a dork.”
“True. But then, Julia would never say that.”
“Is she coming over here tonight?” Stevie asked expectantly. “So you can have your uninterrupted sex romp?”
“You don’t really expect me to answer a question like that, do you?”
“No.” Stevie sulked. “But I keep hoping.”
“Well, the answer is no, just the same. Julia had to take a last-minute business trip. She’ll be gone for a day or two.”
Evan didn’t see any reason to fill Stevie in on the reason for Julia’s sudden trip to Paris. It probably wouldn’t remain a secret for long, so she wanted to give Julia as much space and time as possible to figure things out. That went for her report to Dan, as well. She’d already opted to omit any details about Lewis Donne and his “charitable” trust. She’d share that information with Dan verbally, but not include it in her written report. He might balk at that, but Evan was determined to remain firm about her reasons for withholding it. Donne might’ve been involved with Cawley and Bishop Szymanski in what appeared to be an institutionalized pedophilia scheme. But even if that proved to be the case, Cawley’s own sins would be sufficient to sink his nomination. However incriminating what Evan now suspected about Lewis Donne was, it remained uncorroborated. As of today, there was a lot of smoke—but no smoking gun.
At least, not yet . . .
Stevie disappeared to finish up her load of laundry, so Evan took advantage of the quiet to start compiling what she had for Dan. She knew he’d bitch about wanting the written report from her ASAP.
When she sat down at her desk, she listened to the voicemail message on the house phone from Tim.
“Hey, Evan. I had a pretty shocking conversation yesterday with a guy named Mark Atwood. We were teammates at St. Rita’s. He now runs a bar in the Gayborhood and he was very open about Father Szymanski. He pretty much confirmed what we already knew. It sounds like there were more members at that private club involved than we realized. He also said some exotic woman approached him a couple weeks ago with a big cash offer to keep quiet—just like Joey. He didn’t take it because he’s already decided he’s not coming forward with anything about what happened to him. He didn’t name any names, either. But I think it’s possible your guy was involved with what happened to him and the other kids from the team. I know you’ll want to talk more about this. So, give me a call when you can, okay? We’ll figure something out.”
Damn it. What the hell was Tim doing still going around talking to these guys?
She dialed his number back. It rang four times before rolling to his voicemail.
Shit. Phone tag . . . She’d have to settle for leaving him a message.
“Hey, Tim,” she said to his machine. “It’s me. I got your message. Why don’t we meet for dinner tonight? Julia is out of town and Stevie is headed to Dan’s for a few days, so I’m on my own. How about I come by the church and pick you up around six or so? We can grab something to eat and you can fill me in. Maybe I’ll even take you out to that bourbon bar after dinner? That’s if you can promise me you’ll quit playing amateur detective. Call me back if this doesn’t work for you; otherwise I’ll see you at six.”
She hung up and started outlining the information she had for Dan. The more she worked on compiling it, the more surreal the whole scenario seemed.
This is going to read like the plot of a Wes Craven movie.
She’d asked Ping to organize the information she’d gleaned from their raid of the PAC attorney’s office and transmit it to her in electronic form. That material hadn’t arrived yet, but Ping knew Evan was under the gun to turn everything over to Dan today or tomorrow, so she expected to get a Signal message from her with the attachments at any time.
Her cell phone beeped. She picked it up.
“New Signal message from Moxie.”
Great. Can’t wait to read this . . .
Hello, dear Evan. How lovely it was to see you and the sainted Julia last night. I suppose, since we’ve had the big reveal, there isn’t much reason for me to keep my identity concealed any longer. My reasons for tarrying in your province (as you so charmingly called it) are all but concluded anyway, so I’ll be moving along to greener pastures very soon. One last item of business I have to resolve does, coincidentally, touch upon something that concerns you. Your bumbling friend, “Father Dowling,” does seem to have a propensity to stick his nose into areas it does not belong. A word of caution regarding this: if he persists, it will end badly for him. I can assure you that I am not the only party distressed by his recent conduct. I, however, am only peripherally involved and have neither the time nor the inclination to school him about his continued interference. Alas—I cannot say the same for others who may be less well tempered. I am sure you take my meaning. Please do give my warmest regards to the lovely Julia. It’s gratifying to see that she has achieved a modicum of constancy where you are concerned. Brava for that accomplishment. Enjoy it while it lasts.
–Affectionately, M.
Sonofabitch . . .
How could she have been stupid enough not to make this damn connection with Moxie from the outset? Even in those fleeting moments when she flirted with the idea, she’d dismissed it as impossible.
So why was Maya Jindal involved in this, and who the hell was she working for?
Marcus? Possibly.
But Dan denied that Marcus had any role in the Cawley matter.
And what had Maya been doing at the Galileo Club last night?
Evan wasn’t naive enough to think it had been an accident. Maya didn’t operate that way.
And now she was warning Evan that Tim was in the crosshairs. From whom? She said it wasn’t from her—or her client. But somebody had tipped her off that Tim was in danger.
She found it hard to believe that Maya would be working to protect anyone. That wasn’t her métier.
Tim said that Mark Atwood told him an “exotic” woman had tried to buy his silence—just like Joey Mazzetta. Well, “exotic” could be stamped on Maya Jindal’s damn calling cards.
What a perfect cluster.She had no idea how to parse all of this out.
But she knew one thing for sure: she needed to rein Tim in, and fast.
She picked up the phone and called his number again. Same deal. Four rings. Voicemail.
“Tim? It’s Evan. If you’re there, pick up.” She waited a few beats. “Listen. I really need to talk with you. Call me back ASAP about tonight. And don’t make any other plans, okay? I’ll see you at six.”
She hung up.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
She was tempted to grab her keys and head back into the city right now. She could catch up with Dan later. That prospect evaporated when she heard the nagging rumble and drag of Dan’s Chrysler, groaning its way up her gravel driveway.
“Dad’s here!” Stevie yelled.
Great, Evan thought. A nice little ass-ripping is just what I need right now.
She got up to meet him at the door.
◊ ◊ ◊
Julia’s mother was anything but cordial when she opened the door to her extravagant Left Bank digs and saw her haggard-looking daughter standing there.
“Where are your bags?” her mother demanded.
“It’s wonderful to see you, too, Mother. May I come inside?”
Her mother stepped back to allow Julia to enter. Julia was impressed by how unchanged the apartment was. She hadn’t been there in more than two years, not since before Andy’s murder. Her parents had flown to the States to attend the private funeral service for Andy in Delaware. They stayed on in Philadelphia at the Delancey Place townhouse for several days, but Julia saw very little of them. If they minded, they didn’t bother to express it. She now assumed that her father had used the trip back as an excuse to renew acquaintance at his club.
The thought sickened her.
That visit had been the last time Julia would see her father before his death, seven months later.
Her mother was now striding about the room in a clear display of agitation, absently straightening things that didn’t require adjustment. Julia had noticed when she arrived that her mother appeared to be dressed for going out—impeccably attired, as was her custom. That wasn’t uncommon. She doubted that Katherine Donne took any meals in her apartment, although its kitchen was impressively equipped with every culinary requisite.
Evan would love it. Even though it had a dearth of cast-iron pots.
Katherine Hires Donne was the author of Julia’s disdain for unrefined cookware.
“I fail to see why it was impossible for you to let me know your plans.” Her mother continued to catalog her expressions of umbrage. “I could have been away overnight. As it is, I’m already committed for the evening.” She slammed the lid of an ornate cigarette case shut with so much energy, it made the water inside a crystal vase full of white Peruvian lilies pitch and roll in protest.
Apparently, everyone in France still smoked.
“I apologize for that, Mother.” Julia dropped into a chair without waiting to be invited to sit.
“Just showing up like this is most inconsiderate of you, Julia. And your appearance is frightful. You look so . . . unkempt.”
“Mother, I just spent eight hours on an airplane and another three quarters of an hour in a car getting here. Do you think it’s possible we might try and at least feign civility for a few minutes before lapsing into recriminations and discussions of appropriate fashion?”
Her mother glared at her for a few moments before sitting down on a love seat that sat opposite Julia’s chair.
“What do you want from me?”
It was an odd question, considering the reason behind Julia’s visit—an almost prescient one. At least her mother’s voice was . . . not exactly kinder, but lacking its initial tone of haughtiness.
“I need to talk with you,” Julia said, simply.
“You flew over here in the middle of the night—without telling me you were coming—because you wanted to talk with me?” Her mother plucked at a nonexistent speck of lint on the empty cushion beside her. “I have a telephone. You sent me a message not thirty minutes ago, so I am able to deduce that you still know the number.”
“You always were a quick study, Mother.”
Katherine Donne actually started to smile, but managed to rein it in at the last moment.
“If you’re here to discuss business, I already made it clear that I have no interest in that.”
“It’s not business,” Julia corrected her. “At least, not publishing business.” Julia didn’t bother to share with her mother that some of her plans actually would have a significant impact on the family business. That could all come later—depending, in large part, upon the outcome of this visit.
“What is it, then?”
Julia could detect a tinge of wariness in her mother’s question.
She resolved to allay the suspicion that lurked behind her mother’s query. “I’m not here to discuss my relationship with Evan Reed, either.”
Her mother seemed to relax. A little.
“Why are you here, Julia?” She asked in a softer tone.
Julia realized this was as close to empathetic as her mother could get. It reminded her of her mother’s first question when she’d heard the shocking news about Andy’s death: “But, what will you do?” Even in the throes of her own jumbled haze of shock and confusion, Julia noticed that her mother’s initial response wasn’t to ask, “How are you?”
There was no reason to put off their conversation. But Julia thought it might go better if they at least engaged in some kind of convivial activity. Something that might help level the emotional playing field and hint at memories of a shared past. Good memories.
“Could we make some tea?” She asked. “Some of grandmother’s Earl Grey?”
The exotic, bergamot-scented tea was the first one Julia had ever tasted. On her sixth birthday, her mother and grandmother, both wearing hats and white gloves, had taken her for her first afternoon tea at the Crystal Tea Room in Wanamaker’s Department Store. Julia recalled sitting very stiffly on her chair and the struggle she had had to imitate her hostesses, who seemed to have no difficulty manipulating the small cakes and fig sandwiches with their gloved fingers. Julia marveled at the delicate French china teacups, ornamented with pink asters and gold-trimmed ribbon handles. That had been one of the happiest memories of her childhood. She recalled the easy conversation between her mother and grandmother—how they talked about the right time to set gladiolus bulbs in their flower gardens, and predictions that spring weather would arrive earlier than forecast.
Julia carried those memories with her. And ever since, especially during times of uncertainty or discord, she had taken respite in the sweet simplicity and civility that were always delivered inside a cup of hot tea.
Her mother didn’t question her request. Julia took that as a hopeful sign as the two of them made their silent way to Katherine Donne’s small but well-appointed kitchen. The single window in this room faced west, and afforded a view of the sixth-century Benedictine abbey.
Julia set the kettle to boil on the blue-enameled La Cornue range. She recalled when her parents bought the coveted apartment on Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and promptly began upfitting everything in it. Julia had visited Paris to tour their new home, and she remembered how the kitchen designer had rhapsodized to her mother about how the range’s electric oven could “bake a more stable and precise chamomile cake” than any other designer range in its class. Julia’s father had scoffed and remarked that for €49,000, it should do the dishes, too. Julia’s mother had simply blinked at the overzealous designer and asked if the range were available in blue.
While they waited for the water to heat, Julia’s mother opened a mahogany tea box and set about scooping a generous portion of the fragrant leaves into an old china pot that had been in the family for generations.
Julia retrieved two porcelain cups from a china closet and took a seat at the small kitchen table. Her mother carried a pitcher over to her dark blue Smeg and filled it from a container of cream, before joining her at the table. She made no comment about why Julia chose to sit there instead of returning to the living room.
The companionable quiet they shared was a welcome change from the terseness of their interactions when Julia had first arrived. It was so easy and unaffected that Julia hated to shatter it with her questions. But there was little benefit to be gained by putting off the inevitable.
Once they both held their steaming cups of Earl Grey, Julia steeled her determination and opened the discussion.
“How much did you know about Dad’s trust when he established it?”
Her mother seemed unfazed by the question. “He told me about it, of course. He wanted to have control over where some of his assets went.”
“Did you know any details about its specific provisions?”
“Not really. As I told you, I never had an active role in business decisions.”
“But this wasn’t about business, Mother. It was about Dad’s desire to fund . . . things that mattered to him personally. Did he ever share any information with you about those? Or ask for your input?”
“No. But I don’t find that unusual. Apparently you do, so would you like to share your reasons for asking these questions?”
Julia chose her words carefully. She knew her mother had instincts like a wild animal, and would flee at the first hint of anything that threatened the stability of her environment.
“I spent some time with the estate attorney on Monday, reviewing the specifics of some of the trust beneficiaries. There were some things I found . . . confusing. I wanted to share them with you, to see if you could shed any light on what his motivation might have been for some of these.”
Her mother picked up on one detail of Julia’s explanation. “Did you say you reviewed the documents on Monday? As in the day before yesterday?”
Julia nodded.
“And what you discovered concerned you enough that you flew to Paris to see me? Immediately and without warning?”
“I suppose so.”
“You suppose so?” her mother asked somewhat pointedly.
“Yes,” Julia admitted. “What I found concerned me a great deal—enough to know that I needed to talk with you about it. And that is why I’m here.”
“Why the urgency? Surely, there can have been nothing in your father’s estate plan that warranted such an extreme response.”
This was getting her nowhere. She needed just to come out with it.
“Mother, did you know that a significant portion of Dad’s trust—the lion’s share, actually—is committed to support certain . . .” She searched for the right word—something innocuous enough not to alienate or antagonize her mother. “Projects. Projects confined to a small circle at his club?” Her use of the benign word to describe a horrifying and contemptible practice sickened her.
“No. I was unaware of that. But I see nothing untoward in it. Your father was devoted to his club. As you know, his work allowed him little enough time to develop or nurture other interests.”
Dear god . . . “other” interests?
“There were some other peculiarities, as well,” Julia added. “It appeared that Dad sometimes used the fund to pay for . . . expenses—sometimes in large amounts of cash—to . . .” She hesitated. “Men. Young men.”
Julia’s mother abruptly pushed back her chair and got to her feet. “I will not listen to this.”
“Mother . . .”
“No. I understand what you’re trying to suggest and it’s . . . repugnant.”
“I’m not trying to ‘suggest’ anything, Mother. I am asking you if you knew anything about these payments. I’m trying to find a context for these disbursements that makes sense.”
Her mother walked to the sink with her teacup and emptied it. She faced Julia with an icy expression.
“There is no context for it that makes sense, and you understand that as well as I.”
“But . . .”
“But, nothing. I discovered your father’s illicit, private . . . tendencies years ago—when you were just a baby. The discovery was devastating to me. I had little choice but to do what I had to do to save my reputation—and yours—and spare us both the ruinous effects of a heinous disclosure. I never allowed myself to think about any of those behaviors, or about the time he spent indulging himself at his precious club—and I refuse to do so now, just to satisfy your prurient curiosity.”
“Prurient curiosity?” Julia’s temper flared. “How dare you suggest that I might derive some kind of twisted pleasure from this discovery?”
“Why should I think otherwise, based on your recent revelations about your own proclivities?”
Proclivities? Julia was outraged. “How can you possibly equate my honest avowal of my sexual orientation—or anyone’s—with pedophilia? That is an ignorant and offensive comparison with no basis in fact.”
Julia’s mother had regained some of her composure, but her frozen countenance did not change.
“You sound as if you’ve researched the topic. If so, then perhaps you’ll discover, like I did, that it’s preferable to look the other way. My advice is to let the dead lie buried, Julia. What he did has no bearing on our lives.”
“How can you say that? How can you believe that? Especially if you knew what he was doing all those years?” Julia was staggered by this callous expression of her mother’s dismissive attitude toward her husband’s horrific behavior. It was equally disgusting that her mother admitted to adopting a tacit indulgence of it because it mattered more to her to preserve her life of privilege.
But Katherine Donne had had enough of their conversation. She held up a hand to halt Julia’s tirade.
“I am finished with this discussion, Julia. I will listen to no more of this. You are welcome to rest or shower or do whatever you wish while you remain here. I am going out.” She left the kitchen.
Julia stood up belatedly and followed her mother into the living room.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Out. I honestly do not care where.” Her mother withdrew a heather-colored Lolë jacket from her foyer closet, and retrieved her handbag from a shelf. “I have dinner plans tonight. Do not expect me back here before ten.” She strode to the front door, and exited the apartment without looking back.
Julia stared dumbly at the back of the carved, French colonial door until the sonorous ding of the elevator bell brought her back to reality.
She sank onto the arm of a chair.
Now what?
◊ ◊ ◊
Tim called Evan back a few minutes before he had to head over to the church to hear confession. Her phone rolled to voicemail so he left her details about connecting in Center City for dinner, instead of meeting up at St. Rita’s:
“Hey, Evan. It’s me. Tonight works fine, but you’ll need to meet me at the DoubleTree on South Broad Street. I got a call from another former basketball team member, Mike Duffy. I don’t think you knew him, but he was only at St. Rita’s a little while. He lives in Phoenix now but is back in town on business. He says he saw Mark Atwood after I was there. He wants to talk with me about Father Szymanski, so I’m meeting him at the hotel at 6. We’ll be in the lobby bar if you get there early, or I can text you when we finish up. I’m on my way to hear confession right now, so I’ll be offline for a while. Catch up with you in a bit.”
By the time Tim got back to his quarters, he was already on the cusp of running late for his meeting with Mike Duffy. He hadn’t been scheduled to perform the sacrament today, but Father Langley was sick with a sore throat, and the parish priest, Father Joseph, had asked Tim to take his place. It was just Tim’s luck that there was a larger than usual turnout.
He thought old Mrs. Magill would never finish . . .
She was legendary at the parish. They all joked about how she used the confessional as her primary social outlet. It was poignant and irksome all at the same time.
He changed out of his vestments as quickly as possible and was on his way out the door when he noticed the message light blinking on his phone. He deliberated about whether or not to take the time to listen to it. He checked his watch. Damn. With traffic, he’d be doing good to make it to the hotel on time. He knew he couldn’t call Mike, and he didn’t want to leave him stranded for too long, waiting in the parking garage.
He decided he’d check the message later, after he got home.
◊ ◊ ◊
As predicted, Dan had been pissed at Evan’s reluctance to include everything she’d discovered about the Galileo Club in her report.
“Why the fuck not?” he demanded. “It’s not up to you to decide what’s relevant and what isn’t. You just need to report the facts.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last half hour,” Evan asserted. “The rest of this—the stuff about other club members—is supposition, not fact. None of it is corroborated yet.”
“So what?”
“Whattaya mean, ‘so what’? Aren’t you the one who told me not to bring you anything you couldn’t take to court?”
Dan looked up from the pages of notes from Ping. “Not when it’s this fucking salacious.”
“Since when is the creep factor a gauge of what is and isn’t admissible?” Evan huffed.
“Since it started including the names of assholes who have been personally financing regressive political agendas in this country for a goddamn quarter century. That’s when.”
“I will not let you use this, Dan. Not now.”
“Not now?” he repeated her caveat. “Why not now?”
“Because there are certain to be a lot of innocent people who will be tainted by all of this. We don’t have all the facts yet.”
“Who are you protecting?”
“No one.”
“Bullshit. I know you.” Dan looked over the pages from Ping more carefully.
Evan gave up. It had been insanity to think she’d ever be able to stonewall him.
“Julia’s father,” she said without preamble.
He looked up at her. “What?”
“Julia’s father, Lewis Donne. He was one of Cawley’s cronies at the club—along with the bishop and a few other blue-blooded scions of the city.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Evan.”
“Tell me about it.” She nodded miserably.
“How the fuck did you find out about that?”
Evan opened her mouth to explain about their second-story work on Sunday night, but Dan held up a hand to stop her. “Never mind . . . I don’t wanna know.”
“Wise decision,” she said.
He sat down. “How much time do you need?”
“I don’t know.” Evan shrugged. “A week maybe? Julia is in Paris right now, talking with her mother.”
“Julia knows about this?” Dan was incredulous.
“Yeah. She found out on her own.”
“How?”
“She was the one who identified her father—and the Galileo Club—in the photo you got from Marcus, the one with Cawley and Miller.”
Dan raised an eyebrow. “I never said that picture came from Marcus.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, okay. So what if it did come from him?”
“Dan. He had a reason to give that to you. And it wasn’t philanthropic.”
“Why do you think he sent it to us?”
“Precisely so I would do what I did: dive down a useless rabbit hole and waste most of a week trying to track it down. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was buying time for Cawley.”
“Cawley? Why the fuck would Marcus want to help Cawley?”
“Jesus, Dan.” Evan’s frustration began to overflow. “Why the hell do you keep wearing blinders around him? Remember the Miller campaign? Didn’t that teach you anything about this scumbag’s moral compass? Marcus will help anybody who pays him enough. I’ll give you one guess who that might be.”
“Who?”
“Take your pick.” Evan handed him the list of names attached to the Citizens for Integrity in Government PAC. “But if we’re taking bets, my money is on Cawley.”
“Fuck.” Dan lowered the list to his knee.
“Everything I found is in the report I’ll be sending you this afternoon. Take my word for it, Dan—Miller was murdered to protect Cawley. And so was Joey Mazzetta.”
“Mazzetta? What did Mazzetta’s death have to do with Cawley?”
“Joey was one of the boys on the St. Rita’s basketball team who the bishop and his cronies at Cawley’s club preyed on. He was going to meet Tim the night he was killed—to spill his guts about all of it. But first, he made a side trip to the Galileo Club. He was dead drunk, but he managed to sneak in through a service entrance. He made his way to one of the club’s dining room and made a hell of a scene, sounding off about Cawley and the bishop in front of everyone who was there—and it was a Friday night, so the place was teeming with people. Joey said to tell the bishop and the judge he was there to ‘collect the rent.’ Club security tossed him out and the police responded. But guess what?”
“They never pressed charges?”
“Bingo. Joey ended up dead an hour later. Killed by a bullet fired from a Tokarev 7.62.” She let that sink in. “Ring any bells?”
“Should it?” Dan asked.
“Yeah. It’s Maya’s weapon of choice—the same one she used to kill Andy Townsend.”
“Maya Jindal?”
“The one and only,” Evan said. “And here’s another little happy coincidence for you. Julia and I ran into her last night, when we were scoping out the Galileo Club. And this morning, she sent me a Signal message outing herself as my little pen pal, Moxie.”
Evan couldn’t remember a time when Dan was quiet for so long.
Finally, he got to his feet.
“Send me your report,” he said. “It sounds like you’ve got enough to derail Cawley’s nomination—at least long enough to give Julia the time she needs to figure out her plan for managing the fallout about her father.”
“Okay.” Evan nodded. “Thanks, Dan.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “I’m sorry I got you into this mess.”
“There was no way for you to know what we’d uncover.”
“Yeah,” he said morosely. “But that doesn’t make the stench of it any easier to bear.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
“Come on.” He put an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go see if that kid of ours is ready to go.”
She leaned into him, and they left her office to go find Stevie.
◊ ◊ ◊
Evan was exiting I-95 onto South Columbus Boulevard, driving as fast as she could without risking an accident.
Come on, Tim. Pick up. Pick up.
She’d been calling his cell phone repeatedly since finding his voicemail message after Dan left.
No dice. He’d obviously already left to head to the DoubleTree. He’d called her back while she was walking Dan and Stevie out. As soon as she got back inside and listened to his message, she did a quick LexisNexis search on “Mike Duffy, Phoenix.” There were only four hits, and three of those she was able to eliminate immediately because of their ages. The fourth, Michael Joseph Duffy, was age appropriate and had lived briefly in Philadelphia in the ’90s, but he was deceased. Evan found his obituary listed at the site of the Whitney & Murphy Funeral Home in Phoenix. Mike Duffy had been active in the St. Catherine of Siena Roman Catholic Church, and was survived by his wife, Gloria, three children and four siblings. The family requested that memorial contributions be made to the Fight Colorectal Cancer Fund and Solace Hospice of Maricopa County.
Son of a bitch.
Maya’s warning was right. This meeting was a setup, and Tim was on his way to an ambush.
She thought about calling J.C. Ortiz. But what could she tell him? It would take more time than she had to convince him about why she was persuaded that Tim was in danger.
No. All she could do was get to the DoubleTree as fast as possible and pray she could head Tim off before he went inside.
She tried Tim’s phone again. No dice.
Shit.
She knew he had his phone turned off. He always did when he was driving. He was such a damn stickler for driving safely—a nerdy godsend when it came to his patience teaching Stevie the rules of the road, but a total pain in the ass right now.
The exit for Washington Street was right ahead. Then it was a straight shot to South Broad and the entrance to the DoubleTree. Evan checked the clock on her dash. 5:58 p.m.
Maybe he’s only just getting there? He’d hit worse traffic getting up here from St. Rita’s. Maybe I can still catch him before he goes inside . . .
She floored it to make the next two intersections before the lights changed, and took the turn onto South Broad Street on two wheels.
Jesus, if I don’t lose my fucking license it’s gonna be a miracle.
She turned into the entrance to the DoubleTree Parking garage and stopped to grab a ticket from the automated kiosk. The Standing O bar was located in the lobby, so she needed to grab the first parking space she could find.
Level One was a write-off. There was nothing.
Level Two wasn’t looking much better and she’d just about determined to ditch her car and damn the consequences. Then she saw Tim’s Subaru, parked in a space near the entrance to the elevators.
Fuck.
That had to mean he was already inside . . . or wherever else the bogus Mike Duffy chose to take him.
She parked her car behind his and prepared to head inside.
That’s when she heard the gunshot and saw the back window of a nearby SUV explode.
Jesus Christ!
She threw open her door and stood up on the rocker panel. Then she saw him. Tim was running like hell, ducking in and out between cars, heading for the exit ramp. There was another man chasing him—and he was gaining fast. Evan reflexively laid on her horn—then started shouting at the top of her lungs.
“Hey? Asshole? Over here you worthless piece of shit!” She blew the horn again. “That’s right—I see you! Come and get me, fuck stick!”
Her taunts worked. The man stopped and looked right at her. Evan dropped down behind her car door as he fired again. The bullet hit a support column directly behind her car.
“Tim!” She yelled from her crouch. “Hit the deck! Stay down!”
She stayed low and crept away from her car, trying to work her way around behind the gunman by weaving in and around parked vehicles. When she thought she could, she risked taking a peek at him. He was scanning the area where she’d been and was slowly backing his way toward her still-running car.
He was only about thirty feet away from her now.
Evan ducked down again. Shit. I need something—anything—to hit him with. She inched backward to move farther away, but her foot connected with an empty Diet Coke can and sent it clattering.
Shit. He had her now.
He shifted direction and headed straight for her.
“Come on out, Reed,” he yelled. “Lemme see your pretty face before I fucking waste you.”
Okay . . . this guy was a talker. Maybe she could leverage that?
It was worth the risk. She slowly stood up with her hands held high in the air.
“I think it would be rude for you to kill me before introducing yourself.” She said. “Don’t you?”
He actually laughed. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, as he trained his weapon on her. “You can call me Billy.”
What happened next was a blur. Evan saw a swirling flash of bright red, and suddenly Billy was lying flat on his back in a puddle of motor oil.
Evan’s jaw dropped.
Someone else had joined their party . . .
Maya Jindal was bending over Billy’s unconscious body, retrieving his firearm . . . her firearm, no doubt. This, of course, was after she’d appeared out of no-fucking-where and nailed Billy with a perfectly placed roundhouse kick.
“Oh, my,” she cooed at him, waving her Tokarev back and forth in front of his unseeing eyes. “What a bad boy you’ve been, playing with Maya’s gun. Marcus should’ve known better than to give you such a grown-up toy. Pity you have to find out the hard way how dangerous these old relics can be.”
Evan walked toward them.
“Why, hello.” Maya straightened up and faced her. “We do seem fated to keep running into each other, don’t we?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Now, is that any way to express gratitude? I did just save your life—again.”
“I’ll be sure to add your name to my Christmas card list.”
“Dear Evangeline. I do seem to keep cleaning up your messes, don’t I?”
“Don’t feel you have to do me any favors.”
“Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Unfortunately, it seems this cretin just broke my heel with his face.”
Maya calmly trained her gun on Billy, and shot him between the eyes.
Evan lurched backward and stared, stupefied, as Maya bent down and methodically set about relieving Billy of his wallet and car keys.
“You killed him,” Evan muttered. “You just fucking killed him.”
“What a bright girl you are.” Maya got to her feet. “Oh, look,” she made an oblique gesture with Billy’s wallet, “here comes Father Dowling.”
Evan looked over her shoulder to see Tim running toward them. When he reached them and saw the dead man, he dropped to his knees.
“What . . .” he panted. “What . . . happened?”
“She shot him,” Evan said, simply. There was no reason to belabor the point.
Tim looked anxiously up at Maya, then back at Billy. He swayed for a moment, but managed to remain upright. Then he crawled over to Billy, took hold of his hand, and began to pray. “May you rest in the arms of the Lord who formed you from the dust of the earth . . .”
Maya gave Evan a quizzical look. “Whatever is he doing?”
“Praying.”
“How very singular. Well. As much as I’d love to stay and watch this fascinating demonstration, I have another small errand to take care of. And thanks to dear Billy, I now have to go and change my shoes.”
She removed her heels with practiced ease, as if she were standing near a rack in Ferragamo’s, instead of beside the body of a dead man in a parking garage.
“Gotta dash now, Evangeline.” She cut her eyes at Tim. “I suggest you two do likewise.”
“Trust me,” Evan told her. “It’s next up on the itinerary.”
Maya gave Evan a coquettish smile, followed by a royal wave. “Tutty byes.”
She walked briskly away. Seconds later, Evan heard a car start, followed by the screech of tires as she left the parking garage.
Evan knew they only had seconds to follow suit. She stepped closer to Tim and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Tim. C’mon. We have to go . . . now.”
He continued to pray. “May Christ who was crucified for you, bring you freedom and peace.”
“Tim? I’m not kidding, man. I need you to do the expedited version of this. We gotta go. Now.”
Tim still didn’t budge. It was clear he was going to finish his errand.
Evan’s frustration reached apocalyptic proportions. “I don’t know why the fuck you ever doubted whether or not you should stay a priest. If this doesn’t answer that question for you, nothing ever fucking will. Now come on!”
“May Christ who died for you admit you into his garden of paradise.” Tim made the sign of the cross and struggled to his feet. His face was ashen.
Evan took hold of his arm and hauled him over to her Forester, which was still running.
“Get in,” she commanded.
Once she had him safely stowed, she hurried around to climb into the driver’s seat.
They’d be able to return and retrieve his car any time. Right then, what they needed was to put some fast distance between them and what remained of “Billy.”
The exit kiosk was unattended when they approached it. To avoid having a time stamp applied to her parking ticket, Evan crashed through some blaze orange cones that blocked off a service vehicle lane and turned out of the garage onto South Broad Street, and made a beeline for The Twisted Tail.
She knew Tim wouldn’t be going back to St. Rita’s that night.
The other thing she knew with certainty was that they both needed some time, some space, and some goddamn good bourbon before making the fifty-minute drive back to Chadds Ford.
◊ ◊ ◊
Julia embraced one of her mother’s parting suggestions, and took a shower.
She stood beneath the spray until the hot water scalded her skin. Only when she couldn’t stand the heat any longer did she turn the taps off and remain riveted in place until the steam evaporated and her body grew cold. That was when she stepped from the shower, wrapped herself in several thick towels, and curled up on the bed in her mother’s guest room until her shivering stopped.
The experiment worked.
She’d needed to feel something. Anything. Just to know she was alive, and could still recognize the difference between pain and pleasure.
There was nothing left for her in Paris. There was nothing left for her at all—not in this apartment, not at her grandmother’s house in Philadelphia, not at Donne & Hale, and not anywhere else connected to this part of her life or history.
Her mother had made the choice clear for her. It was uncomplicated. There were no variables. There were no avenues for negotiation. No compromises. It was binary. Black and white. One and done.
No . . . one and undone.
Julia understood it all now. It was why she had come here, after all. To learn where the parameters lay that divided love and truth from fealty to self-interest.
It was shocking how simple it had been. With a few declarative sentences, her mother had managed to lay waste to all of Julia’s carefully crafted paradigms for the ways they could persevere, could recover, could go forward and salvage something from the carnage that would soon overtake their lives.
That had already claimed hers . . .
There was a kind of giddy release that came with acknowledging the epic scope of her failure.
Julia felt like a character from a Charles Dickens novel.
She was Miss Flite, the half-delusional, faded spinster in Bleak House, who wasted her life awaiting judgment in the Court of Chancery. After scores of years, when her verdict was finally returned, Miss Flite released her captive birds from their cages—the same creatures that had been her constant companions and spiritual guardians. Julia had memorized all of their names: Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach.
Judgment had at last arrived for Julia, too—and the time had come to set her own disappointed hopes free.
She dressed and wandered aimlessly through the apartment, looking for anything familiar.
There wasn’t much to find.
L’Étranger. She had become the stranger.
She hesitated at the doorway to her father’s study—the one room that had always been his private sanctum—whether located here, or in any other of their houses.
She crossed the threshold into the immaculate space. It was clear that her mother kept it up exactly as it had been. The shelves that lined two walls were filled with books. Reference books. Histories. Biographies. The Classics. There was even an entire section devoted to books published by Donne & Hale—all of them from his era, or that of his father, or his father’s father. None from hers.
She wasn’t surprised by the omission.
He had an elaborate desk covered with a leather blotter and a vintage brass lamp with a black shade. There was a caddy containing the routine things a businessman would need: a letter opener, a small stapler, paper clips, a book of postage stamps. Julia picked those up. They featured tiny portraits of Catherine De Médici.
Strangely appropriate . . .
Her father also had a small box containing sticks of blue sealing wax and a heavy brass embosser with his monogram, JLD. The thing had a soft patina. It had seen a lot of use.
She gazed down at his chair. It occurred to her that she’d never dared to sit on it—not this one, and not any of the chairs at his offices in New York or in Philadelphia—not even after he’d retired, and she took over the firm.
She had no desire to sit in it now, either.
Instead, she chose a wing chair upholstered in dark green leather that sat in the corner of the room, near a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the Seine. There were some books stacked on a low table beside the chair. The top volume had a bookmark in it. She picked it up. The Decameron. She returned it to the stack, regretting her impulse to look at it.
It would remain unfinished. Evidence of a life interrupted.
The room was quiet, except for the subtle click, click, click of a Limoges porcelain clock sitting atop a Louis XIV chest near the door. Julia watched its second hand make its slow but measured progress around the painted numbers. She watched it for a long time.
There were several paintings in the room, all perfectly displayed on the boiserie-paneled walls. Most could have been exact replicas of the artwork they saw on display last night in the dining room at his club. Hunting scenes. She found his taste for those odd, since, as far as she knew, her father had never hunted for anything—except upstart smaller presses that he could gobble up and make disappear.
There was another painting, only partly visible behind the carved door that led to his bedroom. The edge of its gilded frame flashed in the sunlight streaming in from a nearby window.
Julia didn’t recall that painting, probably because the door to his bedroom was rarely open.
Her curiosity was piqued. She crossed the room and inspected it. What she saw when she closed the door stopped her heart.
The painting was a smaller version of “Snap the Whip.”
She reached out with shaking fingers to touch the canvas. It was authentic. She was certain of it. Homer had signed and dated it “1872.”
Homer painted quite a few of these as studies,Evan had said. There were many practice paintings, but only one original—the original that had been on display at the Galileo Club.
“Little stars,” she quoted.
She ran her fingers across the faces of the boys in the painting.
On impulse, she took hold of the frame and lowered the painting so she could inspect its back for any telltale gallery markings or inventory data that might suggest where her father had acquired it. She was surprised to discover a fat, booklet-sized envelope attached to the back of the frame with clips.
What on earth?
She carefully detached the envelope and propped the painting against the wall, then held the envelope for a few moments without opening it. It was thick. Heavy. It was clear that it contained many sheets of paper or folded documents.
She began to feel wary.
Maybe she shouldn’t open it?
It had been hidden for a reason. Wasn’t this trespassing? What if it contained things that belonged to her mother? Secret things? Letters from a lover? Things she wouldn’t want Julia to know about.
Things Julia didn’t want to know about . . .
What right did she have to look inside?
She looked down at the painting again.
Little stars . . .
She returned to her chair and sat down with the envelope on her lap. She opened its flap and withdrew a thick stack of . . . photographs—scores of them in various sizes and orientations. They were starkly lighted, graphic images—all in black and white. Julia began flipping through them robotically before her tired mind could process the horror of what she was seeing.
Once it did, she recoiled from the photographs in revulsion. They fluttered to the floor and spread out around her feet like a dark wave.
Her breathing became ragged. Blood hammered in her temples. The room began to spin. She knew she was going to be sick.
She clapped her hands to her mouth and stumbled over the images as she fled.
◊ ◊ ◊
Maya waited half an hour for the old geezer to show up.
When, finally, he did arrive, he was shocked to see her.
“How did you get in here?” he demanded.
“It wasn’t all that difficult,” she explained. “Unlike many establishments, your lock accepts American Express. You really should improve security at this place.”
Maya watched an easy half-dozen expressions flicker across the Bishop’s sagging features. They ran the gamut from fear to outrage to guarded suspicion. He was a smallish man, which seemed at odds with the entrapments of power and influence exuded by the opulence of his wardrobe. Her overwhelming impression of the man was that he looked . . . soft. Pampered. Like he’d never lifted anything heavier than the pectoral cross that hung from his neck at the end of a heavy chain. He had pale skin marked with age spots and eerily white hands that now clutched at the folds of his dark cassock.
“I have no further business with you, Miss Jindal. And I do not appreciate seeing you here.”
“I rather suspect we’d be hard-pressed to find any circumstances where you’d appreciate my company. But then, your standards are quite different from those of your colleague the judge, aren’t they, Bishop?”
He sat down behind his imposing desk. It was ridiculously tidy. No papers in evidence. Just an ornate leather blotter, a bound folio of some kind, a small bronze replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà, and a telephone. He cleared his throat.
“Mr. Zucchetto has informed me that our relationship has been terminated. I believe you’ve already been paid the full fee for your services.”
“Mr. Zucchetto informed you correctly.”
“Then why are you here?” He sat back and folded his hands.
Maya crossed her long legs. “Did Mr. Zucchetto also inform you that part of his plan was to have me killed?”
The bishop seemed unfazed by her remark.
“No. But I don’t know all the details of his intercourse with you.”
Maya laughed. “Touché, Bishop. Well played.”
“What do you want?” His tone was icy.
“Contrary to opinion, I’m really an old-fashioned girl.” She reached into the messenger bag that sat on the table beside her chair, and withdrew a sleek pair of black leather gloves. She took her time putting them on before completing her thought. “All this is to say that I believe turnabout is fair play.”
“I’m not sure I take your meaning.”
“Oh,” Maya reached back into her bag and withdrew the Tokarev, “don’t you?”
That finally got a rise out of the old man. His watery eyes began to show traces of fear.
“What do you expect to accomplish with this?” His voice had lost its imperial tone.
“I’m a cleaner, Your Excellency. That’s what I do. It’s why you hired me.” She cocked the hammer on the Tokarev. “I’d be a very sloppy employee if I left a steaming mess of your magnitude behind, now wouldn’t I?”
He held up his hands. “Don’t do this. It isn’t necessary.”
“Oh, but I disagree. Think about poor Joey Mazzetta. And sad Senator Miller, who had to swallow all of those tiny nails and wait hours to die.”
“I had nothing to do with Mazzetta.” The bishop was beginning to sound anxious.
Maya chuckled. “It’s comforting to know you are still a man of some integrity.”
“What are you talking about?”
Maya saw tiny beads of sweat developing on the bishop’s pate.
“You’re so quick to acquit yourself of only one of the two murders carried out to preserve your . . . what shall we call it? Ecclesiastical purity?”
“I didn’t have anyone target him. That was . . .” he didn’t finish his statement.
“Your colleague, the Honorable Justice Cawley, perhaps?”
The bishop did not reply. That would never do . . . Maya needed him to elaborate. Otherwise, her visit here would be wasted.
“No matter,” she said. “It’s all pro forma now, anyway.”
His eyes grew wide. “What do you mean?”
Maya made an elaborate display of checking her watch.
“By now, I’d imagine the judge is on the phone with the White House. One can only wonder at the story he’ll have to tell about your role in this sordid business. As you know,” she leaned forward and rested her elbow on the edge of his desk to set up her shot, “the early bird catches the worm.”
“Cawley panicked.” The bishop was desperate now. “He had that man, Goldman, take care of Mazzetta after his disgusting performance at the club. And Goldman’s people dealt with Miller, too. I had nothing to do with either of those incidents. They weren’t about me.”
“Well, the perfect symmetry of this is that you’re in the enviable position of being able to forgive yourself for the sins you have committed. Isn’t that right, Bishop? All of the nasty things you and the judge did to those innocent little boys?”
“That was all over years ago. Another life. A different time. I haven’t broken my vows.”
“Which vows would those be, Your Excellency? Shall we tally them up? Let’s see . . . poverty, obedience, chastity . . . did I get them all? Oh dear. It looks like you might have a problem with that last one.”
“You can go to hell.” He nearly spat the words at her.
“Oh, that’s in my long-range plan, I assure you. I’ll so look forward to seeing both you and the judge there. We’ll have quite a time reminiscing about the secrets we shared, don’t you think?”
“Tell me what you want.” He was desperate now. “More money?”
“Back to that, are we?” She exhaled. “You’re right. I probably have tarried too long. Allow me to get to the point. You’re up to your sanctified beanie in dung. From where I sit—literally—this can unfold in one of three ways. First: I could kill you right now and simplify everything for everyone. A nice little remedy, but I’m not really feeling the magic in it. Second: I could turn the lovely recording I just made of our conversation over to the authorities. It would incentivize a lot of lively discussions on the cable news channels, don’t you think? And it provides the extra benefit of inoculating me against any future reindeer games by our mutual friend, Mr. Goldman. That leaves us with option three: you can put feet to your own twisted prayers, and go out in a proverbial blaze of glory.” She pulled back the slide on her Tokarev. “Your choice, Bishop. But I think I’m leaning toward that last option. How about you?”
The bishop was starting to shake.
“I see we’ve reached consensus.” Maya deftly extracted a second, smaller weapon from her bag before placing the Tokarev on the desk between them. She got to her feet. “Do take care to make your first shot count. This weapon tends to be messy. You won’t want to try it twice.”
She backed toward the door.
“Deum vigilat,” she chanted, before leaving his office.
She’d reached the elevator doors when she heard the gunshot.
It wasn’t followed by a second.
◊ ◊ ◊
Julia didn’t often drink by herself, but tonight she made an exception.
Her Norwegian Air flight left Paris at 6:15 p.m. local time, and she’d arranged to have a driver pick her up at JFK outside the international terminal for the trek back to Philadelphia. That choice had been simple. A two-and-a-half hour car ride held greater appeal to her than spending the night at an airport hotel to wait for the first commuter flight home in the morning.
She’d already determined that she wouldn’t call Evan. She knew it would be the middle of the night when she got back to Delancey Place—and, in truth, she wasn’t ready to face Evan. Or anyone. Not until she could sort out her emotions and figure out what she was going to do.
After the driver dropped her off, she headed straight for the shower, followed by a much-needed change of clothes. She was bone tired, but knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She’d actually managed to doze a bit on the long flight back from Paris. That surprised her—mostly because she’d stashed the fat envelope of photographs into her carry-on bag, and the damn thing tormented her throughout the entire flight. It virtually banged and strobed from its nest on the floor in an obscene parody of “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Your sins will find you out.
Would this unwelcome record of her father’s sins now become her own dark secret to keep?
What should she do?
Had it been possible, she’d have tossed the photos out the window of the airplane, and let them disappear into the cold waters of the Atlantic.
Now? Now the unopened envelope sat in front of her on her grandmother’s coffee table.
It didn’t belong here. She said a silent apology to her grandmother for bringing the abomination into her house. That thought made her wonder if her grandmother had ever known about Lewis Donne’s sick fraternity of pedophiles? Had Katherine Donne ever shared her lurid discovery with her own mother? At one time, the two women had been close . . .
No. Julia doubted that she had. It wouldn’t be Katherine’s style. And in the end, everything came down to considerations of “style” for Julia’s mother.
She nursed her tumbler of cognac and stared at the packet containing the photos. The decision to bring it back to Philadelphia with her had been reflexive. Now she wondered why she chose to do so? It wasn’t like she wanted more time to review the photographs . . .
Quite the contrary. She never wanted to see them again. She knew she’d live the rest of her life trying to erase the memory of what she’d already seen. The collection of repulsive images was burned into her mind like hidden objects revealed by flashes of lightning.
She closed her eyes. Her father . . . naked and bent over the back of a boy. A boy. A boy with a blank expression on his young face. Vacant eyes . . .
No. She didn’t need to see these again. No one ever needed to see these.
What good could come from making them public? Scores of lives would be tainted . . . ruined by their accidental association with these men. Innocent people who’d had nothing to do with her father or his closed circle of . . . perpetrators . . . would be tarred by the exposure of what some members of their beloved club had done.
Her gaze shifted to the fireplace that commanded the wall facing the sofa. She’d turned on the gas logs before she sat down. There were no lamps on in the room, and the dramatic shadows cast by the fire undulated along the walls and ceiling like underworld demons. Their frenzied movements compounded her agitation. She felt surrounded—pursued by a posse of every unholy thing that lurked behind the shroud of darkness.
Enough. It was enough. She would not allow herself to become a hostage to her father’s diseased and criminal past.
She couldn’t will her discovery away any more than she could change the reality of what her father and the other men in his cabal had done. She knew about it. And knowing about it changed everything. Knowing about it also implied responsibility. There was no denying that. Hiding from the truth never solved anything. Averting your gaze from things you’d rather not know about simply gave those things greater power and the tacit permission to flourish unfettered.
She drained her glass of cognac and picked up the envelope. There was nothing to be gained by putting this off. She owed it to herself to face the full reality of her father’s deeds. She owed it even more to every one of the children he’d victimized. Violated. Their lives had been changed forever.
Just as learning the truth about what had happened to them had now changed her life.
She removed the stack of images and spread them out across the top of the table.
The scenes they depicted were abominable. Harsh, graphic scenes of the sexual abuse of children preserved for . . . what? Voyeuristic pleasure? Licentious reminders of forbidden conquests? Some profane historical record?
My god . . . Julia forced herself to stare at the images. This was my father’s private porn stash.
The realization sickened her.
The faces of some of the men—at least the ones she could make out—were familiar to her. Bishop Szymanski. Judge Cawley. Albert. Others were too obscured. She guessed they all were part of the same small set within the club—her father’s special confederacy. The beneficiaries of his Ganymede Trust.
The boys, however? The faces of the boys were all alike. Their expressions were empty. Vague. Void of any emotion. One face in particular deviated from that. She nearly missed seeing him as he stood in the shadows near the edge of one of the photos. A rail thin boy wearing only his underpants. He stared directly at the camera with a look of terror on his face—like he knew what would happen. Like he knew he’d be next.
She swept the images back into a stack and covered them with the empty envelope.
Once again, she thought about destroying the photos. Once again, she resisted the impulse.
Destroying them would be wrong.Destroying them would make her complicit in the crimes committed by her father and his cronies. Destroying them would allow the same abhorrent acts to continue without consequence, without conscience, and without responsibility.
Destroying them would make her like her mother . . .
When you know better,Maya Angelou said, do better.
It was now her turn to do better.
She could tell Evan. She could simply hand the evidence against Cawley over and let Evan decide what to do with it. Undoubtedly, Evan would give the images to Dan. Would justice then be served?
Maybe.
She thought about Edwin Miller and the way the Democrats had protected him because they cared more about changing the legislative balance of power than protecting the children he preyed upon. How naïve would she have to be to expect today’s Republican majority to behave any differently?
They wouldn’t.
Political divisions in the country had moved beyond concern for what was right. There was no longer a shared moral compass that steered divergent political ideologies toward a shared sense of the common good.
It was no longer possible to trust the instincts of a political culture that had lost its center.
No. She couldn’t play Pontius Pilate and calmly wash her hands of this before waltzing off to resume the pampered comforts of the rest of her life.
That was all finished now. It had to be.
Monday’s unread newspaper sat on an overstuffed ottoman beside the sofa.
Jessica Hayes Marsh.They’d been classmates at Exeter. Jess had gone on to study journalism at Columbia, and now worked as a senior editor at The Washington Post. Julia had run into her last year in New York at the Pulitzer ceremony. Jess and her team had just won the award for investigative reporting.
Julia looked back at the stack of photographs. Jess would know exactly what to do with these.
But she’d have to make another phone call first—to the board chair at Donne & Hale.
She got up and headed for the bedroom to retrieve her cell phone.