Jack watched Maggie leave, nimbly sliding past Patsy as she gave him the brush.
Months ago a lady—a Russian lady with a big white dog—had told him there’d be no more coincidences in his life. He’d seen no hard evidence yet that she’d been right, but certain incidents that he might otherwise consider happenstance seemed to form a pattern when he looked for one. True, you could always find connections if you looked hard enough and stretched the imagination. That was how conspiracy theories were born.
But Maggie had it right: Her picking him to help her with Cordova seemed like a hell of a coincidence. On the other hand, Cordova did a lot of blackmailing. It wasn’t impossible that two of his victims—Emil Jankowski in September and Maggie here at the tail end of October—would call on Jack. Not too much competition in the fix-it field.
Still…
He popped out of his seat and headed for the door, waving to Julio as he passed the bar.
Out on the street he peered up and down the sidewalk until he spotted Maggie’s blue knit hat bouncing away to his right. He took off after her, keeping his distance. He hoped she’d snag a cab but no, she bounded down the steps of a subway entrance.
Damn. Following her on a Sunday wouldn’t be easy. No crowds to hide in. With a mental shrug he headed down. The worst that could happen was she’d spot him and he’d have to ad lib an explanation.
He hung back on the stairs till he saw her head for the downtown side. When she hopped on an A train he slipped into the following car and positioned himself where he could watch her through the glass. She pulled a book from her bag but didn’t open it. She stared at the floor, looking lost, as if the worries of the world were all hers.
She rode that way down to West Fourth where she switched to the F. Along the way she didn’t look around much, too lost in her thoughts to notice anyone following.
She stepped off at Delancey and Jack followed her up to the streets of the Lower East Side. The buildings here were former tenements that maxed out at five stories. Canopied oriental and kosher food stores sat cheek by jowl along the stained gray sidewalk.
He gave her a block lead but grew a little uneasy as he started to recognize his surroundings. He’d come down here just last August to confront a priest who had hired him but managed to pull one over on him. What was his name? Father Ed. Right. Father Edward Halloran. His church had been around here somewhere, St. Somebody-or—
He stopped dead as he followed Maggie around a corner. There, across the street, looming over the surrounding tenements, sat the hulking, Gothic, granite-block mass of the Church of St. Joseph. The old building wasn’t in any better shape than the last time he’d seen it. The large rose window centered over the double doors was caked with grime, as were its twin crocketed spires, but the latter boasted the added decoration of white stripes à la city squab.
The doors stood open and people, mostly older with an immigrant look, were wandering inside.
Jack had been in the rectory to St. Joe’s immediate left, but not the building to the right where Maggie was hurrying up the front steps, passing a sign that read Convent of the Blessed Virgin.
A nun? Maggie was a nun?
Well, it sort of fit with her uptight personality. But he guessed she wasn’t too uptight, otherwise Cordova would have nothing to hold over her. And since she was connected with St. Joe’s, Jack had a pretty good idea who had referred her: Father Ed.
Okay. One mystery solved. But another remained. Why blackmail a nun? Seemed like a waste of effort. Nuns didn’t have any money—unless Maggie came from a wealthy family.
Jack glanced at his watch. Five to four. He’d promised to take Gia and Vicky out to dinner, but that wasn’t till seven. Maybe he’d invest an hour or so here and see if he could learn any more. Maybe Maggie wasn’t a nun. Maybe she merely worked at the convent…but he doubted that.
He spotted an all-purpose convenience store/take out/coffee shop eater-corner from the church. Maybe he could watch from there.
He crossed over and bought a cup of stale coffee in the traditional blue-and-white container from the Korean proprietor. No sooner had he stepped to the window and taken his first bitter sip when Maggie reappeared. She’d changed into a gray skirt and jacket over a white blouse. Her hair was tucked under a black wimple with a white band. She hurried down the convent steps, up the church steps, and disappeared inside.
Well, that settled the is-she-or-isn’t-she question. But Jack wanted a little more info. He stepped outside and crossed back to the church, dribbling his coffee onto the pavement as he went. On the far side he tossed the empty cup into a trash basket, then climbed St. Joe’s front steps.
To the right, white vinyl letters snapped into a black message board that listed the Mass schedule. Sunday had one every ninety minutes till noon, then one last chance at four.
To the left, a worn black-on-white sign heralded the Church of St. Joseph’s Renovation Fund and sported a thermometer to track the progress of contributions. One-hundred-thousand-dollar increments were listed to the left of the graduated column up to the goal of $600,000; the red area that marked the level of contributions hadn’t even filled the bulb. Not surprising, considering the chill economic climate and the low-income level of the parish.
Jack edged through the entrance and stood in the vestibule. The nave stretched ahead through a second set of doors. A sparse crowd for the four o’clock Mass, so he had no trouble spotting Maggie. She sat behind a well-dressed man. Occasionally she’d lean forward and whisper something. He’d nod and she’d lean back.
The priest on the altar was not Father Ed; he displayed about the same level of interest in what he was doing as his parishioners, which was not much. Jack tuned him out, trying to get a fix on the relationship between Maggie—if that was her name—and her man friend. He’d thought at first that they might be having an affair, but he sensed a distance between them.
About halfway through the Mass the man rose and sidled to the aisle, then headed back toward Jack. He looked to be about fifty, with a good haircut and features that might be described as distinguished looking except for the haunted look in his eyes and the circles beneath them. He gave Jack a friendly nod and a reflexive smile as he passed. Jack nodded back.
Jack counted to five, then stepped to the front doors. He watched the man stand on the corner, looking for a cab. It took a couple of minutes but he snagged one and it headed uptown.
Jack leaned against the rusty iron railing by the building-fund sign and waited. Soon the parishioners began to filter out. He spotted Maggie among them, head down, lost in thought.
“Sister?” he called softly. “Can I have a word with you?”
She looked up and her initial look of confusion vanished in wide-eyed shock.
“You! How did you—?”
Jack motioned her closer. “Where can we talk?”
She glanced around at the final parishioners straggling from within and heading down the steps.
“In a moment this will be as good a place as any.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I can’t be seen strolling around with a man, and certainly not sitting in a bar with him.”
Jack noted the emphasis on “bar.”
He lowered his voice. “What’s your real name, sister?”
“Margaret Mary O’Hara.” She flashed a tiny smile. “The kids at the parish school used to call me ‘Sister M&M.’ They still do, but now they spell it differently.”
Jack returned her smile. “Sister Eminem. That’s cool. Better than Sister Margaret. That’d make you sound ninety years old.”
“Around the convent I’m known as Sister Maggie, but lately I have felt ninety years old.”
Movement caught Jack’s eye. He spotted a white-albed altar boy at the front doors, kicking up the hooks that held them open.
“Hi, Sister,” he said as he spotted her.
“Hello, Jorge,” she said with a genuine smile, wider than Jack had ever seen from her. “You did a good job today. See you in school tomorrow.”
He nodded and smiled. “See ya.”
When the doors had closed she turned back to Jack.
“Obviously you followed me. Why?”
“Too many unanswered questions. But at least now I know who referred you. Does Father Ed know you’re being blackmailed?”
She shook her head. “No. He just knows I need help and can’t go to the police. I went to him for advice and he suggested you. Did…did he hire you for something?”
“You’ll have to ask him. My memory’s very unreliable.”
The answer seemed to please her. “That’s good to know.”
“Are you and that man I saw you with in the photos together?”
“I’d really rather not say.”
“Fair enough.” Jack looked around. They were alone on the steps, alone on the deserted street. A man and a nun standing a good two feet apart. No one could infer anything improper from that. “How bad can the photos be?”
She looked at her feet. “He sent me copies. Very bad. Nothing left to the imagination.”
“Well then let me ask, How much can they hurt you? I’m assuming you were with a guy, but even if you weren’t, I mean, they made some openly gay guy a bishop, so what could—?”
“Good gravy, Jack. Those were Episcopalians. This is the Catholic Church.”
Good gravy?
“You’re kidding, right? After what Catholic priests have been up to?”
“Some Catholic priests. None that I’ve ever known. But this is different. Nuns are different. My order would banish me. I’d be out on the street with no home, no savings, and no job.”
“Seems pretty cold.”
“I love my order, Jack. But more than that, I love serving God and I love teaching these children. I’m a good teacher. It’s not false pride when I say I can and do make a difference. But even if I was allowed to stay in the convent, I couldn’t be allowed to teach.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Those pictures threaten everything I hold dear in my life.”
Jack watched her and wondered how so many facets of her life had combined to ruin it. If she’d been Margaret Mary O’Hara, single public school teacher, she could thumb her nose at Cordova. Yeah? So? But she was Sister Maggie and that was a whole other ball game.
“Okay, answer me this: How much money do you have?”
“We take a vow of poverty but are allowed to put a little away for special circumstances. Whatever I had is all but gone now, paid to that…that…”
“Yeah, I know. Any family money you can tap into?”
Her mouth twisted. “My father’s long dead, my mother died over the summer, penniless. Every last cent she had was eaten up by the nursing home.”
“Sorry to hear that. But I’m confused. Having seen the way this creep operates, I can’t understand him going after someone with a vow of poverty. He tends to like deeper wells.”
Sister Maggie looked away. After a few heartbeats she sighed and pointed to the sign behind Jack.
“He wants me to steal from the renovation fund. I’m one of the overseers.”
“Really.” This was an interesting twist. “How could he know that?”
Another look away. “It has to do with the photos. I can’t say any more.”
“All right then, why not simply quit that position?”
“He said if I don’t pay, or if I quit working with the fund, he’ll make the photos public and ruin me and the fund. The fund’s having such a tough time as it is, a scandal will sink it.”
“Whatever they show, you can say they’re fake. You wouldn’t believe how they can manipulate photos these days. Seeing used to be believing. Not anymore.”
“First off,” she said, “that would be lying. Secondly, I have been working closely of late with the other person in the photos. What they show would not seem so preposterous to anyone who knew us.”
“So what you’re saying is even if they were fakes, very good fakes, they’d still mess up your life and the building fund.”
She nodded, started to say something, but couldn’t get the words past her trembling lips.
Jack felt his jaw clench as he watched tears of helplessness rim her eyes. Sister Maggie seemed like good people. The thought of that slimy, belly-crawling son of a bitch turning the screws on her, and probably enjoying every minute…
Finally she found her voice. “He stole something from me…a very private moment…”
“And you want it back.”
She looked up at him. “No. I want it erased.” She pointed to her heart. “From here”—then touched her forehead—“and from here. But that can’t happen while those pictures are out there.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”
She looked into his eyes and didn’t seem to like what she saw there.
“But without violence. Please. I can’t be a party to violence.”
Jack only nodded. No promises. If an opportunity to put the hurt on the slob presented itself, he might not be able to resist.
He’d have dinner with his ladies tonight, then he was going to pay a visit to fat Richie Cordova.