Deadly Blessings (15 page)

David grimaced and reclined again as Fenton
shot me an expression of one-upmanship. “I still think that since
Alex isn’t doing anything important she ought to pitch in on
mine.”

“
What do you say, Alex? You
want to show Fenton the ropes on this one?”

The beauty of Bass’s remark was not lost on
me. With a weeklong delay due to the candidate spots, it was going
to take some real clever angle to get people engaged in Milla’s
story again. Dan’s station had done a small introductory teaser on
it, touting it as an “ongoing investigation.” Which meant that they
either had some big revelation in the works, or they were
scrambling to come up with one.

Bass wanted help. Badly. I could tell from
the politely toned request. But I wasn’t about to fold.

William had been very quiet. He had all my
information-to-date on the hair care story, and as yet, I hadn’t
been assigned anything new. I often juggled multiple stories at
once. As a matter of fact, I’d grown accustomed to the pressure,
and when I had only one story to focus on, I tended to get bored.
Which led me to my request.

“
Actually,” I said, “I have
another story I’m working on. Entirely new.”

“
What is it?” Bass
asked.

William shifted in his seat, in a way that
made me think I might have piqued his interest. Problem was, I
didn’t want Fenton to know anything about my private investigation
into Milla’s death. Or about the alleged prostitution ring Sophie
told me about.

So, I hedged. “I’m going to ask you to give
me a little leeway here, Bass. Trust me on this one.” I had nothing
to back my claim, other than a gut-level feel that I’d scratched at
the surface of something big. “It’s too early to get into it all.
There are lots of variables and I need time to investigate before
the story comes clear. This extra week to finish off the hair care
story is going to make all the difference for me.”

He’d acquiesce. I could sense it.

“
Nope.”

My mouth dropped open. “What?”

Bass shook his head. “Not good enough.
Fenton needs your help on the Milla Voight story. This is the one
we’ve been waiting for.”

Though I kept my eyes on Bass, I could see,
in periphery, Fenton’s gloat. I wanted to tell him that he could
kiss my ass before I’d jump in to help pull this off. “No way,” I
said. “You took me off that one.”

“
Yeah, well I’ve got
another story for you in mind if you’re so set on working a
different one. You know that homeless story we’ve been batting
around for a while … ?”

He let the sentence hang, but the threat was
there. The homeless story. The story that he pulled out of
mothballs to hold over our heads every time he needed something
done. Nobody wanted the homeless story. It was one of those that
could be done any time, fit in any place, but involved traveling
down to the depths of Lower Wacker Drive to interview recalcitrant,
not to mention smelly, people who would prefer to spit and throw
things at you than to answer your questions.

Not to be baited into an
argument, though one was gathering like a storm in my brain, I
deflected the tangent of the conversation. “I’ll tell you what.
Give me the leeway I’m asking for on this new one, and I’ll make it
work.
Up Close Issues
will be eating their hearts out. But I’m going to need
time.”

Maybe it was my imagination, but I believed
Bass maintained a grudging respect for me. I watched indecision
work its way through his face, and I sensed his reluctant trust.
“Okay,” he said at last.

I let out the breath I’d been holding and
tried not to laugh when Fenton jumped out of his chair to start
whining.

Bass snapped at him,
effectively shutting him up with a rebuke. “Cut it out. You do your
job, let Alex do hers.” He turned to me then, “But you better come
up with something good. Otherwise, I
will
assign you that homeless
story.”

William cleared his throat. “One thing you
might want to consider,” he said. Focusing his attention directly
toward Bass, he gave me a nice profile to watch as he talked. The
sheer difference in size between the two men was staggering.
William was tall, trim—a man who kept himself in great physical
condition. Bass was short, pale and though not overweight, he
enjoyed the life of middle-class sedentary hedonism, and had just
enough flab to prove it.

“
What’s that?”

William gave a nonchalant shrug. “Homeless
stories tend to be the black hole of ratings. We did a couple of
them at the paper and nearly sank the ship both times.” His eyes
flicked my direction for a split-second before he continued. “I
know we’re hungry for ratings here. Thought that might help.”

“
Yes, well, thank you,”
Bass said, but I’d bet he was gritting his teeth as he spoke.
William had effectively taken the wind out of Bass’s sails of
threat. Politely too. I caught William’s glance and smiled. He
raised his eyebrows in a gesture of innocence and went back to
studying the files on his lap.

* * * * *

I visited Sophie again at her apartment
right after our staff meeting adjourned. For the first time this
season, the air held a bit of a chill. Navigating the narrow
gangway that separated one tall three-flat from its neighbor, I was
blasted with a twisting breeze that swirled my hair around my head
and made crispy brown whirlpools out of the fallen leaves that
crunched when I stepped on them.

Up above, beyond the top of the bricked
walls that made up the two structures beside me, I stared at the
blue in my narrow view of the sky. Days like this made it hard to
believe that such beauty and such sorrow can exist on the same
planet. Matthew’s wake was scheduled for the next evening, Tuesday.
I’d make it a point to attend.

Sophie had told me over the phone that she
was afraid she didn’t have the funds to give Matthew a proper
burial, but that Father Bruno had made arrangements on her behalf
with a mortician friend. Except for the relatively minor price of
the grave, and the marker, if she chose to purchase one, Matthew’s
funeral would cost her nothing.

We sat at the kitchen table again, with two
steaming cups of coffee sitting between us. Behind Sophie, a large,
double-hung window offered a view of the next-door brick wall.

“
Her name is Lisa Knowles,”
Sophie said in a halting way, writing the name down for me in
curlicued foreign script. “But is maybe not her real name. A man
call her Vicky one time and she answer. I pretend not to listen.
She no know I hear that.”

Her admission the night
before had thrown me off-kilter, and I had to fight off a vague
sense of disillusionment. She told me that most of the young women
who came to help her—the women I’d met the night before—were her
colleagues. Not all of them. But most. And several worked at the
north side hair salon as well.

My best shot at helping her, and at making
Bass sit up and take notice, was to withhold judgment. Who was I to
decide other peoples’ life choices? Still, the idea of that kind of
intimacy with strangers for money made me cringe.

Sophie’s tentative English was
comprehensible, but slow. As she spoke, I could feel her weigh
every word, analyze her syntax, and be more concerned about how she
phrased things than about what she was saying. I urged her to
switch to her native language and I pulled out my small tape
recorder. If worse came to worse, I had a whole family of folks I
could rely on for translation.

Sophie’s odyssey had begun two years
earlier, when she had come to the United States under Father
Bruno’s wing. When he interviewed her, she said, he’d been happy
and proud to find out that she had goals and aspirations.

“
Matthew,” she said with a
sucking breath that threatened to be let out in a sob, “came to
protect me. My parents were afraid to let me come to a new country
on my own. We hoped to bring our parents here, someday too. He
wanted them to have a good life.” She paused again as tears moved
down her pinkened cheeks. “But this is the life that killed
him.”

“
You can’t think like that,
Sophie. Dangers are everywhere. It isn’t your fault.”

Her lips tight, she simply shook her
head.

“
Do you know what he was
doing in the neighborhood where he was found?” I asked.

“
They killed him
there.”

“
I mean,” I said, “do you
know why he went there? Did he have some business? Friends who live
in the area?”

I watched her struggle for control. “Matthew
didn’t go there,” she said at last. “Someone took him there. They
were afraid that he was going to go to the police. They had him
killed.”

Afraid that Sophie had lost her grip on
reality, I said, in as gentle a voice as possible, “You realize all
the evidence at the scene suggests a robbery gone bad.” I’d
squeezed in a call to Maria to see what she could come up with. The
fact that Matthew had been found in a neighborhood known
notoriously for its high-crime and that he had nothing left on his
body of value, made it likely Matthew was simply a random victim.
The only way they’d been able to discover his identity had been my
alert to Maria, earlier. She caught the connection and put two and
two together.

“
You don’t
understand.”

“
I’m trying to,” I
said.

Sophie’s frustration seemed less aimed at me
and more toward an unseen entity near the ceiling. “You remember
the girl who was murdered? Milla Voight? Milla worked at the salon,
but she would not prostitute herself. She refused, despite a great
deal of pressure.” I watched more heavy tears gather, trembling in
Sophie’s eyes. “She was going to be fired soon. Miss Knowles was
very angry with her.

“
But then Milla found she
was pregnant. And only after that did she learn that her beloved
Carlos was a priest. A priest! What would Father Bruno say to
that?” Sophie hugged her arms around herself and gave a shudder.
“Even when she found out, I think she would have kept it quiet,
except then she heard he had slept with many of the girls. And paid
for it.” She gave me a meaningful look. “He knew what we were. Just
as he knew Milla was really, just a girl in love. And he used that.
He used her. He was part of Miss Knowles organization.”

Sophie’s face wrinkled up again.

“
She was never going to get
an abortion. I knew that. She would never go through with something
like that. She only went there to confront Carlos. I think he would
have liked her to get rid of the baby, if you want to know the
truth. But he was there, demonstrating, with other clergy, and he
had to make a show of stopping her.”

The story hurt for Sophie to tell, as was
obvious from her constant shifting and from the way she bit her
nails after nearly every sentence. I wanted to hold her hands down
on the table, to keep the poor fingers from losing their nails
entirely, but I held tight to my mug and sipped my coffee
instead.

“
She discovered later that
he had planned all along to lure her into prostitution. I can’t
tell you how much that tore her apart. I swear she lost her mind.
She’d given him her heart. A woman does not do that
lightly.”

“
No,” I agreed, “she
doesn’t.”

“
She threatened him, then.
She should never have done that. She told him she was going to go
to the authorities. To let everyone know what kind of a priest he
really was. She was so hurt, herself, she wanted to hurt
him.”

“
But that would have
exposed all of you.”

Sophie shook her head. “Milla only wanted to
frighten him. She wanted to make him understand the kind of fear
she was feeling.”

“
But then she was
killed?”

“
Yes,” she said, taking a
deep breath. “Matthew disapproved of my involvement. Even though it
put food on our table and paid our rent while we tried to make a
life here. He believed someone killed Milla before she could reveal
the truth about Miss Knowles’ organization. He wanted to find proof
and show me so that I would leave.”

“
But you didn’t believe
him?”

“
No, of course not. I
didn’t want to believe that at all. Miss Knowles and Rodero protect
us. They take care of us. They don’t want us hurt.” Her words were
coming out fast. She stopped for a moment, shaking her head. “Or, I
didn’t think so. I felt safe. And I didn’t want to disappoint
Father Bruno. If we left, what would he think?”

“
How did Father Bruno
react?”

“
To Milla’s murder? He was
saddened. Deeply saddened. He takes care of us like we were his
children. He found out about the pregnancy after she died, and he
grieved for all the lives that were lost or were broken in this
tragedy. He did not know about the prostitution. He only knew that
Carlos was the baby’s father. Still, he felt responsible. After
all, Carlos was his protégé.”

I made an unladylike sound.

Sophie continued, “Milla’s was the most
touching funeral I have ever been to. And he is angry at Carlos for
leaving the United States. But his hands are tied.”

I gauged her reaction as I asked, “What’s
the story on that fellow, Emil? From the rectory.”

“
Why?”

“
You froze up the minute he
walked in. And he either had a good drunk on him, or he’s under
some major league medication. Something’s wrong there.”

Sophie’s gaze dropped to the mug in front of
her. It was still full to the brim, untouched. “He works with Miss
Knowles to make arrangements. He was my … date … once.”