Deadly Blessings (29 page)

I had to know. “What’s in the folder?”

He gave a long, slow smile. “Just a few
pieces of information.” Picking it up, he opened it so that it
formed a wall between us. “Let’s see here … Your date of birth is
November eighteenth, correct?” I felt my mouth open as he
continued. “I have that right here. And a couple of names. Mother,
father, attending physician. Your real name.”

I heard, more than felt, the sharp breath
rush into me. Surrounding lights and noises dimmed and a rush of
blood shot to my brain, sending sparks of fear, anticipation, and
hope ricocheting through my body like knives, making tiny cuts as
they flew.

“
I have contacts with
Catholic Charities, to answer your question. It took some effort,
but when I assured the administration that this was of the utmost
importance, they took me at my word. And I will take you at yours,
if you give it to me.”

His stare bore into me, as he took his time
before speaking again. The fact that I sat speechless did not deter
him. The part of my mind that tenaciously tried to remain objective
understood that I was giving him the precise reaction he’d
expected.

“
As I said, we are each in
a position to help the other.” Closing the folder, he placed it on
the table again, this time using his smoke-stained fingertips to
inch it closer to me.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Inside were
all the answers I wanted. My mother’s name. Who she was; who my
father was. The questions I’d had for decades, questions I’d
suppressed. All the answers were right there. Within my grasp. All
I had to do was look the other way where Sophie was concerned. And
how simple that sounded right now, how very easy.

My hands gripped each other tightly in my
lap, but I couldn’t tell if they were working together to prevent
grabbing the folder or if they were pained in anticipation. I
didn’t know anything.

“
Alex,” Bruno’s voice was
soothing, like a lullaby, as I stared at the answers to my dreams
on the table before me. “You’ll be helping Sophie, you’ll be
helping all those she cares about. If they’ve chosen their path,
their eyes are open. And they’re hurting no one. Would you strip
from them the very lives they’ve created? Just to exploit their
stories for the nation to see? For your own need for recognition
and accolades? Think about it, Alex. What will happen to them, if
they’re exposed? Even if nothing of what you claim is true. Their
lives will be forever tainted by your actions. Can you live with
that guilt for the rest of your life?”

My mind tried to catch up with my emotions.
I ignored the shots of adrenaline that raced my heart so hard and
so fast that I swore it would burst. I knew I should refuse. I knew
that. I tried to distance myself from my own desires. To analyze
the situation. But, like a dream where you’re being chased by a
shadow, and your feet are suddenly frozen in place, I struggled
against an unseen force.

Concentrate, I told myself. Don’t react. I
conjured up enough chutzpah to say, “It isn’t just Lisa’s …
organization.”

He raised an eyebrow.

I took a deep breath. But I had to know.
“Milla,” I said. “And Matthew. Were their deaths—”

He held his hands up, positioned eerily like
priests’ are during the blessings over bread and wine. “Alex.” His
voice was low, warning. “Don’t.”

“
Why?”

Once again, the kindly priest mask settled
over his features. “Because you are a news investigator. You see
connections that don’t exist. You’ll bring more to the forefront
than belongs there, all in the name of exposing the truth. But
there is nothing there. We may all be sinners in the eyes of God,
but there is no one more devoted to protecting the sanctity of life
than I am.”

I wanted to believe him. For Sophie’s safety
and for my own. But I had to know.

“
If I refuse?”

His face hardened, for a brief moment. He
pulled the folder from the Formica tabletop, in exquisite slowness.
My heart wanted to reach out and grab it from him before he tucked
it back into his briefcase. “If you pursue your story, I will use
whatever means necessary to prevent the segment from airing. I have
many important contacts in the city, and I’m confident I’d be
successful.” He paused a long moment. “With that in mind, why not
take advantage of my offer and make it easier on both of us?” He
shut the briefcase with a tiny double-click and eased himself out
of the booth. Tapping the table in front of me he smiled in a way
that made my stomach squirm. “Think about it.”

Chapter Nineteen

The very last time my parents took us to the
drive-in theater, we’d gone for the requisite double feature. Kid
movie first; some Disney offering, as I recall. Grown-up film
following. The arrangement worked like a charm as far as my parents
were concerned. Dangling the carrot of a drive-in before us ensured
our angelic behavior for at least half the day leading up to it. A
perfect family outing. Especially since, at drive-ins, no one
complained about Lucy’s incessant chatter.

Once the kid-friendly movie finished, my
parents expected us to go to sleep, pajama-clad in the back seat,
like we always had in the past. They collected our empty candy and
popcorn containers, let us take one last sip of our sugary pop, and
settled us in during the peppy, animated intermission.

Lucy complied, snoring softly, in three
minutes flat.

That time, for some reason, I couldn’t. And
though the idea of sneak-watching a grown-up movie held allure to
my ten-year-old sensibilities, I quickly found it boring. My
parents, engaged in the talky drama, didn’t notice me doing what I
liked to do best, which was, even at that age, watching other
people.

The young couple in the car next to us, very
close, were engaged in some heavy petting, though I didn’t realize
it at the time. I kept my head low, peering over the edge of the
door. Half-open to allow for air movement, my window made a nice
place to rest my forehead as I watched. I kept having to ease my
sweet-sticky fingers up to smear away my breath’s condensation, but
I moved in stealth, knowing without knowing why, that my parents
wouldn’t quite approve of whatever this couple was doing.

I vividly remember trying to figure it out.
Obvious to me that these two weren’t interested in the flickering
movie either, they seemed instead to be moving their bodies in
unnatural gyrations. He sat facing forward, in the back seat. She
faced him, looking to be perched on his lap.

I found it curious, fascinating. Little did
I know. Judging from their faces, I decided that whatever the
activity, they both found it enjoyable. And they kissed a lot.

When he pulled her shirt over her head,
exposing her bare chest, my attention was riveted. I couldn’t drag
my eyes away, no matter how much I knew I should. I watched them
smile and kiss and rock in increasingly quicker motions until she
arched backwards, letting out a high-pitched moan that grabbed my
parents’ attention from the screen.

Within seconds Dad looked at them, looked at
me, threw the big old metal speaker out the window, and slammed the
car into gear.

My parents never spoke about the incident,
and didn’t answer Lucy, even when she raised her groggy head to
ask, “What happened?”

Never went to the drive-in again.

And a little bit of my innocence was
lost.

That memory popped up now as I sat with Bass
in the night’s darkness, with a silver-framed plasma screen set
between us. The slight scratchiness of the audio, the closeness of
the car’s interior, and most of all, the anticipatory feeling of
voyeurism transported me back to that moment. At once I felt eager,
guilty, and uncomfortable.

We were across the street from the Romantic
Voyage motel. Its amber sign blinked in loud precise buzzes,
advertising four-hour naps available round-the-clock. Cicero Avenue
had plenty of traffic, but we’d picked this particular
establishment because a quiet parking lot across the street
afforded us opportunity to watch the place while William’s
encounter would be recorded. The shrub-shaded lot we sat in now had
no overhead lighting. Tall yews and the dark night guaranteed our
near-invisibility to the traffic zooming by. This parking area
butted up to a squat brick animal clinic—office hours over since
noon.

I’d driven my Ford Escort, at Bass’s pointed
suggestion. His roomier Lexus SUV would have been a better choice,
but he claimed car problems and insisted we use something “more
dependable.” Known forever as a car-babier, I suspected he simply
didn’t want his precious vehicle involved in the undercover
operation for paranoid reasons of his own.

Tech-Jeff walked us through the process
earlier. He was a handsome man, over six feet tall, not a spare
ounce on him. Ten pounds more would have been a smart investment,
in my opinion. Men need a little bulk. His full head of dark hair
had the monochromatic sheen of dye. Long, slim fingers worked the
gizmos he’d demonstrated, and I swore that his nails were manicured
and polished. He went over each step of the taping process with
clear explanations and caveats. From our perspective, things were
easy. Bass and I would sit in my car, watch the monitor, and
whisper the occasional direction to Jeff via our walkie-talkies.
But only if necessary.

Jeff had parked in an adjacent lot a block
down; the van he drove had a number of odd gizmos attached to it,
and we didn’t want to attract undue attention by parading it along
busy Cicero Avenue. Should the need arise, we had a code word,
“Voyager,” that would bring him front and center to help out.

When we first arrived, I left Bass in the
car long enough to take a quick walk around the place, to get a
feel for it. As “nap” motels went, the Romantic Voyage did a nice
job of keeping the cheap looking clean. Faux-classy, the
white-washed, two-story structure had red trim and pink doors that
boasted gold room numbers against wooden red hearts. The light from
the flashing neon sign, thirty feet tall, washed over the building
in blinks, causing it to alternate in color between cool
night-white and a sorry shade of yellow. The parking lot,
surprisingly free of litter, even boasted two small plantings of
shrubs that someone cared enough to trim. William’s car sat to the
far right of the lot. He’d rented one. In case anyone bothered to
check, he would appear to be merely a traveling businessman.

William had gotten to the motel a short
while before we did. He and Jeff had set up four tiny cameras in
strategic places around the room. We watched William now, on the
plasma screen squeezed in the narrow space between our two laps,
the color display split into four views. Jeff had a similar
set-up—with one notable exception. From his screen, wires led to a
busy recorder, filming events as they took place.

Watching William wait for his date made me
irritated, the same way I feel when my hands are dirty, or my
clothes are too tight.

He paced the motel room. Tiny, utilitarian,
it had one bed—large, though not king-size. The orange floral
spread was short on one side, fitting unevenly so that a corner of
a beige blanket hung out the end, an extended rip along the hem. A
television perched, suspended from the ceiling—stationary on a
solid metal bracket. Two chairs, that neither matched each other
nor the bedspread, straddled a small table by the draped picture
window. A far door at the rear of the room led to the bathroom.
William walked toward it and turned on the light, giving it an up
and down glance before shutting the light back off. He looked our
way again. “It sure ain’t Buckingham Palace,” he said.

Up to that point, he’d been silent in the
white noise, and it jarred me to hear him speak. He shucked his
jacket, dropping it near the pillow end of the bed, and shook his
head with a look up to the camera that I knew was meant for me. My
heart gave a little lurch.

Silent, Bass and I watched him pace the
motel room floor on the different viewpoint monitors. The effect
was strange. As he walked away from one camera, he walked toward
another. If I shifted my attention from right to left, and back
again, and timed it just right, it appeared that he was walking
away from me, over and over and over again. Both cameras were
capable of zooming in and out. Jeff worked the controls from his
location, while Bass snapped orders, pestering him to test the
effects before our quarry arrived.

The fourth camera, a wide-angle mounted atop
the suspended TV, provided a bird’s eye view of the entire room.
Unless either William or the girl went to the washroom, they would
be in our sights the whole time.

I checked my watch and in periphery, noticed
Bass do the same. Just ten o’clock now.

At a knock, we all reacted. William’s
attention shot up toward the camera. I watched him square his
shoulders before he strode to open the door. He couldn’t see us, of
course, but I still smiled encouragement at him. Bass yelled,
“Wider, wider,” to Jeff over the phone, so loud that I found myself
shushing him like a kindergarten teacher reminding a child to use
his “inside voice.” Evidently the message went through loud and
clear, because the close-up shot from the first monitor widened
abruptly, but not before I caught William’s look. I bit my lip.

She was both exactly and nothing at all what
I expected.

When she walked in, my heart went out to
her. Petite and blond, she carried herself like a young girl, a
tiny bounce in her hesitant steps. “I am Candy,” she said, in
heavily accented English. She canted her head. “You are John?”

William nodded and stepped far enough away
from her that we were able to get the full effect of her
appearance. We would cover her face in post-production, but her
clothing would be clear. Wearing a short black and white zebra
stripe skirt, and a fluffy white coat that came to her waist, she
looked the part of a hooker. Right down to her spikey heels and the
small pink purse clamped to her side like a security blanket.