Speak of the Devil (16 page)

Small stared at me as if I’d just spoken in a rare Senegalese dialect. “Where are you
going
?”

I turned to the woman. “May I have your name, please?”

“Mary Ryan.”

“Mary Ryan and I are going to get some air.”

Small was on the verge of full apoplexy. “I need to speak with my staff! I need to tell them what’s happening!”

“Nothing is happening,” I said. “The police were running an emergency drill. The museum was cooperating. The drill was a success. You may thank them for their professionalism.”

“I
demand
to know what this is all about! Who is this woman? What is she planning to do with all this money?”

Jigs pushed away from the filing cabinet. “Do we need a muzzle on this hen?”

“But I don’t—”

“Shut up.”

I turned back to the woman. “Miss Ryan?” She rose from her chair. “Or is it Mrs.?”

“It’s Sister,” she said.

I took a beat. “Sister?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re a
nun
?”

She answered with a gentle tilt of the head. Next to the file cabinet, Jigs Dugan crossed himself with demon speed.

“Oh shit. JesusMaryMotherofGod . . .”

SISTER MARY RYAN ASKED IF SHE COULD PAUSE FOR A PRIVATE MOMENT in the Fuentidueña Chapel just around the corner from the stairs. I was sure I’d be struck dead on the spot if I said no. The nun crossed herself at the chapel entrance, then stepped forward, bowing her head before taking a seat in one of the rigid wooden chairs.

“What do you think?” Jigs asked me.

I shrugged. “I suspect whatever she tells us will be the truth.”

“I’m old-fashioned, Fritz. I like my nuns in costume, thank you. Your nuns start looking like everyday Joes, we’ll have to be on our best behavior all the time, just to be safe.”

According to a placard on the wall, the polygonal apse that made up the Fuentidueña Chapel dated from the mid-twelfth century and had originally been part of the Church of Saint Martin in Segovia. Included in the chapel were twelfth-century friezes from San Baudelio de Belarga, also in Spain, as well as sculptures from Austria, Italy and the valley of the Meuse River, wherever that was. The room was narrow, the ceiling was high, the stone walls were cold to the touch.

Sister Mary Ryan spent several minutes in prayer. When she came out, the prayer seemed to have done her good. All the creases in her face had smoothed out. She looked as if a little lamp were illuminating her from the inside. I’ve seen a similar trick work with Jigs and a glass of Jameson’s. The problem with Jigger’s lamp is that it usually tips over and sets everything on fire.

“Thank you,” Sister Mary Ryan said.

Across the Romanesque Hall from the chapel was one of the outdoor cloisters. In secular terms, a courtyard. A pair of paths intersected in the middle, at a stone fountain that was dry as a bone. Arched walkways bordered the courtyard. We settled on one of the low stone walls, in a final wedge of the fast-falling sun.

“I’m with the Convent of the Holy Order of the Sisters of Good Shepherd,” the nun volunteered. “An envelope arrived at the convent this afternoon. That claim tag was in it.”

I asked, “How was the envelope delivered?”

“That was the peculiar part. It was left in a basket at the front door.”

“A basket?”

“A large basket. Like a bassinet, really.”

“You mean like a baby basket?” Jigs asked. “Like if you were going to leave a baby on the front doorstep?”

“I suppose.”

“Did someone ring the doorbell?” I asked.

“No, it wasn’t like that. Sister Anne had come through the door not ten minutes before. She received a phone call from someone. A man. He told her that a package had been left at the front door. He called it a gift, actually, not a package. He said that with love, reverence and respect, he was making a gift to the convent.”

“Those exact words?”

“He repeated them in the note.”

“The note?”

“The note that was in the envelope along with the claim tag.”

“Do you have the note with you?”

She opened her purse, pulled out a letter-size envelope and handed it to me. A GIFT was typed on the front in an all too familiar font.

“Did he say anything else to Sister Anne?”

“He said there was a gift. He said we shouldn’t let anyone take it away from us. He was adamant on that point. It says the same thing in the note.”

I unfolded the piece of paper.

Sisters—
In love, respect and reverence, a Gift awaits you. It is yours. This is my wish and decree. You need not allow anyone to talk you out of accepting it. Do not let them. It is yours. I want this for you. You are deserving. You are purity. You are endangered. I love you so much. Your Gift awaits you at the Cloisters. You will claim it with the enclosed claim check. Today. After three o’clock. Please be trusting. Please be swift. I am your lamb. From slaughter comes Grace. I am in tears with happiness over your Gift.
A Friend.

I read the note through twice and handed it to Jigs. I stared out at the dry fountain until he finished it.

“Fruit Loop,” Jigs said.

Sister Mary turned to him. “Excuse me?”

“Your so-called friend, Sister.” Jigs tapped a finger against his head. “He’s got some of the pieces in the wrong place.”

“What is this all about?” she asked.

I asked, “I can trust you to keep a secret?”

She smiled. “Vows of silence are our specialty.”

“This is related to the business at the parade on Thursday.”

“Those horrible shootings?”

“Yes. And the bomb at Barrymore’s.”

“My goodness.”

“Mr. Dugan is right. Your ‘friend’ has his good and bad in a serious twist.”

“How much money is this we’re talking about?”

“A lot. There’s a million dollars in that bag. I’d say that’s a few new coats of paint for the old convent, wouldn’t you?”

Her tone was hushed. “A million dollars.”

“You understand that we have to hold on to that money,” I said.

“May I?” She took the note from Jigs and read from it. “ ‘You need not allow anyone to talk you out of accepting it. Do not let them. It is yours.’ ” She looked over at me. “You are telling me not to accept this money for my convent.”

“He’s responsible for the killing of ten people, Sister. He made an orphan of a three-year-old boy. Others are still in the hospital. If you’ll excuse my saying it, this money is dripping in blood.”

She looked out toward the dry fountain. “Of course.”

I checked my watch. It was nearly five. The museum was closing. The sun had dipped behind the slanted roof, and the temperature had dropped a good ten degrees. I reached for the note. The nun’s hand was trembling.

“What is this all about?” she asked.

“We don’t know, Sister.”

“I must . . . We must pray for him. We must find forgiveness in our hearts.”

She stood and walked over to the fountain. I couldn’t quite tell, but it looked as if she dipped her hand into it, dry as it was.

Jigs looked over at me. He spoke in a low growl. “First we catch him and beat the living shit out of him. Then we’ll worry about the forgiveness part.”

BEFORE LEAVING THE CLOISTERS, SISTER MARY HAD REQUESTED THAT she be allowed a copy of the note. Gerald Small had photocopied it for her.

“We’ll be in touch,” I told her.

I phoned Margo on our way back to the city, but she didn’t answer. I left her a short, silly message that apparently hit Jig’s funny bone.

“You’d buy the moon for that girl, wouldn’t you?”

I called Tommy Carroll on his cell phone, but he didn’t answer either. I was dumped into voice mail. I left him a short message, too. Not as silly: “He didn’t show. He sent a nun instead. She knows nothing. I’ve got the cash. Call me.”

We stopped at Cannon’s on Broadway at 108th. We brought the million dollars inside with us. Jigs was still disgusted with the yuppie makeover the place had undergone several years back. In our younger days, Jigs and I used to include Cannon’s on our rounds. It always felt as if we were stepping into a cave. Now a new glass front let in so much light from the street that you couldn’t find a dark corner if your life depended on it. Large-screen television sets hung all around the ceiling. Football, ice hockey, motocross, every sport in the book. The old tables had been replaced; no more knife scars and cigarette burns. The bar had been refinished. And with the city’s recent no-smoking policies, you could actually see from one end of the room to the other. Time was at Cannon’s, you’d pick up your darts and have to throw them into a fog.

Jimmy Reese still worked the bar. Except for the blue polo shirt with the Cannon’s cloverleaf logo on it, Jimmy remained unrenovated. His tomato face was a psychedelic of burst blood vessels. Jimmy used to be a boxer. When I was a teenager, I saw him fight a handful of times. He had a peculiar sideways punch that became his signature. At a given moment in the round, he would abruptly shift so that he was standing next to and just a little behind his opponent. It was a sudden move, and when the opponent would start his turn to face Jimmy, the glove would come up.
Pop, pop
. Rabbit punches, but hard ones. Jimmy called them “nose poppers.” He could do it from either side.

At Cannon’s, especially late at night when he got talking, you’d see Jimmy go sideways behind the bar and feign a few of the punches. On the rare occasions when a real tussle broke out between patrons, he’d land them. They were still plenty hard. Jimmy Reese had stabbed his first wife during a domestic dustup. She lived—it was a superficial arm wound—but she set her two meaty brothers on him. Jimmy managed to KO one with his sideways punches, but the other one took a cast-iron pan to Jimmy’s skull. When his hair started receding a few years ago, you could see the flat spot where the bone reset poorly.

Jimmy’s second wife was named Shirley. That marriage lasted five years. Shirley referred to it as a “five-year food fight,” which, frankly, is putting a soft spin on it. Though Jimmy never stuck a knife in
her
arm. Nice thing, right? Getting credit for not sticking a knife in your wife’s arm? At the time of his marriage to Shirley, Jimmy had his hand, here and there, in what he referred to as “off-the-record business.”
Something to keep the little lady in furs
. “Some furs,” Shirley would say, modeling her thin cardigan. Shirley wasn’t a prude about Jimmy’s activities except when she wanted to be, which was usually during their yelling matches. Jimmy’s marginal criminality was always Shirley’s ace in the hole. To be more precise, it gave her the pretext for threatening to play her ace in the hole. “I’ve got connections!” she’d shriek. “I could have you put away!” And it wasn’t bluster. She did have connections. A certain police lieutenant rising swiftly through the ranks was only a phone call away. And Jimmy knew she’d make the call if she wanted to, because he’d already seen her do it. Not on his account, but on account of her teenage son, who wasn’t always mixing in those days with the finest elements Hell’s Kitchen had to offer. Jimmy had seen the police lieutenant answer one of those calls in particular. He’d seen him come down hard on the boy.

Shirley loved the cop. Jimmy knew that. Anyone who knew Shirley knew that. It was a fact-of-Shirley. She never pretended to hide it. Jimmy swallowed the lump for five years until one day he finally stuffed his duffel and moved out. I found him at Butch’s Tavern that night, and he sang me a sad sloppy song about the toll it took on him to share Shirley’s heart with a cop. He actually got a little blubbery at one point, which was embarrassing for both of us. I was only seventeen at the time. It was later in the evening, when Jimmy was back in the whiskey fire and getting sufficiently nasty about Shirley’s cop, that it occured to me I didn’t really want to be sitting right next to him at the bar. I was thinking about Jimmy’s sideways punch. His nose popper. Luckily for me, his fist was mostly occupied in squeezing his dirty bar glass. But I’d seen the punch. I knew how quick it was. And already, at seventeen, I was shaping up to be my old man’s spitting image. My old man the cop. The fast-rising one. There was no telling when Jimmy might finally look up from his fingers and see the enemy’s face floating in the mirror behind the bar. Sitting right next to him. Perfectly positioned.
Pop, pop
.

“Trouble in twos,” Jimmy crooned as he ran a cloth over the bar in front of Jigs and me. I nodded a greeting. Jigs did his John L. Sullivan imitation, his fists circling ludicrously. Jimmy smirked. “Look at the twig. Bare-bones champion.”

Jigs brought a fist forward in slow motion and tapped it against Jimmy’s chin. “Ha. Rang your bell.”

“My bell, my ass.” Jimmy tossed a pair of coasters on the bar. “What do you hear from your mother, Fritz? The two of you have a great big turkey on Thursday?”

“She’s out in California,” I said.

“California? What takes her to the Golden State? She breaking into the movies?”

“A friend of hers moved out there, swears she died and went to heaven. Queenie thought she’d go out for a visit and get the lowdown on heaven.”

“She’s not thinking of moving out there?”

I shrugged. “Could be. But I wouldn’t put money on it. Her roots are pretty firm in the local pavement.”

“So what’ll it be?”

We ordered a couple of beers, mine with a half-pound burger on the side. When Jimmy headed off to put in my order, Jigs pulled a cigarette from behind his ear.

“You can’t smoke that in here,” I reminded him. “They’ll put you in Rikers.”

He ran the cigarette under his nose like a Montecristo cigar. “They can’t toss me out for fondling the damn thing.”

The bar was half full. Half empty. A matter of perspective. Jigs eyed a pair of Columbia coeds who were at a table near the door, giggling. He tapped the end of his cigarette against his lips. “I’d trade this for that.”

“That might land you in Rikers, too.”

“Ah, they’re old enough for Cannon’s, they’re fair game.”