The 7th Canon (27 page)

Dried blood, nearly black in color, saturated a small wooden manger stuffed with straw. Donley looked away, moving to the metal door behind the altar. Painted the same color as the wall, the door was almost imperceptible. He pushed it open. Heavy and spring-loaded, it shut automatically. Had he not braced it, it would have shut with a thud. He opened it again and examined the other side. Like the door at the bottom of the stairs in the park, it had no handle, only a metal plate.

As Donley started into the stairwell, Ross grabbed him by the collar. When he turned, Ross had a finger to his lips. He pointed with the other hand to the waffled sole of a shoe sticking out from under the cloth-draped altar.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ll go through the boiler room.”

Ross let the metal door slam closed and released the snap of his shoulder holster.

The cloth covering the altar fluttered, and a boy crawled out backward, feet first. He stood, took one look at Ross and Donley, and started running. Donley caught him halfway across the room, subdued him with an armlock, and walked him back.

“Just take it easy, and tell us what you’re doing here,” Ross said.

The kid looked to be in his late teens, his red hair shaved on one side and long and straight on the other. He wore a silver ring in his right nostril, faded blue jeans, and heavy black work boots. A black T-shirt with a skull and crossbones and an unbuttoned, long-sleeve flannel shirt completed the ensemble. He didn’t respond.

Donley tried a softer approach. “What’s your name?”

The kid continued to study the linoleum.

“Look,” Ross said, “if you won’t talk to us here, I have to take you downtown. You know the routine. So, tell me what you’re doing here.”

The boy lifted his head. “Nothing.”

“Strange place to be doing nothing,” Ross said. “How long have you been staying here doing nothing?”

“Just last night.”

“Never before last night?”

“No.”

“Then why did you stay last night?”

The kid shrugged. Ross looked to Donley and arched his eyebrows to indicate he wasn’t buying it.

“Were you here last Wednesday?” Donley asked.

“No.”

“You wouldn’t lie to us, would you?” Ross asked, making the question sound rhetorical.

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Do you know what happened that night?” Donley asked.

The kid shook his head.

“Really? Didn’t hear a thing?” Ross said.

“No.” The kid shifted his gaze between Donley and Ross. He said, “Fine, I heard the priest killed that kid. We all heard it.”

“Did you know Andrew Bennet?” Donley asked.

“Not really.”

“Not really, or not at all?” Ross asked.

“Not really.”

“Wasn’t well liked, was he?” Ross said. “Did heavy drugs, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know him.”

“Heroin, crack, crystal meth. He was a junkie, wasn’t he?”

Another shrug.

Donley couldn’t help but feel sorry for the kid. “How old are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know how old you are?” Ross said.

“My mom wasn’t big on birthdays,” the kid said, voice dripping sarcasm.

“Where’s your mom?” Donley asked.

The kid smirked. “Guess.” He continued to shift from foot to foot.

“You need to go to the bathroom?” Ross asked. “You look like you got ants in your pants. You know that’s a tell when a person is lying.”

The kid stopped shifting.

Donley said, “You know a guy named Danny Simeon? Worked here at the shelter.”

He shook his head. “I told you, I’ve never been here before.”

“How did you get in here?” Ross asked.

“Window in the kitchen,” he said. “There’s a dumpster to stand on.”

Ross looked to Donley and shrugged. “Would have been easier.” He reached into his pocket and handed the kid a business card. “Put this in your pocket. I want you to ask around, talk to all your buddies. I want the names of anyone who stayed here the night Bennet was killed. You call me at that number tomorrow at noon, and tell me what you’ve found out. You don’t call, and I’ll come looking for you.”

The kid reached for the card, but Ross did not release it. “I’ll find you. You know that, right?”

Dixon Connor watched Frank Ross come out the back door from the boiler room, followed by the red-haired kid and the lawyer, Peter Donley. “Frank Ross,” Connor said to himself.

He raised the newspaper as Ross and the lawyer drove past in the Cadillac. Less than a minute later, the red-haired kid was at the passenger’s-side window.

Connor pushed the door open. “Get in.” Red slid into the passenger seat. “Did you find it?” Connor asked.

Red shook his head. “I didn’t see any book with names in it.”

“What did they want?”

“I don’t know.”

Connor whipped the back of his hand across Red’s mouth, splitting his lip. Blood dripped onto the kid’s shirt. “You get blood in my new car, and you are really going to be in a lot of pain. Now, tell me what they wanted.”

Red held his shirt to his mouth. “They wanted to know if I knew someone named Simeon,” he mumbled. “They wanted to know if I was there that night.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I said no.”

Connor grabbed Red’s hand, forced open the boy’s index finger, and put the first knuckle between the blades of pruning shears. “If I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll start with the first knuckle and take them off one at a time. You understand me?”

Red’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t say anything. I swear.”

Connor let go of the hand. “Get the hell out of my car. You’re stinking it up.”

Chapter 17

Donley and Ross went in search of Danny Simeon. Ross said he recalled the Grub Steak, which was where Father Tom said Simeon kept a room, but that restaurant had gone out of business, explaining why Donley had trouble finding it.

Ross rubbed the cold from his hands and turned on the heater. It brought the distinct smell of hamburgers, which Donley assumed was from the fast-food bags discarded on the floor.

“I’m hungry,” Ross said. “You hungry?”

Donley had been staring out the window, recalling his first memory of his father beating him, and how close he’d come to running away and possibly living on the streets, maybe like the kids Father Tom was trying to help. He couldn’t remember the reason for the beating; there didn’t need to be one. His father beat him for any number of digressions, from spilling his cereal over the rim of his bowl to talking back. Mostly, he beat him because he was alive.

“Hey? You with me?” Ross asked.

Donley turned from the window. “What do you think makes a kid like that run away from home?”

Ross shrugged. “First thing you got to understand is that with these kids, you never know what’s the truth and what’s fiction. They’ll bullshit the hell out of you, and they’re adept at it. It’s like some Vietnam vets; they all have a story. They all experienced combat and watched women and children being shot and mutilated. They all had their lives ruined. Listen, I was there, and I know that some did, no doubt about it, but for others, it’s just a sob story to separate you from some of your money. With these kids, sometimes it’s drugs; sometimes it’s broken and abusive homes. Sometimes it’s just the kid. Did you believe him?”

Donley shook his head. “Something didn’t seem right.”

“Like why he was there?”

“Not the first cold night we’ve had,” Donley agreed.

“And if he’s never stayed at the shelter, it means he has other places to go. These kids usually stick to what they know.”

“You really think he’ll call?”

Ross chuckled. “Stranger things have happened. I just wanted to give him the option and let him think I wasn’t done with him.”

“What if he runs?”

“Where?” Ross looked over at him. “Where’s that kid going to run?” Ross shook his head. “People say the same thing about the homeless. ‘Why don’t they go someplace warm like Florida?’ Like they could just pack up the family station wagon and drive three thousand miles across country. They stay where it’s familiar, where they know the services and the angles, where they have a network. Those kids have no place to go. They don’t trust anyone. That’s the sad part.”

Donley knew.

They parked at the corner of Polk and Larkin. The Gulch in the morning was everything it was not at night—quiet, deserted, mostly subdued. The lunch crowd wouldn’t arrive for an hour. Donley looked up at a neon sign of a green cactus wearing black sunglasses. The cactus held an umbrella to shade it from a bright tropical sun. Tequila Dan’s.

“You sure this is the place?” Donley asked, considering the knotted-wood facade and bamboo-pole railings that made the restaurant look like a tropical shack dropped in the middle of the city.

“This used to be the Grub Steak,” Ross said. “Before that, it was a hamburger-and-fries joint. Believe it or not, it used to look like a cable car. I’ll bet you ten bucks you can’t get a hamburger or steak in here now.”

“No wonder I couldn’t find it,” Donley said.

Donley fed the parking meter and followed Ross up the wooden ramp.

Inside the restaurant, seashells and other beach finds filled a fishing net draped over the entrance. To Donley’s right, colorful fish swam in a large tropical fish tank. Reggae music and chirping birds played at a moderate level from speakers attached to beams made to look like beach logs and palm trees. Weathered tables and chairs sat beneath thatched roofs.

“Can’t believe what an active imagination and a good bank loan can do,” Ross said. They took stools at a horseshoe-shaped bar decorated to look like a Club Med bar at a resort in the Caribbean. A bartender in a flowered shirt and khaki shorts put paper coasters in front of them. Then he picked up a stack of playing cards, separating and burying the top card using just one hand, like a magician. They ordered coffee.

The bartender set down two mugs and filled them from a coffeepot. Ross stirred in three packets of sweetener. “Looking for a kid named Danny Simeon. Sometimes goes by the name Dingo.”

The bartender set the coffeepot back on a burner and returned to flipping the cards, showing them the ace of spades, burying it, and flipping it up again. “Who are you?” He asked the question without stopping the card trick. His thick mustache draped over his mouth, preventing them from seeing his lips move, like a ventriloquist act.

Ross and Donley had discussed the scenario in the car. If Simeon lived in back of the restaurant, he did so illegally. The owner and employees wouldn’t be eager to talk about it, but they might to someone perceived to be a friend of Father Martin.

Donley set a business card on the counter. “I represent Father Thomas Martin. Danny Simeon may be able to help.”

The bartender did not pick up the card or give any indication he read it from behind rose-tinted glasses, but the moment Donley mentioned Father Martin, the man stopped flipping the deck of cards.

“Thought you looked familiar. Saw you on the TV. How’s he doing?”

“Not too good.”

The bartender shook his head. “The whole thing is a tragedy.”

“Father Martin said Danny kept a room in the back. I think he could be in some danger. I’m trying to find him before there’s another tragedy.”

The bartender paused for a second, picked up Donley’s business card, twirled it between each of his fingers, and made it disappear. “Wait here.”

He came back a few minutes later. “It’s in the back off the bathroom.” They started from their stools. “I could get in trouble for letting someone live here; just trying to help him out.”

“You’ve got no problem with us.” Donley pushed a twenty-dollar bill across the counter.

The bartender pushed it back. “Give it to the shelter.”

They walked past two men studying a chessboard of odd-shaped tiki pieces. Ross stopped and studied the board, then reached down and moved a black piece. “Checkmate.”

The player returned the piece to its original position, looking irritated. “Nice try. That’s a rook.”

Ross shrugged at Donley. “Damn thing looked like a knight.”

They continued down a short hallway past a unisex bathroom to a room stocked with restaurant supplies. At the back of that room they encountered two doors. One led to an alley. On the other door someone had stenciled
P
RIVATE
. Donley knocked once, turned the handle, and opened the door. He got one foot inside when he heard a sharp click.

A muscular young man sat on the edge of a bed holding a six-inch switchblade in his right hand.

Ross walked into the room without pausing. “Down, boy.”

Danny Simeon had a gray blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Pale and sweating profusely, he looked sick and spoke in a halting voice. “Which one of you represents Father Tom?”

“I do,” Donley said.

Simeon looked about to say something more; then his eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped the knife and slumped off the edge of the bed and onto the floor.