The Fourth Deadly Sin (35 page)

“Try again.”

“Vince. Something like that.”

Konigsbacher patted his cheek.

“Good boy,” he said.

As far as the Kraut was concerned, that was enough to clear L. Vincent Symington. He had never believed in the poof’s guilt in the first place. Vince could never kill anyone with a hammer. A knife maybe-a woman’s weapon.

But not a hammer.

So, Konigsbacher thought sadly, that was the end of that.

He’d submit a report to Boone and they’d shift him to some shit assignment.

No more cashmere sweaters and free dinners and lazy evenings sitting around Symington’s swell apartment, soaking up his booze and trading dirty jokes.

But maybe, the Kraut thought suddenly, just maybe there was a way he could juggle it. He would clear Symington-he owed the guy that-but it didn’t mean the gravy train had to come to a screaming halt. Confident again, he headed for dinner at the Dorian Gray, wondering what Vince would bring him tonight.

Robert Keisman and Jason thought Harold Gerber might be a whacko, but he was innocent of the murder of Dr. Simon Ellerbee. Gerber’s confession was what Keisman called a “blivet7— four pounds of shit in a two-pound bag.

The Vietnam vet just didn’t know enough of the unpublished details to fake a convincing confession. But Delaney wanted the guy’s innocence proved out one way or another, a Id that n s what the two cops set out to do.

The Catholic Bible was a flimsy lead. They had no gut reaction one way or the other. The only reason they worked at it was that they had nothing else. It was just something to do.

They started with the Manhattan Yellow Pages and found the section for Churches-Roman Catholic. There were 103 listings, some of them with odd names like Most Precious Blood Church and Our Lady of Perpetual Help. the thought of visiting 103 churches was daunting, but when they picked out the ones in the Greenwich Village area, the job didn’t seem so enormous.

The Spoiler took the churches to the east of Sixth Avenue and Jason Two took those to the west. Carrying their photos of Harold Gerber, they set out to talk to priests, rectors, janitors, and anyone else who might have seen Gerber on the night Ellerbee was murdered.

It was the dullest of donkeywork: pounding the pavements, showing their ID, displaying Gerber’s photograph, and asking the same questions over and over: “Do you know this man?

Have you ever seen him? Has he been in your church? Does the name Harold Gerber mean anything to you?”

Sometimes the church would be locked, no one around, and Keisman and Jason would have to go back two or three times before they could find someone to question. They worked eight-hour days and met after five o’clock to have a couple of beers with Harold Gerber. They never told him what they were doing, and he always asked complainingly, “When are you guys going to arrest me?”

“Soon, Harold,” they’d tell him.

“Soon.”

They kept at it for four days, and were beginning to think they were drilling a dry hole. But then the Spoiler got a break.

He was talking to a man who worked in an elegant little church on 11th Street off Fifth Avenue. The old man seemed to be a kind of handyman who polished pews and made sure the electric candles were working-jobs like that.

He examined Keisman’s ID, then stared at the photo of Harold Gerber.

“What’s he wanted for?” he asked in a creaky voice.

“He’s not wanted for anything,” the Spoiler lied smoothly.

“We’re just trying to find him. He’s in the Missing Persons file. His parents are anxious. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Oh, sure,” the gaffer said, still staring at Gerber’s photo.

“I’ve got a son of my own; I know how they’d feel. What does this kid do?”

“Do?”

“His job. What does he work at?”

“I don’t think he works at anything. He’s on disability. A Vietnam vet. A little mixed up in the head.”

“That I can understand. A Vietnam veteran you say?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he’s a Catlick?”

“That’s right.”

“Well,” the handyman said, sighing.

“I’ll tell you. There’s a priest-well, he’s not really a priest. I don’t mean he’s unfrocked or anything like that. But he’s kind of wild, and he’s got no parish of his own. They more or less let him do his thing, if you catch my drift.”

Keisman nodded, waiting patiently.

“Well, this priest,” the janitor went on, enjoying his long story more than the Spoiler was, “Father Gautier, or Grollier, some name like that-he opened a home for Vietnam vets.

Gives them a sandwich, a place to flop, or just come in out of the cold. I’m not knocking him, y’understand; he’s doing good. But he’s running a kind of scruffy joint. It’s not a regular church.”

“Where does he get the money?” the detective asked.

“For the sandwiches, the beds, or whatever? The Church finance him?”

“You kidding? He does it all on his own. He gets donations from here, there, everywhere. Somehow he keeps going.”

“That’s interesting,” Keisman said.

“Where’s his place located?”

“I don’t know,” the old guy said.

“Somewhere south of Houston Street, I think. But I don’t know the address.”

“Thank you very much,” the Spoiler said.

He told Jason about the priest, and they agreed it was the best lead-the only lead-they had uncovered so far. So they started making phone calls.

They phoned the Archdiocese of New York, the Catholic Press Association, Catholic Charities, the American Ugion, asking if anyone knew the address of a Catholic priest who was running a shelter for Vietnam vets somewhere around Houston Street in Manhattan. No one could help them.

Then they called the Catholic War Veterans and got it: Father Frank Gautier, in a storefront church on Mott Street, a block south of Houston.

“Little Italy,” Jason said.

“I used to pound a beat down there.”

“Wherever,” Keisman said.

“Let’s go.”

They found the place after asking four residents of the neighborhood. It looked like a Mafia social club, the plateglass window painted an opaque green, and no name or signs showing. The door was unlocked and they pushed in. There was a big front room that looked like it might have been a butcher shop at one time: tiled walls, a stained plank floor, tin ceiling.

But it was warm enough. Almost too warm. There were about a dozen guys, maybe half of them blacks, sitting around on rickety chairs, reading paperbacks, playing cards, dozing, or just counting the walls. They all looked like derelicts, with unlaced boots, worn jeans, ragged jackets. One was in drag, with a blond wig and a feathered boa.

No one looked up when the two officers came in. Keisman stood close to a man holding a month-old copy of The Wall Street Journal.

“Father Gautier around?” he asked pleasantly.

The man looked up, slowly examined both of them, then turned to a back room.

“Hey, pop!” he roared.

“Two new fish for you!”

The man who came waddling out of the back room was shaped like a ripe pear.

He was wearing a long-sleeved black blouse with a white, somewhat soiled clerical collar. His blue Levi’s were cinched with a cowboy belt and ornate silver buckle. He was bearded and had a thick mop of pepper and salt hair.

“Father Gautier?” Jason asked.

“Guilty,” the priest said in a hoarse voice.

“A%o you?”

They showed him their IDS.

“Oh, God,” he said, sighing, “now what? Who did what to whom?”

“No one we know of,” Keisman said. He held out the photo of Harold Gerber.

“You know this man?”

Gautier looked at the photograph, then raised his eyes to the officers. “You got any money?” he demanded.

They were startled.

“Money!” the priest repeated impatiently.

“Dough. Bucks.

YOU want information? No pay, no say. Believe me, it’s for a good cause. You’ll get your reward in heaven-or wherever.”

Sheepishly Jason and Keisman pulled out their wallets.

They each proffered a five. Gautier grabbed the bills eagerly.

“You, Izzy!” he yelled at one of the lounging blacks.

“Take this to Vic’s and get us a ham. Tell him it’s for us, and if it has as much fat on it as the last one, we’ll come over there and trash his place. Bone in.”

“Yassa, massa,” the black said, touching a finger to his forehead.

“You two come with me,” the Father said, and led the way into the back room. He took them into a cluttered office hardly larger than a walk-in closet. He closed the door, turned to face them.

“Yeah, I know him,” he said.

“Harold Gerber. What’s he done?”

“Nothing we know for sure,” the Spoiler said.

“We’re just trying to establish his whereabouts on a certain Friday night.”

“He was here,” Gautier said promptly.

“Hey,” Jason said, “wait a minute. We haven’t told you which Friday night.”

The priest shook his head.

“Doesn’t make any difference.

Harold is here every Friday night. Has been for more than a year now.”

The two officers looked at each other, then back to the priest.

“Why Friday nights?” Keisman asked.

Gautier stared at him fixedly.

“Because I hear confessions on Friday nights.”

“You trying to tell us,” Jason said, “that Gerber has been confessing to you every Friday night for more than a year?”

“I’m not trying to tell you, I am telling you. Every Friday night. Take it or leave it. If you don’t believe me, I’ll put on a damned cassock, go into a court of law, and swear by Almighty God I’m telling the truth.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Father,” Keisman said.

“What time does he usually get here?”

“Around nine o’clock. I hear confessions from eight to ten.

Then he usually sits around awhile, bullshitting with the boys.

If he can spare it, he leaves a couple of bucks.”

“No disrespect to you, Father,” Jason said, “but the guy was going to a psychiatrist.”

,”I know he was. I’m the one who convinced him to get professional help.”

“So if he was going to a shrink, what did he need you for?”

“He was brought up a Catholic,” Frank Gautier said.

“You don’t shake it easily.”

“You think he was making progress?” the Spoiler asked.

The priest got angry.

“Are you making progress? Am I making progress?

What’s this making progress shit? We’re all just trying to survive, aren’t we?”

“I guess we are at that,” Jason said softly.

“Thank you for your time, Father. I think we got what we came for.”

At the door, Keisman turned back.

“Who does the cooking around here?” he asked.

“I do,” the priest said.

“Why do you think I’m so fat? I sample.”

Jason Two smiled and raised a pink palm.

“Peace be unto you, brother,” he said.

“And peace be unto you,” Gautier said seriously.

“Thanks for the ham. You saved us from another night of peanut butter sandwiches.”

Outside, walking back to the car, Jason Two said, “Nice guy. You think he’s lying? Protecting one of his boys?”

“I doubt he can lie,” Keisman said.

“I think that Gerber is doing exactly what Gautier said-confessing his sins every Friday night.”

“Crazy world,” Jason said.

“And getting crazier every day. Will you do the report for Delaney?”

“Sure. Tonight. What do you want to do right now?”

“Let’s go back and have a beer or two with Gerber. That poor slob.”

Detective Benjamin Calazo sat lumpishly in the rancid lobby of the fleabag hotel on West 23rd Street, waiting for Betty Lee, the Chinese hooker, to return from her daily visit to her mother. Mama-san lived down on Pell Street and looked to be a hundred years old at least.

Calazo had been tailing Betty for four days and thought he had her time-habit pattern down pat. Left the hotel around 9:00 A.M had coffee and a buttered bagel at a local deli, then cabbed down to Chinatown. Spent the morning with Mama, sometimes bringing her flowers or a Peking duck. A good daughter.

Then back to the hotel by noon. The first john would arrive soon after-probably a guy on his lunch hour. Then there would be a steady parade until three or four o’clock, when business would slack off and Betty would go out to dinner.

Things picked up again after five o’clock and continued good until two in the morning.

Betty wasn’t pounding the pavements as far as Calazo could tell. She had a regular clientele, mostly older guys with potbellies and cigars. There were also a few furtive young kids who rushed in and out, looking around nervously like they expected to get busted at any minute.

Betty Lee herself was far from what Benny Calazo envisioned as the ideal whore. She was dumpy and looked like she bought her clothes in a thrift shop. But she must have had something on the ball to attract all those johns. Maybe, Calazo mused idly, she did cute things with chopsticks-it was possible.

She came into the hotel lobby. Benny folded his Post, heaved himself to his feet, and followed her into the cage elevator. They started up. He knew her room was 8-D.

“Good morning,” he said to her pleasantly.

She gave him a faint smile but said nothing.

When’s he got off on the eighth floor, he followed her down the hall to her door. She whirled and confronted him.

“Get lost,” she said sharply.

He showed her his shield and ID.

“Oh, shit,” she said wearily.

“Again? Okay. How much?”

:”I don’t want any grease, Betty.”

“A nice blowjob?” she said hopefully.

He laughed.

“Just a few minutes of your time.”

I got a client in fifteen minutes.”

“Let him wait. We going to discuss your business in the hall or are you going to invite me in?”

Her little apartment was surprisingly neat, clean, tidy. Everything dusted, everything polished. There was a small refrigerator, waist-high, and a framed photograph of John F Kennedy over the bed. Calazo couldn’t figure that.

“You like a beer?” she asked him.

“That would be fine,” he said gratefully.