VC03 - Mortal Grace (43 page)

Olga Quigley nodded. It was clear she was not in the habit of allowing the name to pass her lips.

“The world is falling apart. Law-abiding citizens are afraid to walk down the street. Senior citizens are getting raped. A Greek bishop was shot last week in a holdup. Children are murdered every day in this city. And now we have to put up with woman priests.
Divorced
women priests.”

“Aside from being a woman priest and divorced, was there any particular reason you disliked her?”

“I didn’t dislike her—I distrusted her. And I had grounds.”

“I’d like to hear them.”

“She changed Father Joe.”

Olga Quigley’s motivation was beginning to be about as inscrutable as a billboard: she was a lonesome, sad, no longer young woman who had invested ten years in dusting off two priests’ lives. And then another woman had breezed into the picture and usurped half her world. Possibly the better half.

Cardozo realized he would have to question Olga Quigley gently, leave room for face-saving, for evasion, even for lying if she felt she had to lie.

“Tell me how she changed Father Montgomery.”

“She involved him in things no priest should be involved in.” Olga Quigley’s eyes began flicking restlessly around the kitchen, alighting everywhere but on Cardozo. “All day long there were prostitutes in and out of that rectory—and kids on dope—and things going on. It makes me feel dirty just to remember them.”

Her hands twisted in her lap and the skin tightened across the bridge of her nose.

“One morning after a dance, I was cleaning the young people’s game room. I found condoms in the punch bowl, and packets of I-don’t-know-what—some kind of jelly to kill the sperm. She was encouraging children to use these things. And there were videos.”

Cardozo said nothing to interrupt the flow. Olga Quigley slowly turned eyes to him that were grave and melancholy.

“I wondered what kind of videos she was showing the children, so I put one on the VCR. It was so horrible I quit my job. No way could I work there anymore after I saw that.”

Cardozo wondered if Olga Quigley was overreacting to a safe-sex video. “Can we talk a little about this tape? What was it—pornography?”

“Worse.”

She was having trouble with this, and he didn’t push. A moment went by.

“Children tied up,” she said. “Gagged, injected, burned.”

“Burned how?”

“I’ve been trying to forget.”

“Try to remember. How were they burned?”

“Candles.”

Cardozo was suddenly aware of another sound in the kitchen besides the hum of the refrigerator. It was rain snapping softly against the window.

“Was Father Chuck involved in any youth activities?”

“None like that.”

“Of course not. But did he ever work with Father Joe or Reverend Bonnie?”

“He had his own youth activities—no time for the likes of theirs.”

“Did he keep records?”

“Of what—softball games? Saturday night dances? Musical shows? He was too busy doing things for people to write it down.”

“And he counseled young people.”

“Old people, young people—anyone who asked. He always had a half hour and an open heart for anyone in need.”

“What kind of social life did he have?”

“He had no time for that sort of foolishness. Neither had Father Joe till that woman moved in.”

“But Father Chuck was friends with Father Joe?”

“They played golf together.”

“Nothing else?”

“Not that I ever saw.”

“And was he friends with Reverend Bonnie?”

“She was always trying to buy his friendship—but he saw through her.”

“Buy his friendship how?”

“Giving him presents. Every Christmas there was a bottle of imported 150-proof rum. You couldn’t put the stuff in your system; you’d explode. He never touched it. Poured it down the sink. Once she gave him a golf cap for his birthday. A silly thing. He never wore it.”

“A tweed cap with a snap brim?”

She looked at him with surprised eyes.

“He never wore it—or you never saw him wear it?”

“I know the clothes he liked and the clothes he didn’t.”

“I’m sure you do—and a great deal more.” Cardozo closed his notebook and slid it into his pocket. “I’m sure you made Father Chuck very comfortable.”

He opened his wallet and laid a business card on the tablecloth.

“If you remember anything unusual Father Chuck ever said about his counselees or the young people he worked with—or if you come across anything he left in writing—would you call me at this number?”

After the police lieutenant had gone, an anxious electricity seemed to hover over the kitchen table. Mrs. Quigley saw that he had not touched his tea. She emptied the cup down the sink. She took the card he had left and went to her bedroom.

She opened the bottom drawer of the bureau, moved aside stockings and wool socks, and carefully lifted out a manila folder. She sat in the easy chair and spread the folder on her lap.

For a long reflective moment she gazed at the scraps of half-burned paper. On one of them the letters ALLY MAFRE had been printed in Father Chuck’s thick block capitals, and beneath them, in the same hand, an area code and a phone number.

Mrs. Quigley added the business card to the collection. She closed the file, picked up the remote, and aimed it at the TV.

FIFTY-FOUR

C
ARDOZO HANDED GREG MONTELEONE
a cup of coffee fresh from the squad room coffeemaker. It was 4:05
P.M.

“Greg, when you were working vice, did you run into much s/m?”

“If you mean personally,” Greg answered through a mouthful of doughnut, “I’m taking the fifth.”

“Could you step into my office for a minute? I’d like you to take a look at something.”

Greg sauntered into the cubicle. Today he was wearing a cotton polo shirt the color of lime jelly beans. A gold chain twinkled in a V of store-bought tan.

Cardozo handed him four autopsy photos—one each of Gilmartin, Vegas, Wills, and Lomax.

Greg stared at the photos. “You realize you just ruined my coffee break.” He held them under the desk light and then he went to the window and looked at them in sunlight.

“Do you see the marks where wax has preserved the skin?”

Greg slowly shook his head from side to side. “I see.”

“Do you think that stuff is s/m?”

“It sure looks s/m to me. Explain it to me, Vince. The country’s falling apart and people have still got time for homicidal bullshit.”

“Don’t ask me to explain people. What scene do you think those kids were into?”

“Earning enough money for their next pipe of crack.”

“Think it could have been the same practitioner all four times?”

“I’m not a coroner, Vince. And my s/m days are pretty well behind me. But I know an s/m madam who might be able to help.” Sybil Stoller placed the five Polaroids side by side on the mahogany-and-rosewood inlaid coffee table. Her heavily made-up brown eyes took a moment to gaze at each of them. “These look like street kids to me—underage and stoned on downs. No, I don’t recognize any of them.”

Cardozo handed her three autopsy photos of Pablo Cespedes, taken just before the medical examiner had cut into him. “Can you tell me anything about the markings on this young man?”

A deep-crimson fingernail pointed without hesitation to the faint rows of parallel welts on Pablo’s back. “Those are made by a castigator.”

They were sitting on metal and leather in the high-ceilinged living room of Sybil’s Sutton Place South apartment. The air smelled of fresh-cut hothouse lilac. Signed Rauschenberg lithos dotted the walls. A hidden sound system piped unobtrusive Mozart.

Cardozo played dumb. “What’s a castigator?”

“It’s a self-flagellation device monks used in the Middle Ages—updated for modern times.”

“Are they common?”

“I haven’t seen them mass-produced in sex shops, but they’re fairly common custom items.”

“Do you have any?”

She gave him a slow glance over high, chiseled cheekbones. She viewed talking to cops, he sensed, as part of the rent she paid for her space on earth.

“I don’t use castigators and I don’t allow my clients to use them. They cut the skin. No scarring, no scaring—that’s the rule around here.”

Cardozo pointed to abrasions on Pablo’s chest and under his armpits. “What causes these—the castigator again?”

“No. Those are a signature.”

“You’re going to have to educate me. I don’t know what a signature is.”

“What do you know about Kentucky fried?”

“It’s bad for your arteries.”

“That’s funny, Lieutenant.” Her eyes said,
Your meter may not be ticking, but mine is, so may we forgo the comedy please and get the hell on with this.
“But we’re talking s/m, not diet. Kentucky fried is your basic chicken in a basket. You put a kid in a restraining basket and do light to medium s/m. The usual rules apply—no cutting no burning.”

She explained that once a wicker basket was outfitted with restraints, it had a signature—it left a recognizable pattern of pressure marks and abrasions on the skin.

“Actually, there’s more than a signature here. He’s been burned.” She put on a pair of severely styled gold-framed reading glasses and studied the photo of Pablo’s chest. “With candle wax.”

“You’ve got sharp eyes.”

“Thank my optometrist for that. Okay. Here’s what I think. There’s a thing that’s been going on for about four years—it’s called Colonel Sanders. It’s a variation on Kentucky fried. In traditional s/m the
m
is willing, but in Colonel Sanders the
s
tries to scare the shit out of the kid. Which involves crossing the borderline—you get into burning and cutting. The whole game is the kid’s terror—so there’s a lot of demand for kids who have never done it before. I personally won’t handle it. First of all, I don’t handle kids. Secondly, I don’t get into terror and mind-fucks.”

“But you think, because of the burns, this is Colonel Sanders.”

“Not exactly.” She gave him a long look and drew in a deep breath. “There’s a version of Colonel Sanders—it’s called Omaha, don’t ask me why. I think that’s what you’ve got here.”

“Educate me about Omaha.”

“The
m
dupes the
s
. The kids pretend to be fresh, but in fact they know the score. To keep from freaking, they’re completely downed out.”

“On what?”

“Whatever they can get hold of. Antipanic medication’s the best, but it isn’t easy to get hold of.”

“You seem to know the scene.”

Beneath her hi-tech halo of dark auburn hair, her face was as untroubled and unlined as cheesecake. “I don’t know
that
scene, Lieutenant, but I do know the street. There are five dozen kids cruising Fifty-eighth every night, two blocks from here. For two hundred bucks, you can do anything to them you want. They’re lucky to have the life span of a mayfly.” Her finger tapped the Polaroid Pablo. “This kid is blitzed—you could hit him with a falling safe and his reaction would be, ‘Oh, wow.’” She tapped the autopsy photo of the chest and face. “These marks and the burns—my instinct says it’s Omaha.”

“Are kids ever killed playing Omaha?”

“Not that I’ve heard of. No
s
could go that far and still be accepted in the s/m community.”

“What about accidentally killed?”

“That’s the risk you take in s/m, but it’s rare.”

“Who handles Omaha?”

“There you’ve got a problem: it’s not even semilegit. Any form of chicken is child prostitution—and most of it’s run by pimps who are kids themselves, so they can’t be prosecuted. As I said, I steer clear.” Sybil angled her wrist. A platinum, wafer-thin Patek-Philippe glowed against the deep tan of her forearm. She made a show of noting the time. A hint to her visitor. “I wish I could be more help.” She rose from the brass-studded leather love seat.

Cardozo collected his photos and stood. “Perhaps you could be. Have you ever run into a man by the name of Joe Montgomery?”

“Father Joe Montgomery?” She gave him a good-natured who’s-fooling-who look. “Come on, Lieutenant, do I look like the kind of nice Jewish girl who runs off to confession every Wednesday?”

“Maybe he comes to you.”

She walked Cardozo into a hallway hung with Parisian gallery posters advertising exhibits of Miro, Chagall, Picasso.

“First of all, I’m a physiotherapist licensed by the State of New York and I regard my clients’ records as medically privileged. Secondly, any clergyman using our services would be smart enough to use a false name. Thirdly—yes, I do have priests and ministers and rabbis as clients; no, I won’t tell you who they are; and no, Father Joe Montgomery is not one of them—though I’ve met him socially and frankly he needs his ashes hauled—badly.”

She eyed Cardozo appraisingly.

“And you look a little needy yourself. Please feel free to drop by if you’re interested in any specialties of the house.”

“Thanks, it’s not my scene.”

“Maybe you don’t know yourself. A lot of cops have trouble coming out as s/m-ers.”

“If I ever get the urge, I’ll let you know.”

They reached the door.

“By the way, how’s Greg?”

“He’s great.”

“Greg and I are old friends. We go back a long way.”

“He told me.”

Sybil smiled. “Say hi for me.”

“Did Father Joe ever try to convert you?” Cardozo said.

“Sure,” Jonquil said, “to rum punch.”

“Did Father Chuck?”

“Who said Father Chuck was even a customer?”

“You haven’t said he wasn’t.”

“I don’t discuss Father Chuck.” Jonquil was painting her toenails, one bare brown foot up on the bed, concentrating on each toe like a medieval monk illuminating a manuscript. “It’s unlucky to speak ill of the dead.”

They were sitting in Jonquil’s tiny room at the George Washington Hotel on Lexington and Thirtieth. The hotel was a flophouse for whores, pimps, junkies, muggers, and small-time criminals who had made the streets just mean enough that they didn’t care to sleep in them anymore; but Jonquil’s room was a little girl’s dream, a space of ruffles and dolls and with a silk square dangled over the lampshade. It exuded an atmosphere of sweetness and scrubbing and things exactly in their place.