SIREN’S TEARS

A Novel By

Lawrence De Maria

(An Alton Rhode Mystery)

SIREN’S TEARS, a novel by Lawrence De Maria

Copyright © Lawrence De Maria 2013

Revised 2016

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations,

places and incidents portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, transmitted, reverse engineered, decompiled or stored in or introduced into any storage or retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electric or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading or distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law.

Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

Special thanks to Nancy Kreisler, Maryellen Alvarez and Deborah Thompson. Published by St. Austin’s Press

To Patti, without whose love, support and faith this book

– and others –

would not have been possible, and two my sons, Lawrence and Christopher, good men, both.

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,

Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within.

(William Shakespeare, Sonnet 119)

PROLOGUE

Cordillera Occidental (Western Andes) - 2003

Black spider monkeys are social animals, often found in close-knit family groups of 20 or more. Social, but not stupid.

Those that inhabit the Pacific slopes of the Andes of western Colombia are particularly cautious, constantly on the move, swinging through the trees with a genetic grace and power that would be the envy of Cirque du Soleil. To remain motionless for more than a few minutes in a South American rain forest is to be eaten.

But even some arboreal creatures must come down out of trees occasionally. But when a group of spider monkeys, mostly females and immature males, is on the ground foraging for fallen fruit and other food, the older males higher up are constantly on the watch for predators. These they usually manage to thwart with their early warning system. If an anaconda or jaguar is spotted in time, all it takes is a screech from one monkey to send the entire troupe up into the canopy, frightened babies clinging to the backs of their howling mothers.

There they will all sit for a moment, looking down at their frustrated pursuers, until, at a signal from the dominant male, all the monkeys will swing toward even more safety. Adding distance to height almost always works. Almost always.

Spider monkeys are reluctant to leave a group member behind, although in dire circumstances self-preservation wins out and, with the exception of females with young, it’s every ape for itself. On this day it was not a 20-foot snake or a big cat that caused the tribe to climb frantically into the trees. Humans were walking through the forest: Four loin-clothed Noanamá Chocó Indians and a young white woman. The Indians carried long palm-wood tubes; the woman, binoculars. Except for the low buzz of insects, the forest was now silent. Animals, even those not in danger, instinctively sense a hunt. Death was in the air.

The spider monkeys were the most nervous, and with good reason. The five humans circled their trees far below. But they made no move to climb. The four Indian men merely put their tubes to their mouths. There was a series of barely-audible “pfftts.” The small primates awaited a sign from the alpha male to flee. Suddenly, he jumped to another branch with a screech. It wasn’t the normal signal, but it was enough for the others. They started swinging away through the branches.

Surprisingly, the humans followed, at a loping pace that gave them no chance to catch the monkeys. With safety assured, the troupe slowed, waiting for their leader. For some reason, he lagged behind. At one point he did something none of the animals ever did. He missed a branch, and barely caught a lower one. He wrapped his legs and arms around it. Another big male, showing unusual courage, swung back toward the alpha. The leader raised his head, shaking it violently back and forth, as if to say, “Don’t come any closer.” But even had he been capable of such intelligent thought, it was merely the beginning of a convulsion. The shaking soon spread to the rest of his body.

Suddenly, the alpha male stiffened, and tumbled off the branch to the forest floor 60 feet below. With millions of years of accumulated rainforest detritus breaking his impact, the fall wouldn’t have killed him. It didn’t matter. The alpha male was dead before he hit the ground.

The other male didn’t hesitate, or wonder why the other ape fell out of the tree for no apparent reason. All he felt was fear. And even if he could have felt regret, he wouldn’t have. The dead alpha male had bullied him into second place in the tribe, and mated with all the best females. Now, he was the leader. He let out a loud screech and led the survivors away. The sounds of the chattering band soon receded in the distance. But other animal sounds, muted to be sure, resumed. An animal died, but the forest lived.

Below, at the base of the tree, the four men squatted around the dead animal. Their blowguns lay next to them. One of the Indians reached out and pulled a small dart from the monkey’s shoulder and placed it in a pouch tied to the lace string that held up his scanty loincloth. The woman came up to them and sat cross-legged. One of the men reached down and cupped his own dangling testicles and said something. The other Indians laughed and then looked at the woman. She smiled and nodded. The first man took out a knife and expertly castrated the dead monkey. Carefully, he sliced the animal’s genitals in four roughly even pieces and passed the dripping delicacies around to the other three men. Each tilted his head back and dropped their portions into their mouths. They looked like they were slurping oysters, she thought.

The woman had eaten much worse in her time with these people, but the monkey gonads were not offered. She was not offended. They liked her, and accepted her almost as one of their own, but she obviously didn’t need male spirit.

Thank God, they didn’t kill a female, Dr. Mary Naulls thought. Although I doubt if they even know what ovaries are.

***

A half hour later the small hunting party emerged from the tree line and walked into a small village. Two of the men carried a long pole, from which hung the body of the spider monkey, its long swishing tail almost touching the ground. The man whose dart killed the animal walked at the head of the column. No monkey-carrying for him. Naked children and several hairless dogs ran out to greet them. A woman with a baby at a breast walked over to the lead man and said something. She pointed at the dangling animal. He looked chagrined. Mary Naulls had a limited grasp of the language, but she got the drift. Something about a “small monkey.”

Mary smiled. It was domestic conversation, she knew, that dated from when the first humanoids themselves climbed down from trees. The man made a show of arguing but was quickly silenced by a sharp retort. He didn’t want to antagonize his wife. The traditional delicacy of monkey brains, eaten right from the skull, is reserved for the successful hunter’s family, and the woman of the house divvies up the portions.

Two of the village children ran over to Mary and took her hands. She was their favorite. Mary loved these simple, generous people, especially the kids. She wondered how long their way of life would survive. The rainforests were shrinking, though not as fast as on the east coast of South America. The Indians loved her back, admiring her fortitude. She could sit for days in a steady rain studying the plants and animals that fascinated her. Mary couldn’t explain to them that at least she was usually comfortable, unlike the many hours she spent shivering and hiding from her father back in Ocean Falls, off the coast of her own Columbia, British Columbia. The spelling was different, but Ocean Falls had almost as much precipitation as the Colombian rainforest, an average of 170 inches of chilling rain annually. To Mary, walking around with Chocó hunters during a downpour was as pleasant as taking a warm shower. In fact, she always carried a bar of soap with her and when alone stripped naked to wash.

One of children, the boy of about five, had a small sack in his hands, which he held up proudly. Mary knew what was in it but made a show of delight. A tiny frog hopped out, only to be snatched in mid air by the little girl and returned to the sack. Mary was momentarily startled until she saw that the little girl’s hand was wrapped in plantain leaves. Some adults handled a Rana Tóxico, the Spanish name for Poison Dart Frog, without even that rudimentary safety precaution. Just touching the skin of the tiny amphibian could be painful, as Mary knew from experience. She suspected that many of the hunters had built up immunity to the poison, at least externally. But when the toxin entered the bloodstream, via dart or ingestion, it was another matter. No animal was immune from its effects internally. Except for one local snake, anything that ate the brightly colored little frog died.

There are several varieties of Poison Dart Frogs in South America. Most are truly beautiful, with skins dappled with colors so bright they almost hurt the eyes. But none are as deadly as the one the little girl held, which had the scientific – and appropriate – name of Phyllobates terriblis. In fact, biologists consider it the most potentially lethal of all animals, its batrachotoxin even surpassing the potency of sea wasp jellyfish venom. One milligram of the thumb-sized frog’s skin-secreted alkaloid poison can kill 20 men or two bull elephants. The minute grooves in the darts used by the Indians contained a fraction of that amount and it had been more than enough for the unfortunate spider monkey.

When Mary got to her hut she carefully added her new frog to a small wicker basket containing a dozen others. Using techniques taught her by the villagers, she had been collecting toxin from her little captives for months. The villagers never asked her for any. The frogs were all over the jungle. She was due to go back home and knew she would have trouble taking any live frogs with her. There were plenty of South American dart frogs in North American research labs, and even in private hands. But they had limited use for the kind of research Mary wanted to do. The native frogs synthesized their poison from chemicals obtained from the bodies of specific insects, mainly forest ants and beetles, consumed locally. Once on a different diet in laboratories, such as fruit flies and crickets, Rana Tóxico became just another Kermit.

***

The Rev. Humphrey Naulls was waiting impatiently for his daughter in the Avianca terminal in the Vancouver International Airport on Sea Island. It took Mary more than an hour to clear customs. Fortunately, her academic credentials were iron clad, with letters from both Colombian and Canadian officials and colleagues explaining why the attractive woman scientist was allowed to bring in the clearly marked samples of various venoms into North America.

The vials were in a small lock box and officials made a show of counting them against a list that had been wired to them from Bogota. No one bothered to check the toothpaste tubes and face cream jars that contained the bulk of the toxins Mary had collected. In them was enough batrachotoxin to depopulate Canada’s Western Provinces.

Not that Mary planned mass murder. On the contrary, most of the venom would go into legitimate research to further her career. But she had planned ahead.

There would always be enough left over for selective murder.

When Mary finally greeted her father, there was no kiss, or hug, despite the fact that she’d been gone more than a year. A casual observer might have assumed that Mary’s recent conversion to Catholicism, the result of her time spent with a dynamic Catholic missionary from Spain who worked with the Chocó villagers, explained her father’s coolness. After all, Rev. Naulls served one of the largest Lutheran flocks in British Columbia, and was locally famous for flying his own plane to remote congregations. He did, in fact, consider her a traitor. But their personal schism ran deeper than religion. Mary Naulls hated her father, for what he did to her mother, and to her.

Her mother, a morally weak woman to be sure, was dead. The official cause was heart trouble. But Mary blamed her father for driving the woman to an early grave with his philandering. Not that Mary missed her mother, who had never lifted a finger when Rev. Naulls satisfied his urges with late night visits to his daughter’s bedroom that lasted until she went to college.

“How long will you be home for?”

It was the first words spoken by her father since they had climbed into his single-engine Cessna Skycatcher for the two-hour flight to Ocean Falls. Mary looked down at the waters of Queen Charlotte Sound while she answered.

“Just a few weeks. I start my new position in Ontario in September.”

“I had hoped you might stay longer.”

She looked at her father. At 70, with a full head of white hair and a ruddy complexion, he was still a handsome man, catnip, she was certain, to lonely widows in remote congregations. She smiled grimly to herself.

***

Once home in Ocean Falls, they maintained a polite civility. A week into her stay, Rev. Naulls told his daughter he had to make a pastoral visit to Masset, a small town on Graham Island, part of Nakoon Provincial Park, 200 miles to the northwest. He asked her to go along.

“I can’t, father,” she replied, thinking the timing couldn’t be better. “I have too much to do preparing for my new position. But let me pack a breakfast for you.”

Mary watched his plane take off due west over the Pacific Ocean. She wondered how long he would be able to resist the smell of freshly baked sausage biscuits. Then, smiling, she went into the house.

***

In his plane, 45 miles out and having reached the Cessna’s 14,000-foot cruising altitude, Rev. Naulls put a half-eaten biscuit on the seat next to him and started to make his scheduled turn to the north toward Graham Island. Much to his surprise, the Skycatcher, normally a nimble aircraft, responded sluggishly. He looked at his instrument panel to see what the problem might be. The dials were blurry. He blinked, but that didn’t help, especially since he had trouble blinking. He was also having a hard time concentrating, and he suddenly realized that it wasn’t the Skycatcher that was responding sluggishly. He was.

The minister’s lips and tongue felt numb and he had a strange sensation in his throat. It felt like the temporarily unpleasant feeling one has in the dentist chair after accidentally swallowing a topical gum anesthetic. Except this time the feeling didn’t go away. He tried to swallow, and couldn’t, succeeding only in dribbling biscuit and sausage bits down his chin.

The plane started to roll, but with an awkward lurch Naulls was able to hit the autopilot and it straightened out. Panicking, he tried to reach for his microphone but discovered that he couldn’t move his arm. A moment later, he couldn’t move anything at all and he was having trouble breathing.

With a top speed of 129 miles per hour and a range of 541 miles, the Cessna flew on for just under four hours before running out of fuel. It began losing altitude in a slow glide but with it’s autopilot now useless soon tilted on one wing and stalled at 12,000 feet.  Nose heavy, it began a steep dive and smashed into the frigid waters of the North Pacific approximately one minute later.

It was a much longer plunge, resulting in an exponentially greater impact than experienced by a spider monkey falling in a rain forest. But, as with the monkey, it made no difference to Rev. Naulls.

He was already dead.

***

Because his intended destination was so close to the Alaskan border, the United States Coast Guard joined their Canadian counterparts in the search for Rev. Naulls, who, according to radar plots, had inexplicably flown almost 500 miles straight out over the Pacific until his plane presumably ran out of fuel.

The recovery effort was called off after three days, amid steadily deteriorating weather. A Canadian Coast Guard officer told Mary it was unlikely that either the plane or her father’s body would ever be found. As an islander, Mary knew that the Coast Guard took great pride in bringing closure to the relatives of those missing at sea. She wound up consoling the officer, who couldn’t know how really comforted she was by the news that her father’s body was lost.

There was, of course, a large memorial service that Mary found almost unbearable for reasons that would have shocked those attending. But she managed to convey a passable look of bereavement and a stoicism that impressed many and masked her disdain for words of praise she found hypocritical.

The next day, she informed LexGen, the company she was scheduled to start work for, that she now needed time to settle her father’s estate, for which she was the sole heir. Her new employers were very understanding. As one of the world’s leading experts in biological toxins, thanks to her work in South America, Dr. Mary Naulls was a valuable commodity to the startup pharmaceutical research laboratory.

A month later, flush with the proceeds from the sale of everything her father owned, plus a quick but generous settlement from an aircraft insurance company anxious to avoid litigation and publicity over the mysterious death of a well-known pastor, Mary Naulls moved to Ontario to start her new life.

CHAPTER 1 – NO GOOD DEED

Cashman, Ontario - 2008

In the five years she lived and worked in Cashman, a small town an hour north of Toronto, Mary Naulls flourished, both professionally and sexually. She made a small fortune from her work at LexGen, became a respected member of her community and church – and accumulated three secret lovers, all married men in their early 60’s. It was no mystery to Mary, who accepted the fact that she was a damaged personality, why she slept with men who were roughly her father’s age when he abused her. They provided the two things that she psychologically craved: pleasure and revenge.

The lovers lasted an average of 18 months. All died of apparently natural causes. None of them knew each other. Their wives may have suspected that their husbands cheated on them, but Mary Naulls, respected scientist and lay Eucharistic Minister at Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church, was never considered. The men took her identity with them to the grave.

***

It was ironic that killing a man she didn’t have sex with forced Mary Naulls to leave Canada.

Not that Father Michael Richter didn’t like sex. Indeed, that was the problem. But his tastes ran to prepubescent children. Mary found out about her pastor’s predilections after inadvertently catching him with his hands down the Mallory boy’s trousers one day in the sacristy after Sunday mass. She decided on the spot to add the bastard to her string.

After the poor altar boy ran off, a blubbering Richter begged Mary to forget what she’d seen. He actually got on his knees in front of her.

“I’ll go for counseling, Mary. It’s like a wave coming over me. I can’t control it. I love these children. Perhaps too much. Please don’t destroy all the good I have done.”

“Oh, Father,” she said, looking down at the pathetic wretch, “I know you are a good man at heart. It was a momentary lapse. Maybe we could pray together. Promise me this won’t happen again.”

“Never. I swear.”

That’s wonderful, she gushed, and made him also promise to come over to her house for dinner the following Saturday.

***

She tried to put him at ease, but he was nervous and at first hardly touched the roast beef dinner she prepared. But he readily drank the wine she served. Richter was a sad sight. Almost 60, with the belly and red-veined cheeks of a man who liked his booze, he had been disappointed when she said there was no hard liquor in her house.

Predictably, he talked about his terrible childhood, his cloying mother and abusive father. How he was always been awkward around girls. She clucked sympathetically and poured more wine.

“Mary, you are a fine, upstanding woman. You wouldn’t understand this compulsion I have. I fight it every day of my life. Now, thanks to you, I think I can turn the page. I will devote myself to my calling, to my priesthood. You don’t have to worry.”

Mary Naulls knew all about compulsion. I could write a book on it, she reflected. She also knew all about bullshit. This bag of crap would break his word and resume preying on children just as soon as he thought he could get away with it. His next utterance validated her point.

“It’s not like the children ….” He thought better of finishing the thought. “I wonder if you could open another bottle of wine, Mary.”

“Of course, Father. But I do wish you would eat more.”

“Yes, I think I will. It all looks so delicious.”

She left him at the table spooning massive amounts of meat and mashed potatoes onto his plate. With his good humor and appetite restored, she knew there would be few leftovers. Father Richter didn’t need much padding when he played Santa Claus every year at the parish’s family Christmas party. Mary smiled grimly as she thought about all the children who sat on his lap. When she emerged from the kitchen holding a bottle of Pinot Noir, he was pouring gravy all over the mountain of food in front of him.

“You’d better save room for my apple pie, Father,” she said as she filled his glass.

“Oh, don’t you worry about that, Mary. I’ve heard about your pies.” He gave her a friendly smile. “Aren’t you going to have more wine?”

“I’ve had my limit, Father.”

“I understand.” He drank half his glass. “But, too bad. This is really excellent. If I may say, it’s even better than the first bottle. Don’t you remember your Gospels?”

“I’m sorry.”

Richter laughed, fully at ease now.

“The Wedding Feast at Cana. You are supposed to serve the good wine first, because nobody notices what kind of wine they get later.”

Oh, I think you’ll notice, Mary thought.

“Speaking of weddings, Mary, don’t you think that it’s about time you considered dating again?” He paused and gave her his most understanding, priestly look. “I know you are devoted to your late husband, whom I never had the privilege of meeting, but you are still a very attractive, educated woman and would make some other man a fine wife.” Richter chuckled. “I certainly can attest to your cooking.”

Mary, who passed herself off as a widow, smiled ruefully.

“I’m not sure I’m ready yet. And there really aren’t many eligible men in these parts.”

Besides, she reflected, I prefer married men. The men she’d had affairs with were pillars of the community, with prim wives they dutifully bedded once or twice a month. At their age, even that must have been a trial for the men, since she herself was screwing their brains out two and three times a week before their apparent heart attacks killed them.

“But I appreciate your concern, Father.”

Mary was fascinated: This pederast priest who preyed on little boys giving her marital advice! And telling her how attractive she was! I’m making the right decision, she thought. I could have gone to the Bishop. But then the rotten apple would just be transferred to another parish barrel. The police weren’t an option.

She realized Richter was saying something.

“I’m sorry, Father. What was that?”

He was pouring himself more wine.

“I said I’d love to try that pie now. I do hope you have some vanilla ice cream.”

He stumbled out an hour later, refusing Mary’s offer to drive him home.

“The rectory ish only two blocksh away,” he slurred. “Pish of cake.”

***

The next morning Mary Naulls was awakened by a phone call from Margaret McGiver, who, like her, was a Eucharistic minister. Mary didn’t particularly care for her, but the Eucharistic Ministers who were women tended to stick together in the male-dominated world of the Catholic Church, which allowed them to pass out Communion and do other, minor, functions. As if, Mary often thought bitterly, that could make up for thousands of years of sexual discrimination. But Margaret was also a world-class gossip and Mary liked to keep abreast of parish developments, for a variety of reasons.

“Did you hear about Father Richter, Mary?”

She looked at her alarm clock. It was just 6:30 AM. How the hell would Margaret expect her to know what happened? The woman was certainly on the ball. She should be working for the C.I.A. But Mary played along, wondering who found the body. Maybe Richter had an early Mass and when he didn’t show up somebody went to check on him.

“No, Peggy.” Mary Naulls yawned. She didn’t have to pretend to be tired. “What happened.”

“He’s dead!”

Margaret imparted the news with the relish most people reserve for bad tidings.

“Oh, no. The poor man.”

“You must feel terrible, Mary. He had dinner with you last night, didn’t he?”

Mary Naulls wasn’t alarmed. Richter had surely told a lot of people he was getting a meal with one of his parishioners. It would be a way for him to hint that other invitations to free meals would be appreciated.

“Yes. He seemed fine. Was it his heart?”

“They don’t know. They’ll have to wait for the autopsy.”

Autopsy? Mary Naulls tries to keep her voice calm, but she was wide awake now.

“Why would there be an autopsy? I thought he died in the rectory.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I know,” she said, cursing her slip. “I just assumed. He left here rather late and said he was going straight home. I also assumed he might have died in his sleep, or something.”

“He died in the police station, Mary.”

“Fuck me!”

“What was that?”

“Nothing. What’s this about a police station?”

“Well,” Peggy said, getting a head of steam up, “Richter was apparently drunker than a skunk and hit another car. Just a fender bender, mind you, but the police came and he was arrested.”

“They arrested a priest?”

The local police had a reputation for live and let live, particularly when prominent citizens were involved.

“Yes. Apparently one of the officers knew him from when he was an altar boy. They had a falling out or something. I don’t even want to know what that was about, what with all the stuff you read about priests. But the cop took Father Richter right to jail. He dropped dead right in the middle of a blood test.”

Blood test? And an autopsy?

“Anyway, the police are frantic. Having anyone dying in custody is bad enough, but a priest?” Margaret McGiver finished triumphantly. “They have to do an autopsy.”

“Well, thanks for calling me, Peg. I’ll say a prayer for the poor man.”

“Mary?”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps you should think about contacting a solicitor. Mary? Are you still there?”

“Why on earth would I need a lawyer?”

“Well, if his blood alcohol level is above the limit, they could come after you for letting him leave your house drunk. I think that’s the law now. Thank God he didn’t hurt anyone in the crash. But I wouldn’t take any chances.”

No good deed goes unpunished, Mary Naulls thought. But I’ll be long gone before they come around to ask me about what was in his blood. And they won’t be talking about alcohol.

She thanked Peggy for the heads up about “poor Father Richter” and made a promise, which she had no intention of keeping, to come over for dinner the following weekend. The dumb woman never noticed how her husband looked at Mary when they were together. Fred McGiver, who owned the local Hyundai dealership, even pinched her ass in the kitchen when his wife wasn’t looking. Mary had been planning to jump his bones for weeks. If it wasn’t for the spur-of-the-moment decision on Father Richter, Fred would have been her No. 4; he was just the kind of cheating, lecherous hypocrite she preferred.

After ringing off, Mary went into her bedroom and opened the small safe at the rear of her closet, pulling out a notebook that she carried to the vanity table across from her bed. She sat down and began riffling through the pages until she came to the section on the destinations she had researched for a hasty relocation. She had narrowed down the possibilities to two locales on the opposite coasts of the United States. One really intrigued her. It offered the greater anonymity of a large city, which might be safer now, but seemed to have the ambiance and sociability of the small towns she preferred.

***

The next morning the lone security guard at the desk in the lobby at LexGen Lifescience Ltd. was surprised to see Mary Naulls. Not because the sun was barely up – she was known to put in the longest hours of anyone on staff – but because it was Sunday, the only day Dr. Naulls scrupulously avoided coming to work. In the small, tight-knit Catholic parish they both lived in just outside Cashman, she was known for her religious fervor. They had often bumped into each other at Holy Rosary.

“Good morning, Charlie,” she said brightly.

“Good morning, Doc. What are you doing here?”

“Just dropping off some research papers for the team to sort through.” For emphasis, she hefted the attaché case she was carrying. “I had them at home and was planning to work on them next week but my sister called. My Mom’s sick and I have to take some time off to help Sis care for her.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is it serious?”

“I don’t think so, but at her age one has to be careful.”

“Where does your Mom live?”

“Vancouver,” she lied.

“Well, when your Mom needs you, it’s important to be there. I’m sure she’ll be all right.”

“Thanks. Charlie. Anyone else here today?”

“Are you kidding?” He wrote her name down on a yellow pad. “This early?”

The security guard’s eyes followed her as she walked to the elevator. While it was the look of an appreciative male, he liked Dr. Naulls on all levels. She was always friendly, often asking to see photos of his grandchildren. His wife was another story. She didn’t care for the woman, a sentiment, he knew, that was shared by some of the other wives in the parish. He ascribed it to both personal and professional jealousy in a community that was very class conscious. Mary Naulls was a fine-looking woman and her position at LexGen gave her a certain status.

Five minutes later she buzzed her way into the lab complex on the fifth floor, smiling, as she always did, at the small sign some joker had placed under the coded key pad: “Venom Inc.” After undergoing the retina scan that allowed her entry into her own laboratory, the most secure facility in the building, Dr. Mary Naulls went to a small refrigerator that sat on top of a counter. Its door was secured by a simple combination lock. She opened a drawer below the refrigerator and put on a pair of gloves. Then she unlocked the refrigerator door and removed a large tray of vials, setting it next to her attaché case. Each of the 30 vials was marked with letters and numbers that only Mary Naulls understood. These were her experiments and her reputation in her chosen field accorded her a certain amount of idiosyncratic privacy.

She opened her case and removed its specially constructed false bottom, under which were 30 other vials, each resting securely in a niche in Styrofoam. Next to the vials was a small red water pistol. The false-bottom subterfuge wasn’t necessary this day, but might prove crucial at the border crossing. Practice never hurt. She had been planning for this day, which admittedly came earlier than she had hoped, for years.

Working carefully, she removed the laboratory vials one-by-one and replaced them with their identical-looking counterparts from her attaché case, all bought from a medical supply company in Ontario. The colors of the liquid now in these new vials were the same as those of the originals, and the vials had the same markings.

Dr. Naulls knew that she could have just taken the originals and been done with it. But once she disappeared, the staff would undoubtedly break into the refrigerator. If they went to the trouble of testing what was in all the vials now in the cooler, they would find traces of the venoms and poisons she was known to work with, adulterated with some chemicals she had concocted using common ingredients available in any pharmacy. It would be assumed that the chemicals were reagents she was using in her experiments.

The liquids in the original vials were a different story. Some of them were highly toxic in their own right. But when mixed with special reagents, in proportions known only Mary Naulls, they were potentially among the most lethal concoctions on Earth.

She was almost done. There was one bit of unpleasantness. She removed one of the vials from the attaché case and poured a drop of liquid into a beaker. She then filled the beaker with distilled water, almost to the top. Then, taking another vial, she added another drop. The mixture in the beaker did not change color, but Mary knew that at the molecular level everything was altered. She reached into the attaché and brought out the small toy water pistol, filling it with some of the liquid from the beaker. She replaced the two vials she had just used and inserted the attaché’s false bottom, on top of which she put the water pistol.

All told, she was in the lab only 30 minutes.

***

“That didn’t take long, Doc.”

Mary Naulls smiled at the guard by the front entrance. She liked Charlie. He was a nice old guy, always friendly, unlike some of the younger ones, who thought their rent-a-cop uniforms made them Rambos. One of them had even made a pass at her.

“I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

“Of course. I’m sure your Mom will be OK. I’ll say a novena for her.”

If she could have gotten in and out of the building without Charlie seeing her, she would have. But on weekends, when the place was usually deserted, all the other entries in the building were locked and alarmed. That was the only real security for the facility overall, something that initially surprised her in the post-9/11 world. True, the coded buzzers and retina scans offered some protection against intruders, but they were meant to discourage corporate piracy rather than terrorists. And Dr. Cruikshank, the facility’s director, told her that neither pirates nor terrorists were likely to bother with an obscure lab doing esoteric research “in the middle of nowhere.”

There were security cameras, but they were for show. None of them worked.   Of course, the lobby guards were supposed to check every bag and case that left the building. But they rarely did, especially if they knew the person who was leaving. Once in a blue moon a brown-nosing Rambo made a show of following protocol, even with Cruikshank. But he was soon straightened out by the older hands, who invariably pointed out that anyone who wanted to steal material could do it in miniscule batches over time. Nobody would be dumb enough to fill a briefcase or pocketbook with the stuff.

Mary put the attaché case on the guard’s counter and opened it. He smiled and winked at her.

“That’s OK, Doc. Have a safe trip.”

“I intend to,” Mary Naulls said. “That’s why I have to do this.”

She casually pulled out the water pistol, and covering her mouth and nose with her other hand just in case of a splatter, sprayed the surprised guard in the face. His initial reaction was to laugh, assuming that Dr. Naulls was playing a prank. His next reaction was to die. He toppled from his chair to the floor.

“Five seconds,” Mary, ever the scientist, murmured.

She didn’t check to see if he was really dead. The dose would have killed 20 Charlies. She leaned across the counter and ripped the top page from the yellow pad, which contained only her name and time of arrival. Then she recalled a recent crime show on TV and tore off another three pages. There would be no pressure imprints.

“Sorry Charlie,” she said, and left.

***

The water pistol was thrown into one of the many lakes Mary Naulls passed on her drive toward Ontario. Its deadly contents could not harm aquatic creatures, whose biology and neural pathways differed from mammals. Besides, the toxin was quickly diluted by millions of gallons of water.

An hour later in the Toronto Pearson International Airport, she purchased a ticket to Vancouver, which she promptly ripped up and deposited in a trash bin. Then, leaving her car in the long-term parking lot, she wheeled her one large Laco Sac suitcase to the express bus shuttle that took her downtown to Union Station, where, paying cash, she booked a train ticket for the next morning.

Then she walked across the street to Fairmont Royal York Hotel and, again paying cash and using a false driver’s license provided by a man in Toronto who specialized in such things, she took a room for the night. The police could eventually figure it all out, she reasoned, if they bothered. But by then, using the papers and background provided by the forger, she would have established her new identity. He certainly would never tell anyone about her. An addict, he had been happy to take part of his payments in some of the drugs she could provide from LexGen. Unfortunately for him, his last batch was laced with a little extra something from the lab refrigerator. With the needle still in his arm, the police chalked his death up to an overdose.

After lunch and a short nap in her hotel room, she went down to the Fairmont’s Business Center and, using one of the hotel’s computers, spend two hours transferring funds from local accounts offshore to select banks in the Caribbean. The offshore accounts were already well stocked, from years of precautionary financial planning on her part. Mary Naulls would never have to work a day in her life if she didn’t want to. She could live off the money and royalties she had earned for the drug and biological patents LexGen, as part of her employment contract, either bought from her or let her keep. The forger had been an expert. His work, and her variety of new names, passed scrutiny in all the islands she had visited to set up the accounts. The world lost a great artist when that man died, she believed.

Her financial future again secure, she went to the 5 PM mass at Toronto’s famous St. Michael’s Cathedral, built, she knew, in 1848. Then, after a light dinner in her room, Mary Naulls riffled through several fashion magazines, comparing various possible hair styles and colors for her next look. She nodded off with Vogue lying across her chest, and slept soundly the night through.

***

As the train pulled out of Union Station at 8:20 AM Monday morning, Mary permitted herself a few moments of contemplation. It wasn’t regret, since she never regretted anything she did and had a preternatural ability to move on, both physically and mentally. Considering her religiosity, some people might have found it strange that she never went to Confession. She didn’t see the need for the Sacrament of Reconciliation After all, she was doing God’s work. What did she have to confess?

But she knew she’d miss certain things about her life in Cashman. The easy access north to the beautiful resort area of Parry Sound, with its pristine lakes and endless forests. The lure of cosmopolitan Toronto, with Chinatown, the Distillery District and St. Lawrence Market. Most of all she’d miss the city’s huge Eaton Centre shopping mall, which had some of her favorite stores: Bench, Laco Sac, Melanie Lynn, Femme du Carrier. She’s spent many happy days eating a gelato under the famous “Flying Geese” sculpture that dominated the mall’s center court or sitting quietly in the lovely old Church of the Trinity, which was incorporated into the Centre. Anglican, to be sure, but certainly peaceful.

By the time Mary Naulls walked to the dining car, Canada and Toronto were in her mental rear view mirror.

After all, they couldn’t hold a candle next to her next home: New York City.

CHAPTER 2 – ILL WIND

New York City – November, 2012

I was almost certain someone was following me through the Staten Island Mall. I say almost because the mall was crowded and I was out of my element. I’m not a mall person and do much of my clothes shopping online, or at some family-owned stores in older neighborhoods where they know my name. There aren’t that many left on Staten Island, so I occasionally venture into Manhattan to shop with Alice Watts. Her taste in my clothes is better than mine.

But I had to quickly replace much of my basic wardrobe after Hurricane or Superstorm Sandy, or whatever the hell they called that meteorological malignancy, blew the South Shore of Staten Island to smithereens a week earlier.

Not that the storm directly affected me. My part of the borough, on the North Shore, was virtually unscathed by Sandy. On St. Austins Place, where I lived in a 100-year-old side-hall colonial I’d inherited from my parents, no big trees came down, mainly because earlier storms eliminated many of the older and weaker ones. The neighborhood’s power was back on in 16 hours, a fact that I kept to myself when meeting people on the South Shore who were still hovering around street bonfires fueled by kindling from their shattered homes.

After Sandy left town, I fired up my outdoor gas grill and cooked up all the meat in my larder and boiled eggs in a pot of water. The smell of barbecuing meat attracted several animals, including a three-legged raccoon, two dogs and two cats, all of whom looked bedraggled, not surprising considering that wind speeds had topped out at 80 miles an hour and the rain had been horizontal. The raccoon had apparently lost one of its limbs long before Sandy and was obviously a tough hombre. The dogs were mutts and the cats were, well, cats. All looked hungry.

I was in the middle of cutting up some of the meat for them when Scar showed up. A big, almost feral, tomcat who adopts me whenever he feels like it, Scar didn’t look much worse than he usually does. His name, which I gave him, says it all. We have an understanding. I feed him and he ignores me. I have never petted him or even picked him up. I would bet Alex Rodriguez’s paycheck that he doesn’t purr, not that I will ever find out. I’d rather put a live grenade on my lap. His meow reminds me of fingernails on a blackboard, although to him it probably sounds like music to his one and a half ears.

Scar walked majestically through the other critters and climbed the stairs as if he owned my deck, which, I suppose, he does.  I could have sworn that the raccoon eyed him warily. It made me wonder about that missing leg.

I made Scar a plate and put it down in a corner of the deck. He rewarded me with his usual signs of affection. Which is to say, none. I then fixed up plates for the others. When I carried them down to the yard, far from Scar, the dogs and cats paired off and ate separately, which I sort of expected. It was like the U.S. Congress. That left the raccoon. I put his plate down by the garage and he waddled over and started eating. I looked around my yard. I had become a zookeeper. I didn’t bother putting out anything for the animals to drink. Standing water wasn’t going to be in short supply anywhere on Staten Island for days to come.

I wanted to leave before the wildebeest arrived, so I wrapped up the rest of the cooked food, and went through my pantry, grabbing everything edible or drinkable. Then I drove to Midland Beach, perhaps the hardest-hit community on the Island, which had the most storm fatalities in New York City, where I joined an army of volunteers trying to mitigate the unimaginable.

After giving the food to those I thought needed it most, I signed up with some ad hoc cleanup crews, which included people from all five boroughs and New Jersey, and even hundreds of runners who had come to New York for the canceled Marathon. It was dirty, often dangerous work, and I ruined every set of clothes I wore, rotating home every night to change. But I was glad to do it and seeing people come together like that restored a bit of my flagging faith in the human race. I even bumped into a couple of lawyers from the firm that owned the Stapleton building where my office is. And they weren’t trolling for liability or insurance cases.

The only break in my routine came when I drove over to nearby Great Kills to see how Porgie Carmichael and his family made out. Porgie was a one-time and small-time hood who had risked his life by refusing to take mine when a psychopath mobster named Nando Carlucci ordered him to. For that, he was savagely beaten. I got Porgie a job in a marina, one of the legitimate businesses run by the Rahm crime family, with their promise that he would not have to do anything illegal for them. On Staten Island, where friendship and family ties outweigh standard, and often hypocritical, morality, such arrangements are commonplace. It can work both ways. I know a detective in the New Dorp Precinct who arranged to have a friend who had lost his job on Wall Street get a numbers job with a bookie they had both grown up with in West Brighton. Not surprisingly, the numbers business was a good fit.

A natural fisherman, Porgie soon bought his own boat and was doing quite well. Then Superstorm Sandy came along. When I got to Porgie’s house, only three blocks from the water, it was in the middle of what looked like a war zone. He was standing in his yard piling up ruined furniture, rugs, clothing, electronics and children’s toys. I immediately asked about his family.

“Angie and the kids left during the mandatory evacuation, Mr. Rhode.” I couldn’t get him to stop calling me that. “I stayed until the last minute at the marina securing boats. Not that it mattered.”

“Where’s your boat?”

It was, of course, named “Angie.”

Porgie smiled wearily and pointed up the block.

“My house is closer to the bay than my boat now.”

A black Humvee pulled up. It looked suspiciously like the military version and my instincts were confirmed when I saw a splash of camouflage peeking through the newer black paint around a side view mirror. Someone had been sloppy with a spray gun.

Arman Rahm and Maks Kalugin stepped out and walked over. Rahm, a darkly rakish, cultured man with an easy smile and murderous instincts, looked like he stepped straight out of an L.L. Bean catalogue: tan khaki pants with leg pockets, navy blue wool sweater over a red corduroy shirt and shearing-lined work boots. Everything was creased and new. Kalugin was also color coordinated, all in dark brown work clothes. As usual, he looked like a block of wood.

“I’m not sure that gas guzzler will go over big around here, Arman,” I said.

“When people see the blankets and food in the back, I doubt they will complain, Alton.”

“Worried about I.E.D.’s? That doesn’t look like a Hummer you can buy off the lot.”

“It does have some added refinements.” He smiled. “Let’s say it is Army surplus.”

I was fairly certain the Army was unaware this particular vehicle was “surplus.”

Rahm put his hand on Carmichael’s shoulder.

“How are you doing, Porgie? Family OK?”

“Yes, sir. They’re at my Mom’s. No power yet, but soon, they say.”

“Good. What about your house?”

“It’s going to need some work, but I think it’s sound.” He pointed at the rubble he’d been piling up. “Lost a lot of stuff on the first floor.”

Kalugin, who had walked into the house without invitation, presumably to do a quick inspection, now reappeared. He nodded to his boss.

“Good,” Arman said. “What your insurance doesn’t cover, I will. Same with the boat. I presume it’s a loss.”

“Don’t know. You may have driven passed it on the way here. It’s in the front yard of that colonial at the corner of Hylan. I’m afraid the marina is a disaster.”

The Rahm family owned the marina.

“Serves us right,” Arman said, smiling. “Russians usually don’t have to worry about global warming. Historically, we spend much of our lives freezing our balls off. But we’re Americans now, so there you have it.”

He looked me up and down. I must have been a sight.

“Typical sartorial splendor, Alton. Volunteering?”

“Yeah. Midland Beach. They are in bad straits.”

“I know. We’ve made several trips. Got a truck with generators coming tomorrow morning. Some of them aren’t even stolen.” He turned back to Porgie. “You better stay close. Heard there are some looters. I’ll send men back with Kalugin to keep an eye on your block until the police get a handle on things.”

We all looked at Kalugin, who may have killed more people in Brooklyn and Staten Island than any hurricane. But at least they might have deserved it. The Rahms were known as prolific, but not indiscriminate, killers.

“No looters,” Kalugin said.

And there weren’t any. Arman Rahm was a bad guy, running a Russian mob with an iron fist. The fist being Maks Kalugin. But he spent as much time helping out the victims of Sandy as anyone. And got his hands dirty. By the end of the week he didn’t look so L. L. Beanish. One of us may have to kill the other some day, but I’m sure we won’t be happy about it.

On my last day, I brought the clothes on my back, and bags more. It was cold, and people needed them. By that time, Alice had been working at my side for several days, sleeping back at my place. Well, mostly sleeping. It’s an ill wind, etc.

Alice not only approved my decision to donate my clothes but helped me clean out my closets and drawers. A bit too enthusiastically, I thought. She even teased me with the suggestion that the storm victims might reject some of my threads. My trip to the mall was in partial revenge for that comment. Alice wouldn’t be caught dead in a mall.

***

But I thought I might, since I was now positive I was being followed. I wasn’t sure how I knew.  I’d like to say that my instincts were so honed by experience that detecting a tail or an observer was second nature, but that’s wishful thinking.  Yeah, I can spot a tail with the best of them, because I am one.  But this was different.

It was more an animal thing, that sixth sense thing many people have.  It dates back to prehistory, when the world was a very inhospitable place for hairy, semi-intelligent bipeds not far removed from the comparative safety of trees.  A lot of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon’s were undoubtedly snacked on by saber-toothed tigers or cave bears, but I bet not too many of them were taken by surprise.  Most were outrun, or trapped in a gully, or maybe went down defending the Missus and the little cave brats, but they probably weren’t calmly walking down the trail with some 600-pound carnivore walking behind them.

At some point, the hair on the back of their neck stood up and they knew – with absolute certainty – their day was about to be ruined unless they stepped lively.  I wonder what it is, this sixth sense a lot of us have.   Do things radiate a force that can be detected by the ultrasensitive? Or is it merely an acute awareness distilled from the input all our other senses are constantly gathering.  A polar bear can smell a seal 20 miles away, and smell is only atoms, or bits of matter.  And matter is energy in a different state, E=MC2 and all that.

In any event, I had a feeling. I looked around for a men’s room.  If somebody followed me into one, I’d at least narrow the field by 50%, even accounting for transvestites. It was Sunday and the mall was crowded, but I’d already eliminated the senior citizens getting in their exercise, women with strollers or toddlers, the old priest who was standing at a travel agency kiosk looking at guides (for Italy and Rome, what else?) and a million hyperactive teen-agers.

Of course, the men’s room ploy doesn’t always work.  And it didn’t this time. I wasted 20 minutes in the john before I began to feel foolish. A lot of men came in. Nobody paid me much attention, except a security guard who had been alerted by the cleaning man changing the paper towels that a pervert was watching everyone who came in to take a leak. I decided to leave before I was arrested.

When I came out, there was nobody suspicious lurking about, and I recognized no one in the crowd.  There wasn’t a polar bear in sight, and I had lost that feeling. So I went shopping. Maybe I had been wrong. I hoped I was. Because by the time I reached my car I was so overburdened with boxes and bags a Girl Scout with an attitude could have taken me out.

CHAPTER 3 – FATHER ZAPO

The next day I was sitting in my office reading Doonesbury when a large black fly landed on my newspaper. I didn’t know flies lasted into November. It had been unseasonably warm, but still. I suspected it might be last fly of the fall. A survivor. I didn’t care. I hate flies, almost as much as I hate mosquitoes. I didn’t care if it was the last fly on Earth. We weren’t talking spotted owls or Florida panthers here.

I hadn’t moved a muscle but the fly must have sensed my intent, because it flew to the window and started buzzing around its rims and slamming against the glass. Great. A loud fly.

I didn’t have a fly swatter. I think they are disgusting. I rolled up the paper and walked slowly to the window. I didn’t like my chances. Fly swatters work because their business end has holes that let air pass through. Flies, incredibly sensitive to changes in air pressure, lose that extra step they need when a fly swatter heads their way.

I heard someone come into my outer office and say something to Habika Jones, who was now working full time as my assistant, having quit the security firm responsible for my building. Even though I had banked some good money on some recent cases and was able to match Abby’s previous salary, it was still a leap of faith on her part. But as a former Army M.P. she was being wasted patrolling the security desk in the lobby and we both knew it. Her insight and experience had helped solve the Olsen case a few months earlier, and she was only a part-timer then, moonlighting from her regular job.

I hoped she’d keep my visitor busy until I finished with the fly. I waited until my target quieted down. Then I struck. November flies apparently don’t even have that step to lose, because I mashed this one against the window. It made an impressive smear.

“Got you, you son of a bitch.”

“Nice work, Ramar of the Jungle.”

It was Abby, standing at my office door. An elderly priest stood smiling in the doorway just behind her. He had a thick manila envelope in his hand.

“You must have incredible eyesight, Mr. Rhode,” the priest said.

“Excuse me?”

“To be able to tell that the fly was a male.”

“You’re losing me, Father.”

“You said, ‘son of a bitch’.”

Abby laughed.

“Alton, this is Father Zapotoski.”

I don’t get many priests coming to the office. In fact, he was the first that I could recall. Probably looking for a donation. I couldn’t very well say I gave at the office. I was in my office. Then I looked closer at him. It was the full head of white hair, neatly combed, that jarred my memory.

“My vision is good enough to know we’ve met, Father. Or, should I say, almost met?”

“You remember, then, Mr. Rhode,” he said. “That’s good, very good.”

Abby looked a little confused, then shrugged.

“Would you like some coffee, Father,” she asked.

“No thank you.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” she said. “Don’t forget to clean that window, boss.”

Abby walked back out to her desk, shutting the door behind her, and the priest came over to me and put out his hand. He had nicotine stains on his fingers. He was smaller and thinner than I remembered, his roman collar too big for his neck.

“I almost didn’t recognize you, Father.” He was the same priest I’d seen at the mall, looking at guides at the travel agency kiosk. “So, it was you who was following me.”

“Yes.”

“And I presume you are a real priest.”

“Almost 40 years. I’m assigned to Our Lady of Solace in Tottenville.”

“I’m glad. If you had been a hit man in priestly garb, I might be as dead as that fly.”

He smiled.

“Yes, Mr. Rhode. It would be a good disguise. Old priests aren’t very threatening, except maybe to your sex life.” His accent was slight, and sounded Slavic. “I wasn’t following you very long. You were very good.  I saw you checking out the crowd, and let you go when you went into the men’s room. I might have gotten away with following you in there, but to what end?  Priests have a bad enough reputation as it is. I left when I saw the security guard enter. I hope you weren’t harassed. I know you were in there so long just to see who might follow you in. I had learned enough about you.”

“And what was that?”

“You have excellent instincts. You are obviously a cautious man, well skilled in your craft.  You had no reason to feel threatened, and yet you felt so. Had I not had so perfect a disguise, which, after all is no disguise, I believe you would have made me.”

“Forgive me, I mean, excuse me, Father Zapotoski, but you don’t talk like a priest.”

He smiled at my Catechismal slip of the tongue.

“Please call me Father Zapo. All the kids in the parish do. I’m Polish and my first name is so long you would have to buy a vowel to feel comfortable. You know the joke about the Pole who goes to the optometrist who asks him to read a line on the eye chart? ‘Read it,’ the fellow exclaims, ‘hell, I know that guy!’”

“When I heard it, it involved a Czechoslovakian patient,” I said.

“Yes. That would work, too,” the priest said. “Anyway, I have a weakness for detective and spy mysteries. I know all the lingo, as you call it.” He paused. “And I was in the Polish army before becoming a priest. Military Intelligence. Please no ethnic jokes. We were very good at our jobs. We had to keep the Russians and both the East and West Germans properly confused, and for the most part we did.”

“Your English is excellent. Barely a trace of an accent.”

“I began my ministry working with American missionaries in Africa and have been in your country, mine now, for many years. My English was very good to start with. It was the second language of the intelligence service.”

“All this is fascinating,” I said. “But why were you following me?”

“A momentary lapse on my part. Weakness, really. I’ve tried to leave my old life behind but I just wanted to see if I still had the tradecraft. I have been meaning to speak to you but I didn’t follow you to the mall. I just happened to see you there.”

“How did you know who I was?”

“I Googled you when I did my research. Your photo had been in the newspapers. I must say, some of your cases have been notorious. You lead an interesting life.”

“You have no idea, Father.”

“My first inclination was to approach you at the mall, but the way you were flitting around from store to store I thought you might be looking for someone and I would be compromising a surveillance.”

I laughed.

“I was flitting around, as you said, because I couldn’t make up my mind. It’s been a long time since I’ve shopped in a mall. Now, what did you want to see me about?”

He began untying the string of the manila envelope.

“I believe there is someone who is killing men in my parish.”

CHAPTER 4 – OLD, COLD WARRIORS

“Killing, as in murdering?”

I knew it was a lame thing to say. He smiled patiently. I had the impression that I was not the first person he had approached with that declaration.

“Yes, Mr. Rhode. Three murders, to be exact. Or. I should say, to be inexact, since I fear there may have been more.” He tapped the envelope he was holding and started to open it.  “I have the information in here. It’s a bit sketchy, I’m afraid, but it should be enough to start.”

Start what?

“Hold it, Father. Before we get ahead of ourselves, why did you come to me? What about the police? This sounds like a job for them.”

“Yes, it should be,” Father Zapo said. “But they don’t believe me. Neither does Marat Rahm. I hope you will not take offense, but you are not my first choice. I was duty bound to go to my pastor, first, of course, then, when he dismissed my concerns, to the bishop. As you might imagine, that did not endear me with Monsignor Barilla, going over his head to the bishop. I’m afraid my days at Our Lady of Solace are numbered. I was due to be put out to pasture, anyway. I’m 80 years old and only working part-time at Our Lady. There’s a shortage of priests, as you may have heard, so the archdiocese allowed me to keep working.  But I believe I have now greased the skids, as you say.”

“What’s this about Marat Rahm?”

Marat was Arman Rahm’s father, a former KGB agent who saw the writing on the Kremlin wall before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and used his money and contacts to bring his family to the United States, where he consolidated existing Russian expat gangs in Brooklyn into a businesslike crime family. With the weakening of the Italian Mafia on Staten Island, he sought greener pastures. Arman took over the operational duties of the family after the assassination of his older brother but Marat’s fiat was still respected on both sides of the law. Arman and I were almost friends growing up until our career paths diverged, when he became a crook and I became a cop. My recent dealings with the Rahms have been complicated. They involved me in one of their schemes, which almost got me chopped into pieces before they saved me at the very last moment. And when I was in a bind on my last case, their help was indispensible. The fact that Arman and Kalugin are also fond of Alice, and vice versa, has not hurt our détente.

“After the police showed little interest,” Father Zapo continued, “I went to Marat. We are old adversaries, from the Communist days. I have forgiven him for having me imprisoned, and I also believe that he intervened to prevent me from being shot. He won’t admit that, of course. But our relationship has reached the point that we can drink the occasional vodka together. Alas, while he heard me out politely, he was not much more inclined to believe me than anyone else. But when his son said he had seen you working during the recent storm, Marat suggested that I contact you. He said you owed him a favor. He also said you were a miracle worker of sorts.”

It would have been useless to discuss my relationship to the Rahms with the old fellow. I was his fifth choice, after all. He’d tried the Roman Catholic Church twice, the N.Y.P.D. and the Russian mob, and now I got him. After me, I suppose there was always Inspector Clouseau. I resigned myself. I didn’t know what the story was, or what was in the envelope, but if Marat Rahm, who I knew to be an atheist, thought the priest needed a miracle, I would at least listen. It was certain to be entertaining. I wasn’t going to blow the old fellow off, but this promised to be a quick and easy way to even things up between the Rahms and myself. Although to be honest, I had trouble understanding why I owed them anything.

“What have you got, Father?”

He lay documents in three small piles on my desk, all neatly held together by paper clips. The first page of each pile was a photocopied obituary from the local paper. I quickly scanned the names. John Clifton, Ralph Lydecker and Mario Spinelli. I looked at the photos of the men and read their obits.

“Mr. Rhode, would you mind if I smoked while you read my files?”

Smoking was prohibited in my building. In fact, it was prohibited in all New York City buildings, even those, like many on Staten Island, downwind of the chemical factories in New Jersey that spewed out carcinogens and other poisons in volumes that could knock a Pterodactyl out of the sky. I couldn’t see sending an 80-year-old priest down eight floors to smoke in the parking lot. I opened up a drawer on my desk, pulled out an old green ashtray that said “Henny’s Steak House” and placed it on the radiator ledge next to the window with the fly smear. I opened the window.

“Try to blow the smoke out, Father. If Abby gets a whiff, you’ll be giving me the Last Rites.”

“I am not a coffee drinker, Mr. Rhode, but I understand that most private investigators keep a bottle of something stronger in their desk.”

I laughed.

“You’ve read too many thriller novels.”

Truth was, I’d just relocated my bottle. I walked over to the small fridge in the corner.

“Bourbon all right?”

I held up a bottle of Rebel Yell.

“It’s not vodka, but beggars cannot be choosers, my son.”

I poured him a drink in one of the coffee cups sitting on the fridge. It was just past 10 AM, a little early for me, but an old master sergeant told me once that letting a man drink alone was a court martial offense in his book. Most of what I knew about life came from old sergeants. I poured myself a stiff shot.

“I am not a whiskey priest, if that’s what you are thinking, Mr. Rhode. I would not have made it to this age if I were.” We clinked cups and took swallows. “But a man without vices is not a man. As I said, I prefer vodka, but this is excellent. Thank you.”

He took his cup to the window and lit up an unfiltered Camel. While he smoked and drank at the window, I sipped my bourbon and read the other material attached to each obituary. It was a mixed bag. Each pile contained printouts of what was obviously Internet searches that basically augmented the information in the obituaries. There were also some other newspaper clippings about the men’s businesses and other activities, mostly social or related to sports.

John Clifton, 62, owned a Ford dealership in Oldbridge, New Jersey. His face was a frequent advertising presence on local cable television, but I’d never met him.

Ralph Lydecker, 60, ran the family lumber business in Mariners Harbor. Lydecker Lumber was well known on Staten Island, having been established in 1898. Ralph was the latest Lydecker to run the place. I met him once or twice when I needed some supplies during my periodic bursts of home improvements. Nice fellow, as I recalled, who didn’t necessarily try to sell you the most expensive material in his yard. I wondered who was running the business now. With all the rebuilding that would follow the recent storm, Lydecker Lumber would do very well.

I also knew, or at least had seen, Mario Spinelli, who owned the Spinelli Home for Funerals in Pleasant Plains. I had been to one or two wakes in his parlor. His was the most recent media clipping, since there was a story about his generosity in providing free funeral services, including caskets, for two reclusive drowning victims of the Superstorm whose bodies had not been claimed.

All three men were active in various associations related to their parish, Our Lady of Solace. Their participation as coaches of various parish basketball and baseball teams, as well as those in the borough-wide Catholic Youth Organization, was also highlighted in clips from the parish newsletter that Father Zapo had compiled. All had died suddenly, of apparent heart attacks. Clifton and Spinelli at home, a few hours after dinner; Lydecker while playing golf. I compared the dates of their demise. They were roughly spaced a year apart, with Clifton’s death the most recent, just over two months ago. All left widows, and a total of seven grown children among them.

“I have a lot more information,” Father Zapo said as he sat back down after two cigarettes, “but frankly, it’s not much different from what you have in front of you. I didn’t think I had to copy everything. Besides, Monsignor Barilla keeps a close eye on our Xerox machine. It’s got some sort of counter on it. We each have a code. Isabella is kind enough to do some of my copying for me, using her code, but I don’t like to abuse the situation and perhaps get her in trouble.”

“Isabella?”

“Yes. Isabella Donner, one of the young women in the parish. She occasionally fills in for the Monsignor’s regular secretary. She only works a few hours a week. I only do my copying when she’s there.”

He looked at me expectantly.

“Well, Mr. Rhode, what do you think?”

“We’re not talking a Marine combat platoon here, Father. Men in their 60’s drop dead of heart attacks, often without symptoms or warning, all the time. Three deaths in about two years doesn’t seem that unusual to me. I bet that you could find a cluster like that in every parish on Staten Island. Maybe the country. You knew these men and were close to them. Unless you are saying that their deaths are related to their knowing you so well, this just sounds like a tragic coincidence.” As soon as I said ‘coincidence,’ I felt uneasy. How many times had I told people that I didn’t really believe in coincidences. It was a standard detective line. “Is that what you are saying? They died because they knew you. Some sort of holdover from the Cold War?”

Father Zapo waved his hand.

“No. No. No. I only knew these men from my time at Our Lady of Solace. This isn’t a spy story. There is something else at work here. I don’t know what it is. Maybe everyone is right. It’s just the ruminations of an old man.” He touched his nose with his index finger. “But this has never failed me. I smell a rat. Considering how the men died, I suspect they were poisoned.”

I looked over at the smashed fly on the window. You got off lucky today, pal, I thought.

Father Zapo leaned forward.

“If I’m wrong, I’m willing to pay the consequences. But if I’m right, and I walk away, someone else may die.”

“It wouldn’t be a picnic for me either, Father. I may also pay some consequences if you’re wrong.”

“I was told that you are a man who doesn’t mind stepping on toes.”

I wanted to say that I preferred not doing that while chasing wild geese. But I tried another tack.

“I will upset some people with my inquiries. To do this right, I’ll have to speak to your pastor, maybe even the bishop. Do you really want that?”

“As I’ve said, I’ve burned those bridges. Don’t worry about it. I was almost sent to Siberia once. A retirement home is probably no worse.”

I wasn’t making much of an impression on someone who had once been at the tender mercies of the KGB. But I gave it one more shot.

“What am I supposed to do? Go to some man’s widow and suggest that her husband may have been poisoned? Without any proof that I can see? Do you realize that the only way to prove your theory may be to exhume the bodies?”

“Perhaps it won’t come to that. You may identify the killer by other means. I hope so.”

“Did you approach the widows?”

For the first time, he looked uncomfortable.

“No.”

“Why?”

“I have my reasons, which I cannot explain.”

All private investigators deal with people who don’t level with them, spouting everything from half-truths to outright lies. We’d go broke if we only took clients who were completely forthright. Zapo smiled, and played his best card.

“There is one other thing. You understand, of course, that I do not have the means to pay you. But Marat Rahm told me you would be happy to help.”

Terrific. I was going to investigate the heart attacks of three men when I was pretty sure the killer was a Big Mac.

“All right, Father. I will look into this. One final question. I presume these men knew each other, either from the parish or through business. In fact, I gather they all belonged to some of the same associations, like the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary. But do you know of any other more meaningful connection they had? Were they related by marriage? Played in a regular poker game? Shared a mistress? Took vacations together? Anything?”

I had rattled off the list quickly and noticed that he blinked at the word ‘mistress.’ I didn’t know if that meant anything. He might have been due for a blink. But what he said next made me wonder.

“They were men like any other. They weren’t saints.”

“In what way, Father?”

“The usual way, my son. And that’s all I have to say on the subject.”

He got up to leave.

“Oh, before I forget. You can usually reach me at the rectory but please take down my cell phone number.” He reached into his pocket and took out an iPhone. On the back was a small piece of tape from which he read off a number. “I’m afraid I haven’t memorized it yet. I just got this. Still trying to figure out how to use it. I lost my other phone and Monsignor Barilla gave me his when he upgraded. He was also kind enough to get me a new two-year calling plan.” Father Zapo smiled. “Although I’m sure he regrets that now, since I’m not likely to be in the parish much longer. I understand this is an older model without all the bells and whistles. But it does have some useful functions. It has a voice recorder and a note pad, both of which are helpful when I am preparing a sermon.”

“There is a way to recall your number using the phone, Father. I can show you if you like.”

“Will it be faster than looking on the back of the phone?”

He had me there. He put the phone back in his pocket and stuck out his hand.

“Good luck, my son. And God bless you.”

CHAPTER 5 – CARPET BOMBED

The next day, Alice Watts and I were having dinner at Monte’s, the venerable trattoria in Greenwich Village not far from her apartment. We had not seen each other since our storm relief work and I teased her about her selection of restaurant, since she invariably preferred French cuisine. She had smiled wanly. In fact, she had seemed a bit distracted all night. But she perked up when I told her about Father Zapotoski and gave me her full attention.

“What an interesting man,” she said. “Do you think there is anything to it?”

“No. Aren’t you going to finish your ravioli?”

She pushed her plate toward mine.

“I don’t have much of an appetite tonight.”

“You OK?”

Alice never worried about her weight. What calories her duties as a college swim coach didn’t burn her frequent five-mile runs did. When she ate, she ate like she was going to the electric chair. She always ordered appetizers and full meal portions, which invariably worked out well for me.

“I’m fine. What are you going to do about what Father What’s His Name told you.”

I speared one of her ravioli and noticed that she poured herself more wine.

“Zapotoski.” I spelled his name out for Alice. “I haven’t figured that out yet. I promised him I would look into it, but I don’t know what to do that won’t ruffle liturgical feathers and upset widows.”

“Liturgical feathers?”

“Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it.”

I nailed another ravioli. They were mushroom, my favorite. I had ordered veal spedini, my second choice, knowing that Alice would be generous.

“Did it occur to you that perhaps Father Zapotoski heard something in the confessional, but couldn’t tell you.”

My ravioli stopped halfway to my mouth. A first. I even put it down on my plate.

“The Seal of the Confessional?”

I was annoyed with myself. I was the Catholic, and a Methodist who taught philosophy at a college founded by Lutherans was reminding me about the damn Seal of the Confessional.

“Yes,” Alice continued. “Maybe Father Zapotoski couldn’t break it, but wants you to come at the crime from another direction, for the sake of justice.”

“You think a murderer confessed to killing three people?”

“No. But a priest might hear something else in confession that leads him to believe the deaths weren’t random. You said he hinted that the victims weren’t saints.”

I wasn’t willing to call the deceased “victims” yet, but Alice had made a good point.

“It’s still a stretch. But you’ve given me something to think about.”

The ravioli were all gone, as was my veal. Had there been anything left in the bread basket I would’ve done some serious sopping up. But I draw the line of asking for more bread after the meal is officially over. At least when I’m dining with someone. When I eat alone, I sometime bend the rules. They’re more like guidelines, anyway.

A waiter began clearing our places. I looked at Alice.

“Dessert?”

Alice, bless her heart, never met a canoli she didn’t like. But she fooled me.

“Do you think I can have an after-dinner drink instead?”

Two glasses of wine, and now an after-dinner drink. Something was up. I felt a tingle of apprehension.

The waiter turned to me.

“Might I suggest the Vecchia Romagna Riserva. It’s the best Italian brandy. Made from trebbiano grapes. We just received two bottles.”

I ordered two. With espressos. I’d suddenly lost my desire for a pastry. After the drinks came, we both took sips. The brandy was the equal of any I’d had.

“Alton, there’s something I have to tell you.”

There was an inflection in her voice and a look on her face that meant bad news. I mentally narrowed down the possibilities to the two that frightened me: illness and another man.

“Yes,” I said, trying to sound calm, and knowing I didn’t succeed.

“I’ve been offered a sabbatical in Paris. It’s for six months, starting with the spring semester in February, with the possibility I can stretch it to a year.”

It wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t another man who in my mind I had already decided to shoot. Hell, a six-month sabbatical? That didn’t sound so bad. Did she say a year?

“Alice. That’s great. In your field?”

I hoped I sounded sincere. I was, but that didn’t mean I was ready to do cartwheels.

Alice had a Masters in Philosophy and taught at Wagner College on Staten Island, where she coached the women’s swim team. I’d met her at the school pool, where I was rehabbing from recent military service after my reserve unit was called up. She had noticed the bullet wounds on me. I had noticed the legs on her.

“Yes. At the Sorbonne. It’s a wonderful opportunity. To study philosophy in the city where Sartre, Gueroult, Camus, Gilson and all the other great French philosophers walked is a dream come true. It will count toward my PhD. Bradley is very excited and supportive of me.”

Spencer Bradley was the president of Wagner College, a black man who fought racism and academic incompetence with equal vigor, and who was generally acknowledged to have made his school a fine institution of learning. He also liked good football and basketball teams, which further endeared him to me.

“Go for it, kid.”

Alice’s eyes misted up.

“Hey,” I said.

“Oh, Alton. Just when we were …. “

“Were what?”

“You know. We have something special. I feel like I’m ruining it.”

“Honey. You’re going to Paris to pursue your dream. That dream predated me.”

“You don’t want to try and talk me out of it.”

Caesar at the Rubicon had an easier decision than the one I was now faced with. Did Alice want me to say I couldn’t live without her? If I didn’t fight to keep her near me, would she assume I didn’t love  her? If I begged her to stay, would she lose respect for me? And how would I react if I asked her not to go, and she went anyway?

“No. I think you should go. I’d be angry if you let anything, or anyone, stand in your way. That’s not who we are. That’s not what we mean to each other.”

She must have seen something in my face, or heard something in my voice, because she simply said, “Thank you.”

“When will you leave?”

“Early January. I want to get settled in an apartment and feel my way before starting classes, maybe bone up on my French.” She hesitated and I sensed more bad news coming. “But I will be traveling for most of December. I want to visit my folks in California before I go, and see my sisters. I’m afraid I won’t see you over the holidays.”

“I think I can return the peck of mistletoe I bought.”

“I didn’t know you could buy mistletoe in pecks,” she giggled.

“I’m cutting back this year. In this economy, a bushel seemed extravagant.”

***

That night, in her bed, we made the best love of our lives, and that was saying something. Later, as she lay in my arms, she said, “You will visit me, won’t you?”

“As soon as I get out of the hospital,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “Might be a couple of months.”

She punched me.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. I think you broke something.”

“Alton!”

I kissed her.

“Wild horses won’t keep me away.”

She fell asleep. I lay there. After sex, they say men are often sad, diminished. Something to do with the post-coital effect of oxytocin, the so-called pleasure hormone, on the brain. The goddamn French call the feeling “la petite mort,” the little death.

I was sad. But it had nothing to do with oxytocin.

CHAPTER 6 – LUNCH ORDER

I needed something to keep me occupied, rather than dwell on Alice’s looming departure. Father Zapo’s  case, if that was what it was, fit the bill. Hopeless and non-paying, my stock in trade.

Just to make it interesting, I thought I’d work backwards. That meant starting with Marat Rahm. I called his son.

“Thanks a lot, Arman,” I said.

“I presume the priest has been to see you.”

“I would like to talk to your father.”

“He won’t be able to add much more than what Zapotoski told you.”

“It’s how I work, Arman. I need to get a feel for this.”

“I admire you, Alton. Just about anyone else would blow the old gentleman off. Why don’t you?”

“He said I was his fifth choice and couldn’t pay me. How was I supposed to say no to him?”

Rahm laughed and said something in Russian to someone on his end. I heard a sound like a rusty lawn mower. I presumed it was Kalugin’s version of a laugh.

“I’m in New Jersey at the moment, but am having lunch with my father at home. Meet us there at 1 P.M.”

It was less an invitation than an order.

***

I had been to the Rahm mansion on Todt Hill on more than one occasion. The first time was the most memorable. That was when underworld doctors patched me up while Marat Rahm debated whether to kill me. But even then the Rahms set a good table and I was looking forward to lunch.

Not every visitor walked away from the mansion. In certain circles it was rumored – hell, it was established fact – that one of Staten Island’s most notorious second-story men, Plasma Joe Menucci, didn’t. Plasma Joe, who got his nickname from his uncanny success in removing even the largest televisions from a target home, had boasted that no domicile, with or without a security system, was impervious to his flat-screen talents. On a dare from some of his peers after a night of heavy drinking, Plasma Joe vowed to creep the Rahm manse. This was before the Rahm family had fully established itself on Staten Island, and was barely holding its own against the long-entrenched Italian Mafia. Drinking and daring aside, Plasma Joe, while an independent contractor, was possibly motivated by ethnic pride.

He chose a snowy night when the Rahms went to their old neighborhood in Brooklyn to attend a wedding. Amid worsening weather reports, and suggestions that the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge might have to be closed, the family decided to leave the festivities early. That was three years ago. No one has seen Plasma Joe since.

Things changed after the Rahms rose to the top of Staten Island’s crime pyramid.  Now there were security cameras in every alcove and thin wires ran along the windows. I was sure the electronic security was at a C.I.A. level now.

The Norman-style limestone and slate house itself was stunning. Its most distinguishing feature was a two-story copper-clad turret just to right of the front door. Arman told me his father added the turret because it made the house look a bit like his old dacha in the Crimea.

Kalugin answered the door. I wondered if his was the last face Plasma Joe ever saw.

“Nice to see you, Maks. How are the Pilates lessons going?”

He shut the door behind me and then walked ahead without a word. I followed him past the winding marble staircase that led up the turret to the rooms on the second floor. Arman Rahm came out of a room halfway down the hallway from which I heard construction noises.

“Ah, Alton. Perfect timing.”

I glanced into the room, in which workmen were installing shelves along a far wall that had walnut paneling and hand-carved detailing.

“Another library,” Rahm explained. “We Russians are great readers.”

“Have one of your girlfriends buy you a Kindle for Christmas, Arman. It’s cheaper.”

“But not as beautiful, my friend. Look at those shelves. A new design. No visible means of support.”

“In keeping with the family tradition.”

Arman laughed.

“Come, my father is waiting.”

Marat Rahm were already seated at a dining room table. The room was dark and a maid was lighting candles in its center. She was young and very pretty.

“Sit,” Kalugin said, pointing to a chair, “and behave yourself.”

He walked over to the wall behind Marat, who was at the head of the table, and stood there. The maid soon joined him on the wall, but at a safe distance. I sat. Arman smiled across the table at me.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Rahm.”

The old man nodded.

“I’m glad you could join us for lunch, Rhode. Please forgive the lighting. The drugs I am taking have made my eyes very sensitive to light. I’ve been told that the condition is temporary. I could have the electric lamps turned on if you like, and I can wear sunglasses.”

The idea that I would ask one of the most powerful mob bosses on the East Coast to put on sunglasses for my convenience was humorous.

“This is fine, Mr. Rahm. In fact, I prefer it this way. It might throw Kalugin’s aim off.”

Both Rahms laughed and Marat said, “I almost forgot why I liked you.” He coughed and I caught a look of concern in his son’s eyes. “I know you have questions for me, but perhaps we can eat first. I am hungry, a rare enough occurrence these days, and I don’t want to waste it. Lara, please tell the chef we are ready.”

The maid went through a door.

“Lara, a lovely name, Mr. Rhode, don’t you think? You’ve read Doctor Zhivago?”

“No, but I saw the movie, with Julie Christie as Lara. She was Zhivago’s lover. Your maid could give her a run for her money.”

Marat Rahm laughed.

“Yes, I believe she would. But don’t get the wrong idea. She is the daughter of a distant cousin in Kiev. I am putting her through school. NYU. But I want her to learn how to work when she is not in class. She also does some secretarial chores for me.” He turned to his son. “Arman, why don’t you open up a good cabernet. We can drink wine, eat and talk movies for a little while. I would like that.” He turned back to me. “You know my daughter, Eleni, is an actress. She has appeared in several European films.”

I stared at the old man. Was it possible he didn’t remember I knew all about Eleni’s acting ability. Indeed, I had been a victim of that talent. And he had to remember that she had slept with me, likely with his approval, if not urging. But I could see no sign in his face that he was being cruel or disingenuous. I looked at Arman, who shook his head slightly and shrugged. I let it go.

Marat continued, “What did you think of Omar Sharif as Zhivago?”

He was very knowledgeable about American movies, although he insisted that Russia’s Serge Eisenstein was the greatest director who ever lived. I made my case for John Ford and William Wilder and we agreed to disagree, which considering who I was dealing should have earned me the dinner-table equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. I was initially surprised at his film expertise until I remembered that prior to becoming a Russian mob boss, Marat Rahm was a colonel in the Soviet Union’s KGB and a highly educated expert on all things Western.

CHAPTER 7 – BYGONES

Lunch was Beef Wellington, asparagus and new potatoes, all served in high style by Lara the cousin, whose cleavage when she bent to ladle some gravy on my plate would have stopped Napoleon before Moscow. She noticed where my eyes went and smiled. Ah, NYU.

Lunch and Hollywood done with, Arman poured the three of us small tots of chilled vodka to go with our cheese and fruit plate dessert.

“I take it you found the food acceptable,” Marat said,

Before I could answer, Arman said, “He was expecting borscht.”

“Everything was excellent, Mr. Rahm. And I want to take the opportunity to commend you on the help you gave to the victims of the recent storm.”

“There are many Russians on the water in South and Midland Beach,” Marat said. “Blood is blood.”

That was true. Many Russians, with a landlocked gene in them, gravitated to the shore, wherever they settled in the United States.

“You didn’t help only Russians.”

“Did you know that during the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, a visiting Russian naval vessel was one of the first to offer succor and relief supplies?”

“Yes.”

Marat Rahm smiled.

“Of course you do. I forgot how well-educated you are. Is there anything you don’t know, Mr. Rhode?”

“I don’t know what to do about Father Zapotoski.”

“Ah, yes. The reason for your visit. You want to find out why I sent him to you and if I believe him.”

“That’s it in a nutshell.”

Marat looked at his son.

“An American idiom, Papa. He means yes.”

“I can see my money was well spent on your Ivy League education, Arman. Do you still have those cigarettes you keep hiding from me?”

“Papa. Wine, vodka and cigarettes. Why don’t you just shoot your doctors?”

“A fine idea. But, for now, one cigarette.”

Arman looked at Kalugin, who reached into his pocket and brought over a pack, picking up an ashtray from a nearby chiffonier. Arman lit two cigarettes off one of the candles and gave one to his father.

“Zapotoski is an interesting character,” Marat said. “I knew him from the old days, in Europe. Our two secret services occasionally worked together. Although we knew, of course, that Polish Intelligence distrusted us more than they distrusted the West.”

“I’m shocked.”

He laughed.

“Yes, they had good reason. We were all ostensibly Communists, but Poles and Russians share a long and vengeful history.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. Surprisingly, he didn’t cough. “In any event, Zapotoski and I had a bit of a falling out.”

“So he told me.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“He also said you saved his life.”

“I didn’t have him shot. That’s not the same thing. I still gave him a rough time, but we’ve let bygones be bygones. Indeed, I was instrumental in getting him his current position.”

Marat saw the look on my face and smiled.

“I should explain. After Zapotoski got out of Lubyanka alive, a rare feat in itself, he was a changed man. He came from a very religious family and never really accepted the atheism that normally was de rigueur for men in his position. Honestly, I don’t know how he ever became a major in the Oddzial Polskiego, Polish Military Intelligence. He was what you would call a ‘closet Catholic’ I suppose.”

“Why did you let him go?’

“The charges against him were flimsy. He was not really disloyal, just a Polish patriot who liked to stick his finger in our eye occasionally. And things were changing, even then. The more perceptive among us could see the writing on the wall by 1980. We were making a cock-up in Afghanistan, something your Government should have learned from. It wasn’t the time to make a lot of enemies in sister services.” He looked over his shoulder. “Lara, some Turkish coffee, please.”

The girl went out and he continued.

“When he got back to Poland, he resigned his commission and entered the priesthood. The discipline must have been comforting for a military man. And an ex-spy would find the machinations and secrecy of the Catholic Church very familiar. And don’t forget, there was then a Polish Pope, the first non-Italian since the 16th Century. It was a heady time for Poles.”

“Now they have a Kraut in the Vatican.”

It was Kalugin, who had been silent up to then.

Marat laughed.

“My Maks is not overly fond of the Germans.”

Kalugin grunted and resumed his silence. Lara came out with the coffee and served us and went back to the wall.

“Zapotoski came to me with this rather ridiculous story of murders in his parish,” Marat Rahm said as we sipped the strong coffee. “Apparently he got nowhere with his superiors or with the police. I’m not surprised. The reputed victims all seemed to have died from natural causes, without any hint of foul play. You have seen his files?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you think.”

“There’s nothing really there. The age of the three men bothered me. They were all fairly young, and apparently in good health.”

“Three deaths of men in their 60’s is not a massacre. Zapotoski had nothing.”

“He is, or was, a trained intelligence officer.”

“Many years ago. His skills have rusted.”

I mentioned how the good father had trailed me professionally in the mall.

“Bah. Play acting. He is nowhere the man he used to be. None of us are.” I remembered how a few moments earlier Marat had apparently forgotten that I knew his daughter. “He is tilting at windmills.”

“Then why did you recommend me?”

“Professional courtesy.”

“To him, you mean.”

Marat laughed.

“I see your point. But don’t be insulted. I know it’s hopeless. I also know you are one of the best investigators I’ve seen. And in your own way a decent man. You won’t humiliate the old fellow. I told him that if you can’t get to the bottom of it, no one can. So, you see, this will let him down gently. I promised him I would help, but there is only so much I can do. It would be awkward for me to send my men to make inquiries of widows and some such.”

“You don’t think Maks has the necessary style.”

At the mention of Kalugin, both Rahms laughed. Even the family assassin grinned.

“You see what I mean,” Marat finally said. “Please, humor me, and look into Zapotoski’s situation. Send your bill to me.”

I had no intention of sending an invoice to the Russian mob, but I said, “Sure.”

***

Arman and Kalugin walked me out to the car.

“I know you won’t send a bill,” Arman said, laughing. “Don’t spend too much time on this. You have to make a living. And I appreciate what you are doing.”

“A little pro bono work for the Catholic Church won’t hurt. Might chop a few thousand years off my stay in purgatory.”

“You may break even in that department, considering you are doing a favor for my father.”

“How is he really doing, Arman.”

He looked pensive.

“Not well. He has prostate cancer. We thought it was arthritis.”

“He seems sharp enough, except for that bit about your sister. Was he putting me on?”

“Perhaps. But sometimes he can be vague. It comes and goes. I’m glad you didn’t say anything. Eleni always asks for you, by the way. She’s in Italy, making commercials.”

“What about your father’s cough.”

“An infection of some sort. The chemotherapy has made him vulnerable.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. Well, my father is a tough man. As you know.”

An understatement. Beneath the surface of his courtly demeanor, Marat Rahm was the dispassionate hands-on killer of many men, first as a KGB operative and, more recently, a mobster. The occasional loss to assassination aside, the Rahms were survivors. And opportunists of the first order. Originally Rahmanovs, the family had adapted to whatever political wind was blowing, shedding their aristocratic trappings to serve the Communists and then moving to America to become that most capitalist of institutions, a crime family.

“We’ve had these scares before,” Arman continued. “He will bounce back. By the way, I saw you looking down Lara’s blouse, Alton. What would Alice say?”

“She would worry if I didn’t.”

“How is she?”

“She’s leaving for Paris on a sabbatical. The Sorbonne.”

Arman looked at me closely.

“How long?”

“At least six months.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I think it sucks. For me. But it’s a wonderful opportunity for her.”

“You can always visit her.”

“You in the relationship business now, Arman?”

He smiled.

“A woman like her does not come along very often, my friend. Six months is nothing.”

“It might be longer.”

He put out his hand and I took it. Then he turned and went back into the house. Kalugin didn’t. In fact, he opened the car door for me.

“That Polack priest,” he said, “is no fool.”

“What does that mean?”

“If he says there was murder, there was murder.”

CHAPTER 8 -- BAGELS

After I left the Rahms, I called Cormac Levine in the District Attorney’s office in St. George, where he had recently been reinstated to his old job.

“Come on down,” he said. “You know that bagel place on the corner by the courthouse?”

“You want to meet me in a bagel shop?”

“No, Sherlock. I want you to bring in some bagels. Hold on.” I heard him talking to people in the background. Jesus Christ. He was taking orders. “OK. One sesame with cream cheese, two cinnamon raisin with butter and a toasted plain with low-fat margarine. Four coffees, black. The java in here would take the paint off a cesspool. We got a fridge. We’ll do our own milk and sugar. And get whatever you like. Not that we’re paying.”

“You sure nobody wants a turkey club or a pizza?”

“Hold on, I’ll ask.”

He was serious. I broke the connection before I had to rent a U-Haul. It was turning out to be a humbling day. Both the crooks and the cops had me running errands.

As usual, parking around Borough Hall was at a premium. The municipal lots were jammed because of the overflow from the commuter lots still recovering from the storm, The side streets were full of cars owned by the men and women who worked in Borough Hall, the courts, the St. George Precinct, the D.A.’s office and the many other government offices in the area. It seemed that every car had an official sticker in the window. It drove local merchants crazy, since potential customers were limited to a few metered spots. The local paper, surprising everyone, actually had the nerve to write an article about the abuses but nothing seemed to have changed. I did hear, however, that the paper’s delivery trucks were running up more moving violations than normal.

By some miracle, I found an unoccupied meter almost directly in front of the bagel shop. I didn’t know how long I’d be and wasn’t willing to risk a $125 parking ticket, so I reached into my glove compartment and pulled out my “Marine Corps Chaplain” emblem and threw it on my dashboard. It was, of course, bogus. Navy chaplains take care of the Marines. For added measure I hung some rosary beads off my rear view mirror.

In the bagel shop I made sure to tell the Pakistani owner that I was picking up an order for the “police” and wondered if he could keep my meter up to date while I was with the “District Attorney.” He sighed resignedly but brightened when I insisted on paying for my order and gave him an extra $20 for his trouble. I was pretty sure that wouldn’t have happened in Karachi, where he might be told to watch the meter if he ever wanted to see his family again.

I had bought a couple extra of everything to give to the guards in the lobby of the D.A.’s building. I was carrying so many food bags one of them asked me if the private investigation business was slow. He wanted to know how I making out with tips.

Four detectives were in the D.A.’s squad room when I finally made it upstairs. In addition to Cormac, there was Paul Vocci, who ran the unit, Tom Smith, who I’d met on the Denton murder  case, and a fresh-faced cop I didn’t know. Vocci and I had not always gotten along, but now we owed each other, big time, from the same case. Cormac and I had also been thrown together by circumstances years ago, when I lied to a Grand Jury to save his career after a child molester in his custody mysteriously did a half-gainer off a balcony. We’d barely known each other back then but now were fast friends. I thus had great hopes for my relationship with Vocci, although he didn’t have Cormac’s sense of humor.

“This is Ned Thompson,” Vocci said, indicating the new kid on the block. “He just came on board.”

“You’re the toasted bagel with diet margarine,” I said, shaking his hand.

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Because these guys would never eat anything healthy. In a year they’ll have you ordering bagels with lard.”

“I heard you were a wise guy,” Thompson said, but without malice, taking his bagel and coffee and heading back to his desk.

I looked at Vocci.

“ I bet that if you guys ever stopped feeding your faces and got out of the office once in a while the crime rate in this borough would plummet.”

“We’d be crazy to do that,” Vocci said. “Staten Island has the lowest crime rate in the city as it is. It goes to zero, they’ll shut us down and ship us to Harlem or Bed-Stuy. We protect, serve and eat. It’s in our union contract.”

Maybe I was wrong about his sense of humor. Or Cormac was rubbing off on him. I pulled him aside.

“How’s Mike doing, Paulie?”

At mention of the District Attorney, Vocci turned serious. With the exception of the new guy, Thompson, everyone in the room had been party to a massive coverup to protect Michael Sullivan. It was a scheme I orchestrated, and we all committed numerous felonies in the process. I was still surprised that we managed to pull it off.

“Mike has his good days and bad days,” Vocci said. “He really loved her. He’s thrown himself into the job.”

“I’m glad he decided to run again. I feel rotten that she took a bullet for me. Several, in fact.”

“He doesn’t blame you for anything, Alton. Let it go. There was no way it was gonna work out for her. Or Mike. He’s grateful you wiped a real scumbag off the board. We all are.”

“I wanted to thank you for getting Cormac back here.”

“I’m having second thoughts. I’ve put on five pounds since he showed up.”

“You guys talkin’ about me.” It was Cormac, barely intelligible with a mouthful of bagel. “Least you could do is do it behind my back. Get over here, Alt. You didn’t come down here to swap spit. What do you need?”

I sat at his desk and told him Father Zapotoski’s story. The other detectives went about their business, which was fine by me since I felt slightly ridiculous. I could tell by the look on Cormac’s face that he thought I was ridiculous.

“He told me he went to the 123 and they said they would look into it.” The 123, in Tottenville, is the southernmost of the three Island precincts, thus the southernmost of any police stations in New York State. “Did it ever make it out of the precinct?”

“I doubt it,” Mac replied. “No one around here has said anything. But I’m not back that long. I’ll ask around. But if the precinct guys thought he was a crackpot or senile, they wouldn’t bump it up the ladder.”

“They’d just ignore it?”

“I didn’t say that. Given how slow it is out there, they would have jumped on anything that made sense. Balls, the last murder in Tottenville was committed by a Redcoat. They must have thought it too flimsy to take serious. I mean, what have you got? Three natural deaths, an old man’s hunch and some newspaper obits.”

“He’s a priest.”

“Yeah. And he’s ancient enough to have baptized JFK.”

“He was in military intelligence in Poland.”

“I rest my case.”

“Zapatoski’s heard all the jokes. He was apparently sharp enough to give the Russians a run for their money. Even Marat Rahm admits that.”

“Was being the operative word. Marat dumped him on you, didn’t he?”

“The Rahms have other fish to fry. They run a criminal empire, or haven’t you noticed?”

“Yeah, I read the papers.” Cormac had finished his bagel and now looked in the bag. He was used to taking at least half of whatever I was eating. “Didn’t you get a bagel for yourself?” He looked hurt. I couldn’t resist.

“I’m stuffed. The Rahms put out quite a spread for me. Beef Wellington.”

“Well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

“Can we get back on point here, Mac?”

“What exactly did Marat say to you?”

I hesitated.

“He thinks Zapo may have gone round the bend.”

“So, I take it you’re just going through the motions. Wait, forget I said that. That’s not you. You’ll give it your best shot, and cover all the bases, but you expect to come up empty.”

“Kalugin thinks there’s something to it.”

There was a long pause.

“Based on what?”

“Gut feeling.”

Another pause.

“Kalugin’s gut is nothing to sneeze at.”

There was a mixed metaphor in there somewhere, but I ignored it. Then I told him about Alice’s comment about the confessional.

“She’s a smart cookie. When does she leave for Europe?”

“Next week.”

“She’ll be back, kid.”

“Can you do some checking for me?”

“Sure. Give me the names and dates. I’ll get back to you. What did the bishop say about all this?”

“I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to go there. The old guy is in enough trouble. He says they are planning to ship him off to a retirement home in Virginia.”

“Who are you kidding? You Catholics are all the same. In awe of the collar. The church screwed your mind up about sex and you carry around all this fear and guilt. You’re just too chicken to brace them.  We Jews may have invented guilt, but you guys perfected it.”

“Who said that? I know it wasn’t you. Besides, what the hell are you talking about? Your mother and wife are both Catholic.”

“I rest another case. I’ll call you if I get something. Or, as is more likely, nothing.”

CHAPTER 9 – THE MONSIGNOR

On Thursday, I called the rectory at Our Lady of Solace and asked to speak to Monsignor Barilla. A woman with a pleasant, sexy voice informed me that the good Monsignor was at luncheon at the Jewish Community Center in New Brighton.

“Ah, ecumenism,” I said. “Good for the soul, but hard on the waistline.”

She laughed. It was a nice, strong laugh.

“What time will he be back?”

“Not before three o’clock.”

“Are they having lunch, or parting the Red Sea?”

She laughed again. I instinctively like women who appreciate my jokes, while questioning their sanity.

“I think they will be parting the Rabbinical wine cellar,” she said.

“Can I make an appointment?”

“And you are?”

I told her.

“Can I ask what this is in reference to?”

“I just won a church raffle and the prize was an air ticket to Lourdes.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, but I could hear a bubble of another laugh.

“It’s a one-way ticket. You can see where I might be concerned.”

When she finished laughing this time, she said, “That’s priceless.”

“Actually, I’m a friend of Father Zapo. He suggested I speak to Monsignor Barilla on a private matter.”

There was a short pause. I had the sense that she knew what the “private matter” was.

“Come in at 3:30, Mr. Rhode. I’ll let Monsignor know.”

“And you are?”

“Isabella Donner.”

She knew.

“Our Lady of the Xerox.”

“Pardon me.”

“Nothing, I’ll be there at 3:30.”

***

The rectory was a two-story, red brick building directly across from the church on Joline Avenue. An elderly Asian woman holding a broom opened the door. I told her my business. She stared at me. I repeated myself, louder, and she bobbed her head and motioned for me to follow her. She led me to a small office where a heavy-set woman wearing a shapeless black dress, with her back to me, was busy at a file cabinet. I could here a man’s voice through a door that led to an inner office. The woman with the broom announced my arrival in a heavily accented voice and then walked away. I could hear her sweeping her way down the hallway.

The view of the other woman’s ample rear was disconcerting, given my expectations from the sexy, pleasant voice on the phone. But I banished my uncharitable thoughts and waited patiently. She finally turned around and the view did not improve.

“Ms. Donner,” I said. “I’m Alton Rhode.”

I could just as easily have said Jack the Ripper for the look she gave me.

“Isabella left at 3,” the woman said shortly. “And it’s Miss Donner. She is not married.”

I could tell by the way she said it that she approved of women who were not married.

“And you are?”

“I am Imogene Bulger, Monsignor Barilla’s personal assistant.”

Imogene Bulger had a voice like a foghorn and the face to match. She waited imperiously for me to say something.

“Well, Ms. Bulger, I have a 3:30 appointment with the Monsignor.”

“It’s Miss Bulger. I, too, am unmarried.”

No surprise there, I thought.

“Isabella shouldn’t be making appointments,” she went on. “That’s my job. She’s only a part-timer and came because I had an appointment at the beauty parlor.”

I could have hit that one out of the park, but kept my mouth shut.

“But since you’re here, the Monsignor will see you. But he is very busy. Right now he is on the phone. You will just have to wait.”

There was a chair by the door. I sat. She looked at me as if I should have asked permission. After five minutes, her phone buzzed. I started to get up.

“Yes, Monsignor. Right away.” Miss Bulger put her boss on hold and punched a button on her console. “Mullah Yusef? Monsignor Barilla would like to speak to you. Please hold?”

Barilla undoubtedly had all the Island’s religious leaders on speed dial. She put the call through and squinted at me. I sat back down. I heard laughter from the inner office. I waited another 10 minutes I got up and went to the desk.

“Is the Monsignor in the habit of making calls when his appointment is waiting?”

Miss Bulger looked at me.

“I told you, he’s busy. Besides, I didn’t make your so-called appointment.”

It was the “so-called” that steamed me. I smiled.

“Well, I have to be in probate court in an hour. Tell the good Monsignor that the law firm of Rhode, Rhode & Rhode is handling the Frobisher estate. Hortense Frobisher, the heir to the Frobisher buggy whip fortune, has left a sizable bequest to Our Lady of Solace in her will and there is some paperwork I’d like to discuss with him.”

She looked startled. I was glad I had thrown a tie on before leaving the office.

“Isabella didn’t say anything about a will.”

I chuckled good-naturedly.

“You know those part-timers. Can’t even take a proper message.”

I started to leave.

“Just a second, please, Mr. Rhode. I think Monsignor is just finishing up.”

She went into Barilla’s office and a moment later ushered me into his office.

“This is Mr. Rhode, from Rhode, Rhode and Rhode.”

With potential estate money walking into his office, Barilla stood and smiled expansively. He was a well-fed Monsignor, as they tend to be. His head was too small for his body, and he was almost bald, except for a fringe of brown hair that circled his dome, ear-high. We shook hands and he asked me to sit.

“I don’t think I’ve heard of your firm, Mr. Rhode.”

“Understandable. We used to be Rhode, Rhode, Rhode & Rhode, but Clarence, my great-grandfather, just died. He was almost 90.”

“I’m sorry. But he must have had a wonderful life.”

“Yes, he did. Active to the end. We warned him about his mountain climbing.”

I looked at Imogene Bulger, who face had unsuccessfully been trying to register sympathy. Now she just looked confused.

“Please shut the door on your way out, Miss,” I said. “I’m sure you understand that this conversation has to be confidential.”

After she left, Monsignor Barilla said, “What’s this about a bequest?”

“I lied. I’ll say three Hail Marys. I’m a private investigator looking into the deaths of three of your parishioners, John Clifton, Ralph Lydecker and Mario Spinelli.”

Barilla’s face went through several phases, starting with surprise, moving to anger, then frustration and finally arriving at what I assumed was Christian resignation.

“And who do you represent, Mr. Rhode? If that is your name.”

“It’s my name, Monsignor.” I handed across my card. “But I’m afraid that I’m not at liberty to identify my clients.”

I’d taken a chance. The battleship in the outer office had given no indication that Isabella Donner had mentioned my connection to Father Zapo and I couldn’t imagine that Barilla would expect a poor old priest to employ a private investigator. If he thought I had more than one client, the Monsignor would be further confused and perhaps more cautiously helpful. For all he knew, I could be working for the men’s widows. Or an insurance company. Hell, maybe even the bishop. It wasn’t really a lie, if you counted Zapo, and, by extension, Marat Rahm. I would love to have said that I had, in effect, been hired by an octogenarian cleric and the Russian mobster who once tortured him, but sometimes the best lines have to be sacrificed for the greater good.

I took out a small Reporter’s Notebook and a pen. I rarely need to write anything down, but I suspected that Barilla might be less inclined to prevaricate if what he said was apparently recorded.

“Now, what can you tell me about the deaths of Clifton, Lydecker and Spinelli?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“You mean their demise is news to you?”

I was enjoying myself.

“Of course I know they died. They were very active in the parish. Their passing was a tragedy.”

“You mean their deaths were not accidental, perhaps somehow connected?”

I wrote something down. Barilla couldn’t see it. It was the starting infield for the New York Yankees. Assuming A-Rod’s hip held up.

“I mean nothing of the sort! I didn’t say that. It’s always a tragedy when someone goes before their time.”

This was too easy.

“Well, maybe I’m the suspicious type, but I’d say that when three ‘someones’ kick the bucket before their time, maybe it’s more than tragic. Might not it be criminal?”

There. I’d said the word. The Monsignor looked nervous. He didn’t know what I knew. Which made two of us.

“One of my priests may have had suspicions.”

I was surprised he said that. Monsignor Barilla looked at me closely. He was no fool. He was fishing.

“Indeed,” I said. “What’s his name?”

“I’m afraid that I can’t tell you.”

“Why not? I’m sure I can find out by just asking around. Do you want me to do that?”

I’d boxed him in.

“Father Zapotoski,” he said reluctantly.

“How do you spell that,” I said, wondering whether I was overplaying my hand.

He spelled out the name, which I dutifully wrote down. I wondered if Father Zapo could play third base. Now, unless Isabella Donner or Zapo himself spilled the beans, no one would know who first came to me.

“Father Zapotoski is a good man,” Barilla said. “But he’s getting on in years. I hope you will take that into account.”

I ignored him.

“You didn’t act on his allegations?”

“They weren’t allegations. He had no proof, other than the three obviously coincidental deaths of men of an age where death is not all that rare of an occurrence. Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this, but Father Zapo, that’s what everyone in the parish calls him, came to the priesthood late, from a background that may have inclined him to be suspicious.”

“I don’t understand,” I lied.

Barilla then told me about Zapo’s military experience, as I tried to look interested.

“Amazing story,” I said.

“So, you understand Mr. Rhode, he may see things that are not there.”

“Isn’t it just as likely that, with his background, he sees things that others can’t?”

“The deaths were many months apart, Mr. Rhode. Doesn’t that argue for happenstance and coincidence?”

“Perhaps. But it’s not unusual for a serial killer to space his murders so as not to attract suspicion, or for psychological reasons only he knows. Look at it this way. If they were close together, we’d be able to call it a massacre.”

He was flabbergasted. I was really pushing it, using “serial killer,” “murders” and “massacre” in one paragraph. I was trying to shake Barilla’s tree, hoping something, anything, would fall out. Father Zapo told me he’d already burned his bridges.

“There are still the questions of proof, motive and opportunity,” Barilla said, trying to recover. “All lacking. Surely, someone like you understands that.”

The good Monsignor had obviously been watching too many TV cop shows.

“Perhaps he heard something that he can’t repeat. Maybe several somethings. Then put two and two together. He did hear confessions, didn’t he?”

Barilla looked aghast.

“I won’t go there, Mr. Rhode. And I would urge you to drop that line of questioning. The Seal of the Confession is one of the most sacred tenets of the Catholic faith. Your client confidentiality pales in comparison.”

“So Zapotoski wouldn’t confide something like that with you?”

Barilla now looked genuinely offended.

“Never!”

He would have said the same thing if Zapo had told him anything. Still, I couldn’t imagine the old priest breaking the Seal with anyone. I decided to move on.

“I’m sorry. I respect your position. It is an honorable one,”

He seemed mollified.

“What could I do, Mr. Rhode? I heard him out. I looked at the clippings he had. I even went so far as to speak, as delicately as I could, to the widows of the men involved. But only in generalities. None of them harbored the least doubt that their husbands had died natural deaths. But that wasn’t enough for Father Zapo. He went over my head to the diocese. Then to the police. He has apparently stirred up a lot of people. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

I smiled enigmatically and wrote something else down. I was working on the Bronx Bombers’ outfield now.

CHAPTER 10 – WIDOWS

I left my house Friday morning in a cold drizzle quite sure it was going to be one of the most miserable days of my life. And the weather had nothing to do with it. I’d arranged to see all three of the widows whose husbands’ deaths had aroused Father Zapo’s suspicions. The only break I caught was the fact that none of the widows had children still living at home.

My first stop, at 10 A.M., was at a house on Murray Street in Richmond Valley, a small town just west of Tottenville. Naomi Clifton, widow of John, answered the door. As with all the widows I’d called, I told her that I was investigating the possibility that some recent deaths on Staten Island had been caused by something in the environment. That was a story that anyone in the borough, a dumping ground for the city for years, would buy. I rationalized the lie by telling myself that if there was a killer at large, he or she could be considered part of the environment. All the women asked me who I represented. I told them that was confidential but hinted strongly that I was on their side. I might have dropped the phrase “class action” as well.

After we settled in with coffees at her kitchen table and finding out that she “was doing as well as could be expected,” I asked Mrs. Clifton if there was anything that bothered her about her husband’s death.

“You mean other than his dying?”

I richly deserved that.

“Sorry. I mean, the circumstances.”

“Well,” she said, “it was very sudden. John had just finished dinner and we were watching N.C.I.S. on cable. A rerun. The one where Abby goes bowling with the nuns and comes home to find a killer waiting for her.” She looked at me. I smiled. “Anyway, Jack’s head slumped forward. I assumed he had nodded off. But when I asked him for the remote he didn’t respond. He wasn’t breathing. I called 911, but it was too late. They said it was a heart attack. No one mentioned anything about the environment. But I wouldn’t be surprised. We’re so near to Jersey and the Fresh Kills dump isn’t all that far away either. I worry about the water.”

The Fresh Kills Landfill, so huge that when operating it was visible from orbit, had been closed a few years. But it still got blamed for a lot. As well it should. I clucked sympathetically, feeling like a heel. Then it got worse.

“Poor Jack wanted to move to Jersey, nearer his dealership. He sold Fords, you know. Would only sell American. He was a veteran. But I said no. Our family is on Staten Island. We raised our kids here. Now something here might have killed him. He won’t get to have any grandkids. I wish I had listened to him.”

She started crying then, quietly. Being a heel would have been a step up from how I felt now.

When she composed herself, I said, “Mrs. Clifton, it may not have had anything to do with that. This is all very preliminary. I just have a few questions. Are you up for them?”

She nodded.

“Did your husband complain of feeling ill in the days or weeks leading up to his death?”

“No. The normal aches or pains. But he always went to work. He was often tired. Had a lot of late meetings and such, but the car business is like that, you know.”

“Did he always work late, or was that something more recent.”

She thought about it.

“It seemed like he had more business meetings in the months before he passed. Why?”

“Well, if he was working so hard, it might mean he was under a lot of stress.” I took a deep breath. “What about other kinds of stress, perhaps in his personal life.”

She looked at me.

“Why do you want to know that?”

“I really don’t. But some lawyer will undoubtedly ask, trying to shift the blame. Looking for mitigating circumstances. You know how they work. Always trying to blame the victim. I just want to get it out of the way. I know it’s a difficult subject to address. You can’t imagine how many of these interviews I’ve done. Fortunately, many of the wives I’ve spoken to see the big picture. In cases like this, it’s better if we get a full picture of a victim, warts and all. We’re all human, after all.”

“John was a fine man. A little overweight, but he was working on that. We had a happy marriage. That’s what you’re getting at, aren’t you?”

I knew I had gone as far as I could. Or would.

“I’m sure you did, Mrs. Clifton. What you’ve told me is most helpful.”

Somewhat placated, she said, “When will you know if John’s death is connected to any others?”

“I can’t predict that. But if there is a connection, you will be notified.”

That, at least, was the truth. She would indeed be notified, but not for the reason she thought.

***

My next visit went a little better, although I still felt like I needed a shower when it was over.

I told the same lies to Carol Lydecker in a small storeroom behind her office at the family lumber business she was now running in Mariners Harbor. We were constantly interrupted by customers, salesmen and employees, which helpfully distracted her from some of my probing questions.

“I’m sorry,” she said after one man with a clipboard left. “Ralph was very hands-on and I’m still learning my way. I’m hoping my boys pitch in when they are on school break.”

“Do they want to come into the business permanently?”

“God, no. I want them to be doctors or lawyers. We can’t compete against Home Depot and the others. Ralph was planning to sell when they finished college. The only reason we’re so busy now is because of the hurricane.”

“Staten Island won’t be the same without Lydecker Lumber,” I said.

That, I meant, and she seemed to appreciate it. In any event, she was candid about her marriage. There had been rough patches, even a short separation a year before his death, but things had been fine between them after they patched things up. Her husband’s death had been a shock.

“Ralph kept in shape. He worked as hard in the lumber yard as any of our employees. He was a runner, played tennis every Sunday at Hillside Swim Club. To die in the middle of a round of golf seems so unfair.”

On the way to my final interview from hell, I mentally recapped what I had learned from the first two widows. It didn’t take long. Clifton and Lydecker seemed to be hard-working family men who died too young, leaving genuinely bereft families. The only possible anomaly was the fact that Clifton had a lot of late “business meetings” in the months just prior to his death and Lydecker had separated from his wife for a time.

Affairs?

***

The huge woman who answered the door at the Spinelli residence, which was just down the block from the funeral home, was too old to be Mario’s widow. She was wearing a shapeless black dress that looked like it was made by Omar the Tentmaker.

“I’m Moira Regan, what’s this crap all about?”

“It’s OK, Ma, let him in,” said a voice from further in the house. “I spoke to him on the phone.”

“I know you spoke to him on the phone. That makes him the Pope?” She put a hand out. “Identification?”

I gave her my card.

“You can get these printed for free on the Internet.”

I held up my license. She looked at it and then moved into the house, motioning for me to follow her. Noreen Spinelli was sitting on a couch in the living room with her feet tucked under her wearing jeans and a purple turtleneck. She was a tiny woman, a redhead, with pale skin and a map-of-Ireland face. Her mother, on the other hand, could play linebacker for Notre Dame. She plopped down next to her daughter and looked at me as if I had personally shot Michael Collins after the Easter Rebellion. I silently cursed Father Zapotoski.

“Would you like some coffee, Mr. Rhode,” Noreen asked.

“Nobody wants any damn coffee, Noreen,” her mother said. “Or tea. Or roast pheasant. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

I went into my spiel. Noreen looked intrigued, but the old lady wasn’t buying it. I managed to get the basics, at least as related by Noreen. Mario Spinelli loved his wife and children, and was in good health until he face-planted in his lasagna at dinner.

“He loved my lasagna,” she said proudly as her mother rolled her eyes. “He said my sauce was better than his mother’s. Sweeter.”

“The man doesn’t want to hear about your gravy, Noreen. Move along.”

It was obviously a heart attack. The marriage was solid. The kids were running the funeral home. It would stay in the family. When I asked Noreen whether she had noticed any changes in her husband’s habits or demeanor, she didn’t take offense.

“Mario always worked hard. It is a stressful business. He didn’t keep regular hours. He was often called away at night.”

Her mother just stared at me. I decided to press my luck.

“Was he away at night more often in the months leading up to his death?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “What do you think, Ma? Do you remember Mario working harder before he died?”

“I think this guy has wasted enough of our time. I’ll walk him to the door. You go rest.”

Noreen gave me an apologetic smile, shook my hand, and then did as she was told. Moira Regan followed me out the front door and shut it behind the both of us.

“What are you really after, buster? And don’t give me any more of that environmental bullshit. Why do you really want to know about my idiot son-in-law?”

I decided to take a chance. This was a tough Irish woman who apparently wasn’t too fond of Mario Spinelli. Maybe she knew something.

“I didn’t want to upset your daughter, Mrs. Regan, but I’m looking into the possibility that Mario’s death might not have been natural. Was the marriage as solid as your daughter claimed?”

She took a step toward me.

“You think my daughter killed him? Are you crazy? Noreen is a ditz, but she has a heart of gold. She really loved the bastard. Get lost.”

“Back off, lady. I don’t think your daughter did anything. I think someone else might be responsible, and not just for his death. But I’m running into a stone wall. Can you tell me anything?”

She crossed her arms on her massive bosom and smiled.

“You got balls, I’ll give you that. Noreen shouldn’t have married that guinea bastard. He’s been cheating on her for years. He had a goomah when he died. No funeral director makes that many night calls. You’d of thought the Island was hit with the bubonic plague or something the way he was always out at night.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve lived here since my husband died in 2004. Got my own apartment in the basement. It’s finished. Italians are big on finished basements, you ever notice that. Even has a kitchen.” She laughed. “To make the gravy.”

“Do you know who his girlfriend was?”

“No. You’re the detective. You find out.”

With that she lumbered back into the house and slammed the door. Having a battleaxe mother-in-law like Moira Regan living in the basement might be one reason Mario Spinelli rarely came home, but I was betting on her instincts. Father Zapo had said the dead men “weren’t saints” and I was now becoming convinced all three had affairs before they died. That didn’t mean they were murdered. But it didn’t mean they weren’t.

CHAPTER 11 – PARTY TIME

I grabbed a quick burger at Duffy’s on Forest Avenue and then went back to my office, where Abby and I spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to figure out the new Windows operating system she’d installed on my laptop. The phone rang. After a moment she passed it to me with a disapproving look.

“It’s the plant lady.”

“I need a date for tomorrow night,” Nancy Robart said without preamble, “and I heard that you are now available.”

“Good Lord, Nance. Alice has only been gone a day. Besides, you’re engaged. It’s you who shouldn’t be available.”

Last I’d heard, Nancy, who ran the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, was working on husband No. 4, Clyde somebody. We’d been friends forever, occasionally “with benefits” whenever we were respectively between serious relationships. “Benefits” with Nancy were not for the faint of heart. She was one of the most sexually charged women I’d ever met, and a free thinker, except when she had her sights on a potential spouse. For a variety of reasons Nancy didn’t think I was marriage material. At one point she said I was perfect for keeping her “engine tuned.”

“I’m not available, you turkey,” she said now. “There will be no sex involved, before, during or after. My honey is away on business and I have to go to this goddamn Tiffany party.”

My sigh of relief was mixed with a tinge of regret. But just a tinge.

“What the hell is a Tiffany party?”

“It’s like a Tupperware party, except they sell Tiffany stuff. Some sort of new corporate outreach. The wife of one of the pricks on my board is hosting one and I have to go. Hell, it won’t be that bad. There will be plenty of booze and eats. You can hobnob with the swells. They’ll be a shitload of judges and lawyers there. Maybe you can ambulance chase some business.”

“Are you trying to set me up with one of your girlfriends?”

“I don’t have women friends, just rivals. I never spread my previous boy toys around. One never knows when they will come in handy again.”

“Boy toys?”

“Just kidding, kiddo. You know I love you like a brother. Incestuously, of course. Come on, keep me company. Maybe you can pick up a nice bauble for your new squeeze.”

“It’s really not my scene, Nance.”

“Pretty please. I’m feeling lonely myself. We can be bereft together.”

“I’m not bereft.”

“Yet. Pick me up at 7:30. If you don’t, I’ll think you only like me for my vagina.”

After I hung up I looked at Abby, who was glaring at me.

“What?”

“She didn’t waste any time, did she?”

“You heard what I said. Her next husband is out of town and she wants an escort.”

“That woman is a walking Venus Flytrap. Be careful. What’s this about a Tiffany party?”

I told her. She hooted.

“You’re kidding, right. You know those things are scams, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The stuff they sell at those things is hotter than your date.”

“They may be knock-offs, but I seriously doubt they’re stolen. Nancy says the place will be crawling with judges.”

“I don’t care if the Cardinal is there buying a new ring for you to kiss. Stuff is stolen.”

“How would you know?”

“My brother told me. Not that I just said that.”

“Your brother at the cable company?”

Having a brother who works for the cable company was one of many reasons that Abby was valuable to me, and everyone else in the building. Our service was the envy of Staten Island.

“Not him. My half-brother, Leon, in Bayonne. The gangbanger. Says he’s been tryin’ to get in on the party action for years but the Hispanics have it sewn up. They have someone in a Tiffany factory lifting stuff. Then they show up in a van at rich folks’ homes and make a fortune.”

Now I was interested.

“Why doesn’t Tiffany put a stop to it.”

“I don’t think they even know about it.”

Now that was really interesting.

“Maybe they’d like to.”

Abby smiled. She got it.

“I bet they would. And I bet they’d pay to find out. Not bad, boss. Nice to see you with your game face on again.”

CHAPTER 12 - UNDERCOVER

The party was on Longfellow Avenue on Emerson Hill, a dead-end street famous locally for being the site of the filming of a major portion of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.

“Why people who have more money than God want jewelry bargains is beyond me,” Nancy said as I pulled into the street.

“It’s why they have so much money. Who’s throwing this shindig?”

“Norma D’Elicio. Husband owns D’Elicio Construction. A real piece of work, Ed is. You better grab the first spot you see. Their house is near the top of the street but there won’t be anything there.”

She was right. All the parking near the D’Elicio house, a massive Tudor, was taken, including those in front of fire hydrants. There were several cars in the driveway, as well as a black van from which two rough-looking men were unloading fold-up tables and large felt-covered boards. There was no wording on the side or back of the van. But it had a license plate, which I committed to memory. The men didn’t look like anyone who worked for Tiffany. In fact, they looked like lawn guys. I immediately regretted my facile and politically incorrect assumption, even though Abby had mentioned the scam had Hispanic players. Just because they weren’t wearing suits didn’t mean they weren’t corporate employees of some sort.

“Do those men look like they work for Tiffany?” I asked Nancy as we followed the men up the walk into the house.

“No, they look like lawn workers. Funny, I would have expected the van to be blue.”

“Why blue?”

“The blue box, silly. It’s a Tiffany trademark.”

“I’m a Cracker Jack man myself.”

We followed the workers into the house. They peeled off and headed toward the dining room, where I could see some displays already set up on a table. I looked around for the bar. It turned out there were two of them, one in the living room and one in an enclosed sun porch. And you couldn’t turn around without bumping into a waiter or waitress holding a tray of canapés. The evening did have some possibilities after all. Nancy was soon enveloped in conversations with a variety of people. I nodded, smiled and bounced between the bars. I was talking to a Supreme Court judge I knew when I heard Norma D’Elcio shout for everyone’s attention.

“We’re going to start the jewelry sale. Please come into the dining room.”

We gathered around a very attractive Hispanic woman who was standing in front of the dining room table, on which were trays of jewelry. Behind the trays were several of the felt-covered display boards with more jewelry.

“My name is Rosa,” the woman said. “If you have any questions, please ask me or Carmel.” She pointed at another woman standing at the other end of the table. “All the jewelry is clearly marked, and severely discounted, but perhaps I can do better on certain items, or for multiple items.”

A woman asked, “Are they knockoffs?”

“No, no,” Rosa said vehemently. “This is all original Tiffany, and new, not resale. You can see the markings.”

Norma chimed in, “It’s part of a new Tiffany promotion to generate business at the stores, right, Rosa?”

“That’s right. None of this jewelry is really high-end. Tiffany wants people to know that they have something for everyone, in all price ranges. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but you will be getting much of this jewelry near cost. Tiffany is not looking to make money with this program, only generate future business and customer loyalty.”

She was really good.

Everyone started picking through the jewelry. It was mostly silver, and priced between $25 and $500. The most expensive items were some pearl necklaces. I knew something about Tiffany prices, and I estimated that everything was at least 70% discounted. Not surprisingly, the women hit the table like bluefish hitting a school of menhaden. Even the men went a little nuts. I saw the Civil Court judge flip a coin with a Criminal Court counterpart over a flask they both spotted at the same time.

Nancy bought some hoop earrings. I bought a keychain for $25, one of those horseshoe things with a ball at one end that unscrewed. I wouldn’t use it, having never found anything better to hold a set of keys than the little plastic crampons they sell at novelty stores. I spotted a silver compact that I thought Alice might like. I didn’t have enough cash on me, but that didn’t matter. Checks were readily accepted and Rosa and her helper also had hand-held credit card readers.

There was a lot of “oohing and ahhing,” and in a half hour most of the merchandise was gone. I met Nancy back at the sun porch bar.

“Do me a small favor,” I said. “Go over to that Rosa woman and ask her how you can contact her. Tell her you’d like to host a party like this.”

“Why?”

“I’m curious.”

“I could just ask Norma.”

“Maybe we’ll have to. But I’d like to see what Rosa says.”

She looked at me.

“And for some reason you don’t want to ask her yourself. Because it would make her suspicious. What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you later. I’ve just deputized you. So mosey on over there. I have to check something outside.”

“Mosey?”

“Isn’t that what Wyatt Earp would say?”

“I sincerely doubt it.”

I wandered out the front door and walked to the van. The two workmen were leaning against it, smoking.

“How you guys doing? Can I bring you out something to eat, or some coffee?”

“No, thank you,” one of them said. He had a gold earring. I wondered if it was from Tiffany.

“It’s a madhouse in there,” I said. “I got between some broad and some necklace and almost got knocked over.”

They both laughed.

“Tell us about it,” the guy with the earring said. “Sometime they don’t even wait for us to unpack the shit.”

To further break the ice, I grubbed a cigarette from them. I don’t smoke. Or at least I don’t buy. As I took a drag I recalled my last experience with cigarettes. Nando Carlucci was blowing smoke in my face and putting them out on my chest. Better than the other way around, I guess.

“Well, it’s going to be an early night for you guys. It’s almost over.”

“Shit, man,” the other guy said, “we got two more parties tonight.”

When I got back inside, Nancy wrinkled her nose at me.

“Did you have a cigarette? Yuck.”

Considering what I’d seen her smoke, I thought she was being a little hypocritical. Maybe Clyde had her turning over a new leaf.

“It was business.”

“So you didn’t enjoy it.”

“I didn’t say that.” We were standing by the bar. A waiter with a tray of appetizers walked into my kill zone and I popped a crab miniature in my mouth. “Is that better?”

“Oh, yes. Now you have crustacean breath. Charming”

Rosa and her crew broke down their displays in remarkable time and not 10 minutes later Norma D’Elcio and the wait staff set out a splendid buffet on the dining room table.

***

“Why did you want me to get that information from the woman running the sale?”

I was driving Nancy home. She had just handed me the business card she had gotten from “Rosa Casablanca, Senior Jewelry Consultant.” I told her what I suspected.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to get the lay of the land first.”

“The lay of the land was your date tonight, big boy. Not that you will ever find out again. I can’t believe you just let me commit a crime.”

“If the stuff is hot, I was the only one at the party who committed a crime by knowingly buying stolen goods.”

“Jesus Christ, Alton. There were judges and assistant D.A.’s in there. A couple of state senators. Most of my board.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure nobody you know gets hurt. An iconic company like Tiffany wants to get the bad guys, not to embarrass innocent people.”

We drove in silence the rest of the way. When I got to Nancy’s house near Snug Harbor I noticed she was smiling. I had seen that smile.

“I can almost hear the wheels turning in that conniving brain of yours, Nancy.”

“It just occurred to me that Ed D’Elicio wants to be the next chairman of my board.” I could see where this was going. She didn’t disappoint me. “And he just hosted a party where some of Staten Island’s finest bought stolen property. And I didn’t see anyone being charged tax, did you?”

The tenure of executives running charitable or artistic institutions in the borough depends on two things: the ability to fundraise, and political or personal leverage. Nancy could wheedle a contribution out of a homeless person and had enough dirt on the people who mattered to run things at Snug Harbor the way she wanted. I had supplied some of the dirt when some of her board members, who wanted unfettered access to the Harbor’s bank account, tried to oust her when she wouldn’t bed them. It wasn’t my finest hour, but Nancy and I go way back. For all her faults, she is an extremely talented and honest C.E.O. and I wasn’t going to let a bunch of men, including a pederast and a couple of thieving contractors, run her out of the job she loved. Now, I had apparently just put another arrow in her blackmail quiver.

“I told you that no one else but me committed a crime, Nance.”

“Ed is dumber than a sponge. He wouldn’t know that.”

I almost felt sorry for the poor bastard.

“Hey, you know what, Alton?”

“What?”

“This is the first time I went undercover for you without going under the covers.”

CHAPTER 13 – SLEEPY HOLLOW

On Monday, I filled Abby in on the jewelry party and gave her Rosa Casablanca’s business card. I told her what I wanted her to do.

“It’s not a local area code,” she said.

“Probably a cell. She’d be careful. Do you think you can act like a rich white woman?”

“Be easier if I started out as a rich black woman. How about a raise?”

“Do your best.” I thought of something. “If Rosa is cautious, we should be, too. Can you get your hands on a throwaway with a non-Staten Island area code, preferably New Jersey. I don’t want her knowing we called from here.”

She looked at me like I had two heads.

“Gee. Remember my brother, Leon the gangbanger? He might have a few hundred of those.” She picked up her phone and punched some numbers. “Leon. It’s Abby. I need one of your Jersey throwaways. None of your damn business. Where are you? Great.” She listened for a moment. “I didn’t mean great like that. I mean it’s convenient you’re close by. How’s it look for you? Well, that’s good, isn’t it? They gonna break for lunch? OK. I’m buying. Where do you want to go? I’ll meet you there. Thanks. Love you.”

She looked at me.

“He’s on trial in St. George. I’ll buy him lunch and get one of his phones.”

“Is it serious?”

“Assault. He says he’ll beat it. He usually does.”

I reached in my pocket to give her some money, which she waved away.

“It’s family,” she said.

***

I called Father Zapo. No answer. Not even a message recording. I crossed my fingers and dialed the rectory.

“Thank God,” I said when Isabella Donner answered. “It’s like hitting the lottery.”

“What on earth are you talking about, Mr. Rhode?”

I was momentarily pleased that she remembered my voice, until I realized the rectory phone probably had caller ID.

“I don’t think I could survive another bout with Miss Bulger.”

That great laugh again.

“You are terrible. What can I do for you?”

“I’m trying to reach Father Zapo. He’s not answering his cell.”

I heard an exasperated sigh.

“I’m not surprised. Even if he doesn’t leave it in his room, he often forgets to turn it on, or he lets the battery run down. But I think I can reach him. He’s got a doctor’s appointment and I have that number. Is it important?”

“Yes. I have to talk to him and I’d like to take him to lunch.”

She said she’d call me right back if she caught him before he left the doctor’s. And she did.

“He’ll be back here by noon and would love to have lunch with you, Mr. Rhode.” She laughed. “He just loves the Sleepy Hollow Inn in Pleasant Plains. Do you know it?”

“I do. And please call me Alton.”

“Only if you call me Bella. All my friends do.”

“Done. Tell me, Bella, is it just a checkup?”

She hesitated.

“He hasn’t been feeling well. It’s the cigarettes. But he won’t listen. He really hasn’t been himself lately. He seems to be under some kind of stress.”

I wondered if Isabella Donner knew more than she was saying. She had, after all, copied the materials that Zapo had given me.

“I’ll pick him up outside the rectory.”

“Oh, that’s so nice of you, Alton.”

***

When I pulled up, Father Zapo was standing at the curb with a young, attractive woman. She held the door for him and after shutting it leaned in the window.

“Don’t let him have more than one martini, Alton,” she said.

Isabella Donner looked as good as she sounded on the phone.

“I have to find you a husband, Bella,” the priest said, “so you will have someone else to nag.”

She winked at me.

“Be my guest, Father. But go easy at lunch.”

As I drove away, I said, “Pretty lady. I’m surprised she’s not married. Was she ever?”

“I don’t believe so,” Father Zapo said. “But she’s still fairly young. Mid 30’s I would guess.”

“Perhaps she’s not the marrying type,” I said delicately.

“I know what you mean. But Bella likes men.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’m a man, aren’t I? I can tell. I may be 80, but I’m not dead.”

“But you are a priest.”

“Just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t look at a menu.”

***

We’d just ordered drinks in a quiet booth at the Sleepy Hollow Inn. Beer for me, vodka on the rocks for him.

“Father, here’s the deal. I suspect, and you probably know, that the three married men had affairs. You are almost certain it was the same woman, presumably at different times. I don’t know how you came to that conclusion, but I’d guess they confided to you, possibly in the confessional. Perhaps they gave you details that were too similar to be coincidental. But the details weren’t specific enough to allow you to figure out who the woman is. You’re in a bind. The Seal of the Confessional extends forever, even after the death of the penitent. You believe the men may have been killed by this woman. I’m pretty sure she never confessed to you. Because if she had, you would really be in a bind. You could urge her to turn herself in and threaten to withhold absolution, but you couldn’t tell anyone.”

Father Zapo started to say something but I held up my hand.

“Please, hear me out. I got most of this religious palaver from Google and not everyone is in agreement, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. So, if you are suspicious that there is a serial killer in your parish the only way you can try to stop her from striking again is to prompt an investigation without revealing the source of your suspicions. As a former intelligence officer, you are hoping that people will give you the benefit of the doubt because of your experience. Except they haven’t. I was your last hope and I have to tell you now that while I now think it likely the men were cheating, I have no idea if it was with one woman or ten women or the Easter bunny. Even if it was one woman, it means nothing. Except maybe that they were lucky. It doesn’t mean she, or anyone else, killed them. And unless you have something to tell me, some sort of hard proof, I’m afraid I can’t go on. Talking to the widows was, frankly, unbearable.”

Our lunch came. A hot turkey sandwich for him, pot roast for me. Risking Isabella Donner’s wrath, I ordered more drinks. Zapotoski was having a tough day. He deserved another vodka. We ate in silence for a while. Finally, he pushed his plate away.

“Mr. Rhode. I appreciate all you have done. I am convinced I am right and will continue to pursue my investigation as long as I am able. I have only one additional favor to ask of you.”

“Of course, Father.”

“I would hope that if I uncover something you would consider pertinent, that I can call upon you again. If only to ask your counsel before going elsewhere with it.”

I told him that wouldn’t be a problem. I was pretty sure I would never hear from Father Zapo again. Especially if he was right about the diocese forcing his retirement and shipping him to a clerical gulag.

***

Abby was already back from her lunch with Brother Leon the Gangbanger when I walked into my office. She held up her new throwaway cell phone.

“I’ll keep it in case Rosa calls back to check up on me,” she said.

“How did it go?”

“I told her I was at the party last night and might want to host one of my own. She asked if I had a date in mind. I said I wanted to check with my husband and would get back to her.”

“She bought it?”

“Why, daarling, she ate it up, especially when I mentioned that Bunny and Ashley, my twin daughters, just loved Tiffany and their Sweet Sixteens were coming up.”

Abby had changed her voice. She sounded exactly like a marble-mouthed Bryn Mawr graduate.

“Jesus,” I said, laughing.

“You want me to call Tiffany and see who you should talk to?”

“No. I’ll just go up to see them. I think this needs the personal touch.”

CHAPTER 14 – GILT-EDGED CLIENT

I caught the 11 AM ferry into Manhattan Tuesday and took the subway up to Tiffany’s main headquarters on Fifth Avenue near Central Park. I had a reason for not making an appointment. I wanted to speak to someone in authority, but knew if I called ahead and stated the nature of my business I might be telephonically bounced from corporate officer to corporate officer and eventually confronted with a phalanx of lawyers. I have an outsized opinion of my ability to talk my way into a corporate headquarters based upon my willingness to fabricate my credentials or intimidate gatekeepers. It helps if you view every lobby or reception desk as an enemy pillbox or bunker ripe for a satchel charge or grenade. Then a rejection or getting thrown out on your ass is easier to take.

I’d been to Tiffany’s flagship store before and headed straight to the bank of elevators in the rear of the showroom. When I got off on the floor where the corporate offices were located I faced my first obstacle, a very pretty young thing with a wonderful smile and a chest that would launch a thousand ships. I told her I wanted to see either the director of corporate relations or the head of security, or both.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I’m afraid not, miss. I don’t think I need one. I’m a detective.”

I was wearing a dark blue suit, with a white shirt and a maroon tie. I hoped I looked like a cop to her. I gave her a thin Law and Order smile. Had she been an older, corporate veteran I might have tried a different tack, but she looked like the easily-flustered type. Adaption is everything.

“Just a minute,” she said and picked up her phone.

A minute later I was ushered into an office down the hall. The man behind the desk rose to meet me.

“Fred Kipfer, corporate relations,” he said, extending his hand. “What can I do for you, officer.”

“First off, I’m private.” I gave him my card. He looked confused, then realized he’d been had. But there wasn’t much he could do about it. I didn’t give him time to think. I sat in a chair without asking. He sat, somewhat reluctantly. “I’m investigating a scam involving your company. It’s highly confidential. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time, particularly my own. Don’t be offended, but are you the right person to talk to?”

“What’s the scam?”

It was a reasonable question so I gave him a bare-bones outline. He gave me a condescending smile.

“I think you’ve been misled Mr. Rhode. But let me bring in our head of security.”

Kipfer picked up his phone.

“Morgan, can you spare a moment. No, nothing serious. OK. Thanks.”

I love not being taken seriously.

A few minutes later a tall black man walked in. He was wearing a sharp grey suit in the new, tight-fitting style made popular by Daniel Craig in the latest James Bond movie. Introductions were made. His name was Morgan Jones. He sat casually in another chair.

“Mr. Rhode is a private detective, Morgan.” He passed my card to Jones. “He has quite a tale, which I would like you to hear.”

I also love the double team. I repeated my story. Morgan also smiled.

“Somebody sold you some knockoffs,” he said. “It’s a real problem we have, especially over the Internet. You must have heard about our lawsuits to stop the piracy.”

He exchanged looks with Kipfer. They both stood. Time for more important corporate business. I didn’t budge.

“So you guys aren’t interested in some gang driving vans full of Tiffany product telling everyone it’s part of a new corporate marketing strategy?”

I was still seated and was obviously going to stay that way, so they sat back down. I pulled the key ring and compact out of my pocket and laid it on the desk.

Kipfer picked them up.

“Obvious knockoffs.”

He handed them to Jones.

“Knockoffs,” the security chief agreed. “I don’t like people driving around with a lot of this stuff and using the name, but it should be easy enough to track them down. What did you pay for this crap?”

I told them.

“That should tell you something,” Kipfer said smugly. “I believe that key ring goes for around $125 and the compact maybe three times that.”

This was getting good.

“Guess I got a hell of a deal,” I said. “But humor me. Have one of your jewelry experts look at them. I have to be sure before I go to the cops.”

They didn’t like the idea of the cops. Jones shrugged.

“Sure, why not. Be right back.”

I knew it wouldn’t take long. The corporate headquarters had to be lousy with jewelry experts. Kipfer and I talked baseball while we waited. He was from Boston and a rabid Red Sox fan. Fortunately, Jones was back in 15 minutes, and I didn’t have to shoot him.

“It’s ours,” Jones said glumly as he walked in. “Brand new.”

“All the jewelry was like that,” I said. “My sources tell me it’s right out of the factory.”

“Who are your sources?”

I shook my head and held out my hand. He reluctantly gave me back the evidence.

“Let me lay the ground rules here, fellas. While I’m here to help you guys out, I’m not about to betray any confidences or get people hurt. This has the potential to be a major hair ball for everyone involved, including your bosses and several prominent innocent bystanders, some of whom are judges.”

“You are withholding evidence of a crime,” Jones said.

“Not to mention corporate incompetence,” I shot back. “The media would have a field day.”

That shook them up. Kipfer turned on his colleague.

“How is this possible, Morgan? Why haven’t you heard about this?”

I particularly liked the “you” reference. I felt sorry for Jones. He was a squared away dude. I figured him for ex-F.B.I. The Tiffany gig was a plum job that I’m sure he wanted to keep. Being upbraided by a corporate relations flunky was hard to take.

“Obviously, these people have a pipeline into one of your factories, or whatever you call them,” I said. “But once they get the product, it’s a dream scam, when you think about it. They are selling to high-end folks who think it’s a Tiffany outreach program. The stuff is obviously genuine and the Tiffany name is so respectable they can’t imagine there’s anything shady. The sellers even take checks and credit cards, which gives them an air of legitimacy, but they are probably run through dummy accounts no later than the next morning So, let’s hold the recriminations and work something out that will make everyone happy.”

Two hours later, after several phone calls, visits to higher-ups, threats and corporate hand-wringing, I had a new client. Gilt-edged, so to speak. Kipfer even walked me to the elevator.

“We’ll electronically deposit your retainer in your account before the day is out,” he said. “Anything else you need?”

“Who do you know in engraving, Freddie?”

CHAPTER 15 – A CATERED STING

It was obvious that I had gotten Tiffany’s attention. By the time I got to my office the next morning my retainer was already in my bank account.

I called Mario Giammarco at Bernard Herold & Company, a small Wall Street firm that has a branch on Hylan Boulevard in Grasmere. I don’t believe in mattresses, but I like to be able to visit my dough occasionally.

“It’s not like you to do something sensible with your money,” he said when I told him I wanted to add some funds to my Individual Retirement Account. “Did you come off your meds.”

Mario was ex-Army and had been recommended to me by someone at the Veterans Hospital in Brooklyn when I was still under the care of psychologists worried I might be abusing the painkillers that made my life bearable during my recovery.

“Months ago. Got any ideas? Long-term?”

“How long?”

“Until the Jets win the Super Bowl.”

“How about glacier futures?”

We kicked around a few ideas and I finally pulled the trigger on a couple.

I didn’t want my planned jewelry sting to go down on Staten Island, where it might hit the local media and embarrass some people who attended earlier parties. I called Tim Condon, a detective in the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey.

“Been a while, Rhode. Since the nursing home thing.”

On a prior case, when I was tracking down a missing man, I visited the guy’s mother in a nursing home in Monmouth County. The director of the run-down facility was a weasel named Earl Patchett, who I suspected of not only skimping on services but also of stealing money from his helpless charges. I dropped a dime on him with Condon, who said he’d follow up with someone in Monmouth County who handled elder abuse cases.

“Yeah. Whatever happened to Patchett?”

“I hear they got him on tax evasion.”

“If it was good enough for Al Capone, it works for me.”

“Roger that. Hey, I heard nice things about you from some friends in the D.A.’s office on Staten Island,” he said. “Be careful, Alton, it will ruin your reputation.”

“What’s a reputation for, Timmy. Listen, I may have something for you.”

“Please tell me it’s in Bergen County.”

“It can be, if you want it. But I’ll need a house in a nice, secluded neighborhood where I can set up some multiple felonies. And no publicity.”

“Gee, why would I turn down something like that? What’s in it for me?”

“Your bosses will think you’re a goddamn genius.”

“Let me hear it.”

***

Condon called me back two hours later.

“Got a house at the end of a cul-de-sac in Ramapo, off Route 17. It will be a cinch to box them in. Nice upscale neighborhood. We seized it in a drug case. Still has furniture in it. We’ve been inventorying the contents, so the neighbors are used to seeing people going in and out. They know what went down there, so they don’t get to curious anyway. Some of my staff, male and female, can act as buyers. I’ll have to use some local resources, but don’t expect a problem. Figure about 10 couples. That enough?”

“More than enough. You can bust her soon as she makes the first sale. Give me the address. I’ll call you back when I set it up. How fast can you work it at your end.”

“Two days.”

I had Abby call Rosa Casablanca. She came into my office smiling.

“Did she go for it?”

“Hook, line and sinker, boss. She couldn’t do Saturday, asked if that was a problem. I said no, it would give me more time to invite people. You’re all set for 8 PM Sunday.”

I called Condon.

“You’re going to have to make it look real. You have a catering budget?”

“You’re buying the food, pal. Give me a credit card number.”

That was just great.

“Just don’t order a thousand donuts, Timmy. Show a little class.” Then I realized he had my credit card number. “Within reason.”

We arranged to meet in his Hackensack office at 5 PM. Next, I called Morgan Jones, the security executive at Tiffany, and filled him in.

“If you like,” I said, “I’ll bring you along.”

He jumped at the chance. It might save his job.

CHAPTER 16 – DEMOLITION DERBY

I could have stayed home, but I wanted Jones to know how involved I was. I was hoping Tiffany would be very grateful. In the end, I even talked Condon into letting him inside the house.

“Have him buy some jewelry,” I said. “That should seal the deal for you guys.”

By 6:30 PM everything was set up. There were half a dozen cars parked near the sting house. I knew they belonged to some of the cops inside. They made sure to leave a spot for the van in the driveway. I was in an unmarked car with a local town cop named Lucarelli at the foot of the cul-de-sac. I didn’t need Rosa to see me. Another unmarked car was parked across from us, with two more town cops. Their job was to block the street in case anything went wrong. Our car was their backup. Condon called in some chips, and most of the cops involved in the bust were drawn from local jurisdictions. They spent an awful lot of time with radio checks. This was a big deal for them, being part of a “task force.”

There was very little traffic on the block. Most of the people who lived there were sitting down to dinner.

At 7:30, a pair of headlights turned onto the street. The cop next to me tensed.

“Relax,” I said, “It’s not the van.”

A blue Audi with a whip antenna drove past us and parked about halfway up the block.

“Nice car,” the cop said. “Must be an older model. The new ones have antennas embedded in their windshields.”

While I was thinking about that, the van turned onto the street and drove up to the house. It was the same van I’d seen at the Staten Island party. I watched as Rosa Casablanca and her two helpers got out. The men went to the back of the van and started unloading. Rosa headed up the walkway. Our radio crackled:

“OK. Here they come. Everybody stay cool until she actually sells something.”

Rosa was just about up to the front door when she stopped. She reached in her pocket and pulled something out and put it to her ear. A cell phone. She listened for a second and then started walking back to the van. She started waving to her helpers, who were just walking up to her.

“What the hell is she doing,” the cop next to me asked.

The blue Audi that had been parked just up the block from us peeled out, leaving rubber, and headed toward Rosa, who was now running away from the house.

“We’ve been blown,” I said.

The Audi stopped just long enough for Rosa to jump in, then it wheeled around and headed back down the street right at us. By now, the two helpers had dropped whatever they were carrying and were sprinting toward the van.

“Whoever was in the Audi must have been monitoring the police radios,” I said. “Block the street!”

It was close, but Lucarelli managed to swing our car out across the road. The Audi swerved to avoid us and jumped the curb, smashing into a car parked in a driveway next to us. The other task force car reacted more slowly, but managed to ram the fleeing van. The quiet suburban street had turned into a demolition derby. Doors in nearby houses started to open. Lucarelli and I jumped out of our car, guns drawn, and approached the Audi. Behind us I heard shouts and commands from the cops who had crashed into the van. I heard a “whoosh” as a fuel tank exploded and could feel the heat on my back.

Rosa came out of the passenger side door of the Audi and began running. The driver opened his door and came out shooting. I heard Lucarelli cry out and he went down. I rolled to the ground and aimed into the middle of the shooter’s body. The light from the blaze behind me was a great help. Five quick shots. He fell to the ground without a sound. I looked back at Lucarelli.

“I’m OK,” he gasped. “Go get the bitch.”

I sprinted past the gunman, who was on his back staring up at nothing, and went after Rosa. She had cut between houses. I might have lost her but some backyard lights, activated by a motion detector, caught her just as she ran into some adjacent woods. Then I just followed the sounds of her cursing as she slammed into a succession of bushes and trees. I found her lying in a heap at the bottom of a small stream holding her foot. Her nose was bleeding and she had several cuts on her cheek.

“I think I broke my fucking ankle,” she cried.

It wasn’t much of a stream, but she was getting soaked.

“Put your weight on your good foot.”

I reached down to pull her out.

“I know you, you prick,” she said, and bit my hand. She wasn’t about to let go, so I slugged her with my gun. Then I dragged her by the collar of her shirt back to the road. Condon and couple of his men met me half way and they cuffed her.

“Well, that went well, didn’t it,” I said.

Rosa spit at me.

“He’ll get you, you mother fucker.”

***

“Radio silence,” I said. “A wonderful thing.”

I was sitting in Condon’s office at 3 A.M. when he walked in after finishing up the last debriefing. After being interviewed by cops from three jurisdictions, I had been banished. I was tired and had a splitting headache from six of the worst cups of coffee ever made.

“I never figured they’d have a lookout,” Condon said. “And the locals believe in keeping in touch with each other. Remember how there was a big shit storm after 9/11 because nobody could talk to each other on different radios. Now every little police force has a state-of-the-art communications system. They can dial up the Space Station. But when push came to shove, they came through. We nabbed everyone.”

“Is that how everyone saw it?”

“Well, the State Police Captain did say it was, and I quote, “a once-in-a-lifetime world-class fuckup.”

“How is Lucarelli?”

“He’s fine. His vest stopped two bullets, although one creased his side.”

“What about the cops who rammed the van.”

“They’re OK. But the two bad guys got singed a bit. They were lying on the ground close to the van when the gas tank went up.”

“Who was the guy I shot.”

“Julio Casablanca. Rosa’s little brother. Hard core gunny. Been in the joint more than out. Nice shooting by the way. He took three in the chest.”

“I fired five times.”

“And two in the throat.”

“Oh.”

No wonder he didn’t make a sound.

“You guys have enough to roll up Rosa’s operation?”

“Yeah. Despite the cock-up, we got stolen goods, resisting arrest, attempted murder of a police officer and half a dozen other felonies. Rosa hasn’t cracked yet, but she will. We picked up her older brother, Cesaro, who we think is the real brains behind the operation.”

“I told the Tiffany people there would be minimum publicity.”

The last glimpse I got of Morgan Jones, he looked shell-shocked.

Condon shrugged.

“Shit happens. You saw the street when we left. Looked like Iwo Jima. No way it’s not on the morning news. But Tiffany is a savvy organization. They’ll know how to spin it. Hell, bottom line, they showed how gutsy they are.”

CHAPTER 17 – COMA

It was almost dawn when I got home, my head still pounding.  I called my office and left a message with Abby telling her I was taking the day off.

“Don’t call me unless there is a nuclear attack,” I said.

I knew I was still too caffeinated and wired to sleep in a bed, so I sat in a recliner in my family room and turned on the TV. I found the cable channel devoted to covering deliberations in the United States Senate. The debate I watched was from the previous week, but it did the trick. I was able to nod off. Then my cell phone buzzed. It was just after 9AM and it was Abby.

“Is it the Russians or the Iranians,” I said, groggily.

‘What?”

“The nuclear attack.”

“It’s worse. I checked your other messages. One was from Father Zapotoski. He said he found out something and wanted to run it by you.”

I was annoyed.

“Damn it Abby!”

“Just listen. I called him back to tell him you’d be in touch later. No answer and for some reason I couldn’t leave a message. So I called the church and they told me he’s in the hospital. Intensive care.” She paused. “Apparent stroke or heart attack.” She emphasized the “apparent.”

***

Father Zapo was at Richmond Memorial Hospital in Dongan Hills. When I got to I.C.U., I still felt, and probably looked, so bad I was afraid they would try to admit me.

Isabella Donner was standing next to a resident who was reading a chart at Father Zapo’s bed. A nurse was adjusting something on one of the machines keeping the old priest going. I nodded at Isabella, who gave me a wan smile. I approached the doctor. His name tag said “Gallo.”

“How is he doing?”

He looked at Isabella.

“Mr. Rhode is a close personal friend,” she said. “You can speak freely.”

“Father Zapotoski has been this way since he was brought in,” Dr. Gallo said. “We don’t expect him to regain consciousness.”

“Has anyone been in to see him?”

“Just his pastor,” the nurse said, “and Miss Donner and some other ladies.”

“From the Rosary and Altar Society,” Isabella explained. “I don’t think he has any living relatives.”

I turned back to the doctor.

“What can you do for him?”

“Palliative care,” the doctor said, “and that’s about it. He’s under a DNR protocol. Even if he wasn’t, at his age I doubt that he could withstand the procedures necessary to reverse the damage.”

“Is he brain dead?”

“No. Far from it. His EEG isn’t too bad. But as long as he’s comatose we don’t really know what’s going on in there.”

“This was kind of sudden, wasn’t it?”

“When you’re 80, things can be very sudden. They tell me he smoked like a chimney and liked his vodka. Something had to give.”

Now I felt guilty about that second vodka I bought him at the Sleepy Hollow Inn. The nurse stepped away. Still, I lowered my voice.

“What about his blood work? Was it normal?”

“I don’t recall seeing anything out of the ordinary, other than protein and chemical anomalies common with stroke victims, lower potassium levels and that sort of thing. And, of course, some of the common medications he was on, typical of men his age. Why do you ask?”

“So, you didn’t do a full tox screen?”

“That wasn’t called for. Again, why do you ask? What do you suspect?”

“I think he may have been poisoned.”

Gallo looked at me and then at Isabella.

“Have you contacted the police?”

“I’m a little short of proof,” I said lamely. “What would it take to get you to look at the blood more closely?”

“That battery of tests is expensive,” Gallo said, somewhat embarrassed. “I’m not sure they would be covered by his insurance. If the police ordered it, that’s one thing. But other than that, I guess in the absence of any family someone in authority at the church would have to give permission.”

I knew it would take a miracle on the order of the loaves and fishes for that to happen.

“Doctor, if there is any chance that someone harmed Father,” Isabella said, “I’m sure you would want to know about it. Mr. Rhode is a detective. I’m sure his instincts can be relied upon. We were both close to Father Zapotoski. I know he would want you to do the tests.”

Gallo lowered his voice.

“Listen. You’re lucky. We have our own lab here. I know the tech guys. No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”

I thanked him and gave him my card.

“I’d appreciate a call if you find anything out, or if there is any change in his condition.”

“I might not be on duty, but I’ll let the nurses know,” he said.

***

Isabella and I left the hospital together. I walked her to her car.

“How did it happen?”

“He collapsed at the 7 AM mass. I only found out because Imogene called to ask me if I could spell her tomorrow if she came to visit.”

“I appreciate the support you gave me upstairs, Bella.”

“I just hope you’re wrong, Alton. Otherwise it’s too horrible to contemplate. I love Our Lady of Solace. I was born in Tottenville. It’s the only church I’ve ever known. To think someone might harm a priest. Well, it’s horrible.”

“Father Zapo called me. He said he had some new information. Do you have any idea what it was?”

“No. All I know is that he was excited about something.”

“I want to get into his room at the rectory. But I’d need a tank to get by Miss Bulger. Will you help me? I hate to ask. You’ve already gone out on a limb.”

“You think it has something to do with his suspicions, don’t you? Just like you don’t think he’s had a stroke, either.”

“Will you help me, Bella?”

“His door is locked. I don’t know where Father’s key is. The hospital may have it.  Monsignor and Imogene have spares, but I don’t know how you can get those. Mrs. Phung has one too, of course, but she doesn’t work Tuesdays.”

“Who is Mrs. Phung?”

“She is a combination cook and housekeeper, been there forever. Vietnamese. She may be older than Father Zapo, but nobody knows. Imogene wants to get rid of her because she’s hard of hearing and half blind, and misses more dust then she gets, but the Monsignor has a soft spot for her. He even puts up with her favorite dish, chicken with cashews.” Bella laughed. “Most of the time she forgets to put the cashews in it.”

“Let me worry about getting in the room, Bella. Will you help me?”

She hesitated.

“Yes. I’m due to work from 11:30 AM tomorrow so Imogene can come to the hospital. Monsignor has a Rotary meeting. Come to the rectory at noon. Call me from your car and I’ll let you know if the coast is clear. You will have at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half.”

***

When I got back to my office, Abby said, “Well?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Me neither.” She paused. “But he is an old man.”

“Yeah.”

“Course, it’s never a good sign when your client croaks.”

“He’s not dead yet. And he’s not really even my client anymore.”

“True. On both counts. But you get my meaning. I’ll get his file out for you.”

I called around to see if anyone else thought Father Zapo’s stroke was too convenient. The general consensus was of Abby’s “shit happens” variety. Cormac Levine, being a friend, managed to bump me up to the District Attorney himself.

“I owe you a lot, Alton, but I’d be wasting a favor on this. An 80-year-old priest in crappy health has a stroke and you want me to exhume the bodies of three men he thinks were murdered, presumably by a serial killer. He has no proof and no suspect. You drew a blank. Don’t think I don’t want to help, but I can’t do the impossible. A judge will laugh me out of court.”

“First off, you don’t owe me a thing, Mike. That’s not how I operate.”

There was a long pause.

“Just bring me something, Alton. Anything. I took some heat for you from two of the widows you spoke to. They wanted to know if you could be charged with harassment. And I’ll take more heat if you need it. But as regards your suspicions, legally I’m at a dead end.”

He was right, of course. All I had to go on was my gut. And Kalugin’s, of course. But I wasn’t sure that would carry much weight with a District Attorney. I had to count on Zapotoski’s blood work coming back positive.

Great, I was rooting for a priest being poisoned.

CHAPTER 18 – HOLY BURGLARY

As planned, I met Isabella just after noon the next day and she escorted me to Father Zapo’s room at the rectory. It was down a long hall at the rear of the ground floor. We passed a small library and a kitchen that smelled of cabbage.

Zapo’s door was indeed locked.

“You would think people trusted each other in a rectory,” I said.

“It’s the kids,” Bella said. “It’s a real problem. But how will you get in?”

I opened a small leather case I carried for just such a situation. A moment later, after inserting one of the tools of my trade, I heard a satisfactory click.

“The benefits of a misspent adulthood,” I said as the door swung open.

The priest’s room was larger than I expected, but colorless, furnished in Early American Goodwill. The single bed, neatly made, had a reading lamp clipped awkwardly to one of its metal posts. At the foot of the bed was an old footlocker that I suspected had been Zapotoski’s during his career in the Polish military. A chest of drawers stood next to the wall near the door and there was a night table on the other side of the bed. A beat-up lounger faced a small 19-inch TV on top of a small wicker stand in one corner of the room. If anything matched, it was by accident. There were two windows, between which was a small writing desk with a green-shaded banker’s lamp, pens and an old laptop. There was an open closet filled with clerical garb, as well as some “civilian” clothing: shoes, jackets and pants. The wooden floor was partially covered with two small area rugs, one brown; the other, browner. A door led to a small bathroom with a stall shower.

“It looks like he takes his vow of poverty seriously,” I said. “Where does the Monsignor sleep?”

“His suite is on the second floor,” Bella said. “She emphasized the word ‘suite’.”

We both heard the phone ring at the front desk.

“I’d better get back there,” she said.

“Don’t worry, Bella. This won’t take long.”

It didn’t. I’d done enough room searches to know where to look. Of course, an ex-intelligence officer might have a few obscure cubbyholes up his sleeve, but considering that Father Zapo had broadcast his investigation on everything but Facebook – at least I assumed he didn’t do that – I was pretty sure anything to be found would be in plain sight. Still, I was thorough. I looked under the bed, under the pillows, in the lamps, opened the bathroom cabinet and the back of the toilet. Nothing. I opened every drawer. Going through a priest’s underwear was a first for me. I checked all his other clothes. The only thing of note that I found was his cell phone, in an inside pocket of a jacket hanging in the closet. I opened it. It was dead. Without hesitating, I put it in my own pocket.

I went to the writing desk and rifled through the paperwork on top and in the single center drawer. Innocuous and religious. I opened the laptop, an old Dell, and booted it up. While I waited, I noticed the cell phone charger. I unplugged it and also put it in my pocket. When the laptop was booted, I opened up a MY DOCUMENTS folder. In it were perhaps 50 WORD docs, neatly arranged in three subfolders: FINANCES, RESEARCH and SERMONS. Everything was in English. I know kindergarteners who have 10 times as many folders and WORD files.

I had hopes for the RESEARCH folder but went through the other two first, on the assumption that an elderly man might accidentally drop a document in the wrong folder. It was an ageist assumption. Abby delighted in pointing out that I occasionally made the same mistake. I read every document in those folders, and found out that Father Zapo, not surprisingly, was poorer than a church mouse. But he could write a hell of a sermon.

I opened the RESEARCH folder. And was disappointed. It had the most documents, and all were related to Zapo’s “investigation.” But there was nothing there that he hadn’t already told me. No smoking chalice.

I checked the laptop’s recycle bin. It was empty. That was a bit unusual. Most people don’t empty their recycle bin unless it becomes too full. Father Zapo didn’t strike me as the type of computer user who had a lot to discard.

Isabella stuck her head in the door.

“The Monsignor just called. The Rotary meeting broke up early. He wanted to know if he could bring in a deli sandwich for me. He’s nice like that. I ordered one to stall him but he’ll be here in a half hour, maybe less.”

“What did you order?”

“Tuna on …. What the hell difference does it make!” She saw me smiling. “You’re impossible!”

“I’m almost done. But, listen, did Father Zapo have an email account? I can’t find one on this laptop.”

“No, I don’t think so. He used the house email, if at all. And then only for church business. Monsignor is very strict about computer use, ever since some kids snuck in and went on some raunchy sites.”

“Raunchy?”

“Hard-core porn.”

“Learn anything?”

She laughed.

“I was there when Imogene opened up some of the stuff they downloaded. I thought I would have to give her CPR.”

“That alone would qualify as porn.”

“Please, just hurry.”

But she was still laughing as she went down the hall.

I opened up an internet connection and checked recently visited sites. There were none. I also found that strange. I knew Father Zapo had searched the web to come up with some of the material he gave me. Of course, he might have used another computer in the rectory, or perhaps in a library. But I couldn’t ignore the possibility that someone had wiped his laptop.

I heard murmuring from down the hall. I stuck my head out the door. Monsignor Barilla and Miss Bulger, deep in conversation, were both headed my way. I assumed the College of Cardinals might show up next so I quietly locked the door and ran to a window, scooping up the laptop. Luckily, the window opened easily and silently. I dropped to the pavement of the rear parking lot, praying that no one was watching. I could see myself explaining to the cops why I was climbing out of a rectory window with a comatose priest’s laptop and cell phone.

As I drove away, I reflected on another first: I’d just burgled a rectory.

“Forget purgatory,” I said aloud. “I’m going to hell.”

CHAPTER 19 – CHILD’S PLAY

Sacrilege apparently stimulates the appetite. I was starving. But I wanted to have an expert look at the laptop. Killing two birds with one stone is a specialty of mine, so I drove to Wagner College on Grymes Hill. Twenty minutes later I was in Dave Clapper’s office in Ithan Hall, the school’s new administration building. Dave is the Chief of Staff for the college and he works directly for Spenser Bradley, the school’s Wagner’s president, whose office is a few feet away.

Dave used to run the Coast Guard base on Staten Island before retiring to a life of academia to work on another pension. A no-nonsense type who never puts up with bullshit and posturing, he was, naturally, despised by many professors and beloved by most students. After my final tour in Afghanistan, I had rehabbed various wounds at the Coast Guard base and when he moved over to Wagner he gave me full gym privileges to complete my recovery. Then, I did a huge favor for him and President Bradley by running a drug-dealing, sexually predatory professor named Pierce Lancaster out of town, saving the school huge embarrassment. The fact that Lancaster had his sights set on Alice Watts was a bonus. In any event, my temporary privileges were extended to a free lifetime membership. At the time, Dave said it was a no-brainer, because they didn’t expect me to live very long.

“What’s on the laptop?”

“Hardly anything,” I said. “I thought one of your whiz kids might be able to look it over and see if I missed something. I must have skipped the Windows for Dummies chapter on how to access permanently deleted files on a PC.”

“You watch too much N.C.I.S., Alt.”

“Great show.”

“Will there be anything a kid shouldn’t see?”

“A college kid? Be serious.”

“I don’t mean porn. I mean anything illegal.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why not go to the cops.”

“I stole the laptop from a church. I’m hoping to get it back before it’s missed.”

“Perhaps we should keep that between ourselves.”

He picked up his phone and 10 minutes later a gangly, long-haired kid wearing ripped jeans and a sweatshirt walked through the door.

“Brendan hacked into the school computer last semester, looking for tests.”

“I was just foolin’ around, Commander. Just to see if I could do it.”

Everyone on campus called Dave ‘Commander,’ even though he retired as a full captain in the Coast Guard.

Dave ignored him.

“They wanted to expel him, but I hate to see talent wasted. So now he does some odd jobs for me. Protects our computers from other idiots, mostly, as long as he keeps his nose clean.” He handed the laptop to the kid. “I want you to find out what might have been deleted from this.”

“Files and internet searches, especially,” I said. “How long?”

He opened the laptop and booted it. After hitting some keys and checking some drives, he said, “Child’s play. Half hour, max.”

“Good,” Dave said. “You can sit at my desk.” He looked at me. “Let’s head over to the Bear’s Den, Alton. I could use a cup of coffee. Brendan, try not to steal anything while we’re gone.”

“Aww, Commander.”

Like most colleges and universities, Wagner had several modern dining halls offering menus that Caligula’s chef would have had a hard time matching. The Bear’s Den wasn’t one of them. Located in the basement of the old administration building, it was a holdover from the days of caffeine and cholesterol, famous for its multilayered Grizzly Burgers, known by students as “Gristle Burgers.” The place was jammed. In the land of blind health conformity, the one-pound burger is king.

“How’s Alice, Alt?”

“Fine,” I mumbled through a mouthful of burger. Dave was nursing a black coffee.

“And you? Big Dom says you haven’t been yourself at the gym.”

Dom DeRenzi is Wagner’s Athletic Director, who, despite being married three times, believes he an expert on matters of the heart.

I shrugged, not the easiest thing to do when holding something dripping like a severed jugular.

“Going to visit her?”

“When she’s ready for a visit. She deserves some time to herself.”

Dave is a good guy. He let it drop. I really didn’t want to talk about Alice. It was tough enough being on campus, where I first met her. And where, later, I found out that she could be the one.

When we got back to Dave’s office, we found Brendan asleep in a chair, feet up on the desk.

“They can sleep on a picket fence,” Dave said, slapping the kid’s sneakers.

“Got some stuff,” Brendan said sitting up, instantly awake. “Figured you wanted to see them.” He handed Dave several sheets of paper, which he passed on to me. “Only computer I ever gashed that didn’t have a zillion porn websites cached away somewhere on its hard drive. In fact, it didn’t have many files or sites deleted. Basically just those I printed out. Considering how ancient it is, my guess it’s a factory refurbish, with the old hard drive wiped clean, or maybe a new one installed.”

That made sense. Like his cell phone, Father Zapo’s computer was probably a retread or hand-me-down.

“Can you tell when the files and sites were erased?”

Brendan gave me a “what century were you born in” look.

“I wrote it down on the top of the first page,” he said. “Everything was shit-canned yesterday.”

I looked at the sheet. Last night. When Father Zapo was tethered to machines in the hospital. I thanked the kid and slipped him $40, all I had on me, as I walked him to the door. He didn’t want to take it.

“Bail money,” I said. “For when you hack a Pentagon computer.”

He put it in his pocket, laughing.

I went back to Dave’s desk.

“I know that look,” he said.

“Yeah. A clue just walked up and bit me on the ass.”

I pulled up a chair and started to read the printouts. Before I got very far, my cell phone buzzed.

It was Dr. Gallo from Richmond Memorial.

Father Zapo had regained consciousness and asked for me.

CHAPTER 20 – MARYKNOLLS

When I got to I.C.U., Monsignor Barilla was huddling with Dr. Gallo. Isabella Donner stood apart from the two men, looking distraught. I went up to her. She was wearing jogging clothes. For the first time I noticed how athletic she looked.

“How is he doing?”

“He’s drifting in and out of consciousness,” she said. “We got here just as fast as we could when Dr. Gallo called but he had slipped away again.”

I patted her arm and walked over to the others. They turned at my approach. Barilla looked like he was annoyed to see me.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Rhode?” he asked.

“I called him,” Gallo interjected. “Father Zapo asked for him by name. Frankly, I’m stunned.  He must have a will of iron. But he’s very weak and his vitals are morgue worthy.” He looked at me. “I’m glad you didn’t waste any time getting here.”

“Did he say anything, Doc?”

“Nothing I could understand, Mr. Rhode. Then he went out again.”

“Wode!”

We all turned at the sound. The old priest was awake and struggling to sit up. Some of the machines he was tethered to started chirping excitedly. He stared right at me.

“Wode!”

“Nurse!”

Gallo and a nurse who ran over gently pushed the priest down as I leaned over him.

“I’m here, Father. What did you want to tell me?”

“This is not the time, Rhode.” It was Barilla. “Leave the poor man alone.”

“Back off, padre,” I said harshly. “Time is what we don’t have.”

I leaned down.

“Mary knows!”

The stroke had obviously affected his speech. With one side of his mouth useless, the words were distorted.

“I didn’t get that.” I said, “Did either of you?”

“Mary knows!”

“Mary knows what, Father?”

He became more agitated. The effort to speak more clearly was exhausting him.

“Knows! Mary knows!”

I looked at the others. They all shook their heads. Suddenly Father Zapo let out a gurgle. His face lost all expression and his eyes roiled back in his head. The machine alarms were now in symphony. His grip on my arm suddenly relaxed and he fell back against his pillow. The doctor and nurse elbowed me away from the bed.

“Wait outside,” Gallo barked.

We stood in the hallway. With a “Do Not Resuscitate” on Father Zapotoski’s chart, we didn’t have to wait long.

Gallo came out.

“He’s gone.”

“Oh, no,” Isabella said, and began to cry. Barilla put his arm around her.

“I know you and he were close, Miss Donner,” he said gently. “It was a blessing you were here at the end. He really had no one else.”

“The poor man,” she said. “The poor sweet man.” She looked at us. “Does anyone have a tissue? I must look a sight. I didn’t even have time to change.” None of us had one but she quickly said, “Don’t worry, I saw a ladies’ room down the hall. I’ll only be a moment.”

She walked away and Barilla turned on me.

“I begged you not to excite him.”

“Don’t blame him, Monsignor,” Gallo said. “Medically, it wouldn’t have made any difference. He was determined to say something to Rhode. That was possibly the only thing keeping him going this long.”

Barilla looked at me.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rhode. This is very upsetting.”

“Forget it. But what was that other thing he was saying? Mary Knows? Do you have any idea what that means?”

Isabella rejoined us. She was no longer crying.

“I don’t think that was it,” Barilla said. “It was ‘Maryknolls.’ It’s a religious order of sisters that does wonderful work in the third world. Father Zapotoski spent years in the missions. Africa, the Pacific. We sometimes forget what a dedicated priest he was. At least I sometimes forgot. He was probably remembering his time with them. Well, I’m sure he will be seeing some of them in heaven.” He turned to the doctor. “I would like to give him the last rites, and say a few prayers over him.”

“Of course, Monsignor. Let me tell the nurses.”

“Miss Donner,” Barilla said, “I have to stay here a while. The parish and diocese will, of course, handle all the final arrangements. Can you go back to the rectory and tell Imogene what’s happened. Perhaps you can help her make some phone calls to people who might want to know. And tell her to start on Father’s obituary for the paper.”

“Of course I will, Monsignor.”

He looked at me.

“Mr. Rhode, Isabella came with me in my car. Would you be so kind and take her back to the parish.”

Before we left, Gallo pulled me aside.

“It will be a couple of days before I have anything definitive from the lab,” he said.

***

On the drive to Our Lady of Solace, Bella asked me if I could stop by her home so she could freshen up and change into something more appropriate for work.

“It’s only two blocks from the rectory,” she said.

When we got to her house, a neat two-story Cape, she asked me in. I said I had some calls to make and would wait in the car. Isabella came out 15 minutes later, wearing a grey skirt, white blouse and black jacket. She had brushed her hair and put on a touch of makeup. She looked very attractive and I said so.

“It’s hard to look good in a sweat suit,” she said.

“Don’t sell yourself short. You looked pretty terrific in that as well, Bella.”

She smiled at me and I suddenly realized that there was a sexual vibration between us. Jesus. I changed the subject quickly, asking her if she knew of anyone who had been in Father Zapo’s room after he went into the hospital.

“There are people in and out of the rectory all the time. But, again, his door is locked.”

“I got in.”

“I don’t think everyone has your skill set, Alton.”

When we got to the rectory, Bella turned to me and said, “By the way, how did you get out of here yesterday? I almost had a stroke myself when the Monsignor and Imogene walked down the hall. They told me they were going into Father Zapo’s room to get his missal to bring back to the hospital.”

“The window. I’m glad I was on the first floor.”

She shook her head. I didn’t tell her about the computer and cell phone. I’d already made her more of an accomplice than I wanted. Of course, I might need her help returning the items, which apparently had not yet been missed.

But I didn’t want her worrying about it. I said goodbye and then went home. I showered, shaved and went to sleep. This time, I didn’t need the help of the Senate.

CHAPTER 21 – OH, CANADA

Back in my office the next morning, I started going through the printouts Brendan had given me.

Father Zapo had been searching the Internet, visiting various websites devoted to crime news. He had downloaded several articles that dealt with multiple murders where the victims had been poisoned. He apparently restricted his search to the previous decade. There were four incidents that caught his eye, one each in Australia, Canada, England and Belgium. In all but one case, the murderers, all women, had been apprehended.

The unsolved case was the one in Canada, and from the sketchy news articles it appeared that the local authorities were not even sure there had been more than one murder. Five years ago, an Ontario woman named Mary Naulls had disappeared after the mysterious death of a local priest in a small town named Cashman about an hour north of Toronto. He, indeed, had been poisoned and the Naulls woman was the main suspect, since the priest had left her house shortly before dying and she was a scientist who worked with toxic materials at a nearby laboratory. The fact that the poison was unknown to local authorities but had characteristics similar to agents she had ready access to forced an obvious conclusion. However, subsequent searches of her home and laboratory provided no hard evidence. The case against Mary Naulls was described as “compelling but circumstantial.”

Mary Naulls? Why did that name sound familiar?

“Jesus Christ!”

I said so loudly Abby stuck her head in my office.

“You OK, boss?”

“Mary Naulls. We thought he said ‘Maryknolls.’ He was saying Mary Naulls.”

“Who?”

“Father Zapo.”

She shook her head and went back to her desk. I went back to reading.

At first the police naturally considered that there might have been other victims, and exhumed the bodies of three men. The exhumations caused quite a flap because toxicology reports on the bodies came back negative. There were presumably a lot of angry relatives. When it came out that the dead priest had been abusing children, it was assumed that Naulls, known to be religious and active in the church where the priest worked, had simply taken matters into her own hands and rid the community of a predatory pedophile. She had disappeared completely, although there was a brief sighting of someone fitting her description on a train heading to the United States. But that was well after the fact. The train’s final destination was New York City, but no one could be sure where the woman, if she even was Mary Naulls, got off.

There was nothing else of interest in the clips. I spotted Zapo’s cell phone and charger where I had thrown them on my desk. I plugged them in and opened up his recent-call list. There were so few calls I considered the possibility that someone had also wiped his phone clean. But there was one unfamiliar area code: 905. I looked it up on my laptop. It was an Ontario number. I called it. A woman answered.

“Constable Barrett. O.P.P.,  Cashman.”

Ontario Provincial Police. If any number should have been deleted, it was this one. The phone hadn’t been touched.

“My name is Rhode. I’m a private investigator in New York working on a case that may have a connection to your jurisdiction.”

“What’s the connection?”

“Constable, I’m not sure. I’m just fishing. But tell me, is the name Mary Naulls familiar to you?”

There was a long pause.

“I think you should speak to Sergeant Preston, sir. Please hold.”

I’ve been on shorter “holds” with a credit card company. When Preston finally came on the line, he said, “What’s this about Mary Naulls, eh?”

I told him.

“We’ve already spoken to this priest of yours, Mr. Rose.”

“It’s Rhode. R-H-O-D-E. I know you spoke to him. That’s how I got this number.”

“We told him that his so-called suspicions made no sense. No disrespect to a man of the cloth, mind you, but just between us, I think the man is off his noggin’. Sounded a bit dotty. How old is he, anyway, eh?”

“Eighty.”

“Of course.”

“Look, I was inclined to doubt him, too, but now he’s in the hospital, a possible poisoning victim himself, and someone deleted files on his computer related to the Naulls case.”

“You’re sure about the poison?”

“No, not yet. I’m waiting on a tox report.”

I didn’t mention that it was unofficial.

“How about when, or if, you are sure, you call us back, eh.”

“What about the missing computer files?”

“If they were deleted, how do you know that?”

Apparently, I wasn’t dealing with the brightest bulb in the O.P.P. chandelier.

“I had the files recovered by a forensic computer specialist.”

I made it sound official. Preston was unimpressed.

“Have you gone to your local coppers with this?”

“Not yet. I wanted to get all my ducks in order first. That’s why I called you.”

“Ducks? What does this have to do with ducks, eh?”

I should have said Canadian geese. I soldiered on.

“Are you actively pursuing the Naulls case?”

“Of course. It’s an open homicide. No statute of limitations on murder in Canada, you know. The law is the law. Same as in your country, eh.”

I wanted to say that I thought there should be a law against using “eh” but I didn’t want to antagonize Preston.

“Making any progress?”

“It’s being handled from headquarters in Toronto. Now, I’m a busy man, Mr. Rose.”

“It’s Rhode. What can you tell me about the men who were exhumed during the Naulls investigation?”

“Nothing. Other than that they should have been left to rest in peace. Their families were outraged. Justifiably, in my opinion. They died of natural causes.”

“You’re sure?’

“Coroner was sure, eh. Is that all?”

“Let me guess. Heart attacks.”

“I believe that was the determination. Happens all the time to men in their 60’s.”

Bingo.

“I’d like to come up and see you,” I said.

“Can’t stop you. But it will be a waste of your time, and mine. Better make it quick, though. I leave on a fortnight’s holiday in three days. I’ll switch you out to Barrett. She handles my appointments.”

Before I could ask why a rural “copper” had to make appointments, I was talking to the woman constable.

“He can see you Friday afternoon at 4 PM,” she told me.

“I’ll be there.”

I called Cormac at the D.A.’s office.

“That’s interesting,” he said after I finished. “All in their 60’s.”

“Will you guys move on it now?”

“I’ll do what I can, but it will take more than some missing computer files. Six dead guys in their 60’s ain’t that much more shocking than three. Don’t forget they are a thousand miles and years apart. It would be nice if we could prove your priest didn’t have a run-of-the-mill stroke.”

“I may have some more for you in a couple of days.” I told him what Gallo promised me he would try to do through the hospital lab. “In the meantime, I’ll send Abby over with everything I do have.”

“Worried about someone slipping a poisoned olive into your martini?”

After I hung up, I went online and booked a flight out of Newark for Toronto. Then I helped Abby put together the file for Mac. He was old school, so I wanted him to have it in print, as well as on a flash drive. We also made copies for my trip to see Preston, although I suspected that the only way I’d make an impression on the dim sergeant would be to drop a corpse on his desk.

“Cops know you got this stuff robbing a church?”

“It was a rectory.”

“Oh, that’s real good. They’d probably let you slide on burglarizing a rectory. But if they give you any problems, my brother can get you a good lawyer.”

It was almost 7 PM when we finished, so I took Abby out for dinner at the Rosebank Tavern.

“So, the priest thinks that there is a connection between this Canadian woman and what may be happening in his parish here on Staten Island,” Abby said as we dug into our Caprese salads. “Just how did he reach that conclusion, boss?”

“Perhaps he heard something in the confessional. Maybe he had an overactive imagination. He was a former spy. Maybe he saw conspiracies everywhere. He was an old guy. He seemed sharp enough, but maybe he wasn’t all there. It doesn’t matter. Someone poisoned him and wiped his laptop clean of any references tying the Naulls case to his investigation of suspicious deaths in his parish.”

“I know you hate that word, but it could be a coincidence. Another killer who just wanted to erase any hint of a crime.”

As a former Army MP, Abby was a perfect devil’s advocate.

“It doesn’t do me any good to think that way, Abs. I have to eliminate Naulls first.”

“How old would this broad be now?”

“She was 40 when she left Cashman, five years ago.”

“Lots of 45-year-old women in Tottenville.”

“I don’t think she would be married. Mary Naulls wasn’t the type, apparently. She would need freedom to have her affairs and bump off her lovers. Tough to do with a husband. I also think that, given the religious fervor attributed to her, she’d probably be involved in church activities at Our Lady of Solace.

That would limit the pool of suspects.”

“And just how are you going to narrow that pool down without making a damn fool out of yourself? The church is likely to run an exorcism on your ass.”

Our pastas came. Puttanesca for me, Alfredo for Abby.

“I think I know someone who might be able to help me. Isabella Donner. She already knows some of what is going on.”

“How can you trust anyone in the parish?”

“She’s been there all her life. And she’s too young to fit the profile. But I’m not going to do anything until I find out more about Mary Naulls.”

“If this nutcase relocated here five years ago,” Abby said, “she’d need a year or two to get established before she killed anyone. Otherwise she might attract attention, being the new gal in town. What was the interval between the deaths of each man here?”

“Approximately a year apart.”

“The timing is right. Speaking of killing, when did the last guy die?”

I knew what she was getting at.

“Three months ago. If it’s Naulls, and she did kill Clifton, Lydecker and Spinelli, I have time.”

“Unless one or more of them was really a natural death, or there are others you don’t know about. That would screw up any time frame. And wasn’t the time span between alleged murders in Canada longer?”

“It was about 18 months.”

“So, she may be speeding it up. She’s older. Maybe thinking she’s running out of time, looks-wise. Or maybe she gets bored more easily. She could also be planning to beat feet again, and start offing men elsewhere, in which case you may not have any time at all. She might decide to kill one for the road, so to speak.”

***

I was home by 8:30 and looking forward to a full night’s sleep.

I made myself a martini to relax. I had opted for a lemon twist when I recalled Mac’s last remark about a poisoned olive. He was trying to be funny, but it occurred to me that if someone had indeed tried to knock off Father Zapo, he might not be the only target.

It was true that he hadn’t been very discreet in his inquiries, but with most people dismissing his suspicions, a murderer wouldn’t be that concerned – except with those people who might believe him. I was one, and Isabella Donner was another.

I realized that I didn’t have her phone number. I went down to the computer in the alcove off my kitchen and tried to look it up, while at the same time calling the rectory. Her home number was unlisted and I got an answering machine at the rectory. I decided to drive out to Isabella’s house in Tottenville. I didn’t want to frighten her, but I wanted to warn her to be cautious.

I brought Father Zapo’s cell phone and laptop with me.

Might as well tell her about them. Maybe she could get them back in his room before anyone missed them.

CHAPTER 22 - BRUCE

I had to park on the street because there was a car behind Isabella’s in the driveway. I didn’t want to disturb her if she had company, but since I was there to warn her to be careful I wanted to make sure her company’s visit was benign. It was probably just one of the other church ladies over for tea. Hell, maybe a drink. I hoped it was for a drink. She might invite me in, and I’m not that crazy about tea.

I left the cell phone and laptop in a shopping bag in my car and walked up to the front door. I was about to ring the bell when I heard a woman cry out. I tried the door. It was locked. Another scream. It sounded like it came from the back of the house. I pulled my gun and sprinted toward the source of the cries. There was a double glass door off a rear patio leading into what looked like a den or small library. It was dark but from moonlight and light coming into the room from elsewhere in the house I could see a man on top of Isabella Donner on the carpet. His pants were around his ankles and he was thrusting wildly into to her. She was beating on his chest, moaning. I stepped back and kicked the doors open. Glass from the panels shattered.

The man turned at the crash and looked at me. There was a table next to the door with a lamp. I turned it on and reached down and grabbed him by the hair and yanked him to his feet. I leveled the gun at his head. There was a look of sheer terror on his face. And humiliation. I soon saw why. My intervention had come at an inopportune time for him.  He was gripping his erection, trying to stop the unstoppable. He was making a mess and wouldn’t be a threat to anyone for a while.

“Alton! What are you doing?”

I turned to Isabella. She also looked shocked. Then she stood slowly, completely naked. She had a remarkable body with legs, as they say, longer than a Ken Burns documentary. Her breasts, high and firm, were splotched with red, her nipples fully erect. She did not try to cover anything. The man whimpered behind me. He was looking at the trousers now bunched pathetically at his feet.

“It’s all right, Bruce,” Bella said calmly. “I know this man.”

Uh, oh.

She turned and walked out of the room. It was the name that did it. I looked at Bruce.

“Hello, Congressman,” I said. “If it’s any consolation, I voted for you.”

Bruce Purvice, who represented Staten Island and part of Brooklyn in the House of Representatives, pulled up his pants. And zipped. Too quickly, given his flagging, but still impressive, arousal. He cried out, cursing, as metal met flesh. But he finally got dressed and then for the next half hour told me what a fucking imbecile I was, and how he knew every law enforcement officer and regulator in the Western Hemisphere. He was going to ruin me.

I let him rant. I owed him that much. But finally I had my fill. I got him to stop shouting at me by asking if all those powerful people he mentioned also knew his wife.

“You might want to get those trousers cleaned before you go home,” I added, perhaps uncharitably.

He left shortly after that.

***

I was in Bella’s kitchen. While she showered, I’d gone out to the car to get the cell phone and laptop and was now nursing a water glass full of scotch from a bottle I found in a cabinet. The situation seemed to call for it. Finally, she walked in barefoot, rubbing a small white towel through her hair. She looked fresh and lovely, with a post-coital glow I recognized.

“Bella, I’m sorry.”

“Can I have one of those,” she said.

I fixed her a drink while she put on a pot of coffee. While the coffee brewed she sat in one of the two tall wrought-iron ice cream chairs that flanked a glass-top table. I sat opposite her.

“I can’t be mad at you,” she said, draining half her scotch. “I guess it did sound like I was being murdered.”

She put her drink down and leaned forward to put a comforting hand on my wrist. Her robe slipped open, revealing one breast. She saw where my eyes traveled and slowly closed the gap with her free hand. She laughed. “It’s not like you haven’t seen them before.”

“It’s none of my business, Bella, but you must know he’s married and has four kids.” My voice sounded a little strange to me. “And runs all his campaigns on family values.”

“I guess you won’t vote for him again.”

“I’m thinking of you.”

“You thought you were saving my life, and now you want to save my soul? You were right the first time. It’s none of your business.” She got up. “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black is fine.”

“I’m sorry,” she said as she brought two mugs back to the table. “I’m just being bitchy. But it’s complicated. Hell, I think it’s a moot point now. I doubt Bruce will get over what happened.”

She walked to her refrigerator and took out butter and something wrapped in aluminum foil. She grabbed two small plates and a knife from a rack next to the sink.

“Some people smoke after sex,” she said, unwrapping the foil. “I eat. It’s soda bread. Mrs. Mullens, one of my neighbors, makes it. Have you ever had any?”

I happen to love soda bread.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to insult her,” I said.

“Do you really think I’m in danger because I helped Father Zapo?”

I reached into the shopping bag and brought out the laptop and cell phone.

“These are both Father Zapo’s. I took them from his room. Someone wiped files from his hard drive after he went into the hospital. That worries me.” I didn’t tell her that I’d recovered some files. That would be dangerous information for her to know, if she was indiscreet. “Does anyone know you copied files and articles for him?”

She thought about it, sipping coffee from the mug she was holding with two hands.

“I don’t think so. He wanted it kept quiet. I think he wanted to protect me from retribution from Imogene and the Monsignor. He wasn’t supposed to use the copier for that sort of thing.” She paused. “No, I don’t think anyone would connect me to what he was doing.” Suddenly, she looked concerned. “But you are an obvious target!”

“I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, but that often comes with my job. You didn’t sign up for any of this. I want you to be careful. Can you get the cell phone and laptop back in the rectory without anyone noticing?”

“I don’t see why not. I might not be able to get in Father’s room, but I can leave them in the library under some old magazines. He was always so forgetful no one will think anything of it.”

I hesitated. But I was pretty certain she was right about not being in danger.

“You know most of the women in the parish who are active in church groups. I’m looking for someone, between 45 and 50, who has lived here five or so years. Almost certainly unmarried. Undoubtedly attractive for her age. Could you make me a list?”

“It won’t be a big list,” she said, laughing. “I guess I can leave Imogene off it. Oh, God. I’m still being a bitch.”

***

Bella walked me to the front door.

“I’ll send someone over first thing in the morning to fix the back door. Are you sure you will be all right tonight?”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll lock the library’s interior door.” She laughed. “I’ll be safer than I was before you smashed your way in.”

“Again, I’m sorry I messed things up for you, Bella.”

Then she did something that took me by surprise. She put her arms around my neck and kissed me. Her robe fell open. She pressed her breasts into my chest and my hands instinctively went around her and I cupped her buttocks. The blood was roaring in my head but I finally managed to push her away. We were both breathing heavily.

“Bella,” I said in a voice that sounded far away. “I can’t.”

“Why? I know you find me attractive.” As if to prove her point she pushed her pelvis forward in to my groin. “Obviously.”

“You are beautiful, Bella. And desirable. But I’m involved with someone. I don’t know where it’s going, but I want to give it a chance. If it’s any consolation, I must be out of my goddamn mind.”

She looked at me, more with curiosity than disappointment. Then she smiled.

“Tell me, Alton, do you always get your man? Or woman?”

“Always.”

“So do I.”

I couldn’t help but think that Alice had picked the wrong time to leave me to my own devices. I quickly banished the thought.

CHAPTER 23 – SERGEANT PRESTON

I went home to change and take a cold shower. Then I summoned a car service to take me to the airport. When you factor in the tolls, daily parking fees and aggravation of taking your own car to the airport, it’s not even a close call.

The next morning I caught a noon United Airlines nonstop to Toronto and rented a car for the hour drive to Cashman. I had made an appointment to see Sergeant Preston at 4 PM in the Ontario Provincial Police barracks 10 miles north of the town. It was a pleasant drive. Once out of the Toronto environs, the road leading to Cashman passed through a beautiful landscape of mixed forests, meadows, ponds, streams and wetlands.

The town itself was miniscule, and I had no trouble finding the police station.

“You just missed him, Mr. Rhode,” the female officer at the front desk informed me. “And I don’t expect him back before morning.”

She was a good-looking young woman with close-cropped brunette hair and a small, pointed nose. The name plate on her desk said “Constable A. Barrett.” I looked at my watch. It was 3:43PM.

“How could I just miss him? I’m early. And I had an appointment.”

“Well, you will have to come back in the morning.” She bent her head to some paperwork.  “He was called away. Police business.”

I was dismissed. I don’t like being dismissed. I stood there for several minutes just staring at the top of her head. Finally, she looked at me.

“Is there anything else, sir?”

“I just flew in from New York. My arms are tired. Perhaps you can call Sgt. Preston and tell him I’m here.”

She gave me a wintry smile.

“It wouldn’t do any good. The Sergeant will be unavailable until tomorrow morning. Come back at 9 AM.”

I wondered what kind of police business could be so damn important in Cashman, Ontario.

“You mean he wouldn’t respond to an emergency?”

“Is it an emergency, sir?”

She had me there. I left, Yankee tail tucked between my legs.

I had passed a Holiday Inn on the way to my non-appointment. I checked in and picked up a couple of tourist brochures from a stand near the front desk. I like reading them when visiting a new area. They can often tell you a lot about a place.

When I got to my room there was a couple entering another one just down the hallway. The man had a florid face and a handlebar moustache. The woman had the face of a moose and a chest that could have been set up as a table for eight. They were laughing as they entered their room. Handlebar had his beefy hand on her ass.

I unpacked and took a shower. After I dressed, I poured myself a scotch from an airline bottle in the small room fridge and read my brochures. There was apparently a lot to do in the surrounding area, if you liked to fish or shoot furry animals. The only other activity that sounded vaguely interesting was the Cashman Autumn Fair “held annually since 1884 and famous throughout Ontario for attractions that include crafts and antiques; vegetable and flower shows; exhibits devoted to cattle, goat, sheep, poultry and rabbit shows; tractor and heavy horse pulls; a demolition derby; a rodeo, and Celtic entertainment.” I was actually sorry I missed it.

I went down to the bar and ordered a Labatt, the Canadian brew that never disappoints. The bar and adjoining restaurant were empty and from talking to the bartender I quickly found out that, when there wasn’t a fair going on, there were basically only four things to do in town.

“Two of them are eating and drinking.”

“What’s the other two?”

“Not eating and not drinking.”

He pulled me another beer and set out some peanuts.

“Well,” I said, “I spotted at least one guy upstairs who found something else to do. Maybe he just got lucky.”

The bartender laughed.

“Luck has nothing to do with that.”

“What do you mean?”

He just smiled.

“Hungry? Try our restaurant. You can beat the dinner rush.”

“Dinner rush?”

He laughed.

“Believe it or not, we have the best kitchen in Cashman. Try the pike before it runs out. It’s fresh.”

“I’m sure.”

He looked offended.

“Hey. I caught it myself this morning. Big bastard. Thought it was a fuckin’ muskie at first.”

I left him a sizable tip to assuage his fisherman’s feelings and took my beer into the dining room, determined to avoid the pike, which tends to be bony. As I was the only patron in the place, I didn’t want to depend upon the lone waitress being handy with the Heimlich Maneuver. I would probably have to settle for a mooseburger.

The waitress gave me a menu.

“Try the pike,” she said.

There it was, listed as a special: Pike Quenelles, with Chicken Liver Tambale in a Wild Mushroom Tomato Sauce. Was it possible? Not a moose, but a mousse?

“Our chef is from Quebec,” she said, hopefully.

“Do you have a wine list?” I said, just as hopefully.

It was one of the best meals I’d ever eaten. Set off with roasted potatoes, asparagus and a bottle of decent chardonnay, the ground-up pike, mixed with eggs, flour, butter, cream and cheese, was Paris-worthy.

I went to my room, watched a hockey game break out during a fight and fell asleep, sated and slightly drunk.

***

The next morning I was back at the police station at 9 AM sharp. Constable Barrett was again on the desk.

“The sergeant will see you as soon as he’s free. He said to tell you that since you don’t have an appointment, it may be a while.”

There was absolutely nothing to be said to that, so I found a seat and waited. At 10 AM, her phone buzzed.

“You can go right in,” she said. As I passed her, she had the decency to say, “I’m sorry.”

Sgt. Preston, wearing a crisp blue uniform, had his back to me when I entered his office. He was putting pins into a map on a corkboard behind him. Probably some appointments he was planning to miss.

“Take a seat,” he ordered. “I’ll be right with you.”

I sat. And waited a full five minutes. He finally turned around. I laughed.

“What’s so funny?’

“Police business.”

He gave me a stern look, which is hard to do when you have a handlebar moustache.  He sat in a large, high-backed, brown leather swivel chair that I suspected wasn’t government-issued.

“Police business is serious business, laddie, though I expect your kind wouldn’t know that. Let me see your credentials.”

I love when people call me “laddie.” And I’m really fond of “your kind.” I opened my wallet, took out my license and passed it across to him. He looked at it so long I thought perhaps he had a stroke. I thought about asking him to touch his nose or stick out his tongue – the only two stroke signs I remembered – but instead took the time to size him up. Hell, he studied my “credentials” so long I could have measured him for a three-piece suit.

Preston was a big man, maybe six-two, with a paunch and thick reddish hair. His nose showed early signs of too much drink. Eventually, he handed my license back. Or, rather, he flipped it on his desk, where I had to lean forward to retrieve it.

“This isn’t the United States,” he said with a smirk. “You have no privileges here.”

“Hell, I don’t have many privileges back home. I’m just looking for some information.”

“About what?”

“Well, Sarge, as I explained to the lady Mountie on the phone before I flew up here, I’m investigating a possible homicide back in New York that may be related to the disappearance of a woman who lived here. Her name is Mary Naulls. I was hoping you could help me out.”

He didn’t like me calling him “Sarge.” I didn’t care. He thought he had the high ground. I would soon disabuse him of that notion.

“We are officially known as the Ontario Provincial Police,” he huffed. “Totally separate from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who have no jurisdiction in Ontario.”

“Sorry. I should have realized that when I didn’t see your horse parked outside. Anyway, what can you tell me about Mary Naulls.”

He leaned forward and put his hands on his desk.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I believe you were informed that your trip here would be a waste of time. You should have listened.”

“Her disappearance was investigated by your department, wasn’t it?’

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Well, in whatever manner, I’d like to know what you found out.”

“It wasn’t my case.”

“It was somebody’s case, Preston. Maybe you don’t have horses, but you do keep records don’t you? I think I even spied a computer or two lying around. Perhaps I can talk to the officer who was involved in the investigation.”

He was seething. He was a big deal in this town and wasn’t used to “laddies” pulling his chain.

“I don’t like my officers talking to private detectives. In fact, I don’t like private detectives snooping around. Especially wise-mouth Yanks, eh.”

I gave him my most disarming smile.

“Just for the record, Sarge, we can’t call ourselves private detectives in New York. I’m a private investigator. But I can certainly understand why you might not like me snooping around. I might interfere with your moose humping.”

He looked confused.

“Moose hunting? I don’t hunt. Now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.”

I was being dismissed again. I stayed seated.

“I can have you escorted out of here, mate. If you resist, I’ll have your arrested, eh.”

I crossed my legs and started whistling. I don’t know the Canadian national anthem and I couldn’t remember Celine Dion’s latest, so I made do with “Waltzing Matilda.” The sun has long since set on the British Empire, but I thought I might win points for remembering the good old days.

Preston angrily punched a button on his phone.

“Constable, come in here.”

“Does the delectable Constable Barrett know that you left early yesterday to have your hockey stick polished at the Holiday Inn,” I said. “I bet she does. I bet a lot of people know. They’re afraid of you. You think you have this shithole town by the balls because you’re the top cop. But I have you by the balls. I’m a legitimate investigator backtracking what might be a serial killer who was right under your big fat nose. You blew me off yesterday to get laid on police time. Do you think I fell off a Labatt truck? I know the Mounties don’t have provincial jurisdiction in Ontario. But they do have Federal jurisdiction and might be interested to learn what kind of asshole is running things here. The Toronto media might, too. By the way, now that I have a close up, I think one side of your moustache is a tad longer than the other, eh.”

I couldn’t resist the “eh.” I heard the door open behind me.

“Yes, Sergeant?”

Sergeant Preston’s face was even redder now. I thought a stroke was now a real possibility. He visibly swallowed.

“Uh, Annie, could you get us a couple of coffees?”

“Black,” I said. “Eh.”

CHAPTER 24 – DESK JOCKEY

On the way out, I stopped by the front desk, where Constable Barrett was just getting off the phone with Preston.

“I’m to show you everything we have on Mary Naulls,” she said. “Please follow me.”

“Who is going to handle the desk?”

“We don’t get many visitors.”

“I’m not surprised.”

She led me to a small room, which looked the same as every small room in every police station on the planet. Dirty tile floor, metal table and chairs, gray paint. There was no large one-way mirror on the wall. It was probably where they gave the third degree to mink poachers. She left me but was soon back with a small file and a laptop. She sat down across the table from me.

“Do O.P.P. constables typically get coffee for their superiors?”

“What business is it of yours?”

She handed me the file and started booting up the computer. I started reading. I saw the name of the investigating officer.

“You caught the Naulls case, Constable Barrett?”

“I was assigned to it.”

Her face was a blank, but I detected an undercurrent of bitterness in her voice. I continued reading. It wasn’t a thick file, but it was thorough. When I finished, I said, “So, you didn’t think she only poisoned the priest?”

“We could never prove that she did poison him.”

“What about the blood test?’

“There was a compound in his blood that was new to us. New to everyone, in fact. The Medical Examiner said it was suspicious, but maybe it was just the result of the priest’s regular medications reacting to all the alcohol in his blood. He was properly soused. The official cause of death was a heart attack brought on by an arrhythmia.”

“Come on, Constable. The priest leaves her house and drops dead. She works with poisons. Who do you suspect? Colonel Mustard Gas in the library?”

That got a smile out of her. It was a nice smile. I glanced at her left hand. No ring. I’m the kind of guy who always does that with a pretty woman, no matter what the circumstances. If I’m put in front of a firing squad and a gal offers me a final cigarette, I’ll check her hand. Sue me.

“Who are these other four men you mention in your report? You labeled their deaths as suspicious.”

She hesitated.

“I believe Preston the Magnificent told you to give me your full cooperation.”

That got an even bigger smile.

“Three of them died in the five years following Mary Naulls’s arrival in Cashman, all suddenly about a year and a half apart.”

“Did she know the men?”

“It’s likely. They were all active in the same parish, Holy Rosary. It would have been hard for them not to know one another. But the men were all married and we could find no traces of anything other than a casual relationship between Naulls and them.”

“They were in their 60’s?”

“Yes. Is that important?”

“It fits a pattern. What about the fourth man?””

“A guard at LexGen, the lab she worked at. But he was a lot older, in his 70’s.”

“Let me guess. A heart attack.”

“Yes.”

“When did he die?”

“The day we think she fled.”

I was incredulous.

“And no one else but you thought that was unusual.”

“There was no sign that she had gone to the lab. Nothing was missing. That was enough for Preston, who was handling the investigation.”

“But not for you.”

“The security cameras are fake,” she said. “The only person who would see her at the lab on Sunday was the guard, now dead. How hard would it be for her to take some weird chemicals from the lab and replace them with other weird chemicals?”

Every jurisdiction needs a savvy cop like Barrett.

“What did you do?”

“Went over Preston’s head, to our boss, Staff Sergeant Wallace. He went to the local prosecutor and we got all the bodies exhumed. It was a total cock-up. There was no trace of any poison. That caused quite a flap. Cost the local prosecutor his job. And Wallace was transferred to Sturgeon Falls.”

“Not a promotion, I take it.”

“Next stop, the bloody North Pole.”

“And Moustache Preston became top dog.”

She nodded.

“And you became a desk jockey.”

“That would have happened anyway. Preston doesn’t have a high opinion of female police officers.”

“And the Naulls case was deep-sixed.”

“Yeah. The clincher was a letter we got claiming that Father Richter had sexually abused children for years.”

“Anonymous?”

“Of course. Mailed from New York. Albany. My guess is that Mary Naulls sent it on her way south. But it turned out to be true. Kids came out of the woodwork. It was a black eye on the community and the general consensus was that if Richter was killed by Mary Naulls, he only got what he deserved.”

“What about the other men? Did they get what they deserved?”

“You have to understand. We had no absolute proof Richter or anyone else was poisoned. Naulls had disappeared into thin air. Even if we found her, any decent solicitor could have gotten her off. Besides, Preston doesn’t like complications. And the case had already cost two careers. He likes his job. It gives him certain …. privileges.”

We exchanged a look.

“I’m surprised the sarge is being so cooperative,” she said. “How did you do it?”

“He’s arrogant. Or incautious. Or both. He should use a motel farther from town to bop the local ungulates.”

Constable Barrett put her hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh.

“You mean Mrs.,” she stopped before she said the woman’s name. “You are being quite uncharitable. She is a lonely woman.”

I liked the fact that she was sticking up for one of her townsfolk.

“Preston is a right bastard,” she added quietly.

“If you were going to look further into this,” I asked, “where would you go?”

She plugged a small flash drive into the side of her laptop and hit some keys. Then she gave me the flash drive.

“LexGen, the place where she worked. There is some stuff about the company on that drive, plus a copy of that file.”

“I take it you don’t hate private eyes as much as your boss.”

“You’re the first one I’ve met,” she said, smiling, “so the jury is still out on that.”

I got up and shut the door.

“I take it this room isn’t wired.”

“No.”

“Listen, kid. I know about assholes like Preston. You know what he was doing yesterday afternoon, and a lot of afternoons, on so-called police business.”

“So.”

“Preston thinks women are only good for one thing. But he is a bully. He folded like an accordion when I braced him.”

“What are you saying?”

“Knowledge is power, Annie. Use it. Or lose it. Get yourself off the desk. You’re a good cop.”

“You’re a right bastard, too, aren’t you, Mr. Rhode.”

“He should have kept the damn appointment with me. How about taking a ride with me to visit LexGen? You being there might make them more thrilled to see me.”

“I can’t leave my desk.” We exchanged stares. “But I’m off tomorrow.”

CHAPTER 25 – POISON CENTRAL

Annie Barrett picked me up at the Holiday Inn at 9 AM in a Jeep. She was in uniform.

“I don’t want you to get in trouble on my account, Constable.”

“Knowledge is power,” she said.

It was only a 10 minute drive out to LexGen through some of the most beautiful country I’d ever seen. At one point we had to stop to let a moose cross the road. We weren’t merely being considerate. It was bigger than the Jeep.

“My God,” I said. “A real ungulate.”

“Oh, do shut up,” Barrett said.

The LexGen building was one of those steel-and-glass structures that all but screams “high tech.” It was much smaller than I expected.

“Doesn’t look like a poison factory,” I said as Barrett pulled up to the entrance, ignoring the small parking lot in front, which had about 20 cars in it. “It could pass for a urology clinic.”

“That’s because it’s not a factory. It’s a lab. They just do basic research here.”

We stopped at the security desk. The young woman guard gave us an expansive smile. I have that effect on women.

“Hey, Annie, what’s up?”

They knew each other. The smile wasn’t for me.

“How are the kids, Terry?”

The ladies made small talk for a minute. Finally, after they were all caught up on each other’s families and love lives, Barrett said, “We’d like to see Dr. Cruikshank.”

Terry the guard picked up her phone and a few minutes later a young woman in a lab coat walked out of an elevator and up to us. Her name tag said “E. Perkins.”

“Betty, will you take them up to see Dr. Cruikskank, please?”

“Please follow me,” Betty said, and we did.

After leaving the elevator on the third floor, we walked down a long hall past laboratories on both sides. I saw cages with various kinds of small animals, from rats to monkeys. There were aquariums loaded with ugly fish. Having once trained in the waters off Australia, I recognized one, a stonefish. We had been warned not to go near one. Their poisonous spines could inflict incredible pain. One lab was filled with terrariums. Some held frogs and others, snakes. I spotted a couple of mesh cages with what looked to be large tarantulas crawling inside.

I was pretty sure the long-term prospects for many of the research creatures at LexGen weren’t particularly bright.

“I presume burglary isn’t a big problem here,” I said.

Barrett shivered.

“This place gives me the creeps,” she said.

In one antiseptic-looking lab, technicians were wearing face masks and gloves.  A man was manipulating some sort of robotic arms inside a large glass container while a woman peered over his shoulder. The woman looked up and gave a small wave.

We entered a large office. The sign on the door said “Dr. Cyril Cruikshank, Director.”

Cruikshank was on the phone when Betty knocked on his door jamb. He quickly hung up, saying, “Got to go. Tell Michael I should be able to make his hockey practice.” Betty left and he stood up and came around the desk. We all shook hands and Barrett introduced me. It was obvious they knew each other.

“What’s this about, Constable Barrett?”

She told him. He was not overjoyed.

“I’m afraid that I want to talk to my solicitor before agreeing to an interview with you. He will undoubtedly want to sit in on the conversation.”

“I’m here in an unofficial capacity,” Annie Barrett said. “It’s not my interview.”

“I’m sorry, Constable, but I’m still uncomfortable talking in front of you, in any capacity. Especially after the last time.”

“I’ll wait downstairs,” she said. “Then nothing you tell Mr. Rhode will have any legal weight. And I won’t have to come back with a warrant. All he needs is some general information.”

The threat of the warrant, which we both knew she had no likelihood of obtaining, did the trick.

“As long as he keeps to generalities, I don’t have a problem, Constable.” Cruikshank said. “And why don’t you wait in our canteen. It’s just off the lobby. We have coffee and some freshly baked beavers.”

“Good Lord,” I  muttered.

They both laughed.

“He is referring to Beavertails,” Barrett explained. “It’s a Canadian pastry made from fried dough.”

After she left, we sat.

“What can you tell me about Mary Naulls, Doctor?”

“A brilliant scientist. One of the world’s leading expert on dendrobatid frogs, or what are commonly known as Poison Dart Frogs.”

“Probably not a crowded field,” I said.

Cruikshank smiled indulgently.

“No. I take it you’ve heard of them.”

“They are the frogs that produce poison, in their skin I believe, that Amazon tribes use to coat their hunting darts. They can bring down fairly large game with them, can’t they? And aren’t they used in tribal warfare?”

“Rarely. All dendrobatids are poisonous, but only a few are toxic enough to kill a person. But in a proper concentration, they can kill a full-grown man in minutes. Most of the really dangerous dendrobatids are not found in the Amazon, by the way, but in the rainforests of the Cordillera Occidental, or Western Andes, near the Pacific Ocean.”

Cruikshank was warming to his subject. In a community with more moose than people, and where the local treat was a doughnut named after a large rodent, he had little occasion to show a layman how brilliant he was.

“The frogs themselves are among the most beautiful of amphibians. Very colorful, some hardly bigger than a man’s thumb. The most lethal compounds they produce are batrachotoxins and pumiliotoxins. Crystalline compounds, soluble in alcohol and water, thus ideal for lab study. They basically work the same, by increasing the permeability of the outer membrane of nerve and muscle cells to sodium ions. A large influx of sodium into the cells causes electrical depolarization. Normal nerve signals that allow muscles to relax are blocked. The muscle remains in a contracted state. As it happens, Purkinje cells within the heart are extremely sensitive to this fiber. The resulting arrhythmias and fibrillation cause death.”

“I hope there’s not going to be a quiz,” I said. “And I presume you work with such toxins hoping to find more benign uses for them other than moose hunting.”

At least he smiled at that.

“Of course. We work with all sorts of nefarious agents hoping to, in effect, tame them so they can have medical applications. It was counterintuitive, but Mary Naulls believed that mixing some of the deadliest materials, molecularly altered, of course, might be better than just trying to weaken them individually.”

“Something tells me she succeeded.”

“Well, it’s no secret. It’s been in the medical and chemical journals. The agent she perfected was a mixture of three molecularly altered poisons: sarin, the nerve agent developed by German scientists in World War II; ricin, obtained from the Ricinus communis, the castor oil plant, and a batrachotoxin excreted by Phyllobates terriblis, the most deadly of the poison dart frogs. Since it was her idea to use the toxin from the frogs, we allowed her to name the final compound. She called it Ranatoxin. Not very original, I’m afraid. The Spanish name for Poison Dart Frog is Rana Tóxico.”

“It must be interesting to work with such wonderful stuff,” I said. “Sarin came in very handy for the Nazis. Couldn’t have run a Holocaust without it.”

Cruikshank looked offended.

“It was a real breakthrough,” he said, icily. “No one before Mary had been able to combine three such chemically diverse compounds, either in their natural or synthetic form. We call it “The Ranatoxin Solution,” because the key was the frog poison, in which she had a lot of experience from her time in Central and South America, particularly Colombia. Of course, Ranatoxin is lethal in its purest form, but we are working on ways to dilute it to the point where it would be medically useful. When we succeed, we’re going to call it “The Ranatoxin Dilution.”

He chuckled and I think I was supposed to appreciate the inside joke, so I smiled. Pharmaceutical humor being what it is, that’s all it deserved.

“It’s a hit or miss proposition. Not all compounds play well with others, you see. But you’d be surprised at some of the combination we’ve tried. The sarin, ricin and batrachotoxin are the base but we add minute amounts of other chemicals to see if they will mitigate Ranatoxin’s potency.”

“Maybe a dash of nutmeg?”

“Too toxic,” Cruikshank said, seriously. Then he saw the look on my face. “Oh. You’re trying to be facetious. Well, it might interest you to know that nutmeg is a powerful poison. Ingest too much of it and you might die. I think Mary tried it. In fact, I teased her about ordering too much. We have enough left over to make Brandy Alexanders well into the next millennium.”

CHAPTER 26 - ZINC

Right about then, anything alcoholic was looking pretty good to me. Cruikshank picked a piece of lint off his sleeve and looked at it closely. He was apparently satisfied it wouldn’t kill him because he rolled it between his fingers and let it drift to the floor.

“Anyway,” he continued, “we hope eventually to have a wonder drug, useful in treating a whole host of neurological diseases, such as Parkinsons, Alzheimer’s and, of course stroke and cardiac patients. Ranatoxin’s paralytic properties would have surgical applications, in much the same manner as curare. The beauty of Ranatoxin is that it degrades quickly and breaks down into harmless compounds absorbed by the body.”

“Which would make it a great murder drug,” I said. “Apparently the only reason Mary Naulls aroused suspicion was that the priest was given a blood test just before this marvelous stuff killed him.”

“Apparently,” he said.

“Can you explain how he managed to drive away from her house?”

Cruikshank tented his fingers and went into his theorizing mode.

“Less zinc.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Zinc oxide is known for its ability to bind with certain compounds to increase their immediate efficacy. By limiting the amount of zinc in the dose, one can delay the inevitable outcome. The police came to us to help identify some of the substances in the priest’s body. Zinc was Mary’s preferred reagent, and it appeared in the toxicology reports. But it wasn’t important. I mean, there was little doubt what happened. There were still traces of the lethal compounds she used. Had she used more zinc, the man would have died in her house.”

“And if she is out there still playing with her little chemistry set, could she vary the delay and the zinc wouldn’t be a giveaway?”

Cruikshank was on a roll, in full lecture-the-layman mode.

“Zinc is a common substance, found in many food products. In fact, it is considered a micronutrient. If people or animals don’t get enough zinc in their diet they can develop a condition called hypozincemia, which is very debilitating and a huge problem in third-work countries. In fact, may people take zinc supplements. Depending upon the level of zinc used, the lethality time frame could fluctuate from almost instant death to, I don’t know, several days.”

“After which,” I said, “there might not be any obvious tie to the killer and the death might be written off as a heart attack or other sudden, but natural, event.”

He shrugged.

“That would be a fair conclusion.”

“Are you close, Doctor?”

“Close to what?”

“A Ranatoxin Dilution that won’t kill people.”

“I’m afraid I cannot answer that, Mr. Rhode. Legal considerations, you know. There are Canadian laws against revealing what might be considered inside information. Your own Securities and Exchange Commission has been locking up people for insider trading left and right.”

“But I take it you are proceeding without Mary Naulls.”

“Oh, Mary wasn’t interested in the medical or cosmetic potential of her discoveries.”

“Cosmetic?”

“Yes. You’ve heard of Botox, of course, which women, and I suppose, some men use to eliminate wrinkles? It is derived from the botulism toxin and works by blocking nerve impulses to the muscles that cause frown lines. When Mary was tweaking some of her compounds she discovered that one of them had basically the same result. It was quite by accident, an offshoot of her work with some rhesus monkeys.”

“Well, at least they went out smiling,” I said.

Cruikshank looked confused, but continued.

“Of course, some of science’s greatest discoveries are the inadvertent results of experiments designed for something entirely different.”

“Like penicillin.”

“Exactly,” Cruikshank said, now back on track and actually looking a little proud of his new student. “We call her discovery Rantox and it is just now undergoing clinical trials. One of its advantages over Botox is that it can come in a salve, like a face cream, although injection is the preferred delivery method. The other advantage, if it can be termed that, is a side effect that was completely unexpected.”

“What was that?”

“Well, in some cases, usually women, it can stimulate the libido. It apparently heightens the neurological pathways involved with sexual arousal and gratification. You can see why we are excited about it. A drug that eliminates wrinkles and bolsters the sex drive can be doubly attractive to women of a certain age. To be frank, we’re not sure how we should market it.”

“Your researchers get paid for accidental discoveries?”

“In certain cases, stipulated contractually ahead of time, of course. Mary was a shrewd businesswoman as well as a great scientist. Her contract with us was more liberal than with other researchers. She basically had right of first refusal on her patents. She believed her discoveries would prove the most valuable. I shared that belief. I didn’t want her going to a major pharmaceutical laboratory. Having some of her discoveries was a hell of a lot better than having none of them. Fortunately, in the case of Rantox, she opted to sell us the rights.”

“Why?”

“At first I assumed that it was because she was a pure theorist, with no interest in pursuing research in cosmetics. I mean, her specialty was taming toxins, the deadlier the better. But in hindsight, I now think that she may have suspected Rantox’s sexual proclivities might delay its marketing and she wanted to profit from it sooner than later. As I said, Mary was financially shrewd. Got a small fortune from us.”

“Would you say she is a wealthy woman?”

“Oh, yes. She came here with plenty of her own money and by the time she left was a millionaire.”

If Mary Naulls was indeed a serial killer, I realized, her wealth and financial acumen made her uniquely dangerous.

Cruikshank’s face took on a very unscientific, almost dreamy, expression.

“She tried the original Rantox formula on herself, which took great courage and we all knew she continued using it even after selling us the rights. She was a woman, after all, and vain about her looks. The Rantox certainly did wonders for her. She looked much younger than she was. And Mary was a very attractive woman; she hardly needed any help to begin with. Some of her colleagues teased her about that side effect I mentioned.”

Something in what Cruikshank said clicked in the back of my mind.

“Now, is there anything else, Mr. Rhode? I have a lot of work to do and want to try to get to my son’s hockey practice.”

I lost the half-formed thought.

“On the day she apparently disappeared, one of your guards was found dead.”

“Yes, Charlie Eichenwald. Nice man. Nearing retirement. A real shame.”

“Didn’t bother you?”

“Of course, we’re like family here. Oh, I see what you’re getting out. No, we saw no connection. And neither did the police, initially. Only Constable Barrett was suspicious. She pushed it and it blew up in her face. Just between us, she was lucky to keep her job. I’m surprised she’s even helping you now. I’d guess she’s on thin ice back in Cashman.”

I didn’t mention that Preston’s hotel indiscretions had thickened the ice somewhat.

“Dr. Cruikshank, is it possible that Mary Naulls, an admittedly brilliant woman, could have stopped here on her way out of town, stole chemicals from her own lab, replaced them with similar solutions and then killed the guard? The only person who would know she was here.”

Cruikshank threw up his hands.

“Anything is possible, Rhode. But why would she do that? She was presumably in a hurry to leave the area.”

“Maybe she wanted to keep killing people and needed the ingredients.”

“She could have brought them out in small batches over years. Why keep them here?”

“For one thing, murderers try not to keep too much evidence in their own homes. For another, what better place to keep stuff than in plain sight in your own lab? And don’t forget, the quick blood test of Richter may have been a shock to her. Her escape was probably spur of the moment.”

He shook his head.

“I would file all of this under logical, but not likely. I think you are hearing hooves and thinking zebras instead of horses.”

I hated that phrase. In my line of work, I never thought horses, because it was the zebras that could get you killed.

There wasn’t much else to get out of Cruikshank.

“I don’t suppose you have a photo of Mary Naulls. In your files, perhaps?”

He shook his head.

“We’re a small company. We don’t take corporate photos. When the police made their initial inquiries, we thought we might find some pictures of Mary at a company function, a picnic or presentation, that sort of thing. But there weren’t any.”

“Convenient.”

“Yes. If what they say about Mary is true, she probably avoided having her photo taken. Employees were asked to sit with a sketch artist.”

“What about due diligence when you hired her? Surely you ran a background check.”

“There was no need. Her reputation preceded her. Mary held a Doctorate from the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Toronto, one of the finest research schools in the world. She came highly recommended by experts in the field. We were very anxious when it appeared there might be a snag.”

“Snag?”

“Yes. You see her father died suddenly, just before she was to start with us, and she needed time to settle her affairs. There was property to be sold, and the like. We were afraid that a rival company might steal her before she came here. It’s not uncommon. It’s a form of corporate piracy you don’t often hear about.”

“You said he died suddenly. How?”

“An air accident. He disappeared over the ocean flying his own plane to visit some of his congregation. He was a fairly well-known minister in British Columbia. I even went to the funeral in Ocean Falls, the small fishing village where she came from. Or, rather, memorial service. There was no body, of course.”

Cruikshank went to keep an eye on his prize recruit, I thought.

“When was this?”

“Well, just before she came to us, in 2003. We needn’t have worried. Mary wrapped up her affairs in record time, considering.”

“Did they ever discover what caused the accident?”

“Not to my knowledge.  I spoke to some people when I was out there and the consensus seemed to be that Rev. Naulls had a stroke or heart attack.”

Heart attack, again.

“I thought Mary was Catholic.”

“She was apparently a convert from the Lutheran Church. I gathered from what I heard at the memorial service that she and her father didn’t see eye-to-eye about a lot of things, religion included. Converts can be even more dogmatic than those born into a church. Mary wore her Catholic faith on her sleeve.”

“Why did they think heart attack, if no body was found?”

“Because the plane apparently flew on in a straight line out over the Pacific before running out of fuel, probably on autopilot. What other explanation could there be?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Doc. Maybe he was paralyzed by some froggy poison.”

Cruikshank’s mouth was still open when I left.

***

“How did it go?”

Barrett and I were driving back to town.

“I may be setting a record for finding out things I can’t prove. Cruikshank said he had no photos of Mary Naulls but he and others worked with a sketch artist. Does that mean you couldn’t dig up any pictures of her?”

“There weren’t any. Not in her house. Or in any of the church publications. She was active in certain groups, like the choir, but always seemed to avoid being photographed.”

“I’d like to see the sketch.”

“I’ll see if I can find it. It’s been five years. If she is on the run, she’s had plenty of time to change her appearance.”

“Cruikshank said she attended the University of Toronto. What about school or yearbook photos?”

“We checked. She did her undergraduate and graduate work there, but never joined any clubs or sororities. And there were no yearbook or graduation photos of her. Either she was very shy, or she was really planning ahead.”

“Did you check into her background where she lived in British Colombia before she moved here?”

“Yes. I contacted the R.C.M.P. barracks in Bella Coola, which covers Ocean Falls. But it was a dead end. She grew up in Ocean Falls but after going away to university spent most of her time in South and Central America doing research and living with the natives. She only went home intermittently after her mother died. The locals said she was not particularly close to her father, who was apparently pretty straight-laced. They said she left town more or less permanently when he died.”

“What about photos from high school. Hell, any school? She couldn’t have been planning murder since kindergarten.”

“I thought of that.”

Barrett looked offended.

“Of course you did, Annie. I’m sorry. You are a great cop. I’m just frustrated.”

“Well, this won’t help. She was basically home-schooled, like a lot of kids in isolated communities. Plus, her mother was a teacher before she married. Another dead end.”

Having just told her she was a great cop, I didn’t like asking the next question.

“Didn’t the manner of her father’s death bother you?”

“Why? It was an air crash. He flew his own plane frequently in some of the roughest weather and terrain on earth. I guess God wasn’t his co-pilot that day.”

I filled her in on what Cruikshank told me about the “accident.”

“That doesn’t prove ….” She stopped. “Oh, Jesus, God. I screwed up.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Annie. You were working a case on your own, with no support. Your boss would have buried it anyway. And, once again, there is no proof.”

I don’t think it made her feel any better. She was silent until she dropped me off at the Holiday Inn.

“I’ll let you know when I find out about the sketch, Rhode.”

I promised to keep her in the loop if I found out anything. I always say that, and rarely follow through. But in her case, I thought I might.

CHAPTER 27 – OCEAN FALLS

The next morning, Annie Barrett called me.

“There is no sketch in the file, but that’s not unusual. We put it on the wires and one of the constables took the original around to show people locally. Things get lost. We don’t have our own sketch artist, so we borrowed one from Toronto. I’ll see if they can locate a copy in the main files at headquarters. If not, I’ll try to track the artist down. I don’t think those guys throw anything out. But, like I said, I don’t know how much help it will be. It’s been five years. She probably doesn’t look anything like the sketch now. I wouldn’t, if I were her. I’ve got your card. I’ll send you an email or FAX if I find it.”

“Thanks, Annie. I owe you.”

“Yes, you do.”

A half hour later I was on my way to the Toronto airport.

But I wasn’t going home.

***

I flew to Vancouver on Air Canada and then chartered a puddle jumper seaplane to Ocean Falls, a small town in one of the many inlets along the coast of British Columbia on Hecate Sound. I was burning through my Tiffany retainer at a record clip.

My seaplane pilot asked me if I wanted to see some scenery on the way and, like an idiot, I said yes. His scenic tour consisted of flying very low through valleys and passes, often swooping at the last moment to avoid crashing. During a brief period of level flight, after my stomach caught up with me, I asked him if he knew the Naulls family.

“Old Humpy Naulls? Sure, I knew him.”

“Humpy? We talking about the same man? The guy I mean was a minister.”

The pilot laughed as he banked and dove toward the water in what seemed like a death dive.

“Look down there. It’s a pod of orcas, killer whales.”

We skimmed over the whales and then we thankfully resumed a normal flight.

“Where was I? Oh, yeah. Humpy Naulls. Same guy. The Reverend Humphrey Naulls, pastor of the north, they used to call him. Flew his own plane to visit his flocks, where he flocked a lot of lonely ladies.” He laughed at his own humor. “When their husbands weren’t around, of course. Phoniest bastard I ever met. Would hump a wolverine if it would stay still. Didn’t leave much for anyone else, and the pickings up here aren’t all that great to begin with. Got himself killed a ways back. I helped out in the search. Never found anything, though.”

“Sounds like your heart wasn’t in it.”

“Oh, hell. I gave it my best shot. Felt sorry for his daughter, is all. She may be the only female he didn’t screw.” Then he thought about that. “Course, the way she left right after school and rarely came back, I had my doubts about even that. Hate to think it, though. She was a looker, and a nice kid. I sometimes flew her back and forth when the old man was away. Heard she’s some big scientist, now. Good for her. What’s your interest in the Naulls clan? There’s none left in these parts. Least that I know of.”

“I’m looking for Mary Naulls. She’s disappeared.”

“No kidding. Well she ain’t in Ocean Falls, friend. The population is about 500 nowadays. And I know them all. Unless she is disguised as a seal, you’re wasting your time.”

“I’m just collecting information.”

“You a cop?”

“Private. You have any suggestions about who I might talk to, other than the police?”

He thought about it.

“Hell, the nearest Mounties are 50 miles away. Your best bet is Leticia Bottomley, old Ben’s widow. Together they ran the local paper for years. Letty kept it going for a while after he died, but shut it down a few years ago. But she knew everyone, knows everything. But be careful. Get her started and she’ll talk your ear off. But you’ll get a good meal. She doesn’t get many visitors and dotes on them.”

After setting his seaplane down in the blessedly calm waters of the small bay fronting Ocean Falls, the pilot taxied to a small town dock. There was a medium-sized fishing boat tied up to pier just down from us. A man came out of a small shack to help the pilot secure the plane.

“How are you, Buzz? Good flight?”

“Yeah, Amos, thanks.”

“Sticking around?”

“Don’t know.”

Buzz the pilot turned to me.

“How long you staying, Mr. Rhode.”

“Just the night, I hope. Can you come back for me tomorrow?”

“Won’t have to. I don’t have another charter until the weekend, so I’m sticking around.”

“A girl in every port?”

“Lot easier with Naulls out of the picture, I’ll say that. You have my cell. Just call me when you want to go. If something comes up, I’ll call you. I won’t leave you stranded. Fair enough?”

I said it was.

“Where are you staying, mister,” Amos said.

“Hadn’t given it any thought. You have a suggestion?”

“Well, there’s no hotel. But I know Captain Paul has a couple of rooms over the tavern that he lets out.”

“Where is the tavern?”

Amos pointed to a cluster of buildings just down the street.

“Can’t miss it. It’s called ‘Captain Paul’s Tavern’.”

“Original.”

“It’s his last name. His first is Randy and his wife didn’t want the place named Captain Randy’s. She was afraid it might attract the wrong type of crowd.”

I looked at the deserted streets. All two of them.

“Yes, I could see that might be a problem,” I said.

“She is a bit strange,” Amos admitted. “But good with the buybacks.”

“He’s going to see Letty Bottomley,” Buzz said.

“You’d better watch yourself,” Amos said. “I hear old Letty was pretty frisky back in the 60’s.”

Both men laughed.

***

The tavern was what one would expect in a small fishing village on an unforgiving coast. Wooden and weather-beaten, both inside and out. I could have been in Gloucester. For all that, the interior was warm and spotless, and the small bar had a sort of rustic charm that invites serious drinking. I nodded at two men wearing heavy rain slickers and holding pints. Two red poker chips were on the bar in front of each man. A simple way to keep track of buybacks and drinks owed. A middle-aged woman wearing an black apron with a picture of a salmon on it was tending bar. I asked for a pint.

“What of?”

“Whatever these gents are drinking,” I said, “and why don’t you give them both another.”

“Just leavin’, mate,” one of the men said as they pocketed the two chips in front of them. “Got to ship on the tide. Save your money. But thanks just the same.”

“That your fishing boat at the dock?”

“T’is.”

“Halibut?”

“Salmon, too.”

“How long are the poker chips good for?”

“To the next ice age,” he said. “We’re kind of rooting for global warming.”

I signaled the barkeep.

“Give them two chips, on me.” I looked at the men. “For good luck.”

The men raised their mugs to me in unison and she put another two poker chips in front of them.

“If you’re here when we get back,” the other man said, “we’ll stand you one.” He blew a kiss to the barkeep. “See you, Katie.”

“Stay safe, boys,” she replied.

Katie turned out to be Captain Paul’s wife. She was happy to rent me a room for the night and give me directions to Leticia Bottomley’s cabin, which was about two miles out of town. She suggested I call ahead and I did. As Buzz suggested, I was invited for dinner. At “6 PM sharp.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Mrs. Paul said. “Our dinner special tonight is fish sticks. Make them myself.”

“A pity,” I managed to say.

“My God, an honest-to-goodness straight man,” she said, laughing. “I’m just kidding. Jesus. You think with a name like mine I’d serve fish sticks?”

I was beginning to like Ocean Falls. I had just over an hour to kill so I went up to my room to drop off my overnight bag and clean up. When I went back down, I asked Katie Paul where I could buy some wine to bring for dinner and she went into the back and brought out two bottles of “Blasted Church” Syrah. I raised my eyebrows but she said, “It’s a local winery. Reasonable. I’ll put them on your bill. If you don’t like them, you don’t have to pay. Letty is partial to it.”

There was no taxi service in town, so she offered to drive me herself.

“Who’s going to watch the tavern?”

“I leave it open. Anyone comes in they know to fix themselves a drink. People are honest around here. If I’m not back in time, they leave the money on the bar.”

“Or poker chips?”

“Yes, we get a lot of those,” she laughed.

A few minutes later I climbed out of her jeep in front of a white clapboard house set among some trees on the side of a small hill.

“Call me when you’re finished,” Katie Paul said, “and I’ll come and get you.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“We like to make our customers happy,” she said. “Where would we be without repeat business? You might come back in 10 years.”

CHAPTER 28 – A SWEET CHILD

Leticia Bottomley was bigger than I expected. Tall but not fat, with a face that, while not pretty, could certainly be described as handsome. Her hair was silver, full and well-kept. She was dressed in jeans and a heavy Irish sweater, and looked good for a woman who had to be pushing 70. She took the wine from me with a smile and led me into her parlor, where there was some cheese and crackers set up on a table next to a roaring fire. There were photos of children on the mantle above the hearth. The smells coming from the kitchen were promising but I withheld judgment. For all I knew, I was getting muskrat pot pie.

“Please sit, Mr. Rhode. I’ll open one of these.”

“I can do that if you like.”

“I’m perfectly capable of opening a bottle of wine, Mr. Rhode. Besides I want to check on the roast.”

She went into the kitchen for a few minutes and then returned with the wine and two stem-less wine snifters. She allowed me to pour. The Syrah was excellent and I said so.

“People make a big fuss over the wines from Oregon and Washington,” she said, “but we have much the same soil and climate.”

We ate cheese, drank wine and chatted for a while. We were soon Alton and Letty. She was a well-educated and well-read woman, which I should have expected from someone who ran a newspaper for decades. Modest on the outside, the house was surprisingly plush inside, with expensive-looking furniture and carpeting. It turned out that she came from money “back east.” The newspapering started out as a sideline and something to keep her busy. Her husband was a well-paid manager for Crown Zellerbach when that company ran a huge paper and pulp mill in Ocean Falls.

“We had almost 4,000 residents here in the 1960’s,” she said, “but the population withered after the mill closed in 1980. They offered my Ben a job elsewhere but we loved it here and enough of our old friends stuck around to make it enjoyable. So we stayed, and Ben helped me put out the paper. And to be honest, without the paper mill, which didn’t always smell the best, the area went back to how it must have been a hundred years ago. Now it’s a fishing village and quite beautiful, don’t you think? Of course, it does rain a lot and you have to like the cold.”

The Bottomleys had two grown children, both boys, who rarely visited.

“A son is a son until he takes a wife, a daughter is a daughter all of her life,” she said. “Doesn’t really bother me. Not much to do around here for my grandchildren.” She waved an arm at the photos above the fireplace. “And both my boys live where it’s warmer. One is in California and one in Georgia. Both married with kids and doing very well. I visit them each at least once a year. I’m one of those women who gets along with her daughters-in-law. And I take them all to Disney once a year. The one in Florida. Now why don’t you bring our wine to the table and I’ll get us dinner.”

The roast turned out to be elk, which she served with a port wine reduction, potatoes and green beans. There was a basket of biscuits. The meat was rare and tasted like good venison. I said so.

“We ran a food column featuring local recipes,” she said. “I became a good cook in spite of myself. Now what do you want to know?”

“Anything you can tell me about Mary Naulls.”

“My eldest, Tom, dated Mary. He liked her well enough, but I got the sense he thought there was something off about her. He wouldn’t say much, but I think she had a problem with sex. I don’t mean she was a lesbian or anything. That doesn’t bother anyone around here. It’s too damn cold to begrudge anyone keeping warm, with anyone. Mary liked men, but seemed afraid of them.”

“Did that have something to do with her father?”

Letty Bottomley looked at me.

“What do you know?”

“I flew in with Buzz and got an earful.”

“Buzz is an old lady. He was our internet before there was an internet. I suppose he told you that Humphrey Naulls was a lecher.”

“Not true?”

“Hell, yes it was true. He even propositioned me. Unsuccessfully, mind you. A real Elmer Gantry. His poor wife was a laughingstock.”

“There were no scandals? The man was a minister, for God’s sake.”

“Humphrey did most of his catting around far from home. I was an exception to his proposition rule.” She smiled. “I may not look like much now, but in my day I could turn a few heads.”

“I’m sure you could,” I said. “You are still a good-looking woman.”

She nodded at the compliment.

“And let’s just say I enjoyed the 60’s,” she added, with a glint in her eyes, “and leave it at that.”

I didn’t mention that the boys at the town dock also had the same opinion of her younger version.

“In any event,” Letty went on, “Humphrey really didn’t need to look locally. Fishing, trapping and logging are dangerous professions. There were plenty of lonely widows in the boondocks that he went out of his way to console and comfort. It’s not easy being a widow in these parts. I know. I’m one. But I was past the shenanigan stage when Ben died, and I’ve made my peace with it. It could be worse. The Kaulong tribe in New Britain, the island off Papua New Guinea, used to strangle widows after their husbands died. Personally, I’d rather be strangled than sleep with someone like Humphrey Naulls. Mary told me about the Kaulongs. She knew a lot about indigenous people, from her studies and travels. I always loved talking with her when she was in town. Not that she came back very often.”

“Because of her father?”

“Yes.”

“You may have been an exception to his rule, Letty, but not the only one. Buzz hinted that Naulls did some of his lechery very close to home. Maybe in his home.”

Letty Bottomley didn’t look shocked. Only sad. She passed me the second bottle of wine and motioned for me to open it. I did and filled our glasses.

“Buzz isn’t a total idiot,” she said. “I suspected that as well. It’s not that incest is unknown in these parts. Winters are long and people get isolated. It’s rare, but usually of the brother-and-sister kind. Not my cup of tea, certainly, but not as monstrous as father and child. But no complaint was brought against Humphrey Naulls. The people in this town might have had their doubts about him, but he was a bit of a legend in B.C. The “Flying Pastor” bunk. He was always after Ben and me to do feature stories about him.”

Letty looked at me shrewdly.

“This is more than just Mary going missing, isn’t it, young man?”

Letty must have been a heck of a newspaperwoman. While we finished eating, I told her why I was tracking Mary Naulls.

***

“It’s hard to imagine that poor, sweet girl turning into a serial killer,” Letty said. “But you make a persuasive case.” Dinner over, we were back sitting by the fireplace, drinking coffee. “I’d say my son, Tom, dodged a bullet.”

“I don’t think she would have harmed him. She seems to target married men in their 60’s, her father’s age. If I had to guess, I’d say they reminded her of dear old dad, right down to his philandering. That would suggest that she knows they were adulterers, probably from first-hand experience. And if her father did sexually abuse her, she could easily transfer her hate for him to any man she thought treated women dishonorably.”

“Daughter of a hypocritical, perverted minister,” Letty mused aloud, “who sought solace in another religion, only to find out that there are hypocrites in every faith. My God, what a story! What are you going to do?”

“I have to find her before she kills anyone else on Staten Island, or moves on. My problem is, I can’t even prove she is there. And even if I could, I don’t know her name, or what she looks like. I don’t suppose you ever took a photo of her for your newspaper.”

Letty snapped her fingers.

“You know, I seem to remember we did a story about her when she worked in South America. Local girl makes good kind of thing. I think she sent us some photos to use, and she was in some of them.”

I felt a sudden thrill of anticipation.

“Did you save the photos?”

“I don’t know. If we did, they might be in the morgue at the paper.”

“I thought you shut down the paper.”

“I did. Sold the operation to a young couple. They turn out those all-advertising shoppers. I think you call them penny savers in the States. Not just for Ocean Falls, of course. Not big enough. They also print for Aristazbal Island, Bella Coola, Rivers Inlet and several other communities. Nice folks. I asked them to keep a couple of copies of all of our editions in the basement, for their historical worth. So, even if there are no photos, there should be a story with the photos in them.”

I called Katie Paul at the tavern and she picked me up. I had a brandy with her at the bar, just to be sociable, and then went to my room. I was looking forward to possibly finding a photo of the elusive Mary Naulls. My elation at the prospect was quickly short-circuited by a cell call I got from Dr. Gallo at Richmond Memorial.

“The toxicology report on Father Zapotoski came back negative, Mr. Rhode. The official cause of death is stroke. If anything precipitated that, it was no longer in his system. There are more sophisticated tests available, of course, perhaps at Government organizations, but I don’t have the standing to order them. I’m sorry.”

I thanked Gallo for his efforts, feeling deflated. It looked as if I was going to wind up with a suspect and no proof. And that suspect was in the wind. Everything now depended on finding that photo.

CHAPTER 29 – OBITUARY

The next morning I met Letty Bottomley at her old newspaper office. She’d made a call and one of the new owners met us and let us in and then left. The “morgue” of the weekly Ocean Falls Gleaner consisted of several file cabinets of photos and research material, and boxes of old newspapers, all set against a back wall of the unheated and dank basement. A single ceiling light provided barely enough illumination. I was happy to see that the boxes were on palettes and looked dry.

Letty started going through the boxes while I hit the file cabinets, whose rust-stained drawers were labeled alphabetically. In the “M-N-P” drawer I located a thick hanging file labeled “Naulls.” It was full of photos and stories about the Rev. Humphrey Naulls, an obvious publicity hound. I was undoubtedly predisposed to regard him badly, but from looking at his hawk-face in the photos, I had no trouble imagining him as sexual predator.  But there were no photos of his daughter. Since there was the possibility that a photo of her had been misfiled, or was in a file related to the topic of the story about her, I resigned myself to looking through every one of them if I had to. So I was relieved when Letty said, “Got it!”

The paper was dated Monday, January 14, 2002. On Page 3 was a full page story about Dr. Mary Naulls and her scientific work in the rainforests of Colombia. The headline was: “COLUMBIAN GAL GOES NATIVE IN COLOMBIA.”

“Catchy,” I said.

“I guarantee I was away from the office that day,” Letty said with a laugh. “Ben thought he was a genius with headlines. He would never have tried that with me around.”

There wasn’t much copy in the story. It was more like a photo spread.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Letty said, “where there’s some damn light.”

We found a table and lamp, and, blessedly, a magnifying glass for the faded, yellowish paper. There were a lot of photos of trees, frogs, huts and naked Indians sitting around a fire eating something with their fingers. There was only one photo of Mary Naulls, standing with a group of hunters carrying blowguns. It was a terrible shot, blurry and taken at too far a distance. My guess was she asked one of the villagers to try his or her luck with the camera. It was a miracle it came out as well as it did. But the only way you could be sure it was Mary Naulls was because everyone else was brown and only came up to her chest. She was wearing a floppy hat, the brim of which further obscured her features.

“Let me have that magnifying glass.”

Blown up, I could see that she was skinny and pretty, but that was all. The photo, at least 10 years old, was basically useless for identification purposes. Letty took the glass from me.

“Doesn’t even look like the girl I remember,” she said. “She lost a lot of weight.”

“I guess I’ll have to go through all the filing cabinets,” I said. “There may be photos misfiled, or labeled differently.”

“That will take hours. We’d better start right away. I’ll see if I can round up some flashlights or a floor lamp.”

“I appreciate the help, Letty, but I hate to take up so much of your time.”

“Nonsense, it will be fun. I feel like a journalist again. I’ll call up the tavern and have Katie send over coffee.”

I called Buzz the pilot, who said he was having a fine time and wasn’t in any hurry.

***

“I don’t think I have ever seen so many moose, halibut and bear photos in my life,” I said three hours later. We were sitting at a small wooden table the shop owners had set up for us. “And not one damn photo of Mary Naulls.”

“I guess my filing system left something to be desired,” Letty said, apologetically.

“Hey, it was a long shot, anyway. If we found a picture, it wouldn’t have been much better than the one in the paper. Come on, let’s put this stuff away and I’ll buy you lunch at Captain Paul’s.”

“It’s Sunday. Katie calls it brunch. Same menu, though.”

While Katie Paul was broiling our salmon, Letty and I licked our wounds with the help of some Iceberg vodka.

“It’s from Newfoundland,” Letty explained. “Supposed to be the purest. Made from water melted from icebergs.”

“Well, we’ll have to drink some more, before global warming limits the supply.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Go home, I guess. I don’t plan on interviewing a bunch of headhunters in South America.”

“You don’t seem to be the type to let things go. Sticks in your craw, I bet.”

“You can’t imagine.”

“I’m not too happy myself. No matter what Mary may have become, I liked her. I hope she’s caught, of course, but she needs help. I’m feeling a little guilty about the whole thing.”

Our lunch arrived.

“Doesn’t get any fresher than this,” Katie said as she put down the platters.

I ordered two more drinks.

“What do you feel guilty about, Letty?”

“I was pretty close to Bella. I should have done something. Said something.”

I felt like someone punched me in the solar plexus.

“Bella?”

“Yes. Isabella Naulls. Mary’s mother. She’s named after her. Mary Isabella Naulls. What’s the matter?”

Katie came back to our table and put down our new drinks. I was already standing up.

“Don’t you like the salmon, Mr. Rhode?”

I ignored her.

“Letty, did you run an obituary of the mother when she died?”

“Of course. I wrote it myself.”

“With a photo?”

“Yes, we usually ran photos when we could.”

“The salmon is getting cold,” Katie said, sounding annoyed.

“I don’t remember a photo file for obits.”

“The photos were usually supplied by the family and we typically returned them.”

“But there would be a story in one of the boxes.”

“Of course.”

“Did Mary look like her mother?”

“Damn! She did. Spitting image. They could have been sisters.”

“Let’s go,” I said. “I have to see that obituary.”

“What about the salmon,” Katie Paul said.

“Keep it warm. And the vodka cold.”

***

It didn’t take long for Letty to find the obituary of Isabella Naulls. She handed me the paper. I just stared at it. The resemblance was remarkable, which was not surprising. Isabella Naulls had died in 1989, when she was only 41, only four years younger than her daughter was now.

“How could I be so goddamn stupid?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Rantox.”

“What the hell is Rantox?”

“The Fountain of Youth. And I took her at her word that she was born on Staten Island. I never even checked.”

“Who?”

“Isabella Donner.”

CHAPTER 30 – UNWELCOME WAGON

Buzz wasn’t happy when I called him and said I had to get back to New York. But he rallied and flew me to Vancouver in time for me to catch a plane east. That was the last break I got. My Air Canada flight was diverted to Saskatoon in Saskatchewan because of mechanical trouble and it was almost 4 AM on Monday when my cab dropped me off at home on Staten Island. I was dead tired. So was the cabbie, so I gave him a huge tip.

When I put my key in the lock to open my front door, it turned too easily. The door was already unlocked. I was a bit groggy and was having trouble remembering if I had left by the front door or the back. I typically go out the back because that’s where I usually park, but I’d taken car service to the airport. Did I leave the door unlocked and the alarm off? Not likely, but possible. Since possible is no reason to get killed, I went to my car, which I had left in the driveway in the front to give the appearance that someone was home. I quietly opened up the trunk, where I keep a spare handgun in a gym bag.

It’s a .25 caliber Beretta, commonly called a “ladies gun,” but it’s not pink, very light and certainly better than nothing. I take it jogging, despite the fact that in a recent case it proved less than adequate against a sniper using a high-powered rifle. But it made a lot of noise and attracted a lot of sirens, which allowed me to jog to safety. Well, maybe I ran.

I pushed open my front door cautiously. That wasn’t hard, it barely budged. Something was blocking it. Accumulated mail? Away longer than anticipated, I had not stopped delivery. Same with the newspapers. When they pile up outside, the neighbors shove them through the mail slot so the house doesn’t look unoccupied. I have good neighbors. In any case, both scenarios argued against someone still being in the house wishing me harm.

I put my shoulder to the door and finally shoved it far enough open to squeeze in. It was pitch dark. I went to switch on a light and I tripped over something big and soft. Something that couldn’t have fit through the mail slot. I found the switch. I looked down.

Judging by the gun in his hand, it was indeed someone who wished me harm.

Past tense.

Sprawled on his back with a surprised look on his face was a very dead man.

***

“As alibis go, you have a pretty good one, Rhode.”

I was sitting in the 120 in St. George talking to a couple of homicide detectives. Four hours had passed since I found the stiff in my vestibule.

“You guys ever going to paint this place,” I said. “The wall flakes have flakes.”

“The M.E. says the guy died when you were allegedly in,” one of the cops said, pausing to look at his notepad, “Saskatoon.”

“No one is ever allegedly in Saskatoon.” I said.

“Where the fuck is that, anyway,” the other detective said.

Their names were Benedetto and Teichmann. I had their cards in my pocket. But I didn’t know who was who. They could have been Frick and Frack for all I cared, I was that tired.

“It’s a city in Saskatchewan,” I said. “Canada.”

“I know it’s in Canada. What were you doing there?”

“I’m a big hockey fan.”

“Do you know what time it is,” the first cop asked. “Stop fucking around.”

“All I know is that I got home around 4 AM. You can check the airlines and the cab company if you don’t believe my receipts. The guy was just lying there. I don’t know who it is. I did notice he had a cannon clutched in his hand, so I’m lucky that he was dead. I’ve lived on the block a long time, so I’m pretty sure he wasn’t with the welcome wagon. You guys know who I am. I try not to murder people in my own house. I have that printed on my business card.”

Paul Vocci from the D.A.’s squad walked in to the interrogation room.

“The stiff’s name is Cesaro Casabianca,” Vocci said. “He’d just made bail over in Bergen County on some sort of stolen jewelry scam he was running with his sister.”

“Rosa,” I said.

They all looked at me. So I told them about the sting.

“Call Tim Condon over in the Bergen County Prosecutor’s office,” I said. “He will want in on this.”

Just then Cormac Levine joined the party, looking rumpled, which was how he looked at all times.

“He did it,” Mac said. “And if he didn’t, he probably did something else. Can I borrow a rubber hose?”

***

“What did the M.E. say killed Cesaro,” I asked.

It was late afternoon and we were sitting in Mike Sullivan’s office. Mike had dropped a lot of weight and looked about 10 years older. Losing a wife you still loved after finding out that she was an ex-hooker and had killed someone will do that to a man. Everyone but him was eating Egg McSomethings and drinking coffee by the gallon. My near-death experience must have counted for something because Vocci bought the food.

“He’s stumped,” Mac said. “The only thing out of line was the zinc, which he only looked for because we told him to. It was elevated. But zinc doesn’t kill, he said.”

“I told you what it’s for.”

“Yeah. But it’s not proof. She must be a fucking genius.”

“Might have been nice if you let us in on the jewelry thing,” Vocci said. “We could have run the bust here.”

“Sure, Paulie. And the wife of every judge on Staten Island would have to return the bracelets they bought. And then they will have to testify. And, of course, there’s the I.R.S.”

“Shit,” Vocci said. “I didn’t think of that. Good job, Rhode.”

“Perhaps we should get back on point,” Sullivan said quickly. “I’m not sure I want to hear about the other thing.”

“The point is, if my flight wasn’t delayed, when I opened my front door, Cesaro would have aced me in revenge for killing his brother and getting his sister arrested. Instead, when he opened the door, he got a snoot full of frog poison, or something similar, by someone who also wanted me dead.”

“You’re a popular guy,” Mac said. “But why did he open the door.”

“I took cabs to and from the airport. My car was in the driveway. Whoever killed Cesaro probably assumed I was asleep, and was persistent. Maybe Cesaro saw her from the window and figured she was a girlfriend. Killing her would be a bonus.”

“You sound sure it was a woman,” Sullivan said.

“I’m sure it was Isabella Donner. Or, rather, Mary Naulls. It’s what she does. And it’s how she kills. She figured I would eventually figure things out. For Christ sake, she knows I had the priest’s computer and cell phone. I even asked her to sneak it them back into the rectory.”

“That’s something else I just didn’t hear,” Sullivan said.

“Do you guys have enough for a search warrant,” I said.

“We still have no proof. Just a grainy photo from years ago, a lot of coincidences and the tainted evidentiary products of a sacrilegious burglary of a Catholic church.”

“Try a Jewish judge,” Mac said.

Everyone ignored him.

“Maybe I can get hard evidence,” I said.

How,” Vocci asked.

“From her house.”

“Burglary is burglary,” Sullivan said. “Anything you find will be thrown out.”

“I’m not a cop. But I don’t plan on breaking in. I don’t even know if she realizes she killed the wrong man. Even if she does, she will want to see me.”

“To finish the job, maybe,” Mac said.

“I doubt she’d do it in her own house. Besides, now that I know what she’s capable of, I’ll be careful.”

“I don’t like it,” Vocci said.

“Gee, Pauli, I’m touched. I didn’t think you cared.”

“I don’t. But I also don’t want you screwing up a case.”

“A case you can’t make unless I get in that house. And I don’t want a cop within a zip code of the house. This has to be completely unofficial if you want it to stand up in court.”

I went home. If I didn’t get some sleep, no one would have to kill me.

Cesaro had died nicely. There was no mess.

My cell buzzed. It was Isabella.

“Alton, I’ve found out something. Can you come out to my house tomorrow morning? We can have breakfast. There is something you should know.”

CHAPTER 31 - BACKUP

I was getting dressed the next morning feeling almost human when my front doorbell chimed. Just because Bella invited me to breakfast didn’t mean she wasn’t standing on my doorstep with gallon of frog poison. I pulled my gun and peered out the bay window. Arman Rahm was on my stoop, with Kalugin standing behind him. I holstered my gun and opened the door.

“You really should do something about your lawn,” Arman said, handing me a small strip of yellow tape that the cops had apparently left behind. “It must embarrass your neighbors to know that the police consider it a crime scene.”

I waved them toward my kitchen.

“I presume this is not a social visit,” I said.

“Hardly. We heard what happened. Your house is gaining a reputation for being unhealthy for felons.” He knocked on the wood of the banister leading up to the second floor. I was about to point out that he was responsible for the majority of felons who died under my roof, but he continued. “My father assumes that it was precipitated by your investigation into the Father Zapo situation. He feels responsible.”

“As much as it pains me to say it, Arman, your family is off the hook for this one.”

We were sitting at my kitchen table. Kalugin was leaning against the counter next to my refrigerator, which now looked like a side-by-side. I told them what happened.

“I heard about the Tiffany parties. Thought it was quite inventive. You are very lucky to have survived. That Hispanic bunch has a reputation for violence. You should remain on your guard.”

“It was apparently a family operation. Rosa is going away, she’s run out of brothers and the cops don’t think anyone else in their crew will chance another shot at me. They probably think I’m Jason Bourne.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

I told them everything.

“Tsar Bomba!” Kalugin said when I finished, impressed despite himself.

“So you think she came here to silence you,” Rahm said, “and killed the wrong man when he opened the door. Do you think she knows it wasn’t you?”

“She called me last night. I’m going to her house for breakfast.”

Both men looked at each other.

“You can’t be serious about going out there,” Rahm said. “She may have already tried to kill you. She’s may be a mass murderer. Let the police handle it.”

I shook my head.

“Sullivan is working on a warrant, but all they have is a bunch of coincidences and a grainy photo from 20 years ago of some woman standing in a Colombian village surrounded by a bunch of underdressed Indians. They can’t prove she killed anyone. The Ontario cops never even brought an indictment. I want to confront her and see what happens. Maybe she’ll slip up. Maybe I’ll find something.”

“Maybe she’ll kill you,” Kalugin suggested.

He didn’t seem distraught over the prospect.

“Unlike her other victims, I’ll be ready.”

“And if she dies trying,” Arman said, “Justice is served.”

“I think she killed her father, four people in Canada and now five here, including Father Zapo and Casabianca. And she was lining up another.”

“Who?”

“Congressman Purvice. Her latest boyfriend.”

Rahm smiled.

“A Congressman. Well, I suppose she’s not all bad. But you are making a mistake.”

“Maybe. But she suckered me. She told me she was born on Staten Island and lived here all her life. I fell for it. Didn’t even bother to check it out.”

“The big lies,” Kalugin said.

We both looked at him.

“Hitler and Goebbels used them,” he explained. “People believe the big lies.”

“Listen, Alton,” Rahm said, “I have a meeting in Manhattan. But I want Maks to go with you.”

“Thanks. But it’s not necessary. She’ll know something is up.”

“Humor me. Just as backup. He can hide behind a tree.”

“I don’t think there are any redwoods on her block.”

Rahm ignored me.

“Maks, go in his car and do what he says. I’ll take the Mercedes.”

It was no use arguing.

“I didn’t know you remembered how to drive, Arman. I’m impressed.”

“I learned to drive getaway cars before I had hair on my balls.”

CHAPTER 32 – SKIPPING BREAKFAST

I parked on the street in front of the house next door to Isabella’s.

“Be careful,” Kalugin said.

It was the nicest thing he ever said to me.

I walked up to the door and rang the doorbell.

“Alton, it’s not locked,” she shouted from inside the house. “Just let yourself in. I’ll be right with you.”

I turned the knob and entered. There were two suitcases in the front hallway. I went into the living room and could see Isabella flitting about in one of the back bedrooms. The table in the kitchen was set with a coffee pot, cups, a container of cream and some more damn soda bread. Maybe it was my imagination, but the raisins in the bread looked particularly malevolent.

“Help yourself, Alton.”

Drinking or eating anything in this house was a nonstarter. A moment later, Isabella walked in carrying a coat in one hand and a rag in the other. She had on rubber kitchen gloves and dropped the coat on a chair before disappearing into the hallway, where I heard the front door open. I jumped up but then remembered Maks. She wouldn’t get far if she was running. I heard the door close and she was back in the dinette almost immediately. She washed the rag in the sink and put it and the gloves on a rack to dry. Then she sat down at the table. So did I.

“Just some last minute cleanup,” she said. “Hate to leave a mess.”

She was wearing a smart business suit and sensible shoes. She poured herself a cup of coffee, added cream and sugar and cut a piece of cake to put on a plate.

“Don’t you want something, Alton?”

“You’re going someplace?”

“Yes. I have a flight out of Newark. The food on those planes is execrable. I won’t eat for hours, so I just had to have something.”

“You’ve been traveling, I suspect, so you know how it is. Where did you go?”

“Canada.”

She didn’t seem surprised.

“Cashman?”

“And Ocean Falls.”

“My, but you are thorough. How is good old Ocean Falls.”

“You were smart to leave. Did you kill your father?”

“It seemed the right thing to do. He was a monster.” She took a dainty bite of soda bread. “Runs in the family, I guess.” She seemed preternaturally calm. “I presume you don’t think it’s a good idea that I go on a trip right now.”

“You’re not.”

She took a sip of coffee. Her actions were precise and ladylike.

“I guess it’s no surprise you won’t eat anything, Alton. Trust me, the food isn’t poisoned. Nor is the coffee or cream. Unless, of course, I’m committing suicide right in front of you.”

I hadn’t considered that. I made a move toward her but she laughed and held up a hand.

“I’m only joking, honey. My bags are packed and I fully expect to make my flight. What were you going to do? Give me mouth-to-mouth?” She laughed. “Not that I wouldn’t want you to. I will always regret that we didn’t finish what we started that night. You’re younger than my traditional lovers, but I thought it might be a nice change. You don’t know what you missed, although I think you got a taste of what it would have been like when you watched Bruce and me.” She shrugged. “Your loss.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you kill those other men? And why Father Zapo? Did he find out?”

Isabella, or Mary, looked at me sadly.

“I was right. You still think I killed Zapotoski.”

“Of course you did.”

She poured herself more coffee.

“Believe me, I’d tell you if I did. There can be no secrets between us now. The good Father had a legitimate stroke. A stroke of bad luck for me, as it was, since it convinced you that there was really a killer at work. That meant you wouldn’t stop investigating until you found out. You always get your woman, you joked. You are dogged, Alton. Cashman, Ocean Falls. I’m surprised you didn’t go to fucking Colombia.”

For someone already packed, Mary Naulls didn’t seem to be in a hurry. I wondered about that.

“When you think about it, it’s all quite funny. Another man whose death I had nothing to do with forced me to change all my plans again. For God’s sake, Alton, the man was 80, smoked, drank vodka and ate Polish food. He was a walking time bomb, health wise. Believe me, I almost died myself that day in the hospital when he mentioned my name and said I was Mary Naulls! Thank God that silly monsignor convinced you that Zapotoski said Maryknolls.”

“How did Father Zapo figure it out?”

“I don’t know. He never approached me. Perhaps he heard something in the confessional from one, or all, of the men. I doubt if they mentioned me by name, but maybe the time frame with my coming to the parish tipped him off. By the way, you never checked to see when I moved here, did you?”

“Not one of my finest moments. I took you at your word. Who would lie about something so easily checked? I won’t make that mistake again.”

“No, you won’t. But don’t feel bad. I’m really good at that kind of thing. And I’m sure my apparent age also threw you off. How old do you think I am?”

“I know you must be at least 45. I presume you are still using Rantox for wrinkles.”

She laughed delightedly.

“My God. You are good. You know everything now. But I had you fooled, even when you saw me naked. But while my face may have been helped chemically, my body is the result of hard work. I have smallish breasts, but it’s still tough fighting gravity.”

CHAPTER 33 – GOD’S WORK

Listening to her, I got a queasy feeling in my stomach. Her Eucharistic Minister pose was nowhere in sight. Before me was a cold, calculating serial killer. Possibly insane, but a killer nonetheless.

“You want to know why I kill men? Isn’t it obvious? I hate them. Especially men of a certain age and position. Secure, married but with a roving eye. Coach the fucking Little League. Church-going hypocrites who profess to be right-to-life but force their mistresses to have abortions. Like my father. Yes, yes, I’m one of those who blame Daddy. But in my case I think it’s justified. When dear old Dad wasn’t screwing all the women in British Columbia he was popping into my bed on a regular basis. Got me preggie and forced me to abort, on the sly. Couldn’t chance my Mum finding out, though I’m pretty sure she knew everything my father did, with me and others.”

Her face, serene to this point, got hard with the remembered abuse.

“I can’t have children because the abortion was botched.”

“It doesn’t seem to have affected your sexual appetite.”

“What’s left to me? I love sex and it’s a means to an end. The Rantox helps me stay desirable and also inflames my libido. When I was younger, I had trouble climaxing. Probably the result of my father’s abuse. Now I’m multi-orgasmic. You heard me. I wasn’t faking it. Those fools think they are great lovers. You should hear them. ‘I love you. I’ll leave my wife. Just give me a little time.’ And I never even bring up marriage. It’s so easy. Sure, they all have visions of screwing some 25-year-old Pilates instructor but they know, deep down, I’m the best they’re ever going to get. I keep in shape. You saw that yourself. I know I turned you on. Once you tell them you’re really not interested in marriage, only being their love slave as long as they want you, they’re in your thrall. I love killing the sons of bitches. I only wish I could look them in the eye when they died. But, of course, that would present a problem. One Nelson Rockefeller dying in the saddle is happenstance; two or more is murder.”

“How did you do it?”

“Kill them?”

“Yes.”

“The Body of Christ.”

“I don’t understand.”

I was suddenly very thirsty. But I wasn’t going to ask for a drink of water.

“Come on, Alton. Figure it out. On what days did the other three men die on Staten Island?

I tried to remember the information from the obituaries. I couldn’t. I seemed to have a problem concentrating.

“I’ll help you out,” she said. “Two were on Sunday and one, Spinelli, was on a Thursday. It’s the Thursday that’s throwing you, right? I’ll give you another hint, since you seem to be having trouble. The Thursday was the Assumption, a Holy Day of Obligation.”

“They all went to mass?”

“Bingo!” She laughed. “No, I don’t mean that. There was no church gambling involved. I mean you’re right. They all went to mass before they died.”

It wasn’t possible! “The Body of Christ” referred to Holy Communion. It is what a priest says when he puts the wafer on your tongue or hands it to you. It was also what a Eucharistic Minister serving communion would say!

“You poisoned their communion wafers!”

“Ingenious, no? The beauty of oral delivery is that it’s very easy to adjust the dose.  It wouldn’t do to have people drop dead in their tracks, at the altar or in a church pew. I had to make sure that there was enough time between ingesting the poison and their collapse from an apparent heart attack. It was ridiculously simple. I always wore a long-sleeved blouse and kept the wafer under my watch. I think my boys loved receiving communion from me. Sometimes we’d exchange knowing winks. I told you they were hypocrites.”

“What does that make you, Mary?”

“I like to think I was doing God’s work.”

“Weren’t you worried about the poison being absorbed by your skin?”

She looked at me the way a schoolteacher would look at a particularly obtuse student.

“A delayed-action dose that is designed for oral delivery, where it is absorbed in the lining of the tongue or in the esophageal mucosa, is typically inefficient for transdermal application. It’s quite different from the viscous liquid I occasionally use on hard surfaces.” She gave me a searching look, then shrugged. “Besides, I’m not an idiot. I always take a prophylactic dollop of antidote prior to delivery, just in case. I’ve been doing this for some time, dear boy.”

I had a feeling that I had just missed something. But she went on calmly. We could have been discussing the weather.

“I had something else planned for Bruce before you traumatized him. One of my specialties. There are so many ways to introduce one of my specialized toxins. The glans of a penis is a perfect receptor. Worked like a charm in Canada. Men love a woman’s touch. I would apply a lubricant for them, suitably laced. It was almost instantly absorbed, so it is no danger to me, although, of course, I still take a prophylaxis antidote, and keep more handy. That method has the added advantage of deadening certain neurological pathways in the man. He can remain tumescent, but can perform for a long time. You see how that would work out to a woman’s advantage, especially one who is multi-orgasmic, like I am.”

She looked at her watch.

“Such a pity,” she said. “I could have stayed on Staten Island a bit longer but for Father Zapotoski becoming suspicious. That was also a bad break. Never counted on an ancient, part-time priest being an ex-spy. I mean. What are the fucking odds, I ask you?” She suddenly looked reflective. “I seem to have bad luck with priests. I kill one, a child molester, who deserved to die and you blame me for the death of another that I had nothing to do with. I swear, Alton, priests are going to be the end of me.”

“You left out your own father.”

“He doesn’t count. He was a minister, and the reason I became a Catholic. By the way, who was that man I killed at your house.”

“Someone else who wanted to kill me. Different case. I’m thinking of selling tickets.”

She laughed.

“That’s priceless. He almost shot me! Then, when he saw my water pistol, he actually laughed. You should have seen the look on his face when I sprayed him.”

I felt a chill run up my spine. I thought it was a reaction to her cold, dispassionate recitation of her murders. But it stayed there. In addition to the queasy feeling in my stomach, which had now reached the level of nausea, I felt flu-like. I began to sweat. Isabella leaned in to look at my face.

“Are you feeling all right, Alton. You don’t look well.”

Her voice sounded hollow and the room began to spin. I was having a hard time focusing and I suddenly felt like I weighed a thousand pounds. I tried to stand. I couldn’t. In fact, I couldn’t raise an arm.

“Don’t worry. I know it’s unpleasant. Those symptoms will pass quickly. Soon you won’t be able to feel anything. I’m afraid I can’t do anything about the asphyxia. I presume suffocation can’t be pleasant once your diaphragm is paralyzed. The downside of this particular drug cocktail is that the subject is cognizant right up to the end. But maybe your arrhythmia will kick in quickly.”

CHAPTER 34 – FINAL SCREAM

My eyes went instinctively to the food and coffee.

“Wha .…”

“Don’t try to talk. I can see what you are thinking. You haven’t eaten or drank anything. I didn’t poison the food or cake. I suspected you would be cautious about that. The doorknob, on the other hand ….”

The doorknob. “Just let yourself in.” A hard surface, perfect for “the viscous liquid I occasionally use on hard surfaces.”

“Ah. I can see from your eyes that you get it. Once you opened the door, it was all over for you. I only had to keep you busy until it took effect. Hence, my lengthy and heartfelt confession. Thank God you weren’t wearing gloves. I might have had to go to Plan B.”

Isabella reached for her coat and pulled out a small pistol from a side pocket. A Beretta .25. That figured.

“Plan B,” she explained. “A real gun. I used my last water pistol dose on that man at your house. I’m glad this won’t prove necessary. So messy. And don’t worry. I cleaned the doorknob off when I went into the hallway before. I wouldn’t want to harm any visiting Jehovah’s Witnesses or Girl Scouts selling cookies. Oh, in case you’re wondering how I’ll explain you lying dead in my house, I won’t have to. By the time they find you I’ll be in Argentina. New name, new look. I don’t own this house. I rent. I always rent. You can imagine why.”

She started gathering her things.

“I’ll turn down the heat. There’s a cold snap coming. You should keep quite a while.”

Mary Naulls looked at me pityingly. I couldn’t move a muscle. I was having trouble breathing. She got up and leaned down. Her lips brushed mine.

“You should have fucked me, darling. It wouldn’t have changed anything, but at least you would have had a wonderful time. And I wasn’t going to pull a Bruce on you. You are young. I wasn’t worried about your virility.”

Then she bit my lower lip. I felt pressure but that was all. There was blood on her teeth when she stood up. She licked it away with her tongue.

“Very good,” she said. “Completely numb. Forgive me if I don’t clean up. I want to get going. Traffic can be murder going over the bridge.”

She started to walk away and then paused.

“Alton, I’m sorry about this. Really, I am. I dislike men, but you are different. You think I’m a monster. But I’m not. The men I killed were despicable. But I have my standards. Their children were grown. I would never harm someone who had children at home. Assuming they didn’t abuse them like my father abused me, they might have had a positive effect on their kids. We all want to look up to our parents. I killed hypocrites, but I’m sure their grown kids think the world of them. I can live with that.”

Isabella looked at me. My eyes were burning. I couldn’t blink.

“If it’s any consolation to you, I’m fairly certain that my next port of call, so to speak, will be my last. I wonder how many men I will be able to keep on a leash when I’m in my 50’s, Rantox or no Rantox.”

She laughed quietly and then disappeared from my vision. I started gagging, drowning in my own saliva. I heard the front door open, then a muted conversation. The voices got louder and then I heard a shot. There were sounds of a struggle, and of furniture breaking. Finally, a woman’s scream.

I knew that scream. It was unmistakably Isabella.

But I also knew, just before I blacked out, that she didn’t just have an orgasm.

CHAPTER 35 – BIGFOOT

“Are you going to eat that Jell-O?”

Cormac Levine was already reaching for it.

“Why should today be any different,” I said, pushing my tray closer to him. “I’ve been two days and I haven’t gotten to my dessert yet.”

“Yeah, but yesterday you couldn’t even swallow. That don’t count.”

That was true enough. It took a while before my nerve synapses were functioning on all cylinders. I still had unwanted twitches and spasms in my extremities.

We were waiting for Dr. Singh, the neurologist assigned to my case. He and Dr. Gallo, who stabilized me in I.C.U., were tag-teaming my recovery. Gallo, in particular, was quite solicitous, thinking that I might not have been poisoned had he done more research with Father Zapo. I finally convinced him that the priest’s death, while reinvigorating my investigation, had been natural. There was nothing for him to find. Now, with any luck, Singh was going to discharge me, and then I was going to hunt down the biggest cheeseburger in the borough. Maybe two.

Mac was doing his best to run interference with me with the platoons of detectives, scientists and media who wanted to know how I managed to survive. They also wanted to know who had so fortunately showed up at Isabella Donner’s house to save me. Finding out who killed her was also a priority, but Cormac, as a detective in the District Attorney’s Office, was able to deflect that line of inquiry by claiming jurisdiction.

“Kalugin still among the missing?”

“Yeah,” Mac said, with strawberry Jell-O dripping on his chin. “And I hope he stays that way until I can figure out what to do about the dead broad. The F.B.I. is buggin’ us, not to mention the Canadian cops.”

“There were no witnesses. I was out cold. Even if I could identify him, I’m not giving him up. He saved my life after she shot him.”

Mac snorted.

“The only other person who fits the description the EMS guys gave is Bigfoot.”

“He’s not that tall,” I said. “I presume you went to see the Rahms.”

“Yeah. Arman said Kalugin was taking his regular two-week vacation in Siberia. My guess is that he’s been shipped out to lay low and recuperate. With their dough, it’s probably the Mayo fuckin’ Clinic. Arman wouldn’t say much, but I got the impression that Maks wasn’t hurt that bad. Bullet probably bounced off.”

Cormac had filled me in on what the cops had managed to piece together. One of the EMS guys had tried to stop Kalugin from leaving the scene since he was bleeding down his arm. The man backed off when Kalugin, using his other arm, lifted him off his feet.

“I can’t see him going down for Donner,” I said. “Anyone else, they might give a medal.”

Mac laughed.

“I know. The boys on my squad have been dying to nail Kalugin for a dozen unsolved homicides. It’s driving them nuts that he may slide for this one. But I think they’ll go along. You know how it works. They’ll take some of the credit for getting a serial killer off the streets. The D.A. is already spinning it that way.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Means Sullivan may finally be getting some of his moves back. Did you make that call to Toronto?”

I had asked Mac to tell the big shots in the headquarters of the Ontario Provincial Police that Constable Annie Barrett in Cashman was instrumental in tracking down Mary Naulls.

“Yeah. They sure talk funny up there. Anyway, I laid it on thick. After I finished singing her praises they have to think she’s a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Stephanie Plum.”

“Stephanie Plum?”

He shrugged.

“Irene has all the Evanovich books. Read a couple myself. Pretty good stuff. What’s the story with the Barrett broad?”

“Good cop. Works for an asshole who blew the original case and now has her riding a desk.”

“Not for long.”

Dr. Singh walked into my room.

“How was the Jell-O, Detective Levine?”

“Outstanding, Doc. I’m thinking about getting sick just to keep it coming.”

Singh laughed.

“Well, you will have to do that. Mr. Rhode can go home today.” He turned to me. “I’m going to miss you. You’re my first nerve gas patient, as well as my first frog poison patient. I’d only read about them in medical school.”

“Glad I could have been of help, Doc.”

Dr. Singh turned serious.

“You were very fortunate, Mr. Rhode. The man who found you not only recognized the symptoms, but knew what to do to keep you alive until Emergency Services arrived. He even told them what caused your condition. Thus, we were able to stabilize you until we could get the proper antidote. And that in itself was a miracle. Fortunately, the police went through the woman’s luggage and found some vials she prepared. But it was close. Your heart stopped twice, although not long enough to cause brain damage.”

“Which might have been an improvement,” Mac said.

***

I spent the next day at home. I was weak, but other than a slight tingling in my left leg that Dr. Singh said would eventually disappear, I felt pretty good.

Abby came by with the office mail and a shopping bag, from which she unloaded containers of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, collard greens, stewed apples, biscuits and gravy. And, finally, a sweet potato pie.

“What the hell is this, Abs? The road show of Roots? I thought you only ate Italian.”

“I only order Italian. I cook black. My family comes from the South. My great-great granddaddy was the slave cook for the largest plantation in Mississippi.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“No reason you should,” she said, laughing. “I just made that up. But I can cook up a storm. Nothing like home vittles to make a soul feel better. Where do you keep your plates? I damn near passed out from hunger making this stuff. It brought back memories. We’re going to have lunch together.”

She obviously wanted to make sure I would eat. I could have told her that would not be a problem. A man would have to be already dead not to dive into the spread she was laying out on my kitchen table. The delicious smells had obviously escaped the kitchen. I could hear Scar scratching at the back door.

After Abby left, I called Alice. Cormac had decided against telling her about what happened until he found out if the antidote was going to work.

“If you croaked, she’d come back for the funeral,” he explained. “If you made it, I was going to leave it up to you.”

“What about if there was brain damage?”

“I probably would have called her, cause if I didn’t she’d be pissed at me. But I would have tried to talk her into staying in Paris. Airfare ain’t cheap. Why waste a trip to visit a carrot.”

Despite his way with words, Mac’s logic was unassailable. And I told Alice that.

“So,” I said when I reached her on her cell, “there is no reason to come home now.” I’m no more a vegetable now then the last time I saw you. As I recall, I could hardly move then either.”

Alice laughed, but I could hear the tremor in her voice.

“I feel terrible. You could have died. I should have been there. I’m coming home. I want to see you.”

I knew how important Paris was to her right then.

“Alice. Don’t be a goose. I want you to stay in Paris. I’m warning you. I kept a vial of nerve gas. If you try to fly back I swear I’ll take it. With the appropriate wine, of course. A nice Pinot Noir.”

“You are such a goddamn idiot!”

I took a bottle of beer from the fridge and popped the top near the phone.

“Hear that! It’s the poison. I’ll take it unless you promise to stay.”

Her laugh was stronger then. The rest of the conversation went fine, although some of it would’ve gotten an R rating.

“Promise me you will visit me as soon as you are able,” she finally said.

“I’ll hop the first flight after I restore feeling below my waist.”

“Yes. That would probably be a good idea.”

The next morning I called Arman Rahm. He told me he was on his way out but suggested that we meet for lunch at Rod’s Steak House in Convent Station, NJ.

CHAPTER 36 - RETREAT

Rod’s sits adjacent to one of northern New Jersey’s finer hotels, the Madison. It is considered by many the equal of the best Manhattan beef emporiums, and is certainly any restaurant’s equal in ambiance, with its rich wood paneling, highly polished brass and antique furnishings. Rod’s also boasts two attached 19th Century Pullman railroad coaches that also serve as dining rooms, usually for private parties.

I found Rahm in a dark blue three-piece business suit sitting at a corner table by himself, although two men wearing leather jackets sat to his front and watched me approach their boss. One of them recognized me and said something to his partner. They both visibly relaxed. I nodded at them and sat. A waiter came over.

“What will you like to drink, Alton?”

He had a half-finished martini in a tall stem glass in front of him.

“That looks good,” I said.

He held up two fingers and the waiter disappeared.

“How do you feel?”

“Fine,” I said. “What are we doing in New Jersey and what are you dressed up for?”

“I always dress properly when visiting the Jesuits.”

“The Jesuits?”

“Yes, the Loyola House of Retreats in Morristown is just down the road.”

I knew that. In fact, I had once gone on a weekend retreat at the beautiful 30-acre property at a time when I was trying anything to get my head back on straight after a disastrous overseas tour. The sloping lawns, gardens and woodlands, and the strict discipline of silence enforced by the “Jezzies” helped enormously. In fact, that was the last time I was at Rod’s, a traditional stop for retreat-goers who wanted a good steak and some stiff drinks before entering Loyola’s welcoming, but austere, arms.

I was pretty sure Arman Rahm wasn’t planning to go on a retreat and I said as much.

“I’m visiting a sick friend who is recuperating under the watchful eyes of the good Fathers,” he said, smiling.

Our drinks came. I took a long pull. Then it hit me. The Rahms were hiding Kalugin in a Catholic retreat house! Arman saw my look of comprehension and laughed. Then he said, “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”

It was a fair imitation of Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame after he carries off Maureen O’Hara and gives her the protection of the church in the iconic cathedral. Some nearby diners looked our way but then quickly went back to their lunches when Rahm’s men stared them down.

“I don’t think that works anymore, Arman. I think the Catholic Church traded sanctuary for a tax exemption.”

“I know. But who will look for him there? You won’t tell anyone.”

“How did you swing it?”

The waiter appeared. Rahm looked at me.

“Let me order. I know the chef.”

Without looking at the menu, he ordered Caesar salads, Maryland crab cakes and two 24-ounce Delmonico steaks, with all the trimmings, plus a bottle of Cakebread Cellars cabernet.

“Are we expecting the New York Giants offensive line to join us,” I said.

“It won’t go to waste,” he said, gesturing to his men at the other table. “And to answer your question, we have a close relationship with Mount Manresa.”

Mount Manresa is the 100-year-old Jesuit retreat house in Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. It was scheduled to be closed and its operations folded into the Morristown facility. The 10-acre property was valued at almost $16 million and the consensus was that the storied grounds would soon go the way of all vacant land in the borough and be developed into condominiums and townhouses.

“Please tell me you’re not buying Mount Manresa.”

“Staten Island real estate is potentially the most valuable land in New York.”

“I thought you Russians only bought along the shore.”

“After Hurricane Sandy, we are rethinking that. Hell, the way things are going with global warming, Mount Manresa may be waterfront property someday.”

“And the Jesuits don’t have a problem with you?”

“With enough dummy corporations, one can buy anything. Besides, they’d rather sell to the devil they know then one they don’t. For some reason they hate Donald Trump.”

The crab cakes arrived and the waiter uncorked our wine. Arman went through the tasting routine but after the wine was poured he told the waiter to bring two ponies of chilled vodka.

“We can’t drink red wine with crab,” he explained.

“How is Maks doing?”

“A simple flesh wound. But I think it best he stays here until things blow over. He’s enjoying himself. He’s not a talker. The silence is wonderful for him. And the staff loves him because nobody dares break the rules when he’s around.”

“I hope to God he doesn’t go to confession.”

Rahm laughed.

“Yes, that would open up even a Jesuit’s eyes.” Rahm cut a piece of crab cake and pointed it at me. “What can you do for him?”

“Whatever it takes, Arman. He saved my life. What does your friend in the D.A.’s office say?”

I was one of the few people who knew that Rahm was sleeping with one of the Assistant District Attorneys in Mike Sullivan’s office.

“She tells me that they are not inclined to pursue the matter too closely.”

“I hear they will try to take credit for exposing Isabella Donner.”

“Are you surprised?”

The waiter came with our vodka. It did go well with the crab.

“Did Maks tell you why he went to the door when he did?”

“When he saw the woman wipe off the doorknob, he became suspicious. He assumed it was fingerprints, but we now know it was something more sinister. He waited a few minutes and then decided to go in. He got to the door just as she came out with her suitcases in hand. He called your name and when he got no reply he pushed past her. She panicked and shot him in the back. The shoulder, actually. Fortunately, it was a small-caliber pistol. Maks has survived much bigger bullets. He was forced to subdue her but, alas, his skills in that regard are not, how shall I say it, refined. You know the rest.”

Cormac said Isabella’s neck had been snapped like a twig.

“The police will probably treat it as self-defense.”

“Yes. He is quite embarrassed about that. It’s a first for him. I doubt there will be repercussions. The woman, after all, was a mass murderer.”

“I’m lucky she didn’t kill him. Then we’d both be dead.”

“Yes. And that was the least of your luck. Kalugin is familiar with various toxins. At one point the Soviet Union was prepared to nerve gas against the Taliban and other insurgents during our misadventure in Afghanistan in the 1980’s when he was stationed there. They never did, primarily because nerve agents are so dangerous to handle. The Soviet Army was never big on operational safety. After several Red Army soldiers died working with the hellish stuff, the idea was shelved. Kalugin was a witness to some of the deaths, which were quite gruesome. It made an impression, as much as anything can make an impression on Maks. When he saw the state you were in, he called 911 and did CPR on you until help arrived.”

Rahm saw the look on my face and laughed.

“Yes, my friend, the poison was one thing, but you may also be the only person on earth to have survived mouth-to-mouth with Kalugin. Undoubtedly something neither of you will want to repeat. Or talk about.”

He didn’t have to worry about that, I thought, as our steaks arrived. They were seared perfectly and delicious. I said as much.

“Yes,” Rahm said, “but I imagine most things taste better after surviving almost certain death.”

He was right, of course. For the next quarter hour we simply ate. I finally pushed my plate away and finished my wine.

“I’m having a hard time thinking that Maks Kalugin knows CPR.”

“All my men have been trained in it, as well as basic first aid,” Rahm said. “It comes in handy in their line of work.”

“Of course.”

When the waiter came over to see how we were doing, there was still enough food left on the table to feed Rhode Island.

“Please box all this up,” Rahm said. He looked at his two bodyguards who had their eyes on the room and its entrances. Probably calculating lines of fire. “And add two pieces of your excellent cheesecake, to go. Then bring us cognacs. Your best.”

After the waiter left Rahm turned to me.

“How about after our brandy we go over and see how Maks in doing at Loyola?”

“Sure. But I’m not going to kiss him.”

Rahm laughed.

“Yes. And try not to make too big a deal about his saving your life. He is sick of doing it. This makes the third time in two years or so. He told me he either wants a raise or permission to kill you. You are wearing him out.”

“I repeat myself, but on each occasion he intervened I was only in danger because you guys put me there.”

“A minor point. But it is funny, when you think about it, Alton. This whole Naulls situation started with a Polish priest who used to be a Communist seeking the help of an old atheist adversary in the KGB to catch a serial killer using the Catholic Church as her cover. And it ends with us visiting your rescuer who is hiding out with the Jesuits. It’s almost enough to convince me that God has a sense of humor.”

“God?”

Our brandies came and Arman Rahm lifted his glass toward me.

“I said my father was an atheist, Alton. As you know, I believe in hedging my bets.”

CHAPTER 37 – FRENCH LESSONS

Two Weeks later

Alice was in full Parisian expatriate student uniform. Tight jeans, back boots, sweater and scarf. Everyone in France wears jeans. I think they are issued by the Government. I felt conspicuous in my khakis. In a manhunt, I’d stand out like a camel at the Kentucky Derby. I could imagine the BOLO the gendarmes would put out: Male, Not Wearing Jeans. Expel on sight.

Of course, Alice looked terrific, as, I am forced to admit, did most of the women I saw. There is something about French women that is unexplainable. I mean, all women are unexplainable, but the French versions take it to another level.

We were sitting in a bistro drinking Café Americanos on Rue de Platre just up the street from my hotel. I had taken a room because Alice was sharing a small flat with another student. We were killing time before walking over to the Latin Quarter for dinner. Alice said she had discovered “an absolutely lovely little restaurant on Rue Gallande with the best bistro food in Paris.” After dinner she wanted to show me St-Séverin, “the most-charming church in Paris.”

This was Alice’s first experience of Paris, and it showed. I’d been to Paris before and could have told her that to get a bad meal in the city was next to impossible. I might have also told her that, given my recent adventures, I could do without any more religious exposure. But I was happy for her, falling in love with what, to my mind, is the greatest non-New York city on the planet. And in my more reflective moments, I think it’s a tie.

“How is your room? The Hotel Britannique is supposed to be lovely.”

“It’s larger than I expected. Last time I was here my room was so small I had to punch air holes in the wall.”

Alice loved the engraved compact I gave her, and the story that went with it.

“I love it even more knowing it’s stolen,” she said.

“And, don’t forget, I got it at a huge discount.”

“You are so romantic, Alton.”

Of course, I also told her about the dead guy in my foyer and everything that had happened with Isabella Donner.

“My God! What a woman. Do you think she would have tried to kill you if you had, well, succumbed to her charms?”

“After seeing what she did with the councilman, I might have succumbed during the succumbing.”

“I’m serious.”

“I assume so. I don’t believe any of her lovers are alive to tell the tale.”

“But you didn’t fit the profile of the men she despised.”

“I think she made exceptions for self preservation. Can’t hold that against her.”

We had been sitting in the bistro for almost an hour, just sipping coffee. One of the delights of Paris is that you can sit all day having a couple of cups of coffee, a glass of wine, perhaps a croissant, and nobody thinks anything of it. For a few francs, or euros, one can feel like a human being. There would have been no Hemingway if that wasn’t the case. He was always broke.

“Her sex drive must have been amazing.”

“Yes. It was obviously chemically enhanced. She may have overdone the Rantox.”

“A drug that makes you look 10 years younger and pumps up your libido at the same time. Where can I buy the stock?”

“I think LexGen has some kinks to work out. Plus there may now be legal issues. Marketing a drug associated with a sex-crazed serial killer might be problematical.”

“Do you think it made her the way she was?”

“No. I think she was just bats. Your French philosophers likely have another name for it.”

“Très bats.”

“Anyway, it certainly made her more attractive to her victims,” I said. “There wouldn’t be many men who could resist her.”

“Lured by meadows starred with flowers,” Alice said.

One of the risks one runs when involved with a philosophy professor is that they occasionally say things that need clarification. I gave Alice a look.

“That’s how the Greeks described the place where the Sirens lived,” she explained, laughing. “Your Isabella would be right at home in Greek mythology. She was certainly as dangerous and devious as any one of them.”

“Except the Sirens lured sailors to their deaths with their songs,” I said, “not with chemically enhanced sex.”

“How did you resist her charms, sailor?”

“I think it was the soda bread. I kept thinking of my grandmother.”

“Your grandmother made soda bread?”

“No. She could hardly boil water. I was thinking of you.”

Her eyes misted at that, which wasn’t my intention.

“Hey,” I said.

Fortunately, we were interrupted by four of Alice’s friends from school. Her roommate, Nicolette, was one of them. There was another girl and two men, none of whose names I caught. Hell, they were all wearing jeans.

A lot of French was spoken but I caught enough, along with Alice’s quick translations, to garner that I was not completely unknown to them, at least the girls, both of whom I soon warmed to, mainly because they thought I looked “dangereux.” The men were another story. They kept looking disparagingly at my khakis and seemed entirely too solicitous of Alice. The French have earned their reputation as seducers. Their recent Presidents married supermodels and juggled wives and mistresses in public, much to the delight of an understanding, and apparently approving, public. I presumed Alice was fair game. I weighed my options. I could shoot all the men in France. I would have to obtain a gun, as mine were back home. That might be a problem. France wasn’t the United States, where there were more guns in private hands than there were private hands.

***

That night, as we lay in my bed at the Hotel Britannique, I mentioned my plan on dealing with potential rivals.

“I believe the Germans tried something similar,” Alice said, “several times. And even with Teutonic efficiency, they failed. What makes you so sure you can succeed?”

“I have greater motivation.”

She cast her eyes down.

“Your motivation appears to be unmotivated.”

“Give me a break.”

She laughed.

“Won’t your plan be awfully expensive, ammunition-wise?”

“What’s the exchange rate with the Euro?”

She told me.

“I’ll have to cash in my 401-k. Mario will be devastated.”

“I can’t be involved with a man without a pension plan.”

“You’re not making this any easier.”

“I see other obstacles. I know you. You will make exceptions.”

“Such as.”

“Chefs.”

“Then it’s Plan B.”

“Which is?”

“This,” I said, as I moved my hand between her legs. “Followed by 24/7 long-distance phone sex to keep you busy.”

Alice giggled and then began squirming.

“That might work,” she said and let out a small moan, “but long distance will probably be as costly as ammunition.”

“You’re worth it, kid,” I said, rolling on top of her.

“I like Plan B,” she gasped. “But I’d like to try something.”

Ten minutes later, after I got my breath back, I said, “Where did that come from?”

“Nicole showed me.”

“Showed you?”

“Well, told me. But she was very graphic. She taught me some other stuff. When you’re ready again, we can try them.”

After the first Nicole maneuver, I figured I’d be ready in a month or so.

“How about you just tell me about it,” I said, trying to buy time.

Alice did, colorfully, using a ribald mixture of French and English, and I discovered I didn’t need the month.

THE END

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***

Alton Rhode returns in SISTER. This is an excerpt:

CHAPTER 1 - PROM CHECK

Sister Veronica leaned forward and smiled into Carole MacQuaid’s nervous, pretty face.

“Really, Carole? Your Mom said this dress was appropriate?”

“I swear, Sister. She said it was just like the one she wore to her own prom.”

The principal of Ave Maria Academy for Girls in Worcester, Massachusetts, held her tongue. But what she wanted to say was that if Mrs. MacQuaid had worn a similar dress to her prom it was probably the night she conceived Carole. Instead, she said, “OK. Let’s give her a call.”

The girl sighed heavily, defeat on her face.

“Well, maybe not just like the dress she wore. But it is the same color.”

The dress was purple. Bad taste apparently ran in the MacQuaid family.

“I don’t think your mom’s boobs were falling out.”

The girl looked down at her chest.

“I don’t think they are so bad, Sister.”

“They aren’t bad, Carole. You have a wonderful figure. But there is a difference between cleavage and the Grand Canyon.” Sister Veronica was quite sure some of the boys in town had seen the girl’s breasts in all their naked glory, but that was no reason she should look trashy on prom night, purple dress notwithstanding. “You are a lovely girl. Let the boys concentrate on your face for a change.”

All the seniors had to pass inspection. One by one the girls came by the principal’s office, changing in the bathroom, to preview their prom dresses. Sister Veronica was halfway through the senior class. The prom was two weeks away but she wanted to give the kids enough time to make the necessary adjustments. In Carole MacQuaid’s case, she thought, steel cables might be in order.

The dresses did not have to be suits of armor. But they couldn’t be strapless, and the straps had to be at least one and a half inches wide. Sister Veronica had nothing against her girls showing a little feminine pulchritude. It was not unheard of for her to tell a girl she might want to be a little more daring. Cleavage depended on each girl’s attributes. Small-breasted girls were given slightly more leeway in that department. High heels were permitted. Telling a teen-age girl she couldn’t show off her legs would be cruel. But not too high. The girls would probably be scandalized if they found out their principal knew that ultra-high heels were called “fuck me” shoes. I didn’t always wear these skirts, jackets and high-collared blouses that make me look like, well, Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote. These kids should have seen me in a bathing suit. And they’d be really shocked to know I wasn’t a virgin, although it’s been many years since I’ve been with a man. None since long before I took my vows. But I remember how it was. The intensity. The need. A blurry image of a handsome young man swam into her consciousness. I wonder how he is?

“Earth to Sister,” Carole said.

“What’s that?”

The principal realized that her mind had wandered.

“You were staring off into space,” the girl said. “I thought you were spazzing out.”

“Sorry. I was thinking of something. Not that you girls aren’t capable of giving me a stroke. Now, are you going to the prom with that boy from Holy Cross?”

“Tom? Yes, Sister.” The girl looked at her principal for a sign of disapproval. “He’s only a freshman.”

“Nice-looking boy, and polite as I recall. Freshman, huh. Way to go, girl.”

They both laughed. Who am I to cast stones, Sister Veronica mused. Mine was a college sophomore. A Holy Cross boy, too, although neither of us lived anywhere near here back then. Funny I wound up here.

Carole MacQuaid left, disappointed about the dress, but not angry. None of the 133 girls in the school could ever be angry at Sister Veronica. She ran a tight ship, but she was eminently fair, doling out help and praise just as often as discipline. Every week she made it a point to call the parents of at least five students, always finding something positive to say about their children. She only had two decades on her seniors but they, and other students, came to her for everything. Boy troubles, drunken fathers, academic problems. Ave Maria graduated all its students and every single girl went on to a four-year college, including some Ivies. A couple went to military academies. She cherished a wonderful letter from one of her girls, who credited the discipline and guidance she received at Ave Maria for her success in surviving her first year at West Point.

Sister Veronica was only one of three nuns still at the school. They lived on a stipend, with their salaries going back to their religious order with the understanding that it would be used to bolster the pay of lay teachers, and the occasional scholarship for a needy girl. Ave Maria didn’t graduate ingrates. The kids, and their parents, knew how lucky they all were.

The Ave Maria principal was still a very attractive woman, kept trim by 80-hour work weeks and jogging, augmented by long walks in the woods and hills surrounding the school’s 10-acre campus. She also used the treadmill in the small gym in the main school building, which was, in fact, the former mansion of a local Irish bootlegger, who stored Canadian liquor in the basement and a series of Asian mistresses upstairs.

It had been four years since leaving her teaching job in the Boston Diocese to become the youngest principal in the 89-year history of Ave Maria, 40 miles west of the big city. The glass ceiling for women in the Catholic Church was still bullet-proof thick, but her intelligence and drive were common knowledge and the Mother Superior of her religious order — the Sisters of St. Jerome — had little trouble convincing the bishop that her talents were better used elsewhere. It didn’t hurt that the poor man was overwhelmed by a sex-abuse scandal that threatened to bankrupt his diocese, and moving another salary, however minor, out of town didn’t hurt.

Sister Veronica immediately revamped the rather stodgy curriculum of Ave Maria to better reflect the changing ethnic makeup of the student body. What had once been a predominantly white school, heavily populated with Swedes, Italians, Irish, Poles and French Canadians, now had a sizable minority of Vietnamese, Ghanaian, Liberian and Congolese girls. In an effort to make those kids feel more welcome, and to show the entire student body the reach of the Catholic faith, she recruited Rev. Rudolphe Jolly from nearby St. Basil’s to be the school chaplain. Father Jolly, a boisterous and expansive man who lived up to his name and was beloved by everyone, came from Togo, one of the wave of African priests who were filling out the Church’s depleted parish ranks in the United States. Fluent in French, he was an immediate hit with the girls whose families hailed from Quebec and soon had half the other kids learning the language.

The move toward greater diversity initially met some resistance from a few parents and local townspeople. But the opposition quickly evaporated after Sister Veronica asked the head of the local Mafia and a high-ranking State Police officer, both of whom had daughters who loved Ave Maria, to make a few calls.

The peripatetic educator also instituted an early placement program with nearby institutions of higher learning. So innovative was her thinking that other school districts in New England began to emulate her initiatives. And as a fundraiser who, in the pithy words of the head of the local Chamber of Commerce “could charm the warts off a hog,” she had created an endowment that allowed Ave Maria to keep its annual tuition below $7,000. A rabid Boston Red Sox fan, she even managed to get the team to sponsor a four-year scholarship and provide two season tickets. She auctioned off most of the games, raising even more money, although she did keep a couple of days for herself and her staff when the Yankees played at Fenway. Her stewardship was credited with saving Ave Maria from the fate of other private Catholic academies, such as Assumption Preparatory School, which was rebuilt after the deadly 1953 tornado that killed 94 people only to succumb permanently to budget woes many years later.

Ave Maria’s finances were still in precarious shape, she knew. But she was hopeful that might soon change, if the lawyer she recently spoke with was right. The Lord certainly worked in mysterious ways. Often, a bit too slowly, for her taste. There were bills to be paid.

Sister Veronica looked at her watch. Carole MacQuaid was the last girl to stop by with a dress. The building was quiet, other than the normal creaks and groans common to ancient plumbing pipes and heating ducts. It was Friday, and the rest of the lay staff had hurried away for their weekend. The only other two nuns who taught at Ave Maria left to visit relatives in Boston. It was still light outside under a cloudy sky, and a bit chillier than normal for late spring.

The principal was tired. If I don’t do something to get my blood moving, she thought, I’ll fall asleep during N.C.I.S. It was her favorite show. She particularly liked Abby Sciuto, the quirky forensic scientist, a devout Roman Catholic who in her spare time went bowling with nuns. Abby, a free-spirited Goth with a heart of gold, was one of the reasons Sister Veronica looked the other way when one of her students got a tattoo, as long as it was small, not obscene and not visible in street clothes. As for Tony DiNozzo, the irrepressible N.C.I.S. bad boy, he reminded her of her first real boyfriend. Her first and only lover. I hope he didn’t hate me for what I did. Leaving him without a word.

She shook off the maudlin memories. She knew what she needed. She went up to her small apartment on the top floor of the old mansion, the one where the long-dead bootlegger probably kept his mistress in splendor, and changed into a sweat suit. Ten minutes later, she was jogging along a path adjacent to the Blackstone River near Quinsigamond Village. It had started to drizzle and she was glad her sweat suit was waterproofed and she was wearing her Red Sox cap. Because she maintained a good pace, she wasn’t cold. But she knew she would be when she stopped running. She decided to stop at the McDonalds in Quinsigamond on the way home for a large hot coffee.  And, what the heck, since she was there, she might as well get a Big Mac, with fries. What better meal to watch N.C.I.S. She knew Tony would approve.

Almost an hour later, the Ave Maria principal was back where she had started her run, a small grass parking area down a short gravel cutoff that jutted off the highway. She felt good, and rationalized that she’d burned off enough calories to justify her planned fast-food splurge. Maybe she’d even get the little apple pies Mickey D’s sold, two for a dollar. She pulled off her ski cap and shook her head. Rivulets of rain water mixed with perspiration ran down her brow and cheeks. Strands of her hair were plastered to her face. I must be a sight, she thought.

There had been several cars parked in the lot when she arrived. She had passed — and been passed — by other joggers, many of whom she knew. She’d even run almost a mile alongside the slow-poke Rabbi Markowitz from Union Hill’s B'nai Avraham synagogue before apologizing and leaving him in the dust, or rather, mud. But it was dark now. As far as she could tell, she was the only one still running in the rain, which was now heavy.

The lot was almost deserted. There was only one car near her 2005 Hyundai Santa Fe. Some of the girls had teased her about her choice of vehicle. S.U.V.’s and nuns didn’t seem to go together. But it sure came in handy to haul equipment and kids to soccer practice and other sporting events. She again glanced at her watch. A half hour to N.C.I.S. She would be cutting it close, but at least the food would be hot when she turned on the TV.

Sister Veronica reached the Santa Fe and glanced at the car next to hers. The windows were fogged up and she couldn’t tell if anyone was in it. It crossed her mind that the spot would make a great lovers lane once the joggers and walkers left. She smiled. I suppose it qualifies as a form of exercise. She shrugged. Well, I still have my Tony DiNozzo.

As she opened the door to her S.U.V., she could see and hear cars and trucks on the main road. Then the other car’s door opened.

“Hello, Sister.”

It was a man’s voice, vaguely familiar. And the way he pronounced “Sister” was strangely discordant. She turned as the man approached. He was dressed all in black and had something in his hand that glinted as a beam of light from a truck on the main road shimmered through the trees and swept over them. It also briefly illuminated his face and, with a start, she understood why the voice had seemed familiar..

“You!”

The man smiled, and punched her in the chest. And held his fist against her left breast. There was a sharp pain, but only for a second. It was replaced by a strange hollow feeling.

Sister Veronica tried to say something, but couldn’t. She looked down as he withdrew the ice pick. She looked at his face again, which began blurring and shifting, so that his smile became lopsided, like that of the Joker in that Batman movie. Heath Ledger. The man also seemed to be getting taller, until she realized she was just sagging down toward the ground, the strength leaving her legs quickly.

All these years, she thought.

Sister Veronica wasn’t afraid. Even though she knew she was dying.

And why.

***

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SISTER

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lawrence De Maria began his career as a general interest reporter (winning an Associated Press award for his crime reporting) and eventually became a Pulitzer-nominated senior editor and financial writer The New York Times, where he wrote hundreds of stories and features, often on Page 1. After he left the Times, De Maria became an Executive Director at Forbes. Following a stint in corporate America – during which he helped uncover the $7 billion Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme and was widely quoted in the national media – he returned to journalism as Managing Editor of the Naples Sun Times, a Florida weekly, until its sale to the Scripps chain in 2007. Since then, he has been a full-time fiction writer.  De Maria is on the board of directors of the Washington Independent Review of Books, where he writes a regular blog column:

THE WRITE STUFF (MY BLOG)