Sweat Page 25

  Father McKenna opened the door, exposing his bare toes through the end of his leather slippers. He looked surprisingly dapper in an Irish-supporting green bathrobe with gold trim. “May I help you?”

  “Good evening. I am sorry to disturb you at such a late hour.”

  “I believe it is more early than late,” Father McKenna answered, neither perturbed nor trying to be funny.

  “I guess you’re right, my apologies. My name is Detective Earl Wallace with the First District.”

  “Good morning, Detective. Father Thomas McKenna. Please come in.”

  “Thank you.”

  Detective Wallace followed the Padre to the small living area in the rectory. The leather sofa was worn, a place where life, death, marriage, and baptism were discussed daily. Father McKenna turned on a small standing lamp near a statue of St. Joseph, and fumbled through the kitchen drawers just beyond the living area.

  Detective Wallace walked around the quiet rectory and stopped to read a framed document on the wall titled “Desiderata.” Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

  The words were hypnotic and therapeutic. Detective Wallace finished reading and started at the beginning again before Father McKenna interrupted the most religious experience the detective had had since a child had fallen, before his very eyes, four floors from an apartment balcony, bounced once, and landed unharmed.

  “How do you take it?”

  “I’m sorry?” Wallace said, his trance broken.

  “How do you take your coffee, detective?”

  “Black is fine, Father.”

  Father McKenna joined the detective in the living area, balancing two cups of coffee that were filled to the brim.

  “That is a very inspiring piece,” Detective Wallace said, nodding to the framed document on the wall.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Where is it from? I don’t recognize it.”

  “There’s a lot of mystery behind it. It gained notoriety under the misconception that it was penned by a saint in the eighteen hundreds. In fact, it was written much later, by a common layman. Common except for the skill to be able to write something that people put on their walls. Something that people fold up and put in their wallets.”

  “It is inspirational,” Wallace said, stressing the middle word.

  “Yes it is.” Father McKenna stirred his coffee and set the cup down.

  “How can I help you, detective?”

  “I had some questions about a possible parishioner. Do you know a Marilyn Ford?”

  Father McKenna paused for a split second. “Yes, I knew her. She was not a regular, if you will, but I knew her.”

  “Do you know all of your parishioners who aren’t regulars?”

  “No, not all. We have a few lapsed Catholics who are on their forth or fifth relapses. I don’t know them all, but I did know Marilyn. I understand she passed away last week. Very tragic.”

  “Yes, very tragic. Did you perform a ceremony for her?”

  “No. I believe her brother flew her body back to Wisconsin rather hastily.”

  “What do you know about the circumstances surrounding her death?”

  “Just what I have heard.”

  “Which is?”

  “That she had an accident in a Metro station involving the escalator.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That is all. Yes.”

  “Well, Father, we have reason to believe that you may be able to help us determine if she was a victim of foul play. On the morning of the sixteenth, I received a call from this rectory inquiring about the official filing status and the cause of death in the case of Marilyn Ford.”

  “And you suspect me?”

  “God no, Father,” Wallace said before catching himself. “I mean, no Father. But maybe one of your parishioners’s guilty conscience got to them. Maybe they came in for confession, cleansed their souls, and then made a call from a phone here on the premises.”

  “Detective, the confessional is not a place to start an investigation. I wouldn’t tell you anything, even if I could. Those are acts of contrition between man and God.”

  Wallace saw the dead-end sign in his mind and slammed on the brakes. “I understand, Father. Could I ask if you saw or heard anything suspicious last Monday morning? Any strangers around the church? Anything at all?”

  “Not that I recall. But the days here blend into one another more easily than the defined lives of the masses. Services in the morning, visits to the ill during the day. Dinner and evening prayers. Sunday is really the only day where I have what most people would call a ‘normal routine.’”

  Detective Wallace opened the envelope in his left hand and pulled out the photo of Chow Ying from the surveillance tape. “Father, have you ever seen this man in church?”

  Father McKenna adjusted the glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. He took a long look at the photo. “No detective. I think I would remember him.”

  Both men picked up their coffee cups. Father McKenna sipped the steaming coffee off the surface of his cup with puckered lips. Detective Wallace, with years of hot-coffee-induced asbestos on his tongue and throat, gulped down half the cup.

  “Could I see the phone or phones with this number?” Detective Wallace asked, showing the priest a page from the small detective note tablet that was an extension of his right arm and constant breast-pocket companion.

  “That is the number for the public phone in the back of the church.”

  “Could I see it?”

  “I can show it to you on the way out, if you like.”

  “Trying to get rid of me, Father?”

  “No detective, not at all. But it is early. Is there something else I can do for you?”

  “Would it be possible to get a list of current parishioners?”

  “Absolutely,” Father McKenna said standing and keeping his bathrobe closed with his left hand. “If you wait here, it should only take a minute or two.”

  “Sure Father,” Wallace answered, starting to re-read the well-crafted verse on the wall.

  Father McKenna came back with a simple stack of stapled white paper. Fifteen hundred names, listed alphabetically.

  “Here you are, detective.”

  “Thank you, Father. And if you would show me the phone, I will get out of your hair.”

  Father McKenna led Wallace through the back halls of the rectory, past the altar, and down the aisle.

  “The phone is just beyond the bathro
om, in the room on the right. You can let yourself out the front door when you are done. The door is always open,” said Father McKenna, pointing down the hall.

  “I will. Thanks, Father,” Detective Wallace said, producing a business card and handing it to the head of the church. “If you think of anything that may be useful, please give me a call.”

  “Of course, detective. Good luck with getting the answers you are looking for.” ***

  Nguyen walked up behind Wallace as the older detective dozed in his seat, his neck swaying back and forth like a flagpole in alternating winds. Nguyen tapped him on the shoulder and Wallace shook violently in his chair, his hand catching the corner of the desk, narrowly avoiding an incident that would have resulted in a daylong ribbing from colleagues.

  “Nice recovery,” Nguyen said with disappointment. “Been in long, Sarge?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. Got up early and went to speak with the priest at St. Michael’s this morning. He doesn’t know anything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, he’s a priest. The call came from the public phone in the back of the church. It’s accessible to anyone. It’s down a little hall in the back of the church in one of those play rooms for kids. One of those soundproof rooms where parents can take their crying kids so they don’t disturb the service.”

  “You don’t think the call was from someone who just happened to be walking by?”

  “Not likely. I mean, would you look at a church and think ‘Hey, this is a good place to make a call?’”

  “Not unless I was a parishioner and knew the phone was there.”

  “Right.”

  “So you think it was a parishioner who made the call?”

  “Probably.”

  “How many in the congregation?”

  “According to the list the priest gave me, there are officially over fifteen hundred on the registry. Probably another thousand not on the list who come irregularly and could know about the phone.”

  “That is a lot of pavement to pound.”

  “Yes it is, Detective. And before going down that street, I was thinking about checking Marilyn’s former company.”

  “I’m driving, I assume?” Nguyen asked.

  “Until further notice.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter 30

  Al’s legs dangled over the edge of the Potomac’s retaining wall, the water rushing by five feet below, a dangerous current lurking beneath the surface. Jake stepped under the bridge into the now familiar respite from the heat. The smell of urine was strong. Empty wine bottles with screw-off lids littered the embankment near Al’s neighbor’s designated area. Jake scrunched his nose as he walked by, two bare feet protruding from a worn dark purple blanket.

  “Jake, my friend. I knew you would be stopping by today,” Al said before his visitor got too close.

  Jake looked in the same direction that Al stared, the Kennedy Center and the Whitehurst Freeway dominating the skyline, the morning sun bouncing off the water in the distance. Eight-man sculling teams raced down the edge of Roosevelt Island, oars cutting through the water in perfect unison.

  “Oh, yeah? Why’s that, Al?”

  “Your problem hit the front page. Go grab those papers from the chair in the living room, if you don’t mind,” Al asked still staring off into the distance.

  Jake tried to force a smile as he walked up the sloped dirt. The living room…

  Jake dropped the papers on the concrete wall next to Al, flopped his butt down, and hung his feet over the edge, shoes still on. Al shuffled through the first paper on the top of the stack.

  Jake reached into his backpack and pulled out a bag. “I brought you lunch, if you want it. An eight-inch sub with everything… an apple, a banana, and some milk.”

  “Sounds very nutritious. You’ll make a great mom someday.”

  “If you don’t want it, just say so. I’ll eat it myself.”

  Al reached for the bag and put it on the other side of his body. “I’ll make sure it goes to someone who can use it.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Jake said.

  Al flipped through pages like a speed-reader on cocaine. Jake noticed the variety of the day’s newspapers. The stack was thick. Everything from the Wall Street Journal to Barron’s to the Financial Times. Al peeled off page after page and handed them to Jake.

  “Take a look at the articles on the pages I dog-eared. Tell me what you see.”

  Jake opened the first page, started to fidget, and moved to the next paper. The same photo, taken a few frames later than the first.

  Jake looked at Al. “I know all about the photo. The story ran on the news last night.”

  Al gave Jake a serious look, his mouth closed, his eyes focused. “This isn’t what I would classify as a positive development.”

  Jake looked at the picture of his father and Senator Day, shaking hands with Lee Chang. All three men were identified in the photo caption.

  “I’m not sure exactly, but there is something you need to know. You can’t really see this clearly, but on TV they had a closer picture. That’s the big Asian guy I think I saw the night Marilyn was killed.”

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  “Not one hundred percent, but sure enough that if I see him again I’m going to be running in the opposite direction before I start asking questions.”

  Al fell into a deep silence, all of the life, the craziness, gone from his personality. He was somewhere else, and Jake waited for him to return.

  “Senator Day,” Al said with open disdain.

  “What about him?”

  “It’s not good, Jake.”

  “I had dinner with Senator Day a month ago. He was harmless. Arrogant and full of hot air, but harmless.”

  “You had dinner with Senator Day? The senator from Massachusetts?”

  “Yes. It was my first day working at my father’s office. I guess he was trying to impress me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Jake.”

  “What, that my father was trying to impress me?”

  “No, that you had dinner with the senator. Just as I was beginning to like you, I find out you’ve been sharing your table with vermin.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I’ll tell you about the harmless Senator Day,” Al hissed, pausing slightly before continuing. “The plane that killed my wife and son, Egyptian Air Flight 990, took off from New York at 1:20 a.m. on October 31, 1999. The plane flew for thirty-one minutes and vanished from radar sixty miles south of Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. As usual, there was a large-scale investigation headed up by the NTSB, the FAA…the usual suspects. Lack of physical evidence made determining the cause of the crash difficult. The debris of the 747 was scattered across some fifty square miles of ocean. Two hundred and seventeen lives reduced to pieces of foam, plastic, and seat cushions bobbing on the water,” Al said, fading out, his voice cracking.

  “Of course, given my former employer, I was able to lean on a few people and get a little more information than the general public could get. There were complications with the investigation. The little black boxes were eventually retrieved via a robotic arm on an unmanned mini-sub. Contrary to popular belief, information from the data recorders can be hit-or-miss, and in some cases the black boxes are worthless. In the crash of Egyptian Flight 990, the data was too good. All evidence pointed to a plane that was mechanically sound. There was no history of failed hydraulics or engine problems, and a recent scheduled maintenance showed a perfectly fit aircraft.

  “The crux of the crash was the voice recordings from the cockpit, and it wasn’t until these were studied that real problems began. Two minutes of tape from some crazy-ass, co-pilot-in-training quoting the Koran and rambling on about Allah. There were all kinds of procedural inconsistencies, starting with the pilot leaving the co-pilot behind the controls in the first hour of flight. When the plane started dipping erratically, the pilot fought his way back to the c
ockpit and tried to regain control of the aircraft, battling the structural limitations of the airplane and the physics of an aircraft in a steep dive. All the evidence needed for the investigation was there, on the tape, in words.”

  Jake looked at Al as he continued to tell the story, tears rolling down his cheeks, his voice quivering.

  “Well the Egyptians start screaming foul, claiming the cockpit recordings were inconclusive and that by portraying the Egyptian Air pilots as kamikaze, suicidal maniacs, it would damage the mainstay of their economy—tourism. Given the political nature of the claims, a special Senate inquiry team was formed to gather additional, impartial information from a clusterfuck of agencies and individuals. The FBI Anti-Terrorist Task Force, the FAA, NTSB, the Airlines Pilot associations, Boeing, Airbus. Anyone and everyone who knew anything about aircraft, or the two million parts that go into one, was paraded through the Capitol in front of the Senate inquiry.”

  “I think I see where this is heading.”

  “I guess you can. The inquiry team was headed by one ‘harmless’ senator from Massachusetts. The plane had crashed in his backyard, and with that individual piece of luck, Senator Day was nominated as the Senate point man for the investigation. The whole affair was anything but a picnic. Surviving family members were going toe-to-toe with the airplane manufacturers, the airlines, and the Egyptian government. Senator Day, avoiding decision and repercussions that could come from making the wrong one, simply drowned the proceedings with testimony, knowing the longer he could stall the proceeding, the less public interest there would be. Twenty months later, with the Egyptian government still protesting loudly, the official initial finding of the NTSB was thrown out in favor of a much more politically-correct finding of ‘inconclusive.’ I’m sure Senator Day got honorary Egyptian citizenship and a free lifetime pass to the Pyramids.”

  “I’m sorry, Al.”

  “Yeah. Everyone is sorry,” Al responded with half the volume in his voice. “You know, I was able to pull a few strings and listen to an unedited version of the cockpit recording. The man plunged the plane into the ocean, pure and simple. And Senator Day sold out the Americans onboard that flight to appease the Egyptians.”