Vespers

  VESPER

  by

  ED MCBAIN

  Copyright ©

  1990 by HUI Corporation

  First published in Great Britain 1990 by

  William Heinemann Ltd

  First published in U.S.A. 1990 by

  William Morrow and Co. Inc.

  Published in Large Print 1991 by

  Clio Press, 55 St. Thomas' Street, Oxford OX1 1JG, by

  arrangement with William Heinemann Ltd and

  William Morrow and Co. Inc.

  All rights reserved

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

  Mc. Bain, Ed, 1926 Vespers. I. Title.

  813.54 IF]

  ISBN 1 - 85089 - 498 - 1

  Printed and bound by Hartnolls Ltd., Bodmin,

  Cornwall

  Cover designed b,¢ CGS Studios, Cheltenham

  This is for ANNE EDWARDS AND STEVE CITRON

  The city in these pages is imaginary. The people, the places are all

  fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established

  investigatory technique.

  It was his custom to reflect upon worldly problems during evening

  prayers, reciting the litany by rote, the prayers a mumbled counterpoint

  to his silent thoughts.

  The Priest.

  At such times, he thought of himself as The Priest.

  The T and the P capitalized. The Priest. As if by distancing himself in

  this way, by referring to himself in the third person as if he were

  someone not quite himself... ... a character in a novel or a movie,

  perhaps... ... someone outside his own body, someone exalted and remote,

  to be thought of with reverence as solely The Priest. By thinking of

  himself in this manner, by sorting out The Priest's problems as the

  problems of someone other than himself, Father Michael could... Because,

  you see...

  It was he, Father Michael, who could find comfort ... the hateful

  threats in the rectory... ... this is blackmail, blackmail... ... the

  pounding at the central portal doors... ... the black boy running into

  the church, seeking sanctuary, Hey man, hep me, they goan kill me!

  Blood running down his face. ... gone to ruin, all to ruin.

  Graffiti on the massive stones of the church, barbarians on ponies

  storming the gates. Almost six weeks since all of that ... today was the

  twenty-fourth of May, the day of Ascension all that time, almost six

  weeks, and he was still on his knees to... I came forth from the Father

  and have come into the world; now I leave the worm to return to the

  Father, alleluia!

  There was the sweet scent of roses on the evening air.

  The roses were his pleasure and his vice, he tended them the way he

  tended the Lord's flock.

  Something still and silent about tonight. Well, a Thursday. The name

  itself. Something dusky about the name, Thursday, as soft and silken as

  sunset.

  Thursday.

  God is rich in mercy; because of his great love for US... ... I'll tell,

  I'll tell everything... The boy's blood dripping on the marble floor

  before the altar.

  The vengeful cries echoin inside the church.

  Still on his knees.

  ... by this favor are you saved. Both with and in Christ Jesus, he

  raised us up and gave us a place in the heavens.

  Beyond the high stone walls of the garden, The Priest could see the

  sooted upper stories of the buildings across the street, and yet above

  those, beyond those, the sunset-streaked springtime sky.

  The aroma of the roses was overpowering. As he moved past the big maple

  set exactly at the center of the garden, a stone bench circling it, he

  felt a sudden suffusion of love.., for the roses, for the glorious

  sunset, for the power of the words that soared silently in his prayers,

  God our Father, make us joyful in the ascension of your Son Jesus

  Christ, may we follow him into the new creation, for his ascension is

  our glory and our hope. We ask and noticed all at once that the gate in

  the wall was open.

  Standing wide.

  The setting sun striking it so that it cast a long arched shadow that

  reached almost to the maple itself.

  He had thought... Or surely, Martha would have... He moved swiftly to

  the gate, painted a bilious green by a tasteless long-ago priest, and

  yet again recently with red graffiti on the side facing the street.

  The gate was wooden and some four inches thick, stone walls on either

  side of it, an architectural touch that further displeased The Priest's

  meticulous eye.

  The narrow golden path of sun on the ground grew narrower yet as he

  swung the gate closed on its old wrought-iron hinges.., narrower..,

  narrower.., and then was gone entirely.

  Alleluia, come let us worship Christ the Lord as he ascends into heaven,

  alleluia t The lock on the gate was thoroughly modern.

  He turned the thumb bolt.

  There was a solid, satisfying click.

  Give glory to the King of kings, sing praise to God, alleluia t His head

  bent, he turned and was walking back toward the rectory, past the

  shadow-shrouded maple, when the knife... He felt only searing pain at

  first.

  Did not realize until the second slashing blow... Knew then that he'd

  been stabbed... Turned... Was starting to turn...

  And felt the knife entering again, lower this time, in the small of the

  back... Oh dear God... And again, and again, and again in savage fury...

  Oh Jesus, oh Jesus Christ...

  As complete darkness claimed the garden.

  Not a day went by without Willis expecting someone to fred out about

  her. The open house tonight was on the twelfth floor of a renovated

  building about to go co-op. There were a great many strangers here, and

  strangers were dangerous. Strangers asked questions. What do you do, Mr.

  Willis? And you, Miss. Hollis? Willis and Hollis, they sounded like a

  law firm. Or perhaps a dance team. And now, ladies and gentlemen,

  returning from their recently completed tour of the glittering capitals

  of Europe. we bring you... Willis... and Hollis!

  The questions about himself were merely annoying; he wondered why

  everyone in America had to know immediately what everyone else in

  America did. He was sometimes tempted to say he sold crack to innocent

  schoolchildren. He wondered what sort of response that would get. Tell

  them you're a cop, they looked at you with raised eyebrows. Oh, really?

  Cut the crap and tell us what you really do. Really, I swear to God, I'm

  a cop, Detective/Third Grade Harold O. Willis, that's me; I swear.

  Looking you over. Thinking you're too short to be a cop, a detective, no

  less, and ugly besides with your curly black hair and wet brown eyes,

  let me see your badge. Show them the potsy. My, my, I never met a real

  live police detective before, do you work in one of those dreadful

  precincts we're always reading about, are you carrying a gun, have you

  ever killed anyone? The questions. Annoying, but not d angerous.

  The questions they asked Marilyn were dangerous. r />
  Because there was so much to hide.

  Oh, not the fact that they were living together, this

  was already the Nineties, man, nobody even thought about such things

  anymore. You got married by choice, and if you chose not to, then you

  simply lived together. Had children together, if you could, did whatever

  you wanted, this was the Nineties. And perhaps.., in such a climate of

  acceptance.., you could even.., well, perhaps.., but it was extremely

  unlikely. Well, who the hell knew? Maybe they could, after all, come

  right out and say, Look, people, Marilyn used to be a hooker.

  The raised eyebrows again.

  Oh, really? Cut the crap and tell us what she really did.

  No, really, that's what she really did, I swear to God, she used to be a

  hooker. She did it for a year or so in Houston, and ended up in a

  Mexican prison on a dope charge, and then picked up the trade again in

  Buenos Aires where she worked the streets for five years, more or less.

  Really. That's what she used to do.

  But who would believe it?

  Because, you know, you looked at Marilyn, you

  saw this woman who'd be only twenty-six in August, slender and tall,

  with long blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes and a complexion as

  flawlessly pale as a dipper of milk, and you thought No, not a hooker.

  You didn't survive being a hooker. You didn't come off six years of

  peddling tail --. not to mention the time in that Mexican hellhole, and

  look like this. You just didn't. Unless you were Marilyn. Then you did.

  Marilyn was a survivor.

  She was also a murderess.

  That was the thing of it.

  You opened the hooker can of peas, and everything else came spilling

  out.

  The cocktail party was in a twelfth-floor corner apartment, what the

  real estate lady kept calling the penthouse apartment, although Willis

  didn't think it looked luxurious enough to warrant such a lofty title.

  He had been in court all day long and had come up here against his

  better judgment, at the invitation of Bob O'Brien who said there'd be

  good booze and plenty to eat and besides neither of them would run the

  risk of getting shot, a distinct possibility if ever you were partnered

  with a hard-luck cop like O'Brien.

  He'd called Marilyn to tell her that O'Brien's girlfriend Maizie -- who

  turned out to be as ditsy as her name would be coming along, and maybe

  the four of them could go out to dinner later, and Marilyn had said,

  sure, why not? So here they were with the sun just gone, listening to a

  real estate lady pitching renovated apartments to supposedly interested

  prospects like O'Brien who, Willis discovered for the first time

  tonight, planned to marry Maizie in the not-too-distant future, lots of

  luck, pal.

  It was Maizie who looked like a hooker.

  She wasn't. She worked as a clerk in the D.A.'s office.

  But she was wearing a fuzzy pink sweater slashed in a V over recklessly

  endangered breasts, and a tight shiny black skirt that looked like a

  thin coating of crude oil, and high-heeled, ankle-strapped black patent

  leather pumps, a hooker altogether, except that she had a tiny little

  girl's voice and she kept talking about having gone to high school at

  Mother Mary Magdalene or some such in Calm's Point.

  The real estate lady was telling Willis that the penthouse apartment,

  the one they were standing in this very moment, was going for only

  three-fifty negotiable, at a fixed eight'and-a-quarter percent mortgage

  with no points and no closing fees. Willis wondered if he should tell

  her that he was presently living in a town house uptown that had cost

  Marilyn seven hundred and fifty thousand-dollars. He wondered if there'd

  be any former hookers living in this fine renovated building.

  In her high, piping voice, Maizie was telling someone that a nun named

  Sister Letitia used to hit her on her hands with a ruler.

  O'Brien was looking as if he expected to get shot at any moment, Marilyn

  wondered out loud how such a reasonable mortgage rate could be offered

  in this day and age.

  The real estate lady told her that the sponsor was a bank in Minnesota,

  which meant nothing at all to Willis. Then she said, "What do you do,

  Mrs. Willis?"

  "It's Hollis," Marilyn said.

  "I thought..." She turned to Willis. "Didn't you say your name was

  Willis?"

  "Yes, but mine is Hollis," Marilyn said. "We're not married."

  "Oh."

  "The names are similar, though," Willis explained helpfully.

  "And are you in police work, too, Miss. Hollis?"

  "No, I'm a student," Marilyn said.

  Which was the truth.

  "My education was interrupted," she said.

  And did not amplify.

  "What are you studying?"

  All smiles, all solicitous interest; these were potential customers.

  "Well, eventually, I want to be a social worker," Marilyn said. "But

  right now, I'm just going for my

  bachelor' s."

  All true.

  "I wanted to be a doctor," the real estate lady said, .and looked at

  Willis. "But I got married instead," she added, as if blaming him for

  her misfortune.

  Willis smiled apologetically. Then ha trn, t, O'Brien and said, "Bob, if

  you plan on staying a while longer, maybe me and Marilyn'll just run

  along, okay?"

  O'Brien seemed to be enjoying the warm white wine and cold canap6s.

  "See you tomorrow," he said.

  "Nice to meet you," Maizie said to Marilyn.

  The church garden was crowded now with two ambulance attendants, three

  technicians from the Mobile Crime Unit, an assistant medical examiner,

  two detectives from Homicide, a woman from the Photo Unit, and a

  uniformed Deputy Inspector from Headquarters. The D.I. was here because

  the police department in this city was largely Irish-Catholic, and the

  victim was a priest.

  Detective Stephen Louis Carella looked out at the assembled law

  enforcement officers, and tried to remember the last time he'd been

  inside a church.

  His sister's wedding, wasn't it? He was inside a church now. But not to

  pray. Well, not even technically inside a church, although the rectory

  was connected to the church via a wood-paneled corridor that led into

  the sacristy and then the old stone building itself.

  He looked through the open rectory doorway and out into the garden where

  roses bloomed in medieval splendor. Such a night. On the paved garden

  floor, the priest lay as if dressed in mourning, wearing the black of

  his trade, festooned now with multiple stab and slash wounds that

  outrioted the roses banked against the old stone walls. A small frown

  creased Carella's forehead. To end this way, he thought. As rubble. On

  such a night. He kept looking out into the garden where the crowd of

  suits and blues fussed and fluttered about the corpse.

  Carella gave the impression even standing motionless with his hands in

  his pockets of a trained athlete, someone whose tall, slender body could

  respond gracefully and effortlessly to whatever demands were placed upon

  it. His appearance was a lie. Everybo
dy forgot that middle age was

  really thirtysomething. Ask a man in his mid-to-late thirties if he was

  middle-aged, and he'd say Don't be ridiculous. But then take your

  ten-year-old son out back to the garage and try to play one-on-one

  basketball with him. There was a. look of pain on Carella's face now;

  perhaps because he had a splitting headache, or perhaps because he

  always reacted in something close to pain when he saw the stark results

  of brutal violence. The pain seemed to draw his dark, slanting eyes even

  further downward, giving them a squinched, exaggerated, Oriental look.

  Turn a group photograph upside down, and you could always pick out

  Carella by the slanting eyes -- the exact opposite of almost anyone else

  in the picture.

  "Steve?"

  He turned from the open doorway.

  Cotton Hawes was leading the housekeeper back in.

  Her name was Martha Hennessy, and she'd become ill not five minutes ago.

  That is to say, she'd thrown up. Carella had asked one of the ambulance

  crew to take her outside, see what he could do for her. She was back

  now, the smell of her vomit still lingering in the rectory, battling for

  supremacy over the aroma of roses wafting in from outside. She seemed