by Ann McMan
“No. I just assumed she was working for the Church. It’s no secret how invested they are in keeping all of this quiet. Look at what we now know they’ve done over the years to hush it all up and protect the priests. It’s pretty disgusting, if you ask me.”
“I agree with you. It’s intolerable and very . . .” he didn’t finish his statement.
“Very . . .what?” Mark asked.
Tim met his eyes. “Unforgivable.”
“From their perspective, I can see that.”
“What other perspective is there?” Tim asked.
“The Church is a thing, not a person. A ‘thing’—like an organization—can’t be responsible. Only the people who run it and make bad decisions for it are responsible. It’s a baby and bathwater kind of thing, you know?” He shrugged. “You don’t throw one out because the other got dirty. That’s how I see it, anyway.”
“The Church is the bride of Christ.” Tim responded in the only way he understood: by rote. It’s what he’d been programmed to do. It’s what they’d all been programmed to do.
Mark regarded him with a raised eyebrow. “Then Christ is in a pretty fucked-up marriage, if you ask me.”
Tim was blown away by Mark’s analogy and how perfectly it dovetailed with Stevie’s simple summation of his dilemma. He had no idea what to say.
In that moment, he had no ideas about anything.
Mark stretched a hand across the table and pushed Tim’s tumbler of Basil Hayden’s a tad closer. “I really think you need to drink this,” he said in a softer voice.
Tim took a careful swallow of the Kentucky bourbon. When he found his voice again, he asked Mark another careful question.
“You said you made your peace with what happened to you a long time ago. Do you mind telling me how you did that?” He lowered his eyes. “I seem to be struggling with it myself.”
“Therapy, dude. Lots of it. I know everybody’s process with recovery from this stuff is different. And that’s if you’re even lucky enough to recover. For me, it was simple: I didn’t really have a choice. My life was in the shitter—and so were all of my relationships. There wasn’t enough coke in Philly to make me forget. Not enough sleeping pills. I could either stay on the path I was on and lose everything, or I could get some help.” He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Believe me, Tim. There are people out there who get this stuff. Who know how to help you find your own way through it. You just have to make up your mind to find one—and then be brave enough to tell the truth when you do. It’s not easy, but not many things worth having are.”
Tim didn’t dispute Mark’s advice. He knew he was right. “This is what got you to a place where you didn’t want to speak out about Father Szymanski?”
“Hell, no,” Mark corrected him. “That was something else altogether. Therapy just helped me to stop throwing my life away with both hands.”
“I don’t understand. What made you decide not to go public about what happened to you?”
Mark sat back. “In a word: commerce.”
“Commerce?”
“Sure. You think we make a great living running this little storefront fag bar? Think again. It’s what happens upstairs that pays the bills.”
Tim felt out of his element. “I don’t know what that means.”
Mark smiled. “There’s no reason you should know what it means. Santino and I run a second business out of this location—a very specialized one that caters to a specific clientele.”
Only one possibility occurred to Tim, but he was reluctant to suggest it.
Mark seemed to read his mind. “Before you ask, it’s not ‘rent-a-boy’ services. We operate a legitimate private club—members only. It’s a place where the city’s closeted rich and powerful can come to kick back—be who they are, dress how they want, behave how they want, be with who they want—all without fear of disclosure. They pay us a lot for this privilege, and in exchange, we guarantee their privacy. The financial security this venture provides us would evaporate if I blew the whistle on the bishop—and attracted a nonstop media circus to our doorstep in the bargain.” He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Like I said . . . sometimes, your choices are simple.”
It was a lot for Tim to take in. He knew he’d probably think about little else once their interview ended and he was alone to consider everything Mark had shared. But there was still one thing he wanted to follow up on.
“Earlier, you said Father Szymanski played favorites. What did you mean by that?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“I think so,” Tim nodded. “No—I know so.”
“Okay,” Mark said. “It was all pretty gruesome. Let’s just say that Szymanski and his colleagues had some pretty eclectic tastes.”
“His colleagues? Other priests?”
“Not usually. It was mostly other members of his fancy private club.”
“I heard the stories about how some of our team members got to go there for special dinners,” Tim asked. “Is that what you mean?”
“Special dinners?” Mark considered Tim’s comment. “I guess we got dinner . . . sometimes—if we performed really well.” He gave a bitter-sounding laugh. “We mostly went over there as trophies. Tidy little presents for the fat cats who gave so much money to the parish. We got passed around a lot on those nights—just like basketballs in practice.” He stared at Tim. “You get my meaning here? They took turns with us—sometimes, two at a time. They even had some special rooms upstairs for it—places that weren’t open to other club members. And all the while, they told us what good boys we were and how well we’d be rewarded for being ‘nice’ to them. Nice? Like choking while you sucked some old codger’s dick was being nice? Or letting some skeevy perv in a black mask fuck you up the ass without lube or a condom? Nice? I don’t think so.”
Tim could feel the bile rising in his throat. What Mark was describing was worse than anything he’d imagined—and what he’d allowed himself to imagine had already been repugnant.
“I don’t . . . I can’t . . .” Tim couldn’t finish his statement.
“Later on,” Mark mused, “there were people who told me I became queer because of this. Can you believe that shit? Like being raped by someone can make you gay?” He scoffed. “Funny how nobody ever suggests that getting raped can make you straight. I wonder how they square that part of their stupid equations?”
Tim closed his eyes. He wanted to flee. He wanted to run away from this place as fast and as far as he could—to run to a place where he’d never have to hear this again. Never have to know this again. To find a world that had no space for such cruelty—no ‘special rooms’ where the innocence of children could be sacrificed in perverted acts of illicit and godless pleasure.
Enough. It was all enough.
“Yes.” Mark said quietly. “It is.”
Tim opened his eyes and looked at him. He didn’t realize he’d spoken the words aloud.
But whether he had or hadn’t didn’t matter.
Mark had managed to find a way out of his personal horror.
And he’d given Tim a path to find his own.
◊ ◊ ◊
This wait was becoming interminable.
Maya snapped up the iPhone tucked into the console of her rental car and checked the time again.
Tim Donovan had now been inside Shaken On Camac for more than an hour.
What the hell was taking so long?Whatever they were talking about, it couldn’t be good news for her client. Atwood had refused to accept Mr. Zucchetto’s generous offer two weeks ago. His response to the offer had been almost . . . blasé—as if a sudden infusion of $10,000 in cash meant nothing to the small businessman.
Maya was anything but naïve. Atwood’s insistence that he had no desire or inclination to become involved with the bishop’s problems seemed credible. His face had been completely open when he’d said it. There was not the slightest reason to doubt the veracity of his statement.
So why
was his conversation with Donovan taking so long?
It probably wasn’t due to the quality of the cocktails served here. Maya’s fairly broad experience with gay bars could attest to that. Most people didn’t seek these places out to titillate their palates by sampling their impressive inventories of fine spirits.
Ten more minutes, and I’ll have to move this sodded car again. A traffic cop was already chalking tires on the opposite side of the street. The meter maid stopped behind a black Ford and pulled out her citation book. Some poor bastard was getting a ticket.
No . . . the driver was still sitting in the car. He opened his door and got out to go talk with the cop—clearly in an effort to avoid the citation. The hard-boiled public servant seemed unimpressed.
Welcome to Philadelphia, asshole.
The traffic cop calmly finished writing up the ticket, and then pointed out some other empty spaces farther down the street.
Cheap bastard. Just pay the sodded ticket, already.
The ill-humored man snapped the ticket from her extended hand and stormed back to retake his seat behind the wheel of his car.
Jesus fucking Christ. Maya recognized him.
He was one of Marcus’s flunkies. Marcus had about a dozen goons like this who did his shit work. Their list of duties was pretty varied. Most of them worked as “cleaners.” Some of them, like this guy, did whatever the hell Marcus needed to make problems go away. The fact that he was here, parked on the street outside this innocuous bar in Philadelphia’s Gayborhood, could mean only one thing.
Tim Donovan had become a problem that needed to go away.
Well, well. We live and learn.Maya wondered if this ill-tempered thug had enjoyed his little jaunt to North Warren? There was no doubt now that Marcus had arranged for Senator Miller’s creative demise. He got extra points for that one.
Joey Mazzetta’s murder, however, had not been carried out in as laudatory a fashion. In fact, it was downright clumsy. And the special signature Marcus chose to append to the commission of Joey’s last act was unabsolvably sleazy—even for him.
It was personal, too. Marcus made sure of that.
The street door to Shaken opened and Tim Donovan stepped out into the cold. Maya watched him hike up the collar on his black wool coat and walk toward a Subaru that had seen better days.
She waited to see what Marcus’s Big Bad would do. If he started his car and followed Donovan, it would certainly result in some very bad news for Evan Reed this evening. If, on the other hand, he got out of his car and went inside the bar, the good Father might get a reprieve to preach another day.
Either way, it was clear that things were about to get a whole lot murkier.
Donovan started his car and pulled out of his space. Maya watched him rumble and rattle his way along the cobblestone street, headed for god knew where.
Big Bad did not follow him. Instead, he climbed out of his car and walked toward the entrance to Shaken. That had to mean that for right now, his objective was to gather information—not to shut down the conduit.
How long that would remain his job was difficult to determine. It, like everything else associated with this tiresome business, was a floating decimal point.
◊ ◊ ◊
The second thing that surprised Evan was how easy getting inside the actual office of Smith, Martin, Squires & Andersen turned out to be.
The first thing that surprised her was the physical location of their office building.
Ben had said the highbrow Center City firm was located in a building on 8th Street. Evan didn’t give that a second thought until they arrived at the scene and she realized that the actual building was on the corner of 8th and Market Streets—with entrances on both sides.
It was the same damn building where the Philadelphia offices of Donne & Hale were located.
Fabulous.
Julia’s firm used the Market Street address, so it never occurred to Evan that both businesses would be housed in the same damn building. She prayed that no one in Julia’s office—like, for example, Julia—would decide that Sunday night might be the perfect time to get caught up on some extra work. Evan didn’t make a habit of visiting Julia at work, but the Philly office was small enough that everyone on the staff there knew who she was.
Once they’d entered the building—from the 8th Street door—and taken the elevator to the second floor, Ben Rush approached a large potted ficus tree that stood in front of an imposing art deco window located at the south end of the hallway. He dug around beneath the Spanish moss that covered the soil and withdrew a plastic card attached to a blue lanyard.
“Behold,” he said, holding it up. “The key to the kingdom.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Evan was astonished. “A key card?”
“Yep. It’s all-access, too. We use it, then drop it right back here when we’re finished.”
“How the hell did you get that?” Evan asked.
“Never underestimate the persuasive powers of Benjamin Rush, PCI.” Ben buffed his nails on the lapel of his jacket.
Ping clucked her tongue and faced Evan. “Which, translated, means he had to pay somebody half a stack to get this.”
“I resent that,” Ben retorted. “I didn’t have to pay anybody five hundred bucks.”
“No?” Ping asked. “How much, then?”
Ben looked at Evan sheepishly. “Three hundred.”
Evan wasn’t surprised. “Whatever. Now what?”
“Now we head for the maintenance closet around the corner and get suited up.”
“Suited up?” Ping’s voice was tinged with suspicion. “What kind of suited up?”
“We have to look like we have a reason to be in there. So we’re gonna put on maintenance jumpsuits, and you,” he pointed at Ping, “are gonna have to dress like a housekeeper.”
“Yeah?” Ping wagged a finger in Ben’s face. “I don’t think so.”
“You got any better ideas, Madame Curie?” Ben hissed. “You weren’t supposed to be on this mission, remember? There are only gonna be two sets of coveralls hanging in there.”
“Well, I guess you’d better try ransacking a few more supply closets, homeboy, ’cause I am not dressing up like a damn charwoman.”
“How about you two take it down about a thousand decibels?” Evan herded the pair into the nearby stairwell, where they’d be less likely to attract attention from anyone who might still happen to be hanging around this late after 5 p.m. on a Sunday. “Okay. Ben? If we have a damn key card and a credible reason to be in there, then why can’t Ping just be . . . I don’t know—an IT person? In there to fix some malfunctioning cyber-gizmo kind of thing?”
“I suppose that could work, too,” he muttered.
“That’s more like it,” Ping nodded her assent. “I have mad skills fixing cyber-gizmo kinds of things.”
“Right. Let’s go and get this over with.” Evan held the door open for them. “I want to get in and get out, lickety-split.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were suited up and back in the elevator. Ping carried a messenger bag containing her laptop. She’d also donned a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses for the occasion.
Evan thought she looked very IT—right down to the requisite scowl of intolerance that usually clung to the countenance of people in that profession.
Ben also nabbed a ladder and a tattered box of fluorescent light tubes from a corner of the storage closet.
“Fool.” Ping tutted when she saw what he had. “What are you gonna do with those?”
The ladder was hooked over Ben’s shoulder, and when he swiveled to face Ping, it barely missed hitting Evan in the face.
“It’s so we can look busy if anyone stops by to chat,” he explained.
“And what makes you think they even have light fixtures like that?” Ping pointed at the box.
Ben looked baffled by her question. “Whattaya mean?”
“It’s an attorney’s office, not a damn dollar store.” Ping grabbed a to
ol bucket. “Leave those damn things and take this instead.”
Evan finished snapping the front of her coveralls. “Are you two ready?”
They both nodded.
“Okay, let’s hit it.”
They took the elevator to the seventh floor. Evan groaned. Donne & Hale’s offices were on the sixth floor. She saw the name of the publishing firm on the directory plaque displayed inside the elevator above the bank of buttons.
Ben noticed it, too. “Cozy.” He chuckled.
The key card worked just like it was supposed to and the three of them were inside the office in a flash. The firm had wooden louvered blinds on the windows on either side of its big oak door and, mercifully, they were shut tight.
“Okay, Ping.” Evan faced her. “Where do we start?”
“I need to find Dumbass’s office. That’s where I start. You two should go find their file room and start looking for hard copies of anything. If you’re in doubt, make a copy of it. One of these reception desks,” Ping gestured toward the two big desks that anchored the firm’s foyer area like moored ships, “should have a cassette to unlock their office copier.”
Ben was already opening drawers. “Bingo.” He held up a small cartridge and a set of keys. He jingled the keys. “Wanna bet these are to all of the office doors? This place’s security is for shit.”
“Lucky us,” Evan noted. “All right. Let’s get busy.”
It didn’t take Ping long to find the office she was looking for. And when they unlocked it, there were two computers sitting on a console behind the impressive desk.
“There you go.” Ping began unpacking her messenger bag. “I can guarantee you that only one of these is on their corporate network. Amateurs.” She sat down on the big leather chair before fluttering her hands at Evan and Ben. “Go on, go on. I don’t need the two of you in here gawking at me.”
They left Ping alone and went in search of greener pastures.
Evan found the file room at the end of the hallway near the entrance to the firm’s canteen. Ben followed her inside. It was a narrow space. One wall was lined with standard-sized file cabinets and the other wall was shelved from floor to ceiling. The shelves were filled with rows of brown document boxes. The room was small enough that they had to stand sideways when they opened any of the file cabinet drawers.
