Galileo

by Ann McMan

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Maya waited half an hour for the old geezer to show up.

  When, finally, he did arrive, he was shocked to see her.

  “How did you get in here?” he demanded.

  “It wasn’t all that difficult,” she explained. “Unlike many establishments, your lock accepts American Express. You really should improve security at this place.”

  Maya watched an easy half-dozen expressions flicker across the Bishop’s sagging features. They ran the gamut from fear to outrage to guarded suspicion. He was a smallish man, which seemed at odds with the entrapments of power and influence exuded by the opulence of his wardrobe. Her overwhelming impression of the man was that he looked . . . soft. Pampered. Like he’d never lifted anything heavier than the pectoral cross that hung from his neck at the end of a heavy chain. He had pale skin marked with age spots and eerily white hands that now clutched at the folds of his dark cassock.

  “I have no further business with you, Miss Jindal. And I do not appreciate seeing you here.”

  “I rather suspect we’d be hard-pressed to find any circumstances where you’d appreciate my company. But then, your standards are quite different from those of your colleague the judge, aren’t they, Bishop?”

  He sat down behind his imposing desk. It was ridiculously tidy. No papers in evidence. Just an ornate leather blotter, a bound folio of some kind, a small bronze replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà, and a telephone. He cleared his throat.

  “Mr. Zucchetto has informed me that our relationship has been terminated. I believe you’ve already been paid the full fee for your services.”

  “Mr. Zucchetto informed you correctly.”

  “Then why are you here?” He sat back and folded his hands.

  Maya crossed her long legs. “Did Mr. Zucchetto also inform you that part of his plan was to have me killed?”

  The bishop seemed unfazed by her remark.

  “No. But I don’t know all the details of his intercourse with you.”

  Maya laughed. “Touché, Bishop. Well played.”

  “What do you want?” His tone was icy.

  “Contrary to opinion, I’m really an old-fashioned girl.” She reached into the messenger bag that sat on the table beside her chair, and withdrew a sleek pair of black leather gloves. She took her time putting them on before completing her thought. “All this is to say that I believe turnabout is fair play.”

  “I’m not sure I take your meaning.”

  “Oh,” Maya reached back into her bag and withdrew the Tokarev, “don’t you?”

  That finally got a rise out of the old man. His watery eyes began to show traces of fear.

  “What do you expect to accomplish with this?” His voice had lost its imperial tone.

  “I’m a cleaner, Your Excellency. That’s what I do. It’s why you hired me.” She cocked the hammer on the Tokarev. “I’d be a very sloppy employee if I left a steaming mess of your magnitude behind, now wouldn’t I?”

  He held up his hands. “Don’t do this. It isn’t necessary.”

  “Oh, but I disagree. Think about poor Joey Mazzetta. And sad Senator Miller, who had to swallow all of those tiny nails and wait hours to die.”

  “I had nothing to do with Mazzetta.” The bishop was beginning to sound anxious.

  Maya chuckled. “It’s comforting to know you are still a man of some integrity.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Maya saw tiny beads of sweat developing on the bishop’s pate.

  “You’re so quick to acquit yourself of only one of the two murders carried out to preserve your . . . what shall we call it? Ecclesiastical purity?”

  “I didn’t have anyone target him. That was . . .” he didn’t finish his statement.

  “Your colleague, the Honorable Justice Cawley, perhaps?”

  The bishop did not reply. That would never do . . . Maya needed him to elaborate. Otherwise, her visit here would be wasted.

  “No matter,” she said. “It’s all pro forma now, anyway.”

  His eyes grew wide. “What do you mean?”

  Maya made an elaborate display of checking her watch.

  “By now, I’d imagine the judge is on the phone with the White House. One can only wonder at the story he’ll have to tell about your role in this sordid business. As you know,” she leaned forward and rested her elbow on the edge of his desk to set up her shot, “the early bird catches the worm.”

  “Cawley panicked.” The bishop was desperate now. “He had that man, Goldman, take care of Mazzetta after his disgusting performance at the club. And Goldman’s people dealt with Miller, too. I had nothing to do with either of those incidents. They weren’t about me.”

  “Well, the perfect symmetry of this is that you’re in the enviable position of being able to forgive yourself for the sins you have committed. Isn’t that right, Bishop? All of the nasty things you and the judge did to those innocent little boys?”

  “That was all over years ago. Another life. A different time. I haven’t broken my vows.”

  “Which vows would those be, Your Excellency? Shall we tally them up? Let’s see . . . poverty, obedience, chastity . . . did I get them all? Oh dear. It looks like you might have a problem with that last one.”

  “You can go to hell.” He nearly spat the words at her.

  “Oh, that’s in my long-range plan, I assure you. I’ll so look forward to seeing both you and the judge there. We’ll have quite a time reminiscing about the secrets we shared, don’t you think?”

  “Tell me what you want.” He was desperate now. “More money?”

  “Back to that, are we?” She exhaled. “You’re right. I probably have tarried too long. Allow me to get to the point. You’re up to your sanctified beanie in dung. From where I sit—literally—this can unfold in one of three ways. First: I could kill you right now and simplify everything for everyone. A nice little remedy, but I’m not really feeling the magic in it. Second: I could turn the lovely recording I just made of our conversation over to the authorities. It would incentivize a lot of lively discussions on the cable news channels, don’t you think? And it provides the extra benefit of inoculating me against any future reindeer games by our mutual friend, Mr. Goldman. That leaves us with option three: you can put feet to your own twisted prayers, and go out in a proverbial blaze of glory.” She pulled back the slide on her Tokarev. “Your choice, Bishop. But I think I’m leaning toward that last option. How about you?”

  The bishop was starting to shake.

  “I see we’ve reached consensus.” Maya deftly extracted a second, smaller weapon from her bag before placing the Tokarev on the desk between them. She got to her feet. “Do take care to make your first shot count. This weapon tends to be messy. You won’t want to try it twice.”

  She backed toward the door.

  “Deum vigilat,” she chanted, before leaving his office.

  She’d reached the elevator doors when she heard the gunshot.

  It wasn’t followed by a second.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Julia didn’t often drink by herself, but tonight she made an exception.

  Her Norwegian Air flight left Paris at 6:15 p.m. local time, and she’d arranged to have a driver pick her up at JFK outside the international terminal for the trek back to Philadelphia. That choice had been simple. A two-and-a-half hour car ride held greater appeal to her than spending the night at an airport hotel to wait for the first commuter flight home in the morning.

  She’d already determined that she wouldn’t call Evan. She knew it would be the middle of the night when she got back to Delancey Place—and, in truth, she wasn’t ready to face Evan. Or anyone. Not until she could sort out her emotions and figure out what she was going to do.

  After the driver dropped her off, she headed straight for the shower, followed by a much-needed change of clothes. She was bone tired, but knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She’d actually managed to doze a bit on the long flight back from
Paris. That surprised her—mostly because she’d stashed the fat envelope of photographs into her carry-on bag, and the damn thing tormented her throughout the entire flight. It virtually banged and strobed from its nest on the floor in an obscene parody of “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

  Your sins will find you out.

  Would this unwelcome record of her father’s sins now become her own dark secret to keep?

  What should she do?

  Had it been possible, she’d have tossed the photos out the window of the airplane, and let them disappear into the cold waters of the Atlantic.

  Now? Now the unopened envelope sat in front of her on her grandmother’s coffee table.

  It didn’t belong here. She said a silent apology to her grandmother for bringing the abomination into her house. That thought made her wonder if her grandmother had ever known about Lewis Donne’s sick fraternity of pedophiles? Had Katherine Donne ever shared her lurid discovery with her own mother? At one time, the two women had been close . . .

  No. Julia doubted that she had. It wouldn’t be Katherine’s style. And in the end, everything came down to considerations of “style” for Julia’s mother.

  She nursed her tumbler of cognac and stared at the packet containing the photos. The decision to bring it back to Philadelphia with her had been reflexive. Now she wondered why she chose to do so? It wasn’t like she wanted more time to review the photographs . . .

  Quite the contrary. She never wanted to see them again. She knew she’d live the rest of her life trying to erase the memory of what she’d already seen. The collection of repulsive images was burned into her mind like hidden objects revealed by flashes of lightning.

  She closed her eyes. Her father . . . naked and bent over the back of a boy. A boy. A boy with a blank expression on his young face. Vacant eyes . . .

  No. She didn’t need to see these again. No one ever needed to see these.

  What good could come from making them public? Scores of lives would be tainted . . . ruined by their accidental association with these men. Innocent people who’d had nothing to do with her father or his closed circle of . . . perpetrators . . . would be tarred by the exposure of what some members of their beloved club had done.

  Her gaze shifted to the fireplace that commanded the wall facing the sofa. She’d turned on the gas logs before she sat down. There were no lamps on in the room, and the dramatic shadows cast by the fire undulated along the walls and ceiling like underworld demons. Their frenzied movements compounded her agitation. She felt surrounded—pursued by a posse of every unholy thing that lurked behind the shroud of darkness.

  Enough. It was enough. She would not allow herself to become a hostage to her father’s diseased and criminal past.

  She couldn’t will her discovery away any more than she could change the reality of what her father and the other men in his cabal had done. She knew about it. And knowing about it changed everything. Knowing about it also implied responsibility. There was no denying that. Hiding from the truth never solved anything. Averting your gaze from things you’d rather not know about simply gave those things greater power and the tacit permission to flourish unfettered.

  She drained her glass of cognac and picked up the envelope. There was nothing to be gained by putting this off. She owed it to herself to face the full reality of her father’s deeds. She owed it even more to every one of the children he’d victimized. Violated. Their lives had been changed forever.

  Just as learning the truth about what had happened to them had now changed her life.

  She removed the stack of images and spread them out across the top of the table.

  The scenes they depicted were abominable. Harsh, graphic scenes of the sexual abuse of children preserved for . . . what? Voyeuristic pleasure? Licentious reminders of forbidden conquests? Some profane historical record?

  My god . . . Julia forced herself to stare at the images. This was my father’s private porn stash.

  The realization sickened her.

  The faces of some of the men—at least the ones she could make out—were familiar to her. Bishop Szymanski. Judge Cawley. Albert. Others were too obscured. She guessed they all were part of the same small set within the club—her father’s special confederacy. The beneficiaries of his Ganymede Trust.

  The boys, however? The faces of the boys were all alike. Their expressions were empty. Vague. Void of any emotion. One face in particular deviated from that. She nearly missed seeing him as he stood in the shadows near the edge of one of the photos. A rail thin boy wearing only his underpants. He stared directly at the camera with a look of terror on his face—like he knew what would happen. Like he knew he’d be next.

  She swept the images back into a stack and covered them with the empty envelope.

  Once again, she thought about destroying the photos. Once again, she resisted the impulse.

  Destroying them would be wrong.Destroying them would make her complicit in the crimes committed by her father and his cronies. Destroying them would allow the same abhorrent acts to continue without consequence, without conscience, and without responsibility.

  Destroying them would make her like her mother . . .

  When you know better,Maya Angelou said, do better.

  It was now her turn to do better.

  She could tell Evan. She could simply hand the evidence against Cawley over and let Evan decide what to do with it. Undoubtedly, Evan would give the images to Dan. Would justice then be served?

  Maybe.

  She thought about Edwin Miller and the way the Democrats had protected him because they cared more about changing the legislative balance of power than protecting the children he preyed upon. How naïve would she have to be to expect today’s Republican majority to behave any differently?

  They wouldn’t.

  Political divisions in the country had moved beyond concern for what was right. There was no longer a shared moral compass that steered divergent political ideologies toward a shared sense of the common good.

  It was no longer possible to trust the instincts of a political culture that had lost its center.

  No. She couldn’t play Pontius Pilate and calmly wash her hands of this before waltzing off to resume the pampered comforts of the rest of her life.

  That was all finished now. It had to be.

  Monday’s unread newspaper sat on an overstuffed ottoman beside the sofa.

  Jessica Hayes Marsh.They’d been classmates at Exeter. Jess had gone on to study journalism at Columbia, and now worked as a senior editor at The Washington Post. Julia had run into her last year in New York at the Pulitzer ceremony. Jess and her team had just won the award for investigative reporting.

  Julia looked back at the stack of photographs. Jess would know exactly what to do with these.

  But she’d have to make another phone call first—to the board chair at Donne & Hale.

  She got up and headed for the bedroom to retrieve her cell phone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Evan’s text alert tone went off twice before 6 a.m.

  She checked it the first time because she hoped it might be a message from Julia. It wasn’t.

  It was Dan. She ignored his message and rolled over. She knew he was texting to nag her about when she’d be sending him his damn report.

  The second time the alert sounded, she ignored it and pulled a pillow over her head. She hadn’t gotten much sleep. She’d stayed up with Tim until the wee hours to process everything that had happened in the parking garage. They’d finally made their way upstairs a little after 1 a.m.

  Even then, she doubted that Tim had got any sleep. Although he did seem calmer than he’d been in weeks. Calmer and more at peace than he’d been since the night he appeared like an apparition in the snow, to tell her he was thinking about leaving the priesthood. She knew better than to press him on his state of mind where that consideration was concerned. She knew he’d talk with her when he was ready.

  Her phone went off again—r
inging this time.

  Jesus Christ, Dan . . .

  She grabbed it off her nightstand. “What?” she barked.

  He didn’t waste time. “Cawley withdrew.”

  Evan sat up. “What?”

  “Yeah. We got word about half an hour ago. He called the president last night.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “Me?” Evan rubbed her eyes. “Why the hell would I know?”

  He shrugged. “Wishful thinking, I guess.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “What do they ever say?” Dan scoffed. “The White House is gonna issue a statement saying that Judge Cawley withdrew over health and family considerations. You know . . . one of the old standbys.”

  “Something spooked him,” Evan suggested. “He must’ve found out everything is about to break.”

  “I’m guessing you’re right. Either way,” he declared, “our work is finished.”

  “Not all of it.”

  “Whattaya mean? It’s over. Now we wait for the next scumbag POTUS spools up.”

  “Yeah,” Evan said. “You can count me out on that one.”

  “Come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “Let’s just say I left it in my other suit. Do you still need my report?”

  “Oh, yeah. We want a paper trail on this asshole. With luck, he’ll resign from the bench altogether.”

  “Okay.” Evan thought about filling Dan in on what had happened last night with Maya and Marcus’s goon, but didn’t. There’d be plenty of time for that in the days ahead. “How’s Stevie?” she asked instead.

  “Good. She and Kayla are going to that Alice Cooper concert today.”

  Alice Cooper? “Dan, that’s Alice Glass—not Alice Cooper.”

  “Yeah . . . whoever. They’re having a great time.”

  “Anybody’s phone in the freezer yet?” she teased.

  “Hey . . . I do not put phones in the goddamn freezer—all right?”

  “Cool your jets, man. It’s too early to bust a blood vessel.”

  “Yeah—whatever. I’ll talk to you later.”