by Blake Banner
Jim spoke without opening his eyes. “When did this happen? Where has he been all this time? What has he got himself mixed up in…?”
I took a deep breath, but it was Dehan who answered. “It happened twelve years ago, Mr. O’Conor, but we were only able to identify the body this morning.”
Kathleen’s hands dropped into her lap. “What?”
Jim opened his eyes. “Twelve feckin’ years?”
“Why were we not notified? Why was he not…”
“Twelve feckin’ years!” Jim said it again, looking around the room as though he might find an explanation on the walls somewhere.
“I know it is hard to understand.” Even as I said it, it sounded lame. “We were pretty surprised ourselves. But all his papers had been removed, and he had been dressed in the clothes of a vagrant. There was no possible clue to his identity.”
Kathleen’s face twisted and she started to sob. “Oh, God bless him, poor Sean!” Dehan put her arm around her.
Jim shook his head. His voice was a rasp. “Who would do a thing like that to my son?”
“That’s what we mean to find out.”
Dehan said, “We know this is really hard, but if you can help us, if you can answer a few questions for us…”
“We can come back later if…”
But they were both shaking their heads. Kathleen spoke into her handkerchief, twisting her nose. “I knew it. I knew he was dead. I said so, didn’t I, Jim?”
“Ah, sure, we both knew, Kath. It’s just, when you come face to face with it like that…”
“When you have it confirmed. And murdered… sweet mother of God, murdered…” She started sobbing again.
“Shall I make a cup of tea?” It was Dehan, stroking her back.
Kathleen gripped her hand and looked up into her face. “Would you, love?”
Dehan went out to the kitchen. I heard the cupboard doors bang and the tap hiss.
I said, “Did he ever talk much about his work with you?”
“All the feckin’ time!” It was Kathleen, talking into her handkerchief again. She blew her nose. “It’s all he ever feckin’ talked about. His work, and the f… and the church.”
Jim said, “He was very devoted to his work, and to the church, detective.”
“Do you recall what he was working on just before he disappeared?”
Jim nodded. “Oh yes. How could I not? We both do, don’t we, Kath?”
“Some feckin’ squatters. Lazy feckin’ no-good layabouts, want every feckin’ thing handed them on a feckin’ plate…”
She dissolved into tears. Jim watched her a moment, then turned to me. “They had taken over a building on Tiffany Street, in the Bronx. Big, five-story apartment block, so it was. Semi-derelict, no water, no electric, but there must have been some handy lads there ’cause didn’t they get it all working? Illegal, like, but still...”
“And charge it to the feckin’ honest taxpayer!”
“Not at all, Kath! Taxpayers had nothing to do with it.”
“So you say!”
I coughed. “So, what did your son have to do with these squatters?”
“Didn’t the landlord want to sell the site, so they could tear it down and make offices there? See, it was worth a hell of a lot more as offices than as apartments. So, one of the parishioners at St. Mary’s, some down and out, one of them squatters, tells Sean they’re being evicted, and doesn’t he only go and start a case against the company that’s selling the site. He claims agents for the company had taken rent from the residents, and therefore owed them compensation for evicting them.”
“Can you remember the name of the company?”
He gave a dry laugh. “Well, that was another thing. It turns out, according to Sean, the company selling the property and the company buying the property, are both owned by the same parent company, and they both have city officials sitting on the board of directors. It stank to high hell. And he was goin’ after them, goin’ for the jugular, so he was.”
“Can you remember the name?”
“Remember it? I’ll never feckin’ forget it. Hagan Construction. That was the parent company, belonged to Conor Hagan and you being a policeman, you’ll be familiar with the name. Any Irishman who has lived in the Bronx is familiar with that name. Head of the Hagan clan, a big shot in the Irish Mob, a very dangerous man to cross.” His bottom lip curled and he began to sob. “I never wished so bad that I’d had a coward for a son. May God forgive me, wasn’t it his courage and his faith that cost him his life?”
Dehan came in with a tray, four cups, and a pot of tea. She set it down on the coffee table and started to pour. While she did, I sat back and stared out their bow window at the tree across the road.
Dehan handed me a cup and sat down next to Kathleen. I said, “So Sean was taking a case on behalf of the residents of this building on Tiffany Street, against Conor Hagan.”
“Residents?” It was Kathleen. “Squatters and parasites, more like!”
A flash of irritation crossed Jim’s face. “He was a good Christian, Kath. He lived by his faith…”
“And feckin’ died for it!”
Dehan cut in before it escalated. “I believe he was active at a church in the Bronx.”
Jim sipped. “St. Mary’s. He was born in the Bronx, and we moved out here when he was a young lad, to get away from the crime. But we stayed in contact with the priest, a good man so he was, always ready to help, if he could.”
“Father O’Neil. So Sean must have had friends at the church.”
“Oh, he did that.”
Kathleen smiled briefly. “And a lovely girl. God alone knows what she thought when he just vanished, Mexican, but a lovely sweet child, as devout as he was. Isn’t that how they met? In the soup kitchen, and delivering clothes during the bitter winter. They were both besotted, bless them.”
Dehan asked, “What was her name, Kathleen?”
“God forgive me, I can’t remember. Isn’t it a shame? I only met her the one time when he brought her over for dinner. But it’s that long ago, I cannot remember her name. Can you remember, Jim?”
He shook his head. “No. It was one of them Mexican, Spanish names. Maria, was it? Or Carmen…? I don’t recall.”
I asked, “Any idea how we could find her or contact her?”
Kathleen looked at me as though I were a bit slow. “Sure, won’t he have her address and telephone number upstairs?”
I smiled. “Upstairs?”
“Of course! I have all his stuff upstairs. His computer, all his papers, his diary… everything, I mean, until today…” Her face started to fold up into wet grief again. “…We had no idea if he was coming back. He might have turned up at any time, walked through the door…!”
I watched her a moment, trying to conceive what kind of hell she must be going through. I couldn’t even begin. I turned to Jim. I saw the same hell behind his eyes, but I knew from his face he was going to keep it together until we were gone, until Kathleen couldn’t see him.
I said, “We need to take his things away and examine them. Have you any objection? It will all be returned to you after the investigation.”
“We have no objection. Take what you need. Just catch the bastard who did this to our son.”
I pulled out my phone and called the 43rd. “I need a CSI team to collect evidence from the following address…” I told her where it was. Then added, “It is just papers and IT stuff. No, no body.”
When I hung up, Kathleen said, “Of course, it all depends how much was taken in the burglary.”
Dehan sat back and sighed. I tried not to look at her. “Burglary?”
“Didn’t it all happen at the same feckin’ time. They say it never rains but it pours. The very night after he never came home, didn’t we have a feckin’ break in? They went into his room, God alone knows what they expected to find up there…”
Jim shrugged. “The policeman said it was probably opportunistic, you know, broke in on the off c
hance.”
I stared at them both for a moment, trying to fathom the depths of human stupidity.
“It didn’t occur to you, or the cop, that his disappearance and the break in might be connected?”
They looked blank. Kathleen said, “No. Why would it?”
I smiled. “Sure, why would it? Did anything go missing from Sean’s room?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” said Jim. “He kept all his stuff very private. Nobody was allowed to touch it, but I wouldn’t have thought so. Sure, they left the computer, didn’t they? A real fancy one at that, and who’d be interested in a lot of papers? So you’re probably all right.”
I nodded and looked at Dehan. “No doubt.” I made to stand. “We won’t take up any more of your time. A van will be here shortly to bag up and take the stuff from Sean’s room. Please don’t go in there or disturb anything. We’ll keep you posted as to any developments.”
We left them holding each other at the door and climbed into the Jag. Dehan frowned at me. “You don’t want to look through his stuff before we leave?”
I shook my head. “I’m more interested in what isn’t on the computer. We’ll go over everything at our leisure back at the station, but I think we’ll find anything of interest has already been taken.” I fired up the engine. “Where to now, Dehan?”
She smiled. “Sure, isn’t it time you spoke to Father O’Neil?”
I nodded. “It sure is.”
FOUR
We took the I-678, crossed back over the Bronx Whitestone Bridge, and arrived at Lafayette Avenue, in Hunts Point, about twenty minutes later. The sun was slipping in the east and evening was insinuating itself into the air. I parked, climbed out of the car, and stood staring at the massive, stone temple. I was tired and in need of a beer, but I wanted to talk to Father O’Neil before Dehan and I chewed the cud over a drink.
The church was big, set back from the road in its own grounds and surrounded by trees that made it hard to distinguish the details of the building. The walls were gray stone and the roofs were sharp, red-tiled gables. They looked stark and unhappy against the fragile, early spring sky. The whole thing occupied half a block and was surrounded by a black, iron railing, maybe seven feet high.
Dehan pointed at the corner. “The entrance is on Faile Street.”
“Let’s take a look around before we go in.”
I walked east, toward the corner with Bryant. The church railing ended where it joined with the wall of a six-story brownstone apartment block. I stopped outside the door and pointed at the curb. “That’s where the dumpster was.” I looked back at the church grounds. “What is that, thirty feet from the railing?” I looked at the apartment block. It had a fire escape on either side of the building, with a CCTV camera over the arched doorway. “I’m figuring they didn’t bring it down the fire escape. This is a busy street, patrol cars are frequent in this area…” I jerked my head at the entrance. “CCTV, unlikely they brought it out the door.”
Dehan nodded and walked to the corner of Bryant. I followed her and we strolled down to the end of the block. There was an alleyway that led down the side of the brownstone to the church yard. There was a gate with a padlock at the near end, and another where it connected with the church.
“What are you thinking?” She had her skeptical face on.
I smiled. “I’m not. I just want to know what the place looks like.”
We walked back up Lafayette and made our way through the large, iron gates that guarded the entrance to the House of the Almighty. There was a gravel path that led, among lawns, to the Gothic arch of the main door. To the left, attached to the main nave, was a house built in a similar style, also made of gray stone, though the gabled roof was of dark slate tiles. The door was a cheerful, fire engine red, with a shiny brass knocker in the middle.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Is he at home having tea, or is he doing God’s work?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she followed me around the side of the church, through the grounds. There were a lot of trees, mainly plane trees, though there were some poplars and cypresses too.
“This was my mom’s church,” she said. “When I was a kid, we used to come here on Sunday.”
A footpath ran along the side of the building. At the end, where the main body of the church ended, there was a sharp angle to the left. It had the depth of the nave, maybe forty or fifty feet, and formed another angle with an old red brick building that looked as though it might have been a coach house or a stable. A number of fruit trees had been planted in the lee of the walls.
The footpath continued past this recess until the grass was replaced with concrete, and two steps led down to the iron gate that we had seen at the end of the alleyway. I surveyed all this and asked, “Did your dad come with you?”
“No, he used to go to the synagogue.”
We started back toward the front of the church. “How come you went with your mom and not your dad?”
“I went to both. Sometimes it was one-week mom, one-week dad. Sometimes it was months. They were never sure how to handle it and they were never sure how best to please God.”
“I never got it,” I said.
“Never got what?”
“Three religions, all devoted to the same god, all trying real hard to please him, and instead of being grateful, he gives all three of them a real hard time.”
She gave a small laugh. “He gave the oil to the Muslims, the banks to the Jews, and the empires to the Christians, but the tortured souls He distributed evenly amongst all three.”
We had reached the main entrance. The massive doors stood open onto an impenetrable darkness. I stood looking at the dark arch. “Do I gather you are an atheist?”
She shrugged. “Do I need a label? I read all the holy books and came to the conclusion they were all written by men. Mostly men who had been too long in the desert, suffering from dehydration.” She looked at me with a bland smile. “Hydrate a man and put him in a lab, he will tend to talk more sense.”
“Or a woman.”
“There’s that.”
“I feel a disturbance in the Force. I think he is in the church, doing God’s work.”
We stepped through the portal into the cool, echoing darkness. Our footfalls seemed to slide up the walls and scamper around the vaulted ceilings. Two rows of arches supported on marble columns separated the aisles from the central nave. A red carpet led to the vast, golden altar, where archangels and saints stood watching, with apparent indifference, as Jesus, raised up on a vast wooden cross, continued his two-thousand-year ordeal of suffering and self-sacrifice.
There was a figure kneeling before the altar, dressed in black. He heard the echo of our feet approaching and when we came to a halt behind him, he crossed himself and stood. As he turned, I said, “Father Padraig O’Neil?”
“That’s my name.” He smiled. We showed him our badges and told him whom we were. He remained impassive and asked, “How can I help you, Detectives?”
“Do you recall a young attorney who used to volunteer here about twelve years ago, name of Sean O’Conor?”
His face lit up. “Sean? Do I remember Sean? Well, of course I do! A rare and wonderful young man, but if you’re looking for him, I’m afraid I have no idea where he is.”
When Dehan spoke, she had a harshness to her voice that made me look. “We’re not looking for him, Father O’Neil. We’d like to talk to you about him. Is there somewhere we can speak, in private?”
He noticed her tone too and frowned slightly. “Of course, let’s go through to the rectory, we can talk there.”
He led us to a small wooden door at the end of the North Transept. He unlocked it with an old, chub key and ushered us through.
The rectory had the same feeling of hushed reverence and contemplation as the church, but without the distant, vaulted echoes. We were in a broad, carpeted hallway with the front door on the left; probably the bright red one I had seen earlier. There were a couple of rooms u
p ahead with tenuous sunlight filtering through half open doors, and a wide, solid mahogany staircase on the right that climbed to a landing over our heads.
Father O’Neil closed and locked the door behind us.
“I was going to have some tea.” He smiled. “It’s hard to shake the habits of the old country. Would you join me?”
Dehan said nothing, but I thanked him and he asked us to go into the parlor while he spoke to Mrs. Doyle about a brew.
The parlor was large, comfortable, and old world. There was an open fireplace with a vase of chrysanthemums in it. An old TV stood pushed away in a corner on a trolley, attached to a DVD player and an old video machine. A large crucifix dominated the room over the fireplace. There was one bookcase and most of the volumes were hardbacks on the subject of Catholic Theology.
Two large, leather armchairs and a leather sofa were arranged around the fire. They looked out of place in that room, and expensive. I sat in one of the chairs and Dehan sat on the sofa.
Father O’Neil came bustling in in his cassock, muttering that ‘that was sorted’, and settled himself in the remaining chair. He smiled at us each in turn and asked, “Now, how can I help you? You wanted to ask me about Sean?”
“Anything you can tell us, Father. I believe he did a lot of charitable work here.”
He nodded vigorously. “Oh yes, indeed. He was one in a million. Nothing, nothing, was too much trouble for him. He had a very good job over in Brooklyn, at a very distinguished law firm. But he devoted every spare minute of his time to helping those in need. He was a true Christian and no mistake.”
Dehan was watching him like a cat watching a mouse hole.
I nodded. “Did he ever confide in you with regard to the cases he was handling?” He hesitated and I added, “In particular, the pro bono work did on behalf of the needy.”
His face became grave. “He did, Detective.” He frowned at us both and looked confused. “But you must know that Sean has been missing for, oh… ten years at least.”
Dehan said, “To be precise, Father, twelve years and three months. He went missing in January 2005.”
He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, then looked at me. “So you are looking into his disappearance?”
