Deadly Blessings

by Julie Hyzy

  A maid emerged from a far corner of the motel, pushing a cleaning cart. She headed directly to the room William and Candy had occupied, and entered, presumably to tidy up. Not much work for her in there tonight. I found it curious that she didn’t knock first. I couldn’t imagine why she’d want to risk catching tardy patrons in flagrante delicto.

  I wondered what Bass and I looked like to the young lovers and the maid, or to anyone peering out the motel room windows. Maybe an odd-couple romance? Or maybe some chick trying to weasel a raise from her boss? I shook my head, grimacing at the thought.

  Soft shushing sounds forewarned me seconds ahead of a cold blast. “Let’s go,” I said, hunching my shoulders against the wind.

  Bass followed me across the wide avenue. Traffic had slowed markedly. I kept my head down as we crossed. Bass talked. I ignored him.

  Until he said, “Use what we have.”

  I’d just cleared the evergreen dotted berm we’d used for concealment. My shoes made a tap-tapping sound on the asphalt parking lot. I stopped. “What?”

  “You have to get your friend Sophie to agree to cooperate.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” I said. “She’s convinced that both Milla and her brother were killed by someone in the organization. And after hearing this Katrina tonight … well … If they’re right, Sophie would be stupid to appear on TV. It’d be like signing her own death warrant.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic. This is what William talked about, isn’t it? The ‘net’? We’ll use as much as we can.”

  “Yeah, right. With no release?”

  “We’ll claim First Amendment. Broadcast all of it, but edited for time, you know. It’d be like exploding a bomb in a lake, and all the dead fish float to the top. Right?”

  “That’s not a net. That’s unnecessary killing.”

  “I was being symbolical.”

  Symbolical? “Bass, you never cease to amaze me.”

  “Anyway, we’re talking about fish.”

  “We’re talking about people!” I said, my voice a notch below shouting. I moved in closer to his personal space. I knew he hated that.

  He backed up. “We’d mask the girl’s face …”

  “Didn’t you hear what she said? They’d kill her. She wasn’t play-acting when she freaked out like that. She was terrified. Even if we mask her face, then what? She gets nailed because somebody recognizes her outfit? That pitiful jacket of hers?” Angry, I headed back toward my car. Bass stood at the passenger side, waiting for me to finish, I guess.

  I shrugged, looking up at the night sky to quiet my frustration. The stars and moon were in sharp focus. Too bad my mind wasn’t. “I’ll talk to my friend Maria at the police department. She’ll give us some idea of where to take this.”

  “Sure. I’ll tell you exactly where the story will go, then.” He blew out a breath so loud and forceful that its wispy grayness traveled across the entire top of the car before it dissipated. “Cops are gonna laugh you outta the station. What? You think they’re going to give a shit about some Polock hustler?”

  He was right, as much as I hated to admit it. In the darkness I couldn’t read his expression. Not that it mattered. I felt annoyance. At him, at myself, at the situation. At William for leaving so abruptly. “Well then, I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. An idea bubbled in my brain, but I didn’t have the words for it, yet.

  Bass got back in the car before I did. “Hurry up, would you? It’s cold in here,” he yammered at me as I stopped, just for a moment, before lowering myself into the driver’s seat, giving my idea a chance to congeal.

  Snapping the car door shut, I suppressed a chilly shudder. Bass had his leather-gloved hands wedged between his knees for warmth, like a little kid. It was cold, but not that cold.

  I blew out two cloudy puffs of air, but didn’t start the car.

  “What are you waiting for?” he asked.

  “What are you going to do with the footage we just recorded?”

  He shook his head and looked out the window. “I don’t know,” he said with just enough resignation in his voice that I knew he understood that we couldn’t air it. “Jeff’s already headed back to the station. I’ll get it from him Monday. I’ll hold onto it, I suppose,” he said, turning toward me again. “She might change her mind, you know.”

  “She might,” I said. Not a chance, I thought. And even if she did, she’d thrown the phone numbers back at William. No way for her to contact us.

  “And you’re gonna work on getting Sophie to cooperate, right?”

  “I’m going to work on the story, Bass. But I’m not guaranteeing that Sophie will be part of it.”

  He looked over at me and I saw weariness, anger, and shrewd impatience in his eyes. “You got till Tuesday. To wrap this one. I think you better start leaning on her.”

  Dejection settled over both of us. I felt it in a physical way, like a blanket of lead draped over my shoulders. Bass didn’t push me to get moving, and I don’t know how long I sat there before keying the ignition to head back.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I spent a restless night wrangling with my covers. Too hot, too cold, too bumpy—the bed provided no comfort as memories from the night’s adventure mingled with snippets of dreams, flickering through my brain like a poorly edited movie. Odd combinations: Candy’s walk, Bass’s shouts, William’s face. My own feelings of disquiet where he was concerned.

  The late night daydreams finally dissolved into sleep. But not a restful one. My mind replayed all the evening’s images, and went on to create some new ones of its own. I woke up in the dark: alone, disoriented, and not knowing where I was. It had been so real.

  Bass’s warning still rang in my ears when the morning dawned. I went out to the back porch, my feet chilled on the cold linoleum, making quiet sticky noises as I walked. My neighbor’s backyard tree, now nearly bare, stood staunch in the late October wind. It reminded me of a scary movie, where branches come alive to reach in and grab and snatch and steal.

  Lucy had always wanted a tree house there. With it not being our tree, my father had taken time to explain that we couldn’t build a tree house. She claimed she understood, but I’d seen her wistful looks. That memory tugged at my heart, reminding me I hadn’t called her. Worse, I hadn’t even planned to see her this weekend. I knew she missed me. I missed her, too.

  When she went to live there last month, I vowed that she’d never become a statistic—one of those poor souls sent to live in a home, by well-meaning relatives who never managed to visit. And yet, despite my best intentions, I only made it there once, so far. This goddamn story, Bass’s goddamn pressure, and my own driving need to see it through was blinding me to everything else.

  Conjuring up ambitious resolve, I decided I would spend next weekend down there. Once this story wrapped. Allowing my guilt to snowball, I toyed with the idea of taking a week off from work, bringing her home. Like old times. It would be a high energy, high tension week for me, but I knew Lucy would love it.

  I leaned on the windowsill with the heels of my hands, elbows locked. Stretching, I stared at the tree. Everything was screwed up. I needed to regain control. Cloudy grayness cast a pall over the orange and yellow leaves caught in mini-vortices near the ground. Brown, gray, cold. The world felt as bleak as it looked.

  After my second mug of coffee, I called Sophie.

  A nun answered. “Just a moment.”

  A well-being check, I told myself. But not the truth.

  Confession, they say, is good for the soul. I wanted to come clean, to tell her what we’d done the night before; but I also half-hoped that Katrina’s story would spur Sophie to action. Action that could include her helping me with the story.

  Guilt and unease made me chew my lip while I waited. I’d gotten involved because I wanted to help Sophie, I told myself. But that wasn’t entirely true. I’d gotten involved because I couldn’t let go of the Milla Voight story. I needed
to push. Calling her now seemed like just another exploitative move. I cringed at what that said about me.

  Sophie had tried to get out of the organization, but had been beaten up for her efforts. Like a fly caught in a web, the sticky snare tightened around her with every move, keeping her unable to extricate herself. Everywhere she turned, she faced those who would be her friend, but only for a price.

  Maybe I was no better, after all. I wanted this story. So badly, I could taste it. Cradling the phone on my shoulder as I rinsed my mug under the spray of warm water, I had a disturbing notion. What if this was it? What if this was as good as I got?

  She came on the line, interrupting my mental self-flagellation.

  “Alex,” she said, in a breathless voice. “I going to Mass now, over here. I call you back later?”

  A quick glance at my watch. I remembered the Sunday schedule from the days I used to attend Mass at Good Shepherd. Next one was at eight-thirty. About fifteen minutes from now. Father Trip usually said this one. I’d be late, even if I left this minute, but, what the heck.

  “I’ll meet you there,” I said.

  * * * * *

  There was something almost soothing about the rote responses my mind directed my body through during the Mass. This early service had no choir, no music at all. Father Trip led the sung responses and hymns himself, and he winced at the flatness of his own voice at every opening note, exactly the way he’d done for as long as I could remember.

  Afterward, he stood in the church’s narthex, shaking hands with the thirty or so elderly parishioners. Sophie and I hung back, waiting for the small crowd to disperse.

  If Father Trip had been shocked to see me, he gave no indication. Afraid of scaring me off from future visits, perhaps.

  “You have a few minutes?” I asked him.

  Sophie looked at me.

  “Sure. Let me get changed out of my vestments,” he said, holding his arms out to indicate the long, embroidered tunic he wore. “And I need to check on the altar servers. I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay, we’ll be in there.”

  I moved toward the “crying room,” a small, sound-proof enclosure that could seat about ten devoted parents and their wailing babies at any given time. The cry room boasted a wide picture window view of the entire church and sound piped in through big speakers overhead. With the neighborhood demographics having changed so drastically over the past decade, I wondered if the room ever got used anymore.

  I snagged one of the squeaky folding chairs and sat, more to calm my restlessness than anything else.

  Sophie reminded me that she planned to return to her apartment the next morning and I was in the midst of trying to convince her otherwise when Father Trip returned.

  Talking fast, I brought them up-to-date on the undercover operation gone wrong last night, and Katrina’s reaction, which I knew would hit a nerve.

  Father Trip took a seat. The three of us faced one another in a skewy triangle, on creaky chairs that echoed in this semi-darkened room. With all of us speaking in low tones, I felt the familiar tingle that always hit me when I used to kneel in the confessional and tell the good father what I’d done wrong that week.

  Three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys. Standard penance. Less than that, and you felt pretty good about avoiding all those venial sins all week; more than that and you knew you’d blown it.

  Right now, having told him all about the prostitution ring, and having him realize that he’d been harboring a hooker in the parish convent without knowing it, made me believe that I was going to get the Good Book thrown at me. But Father Trip didn’t react. Not outwardly, though I thought I detected sadness in his eyes.

  “She tell you her real name?” Sophie stooped in her chair, as though the news had punched her in the gut.

  “She did, and her story is perfect. It can make all the difference. Help you and all the other girls break free. If we can just get her permission to air it—”

  Sophie’s fingers massaged her temples. She stared at the floor, talking to herself. “If anyone ever find out that she give her name …” Sophie stood, glancing up toward the door. Exactly the way Katrina had the night before. “Oh, Alex,” she said, her voice dropping, full of despair. “How could you do this?”

  “Sophie, listen, you were right. They killed Milla. They killed your brother. I’m sure of it, now. But we need to prove it.”

  Sophie sat down again, as though all the bones in her body had turned to rubber. I decided to press.

  “Do you know this Katrina? She’s small. Tiny actually. Blond hair?”

  A sigh. “I meet her coupla time.”

  Trying to keep anticipation out of my voice, I prompted. “You did?”

  “She work for Lisa as cleaning lady. When she need hair done she come in. No charge. That how we know she one of Lisa girls.”

  “Can you talk to her?” I kept my voice low, as gentle as possible. “If we can just get her to agree to come on camera—”

  Sophie shook her head, with vehemence. Her large teeth bit hard on her lower lip. “She will never.”

  “What about you, Sophie?” I said, in measured tones, “Maybe you could?”

  “I wrong, Alex. How you no understand?”

  “After hearing Katrina, I know you were right.”

  Sophie looked like an animal, trapped and panicked. Nowhere to run. “Please,” she said. “Please, you don’t do no more.”

  I turned to Father Trip. “Were you able to find out anything about Father Bruno?”

  Sophie asked, “Why?”

  I pretended not to hear her. She leaned forward, to tap me on the arm—Father Trip hesitated before he answered, “I don’t know what you were looking for, Alex. Bruno Creighter is well-respected, well-known, and every person I spoke with couldn’t say enough about the man.”

  Sophie stopped tapping. Now she grabbed my arm, at the wrist. “Why you ask about Father Bruno?”

  The time had come to lay my cards on the table. Even though I knew neither of them would like what they saw.

  “Katrina said that a priest had come to her village. …” I let the thought hang.

  Sophie said nothing, but Father Trip fixed me with a stare. I forgot how piercing his gaze could be. There were times he actually stopped a weekday Mass to chastise misbehaving school kids. Worked like fast magic to whip them back to attention.

  I forged ahead. “This priest convinced her to return to America with him.”

  “So?” Sophie said, in a high voice. I could see her sit straighter, her back getting up. She wasn’t a dumb girl, she knew where this was going.

  I tried to keep my voice gentle. “She was talking about Father Bruno, wasn’t she?”

  Father Trip interceded. “Alex, everyone in the Archdiocese knows of Father Bruno’s work to help bring young people to the States for a better life. He’s sponsored more people, and achieved so much success, that they’ve created an award for him. For his work on behalf of humanity.”

  I chose my words. This almost hurt to say aloud, not for fear of sullying old Bruno’s reputation, but for what damage I was about to do to both Father Trip and Sophie’s outlook on life. “I’m convinced Father Bruno is involved in the prostitution organization. In a big way.”

  There. It was out.

  I worried for Sophie. I worried for Father Trip. I hadn’t exactly been forthright with him about Sophie’s profession when I asked him to shelter her here. He was definitely getting an earful today.

  Sophie stood up, rested her forehead against the window facing the church. The little bit of light that came into our small room from the doorway was enough to let me see the reflection of her face in the glass. She personified misery.

  Father Trip shifted in his chair. Looking from Sophie to me again, he said, “I don’t think so, Alex. A man of God wouldn’t ever get involved in such a scheme.”

  “You wouldn’t,” I said. “But I believe he would.”

  I explained Father Bruno’s “deal
,” to let me have a copy of my adoption folder in exchange for my silence on the story. At that revelation, Father Trip got up. Hands behind his back, he walked toward the doorway and stood, facing out.

  Feeling icky and vulnerable, I stood, too.

  After a moment, Father Trip cleared his throat. “I did find information about Emil.”

  Trying to keep my voice neutral, I said, “You did?”

  I watched the back of his head nod.

  “His full name’s Emil Schober. And he’s not the sort of individual I’d expect to find working in the church,” he said, hesitation in his voice. “The few people I talked to shied away from the subject. It seems he falls in the ‘let’s not discuss it’ category.”

  “Isn’t that the attitude that got the Church in trouble not so long ago?”

  When he turned to look at me, I wished I’d held my tongue. “Yes,” he said, “you’re absolutely right, and precisely why I pushed further than I originally thought necessary.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He didn’t acknowledge my apology as he sat down once again. “I don’t know how to rationalize it,” he began. “Father Bruno has everything going for him in his position at Saint Dymphna’s. He’s the kind of priest the higher-ups point to and suggest we emulate. Emil appeared on the scene a couple of years ago.”

  “Who did you talk to?”

  “Friends. Many of the fellows I attended the seminary with have their own friends among the higher-ups. As a grapevine, it’s pretty reliable. And it seems our friend Emil has been in and out of jail a number of times, and continues to fight a losing battle with alcohol.”

  “And yet Bruno keeps him on?” I said.

  Sophie waved a finger our direction. “Father Bruno tell me. Emil was homeless man downtown, but Father save him. Give him work and home. And he such a good priest, he won’t turn a back on him now, even though he don’t work no good.”