Cathedral

by Nelson DeMille

  Baxter looked over the length of the Cathedral. “I’ve been analyzing this building. When Hickey and Fitzgerald came up from that plate, they had earth on their hands and knees. So it must be mostly crawl space. There must be large areas that are unlit or badly lit. We have an area of almost a city block in which to disappear. If we can lift that plate quickly and drop into that space, they could never flush us out.”

  As they paced back toward the right side of the altar the plate came into view again. She said, “Even if we could raise the plate and drop below before we were shot, we wouldn’t be free, and no one on the outside would know we were down there.”

  “We would know we weren’t up here.”

  She nodded. “Yes, that’s the point, isn’t it?” They walked in silence for a few minutes, then Maureen said, “How do you plan to do it?”

  Baxter outlined his plan.

  Father Murphy and the Cardinal entered the sanctuary, and both Maureen and Baxter noticed that the two priests looked very pale. Father Murphy looked from Maureen to Baxter. “Hickey knows, of course.”

  The Cardinal spoke. “I would have had no objection to trying to signal the rectory.” He looked at Murphy sharply, then at Baxter and Maureen. “You must keep me informed—beforehand—of your plans.”

  Baxter nodded. “We’re about to do that, Your Eminence. We’re considering an escape plan. We want you both to come with us.”

  The Cardinal shook his head and said emphatically, “My place is here.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then said, “But I’m ready to give you my blessing.” He turned to Father Murphy. “You may go if you choose.”

  Murphy shook his head and addressed Maureen and Baxter. “I can’t leave without His Eminence. But I’ll help you if I can.”

  Maureen looked at the three men. “Good. Let’s work out the details and the timing.” She looked at her watch. “At nine o’clock, we go.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Captain Bellini said to Monsignor Downes as the Rector walked into the office, “Have you found the plans to the Cathedral yet?”

  The Monsignor shook his head. “The staff is looking here and at the diocese building. But I don’t believe we ever had a set on file.”

  Commissioner Rourke said to Langley, “What are you doing about finding the architect, Gordon Stillway?”

  Langley lit a cigarette and took his time answering. He said finally, “Detectives went to his office on East Fifty-third. It was closed, of course—”

  Rourke interrupted. “Are you getting a court order to go in?”

  Langley noticed that the Deputy Commissioner was becoming more assertive. By midnight he’d probably try to give an order. Langley said, “Actually, someone already got in—without the benefit of a court order. No Cathedral blueprints. The detectives are trying to find a roster of employees. That’s apparently missing also.”

  Monsignor Downes cleared his throat and said, “I don’t approve of an assault … but it must be planned for, I suppose …” He looked at the bookcase and said, “Among those books you’ll find about five that are pictorial studies of the Cathedral. Some have plans in them, very sketchy plans—for tourists to follow when they walk on the main floor. The interior pictures are very good, though, and may be helpful.”

  Bellini went to the bookcase and began scanning the shelves.

  Burke stood. “There may be a set of blueprints in Stillway’s apartment. No one’s answering the phone, and the detective we have stationed there says no one’s answering the door. I’m going over there now.”

  Schroeder stood also. “You can’t leave here. Flynn said—”

  Burke turned on him. “The hell with Flynn.”

  Roberta Spiegel said, “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  Langley ripped a page from his notebook. “Here’s the address. Don’t gain entry by illegal means.”

  Monsignor Downes said, “If you should find Gordon Stillway, remember he’s a very old man. Don’t excite him.”

  “I don’t do anything illegal. I don’t excite people.” Burke turned and walked out into the adjoining office. A heavy cloud of blue smoke hung at face level over the crowded outer office. Burke pushed his way into the hall and went down the stairs. The rectory offices on the ground floor were filled with uniformed police commanders directing the field operations. Burke approached a captain sitting at a desk and showed his badge case. “I need a squad car and a maniac to drive it.”

  The captain looked up from a map of midtown. “Do you? Well, the area on the other side of the cordon is jammed solid with people and vehicles. Where is it you’d like to go in such a hurry, Lieutenant?”

  “Gramercy Park. Pronto-like.”

  “Well, make your way to the IRT station on Lex.”

  “Bullshit.” He grabbed a phone and went through the switchboard to the Monsignor’s office. “Langley, is the helicopter still in the Palace courtyard? Good. Call and get it revved up.”

  Burke walked out of the rectory into Fifty-first Street and breathed in the cold, bracing air that made him feel better. The sleet was tapering off, but the wind was still strong. He walked into the deserted intersection of Fifty-first and Madison.

  An eerie silence hung over the lamplit streets around the Cathedral, and in the distance he could see the barricades of squad cars, buses, and sanitation trucks that made up the cordon. Strands of communication wire ran over the sleet-covered streets and sidewalks. Sentries stood silhouetted against half-lit buildings, and National Guardsmen cruised by in jeeps, rifles pointed upward. Bullhorns barked in the wintry air, and policemen patrolled the sanitized area with shotguns. Burke heard their footsteps crunching in the unshoveled ice and heard his own quickening pace. As he walked, he thought of Belfast and, though he’d never been there, felt he knew the place. He turned up his collar and walked faster.

  Across Madison Avenue a solitary figure on horseback rode slowly into the north wind. He stared at the rider, Betty Foster, as she passed beneath a streetlight. She didn’t seem to notice him, and he walked on.

  The wind dropped, and he heard in the distance, past the perimeter of the cordon, the sounds of music and singing. New York would not be denied its party. Burke passed the rear of the Lady Chapel, then approached the Cardinal’s residence, and through the lace curtains on a groundfloor window he saw ESD men standing in a room. A lieutenant was briefing them, and Burke could see a chalkboard. Win this one for the Gipper, lads. Through another window on the corner Burke saw well-dressed men and women, the Governor and Mayor among them, crowded around what was probably a buffet. They didn’t exactly look like they were enjoying themselves, but they didn’t look as grim as the men around the chalkboard either.

  In the intersection Burke turned and looked back at the Cathedral illuminated by its garden floodlights. A soft luminescence passed through the stained-glass windows and cast a colored shadow over the white street. It was a serene picture, postcard pretty: ice-covered branches of bare lindens and glistening expanses of undisturbed sleet. Perhaps more serene than it had ever been in this century—the surrounding area cleared of cars and people, and the buildings darkened….

  Something out of place caught his eye, and he looked up at the two towers where light shone through the ripped louvers. In the north tower—the bell tower—he saw a shadow moving, a solitary figure circling from louver to louver, cold, probably edgy, watchful. In the south tower there was also a figure, standing motionless. Two people, one in each tower—the only eyes that stared out of the besieged Cathedral. So much depended on them, thought Burke. He hoped they weren’t the panicky type.

  The police command helicopter followed Lexington Avenue south. Below, Burke could see that traffic was beginning to move again, or at least what passed for moving traffic in Manhattan. Rotating beacons at every intersection indicated the scope of the police action below. The towering buildings of midtown gave way to the lower buildings in the old section of Gramercy Park, and the helicopter dropped altitude.

 
; Burke could see the lamps of the small private park encircled by elegant town houses. He pointed, and the pilot swung the craft toward the open area and turned on the landing lights. The helicopter settled into a small patch of grass, and Burke jumped out and walked quickly toward the high wrought-iron fence. He rattled the bars of a tall gate but found it was locked. On the sidewalk a crowd of people stared back at him curiously. Burke said, “Is anyone there a keyholder?”

  No one answered.

  Burke peered between the bars, his hands wrapped around the cold iron. He thought of the zoo gate that morning, the ape house, the sacristy gate, and all the prisons he’d ever seen. He thought of Long Kesh and Crumlin Road, Lubianka and Dachau. He thought that there were too many iron bars and too many people staring at each other through them. He shouted with a sudden and unexpected anger, “Come on, damn it! Who’s got a key?”

  An elderly, well-dressed woman came forward and produced an ornate key. Without a word she unlocked the gate, and Burke slipped out quickly and pushed roughly through the crowd.

  He approached a stately old town house across the street and knocked sharply on the door. A patrolman opened the door, and Burke held up his badge, brushing by him into the small lobby. A single plainclothesman sat in the only chair, and Burke introduced himself perfunctorily.

  The man answered through a wide yawn, “Detective Lewis.” He stood as though with some effort.

  Burke said, “Any word on Stillway?”

  The detective shook his head.

  “Get a court order yet?”

  “Nope.”

  Burke began climbing the stairs. When he was a rookie, an old cop once said to him, “Everybody lives on the top floor. Everybody gets robbed on the top floor. Everybody goes nuts on the top floor. Everybody dies on the top floor.” Burke reached the top floor, the fourth. Two apartments had been made out of what was once probably the servants’ quarters. He found Stillway’s door and pressed the buzzer.

  The detective climbed the stairs behind him. “No one home.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” Burke looked at the three lock-cylinders in a vertical row, ranging in age from very old to very new, showing the progression of panic with each passing decade. He turned to the detective. “Want to put your shoulder to that?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither.” Burke moved to a narrow staircase behind a small door. “Stay here.” He went up the stairs and came out onto the roof, then went down the rear fire escape and stopped at Stillway’s window.

  The apartment was dark except for the yellow glow of a clock radio. There was no grate on the window, and Burke drew his gun and brought it through the old brittle glass above the sash lock. He reached in, unlatched the catch, and threw the sash up, then dropped into the room and moved away from the window in a crouch, his gun held out in front of him with both hands.

  He steadied his breathing and listened. His eyes became accustomed to the dark, and he began to make out shadows and shapes. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, nothing smelled; there was nothing that wanted to kill him, and, he sensed, nothing that had been killed there. He rose, found a lamp, and turned it on.

  The large studio apartment was in stark modern contrast to the world around it. Bone-white walls, track lighting, chromium furniture. The secret modern world of an old architect who specialized in Gothic restorations. Shame, shame, Gordon Stillway.

  He walked toward the hall door, gun still drawn, looking into the dark corners as he moved. Everything was perfectly ordinary; nothing was out of place—no crimson on the white rug, no gore on the shiny chromium. Burke holstered his revolver and opened the door. He motioned to the detective. “Back window broken. Cause to suspect a crime in progress. Fill out a report.”

  The detective winked and moved toward the stairs.

  Burke closed the door and looked around. He found a file cabinet beside a drafting table and opened the middle drawer alphabetized J to S. He was not too surprised to find that between St.-Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie and St. Paul the Apostle there was nothing but a slightly larger space than there should have been.

  Burke saw a telephone on the counter of the kitchenette and dialed the rectory, got a fast busy-signal on the trunk line, dialed the operator, got a recording telling him to dial again, and slammed down the receiver. He found Gordon Stillway’s bar in a shelf unit and chose a good bourbon.

  The phone rang and Burke answered, “Hello.”

  Langley’s voice came through the earpiece. “Figured you couldn’t get an open line. What’s the story? Body in the library?”

  “No body. No Stillway. The Saint Patrick’s file is missing, too.”

  Langley said, “Interesting …” He paused, then said, “We’re having no luck in our other inquiries either.”

  Burke heard someone talking loudly in the background. “Is that Bellini?”

  Langley said quietly, “Yeah. He’s going into his act. Pay no attention.”

  Burke lit a cigarette. “I’m not having a good Saint Patrick’s Day, Inspector.”

  “March eighteenth doesn’t look real promising either.” He drew a long breath. “There are blueprints in this city somewhere, and there are other architects, maybe engineers, who know this place. We could have them all by midmorning tomorrow—but we don’t have that long. Flynn has thought this all out. Right down to snatching Stillway and the blueprints.”

  Burke said, “I wonder.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you that if Flynn had Stillway, then Stillway would be in the Cathedral where he’d do the most good?”

  “Maybe he is in there.”

  Burke thought a moment. “I don’t know. Flynn would tell us if he had the architect. He’d tell us he knows ways to blow the place by mining the hidden passages—if any. He’s an intelligent man who knows how to get maximum mileage from everything he does. Think about it.” Burke looked around the tidy room. A copy of the New York Post lay on the couch, and he pulled the telephone cord as he walked to it. A front-page picture showed a good fist-flying scene of the disturbance in front of the Cathedral at noon. The headline ran: DEMONSTRATION MARS PARADE. A subline said: BUT THE IRISH MARCH. The special evening editions would have better stuff than that.

  Langley’s voice came into the earpiece. “Burke, you still there?”

  Burke looked up. “Yeah. Look, Stillway was here. Brought home the evening paper and …”

  “And?”

  Burke walked around the room holding the phone and receiver. He opened a closet near the front door and spoke into the phone. “Wet topcoat. Wet hat. No raincoat. No umbrella. No briefcase. He came home in the sleet, changed, and went out again carrying his briefcase, which contained, I guess, the Saint Patrick’s file.”

  “What color are his eyes? Okay, I’ll buy it. Where’d he go?”

  “Probably went with somebody who had a good set of credentials and a plausible story. Somebody who talked his way into the apartment …”

  Langley said, “A Fenian who got to him too late to get him into the Cathedral—”

  “Maybe. But maybe somebody else doesn’t want us to have the blueprints or Stillway….”

  “Strange business.”

  “Think about it, Inspector. Meanwhile, get a Crime Scene Unit over here, then get me an open line so I can call Ferguson.”

  “Okay. But hurry back. Schroeder’s getting nervous.”

  Burke hung up and took his glass of bourbon on a tour around the apartment. Nothing else yielded any hard clues, but he was getting a sense of the old architect. Not the type of man to go out into the cold sleet, he thought, unless duty called. The phone rang. Burke picked it up and gave the operator Ferguson’s number, then said, “Call back in ten minutes. I’ll need to make another call.”

  After six rings the phone was answered, and Jack Ferguson came on the line, his voice sounding hesitant. “Hello?”

  “Burke. Thought I’d get the coroner.”

  “You may well hav
e. Where the hell have you been?”

  “Busy. Well, it looks like you get the good-spy award this year.”

  “Keep it. Why haven’t you called? I’ve been waiting for your call—”

  “Didn’t my office call you?”

  “Yes. Very decent of them. Said I was a marked man. Who’s on to me, then?”

  “Well, Flynn for one. Probably the New York Irish Republican Army, Provisional Wing, for another. And I think you’ve outlived your usefulness to Major Martin— it was Martin you were playing around with, wasn’t it?”

  Ferguson stayed silent for a few seconds, then said, “He told me he could head off the Fenians with my help.”

  “Did he, now? Well, the only people he wanted to head off were the New York police.”

  Again, Ferguson didn’t speak for a few seconds, then said, “Bastards. They’re all such bloody bastards. Why is everyone so committed to this senseless violence?”

  “Makes good press. What is your status, Jack?”

  “Status? My status is I’m scared. I’m packed and ready to leave town. My wife’s sister came and took her to her place. God, I wouldn’t have waited around for anyone else, Burke. I should have left an hour ago.”

  “Well, why did you wait around? Got something for me?”

  “Does the name Terri O’Neal mean anything to you?”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Woman.”

  Burke thought a moment. “No.”

  “She’s been kidnapped.”

  “Lot of that going around today.”

  “I think she has something to do with what’s happening.”

  “In what way?”

  Ferguson said, “Hold on a moment. I hear someone in the hall. Hold on.”

  Burke said quickly, “Wait. Just tell me—Jack—Shit.” Burke held the line. He heard Ferguson’s footsteps retreating. He waited for the crash, the shot, the scream, but there was nothing.

  Ferguson’s voice came back on the line, his breathing loud in the earpiece. “Damned Rivero brothers. Got some señoritas pinned in the alcove, squeezing their tits. God, this used to be a nice Irish building. Boys would go in the basement and get blind drunk. Never looked at a pair of tits until they were thirty. Where was I?”