“Only, like, every club I’ve ever been in.”
“Well, when you get that feeling?” Robyn said. “Get the hell out because you’re in the wrong bar.”
In truth, Dane had spent the better part of the previous two years traveling in Koda’s private jet—hanging out with stars and celebrities in VIP rooms in the most exclusive clubs in the world—and he’d never felt more alone in all his life.
What bothered Dane was knowing that, at that moment, his best friend was at his family’s annual Fourth of July bash—surrounded by some of the most well-connected people in the world—feeling completely disconnected and alone.
But what could he do?
Koda had rightfully cast him out for recommending the séance with a charlatan who’d turned him into a late-night-show punchline.
Dane had called Koda repeatedly for two solid weeks after the show aired, but none of the calls were taken. And his voice messages had gone unreturned.
So that was it. If he and Koda were to ever repair their relationship, the next move would be Koda’s.
Thank God he had Robyn.
“I get it,” Dane said finally. “Teach me.”
“Good.”
“So where do we start?” Dane asked.
“Where do you think?” Robyn said, leaning in and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “With clean ice, of course.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
St. Louis, Missouri
September 14, 1938
Tommy had been gone too long, and with Father Fanning also gone, Declan stood and worked his way down the row past the other kids, their eyes glued to the screen.
Declan pushed through the rear doors of the darkened theater into the massive, brightly lit marble lobby and—as he expected—the line at the refreshment counter was jammed with kids.
Tommy wasn’t in it.
Could they have passed each other? Unlikely.
Declan glanced around the lobby. Father Fanning was nowhere in sight either.
“Where are the bathrooms?” Declan asked a girl behind the counter, who was scooping popcorn into paper bags as fast as she could.
“Upstairs,” she said, pointing toward a marble staircase ascending to the balcony at the far end of the lobby.
Declan found the door marked “Gentlemen” and pushed inside. It was empty. Still too early for everyone’s bladders to be overflowing. Another half hour and more Coca-Cola would change that.
Now what?
Declan made his way down the hall to the door marked “Ladies” and rapped on it.
Nothing.
Probably empty, too, but he couldn’t leave the room unchecked. Declan pushed the door open and immediately heard one of the stall doors slam closed.
“Tom?” Declan called out.
No response.
Declan entered and looked around, seeing what looked like a cloud of smoke over one of the bathroom stalls.
“Tommy?” Declan called out again, louder—again with no response. If what he thought could be happening actually was happening, there was no time to waste on ceremony.
Declan pushed the stall door open to find two girls he didn’t recognize, probably from another orphanage, smoking cigarettes. The girls started giggling. “Get out, creep!” one girl said.
Crap.
Declan exited the restroom and scanned the hallway. To his left was a set of double doors marked Balcony. To his right was a single door with the word Office stenciled on it.
Figuring there was no reason Tommy would go to the balcony, Declan went to the office door—took a deep breath—and quietly opened the door.
The entire area was dark and empty.
With the theater packed to the gills, every employee had likely been assigned some form of duty elsewhere in the building. But just as he was about to close the door, Declan spotted something at the far end of the office area—a large cloth sheet hanging from the ceiling with black-painted letters reading: Construction, Do Not Enter!
Then he heard a noise.
Declan quietly closed the door behind him and went still, straining to listen. At first, he heard nothing. Then he heard sounds coming from across the room—from behind the cloth.
Someone was back there.
Declan crept to where the cloth sheet hung. He grabbed it at the edge, slowly pulled the sheet back, and looked in to see the room was filled with construction materials, assorted tools, and stacks of lumber.
The noises were louder but muffled, like someone talking. Declan took a few more steps toward a large stack of lumber in the center of the room, and then looked around it.
Declan saw Tommy before Tommy saw him.
Tommy was bent over one of the work tables, his pants down around his ankles. Directly behind Tommy stood a man in a black suit. What Declan had been hearing wasn’t the sound of people talking—it was the sound of Father Fanning grunting in lust, and Tommy whimpering in pain.
Tommy turned his head and made eye contact with Declan, and tears immediately began streaming down Tommy’s face. Father Fanning was too busy to notice Declan had entered the room.
A feeling of rage, more intense than anything he’d ever felt before, overwhelmed him. Without thinking it through or making a plan, Declan reached down and grabbed a two-by-four from a stack of lumber and took several quick steps toward Father Fanning and swung.
The piece of wood came down on the priest’s back so hard that drops of sweat flew from Father Fanning’s forehead like rain.
Fanning howled and arched his back in pain. He pushed himself away from Tommy and turned just in time to see Declan swing the piece of wood a second time.
The two-by-four caught Father Fanning about an inch above the left knee, the bones in the priest’s left leg shattering with a sickening crunch, and he fell to the floor.
Father Fanning grabbed his knee. “Stop! Stop, Declan!” he cried.
Declan paused, breathing heavy.
Tommy pulled up his pants and cowered in the corner as Father Fanning lay on the floor—pants down around his ankles, clutching his leg—looking up at Declan.
“I named you,” Father Fanning said.
“What?” Declan snapped.
“The day of… the Sulphur Springs train wreck,” Father Fanning said, gritting his teeth in pain. “The day Sister Mary Margaret and I took you from the hospital to the orphanage. Your mother gave you your first name—Declan—after the doctor who delivered you…”
“Shut up,” Declan snapped. “I don’t care if—”
“… but I gave you your name, Declan,” Fanning continued. “The name Mulvaney,” Father Fanning said. “A good Irish name for a good Irish boy who deserved so much better.”
“What about Tommy?” Declan asked, pulling the two-by-four back like it was a baseball bat. “Don’t you think he deserved better?”
“Declan, don’t,” Tommy said.
Declan flashed back to the day when Sister Mary Margaret made Declan stand behind the piano in the corner of the classroom, a large black spider spinning its web inches from his face. When Declan told Tommy he’d crushed the spider and dropped it at the old nun’s feet, Tommy asked, “Why’d you do that? The spider didn’t do anything to you.”
What a sweet and gentle kid Tommy Bilazzo was, filled with nothing but kindness and forgiveness, Declan thought.
Nothing like himself.
And nothing like Father Fanning.
“Say something!” Declan screamed at the priest kneeling before him.
Father Fanning remained silent. What could he say, really? That it wasn’t what it looked like?
It was.
That it wasn’t his fault?
It was.
That he deserved understanding and forgiveness?
He didn’t.
Declan swung the two-by-four directly into the side of Father Fanning’s head, and the priest toppled over like a rag doll.
Fanning was completely still.
Everything was silent.
&n
bsp; Declan looked down and saw the gash in the side of Father Fanning’s head.
“What… what… what have you done?” Tommy stammered.
Declan knew exactly what he’d done—like Sister Kay Kay, he’d just become a member of a rare club doing God’s work here on Earth.
“Listen, if we’re going to get away with this I’m going to need your help,” Declan said. “Okay?”
Tommy managed a nod.
“We’ve got to find a place to hide the body,” Declan said. “Somewhere they won’t find—”
“How about the trash chute?” a woman’s voice said from the far side of the room.
Declan and Tommy turned and saw Sister Katherine Keane standing there.
“You don’t understand,” Declan said. “Father Fanning was—”
“There’s no need to explain, Declan,” Sister Katherine said. “I know. Father Fanning should have been dealt with a long time ago.”
“You knew?” Tommy said.
“I suspected,” Sister Katherine said. “I was waiting for God to give me instructions, but He never did—not until now at least. What’s important now is that we dispose of the body.”
“How?” Declan asked. “We can’t just carry it out.”
“There’s a trash chute running down the back wall of the theater. I noticed it when we parked the buses behind the building.” The nun walked to the back of the construction area. “It’s over here.”
Declan and Tommy grabbed Father Fanning and rolled him over on his back. The priest had gone down face forward when Declan struck him and was probably dead before he hit the floor. “Tom, look for a wallet.”
As Tommy rummaged through Father Fanning’s pockets, Declan pulled down the cloth sheet and laid it on the floor next to the priest’s body.
“No, Declan, put it back,” Sister Katherine said. “Nothing can be out of place, everything must look the same.”
“I found it,” Tommy said, holding Father Fanning’s wallet. “What should I do with it?”
“Give it to me,” Sister Katherine said. “You don’t want to have it on you if you get stopped by the police.”
“Stopped by the police?” Tommy asked. “Stopped going where?”
Declan finished putting the sheet back, ignoring the question. “Tom, look in Father Fanning’s pockets again, see if you can find his keys to the bus.”
“We can’t drive a bus!” Tommy shouted.
It was obvious that Tommy was starting to panic. “We’ll figure it out, Tom,” Declan said in a calm voice. “Just find them, okay?”
Tommy found the keys. Then the three of them tugged, pushed, and dragged Father Fanning’s body over to the chute and hoisted it in, his limp body toppling down the chute like a sack of garbage. Then Declan retrieved the bloody two by four and dropped it down the chute on top of the dead priest.
Sister Katherine pulled several dollar bills from Father Fanning’s billfold, then took a small coin purse from her pocket, and handed the cash and the purse to Declan. “Here, take this.”
Tommy looked at Sister Kay Kay. “What are you saying? What are we doing?”
“You must run. It’s better this way.”
“What are you going to say if they question you?” Declan asked.
“Don’t worry. They won’t,” Sister Katherine said. “Just take care of each other, okay? And always remember—you are brothers of the most special kind, brothers connected by the most unbreakable bond of all.”
Declan grabbed Tommy by the shoulders. “Sister Katherine is right, Tom. You and I are bonded for life…”
“Best friends to the very end?” Tommy said.
“To the very end,” Declan said. “Now let’s get out of here.”
Sister Katherine didn’t bother to tell Declan that friendship was not the bond she meant. She was referring to the bond of shared suffering.
Chapter Thirty-Six
San Francisco, California
June 22, 1936
Onyx was relived to find Ulrich still fast asleep when she returned to the motel. She had no desire to explain where she’d been and had no intention of telling him about her encounter with the strange, tiny woman she’d met.
Sarah.
An hour later, they were back on the road, heading north this time on their way to San Francisco.
Welcome to The Palace,” the doorman said as Ulrich and Onyx passed through the large gold doors and entered the grand nine-story structure at the southwest corner of Market and New Montgomery in the heart of magnificent San Francisco.
To some, the hotel was like the New Palace, ever since the original structure—built by William Ralston Chapman in 1875—had been leveled during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The hotel was then rebuilt, opening its doors to the public three years later in 1909.
The doorman didn’t care.
He’d been there a long, long time, and to him the place would always simply be “The Palace.”
Onyx and Ulrich were shown to Suite 738, which the bellman said was directly below the suite where President Warren G. Harding had died just fourteen years earlier.
“How beautiful, like a picture from a magazine,” Onyx said as she and Ulrich walked into their suite. She opened the doors to the balcony and peered out at the people bustling on Market Street eighty feet below.
“You deserve a little bit of heaven,” Ulrich said, handing the bellman a two-dollar tip. “I’d like to take my wife for the night of her life. What is the best restaurant in the city?” he asked the bellman.
“You are in luck, sir,” the bellman replied. “A new restaurant has just opened nearby. Would you like me to try to get you in?”
Ulrich pulled out a big wad of cash and peeled off a five-dollar bill. “I’d like the reservation for tomorrow evening at eight. And I’d prefer you did not try,” Ulrich said handing him the bill. “I would prefer you simply made it happen.”
Neither Onyx nor Ulrich knew that—immediately after making their dinner reservation—the bellman went straight to the front desk and flipped through the hotel registration book to get the name of the German with the big bankroll. Finally, there it was.
Suite 738. Schröder.
Yes, that was the name! Schröder.
It had been six months or more since the greasy, Italian-looking man had come into The Palace, handing out money and asking employees to stay on the lookout for a German flashing lots of cash—most likely traveling with an attractive dame.
There was no doubt, the bellman thought again.
It was definitely them.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Charleston, South Carolina
July 4, 2010
“Koda, I want you to meet someone,” Bruce Mulvaney said loudly to be heard over the music. “This is Warren Whitlock, president of American Escrow Corporation. Warren, this is my son, Koda.”
Koda reached out and shook Warren’s hand and spent the next three minutes pretending to listen to what the man was saying, distracted by the music.
The fireworks had gone off without a hitch, and shortly thereafter the evening’s main entertainment—the band Sugarland—took the stage.
Koda had lobbied for Rascal Flats, but his father had balked at the $600,000 fee. Assumedly, Sugarland was more in line with the budget. And though Koda was not a Sugarland fan, the song they were playing—a cover of “Life in a Northern Town,” a 1980’s hit by English pop group The Dream Academy—had him mesmerized.
It was his mother’s favorite song.
Ah hey, ma ma ma…
His mother had heard the song on the radio one day when she was still in high school and had gone straight to the record store after school to buy the album.
She had never heard any song that filled her with such sadness, she’d told Koda once.
“I knew the first time I heard it I had to own it,” Nisa had told Koda, even though she was pretty sure he wouldn’t understand. And he didn’t. How could he?
He was six.
&
nbsp; “Why do you like it if it makes you sad, Mommy?” Koda asked.
“Because it makes me feel,” his mother had said.
“Feel what?” Koda asked.
“Just feel,” she’d said.
He didn’t understand it then, but he did now.
Ah hey, ma ma ma…
He had never heard any song that made him feel more than “Life in a Northern Town.”
“That’s a pretty good idea, don’t you think?” Bruce asked Koda just as the song ended.
“What is?” Koda asked, returning from his thoughts and coming back to the moment.
“Warren was suggesting a way to force the guy next door to sell out,” Bruce said. “Say it again, Warren. The music was so loud that I don’t think Koda heard you.”
“I was telling your father he could ask the county to establish a claim of eminent domain,” Warren said.
Bruce Mulvaney had tried without success to force their neighbor—the only house within sight of the mansion—to sell their property to the Mulvaneys to use as a guesthouse. But the property, which had once served as the slave quarters to the original plantation owners, had been granted Historic Site status by the state, making it virtually untouchable.
“A claim of eminent domain would require establishing an overwhelming public interest benefit for seizing the property,” Koda said, impressing both his father and Warren. “I’m not sure there is any reason that would take precedence over individual right to the property.”
“What about leveling the place and turning it into a private heliport?” Bruce said. It was clear that Bruce had given up on the idea of converting the property into a guesthouse—all he wanted now was to get the bastard out. His father, Declan, had made the mistake of not buying the surrounding land at the time he’d first bought the estate. Now, thirty years later, the family was still trying to get rid of the man.
“Private? No way,” Warren said. “But a public heliport? You might have something there.”
Onyx Webb: Book Two Page 13
