Cruel Mercy

by David Mark

  “He’s strong,” interrupts Dr. Piechowiak. “Half strangled one of the orderlies who found him playing with a dead mouse. Be careful.”

  “Are you strong?” asks Jimmy, and he puts a hand on the boy’s bare arm. Tony flinches, as though brushing up against hot iron.

  “We have to go,” hisses the doctor, desperate.

  Jimmy looks at the boy’s arms. They carry scars and bruises; yellow and blue discolorations in the shape of forefingers and thumbs. Jimmy grinds his teeth. He knows this kid. They used to call him the Dummy, back in the neighborhood. Tony, whose guardian wouldn’t let the poor bastard even take the family surname. ‘Leave it blank,’ said Paulie Pugliesca, when asked to fill in the name for the baptism. That had stuck. Tony Blank. Sal Pugliesca’s little brother. Didn’t speak. Strong. Crazy, if you pushed the right buttons . . .

  “Do you want to leave this place?” asks Jimmy without looking away. “I can help you. I can talk to Paulie . . .”

  The boy stands immobile for a moment, then gives a quick nod.

  “Trust in the Lord,” says Jimmy, and blesses the boy. “I’ll talk to your guardian. Get you out. Get you somewhere else. Close this whole thing down . . .”

  “Father Whelan!” protests the doctor urgently. “We must go.”

  “Believe in me. I’ll believe in you.”

  Dr. Piechowiak pulls the priest by the arm and they disappear into the darkness, hurrying to the open window in the doctor’s old study where they had gained entry.

  The boy stares at the space where the men had stood for a long time after they have gone.

  Then he blesses himself and sits down cross-legged on the floor.

  He whispers to the dying mouse that he holds, like rotten fruit, in the palm of his hand.

  “Believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Amen.”

  NINE

  McAvoy sits in the cool, still air of the church and feels as if he is pressing his face against stone. He is comfortable here, in this chilly, peaceful space, with its smells of furniture polish and incense. It has always puzzled him that air made up of so many prayers should create such a gentle embrace. He pictures prayers as urgent, skittish things, specters born behind locked teeth. Instead, he feels himself strangely comforted. The temples of his youth were the joyless and functional kirks of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. He has always enjoyed the gaudy splendor favored by the Catholic Church. Though he has never made up his mind on the existence of a higher being, McAvoy is always quick to marvel at the ingenuity and creativity of human beings, and within St. Colman’s, he feels he has discovered a magnificent example of man’s potential.

  The pew on which McAvoy sits is near the rear of the church. There is not much light coming through the tall, arched windows but enough to illuminate the face of Jesus, resplendent in white robes and golden halo, smiling benignly upon a kneeling woman with a covered head, herself encircled by men with clasped hands. The light shines through the elaborate panes of yellow and blue glass that serve as an ornate canvas for the scene, and McAvoy enjoys the flickering pattern that the colored glass throws upon the gray-and-white stone tiles of the church’s floor. A more human Jesus is depicted in oil paints behind the cross. His face hangs down, streaked with dirt and blood, and the bones of his shoulder joints strain under his weight. It is a brutal, angry image, and McAvoy, who has seen more horror than most, recognizes it as the portrait of a dying man. It strikes a more personal note with McAvoy than any of the benevolent-faced statues or angelic cherubs that look down from the high walls.

  McAvoy pushes himself back in his seat and his knee cracks with a sound like a stick breaking. He has been sitting here for almost an hour. It is a little before six p.m. According to the schedule in the atrium to his rear, there should have been a Mass at 5:30, but a few minutes ago, a short, twitchy man with white hair came and whispered in the ears of two parishioners sitting in the front pews and they left moments later, telling the other gathered communicants that Father Alatriste had been called away. There are now only half a dozen parishioners left inside St. Colman’s, and McAvoy has yet to find the nerve to go and talk to any of them. He feels like an impostor here. He was confirmed Catholic in his teenage years for no more divine reason than it helped his application to the exclusive boarding school his stepfather wanted him to attend. As an adult, he is an infrequent visitor to church and has not attended confession since his early twenties. Roisin, too, is only a lukewarm Catholic, though she wears a crucifix and blesses herself whenever confronted with bad news.

  “No Mass tonight,” comes a voice in McAvoy’s ear. He spins in his seat. Leaning forward, her face just inches away, is an elderly lady. “Father Alatriste is attending to a parishioner who will be with God before the morning. You’re welcome to follow me down to Saint Brigit’s.”

  McAvoy takes her in. She’s probably in her mid-seventies. Her white hair is cut into a sensible bob and there is no dust on her bifocal spectacles. She’s wearing a pale blue jumper, woolen skirt, thick tights, and flat shoes, and is holding a damp overcoat and pink scarf over one arm.

  “I think I’ll just sit here a while,” says McAvoy, leaning forward so he can whisper into her ear. He catches a smell. Face cream and some delicate floral perfume.

  “There’s no better place for it,” she says, nodding, and McAvoy hears a trace of Connemara in her accent.

  “Beautiful church,” says McAvoy, when it appears that the lady is in no rush to walk away.

  “We like it,” she says. “Not as splendid as old Saint Patrick’s but it has the feel of God about it, wouldn’t you say?”

  McAvoy considers this. “I’m sure the parishioners at most churches say that.”

  “True, but I’m not sure how many of them mean it in their heart. I’ve always felt that if Jesus came to New York, this is where He would go and talk to His father.”

  McAvoy finds himself smiling. He puts out a hand. “I’m Aector,” he says, and as he shakes the old lady’s hand he feels the lumps and swollen knuckles of arthritis.

  “Mary,” comes the reply. “One of eleven Marys in my class year, before you say anything. It’s a popular name.”

  McAvoy is about to speak when Mary ushers him along the pew. “I’ll take the weight off,” she says, and lowers herself down next to him. Her damp coat touches his legs.

  “You’re a tourist, then,” says Mary, in that guileless, gently probing tone that McAvoy fondly associates with Irishwomen of a certain age.

  “I am indeed,” he replies.

  “And you’ll be Scottish.”

  “I am. Was it the hair or the accent that gave me away?”

  Mary smiles, showing teeth too perfect to be real. “You couldn’t look more Scottish if you were wearing a kilt and eating shortbread from a tartan tin.”

  “We were Irish originally,” confides McAvoy. “My ancestors obviously thought that Ireland wasn’t rainy enough and went looking for pastures new.”

  “The whole world was Irish originally,” says Mary, and her voice drops the reverential tone she had first used when whispering in his ear. Now that he has made her smile, she has clearly decided they are friends. “Saint Patrick’s Day in New York—you need to get out of the city. Everybody starts telling you their life story and claiming that their great-great-grandfather came over on the Star of the Sea. If they’re all telling the truth, the blasted ship would have sunk under the weight. I don’t know what Saint Patrick would make of the way he’s remembered. The Paddy’s Day before last, I had to shoo out a load of Mexicans who were dressed as leprechauns. That’s not the sort of thing you expect when you wake up in the morning.”

  McAvoy chuckles. The more Mary talks, the more Irish she sounds. He decides to confide.

  “My wife’s Irish,” he says proudly.

  “The real thing?” asks Mary.

  “We’re pretty sure,” he says.
“She’s a traveler.”

  Mary eyes him and makes a noise in the back of her throat. She’s intrigued. “And you’re a gauja, then,” she says. “Bet that went down well.”

  “I didn’t expect to hear that word while I was here,” says McAvoy. He has grown familiar with the term employed by gypsies for non-gypsies.

  “I’ve no problem with the itinerants myself,” says Mary graciously. “What do her family make of you?”

  The question is too large for McAvoy to begin grappling with, so he just smiles ruefully. “I’m a policeman, too,” he says.

  Mary winces and gives a little laugh. “I bet they’ve got one caravan to entertain you in and another parked somewhere out of sight, full of all the stuff they don’t want you to see.”

  McAvoy finds himself enjoying Mary’s company. He settles back in the pew.

  “You been a New Yorker for long?” he asks, turning away from the altar to give her his full attention.

  “Came here in ’sixty-five,” she says. “I was twenty-three.”

  “Seeking a new life, were you?”

  “More that I was bored to tears with the old one. A man swept me off my feet. Men can do that, when you’re young.”

  “An American man?”

  “No, he was somebody I’d known all my life.”

  “School friend?”

  Mary laughs and gives him a playful slap on the arm. “You’re not much of a policeman. It was God.”

  McAvoy catches sight of the pin on her coat. He screws up his eyes, aware he has missed the obvious.

  “I’ve been a nun for more than fifty years,” she says. “Nice to know I can still shock a handsome young man.”

  McAvoy gives in to a fit of coughing. “You’re part of this parish?” he asks, trying to remember if he has said anything controversial since Sister Mary came and joined him.

  “My order works all over Manhattan,” she says, waving a knobbly hand. “There aren’t as many of us as there once were but we try and have a presence in every church.”

  McAvoy thinks back to what his new friend had said about houses of worship and her words take on a deeper significance.

  “So you have a bit of expertise on which churches are worth my time,” he asks.

  “All churches are worth your time but some were built to glory God and others to glory the men who were paying for it.”

  McAvoy likes her words. “And this place?”

  “Built for God, although there are times I wonder if He’s grateful.”

  McAvoy isn’t sure what she means. “I’m sorry?”

  “That lady.” Sister Mary nods. Beneath a stained-glass window showing St. John the Baptist holding his own severed head, an elderly dark-skinned woman is leaning over a row of candles. She is stick-thin and the coat that dangles off her shoulders looks as though it is still on the hanger. She has her back to McAvoy, but her body language speaks of cold bones and heavy burdens.

  “She looks cold,” says McAvoy.

  “She could light a million candles and it wouldn’t warm her,” says Mary, and she crosses herself, tutting at the world in general. “It’s no small miracle she has the strength to stand.”

  As McAvoy watches, the woman by the candles lowers herself to her knees. She starts praying, completely motionless, face turned upward as if she is hypnotized by the flame.

  “She lights one every morning and night,” says Sister Mary, and her voice drops again. “I admire her.”

  “Who’s she praying for?” asks McAvoy.

  Sister Mary tucks her lips back over her teeth, as if demonstrating an unwillingness to gossip. Then she leans toward him, and McAvoy puts his ear closer to her lips. He catches that same smell, and wonders whether nuns of a certain age know God well enough to tell Him they are going to start wearing a little bit of perfume now and again.

  “Her daughter,” whispers Sister Mary, blessing herself. “Must be not far off forty years she’s been praying for her to come home.”

  “She ran away?” asks McAvoy.

  “Taken,” says Sister Mary, with another sign of the cross.

  “You don’t have to talk about it if it’s painful,” says McAvoy, who wonders if he really wants to hear another sad story when he already knows so many by heart.

  “If she can stand to live, I can stand to tell her tale,” says Sister Mary, and the brightness in her tone sounds forced. “That lady is Magdalena. The family are Puerto Rican. Local to here. Loisaida Avenue. Years ago, she and her husband lost their youngest daughter. I forget her name, God forgive me. She was only a girl. Fourteen or fifteen. Magdalena used to be a cleaner here, as well as working two other jobs. Her husband, God rest him, worked every hour the Lord sent. Good people.”

  “What happened?”

  Sister Mary gives a polite little shrug. “Somebody took her. She didn’t come home one night after school. They never heard from her again.”

  McAvoy shakes his head as the full weight of such a loss floods through him.

  “She crops up in the newspapers now and again, every time there’s a body found or an anniversary passes. Her father died without ever knowing the truth. Magdalena lives on her own now. Same little apartment she used to share with her family. I think she’s older than I am. She’s been in my prayers for forty years and I hope she’ll be in yours, too.”

  McAvoy lowers his head. Instinctively, he wants to run to her and place his arms around her. Wants to promise her answers. He wonders how many other policemen have done the same over the years.

  “We’re all tested,” says Sister Mary thoughtfully. “God only sends the tests He knows we are capable of passing.”

  McAvoy can’t keep the look of uncertainty off his face. “You really think that?”

  Sister Mary’s smile is a tight, sad affair. “I have to. Fifty years of prayers—I have to hope they’ve been going somewhere.”

  “I’m sure you’ve done amazing things,” says McAvoy, and he has to drag his gaze away from the small, still figure by the candles.

  “I hope so, in God’s name,” says Sister Mary. “There are always new fights.”

  “From your accent I’d say you’re Connemara,” says McAvoy, and makes himself look at Sister Mary. “I doubt you’re short of fight.”

  “My father used to say he’d made more people hear bells than the Angelus,” says Sister Mary warmly. “You know Galway?”

  “My wife’s there,” he says. “Went home for a confirmation. Mending bridges with her family.”

  “That’s why she’s not with you?” asks Sister Mary. “You’re here for work?”

  “I’m here for her,” says McAvoy, looking down at his boots.

  “And I’ll be guessing you weren’t welcome at the confirmation.”

  “Not particularly. It was last week, in Tuam. Am I saying that right? With a ‘ch’? Saint Anthony’s. We’ll hopefully both get home to Yorkshire about the same time,” says McAvoy, and he realizes his words are a prayer.

  “I know Saint Anthony’s.” She smiles. “Pretty place. There’s a retreat in the saint’s name upstate, so I hear. You might benefit from a rest.”

  McAvoy smiles. “If I retreat any further I’ll disappear,” he says.

  “I don’t think you’re one for retreating,” Sister Mary muses. “I reckon you’re going into battle even when you’re sitting still.” She seems to be considering something, sucking on her lower lip like a sweetie. She looks into McAvoy in a way that reminds him, absurdly, of his wife. She gives the tiniest of nods, making up her mind. She has weighed him and found him worthy.

  “I had a grand old chin-wag with a Galwegian not two weeks ago,” she says. “He was lighting a candle for his mother and father. I recognized the accent in his prayers.”

  McAvoy sniffs and scratches at his hair, keeping his tone light. “You get many pe
ople from the Old Country coming to this church?”

  “With a name like Saint Colman’s?” scoffs Sister Mary. “We should be serving Guinness at Communion. I know more about what’s going on back in Ireland than I do Manhattan. There’s always somebody to chat to. These boys were full of the craic.”

  McAvoy wonders if he should just come straight out and ask, but Sister Mary saves him the trouble.

  “Grand big fella, the young lad was,” says Sister Mary. “I thought they might be father and son, but I didn’t see much similarity in their features. You don’t like to ask, do you? But he said he were the young lad’s trainer. They were after a blessing for a fight he was going to be having. I don’t like the thought of people knocking lumps off one another, but better in a boxing ring than in the pub, that’s what I say. And with their accents what they were, I had no doubt Father Alatriste would have said yes if he were about the place. As it was, Mr. Molony came and said he would point them in the direction of Saint Brigit’s.”

  If Sister Mary were allowed to play poker, McAvoy fancies she would face heavy losses. She visibly sniffs as she mentions Mr. Molony. McAvoy finds himself unsure of what to ask next. He knew that Brishen and Shay visited this church. He came here hoping to speak to parishioners who saw them here. He believes that from the way Sister Mary is talking she is completely unaware that the two men with whom she chatted were found maimed, and one murdered, not long after. McAvoy does not want to tell her.

  “Is that where they went?” asks McAvoy. “Saint Brigit’s?”

  “They went off with Mr. Molony,” she says, and the same look passes as before across her face.

  “He’s part of the church?” asks McAvoy.

  Sister Mary gives a harsh little laugh. “Thinks he owns this one,” she whispers conspiratorially. “He’s a lawyer, or so we’re told. God forgive me, but he’s a hard man to get along with. I nearly had a coronary when he offered to show them the way to Saint Brigit’s. The last time I saw him doing something for somebody else, he had his stopwatch out so he could check how much of his time he was giving away for free.”