The Canary List: A Novel

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “Rewind,” she told Crockett. With less antagonism. “She—”

  “Jaimie,” Crockett said. “Not she.”

  “Don’t push me,” Pamela said. “Jaimie came here this morning from next door.”

  Crockett let out a deep breath, hoping his tension wasn’t too obvious. He wasn’t out of danger yet.

  “She came over this morning from next door. She stayed the night with Nanna. Nanna drove us to Jaimie’s house last night.”

  “I was really afraid this morning,” Jaimie said. “That guy was there to get me. I had to leave Nanna’s house. I knew Mr. G would protect me.”

  “I understand,” Pamela said to her. “Mr. Grey?”

  “She ran inside the house when I opened the door, and hid in my bedroom. Then someone else saying he was from Social Services arrived.”

  Thomas looked alarmed. “We sent no one,” he said.

  “Did you ask for ID?” Pamela’s scorn returned.

  Crockett shook his head. “Things were happening fast. He arrives, I go into the bedroom, and Jaimie is hiding under the bed.”

  “He was a bad man,” Jaimie said. “I knew it was danger.”

  “Who was a bad man?” Pamela said to Jaimie. “Are you saying it’s Mr. Grey? You can tell me. You’re in safe hands now.”

  “Give me a break!” Crockett said with more force than he intended. Professionally, he didn’t blame the detective. He was familiar with abuse cases. Kids too afraid of their abusers to tell the truth. But he couldn’t stay objective here.

  “I’m listening to the girl,” Pamela said. “Jaimie, who was the bad man? Mr. Grey?”

  “No,” Jaimie said. “He’s the only one I trust. The bad man first went to Nanna’s house. Then came here. He was following me. I ran into the bedroom to hide from him when he knocked on the door. But then he went away. And you got here.”

  “He probably saw your car pull up,” Crockett told Pamela. “I didn’t know it. I thought he was from Social Services, and I was in the bedroom, trying to talk Jaimie into going with Social Services.”

  “With a man who didn’t show ID?”

  “I would have gotten around to asking,” Crockett said.

  “Right. So you’re in the bedroom with Jaimie …”

  The insinuation was back. Crockett bit off another snapped reply, finally realizing the detective’s tactics. Push, push, push. Hoping, if Crockett was lying about anything, for a reaction that would reveal the lie.

  “Yes,” Crockett said. “Then you made it to the door. I stepped out, and you and I began our conversation.”

  “With the girl still hidden in the bedroom.”

  “With the girl still safe in the bedroom,” Crockett said.

  The detective gave Crockett a cold stare. The silence kept building, and Crockett decided he wasn’t going to break it. That would show nervousness. Yes, he was nervous, because he wasn’t blind to how this entire situation appeared to someone with a skeptical and suspicious eye. But an innocent man would have no need to protest repeatedly.

  “How about we talk to your neighbor,” the detective finally said.

  Crockett nodded.

  “I’ll stay here with the girl,” Thomas said.

  “Good,” the detective answered. “Ask her about last night.”

  Another implied threat to Crockett. With him gone, Jaimie could talk freely. It made Crockett grateful he’d chosen to handle all of it with Nanna involved. Soon enough, it would all be cleared up. Social Services would take Jaimie, and she would be out of his hands.

  The situation was so overwhelming that Crockett would try to neutralize by normalizing the rest of the day as much as possible He would have the rest of the pot of coffee, read the paper, shower, and be at his ex-wife’s house in plenty of time to pick up his son for a day at the zoo. He didn’t care how clichéd it was for a weekend dad; Mickey liked the zoo, and Crockett loved being with Mickey. The zoo gave them plenty of distractions, but the pace was slow enough to give them time to talk too.

  It didn’t take long, however, for Crockett to regret his next several steps, which showed his familiarity with Nanna’s house and his ease of access to it.

  When Nanna didn’t answer the door, he lifted a potted plant on the doorstep.

  “She keeps the spare key here,” Crockett said, then realized he needed to clarify. “I feed her cat when she’s away.”

  He meant it as a way to show the detective that he had a great, trusting relationship with Nanna. Which would have been fine, except that, after calling loudly and walking through almost all the house, they discovered why Nanna hadn’t answered.

  Nanna was gone.

  Thirteen

  ight time zones to the east, the midafternoon Roman air held an oily, sensual warmth that American Raymond Leakey was too furious to enjoy as he sat alone at an outside table, cradling his cappuccino.

  With the cafe situated just beyond the walls of Vatican City, the diesel rumblings of tour buses and the constant blare of horns was the perfect noise-canceling background to ensure the privacy of his upcoming conversation.

  Furious as he was, he’d need to remain careful and calculating all through the meeting.

  Leakey thrived on the calculated and the clandestine. Twice divorced. No children. A past that included a decade in the CIA working in Rome, until, with CIA blessing, he’d agreed to be recruited to work for the present organization inside the Vatican, where his Italian language skills were mocked but serviceable, where all his old contacts were an asset, not a liability.

  Leakey was old enough to see retirement looming, and nothing about his job description promised regular pension checks. Instead, he’d have to leverage his way into a peaceful villa—somewhere in Thailand, he’d decided, where an inexpensive maid could provide more than cleaning services.

  That not-so-long-term objective made this meeting crucial.

  Leakey had taken a circuitous route to this cafe—beginning at the Roma Termini station at the Piazza dei Cinquecento in central Rome, where he took the Leonardo Express to the airport, then back to central Rome via taxi, then buses with several transfers to the northwest to mingle with tourists at St. Peter’s Square. From there, moving on foot, his route included a trip through a restaurant kitchen, out the back door into an alley, and back onto the street. Three hours of circuitousness. Unnecessary precautions, he suspected, but in his business, unnecessary precautions were as natural as scanning the bill in a restaurant to make sure there were no overcharges. He also had in his favor his natural invisibility. His face was thin, and he styled his hair in a comb-over, knowing that anyone who looked at him would dismiss him as a mousey, albeit vain, average man.

  He’d chosen a cassock for further invisibility. In Rome, a man walking the cobblestone streets or relaxing in a cafe in priestly garb raised no eyebrows. Scorn, perhaps, from the cynical or those who knew the history of the Holy See’s corruption over the past several decades, but never any real attention.

  Just as well. This meeting, like all others with the cardinal whose arrival Leakey expected at any moment, needed to be utterly private, with no risk of electronic eavesdropping. In an ironic reversal, the cardinal would be dressed in a casual business suit for his own anonymity. The public venue was perfect for their private discussion.

  They had agreed that, unlike Leakey, the cardinal would make no attempts to hide his route to the cafe. By pretending there was nothing unusual about meeting an anonymous priest, the cardinal would not draw any suspicion.

  Exactly on time the cardinal appeared—His Eminence Ethan Saxon, the head of the archdiocese of Los Angeles.

  To Leakey, watching carefully, the only attention the cardinal seemed to draw was from some of the women walking along the sidewalk, even the younger ones. In his elegant brown suit, the cardinal appeared younger and more vigorous than he actually was. His face was remarkably unlined for someone in his sixties—and for a man who had, as Leakey well knew, much on his conscience.

&nb
sp; Leakey doubted it was coincidence that the cardinal resembled a famous portrait of Machiavelli, with his short-cropped dark hair emphasizing a high forehead. Rumor had it that the cardinal thought of himself as The Prince. Leakey suspected it was partially in homage to the book of the same title by Niccolò Machiavelli. The other potential reason, well, that was much darker and something Leakey preferred to keep from his thoughts.

  Leakey detested the cardinal, but of course, with a villa and a Thai maid in mind, he had his own Machiavellian reasons for association with the cardinal.

  His Eminence saw Leakey, nodded, and strode toward him.

  Both were silent until the waiter had brought another cappuccino.

  “Any news?” Leakey asked, tapping his head three times with his forefinger. He needed to add no further reference to his question.

  All the world knew that the pope was in a coma. It had been weeks already, and while the coma had dragged on so long it had stopped making daily headlines, inside the Vatican this situation was without precedence. The escalating turmoil and uncertainty was something Leakey was determined to use to his advantage.

  As for Leakey’s tapping gesture, it needed no explanation either.

  Although it was said in Rome that Pietro non muore—Peter does not die—the mortality of each successive pope made him like any other man. Until abolished by decree by John XXIII a half century earlier, a medieval ritual confirmed the pope’s death. When the pope died, the first duty of il camerlengo, the cardinal who managed the properties and revenues of the Holy See, had been to lightly tap the pope’s forehead thrice with a silver hammer, calling him by his Christian name and asking dormisne, are you asleep? If there was no reply, the camerlengo would utter the four solemn words to declare the pope had truly died—vere Papa mortuss est.

  His Eminence leaned slightly forward, dropping his voice, even as a tour bus rumbled by. “It is ugly, the fight for power between the secretary of state and the cardinal vicar. Far uglier than even hinted by the media. And in this ugliness is much potential for me.”

  “For us,” Leakey said, trying to keep a lid on his fury. Never was he going to let the cardinal forget that once they succeeded, Leakey demanded his payment. Leakey had left the CIA for the Vatican’s counterpart—the not-so-secret spy agency called Entity. Always alert for any kind of leverage, Leakey had seen opportunity when he was assigned to covertly keep track of an unusual correspondence between the Vatican’s chief exorcist and a psychiatrist in Los Angeles. Leakey had approached Cardinal Saxon months earlier to make a bargain. One would become the pope. The other, a retired spy with a new name, new passport, new Swiss bank account, and most importantly, a new villa with disposable maids.

  “Yes, yes, this will benefit us.” Although both Americans had a passable knowledge of Italian, their conversation was in English. “But with O’Hare in Los Angeles, the longer it takes for the white smoke to be released, the more potential for complications. The girl is still a problem.”

  Leakey caught the cardinal’s involuntary glance in the direction of the Sistine Chapel, blocked from their view by the walls of nearby buildings. Soon enough, the eyes of the world would be watching it for smoke during the conclave to elect a new pope. Black smoke, inconclusive vote. White smoke, a new pope, a man with as much power as a government head, declared divinely infallible, with a billion followers.

  “She’s a problem because you made her a problem,” Leakey said. “No matter what the cops might conclude, I know you are responsible. I need to know why and how before we continue.”

  “I do not serve you,” Saxon said. “You might want to keep that in mind. Especially knowing my future position.”

  “You won’t get to that future position if you interfere with my job. You might want to keep that in mind.” Leakey felt the lid on his bubbling fury slipping. Without some sort of venting, he was going to blow. “Any idea how moronic it was for you to step in, let alone step in without discussing it with me first?”

  Saxon’s face tightened. Maybe Leakey had pushed him too far.

  “Were you hoping if it succeeded, you wouldn’t need me anymore?” Leakey asked, forestalling whatever reaction Saxon was about to express. “If so, bad idea. You will always need me. And now you’re going to need me even more to clean it up.”

  “We both know O’Hare is there already,” Saxon finally said. His face relaxed. Leakey judged the man was containing his usual arrogance because it would serve his purpose better to manipulate Leakey rather than try to intimidate him. “With that kind of urgency, I believed if I acted without consulting you, it would solve the problem permanently and keep both of us at arm’s length. I was wrong. So fix it.”

  “Who did you send to start the fire?”

  “Someone who has been convenient to me over the years. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “No,” Leakey said. “The girl is our first priority, but we’re also going to do something about whoever it was you sent in to mess up the job.”

  “Trust me, he’s not an issue. He believes he lives with a demon, one who ordered him to kill his own mother. I learned this from him in a confessional years ago. He only knows me as The Prince. He’s never met me, and even if the authorities catch him, he won’t and can’t point back to us. Just focus on fixing this.”

  Interesting, Leakey thought. With this tidbit of knowledge, it wouldn’t be difficult to learn who it was that the cardinal had sent in to start the fire. It would be a side project for Leakey. And extra potential leverage for the future.

  “Fix the fact that the cops have found the girl at a schoolteacher’s house?” Leakey asked. “My Los Angeles sources tell me there’s a detective there right now, interviewing the teacher.”

  “If you want me to show I’m impressed that you know this already, it won’t happen. It’s what I expect from you.”

  “The girl was alone with the teacher during the night,” Leakey said. “Any idea how dangerous that could be? Who knows what she told him about the psychiatrist.”

  “You’ve told me all along that they’ve warned the girl not to say anything.”

  “She’s twelve,” Leakey said. “She escaped a fire. She probably guessed it was meant to kill her. She’s terrified. You really think she’d keep everything to herself?”

  “Then when you fix it, take care of the teacher too. You have the power.”

  Leakey wanted to lean back in his chair, hands behind his head, to show the casual disrespect he had for the cardinal. As if Leakey wasn’t way ahead of the cardinal on this.

  But if anyone was watching who knew the cardinal, Leakey’s body language would be such a shocking display that it might well lead to questions about the identity of the man in a cassock opposite the cardinal.

  “I think you’re going to need to fatten my Swiss account,” Leakey said. “Because I’ve already started fixing the problem. This teacher has a blot on his record. I’ve begun to arrange a little computer magic to take advantage of it and make sure that, if the girl told him anything, no one will believe it anyway. If he ever clears himself, it won’t lead to you. And if it did, Entity will protect you, because by then you’ll be pope.”

  Fourteen

  ou’ve got two things to consider here,” attorney Dave Mills told Crockett.

  “Investigative point of view. Prosecution point of view.”

  They were finally alone in an interrogation room. With Mills in attendance, two cops—one of them Pamela—had grilled and regrilled Crockett for the previous four hours. Jaimie was somewhere in the labyrinth of juvenile services.

  Thirty seconds earlier, both cops had excused themselves, leaving Crockett alone with Mills, who was in his midforties with graying hair, big gut, big smile.

  Mills was also a BDFOC, a term Crockett coined for his own wry use. Before-Divorce Friend of the Couple. Mills and his wife, Cheryl, lived down the street from the house Crockett and Julie once shared. The couples used to hang out during the idyllic life. Grilled brats and beer.
Cut the lawn on weekends. Two cars, two-car garage, and two kids.

  Lose one kid, and it all changes.

  Julie still lived on the street, still clung to the house, still had Ashley’s bedroom set up the way it was when she died. Crockett had hated being stuck in a place that reminded him every day of what he’d lost. His discontent had clashed with her fear of change and became just one of the cracks in their marriage that led to unbridgeable chasms.

  “Can we take a break?” Crockett asked Mills. “Just tell me—how’s Mickey? We were supposed to go to the zoo.” He muttered the last part, feeling bitter about the recent events that kept him from seeing his son.

  Mickey loved the zoo. Some of the best hours in Crockett’s life were at the zoo with his son. Mickey loved the trip to Griffith Park, the winding roads past the picnic areas where the migrants hung out with their families, then the entrance to the zoo itself. Where Crockett should have been right now with Mickey. They went often enough that they’d begun to recognize when some of the animals had different moods. All of the animals, of course, had names. Given by Mickey. Memorized by Mickey. It may have been a childish tradition, but enjoying the simple things in life with Mickey made Crockett feel less weathered, less adult.

  “Mickey’s good,” Dave said reluctantly. The vague answer didn’t satisfy Crockett in any sense, but he wouldn’t push.

  “I appreciate the help you and Cheryl give our family,” Crockett said. He knew that Dave and Cheryl had come alongside Julie when Crockett left, helping her with the little things, like lawn maintenance, that Crockett used to do.

  Dave looked away briefly, then back at Crockett. “Cheryl and I have separated.”

  “Sorry. I know what that feels like.” It was a quick, canned response. Crockett was too emotionally beat-up to be empathetic.

  “It happens,” Dave said. “But what’s in front of us is what we need to focus on. We need to get you out of here. Last place you want to be for the weekend is a holding cell. It’s like getting thrown into a cage with animals.”