The Altar Girl: A Prequel

by Orest Stelmach

  I raised my eyebrows. “You guys had that in common, too.”

  “Indeed.”

  We stared at each other with blank faces. I knew we were thinking the same thing.

  “No way he went down those stairs on a rainy night,” I said.

  Mrs. Chimchak shrugged. “Rainy night, silent night. I don’t care if the Stalin moon was shining the path down his stairs. There is no way he went down them of his own accord. Someone pushed him. Someone killed him.”

  I marveled at her conviction. “You’re so certain.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Because he suffered from bathmophobia?” I pronounced the affliction in English but with a Ukrainian accent, as though that would somehow make it a Ukrainian word. I did that when my Uke vocabulary failed me, which was inevitable when the discussion included technical terms.

  Mrs. Chimchak, thankfully, understood what I meant. “No. I’m not sure he was killed because of his fear of stairs. I’m sure he was killed, because the only reason he went down them was to get a bottle of wine. And he didn’t need to do that the night he died.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I brought it up for him.”

  Her words echoed in my ears. “You were in his house the day he died?”

  “I came by to discuss his invoices for March. We met once a month to go over the books. And before I left, he asked me to bring him up a bottle of French wine. There were many cases of wine. They looked expensive. I forgot to mention it. That’s another place he parked some money.”

  “What time of day was this?”

  She considered the question. “Midafternoon. About three o’clock. Right before your brother showed up.”

  A lump formed in my throat. I had to clear it to speak. “Marko?”

  She nodded, not a hint of emotion about her.

  “Marko was at my godfather’s house that day?”

  “He was walking up the sidewalk as I was leaving. He said hello, he was very polite. He never smiles, your brother. I feel sad for him because I wonder if he’s ever experienced joy. But he does speak beautiful Ukrainian.”

  “Yes,” I said, my head reeling from the revelation. Why hadn’t Marko told me he’d been there? “He’s a fanatic. He’s obsessed with his Ukrainian heritage. His fluency is a point of great pride.”

  Mrs. Chimchak slid a folded piece of paper toward me. “That is a copy of a receipt for your godfather’s airplane tickets for his first trip. Notice that he didn’t pay for the tickets. A third party was billed.”

  I studied the receipt. Round-trip from New York to Crimea via Frankfurt and Kyiv. The cost of the tickets had been billed to the Black Sea Trading Company. The address given was in Sevastopol. There was also a phone number.

  I pocketed the receipt, thanked Mrs. Chimchak, and got up to leave. She stopped at an alcove on the way and pulled a box out of a desk drawer. She turned and handed me a tin of Altoids. It was the same white box she’d given me during my survival test more than twenty years ago, with the teal piping around the edge. I smiled and tried to say no, but she insisted.

  “Take them. Keep them close to you. When a person doesn’t feel well, a mint will always improve her spirits.”

  I’d heard that line before. The Altoids helped save my life back then. The circumstances were different now, and there was no way they’d save me this time. Still, I changed my mind and took them. It was a spontaneous decision rooted in the knowledge that Mrs. Chimchak was giving them to me for a reason. She was reminding me that I was going to have to be as resilient as I’d been when she’d given a similar box to me last time. With this small gesture, she was also telling me to expect the unexpected, and to remain diligent at all times.

  She asked me about my plan of action and I told her.

  “You’ll keep me informed?” she said.

  “Better than that. I’ll be back tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. Until we’ve solved the murder. Until we’ve solved it together.”

  She gave a slight nod of satisfaction and hustled me out the door.

  I got back on the highway and headed toward Brasilia. Once I was safe in the left lane cruising at a comfortable seventy-nine-mile-per-hour pace, I flipped open the box of Altoids. I remembered the unexpected taste I’d experienced the last time I’d popped one of her mints into my mouth. This time I licked it first.

  It really was a mint this time.

  CHAPTER 21

  ON THE MORNING of her third day, Nadia woke up to find her fire had survived the night. The log-feeding mechanism Mrs. Chimchak had taught her to build had actually worked. The sight of the low burning flames boosted her spirits, as did the realization her fever had broken.

  She climbed out of her lean-to. The red sun rising in the East told her it was still early morning. She still had the rest of the food Marko had brought, and enough juices and water to last her through the night. With the fire burning and the extra matches he’d left her, nothing could go wrong. All she had to do was waste time and survive one more night.

  Nadia ate a Baby Ruth candy bar for breakfast. It was the smart choice. It had peanuts for lasting energy and caramel for an instant pickup. Then she hiked to the stream and washed up. After she was done washing her face, however, she had to sit on a log to rest. The short walk and the simple act of splashing water with her hands had tired her out. By the time she returned to her camp she felt feverish again. Nadia cursed her bad luck as she fed the fire.

  She wished she had some Sucrets throat lozenges or some Vicks cough drops to ease the pain in her throat. It hurt every time she tried to swallow. Then she remembered Mrs. Chimchak had given her the box of Altoids. Maybe a mint really could make a person feel better when she had no better options.

  Nadia popped one into her mouth. Instead of a burst of mint, however, she choked on a bitter explosion. Nadia bolted upright and spit out the tablet. What was it? A salt or iodine tablet? Was it another test? Was she supposed to survive with some sort of strange substance in her body? Maybe the KGB had interrogated Mrs. Chimchak back in Ukraine. Maybe this was her sick way of toughening Nadia up. All the immigrants were wacko that way, Nadia thought. They had a different mentality about what made a person strong from regular Americans because they’d been through so much themselves.

  The residual aftertaste of the tablet lingered on Nadia’s tongue. Thirty seconds after she’d spit it out, she recognized the taste. It was aspirin! The kind adults took, not the baby kind her mother used to give her. She’d taken only one tablet about nine months ago when she’d had a terrible headache. Mrs. Chimchak had pretended to give her mints, but she’d filled the box with aspirin. It was a real wonder medicine, and Mrs. Chimchak cared about her so much she wanted her to have some in case she got sick. Either that or Mrs. Chimchak could already tell she was getting sick when she’d visited her camp. She knew things about people they didn’t even know themselves. She was a strange, bizarre, spooky woman. She was the best.

  Nadia took a fresh aspirin and washed it down with some pineapple juice. Then she slipped into her sleeping bag to rest. Her mind wandered, and she began to get scared about being sick all alone in the wildness.

  Marko had taught her how to deal with unpleasant situations like these. Don’t be scared of getting scared, he said. It’s normal to be frightened in unusual circumstances. Make fear your friend. Let the fluttering in the belly and the pounding of the heart remind you to be alert and not do anything stupid. Then focus your mind on something else, Marko said. Picture yourself doing something you enjoy, and imagine you’re really doing it.

  And that’s what she’d trained herself to do when she got scared or nervous. She did it when she had to recite a poem in front of the entire Uke community on stage at the National Home. The community put on half a dozen banquets during the year to commemorate a person or an event like Uke independence day. Someti
mes a Uke dance troupe would perform, other times a Uke choir would sing.

  And then there was the obligatory Nadia Tesla poetry recital. That was her punishment for being the best Uke student in school and having the best Uke diction. There was nothing she hated more than being volunteered by her father to commit eight stanzas to memory and stand in front of five hundred people and perform. She didn’t even know what half the words meant or what she was getting all emotional about.

  As the recital approached, her nerves got so tight she thought her head would explode. To ease the tension, she pictured herself eating her reward at McDonald’s, a cheeseburger with fries and a vanilla shake. The key moment was when she sipped the shake with a mouthful of food, and the sugar in the shake blended with the salt from the burger and fries. Except she didn’t get any reward after the last recital because she forgot a line and had to be prompted by her teacher from behind the stage. Her father got so mad . . .

  But not as mad as he got when he learned Marko had doctored his report card, used a typewriter to turn an F into an A. As soon as he’d taken his belt off, Nadia had raced upstairs to her bedroom, hidden under the blanket, and covered her ears. Then she pictured herself reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the living room, her father smoking a pipe, her brother watching baseball on the TV as their mother pared apples for them to share. They were happy. So happy . . .

  But there were times when the trick didn’t work. Like when her father and mother screamed at each other, when he told her marrying her was the dumbest decision of his life, and she said she regretted having had his children. There was one time in particular, when they went totally ballistic and her father picked up a kitchen knife and pointed it at Nadia’s mother, and Marko jumped in and stood in front of their mother to protect her. The anguish in Nadia’s soul had been so intense she thought she would never get out of the moment, that she would never recover from the incident, that she would be incapable of experiencing happiness again.

  Much to her surprise, she did recover from that incident. And her family went on pretending there were no problems, that they were a normal family. And so she would survive her final night here on the Appalachian Trail, too, Nadia thought.

  She drifted in and out of sleep for hours. When she woke up to the sound of spitting and cracking, she thought she was seeing things because giant orange flames were raging against the black of night. That was impossible, she said to herself, because she’d been sleeping and hadn’t fed the fire. Then she felt a gentle hand on her forehead and heard a voice that made her realize she was no longer sleeping and this was not a dream. It was the sound of a voice that might have instantly calmed other girls, but for Nadia it was the voice of holy terror.

  It was the sound of her father’s voice.

  CHAPTER 22

  THERE IS A paradigm in the financial markets called the greater fool theory. In such a scenario, a person buys an investment knowing she is paying too much for it, with the underlying assumption she’ll be able to sell it to someone else at an even higher price. In essence, the person knows she’s exercising poor judgment but thinks she’s smarter than everyone else. She believes she’ll unwind her investment in time.

  Such was my current situation. I knew Donnie Angel and his organization were out there. Maybe they were tracking my every move, or perhaps they simply kept watch on the motel where I was staying. But there was no doubt they knew I was in Hartford and understood exactly what types of questions I was asking. I had no doubt of this because if that weren’t the case, I would have been already punished for breaking his leg.

  I was certain this was the case as soon as I walked out of Mrs. Chimchak’s house. In fact, I probably knew it earlier, the moment she implied my godfather had dealt in stolen art or antiquities, and that he hadn’t trusted banks with his money. Those revelations meant that my godfather had probably left something valuable behind him. And by inquiring into my godfather’s death, I was providing Donnie Angel an invaluable service.

  I was leading him to the prize.

  I doubted there was any cash in my godfather’s home as Mrs. Chimchak had suggested. The house was protected with an alarm, but a criminal like Donnie Angel would know how to acquire a code or get past it, wouldn’t he? If he’d found what he was looking for, he wouldn’t have lifted me off the sidewalk in New York. It was as though he knew that my kidnapping assured him that I would continue to ask questions. I wondered if it were possible that Donnie Angel was so smart that he was playing me, or if I was simply thinking too much. Either way, there was no doubt in my mind that he was using me now.

  The Uke community knew his reputation. People in the community wouldn’t answer his questions. But he knew they would answer mine. That was the reason I’d remained unscathed since breaking his leg, I thought. In fact, it suggested that Donnie wouldn’t have exercised his threat of breaking mine, that strapping me onto his leg-breaking machine was just a scare tactic. Why break my leg and risk that I would stop pursuing what he wanted?

  Even if that were true, his mercy was calculated and temporary. Eventually, I’d discover what he wanted me to find or I’d cease to be useful. When that time came, he’d have his vengeance. By going on with my investigation even though I knew what awaited me, I was assuming that I would be able to extricate myself like the aforementioned person who’d overpaid for his investment.

  As a result of my actions, I had become what I’d always deplored. I was playing the part of the greatest fool. Even worse, I was playing the role consciously and willingly, which surely made me the greatest fool of all. And yet I persisted. The thought of quitting was a nonstarter. I wasn’t exactly sure why I was so committed, nor did I care to stop and hyperanalyze my motives. I had a mission and I was determined to complete it.

  I called Paul Obon, my friend in New York, and asked him to see what he could learn about the Black Sea Trading Company. Then I called Brasilia and found out my brother wasn’t working tonight. I tried him at home but got his answering machine. I didn’t bother leaving a message.

  Searching for him would have been futile, so I drove to the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Hartford instead. I had been planning to visit with Father Yuri to see if he could help me. Now I had even more questions to ask him. When I arrived, the church was open. Nine people stood waiting in line across from the confessional. Father Yuri kept the church open the Friday night before Easter to provide a longer window for people to cleanse their souls. That he was still doing so didn’t surprise me. Sin was a perpetual growth industry.

  Two banks of wooden pews faced a rich altar dressed in gold trim with colorful stained-glass windows above it. I dipped my right finger in a bowl of holy water resting on a sconce in the vestibule and crossed myself Eastern-style, thumb, index, and forefinger pressed together to represent the Holy Trinity. The openhanded gesture the Roman Catholics favored never made sense to me.

  Tension melted from my body. The Church had been an emotional shelter where nothing could hurt me when I was a child. Time hadn’t erased its magic despite my prolonged absence. I considered getting in line for confession myself but I wasn’t prepared to bare my soul. Instead, I sat in a pew and waited half an hour for the church to empty and Father Yuri to emerge from the confessional.

  Most priests looked older than their age, and the man who’d taught my catechism classes was no exception. The belt that encircled his waist could have secured a cargo container. He wore the toll of his profession on his body. Giant bags drooped beneath his eyes as he walked with a limp. When he saw me, he lit up. I smiled back but he screwed his face tight and nodded toward the exit instead. His frosty transformation filled me with dread.

  I followed him outside. He looked around as he locked the church. I did the same. Cars lined both sides of the street, but they appeared as empty and harmless as the sidewalks.

  “We have to talk,” Father Yuri said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to see
the only altar girl I ever had, but we have to talk. Let’s go inside the rectory . . .” His gaze fell on my Porsche. “Is that yours?”

  “What do we have to talk about?”

  “Zero to sixty in what—six seconds?”

  “No. Under five. What do we have to talk about?”

  “By God, that’s better than sex. Especially for a man in my profession. Not that I’d know but even a priest has an imagination. Forget the rectory. We’ll talk in the car.”

  “We will?”

  He waddled toward the street. I hustled to catch up, still fixated on his prior sense of urgency to talk.

  “I didn’t remember you to be a car guy, Father.”

  “New hobby.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since now. Let’s take it on the highway and blow the doors off some minivans. They’re constantly leaving my hybrid in the dust. I must have my vengeance.”

  “But I remember you preaching forgiveness from the time I was five years old.”

  “They didn’t make minivans when you were five years old, child.”

  Father Yuri climbed behind the wheel and pushed the seat back to accommodate his huge belly. He was known as the gourmet chef, one who also received weekly platters from devoted Ukrainian spinsters.

  “The Women’s League has been spreading rumors about me,” he said. “They say I emerged from my mother’s womb with a Heineken in my right hand.”

  “Well, we know they’re wrong about that. It was Lowenbrau. I always saw you drinking Lowenbrau at summer camp. Lowenbrau Dark, wasn’t it?”

  “You scoundrel,” he said, laughing.

  “Why did you say we have to talk?”

  “Why do children remember what we wish they’d forget?” He pointed at the shifter, looking confused. “What is this thing?”

  I couldn’t have cared less about my car at that moment, but I did value our lives. “Wait. You’ve never driven a car with a manual transmission?”