by Steve Richer
“Thank you, Simon. I could have taken a cab from the hospital when she didn’t show up. The truth is, I didn’t want to be alone today.”
“Forget about it,” he said with a dismissive wave.
“No, really.”
She reached out and placed her hand on top of his, on his lap. It forced him to look at her and, just like it always did, his gaze made her melt.
“When we get to my house…”
“Yes?”
“I want you to come inside with me.”
She lifted his hand to her face and brushed his skin with her lips.
“Nikki, I don’t know. It’s a busy day, I have to get back to work.”
“Please,” she whispered, her voice frail, shaking. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”
Her affair with Simon had started more than a year ago. She hadn’t been looking to be with another man. It had never been the plan. All she knew was that every day she drifted away more and more from Donnie, and neither of them were doing anything to make it stop.
There had been a party at the Lions Club to honor an old member for all his years of service and devotion. In her experience, they tended to do that to long-serving members when they started to appear unhealthy. All night at the banquet Nicole had been uncomfortable sitting next to her husband. It was like going out with a stranger you didn’t want to talk to.
As it happened, a man had chosen that moment to stab his wife in Central Park and Donnie had been forced to go to work. Seeing her chance to be free for a little while, Nicole had elected to stay at the party anyway instead of going home.
And that was how she had met Simon. He had been at the bar drinking by himself, seething as he watched his wife dancing with everybody but him. Nicole had felt an immediate kinship with him.
They didn’t get together right away. In fact, she had never even thought that things would lead to an affair. It began with Simon calling her just to chat. Then they had gone out for drinks together, everything strictly platonic.
It was on their fourth date that he’d kissed her and it had reminded her of what was missing from her life. It had been fortuitous that they’d been next to a motel. In the beginning, she had been disgusted by what she’d done. That wasn’t who she was, she wasn’t a homewrecker.
However, she soon realized that Donnie had done his share to destroy their marriage. He was basically married to his job and he was equally responsible for this.
So Nicole had embarked on a torrid affair with Simon. He was attentive, thoughtful, and cultured. They could talk about music and world events. He made her feel smart and important. Had she felt this way with Donnie when they had first been married? She couldn’t remember anymore.
Ultimately, things had slowed down with Simon and he had stopped calling when she was diagnosed with cancer. At the time, he’d said that it would be best for her to focus her energies on her recovery. Yet she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because she wasn’t attractive anymore. His phone calls were sparse after that.
That didn’t matter though. He was here with her now.
“I need you to stay with me this afternoon, Simon. I don’t know if… if we can do anything together, I’m so tired, but I need you next to me. Please…”
She hadn’t realized that her eyes had watered until a tear raced down her cheek. He quickly wiped it off her skin and she kissed his fingers.
“Okay,” Simon said. “I’ll stay.”
Chapter 14
Outside of an apartment building on the west side of Jersey City, the FBI was preparing to move in.
They hadn’t just summoned local agents with SWAT training. No, they had flown up the Hostage Rescue Team from Quantico. These men were the elite, almost all former military special operators, hardened veterans who had seen combat overseas.
In today’s climate, terrorist cells were more and more independent. Al Qaeda was losing steam and ISIS was fast becoming a catchall term for any radical group with extreme Islamist views or vague allegiances to Middle Eastern regimes.
This particular New Jersey cell was codenamed Industrial Fox – the term had been coined by an FBI computer – and it had been on the national security watch list for three months. The agents handling this particular investigation had been exclusively in a holding pattern, believing that they weren’t much of a threat.
The group was composed of three young men, second-generation immigrants from Pakistan, and so far the worst they’d done was join a suburban shooting range and write a few inflammatory Facebook posts.
But with the Pope’s assassination, Industrial Fox moved up on the FBI’s priority list.
On the other side of the Hudson River, the Secret Service had also marshaled their agents and SWAT team to take down Richard Jasongo. Ever since the papal visit to New York had been announced, the Secret Service had increased their interest into Jasongo. They were now about to storm his house in Yonkers.
Records showed that he had a rap sheet for violence and had written seven letters to his church, the Archdiocese of New York, and even to the Holy See. In these letters, he vowed to take vengeance against the forces of evil which prevented his mother from getting the exorcism she had severely needed before dying from cancer. Jasongo had a long history of mental illness.
Finally, another team of Secret Service agents, augmented by the ATF, was preparing an assault against a compound in West Virginia. The group called themselves the Movement for the Advancement of God in His Light. They were a doomsday cult which had been under surveillance for thirteen months already. They had been purchasing an arsenal of illegal weapons, getting ready for the so-called apocalypse which they claimed would be triggered by a rift within the Catholic Church.
Donnie believed that all these leads were horseshit.
He turned to Emma who was busy reading a file at their long conference room table at One Police Plaza. He said, “This is horseshit.”
She nodded politely before getting back to her reading. He sensed she was uncomfortable around foul language. Still, it was the right word. The federal agents were so convinced of their self-importance that they failed to see the bigger picture.
Nothing about the crime scene suggested terrorism, a mentally ill man, or a death cult. If it had been the case, the scene would have been messy. The culprits would have done their best to publicize the whole thing. Instead, this homicide had been surgical. It had been planned and made to look like a suicide.
These assaults were therefore a waste of time, money, and resources. Donnie took a sip of cold coffee and leaned back in his chair.
Also around the table were other detectives from the 19th Precinct and Major Case, and some of the officers who had taken statements. They were going over the material to try and make sense of it all.
Kwon was himself exhausted and he lowered his tie before throwing his pen across the table. “Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”
“Why?” Donnie asked. “You have better things to do?”
“Actually, yeah. It’s called a family, you should look into it sometime.”
Donnie wondered if the kid knew he was having trouble with his marriage, if he was baiting him. He considered flipping him off, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
“Let’s look at this one more time, all right? Any moment now, the FBI, the Secret Service, they’ll call in and say what we already know, that they don’t have jack shit. So we need to figure it out ourselves.”
“Fine…” Kwon groaned.
“The papal household. We can rule them out. As much as I hate Cardinal Brambach, Archbishop of my dick, he wouldn’t do this. None of these people who worked closely with the Pope would do this.”
“They had a sweet gig,” a fat detective said from the other end of the table.
“And if they’d wanted him dead, they could have done it quietly in Vatican City. I mean, I like Manhattan as much as the next guy, but why risk doing the deed five thousand miles away from home? This is the sort of thing you do in y
our own backyard where you can control the conditions.”
“You think our doer is local, Donnie?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not the Pope’s entourage. The nuncio and his people? I don’t think so either. These guys are chosen because they’re top-notch, right? This is the major leagues for priests. If by some miracle they blew a gasket, went berserk…”
“Does that happen?” Kwon asked. “Priests going berserk?”
“I don’t know. What am I, a Vatican scholar? Sister Emma, what do you think?”
“It’s just Emma or Officer Aldridge,” she said pointedly. “I’m no longer a nun.”
“Apologies, Officer Aldridge. I’ll go to confession. Now tell me. Is that a thing, priests blowing a fuse and killing people?”
“No, it doesn’t happen.”
Donnie mock-curtsied. “Thank you. And if this thing was some sort of crime of passion, the scene would have been messy as hell. Instead we have a pristine bathroom. No signs of struggle.”
Emma barely paid attention to the others and rolled her chair sideways to a laptop set up nearby. Donnie wondered if that was her way of telling them to lay off.
“Maybe it was a suicide after all,” Kwon suggested.
“No, I think it was planned. This shit was premeditated. So we have to look at the civilian employees.”
“All their statements check out.” It was an older officer in uniform across the table. He was nibbling on a stale doughnut. “Nobody saw or heard nothing.”
“Alibi?”
“It’s hard to prove alibis when everybody’s in the same house already, Detective. Yeah, he was there all right, but I didn’t see nothing ‘cause I was in the john. See my point?”
“I think I have something.”
The voice belonged to Emma and everybody turned to her.
“What is it?”
“This man, Perry Butterfield. He was the nuncio’s cook. I’ve been going over his work history, what he said in his statement? It’s not checking out.”
Donnie stood up and went to her as she typed on the computer. “What do you mean, it’s not checking out?”
“He said that before working for the nuncio he used to work at Giant Pizza in Staten Island. I remember that place from when I was a kid, so I called. The number has been disconnected.”
“Okay, they changed numbers.”
“I just checked the business directory,” she said, looking up at Donnie. “The restaurant has been out of business for fifteen years.”
~ ~ ~ ~
This new lead rejuvenated Donnie, but work was only beginning. He got in touch with Inspector Fabian Sclauzero of the Vatican City Police to see if it could get the file they had on Butterfield. The man was sympathetic, clearly wanting to solve this case as quickly as possible.
Special Agent Garza of the FBI was in a much less agreeable mood.
The raid in Jersey City had ended up being a fiasco. Two of the three suspected terrorists were killed during the assault and the third had confessed to thinking about maybe attacking a New York landmark, but they definitely had nothing to do with the Pope’s death. The kid hadn’t even heard about it before they’d taken him down.
So when Donnie asked him to see if they had any files on Perry Butterfield, the fed wasn’t inclined to help. Plus he insisted that they most likely didn’t have anything. It was the Vatican that had hired him so the FBI wouldn’t have vetted him.
“Please check anyway, Agent Garza.”
The man hadn’t said yes, but he hadn’t said no either. Donnie was chalking this one as a win even though he wasn’t pinning much hope on it.
Sclauzero returned an hour later with a printout of an email which he handed to Emma.
“What does it say?” Donnie asked eagerly, looking over her shoulder.
“Wait, I’m reading…”
Several minutes later, when she reached the second page, she straightened up.
“And?”
“Mr. Butterfield’s reference is marked as amicus ecclesia.”
Donnie frowned. “What?”
“It means friend of the church. It seems like Mr. Butterfield was personally recommended by someone within the Church. It doesn’t say who, but somebody at the Vatican got him his job.”
Chapter 15
It was dark in the car and it was the closest Donnie had been to Emma since meeting her. It was a peculiar feeling to have a strange woman in his personal car. He was driving her to her precinct in Queens. It was not only close to his own house, but to her apartment as well.
She thanked him again for the ride and for the third time he told her it was no bother. It was nice for a change to be with someone like her. She was different from his wife and daughter who were always arguing, or worse, giving him the silent treatment.
“You sure it’s no trouble, Donnie?”
“It’s fine, believe me.”
“I could have taken the train. Well, I usually take the bus since I’m generally still in Queens after I finish my shift.”
“Isn’t this better than the bus? I’ll even let you choose the radio station.”
She laughed and that was another nice sound to hear. It was so removed from the violence and type A personalities he had to endure all day, every day.
He turned on the radio and found a classic rock station. Whoever decided a song became classic anyway? He cringed when England Dan & John Ford Coley came on but it was better than nothing.
“So let me ask you this,” Donnie began. “Is it customary for the Vatican to personally recommend a cook at one of their consulates?”
“No.”
“I mean, I could understand if the guy was a world renowned chef, right? If the Vatican had put in a word to snag somebody like Gordon Ramsay, that I could understand. But this Butterfield guy? His previous employment was Giant Pizza in friggin’ Staten Island, if that’s actually true. You said you know the place, yeah? So tell me about Giant Pizza. Is it some four-star restaurant I don’t know about?”
Emma shook her head. “No, it was a takeout joint with two tables, a small counter, and a gumball machine.”
“There you go, the guy was no chef. So why the hell did somebody from Vatican City personally recommend him for the job?”
“I have no idea. It is definitely uncommon. We can ask him tomorrow when we interview him.”
“You can bet on that,” Donnie said with an emphatic nod as he turned onto a boulevard. “What worries me even more, the line of thinking I’m grabbing onto is a lot more frightening…”
“What is it?”
Donnie had been thinking about this since he’d received the Vatican employment file. He hadn’t told anyone yet because it seemed crazy. Then again, a day that starts with the Pope’s death is already completely fucked up to begin with.
“What if Butterfield was planted there?”
“Planted?”
“Like a sleeper agent. An assassin.”
Emma’s eyes widened and she looked at him, her jaw dropping. “Whoa.”
“I know. We’re entering tinfoil hat territory here. That’s not ordinarily my line of thinking, believe me. Nine times out of ten, murderers are simple. Deadbeat knocks his wife around until she dies, some punk mugs a guy in a suit and shoots him when he resists, drug deal gone wrong. Sometimes things get classy and you have this rich broad who has her young boyfriend kill her husband for the inheritance.”
“You call this simple, Donnie?”
“When it comes to murder, yeah. You follow the prime motivations: revenge, money, passion, mental illness, drugs. Now we’re talking about conspiracy and it’s a whole other ballgame.”
“So you’re thinking this is a genuine assassination against the Holy Father?”
“I don’t know. I’m just spit-balling over here. You gotta admit though that it’s a pretty juicy theory. We’ll talk to Butterfield in the morning and see what he has to say. If he’s playing the long game, he’s not necessary out of the country by now.”
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And Donnie didn’t have to say that he’d had a patrol car go by his place to make sure he was indeed still there. The officers had reported seeing some lights. Everything seemed normal. Maybe the guy wasn’t an assassin after all.
“This is where I live,” he said to Emma as he turned on a residential street.
“Then you can just drop me off and I’ll walk to the bus station.”
“Forget about it. What’s five minutes more, right?”
She opened her mouth to protest again but he winked at her to shut her up, letting her know that it was no big deal. In truth, he wasn’t in a hurry to get home. What did he have to look forward to anyway? Nicole would answer questions in a monosyllabic way, just to avoid total silence, and Sierra would simply ignore him.
Oh, what fun.
“That’s my house, right there,” he pointed out through the windshield. “The one with the broken fence. I’ve been meaning to fix that.”
“You have two other cars? That’s nice. A BMW, yes?”
Donnie squinted. “What the hell?”
There were in fact two cars in the driveway: his wife’s Honda and a black BMW, brand-new. His heart racing, he pulled over to the curb and stopped. He grabbed twenty dollars and handed it to Emma.
“Here, take this. You’ll find a cab at the corner over there, there’s always plenty.”
“What’s going on, Donnie?”
“It’s fine. I just need to go into my house now, okay? I have to take care of this. I’ll see you tomorrow at OPP. You don’t have to wear your uniform.”
He stepped out of his car and she did the same, stunned by his words. He ignored her and stomped toward the house. He knew that car.
He knew that fucking car!
He raced up the porch steps and found the door unlocked. He rushed inside, slamming the door behind him.
“Nicole?”
Before waiting for an answer, he reached the living room. On the couch was his wife and right next to her was that shitty son of the bitch. As soon as he appeared, they separated. However, they weren’t fast enough for him to miss that they’d been holding hands.
