Valley of Bones

by Michael Gruber

  I was out of the truck by now and filling my chain saw with gas. She was leaning against the tailgate. She went on, about how she went for a nurse in Ireland, and then joined the SBC and was taught the special skills that the SBC teaches right here at dear old St. C. and then went out to the Philippines where there was a terror war going on in the southern islands, and then she was replaced by Filipinas and they sent her to south Sudan, where she would be still if not for her leg. She said I trod on a wee land mine, chasing some little kid, and the funny thing was the kid ran through the mine field without a scratch and Nora that great clod of a woman gets herself blown up.

  That was the first time I ever heard the words wee and trod used in speech. It was like being in a book, with her, a delight, but I didn’t let on.

  I see you’re fascinated by me sad story, she said, but I just thought we’d start off a little more even, since I know all about you. I said you don’t know shit. And she said oh, dear, but I do, I do. I know some things you probably don’t know yourself. For example, you’re a cradle Cat’lic too. I said bullshit! I am not! Oh, yes you are, she said, baptized in Holy Family Church in Gainesville, Florida, U. S. of A., age one month eight days, all done proper. Your father brought you. I stared at her. She went on, see here darlin’, you may think we’re a bunch of dotty women but the SBC has one of the finest intelligence services in the world. The Jesuits are older but we’ve got more money. Do you think we’d let a person in here unless we knew absolutely everything there was to know about them? It’s the money, you see, the Trust. You know about the Trust do you? I said I did but I thought it was all lost in the war. She laughed at the thought. Oh bless you it’d take more than a world war to break the Bloods there are deep deep vaults my darlin’. No, we kept most of it and it’s grown since, although we did have to bail out the Holy Father when he got in a bit of a jam over that Banco Ambrosiano thing back in the 1970s. The Holy See was bankrupt and we stepped in as good daughters of the church, us and the Opus Dei. If not, believe me, darlin’, we’d all be making tea for bishops. As it is, the money lets us do as we please, and we’re the pope’s favorite little nursie girls, that and the fact that we die so uncommon frequent. It makes it hard for them to crack down, d’you see, the church still having a soft spot for holy martyrs. Jim De Bree is sort of our unofficial motto. I said I didn’t understand and she said it was French je me débrouille, it means something like making things happen in ways that don’t bear strict scrutiny. Then she said, So when a little wench shows up on the run from the law and half-dead at our biggest priory spouting atheism and declaring visitations from St. Catherine of Siena, eyebrows go up, chins are stroked in Rome. Jette is no fool as you’ll have learned, and she thinks you’re something rare. Not a spy, nor a fraud at any rate. What do you say you are?

  I said I didn’t know. I was confused and scared and starting to get weepy which I definitely did not want to do then, and she took a step and put an arm around me and said then we’ll have to help you find out, mm?

  The touch was what did it electricity of goodness or something stranger because without any warning I was hysterical. I literally collapsed in her arms, soaking her crisp white apron with snot and tears. I had no idea really what I was crying about maybe it was the nature of the touch, communicated on some level way down below. I never got touched like that, even when I was a little kid, my mother never did and neither did the men, and I never had a real friend, it was a touch erotic but not sexual a rare thing in this world saying we are all miserable wretches together here is some comfort. Darlin’ she said there there over and over, Daalin’ in her accent. She said, let’s go on back but you’ll have to drive on account of I’m a foot short. That got me turned from crying hysterically to laughing hysterically until my belly was tight as a washboard.

  That was my conversion as it turned out. C. S. Lewis said he was converted on a motorcycle ride to Whipsnade, and St. Paul was knocked off his horse on the way to Damascus and as for me I rode down the mountain in a pickup truck, with Nora Mulvaney at my side she was humming “Stór Mo Chroí.” Simple as that, I got in the truck an unbeliever full of theology and when I got out in the garage I was Catholic.

  I was at St. Catherine’s for seven months and three days after that. Joy is very simple and does not require much art in the telling I think pain and struggle are more literary. I became more or less her driver and confidante. Neither Lucifer nor any saints or angels made a further appearance in that time, having accomplished their mission or so Nora said and also she said the devil’s a good Cat’lic too when all’s said and done, he does the job required and he loves the church, by God, you can’t get him out of it! Oh, Christ, I loved her, and I had a time distinguishing between that and the love I owed to God, although maybe it comes to the same in the end.

  That Easter we drove into Roanoke and a moon-faced eunuch for the kingdom of heaven oiled a cross on my brow and I was confirmed and took communion for the first time. I wish I could say that it was transcendent, but it was not. Nora was my sponsor of course, and she gave me a rosary, which I still have but have rarely used. I am not the devotional sort—I think you have to be born into all that, or at least I would have had to be. But it made her happy. While we were in Roanoke I saw Skeeter Sonnenborg on his Harley, like a noisy ghost from my past life. He drove by us with his straight pipes ripping the air apart. It gave me a start because I thought he was dead with most of the others. I didn’t say anything to Nora about it or to anyone else, but then I got real paranoid and bugged her to hurry back to St. C., but we had to drop some packages off at the post office, and there was my face on the wall with the other wanted criminals. Like an idiot I stood staring at it with my mouth open and when I turned away there was a middle-aged woman looking at me and I saw her gaze flick back at the picture on the wall of the notorious cop-killer and drug kingpin Emily Garigeau. I got out of there fast and back to Nora, who said not to worry darlin’, we’ll arrange something, je me débrouillerai, and with that she found a phone and made half a dozen calls and we drove not back to the priory but to eastern Virginia near Arlington and put up in a house there with some other sisters. That night Nora helped me dress in the full habit of the Bloods, which I wasn’t even entitled to wear, and someone delivered a passport with my picture in it, but in the name of a sister killed in Colombia. Nora said, we keep the passports of our dead and keep their deaths quiet for just this purpose. We often have to get people across borders and we débrouillons when necessary, you understand? Yes, I did indeed.

  The airport was no trouble on either end. This was before our current terror times, and in any case no one ever looks at a nun. Two days later we were in Rome.

  By early 1914 the Sisters had established priories and other facilities in nearly every western European country and had also established themselves in the United States (Baltimore, 1908) as well as in the Philippines, Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. The training facility in Nemours was flourishing, as was the language institute directed by Claire de Roighy-Brassat in Rome. These were expensive undertakings, but the flow of money into the Trust was unceasing, tied as it was to the burgeoning value of petroleum in the new century. The general war everyone had dreaded began in August of that year. Marie-Ange startled her companions by declaring that “now it is my turn,” and resigned her post as Mother General, in favor of Otilie Roland.

  She appointed herself in charge of operations in western Europe. She chose Lille as her headquarters, a city she knew well, and by late August refugees were already streaming in from the border areas affected by the German invasion and from as far away as the Belgian front. She established her chief hospital in a school near the cathedral, and went about organizing medical relief for the refugees. Those who observed her in these days said that she seemed to have recaptured her youth, exhibiting an energy that belied her fifty-eight years.

  By the first week in October, they could hear the guns of the approaching Germans. Marie-Ange seemed to be everywhere at once,
offering encouragement, even lending a hand with the terrified patients. Among them was Msgr. Matteo Ratti, an Italian scholar who had been wounded in Louvain on August 26, when the Germans destroyed the university and the lovely old city. Now they seemed to be doing the same to Lille. From October 11, the artillery fire was almost continuous. When shells began crashing into the cathedral itself, Marie-Ange ordered the patients moved to the school basement. According to Msgr. Ratti, the Foundress was helping a novice transfer him to a stretcher. He recalled saying to the terrified girl, “Don’t worry, God will protect you,” and her superior saying, “Whether God protects her or not, she must do her duty. Kindly lift his feet.”

  Those were her last recorded words. At that moment a large shell exploded in the room, and the ceiling came down. Hours later, Ratti was rescued from the rubble, unhurt. As her final conscious act, Marie-Ange had thrown her body protectively over her patient. Lying thus she had received a splinter of steel through her valiant heart.

  —FROM FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH: THE STORY OF THE NURSING SISTERS OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST, BY SR. BENEDICTA COOLEY, SBC, ROSARIAN PRESS, BOSTON, 1947.

  Eighteen

  PAZ HARDLY EVER brought his male Cuban friends to the restaurant, and his mother (whom nothing escaped) had often remarked on this: What, you’re ashamed of me? But it wasn’t that at all; it was because of what was going on now with Morales. The young detective was eating zarzuela, what the Cubans have instead of bouillabaisse, served out to him from a pan the size of a bus tire by the proprietress herself. An observer would have been hard-pressed to derive from the scene which of the two men was the beloved son and which the stranger, or rather the observer would certainly err, for Morales was getting the royal treatment, with Mrs. Paz dropping the most succulent marine tidbits on his plate, while leaving Paz to scoop for himself from what was left. Within twenty minutes of sitting down at the special banquette reserved for her most favored patrons, Mrs. Paz had sucked from Morales his entire life history and that of his immediate ancestors. It turned out that Morales lived with his mother, that his two older sisters were both married with children, that he himself was engaged to be married (picture exhibited, to sighs of admiration from Mrs. P.), that he was taking courses at Miami-Dade University on the road to a bachelor’s degree. Paz had not known much of this, and he found himself wishing that Morales had a secret life as a violent pedophile. As this love fest progressed, the mother shot him numerous little looks: See, this is what a good Cuban son is like!

  Paz only picked at the marvelous food, as a way of getting back at her, but of course this was just another indication of his inadequacy, for Morales was putting it away with both hands. Eventually the young man had to stop, when the constraints of physiology trumped even the will of Margarita Paz. Having consumed a mass of prime seafood about the size of his own head, and at the point of tears, Morales rose from the table and repaired to the men’s.

  “You know, Mami,” said Paz, “I think it’s a felony to make a police officer explode in public.”

  “That’s a nice boy,” said the mother, ignoring this. She gestured and a waiter made the debris vanish. “It’s a shame his sisters are married already.” A deep disappointed sigh. Then to the attack: “You ate like a bird. Something’s wrong with you.”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Mami. It’s the middle of the day. If I ate like he did, my brain would shut down.”

  “What, he hasn’t got a brain?”

  “He doesn’t need one as long as he’s partnering with me. Look, Mami, I need to ask you a favor….”

  “No, you look bad, son of mine. First you kill that brujo, and just the other week you shoot someone else. Don’t you know you have to be washed after something like that?”

  “I’m not going to your ilé, Mami.”

  “Of course not, you know everything, why am I even wasting my breath?” A red-nailed finger pointed at his eye. “Also you have a new woman,” said Mrs. Paz. Sweat popped out on his forehead and the zarzuela did the fandango in his belly. “And of course you’re ashamed of your old mother, you don’t bring her to meet me. I know the spirits are angry with me, what other reason could there be to be treated like this—”

  “Mami, on Sunday. I’ve invited her to dinner on Sunday.”

  “Mm. I’ll make langosta a la crema. And what is this favor you want from me?”

  “I need to talk to Ignacio Hoffmann.”

  She looked away. That was unusual. “He doesn’t come in here anymore.”

  “Mami, I know he doesn’t come in here anymore. He’s a fugitive. Look, I got no interest in the man or in causing him any grief. I just need to talk to him.”

  “What makes you think I can find him?”

  “Come on, Mami. Ignacio practically lived in this banquette for years. The seat is still warm from his ass.”

  “Watch your mouth!”

  “And besides, you have to know him. He’s omo-orisha.” This was a guess. Paz didn’t know whether Hoffmann was a devotee of Santería, but the altar at Jack Wilson’s house had suggested the connection. Where would an Anglo like Wilson have picked it up if not from his former boss? And he knew his mother knew anyone who was at all prominent in the cult.

  Now the eyes came back at him, full force. He made himself meet their mighty rays. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  “Mami, it’s part of a homicide investigation. I’m asking you nice, but the fact is every citizen has to help the cops when they ask them to.”

  She held out her hands, wrists together, golden bracelets dinging softly. “So arrest me.”

  “Mami, come on…”

  “I said I’ll think about it.”

  Paz was about to say something about time being critical, but at that moment his cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen. “This is the girlfriend. I’m going to ask her to marry me and have four grandchildren for you right now.”

  “Oh, you’re so smart!”

  “Hello, Lorna. What! When? Calm down, Lorna. Porky Pig? Are the cops there yet? Uh-huh. Okay. Okay, let me talk to him. Yo, Jerry…yeah, I do. No, this is part of a homicide investigation. Right. You got anything on the guy? Yeah, Porky Pig, I heard. No vehicle ID? Uh-huh. Look, can you do me a solid? Have someone drive the vic over to me. I’m at Nineteenth and the Trail…yeah the restaurant. Okay, great, I owe you a meal. No, I’ll take the statement and we’ll handle the complaint. Yeah all the paper too. Thanks, Jerry. Put the vic on again.”

  After some soothing words, Paz clicked off the phone and explained to his mother what had happened. “See, you don’t even have to wait until Sunday,” he said.

  “Not hurt?”

  “No. But it’s no fun getting mugged.”

  Mrs. Paz examined her son closely and waved a hand, as if to indicate something floating around his head. “You’re worried now. I think you like this one.”

  “Yeah, it’s true, I like this one, and I think I got her into a world of trouble.”

  “If you were in the restaurant business or you had a nice profession you wouldn’t be getting women into trouble.”

  “Thank you, Mami, that’s helpful.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic with me, Iago.”

  Morales came back to the table at that point, picked up the new vibe, and looked searchingly at Paz, who directed his own gaze at the big fish tank. Mrs. Paz, however, gave the young detective a radiant smile and said, “You have room for some flan, yes?”

  “No way, thanks, Mrs. Paz, really….”

  She gestured to the hovering waiter. “Two flan,” she commanded.

  This was delivered, and Morales was induced to consume some, after which Mrs. Paz left to attend to other customers.

  “I can’t finish this,” said Morales as his stared at his flan. “I’ll die.”

  “Okay, but if you don’t you’re not the perfect Cuban son. My mom’s got a lot invested in you now, and she’s going to be pissed if you don’t finish every rich spoonful. Alternatively, there’s a pain-in-the-ass jo
b you can cover for me.”

  “Anything,” said Morales.

  Paz explained what had happened to Lorna Wise. “Jerry McLean caught it, but he’s not going to break his balls on a mugging with nothing much taken and no one hurt. Grab the case from him personally, do a thorough canvass of the area, try to find anyone who saw the guy getting away, his vehicle, whatever.”

  “I’m on it,” said Morales, and slid from his seat. “Porky Pig, huh? You think that’s significant?”

  “It could be, Tito. It could be Elmer Fudd trying to send us a message. Or Bugs himself. You’ll find out. Go!”

  Ten minutes later, Lorna Wise was deposited in front of the restaurant Guantanamera by a police car, where Paz, who had been waiting for her under the awning, snatched her up and embraced her. She looked terrible, he thought, pale, splotchy, her makeup tear-ruined, and she trembled. He wanted to shoot someone.

  Inside, she went straight to the bathroom and was in there for so long that he almost called one of the waitresses to go in and check on her, but eventually she emerged, looking somewhat more put together. He ordered coffee for her and a plate of torticas de Morón, but she touched neither.