The medical examiner was pointing out some defensive wounds to Benson, lifting up the dead man's hand and indicating the scrapes on the swollen knuckles with the tip of her pen, and saying some morbid joke about knuckle sandwiches. Benson didn't laugh much, but thanked her, and then it was a new scene, behind the two-way mirror of a line up, and Ice-T was holding out a cup of coffee to a nervous witness. The cadaver's hand had been David's hand. The same strong, thick fingers, the same sheen to the fingernails. She had inspected his marvelous hands enough; they had gone to the movies a few days before, their first date. And she had kept glancing at his hands every time there was a day scene on the screen and the theater was brighter, inspecting his fingers as they reached into the popcorn tub. But how could it be David on the slab? Why was her savior there on the television, looking like the Shroud of Turin? Was Gretchen really a fruit-loop?
And now as she was sitting on the train, she reflected that, yes, she probably was a fruit-loop. A fruit-loop scared of homeless people. David could never be a corpse on SVU. And, she had been thinking further, Darko Trajko's method of ridding himself of his enemies wasn't that crazy. It really was ingenious. Homeless people would probably never be picked out of a lineup: those who had seen the attack wouldn't recognize them, as instead of scrutinizing the homeless, people tended to avoid looking at them.
Gretchen gritted her teeth as the train screeched into the station. It was her stop, Utica Avenue, end of the line. She hoped it wouldn't be the end of the line for her.
Best Allure Jewelry Wholesaler's was the address on the package. She was supposed to give the package to the manager there, a woman called, apparently, Iskra. Gretchen used Google to find out where Iskra was. Just around the corner, thankfully. As she passed a construction site, the workers catcalled and yelled out what she was sure were vulgar things in their language that they thought were flattering. She hurried by, head bent, purse close to her chest. Gretchen paused at the pedestrian crossing. The cars, Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles, teetered on tired wheels before her. Best Allure was just across the street, amidst a vista of overflowing garbage cans and broken appliances left out to rust, between a Church's Fried Chicken with a broken window and a boarded up mattress store. There were meager accessories that could be viewed if one peered enough through the filth of the wholesaler's cracked windows, a few tarnished watches tossed atop what looked like a skirt for a Christmas tree that, under the layer of dust and grime, might once have been red with green sparkles. The 'wholesaler's' seemed to be a front for something far more sinister than brooches. Gretchen shuddered. The remainder of the month with Darko Trajko was going to pass very, very slowly. And this was only her second day of employment.
Just as the light changed and she was stepping onto the street, surprise sirens blared, and five police cars and two SWAT vans roared past her from all directions and, wheels screeching, fishtailing, descended upon the store. Gretchen shrieked. Panic skittered throughout her as she saw men leap from the vehicles, padded with bulletproof vests and armed with artillery and battering rams and she knew not what, and lunge towards the entrance. A megaphone blurt over the sirens, “Police! You are surrounded! Come out with your hands up! There's no escape!”
But there was for her. Gretchen hightailed it down the street, her purse smacking her hip, and she was all too aware of the heft of the package that burned inside.
“IS THE PRIEST IN?”
Gretchen hadn't expected bolts of lightning to materialize from the blue of the sky and electrocute her skull as she scurried up the steps of the ramshackle church, but near as dammit. Heart thumping, guilt lashing down with the sweat, sirens still ringing in her ears, she had spied Santa María La Estrella Del Mar Iglesia seven blocks away from the raid, sandwiched between a McDonald's and a Little Ceasar's, and her eyes had risen to heaven and she had thanked the Lord, but in English. Hand gripping the rusty handrail, feet scattering the syringes and used condoms, she had reached the battered wooden door and propelled herself through it. She had entered a place of holy goodness laden with unholy contraband.
She should have flung the package in the nearest garbage can, rid herself of it, but feared retribution from Darko. If it held thousands of dollars worth of drugs or arms or livers, he would want it paid for. And if she couldn't pay him back, which she couldn't, there were far too many homeless on the streets of New York he could entice with a twenty dollar bill to exact revenge on her. So here Gretchen was, her fake Chanel weighty with some unknown sin, staring down at the cleaning woman who was staring up at her with incomprehension and fear, hands twitching around the handle of the filthy, dripping mop like claws, each fingernail painted a different color of the rainbow and glinting with glitter, portly form shoved into a faded Menudo promotional tour t-shirt three sizes too small, flabs of flesh hanging over purple jeans that seemed painted on, the seams straining, salsa music blaring from the cheap headphones wrapped around her neck. She had ripped them off at the first sight of Gretchen sliding her way down the soapy aisles, gripping the pews for support, whimpering and staring with the fear of a true sinner at the elaborate golden cross that towered over the altar. It was difficult to discern who at that moment was more fearful: Gretchen of the Lord's retribution, or the cleaning lady of Gretchen.
“I need to confess!” Gretchen screamed at her, hysterical. “This very instant!”
The mop fell to the floor, the sound echoing. The cleaning woman clutched at her breast, but she was staring blankly, as if to say, “What's this crazy white bitch with her alien red hair and strange potato-chewing-like language doing in our 'hood, invading our space? Don't her kind already own most of the US? Can't she go back to her part of town and assault someone there?”
Gretchen bit short a torrent of abuse. She supposed it was too much to expect that the woman had bothered to learn English when she arrived in the country. But then she wondered if the priest of this parish, the person she desperately needed to confess to this very moment, would also be clueless about English, and then she was pleased, as revealing all her horrid, repellent sins to someone who couldn't understand what she was saying, confessing, was much more appealing than revealing them to someone who understood every sordid detail. She'd still get God's absolution, regardless of her sins not having being relayed with any understanding to one of His servants on Earth.
Gretchen tried to dredge up some high school Spanish. She had used it frequently when she was with Nickel and Dime, but it was limited in-flight to phrases like, “Please use your indoor voice,” “I'm sorry, but the trays are not for changing diapers,” and “Please refrain from doing that during the flight. There are children in the next row.”
“El Padre?” she chanced. “Quiero...quiero...confessar? Confesser? Confessir?” she said hopefully.
The woman gasped, understanding in her saucered eyes. A sinner! She nodded her twitching head, as if she expected nothing less from someone like her. She crossed herself as if confronted with Lucifer himself, then hurried off as quickly as the tightness of her jeans would allow towards the nave, then into, Gretchen supposed, the rectory. She hoped the woman was getting a priest for confession, not exorcism.
“No soy el Diablo!” she called out as an afterthought.
She heard a door slam. She sat in a pew. She looked up at Christ on the cross. She looked down at the rectangular bulge in her fake Chanel bag. The forbidden package was all too evident. She despaired. But if she had arrived at Best Allure two minutes earlier, she'd be in a cell with Iskra now instead of seeking a confessional. So maybe the Lord was already looking out for her?
She leafed through a hymnal. It was all in Spanish. After some time, she didn't know how long, she heard the door creak open. The cleaning woman had found a priest somewhere. He was walking down the aisle towards her.
As luck would have it, bad luck, that is, he was gorgeous, as all young Latino priests seemed to be. Teeth as pearly as the Gates, smooth, bronzed skin, high cheekbones, jet black hair, eyes she could drown i
n. Gretchen damned her luck. The cleaning woman was looking fearfully after him as if Gretchen might take him away from the parish and they would never see him again. Like he were a teen idol and she a teen. Gretchen understood. Why couldn't he have been harmless, fat and unsightly, like Father Breeny from her local church? And she would have to tell this hunk every shameful thing she'd been up to?
Gretchen suddenly wished she were a woman from Saudi Arabia, her face hidden under the black shroudy thing, anonymous. But then, she supposed, is she were Saudi, she wouldn't be seeking out a priest for confession. And she wouldn't have a life.
“No!” Gretchen pleaded as he came closer. She hid her face behind the hymnal. “Don't look at me!” She almost added, “I'm unclean!” but thought it a bit melodramatic. No matter how true.
“I'll go to the confessional,” he said kindly. “You can follow behind.”
Damn! Perfect English.
He disappeared into the booth, one of three old fashioned wooden ones that lined the left side of the church, under the stations of the cross. There was a life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary next to Gretchen's entrance, the mother of God smiling down at her, hands outstretched, welcoming her, lambs and chickens and what looked like a calf around her feet. Gretchen, feeling the cleaning woman's eyes boring with resentment into her shoulder blades and the Virgin's with dismay, slipped through the curtain and into the darkness beyond.
She could just make out the mesh through which she would whisper her sins. And it was mesh, not latticework, like in her church. The booth smelled of Pinesol and perhaps a little bit of fried plantains, though that might have been her imagination. She felt her way to the kneeler and knelt down. She felt his eyes upon her.
“Please turn your face, Father,” she implored.
“Okay.” He complied.
Gretchen had her tissues ready. She suspected tears were on their way. She hoped he knew he was in for a long haul.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been, I'm sorry to say, quite a while since my last confession. Far too long.”
“Go on,” the voice urged.
Gretchen reached into her purse, her fingers avoiding the package, found the piece of paper, and unfolded her list of sins. It was difficult to read there in the darkness, but she did her best.
She would start with some simple, inconsequential sins. Then work her way up.
“I've taken the Lord's name in vain. I've lied. To myself. I told myself I would start eating quails' eggs. I bought some, but never got up the nerve to cook them. They've been sitting in the fridge, uneaten, for weeks. And I said I'd learn Russian, but missed my first lesson, so I think I'll just ask for a refund. I used to know how to count up to five, but now I've forgotten. And I told myself I would do my Eight Minute Abs workouts every day. I did them one day, but that was it. I couldn't drag my body to the floor, the exercises need to be done on the floor, I couldn't find the strength to drag myself to the floor to do them again after the first day. I know the Lord put us on the Earth to make the most of our lives. But I haven't been doing it. And I've coveted my neighbors' goods. Well, one neighbor's good.” The French girl's fondue set she had spied in her kitchenette when she went to question her about David Lee Roth. “And for ages I lied to everyone about my job. I told them I was jet setting around the world with Oceanic Airlines, told them I had just flown in from or was leaving for, mmm, São Paulo was a favorite location, and then there was Dubai and Rome and London and Buenos Aires and Beijing. When it was really Idaho and Ohio and Michigan. But, really, Father, who would want to admit that? And there was this guy at the job who is a real bast—” No, don't justify. “There was a guy at work. I'd been spitting in his coffee.”
“Been spitting? How often?” He knew English only too well, understanding that the tense she used implied an action that had gone on for an extended period in the past.
“Every day.”
“And how long did this go on for?”
“A-A year and a half?”
Had she been raised to be like this? No, the opposite. Standing next to her mother Ursula, flipping the pages of the hymnal, singing songs of praise to the Lord. Where had that child gone? She bowed her head in shame before the mesh, and shame continued to shroud her, grow within her, wash upon her in ever-increasing waves as she forced herself to admit the even more heinous things she had been guilty of.
“And speaking of my job, I was fired from it for, for beating a man, a passenger in the emergency exit row, so badly that they had to send an ambulance for him. But, Father, what else was I supposed to do? He was trying to kill us all, the crew and the rest of the passengers. He wouldn't listen to reason, and I certainly shrieked it at him often enough. I'll never say he deserved what I gave him, but, listen to me, Father, and I hope you understand. He was tugging on the handle to the door over and over, screaming that the Cubans were out to get him and he had to jump out of the plane to escape them. We were flying at 38,000 feet. I think he was high on something, maybe Angel Dust, or even PCP, or, well, I don't even know if those are the same thing. But I've heard some drugs give people superhuman strength, and although the emergency doors are built so that they can't be opened in flight, who knew if he'd be able to pull it open or not? And suck us all out into the air? Well, I was closest to him, so he and I would have been the first two flying out the door. I didn't know how else to calm him down, except by giving him a few smacks to the face. And then a few more. And then, as he became more enraged and hysterical and terrifying, a few punches to his shoulders, then to his stomach. And then I kicked him in the...in his sensitive area. And then I tried to get him into a headlock. Yes, there was some blood, but not much. At least I didn't think so. The, the guy whose coffee I always, er, enhanced, my co-worker, had to jump in and restrain the loon with a few belts the passengers had pulled off themselves and volunteered. And I was so grateful, Father, to have the idiot strapped down at last, oh, sure, yelling things about lawsuits and Castro, but of no harm to us anymore. But I couldn't believe it when two other co-workers, Molly and Aidan, restrained me as well. Maybe I should've stopped hitting him after they tied him up. I don't know.
“The police interview was so...mortifying, Father. They had me locked in the interrogation room, barking at me as if I were the criminal and not the victim! And they threatened to press assault charges. But that never happened. Well, it hasn't happened yet, at least. I'm still waiting for the report from the airline, for their decision. I suppose it depends on if they can get the passenger to drop the charges or not. And speaking of the police, Father, ohhhh! I was so embarrassed! While I was sitting there in the interrogation room, one of the detectives went out, then came back in again, holding a piece of paper, waving it about in a sort of triumph. You should have seen the look he gave me! They must have done a search for my name in their database when they arrested me. To see if I had been convicted of any crimes before. Well, of course I haven't! But they found out I'd applied to the NYPD weeks before. Yes, I wanted to be a cop! And there I was being questioned by them! As a criminal! I was sick of my job with the airlines, I knew I'd go crazy if I kept working for Nickel and Dime, and I have almost three more years before I can reapply to Oceanic. So, yes, I applied to become a cop, and I filled in all the applications, took the medical and then, and then...I failed the psych exam! It's the most horrible thing I've ever had happen to me in my life. Can you imagine, Father, people telling you you're crazy when you so obviously aren't? I don't mean you you, you understand, I mean people in general. They won't allow me to join the police because they think I'm a lunatic!
“How could I tell anyone? My mother, my father, my friends, everyone, I've been lying to them all, telling them I'll start work for the police soon. What's going to happen as the weeks, then the months, go by and I'm still not working for them, I don't know. Maybe I will have to think of a new lie. And I know, yes, I know, lying is a sin. So I'll be back after I've told those new lies to tell you I've sinned again. But lying's n
ot the worst of it, Father. That pales in comparison to what I've been doing since. I've been calling the NYPD up for weeks now, refusing to take no for an answer. I've spoken to representative after representative, sergeants, commanders, everyone. Screaming, shrieking at them that they are responsible if I end up killing myself. That they've ruined my life. Yes, there has been some taking the name of the Lord in vain thrown in there during those calls, I'm afraid. I'm ashamed to say. And so many obscenities strung together that if I said even one of them here and now you'd be shocked. But I roar them all down the line, one after the other. And now I don't even bother to ask to speak to someone in charge. I just call 311 and scream at them. Horrible, vulgar, disgusting words. And then I hang up.
“I was almost mugged the other day, and I've been telling everyone I've changed. But I still call 311. I'm supposed to have changed. Well, that's easy enough to say. Maybe actions speak louder than words at times, and if that's true, I haven't changed at all. But, before right now, before telling you this, I justified it in my mind by telling myself that if you didn't speak about your actions, it's sort of like they didn't happen. But I realize now I'm wrong about that. And speaking of being mugged, someone saved me from the muggers. A nice man. An anesthesiologist. And I met up with him the other day outside the hospital. We had lunch. And...oh...oh...” Her throat grew tight. It was difficult to get the words out. “You'll never believe what I did!” Gretchen croaked in a shrill, warbling voice.
Finally, the tears burst forth from her eyes. She put the tissue to use. She sobbed and sobbed, her chest heaving.
“There, there,” the priest said softly, calmly. “Please continue. Please tell me what you did. Remember, if you don't, you can't be absolved.”
“Do you think I'm a horrible person, Father? Am I a fruit-loop?”
“That's not for me to decide. But the Lord's forgiveness knows no bounds.” It sounded to Gretchen as if he were reading from a script, as if he had to say this to her. She wondered what he really felt. But she didn't want to start banging on the mesh and demanding he tell her the truth. The last thing she wanted was another brush with the NYPD. “Please continue.”
Emergency Exit (The Irish Lottery Series Book 6) Page 19
