“Go, go, go,” Ramon yelled. “Close the damn door, old man.”
Trong Tri’s hand snaked out from the blackness, circled Ramon’s neck, and yanked him inside. Samay pulled down his ski mask, kicked his bike to life, sped to the van, and looked within. The bull was turned to the wall, his muscled back still. Trong Tri was sitting on Ramon, knees pinning his arms in crucifixion.
The feeble Trong Tri had become Pon again. His mustache was gone and his scalp was flecked with blood. The moon lit the tiny, angry pink replica of itself on his chin, the half-inch crescent scar. His skin seemed tighter, younger, as if he’d found the fountain of youth here on the banks of the foul-smelling Saugus River. His hand flashed behind him, drew a serrated knife, and held it close to Ramon’s face.
“Don’t kill me,” Ramon begged.
Pon dragged his fingertips lightly across Ramon’s handsome cheek. “I won’t, my friend. But maybe you’ll wish I had.”
“Anything. I’ll do anything,” Ramon cried, not so tough now that he wasn’t beating an old man.
“Good. You will bring a message.ˮ
“What do I say?ˮ
“Nothing. You say nothing.”
Pon’s hand hid Ramon’s eyes like a blindfold and clamped his head still. Ramon bellowed, and his cry swirled around the van’s metal walls and echoed with a metallic twang as Pon sliced one side of Ramon’s face from mouth to ear, then the other. Ramon choked, gargled, and groaned. He’d been given the widest, wettest smile in the world.
“No more beauty in this life,” Pon said, then jumped out and straddled the back of Samay’s scooter.
“Maybe in the next,” Pon yelled before they sped away.
Chapter 22
Ocean Park didn’t have enough ambulances to carry all the dead. One from Saugus arrived, slowing when it neared swirling blue lights. Police tape formed bright yellow fences that made cattle pens for the chattering neighbors. A news van followed the ambulance and tried to tailgate past the police checkpoint. Uniformed cops banged fists on the side of the van, cursed the reporters, ordered them off the street.
Conley stood next to a makeshift wall of wooden poles and black plastic that hid the bodies in the front yard. His heart still pounded a drumbeat that had begun when the call came in. He’d raced to her house, a ride he couldn’t even remember now, and his pounding heart didn’t slow until he saw Channary unharmed, felt the pulse in her tiny, warm hand, and led her to the safety of a neighbor.
Stefanos arrived and grabbed the collars of two young local cops, pulled their faces close to his, told them to guard the neighbor’s front and back doors with their lives. “And shoot to kill,” he screamed, the veins on the back of his hands as blue as the bunched uniforms he held.
Crime scene techs shuttled between the bodies on the ground. The corpse nearest the street was a rag doll. Hispanic male in his twenties, strong build, dressed in black. Dressed for death. Stefanos squatted and spoke to the dead man.
“Hope it hurt, asshole—a lot.”
Mazzarelli had just arrived. His hair was disheveled and his slack tie hung like a paisley noose.
“You okay, Captain?”
Stefanos rose and smoothed the wrinkles from his pants. “About time you showed up. Take notes.”
Mazzarelli straightened and dug a notepad and pencil stub out of his overcoat pocket.
The three of them walked to the corpse in the alley.
“Another Hispanic,” Stefanos said. “Latin Kings probably. Somebody gutted them both from belly to neck.”
Conley, Stefanos, and Mazzarelli climbed the steps of the three-family house, past the officer holding the logbook, to the victim on the second floor landing. He was curled into a ball, dead hands clutching his chest, dark hat shading lifeless eyes.
“Last two were edged-weapon attacks,” Stefanos said. He knelt on one knee. “Cuts have a bevel to them, probably came from behind. Angled strikes.”
Conley remembered a coroner saying knife wounds were agonizing—thousands of nerves screaming, thousands of points of pain.
A patrolman approached and whispered to Stefanos.
“Captain, we got enough meat wagons now. Techs need to do their work.”
“Ten minutes.”
They climbed to the third floor, Mazzarelli wheezing and glistening with sweat. They inspected the hallway and bedrooms. Spartan spaces—mattress and a chair, clothes in piles against the wall. They walked into Channary’s bedroom and stood over the body on the floor. This gangbanger looked like a teenager.
“Scrimmage wounds,” Stefanos said as Mazzarelli wrote with a tiny pencil, tongue out, eyes straining. “Lunging stabs from the front, knife twists to open a hole as big as a baseball. Killed quietly. Quiet and sure.”
“Dark clothes again,” Conley said. “Like commandos, all except for the one in the van. They placed lookouts. This was well-planned.”
Mazzarelli wrote fast, big hands pinching the pencil. He flipped a page and spoke.
“Buddy D’Amico’s the stiff in the van, Captain. He was just two weeks out of Cedar Junction. Child molesters like Buddy usually don’t do too good in that pit, but he’d managed all right. Raped most every guy under thirty, but none of them would testify. Hard to imagine someone could strangle a guy with a neck like that.ˮ
“Thank God someone did.”
Conley visited the rooms again, and the second floor landing. The perps had numbers and lookouts.
So how’d they get ambushed?
Outside, a reporter held a microphone in front of a statuesque redhead in the middle of the street. A crowd gathered around them. Conley strained to see.
Lisa.
Human misery attracted politicians as well as media. His wife the candidate held court, pointing at the death house, eyes shifting from one listener to another, a calculated second and a half, just enough to form a bond, maybe grab a vote.
He knew the spiel. Safer streets. Better-trained police. Programs. Money. He’d heard it a million times. Simple solutions. Everything was easy for those who didn’t have to do it.
“Kendricks just arrived,” Mazzarelli said to Stefanos.
“Tell him to take a look at this mess, then see me.”
“A drug beef, Captain?”
“I don’t think so.”
Outside, more reporters strained against the police tape and shouted questions at stone-faced policemen.
“This’ll get national coverage,” Mazzarelli said. “Local businessman’s death gets local newspaper’s front page. Drug dealer gets the metro section. Massacres get network news specials. News vultures must have all the rules written down in a book somewhere. We got a motive, Captain?”
He nodded upstairs. “They wanted Channary.”
“The girl in the church?”
“The last intruder was in her bedroom—farthest one from the van. Thank God she wasn’t there.” He dug a fist into his palm and turned to Conley. “Time to get to work, Detective. The Latin Kings have targeted our Channary.”
****
An ambulance left with the last body after noon. Conley and Stefanos joined Channary in the neighbor’s house. Conley sat next to her on a musty couch and Stefanos sat in a wingchair. The coffee table between them was cluttered with religious pictures and statues of saints.
Channary and the saints—a team of innocents.
She clutched a blond doll and caressed its limp hair.
“Hello, Channary,” Stefanos said.
“Hello, sirs, and good afternoon.”
“Your English is improving.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “Sheila knows many words.”
“I bet she does. Do you know what happened last night?”
“No.”
Channary caressed the doll’s straw hair harder and smoothed it closer to its head.
“Did you hear noise?” he asked. “Voices?”
“The trees whispered good night to me. They always do. And then I slept with the Aunties last night.”
“I see. Nothing else?”
“The trees had nothing else to say.”
“Do you remember Kendricks and Conley?”
“Sheila says Kendricks is funny and Conley is handsome.”
“Do you like them?”
Her face turned red. “Yes.”
Kendricks walked in the front door, arguing loudly with the patrolmen posted guard. One pinned him to the wall before Conley refereed. Still breathing hard from the tussle, Kendricks sat on the sofa, and Channary smiled that beautiful lazy crescent of perfect, salmon-colored lips and teeth the color of pearls.
Conley placed his arm around her.
Stefanos sat back and folded his hands.
“I’m glad you like them, Channary, because you’ll be staying together for a while.”
Chapter 23
Conley, Kendricks, and Channary left River Street and drove to Nahant, a hilly patch of vacation houses, an eclectic mix of historic homes and contemporary retreats slammed onto every spit of available land. Nahant tried like hell to be an island, but the two-mile causeway that connected Ocean Park forced it to be a peninsula. Overachievers lived in the tiny bedroom community, and the local cops always rousted Ocean Park kids to make sure the privileged kept their status.
Channary rode in Kendricks’ sedan, lost in the expansive back seat. She pulled herself to the window and pointed at the beach and its pounding waves.
“Atlantic,” she said to Conley, proud she remembered the word. “The shining sea.”
They turned onto the main road, a winding climb that lifted them past houses clinging to slopes. The glimmering Boston skyline in the distance seemed close enough to touch.
The safe house sat hidden at the end of a tree-lined dead-end street. Its small backyard dropped off to a steep cliff, topped by a chain link fence.
Conley and Kendricks stopped beside a Nahant police cruiser at the beginning of the street under a big maple.
“You the only one?” Kendricks said to the young cop behind the wheel.
“Don’t sweat, Detective,” the cop said, “We keep this town pretty damn secure. We’re small though, can’t afford to dedicate a lot of patrolmen to sit in cars all day. Besides, this street’s well-protected and that house has more alarms than Fort Knox.”
Kendricks and Conley parked in the driveway and unloaded bags from the trunk. Channary rolled an old-fashioned hard suitcase past a new kitchen, a wide-screen TV, and modern furniture that looked out of place in the antique home.
Kendricks hefted his bag onto the couch, unzipped the side compartment, and set family pictures on end tables.
Conley looked up the stairway to total darkness. They chose bedrooms and unpacked. Dusk was approaching, and a stillness came over the neighborhood, despite the distant roar of surf. Suddenly footsteps clattered on the front stairs. Kendricks drew his gun. Conley approached the door slowly and watched silhouettes behind the thin shears. A hooker appeared to be arguing with their sentry. Safe neighborhood indeed. Three knocks were followed by a fourth. He opened the door cautiously.
Thompson stood next to a blushing Nahant cop. She was transformed. Her dress fit like a tight black leather glove, its low neckline showed an acre of skin, and stiletto heels made her long legs seem even longer.
She cocked her hip and threw her head back.
“Ready for our date, Conley?”
Kendricks holstered his gun. “Captain says this is dangerous. Besides, he says there is no Paladin.”
“Perfect,” she said. “Tell your captain if there’s no Paladin, there’s no danger. Iʼll be in the car.ˮ
Kendricks looked past her. “Tell him yourself. There’s him and Mazzarelli, coming to visit.” He sat back on the couch and nodded at Sheila. “You got your hands full there, Conley.”
Conley grabbed his coat to follow her down the steps. “Don’t wait up. No telling when I’ll be back.” He grinned. “Hopefully never.”
****
At midnight, Channary cracked open the bedroom window, and the salty air that seeped in from the ocean seemed to give the bed sheets weight and make them smell smoky, like fresh sails. She snuggled in the covers and felt sleep coming. Time to dream, but hard to fall asleep with all the noise. Loud waves crashed outside. A motorboat roared far away.
She smiled and yawned. Her eyes began to close.
The house again. The swing on the porch was still, and the garden plants swayed in the breeze. She climbed the steps and looked inside. She’d never made it this far. Where were Conley and Sheila? She ran to the garden and searched.
Someone called from the house and she ran inside again. A man stood in the sun-baked hallway. His eyes were black marbles, his white lips pressed together tightly, and blood moved down his handsome suit like a living thing.
She woke with a start, screaming, and when Captain Stefanos came running she held onto him with all her might.
Chapter 24
Father McCarrick was not happy. Monday was his day to sleep late, but the growl of a diesel engine woke him early. He curled his bedroom window shade back with a finger. A news van was parked out front, its lazy-looking driver puffing smoke out the crack of an open window. Needed a shave, McCarrick could tell from here. He had a mind to call the police if that’s all Smokey was going to do, loiter and despoil the environment. The driver had already flipped three butts onto Summer Street.
Another truck pulled up behind, this one with the ungrateful Jewish girl, still scratching that jet-black mop of hers. Bugs, probably.
Two more vans. Men drifted out and slammed car doors, explosions in the early morning stillness. They were in no hurry to approach the Jew. Couldn’t blame them—head lice were highly contagious.
Disappointing really. If this was all St. Ambrose’s had drawn, small fleet of rusted white vans with rainbow-colored letters of local news stations—
Wait. The newcomers turned to the sound of rolling thunder, and stared down Summer Street. A behemoth crept toward them. A gigantic truck, gray dishes sitting on its rooftop, giant salad bowls aimed at heaven. No four-letter W call letters on this monster. A Network. The big time. Three familiar letters graced the side of the van, large and proud. Damn the Olympics, Super Bowls, Hollywood murder trials. The Church of St. Ambrose was center stage today, and its story required satellites.
Movement on the left. Father Spinelli stood in the driveway, hand shading eyes from the sun, tight curls rising from the back of his hairy paw. He headed toward the trucks.
McCarrick ran downstairs, twisted the knob on the rectory front door, and threw it open.
Father Spinelli was standing in front of the church, arms spread like Christ the Redeemer.
“The church is closed, ladies and gentlemen. Schedule of Masses is on the sign. Confessions are on Saturday.”
Not a very welcoming Redeemer.
“Why is it closed?” Debbie Feldman asked, drawing out the word ‘closed’ as if only she knew how to pronounce it. “What are you hiding, Father?”
Microphones blossomed and others joined in, slowly advancing.
“Is the statue still crying?”
“Has the Vatican been notified?”
They stepped forward and Spinelli shuffled back, arms outstretched as if he could somehow contain the crowd.
McCarrick strode across the lawn between them and joined Spinelli.
“This is public property,” a gray-haired man with a tie said, loud and clear. “Taxpayers paid for this church.”
Father Spinelli lowered his hands and cupped them in front of him as if he were holding an infant. “Taxpayers? No they didn’t. Parishioners paid for the church, along with The Holy See—ˮ
“He’s right,” McCarrick bellowed in his best Sunday-sermon voice. “St. Ambrose’s is a church of the people.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Father Spinelli sputtered.
“Just go with it,” McCarrick muttered. “Who knows who paid for the church, Frank? Happened a hundred years a
go, for Christ’s sake. This is television. Truth is irrelevant.”
A man in jeans and a parka ran around them and tried the front door. Locked.
“The door is locked,” Father Spinelli said. “Don’t bother trying.”
Mrs. Blodgett suddenly appeared. “Father Spinelli, you just have to jiggle the knob. Lock’s broken, remember?”
McCarrick smiled as the crowd surged past the priests, yanked the door open, and jostled to get inside. Most looked like laborers—hairy, unkempt. A few were well dressed—two men, one woman—their arms held high against the crowd, a clever maneuver to guard perfect hair and stretch handsome suits and dress so they wouldn’t wrinkle.
They poured inside, equipment knocking against ancient doorframes and pews. They shouted, barked orders, and smoked cigarettes in the cold, dry church. Debbie Feldman led the irreverent army to the Madonna and they dropped equipment on the floor. Two of them leaned back against the communion rail, fat asses resting on the red leather. One dabbed his cigarette butt in a votive candle.
The priests were close behind, a noisy caboose.
“This is private property,” Father Spinelli yelled to the crowd.
“Not really, Frank.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“I’m not going to argue with you.”
“Certainly sounds like arguing to me, Frank.”
Mrs. Blodgett held the door, unable to step inside. Thick black cables were being dragged into St. Ambrose’s from the big van. They coiled, curled, and straightened like striking snakes, whipsawed the gritty floor, hissed as they slid. She waited patiently and stepped lively through the entrance when the wires finally stilled.
Blinding light shone on the Madonna. A technician had found an electrical outlet, plugged in, and turned a bleaching bulb on the Blessed Mother. Mary didn’t look so good. The cracks in her face looked like wrinkles. They even laced her pink and blue robe.
Father Spinelli searched the side altar, found the plug, and pulled. That light died, but another came to life instantly. He scrambled to find the outlet and stubbed his foot on the pedestal under the statue.
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