The sun in sunrise was an acronym for the last initials of its three partners, Daniel Sanders, Keith Unger, and Stan Nichols. It was Nichols’s card Bender had given him.
Sunrise’s claim to fame was institutional shorts for trade clients, but had recently begun to branch into longer films they hoped to sell to stations like the History Channel and PBS.
It didn’t take them long to discern which office belonged to Sunrise. A giant mock-up of General Custer in battle gear with the words, “The Definitive Biography on Custer” along with the channel, date and time it would be airing emblazoned across it was tacked on the door.
Mari eyed the mock-up with disgust. “I’ll have to make sure to miss that.”
Him, too. The door opened onto a small reception area. Behind it were a few cubicles and beyond that a pair of offices. If there was any more to Sunrise Motion Pictures, Jonathan couldn’t tell.
The girl behind the reception desk flashed him a smile as they approached. “Can I help you?”
He flashed her his badge. “We’d like to speak to Stan Nichols.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hold on.” She picked up the phone and punched in three numbers. “Stan, the police are here,” she said as if it weren’t an unheard of occurrence. She nodded rather than spoke into the phone then hung up. “He said to tell you he’ll be right out.”
They stepped back from the desk to wait. Mari leaned closer to him. “Seems like you’re the one with an admirer today.”
“Oh, am I?”
Mari looked around. “What is it about this place that gives me the creeps?”
He didn’t have much chance to speculate or answer. Stan Nichols approached, a puzzled expression on his face. “What can I do for you, Detectives?”
Nichols wore jeans and a black “Custer is Coming” T-shirt stretched over his ample belly. With his head of frizzy brown hair and coke bottle glasses, he reminded Jonathan of either an aging hippie or an overgrown Jim Henson puppet. Either his expression was a good act, or the man had no idea why they were there. For now he’d reserve judgment on which.
“We’re investigating the Amanda Pierce murder. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“Sure.” Nichols looked a bit more nervous now. “Let’s go into my office.” He led the way to the office he’d come from. “Please excuse the mess.”
The office was furnished with the kind of leather and dark wood you could get out of an Ikea catalog. Every surface, and the desk in particular, was covered with papers, videotapes or electronic equipment of some kind. Even the laptop on Nichols’s desk was propped up on top of a stack of papers. At least the visitors’ chairs were clear.
Nichols rounded his desk and sat. He offered them a nervous smile. “Would you believe me if I told you I know where everything is?”
“No, not, really,” Mari said. “We understand you were making a film about Pierce’s uncle that she wasn’t too happy about.”
Nichols rolled his eyes. “That’s an understatement. When I approached her about being part of it, she went ballistic. Threatened to report me to the police. But there was nothing she could do about it. It’s taken us a few years but we’re strictly legit now.”
Jonathan scanned the room. A series of framed photographs lined the wall. Most were awards or stills from what he assumed were industrial films. But a couple were obviously from adult films.
Nichols must have noticed the direction of his gaze. “I suppose I should get rid of those.”
“What interested you in Father Malone in the first place?”
“You have to understand, New York history and the Bronx in particular is hot now. Ever since 9/11 people can’t get enough of this stuff.”
“So you figured you’d cash in on it?” Mari said.
He shrugged. “Yeah. Why not? That’s what you’re supposed to do—take advantage of an opportunity. A few months ago I got a call from one of the yahoos from my high school asking me if I wanted to be on the planning committee for the 25th year reunion.”
There was a black coffee cup resting on another stack of papers. Nichols picked it up and drank from it. “Now you know they had to be desperate if they were calling me, but it got me started thinking about the old neighborhood. And I remembered that about a year before or a year after we graduated was when all that hoo-ha went on with Father Malone. I remember him. He was a great guy. So I started looking into it.”
“How did Ms. Pierce get into it?”
“I contacted her. I mean, Amanda Pierce in one of my films talking about her uncle. That would have been hot. I could have sold that in a minute.”
“What did you do when you found out she wasn’t interested?”
He lifted his hands as if in surrender. “Hey, I made an ass of myself pestering her, but I didn’t kill her. I even told her I hoped to find out who murdered him. You know, hoping to pique her interest. That made her even madder. But if you think I killed her over it! Why would I do that?”
“She was planning to publish an article in the Times refuting whatever claims you might have made later.”
Nichols seemed genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know that.”
“Where were you last Friday morning?”
“Last Friday? Hold on a moment.” He pressed a button on the phone. “Babe, where was I last Friday morning?”
The receptionist’s annoyed voice came back. “You were at the dentist’s. Anything else?”
“No, Babe, thanks.” Nichols turned back to him. “I forgot. Root canal.”
Jonathan handed the man his notebook. “Write down the name and address.”
“Sure.” The man scribbled something and handed it back. “Is there anything else?”
Jonathan stood and Mari followed. “Not at the moment.” They’d check out Nichols’s alibi, but if the man were telling the truth, he probably wasn’t in any shape to have strangled anybody.
“Oink, oink and freaking oink,” Mari said when they reached the elevators. “Here’s what I want to know, how did she keep from strangling him? Imagine having a former pornographer being the one to do the biography of your beloved relative.”
“No, thanks.” Nichols had written down the phone number as well. Jonathan dialed it on his cell phone. When a woman answered, he identified himself and asked if Nichols had come in on Friday morning.
“Yeah, he was here,” the woman said in a disgusted tone. “If you really are the police, see what you can do about getting the creep to stop pinching my butt.”
Laughing, Jonathan disconnected the call. “Nichols checks out. Seems he left an impression on the receptionist.”
“I’m not even going to ask what that means.”
“Don’t.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean you’ve crossed him off your list completely. I haven’t.”
Neither had he. Nichols definitely struck him as the type to get one of his low-life friends to remove any obstacle in his way. When he got back to the Bronx, he’d ask the receptionist in for a chat, away from the influence of her boss. He’d bet whatever was going on in that office she knew about it.
But he didn’t tell Mari that, not while she was still riled up about the man. Instead, he managed to say with a straight face, “You objected to the former porno king’s choice of artwork.”
She shot him a disgusted look. “I’d like to see him with a dick shoved up his—”
The ping of the coming elevator distracted Mari from finishing that sentiment.
“With that mouth, it’s a good thing the next place we’re going is to see a priest.”
The new St. Jude’s sat on the corner of Prospect and Dyre Avenues, a beacon of neither beauty nor grace. A squat building, wider than it was long, it boasted little in the way of adornment of any kind. The spiked gate surrounding the property and the bars outside the few stained glass windows showed the church had more of an eye to curbing theft than comforting souls.
“It’s a shame what some of these churches have to do,” Mari said as t
hey got out of the car.
Sometimes he forgot she’d been raised Catholic and didn’t mind the upbringing. They’d contacted Father Masella, the current head of the church, that morning. They were a bit early for the one o’clock meeting they’d scheduled. Hopefully, the priest would be available now.
A knock at the rectory door produced a young man that didn’t look any older than eighteen. Before they had a chance to introduce themselves, he said, “Come in. Father is expecting you.”
They followed the boy to an office at the corner of the building. The door was already open. The man on the other side of the desk rose as they approached. He was tall, nearly Jonathan’s height, but with a doughy body that foretold a lack of any real exercise. Judging by the lack of gray in his hair and the absence of wrinkles on his face, Jonathan would put the man at ten or fifteen years his senior, though he knew the man to be in his early sixties. But his cornflower blue eyes assessed them sharply as he and Mari joined him in his office.
After the introductions were made, he gestured for them to sit in the two scarred, wooden chairs across from him. “I’m sorry we have to meet under such unfortunate circumstances. I understand you are investigating Amanda’s murder. Such a shame.”
The priest’s use of Pierce’s given name prompted the question. “You knew her, Father?”
He nodded. “I had just been assigned here a few months before the fire. I saw her here a few times. A most interesting young lady.”
Jonathan hid his humor. That was probably the priest’s attempt at finding something nice to say rather than saying nothing at all. “Have you seen her recently?”
“She came by about a month ago. She told me about the gentlemen who wanted to do a biography on Brendan’s life. She was furious. I can’t say I blame her. She asked me if I could put her in touch with any of the parishioners from that time, hoping one of them could remember something important.”
“Did you?” Mari asked.
“It took some time. Most of the records from that time were destroyed in the fire. It took us two years to rebuild the church. By the time we reopened many of the families had moved on.”
“Why is that, Father?”
The priest tapped his fingertips together. “In many ways, Father Malone was this church. You had to know him to know what I mean. He was a colorful personality. He came from the streets, not here but in Brooklyn. He understood the community. He spoke to them in their own language about the problems they faced, and the archdiocese could go hang itself if they didn’t like it. The boys in particular were his pet project.”
He and Mari exchanged a glance, each of them wondering how much this man’s estimation of Father Malone was colored by his devotion.
Perhaps sensing their skepticism, Masella continued. “I know the reputation the church has gotten in the past years, but it wasn’t like that then. Brendan had a crew of boys, the toughest, meanest kids I’d ever seen. He kept them in school, found them scholarships to college. He’d have them cleaning up the neighborhood Saturday mornings. He taught them if they wanted anything in life they’d have to make their own opportunities.”
“God helps those who help themselves?” Mari guessed.
“Exactly. Those boys would have done anything for Father Malone. The whole parish would have. You have to understand, though, that this was the early eighties. While Mayor Koch was busy putting up fake windows to fool passing tourists, Brendan did something real. He used his influence with some of his friends from the old neighborhood, some who’d done good and some not so good to build some decent housing for the people of this neighborhood.
“That project earned Brendan a lot of detractors, but not in this neighborhood. One thing those people won’t tell you is that the building came in under budget and up to code. And Brendan made sure the City kept its end of the bargain in maintaining the building. That’s when all the rumors about him started flying. I think the politicians were trying to discredit him in order to get him to back off.”
“Getting back to Ms. Pierce, did you ever find any parishioners for her to contact?”
“Yes. Thirteen names. People who stayed with the church after Brendan was gone who were still alive. I gave them to her two weeks ago. That’s the last I heard from her.”
“Do you have those names, Father?”
“Yes, of course.” He searched the papers and files on his desk to pull out a single sheet of paper that he handed to Mari.
There was one question that bothered Jonathan as he’d listened to the priest. He had information pertinent to their investigation and he was obviously willing to talk. Why had he kept this to himself for so long?
“Why didn’t you tell any of this to the police?”
“I did. As soon as I heard about the tragedy, I called the local precinct. The officer I spoke to told me someone would get back to me. When you called, I assumed you were those somebodies.”
Jonathan gritted his teeth. Information getting lost from one house to another wasn’t unheard of, but he’d like to get his hands on the knucklehead responsible this time. If this new information panned out, they could have shaved a couple of days off their investigation.
“How do you want to handle the list? Geographically or alphabetically?”
“How about after lunch?”
Mari had barely gotten the words out of her mouth when her cell phone rang. After she disconnected the call, she said, “Guess who’s finally conscious?”
He knew the answer this time. Now Jonathan had a few questions for Freddie Jackson to answer.
After spending the better portion of the day with Joanna, Dana decided to walk home again. The night was cooler than it had been in a while, though heavy with humidity. The weatherman predicted a summer storm for later that night that would break the heat wave they were having, but so far it hadn’t arrived.
She crossed the street in the middle of the block, after the lone car she’d seen passed by. Traffic was surprisingly light. Probably everyone had already hurried home anticipating the storm. Walking, she had to pass through an industrial section of town. Actually, just one block of it, if she used an alleyway between two buildings. The alley was used for deliveries for the adjoining businesses. It was narrow here, barely wide enough to accommodate a car, let alone a delivery truck. The path widened down at the end where two delivery bays faced each other.
She didn’t usually take that route, but the air seemed to be growing heavier. What the hell? In her present mood, if there were a mugger lying in wait on the other end of the alley, she’d probably kick his ass. Just to be safer, maybe, she took off down the alley at a jog. The quicker she got through, the safer she’d be.
But suddenly there was a car behind her, close enough for her to feel the heat of its headlights on her skin. Didn’t the fool see her? She glanced around, still jogging. The glare from the headlights made it impossible to notice anything about the car, except that it was big and dark—and had begun to accelerate toward her.
Immediately she broke into a run, her heart pumping, her legs reaching as far as they could with every stride. She had nowhere to go except forward. Her purse weighed on her arm. She let it drop and kept running, sprinting toward the wider part of the alley, hoping to find somewhere to duck to get out of the car’s way.
Finally, when the car was almost upon her, she made it, darting left to vault over the high ledge of the loading dock to relative safety. The car veered after her, careened into a huge dumpster that spewed garbage onto the front of the car as it bounced off the metal surface. The car lumbered forward, continuing toward the end of the alleyway, nearly crashing into a car passing on the street.
Breathing heavily, with the blast of the car’s horn echoing in her ears, Dana started to shiver. Whoever had been driving that car had intended to kill her. There was no other explanation for it, not that she could see.
But this time, as the car hesitated under the bright light of the loading dock, she’d managed to notice the license
plate number.
And she realized something else that scared her right down to her toes.
Twelve
Jonathan I need to see you.
Those words echoed in Jonathan’s ears as he drove from his apartment to Dana’s house. Not only hadn’t he expected to hear from her after last night, she hadn’t elaborated on the reason she wanted him to come over. True, he hadn’t exactly pressed her for one either. The only thing he did know was that it wasn’t to pick up where they’d left off last night.
He’d planned on spending the evening reinterviewing the patrons of the bar where Jackson got stabbed. He’d claimed the other man had pulled a knife on him first, supposedly because Jackson was messing around with his woman. Jackson claimed not to know the woman in question, but neither Jonathan nor Mari completely believed him. That didn’t necessarily negate the man’s claim of simply wanting to keep his ya-yas from getting cut off, but it made him less credible. Jonathan was hoping someone at the bar had seen something that would make the case either way.
He pulled up in front of Dana’s place, luckily finding a spot right out front. Even from the street he could see her, sitting in one of her rocking chairs, her legs drawn up, her cheek resting on her knees. He walked up to the house and let himself onto the porch, dread rising in him. She had to know he was there, but she didn’t acknowledge him in any way.
“Dana?”
She lifted her head and looked at him. Her hair was tumbled, not in the seductive way it had been last night. Her jeans were ripped at the knee and the blouse she wore was torn at the shoulder and dirty. Her face looked tear-stained and her eyes were rimmed in red. What on earth could have happened to actually make this woman cry?
“Thanks for coming,” she said, as if he’d made her social event by showing up. “I probably shouldn’t have called you like that.”
Body Of Truth Page 14
