“Look, Daddy’s having some bad problems with his big case, and I have to help him this weekend. I have to go out of town, so—”
Lucy’s face crumpled. “Nooooo!” she moaned. “You promised you would take Isabella and me and Hector to the zoo and to Rumplemeyer’s for sundaes. And go shopping. You promised!”
“I know I promised, but this is an emergency. I know! I bet Daddy will take you.”
“Nooo! It’s not the same. Isabella hates him.”
“Dear, there’s no reason for Isabella to hate him because he’s never done anything bad to her. Maybe it would be a good thing for her to start getting over her fear of men, hmm?”
“You promised!” wailed Lucy. Tears covered her tender cheeks.
“I’m not going to discuss it anymore,” said Marlene firmly. “You can call Isabella at the shelter and tell her your father will take you, or you can wait for next week.”
Lucy uttered a shriek of frustration and flounced out.
“What was that all about?” Karp inquired, wandering back in.
“Oh, nothing. Lucy’s being unreasonable again. I told her I couldn’t take her to the zoo because I had to go … someplace.”
“Oh. You know, I wrote down the information on the Dr. Bailey revocation hearing, the dates and all, on a piece of paper and I can’t remember where I left it. It might be on your desk.”
“Yes, it might,” said Marlene. “It’s probably filed under ‘Arrant Hypocrisy.’”
“Yes,” agreed Karp. “That, or ‘Keeping Daddy Out of Jail.’”
She was parked with Harry Bello in front of the Sullivan County Courthouse in Monticello, New York, a small two-story brick building. They sipped coffee and made plans. Marlene slipped a vitamin pill from her jacket pocket into her mouth and washed it down. It was early Saturday morning; they had left the City just past dawn, and her stomach was starting to grumble for real food.
“This does not look like Fort Knox,” said Marlene.
Harry grunted in acknowledgment and got out of the car, carrying a cheap plastic briefcase. He went up to the glass door of the building and knocked, long and hard. A middle-aged, hefty man in a gray uniform came to the door, shook his head, and tapped the sign that listed the courthouse hours. Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out an ID wallet. He flashed a shield at the man.
Police departments throughout the nation produce miniatures of their shields, and cops exchange these at conventions. Harry was flashing an NYPD detective’s shield, which, if you weren’t all that familiar with the full-size model, looked authoritative. It wasn’t precisely impersonating an officer. The guard opened the door; Marlene saw Harry speak to him for a moment, and then they both went in.
She went around the back of the building. There was an alarm, but she had to assume it was off. She was dressed neatly in slacks, a tweed jacket, low boots, and a white turtleneck with a Liberty print scarf, an outfit that tried for the appearance of old, weary money—at the opposite end of the social spectrum from lady burglars. She picked the lock to the back door and went in.
It took her a half hour to find the right room, and another to find the right filing cabinet. It took two minutes to pick the lock thereof, ten minutes to find the appropriate file, and fifteen minutes of flipping pages until she found the pages containing Selig’s testimony. She cranked up a copy machine and started making copies.
“What are you doing here?”
Marlene jumped and nearly dropped the file, but she completed the copy of the last page she needed and slipped the copies, folded, into her breast pocket.
“I said, what are you doing here? Who are you?” The guard moved closer. Marlene replaced the file, closed the drawer, and turned to face him.
“Sorry, national security,” she mumbled and started to move past him. He held up an arm.
“What?”
She pulled a red capsule from her pocket, held it in front of his face, and then tossed it into her mouth. “Cyanide,” she said. “I have to kill myself if captured. You’ve seen the lights in the sky? No? Other people have. This is big, Officer, we’re talking extraterrestrials, the Soviets. The Kennedy assassination? Just the beginning. Look at this!” She popped out her glass eye and waved it in front of his face. He blanched and backed off a step.
“High-technology device. Where does it come from? We don’t know. I got to go now, Officer, that or you got a corpse on your hands and a world of trouble from the Agency. I haven’t taken anything, I haven’t harmed anything. Just let me disappear and forget you ever saw me.”
He gaped. She pushed past him and in a minute was out of the building and into the car.
“Take off, Harry! I flim-flammed him, but I don’t know how long it’ll hold.”
Harry drove away. “Sorry. He went through the whole mug book.”
“He bought the story you were chasing a fugitive who used to live here?”
“Yeah. You get it?”
Marlene adjusted the rearview and replaced her eye.
“Got it.”
“You get it?” asked Karp.
“Got it. Murray was right, he’s clean.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. How surprised I’ll be when I find just the material I need on the floor of my office on Monday morning. Meanwhile, will you marry me and have my babies?”
A long clinch. When normal breathing resumed, Karp said, “Speaking of babies, Lucy’s in a bad mood. She tried to call that friend of hers at your shelter, and they told her she wasn’t there. Is that standard? Maybe she has to be on a call list, like jail.”
“I don’t know. Let me call them. I’ll talk to Mattie.”
But what Mattie Duran said, when Marlene got her on the line, was, “No, Lucy’s right. She’s not here. She disappeared sometime last night or early this morning. It took us awhile to catch on, because we figured she was in her box, but when we looked, she wasn’t there. I thought she might be with you until Lucy called.”
“She just walked out? How could that happen!”
“Hey, this is a shelter, not a jail. We’re set up to keep people out, not in.”
“And you have no idea where she went?”
Marlene could almost hear the shrug over the phone. “Not a clue. She came, we took care of her, to the extent that she let us, and she went. It’s not the first time it’s happened to us either, with street kids.”
“Yeah, but Isabella is not your regular street kid. Is Hector around?”
“Not lately. Look, it’s possible that they found a parent or relative—”
“Do you believe that, with what you know?” snapped Marlene.
“Not really, but Jesus, Marlene! What can you do? It’s the big city.”
“I’ll think of something,” said Marlene. “Keep in touch and call me if you hear anything, okay?”
Lucy was still stiff with her the next morning as they got ready for church. The child clearly blamed Marlene for her friend’s disappearance: if she had not broken her promise, they would have gone to the zoo and for sundaes, and the world would not have been turned upside down. And Marlene, of course, felt the same at some level, despite the illogic of it. She had given up trying to explain it all to Lucy. Time would doubtless heal her when Isabella returned, something Marlene intended to insure. In the meantime, Marlene was going to church with more than her usual burden of guilt, so much so that she chose to go early to Old St. Pat’s and stop by the confessional to have her tank drained. The nave was purple-draped for Lent, which suited her mood.
She parked Lucy with the good sisters in the church basement and waited at the confessional, while a heavy, dark woman in a lace head scarf and black dress and a skinny old man in a shiny suit used the booth, and then she went inside.
The slide snapped open, she said the ritual words and then began. Of the Seven Deadlies, Marlene specialized in wrath and pride. She was not envious of anyone; sloth had never been a concern—the opposite, in fact; she felt she had way more than
enough worldly goods, avarice not a problem; she longed for booze and tobacco occasionally, but did not obsess about them, or food, which left gluttony out. Lust? Well, yes, on the impure-thought level, but she always worked her fantasies out in the sanctity of the marriage bed, in regard to which she considered that neither Father Raymond nor the Holy and Apostolic Church needed to know the squishy details. She was at present, of course, blameless in the use of contraception.
“I’ve had anger,” she continued. “I want to kill men, to keep them from hurting their families, from killing women. On four occasions I have committed acts of violence or caused them to be committed. I have stolen, three occasions. I have lied, under oath on two occasions, and on many other occasions. I have—” Here she stopped. What was the sin in respect to letting down Isabella and going to Monticello instead?
“I broke my word to a child in order to perform an illegal entry in order to help win a case for my husband, and now that child has run away and she may be in grave danger.”
This must have startled the usually phlegmatic priest, for he cleared his throat and asked, “Do you mean that your own child has been lost?”
“Oh, no, Father,” answered Marlene. “It’s a young girl, a refugee. Isabella … I don’t know her last name. She was staying at a shelter I’ve been working with, and my daughter grew attached to her. She vanished the other day, along with her brother, we think, and I’m worried sick about her.”
“I see. Continue, please.”
Marlene’s confession petered out into venialities. She received a hefty penance and left. Later, at the rail, she felt the pressure of a stare, and looked up to find that it was the priest looking at her with a strange intensity. This was more than odd. Marlene had never shown any interest in Father Raymond as a person, nor he in her. She did not participate at all in parish life. In this she was content, for although any number of heresies tempted her from the true path, donatism was not one of them. Unlike many of her contemporary coreligionists, Marlene was indifferent to the character of her priest, treating him purely as a spiritual utility. As far as she was aware, he returned the favor.
She was even more surprised when, after the service, he approached her outside the sacristy as she was about to pick up Lucy, and beckoned to her. He seemed nervous and distraught; curiously, these emotions seemed to give life to what Marlene had always considered an utterly unmemorable, middle-aged face.
“I wanted … my, this is difficult! I wanted to let you know that Isabella is safe and well. As is Hector.”
Astounded, Marlene blurted out, “Whaaat! How the f—I mean, Father, how do you know? Do you know the kids?”
“Yes. Hector I know quite well. In fact, he often stays here at the church. A very sad child. Much abused and, you know, not quite right in his mind. I’ve only seen his sister once. A beautiful child, and devout. The one time she was here—”
Marlene interrupted, “Please, Father, where are they now?”
The priest hesitated, clearing his throat several times, an irritating sound. “Well, I saw Hector just last evening. Isabella is … in good hands. She’s away from the City, in fact, which I think is a good thing.”
“She’s in danger, isn’t she?”
“Hector certainly thinks so. He calls them soldiers, but we believe they are agents from … the regime, in her original country.”
“Guatemala,” said Marlene.
The priest looked surprised. “She spoke to you?”
“No, but we figured it out. As far as I know, she only spoke at any length to one person, my daughter, Lucy. And her brother, of course.” She gave him a close look. “Is he here now?”
A significant pause. “I really couldn’t say,” answered the priest uncomfortably. “He often comes into the rectory in the evenings.”
Marlene changed the subject. “Do you know anything about their parents?”
“Not a thing. Hector is remarkably tight-lipped about it. Fear of authority, and no wonder! I haven’t notified the juvenile people about him for that reason. I think if I did he’d run completely, and live a … depraved life, on the streets. You know, the Church used to care for strays like him all the time, informally. Maybe there’s something to be said for it, the personal or spiritual approach, rather than everything being bureaucratic.”
Marlene gave him a smile so bright that he blinked. She couldn’t have agreed more.
In the car, Marlene asked Lucy, “What did you learn about today?”
“The forgiveness of God,” said the child shortly.
“And do you forgive me?”
“I guess,” said Lucy without enthusiasm. “I miss Isabella.”
“So do I. Father Raymond says he knows where she is and that she’s safe.”
Lucy’s face lit with interest. “Where is she?”
“He wouldn’t say. I think he promised that he wouldn’t.”
“Are you going to find her? Please, Mommy!”
“You know, I think I will. I think that if she’s being chased by the kind of people I think she’s being chased by, they’re not going to be slowed down much by a bunch of nuns. And I’d like to see if she has any relations in town. It would help a lot if I knew her last name. You don’t happen to know, do you, Luce?”
“No,” said Lucy. Aha! thought her mom.
Later, having served a mighty breakfast of French toast, and his lordship having gone out to shoot hoops in the Village, Marlene was washing up and handing the dishes to her daughter for drying when she remarked, “You know, I was thinking: it’s pretty easy to decide between doing bad and doing good, but it’s a lot harder to decide between two kinds of good. Like, I broke my promise to you, but I really helped Daddy, and like, it’s wrong to tell a lie, but sometimes we tell lies to avoid hurting people’s feelings.”
“White lies,” said Lucy.
“Yes. Look, put down that plate and look at me. You’re seven, which is supposed to be the age you become capable of making moral choices. Let me ask you to make a moral choice. I think Isabella told you her full name, and you promised not to tell anyone else. I think that some very bad men from her old country are chasing her, and that’s why she ran away. Now, I think that if I had her full name, I could find some relative who might know what the danger was, or where Isabella was, so I could help protect her. Now, maybe nothing will happen. But maybe you keeping your promise prevents me from finding her before the bad guys do. You have to choose, and you have to bear the moral responsibility for whatever happens.”
“But she’ll hate me if I tell.”
“Yes, she might. In which case you have to decide whether you want Isabella safe and hating you, or loving you and hurt or dead.”
Marlene’s heart broke as she watched her daughter’s eyes fill with tears, but she held her tongue and resisted the urge to sweep the child into her arms and roll back the implacable years. Suddenly, Lucy sniffed loudly and turned away and ran clattering out of the kitchen. She was back in a moment holding out at full arm’s length a piece of folded notebook paper. Marlene took it and spread it out.
Around the outside of the page was a garland of lush flowers, heavily outlined, executed in colored pencil. Birds in yellow and green, beautifully rendered in the same bold style, were set among the blossoms. In the center was written, in a smooth, antique, schoolroom hand: Lucy, Yo Te Amo, Su Amiga, Isabella Conception Chajul y Machado.
Marlene swallowed a lump and said, “Good call, Luce. Now, do you happen to know her mommy’s first name?”
“Corazon,” said the child, and then collapsed, wailing, in her mother’s arms.
“That sounds like a Maya name, that Chajul,” said Ariadne Stupenagel over the phone. “You say they’re Guatemalans?”
“We think so,” said Marlene. She had called Stupenagel for help with finding out where a Church-connected underground would stash a kid from Guatemala. Stupenagel was one of two people she could think of to call, and the other one, Mattie Duran, was unlikely to have any C
hurch contacts.
“Where from in Guatemala?”
“We don’t know that either. Lucy was babbling something about San Francisco, but apparently there are dozens of—”
“Could it have been San Francisco Nenton?” Stupenagel asked carefully.
“Possibly. Why?”
“Jesus!” A shriek.
Marlene had to take the phone from her ear. “What?”
“Marlene, in November of the year before last, a special unit of the Guatemalan Army, trained by the U.S. government, entered the village of San Francisco Nenton and massacred the entire population, 434 men, women, and children. Or so we thought. God, I’ve got the trembles, Champ! If this fucking kid is an eyewitness to the Nenton massacre … my God, the junta would go crazy if they knew she was wandering around in the States. And you say she’s got a brother to confirm it? Christ, Marlene, you got to find her. And let me have first crack at her, of course.”
“Of course,” lied Marlene. “But look, what about my original question?”
“Oh, who they’d shunt her to for cover? God, I couldn’t begin to figure …”
“What about those nuns you mentioned that time—the Sisters of Perpetual Dysentery? Are they in the States?”
“Damn! You’re right, I must be getting senile. I’ve been so focused on this cab driver thing. They’re the Sisters of Perpetual Help.”
“I never heard of them,” said Marlene.
“No, they’re small, and they only turn up where nobody else’ll go. A daughter house of the Poor Clares, I think. They’re all R.N.’s or nurse practitioners, plus they’re all cross-trained in mucky stuff—agronomy, sanitation. They jump out of airplanes too. A far cry from the penguins. They have a rest house someplace in Jersey. Just a sec, I’ll get it for you.” Clunk and rustlings. “Yo. It’s in Chester, Pee Ay.” She read off the address. “By the way, speaking of the cabbies …”
Marlene brought her up to date, closing with her visit to the Twenty-fifth Precinct and her conversation with Clancy. Marlene heard the scratch of note taking. “Oh, also,” she added, “you’ll be interested to know I saw Jimmy Dalton up there schmoozing with a couple of dicks, waving his stinky—” “What?”
Falsely Accused Page 28
