"Best not to dwell on it,” Dermot advised me.
"No, concentrate on method or means,” I said.
"Consequences are for the weak,” Dermot agreed cheerfully.
And it's the weak who suffer them, I thought to myself. But of course he meant something altogether different, that a predator acts without misgiving or second thoughts. Outside the loyalties of the pack, the rest of us are simply meat.
The time had come, I decided, to thin the herd.
* * * *
A thirst for social justice is no bad thing, I'd said to Johnny Darling, and I knew there were people of ideals on the Left, men who'd fought in the Lincoln Brigade, men who fought in the war against the Germans and the Japanese and came home to find little or no change in the social polity. But were they fertile ground for recruitment by the Kremlin? There was a lot of spy talk that year and in the years that followed. How much of it was guff or anti-Red hysteria? My concerns were more parochial and less political.
Bunny D'Oench was a youngish-looking man with a willowy build. On closer inspection, I saw his youthful appearance was an artful self-invention, the fair hair thinning but arranged in a careful combover, his neck softening and the definition of his chin beginning to weaken, a slackness of physical tone that studied tailoring could ameliorate but not entirely conceal. At a distance, he might be taken for a ravaged twenty. Face to face, he was twice that. I felt revenged, having had the unworthy thought that Rose might be flattered by his attentions.
My first good look at him had come when I got word he was leaving his place of work at 46th and Lex, just past noon. I'd assigned Bunny's surveillance to a pair of my policy runners, the boys who picked up betting slips in Midtown. They were canny lads, not above fifteen, sharp as piano wire and skinny as skimmed milk. I gave them twenty apiece and packed them off.
I kept pace with Bunny a few blocks south to Grand Central, where he repaired to the Oyster Bar and lunched with what I took to be a group of his colleagues. They wore bespoke suits and Sulka ties, and none of them appeared to be of Eastern European origin, or remotely interested in the plight of the common man. Protestants the lot, with good facial bones and the presumption of caste.
Cocktails beforehand, wine with the meal. Afterward, he might have been a little the worse for wear. I followed him up to the concourse again and down into the subway. He headed for the Times Square shuttle.
Two in the afternoon, or thereabouts. The lower levels were crowded. I lost sight of him for a moment, but then I spotted him standing near the edge of the platform. I made my way forward as the train came clattering in. Somebody screamed. The motorman punched his brakes, the wheels shrieked against the tracks, and the train stopped short with a metallic shudder.
It didn't matter; I saw. Bunny D'Oench had fallen on the third rail and been electrocuted. A wisp of smoke rose from his scalp. There was a smell of ozone and scorched hair.
I hadn't been close enough to touch him.
Turning away, I caught a passing glimpse of Dermot.
Our eyes didn't meet.
* * * *
So, what cheer?
The strategy, if you can call it that, that the Italian mob had thought to employ, to tar the dock unions with a Communist brush so as to camouflage their own corrupt intentions, came back to haunt them. It drew too much unwelcome attention. The hearings that followed put Costello, Adonis, Albert Anastasia and his brother Tony, and even Benny Siegel's onetime girlfriend Virginia Hill on the witness stand.
And as to actual Communist subversion, the short answer appears to be that after the Rosenbergs and the arrival of that poisonous windbag Joe McCarthy on the scene, the Russians no longer recruited well-meaning amateurs with a history of leftie sympathies from among the Party faithful. They fed the Parlor Pinks and fellow travelers to the wolves and relied on KGB pros with manufactured backgrounds and colorless cover stories.
Concerning our friend Dermot, he went back to his masters empty handed, or so it appeared. But perhaps I'd framed the issue to Dermot without quite understanding it in fine. I'd planted the suspicion Bunny D'Oench couldn't be trusted to keep his end of the bargain, and Dermot had taken the hint. If the past were any prologue, however, Sinn Fein wouldn't turn down Moscow's money or matériel any more than they'd refused it from Hitler. They were cut from the same cloth, the IRA's bully boys as ruthless and unbending as any commissar.
But what of Montagues and Capulets?
Young Tim Hannah had more cunning than I'd given him credit for. His overture to the Morrissey clan had been couched as an alliance between equals, and it was this, not promises of boyish devotion, which had captured Rose. They married, and from all accounts, they were well matched. Not every man wants a pliant wife, Young Tim had said to me. Rose Morrissey Hannah wasn't one to sit by the hearth, but neither was she an embarrassment to her husband. Her politics were still fierce enough, but she banked the fires. At the end of the day, perhaps Rose came to realize, looking toward the future, that the heirs of Stalin and those of that savage Irish ancient, John Devoy, faced in the wrong direction.
Copyright © 2007 David Edgerley Gates
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SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER
I met her once, undercover. Even though I knew what she was up to, after ten minutes I'd have given her the deed to my house.
—Naomi Bell
From “Bolter,” AHMM, October 2005.
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SAINT CASIMIR'S FIRE by MARIANNE WILSKI STRONG
Tim Foley
* * * *
The underground mine fire made its unholy presence very visible, hot steam and gases boiling up from below, condensing into smoky plumes.
THURSDAY
On Highway 361, Sister Carla pulled her convent's brown Honda CRV to the side of the road. A black Lexus sped past. She shook her head. Everyone in a hurry these days, she thought. Even sightseers. Jenkinsville drew sightseers who ignored the warning signs.
The car, a black blur on the burnt red landscape, sped up the road toward the church. Once there, the Lexus bounced over the pitted shoulder of the road and, fifty yards beyond the church, lurched to a halt in front of a stand of bushes. Two men waited in the car.
Sister Carla stared down a street that led to nowhere, its white clapboard houses long since destroyed, then opened the car door and stepped out. She had, many a time, left the relative safety of the highway to walk the town streets she had walked as a child. But today she did not have the time to pick her way carefully between the fissures and the blasted soil. She had a job to do, maybe for the last time.
* * * *
The Pennsylvania state mining engineer stopped and read the sign: JENKINSVILLE MINE FIRE: UNSTABLE GROUND. IT IS DANGEROUS TO WALK OR DRIVE OVER THIS GROUND. He leaned his head out the window of his truck and gazed round at the ashy red soil and blasted trees. He checked his watch, then continued on his way up the mountainside to the meeting that had been arranged. He'd confirmed with John Fletcher the identity of the old mine foreman, but that didn't mean much. Without maps, the foreman probably wouldn't remember the layout of the mine tunnels.
He pulled his truck onto the paved parking spot on the right side of the rectory, got out, and walked around the outside of Saint Casimir's Church, bending over occasionally to inspect the foundation walls. He ran a finger down some of the cracks, pulled out an instrument from his tool bag, and took some measurements. He shook his head, took a picture of a crack in the foundation, shook his head again, and made some notes.
He looked down the road. No car approached.
Fishing in his pocket, he climbed twelve steps to the church's heavy oak front doors. There he jiggled a key in the lock and pushed. One of the doors swung open with a groan.
The engineer stepped inside, squinting in the gloom of the shadows of gothic arches through which pale shafts of blue an
d red fell from stained glass windows.
He started down the aisle.
Behind the engineer, the church door groaned again. The engineer turned, heard a step behind him, and swung back to the front of the church.
A man, holding a black pouch, had stepped out from the front vestibule of the church.
A second man appeared in the dim light from a side chapel. He was holding a gun.
Alarmed, the engineer reached into his shirt pocket for his cell phone. Something slammed into his chest and burst in his ears. He spun round. He heard two more blasts, then stumbled into the pew on his right. The last thing he saw was two men darting away through the pillars of the aisle.
* * * *
Sister Carla passed the warning signs without reading them. She knew the dangers of Jenkinsville well.
Only last week, she'd shown the state engineer where the mine fire had started. She had guided him over the old pit like a divining rod for fire, picking her way expertly over the seared ground, pointing out ash holes, warning him of hot spots and weakened grounds. “Dangerous place, my hometown,” she had said wryly. “Even on such a sunny bright day, one never knows what part of the earth is ready to drop from beneath you into the pit of hell."
Today, a fine rain dropped a silver sheen over the mountains that ringed Jenkinsville. On such a day, the underground mine fire made its unholy presence very visible, the hot steam and gases boiling up from below and condensing into smoky plumes.
Sister Carla sped up. She was in a hurry. Before she returned to the convent in Wilkes-Barre, she had to ready Saint Casimir's for services this weekend. Jenkinsville's displaced people would return to their town for a few hours. Sad, this preparation once a month for a Mass in a church where she had once attended Midnight Masses, walked in Easter processions, sang in a choir, and decided to become a Sister of Mercy.
Lord knew there was little mercy in or for this godforsaken Pennsylvania mining town. But it was hard to let go of what was left. One hung on to it as one hung on to a fatally ill loved one.
She pulled the convent's Honda onto the gravel drive next to the church and to the left of the old rectory where Father Kelski stayed now and then when he celebrated Mass. She shut off the engine, leaned to the left, and looked up at the cemetery on the rise above the church, where former parish priests and members of the parish, including her parents, were buried. She wanted to tend to their graves today, though she did not relish getting damp and bone chilled in the sullen rain.
She delayed leaving the warmth of the car. Through the turbid wash of rain on the windshield, the path and the steps to the cemetery looked limp and unsteady, as if about to dissolve.
Shivering, she pulled her black sweater tighter round her neck and chest. She peered again through the rain. Something was not right, not quite how she had left Saint Casimir's when she was last here.
A blur of red ran the length of the gravel driveway between the church and the cemetery and ended up flanking the path and the steps.
Sister Carla squinted.
The blur coalesced into the bank of chrysanthemums she had planted three weeks ago. They should have been about a foot high, and most were, but some had been trampled.
She started the motor and switched on the windshield wipers, remembering from about half a year ago the series of break-ins in the few remaining buildings in Jenkinsville. She looked at the windows of the church. They were intact. No one had broken into the church.
Her alarm subsided. Sightseers often drove up to Jenkinsville to inspect what was essentially a ghost town. In a world of computers, SUVs, and iPods, a town where people had become victims of an angry earth, was apocalyptic and ignited curiosity. Sometimes the visitors were careless about where they stepped, unaware or uncaring that people had ties to the town yet: loved ones buried in the cemetery, gardens they still tended, streets they walked as children.
She turned off the motor and reached for her umbrella and the black bag in which she kept the keys to the church. She never failed to lock the church door, though it was as much in a futile gesture to keep away the encroaching mine fire as to keep out thieves.
She clicked open her umbrella, slammed her car door, and headed for the steps that led up to the front door of the church. At the top step, she noticed the door was ajar.
She caught her breath and stood for a moment staring at the door, wondering if someone had broken into the church after all. There were some items of value: a chalice, and an icon of ivory and gold brought from Poland in the early part of the twentieth century. But the chalice was gold plated, Sister Carla was sure. She had clicked her fingernail against it many a time. It sounded tinny. The ivory statue of Saint Casimir was indeed lovely and no doubt valuable, but surely not worth more than five thousand dollars, and it was locked up.
Well, she thought, five thousand was enough. She backed slowly down the steps, planning to get out of the way of any potential danger. She'd get to her car and drive quickly to Sheriff Delensa's office in Pottsville. She'd use her cell phone to call as she drove.
She reached her car, opened the door, got in, backed out, and only then saw the back of a blue Toyota truck protruding from Father Kelski's parking spot on the other side of the old rectory.
She sighed with relief, berating herself for forgetting. When she'd agreed to give the state mining engineer her spare key two weeks ago, she had asked him to come, if possible, when she could be there too. She wanted to know the verdict on Saint Casimir's fate.
She sat for a moment in the car, reluctant to move, reluctant to give up hope. But she could smell disaster: the smell of sulfur and burning earth. She knew that the mine fire had burned its way up the coal seam from the other side of Jenkinsville. If it had reached this far, the church would be condemned and shut.
She felt anger rise in her heart. She didn't know who was responsible for the fire. No one knew. The state of Pennsylvania itself, for neglecting to regulate the mine companies? The Fletchers, owners of the Jenkinsville Mining Company? The miners themselves, careless with a lantern, an explosive, a gas gauge? Whoever was guilty, the state was now poised to condemn one of the last living pieces of Jenkinsville. Sister Carla felt she could work up mercy and charity for the workers, but not for any corrupt officials and mine owners. “Mercy but murders,” she mumbled, “pardoning those that kill.” She lifted her eyes toward the heavens. “Shakespeare said it,” she said. “I'm just quoting.” She chuckled at herself as she got out of the car. She walked up the church steps and pushed open the heavy oak door. Inside she stood for a moment, her eyes adjusting to the gloom of the interior, darker than the gray day outside. If the mine engineer were here, he had not switched on the church lights.
Sister Carla looked toward the small chapel to the right where the exquisite icon of Saint Casimir, the pious prince of Poland, was kept in its polished oak case. Draped over the saint's golden body, stippled ivory formed a hairshirt and the key to heaven, which hung near the hem. The statue had been there for many years now, a steady, stable presence in this town of disturbed and burning earth.
Sister Carla sighed. If the church were to be condemned, as it surely would be, the icon would have to be taken away. The day the icon was moved would be the day of Jenkinsville's final breath. Its soul would be gone.
At the chapel, off to the side of the icon, a single electric candle glowed, a dim unchanging spot of light, producing no flickering gleams as real candles would have done. Father Kelski had had to forbid the use of real candles in a church used only once or twice a month.
Sister Carla stood and stared. Something had been moved. She turned and looked behind. “Hello,” she called out. “Anybody here?"
No answer.
Cautiously, she moved forward up the central aisle of the church, between the oak pews and the enameled stations of the cross that hung on the pillars of the gothic arches.
She was halfway up the aisle when she saw it.
From between two pews, a foot protruded int
o the aisle.
She moved toward it, hardly breathing.
She saw a leg crumpled against one of the pews, then the torso with a blue windbreaker and a white shirt washed in blood.
She froze, then moved forward rapidly and knelt by the man, forcing herself to look closely. She could detect no movement, no breath, no rise and fall of his shattered chest. She recognized death. She recognized the state engineer.
She turned and ran up the aisle and outside to her car. She drove faster than usual down the mountain road, calling on her cell phone to the sheriff of Pottsville.
* * * *
It was two hours before she was able to return to Saint Casimir's. She had filled out reports, talked to the Wilkes-Barre detectives summoned by the sheriff, waited until the sheriff returned from the church, and learned that the dead man was indeed Donald Herald, the mine engineer. He had been shot through the chest with a pistol, a .45 millimeter, and nothing seemed to have been stolen from the church.
She frowned. “Why would someone want to kill the state mining engineer?"
Sheriff Delensa cocked his head and looked at her with narrowed eyes. “A pretty obvious reason comes to mind."
Sister Carla cocked her own head. “Yes,” she said. “Someone who didn't want Saint Casimir's condemned. A number of people might have that motive, including me.” She smiled at the sheriff. “Ever fingerprint a nun?"
Sheriff Delensa blinked. “Nope. Wouldn't hesitate, but no need to. Yet, anyway. I have an idea that someone besides yourself might have been up at the church."
"Who?"
"About a week ago, Herald asked me who the mining foremen had been over the years. He needed mine maps. Apparently, he'd talked with John Fletcher and got nowhere. According to Herald, Fletcher said he'd helped his father run the mine company for a short time, then went into law and paid little attention to the mine. Said that his run again for senator left him too busy to help, that he didn't remember who the mine foremen were, and that he thought the mine maps had been misplaced years ago."
AHMM, June 2007 Page 11
