The Night Church Part 18

"When were you here?"

"The bank had a celebration Friday. I went back to work, remember?" Her voice was dry.

"A celebration? How touching."

"Very."

A waiter began laying out trays of steam-table eggs and sausages.

Mike came forward, leaned down to Patricia, and kissed her forehead. "Honey, I hope you aren't too upset about this Lourdes thing. I know it's-what's the word-"

Jonathan supplied it. "Mawkish."

"That sure as h.e.l.l isn't it. Nothing to do with birds. Anyway, it's a little hokey-but Mary suggested it to me and she and Maxwell kind of got things rolling and all of a sudden-well, h.e.l.l, we're on our way. I put in a word for Miami Beach but n.o.body would listen."

"Hey, Father," Lieutenant Maxwell called to the silent, watching form of Father Goodwin, "how about saying grace so we can dig in?"

Father made the sign of the cross. "Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ Our Lord. Amen." Catholic grace at least was quick.

"Stay right where you are," Mike said to Patricia and Jonathan. "Let me get your plates. I'm sure after all the hard work you've done this morning you're starving. I'll pile 'em high."

"He noticed we're late," Patricia said.

"Well, he's right about one thing. I am am hungry." hungry."

She squeezed his hand. Mike came back and arranged the plates on their table. The three of them seemed to form a separate unit inside the little group. Mary spent time with Father Goodwin; Lieutenant Maxwell and Doctor Gottlieb sat together near the empty bandstand. Jonathan felt com-fortable with Patricia and Mike. They were at ease together, the three of them.

Jonathan watched Mike. He was just another rumpled cop, a little tougher-looking than most, until you met his eyes. Then you were shocked. In those eyes was as deeply felt a human being as you were likely to encounter. No saint, though. In fact, sometimes a sonofab.i.t.c.h. Totally lacking in perspective. Either you could do no wrong by Mike Banion or he treated you as a cross between a sewer rat and a cigar b.u.t.t. But if he loved you, he was mad about you. As he was about Jonathan, and had become about Patricia.

Jonathan's eyes went to her, sitting so stiffly in her chair, a party smile on her face. You'd never guess what she'd been doing half an hour ago.

Once or twice right after Jonathan had been told of the paralysis he had awakened in the middle of the night and sweated out what it was going to be like with her, wondering if she would be ruined.

"I want you to break away and come over to the office after this," Mike said. "I've gotta tell you something."

He whispered this to Jonathan as one might to the parent of a sensitive child. "About the case?" Jonathan replied.

"Yeah."

"She's not up to it."

"That's what your mother and Gottlieb said. That's what Max said."

"What're you two whispering about?" Patricia asked.

"I've got a lead. I've got to talk to you about it over at my office."

She ate her toast delicately, her lap spread with a napkin to catch the crumbs. "Look at it this way, Mike,"she told him. "I can't break because I'm already broken. So you can feel free to tell me anything."

Mike reached toward her as if she were toppling out of her chair. His hands stopped, poised above the table. "We've got what may be a major lead. And a problem. I want you to know in advance it's gonna upset you."

Mary Banion was staring at them. She disengaged herself from Father Goodwin and came over to the table. "Father is ready to bless our pilgrim, Mike," she said, loudly enough for everybody in the room to hear.

The priest reddened and stumbled to his feet. He always fell all over himself when Jonathan's mother noticed him, It amused Jonathan to see how the man blushed. When she idly touched his wrist-as she often did when she talked to people-his eyes followed her fingers with frank avidity. In his daydreams it surely was not his wrist she touched.

Father Goodwin came to the center of the room and faced Patricia. His cheeks were flushed. The lighting made his skin appear mauve.

"I bless you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Go in peace. And may your journey to that holy place of G.o.d's strength and curing be made easy by the intercession of blessed Saint Christopher, patron saint of travelers."

"Patricia, I want to add my personal blessing," Mike said. "To help you out over there, I thought you'd need someone who speaks French, so I'm going along."

"The whole family's going," Mary added hastily.

"We leave on August fourteenth," Father said. "So far there are fifty-five pilgrims, bless their souls."

The sick, the pious, the crazy.

"Perhaps you're interested in the history of the pilgrim-age," Father continued. "I got this material from the Chan-cery yesterday." He handed around a brochure ent.i.tled "Queens County Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady at Lourdes."

Fifty-seven consecutive years except during wartime.

Oldest pilgrim, Miss Mae Pztskowski, ninety-four, a traveler for eighteen years.

Sponsored by the Diocese.

Managed by Catholic Travel, Inc., in business since 1947.

Comfortable SkySaver Airlines Jetliner with facilities for The Sick. (Capitals theirs.) Package price complete, including all transfers, lodging, and, G.o.d help us, meals. Special diets accommodated.

Five days and four nights in the idyllic and holy town of Lourdes, one of the most scenic in the Pyrenees district. Accommodations at the first-cla.s.s Gethsemane Hotel, a short walk from the grotto.

Price: $999.95.

When he saw the surprising avidity with which Patricia was examining the brochure, Jonathan felt an unwelcome twinge of pity for her.

As soon as Father finished there was a general leave-taking. Mike stayed right with Patricia and Jonathan. Max-well joined them. Jonathan's last impression of the room was his mother's face, watching anxiously as the little entourage departed.

After Farrell's Backroom the sunlight seemed unnaturally intense.

"No cabs this time, kids. We go in my car."

"A ride in that thing is equivalent to smoking two cigars, Dad. You think she can handle it?"

"Never fall in love with a woman who can't stand cigars. Advice from the persecuted."

She maneuvered herself out of the chair and into the back seat with a certain new adroitness. "I've been practicing on the way to work," she said. "Soon I'll be able to open the door, get in, fold the chair, and pull it in behind me."

"And tip the driver? Cabbies oughtta be more help than that."

"You learn to tip any driver who'll pick you up. Cabbies stop for drunk killers with smoking pistols in their hands and paralytics, in that order."

Mike hit the steering wheel with the heels of his hands. "You get the number of any f.u.c.king hack pa.s.ses you by and he will not, repeat, will not, will not, drive another day in this town! I'll get the b.a.s.t.a.r.d revoked so fast-" drive another day in this town! I'll get the b.a.s.t.a.r.d revoked so fast-"

"I love you too, Mike," Patricia said hastily. She reached forward as far as she could, touched his shoulder. "But the hacks have it rough enough already."

Jonathan could have kissed his stepfather. He was one loyal man.

Nothing more was said on the way to the 112th precinct house. Mike stuck a cigar in his face but did not light it until they had arrived at his favorite no-parking zone.

Jonathan got Patricia out of the car while Mike hovered, not quite sure how to help.

As he wheeled Patricia along, Jonathan noticed the ugly tile corridors with their glaring overhead lights hidden be-hind wire cages. He wondered if he would ever p.r.o.nounce himself guilty enough to come here as an official visitor.

The precinct house was noisy now; the post-midnight silence of the polygraph session seemed a thousand years away. Yet Jonathan remembered the sick dread, and the grinding sound of this very elevator. There was a reality of some sort waiting for him in the mysteries of this place. Here, perhaps, a devastated Mike Banion would one day book him.

Lieutenant Maxwell and an a.s.sistant were already in Mike's office. They were pulling papers out of their brief-cases when Mary Banion arrived. Mike's eyes widened and he chewed his stogie. "Hi, hon," he said.

"You don't need to be here."

"Lieutenant?"

"I asked her, Mike. I thought you-"

"Doesn't matter. Glad to have you, darlin'. Let's every-body pull up benches. We got a real official presentation here, thanks to Max and the Sarge." That was what he called Maxwell's delicate little a.s.sistant, apparently. Somehow, though, the Sarge's nickname fit. She looked feminine, but not one to tolerate any fooling around.

"We want to take you kids through the case," Maxwell said in his rich, anchorman voice. Obviously he had been designated speaker-Mike's token New Policeman-the kind of cop he liked to show off to Jonathan.

You wanted to shake some sense into Mike; you wanted to hug him. Jonathan wished he knew how to ask him to make his own presentation. But how could he say that they were happier hearing it from him, that they trusted him and respected him more than any of his degree-bearing under-lings?

Patricia's hand slipped into Jonathan's. The gesture might as well have been spoken words, so clear was its meaning: whatever they tell us, we are one now. We are one.

In that moment Jonathan decided to ask her to marry him and d.a.m.n the consequences. If it was psychotherapy he needed, he would get it. They would make a life together. They had a perfect right.

"We believe that we have identified the man primarily responsible for what happened on the night of June six-teenth." The lieutenant handed Patricia a composite drawing of a ridiculously old man. "Do you recognize him?"

"He was at the parish supper."

So it was that again. Nothing new, nothing new.

"He was the one who talked to you at the seniors supper the week before the incident. His name seems to be Franklin Apple. We aren't certain."

Jonathan's heart skipped a beat. He felt so much as if somebody were creeping up behind him that he had actively to suppress the urge to look over his shoulder. Then he realized why: the strange old man he had seen in his lab yesterday looked a little bit like that.

"He died the day we were going to question him."

Jonathan was relieved.

"We believe that he was the local leader of a large religious organization-we call it that for want of a better word-that has been operating clandestinely for some years."

Jonathan put his hand on Patricia's shoulder. He could feel her trembling. But he felt it was right that she be here just as it had been right for her to go to the church. She had had to confront these things. That was the only way back to some kind of mental stability and a chance at happiness for them both. to confront these things. That was the only way back to some kind of mental stability and a chance at happiness for them both.

Mike questioned Jonathan with his eyes. Jonathan nod-ded. "Go on, Max," Mike said.

"We have looked for some sort of pattern of rape in churches-boroughwide, citywide, statewide.

Nothing. Your case is all but unique. What we have found is that a larger number of Catholic religious have turned up missing or dead by violent means than we would have expected. Fourteen in the past twelve years."

"I don't see the connection." Patricia's voice was soft, but Jonathan could hear the fear in it.

"Admittedly tenuous. A recent case ill.u.s.trates the pat-tern, though. A Brother Alexander Parker of the Society of Saint Jude was found dead, apparently of accidental causes, in an apartment across the street from Holy Spirit the morning after your incident. Two strange things. First, he was living incognito. We didn't know he was a religious until we questioned his mother. Second, he had taken a reporter into his confidence."

"The reporter told me about the cult," Mike added. "Your Mr. Apple fit the description of the man he said was running it."

"And the reporter is now a missing person," Maxwell's a.s.sistant said.

"I don't know what all that means and I don't want to hear any more," Patricia said, her voice ragged.

Now Mike spoke. Quietly, almost sadly, as if this were a miserable duty. "There isn't much. Just bits and pieces. But connect the dots and you have something more than a single individual acting alone."

"Come on, Mike, get it over with! Why am I here? What do you want me to do?"

"We are a.s.suming the surviving members of the group have the capacity to come back and finish what was left undone."

She writhed in her chair, looking desperate. Jonathan went closer to her, knelt beside the chair. "That's enough," she said in anguish. "Don't you think I know that? I mean, all those alarms and that horrible little gun and all, how could I not not know? I can't do anything about it. If they're going to kill me, they're going to kill me." She clasped her knees. Her knuckles went white with the pressure she was exerting. "I perfectly fulfill the cliche of the helpless fe-male." know? I can't do anything about it. If they're going to kill me, they're going to kill me." She clasped her knees. Her knuckles went white with the pressure she was exerting. "I perfectly fulfill the cliche of the helpless fe-male."

"Honey," Mike said, "I called you here to tell you that we are going to give you protection. You're getting twenty-four-hour surveillance."

"Oh, no! I won't live like that, I won't!"

"Max, you tell her."

"You won't even know we're there. And it's just until we roll this thing up."

"Roll it up? You said you just had bits and pieces! So now you're going to roll it up?"

"We're working on it. We're getting close."

"How close?" Mary asked. "I think it would help Patricia if you would tell us all."

"We've got Holy Spirit staked out."

"Which is to say you're not close at all. And I'm supposed to remain under lock and key-being watched constantly- until you get somewhere? I'll bet you have years of work before you." Patricia shook her head. "The notion of rolling myself off a cliff keeps recurring."

Mike nodded to Maxwell, who went doggedly on.

He explained the details of how they were going to guard Patricia. They were distressing: every moment of every day somebody would be watching. Plainclothesmen most of the time, but uniformed officers in places like the bank where she was exposed to the public.

Oh, Mexico, land of fantasy! A pool, a beach, a bedroom.