Gardened of the Damned

by Blake Banner

  I said, “I’m not done yet. What about Father O’Neil?”

  He picked up his Guinness and drained half of it. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  “What about him?”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “Very well.”

  “What’s your opinion of him?”

  “He’s a gobshite. He wishes he was Mother Theresa but he hasn’t got the balls. Now have you got any more stupid questions for me? ’Cause I’m losing my patience.”

  Dehan smiled. “What happens if you lose your patience, Conor?”

  “I call the cops and have youse removed.”

  Outside, we walked slowly toward the car. Spring was still trying to make things look beautiful, but it wasn’t doing a great job.

  I looked up at the sky. It was very blue. “What do you make of him?”

  “A showman. Underneath that noisy exterior, he’s a ruthless businessman. Whatever he says about how he would have enjoyed the trial, he did the numbers and saw it would be cheaper and more expedient to have Sean killed. He killed him.”

  “Makes sense.”

  She watched her feet as she walked for a bit. “He got upset when I told him the tramp had been identified as Sean.”

  I nodded. “He did. That’s when he told us to leave.”

  We came to the car and I sat on the trunk. I could see my face distorted in the lenses of her aviator shades. “The way it looks right now, Sean was threatening to expose a child prostitution ring run by Conor Hagan, with the possible collusion of Father O’Neil and three other people…”

  She was shaking her head. “Run by Conor Hagan and Mick Harragan, with the possible collusion of Father O’Neil and two other people.”

  “Okay, Conor warned him off, he wouldn’t listen, so he and Alicia were murdered.”

  She nodded.

  “Now, we have a problem, Dehan. The only piece of physical evidence we have points to a completely different person, and a completely different motive. Sonia Vincenzo, the jilted lover, and her rage and jealousy.”

  I had told her about my meeting with Sonia on the way in the car. She sighed and thrust her hands into her pockets. “You don’t buy that, do you?”

  “Right now I’m not buying anything but lunch. But the fact stands that that is our only piece of evidence.”

  She nodded. “The Captain gave us two uniforms to help with tracking those kids, Stevens and Ortega. Let’s see if we’ve had any hits.”

  THIRTEEN

  While I was talking to Sonia Vincenzo, Dehan had got a complete list from the Parish Archive of the twelve girls who had been in Alicia’s class in January of 2005. Of the twelve, three had no national insurance number. Those three, and four others, were either orphans or presumed orphans, in that nobody knew where their parents were. Of the confirmed orphans, none of them had ever known their father, in four cases the mother had died of an overdose, and John had murdered one. In all cases—all twelve—the mothers were prostitutes. The five girls who were not orphans were theoretically in foster care, but three had escaped to go on the game and two had been kicked out for their violent behavior, and nobody had bothered to inform the agency or the court.

  Dehan had gotten a large whiteboard and put it by the desk. Then she’d cropped the photographs so you could only see the face and taped them on the board, with their names written by the picture.

  When we got back, that was all that was written by any of the pictures and Stevens and Ortega were packing up to leave the station. Stevens saw us approaching the desk and stood.

  “Detectives, we have had consistently negative results on all the names and the NI numbers. The parish record lists the course as closing down on the 21st January, 2005. That is the last official record that we can find of those children. We have checked state and Federal databases, hospitals, FBI…” He shook his head and shrugged. Ortega rose and joined us, nodding his confirmation of what Stevens was saying. “There is just no record of any of these kids. They haven’t acquired driving licenses, they have no credit cards, they haven’t been sick, got married, died…”

  Ortega shrugged with his eyebrows. “Not officially, anyway. So we were on our way to the neighborhood to canvass the homes around there, see if anybody remembers them.”

  I nodded. “Good, good work.”

  They left. We followed. Sometimes—often—that’s what detective work is, walking door to door, ringing on doorbells, stopping people in the street, and that’s what we did. We put up flyers, we handed out photographs, we knocked on doors and visited community centers.

  In the Bronx, the cops are not everybody’s favorite people. So canvassing is often not a productive method of investigation. You tend to get blank stares, shrugs, and shaking heads. But when missing kids are involved, it’s different, especially with the women. We found plenty in the neighborhood of Tiffany Street and Lafayette who remembered one or more of the kids. Nobody knew where they were now, and nobody, not a single person, remembered seeing them after January 2005.

  By half past seven, we gave it up and went back to the precinct. Stevens and Ortega came in shortly after us, reporting the same result. The kids were known. The kids were remembered, but nobody had seen them since those pictures were taken. I thanked them for their help and turned to Dehan.

  “Let’s go see the captain.”

  We climbed the stairs and knocked on his door.

  “Come!”

  We went in and he smiled broadly, like he thought we were amusing.

  “Ah, Stone and Dehan, the Dynamic Duo, what can I do for you? Please, sit!”

  We sat and I laid out the case for him. He frowned and listened without interrupting. When I had finished, he said, “And they missed the haircut and the nails back in the original investigation?”

  “Yes, sir. To be honest, I don’t think there was an original investigation. There was no shell, no slug, no blood, no witness…” I shrugged. “Unsolved.”

  “So you have done well to get this far, but it is hard to see where you go from here.”

  Dehan stared at her boots. I could feel her aura crackling, but fortunately, the captain didn’t have that kind of sensitivity. I coughed.

  “Well, it seems to have progressed from a simple murder investigation, Captain, because we now seem to have also a child prostitution ring, and twelve missing girls.”

  “Yes, I see that. What do you propose to do?”

  I stared at him a moment and sucked my teeth. When I spoke, even Dehan looked at me in surprise.

  “I want to dig up the churchyard.”

  “You want to do what?”

  “Where are those girls, sir?”

  “But, Stone, you know I am always very supportive of you, but you can’t just go marching in and dig up the grounds of a church!”

  I nodded. “I know, sir, but the church was their last known location. It was also the last known location of Alicia Flores.”

  “Even so…”

  “One skilled person may be able to disappear—vanish from all state and federal databases, if they were determined and put their mind to it. For twelve young girls, some as young as eleven years old, collectively to vanish is almost impossible, unless there was some concerted effort…”

  Dehan added, “Or unless they were dead.”

  “And, sir, there is the same thinking behind both Sean and the girls.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Sean was dressed as a tramp on the assumption that people don’t give a damn about down and outs. They were right. If Captain Jennifer Cuevas had not decided to sideline me by giving me these cold cases, nobody would ever have investigated Sean’s death. Nobody would even have known he was dead. And exactly the same is true of those girls. They were chosen because they were people nobody would ever care about. The same mind that killed Sean O’Conor, killed those girls.”

  He looked horrified. I felt Dehan frown hard at her boots. He said, “You cannot possibly be certai
n of that. You have no evidence other than theories and surmise!”

  “That’s why I need to dig up the churchyard.”

  “What makes you think these twelve girls are buried there?”

  “Thirteen. Sean’s fiancée.” I sighed. “Think it through. Thirteen bodies. They are hard to dispose of. You can dump one in the river, maybe two. But thirteen?”

  “I’m sorry, Stone. No judge is ever going to sign off on such slim evidence. I can see where you’re coming from, and maybe you are right. But you need something a lot more convincing that just a theory.”

  I nodded. “I imagined as much, sir, but I thought I had better appraise you of where we are at in the investigation. Thank you. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Yes, do, please.”

  Dehan got to her feet with a rigid face. I opened the door for her and as she went out, the captain said, “Stone?” He looked like his face was trapped in a slow wince.

  I said, “Yes, sir?”

  “Don’t do anything… you know… crazy.”

  I looked surprised. “Of course not, sir!”

  On the stairs going down, Dehan said, “So what are we going to do?”

  I gave her the same surprised look I had given the captain. “Dig up the churchyard, of course.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I don’t know yet. But if we are going to get evidence of Sean and Alicia’s murder, and the murder of those girls, we have to find the bodies.”

  I stopped at my desk and grabbed my jacket. I stared down at the file on my desk with the photographs in it. I opened it and pulled out the list of names.

  Padraig O’Neil

  Sadiq Khan

  Robert Bellini

  She came and stood close by my side. She ran her finger down the names.

  “Even if you have a church yard to bury them in, it takes some organizing to make fourteen people disappear from the face of the Earth.”

  I nodded. “Mick knew how to make friends in high places.”

  “You remember when we investigated the Nelson Hernandez murder, when we found Mick’s body?”

  “Mm-hm…”

  “I always had the feeling that Pro and the Jersey Mob were being informed of what we were doing.”

  I nodded. “I had that feeling, too. And it wasn’t only Jennifer.” I placed my finger next to hers on the last name on the list. She said, “‘H’.”

  I looked at her. “Yeah, ‘H’.”

  FOURTEEN

  Dehan still had her car at my place. We drove in silence through the gathering dusk as the lights started to come on in the city. Headlamps glowed and shop fronts spilled amber onto the sidewalks, while everything that was not illuminated in some way turned gray and grainy. As we turned off Morris Park Avenue into Haight, she said, “Can I borrow your computer for five minutes?”

  “Sure, what for?”

  “It’s just a gut feeling. Something nagging at the back of my mind.”

  I opened the door and switched on the lights. I pointed to the corner by the bow window where the computer sat on a small desk between the sofa and an armchair.

  “Help yourself. You don’t need to sign in.”

  She sat at the PC while I threw my jacket on the chair and went into the kitchen. I heard the Windows tune and said, “You want a drink?”

  She was quiet for a moment and then spoke as she typed. “What you got?”

  “Beer or whiskey.”

  She turned to look at me. She was smiling, a little surprised. “What are you going to have?”

  “I need a whiskey, it’s Irish. You want one?”

  She turned back to the computer with a small laugh. “Yeah. Can’t let you drink alone, right?”

  I poured two generous measures, carried one to the computer and sat on the sofa with the other. I pulled one of my occasional tables around, stretched out, and put my feet up. The first sip of amber fire eased my muscles and I sighed. I was aware Dehan was excited, but figured she’d tell me why when she was ready. It didn’t take long.

  She switched off the PC and came and joined me on the sofa, sitting at the far end with her back against the armrest.

  “Robert Bellini, born Roberto Bellini in Rome, Italy, is the Bishop of the Diocese of St. Mary, which includes Lafayette and Father O’Neil’s church.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Oh, Dehan, you just switched on the fan, lined up your cartload of shit and took your best shot, didn’t you?”

  I opened my eyes and looked at her.

  She grinned. “I figure, if you’re going to make a mess, may as well make a big one. Cheers, Big Ears.”

  I raised my glass and we drank.

  I studied the whiskey in my glass for a bit, thinking about each of our suspects in turn. I spoke to my drink.

  “Leaving aside the evidence for a moment, not that we have much to leave aside, but what we have, forget it for now. Does your gut tell you that Father O’Neil is capable of murdering fourteen people, twelve of whom are young girls and children?”

  She sipped her drink and sat staring into the middle distance, holding the drink in her mouth. After a bit, she swallowed and said, “That is so hard to answer. So many killers don’t look the part…”

  “But that’s not what I’m asking you, I am asking you what your gut tells you.”

  She shrugged and pulled a face. “My immediate reaction would have to be no. But it’s like that quote, you know the one? ‘All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.’”

  I curled my lip at my glass. “Edmund Burke. He never actually said it, but I get your point. Father O’Neil is the type to let sleeping dogs lie, and feeding dogs feast.”

  She seemed to sag suddenly. “Can I take my boots off?”

  “That depends. Did you wash your feet this month?” I closed my eyes. “How about Hagan?”

  “Funny.” I heard her boots thud on the floor and felt her feet settle on the sofa beside me. “Does my gut think he could kill fourteen people? Yes, and fourteen hundred and fourteen thousand. That guy is a sociopath, he will do anything to achieve his ends.”

  “How about getting involved in child prostitution in the first place?”

  She was quiet so long I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was staring at the carpet and chewing her lip. She met my gaze and shook her head. “My gut would say no.”

  “So Father O’Neil would get involved simply not to incur the wrath of the powerful, and Hagan would do the killing, but there is somebody missing who would act as a catalyst and actually make it happen in the first place. Somebody powerful enough to make Father O’Neil comply…”

  “And to make Hagan do the killing…”

  We stared at each other for a while. “Then there are Mick and Bishop Roberto Bellini, both of whom would have Father O’Neil dancing to their tune with no trouble. If we only had some physical evidence, something, to link one person to the girls or Sean.”

  She frowned. “Have you noticed how everybody in this case is Irish except the bishop…”

  “And Sonia Vincenzo.”

  “They are both Italian.”

  She drained her glass, slid down to rest her head on the armrest and closed her eyes. “An alliance of Catholic mobs to run child pornography? It seems a little far-fetched.”

  I drained my glass too and closed my eyes. She was right, it did seem far-fetched; everything about this case seemed far-fetched. Mick Harragan’s ghost rising from the shadows of the past, his rape of Dehan’s mother, her sworn vengeance, honestly it all seemed a bit unreal. The twelve missing children, and Sean O’Conor dressed as a tramp, murdered, lying in a dumpster while his fiancée disappeared, along with the girls, all seemed excessive, like a nightmare that keeps getting darker and crazier. And in the background, in the shadows, the massive, wild form of Conor Hagan, lowering like some diabolical spawn from Hell, and behind him, backlit by dancing red flames, the laughing form of the bishop.

  I opened
my eyes. There was gray light filtering in through the window. My right leg was numb because Dehan’s socked feet were resting on it, cutting off the blood. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open. She was snoring softly and still gripping her whiskey glass in her hands. My glass had fallen on the floor. I looked at my watch, it read six twenty.

  I carefully eased myself out from under her feet and limped to the toilet. I washed and combed my hair, and when I got back down she was still asleep, though she had changed her position.

  The phone rang while I was making coffee and bacon.

  “Frank, good morning.”

  “Is it too early, Stone? Tell me to go to Hell if it’s too early, I have no sense of time.”

  “It’s fine, Frank. I was up. I spent the night with a woman on the couch and had to get up because I had a cramp in my leg.”

  There was a long silence. “Really?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wow…”

  “Whatcha got, Frank?”

  “Fingerprints on the photographs. They were very clear and well preserved, and the same prints were on every picture. Apart from your own, there are three sets. Thumbs on the front, index, middle and ring on the back, as you would expect. By the size, they are men.”

  “You run them through IAFIS?”

  “Natch, ol’ buddy, no matches. Whoever handled those pictures is not in the system.”

  “What about the comparison?”

  “I was coming to that, it was a match. Who was it?”

  “I’ll tell you later, Frank, and thanks for rushing it. Remember to sleep. You got any rafters you can hang from there?”

  “Anybody ever tell you you were funny? They lied.”

  I hung up. Dehan was sitting up, looking at me with sleeping eyes.

  “We got prints?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s good.”

  I nodded. “It’s great. It’s a breakthrough.”

  “Did we sleep on the sofa?”

  “Don’t worry. I still respect you.”

  “You’re cooking! That’s my job.”

  “Go upstairs and have a nice, hot shower. You’ll feel better. I have something to tell you after.”