by Blake Banner
I weighed it up in my mind for a moment, made a decision, and said, “We are looking into his murder, Father.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus…” He crossed himself and said a quick prayer. “I had a feeling… When he just disappeared like that, with no explanation, it was just, not like him.”
I waited. I felt Dehan glance at me. Finally, I said, “The cases, Father? We believe one of the cases he was working on might have had something to do with his death.”
Mrs. Doyle came in carrying a tray and set it on a table by the window. She smiled at me as though she’d done something naughty but she knew I was going to let her off with a light spanking, and said, “Now, who’s going to have nice cup of tea, and some fresh biscuits? My own recipe—you can’t say no!”
We all agreed we couldn’t and she took her sweet time distributing the fruits of her labor. When she left, Father O’Neil smiled beatifically after her and said, “Truly, I do not know what I would do without that woman.”
Dehan dunked her biscuit as though she was trying to drown it and said, “Did Sean ever confide in you, Father, regarding any of the cases he was involved in just before his disappearance?”
He heaved a huge sigh.
I said, “I am beginning to get the impression, Father, that this is a subject you are uncomfortable discussing.”
He grimaced at his tea, like he didn’t really want it. “Of course you are quite right, Detective Stone, and I must apologize. The matter is not as simple as it might seem.”
“What is it that makes it complicated?” I asked the question, but I was pretty sure I knew what the answer was going to be. He didn’t disappoint me.
“The Irish community in the Bronx, in New York as a whole, is a complex one. There are many loyalties, and occasionally those loyalties come into conflict…”
Dehan said, “Can we move from generalities to specifics, Father?”
“Yes. He did confide in me, and seek my guidance, regarding some of the cases in which he was engaged. Especially those cases he took on which were on behalf of the needy.”
“Is there any case in particular that he mentioned at that time, that you felt might have threatened his life?”
He looked sick and drained. “The Tiffany Street squat. Sean was brave to the point of recklessness. If he saw just one person suffering injustice, he had to act. He had to do something.”
There was an edge to Dehan’s voice. “Is there something wrong with that?”
“Of course not, except that life is rarely that simple. Conor Hagan is a very powerful, and dangerous man. I am sure you are well aware of him, and what he is capable of.” He gave a small laugh and nodded several times. “What people are less aware of is the good he does for the Irish community. Things are very rarely black and white, Detective Dehan.”
“Putting people on the street doesn’t sound much like benefiting the community. Or were they not Irish?”
He glanced at her resentfully. “Some of them were indeed Irish. Others were Mexican. There were people of all colors and races. But that was not the point. The point was that Conor Hagan was going to develop that plot for the benefit of the community. Perhaps he was not following the letter of the law, and perhaps people would have been made temporarily homeless…”
“In January, in New York.”
“Indeed, but left to his own way of doing things, Conor would have made sure that those people he evicted were taken care of. But Sean, he had to play Galahad. He had to go charging in, and upset the apple cart.” He saw the way we were looking at him and made a hasty retreat. “Don’t get me wrong. I had the greatest admiration for Sean, and for everything he wanted to do. I just felt he might have gone about it in a more… circumspect way.”
“It seems,” I said, before Dehan could get in, “that you are suggesting that Conor Hagan might have killed Sean O’Conor, or at least had him killed.”
His face went crimson and he began to laugh. “Well now, steady on! That is not in fact what I said.”
“What are you saying, Father?”
“What I’m saying is that, the way Sean went charging in, where Angels fear to tread, was liable to upset somebody, sooner or later.”
Dehan snapped, “So he had it coming?”
“That is not what I meant!”
“I’ll tell you what I think, Father O’Neil,” I said. “I think that you are being vague and evasive because you don’t want to go charging in where angels fear to tread. But I am going to be very clear with you, Father. If you are withholding evidence in a murder investigation in order to protect a killer, I will come gunning for you. And you may not believe it, but I am a much more dangerous man than Conor Hagan. Because if Conor Hagan is guilty of this murder, I will take him down, and if you conceal evidence, I will take you down, too.” I leered. “And believe me, if Hagan goes to prison, you really don’t want to be in there with him.”
He had both hands up, like I was pointing a gun at him. “Steady, lad! Slow down! This is getting a little out of hand. I never said I would not cooperate with you. I was simply trying to make you appreciate the complexity of the situation!”
“I appreciate the complexity of the situation. What I need to know now is whether Sean had received any concrete threats, if anybody from Hagan’s organization had contacted him and told him to leave the case alone… was there anything specific that made Sean fear for his life?”
He thought about it for a long time, chewing his lip. Finally, he said, “A couple of days before he disappeared, he came to me and told me that he had received a number of threatening phone calls telling him to leave the case alone or face the consequences.”
“Did he recognize the voice?”
“He didn’t say so, but he was in no doubt that it was Hagan.”
Dehan said, “And when he went missing, it never occurred to you to inform the police?”
He shook his head. “To be honest, I thought he had run off. I thought it had finally dawned on him that he had gone too far…”
Dehan said, “Gone too far? What does that mean?”
He flopped back in his chair. He was obviously embarrassed at his own cowardice. “Too far means, Hagan is much more than a man. If you put Conor or any of his henchmen in prison, there will be ten more behind him to take his place. And if he warns you off and you don’t heed the warning at the time, you will be punished, and it’s no good heeding the warning later. That’s too late. If you do not toe the line, you will be punished.”
Dehan’s voice was scathing. “Does that apply to priests as well?”
He snapped, “Yes! And police officers!”
I said, “Good to know. So you thought that Sean had finally seen the light, but too late, and done a runner. What made you think that?”
He shrugged. “Well, there was no reason to believe any harm had come to him. If he had been hurt, there would have been some news, or a report or something, or a message from his parents. Also, didn’t his fiancée go missing at the same time! I assumed they’d run off together.”
Dehan sat forward. “Just so I can get this clear in my mind, Father, do I understand…” She shook her head and started again. “Are you telling us that when your parishioners come to you and ask you for guidance because they are being bullied, abused and threatened by gangsters, you advise them to toe the line, look the other way and keep quiet?”
His face flushed and suddenly he looked mad. “Well, what do you suggest I tell them, Detective? To go to the police? Because for your information, a good number of you are on Hagan’s payroll and I, personally, have never accepted money or gifts from him, but if I ever oppose him or confront him, it will not be I who suffers! It will be them, the parishioners. He has made that abundantly clear to me, and that was what I tried to make Sean understand!”
I sat forward. “Well, it wasn’t the parishioners who paid, Father O’Neil, it was Sean. And you did get news, only you didn’t realize it.”
“What are you talking about?”
<
br /> “Do you remember a tramp, a vagrant, whose body was found in a dumpster at the end of the road at the very same time that Sean went missing?”
His mouth dropped and he stared from me to Dehan and back again. “Don’t… Surely you’re not telling me…”
I nodded. “We won’t take up any more of your time, Father. But before we go, did you say his fiancée went missing at the same time?”
“I assumed they had eloped together.”
“What was her name? I’d like to try and trace her.”
He heaved a big sigh and sank back in his chair. “Poor child, I suppose now this means… Sweet Jesus, it doesn’t bear thinking about…”
“Her name, Father?”
“I’m trying to remember.” He looked me in the eye. “Alice. Alicia Flores.”
Dehan said, “Alicia Flores Delgado?”
He stared at her. “Yes, that’s her. Did you know her? Are you from this neighborhood? You do look familiar.”
“Yeah, I’m from the hood.” She didn’t sound friendly when she said it.
I asked him, “Do you have a phone number or an address for her parents or next of kin?”
He went to rise but Dehan said, “I know where they live.”
I stood. “Thank you, Father, you have been very helpful. We may need to talk to you again.”
He spread his hands and gestured at the building around him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He saw us to the door and we stepped out into the gathering dusk.
FIVE
We drove in silence along Bruckner Boulevard as far as Castle Hill Avenue and then turned left over the bridge and stopped at Jimmy’s. All the way she was trying not to scowl, although all the way she scowled.
The evening crowd wasn’t in yet and we found a quiet table near the corner. As we moved toward it, I called to Jimmy and held up two fingers, like the peace sign. When the beers arrived and Jimmy had left, I said, “You going to tell me what’s going on?”
She did that thing where she gave her head a couple of small shakes and made a ‘no idea what you’re talking about’ face while avoiding eye contact. I persisted.
“Is it something I said or did that has annoyed you?”
This time she looked down at her drink, shook her head and made a ‘no that’s ridiculous’ face.
“Is it something related to the case?”
She closed her eyes and sighed.
“Then you have to tell me, Dehan.”
“So you can take me off the case?”
I drank and wiped the foam from my mouth with the back of my hand. “Only if it impairs your ability to perform your duty.” She drew breath but before she could speak I went on, “And if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’ll have no choice but to conclude it has impaired your ability, because you will be keeping relevant information from me. Tell me what’s on your mind, and trust me to make the right choice, Carmen.”
She scowled, curled her lip and spoke through gritted teeth. “You’re so feckin’ reasonable!”
“Ah, Jaysus! Isn’t that the truth after all! Now, spill.”
She heaved another sigh, leaned back in her chair and stared me in the eye. “Alicia Flores Delgado was my cousin.”
She watched me while I stared at my beer, then at the wall and then out the window, where the air was turning from dusk to dark. Finally, I asked her, “Did you know that Sean was her fiancée? Before?”
She shook her head. “No, we were very close as kids, but as we got older,” she shrugged, “she got involved in the church… that wasn’t my scene.”
I believed her. “Is there anything else? Anything you’re not telling me?”
She thought about it, then shook her head again. “No.”
I leaned forward and stared hard at her. “I want you to keep me in the loop every inch of the way, you understand me?”
“Yeah, of course.” She nodded.
I shook my head. “No, not ‘of course’. I mean it, as your partner and as your friend. Do you understand me?”
Her face changed. She looked grateful, though she tried to hide it.
“Yeah, I understand you. Thanks.”
I sucked my teeth for a moment, reflecting that this case was becoming complicated. His hair and nails had told me it would from the start, but this I had not anticipated and I was wondering where to start.
“What did you mean, she ‘was’ your cousin?” It was as good a place as any.
She kind of shrugged with one shoulder and shook her head. “You’d have to know Alicia. She was…” She searched for the right words and suddenly expostulated, “She was everything I am not! She was the quintessential good girl. She was sweet, always ready with a smile, good-natured, could never do enough to help…” She paused, holding my eye. She looked real sad. “And she would never—not in a thousand years—she would never just up and go without telling her family where she was going. It just isn’t credible. Her family was everything to her, and if she hasn’t contacted them, it’s because she can’t…”
She left the words hanging, ugly with meaning.
“I can see why Hagan would want Sean O’Conor out of the way. Hell, I can see that it would be an imperative for him to make an example of Sean. But Alicia?” I thought about it and Dehan, nodding, spoke my thoughts. “Alicia would only make sense if Sean was still alive.”
“Exactly. Her only value to Hagan is as leverage with Sean, or as a way of punishing him.”
She sighed. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. The Irish Mob are about as tough as they get, but they have a reverence for family, and for women. A good Catholic girl like that, active in the church… I don’t see it.”
She was right. “We need to talk to Alicia’s family.”
She shifted her position, leaned back and crossed her long legs at the ankle on the side stretcher of my chair. She nodded absently and said, “So what are we saying, then? Sean O’Conor has a Galahad complex. He gets involved in the charitable work at St. Mary’s, and at the same time gets into this Drop In Center, offering pro bono legal representation. He decides to take a swing at the big guy, Conor Hagan. Conor executes him, for some reason he dresses him as a tramp and throws him in one of his own dumpsters, right by the church. Maybe it was a message to the local population. And then…”
She went into a kind of daze, staring at her boots.
I said, “Maybe she committed suicide?”
She pulled a face. “Where’s the body?”
“Jumped off the Bruckner Expressway into the river?”
“Without being seen?”
A human body is not an easy thing to lose, or to hide, especially when it’s dead. Live humans are a lot easier to conceal and camouflage. Dead ones just keep doing embarrassing, awkward things like decomposing, smelling, and generally looking out of place. It is very difficult for a dead body simply to vanish. Which was what Alicia seemed to have done.
“Also,” I said, “Why leave Sean in full view, and dispose of Alicia so that no one will find her?”
As I said it, I knew that was an important question, and by the way Dehan looked at me, she did too.
I held up the fingers of my left hand and enumerated.
“First, tomorrow morning we go and visit Alicia’s parents, set that up tonight if you can. Second, after that, we pay a visit to Conor Hagan, see what he has to say about the Tiffany Street squatters. Third, we go through the contents from Sean’s room with a fine-toothed comb. There is something here we are missing.”
She pointed at me like she was going to shoot me with her finger.
“Different motives, but it would be too bizarre for it to be coincidence. So, same killer, same overall crime, but different personal motives.”
I nodded. It made sense.
I had been expecting it. So when I was awakened from my sleep by the incessant ringing on my doorbell, I wasn’t surprised or alarmed. I groped for my keys in my pants pocket and leaned out the window. It was cold and s
till dark. The sun wouldn’t be up for another half hour at least. Dehan was doing her cold weather dance and grinned at me. “They are early risers,” she said.
I threw the key down to her and groped my way to the bathroom.
As was her custom, when I got downstairs she was frying bacon and eggs and making coffee. I sat at the kitchen table.
“Did you sleep?”
She gave her head a quick shake. “No.”
The toast popped. She buttered it and shoveled bacon from the pan onto the plate with a spatula. Then she broke the eggs into the pan.
“When we were small, we were like sisters, always in and out of each other’s houses. Her parents didn’t care that my dad was a Jew.”
I blinked. These were big issues for before coffee. But she didn’t need an answer, now she was shoveling eggs.
“These days, Jews and Christians are uniting against Islam, a common enemy, but not so long ago Catholics hated Jews about as much as Muslims do.”
She put two huge plates of eggs and bacon on toast on the table. She had even found some mushrooms and fried those too. She went back for two cups and the coffee pot. She was still talking.
“But Alicia’s parents weren’t like that. Gregorio and Marcela. They were good people, you know what I mean?” She sat and attacked her food with a kind of determination to get the job done. “And I was thinking about that all night. How do you know a person is good? I mean, really good?” She glanced at me as she stuffed food into her mouth. It didn’t stop her talking. “I meam, whadish goom, righ?”
“What is good?”
She nodded. I sipped my coffee, hoping it would give me strength, and speared a rasher of bacon. She swallowed, as though she was getting the food out of the way of her stream of thoughts.
“Yeah. Nobody has ever been able to define good or evil. It’s one of those things, like love. You can’t define it. But we know, don’t we, when a person is good. We know when they are false, hypocrites, on an ego trip—and we know when they are genuinely good.” She waved her knife at me. “Me? I’m just confused. You, you’re basically a good guy who is smart and has learnt to be careful. Gregorio, Marcela, and Alicia, they were genuine good people.”