Leroy Cinque was never an attractive man. His face had been deeply pitted by smallpox and his large nose resembled a sunburned orange peel in texture and appearance. His disheveled hair looked grayer than before, and when he looked up at Jojola there was insanity hovering in his eyes. He stood and walked over to the bars, which he grabbed with both hands.
“And I looked,” he said quietly, “and behold a pale horse…” The man looked like he was about to say something more, when he clutched at his throat and fell to the floor of the cell.
“Deputy Small Hands, call for an ambulance!” Jojola shouted and fumbled for the key to the cell.
White froth mixed with flecks of blood was bubbling out of Cinque’s mouth with strange strangling noises. His eyes rolled into the back of his head as his body went stiff and then a moment later went limp.
Jojola felt for a pulse. Nothing. The froth at Cinque’s mouth remained as it was when he went limp. Not breathing. The man was dead.
“What happened?” Small Hands asked as he came up behind Jojola.
“Not sure. Looked like some sort of fit. Leroy have a history of epilepsy?”
Small Hands looked blank. “Don’t know…not that I ever heard.”
The ambulance arrived and a paramedics rushed in to check for vital signs. He shook his head. “He’s gone. Looks like maybe a massive coronary blew out the old pump.” The paramedic’s partner came back with a rolling stretcher, picked up the dead man, and left. “We’ll let you know what the coroner says.”
They had just pulled out of the parking lot when Charlie showed up on his bicycle. “Hi, Dad,” he said, watching the vehicle drive off. “What happened?”
“I don’t really know, Charlie,” Jojola said, guiding his son back to his private office. “Except that Leroy Cinque died just now.”
Charlie was quiet for a moment. “Well, at least he won’t hit his wife anymore.”
Jojola nodded. “I guess there’s that. So anyway what brings you here?”
Charlie sat down at his father’s desk on which he proudly propped two feet sheathed in brand-new Air Jordans. “So what do you think?”
“They look like they were made for you. Ought to be good for another ten, maybe twenty points a game.” Jojola was rewarded with a smile from Charlie. “Hold on a second and we’ll go home.” He pushed the play button on his telephone answering machine, wondering if he missed something in Asher’s message that might have warned him about the man’s intentions.
When Asher reached the part “If it checks out, I think we could use that to go see my friend the judge…” Jojola happened to look up at his son, who had fallen silent. Charlie’s face was pale, and he was staring at the machine.
“What is it, son?” Jojola asked, concerned, considering that a man had just dropped over dead in his holding cell, that Charlie had taken ill.
“That voice,” his son said quietly. “That’s the voice of the other man who was in the room with Tobias. He’s the one who told Tobias to call New York because you were snooping around and that the lid was…”
• • •
“…coming off the pack of fuckin’ perverts,” Jojola repeated for Marlene and Lucy that night when they met at the Sagebrush Inn.
“Well, I guess that pretty much cements that he was working for whoever it is in New York who’s trying to keep this under wraps,” Marlene said. “I doubt Tobias is going to be any help. The good doctor was ready to lawyer up just because you wanted to ask a few questions; he and Asher both seem to be afraid of whoever’s pulling the strings back east. I’d assume they’ve moved whoever it was they were worried about—maybe this big priest Charlie met and you suspect—away from St. Ignatius. It sounded like they wanted to send him to New York, but we’re not sure, and we need to know the guy’s name.”
“That’s what we’re going to try to find out,” Jojola said. He was quiet for a moment, then added, “But I’ve been thinkin’ and maybe I should do this on my own. It’s breakin’ the law, and it’s my problem.”
Marlene snorted. “After all I’ve told you, you’re worried that I might get caught breaking the law?” She shook her head. “Uh-uh, John, you don’t get to have all the fun. Besides, I think you might need some of my more…umm, unusual…skills. Now quit with the noble hero stuff, Ned Blanchet already monopolized that one up for the day. Let’s get ready.”
Lucy rose. “I want to check my email real quick before we leave,” she said and headed for her room. “I’ll wait for you two outside.”
When she was gone, Marlene picked up a large Wal-Mart bag. “Got your stuff?” she asked Jojola, who raised his army duffel. “My worldly possessions,” he replied.
“Then see you in a minute,” she said, walking into the bathroom and closing the door.
“Not exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger,” he had lamented when she came out of the bathroom…
They left the room and quickly headed down a back stairs to the parking lot, where Lucy was already behind the wheel of a truck Jojola had borrowed. The plan nearly went awry from the beginning because they couldn’t get her to stop giggling when she saw them. “You two look ridiculous,” she chortled.
When at last the indignant pair got her to get serious and drive, they left Taos and drove north to St. Ignatius. They knew that they had a problem in that the only road past the retreat was easily visible from both the front and rear entrances. They also knew from Ned that there would be guards patrolling the grounds, but he had an idea of how to enter the compound.
“It’s probably how your guy, that priest, got in and out without nobody seein’ him,” Ned had said earlier when they were formulating their plans out at the gorge. “The retreat used to be part of an old mission, built way back when this was all still part of Mexico. Anyways, apparently them old monks built themselves an escape tunnel—maybe in case the Indians overran the place—that goes from a root cellar in the main building to what looks like an old mine but is really another entrance.”
“How do you know about it?” Marlene had asked.
“I was raised on a ranch that ran cattle on the property before the church in New York bought it and fixed it all up,” he said. “I guess like most kids I was curious and checked out what I thought was a mine. I got to warn you, though, it’s not a real nice tunnel, and you’ll still have to cover fifty yards of open ground to reach it from the road.”
“I wonder how the priest pulled it off,” Jojola had asked.
Ned had pursed his lips, then said, “If he waited until after bed check at eleven, the guards get pretty relaxed. There’s really not a whole lot to do…have to admit, I’ve dozed off a couple of times myself.”
“Can’t count on it tonight,” Marlene had said. “With the run-in with Asher today, Tobias might have things stirred up a bit more than usual. He’s bound to be a little paranoid.”
Still, they’d agreed that the tunnel was their best hope for gaining access to the main building. Ned, who was more of a roving patrol at night, had volunteered to distract the guard at the front gate when he saw the truck drive past. But that still left the guard at the back gate. So before they came into view of the retreat, Jojola had Lucy stop the truck while he and Marlene hopped into the bed. “Now keep your lights on and drive slow but steady down the road past the retreat,” he said through the back window. “Keep driving up and out of sight, wait an hour and come back for us but don’t stop, just slow down.”
Jojola explained to Marlene that the tactic was an old deer-hunting trick. The animals would watch the truck’s headlights and not notice when a hunter jumped out of the back to creep up on them from another direction. “Hopefully, the diversion will work on the guards as well,” he said.
When the truck was nearly at a small ravine that Ned had told them to follow to reach the tunnel entrance, Jojola and Marlene lowered themselves from the back of the truck, took two steps, and rolled into the ditch at the side of the road.
“Well, that was fun,” Marlene whispered
rubbing a sore elbow.
“Just like James Bond,” Jojola whispered back.
“A very old, easily bruised, and no longer agile James Bond.”
“Shaken, not stirred.”
“Exactly.”
They quickly moved up the ravine and, staying low, reached the tunnel entrance without raising an alarm. Inside the entrance, they turned on their small flashlights with the red bulbs, to make it more difficult to see them in the dark, but it also gave the musty, cobwebbed tunnel an eerie ambiance.
Jojola went first, uncomfortably reminded of the tunnels he and Charlie Many Horses had hunted Vietcong in. “Sure you want to come?” he said, turning to Marlene.
“You going to stand in the way all night,” she replied, imagining what it would be like to suddenly meet a huge hairy priest in the darkness ahead.
They had to move at a crouch, trying not to worry about the loose gravel falling in from the ceiling and sides, or the occasional cobweb that clung to their faces. At last, they reached an old wooden door that opened into a root cellar as Ned had described. It was obvious at a glance that the cellar wasn’t used much, a relic that was no longer needed with the invention of refrigerators. But someone had been there in the not-so-distant past—when Jojola’s light fell on the staircase leading to the floor above, there in the dust were the imprints of giant sandals.
They paused at the top of the stairs, listening for any sounds of someone stirring. But all was quiet, and so tensing at the smallest creaking, Jojola opened the trapdoor and they found themselves in the retreat’s kitchen. Based on their discussions with Charlie and Ned, they quickly found the hallway that led to Tobias’s office.
Jojola tried the door. “Locked,” he whispered.
Marlene moved him aside and shined her light on the door handle. Reaching into a small pack she carried around her waist, she brought out a leather case that she flipped open to reveal a number of curious instruments.
Jojola chuckled quietly. “You always carry burglar tools on your vacations?”
“A lady never knows when she might need to use the bathroom, only to find out some male idiot locked the door,” she whispered back. A moment later there was a soft click and she opened the door.
Jojola moved to the desk, while Marlene went for a small safe in the corner of the room.
“Find anything?” she asked a few minutes later when he came up behind her.
“Nothing,” he said. “Charlie’s magazine but otherwise it’s almost like it’s been cleared out. A few pencils, an empty notepad, paper clips. Not a working man’s desk.”
Marlene nodded and returned to her task. She had some sort of long steel needle inserted in the tumbler. Her fingers made several sure, quick movements; then with her other hand she grabbed the latch and opened the safe. It, too, was almost empty, except for Tobias’s passport and banking receipts and a checkbook for the St. Ignatius Retreat. “If there was anything here, it looks like we’re too late,” she said, disappointed.
Jojola looked around and then tapped her on the shoulder and pointed. “Not by much,” he said. Against one wall was a paper shredder and next to it a large plastic lawn bag filled with strips of paper. He went over to the bag and was considering whether to take it with him, when Marlene whispered to him.
“Well, looky here.” She’d gone over to another office machine, the fax, and was now reading a paper she’d found there.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The key to the city,” she replied and handed him the document, which the sender had forgotten to retrieve.
It was a faxed letter that had been sent to the Archdiocese of New York, Office of the Archbishop, though no recipient’s name was attached. Jojola began to read it and felt the anger returning.
Hans Lichner…is a severely disturbed individual exhibiting antisocial tendencies, possibly psychopathic, and belongs in a secure mental health institution or, perhaps, even a prison with a psychiatric ward. I have reason to believe that he may be involved in the disappearance and murder of local children. The chief of police of the Taos Pueblo was here two weeks ago, asking about a man who fit Lichner’s physical description in connection with the disappearance of one child. I sent him on his way, but he has continued to nose around, and of late in the company of a woman named Marlene Ciampi, who you may know as the wife of the New York District Attorney. I have a hard time believing that her appearance in Taos is purely coincidental.
“I think we got what we need,” whispered Marlene, interrupting his reading. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t think he’ll miss that.”
They made it back to the tunnel and out to the road where Lucy was waiting for them without any incidents. Once in the truck, Jojola removed his stocking cap and swore. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “The archbishop of New York?”
Marlene swallowed hard. “Yeah, hard to believe,” she said quietly. She was thinking of the power they were now up against, and the ramifications for thousands, even millions of people, if this information led where it appeared to be going.
“Remember the scene in the movie Jaws, where the sheriff sees the shark for the first time and goes and tells the captain, ‘You’re going to need a bigger boat’?” she said.
“Yeah, but what…,” Jojola replied, confused by the analogy.
“Well, we’re going to need a bigger boat,” she said. “Get ready, Mr. Jojola, you’re about to be introduced to the Big Apple.”
27
“THIS IS THE PLACE,” GUMA SAID, AS IF THE FLASHING PINK-AND-PURPLE neon sign proclaiming Hip-Hop Nightclub on the outside of the former warehouse wasn’t enough. Or the pulsing beat that was already giving Karp a headache although they were standing on the sidewalk a good ten feet from the entrance.
In fact, the whole day had been a headache, if not an unexpected one. Stupenagel’s story, of course, had been the talk of the town and started the initial throbbing in his temples. He actually thought that she’d done a balanced job of reflecting life in the DA’s office, as well as accurately portraying his day at the Harlem church, including the confrontation with Bernard Little, and their discussions about why he was considering running for office. He was a little uncomfortable with the part in the story about his mom—not because it wasn’t true and hadn’t affected him the way he’d described, but because he felt as though he’d exposed some vulnerable part of himself.
Murrow had certainly been pleased, walking into the office with an armload of the Voice he’d looted from one of the sidewalk racks, and babbling about “a tour de force.” However, there was no denying the fact that much of the article read in some ways like a bad detective novel with missing priests, bodies buried in a public park, and a prosecution witness washing up on the rocks at Hell’s Gate.
The kicker, of course, was that “according to highly placed sources, the New York District Attorney’s Office is investigating allegations of a widespread cover-up of misconduct and criminal acts committed by officers and detectives of the New York Police Department. The cover-up has apparently cost taxpayers millions of dollars in hush money paid to victims and victims’ families. And the scheme has, according to the sources, been going on for at least a dozen years and may eventually implicate the administrations of two previous district attorneys, Sanford Bloom and Jack X. Keegan.”
Stupenagel had not been able to reach Bloom, who had been transferred out of state to serve his sentence, due to threats made against his life by other inmates. She had contacted Keegan at the federal courthouse down the block from 100 Centre Street, but he had declined to comment. “Except,” he said, “to say that this whole thing smacks of crude political maneuvering. I’m sure any legitimate investigation will show that there were no such improprieties involving the office of the district attorney, at least not on my watch.”
Seeing the name of his former boss in the newspaper, the man who’d recommended him as his replacement, had been more of a shock to Karp than he’d anticipated. He knew that eventually
any probe into the No Prosecution files would have to examine the conduct of the DA’s office, but having it in black and white reminded him of the caller’s warning that exposing this sore was bound to garner repercussions from men in high places.
They’d already started with a call first thing that morning from an obviously perturbed Jack Keegan. “What’s this crap, Butch?” he demanded. “Trying to run for office by stepping on my back?”
“No one in this office has accused anybody of anything,” Karp replied. “We’re just following up on some allegations…as I’m sure you would have done.” It hurt his stomach to say that last part, but it had come tumbling out of his disappointment in the man. “I have always respected you, Jack, and you should know me well enough to realize that it’s not my style to advance myself by stepping on someone else’s back.”
“Styles change,” Keegan growled. “Politics and power do funny things to people.”
You’re a fine one to talk, Karp thought. “Well, let’s see how this plays out,” he said. “It’s probably nothing. I have passed the word to my staff that any further news leaks will be dealt with appropriately.”
“Yeah, well, just remember who got you into that office and behind that desk,” Keegan warned. “That little bit about this maybe implicating folks in the government and politics has a lot of important people stirred up, Butch. I’d think real hard before I opened every can of worms in the cupboard.”
Keegan was talking about an unauthorized statement in Stupenagel’s story that she had apparently slipped in after Murrow’s review. It said that the investigation might eventually implicate “well-known and powerful figures in city government and in the political arena.” He’d been upset that she went behind his back on that one, but Keegan’s thinly veiled threat now made him glad she did. After all, if the goal is to smoke out the bad guys, she’d certainly put a match to the gasoline. He wondered what the reaction had been over at Plucker, Bucknell and Kane, and if the next mayor of New York was the important person Keegan was referring to.
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