Charisma

by Orania Papazoglou

  “What worries me,” he told Tom, even though it wasn’t what worried him at all, “isn’t so much the accusations themselves. You’ve built up a lot of emotional capital in this town—”

  “Is that what it is, emotional capital?”

  “Public support,” John Kelly said, flushing, feeling he’d said the wrong thing again. “If these were financial accusations, I wouldn’t be worried in the least. But child abuse—”

  “Yes, John? What about child abuse?”

  “Well. Oh, for God’s sake, Tom, what do you think? Don’t you remember Bruce Ritter?”

  “Of course I remember Bruce Ritter. He was the one who managed to end up getting lynched by his own Church.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” John Kelly shot up and started pacing himself, even though he hated to pace. “Will you please see reason? What the hell else was the Church supposed to do? What if—?”

  “What if Father Ritter actually did the things he was accused of doing? Maybe he did. We’ll never know.”

  “But Tom—”

  “Three investigations, all done internally by Church authorities. A report whose presentation of evidence was damn near nonexistent. A lot of government investigations suddenly dropped—”

  “That’s better than what could have happened. The government investigations could have kept going. Why can’t you see it’s much better like this? There’s no—no record—no—”

  “No trial?”

  “A trial—” John Kelly felt as if he were choking. No, he knew he was choking. He was suffocating.

  “I think you’d better understand something, Father. If it comes to me, I will demand a trial. I will demand it publicly. You’re right when you say I’ve built up a lot of public support. Some of that support is with the media. We can talk about this all you want. I will talk about this all you want, but you’d better understand this: I will not put up with being treated as Bruce Ritter was treated. I will not retire to a monastery. I will not keep my mouth shut when reporters come around. I will not cooperate in internal investigations which issue reports full of bland declarations that supposedly discovered ‘evidence’ that would not hold up in any court of law—”

  “That’s not true,” John put in desperately. “They didn’t do that. The child abuse thing is—”

  “What?” Tom Burne said. “Entirely different?”

  “The rules are different.” John settled sullenly into his chair. “You must know that by now, Tom. Even the Supreme Court says—”

  “Yes,” Tom said softly, “I know what the Supreme Court says. We can tear up the Constitution, deny a defendant the right to discovery, deny a defendant the right to confront his accusers, turn the whole damn legal system into a career mill for men like Daniel Murphy—because child abuse is different. Trust me, John, I know child abuse is different.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do,” John said. “I don’t know what you want anybody to do. What the hell good is it going to do you to go to trial?”

  “It depends on what I go to trial for.” Tom had settled back, the distance once more in evidence, the calm like a ghost’s shroud covering him from hair to shoes. John Kelly found himself once again shifting uneasily in his chair. He didn’t understand a man who could get so worked up over abstractions—constitutional law, for God’s sake, at a time like this—and remain so unaffected by hard reality.

  “I still don’t know what you want me to do,” he said. “I still don’t understand what you think you’re getting at.”

  “I don’t suppose you do.” Tom Burne nodded. “The thing is, John, I don’t think Dan Murphy is going to try to stick me with child abuse.”

  “You don’t?”

  “There are too many problems with it. Too many people still feel as if Bruce Ritter was jobbed—too many people didn’t like the way that whole thing was handled. Too many people out there are susceptible to conspiracy theories.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “Whatever else Bruce Ritter may or may not have done, he was one of the most effective campaigners against the kiddie porn industry this country has ever seen. There are a lot of people who think that maybe what happened to him was that mob-connected types decided they didn’t like the way he was interfering in their business—”

  “That’s not—”

  “True?” Tom Burne said. “No, you’re right, most likely it’s not true. But if I’m right, and if what Dan Murphy is after here is a shot at the governor’s mansion, it doesn’t matter if the same thing is not true here. The mere suspicion of it is a taint.”

  “So?”

  “So.”

  Tom Burne moved forward and took the paper off the desk. John thought he was going to go to the story about himself, maybe point out a paragraph that John had naturally missed, since he hadn’t read the thing. Instead, he flipped through the front section to an interior page, folded the paper into a neat thick quarter, and handed it back.

  “Upper-left-hand side,” he said. “Tell me what you think of that.”

  The small headline on the upper lefthand side said, BOY FOUND IN RIVER EXPECTED TO LIVE. John Kelly stared at it in confusion.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. And then he felt he’d said that so often, it ought to end up engraved on his tombstone.

  Tom Burne took the paper back. “The boy in question is named Stevie Marks. Not his real name, by the way. You never know their real names. Stevie Marks is ten years old. He’s a prostitute.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a prostitute,” Tom Burne repeated. “Maybe I should say he was. A very well-kept prostitute, by the way. One of the boys who gets used by the upper-income types for kicks. He’s the third they’ve found.”

  “In the river?”

  “Shot. In the back of the head. According to Pat Mallory, the other two boys died of what looks on the surface to be gangland-style execution shootings. With this one, whoever it was got sloppy. The shot didn’t go right. The kid lived.”

  “What has this got to do with you?”

  “I don’t know. That’s one of the things I want you to do for me. Check around. Talk to Dan Murphy. Find out if he put his sister up to volunteering at Damien House.”

  “What?”

  Father Tom Burne, John Kelly decided, had a smile like a snake. He always looked so damned pleased to watch you fold.

  Chapter Two

  1

  FOR PAT MALLORY, THE woman who answered the door at Damien House that morning of December 17 was a mixed blessing. He had met her before, right here in the Damien House living room, when she was visiting with one of her brothers. He had liked her, in a not very focused way, and thought she was attractive. The truth of it was, she was very attractive, in spite of all those years locked up in what was a very conservative order of nuns. Some women coming out of the convent were oddly flat. Their hair didn’t work right. Their makeup ended up looking like paint. Even women who belonged to orders that allowed them to live in lay clothes never seemed to get the hang of looking like civilians. Except for her silence and her reserve, this one might never have been a nun at all. He didn’t know if that was a good sign.

  The problem, of course, was that she had another brother, not the Andy she had come down here with—and that brother was Dan Murphy.

  He looked her over anyway, automatically, because men did that to women. They learned it in high school and never were able to shake the habit. Then he held his breath and waited for the blasting sermon on sexism he got from so many ex-nuns. It didn’t come.

  He was standing under the porch light in the cold, with the wind whipping across his bare neck and his knuckles feeling frozen inside his gloves. She stepped back and let him inside, one arm crossed over the bulky sweater that covered her from shoulders to knees. He looked down and saw that she was in socks but without shoes.

  “Splinters,” he said, pointing down.

  She smiled. “I’m not worried about splinters. I’ve be
en trying not to scratch these floors any more than they’ve been scratched. They’re made of what’s really beautiful old wood.”

  “I don’t think anybody has the time to notice.”

  “Maybe not. You’re Patrick Mallory, aren’t you? I met you here a couple of weeks ago. I’m Susan Murphy.”

  “I remember.”

  “You remember because of my brother Dan. Father Tom isn’t here, you know. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to put you.”

  They both looked from side to side, then up and down. Living room, door to kitchen. Stairs and floor. Crucifix and mirror. The whole house was lit up, but this part of it was oddly empty. Pat could hear sounds coming from the back, where the kitchen and the two small bathrooms were. He thought there were also bathrooms upstairs, but he wasn’t sure.

  “Well,” he said. “I suppose we should go to the kitchen. I could use a cup of coffee. I could use a few people to talk to, too.”

  Susan looked toward the kitchen and bit her lip. “A lot of people don’t know she’s gone yet. I mean, they know she’s not around. They can see that. But they don’t know she’s gone. Father Tom felt, with all the murders, people would jump to conclusions.”

  “They’re probably jumping to conclusions anyway.”

  “Maybe. But some of the kids are only six or seven years old. I know they’ve seen a lot, but still—”

  “How come you know?” he asked her. “You can’t have been around long enough to make it into Father Tom’s inner circle.”

  She had been looking everywhere but at him—deliberately, Pat thought—and now she took a pack of cigarettes out of her jeans and bent her head over her preparations to smoke. She had her blue Bic lighter turned up too high. The flame shot out of it, a long stream of fire in the air, nearly singeing her nose. She got the cigarette lit anyway, dragged on it, and blew out a stream of smoke. Pat Mallory found himself wondering why so many of the ex-nuns he knew got addicted to nicotine.

  “The thing is,” Susan Murphy said, “I had to know. I mean, I was sharing a room with her last night.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “That’s right. It was a kind of test, I think. I’m never sure what Father Tom is up to. I was here yesterday morning.”

  “All right.”

  “I don’t know why I came, yesterday morning, I mean. I was just here. Then I went home for lunch, and Dan was there—my brother is—”

  “I know who your brother is, Miss Murphy. I think we went through this the last time.”

  “Yes. Anyway, the news came over the radio about the investigation of Father Burne, and I came back.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. I think I got a little crazy and refused to leave.”

  “You think?”

  Another drag. Another stream of smoke. Blue eyes and black hair. “Do you know they have mini-retreats here, the way we used to give in the convent schools? Four or five hours of praying and edification and then a night under discipline of silence. I used to think that was strange even in the old days.”

  “You did that here, last night?”

  Inhale, exhale, tap ash. “I remember wondering if it had been Marietta’s idea. If she wanted a little peace and quiet for once. They’ve—we’ve—got fourteen girls up there. Most of the time it’s probably like a nonstop pajama party.”

  “Did Marietta leave before the silence started, or after?”

  “Before. We were just starting a rosary. She left that for me to do. She didn’t really trust me to do much of anything else.”

  “So she came downstairs while the girls were saying a rosary. She didn’t come back up again.”

  Susan Murphy shook her head. “No, she didn’t. I suppose I should have raised the alarm—I’ve been kicking myself all morning for not raising the alarm—but I didn’t think anything of it. Last night at dinner, Father Tom was saying how when a kid came to the door, whoever let him in was supposed to stop everything to take care of him. Everything. You weren’t even supposed to go to the bathroom. I just thought—”

  “A kid had come to the door.” Pat Mallory nodded. For all he knew, a kid had come to the door. He had been working in New Haven too long to believe in the innocence of street children.

  The smoke from Susan Murphy’s cigarette was curling up through her great mass of hair, creating a fog that he didn’t find unpleasant. Usually, some atavistic part of him rebelled at the sight of women who smoked. For some reason, he actually liked it on her. He just wished she would relax, instead of twitching and looking away. He was in and out of Damien House all the time. Half the police force was, because Damien House was the best place to bring the kids they found sleeping on the Green and under the stairways of abandoned buildings all winter long. He wasn’t used to having to be nervous here.

  “Look,” he said, “there must be someone around who knows something, someone I could talk to. I can’t do anything to help unless I get more information.”

  “Father Burne—”

  “Father Burne went to see the auxiliary bishop,” he said patiently. “He told me he was going to on the phone. Under the circumstances, that could take hours.”

  “I know,” Susan said, “but—”

  “Look,” Pat said again, “what about Francesca? Francesca’s usually around somewhere—”

  “I know where Francesca is,” Susan said. She looked around the foyer, as if she expected the older woman to materialize, and then seemed to make up her mind about something. “You go into the living room,” she told Pat. “I’ll get her and send her out to you. As long as I don’t bring you into the kitchen, no one can accuse me of not thinking about the children. That’s where most of them are this hour of the morning.”

  “But—”

  She shook her head at him and walked away, moving like a nun.

  2

  “The problem,” Francesca said, after she had scooped him out of the living room, deposited him at the kitchen table in spite of Susan’s Father Tom-inspired worries about traumatizing the children, and handed him a cup of coffee, “is that there’s just so many places we can search. I don’t mean there’s just so many places she could be. You could hide a townful of bodies out there in those vacant lots. But searching—”

  “It wouldn’t make much sense to find Marietta just to get yourself killed.”

  “Mugged, anyway,” Francesca said. “According to the kids, some new drug hit the street about four days ago. I didn’t need them to tell me. There’s been a rash of robberies from one end of the Congo to the other and we had our Virgin stolen again. I hate it when our Virgin gets stolen. The lady who gives them to us gets absolutely infuriated, and she always takes it out on Father Tom.”

  As far as Pat Mallory was concerned, everybody took everything out on Father Tom, as a matter of principle. He thought about Dan Murphy’s investigation and flushed.

  “Tell me what happened last night,” he said, “as far as you can figure. Tell me about Susan Murphy.”

  Francesca’s eyes went to the door. Susan had gone out to dump some trash. He and Francesca seemed to be the only people who noticed her absence. The kitchen was full of kids eating breakfast standing up, but they not only had no time for Susan Murphy, they had no time for Francesca and Pat.

  Francesca poured herself half a cup of coffee, and filled the other half with nondairy creamer. “Oh, Susan,” she said. “Well, she’s here. She showed up yesterday afternoon—”

  “I thought it was morning.”

  “I heard something about morning. Don’t ask me that. You know how I am about mornings. All I know for sure is, she showed up yesterday afternoon, right after the news came out, and she was very upset. Whether it was real or fake, I couldn’t tell you.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Real. But Father Tom thought it was fake.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, she’s Dan Murphy’s sister, isn’t she? And let me tell you, whatever that man is doing, it’s stranger t
han it looks on the surface. I know what child sexual abuse cases look like, Pat, I was a social worker. This is—”

  “What?”

  Francesca shrugged. “Father Tom says it’s because the boy is so much older than accusers usually are in these cases. Did you know Dan’s office had a boy?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Pat said. He turned it over in his head a few times. It didn’t make sense. “How could he have? Do you mean one of the boys from Damien House walked over to Dan Murphy’s office, or some police station—”

  “No, that’s exactly what I don’t mean. Do you remember what happened to Bruce Ritter?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Everybody does, I suppose. Well, if you ask me, what’s fishy about all of this is that it’s happening in exactly the same way. This boy is grown now, or nearly. Theoretically—and notice I said theoretically—he went to Dan and said that, I don’t know, years ago, Father Tom molested him. Then his mother showed up in John Kelly’s office and said it was all a crock—just like with that boy who accused Bruce Ritter and his own father said he was an habitual liar.”

  “Maybe the kid read the reports in the papers on the Ritter case. Maybe he thought that’s the way things were supposed to be done.”

  “Crap,” Francesca said. “That’s utter trash and you know it. Most of these kids can barely read, and that one—I remember that one. I’ve been here forever. What most of us think around here is, Dan read the newspaper reports on the Ritter case, and Dan set it up.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” Francesca’s coffee cup was empty again. This time, so was the thermos she had brought to the table. Pat watched her get up and walk to the counter where another pot was brewing, pour her cup half full, fill the thermos. She was moving slowly and painfully, showing her age for the first time Pat could remember.