The Big Bad City

by McBain, Ed

  There was something so familiar about the gesture.

  … he brought his hand up and put it on top of the girl’s head, just rested it on top of her head. Watching them, Sonny remembered a time long ago when he had a little sister who’d fallen down and skinned her knee and he’d put his big hand on top of her head just the way Carella was doing with the girl down there in the park, gentling her, soothing her, and he knew all at once that this girl was Carella’s younger sister, same as Ginny had been his younger sister.

  He didn’t know why he was all at once trembling.

  He got to his feet, and looked once more down the grassy slope. Carella was taking his sister in his arms now, both of them standing there still as stone, crying maybe, Sonny couldn’t tell. Crying maybe for the father he’d killed, maybe crying for him.

  He ran off down the other side of the grassy slope, away from the scene below, looking for the green Honda where he’d parked it, thinking I got to do this soon, I got to do this fucking thing soon.

  Carella asked the long distance operator for time and charges before he placed his call to California. This was police business and he was but a poor overworked, underpaid servant of the law who hoped to be reimbursed if he put in a chit. It was eight o’clock here in the East, and they had just finished eating dinner. Out there in San Luis Elizario, it was five P.M.; he hoped convent nuns didn’t start their evening meal early. He hoped they weren’t still at vespers or something. He hoped Sister Carmelita Diaz, the major superior of the Order of Sisters of Christ’s Mercy was well-rested after her long journey from Rome the day before. He hoped God had whispered in her ear the name of the person who had killed Mary Vincent. Or Kate Cochran, as the case might be.

  “Hello?” she said. “Detective Carella?”

  “Yes, how are you, Sister?”

  “Oh, fine,” she said. “A bit of jet lag, but otherwise very good.”

  There was only the faintest trace of Spanish accent in her voice. For some reason, he visualized a large woman. Tall, big-boned, wide of girth. Wearing the traditional black habit of the order, the way Sister Beryl had at the Riverhead convent. He thought he could hear birds chirping out there in California. He imagined a Spanish-style structure, all stucco and tiles, arches and parapets, a cream-colored edifice, a monument to God built on the edge of the sea.

  “Am I hearing birds?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes, all sorts of birds, you’d think St. Francis was here on a visit.”

  He dared not ask how old she was. Her voice sounded quite young and robust. Again, he imagined a large woman, perhaps in her early forties.

  “Are you by the sea?” he asked.

  “The sea? Oh no. Oh dear no. We’re in downtown San Luis Elizario, such as it is. The sea? Dear, no, the sea is forty miles away. Tell me what happened, please. We’re positively numb out here, we all knew poor Katie so well.”

  He told her she’d been killed, told her that her body had …

  “How?” she asked at once.

  “Strangled,” he said.

  … told her that Kate’s body had been found in a big park here in the middle of the city …

  “Grover,” she said.

  “Yes. You’ve been here?”

  “Many times.”

  … here in the middle of the city not far from the police station, actually. This was last Friday night, the twenty-first. He told her he’d been talking to many of her friends and associates, sisters in the order, doctors and nurses she worked with, a priest named Father Clemente …

  “Our Lady of Flowers,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “A wonderful man.”

  … but that so far they hadn’t the faintest clue as to why she’d been killed. Unless there was something about her they yet didn’t know. Something she may have revealed to Sister Diaz …

  “Oh, call me Carmelita, please,” she said. “I always feel if I have to call myself ‘Sister’ to let people know I’m a nun, then I’m not getting Christ’s message across. They should realize I’m a nun just by taking one look at me.”

  “Trouble is, I can’t see you,” Carella said.

  “I’m five-five and I weigh a hundred and sixteen pounds. I have short brown hair and brown eyes, and right now I’m smoking a cigarette and sitting in the sunshine in a small garden outside my office. Which is why you’re hearing all the bird racket. What makes you think Kate was hiding something?”

  “I didn’t suggest that.”

  “But something about her is troubling you. What is it, Detective?”

  “Okay,” he said. “We think someone may have been trying to blackmail her.”

  Carmelita burst out laughing.

  Her hearty laugh fortified the image of a large woman in a roomy habit. Five-five, he reminded himself.

  “That’s absurd,” she said. “What could anyone hope to extort from a nun?”

  Echoes of Lieutenant Peter Byrnes, thank you.

  “Then was she in debt? She seemed very concerned about money.”

  “Are you talking about her budget? I’m afraid she was always complaining about the budget. Never had enough to spend. Always asked me to loosen up a little. Give me a break here, will you, Carmelita? Let me go buy a good pair of shoes every now and then. The problem may have come from being on the outside. Each sister in the order receives a standard diocesan stipend, you see, in our case ten thousand a year. Half of that comes back here to San Luis, to support the mother house and any sisters who are retired or ill. Kate’s salary came here, too. As a licensed practical nurse, she earned almost fifty thousand a year. The mother house budgeted her according to her needs, apportioning enough for her to live on. She did take vows of poverty, you know. That doesn’t mean she had to starve. But neither does it mean she could live extravagantly.”

  “Then this wasn’t a recent thing? Her complaining about money?”

  “Hardly. For a while, though, she was used to handling her own finances. And a person develops a sort of independence on the outside.”

  Carella had missed this the first time around, but this time it registered.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “It was my understanding that she’d been a nun for the past six years. Isn’t that so?”

  “Oh yes. Entered the convent six years ago, began her training back then. Started as a postulant … well, do you know how this works, Detective?”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “The training in our order … there are many orders of Catholic sisters in the world, you see, and they all do things differently. What we all share, of course, is our devotion to Christ. As for the rest … oh dear,” she said, and he could imagine her rolling her eyes the way Annette Ryan had. “Kate’s family objected to her entering the order, you know. I’m sure they’d have taken a fit if they’d seen her going through what I call God’s boot camp …”

  It is as if Vatican II has never happened.

  The mistress of postulants is a battle-ax nun who wears her habit like armor. It is she who leads the novitiate Katherine Cochran to the barracks-like building where she will live with eighteen other women in training for the next several years. The room she enters is severe by any standards. The floor is made of wide wooden planks, the walls are a painted white stucco. There is a small window high on one wall, overlooking a garden where now—in this summer six years ago—Kate can hear much the same birds Sister Carmelita is listening to as she relates all this to a detective three thousand miles away. There is a wooden cot in the room, a thin mattress on it, and a slip-covered pillow upon which rests a simple wooden crucifix. There is a chair. There is a hanging curtain that shields a closet with a shelf and a hanging rod. There is a small dresser with a bowl and a pitcher. Throughout the night, Kate wonders if she’s done the right thing, is doing the right thing. She can hear the gentle snoring of a postulant in the cell next door. She is very far away from home. At last she dozes off. And at last it is morning somehow.

  A bell sounds, calling
to prayer the postulants and the novices and the seventy-four professed nuns who make their home in the mother house. It is not yet dawn. The sky beyond Kate’s small window is pink with morngloam. Before bedtime tonight, she will wash in the communal shower down the hall, but for now she bathes her face, hands, and underarms with a plain white bar of soap, and water she pours from the pitcher into the large white bowl. The water is cold. Although Kate may in the future choose whatever modest clothing she wishes to wear, during this intense period of discernment she dresses in the traditional habit of the order. Her uniform is a three-quarter-length black skirt and a black T-shirt from Gap, black socks, black rubber-soled shoes. On her head, she wears a black cap over which she drapes the white veil. In silence, she follows the others down the white-walled corridor to the chapel, her hands clasped.

  The mistress of postulants, whose name is Sister Clare, stands behind the altar and looks out at the young women, their eyes lowered, their heads bent.

  “Dear Lord,” she says, “open my lips.”

  Matins is the first morning prayer.

  Kate’s daily schedule is structured around prayer.

  The seven canonical hours.

  Prime comes at six A.M. Terce is at nine. Sext is said at noon. Nones is the three P.M. prayer. Vespers is the evening prayer. And compline is said before bedtime.

  Structured.

  Ritualized.

  There are strict rules here.

  Although the number of women entering religious life has been dropping steadily—Kate’s entering class numbers only eighteen as compared to a hundred and four in 1965—the intensity of OSCM training has not diminished in the slightest. Postulants may not speak to second-year novices or to any of the professed sisters, all of whom are in their fifties or sixties. They may not enter another novice’s room. They may not break the code of silence. They may not be tardy for morning prayers. They may not meet privately with another sister. They may not …

  “Well, it’s very much like boot camp,” Carmelita says, and laughs again. “But they’re learning to relinquish the material world and concentrate upon their spiritual selves. They’re learning to sacrifice joyously, for those who follow Christ receive in hundredfold.”

  For Kate, the six-month postulancy seems an eternity.

  When at last she is asked by Sister Carmelita if she indeed has a vocation, she answers, “I do, Sister.”

  “And do you feel ready to enter a year of concentrated spiritual preparation for your first vows?”

  “I am, Sister.”

  “Are you ready to dedicate yourself completely to the work of the apostolate?”

  “I am, Sister.”

  “To give up all to serve our Lord Jesus Christ …”

  “I am.”

  “… for He who clothes the lilies of the field and provides for the little sparrows cares infinitely more for the needs of His brides.”

  Kate is asked to choose a new name.

  She picks “Mary” after Christ’s mother and “Vincent,” which is her brother’s name, but also the name of one of God’s saints. When she later becomes a professed nun, she may decide for herself whether she wishes to continue using the name she chose at the beginning of her novitiate. But as she starts her instruction in the Holy Rule, and the obligations of the vows, and the spiritual life, she is Sister Mary Vincent.

  A year later, just as she is ready to take her first vows, she tells Sister Carmelita that she wishes to leave the order.

  9

  IT’S CALLED A QUALIFIED ACT OF EXCLAUSTRATION,” CARELLA SAID.

  “SOUNDS DIRTY,” BROWN SAID.

  “It’s like a leave of absence from the diocese. What it amounted to, Kate wanted to check out for a year.”

  “The Head Penguin told you this?”

  “On the phone last night.”

  “You can do that, huh? Just say, ‘Hey, I think I want to go home for a year, see you later?’ ”

  “It’s not that easy. There are complicated church laws regarding all this. From what Carmelita told me, qualified exclaustration isn’t a penalty, it’s a grace. A favor. Its purpose is to help the religious person to overcome a vocation crisis. It’s granted only when there’s a reasonable hope of recovery.”

  “Meaning they expected to get her back.”

  “Exactly. Carmelita talked it over with her cabinet, and they tried to figure out the best way they could help Kate. Who was already Mary Vincent by then, don’t forget. I wonder why she chose her brother’s name?”

  “Are they allowed to use men’s names?”

  “Carmelita says it’s okay long as they’re saints’ names. You think there are any nuns out there named Sister Peter Paul?”

  “In a mausoleum colossal,” Brown quoted, “the explorers discovered a fossil. They could tell by the bend, and the knob on the end, ’twas the peter of Paul the Apostle.”

  “You’re not a very religious person, are you?” Carella said.

  “You suppose? What else did the Top Tux have to say?”

  “She said, believe it or not, their conversations with Kate were not about getting her to stay. Instead, they were trying to support her, help her make the best possible decision. She told me lots of nuns leave the order for various reasons. They’re fed up, they’re mixed up, they’re in love, they may just want to clear out their heads.”

  “Why’d Kate want to leave all of a sudden?”

  “She wanted to be a rock singer.”

  Brown turned to look at him. The detectives were sitting side by side in proper lightweight business suits, shirts, and ties, on the 9:20 A.M. train to Philadelphia, due to arrive at the 30th Street Station at 10:42. They looked like commuting businessmen, except they didn’t have newspapers. Vincent Cochran knew they were coming. Carella had called him early this morning.

  “A rock singer,” Brown repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “A singing nun.”

  “That’s how she first got interested in the church, remember? The God-given voice?”

  “So now she wanted to leave the order …”

  “Just for a year. To take voice lessons, get a job with a band …”

  “This must’ve gone over very big with Carmelita, huh?”

  “Actually, she took it pretty calmly. Suggested Kate see a psychiatrist …”

  “That’s taking it calmly, all right.”

  “Asked her not to be hasty, explained the benefits of exclaustrauon …”

  “Still sounds dirty.”

  “… and the drawbacks. Told her there’d be documents to sign if she decided to go ahead with this, explained that the order might not accept her back if she decided to return after her year away….”

  “I thought it was a leave of absence.”

  “More or less. Carmelita struck me as a very unusual person, Artie. Almost a visionary. She felt that if Kate believed so strongly in what she wanted to do, then maybe it was what God wanted for her. A calling of another sort. This new career, this new walk of life. And if that’s what God wanted, then Carmelita was there to encourage Kate. Try it, she told her. See what happens. If you’re truly serious about singing …”

  “Rock singing?”

  “I got the feeling she’d have preferred opera. But God works in mysterious ways …”

  “So they let her go.”

  “Eventually. It took about four months before she signed off. That was in San Diego. Apparently, you have to end it in your original diocese. Kate went out on her own, started managing her own money …”

  “Money again,” Brown said.

  “… kept in touch with the convent as requested …”

  “She ever become a rock singer?”

  “The last Carmelita heard, she’d signed with a talent agent.”

  “Which one?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  “Here? L.A.?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  “Got to be one or the other. Where else are there talent agents?”<
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  “In any case, it didn’t work out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Knocked on the convent door six months after she’d left Said she’d had a conversion and seen the light, wanted to be taken back in.”

  “Big Mama must’ve been tickled to death.”

  “She was. This past June, Kate took her final vows.”

  “And now she’s dead.”

  “Now she’s dead,” Carella said. “Here’s our station.”

  It was difficult to draw a family resemblance. They had seen Kate only after she’d been murdered, her face already beginning to look bloated in the summer heat. Vincent Cochran was a tall, thin man with Kate’s blue eyes, though hers had been open and staring when first they’d seen her. He had the same blondish hair, too, though hers was disheveled and tangled after the struggle that had left her dead on a park path. Cochran looked as annoyed as he’d sounded on the telephone the first time they’d spoken to him, when he’d hung up on them, and the next time they’d spoken to him, only this morning, when he’d finally agreed to see them if they came to Philadelphia. The reason he’d acquiesced was the phone bills. Carella showed him those bills now.

  “These came from Bell Atlantic this morning,” he said. “Kate’s bills for the past month.”

  “So you told me on the phone,” Cochran said.

  He had the look and the sound of a sniveling spoiled brat. Brown felt like smacking him.

  “Your sister called you three times in the past two weeks,” he said.

  “So?”

  “You told us the last time you spoke to her was four years ago.”

  “I didn’t want to get mixed up in her murder.”

  “Well, now you are,” Brown said. “What’d you talk about?”

  “The first time, we didn’t talk about anything. I simply hung up.”

  “Bad habit,” Carella said.

  “Is that a nun joke? Stand-up is my turf, Detective.”

  “What’d you talk about the next time?” Carella asked.

  “Money.”

  Money again, Brown thought.

  “What about money?” he asked.