Without Warning

by Joanne Fox Phillips

  “So, they paid Wind Fabricators for the work, not Siemens,” Mark says, leaning back in his chair and stroking his moustache while he takes it all in. “Okay. This looks like it’s the real deal,” he says finally. “Good work, team.”

  Sandy is showing Mark the emails from Marshall and Doug when the door opens and in walk three nuns: Honey, Sister Ignatius, and one other I haven’t met. Mark has a look of total confusion on his face.

  “This is my sister, Honey,” I say to him, hoping to clarify the situation.

  “Sister Mary Marcella,” corrects Honey, holding her hand out for a shake, “and Sisters Ignatius and Agnes.”

  Sister Ignatius gives a shy smile.

  “And I haven’t met you,” I say to the third nun, Sister Agnes. She’s about the same vintage as the others but is much shorter and very round.

  “Sister Marcella said there would be dinner for us,” Sister Agnes complains to me.

  “Her brother was in the FBI here in San Francisco,” Honey clarifies. “He’ll be here shortly.”

  “I’ll call Ryan to order more food,” I tell Sister Agnes. “Are you sure you don’t want anything, Mark? It’s free.”

  I have never witnessed Mark so close to exploding. “You brought the FBI in on this?” he says to Sandy with clenched teeth.

  Sandy takes his arm and gets right in front of him. “Mark,” she says calmly and slowly. “These nuns and the FBI are not involved in our audit. Or—or not directly, anyway. This is all about an archbishop who’s embezzling from a charity out here.” “That’s not all he’s doing.” Sister Agnes laughs. “We heard all about your romp in the hay with the archbishop.” She covers her mouth, and Sandy shrugs and smiles sheepishly at Mark, who closes his eyes and shakes his head.

  “I need another beer,” he says, walking to the bar and removing another Heineken before putting it back. “No, this is definitely more of a bourbon moment.” He fills a highball glass with ice and reaches for a bottle of Jim Beam. Then he seems to realize that all of this is on the house and opts instead for the Blanton’s.

  We’ve ordered dinner for Sister Agnes, and Ryan appears with plates of appetizers. There’s an assortment of Dungeness crab cakes, cocktail shrimp, meatballs, fruits, and cheeses. Ryan opens some bottles of wine and pours glasses for each of the sisters before serving Sandy and me. A few sips of bourbon have apparently calmed Mark down a bit, and I see him talking with Sister Ignatius out on the balcony and enjoying the wonderful view.

  Finally, we receive a call that Sister Agnes’s brother, James Brodnax, is in the lobby, and Ryan goes down to fetch him.

  “We’re going to walk through all of the evidence we’ve collected for this other problem with the archdiocese,” I say to Mark when he comes in from the balcony. “If you’re tired, we can just get together in the morning.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” he says, reaching down for a complimentary shrimp.

  Retired Field Agent Brodnax has a boyish face under his short salt-and-pepper hair, and I put him somewhere in his late fifties. He seems to have held up much better than poor Agnes, but for all I know, there’s a wide age range between them. After giving his sister a hug, he situates himself in the club chair opposite Mark, takes a yellow notepad from his well-worn briefcase, and removes a pen from his shirt pocket.

  “Just coffee, black,” he tells Ryan when offered a cocktail. Then he clicks the end of his pen, signaling that he is ready for the presentation to begin.

  Ryan has brought chairs in from the dining room to accommodate the large audience, and Honey immediately takes center stage. She brings Agent Brodnax up to speed on the evidence identified so far in her investigation. As Honey goes on, Agent Brodnax gives Agnes a look suggesting that his sister is wasting his time but that he loves her anyway. I don’t think this is the first time Agnes has brought in her brother to “take a look at things.”

  “Sisters,” Agent Brodnax begins. “This is very useful information, but it’s hardly conclusive. We’ll need to have the field office here in San Francisco open a formal investigation, and that could take a while.”

  “Does the FBI even take on investigations like this?” Mark asks.

  “Yes,” Agent Brodnax replies thoughtfully. “Yes, they do, if there’s mail fraud. I suspect charity donation requests have crossed state lines, but that would also have to be substantiated.”

  Honey looks crestfallen. She closes her eyes, trying to figure out what to do next. After a moment, however, she remembers something. She brings Tina’s laptop over to James and clicks on the link supplied by the building security company. It shows Archbishop Mauriello entering Tina’s apartment building at 5:24 p.m. and then leaving at 6:14.

  Sandy pokes me in the ribs. “Look, Tanzie,” she whispers. “He’s wearing that sweater I took.” The film is in black-and-white, so the exact color can’t be determined, but it certainly looks like the sweater I donated to St. Vincent de Paul the other day. I look over at Sister Ignatius, who’s preoccupied with picking Brazil nuts out of the mixed-nut bowl, so I’m pretty sure she isn’t connecting any dots. No telling how she would feel if she knew the sweater I gave her belonged to Mauriello.

  “I can’t quite make out his face,” I say. “We know it’s Mauriello. It has to be, but can we prove it is?”

  Agent Brodnax shakes his head. “Really, this is all very good; but once again, this is all very circumstantial.”

  “Agent Brodnax,” pleads Honey. “Sister Ignatius’s nephew, a branch manager at Wells Fargo, strongly suggested someone take a look at the building-fund account.”

  “Those were his exact words—‘strongly suggested.’” Sister Ignatius gives a wink and a nod to James when she says this.

  Agent Brodnax smiles at Sister Ignatius. He is a kind man but experienced enough to understand how the wheels turn at the Bureau. In the end, however, he agrees to meet with one of the active field agents and have one of them look into the situation.

  “But you must keep us out of this, James,” Agnes warns. “The archdiocese would be furious with us for taking this outside the church.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” says Agent Brodnax. “Just like your priests, the FBI is very discreet.”

  The sisters are excited, but I see though the ruse. This investigation will go nowhere. It will sit for years, stalled in some bureaucrat’s inbox, and eventually get filed away among all the other accusations that will take too many resources to substantiate. Years of servitude have made these nuns patient women, and I suppose they’re comfortable waiting for the slow hands of justice to eventually make their way around the throat of Archbishop Mauriello.

  But I’m not. It’s true that I’m not concerned about Mauriello stealing money from St. Benedict’s. What matters are Kathy Westmoreland and Vreseis Cosmo. I told them that I was going to get this guy. And I am—even if I have to do it alone. Or with whatever help I can get from the person who brought me into this investigation in the first place.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Tuesday

  The meeting with Marshall has been pushed to Thursday to accommodate the many administrative tasks necessary when sending your business unit leadership on a perp walk. Brian Wilkinson, our CEO, will be joined on the company plane by representatives from Legal and Human Resources to facilitate the termination. Jim Horsch, the second lieutenant in CoGenCo’s coal fleet, will take on Marshall’s responsibilities on an interim basis until a new president can be hired. All of this is very hush-hush, and Sandy and I will stay in San Francisco and then fly back with Mark and the executive team Thursday evening.

  Sadly, Sandy and I are not invited to watch Doug and Marshall get put through the Vitamix. We were the warm-up act, and now the main performers have arrived to take the curtain call. I can imagine the scene at Westwind: Connie nervously alerting Marshall and Doug that the reception area has been infiltrated by faces she’s only seen in our annual report. The executives will be serious but cordial when Phyllis escorts them to Mars
hall’s office. The scene will be reminiscent of Mafia hit men who are all jokes and smiles until they strangle the guy in the front seat of the Cadillac, all while eating a pastrami on rye. Security will escort the two out of the building as Phyllis breaks down crying. Marshall will lawyer up, but I suspect Boomer will try to make a deal, ratting out Gerard and Marshall to avoid jail time. Maybe the guy from IT will alert the media, and they will be the lead story on the six o’clock news. People who know them will gasp in disbelief. “I never thought them the type,” they will say.

  I’m sorry to miss it. But in practical terms, it means I have a free day, which I plan to spend renting a car and going, alone, to visit Spiro Cosmo and see if he can give me some ammunition on Mauriello.

  Fresno is a three-hour drive southeast of San Francisco and is smack in the middle of California’s Central Valley. It is a town burdened with intense summer heat, polluted air, and street gangs that rival LA in quantity and brutality. On the plus side, there are farm-fresh produce, affordable real estate, and terrific Mexican food. Spiro has agreed to meet me for lunch at a taqueria just off the Yosemite Freeway.

  Alejandro’s appears to have been a KFC establishment at one time, but the perky red-and-white exterior is now faded and peeling. The pole, upon which a bucket of fried chicken once perched, has been painted over with dancing jalapeño peppers wearing broad hats and colorful serapes. The molded plastic booths are long gone, replaced with wooded tables and ladder-back chairs. Colorful paper streamers crisscross the ceiling. The place is loud and packed with locals, but I spot Spiro sitting at a rear table by the bathrooms. He sees me as I approach and stands up to give me a hug hello.

  There aren’t many diet-friendly choices on the menu at Alejandro’s, so I order a single chicken taco, while Spiro opts for some sort of all-of-the-above combo plate that arrives on a massive Talavera platter. He tells me that he loves his new parish, St. Anthony’s.

  “My Spanish is coming along,” he says. “The downside is that I’ve put on ten pounds in this first week.”

  “Well, you look fine to me,” I say, electing not to make any judgmental statements about the correlation between large meals and larger waistlines. “Look—there’s something I need to ask you,” I tell him, “and it’s not about Tina McCrery. I know you can’t discuss that, but I need to know anything else you can tell me about—”

  He cuts me off. “Tanzie, I cannot discuss any of this with you.”

  “I understand,” I say. “That’s why I’m not asking you about Tina. I need to know about Mauriello. I’m not sure we have a solid case, and I was hoping there was something else you could tell me,” I say.

  “Tanzie,” Spiro pleads. “I really can’t discuss any of this with anyone.”

  He begins playing around with his food nervously. Spiro appears to have lost his appetite. Why is he so closemouthed about this?

  We sit in silence, and I take a forkful of Spiro’s enchilada while I think. Then I guess it.

  “You’re not worried about violating the sanctity of Tina’s confession,” I tell him. “You’re worried about violating Mauriello’s.”

  Spiro stares at his food and says nothing.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” I ask. “Mauriello confessed to you—all of it, the embezzling and Tina—so that you couldn’t ever talk to anyone about it, and then he sent you down here in order to make sure you wouldn’t.” I’m more disgusted than ever by this archbishop. “I understand. You don’t have to say anything, Spiro. We’ll find another way to get the goods on Mauriello. Maybe there’s something we’ve overlooked, or maybe the FBI will eventually get him on the evidence we’ve given them. But don’t worry about it. I won’t ask you about it again.”

  “I didn’t realize the FBI had become involved,” he says cautiously and then chuckles. “Sister Agnes? Did she call her brother again?”

  I nod. “I don’t think he took it very seriously,” I add.

  “Never does.”

  “Those nuns really don’t like the archbishop, do they?” I ask.

  Spiro shakes his head. “I think the feeling may be mutual,” he says.

  To lift his spirits, I tell him about Sandy and the pagan baby episode, and Spiro has to work hard to stifle his laughter.

  “Are you really okay?” I ask. “I saw your mother the other night. She’s really upset about the transfer.”

  “There’s nothing I can do, Tanzie,” he tells me. “I plan to drive up to San Francisco a couple times a week to see her, once I get settled in. It’s the best I can do. And please thank Blondie for looking out for her. Your sister is truly the kindest person I have ever known. In fact,” Spiro continues, “all you O’Leary girls are special. All of you, with such different talents and gifts.”

  I let that remark settle in a bit, wondering what my special talent is. Vanity? Dishonesty? Manipulation?

  “Spiro, I really think I can reason with Mauriello and get you transferred back to San Francisco,” I plead. “I have enough on him. Shoot, just him shacking up with Sandy is probably ammunition enough for a little blackmail.”

  “Tanzie,” Spiro says suddenly in a low voice. “Look at me. It’s not violating any confessions I may or may not have heard to tell you this: Do not interact with Archbishop Mauriello. You have no idea what he’s capable of.” His eyes are tearing up, and I can tell he is trying to stay balanced on some sort of ethical tightrope. “Promise me you won’t talk to him.”

  I watch him carefully. “All right, I promise,” I tell him, but I’m not entirely sure I mean it.

  “Super,” he says, and I take the final bite of his enchilada.

  It’s close to five when I make my way back to the Hyatt. Valet parking is a whopping $70 a day, a relative bargain when compared with room service. I have plans to meet Ted for dinner at six, so I dash up to the suite to get ready. The place seems so empty, with all the laptops and files from the Mauriello investigation gone. No nuns busting in at odd hours.

  I’m a bit compulsive about being on time. The traffic is still at a crawl, so I decide to hoof it over to North Beach. The little restaurant on Stockton is completely empty, and at first I wonder if I got the directions right. I tell the hostess I’m meeting someone, and she shows me to a nice little table by the window so that I can see Ted before he comes in.

  By six twenty, the place is filling up. I feel a little pressured to order something, since I’ve been nursing my glass of water while people are at the hostess station waiting for a seat. I don’t mind eating out alone; in fact, I do it quite often in Houston or when traveling. This is different, though. The table is set for two, and it’s clear I am waiting.

  I send a text: Just checking in. Traffic is miserable.

  By seven, I’m on my second glass of Chardonnay, and there’s still no word from Ted. I’ve called and left messages, and I’ve sent more texts. Negative thoughts generated by middle-age insecurity and mean emails percolate in my head. Did I misinterpret things? Is he upset about me canceling yesterday? Maybe he didn’t kiss me goodnight because he found me unattractive. That’s it, I conclude. I thought he was being gentlemanly, but he was repulsed. I think about Marshall and Rich mocking me in those emails. I think about Winston catting around. Just once, I’d like to be Sandy. She will never understand this pain I feel. Neither will Honey, for that matter. This pain is mine alone to bear. Perhaps it’s a continuation of my penance.

  By seven thirty, I’ve paid the check and decide to walk back to the hotel.

  I break into a jog as I cross Broadway, dodging traffic Frogger style. A loud honk from a cabbie startles me, and I have to catch myself to prevent an embarrassing fall. I find a spot on a Muni bench to settle myself.

  That’s when I see him. The man with the Giants cap. He’s looking into a Starbucks window, so his back is to me, but I know it’s him. There is a confluence of emotions: fear, embarrassment, and (most of all) sadness. But all of it sparks recklessness, and I run back across the four lanes of Broadway traffic to
confront him, dodging more angry motorists along the way.

  “Who are you, and why are you following me?” I demand.

  The Giants fan turns around. To my utter horror, he’s a teenage boy. Pimply and awkward, he can’t be more than sixteen.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I tell him, but my apology comes too late. I can tell he’s terrified of the crazy woman standing in front of him. He bolts, making a run for it up Broadway and turning left into the darkness.

  If this isn’t the worst day of my life, it’s certainly close. Emotionally drained, I flag down a cab to the Hyatt Embarcadero. I see at least ten men wearing Giants hats during the ride back to the hotel, and I feel completely ridiculous.

  The suite is empty. After all my complaining about never being alone out here, I finally am. I hate it. I call Ryan and order dinner, not because I’m particularly hungry but because at least Ryan is someone to talk to. He arrives with a bottle of wine and Crab Louis, and I sit at the dining table, ready to enjoy it.

  “This was really so nice of your boss to entertain me like this,” I say.

  “Did you not know the story?” he asks. “Your sister is something of a patron saint to Mr. Rodriguez, our manager. He tells all the employees about it. I think he thinks it’ll inspire us, or something.”

  “So, what did Honey do for him?” I ask.

  “Back in the early seventies, Mr. Rodriguez was involved in a gang, the Sureños. He was maybe fourteen or fifteen but was a tough guy. Anyway, one afternoon he came running into St. Peter’s Elementary School, where your sister was teaching third grade. He’d been in her class a few years before. He ran into her classroom after school while she was grading papers, and he hid in a closet.

  “A few minutes later, four or five other gang members came looking for him. They put a gun to your sister’s head, and they asked if she’d seen Hector—Mr. Rodriguez.”