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The Dead Saint

Page 3

by Marilyn Brown Oden


  Stop it, Lynn. This is real life, not a Ludlum novel.

  He released a sigh. "What did I miss?"

  "Vice President Parker was very nice." She started to pull the unopened envelope from her purse. Again his words echoed: Totally confidential.

  "And?"

  And what? How much should I say? The boards creaked in rocker rhythm as the rain pattered against the sidewalk. The scent of the river thickened the air.

  "Lynn?"

  She hedged. "He said President Benedict respects our work in the global community."

  "She knows about us?" he asked, astonished.

  "Especially our work in Russia. I'm sorry you didn't get to hear the compliment personally. Also, she appreciated my note."

  "That's all? He invited us to ride to the airport simply to express thanks?"

  The rocker creaks ticked off seconds of silence. She wanted to tell him the whole strange story. For your ears only.

  "Lynn?" This time impatience edged his voice.

  She debated telling Galen despite the warning. A safe task, being a letter courier. But courier will ring louder than safe and he'll drive me crazy worrying about me. If I don't say anything now, I always can later. But if I do, I can't ever unsay it. In the zigzag of lightning she scanned the face she loved so much and reached the end of her debate: if a problem occurs, I don't want him connected with it. Forcing a light tone, she asked, "Would you like a direct quote, Love?" She deepened her voice to imitate the Vice President: "The purpose of my visit is to bring you the President's greetings and appreciation." Galen seemed satisfied with that, but she didn't feel good about it. He trusted her.

  Until this moment you were trustworthy, Lynn.

  Technically I didn't lie, she argued back to Ivy.

  You're hang gliding across a chasm of deceit.

  It was a new experience to be less than honest with this man whose touch could uncloud her sky. She didn't like herself right now. It had been a terrible day. She reached up and brushed her forefinger across a bloom of bougainvillea, wishing its scent and soft petals could sooth her shredded soul.

  A car approached, not unusual on busy St. Charles. But this one slowed down. It was too dark to tell what kind. Its lights flipped to bright. Raindrops bounced off the hood like silver confetti falling upward. Last night she wouldn't even have noticed. But last night she lived in a different world, one wrapped snugly in the illusion of tranquility.

  Her cell phone rang. As she pulled it from her purse, her fingers brushed against the envelope. She winced at keeping it from Galen. Secrets make us sick. "Hello."

  "Bishop Lynn?"

  No problem recognizing that James Earl Jones voice. "Hello, Bubba."

  "I wouldn't call so late, but I'm driving by and saw you and Galen on the veranda."

  "Come join us. I'll make some coffee."

  "I just left the Feds." His voice shook with rage. "They accused me of setting Elie up!"

  9

  They sat in the den at the round oak table that had belonged to Lynn's great-grandmother. The yellow roses in the center matched the walls. Usually a cheery room, tonight it picked up the negative energy of distress. Lynn reached around Bubba's immense, rain-dampened shoulders to pour his coffee, averting her eyes from the dark stain on his green polo shirt. The FBI hadn't even had the decency to let him change it!

  Bubba circled the coffee beneath his nose, inhaling its aroma, and smiled at her. "Thank you." He took a sip and released a weary sigh.

  "I'm glad you came by tonight," said Galen sympathetically. He was good at opening doors to whatever a friend needed to say.

  Bubba's anger rested just beneath the surface. "How could the Feds think I . . ." He struggled for control.

  Galen put his hand on the linebacker's shoulder. "Everyone in Louisiana knows the name Bubba Broussard is synonymous with character above reproach."

  "But these Neanderthals aren't from Louisiana. I wanted to sack the—"

  Talking to a bishop self-censors people from their most satisfying expletives, Lynn.

  This time she agreed with Ivy.

  "Chief Armstrong told me killing a Saint ranks right up there with killing a cop. He's like a mama gator trying to protect her nest. And me."

  It was hard for Lynn to grasp that this tough Pro-Bowler needed protection.

  He ran his palm across his shaved head. "I've replayed it again and again. We were on our way to autograph toy footballs for the Orthodox Church benefit."

  "I saw the article in the Times-Picayune," said Galen. "Anyone who read the paper knew where to find Elie this morning."

  "We just wanted to help folks. Now—" his voice cracked.

  Lynn reached over and touched his hand. She wished for a way to comfort this large, in charge, no-nonsense man. Wished for more than worn-out words. Wished most of all that she had the power to erase this tragic day.

  Bubba regained control. "You were there, Bishop Lynn. Did you see anything?"

  "It happened too fast."

  "She has a theory, though." Galen grinned. "The mime did it." His effort to lighten the mood failed. "I remember the last Saints game. All the fans looking down from the stands as he drew back his magic foot and kicked a 53-yard field goal. Electrifying!"

  Lynn nodded. "The last time I was with him he taught me some Serbo-Croatian for the Balkans. What patience!"

  "Why would anyone want to hurt him?" Bubba's voice sounded shallow, the words traveling around a knot in his throat.

  Silence followed his poignant question. Lynn rose to pour more coffee, struck by the human capacity for savagery. It sickened her.

  Galen glanced at his watch. "Time for the news. Maybe there's an update." He turned on TV and caught the lead story:

  "We take you now to Chief Martin Luther Armstrong of the New Orleans Police Department for a live report on the Kicker Case."

  "The Kicker Case!" Lynn groaned. May that cutesy caption writer spend eternity scribbling it on the walls of purgatory!

  Chief Armstrong, promoted from the ranks for his heroism after Katrina, stood confident before the cameras, as smooth and hard as a stone washed up from the river.

  "I pledge to keep the citizens of New Orleans informed about every step of the investigation into the murder of Elias Darwish, a hero on the football field and a role model for youth. He will always have an honored place in our hearts. Late this afternoon one of our friends from the homeless community in the French Quarter gave us an important lead. While rummaging through a trashcan in Jackson Park, he found a plastic bag that contained white gloves with powder burns. He gave them to a police officer he trusts in case they were connected to the murder. He has asked for a reward: three hots and a cot in an unlocked cell." A slight smile played at the corner of his lips.

  Galen chuckled. "Knowing the chief, his 'friend from the homeless community' will get that free room and board."

  Chief Armstrong held up a red wig and a white stretch mask with red circles on the cheeks. The camera zoomed in for a close-up.

  Startled, Lynn leaned forward in her chair. "The mime wore those!"

  "The bag also contained this wig and mask. We believe the killer posed as a mime until Darwish came by, then shot him and scaled the Jackson Square fence."

  Galen looked at her with surprise. "You were right, Lynn!"

  "Then," she said aloud to herself, "he pitched his disguise and faded into the crowd. Ambling away. Or standing in the crowd to watch the aftermath." Little green lizards skittered up her spine.

  "How did you know?"

  "A hunch, Bubba. I walked past him on my way to Café du Monde. He had the hardest eyes I've ever seen—like cold gray marbles. After the . . ." The words wouldn't come. "While we were waiting for the ambulance, I noticed he was missing."

  The chief leaned in toward the camera, speaking personally to each listener.

  "I want to assure each of you that nobody robs the good folks of Orleans Parish of one of our favorite sons and gets away with it! Fi
nding his murderer is the NOPD's top priority."

  The station cut to a commercial with a promise to return for live updates as the case progressed.

  "The brother does a good job on TV." Bubba paused thoughtfully. "So do you, Bishop Lynn. I saw that interview about your peace trip to the Balkans. You mentioned Sarajevo. Are you still going? With all the escalation?"

  She nodded. "The invitation was an intelligence test. We both flunked."

  Bubba's laugh had a hole in it. "Be careful," he said soberly. "That's a dangerous place."

  The image of Elie lying in the street filled Lynn's mental screen. "Apparently, so is the Quarter."

  10

  On Thursday morning the sun rose in a spectacle of mauve and mango, lilac and lapis. The colors changed like a dance of veils. Lynn watched the performance through the semicircle of east windows in her study, a small room nestled in the second-story turret. Favorite books and photos of loved ones lined the shelves. Last night's envelope from the limo ride rested on her lap, still sealed, enticing her toward a strange new doorway.

  One that might slam closed and lock behind you, Lynn.

  She willed her mind to ignore Ivy and the envelope's distraction and began the day in her favorite way—silently centering herself, trying to stay grounded in a slippery society. A challenge any day but especially today, for the sun rose on a scarier world than yesterday. Just yesterday?

  She poured a cup of green tea from the calico pot, the steam rising aromatically. She watched the small stream hit her blue teacup with a dainty splash. She'd chosen blue because Luwuh, an eighth-century Chinese poet, considered it the ideal color as it lent additional greenness to the tea. And he should know—famous for formulating the Code of Tea in Chaking. She took a sip and set the teacup on the glass-topped coffee table beside the white roses. They were her favorite flowers because they bloomed in the midst of thorns and offered a fragrance almost holy.

  The table doubled as a display case for vanity. It held her certificates and mementos, her writings regarding the church, trinkets symbolizing honors. She'd left an empty space, book-sized, in the corner. A silly thing to do, but it symbolized her secret dream: writing a novel. Someday, when she had time. She'd completed the first and only word: Secrets. The display case was a private vanity since no one else saw it, but vanity nonetheless. Vanity, she thought, my worst habit of the heart. Some would say sin, but she'd deleted sin from her vocabulary. Sin led to guilt and guilt led to dysfunction. A habit, on the other hand, could be changed. It left room for hope.

  As always, she focused for a few minutes on precious Lyndie at sixteen, the final photograph of their only child, whose smile brought the light of dawn. Taken from them yet always with them. Each morning at sunrise she held Lyndie in her heart while the silence played a symphony of cherished memories. Each year on Lyndie's birthday she added another candle to an imaginary cake and tried to add another year to her image, wondering what she would be like at this new age, nineteen now. Sometimes Lynn felt tossed about in an eternal sea of grief. Occasionally, she was strong enough to let the celebration of Lyndie's life overshadow the agony of its brevity. Evagrius, the wise fourth-century analyst of the human soul, came to mind this morning as he often did in these circumstances. She understood what he meant when he said that despair is rooted in the sacrifice of the past life for the present one.

  She poured a second cup of tea, recalling Luwuh's words: The first cup moistens my lips and throat, the second cup breaks my loneliness. She sank back into the white wicker settee, curled up her legs on the dawn-colored cushions, and faced the envelope left by Vice President Parker. She'd been too drained to deal with it after Bubba left late last night. The envelope appeared harmless. No return address in gold ink. No presidential seal. No addressee in fancy script. No watermark of fine paper. It reminded her of the common envelopes at Walgreen's.

  She picked it up. An ordinary item with an extraordinary impact. It seemed to generate its own heat, like an omen. "Oh, Lyndie." Her monologues with her precious daughter were common in this snug space so filled with her presence. "I dread opening it."

  Rightly so, Lynn. It could lead you down an irreversible path to things you don't want to know and places you don't want to go.

  Sometimes Ivy irritated her. Sometimes she offered wisdom, like now. But Lynn's curiosity won. As always. Inch by inch, her faltering hands unsealed the envelope. Fine splits tore along the flap demonstrating that this common envelope was not common at all, for it showed any attempt to open it. She heard the sound of her breathing and the pumping of her heart. Done!

  She looked inside. "No white powder, Lyndie. No anthrax." Just another plain envelope, also unaddressed. She opened it also and found two items: a third envelope and a folded piece of paper. She knew without knowing that it would launch her into a new space. Her fingers trembled as she unfolded the brief note. It was handwritten in caps in an unnatural style.

  Thank You in Advance for Delivering

  This Letter To My Friend Marsh (With Nato)

  At The Frankfurt International Airport When

  You Change Planes For Vienna.

  Nothing in it appeared clandestine. Nothing aroused suspicion. A common note without a signature. All she had to do was watch for a man named Marsh during their Frankfurt layover and give him the envelope. Simple enough. She was so relieved she almost felt disappointed.

  How will you recognize this Marsh with NATO in a crowded airport, Lynn?

  A worrisome question. She read the note again, recalling the Vice President's knowledge of her itinerary. How did they know it? What else do they know? She imagined a surveillance camera aimed at her windows and fought the impulse to pull the drapes. She decided to destroy the note like a good spy in a John le Carré novel.

  She tore it into tiny slivers and flushed them down the toilet, watching them swirl away to the sewer. My first act as a courier, she thought, feeling sneaky instead of patriotic. She didn't like the feeling. Secrets make us sick.

  "Well, Lyndie, how is that for being overdramatic!" She visualized her daughter smiling and wagging her head.

  Her cell phone rang. She jumped like a criminal caught destroying evidence. "Hello."

  "Bishop Lynn, this is Bubba." He skipped the customary Southern detour through preliminaries. "I've been thinking about something and have a favor to ask."

  "Name it, you have it."

  "Do you have any time this morning?"

  Her photographic memory pictured her calendar. She could adjust her schedule until eleven. "Sure, Bubba, but I have to be at a meeting at eleven."

  "Is nine too soon?"

  "That's fine."

  "Shall I come by?"

  You know where you need to meet him, Lynn.

  Against every instinct to the contrary, she named the place. His question. Her answer. Silence. Reluctant agreement.

  Before she went downstairs, she hid President Benedict's envelope in a drawer like a good courier.

  How do you know it's really from the President, Lynn?

  11

  The midmorning sun streamed through the open, gray-toned drapes and fell across the tidy surface of the Patriot's desk. He thought about his Platinum Rule of zero tolerance as he listened again to the recent phone conversation on President Benedict's secure line. Secure! Within a month of her election, his elite on the inside, code-named Lone Star, had provided him access to all of her communications. He smiled to himself, then frowned. Stealing another's privacy was a grave matter. Grave but necessary.

  The President of the United States was the most powerful person in the world and therefore, he thought, the most dangerous. Unfortunately the power of this POTUS, like all the others, exceeded her judgment. He hadn't known what to expect from the first woman to hold that office, but it surprised him to find her to be less compliant than her predecessors. She discounted the basic principle of career politics: The top priority is reelection. Mind the money. It gave her unprecedented freedom from lobby
ists and nonprofit foundations like his. She seemed willing to sacrifice the pragmatism of self-interest for the idealism of the common good. Her naiveté or altruism—he had yet to decide which—complicated his life, and he didn't like it. Or her. But, of course, he wouldn't show it.

  What troubled him most at the moment, however, was finding Darwish's surreptitious report, if it existed. Over the years the Patriot had supplemented his D. C. contacts with a cadre of a dozen international specialists. World-class in their fields—and in their pay. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Snipers. Bomb experts. Investigators. Tech prodigies. He founded his elite system on three immutable precautions: One, no one was permitted to know the Patriot's identity nor the identity or codename of anyone else in the cadre. Two, no one had access to more than one piece of the puzzle in any operation. Three, they were never given related assignments where their paths might cross. Since they knew nothing, they could reveal nothing. He also used totally separate and untraceable communication with each member of the elite team. Sometimes, as with the Darwish information, these essential precautions forced him to step outside his cadre and deal with less able people, even unsavory men like Cabrioni. Unpleasant but necessary.

  Cabrioni's best man had beaten the FBI to Darwish's apartment and had searched it thoroughly. Neat and complete, Cabrioni had reported on the secure phone message. No computer. No flash drives. No names. No dates. Nothing. As clean as my daddy's liquor cabinet after Mama cleared it out when he died—God rest his soul.

  Was Cabrioni lying? He wouldn't dare. No one betrayed the Patriot. Zero tolerance. He smiled. His exaggerated reputation gave him power beyond his means. Swiveling his chair toward the credenza, he rubbed his fingers across the cool bronze bust of John F. Kennedy. Many citizens continued to wonder whether the New Orleans Mafia was connected to JFK's assassination. That was understandable. How could a misfit with a twelve-dollar rifle from a mail-order catalogue take down the President of the United States! A Mafia conspiracy seemed more reasonable. He suspected that the Society of St. Sava knew the truth and guarded the secret both carefully and advantageously.

 

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