Lies That Comfort and Betray

by Rosemary Simpson

  There he was again, Mr. Nolan himself, looking every inch the respectable gentleman he was. No clerical collar, no cassock, no whip in hand. Standing talking to Father Brennan. Smiling, one upraised arm swinging downward as he made an important point. The priest nodded his head in agreement.

  Father Brennan beckoned toward the sacristy, then gestured that someone inside should come out. Jerry Brophy, polishing rag in hand, dressed in the long dark blue cotton coat he wore to clean. Sally Lynn made herself as small as she could, knowing if he caught a glimpse of her face, he would recognize her and remember what he’d witnessed on his wife’s kitchen table. She sent a question out to her voices. What are they doing here all at once, these three men I know too much about ever to be comfortable in their presence?

  To Sally Lynn’s knowledge, Father Brennan was guilty neither of abortion nor twisted fornication, but she recognized him as a type she knew well, a man who was never more than an inch or a breath away from evil. He might be an anointed priest of God, but something about him told her he was one of those odd ones who thrived on thoughts of blood and butchery, yet didn’t cross the line from contemplation to action. Until they did.

  She couldn’t identify what in Father Brennan’s looks or demeanor told her who and what he was, but she trusted her instincts. She stayed out of his way whenever she came to Saint Anselm’s and only nodded brief hellos when he smiled at her.

  Sally Lynn knew she would have to leave soon or she’d be late getting back to Madame Jolene’s. Her other errand had taken longer than she’d anticipated, but it wasn’t something she could skip. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving. Shops all over the city were closed. She’d known that if she were to get what she’d promised a client she would obtain for his pleasure, it had to be today. She’d decided there would be time if she hurried, and hurry she had because Madame Jolene’s rules were simple but strict. Every girl had to be dressed and perfumed and in place ready to work before the first client crossed the threshold. The only exception was the few days a month a girl couldn’t work, although there were clients who preferred it that way. Thankfully not many.

  She slid toward the end of the pew in which she was sitting. The package wrapped in brown butcher paper made a loud crackling sound. Mr. Nolan whipped his head around. She froze, bending her head so that all he would be able to make out in the dimness was the top of her hat. There was a shuffle of feet, the sound of a question being asked, an answer given. Still she waited.

  She heard the main doors open in the vestibule just behind her, a slow creak as someone eased them shut. Footsteps, a cough, a muffled sneeze. The doors opening and closing several times. Drafts of cold air swirling around her ankles. She looked up once, in time to see Father Brennan walk toward the sacristy. He turned around before entering the small room where vestments and sacred vessels were stored. Their eyes met as he raised one hand to bestow a blessing, then he disappeared. Sally Lynn shuddered.

  “What are you doing here?” a voice hissed. A hand came down on her shoulder. She twisted around to shake herself free. Jerry Brophy’s enraged face was inches from her own. “You don’t belong here. Get out. Get out, I tell you.”

  He held on to her shoulder so tightly she was afraid he’d rip the sleeve out of her coat. The hissing never stopped, even when he yanked her to her feet and propelled her into the vestibule like a naughty child. She didn’t try to wrench herself free. She might have dropped her package. It wouldn’t have done any good, anyway. Brophy was far stronger than he looked. Sally Lynn was used to being roughly handled; the safest thing to do was ride it out. The mauling and shoving were usually over faster that way. Her shoes clattered on the floor as her feet repeatedly lost their footing.

  “Don’t come back,” Brophy growled when he finally let her loose.

  They were outside in the darkening November afternoon, the gas street lamps just beginning to flicker. She teetered on the topmost tier of stone steps, half afraid he would push her all the way down them to the sidewalk.

  “You don’t belong here. Don’t come back,” he snarled.

  More frightened than she’d ever been with a client, Sally Lynn inched her way along the metal railing that only the old and the infirm used. Step by step she made her way down to the street. By the time she caught her breath and found the strength to stop sobbing, Jerry Brophy was no longer watching her.

  In his place before the great gothic arched doors of Saint Anselm’s stood Joseph Nolan.

  He wasn’t smiling.

  CHAPTER 21

  The best Kevin Carney could calculate when it was all over, Blossom woke him up sometime between midnight and dawn the Sunday after Thanksgiving. The dog’s rough tongue licked at his face until the skin became tender to the touch and wet with drool. She was whining at him, nipping his ears and the tip of his nose, making little huffing sounds deep in her throat as though he were a puppy needing encouragement or a reprimand.

  He was hot, hot all over. It felt like he’d rolled too close to one of the barrels street people filled with whatever trash would burn enough for them to warm their hands over. He reached for the buttons on his coat, but Blossom used her sharp teeth to keep his fingers from fumbling them through the buttonholes.

  What was happening? What was the matter with the dog? What was she trying to tell him?

  Kevin’s throat burned when he tried to argue with Blossom; the only sound he could make was a whimper of pain. He put one finger to his mouth, then held it out toward the streetlamp. Nothing dark on the end of it, so he wasn’t bleeding. No taste of iron on his lips. But, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he was hot.

  He tore the cap from his head, feeling a rush of cold air through the greasy mat of his hair. Blossom barked and crouched down on her two forelegs, grabbed the grubby sailor’s knitted cap with her teeth and shook it violently from side to side. When Kevin didn’t seem to understand, she repeated the hat shaking, then held it out to him in a muzzle gone soft with entreaty. He put the cap back on his head. Blossom smiled at him. Her human was sometimes slow, but he got the point eventually.

  Saint Anselm’s loomed across the street, a dark bulk of brick and stone growing out of the pavement like a rectangular mountain. The streetlight cast shadows across its steps and into the recessed doors. There was no sign or lingering airborne scent of a passing human.

  Kevin had no idea how long he’d slept. He remembered creeping back into the alleyway after a hasty trip to the corner to spend a few of Mr. McGlory’s coins for more of the fried potatoes and bacon he and Blossom loved. He’d used the greasy newspaper the food was wrapped in to oil the cracked skin on his hands, then pulled his mittens over them. Bits of newspaper were lying at his feet, ripped to tiny nesting shreds by Blossom’s sharp teeth. Neither of them ever let anything go to waste. He thought he was thinking clearly, but then he couldn’t remember why he and Blossom were in this alleyway across from the church. Were they waiting for someone? The street was empty. There was no one standing in front of Saint Anselm’s.

  The coughing saved him. Shook Kevin’s brain loose from whatever had gripped it, and made him realize there wasn’t a barrel of burning trash in the alleyway; the heat he felt was coming from deep within himself. He was sick. He hoped it wasn’t the pneumonia, but he knew it started just like this, with coughing that wrenched your insides into knotted ropes of pain and a fever that burned out all your strength and made you sob like a baby. Once it settled in the lungs, the pneumonia killed you slowly and painfully. He’d seen plenty of people die from it. Every winter the bodies piled up in doorways or on park benches like cordwood someone had forgotten to take inside for the stove or the fireplace.

  He had to get up. He had to move, had to get to a place where someone would pour a strengthening broth into him and sponge the heat from his forehead.

  Blossom danced on her four nimble legs, pulling her human along by his coat, pausing when he stopped to cough, tightening the muscles in her back when he needed to lean on her. She was a big dog, bigge
r than any one of her ancestors, the happy accident of a long line of matings between males and females who singled each other out with a sure instinct for survival of their young. She knew where Kevin needed to go, knew where there would be help generously given with no questions asked. She’d been there many times; so had her human. They always ate well and a shed out back had been set aside just for them, though they rarely used it. Her human was stubborn and proud, traits she didn’t think boded well for the breed.

  *

  Madame Jolene’s brothel was as still and silent in the final hours before dawn as Saint Anselm’s had been. One client lay slumbering upstairs in Spanish Lola’s room, a privilege for which he paid dearly. He was too young to have much experience with whores, so he fancied himself deeply in love; it never occurred to him that Spanish Lola didn’t reciprocate his passion. Or that she was a good ten years older than she pretended to be. John Landers’s father was a banker, his uncles were bankers, his older brothers were bankers, and one day he too would be a banker. In the meantime, he was learning lessons other than those taught in vaults and oak paneled offices.

  *

  Kevin nearly wept with relief when he realized that Blossom had led him through the streets to the only place in the city where someone might give a fig for his welfare. Big Brenda the cook had told him the story of Madame Jolene’s youngest brother, how he’d died, and why the madam was tenderhearted toward Kevin. You look so much like the lad, the way he would have grown up, you might as well be his ghost come back to life. I’ve seen a picture of him dressed for his First Communion. It’s you, all right, Kevin. Mark my words.

  It was all he could do to stand upright and reach for the railing of the back steps. He lifted one foot, placed it on the first step, and nearly collapsed from the effort. Blossom bounded to his side, steadying him with the heavy pressure of her huge body. When he seemed to have balanced himself, she leaped down to the ground, circling, snuffling, running off a few steps, then back again, nose to the frozen earth, ears pricked at attention, her plume of a tail first rigid, then wagging frantically.

  If someone had put a bucket of coals in the shed, they’d long ago burned themselves into ash. Kevin needed to get inside the house, inside where the kitchen fire was banked at night but never allowed to go out.

  Three more steps to go. He could just distinguish their outlines in the moonlight. This backyard of Madame Jolene’s house wasn’t well lit. Deliberately so. A few clients always preferred to exit more discreetly than through the front door. Left foot. Right foot. Kevin hauled himself closer to the kitchen door. He could almost reach out and touch it, but he didn’t dare let go of the railing. Not yet. If he fell he knew he would never be able to get up. Blossom might lie down beside him and with her warmth, try to keep him from freezing, but it wouldn’t be enough. The fever would burn him and the icy November night air would chill him until they met somewhere in the center of his body and killed him.

  One more step. Kevin glanced quickly behind him, looking for Blossom. She was still doing her strange dance, sniffing the ground, circling frantically, rushing off in one direction, then another, coming back to snuffle and circle over and over again. There was a scent she could follow only so far and no farther. Someone or something laid down a trail then vanished; her talented nose couldn’t find it again. And it was driving her crazy. The sight of her and the nearness of the kitchen door made him happy. They’d made it. Whatever was bedeviling Blossom, they’d made it. They were safe.

  “Come here, girl,” Kevin ordered, then he lunged for the kitchen door. He expected it to support his weight, thought to find a locked doorknob beneath his fingers. But the door swung inward at his first touch and he fell into the kitchen, landing sprawled on the floor, the rag rug on which Blossom usually curled herself bunched beneath his head and chest. He slipped into unconsciousness.

  Blossom couldn’t nudge the door shut behind her master. His legs were in the way, and they were too heavy for her to move. She whined and pawed at him, nipped the only ear she could reach, barked once, twice, again. Nothing. He didn’t move, didn’t even groan. She knew something was very wrong with him. She could smell it on his breath and in the vapor that hung above his skin. Her human’s scent, but sharp and pungent. His skin was hot; she couldn’t cool him down with her tongue. A terrible rattling noise filled the kitchen when he breathed. The dog knew what that meant. She’d heard it many times before.

  Blossom put her nose to the wood floor, casting about for a particular scent. The dark woman whose face turned soft and loving when she looked at Kevin or the woman who trailed her fingers along Blossom’s always itchy ears. Either would help him. But someone had washed this floor, washed away all the good scent trails. Except. There. One tantalizing trace of something. Just a whiff of a smell, but enough to tell her that someone had walked across this floor after it had been washed, walked straight across the room then back again to the door that was still open, down the stairs, and into the yard. It was the same scent trail she’d picked up outside, then lost again. Over and over. Picked up. Lost. Picked up. Lost. Something else, too. The suggestion of something familiar. What was it? Who was it?

  Kevin breathed in harsh, gasping gulps of air. Blossom made up her mind. She would follow the human scents into the deepest part of the house, where she had never been. Where one human had come from, there were bound to be others, and perhaps one of them would be the woman with the caressing fingers.

  Nose to the floorboards, Blossom left Kevin in the kitchen and made her way through a dining room and three parlors to the foot of a wide staircase. These floors had not been scrubbed clean. The only other place she’d smelled odors this strong all mingled together was inside Billy McGlory’s saloon. The visit had been fascinating but brief. Kevin had explained that her size and delicious fragrance were off-putting to some humans. She understood. She didn’t always like the way humans smelled either.

  Up the stairs Blossom went, the scent trail she was following getting fainter and fainter as another odor overlaid it. This new smell never meant anything good; humans didn’t spill their own blood willingly. She hoped it wasn’t the lady with the soft fingers whose blood scent now filled her nostrils. She could hear Kevin gasping below her and she knew instinctively that he hadn’t much time left.

  Time had run out for the lady whose personal aroma Blossom now recognized, distorted by the blood, but no longer unknown. This was the lady who had come to the church the day before the humans greedily stuffed themselves with food for what they called Thanksgiving, though Blossom wasn’t sure what they were thankful for. The lady had been alone and melancholy. She lived in this house and often sat in the kitchen with them when Kevin came to visit. Once she’d put her plate on the floor for the dog to lick clean. An angry man had pushed and shoved her out of Saint Anselm’s and down the stone steps. Blossom had smelled her fear leap across the street into the alley where she and Kevin crouched, watching.

  Nails scratching on the wooden floor, Blossom hurried down the second floor hallway to the last door on the right. The scent of human blood grew overpowering, though not a drop of the red liquid had flowed under the doorframe. She sat on her haunches and stretched her neck out to grab hold of the doorknob with her teeth. It was a trick her human had taught her, but this time it failed.

  Blossom did the only other thing she knew would bring humans running; she put back her head and howled. Howled and howled. Loud enough to wake the dead. Loud enough to bring Madame Jolene storming from her private suite into the second floor hallway.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” the madam demanded, no trace of her famous French accent softening the words. Whores from bedrooms on the second and third floors crowded around her. “What is that dog doing here? Someone shut it up and haul it downstairs.”

  John Landers, clad only in his unbuttoned trousers, reached for the enormous, foul smelling animal whose shrill howl was enough to shatter eardrums. Blossom didn’t budge. She seemed to sl
ide away inside her skin, so that he stood with a fistful of loose dog determined not to be dragged anywhere. Behind him, Spanish Lola rolled her expressive black eyes and clutched her feathered robe around her pendulous breasts.

  Blossom lunged for the door, pulling the young, broad shouldered John Landers with her. At the last minute, she dug all four feet into the floor and stopped. Dead on a dime. Landers let go of the handful of fur and skin he was clutching as he stumbled over the huge dog and crashed against the door of Sally Lynn’s room.

  Dozens of candles still flickered within, though many others had burned themselves out. The walls and the floor had been painted a bright, garish red, and sworls of red decorated the tall mirror in which clients liked to watch themselves at play. On the floor lay a cocoon the size of a human being, whatever was inside wrapped many times in gauzy white fabric. The bed curtains. The bed curtains from Sally Lynn’s four poster workplace had been taken down, smoothed and coiled over and under and around something that lay on the floor. Something with masses of curly black hair spread fanlike beneath her head.

  Someone screamed.

  *

  “Dear God in Heaven, Jolene, you got yourself a real mess here.” Ned Hayes was never so Southern as when he was waked up early in the morning and dragged off to a scene of murder and mayhem.

  “No need to take the Lord’s name in vain,” chided Tyrus Hayes. He’d taken care of Mr. Ned through slavery days and into freedom, and he knew his former master shouldn’t be alone when he started wading through blood again. Blood made the liquor flow and the white powder disappear. Neither one of which hungers Mr. Ned was strong enough to control on his own. Tyrus was eighty-one years old, twenty-three years out of slavery, but all that history didn’t matter a bit to him. His world began and ended with the man who’d been laid in his arms as a baby.