After conducting the passage once from the podium, he went down the steps and up the raked aisle to hear what it sounded like from the back of the auditorium. There in the last row, flashing a broad smile, was Nim Lavery. After the surprise of seeing her, he was both pleased and angry. The anger was a throwback. He would have spent it in sarcasm on any other intruder.
She sensed this instantly. “I’m sorry. One of the sisters brought me here.”
“The sisters,” he said, rather enjoying Nim’s discomfiture, “are not in charge of the choir.” He turned back to the stage. “All right, take it from the beginning.”
“I’ll wait outside for you,” Nim said, about to get up.
“No. It’s too late to leave the stockade now.” He sat down beside her, slouched in the seat and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on the music. The girls, bless them, were good. They rose to an audience of more than one, and so did he, after all.
“That was just fine,” he said, his voice ringing through the auditorium. “So let’s quit while we’re ahead. Choir dismissed.”
“I’m sorry I came in here,” Nim said.
“Are you?”
“For intruding on your privacy, yes. I didn’t realize it until you came down the aisle.”
“Did you like what you heard, at least?”
“Very much. If I closed my eyes it was like the Vienna Choir Boys.”
“Better,” he said. “These kids know what life’s about. And that’s where real singing comes from.”
“Cowboys and Indians,” Nim said.
He grunted, caught.
“Forgive me again,” Nim said.
The auditorium was empty except for the girl who collected the music and Sister Justine who seemed uncertain of whether she should go or stay.
McMahon got up. “Come back to the rectory and maybe Miss Lalor will give us a cup of tea.”
In the courtyard, Nim said, “Father McMahon…”
He looked at her sidewise.
“I can’t call you Joe in that.” She traced the shape of his collar, her hand at her own neck. “I wanted to tell you—I don’t know if it will mean anything, but after you left yesterday, I was thinking about Stu and the things you and I had said. I remembered there was a showing of Tchelitchew drawings at the Burns Gallery. I went there at noon. Gustave Muller signed the visitors’ book the day of the opening, a week ago Tuesday.”
“So you see,” McMahon said slowly, “he had begun a new phase of work.” It did not necessarily follow, but he wanted her to believe it.
“But what you said about someone’s finding him, that’s where it could have happened, don’t you think?”
“Yes. How many people signed the book?”
“Eighty or so. And not everybody who goes to an opening signs in. Especially when it’s not new work.”
“Still, I suppose we ought to tell this to the police.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” She threw her hair back from her shoulders.
“What have you got against the police?”
“Prejudice.”
“If you were in trouble, wouldn’t you call them?”
“Yes.”
And that seemed to be that until at the school gate she added: “Then maybe I’d be in more trouble.”
On the rectory steps she hung back. “Are you sure it’s all right, bringing me home to tea?”
McMahon laughed. “Miss Lalor is not my mother, though to be sure, she sometimes thinks so. There’s nothing she likes better than to serve tea—unless it’s to be asked to join the party.”
“Please don’t ask her.” A smile fidgeted at the corners of her mouth. “I might call you Joe.”
“I won’t ask her,” he said, and touched the bell as he opened the vestibule door. He took Nim into the study where he had been working when he saw Carlos.
“Ah, it’s the young lady,” Miss Lalor said, coming to the door. “I’m glad you found him, miss.”
“Miss Lalor, this is Miss Lavery. She was a friend of the man who was murdered.”
Miss Lalor gave Nim her most sincere look of sympathy. Her commiseration was rarely in words, only sounds and attitude. Like the priests she served, she sometimes tired of the tools, but never the materials. “Sit down, dear, and I’ll bring you and Father a nice cup of tea.” On her way out, she paused. “Lavery—that’s a North of Ireland name, isn’t it?”
“My great-grandfather came from Londonderry,” Nim said.
“I’ve seen people from the North before with black eyes,” the housekeeper said. “I’ve been told it’s the Spanish, a long way back. Well, I’ll get the tea.”
When she was gone, Nim said: “My grandmother was Italian. My mother’s people were Jewish.”
“As long as there’s a bit of Irish in there somewhere, to Miss Lalor you could be Greek, Gallic or Phoenician, and you’d still be Irish.”
“Unless I were black. Am I right?”
“I’m afraid so. Except that the North are black Irish,” McMahon said and grinned.
Nim studied the room with open curiosity, the crucifix, the framed blessing of the parish by Pius XII, the pictures of Popes Paul and John. “He’s the one,” she said of John.
“Ah, yes. As Miss Lalor would say, he’s the one of them all. Mind, she’s a Pius the Twelfth woman herself, but she’s trying her best to catch up.”
Nim, her hands behind her back, and with a childish sort of swagger continued to tour the small room. Again she stopped at the crucifix.
“It can’t be all that strange,” McMahon said, “Irish and Italian.”
“My father was an agnostic, a physicist.”
“Is he dead?”
“To me—almost from the day I was born.”
“And your mother?”
“She was going to one of those rejuvenation farms the last I heard, and Dad had just been made a director in Dow Chemical.”
“I see,” McMahon said.
“You’d be pretty blind if you didn’t.” She found a straight chair, not that there was any in the room that wasn’t, but she chose one without arms. She tugged at the short skirt, a hopeless gesture. “I didn’t expect to be invited to tea,” she said.
“I like them,” McMahon said of the skirts girls were wearing now.
“For shame, Father!” Then she laughed. “There’s a story, but I’ll tell you another time. Something more important: it’s been going through my mind all afternoon. It’s Tchelitchew again. In a way he’s passé now. Forgive me if I talk to you the way I’d expect you to treat me about music. I asked Mr. Burns why the exhibit. You know, so many good artists can’t get a gallery, and he said it was because a collector, a friend of his, wanted it and was willing to offer some of his Tchelitchew drawings for sale. His name is Everett Wallenstein. The name is familiar but I can’t place it. I’m sure Stu never mentioned it, but he didn’t mention anybody, except maybe painters he thought important to me. I’d like to go and see this man, just to talk to him. But I don’t want to do it alone. I don’t think I could.”
“All right,” McMahon said. “Make the appointment and I’ll go with you. Or have you done it already?”
Nim shook her head. “I wish you’d do it.”
After tea they went into the office and McMahon looked up the name in the phone book. When he dialed the number he got an answering service from whom he elicited the information that Mr. Wallenstein would not be home until after six.
“Let’s just go and camp on his doorstep, surprise him,” Nim said.
“You’re making an adventure of it.”
“I don’t know what I’m making. It’s all instinctual. It’s not like me to crash the gate. Or wasn’t. I did that this afternoon too, didn’t I? And me brought up on the nicest amenities.”
McMahon glanced at the parish calendar for the day. He was free between six and eight o’clock if he was willing to take his supper cold after nine. “Why not?” he said. “Meet me at six-thirty in the Whelan drugstore on
the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue.”
10
THE HOUSE ON CHARLES Street had been beautifully restored, outside and presumably inside, the black shutters freshly painted, the brass knocker and the mail slot polished to a high gloss. McMahon lifted the latch on the gate. A hip-high fence of wrought iron bordered a garden of tulips and iris.
“I wish I’d worn my uniform,” he said, in the sport jacket again.
“I almost wish you had too,” Nim said. “I feel like we ought to be peddling The Watch Tower.”
“Not in my uniform.”
The doorbell chimed deep within the house.
No one came. No sound from inside. Only the rumble of traffic on Greenwich Avenue.
“The bells,” Nim said nervously, “the tintinnabulation of the bells, bells, bells.”
“The Bells of St. Mary’s, that’s what Monsignor Casey thought we were doing. ‘There’s a tune to that, Joseph.’” He mimicked the old man’s accent.
“You’re a snob,” Nim said. “Did you see La Plume de ma Tante? You know, the monks ringing the bells and getting carried away. Literally, all hung up on the ropes. Wild. I was in college then. I met my father in New York and he took me to see it. That was one of our few good times together.”
The door opened without their having heard the man approach. He was a tall young man, quite handsome and at the moment, sweating, as though he had been interrupted in the midst of some strenuous exercise. His hair was tousled from his having pulled on a velure sweatshirt.
“Forgive the intrusion, Mr. Wallenstein,” McMahon said. “We came on the chance that you might know an artist who was a friend of ours. I’m Joseph McMahon and this is Miss Lavery.”
“And who is the artist?” the man asked coldly.
“That’s the trouble. We’re not sure of his name.”
“Then how can you be sure he’s an artist?” The man looked annoyed and McMahon did not blame him. But after a second or two of indecision, he said, “You may as well come in.”
It wasn’t camp, or what McMahon thought of as camp, but it was pure Victorian, the small, high-ceilinged parlor into which he led them. The lamp he turned on was the real Tiffany. It occurred to McMahon that he knew more about fashion and furnishings than he had been aware of knowing.
“I don’t have a telephone,” Nim said, an uneasy attempt at explaining why they had come without forewarning.
“That is understandable,” their reluctant host said with a sudden turn of gallantry. His eyes reinforced his intention of compliment in a frank appraisal of her, head to toe. “Excuse me a moment while I get a towel.” He touched his brow where the sweat was glistening. “I have a gymnasium of sorts in the basement.”
When he was gone Nim said: “I really dig this place.”
“I’m trying to figure out whether I do or not,” McMahon said. He went closer to one of the paintings, a pastoral scene. The signature surprised him. He covered it with his hand. “Who would you say, Nim?”
She turned on another light and studied the painting for a moment. “It’s way out, but I’d say…” She hesitated. “All right, I’ll say it, early Kandinsky.”
“Very good,” Wallenstein said from the doorway.
“Am I right?” She was delighted with herself.
“My father bought that in 1912,” Wallenstein said. He wiped his face and neck in the towel. His having combed his hair, the gray streaks in it showed up. Again McMahon had misjudged age. Wallenstein was in his forties. “Now about your friend.”
McMahon told him of Muller’s death. “I’m a priest, by the way.” He had to add that, explaining why he had been taken to the dying man.
“Are you? No one turns out to be what he seems these days. I’m sorry, but I’m at a loss to know why you’ve come to me: I’m afraid I have not heard of Gustave Muller.”
“Neither had I,” Nim said, “but I lived with him for over a year.”
Wallenstein did not say anything for a few seconds, but he looked at her in a way McMahon did not like, almost as though he was fantasying himself in that position. Then he said, “And whom did you think you were living with, Miss Lavery?”
“Stuart Robinson.”
Wallenstein repeated the name. “That seems familiar. Perhaps I’ve seen his work. Why did you come to me?”
“He was at the opening of the Tchelitchew exhibit at the Burns Gallery.”
“Ah, now I see. But my dear girl, so were a hundred or so other people.”
“I wish I had gone,” Nim said. “Maybe things would have turned out differently if I’d found him.”
“Not if he hadn’t wanted it,” McMahon said.
“Poor fool, he,” Wallenstein said, again with that look at the girl which made McMahon want to hit him. An irrational reaction, he knew. Was it the having of money that made the man arrogant in such a manner? Or the fact of Nim’s having frankly admitted to living with a man?
“Did you admire him as an artist, Miss Lavery?”
“Yes,” Nim said unhesitatingly, which seemed strange to McMahon, knowing that she had never seen Muller’s work.
“I should like to see him,” Wallenstein said. “But perhaps I have. How extraordinary that an artist should change his name. His technique, his medium, his philosophy, I can understand. I paint, myself, you see, and I am as jealous of my name as I am of my mistress.”
McMahon said, almost before he knew he was going to say it: “Mr. Wallenstein, would you go to the city morgue with me in the morning? It’s possible you would know him under yet another name.”
“Yes, of course, if it’s that important to you.” No hesitation, and McMahon had expected it somehow. In fact, part of his intention was to discomfit the man. “Then we won’t take any more of your time now. You’ve been very kind, sir.” He got to his feet.
“Won’t you have a drink? It is that time of day.”
“It’s past that time for me,” McMahon said. “What hour may I call you in the morning?”
“After eight. Any time after eight will be fine.”
When they reached the street, Nim said: “My God, the way you got me out of there, you’d have thought it was a house of prostitution.”
“That was my very feeling.”
Nim grinned. “He’s an odd one, isn’t he? Aren’t you glad we came?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just money. I spend half my life talking about it, trying to coax it out of penny banks and working people’s pockets. I didn’t like the man and that’s a fact.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know why!” he exploded.
“Because he’s decadent? I rather liked that. I like the filthy rich. It’s the in-betweens that turn me off.”
“Then go back and have a drink with him. He’d be delighted.”
“Thank you very much. You’ve been very kind, sir. I won’t take any more of your time.” Having given him back his words to Wallenstein, she turned and ran for the bus that was pulling up at the corner of Greenwich Avenue. She boarded it without looking back.
McMahon walked to Eighth Avenue and then north, thinking at every tavern he passed that he needed a drink, and aware of that craven thing in him that made him watch for those with Irish names where a priest would never be allowed to put a cent on the bar. He realized then that he was in mufti. He needed a drink, but he needed more to remember that he was a priest.
11
THAT THE MORTAL REMAINS of a man should be pulled out on a tray like a slab of beef from a freezer chilled McMahon to his very bones. He felt Brogan’s hand go tight on his arm to steady him. Wallenstein had gone paper pale too. McMahon stared at the tag, then the covering: the words “winding sheet” came to him, and he thought of Lazarus rising from the dead at the bidding of Christ. Thus he got through the self-imposed ordeal. Brogan had said he could wait outside, but he chose to accompany them. He had thought at first he did it to give Wallenstein moral support, but there was also a measure of self-mortification in
the act.
When he had arranged with Brogan that Wallenstein should see if he could identify the victim, McMahon had told his first lie of commission: he told of the exhibit at the Burns Gallery where Muller signed his name to the visitors’ book, but he attributed the discovery to himself, not Nim, whose name had not yet come into the investigation. “Remember the art books at the pawnshop? It was just a hunch.”
“Sometimes they pay off. Bring him down, Father,” Brogan had said.
“I thought at first I knew him,” Wallenstein said when they left the morgue.
“Who did you think he was?” Brogan asked.
“A painter I studied with some years ago—at the Art Students League. But the nose—it wasn’t the same, and I remember that chap’s nose. I don’t remember his name now. I would if I heard it of course.”
They went into a small cell-like office within the building. A smell McMahon associated with embalming fluid stayed with him. He was glad to see Wallenstein light a cigarette.
“It would be in the school records,” Brogan suggested.
“Yes, but I assure you, he is not the same man.”
“As well as the names of others in the class,” the detective went on doggedly. “How many?”
“Twenty or so.”
“And how many people signed in at this gallery affair last week?”
“About a hundred. Ah, I see—cross-checking the names in case I’m mistaken. That is clever.”
“That’s how they train us, Mr. Wallenstein,” Brogan said. He didn’t like him either, McMahon thought, but Brogan’s next question, put with the same aloofness, surprised the priest. It also told him Brogan’s slant: “Have you ever come across a man named Phelan?”
“Phelan or Fallon? I knew a Steve Fallon at one time.”
“What business was he in?”
“Interior design,” Wallenstein said, his voice like ice. The tenor of the detective’s questioning had come across to him too. He looked at his watch, a gesture Brogan ignored.
Where the Dark Streets Go Page 9