Arkin took a MARC Penn Line commuter train through the urban decay and sprawl of Northeast Washington, toward Baltimore, observing the uniformly glum-looking riders who seemed hell-bent on not making eye contact with him. He switched to the light rail at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, then rode it through downtown Baltimore and north to a station near the Guilford neighborhood, where Father Bryant had grown up. It was an old neighborhood of giant trees and massive, architecturally stunning homes—many of which looked like manor houses of England's Oxfordshire countryside. Arkin marveled at their magnificence as he followed his phone's directions to Bryant's childhood home.
At last he came to it. It was a massive red brick affair, set well back from the street. A mansion in anybody's book. Georgian architecture. Three floors, four chimneys, a slate roof, five dormer windows on the top floor, a large glass conservatory on one end of the main floor, an ornate porte cochère on the other. A fitting home for the family of Bryant's father, who'd been the owner of a once formidable Atlantic fishing fleet. But the Atlantic fisheries were depleted, and the fishing fleets long gone. Arkin could tell just by looking at the house. It wasn't nearly as well-maintained as its neighbors. There were signs of neglect everywhere. Overgrown ivy crawling up the walls, half-covering some of the windows. Cracking paint. Masonry in need of a pressure washing and repointing. In the porte cochère, a 20-year-old blue Pontiac sedan sat looking forlorn. Overall, the property gave Arkin the impression of faded glory. A tarnished gem of a grander, more prosperous era.
Arriving at the front door holding a notepad and pen he'd purchased as props at a drugstore near the light rail station, he gave three solid knocks with a heavy antique door knocker bearing the face of Neptune, Roman god of the sea. After the better part of a minute, at which point Arkin was about to knock again, the door opened to reveal the ample frame of Mrs. Howard, the woman he'd spoken to on the phone. The nurse some Medicare-funded service had sent to look in on and treat Lily Bryant. For what, Arkin had no idea. He wasn't about to ask.
"Ms. Lily is in her room, but will be with you shortly. You can take a seat in the drawing room," she said, turning to lead Arkin down a dark wood-paneled hallway. The house smelled of ancient cigar smoke residue and dampness. Arkin didn't see a single light on anywhere—in the hallway they walked, in the side rooms they passed. All light came from the windows.
The passage eventually opened into a massive, high-ceilinged room that looked like something out of Downton Abbey. But the room was dusty and contained nothing more than rows of books lined up on high built-in shelves, a small table and lamp, a 5x7 rug, and two threadbare corduroy chairs that looked as if they could have come third-hand from Goodwill. There was no art on the walls, save for an amateurish watercolor of a single red rose in a silver vase. No couch. No other furniture. But there were floor-to-ceiling mirrors covering the entire wall opposite the bookshelves, which in Arkin's dime store psychologist mind meant that whomever had had them installed had the seemingly incongruous traits of narcissism together with low self-esteem. And, he thought, such traits are often handed down through generations, from parent to child. An unfortunate legacy. He wondered if Lily had inherited the same personality flaws that likely possessed the person who originally had the mirrors installed. Whatever the case, Arkin figured the room had once been the heart of the home, filled with artwork and fine furnishings. But it seemed that over time, the home's current owner, Lily Bryant—youngest of the 10 Bryant children—had sold everything off to fund other needs. He took a seat on the less suspect of the two chairs and waited.
After several minutes of sitting alone in the cavernous room, growing bored, Arkin rose and walked over to the bookshelves to examine the collection. All of the books were bound in fine gilt-edged leather. None of them looked as if they'd ever been touched. There were law books, books on birding, sailing, horsemanship, etiquette, and the cultivation of roses. Arkin wondered whether anyone in the Bryant family had ever had any genuine interest in such subjects, or whether the books were there merely for show.
Losing interest, he returned to his chair. As he sat down, the rug caught his eye. It was black, tan, and off-white, and had a pattern of paired diamond shapes within larger diamond shapes, enclosed by thick zig-zagging lines that ran along the outside edges. Arkin would have guessed it was Navajo if he hadn't already had the uncommon familiarity with Navajo weaving styles that practically comes via osmosis when one lives in the Four Corners area. It was surely Native American—perhaps from one of the Mexican tribes. It wasn't Navajo.
At long last, Lily Bryant shuffled into the room. She wore expensive but outdated clothes, and had obviously gone to great effort to fix her hair and makeup prior to Arkin's arrival. The combined effect was over-the-top. Where her lower arms extended from the silk of her blouse, Arkin could see deep, dark bruising of the sort people get from bumping against things when they are on prescription blood-thinning medications. Arkin stood.
"Hello Ms. Bryant. Thanks for taking the time to meet with me."
"Ms. Howard says your name is Grossman," she said as she sat down without saying anything along the lines of welcome or please, call me Lily.
"Yes ma'am. Dave Grossman."
"And you're a Jesuit. Sounds like a Jew name. And you're a doctoral candidate at Georgetown, and your dissertation could use information about my brother Collin, yes?"
"That's correct," he said, observing with revulsion that she was lighting an off-brand cigarette.
"Well, I must say I'm positively mystified as to how a Baltimore priest's experience starting an ill-fated parish in a dirt-poor black Kentucky town in the 1960s could have any relevance whatsoever in today's world," she said, staring at him with a penetrating gaze. "But I don't have any other obligations at this particular moment."
Taking that as the green light to begin his interview, Arkin thought up an innocuous question to break the ice. "Have you lived here your whole life?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"I lived in Paris for several years. Then Ibiza. That's in Spain. Then in the Greek Isles. I come back when they beg me."
"For what?"
"Keeping of the society flame. I am, for example, the ranking instructor of debutantes for the cotillion."
"The what?"
"It's a coming-out ball for young society ladies of Baltimore. We always hold it in the magnificent Grand Ballroom at the former Belvedere Hotel. Have you even stayed at the Belvedere?"
"Can't say that I have."
"It was the premiere hotel of Baltimore. A favorite haunt of F. Scott Fitzgerald, you know," she said, as if she and Fitzgerald had been in the same social circles. Never mind the fact that Fitzgerald had died before she was born. "I have also been a leading patron of the Hunt Cup."
"Again, I plead ignorance."
"It's the great, traditional steeplechase of Maryland. Another major society event. A steeplechase is a countryside horse race, in case you are unaware. Our family always had a horse in the Hunt Cup. Won it at least half a dozen times."
But not for many, many years, Arkin thought. It never ceased to amaze him that people of Lily's age could still be so insecure as to feel compelled to assume a haughty manner. To put on airs. He found it mildly irritating. But sad more than anything else. Then he wondered what else Lily did to fill her time. Probably painted atrocious watercolors—like the rose on the wall—that her paltry handful of remaining acquaintances pretended to be impressed with.
"Our records indicate that Father Bryant had nine siblings," he said, beginning to steer the conversation.
"Yes. I'm the youngest. Which is another way of saying that I was the most ignored. My father didn't even attend my birth. By the time I came around, the birth of a child was old hat."
"So, you live here alone?"
"Yes. What of it? There are only five of us still living. My remaining brothers and sisters have established families in other parts of the country. None were interested in moving back into this hous
e."
"Your childhood home."
"That's correct. Collin grew up here too."
"Were you close?"
"Collin and I? We grew to be very close in adulthood, despite our vastly different existential philosophies early on."
"I understand he made waves as a young man, winning a Maryland essay contest with a story about the poor treatment of African Americans by the Baltimore Police Department."
"Collin always was a crusader. Always looking to be a part of something that was bigger than he was."
A door slammed somewhere in the house. Probably Ms. Howard leaving.
"Well, getting down to brass tacks, the first thing I'm interested in is what drew your brother to the Jesuit order."
"The better question is what drove him to it. The fear of death, if you ask me. He was traumatized by the death of our older sister, Mary. They were very close. She died when he was quite young. After that, he became a seeker of answers, as I suppose we all are on some level, if we aren't dense or yellow. But Collin ached for reassurance. For adamantine certainties. For a promise, however false, that death would not be the end of him. All of that sort of tripe."
"I take it you didn't share his faith."
"That's putting it mildly. I've been an atheist since high school. The black sheep of the big Catholic family. I did my best to talk him out of going to seminary."
"Did your brother feel he was making a difference in Royburg, the Kentucky town where he started his parish?" Arkin asked, pretending to take notes on his pad as their discussion wore on.
"Initially, I believe he derived some sort of satisfaction from the fact that he was spreading his beliefs, and that others were comforted by them."
"Initially?"
She smiled a devilish smile. "I'd like to think he was beginning to see the logic of my view of things as time went by."
"Of atheism?"
"Call it what you want. I'd like to think I influenced him over time. That my logical, reasoned outlook rubbed off on him. How could it not? That, and living in that dirt-poor town of forgotten and forsaken negroes. I'm sure it evolved Collin's outlook."
"Did the industrial accident in Royburg further exacerbate things for him?"
"Meaning what?"
"Having so many of his parishioners die on him, young and old alike? Do you think he had a crisis of faith?"
"A crisis of faith," she repeated, sounding almost amused at the question. "He wasn't happy with his God, I can tell you that. We spoke on the phone many times in the wake of the disaster. He asked the usual questions. What God would do this to his followers? What worthwhile lessons could possibly be learned? What was the point of such pain and suffering? He was especially distraught over the wretched and agonizing death of a young boy with whom he'd grown close."
"How did you comfort him?"
"I didn't. I told him that fear of death is for the weak-minded. That's why humanity invented religions. So that the weak-minded could quell their fear of death with fantasies of an afterlife. Why else have religions? One could just go to a decent charm school for the rest of it. No offense."
"Well," Arkin said, doing his best startled Jesuit impression. "I suppose we each have our own ideas about such things."
"I also told him, for the thousandth time, that religions did nothing more than serve as another excuse and basis for extremism and all the violence and horrors that go with it." She paused. "What does this have to do with your research into the long-term impact of Jesuit parishes?"
"I'm also looking at the psychological effect, on the priests themselves, of being immersed in these poor communities. Learning, among other things, whether the difficult conditions caused any of them to question their calling. To question the Faith."
"I see. Well, I don't think he was below questioning his faith toward the end." She paused. To Arkin, it looked almost as if she was struggling to suppress a smile. "But who can ever say what really goes on in another person's mind?"
"Do you think Father Bryant suffered from depression in the wake of the Royburg disaster?"
"Certainly. Who wouldn't be saddened by the curtain being lifted to reveal the falseness of something they'd clung to?"
"Was it your impression that he was perhaps closing in on making a major change with respect to his adherence to the Faith?"
"Who knows?"
"Well, you do, if anyone does. Who was he closer to than you?"
"The only person who really knew what Collin was thinking was Collin."
"Do you think there's any merit to the rumors that Father Bryant killed himself?"
"No," she said quickly. "He had a driving sense of purpose that would have dwarfed any feelings of futility or depression."
"What was his purpose?"
She took a breath. "To make the world a better place, I suppose."
"How so? By what means?"
She shrugged. "His ideas were in constant evolution."
Arkin considered her vague answer for a moment. "What do you think happened? I mean, he was a relatively young man when he drowned. In good health and so forth."
She paused again, still bearing a mystifyingly amused expression. "Well, who can say?" she said at last. "Perhaps he had a congenital heart defect or a brain aneurysm. Those can drop you at any age. Perhaps he slipped and bumped his head and fell overboard. Perhaps he went for a swim and a submerged tree branch caught his pant leg so that the current pulled him under. What does it matter?" she asked in a very matter-of-fact tone.
"It must have been hard on you and your family when he disappeared. Hard to find closure."
"It was a long time ago," she said with a shrug. And again, Arkin had the impression that she was suppressing, of all the incongruous and inappropriate things, a grin.
"Still, those sorts of traumas seem to stay near the forefront of one's memories," Arkin said, in a tone of half appeal, half feigned perplexity.
"My lack of emotion surprises you."
"Well, as you said, it was a long time ago."
"I don't fear death. I don't look at it as an enemy. It's just an endless sleep. Who doesn't like to sleep? If more people looked at it the way I do, there'd be a lot less suffering in the world. A lot less evil perpetrated by fanatics."
To Arkin's ears, she was sounding an awful lot like Sheffield.
"Did you know that your brother's parish was essentially abandoned a few years after his death? Royburg became a ghost town, more or less. For all his work there, all his suffering and heartbreak, the community all but disappeared."
"I wasn't aware."
"No. I doubt such things are mentioned in society newspapers." Arkin capped his pen and stood to leave. "Just out of curiosity, for my own interests, can I ask you, if you don't believe in an afterlife, do thoughts of oblivion really not sometimes keep you awake at night?"
"To allow yourself—"
"I mean, I look around and see the fading vestiges of a once great family. Everything disintegrating around you. And I figure that before long, maybe as soon as 20 years from now, there won't be anyone left alive who ever knew who you or your family were. You'll be forgotten. All your achievements. Your reputation. Your cotillion debutantes and your steeplechase wins. This doesn't sometimes leave you feeling a bit empty? A bit afraid?"
She sat silent for a moment. "I've offended you."
"But not in the way you might think. In my youth, it was people like you . . . ." He stopped himself. "Thank you for your time. I'll see myself out."
*****
That evening, after retrieving his dirty thrift store clothes from the Columbia Island Marina, Arkin found a homeless shelter a stone's throw from the U.S. Capitol Building, where he pretended to be mute and half incoherent and signed in as Jim Seers in order to procure a place to sleep while maintaining anonymity. Still, he worried about whether his cover look was convincing enough. After all, his teeth were straight, and they were all in his head. The whites of his eyes were white, not yellow and bloodshot. His sk
in looked healthy and taught, not loose, leathery, and rough like everyone else's. And his body odor wasn't about to burn anyone's eyes. Regardless, he was committed. What choice did he have, aside from risking arrest by trying to sleep somewhere out in the cold, maybe in a thicket of bushes in Rock Creek Park or on Theodore Roosevelt Island? Convincing or not, he was staying put.
THIRTEEN
Just as rush hour began the next morning, wearing a baseball cap pulled low, pretending to read a free copy of an alternative weekly paper, Arkin sat on a stoop two doors down and across Swann Street from Trlajic’s residence , doing his best to look like a commuter waiting for his carpool pickup. He'd already reconnoitered the alleyway behind Trlajic’s home, observing that the man had a dark green Volvo station wagon, and thinking that if he needed to pursue and surveil the man by car, he'd be easy to follow in such a sluggish and clumsy vehicle. He also noted that Trlajic's rear door and two first-floor windows did not have metal security bars over them as did the windows and doors of several other houses in the alley.
Arkin was reasonably sure Trlajic would come out his front door and walk to a bus stop or subway station—that he wouldn't go out his back door and take his car—given that there were so few parking spaces near the U.S. Department of Justice building where DCI's headquarters was located. He didn't have to wait long. A few minutes after eight, Trlajic appeared in the open doorway of his Queen Anne style row house. He was a tall but slouching man in a charcoal gray topcoat and carrying a worn leather satchel-style messenger bag. Arkin was able to ID him from a DMV photo Morrison had texted to him last night. As Morrison would have been entertained to see, the man had a tall, thick head of Balkan hair, as well as big, bushy eyebrows. He turned right after descending his stairs and made his way over to New Hampshire Avenue, where he again turned right, heading toward Dupont Circle. Arkin followed at a discreet distance, assuming the worst—that Trlajic was part of the Priest's group, that he was trained in counter-surveillance techniques, and that he knew what Arkin looked like.
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