Leah had gone home for the night hours before, as had Al Lombard, but Roz and I went into a tiny conference room and shut the door anyway. For all we knew, Lombard had bribed the janitors to listen in on our after-hours conversations.
I set my notepad on the table. Roz put on her jazzy glasses and prepared to jot notes.
“Cause of death? I’m still hearing head trauma, blunt instrument,” she said.
“Me too.” I leaned back in my chair, realizing how tired I was. “And I heard that Patrick’s body was almost certainly moved after he was killed. Can’t say it in print yet, but I have it on good authority.”
“I’m not surprised to hear that, but I’ve got a bigger bombshell. The organized crime task has been pulled in to the investigation.”
I sat up straight. “Organized fucking crime?”
“Yup, Rigoletti’s boss called a powwow this afternoon that included the mob dicks. It didn’t sound like the kind of thing where they were inviting everybody just in case. My source said the mob angle is active.”
“There are so many threads to this story, I’m losing track.”
“Maybe I can help.” She set down her pen.
“Most of it can’t be written about yet.”
“And when it can, you want it to be under your byline.”
“Sure. Wouldn’t you?”
“Damn straight. My tiara is bright enough as it is, and you’ve already got one colleague looking to undercut you. I’m happy to be your sounding board, your second chair.”
I started at the end, telling her about Peggy McGillicuddy’s suspicions about J.C. Bozco. Roz had seen both of them in action and agreed that it made sense to give weight to Peggy’s instincts.
“She’s probably too polite to say it, but it’s obvious Bozco’s wound too tight. He came in here to see me once, complaining about a column where I’d given mild praise to the Church for opening the doors of Jeanne d’Arc parish last fall when protestors were marching around outside during a hurricane. Bozco opened and closed his fists the whole time we were talking, oblivious—or maybe not—that most people would read that gesture as a barely contained wish to grab their throat.”
I told Roz most of what Kathleen had said about Patrick as a boy, and amplified a bit on Alan’s summary of the medical examiner’s conclusions without naming him as my source. We agreed to keep each other informed as details flowed our way, and Roz reiterated her commitment to backing me, not stealing my thunder.
“I know you and Finnegan were tight, that he’s the one who got you assigned to the abuse scandal story in the first place. He and I didn’t much like each other. Paulie may have been your hero, but his attitudes about women in the newsroom were antediluvian. He undercut me a few times when I was green—we’re talking twenty-five years ago, long before you were here—to make sure I knew he was top dog. I don’t feel the need to play those kind of games.”
“Paulie did a lot for me. I’m sorry he was a jerk to you.”
“Water long under the bridge,” she said.
Chapter Thirteen
When Rufe came downstairs at 6:30 Friday morning, Joe and his dog Lou were in his kitchen.
“Jesus Christ, could you knock?”
“Since when is that necessary?”
Rufe blew his cheeks full of air and took a deep breath. He felt groggy after a long night of half-assed sleep, and the last thing he needed was an argument before the sun was fully up.
Joe opened the freezer door and began rummaging. “Got any coffee? I need something to help me get in gear while you explain why you were ducking my calls yesterday.”
“Sorry, man. I was in a bad place.”
“Obviously.”
Rufe sat down at the far end of the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. When Joe released the clip on Lou’s leash she immediately trotted over, either oblivious to the tension in the room or sensing his need for comfort. Rufe roughed the fur around her head.
“This might take a while,” he said.
“Then I definitely will make us some coffee.”
While Joe was grinding the beans, Rufe choked out thanks for the brutal text message heads-up that Pat’s death was thought to be a homicide.
“While I hated hearing the news, I appreciate that you let me know that was going down,” Rufe said.
“I wanted you to hear it from me, though I admit I’m still feeling in the dark about your connection with Patrick.”
“I haven’t lied to you, but I haven’t been entirely truthful either,” Rufe said.
Joe sat down in the chair opposite him.
“I led you to believe Pat was only an acquaintance, but I actually knew him very well. We were in a support group together. A bunch of guys who struggle with big stuff going on in their lives. It’s a hush-hush thing—probably Portland’s best-kept secret—so I’ve never mentioned it before. I’ve been a member for a long time. Pat only for the past few years.”
Joe nodded, but didn’t interrupt.
“It’s a really tight group. You take an oath when you join, that you’ll keep everything that is said confidential. That’s the only way guys are willing to talk about their problems. Everybody’s got a different story, but we all want the same kind of nonjudgmental support.”
“Sounds kind of like a 12-step thing.”
“It’s similar, for people who don’t have a booze or drug problem.”
“What caused you to join?”
“When I was in my midtwenties, half the gay men I knew were HIV positive and the other half were afraid to get tested. I’ve told you about that time. It was nightmarish. That’s what caused me to help found Frig It.”
“Frig It?”
“It stands for Friends Will Get You Through. Our motto.”
“And it’s gay men?”
“God no. Mixed these days, but mostly straight. Guys who are going through rough divorces. Losing a kid to drugs. Grieving the death of a spouse or partner. All the terrible shit life throws at you that makes you want to jump out a window.”
“Why did Patrick join?”
“I can’t tell you that. I’ve violated my oath enough by telling you that the group exists, and that he was a member. I’m trusting you won’t write a damn word about any of this, by the way.”
“Goes without saying.”
“Well I’m saying it.” Rufe felt his face flush. “I should have laid down that ground rule when you came in the door. This is a strictly personal discussion. Me talking to my friend, not me talking to a reporter.”
Joe held up his hands, palms out. “I get it, Rufe. Really. It’s off-limits. You can trust me on that.”
Rufe dropped his crew-cut head on the table, burying it in his beefy forearms. “Trust. It’s a big concept, isn’t it?”
While they drank coffee Joe filled him in on his visit with Kathleen Hazelwood, Patrick’s punky-haired, deeply sad, almost certainly impaired sister.
“He talked about her a fair bit,” Rufe said.
“You should tell her that when you see her at the wake. She’ll be glad to know you knew her brother well.”
“I feel better that you now know that.”
Lou went to Joe’s side as soon as he stood.
“Sunday 3:00 to 7:00 for calling hours,” Rufe said. “Monday at 10 is the funeral. I’ll spread the word.”
“Will the guys from your hush-hush group be there?”
“Not wearing name tags, but the Frig It boys will be there in force,” Rufe said. “Pat was an important part of us.”
* * *
Throughout the day, Rufe continued to cycle through his conversation with Doug, sick at the thought that Pat had been doing business with wise guys. The take-charge priest thought himself a man of the world but Rufe knew bet
ter. He was a prominent figure in a cloistered institution. Outside of that milieu he was an innocent.
It took courage to stand up in front of the public when mea culpa was all there was to say, both when the pedophile priests were being flushed from their lairs and when the parishioners they’d betrayed learned their churches would be sold to pay the legal tab. But Pat’s ability to withstand waves of hard times did not make him a tough guy.
Nothing could have made Pat a tough guy.
Rufe had known Doug for close to a decade, and considered him a good friend. But he’d never seen him in lawyer mode until that day, and he didn’t like it. The “businessmen” were no longer his clients, but it was clear even after retirement Doug reflexively toed the attorney’s ethical line, which meant he was kind of on their side. Even if Doug’s guys didn’t have anything to do with Pat’s death, it was possible they’d dropped his name to actual thugs who wanted more of the valuables Pat was in a unique position to divert.
What the hell was Pat thinking, selling hot Church property to the mob? No matter how upset he was about the stained glass and the carved pews being squirreled away by the diocese for its own gain, that didn’t make it right to steal himself in order to beat the institutional thief to the booty. Rufe tried to imagine his dead friend negotiating with the slick men with whom Doug had set him up. Talk about a babe in the woods. No written accounting would have been provided, Rufe was sure, and Pat probably took his cut in cash. Where would he have stashed the money? At a local bank, where he was as well-known as the mayor? Pat had more sense than that, but Rufe wondered if he would have been able to figure out how to set up an account in an online bank.
A memory surfaced, maybe a year and a half old. It was a Sunday afternoon. Rain was pounding the spring-green grass outside Rufe’s kitchen window. Pat stopped by for coffee after finishing his priestly duties for the day. The Chronicle was strewn across the kitchen table. A headline about computer hacking caught Pat’s eye, which set off a rant about the need for a different password for every online account.
“The hackers are getting so damn sophisticated. It’s not enough to have passwords, you have to change ’em every few months,” Pat had said. “I’m too old for this.”
After convincing Pat that it was well worth a few bucks to set up an encrypted account online to manage his passwords, Rufe fired up his computer and walked the amazed priest through the process on SecretsSafe right then and there.
But a password-management account was an electronic vault that could be used to hold any kind of information. Had Pat choreographed that conversation to get help setting up an online hidey-hole not for passwords, but records of his illicit financial dealings?
Rufe’s busy brain jumped from the stolen stuff to his own blabbermouth. He never should have divulged the stuff about Frig It to Joe. The thing about confidentiality was that it had to be absolute or it was for shit. Once you broke the silence on one thing, you rationalized every other slip of the tongue. At least he’d stopped himself before he told Joe that Pat was gay, and that he had a longtime lover living right in the same rectory.
Pat had held that particular fact back when he first came out to Rufe, and he’d never told Doug and Sam, the only other Frig It men to whom Pat had admitted his gayness. It was during another drinks-after-Frig It session with Rufe alone when Pat disclosed that he and Father DiAngelo had been lovers since 1990, when DiAngelo—a few years younger than Pat and absolutely beautiful—replaced an elderly St. Jerome’s priest who’d died a few months earlier.
Pat was twenty-three at the time and immediately smitten. He said he’d been completely celibate since joining the priesthood except during the year he was on sabbatical in Italy, studying the history of sacred art at the University of Florence. His lover in Italy was an artist who laughed at Pat’s paranoia but was willing to be discreet.
Pat said having a lover for the first time changed how he looked at the world. He was happier than he’d ever been, and began to wonder if it might be possible to be a more or less openly gay man within the American priesthood. When he returned to Maine in 1988, reality slapped him in the face. No priest was willing to be out of the closet, because any intimate relationship would violate their vow of celibacy.
He prayed for the strength to face the fact he’d be alone for the rest of his life, then God sent Father DiAngelo to live at St. Jerome’s. It didn’t take long for them to become lovers. The other priest in residence at the time—elderly and hard of hearing—had his suite of rooms on the second floor of the rectory. The two junior priests had their bedrooms on the third floor, and they knew how to be quiet. It was like a miracle, Pat said, being a priest and having a partner, not having to make the awful choice of one over the other.
Rufe had never met DiAngelo, and Pat was emphatic that his lover had no interest in coming out to anyone, ever. Rufe wasn’t a churchgoer, and he wasn’t about to attend a Mass at St. Jerome’s in order to check DiAngelo out, but was curious about the man Pat loved. Pat’s occasional comments about the younger priest painted an image of a devout man who enjoyed the status that came with his Roman collar. “His mother and all the other old ladies treat him like a prince,” Pat had said. “He loves that, and the automatic deference priests still receive. I can’t stand that sort of thing. I may be ordained, but I’m a man, just like you. But Michael is old school, even though he’s younger than me.”
Old school or not, the man had to be consumed with grief. If DiAngelo in fact had never told another soul that Pat was his lover, he’d have to hide his grief, in the same way he and Pat had hidden their love for all those years. Rufe decided to knock off work early and go by the rectory to pay his respects. It was the least he could do.
Chapter Fourteen
Christie was in the middle of the morning rush by the time I got to the diner Friday morning, having detoured by Rufe’s to finally hear the true story about how he knew Pat. She immediately caught my eye, but her smile didn’t have much oomph behind it, and she sent Heather, the new and quite butterfingered server, to take my order. I scrawled a few words on my napkin and asked Heather to deliver it. She raised her eyebrows but complied.
“At least you know to send me a love note.” Christie dropped off my scrambled eggs personally. “I’ve been waiting for you to come through the door for an hour, now it’s too busy for a little squeeze in the walk-in.”
“I didn’t get to bed until very late, got up before dawn and already have one meeting under my belt.” I didn’t tell her it had been with Rufe, honoring his skittishness. “We’re still going hiking tomorrow, right?”
Christie glanced at the slips piling up on her spindle. “Fingers crossed your busy schedule won’t get in our way.”
But she smiled when she said it, and pocketed my note as she strutted back to the grill.
I’d texted Barb Wyatt the moment I got out of the shower, asking for a quick meet at a place of her choosing. She surprised me by saying yes, and suggested a coffee joint two towns west of Riverside, near Sebago Lake. Unsure what that was about I hopped in the car and enjoyed the October sunshine, still puzzling over Roz’s source’s report that there was an organized crime angle to Patrick’s death.
The coffee shop was called Billie’s and it boasted a jukebox with a terrific selection of classic bluegrass. The Stanley Brothers were picking out a tune when I walked through the door. Barb was in cop position—in the back booth with her eyes on the door—an oversized mug of black coffee in her right hand. She looked as haggard as Rufe had, as though insomnia had been a regular companion, but she didn’t offer me the opportunity to inquire into her well-being.
“Why are we talking this morning? You know very well the fire marshal’s people are running the bombing investigation.”
“I’m reasonably set with that story, at least for the moment,” I said. “But between us, people are getting jumpy.”
>
“No kidding. We’re getting calls on this day and night. A prankster would have stopped after the first or second one. The ongoing pattern says troubled kid. Or maybe not a kid at all.”
“They looking at any adults in particular?”
“Maybe it’s because we’re all spending a lot of time in the churchyard, but I believe they’re taking a look at some of the protesters. Not the locals, the full-time gripers who’ve drifted in from out of town.”
I wondered if Bozco was on their radar already, and if Barb would admit it if he was.
“Someone told me a psychological profile guy is on the case now.” I was fishing, but it seemed logical.
“It’s a woman. A very smart woman,” she said. “The evidence is inconclusive as to age, but whoever it is has a high level of technical finesse and appears to crave attention.”
“The former says adult, the latter says kid.”
“Who the hell knows? We need to catch whoever it is soon, because the profiler says there’s a good chance the next one will involve more than property damage.”
I filed that away for the moment. “I have a solid tip I’m willing to exchange for a frank update about the status of the investigation into Patrick’s death.”
“How do I know your tip is worth that?”
“You wouldn’t be here if you doubted me. By the way, why are we all the way out here by the lake anyway?”
“You know why. Wrecker’s got his guys all over Riverside, and he’s itching for an excuse to cut me out of the briefings.”
“So if I give you something he hasn’t got...”
“That’s always the equation, isn’t it? If I don’t have anything to bring to the table I will lose my seat. So give me something good and I’ll bring you up to speed.”
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