“All right. I’ll call the Bangor chief—I know him through the Police Chiefs Association—and mention Bozco’s name. I can’t tell him how to run his investigation. And I’m not going to spin out your blackmail theory because there’s no basis for it. But I’ll let him know Bozco’s on the radar here, and I’d be awfully interested if his fingerprints show up at the Hazelwood house.”
* * *
Christie and I sat in her driveway for a moment before going inside her house. I wanted to say a few things—to apologize again that my work took over our day, how much I appreciated her being such a good sport, that I would make it up to her. She stopped me before I got two sentences in.
“Don’t apologize. It is what it is.”
“I hate that saying.”
“In this case, it’s accurate.”
“But it won’t always be this way.”
“How can you possibly say that? You never phone it in. I’ve known you ten years, and the closer your newspaper gets to extinction, the more intense you are about your work. Do you imagine you’re going to singlehandedly save the Chronicle from oblivion?”
“This story is a big deal.”
“They’re all a big deal to you, Joe, and you’re not content merely covering them anymore. These days you jump right in the middle, gathering information like you’re a cop. And a couple of times you’ve been in a killer’s sights.”
“Only once, really.”
“Don’t split hairs. You think if you’re at the front of the media pack, the Chronicle will survive. But I don’t think it works that way.”
“I don’t know how it works. Nobody does. We’ve never been in this place before, when people snack on internet headlines all day and rarely eat a whole meal. But I’m not about to join the give-up parade. Good reporters immerse themselves. How do you think Roz Fortuna made her name? Or Paulie Finnegan, for that matter?”
Christie smiled at me, a wry little smile.
“You know what else Roz and Paulie have in common?” She reached for the door handle. “Think about it.”
Okay, so Paulie had been a lifelong bachelor and Roz was known for her inability to settle with one man. I wasn’t oblivious to Christie’s message. But it was not the time for another Chapter of our ongoing conversation about whether we could give each other what we needed.
Theo opened the door before we got there. He didn’t pull away when his mother pulled him into an embrace.
“Quiet tonight?”
“On all fronts,” Theo said. “I’m too tired to go out, told the guys I have a paper to write.”
“Why make up a story?” Christie looked like she wanted to keep her hands on her son but thought the better of it.
“Saying I’m beat sounds lame,” he said. “I don’t want to take any shit.”
His eyes jumped from his mother’s face to the table and back again as he related the details of the confrontation with Bozco. “Dude’s got an anger problem,” he said. “Didn’t seem like a churchy guy to me.”
“I think he’s more into the protest part than the prayer part,” I said. “But there’s something off about him, so steer clear.”
Theo pushed his chair back, the fury in his eyes as sudden as a July thunderstorm.
“No shit. Stay away from guys who come on like psychopaths. Got it.”
* * *
Theo didn’t slam the door to his room but he certainly closed it with authority. I was persona non grata all of a sudden, so I thought it was a good time to make space for him and his mother to hang out by themselves. I drove down the street before pulling to the curb to shoot a quick text to Roz—the Rambling Woman herself—to let her know the Bangor cops had been anything but forthcoming and ask if she had any new intel on the stolen goods angle. She texted back that she was still in the newsroom.
U back in town?
Yes
Come to ofis. Lots to discuss.
My curiosity piqued, I zipped into Portland. She was on the phone when I arrived so I cruised past my desk and found a handwritten note in a pale blue envelope identical to the one I’d received the previous day.
I have been told you respected Father Doherty and would not hurt his memory. I will meet with you if you can assure me you will write a dignified story. The facts may shock some, but Father does not deserve the tabloid treatment. Please leave a message at this number.
The area code was not Maine’s 207, but cellphones long ago had erased the ability to identify a caller’s likely location. Before I dialed I thought about what I could promise. A mechanized voice instructed me to leave a message.
“This is Joe Gale from the Portland Daily Chronicle. I’ve received your second letter and can give you the assurance you seek. I would like to meet you as soon as possible. Please let me know what time and place is convenient for you.” I left my cell number, half suspecting my correspondent was edgar222@hotmail, cleaning up his spelling this time to appear to be someone different. And again, I wondered if Edgar was Bozco. I decided that if I heard back from the pale blue stationery person, I’d ask Rufe to ride along. He’d seen Bozco in action, and if I knew Rufe, he wouldn’t mind seeing him again.
Roz finally hung up from her call and waved me over. “Bangor thinks your friend Kathleen Hazelwood is squirrelly.”
“I could have told you that. She’s not giving them a straight story?”
“You got it. She insists she has no memory of the assault, but these guys read body language for a living, and hers is telling them that she knows quite well who knocked her to the floor.”
“Are they aware she drinks?”
“Oh yeah. Even if she hadn’t been lying in a puddle of booze they’d have known. Her friends ratted her out. Word is she became overly fond of amber liquor after her husband traded her in for a younger model. He apparently went the maximum humiliation route, taking the girlfriend to a couple of charity functions and winking when he was asked where his wife was. Kathleen held it together more or less through the divorce, but last spring her drinking got bad. Her friends staged a little intervention. She cleaned up her act some, but it all went to hell this week. The friends—those nurses stick together, let me tell you—told the cops they started dropping by several times a day as soon as they heard about Patrick’s death. More often than not she had a glass in her hand.”
“But this morning, there was an intruder, or at least a visitor, right?”
“When they canvassed the neighborhood two people reported seeing a silver sedan in her driveway about ten this morning. None of the friends drive a silver sedan.”
“Anyone get a license plate?”
“Not even a consistent story on the make. A neighbor walking her dog thought it might be a Volvo. A fourteen-year-old kid who lives diagonally across the street swears it was a Honda. He was in his driveway playing basketball and noticed it arrive but not leave.”
“And the dog was shut in a closet.”
“Right. Barking its head off.”
“How’d you get the Bangor cops to tell you all this? The two detectives who showed up at the hospital were tight-lipped as all hell.”
“The young officious one is named Clarence. The handsome one about my age is Mark Booth.”
“The handsome one.” I waggled my eyebrows. She ignored me.
“The kid was promoted off patrol a month ago and still hasn’t gotten over himself. Mark is an old friend.” Her red, red lips curved into a smile. “A dear old friend.”
“Glad to know you’ve got sources up there, however that came to be.”
“I’ve also got sources within the state police’s organized crime unit who told me what Rigoletti was hinting about in today’s press conference. It’s a big deal—Patrick was up to his ears in a sophisticated theft ring, stealing the good stuff from the churches he
was in charge of closing.”
I sat back in my chair. “That is unfuckingbelievable.”
“My sources claim to have solid proof Patrick contacted some high-end fencing specialists to help him siphon off some of the stained glass and other valuable stuff. These guys have to be mob, maybe just part-timers, but mob nonetheless. They’re digging deep on it, because of the delicacy of the situation. My sources say the fences are cooperating.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Unclear. They are being asked to provide emails or phone messages that back up what they are saying. If they can do that, this story is going to take an ugly turn before Patrick is cold in the ground.”
* * *
I drove back to Riverside, left my car in my driveway, then walked with Lou to Rufe’s. Feeling beat, I sprawled in one of the comfortable chairs in his den, a cold beer in hand, while he gave me his version of the confrontation with Bozco. That was when I first heard about the bullhorn guy’s taunt about Christie and I sleeping together, a detail Theo had left out when he recounted the confrontation.
“Theo handled that okay?”
“He wanted to take Bozco’s head off for implying there was something tawdry about his mother’s life, but as to the notion that the two of you are having a little sumpin’ sumpin’? He seemed cool with that.”
“I don’t get why Bozco would show up at Christie’s house in the first place.”
“I’m guessing it had something to do with you.”
“Then let him come hassle me.”
“If the scowl on his face and the swearing under his breath were any indication, you’ll get your wish soon enough.”
I filled him in on the assault on Kathleen and her determined dissembling about what had gone down, including Christie’s theory that the attacker might have been looking for hush money not to air Patrick’s dirty laundry. “When I met with him last night, Bozco called Patrick a fraud, but didn’t elaborate. But that press conference today where that asshole Wrecker Rigoletti dropped hints but didn’t really say anything solid? I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, Rufe, but my colleague Roz Fortuna has an inside line to the state police organized crime unit. The word is he was stealing valuable stuff during the parish closings and selling it to the mob. You knew him better than I did. Does that seem plausible to you?”
Rufe lifted his big shoulders to his ears, drained his beer bottle and disappeared into the kitchen. When he came back he set a fresh bottle on the coffee table so hard I jumped.
“I hate this shit,” he said. “The Pat I knew wouldn’t have stolen a pack of gum, but I’ve also heard in the wind this week that something like that might have gone on. It makes no sense to me.”
“When did you hear about it?”
“Couple days ago.”
“Jesus, Rufe. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know if it was true, so it didn’t seem right to spread the rumor around.”
“Who told you? One of your buddies in the support group?”
Rufe shrugged.
“That must have been it, otherwise you’d be telling me.”
Rufe’s arms were crossed in front of his broad chest, his hands balled into fists.
“I made a mistake telling you about Frig It,” he said. “I should never have broken the confidentiality of the group, especially with you, because you don’t get keeping secrets.”
I sat forward in my chair. “What the hell are you talking about? I keep people’s secrets all the time. I honor my sources’ need for confidentiality every damn day.”
“Well I can’t tell you any more about Frig It. Things Pat said, or things people are saying about him. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re speculating, like you are. The whole thing feels like a rumor roller coaster, and I want to get off.”
I took a breath. I already was on Christie’s shit list. I couldn’t afford to have Rufe pissed at me, too.
“Okay. No more talk about Frig It. I haven’t violated my confidentiality pledge to you, but if it makes you feel better, we won’t go there anymore.”
Still puzzling about the possibility that Bozco was the Bangor perp, I asked what kind of car he drove to Christie’s house.
Rufe unclenched his fists, picked up his beer bottle. “I don’t remember there being a car. I’m pretty sure he was on foot.”
“Stella Rinaldi told me she often saw him walking around the St. Jerome’s neighborhood. Maybe he doesn’t have a driver’s license?”
“Who cares?”
“If he doesn’t have a license, that shoots to hell my theory that he might have been Kathleen’s assailant, because how the hell else would he get to Bangor? But if he does have a license, it’d be good to know what kind of car he drives, because the cops have two reports of a silver sedan in Kathleen’s driveway this morning.”
“He could have rented wheels to go to Bangor. To be anonymous.”
“But he’d need a valid license to rent a car.”
“True. Why don’t you ask your pal the police chief to run his name through the database?”
“She gets crazy when she thinks I step over the line from covering crime to investigating it.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, swigging our beer, but it wasn’t an easy silence. Rufe’s arms were crossed again, so I assumed he was still brooding about having told me about Frig It. I swallowed the last of my beer and tapped Lou’s back to signal that we were leaving.
Rufe stopped me, his voice low and intense.
“I met this kid when I went out dancing last night. He saw Pat and the other priest—DiAngelo—up the coast at a lobster shack his family ran.” He paused. “The kid totally read them as a couple.”
I made the time-out signal with my hands. “Who is this kid? How did you manage to bump into someone at a bar who knew Patrick?”
Rufe backed up and told me the story from start to finish, and while it sounded almost too coincidental to be true, the details the guy related—right down to what the priests looked like—were spot on.
“Kathleen told me the first time I interviewed her that sometimes she met up with her brother and Father Michael at lobster shacks in the Midcoast,” I said. “She said they used to goof around, make believe they were tourists. Had alter ego names for each other—I don’t remember what they were, I can look it up—but it sounded like a running gag and almost, I don’t know, campy. But you told me Patrick wasn’t gay.”
“Actually, I said you shouldn’t assume because I knew him that he was gay.”
“Okay.”
“Now this kid tells me he saw them together in a place nobody knew them, and they acted like a couple. So maybe like his sister, Pat was prone to telling different things to different people.”
“Are you upset he didn’t come out to you?”
“I don’t usually have much respect for closet cases, but in his case—if it’s true—I would understand.”
“Do you think he and DiAngelo might have been lovers?”
“No idea.” Rufe said. “And if they were, I’m guessing DiAngelo won’t admit it now.”
My mind raced back to Christie’s blackmail theory. “Do you think Bozco found out somehow that Patrick was gay? If so, that might explain the claim he was a hypocrite.”
“It doesn’t matter whether Bozco knew or simply assumed it. Mere suspicion could be enough to set off a guy like Bozco.”
“I’ll bet Kathleen knew the truth,” I said.
“The question is, will she tell you?”
“No shit.”
“When do you think she’ll be released from the hospital?”
“No idea. The calling hours at the funeral home are tomorrow afternoon and evening. No other family member will be present, and it will be awful if she’s not there.
I might hop in the car first thing in the morning and go back to Bangor. Maybe she’ll welcome the contact. Maybe she won’t want to see me, whether she’s still in the hospital or already home. But that’s my plan.”
“Four-plus hours on the road, fueled by the hope she’ll finally tell you the truth.”
“My gut tells me it’s worth it,” I said. “It usually leads me in the right direction.”
Chapter Twenty-One
It was another sleepless night, and Rufe was feeling the strain. He sat up and drank more beer after Joe left at midnight, clicking through the cable channels, irritated when he couldn’t find an old movie or even a West Coast ballgame to take his mind off the hellish circumstances surrounding Pat’s death. He’d lost his friend. He’d broken faith with his Frig It brothers by telling Joe of the group’s existence. And for all intents and purposes he’d outed Pat and maybe Father DiAngelo as well—two men so private about their partnership they barely spoke of it out loud. He hadn’t admitted to Joe that Pat and he had long conversations about the subject, instead made it sound like the kid in the bar gave him his first clue. It felt bad to half lie to Joe.
But now Joe was aware of the gay angle, and he was right: if crazy J.C. Bozco had somehow figured out Pat was gay, it was possible the dead priest’s sexuality had everything to do with his murder. But Pat was fiercely protective of that secret, and if he and DiAngelo had in fact been lovers, the handsome Italian priest was even more deeply closeted. So how would Bozco have figured it out?
At one thirty he turned out the lights and climbed into bed, where he proceeded to stare at the ceiling, the wall to his left, then the wall to his right. After two hours he gave it up, went back to the living room and sat again in front of the TV, muted this time, watching the perky meteorologists on the Weather Channel.
He booted up his laptop and found the online edition of Joe’s newspaper. Several photographs of his dead friend had been published over the course of the past few days. Rufe found a shot where Patrick wore a particularly characteristic smile. His face was half turned toward the right, engaged with an unseen person. But his eyes were on the camera, aware of the lens watching him.
Truth Beat Page 17