“So did a lot of people, even me at first.”
“But you saw it through,” Eddie said. “I’ve played it safe my whole career.” He felt the tone of the conversation sliding toward morose and clapped his hands. “But no more. I’ve learned this week that nothing extraordinary comes without risk.”
Boden nodded, pleased and intrigued. “Now this I should get on tape.”
“Maybe not. If my scheme doesn’t work you’ll see my career in the obituaries.” And maybe me, too.
“What’s your game plan?”
“It starts with you leading tonight’s six-o’clock broadcast with the story of the year.”
“Yeah, about that—where the hell’s my scoop?” he asked. “I got political capital with the boss riding on this.”
Eddie slid him a photocopy of a seventeen-year-old Empire story.
Boden pulled reading glasses from his coat pocket and set them near the end of his nose. He nodded when he had reached the end of the clip. “I remember the Father Wojick scandal,” he said. “He falls in love and goes to California to get laid. People gossip, he’s never heard from again. The end. What’s the new hook? And where’s my video?”
Eddie slid out of the booth. “Let’s take a walk.”
Boden frowned. “You’re not going to tell me until the last second, are you? See what I mean—you’re a needling little bastard.”
They strolled into the Acre. Their slow pace stirred no interest, not even from folks out on their front steps, bored speechless by being poor and waiting for entertainment to happen by. Boden let old Rusty carry all their equipment. He seemed impervious to the cameraman’s huffing and puffing. Eddie led them through the brush to the side door at St. Francis de Sales Church, and opened the padlock with the key Hippo Vaughn had given him.
“Please,” Boden said as they entered, “let there be a sex cult in here.”
Rusty staggered up the stairs behind them. At the top Boden looked to Eddie and rolled his eyes to apologize for his cameraman’s whimpering.
“So this was Wojick’s church,” Boden said. “Impressive. A shame they don’t use it anymore. This bright enough in here, Rusty?”
The cameraman wiped a sleeve over his shiny forehead. “I got lights. It’ll be fine.”
“Look around,” Eddie said. “Take some film of the sanctuary, but don’t go near the altar until I get back. This could take a while.”
Eddie hustled down the main aisle. His heavy footsteps echoed through the vast church like distant cannon fire. He skirted the altar and slipped through an arched doorway to a stripped-down room, painted white from the hardwood floor to the twelve-foot ceiling. A tall wardrobe cabinet, two sagging cafeteria-style tables and a few mismatched chairs were scattered around.
The room had two doors. The first led down to a dark basement. Wrong way. Eddie needed a passage leading up.
The second door led to a narrow corridor, just wide enough to walk through, which passed behind the altar to a similar room on the other side, probably at one time a dressing room for the altar boys. This room contained a dozen old folding chairs—wooden and missing slats—and two empty wardrobe cabinets.
No passage up.
Eddie peeked behind the cabinets, and then searched the rest of the walls, pushing and tapping, for a panel or utility door. Nothing. He searched back along the narrow corridor, found nothing and performed a similar hunt in the first room. He sat in a dusty chair, defeated. There has to be a way up there.
He looked up. In the ceiling was the square outline of a trap door. Eddie smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand.
The wardrobe, he decided, would make an excellent base for a makeshift ladder; it was sturdy and tall, with a top big enough to support a chair. But it must have been made from the same wood as Eddie’s mysteriously heavy piano, because the damn thing would not budge.
Instead, Eddie dragged a cafeteria table under the trap door. On the table he placed an armless wooden chair with a spindle-rod backing. On that chair, he placed the sturdiest of a rickety bunch of folding chairs from the other room. And on that chair, Eddie placed his feet.
His fingertips clung to the back of the chair until the whole tower stopped quivering. The trap door wasn’t hinged; it was just a piece of plywood painted white to match the ceiling. He pushed it in, and then over to the side. With much scuffling and grunting, he pulled himself up.
He entered a utility room, the same size as the room below, but unfinished. Three of its walls were just planks nailed to wooden beams. The fourth was stone, the granite outer wall of the church. A minimal steel ladder, something like a fire escape, was bolted to the outer wall, leading up into darkness.
Eddie was prepared for the dark. He took a penlight from his pocket, clicked it on, held it in his teeth and started up the ladder. Twenty rungs later, he was still climbing. The exercise, combined with the height, produced a sweat Eddie could smell. It was the odor of parachuting or rock climbing, activities that combine sports with the chance of death. He stopped to wipe his hands, one at a time, on his pants.
The ladder finally reached a roof of heavy timber. Eddie stepped to a triangular platform. It creaked under its first load in decades, but seemed up to the task. He wormed his shoulders into a cubbyhole through an inner wall of the church, and emerged in a crawl space between the ceiling of the sanctuary and the roof of St. Francis de Sales.
The space was about four feet high, cluttered with a crisscross of wooden beams and a web of support wires. Fingers of dust hung from everything, swaying like undersea plants in the dead air Eddie had disturbed. He crouched on parallel wooden timbers, loose insulation between them. What was beneath the insulation? Maybe just thin plaster, like in the old triple-decker in the Acre. He would stay on the timbers, and off the Channel Eight news.
He kept the flashlight in his teeth and crept under support beams and over the wires. Above the altar, right where it should be, he found a metal winch bolted across three timbers. It was the size and shape of an overturned wheelbarrow. Brass gears interlocked on the outside of the winch. A crank handle screwed into an axle.
Eddie gripped the handle. “Okay, Father Wojick,” he whispered, “time to come home from California.”
He pulled.
And nothing happened. The crank didn’t budge. He pushed. Still nothing.
“Don’t piss me off, crank,” Eddie warned. He pushed it with his feet, and then tried again from the other side. The crank refused to listen. He looked closer.
A steel claw, the size of a finger, was wedged into a gear, locking it in place. The lock was on a pivot, but the stubborn thing would not move. Eddie pulled at it, and then kicked it with his heel. He was so close, and this foolish metal claw was thwarting him. He needed something to pry it open. He tugged at a support wire. It might have been possible to loop wire around the claw and pull it free, but he’d need a wrench to loosen a wire. And if he had a wrench, he wouldn’t need wire.
Eddie unscrewed the crank handle, which, once removed from the machine, resembled a crowbar. He tried wedging it against the claw to pry it loose, but the end of the tool was too fat. Furious at this nagging little detail for which he had failed to plan, Eddie whacked the claw with the handle. A spark shot into the darkness. The clanking noise vibrated through the crawlspace.
He hit it again, and then again.
And the machine gave up its ghost.
Gears whirled. The giant crucifix plummeted on its chain like a battleship’s anchor. Eddie shut his eyes and squeezed the penlight in his teeth. The chain whipped back an instant after the crash and rang the winch like a church bell. Plaster chunks scattered below.
By the time Eddie got back down, old Rusty had the tripod and a portable light set up. He panned the camera back and forth.
A vaguely human form was splayed face-up on the altar, arms and head bent limp over the edge of the sacramental table. Chunks of plaster clung to the form. There was no o
dor. The moisture in the body had long since evaporated through pores in the plaster. What remained was the husk.
Boden held a piece of white plaster embedded with a tuft of hair. The newsman’s complexion had faded, and Eddie could see the spots touched up by makeup. Boden’s bottom lip quivered. He glanced to the news clip Eddie had given him, and then said, “Is this—”
“Father Wojick,” Eddie confirmed. “That old news story is all wrong. He never ran away for a woman in California. And he never abandoned his flock. You’ll set the record straight.”
Boden nodded. He swallowed, and then said, “Who did this to him, Ed?”
“That’s the new mystery you’ll offer your viewers tonight at six.”
Boden plopped into a dusty pew, showing no concern for his suit. He pulled out a cell phone and had a hushed, five-minute conversation. He raised his voice one time: “I am not drunk!”
He hung up and told Eddie, “I’m leading the broadcast tonight.” His eyes lingered on the form on the altar. “My boss will need smelling salts when she sees this video.”
Eddie asked, “What time you go on?”
“The news is at six.”
“No, what time do you go on—exactly what time.”
Boden studied his wristwatch. “The show’s intro is ninety seconds. Then Jill and Willy introduce me and set the scene. Figure another thirty seconds. I’ll be live by six-oh-two, the latest.”
“This needs to be exact, not a minute either way.”
“My watch is synchronized with the station clock,” Boden assured him.
“Great. Gimme your watch.”
“Why?”
“Because Rusty has one and I need yours tonight.”
Boden handed over his Rolex without protest.
The cameraman declared he was finished. Eddie sat next to Boden while Rusty packed. “Do me a favor,” Eddie said. “Cover my tracks, and don’t call the cops or the diocese until the video is on the air. I don’t want this story getting around before you break it.”
“Not a problem,” Boden said. “I’m sure they’ll be calling me when they see it.”
They left the church with old Rusty bringing up the rear again. Eddie locked the door. Boden sent the cameraman away for video of the church exterior, and of the neighborhood. He offered his hand and left it there until Eddie shook it.
“Thanks,” Boden said. “For picking me.”
“Pull no punches tonight,” Eddie said, knowing that Boden never did. The Rolex read four-thirty. Plenty of time for a coffee before he barged into the office of Empire publisher Alfred T. Templeton.
“Gotta go,” Eddie said. “I need to quit my job.”
Chapter 34
Eddie slouched on the red vinyl bench and peered over a four-year-old edition of Field & Stream. Another police car slowly passed outside. That made three patrols in the twenty minutes since he had ducked into the barbershop on the outskirts of downtown.
“They’re looking to take you in,” the barber said. He was stooped, and spotted with age and spoke in a thick Cuban accent.
Eddie spun around, startled. “What’s that?” he said.
The barber looked oddly at Eddie. “I was joking to my friend here,” he said. He pointed a comb at his customer, a balding middle-aged man with a black beard that brushed his potbelly.
“Oh. Sorry.”
The barber grinned. “You got a guilty conscience, eh?” He went back to snipping his customer’s black horseshoe of hair. “S’okay. S’okay. I give you a prison cut.”
Eddie laughed. “Are there normally so many cops around here?”
The barber shrugged. “What’s normal? Seems like a lot today.”
Yeah, it seemed like a lot for the late afternoon shift. This was strange. The closer Eddie got to the Empire Building, the thicker the police patrols had become. They were looking for somebody. “Is there a phone around here?” he asked.
The barber pointed with scissors. “Pay phone outside, around the corner.”
Eddie went to the phone. He pried purple chewing gum off the coin slot with a discarded Popsicle stick and then jammed in fifty cents. Whom could he call? Whom did he trust? Eddie dialed an extension at The Empire.
“Newsroom,” answered Boyce Billips.
“Hey, it’s Bourque.”
The intern shrieked in Eddie’s ear and hung up.
“Boyce? Boyce? Hey!” Eddie said into the dead telephone.
What the hell is his problem?
Eddie dug another fifty cents from his pocket and dialed back.
A tiny voice answered after six rings, “Hello?”
“What’s the matter with you?”
Boyce whispered, “Whatever happened, I just want to say I have nothing but respect for you and all the help you’ve given me the past year, and I’ll say that under oath.”
Eddie checked Boden’s Rolex—five minutes to five. “Goddammit, Boyce, I don’t have time for riddles. Tell me what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know? Please, Eddie, don’t shoot the messenger—oh God, I didn’t mean it like that! I mean it’s just an expression….”
Eddie hollered, “Boyce!”
Eddie heard Boyce’s telephone crash off his desk. After some fumbling noises, Boyce got back on the line. “Sorry,” he said with a nervous laugh, “dropped the phone.” He quickly added, “Not that I’m afraid or anything, it’s just startling. I mean, you’re startling, not the phone. Not you, personally, it’s just….”
“Please,” Eddie interrupted. He turned his back to an approaching car, a late-model rust-colored sedan. He let it pass, and then gave a little sigh. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“The cops, Eddie, the cops found the weapon, so just turn yourself in.”
“Again with the riddles? What weapon?”
He could hardly hear Boyce whisper, “The murder weapon.”
“You mean from Danny’s murder? Jesus, Boyce, this is good news. Finally a breakthrough. Where’d they find it?”
There was a pause. Boyce creaked, “In your house.”
My house? Eddie stood stunned, a man of marble with a telephone to his head.
“I guess some investigators went there early this morning,” Boyce continued.
Eddie wasn’t sure he could speak. He was surprised to hear himself say, “Yeah, I had convinced the cops to follow up on a break-in at my place.”
“Like I said, whatever happened….”
“Shut up, Boyce,” Eddie hissed. “I didn’t kill Danny.” He noted a rust-colored Buick slowly coming toward him. Is that the same car from a minute ago? “How do they know it’s the murder weapon?”
“They found blood and fingerprints on it,” Boyce said. “The word leaked from the police lab a little while ago. It’s Danny’s blood. And your fingerprints—they match your media I.D. application.”
Eddie got stern. “Boyce, listen to me. This is a setup.”
“Uh-huh….”
The Buick stopped about forty yards from Eddie. Two people were inside. “Boyce, I’m in some trouble here, and I need you to believe me.”
“Whatever you say.”
“No, Boyce!” Eddie shouted. He caught himself and said calmly, “You have to believe me for real. Think about all we’ve gone through together.”
“Like what?”
Like what, indeed? Eddie tried another line of reasoning, “Think about all those emails about hepatitis you sent me last month. And remember the time you called at five in the morning when you thought you got V.D. from a picnic blanket?”
“There was something crusty on it.”
“Whatever,” Eddie said. “Boyce, think about all the annoying things you’ve done in the past year.”
Two men in black slacks and matching blue windbreakers got out of the Buick.
Eddie gently said into the phone, “If I was really a killer, wouldn’t you be dead by now?”
The
phone was silent.
The two men started walking toward Eddie. They had matching crew cuts and badges on their belts. Eddie recognized one of them from when he worked the night shift on the police beat.
“Think fast, man,” Eddie said. “I really gotta run.”
“Yes, I guess so. I’m sorry.”
“Forget it. Stick by the phone. I may need help.”
Eddie hung up and ran.
***
One cop raced back to the car.
The other raced after Eddie. He ran heavy, arms across his body, more like a football halfback than a track sprinter. Eddie tore across a parking lot, vaulted a low chain fence, cut through a playground and zigzagged down side streets into a neighborhood of low-rent apartments, mini-malls, and light manufacturing plants.
Fleeing on foot through back yards and back alleys kept Eddie’s mind off what the police had found in his house. He thought only about getting away, and getting to the publisher’s office in time for the six-o’clock news. He had one shot to squeeze Templeton for some answers about Danny, and he didn’t care about the risk.
Up ahead, a police cruiser screeched to a stop, its nose diving at the ground. Eddie fled into an alley between two brick buildings. A big blue Dumpster blocked the way. He turned sideways and scraped past it, just as his pursuer on foot came into view.
“In the alley,” the cop huffed into his radio. “Seal the other end.”
The other end was thirty yards away. Eddie dashed for it. The rust-colored Buick beat him there; the car skidded on the concrete sidewalk and stopped across the narrow exit. Eddie hurdled the front fender in stride, slid over the hood and ran blindly across the street. Car horns blared. Brakes screamed. Somebody shouted, “Asshole!”
The driver gunned the Buick’s engine. Tires spun on sand and the car roared after Eddie down a side street lined with interconnected faux-brick condominiums.
Eddie gasped for air. The Buick growled louder. Ahead on the left, a roll-down garage door was closing. Eddie dove under it and rolled. The door closed behind him. Outside, the Buick squealed to a stop.
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