by Baxter Clare
Annie offered a wan smile. She nodded. "I haven't told that story in years." Pulling the drain plug, she added, "Thanks for listenin'."
"Thanks for tellin' me. I got bad news, though."
"What's that?"
"While you were talkin'? I ate all the ice cream."
"No." Annie chuckled. "That's good news."
CHAPTER 33
Tuesday, 18 Jan 05 — Canarsie
Mary Catherine Franco.
Sounds so churchy. So Boston Irish. Neither of which my mother was. She was born Mary Catherine Stenthorst. Good Swedish name. Sounds like stamping your feet in the snow and ordering your horse to stand. Nothing churchy about that.
Mary Catherine Franco.
She loved snow and daisies and sugar cookies with lemon icing. She was young once and pretty. Beautiful even. She turned men's heads. She was slim and tall, very Nordic. A blonde Julie Newmar, only not so jaded. Or stacked. I got her height and her flat chest. Better than being barrel-shaped like Dad. She had gorgeous cheekbones. She could hang clothes on them. But she hated her eyelashes. Called them stumpy. Td sit on the toilet watching her curl them, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, swearing at them as she layered on coat after coat of mascara, an old-fashioned sweating on the sink. They always drank old-fashioneds before they went out. Dad showed me how to make them. I forget now, but something about muddling sugar and bitters—that's what he called it, muddling. Critical step—you muddle the sugar and bitters in a teaspoon of water, add ice, bourbon and a maraschino cherry. I loved the cherries after they'd been soaking in the booze. Sure sounds good right about now.
See, that's how I know Tm an alcoholic—it's ten in the morning, the middle of winter and my toes are frozen yet an icy, dripping, old-fashioned sounds like heaven. And I don't even like sweet drinks. Tm a rummy, just like Hemingway's drunks. Sounds so much more genteel than alcoholic. Alcoholic is so clinical. Has no charm. Rummy sounds quaint, amusing. If a rummy sticks a gun in his mouth and almost pulls the trigger it's amusing. If an alcoholic does it it's desperate. There's a lot in a name.
Like Mary Catherine Franco. Lace Irish, Catholicism, white dresses. But not my mom. She was Cat. Always Cat. Never Mary Catherine, and Catherine only when my dad was frustrated with her. He called her everything starting with "cat"—catawampus, cataclysm, catamaran, Katmandu—he'd come home from work and sweep her into his arms, singing, "How do you do, Katmandu?"—catapult, katabatic. When she was in a down cycle, all depressed and lethargic on the couch, he'd hold her head in his lap and stroke her hair, calling her "my catatonia."
He loved her. He loved her so fucking much. Through the ups, the downs, the in-betweens. There couldn't have been another woman. Yeah, okay, so maybe he knocked off a piece here and there. My mom wasn't exactly available when she was depressed but as far as loving another woman, I can't see it. Not enough for her to still be prowling around his grave after all this time.
And the lows just weren't that bad while he was alive. They were more spread out. Seemed like she was more manic while he was alive and then afterward more depressed. Lucky me. But sometimes the highs were as bad as the lows. Like the night she decided we needed new dishes. She took every plate and bowl we owned and smashed them against the wall. My father tried to stop her but she was just laughing and hurling china. Neighbors called the cops. Thought someone was getting killed.
Crazy cat. Katzenjammer. Cat Ballou. Catamount.
Mom.
CHAPTER 34
Frank snapped out of a doze to see an elderly white woman walking from the direction of her father's grave.
"Oh, shit." Rocketing from the car, Frank trotted up to the departing woman. "Excuse me. Are you here for the Deluca funeral?"
The woman stared with wide, rheumy eyes. "The Deluca funeral? Oh, no."
"Oh. Which one then?" Frank pressed.
"I'm not here for any funeral. I was visiting my brother."
"Oh. Your brother." Frank made a show of looking beyond the woman. "Is there a funeral goin' on here?"
"Not that I know of." The woman turned, searching too.
"Shoot. I hope I got the right day. Maybe I got the time wrong. I coulda sworn it was this mornin'. Well, thanks anyways." Frank pretended to move away but stopped to ask, "Say, who's ya brother? You're a dead ringer for Frankie Ford."
"Oh, no." The woman smiled. "My brother's Samuel Abrams. He died of cancer two days past Thanksgiving."
"Aw, geez. That's terrible. I'm sorry for your troubles."
"Yes, well, thank you. Maybe you could ask about your funeral at the office."
"Hey, that's a great idea. I'll do that. Thanks. Sorry to bother you."
"Oh, it's no bother."
The woman waved and Frank headed to the office. From a corner of the building she watched the old lady leave, relieved she caught her and disappointed she was nobody.
Inside the office, Frank said, "Mornin'. Can you tell me where Samuel Abrams is buried?"
"One minute," the receptionist told her. "I check for you."
Frank followed his directions to Abrams' plot, satisfied with the fresh prints and flowers at Abrams' stone. She checked her father's grave. No prints that weren't her own.
Returning to the Nova she poured coffee and fidgeted. She remembered to call Charlie Mercer and arranged for him to take over surveillance. After talking to him she dialed the squad.
"Homicide, Detective Lewis."
"Sister Shaft. S'appenin'?"
"IT, that you?"
"S'me. S'up?"
"Da-amn, girl. Where you at?"
"Sittin' in a rusty Nova, freezin' my ass off outside a cemetery in Brooklyn."
"Yeah, whassup up with that? When you comin' home?"
"I'll be back Monday. That's the plan. How's things goin'?"
"Let's see. Bobby's in court. Diego's at the morgue. The new guy's weird."
"How so?"
"Kept callin' me Queen Latifah."
Frank laughed.
"Yeah, funny, right? I got in that home's face and told him if he called me Queen Latifah one more time I was going to fuck him up so hard make Queen Latifah look like Pee Wee Herman."
"Great." Frank cringed. "How'd that go over?"
"Let's just say Larry be givin' me some space now."
"Try not to kill him before I get back, okay?"
"Yeah, maybe. We'll see 'bout that."
"Just ice, Joe Louis. He's not so bad."
"Skinhead best not be gettin' in my face again. That's all I gotta say."
"What else? Anyone doing any actual police work or ya'll just hanging out playing kindergarten?"
"We're working," Lewis huffed. She filled Frank in as she absently registered the street. There were faces she'd become familiar with, regulars catching the bus, the old man walking his Airedale, another old man with an obese poodle, a dark woman her age that limped by every day around noon.
Even Frank had her routine. She checked the graves in the morning, then returned to the Nova, content to take in the neighborhood and drink coffee. When she tired of that, she spent the obligatory time on her journal, visited the bathroom and walked around the cemetery. She dawdled, reading names until lunch. If it was nice she ate in the cemetery, and if not, she'd eat in the car and listen to news. After lunch, she'd pour her last cup of coffee and read. She usually nodded off a few times, jerking herself awake. Then it was time for another walk around the cemetery, bemused by both her dreams and the quality of light as the winter sun descended.
It went that way Thursday and Friday, with Frank's second Saturday at the cemetery fast becoming as fruitless as her first. Warm in the heavy wool coat she'd borrowed from Annie, Frank admired a sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding her crucified son in her lap. The Mary looked so pained and the Jesus so dead. Frank was amazed that stone could be so vivid. She studied the epitaphs of the family beneath the monument, deciding she didn't want to be buried. Who would visit and why waste the space?
Wondering if she
could arrange for her ashes to be put in a dumpster, she eyed a man hurrying by on her right. He was about six feet tall, weighed around one-seventy, maybe black or Latino. She couldn't tell from the way he was hunched into his jacket. He wore John Lennon glasses and seemed to know where he was going. In one gloved hand he clutched a grocery sack. Yellow chrysanthemums poked from the edge.
Frank followed discretely.
Her heart jumped when he stopped at her father's grave. The man searched the ground. He looked behind the headstones and at the surrounding markers, then knelt and crossed himself. He appeared to pray for a moment. Done with that, he took the flowers from the sack and propped them against the carved letters Francis S. Franco. Then he took a glass candle from the bag. Stuffing the empty sack into his jacket he fished in a trouser pocket. He struck a match and lit the candle. Arranging it at the base of the flowers, he bowed his head.
Frank edged closer. She drank him down like whiskey. Kinky short hair flecked with gray above a furrowed, walnut-colored face. The skin under his chin bunched under his bent head and she put him in his mid-fifties. He wore black trousers over black lace-ups. The pants and shoes were worn but clean. The down jacket was navy-colored, no brand.
He stood but didn't leave, his gaze rarely straying from her father's headstone. Frank watched, making herself crazy with the possibilities. Could he be the perp? Maybe. Frank tried to see him almost forty years younger. Couldn't. Maybe her father's illegitimate child? Maybe a half brother from somewhere? Maybe he'd been bisexual and this was his old lover. Hell, after Annie's bombshell Frank was ready to accept anything.
The man looked toward her. Frank checked the monument at her feet, crossing herself like she'd seen Annie do. From the edge of her vision she watched him do the same thing then hurry toward the gate. Frank went after him, keeping half a block between them. He stopped at a bus stop and Frank ducked into a grocery. She watched from there, getting a couple dollars worth of change. Five minutes later a bus pulled up and Frank got on behind him.
The bus zigzagged north through Brooklyn. When the man got off Frank did too. She maintained her half-block trail. He seemed oblivious to her. Various people greeted him as he walked. A few times he stopped for a brief talk. Frank strained to hear but couldn't. She twisted and turned with him until he abruptly crossed the street and entered one of half a dozen entrances into a large brick building. Frank crossed too. Reading a sign on the door listing Rectory Hours, she paused.
A young Hispanic woman came out and lit a cigarette. She quickly puffed half of it and as she stubbed it out against the building Frank approached her.
"Excuse me. Who was that man that just walked in to the rectory? Tall guy, glasses, dark coat."
"You mean Father Cammayo?"
Frank hid her surprise. "Is that who that was? I lived here a long time ago. I thought I recognized him but I didn't want to go up and say hello to a total stranger."
Flashing a nervous smile the woman nodded, then returned inside.
Frank walked around the corner and dialed Annie, but she didn't answer. Frank told her voice mail, "It's Frank. I got him. Call me." She pressed end and read the name scrolled above a large set of wooden doors.
Our Lady Queen of Angels.
She climbed the steps to the doors. She pulled a large iron handle and the door gave easily. But she dropped her hand, letting the door close in a whisper of incense. Above her, three stained glass windows stretched to the sky. One panel looked like Mary ascending to Heaven in the company of angels. The second was a mournful, El Greco-style Christ and a third appeared to be Adam and Eve. While grappling with the significance of the triptych her phone went off. It spooked her and she checked the number, relieved.
"Hey," she told Annie. "I got him."
"So I heard. Where are you?"
"Brooklyn. Williamsburg, I think. I'm at a church." Frank tilted her head back. "Our Lady Queen of Angels. On Eighth Street."
"Is that where he's at?"
"Yeah. He's a fuckin' priest."
"Hey, hey. Watch your mouth. A priest? How do you know? Did you talk to him?"
"No. He went into the rectory and a minute later a woman came out. I asked who the man was that just went in and she says, 'You mean Father Cammayo?' A priest. Go figure. When can you talk to him?"
"I just got outta the pool. I was on my way to Mom's but I guess I'll come over there instead. What's the address?"
"Uh . . ." Frank looked around. "Corner of Eighth and Havemeyer. The rectory's around the back. I'm gonna keep an eye on it, see if he comes out again. How long you think it'll take you to get here?"
"I dunno." Annie sighed. "Gimme a half-hour."
"All right. There's a pizza joint across the street. I'll be waiting in there."
Frank ordered a slice and picked at it, too excited to eat. She scoured her memory for a priest. Her father was raised Catholic but except for an occasional Christmas Mass she'd never seen him inside a church, and certainly never with a priest. Although her mother dabbled in practically every known dogma, cult and creed, the woman was adamantly opposed to Christianity in all guises, a backlash from her rigid Lutheran upbringing.
Frank would have liked to talk to her mother. She wished she could be here now to share the excitement. Frank reflexively thought to order a beer. Realizing she couldn't, she concentrated instead beyond the window, one eye on the rectory door, the other searching for Annie.
CHAPTER 35
After an agony of time, Annie finally appeared. They made a quick plan inside the restaurant, and Annie ordered, "You just be quiet, okay? Let me do all the talkin'."
Frank nodded, impatient to get started.
Glancing at the cold pizza, Annie asked, "You gonna finish that?"
Frank pushed the plate toward her.
"This father, he look old enough to have known your pops?"
"Maybe. I put him in his mid-fifties."
"Any way your pops coulda known him?"
"I been racking my brain, but I'm comin' up blank. He didn't go to church except for a Mass now and then, but my mother made such a stink I doubt it was worth it. She hated the Catholic Church. Said it was the second largest corporation in the world and it got that way by burning women at the stake and keeping the rest barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Sorry, but she was no fan of Catholicism. My father wasn't much of a fan either, from what I remember. I think he just went outta guilt. He always looked sad in church. I asked him once, why he was sad. We were at a Christmas Mass and he just said 'Hush.' He was quiet all the way home. I never asked again."
"Your pops, what sorta temper did he have?"
"Temper? Hardly any. He was an easy-going guy. Had to be to live with my mother. She was the one with the temper."
"Didn't get into fights?"
"No. Twice I saw him swing at someone and both times it was because the other guy pushed him."
"What do you mean pushed him?"
"I mean got in his face."
"Your pops knew how to fight?"
"He knew some moves."
"Where'd he learn 'em?"
"Look, why are we talkin' about this when Cammayo's across the street?"
"Humor me. Where'd he learn to fight?"
"Christ, I don't know. His friends. The street. His brother. How the hell should I know?"
"What streets?"
"Chicago."
"He grew up in Chicago?"
"Where are you goin' with this?"
Dusting pizza flour from her hands, Annie said, "Guys learn to fight interestin' places. Prison, the army, boarding schools. Just trying to figure where your pops was comin' from."
"You couldna asked me earlier? Before we had a potential witness waiting across the street?"
Annie stood and leaned over the table. "You didn't tell me earlier your pops was George Foreman."
Frank followed her outside. "He wasn't George Foreman, for Christ's sake. He just knew how to defend himself."
Crossing the stre
et Annie asked, "He ever swing at a man of God?"
"Why would he? He wasn't a loose cannon. I told you. Twice I saw him fight. Both times it was in a bar."
"And the night he got shot."
"How do you know that?"
"It was in your statement. You said he swung at the perp and that's when he got shot."
"Yeah. So three times. And each time he was defending himself. End of story. Jesus, Annie. He wasn't some loony vigilante."
"Awright, I'm just askin'."
Opening the door to the rectory, Annie was all silken politeness to the woman behind the desk.
"Hi," she said, displaying her ID. "My name's Detective Silvester. NYPD Homicide. I hate to bother him on Saturday afternoon, but we need to speak with Father Cammayo. Where might we find him?"
The woman looked back and forth between Annie and Frank. "Um, he's not here. He left just a couple minutes ago."
Frank glared at Annie and held back a curse. Unruffled, Annie continued, "Oh, that's too bad. See, we need to talk to him as soon as possible. We believe he might have some very important information about a parishioner we're looking for. This is a very time-sensitive matter—we're talkin' lives hangin' in the balance—and I'm sure you wouldn't normally do this but we need to ask you for Father Cammayo's address and phone number. It'd be a huge help."
The woman bit her lip. "Could I see your ID again?"
Placing her shield and ID on the woman's desk, Annie assured, "Absolutely, miss. You're right to ask. Copy the numbers for your records. CYA."
"What?"
"Cover yourself."
Having written Annie's information on a slip of paper the woman consulted a printout. She wrote Cammayo's information on a pink memo slip, handing paper, badge and ID back to Annie.
"You're a doll. Let me ask you one more thing. What's his schedule for the weekend?"
The woman checked another list. "Father Cammayo has the eight a.m. and the five p.m. masses tomorrow."
Annie extended her hand. "Thanks, Miss ... ?"
The woman took Annie's hand. "Mrs. Perez."