Three Marys

by Glenn Cooper

  ‘You can still keep the money,’ she said.

  In Ireland at this time of year it didn’t get pitch black until well after ten. That’s when the motorcycles pulled up to Kenny Riordan’s bungalow. After the two men dismounted, a car came down the Tubber Road and turned into Riordan’s gravel drive. The driver kept it running but switched off its lights.

  Whether Riordan heard them or had been keeping watch, he was outside in a hurry. The taller of the motorcyclists, Doyle – he was the talker. The other fellow, McElroy, who had a pock-marked face, wasn’t a conversationalist and also wasn’t the brightest bulb. He relied on Doyle to handle the talking end of things. McElroy’s skills were more on the physical side.

  ‘You’re punctual,’ Riordan said.

  ‘Always,’ Doyle replied. ‘It’s how we roll.’ He had a look over his shoulder. ‘Have the local constabulary been about tonight?’

  ‘They packed it in a few hours ago. They usually do a drive-by at midnight or so. That car with you?’

  ‘It is. Chariot awaits and all that. Everything ready?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  Riordan sniffed. ‘Don’t be like that, my son. Depends on the cash.’

  Doyle unzipped his jacket. A legal-sized yellow envelope flopped down from his chest. It was thick and heavy.

  ‘Mind if I count it inside?’ Riordan said.

  ‘Not a problem, friend, but don’t take all night.’

  Riordan went inside. His wife was barelegged on her lounger, a fuzzy blanket covering most of her nightdress. A sleep-apnea face mask lay on the side table within arm’s reach, next to her cigarettes.

  ‘Where’s the girl?’ Riordan said.

  ‘Her room.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘With her sisters, doing whatever they do.’

  Riordan opened the envelope and emptied the pile of cash on the sofa. His wife tried to whistle but the only sound that came out was her lips puffing.

  ‘Feast your eyes,’ he said.

  ‘They hundreds?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Show me one.’

  ‘What are you – a counterfeit expert?’

  ‘An expert, no, but I can tell if they’ve been run off a copier.’

  He handed her a hundred-euro note which she closely inspected. When she started to say something he told her to shut her trap lest he lose the count.

  When he was done he snatched her note back and declared, ‘It’s all there.’

  ‘Forty?’

  ‘Yeah, forty grand. That plus the ten they gave us for a down payment, I’d say we’re in the fucking money.’

  She lit a cigarette, took a drag and parked it between two orange-stained fingers. ‘Still, she’s my daughter.’

  Riordan repackaged the bills and slid the envelope under the middle cushion of the sofa. ‘We’ve talked ourselves blue over this. There’s no going back. There’s a bloody procession waiting outside.’

  Her huge chest rose and fell. ‘Well, bring her to me.’

  Mary was dressed in her Sunday clothes and was carrying the same small suitcase her mother had taken on her honeymoon. She was crying.

  ‘Come here, love,’ her mother said. ‘Give us a big hug.’

  The girl obeyed but the tobacco smoke stung her eyes making them redder.

  ‘I don’t want to fucking go.’

  ‘I know, love, but it’s for the best. For you and the baby. They said they’re going to treat you like a princess and your baby like a little prince.’

  ‘Where am I going?’

  ‘They said they’ll tell us once you get there. Security and all.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  Her father answered. ‘Good people. The best, in fact.’

  ‘Will you come and see me?’ Mary asked her mother.

  ‘I can’t travel in my state, love, but maybe your pa. We’ll see.’

  There was a knock on the door. Doyle stuck his head in. ‘All good in here?’

  ‘Just give us another minute, son,’ Riordan said. ‘Saying our goodbyes.’

  ‘Be quick. Tick tock. And you need to sign this paper.’

  Her mother was sobbing and heaving and all the kids were in the lounge bawling their eyes out when Mary walked into the night air with her father. A smartly dressed, heavy-hipped woman got out of the car, her shoes crunching on the gravel.

  ‘You must be Mary,’ she said with a Mexican accent, smiling – a big, sincere-looking smile.

  The girl hardly looked at her. She was glancing back at the house where pairs of eyes were peering out the windows.

  ‘My name is Lidia, Mary. I hope we’re going to be friends.’

  ‘Say hello to the lady,’ her father urged.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the woman said. ‘I know this is hard for all of you. Mary, come along now. You’re going to have fun. This is going to be a wonderful adventure.’

  ‘Sod your adventure. I don’t want to go,’ Mary said, taking a step back toward the house.

  ‘Can I tell you something? Your father told us a little secret about you.’

  ‘What secret?’

  ‘He said you always wanted a French bulldog puppy.’

  The girl’s eyes got big.

  ‘Let me show you.’

  The woman took a phone from her purse, opened a video clip, and handed the mobile to Mary. The girl watched a puppy frolicking on a pillow-laden, frilly bed.

  ‘That’s your puppy and your bed.’

  ‘Serious?’ the girl asked.

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  ‘What’s its name?’

  ‘Whatever you choose. It’s a girl. Ready to go and meet her?’

  Mary nodded and took her hand.

  Riordan followed them to the car. The woman took Mary’s suitcase and had her climb into the back. Her father leaned in and told her to behave herself. The girl nodded. That was their goodbye.

  ‘Where’re you from?’ Riordan asked the woman when he straightened his back.

  ‘I was born in Mexico.’

  ‘She going there?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you. Terms and conditions, right?’

  ‘If she’s leaving the country, she don’t have a passport, you know.’

  The woman dipped into her purse and showed him a brand-new Irish one.

  ‘Looks like you’ve got all the angles covered,’ Riordan said. ‘How will we know when she gets where she’s going?’

  ‘We’ll text Mr Doyle. He’ll let you know. For the time being that’s how you’ll communicate with her.’

  Riordan filled his cheeks and expelled the air loudly. ‘Heartened to know this won’t be the last time we see his charming mug.’

  NINE

  Cardinal George Pole was a fastidious man, bordering on obsessive. His clothes and vestments had to be arranged in his closet and laid out just so. His bathroom countertops and medicine chest were scrupulously neat and ordered. He had learned to make a perfect bed when he served as a priest in the Marine Corps and as a cardinal he insisted on doing the chore himself, demonstrating to the nuns how a quarter would bounce off his tight-as-a-drum bedspread.

  On this morning, he awoke in his residence quarters in downtown Houston, prayed for a few minutes, then briskly ran through his ablutions in the same sequence as he had always done since a young seminarian, finishing with a generous splash of aftershave. Once clothed in his daily dress of black wool cassock trimmed in black silk, black wool rabat, purple silk sash, a pectoral cross suspended from a heavy chain, and spit-polished black shoes, he made his way through the diocese headquarters to his office. His work space was also meticulously organized. A folder labeled Today’s Events was front and center on his desk. When he settled into his swivel chair and switched on his reading lamp his personal secretary, a quiet monsignor with graying temples, magically appeared through a side door.

  ‘Good morning, Your Eminence,’ the priest said.

  ‘Good morning, Phillip. Wa
rm outside?’

  It was high summer and as usual the man replied, ‘Hazy, hot, and humid.’

  Pole opened the folder and glanced at his schedule. ‘Here, take it,’ he said.

  ‘But that’s your copy.’

  ‘I don’t need it,’ Pole said. ‘Cancel everything.’

  ‘Are you unwell?’

  ‘Never felt better,’ the seventy-year-old said. He opened his top drawer and handed his aide a single sheet of paper, saying, ‘We’re doing this instead. Send out a media blast – use all the lists, local, national, international – and invite them to a four p.m. news conference at the Westin Hotel. The ballroom’s already booked. In two hours’ time, send this text to the pope via that nun of his – what’s her name again?’

  The monsignor, who had been trying to read the statement while listening to the cardinal’s instructions, was white as the paper he was pinching between three fingers. ‘Sister Elisabetta.’

  The cardinal grimaced at her name. ‘Yes, her.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to give this to the Vatican, Your Eminence?’ he said, his voice cracking.

  ‘I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.’

  Pope Celestine was head down in correspondence when Elisabetta entered to give him the news. The pope and his entourage had only just arrived at his summer residence at Castel Gondolfo. He hadn’t been inclined to leave the Vatican but the August heat was oppressive and Elisabetta had prodded him incessantly about the healthful benefits of the cool breezes coming off Lake Albano. He chose to use a modest office rather than the cavernous and formal one favored by his predecessors. In fact, it was the office usually reserved for the pope’s private secretary so Elisabetta had moved to another, even smaller one down the hall. As she stood before him to deliver the news he stared up in obvious distress and interrupted her mid-sentence.

  ‘Both of them?’

  ‘Yes, Holy Father, both girls. Maria Aquino and Mary Riordan were both taken under similar circumstances with strangers appearing at their homes, offering their parents money and guaranteeing the safety of the girls and their babies. In the case of Mary Riordan, Father McCarthy is telling us that he suspects the parents readily consented. He doesn’t know how much money they received. In the case of Maria Aquino, they told her they represented you personally but still her mother refused. They took the girl by force and left the mother cash, the equivalent of about five thousand euros, a huge sum for this family.’

  ‘But this is similar to what occurred in Peru, is it not?’

  ‘It is.’

  Celestine got up and wandered over to his coffee machine but he must have decided that his agitation would not be best served by more caffeine. He made a round trip to his chair empty-handed.

  ‘But who is behind this? Where have the girls been taken? Why have they been taken? This is all so distressing.’

  Elisabetta had been furiously working the phones before informing the pope of the developments. ‘From what we know from Lima, the authorities have not conducted a comprehensive investigation. Cardinal Miranda cannot prove it but he believes that high-ranking police officials were bribed to impede the investigation. We simply don’t know whether the girl is still in Peru or was taken to another country. The investigations in the Philippines and Ireland are just getting underway.’

  ‘So, what are we to do?’ the pope asked.

  ‘Wait for more information, Your Holiness. And pray. Also, I could compose an appropriate tweet for your @pontifex account.’

  ‘A tweet,’ the pope said, his voice drifting toward silence. ‘A tweet—’

  ‘I wonder, Holy Father,’ Elisabetta said, ‘if it might not be good for you to take some air. Perhaps a walk in the gardens. It’s a beautiful, sunny day and there are nice gusts.’

  ‘Will you walk with me?’

  The Roman emperor Domitian had built the summer palace and gardens in the first century. The Vatican, ever the canny organization, had acquired the property out of bankruptcy in 1596 and it had been in continual use by the papacy since that time. The formal gardens were laid out geometrically with swathes of shade courtesy of towering cypresses, umbrella pines with crowns the shape of clouds, and blue-green ancient cedars. After a gentle stroll, Celestine took a seat on a stone bench and Elisabetta sat beside him. Here, the sun was mostly blotted out by the canopy and there was a view down on to the sparkling lake.

  The girls were clearly centermost in his mind because the first thing he said was, ‘I appreciate the work that Professor Donovan did for us but we’re no closer to understanding the meaning of these three Marys. I don’t know whether I should be praising God for sending us a twenty-first-century sign of his dominion over us, or cursing men for making cynical use of three poor girls.’

  ‘Time will certainly tell, Holy Father,’ Elisabetta said, smoothing the fabric of her habit after it billowed in the wind.

  ‘Whatever the truth of the matter, I am fearful for these young girls. Even if some parents consented to their removal, they must be feeling scared and alone. I pray that the Virgin Mary is smiling on them in their time of need.’

  Mary Riordan had hardly slept. She was at times crying and fitful, at times bored and pouting. Because of this her female companion had also spent a sleepless night. She acted like a jester trying to amuse a restive king, passing the girl fashion magazines, calling up videos and games on the in-flight entertainment system, plying her with junk food. None of it stuck for long and for hours on end the moaning continued. The woman was alone with her in the cabin of the Dassault Falcon private jet so there was no one else to absorb the blows.

  She went to the lavatory to take a short break but soon she heard the girl shouting, ‘I miss my mum.’

  She steeled herself and returned to the cabin to say, ‘I know you do, dear. We’ll get her on the phone when we get to where we’re going. Maybe you can FaceTime.’

  The girl turned acidly sarcastic. ‘That would be grand. All we’d need is for me to have a flippin’ iPhone. Oh yeah, and I suppose my mum might need one too.’

  That was the woman’s cue to pull out the heavy artillery and maybe get an hour or two of rest before they landed for refueling. She got up and retrieved a bag from the aft storage. In it was an unwrapped white box. She walked over to the girl, placed it on her lap over the blanket covering her.

  Mary’s eyes lit up. ‘No way! No bloody way!’

  In seconds, the brand-new iPhone was in her hot little hands and before the woman was able to pull a blanket over her own tired eyes, Mary had tapped into the plane’s Wi-Fi to begin to set up the device.

  The woman was drifting off when she heard the girl say, ‘You’ve got to set it to a time zone. Which time zone should I use?’

  ‘Central. In America.’

  A junior member of the press office of the Holy See had accompanied the pope to Castel Gondolfo. Her medium-height heels were not well suited for running outdoors but she did the best she could. A slow, dignified pace would not have done justice to the fax she had in her hand. The pontiff and his private secretary heard her heels on the stone path and turned to greet her.

  ‘Emilia?’ Elisabetta said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  The young woman was a little breathless. ‘This just came in for you.’

  She handed the fax over without any explanation and the pope waited patiently for Elisabetta to digest the news, whatever it was, and inform him about it. He kept his gaze on the tranquil lake, perhaps sensing that the moment of peacefulness was soon to pass.

  ‘It’s Pole,’ Elisabetta finally said. ‘He’s given his resignation.’

  George Pole was a natural orator, very much at home in front of cameras. He rested his palms on the smooth podium and drank in the overflow crowd at the hotel ballroom. He recognized a good number of people in the audience. Some were well-heeled local Catholics who had donated heavily to his annual fundraisers, some were ordinary parishioners at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston and the S
t Mary Basilica in Galveston. Some were local politicians he had served with on panels and blue-ribbon commissions, and many were members of the Houston–Galveston media he had courted so assiduously this past decade.

  Punctuality was one of the virtues he espoused and at precisely four p.m. he smoothed his gray and white, short-cropped hair then held up his hands for order. He spoke without notes.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you will surely notice that I come before you this afternoon as a simple man of God, dressed not in the finery of a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church but as an ordinary priest. As an aside, I was delighted to discover that I still fit into the clerical garments I used to wear as a younger man. Today I tendered my resignation as a cardinal. Just before I left the diocesan offices of Houston–Galveston for the last time as cardinal, I learned that Pope Celestine has accepted my resignation, surely one of fastest pontifical replies in recent memory. In my case the Vatican cannot be accused of being mired in bureaucracy.’

  He paused for anticipated laughter but there was none. Looking a bit like a stand-up comic in a tough room he continued.

  ‘My disagreements with the current pontificate are well-known. I am a traditionalist. I am proud of it. I don’t believe the world stopped spinning in 1965 after the Second Vatican Council but I believe it marked the beginning of a steep, downward spiral for Catholics who believe in the bedrock values of the Church. I support the traditional Latin Mass and the traditional Baltimore Catechism. I am fervently pro-life. I support an all-male clergy and clerical celibacy. I support traditional family structures. I appreciate the beauty of traditional liturgy and the glory of Christian art, music, and architecture. The teachings of the Vatican used to be aligned with my core values but that is no longer so.’

  Perhaps realizing that he was about to get into the meat of his speech, the camera flashes intensified.

  ‘I am sorry to say that the erosion of these values has accelerated at an alarming pace under the current pontificate,’ Pole said, ‘and lest there be any doubt, I hold the man who holds the rudder to be personally responsible, along with his aiders and abettors. Pope Celestine has launched an ultra-liberal agenda aligning the Vatican with secular leftists who believe that the mission of the Church – my Church – is not the promotion of the word of God and the teachings of the Gospels but issues concerning so-called peace and justice. This pope has championed ambiguity on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, remarriage after divorce, marriage among certain clergy, even some contraception. In the name of social justice, he has sold off some of the great Vatican treasures of Christian art to fund his pet causes. And where will he go next? The ordination of women? Loosening of prohibitions against abortion? I shudder to think. My Church is becoming a Church I no longer recognize and it is for this reason that I can no longer serve as a bishop. As to my future plans, I may have more to say later. For the moment, I will retire to a cloistered space for a period of prayer and reflection. I will not be taking questions. Thank you for coming.’