Reprisal

FOUR

Manhattan

"Letter for you, Sarge," said Potts, waving the envelope in the air from the far side of the squad room.

Detective Sergeant Renaldo Augustino glanced up from his cluttered desk. He was reed-thin with a ruddy complexion and a generous nose. His dark hair was combed straight back from his receding hairline. He took a final drag on his cigarette and jammed it into the crowded ashtray to his right.

"The mail came a couple of hours ago," he told Potts. "Where you been hiding it?"

"It's not regular mail. Came over from the One-twelve."

Great. Probably another late notice for dues to a PBA local he no longer belonged to. He'd been transferred to Midtown North over two years ago and they still hadn't got the message yet.

"Chuck it out," he said.

"Could be a bill of some sort," Potts said.

"That's what I figured. I don't even want to see the damn thing. Just—"

"A phone bill."

That brought Renny up short. "Local?"

"No. Southern Bell."

His heart suddenly thudding in his chest, Renny was out of his chair and across the squad room so fast, he frightened Potts.

"Give me that."

He snatched the envelope from Potts's fingers and strode back to his desk.

"What gives?" said Sam Lang, leaning over Renny's desk, slurping coffee from a foam cup.

They'd been partners for a couple of years now. Like Renny, Sam was in his mid-forties, but balding and overweight. Everything Sam wore was rumpled, tie included.

As Renny sped through the text, he felt the old anger rekindling.

"It's him!" he said. "And he's up to his old tricks!"

Puzzled creases formed in Sam's doughy brow.

"Who?"

"A killer. Name of Ryan. Nobody you'd know." He scanned the letter again. "Any idea where Pendleton, North Carolina, is, Sam?"

"Somewhere between Virginia and South Carolina, I imagine."

"Gee, thanks."

Renny seemed to remember something about a big university there. No matter. He could find out easily enough.

Almost five years now… the kid, Danny Gordon… left for dead by some sicko bastard. Renny had been assigned to the case. He'd seen a lot of gut-wrenching things in his years on the force. When you spent your nights turning over rocks in a city the size of New York, you got used to the slimy things that crawled out. But something about that boy and what had been done to him had grabbed Renny by the throat and wouldn't let go. Still hadn't let go.

His mind leapt back across the years, images flashed before his eyes. The white, pain-racked little face, the hoarse screams that wouldn't stop, and other horrors. And the priest. So horrified, so shattered, so lost, so convincing in the lies he told. Renny had fallen for those lies, had allowed himself to believe, to get sucked into that bastard's trap. He'd come to like the priest, to trust him, to think of him as an ally in the search for Danny's mutilator.

You worked me beautifully, you son of a bitch. Played me like a maestro.

Renny knew he was being hard on himself. The fact that he had once been an orphan like Danny Gordon, growing up in the same orphanage as Danny, raised a Catholic with endless respect for priests, all of that had made him an easy mark for that slimy Jesuit's lies.

Until it had become clear that Danny Gordon was not going to die. Then the priest had acted in desperation to save his worthless guilty hide.

And then, in one night, the whole case had gone to hell. As a direct result of that, Renny had lost his rank. An indirect result of the whole mess had been the loss of his marriage.

Joanne had been gone three years now. When the Danny Gordon case fell apart and Renny's career took a dive, he took it out on everybody around him. Joanne had been around the most so she bore the brunt of his rage and frustration and growing obsession with bringing the killer to justice. She took as much as she could—two years worth. Then she folded. She packed up and left. Renny didn't blame her. He knew he'd been impossible to live with. Still was, he was sure. He blamed himself. And he blamed Danny Gordon's killer. He added the Augustino marriage to the list of the killer's victims.

One more thing I owe you for, you bastard.

But what was really going on here? Now. Today. Had the killer priest he'd been chasing the past five years finally surfaced, or was this just a coincidence? He couldn't tell for sure. And he wanted it so bad, he didn't trust his own judgment.

He decided on a second opinion.

He placed a call to Columbia University and arranged to meet Dr. Nicholas Quinn in half an hour. At Leon's, Midtown North's watering hole.

Dr. Nick arrived just as Renny was downing the last of his second Scotch. Not bad time, considering the guy had to come all the way from Morningside Heights. They shook hands—they didn't see each other often enough to forgo that formality—and moved to a table. Renny carried his third Scotch along, Nick brought an eight-ounce draft.

Renny savored the dark and the quiet, not minding the mixed odors of stale smoke and spilled beer. Not often you could have a quiet drink or three in Leon's; only when it was mid-shift, like now. But in forty-five minutes, when the first shift ended, look out. Most all .of Midtown North would be here, three deep at the bar.

"So, Nick," Renny said. "What're you up to?"

"Particle physics," the younger man said. "You really want to hear?"

"Not really. How's the love life?"

Nick sipped his beer. "I love my work."

"Don't worry," Renny said. "It's just a phase you're going through. You'll get over it."

Renny smiled and looked at his companion. Dr. Nick, as he called him—or Nicholas Quinn, Ph.D., as the people at Columbia called him—was an odd-looking duck. But weren't physicists supposed to be weird? Look at Einstein. There'd been a strange-looking guy if there ever was one. So maybe Nick had a right to look weird. From what Renny had been able to gather, Nick Quinn had an Einstein-league brain. And under all that unkempt hair, an Elephant Man-shaped skull. He also had bad skin, pale with lots of little scars, as if he'd had a severe case of acne as a teenager. And his eyes. He was wearing contacts these days, but Renny had a feeling from their wide stare and the flattened look of his eye sockets that he'd probably worn Coke bottle lenses most of his life. Thirtyish, thin, a little stooped, and developing a paunch. Not surprisingly, he was single. A true nerdo from the git-go. But who knew? Maybe someday he'd find himself the perfect nerdella, and together they'd raise a family of nerdettes.

"How's by you?" Nick said.

"Couldn't be better, kid. Took me five years, but I'm a detective sergeant again."

"Congratulations," Nick said, hoisting his beer.

Renny nodded but didn't drink. It was old news. And besides, he never should have been busted down in the first place.

"And Joanne found herself an insurance salesman out on the Island and got remarried."

Nick didn't seem to know how to take that.

"Don't worry, kid. That's good news too. No more alimony payments."

Renny did take a sip for that one, but there was no celebration inside. Joanne. Remarried. The finality of the news had taken a while to sink in: She'd nailed down the coffin lid on any hopes of a reconciliation.

"Speaking of news," Nick said, "why'd you want to see me?"

Renny smiled. "Anxious?"

"No. Curious. I've been calling you regularly since it happened, and for years now it's always the same answer: nothing new. Now you call me. I know you like to keep people dangling, Mr. Detective, and I've been dangling long enough. What've you got?"

Renny shrugged. "Maybe something, maybe nothing." He pulled the letter from Southern Bell from his pocket and slid it across the table. "This came today."

He watched Nick study it. They'd met five years ago, during the Danny Gordon case. But they'd stayed in touch since. That had been Nick's idea. After Renny had blown the Gordon case, Nick had shown up in the squad room—Renny had been working out of the 112th in Queens then—and offered to help in any way he could. Renny had told him thanks but no thanks. The last thing he needed was a nerdy citizen getting in the way. But Nick had persisted, pulling on the common thread that linked the three of them.

Orphans. Renny, Danny Gordon, and Nick Quinn—they'd all been orphans. And they'd all spent a good part of their childhood in the St. Francis Home for Boys in Queens. Renny had lived there in the forties until he was adopted by the Augustinos. Nick had spent most of the sixties there before being adopted by the Quinn family, and had known the killer-priest well. That alone made Nick an asset. But on top of that, Nick was brilliant. A mind like a computer. He'd sifted through all the evidence and run it all through his brain, and had come up with a theory that was hard to refute, one that made the suspect, Father Ryan, look clean… up to a point.

What Nick's scenario couldn't explain was the eyewitness accounts of Father Ryan carrying Danny Gordon from the hospital and driving off with him, never to be seen again.

In anybody's book, that was called kidnapping.

Renny felt his jaw muscles bunching even now as he thought about it. He'd liked that priest, had even thought they were friends. What a jerk he'd been. Allowed himself to be set up so the priest could pull an end run around him and leave him looking like a Grade-A asshole. An empty-handed asshole who'd let some sicko bastard snatch a child victim from right under his nose. The memory still sent icy fury howling through him like a hungry wind.

"North Carolina," Nick said, looking up from the letter. "Think it might be him?"

"I don't know what to think. It sort of came out of the blue."

"How—?"

"A long-term gain on a short-term investment, you might say."

Five years ago, when Father Ryan had taken off with the boy, and seemed to have got away clean, Renny had put out a man-and-a-boy description of the fugitive pair, but had added a new wrinkle. Through the FBI he'd asked the East Coast phone companies to be on the lookout for complaints about a certain kind of prank phone call that Renny had come to associate with the missing priest. There'd been a fair amount of returns on that at first, and for a while Renny had thought they were zeroing in on Ryan, but just when he'd been sure they were going to run him to ground, he disappeared. Suddenly, Father Ryan was gone, vanished from the face of the earth as if he'd never existed.

Nick dropped the letter onto the table and reached for his beer.

"I don't know. It's so vague. Isn't there some way you can talk to anyone down there?"

"Already have. Couldn't get anything firsthand, though. It happened on the street near a bus stop. The people who'd actually listened to the phone had boarded their bus and gone home by the time the police and emergency squads had arrived. But there seemed to be a definite consensus that the call was from a child in trouble."

Just like the other calls, Renny thought, his mind leaping back five years to the waiting area outside the children's ward at Downstate. He still had nightmares about that endless week in hell, the door to Danny's hospital room looming before him, drawing him forward, opening to reveal the horrors that lay behind it. And he remembered that phone call.

He'd been sitting there with Father Ryan, a man he had come to trust, even to admire. They were both on tenter hooks, alternately sitting and pacing, waiting for the docs to give them the latest news on Danny Gordon, when the phone rang.

A NYNEX pay phone, bolted to the wall, like a million others around the city. But Renny had never heard a phone ring like that before. It just rang, steadily, on and on. Something about it made his hackles rise. Against the priest's warnings, he'd answered it. What he'd heard over that wire still echoed in his brain on those too-frequent nights when sleep wouldn't come. He'd been horrified, mystified, sickened. But when the priest—his new friend, Danny's supposed guardian—had hiked off with the kid, he realized it had all been a scam, a sleazy attempt to direct suspicion elsewhere.

And it might have worked, too.

You were good, you bastard, Renny thought. The Marlon Fucking Brando of the priesthood.

"Low specificity," Nick said.

"Say what?" Renny said, yanking himself back to the present.

Nick smiled. "Scientist talk. It means that the incident under review resembles the sought-after phenomenon in only the most general sense. What about that bizarre ring of the bell you've told me about?"

"Like I said: I couldn't talk to the folks who picked it up, so I don't know. Wish I could. If they confirmed that long drawn-out ring, I'd be on a plane heading south right now."

Nick glanced at him, then looked away.

"You still think he killed the boy?"

As Renny replied, he watched Nick closely. He'd had a feeling all along that Nick knew more about the whereabouts of the priest than he let on. That was why Renny kept an eye on him. One day Nick might slip, and then Renny would have the break he'd been waiting for.

"I'm sure of it," Renny said. "It's the only way he could get away clean. If there's one good thing about working in Manhattan, it's that it's an island. There's only so many ways you can get off. We screened every bridge and tunnel for a man and a boy. Pulled over every man-and-boy combo we found. Danny and the priest weren't among them. Yet we know he slipped past us, through Staten Island is my guess. And as far as I'm concerned, that means he offed the kid and dumped his body—maybe in a construction site, maybe in the East River. Wherever it was, it was a good spot. We haven't found him yet. But Danny Gordon is dead. That's the only way that bastard could have gotten away."

"How about a boat?" Nick said.

Renny shook his head. He'd already shuffled through this deck. Many times.

"Uh-uh. Not in that weather. And anyway, there were no boats reported missing or stolen. No, Nick. Ryan eliminated the only witness who could finger him."

"And then disappeared himself," Nick said. 'The point of eliminating a witness is to obviate flight. You're saying he did both. That doesn't make sense."

"Nothing about this whole case has made sense from the start," Renny said, finishing his Scotch. "And whose side are you on, anyway?"

"It's not a matter of sides. I'm pulling for Danny Gordon, that's for sure. BuJ as for the rest…"

"You mean you're keeping a soft spot for that pervo priest?"

Nick's eyes blazed. "Don't say that. Nobody's ever even hinted—"

"I'm sure that was behind it. When we finally turn over all the rocks, that's what we'll find. And it won't be the first time, believe me."

"He was good to me," Nick said, his throat working as he looked away. "Damn good."

"Yeah," Renny said, sensing the turmoil in the younger man, and feeling for him. "I know what you mean. He fooled us all."

"So what are your plans?" Nick said after a while.

"Not sure. That's why I called you. What do you think?"

Renny trusted his own instincts, but he'd learned over the years that you could get too close to a case—you could get so fixed on the leaves that you lost sight of the tree. That was where a "third eye" came in handy. And since no one at Midtown North really gave a damn about the Danny Gordon case—after all, it was almost five years old and really belonged to the 112th in Queens—Renny used Nick as a sounding board. Besides being brilliant, he was interested.

"I'd wait," Nick said. He tapped the letter. "There's not enough to go on here. Odds are extremely low that it was him. And even if it was, he might have been just passing through. Wait and see."

Renny nodded, pleased because Nick's assessment jibed with his own.

"I think you're right. But if I get another notice like this from North Carolina, I'm out of here. I'm southbound."

Nick nodded slowly and sipped his beer, a faraway look in his eyes. Yeah, this rocket scientist knew more than he let on. Definitely.

Nick Quinn's mind raced ahead of him as he left Leon's and hurried back to Morningside Heights. He didn't know if he should be worried or not. If that telephone incident in North Carolina was connected to Father Ryan, it could mean real trouble for the priest. If only he had some idea where Father Bill was. But he didn't even know if he was still in the country. He could be in Mexico or Staten Island, or anywhere in between.

It made no difference, really. Nick knew how to get in touch with him. And he also knew that Father Bill was no killer, no matter what Detective Augustino or the NYPD or the FBI thought. The man had practically raised him. He couldn't be a killer.

As soon as he got back to his office, he locked the door and sat at his desk. He turned on his Macintosh and dialed into the DataNet network. When he'd accessed the bulletin board, he left a brief message for the priest.

TO IGNATIUS:

YOUR AUGUST OPPONENT GOT WORD OF AN ABERRANT RING-

A-DING IN DUKE COUNTRY. THAT YOU, IGGY? HE'S STAYING

put for now, but you be extra careful. hope you're well. please stay so.

el comedo

Nick leaned back and sighed. Even after five years he still felt the loss of a dear friend.

Please be careful, Father Bill—wherever you are.