"Weren't you raised one?"
I shook my head. "I was brought up sort of half-assed Protestant.
Nobody in the family went regularly."
"Ah. Well, what difference does it make? You don't have to be a fucking Catholic to go to the fucking mass, do you?"
"I don't know."
"I don't go for God. I don't go for the fucking church. I go because my father went every morning of his life." He took a short pull straight from the flask. "God, that's good. It's too good to put in coffee. I don't know why the old man went and I don't know why I go. Sometimes it's where I want to be after a long night, and it's a good night we've just had. Come to mass with me."
"All right."
He drove back into town and left the car on West Fourteenth in front of Twomey's funeral parlor. The eight o'clock mass was held in a small chapel off the main sanctuary at St. Bernard's. There were less than two dozen people in attendance, perhaps half of them dressed like Mick in white butcher's aprons.
When the mass ended they would go to work in the meat markets just south and west of the old church.
I took my cues from the others, standing or sitting or kneeling when they did. When they handed out the communion wafers I stayed where I was. So did Mick, along with three or four of the others.
Back at the car he said, "Where now? Your hotel?"
I nodded. "I ought to get some sleep."
"Wouldn't you sleep better in a place unknown to him? I've an apartment you could use."
"Maybe later," I said. "I'm safe enough for now. He's saving me for last."
In front of the Northwestern he shifted the car into park but left the engine running. He said, "You've got the gun."
"In my pocket."
"If you need more shells—"
"If I need more shells I'm in deep trouble."
"Well, if there's anything you need."
"Thanks, Mick."
"Sometimes I wish you drank," he said, "and then I'm glad you don't." He looked at me. "Why is that?"
"I don't know, but I think I understand. Sometimes I wish you didn't drink, and sometimes I'm glad you do."
"I never have nights like this with anybody else."
"Neither do I."
"The mass was all right, wasn't it?"
"It was fine."
He fixed his eyes on me. "Do you ever pray?" he demanded.
"Sometimes I talk to myself. Inside my head, I mean."
"I know what you mean."
"Maybe that's praying. I don't know. Maybe I do it in the hope that something is listening."
"Ah."
"I heard a new prayer the other day. A fellow said it was the most useful one he knew. 'Thank you for everything just as it is.' "
His eyes narrowed and he mouthed the words silently. Then his lips curled into a slow smile. "Oh, that's grand," he said. "Wherever did you hear that one?"
"At a meeting."
"That's the sort of thing you hear at those meetings, is it?" He chuckled, and for a moment I thought he was going to say something else. Then he straightened up in his seat. "Well, I won't keep you," he said.
"You'll want to get some sleep."
In my room I shucked off my topcoat and hung it up, then drew the gun out of my jacket pocket. I swung the cylinder out, dumped the shells into the palm of my hand. They were hollow points, designed to expand upon impact. That made them do more damage than standard rounds, but it also lessened the likelihood of a dangerous ricochet, because the slug would shatter into fragments upon impact with a solid surface instead of ricocheting intact.
If I'd had hollow points in my gun some years ago I might not have caused the death of that child in Washington Heights, and who could say what a difference that might have made in all our lives? There was a time when I could drink away hours on end running that one through my mind.
Now I reloaded the gun and aimed at objects in the room, getting the feel of the weapon. I took off my jacket and tried to find a convenient and comfortable way to tuck the gun under my belt. A shoulder holster might be best, I decided, and I made a note to go get one later in the day. There were other things I could use, too. Handcuffs, certainly, so that I could immobilize Motley while I questioned him, and neutralize the unnatural strength in those hands of his. I could pick up a set of cuffs at a store specializing in police items. There was at least one such store downtown near One Police Plaza, and I seemed to remember another in the East Twenties, near the Academy. I could stop there on my way to the Lepcourt apartment, and they could very likely supply a shoulder holster as well. Some of their goods were available only to working cops, but most were unrestricted, for sale to anyone who wanted them, and handcuffs were certainly in that category.
You could buy body armor there, too, and I wondered if a Kevlar vest might be a wise purchase. I didn't think he'd be shooting at me, and the mesh won't do much to stop a knife thrust, but would it be likely to afford me any protection against his fingers? I didn't know, and I couldn't quite see myself trying to pry that information from a clerk.
"Will this protect me if somebody pokes me in the ribs?" "What's the matter, sir, you ticklish or something?"
A small tape recorder would be good. One of those pocket-size models that take the microcassettes.
They had them at the Reliable office, and maybe they'd let me check one out for a couple of days. Or maybe it would be simpler if I went to Radio Shack and bought my own. I didn't need state-of-the-art equipment, so how much could it cost me?
I set the gun on top of the dresser and got undressed. I went into the bathroom to run a tub of hot water, and while it filled I came back and switched on the television set and scanned the dial. I caught a newscast on one of the independent channels. The lead item was something about a crisis in the savings-and-loan industry, and then a cheerful girl reporter with a Pepsodent smile came on to tell me that police believed there might be a connection between last night's bizarre murder of an Auxiliary Police officer in the West Village and this morning's pre-dawn assault in exclusive Turtle Bay.
I'd missed hearing about the AP officer earlier, so I paid attention.
I was hooked in tighter when she went on to say that police were speculating further about the possibility of a connection between both crimes and the brutal rape and murder of Elizabeth Scudder earlier in the week at her home on Irving Place. The victim in this morning's assault, an unmarried woman residing at 345 East Fifty-first Street, had been rushed to New York Hospital with multiple stab wounds and other unspecified injuries.
The screen filled with a shot of the building entrance, with paramedics rushing a stretcher out to a waiting ambulance. I tried to make out the face of the woman on the stretcher but I couldn't see anything.
Then the reporter was back, showing what was probably supposed to be a serious smile. The victim, she chirped, was currently undergoing emergency surgery, and a police-department spokesman rated her survival chances as slim. Her identification was being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
I hadn't been able to see her face, but I'd seen the building entrance. Anyway, I'd recognized the address. And I think I'd have known anyway. I think I knew from the moment the item began.
It couldn't have taken me more than five minutes to get dressed and out the door. As it closed behind me the phone started ringing. I let it ring.
Here's how it must have happened:
At ten o'clock Thursday night, around the time we were closing the meeting at St. Paul's, Andrew Echevarria and Gerald Wilhelm finished their tour of duty and reported back to their commanding officer at the Sixth Precinct on West Tenth Street. Since six that evening the two men had comprised one of five Auxiliary Police patrols walking assigned beats in the precinct, carrying nightsticks and walkie-talkies, and serving as the eyes and ears of the regular police while providing a visible police presence on the streets of the city.