“Everybody who’s on the premises was ‘picked,’ in one way or another, except the producers.”
“But they’re all supposedly strangers,” Alch added. “Back at the time of the murder, everybody was related, one way or another.”
“Could the fallout from that violent episode be haunting this show? The suspected perp is at large.”
“Disappeared,” Alch objected. “There’s a difference. Everybody’s given up looking for him.”
“Not me,” Molina said grimly. She tapped the crackling white oversize sheets of paper with their blurred fine lines of newsprint. “Check out what happened to all these people.”
“You think one of them might have come back somehow?” Su sounded unconvinced.
“I think something’s going on that has nothing to do with Teen Queens or TV.”
Chapter 45
Past Tense
The man who looked too much like Matt, or vice versa, shifted his weight from foot to foot. He glanced back over his shoulder, down the corridor leading to the law offices.
But Brandon, Oakes, and McCall were too far away to call on for help.
He cleared his throat. “They said … someone had attempted to find out information on me. It was some sort of a scam.”
Matt just stared into the man’s face. “Someone. Some sort of con man maybe?”
The man’s expression hardened. “Exactly. ‘Extortion’ was the word. I guess you know I have lawyers.”
“I guess you don’t know you have a son.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why? The virgin birth isn’t, to a good Catholic.”
“How’d you know I was Catholic?”
“Guessed.”
“Listen, this building has security cameras, and guards. Whatever you want—”
“Isn’t what you’d think, or what they’d have you think.”
The gray eyes flicked over Matt’s casual clothes, avoiding his face. Matt had dressed like the nobody Brandon, Oakes, and McCall said he was.
“They stiffed me yesterday,” Matt said. Explained. “So I came back undercover.”
“You—what are you? You can’t be a policeman.”
“Actually, I could be. As it happens, I’m not. I’m a professional advisor.”
“Oh, I see. And you want me to pay for your advice. I take the ‘advice’ of my attorneys first and foremost, and I don’t need any outside opinion.”
Matt took a deep breath. “Thirty-four years ago. You were, what—? All of twenty maybe?”
“None of your business.”
“It is my business. I’m about my father’s business.” The first frown of doubt. “Why do you keep quoting religious stuff to me?” He backed away.
Matt could read the man’s mind: religious nut. He almost laughed, except that this was not a proper occasion for mirth.
“I’m surprised. Back then, you’d light a candle to a saint, down in the Polish district, where they still had statues of saints on the side aisles of those old churches, where belief smelled like incense and hot beeswax candles.”
“You are some kind of religious nut.” He was backing away, toward the corridor and the safety of his lawyers’ offices.
Matt laughed gently. “I guess you could call priests that.”
“You’re a priest?” That stopped him. Still a practicing Catholic then.“Ex.”
That had him ready to bolt again: demented ex-priest, out for … what? Blood? Yes, blood, Matt thought.
“I have a regular advice stint on The Amanda Show, that’s why I’m in town.”
“You’re a TV personality?”
“So they tell me.”
“I don’t get this. Stop being mysterious and cut to the chase.”
“I wanted to spare you the shock.”
“Shock? What shock?”
“You’re not supposed to be alive. You’re supposed to have died ‘over there,’ thirty-four years ago. At least that’s what my mother was told.”
“Your mother?”
“You might remember her. Pretty young Polish girl. Must have looked great in the candlelight from a bank of vigil lights before the white plaster statue of St. Stanislaus. It’s still there and so is she, sort of. Mira.”
“Mira.”
The man actually staggered. Away from Matt. He glanced wildly down the hall, suddenly realizing that whatever was down there was too far and too late for retreating to.
Matt put out a hand. “I tried to warn you.”
The man settled for leaning against the wall opposite the bank of elevators and staring up at the ceiling fixtures.
Finally he spoke. “You look like me.”
“I thought you looked like me first.” Matt allowed some weary humor to touch his voice.
“They said she’d disappeared. Girls her age did then. All the time. I knew nothing about her. Nothing about you. There was nothing left to pursue.”
“Yes, there was.” Matt heard his own voice like a stranger’s, hard and unforgiving. “Only the lawyers handled it. They signed a two-flat over to her to keep us, silence being the price.”
“She took it?”
“Her family had disowned her. Your family was willing to give her something to stay away. And … they told her you were dead.”
He slumped against the wall that supported him. “I can’t believe my family would do that.”
“They’re still telling you nothing. The moment I walked in the lawyers’ offices yesterday, I got weird vibes from people, like I was a ghost. That’s when I realized there must be … relatives around. I thought a cousin, an uncle. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to drop it.”
“Then why’d you come?”
“My mother. She’s never forgotten. She’s had a rotten life, as you can imagine. It was the one thing she asked of me that I couldn’t refuse. She would have made a great Godfather.”
“And Mira. Now I see it. You look like Mira.” Matt kept silent.
“Not the Mira I knew.”
“Once,” Matt bit out. One night. One-night stand. “From what I understand,” he added, watching carefully, “I was the product of a virgin birth, so to speak.”
The man shook his head. “What’s your name?”
“Matt, short for Matthias, the apostle who replaced Judas the betrayer.” He let that sink in. “My last name is Devine.”
“She married?”
“Yes, but to a loser. Who else would have her after that? She named me something different. After her favorite Christmas hymn. Can you guess?”
“Divine? Oh.” He grew even paler, if that was possible. “`O Holy Night’?”
—0 Holy Night, 0 Night Divine.’ Bingo. I’m named for a mortal sin.”
The man pushed off the wall. “It’s not your fault. Listen.” He glanced down the hall again, then shook his head. “We need to talk. Privately.”
“Agreed.”
“I have a club . .
“You would.”
“Then you suggest—?”
“I have a hotel. The Drake.”
The man’s pale eyebrows—almost dead white, though his hair was still steel blond—rose.
“The Amanda Show puts up its regular guests in style,” Matt explained.
“We’ll go there then.”
“Yes, a hotel’s so impersonal. Like a church.” Matt was pleased to see him wince.
“You must be famous.” The man came as close as he’d avoided doing before.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, awaiting the elevator Matt’s finger had summoned. Father and son. God’s finger to Adam.
Damn! They were almost the same height. No denying. The man seemed to notice this. “How is … Mira?”
“She’s pretty good. No longer a single parent with a kid at home. Has a job. Is widowed.”
“My name is Winslow. Jonathan Winslow. And . “he reported this dutifully—“I’m married. I have a family. Three almost-adult kids.”
Matt noticed that he hadn’t said “happily.”
“I wish I’d had a son who’d do for me what you did for your mother.”