“DeVonne, my name’s John Cuddy, and I’d like to ask you some questions about the basketball tournament you were in at the Meade Health and Fitness Club.”
“Not in, man. We won the mother.” A sly look. “You here about the holy man, right?”
“Right.”
“Take it to the bank, we didn’t have nothing to do with that dude getting chilled.”
“Why would I think you did?”
“Aw, come on, man. Who do you think you talking at? Russian mothers set off a nuke, we’d be the ones get the blame.”
“Tell me about the tournament, DeVonne.”
He crossed his arms, stretching out in the chair like it was a lounger. “Mr. T loads us on the bus—”
“Mr. Tuglio?”
“Yeah, man. That’s what we call the dude, like after Mr. T on The A-Team, account of the two mens couldn’t be no more different, you know what I’m saying?”
“Go on.”
“So, Mr. T, he loads us on the bus, and we ride on out there to the country, and he thinks we’re all like gonna be so impressed, we grow up and be good suburban executives. But the club was okay, this foxy chick owner give us sandwiches and stuff. Then we play the tournament.”
“Who else was there?”
“The other kids from here, some old priest, and this kind of stale chick, couldn’t take her eyes off the holy man got killed.”
“The other woman, you know who she was?”
“The stale chick? Heard your holy man call her Terry.”
Theresa Tuglio. “You hear anything else, DeVonne?”
“Holy man, he knew something about the game, account of he was coaching the other team we beat, and he had them playing good against us. Mr. T, he try to coach us, and we try not to hear him so he don’t mess up our rhythm, you know what I’m saying?”
“You like Father Riordan?”
A shrug. “He was okay. Acted a little funny sometimes.”
“Funny how?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. Always grabbing at you, arm around the shoulder, trying to make you feel like he was your best friend. And I got to admit, for a white honky holy man, he did some good things.”
It was the first time DeVonne smiled in the time I’d been talking to him.
I wasn’t sure if Estevan had ever smiled. He was a slight, pale Latino kid, fifteen according to Anthony Tuglio, but I thought a ticket-taker at a movie theater might let him in for the under-twelve price. Black tie shoes, white socks, frayed dress shirt with the collar button fastened. Sitting like a West Point plebe at dinner, Estevan kept rubbing his thin wrists under the shirt cuffs.
“I don’t mean to make you nervous, Estevan.”
“I’m not.”
“Can you tell me about the basketball tournament?”
“We went out there. Everybody had to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Tuglio said Father had gone to a lot of troubles to get this chance for us, so everybody had to go and everybody had to play.”
“Father Riordan, you mean?”
Looking down at his shoes, Estevan nodded.
“Do you enjoy basketball?”
He shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Don’t like sports. Like books.”
“What kind of books?”
Estevan looked up. “Kind Father used to bring to me. All kinds.”
Something felt off with the boy. “Are you sorry about him being killed?”
Estevan looked down again, nodding.
“Can you tell me anything that might help find who killed him?”
“No.” He shivered and looked back up. “Can I go now?”
“Estevan—”
He got up and left, without turning back to me.
Kurt never stopped smiling. If you include grinning and leering.
“So, you want to know about the croaked priest, huh?”
I stared at the grinning blond kid, hair buzzed all around except for a short, braided pigtail at the back. Dressed in a riverboat shirt and jeans, he was maybe Estevan’s age, but as aggressive as the other boy was passive. “What can you tell me, Kurt?”
“Hey, not much. I don’t even know if Kurt’s my real name. Around here, Mr. T takes one look at you and puts you in the ‘proper place.’ ” Kurt said the last word with a lisping sound.
“You don’t like Mr. Tuglio?”
“I don’t like faggots. Old ones, young ones.” Kurt closed the top button of his riverboat shirt the way Estevan had worn his, then opened it again.
As I wondered how Kurt would get along with Monsignor McNulty, he leered. “Too bad this shirt doesn’t have a collar that turns, too.”
I stopped. “What do you mean?”
“Hey, forget it, all right?” Grinning again, Kurt began circling the tip of his index finger into his thumb pad. “It’s not like you’re paying me for all this, huh?”
Lovely boy. “Did Father Riordan ever approach you sexually?”
“Hey, like I said, forget it. I ain’t telling you nothing.”
“How about the basketball tournament, then?”
“What about it? Big surprise: the bro’s won.”
“DeVonne’s team.”
“Right. We could have beaten them, too, we didn’t have Es-te-van dragging us down.”
“How?”
“Your dead priest made everybody play, and Es-te-van’s worse than having nobody. Four on five, we’d have had a better chance.”
“You notice anything else about the tournament?”
“Notice?” Another leer. “Just the way this wannabe babe watched your croaked priest.”
“Who was that?”
“He called her Terry, I think. Yeah, Terry. I swear, you’d think she wet her pants every time he looked her way, much less talked to her. Ugly thing, too, and old. Probably lucky even a priest gave her anything.”
“Anything?”
Kurt made the leer harder. “You ever heard of the horizontal mambo? I think that’s what she wanted to dance with him.”
5.
I left the Prelude in the parking area of the Meade Health and Fitness Club and went through the main entrance. Nautilus and aerobics rooms visible in front of me, arrows and signs for locker rooms on the walls.
A striking woman wearing a long-sleeved designer jersey and spandex tights turned toward me from behind a low counter to my right. She was five-six or so and trying hard to look only thirty, with a mane of black curly hair and jangly earrings.
Out came a perky smile. “Hi, help you with a membership?”
“No, thanks. Ms. Steinberg?”
“Yes?”
“My name’s John Cuddy, and I’d just like to talk with you about something.”
The smile drooped. “Look, we’re pretty much full up with personal trainers right now.”
“I’m flattered, but it’s about Father Francis Riordan.”
The whole face drooped, showing her years. “What a way to spoil the day. Police?”
“Private investigator. Monsignor McNulty asked me to look into things for him.”
“How about some identification?”
I showed it to her.
“All right, come on in the office.” Steinberg motioned a guy in an identical jersey over to the counter, then inclined her head toward a doorway behind it.
Inside the office, Steinberg flopped down on a futuristic desk chair while I took one of the more staid visitor’s ones. “Okay,” she said, “what do you want to know?”
“Tell me about Frank Riordan.”
“Tell you about him. Adonis with a personality, that help? He was Jewish, I’d have tied him to a bed until...” She bit off the next phrase. “Sorry, that was just the way...” A wave of the hand, enough like Chief Smollett’s that I noticed it.