DECEMBER, 2010
Father Squid could feel everyone’s eyes on him. The silence was unbearable. It had been for decades. He had to end it, now. It was time to come clean.
He looked Leo Storgman in the eye. “Yes. Take me in. There is blood on my hands, Leo. It is past time I confessed.”
The gasps of shock and the cries of amazed horror that burst out all around him were only to be expected. More surprising was the look of astonishment in Leo Storgman’s eyes. Father Squid thought that the detective had probably figured that he’d deny everything. But he couldn’t carry on with his guilt locked inside any longer.
“Sorry, Father,” Leo muttered as he took out a pair of handcuffs and locked them around the priest’s thick wrists. He took Father Squid by the elbow and led him through the crowd that melted away as if he were a leper. Father Squid looked straight ahead and marched in step with the policeman. There were shocked, angry expressions on every face they passed, but it didn’t bother him. Confession, he had discovered, was good for the soul.
A little voice cried out, “Mommy, why are they arresting Santa Claus?”
No one could answer him.
♣ ♦ ♠ ♥
The Rat Race
Part 18.
THE CHURCH’S STORAGE ROOM was a jumble of religious holiday supplies and musty choir garb. Crosses abounded, festooned with Easter declarations that “He is Risen!” Stacks of candles with round paper holders were piled in boxes to overflowing. An old set of choir bells gleamed dully in the low light.
And everywhere, hastily stored and not precisely put away, were the remnants of the pageant.
A stable wall leaned against the basement wall, and stray sprigs of hay dusted the counters, the crates, and the floor. A plastic donkey leaned mournfully against its stallmate, a puffy white sheep with a lightbulb up its asshole so it’d glow with the help of City Light and Power, if not holy assistance. Over by the stairwell was a haloed little head hanging out of a box, the infant Jesus himself propped and forgotten for another full year. Against a huge nautical chest was pushed the manger bench, a sturdy thing made by a parishioner out of two-by-fours with an ugly brown stain.
Upon it sat Leo Storgman and a book.
Leo hunkered in the dark, breathing the old smell of paraffin wax and the sharp scents of tinsel and cheap wiring. At his feet was a box, wide but not very deep. The box was full of masks—some of the very masks recovered when the Magpie had finally been cornered and all her wares had been retrieved.
Leo held the mask he’d worn in the play.
It was tattered and rough around the edges. Not just vintage, but handmade when it’d been new. The brown and copper feathers were thin and fraying; and the interior stank of glue gone rancid and somebody else’s sweat.
Maybe that part was just Leo’s imagination.
But he held the mask and he passed it back and forth between his hands as he sat there in the dark beside the book he’d never finished reading, alone except for the plastic animals and choir robes and leftover holiday detritus … waiting.
It wouldn’t be long now.
The festivities had wrapped up. The aftermath of Father Squid’s arrest had died down. The last of the church volunteers had finished stuffing the last scrap of pageantry into the basement, shut the door, and left. The parking lot was empty.
Leo had parked around the block.
He wanted the parking lot to stay empty. He wanted it to lie.
He closed his eyes and squeezed the mask, holding it by the edges and feeling the brittle papier-mâché between his fingertips. And at the edge of his hearing, he caught the soft rumble of a car’s purring engine … then the gritty crunch of its tires as it turned into the poorly paved lot, and ground its way into a parking space.
For a long moment he heard nothing. He stopped rubbing his thumb along the inside ridge of the owl’s beak and opened his eyes. He pulled out his cell phone and composed a fast text message, and pressed SEND. His phone thought about it, gave him a status bar, and declared “OK!” Right on its heels he sent another one. He put the phone away.
Out in the lot the car door opened slowly, accompanied by the pinging chime of a warning alarm—signaling that the lights were still on, or the keys remained in the ignition.
The door closed quietly and the chime stopped.
Footsteps followed.
Leo held the mask again, tracing its interior contours like there was something inside, written in Braille.
Outside the church he heard the feet find the stairs that led down to the exterior basement entrance. The footsteps faltered at the top two steps; there was no light at all, except a streetlamp half a block away. Leo knew how dark it was. He’d climbed down the damn things himself, and jimmied the door.
The newcomer didn’t seem to notice the compromised door. Hands fumbled with the knob, and with the lock. The breached piece of hardware gave way. With a tiny push, the door swung open.
Though the light outside was negligible, the light within was all but nonexistent. Leo watched a hand reach inside and pat down the wall beside the door. Feeling nothing, an arm followed the hand, swatting at a larger and larger space. Still finding no handy switch to flip, a man’s full silhouette rounded the frame and flailed until grazing a long string, hanging from the ceiling.
The hand seized the string, gave it a testing tug, and then firmly gripped it. The string tightened and popped.
A dim yellow forty-watt fluttered to life, revealing the cluttered room, the pageant leftovers, and Leo Storgman sitting with his knees apart and the mask in his hand. He sighed heavily. “Hello, Lucas.”
Lucas Tate wore a suit that cost more than Leo’s car, and a black satin mask that was molded to his features—or to someone’s, somewhere. It covered his face down to his chin. Only his eyes were visible, and they were startled into hugeness—without lids or lashes. He replied, “Hello, Ramsey,” because the moment seemed to require it. Then he added, “What are … Jesus, man. It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing here?”
“I’m waiting for you.” Leo held up the mask so its front faced forward, the empty owl gazing blankly at the newspaper editor—whose fingers still clutched the light’s pull chain, as if he might need it at any moment. “And you, you’re looking for this.”
“That’s true, yes. My masks. The ones that batty old thief took—I recognized some of them, when people were wearing them in the pageant.” He said it with the speed of the guilty who is trying to look innocent.
“That’s right.” Leo looked down at the box. “They’re all yours, aren’t they?”
“Yes. It’s all my property. I can come and get it if I want to.”
“Sure you can. Anytime.”
“Day or night.”
The detective said, “Whatever.” And then with a shake of his head he said, “Goddamn, I can’t believe you kept this thing.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”
Lucas stepped forward, his shape not quite hulking, but given a hulking look by the harsh shadows and the feeble sway of the bulb. “That’s mine. I’ll be taking it with me, now.”
“To hide it again, I assume. Somewhere better this time.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m crazy?” Leo made no move to hand over the mask. He only met Tate’s eyes when he said, “You’re the asshole here at two in the morning, trying to break into a church.”
“I didn’t break in. It was open.” Suddenly he realized, “You opened it.”
“You got me there,” the man who was still just barely a cop admitted. “I knew you’d show up eventually. You had to. Tomorrow, all this stuff goes back to the station—back into the lion’s den, picked up and recorded by all kinds of cop hands, and cop paperwork. This was the last of the haul, the last stuff to be filed.”