What did people do with enormous families? All those cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews. How did they keep them straight?
How did they breathe at any sort of family function?
A couple of assaults-no time served-for the Family Ortiz, she noted. One Grand Theft Auto, short time. A few slaps for illegals and other minor bumps. A handful of sealed juvies. She’d get those open, if and when.
Some had been victims along the way. Robbery, assault, two rapes, and a scatter of domestic disturbances. Some divorces, some deaths, lots of births.
She kicked back for a moment, propped her feet on her desk.
No connection to Flores except as the parish priest. But, she mused, Flores wasn’t the connection. Lino or whoever took Flores’s identity was.
Better when the dentals confirmed it, she thought, but she didn’t have a doubt. According to the records, Flores requested assignment at that parish, that specific parish, in November 2053.
Coming home, Lino, or running away? That was a question that needed an answer. Did someone recognize you? Someone who lived here, or was visiting here? Someone who felt strongly enough, passionately enough to execute you in church?
What did you do? Who’d you piss off, betray, hurt?
And thus, having had long patience, he got the promise.
What were you waiting for? What was the promise at the end of the wait?
“It’s fake,” Roarke announced from the adjoining doorway.
“Huh?”
“The ID, it’s fake. Which you already knew so I don’t see why you had me spend all this time on it.”
“Confirmation’s nice.”
He gave her a cool look, then came over to sit on the corner of her desk. “Then you have it. It was good work, costly. Not the best, by far, but not a patch job either. A bit more than six years back. Flores reports his ID lost, applies for a new one.”
“When, exactly?”
“October of ’53.”
“The month before he requests a transfer to St. Cristóbal’s.” She punched a fist against Roarke’s leg. “I knew it.”
“As I said. A new photo was provided by the applicant, along with copies of all necessary data. It’s a common way to make the switch.”
“Prints?”
“Well then, that’s where the cost comes in. You’ll need to grease the right palms or have a skill with hacking, and an unregistered. So you’d be switching the fingerprints all the way back, replacing with your own. And that means transferring them from childhood on, if you want to be thorough-and he did. It’s the first change where the hitch is most easily tripped. After that, it’s you, isn’t it? In your new skin.”
She frowned up at him. “How many forged IDs have you provided and/or used in your shady career?”
He smiled. “It’s a good living for a young lad with certain skills and considerable discretion, but was hardly my life’s work.”
“Hmm. Yeah, I ran the prints. They come up Flores, so he went deeper and hacked, or paid someone to hack, into the database to change them. The rest is pretty standard identity theft.”
“To do otherwise, to save a few pennies, would be foolish.”
“Having the face work though, that adds coin, time, trouble. That’s long haul.” She pushed away from her desk, to think on her feet, to move through it. “That’s major commitment.”
“To go to those lengths, and for that amount of time, means you’d be giving up yourself, wouldn’t it? Your name, your face, the connections. You’d have to strip off your own skin to slip on someone else’s. A commitment, yes. Maybe your victim wanted a fresh start. A new life.”
“He wanted more than that. I think he came back here, to New York, to that neighborhood specifically. He picked this place, so he knew this place. He was hiding, and needed to change the face-and he was patient.” She thought back, murmured, “ ‘And thus, having had long patience, he got the promise.’ ”
“Is that so?”
“I figure the patient get run over in Promiseland more than half the time, but the Bible says no. He had that passage highlighted in his. And this other one…” She had to walk back to her desk to look it up. “ ‘With me are riches and honor, enduring wealth and propriety.’ ”
“A promise of money, respect, stature,” Roarke speculated. “Yeah, all of that fits, and for some all of that’s worth killing for, and waiting for. It’s nice to have familiar surroundings while you wait-and maybe you even get a charge out of seeing people you know, and knowing they don’t recognize you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “People tell priests stuff, right? Intimate, personal stuff. That would be a kick, wouldn’t it?”
“I had an acquaintance once who sometimes posed as a priest.”
“Because?”
“Cons. As you say, sins are confessed, which is handy for blackmail, and collection plates are passed regularly. I didn’t like the gambit myself.”
“Because?”
“Well, it’s rude, isn’t it?”
She only shook her head. She knew the things he’d done, and yet understood he was the kind of man who’d find bilking sinners rude.
“Maybe that’s part of it. Maybe he blackmailed one of the sinners, and he or she sent him to hell. It’s got a nice rhythm to it. Fake priest using collar to con marks, mark uses priest ritual to off fake priest.”
She turned away from the desk, wandered around the room. “But I’m not going to get it, not going to get the thing, until I get him. Who was he? I need the tat. I need the lab to push through the reconstruct of the tattoo. That’s something. Figuring he had it removed and the face work done around six years ago, and getting a bead on where the actual Flores was last alive and well will give me an area to focus on.”
She looked back at Roarke, who simply sat where he was, watching her. “There’s always echoes, right, always shadows? That’s what you e-geeks say about the hacking, the layering, the wiping data. And there’s always a way to get down to those echoes and shadows.”
“Almost always,” Roarke replied.
They wouldn’t find yours, Eve thought. But how many had Roarke’s resources or skill? “If he was as good as you, or could pay someone as good as you, he wouldn’t have been playing priest in Spanish Harlem. He’d have been hiding out and waiting for whatever it was on some balmy beach.”
“I can’t fault your logic.”
“It’s all speculation. It’s all projection. I don’t like working that way. I’ll get Feeny and EDD digging into this tomorrow.”
“And you? What will you do tomorrow?”
“I’m going back to church.”
He rose, moved to her. “Well then, let’s go sin first.”
“Even I know it’s not a sin if you’re married.”
He leaned down, nipped her bottom lip. “What I have in mind might be.”
“I’m still working here.”
He flipped open the top button of her shirt as he backed her toward the elevator. “Me, too.” And the next as he nudged her inside the car. “I love my job,” he said, then brought his mouth down to hers.
And he was good at it, she thought, as his hands got busy and her pulse jumped to gallop. She let the kiss take her under, and was already sunk deep when the elevator doors reopened and her shirt hit the floor.
The cool air whisked over her bare skin; her eyes blinked open.
He backed her toward the roof terrace where the open glass dome let in the night. “What-” Then his mouth took hers again, and she could all but feel her brain dissolving.
“We had a walk outside, dined al fresco.” He pressed her back into the stone rail. “We’ll consider this a hat trick.”