Despite her professionalism, she had lost her ability to do her job. And he knew it. And two seconds later he hit her face with the back of his hand so hard she fell backward.
“You slut,” he hissed.
Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them back. If she allowed herself to cry she would not be able to stop.
Cleo knew that her life hung by a thread. Somehow she had to convince this mad monk that she no longer was a sexual being. That she was cleansed. But how?
He knelt a few feet from her and prayed.
“Mary, mother of God, come to me now in the hour of my need. Teach me how to teach your child to void her mind of the filth that smears it with piss, shit and vomit. Teach me how to wipe her clean, how to make her worthy of your spirit and grace. Teach me how to teach her to shine so that she will come to me. Whole. Intact. A virgin like you, like you…like you, so that she can be mine.”
And then he got up and walked out of the confessional. The screen on the door went black. She was shut off again.
There was silence, and then she heard a phone ringing. She closed her eyes and hoped he would come back soon to clean her off. She hated to be dirty.
52
I dialed and heard the phone ring three times before he finally picked up.
“Elias, it’s Morgan Snow. I think I’ve figured something out.”
“You know who has Cleo? Where she is?” He sounded even more desperate than the last time we’d talked. I pictured him, eyes clouded with worry, hands trembling. This man was being pushed to the edge of a crevice and he stood there rocking with fear.
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t know that.”
I was on Fifty-ninth Street and Madison. The summer night was warm and sultry, and at ten o’clock there were still more than enough people about that I wasn’t concerned about walking and talking on the phone, my concentration not on those around me but on the conversation I was having.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I just left the Cigar Bar. I don’t know where Cleo is, but I think I know which of the men she wrote about might be responsible. And I need to ask you if she told you anything about him. I’m getting in a taxi. If you give me your address, I can-”
“No, I’ll meet you.”
“Elias, I don’t want to talk about this in public.”
“How long will it take you to get here?”
“Ten minutes.”
He gave me his address.
In the taxi on my way to the Upper West Side I called in and checked my messages. There was one from Mitch telling me how upset Dulcie was and asking me to reconsider and please come to the audition. Or at least call him so we could talk about it. And then one from Noah saying that they had a big break on the case. I listened to his slow drawl.
“I’m on my way to the station. A woman, a prostitute, was approached this afternoon by a man who asked her to go to a hotel with him. Just outside he gave her cash and told her to go inside and check in by herself. He gave her a story to give the desk clerk. To say her bag had been stolen, but that she kept emergency cash in her pocket. Once she got the key, she was supposed to go back outside and get him.
“But he was carrying a small suitcase and she’d read enough in the paper about the Magdalene murders to make her nervous, so she took off. We’re bringing her in and we’ll work with her for as long as it takes to get a good composite done of the guy’s face. I should know what he looks like in a few hours. Be careful. Don’t go to the club tonight. If it’s Gil, if it’s any one of those men, he’s going to be disturbed and scared. He might be desperate.”
I shut my eyes and rubbed them. The pressure was relieved for a minute. He was still talking into my machine in the same tone of voice, but each word sounded amplified. My skin was tingling with fear. With relief. They were getting closer. They would have a drawing of him. Then they would know what he looked like. They’d find him. And it would be an end to the murders. If only finding Cleo were connected to that case.
Noah’s message abruptly became personal.
“Please call me, Morgan. You can’t take the easy way out about us. Well, I guess you can. But I don’t want you to.”
I was still holding the phone to my ear, listening to dead air, when the cab pulled up in front of Elias’s building.
The elevator opened on the seventh floor and I walked down the long hall to the right, as instructed. My feet were hurting. High heels with pointed toes were not what I was used to and I’d walked a long way in them. I wished I’d gone back home and changed, but I hadn’t thought about what I was wearing; I was too excited by what I thought I’d figured out. Buttoning the silk shirt up to my neck, I wiped the crimson lipstick off with the back of my other hand. It didn’t seem right to be going to see Elias dressed to attract the moths.
When he opened the door, he looked even worse than he had sounded on the phone. Bloodshot eyes, his hair standing up in unruly tufts, wrinkled clothes. There was nothing that made you think of a partner in a white-glove law firm when you looked at him. If he had walked up to me on the street, I would have held tight to my bag.
And there was a smell…
“Do you want something? Some coffee? I have coffee already made. It’s hot. Still hot.”
I recognized the way he was talking, textbook stuff. He was dissembling again, grief and worry affecting him so greatly that he couldn’t focus on the reality around him.
“Yes, that would be fine. Let me help you.”
“No. The kitchen is a mess. Let me get it.”
He left me in the living room and I sat down on the couch to wait for him.
You could tell the apartment had been done by a decorator. There was an air of perfection in the details. The gingerjar lamps with the bone lampshades. The chenille throw over the couch. The extra-large highball glasses and decanters on just the right chrome-and-glass cart in the corner. I stopped my critical assessment-I was being too hard on him. What else did I expect from an unmarried, wealthy man who lived in New York? Why shouldn’t he have a decorator make his apartment livable? Just because Noah’s apartment-I forced myself to abort the thought.
In front of me on the ubiquitous glass coffee table was a stack of art books that had probably never been looked at and an opened bottle of wine, the label facing away from me. Something about it struck me as odd, and I reached for it just as Elias came back into the room with two steaming mugs of coffee.
“Do you-” He stopped when he saw me reaching for the wine and there was panic on his face. As if he’d made a terrible mistake by not offering wine to me.
“I’m sorry. Would you rather have wine?” he asked quickly, putting down the coffee and grabbing the bottle. I was worried about him. He was in no state to help me.
“No. The coffee is perfect.”
As he walked away, I smelled that other scent again-not the coffee-but what I’d smelled when he’d opened the door. Familiar but foreign. A heavy scent. Sweet.
It would come to me.
He put the bottle down on the glass cart in the corner and walked back toward me.
Taking a seat in the matching leather chair, catercorner to the couch, he picked up his coffee mug. When he took a swallow it was as if he had not had anything to drink in days.
On the floor next to his chair was the briefcase I’d seen him carry before. It was larger than what most executives carried. And the leather was not as fine. He probably had too much paperwork to rely on a sleeker model. The case was open but I couldn’t see inside of it.
“Did you mean what you said about helping Cleo?” he asked.