“You’ve served here long, Father?”
“Since the Draft Riots.”
“That’s forty-five years ago.”
“Some things have changed in the district, most have not. We are still poor.”
The priest entered a tenement with an elaborate carved stone portal and started up a steep flight of rickety stairs. He was breathing hard by the third floor. At the sixth, he paused to catch his breath, and when the wheezing stopped he knocked on a door, and called, “Good morning! It is Father Jack.”
A girl with a baby in her arms opened the door. “Thank you for coming, Father.”
“And how is your mother?”
“Not good, Father, not good at all.”
He left Bell in the front room. A single window that looked onto a yard crisscrossed with clotheslines in the shade admitted the stench of a privy six stories below. Bell folded a wad of dollar bills in his hand and slipped it to the girl as they left.
At the bottom of the stairs, Father Jack caught his breath again. “Who are you inquiring about?”
“Brian O’Shay and Billy Collins.”
“Brian’s long gone from here.”
“Fifteen years, I’ve been told.”
“If God ever blessed this district, it was the day O’Shay disappeared. I would never say such a thing lightly, but Brian O’Shay was Satan’s right-hand man.”
“I’ve heard he’s back.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” the priest said bleakly, and he led Bell back into the street.
“I saw Billy Collins last night.”
Father Jack stopped and looked at the tall detective with sudden respect. “Did you really? Down in the hole?”
“You know he’s there?”
“Billy has, shall we say, hit bottom. Where else would he go?”
“Who is his little girl?”
“His little girl?”
“He kept referring to his little girl. But he claimed he had no children.”
“That’s a dubious claim considering the youth he led. In those years, it was rare I baptized a carroty-topped infant and didn’t wonder if Billy was the father.”
“I wondered if his hair was red. It seemed mostly gray in the dim light.”
“Though I suppose,” Father Jack added with a thin smile, “Billy could claim with a certain degree of truth that he is not aware he had any children. It would have been an unusually brave girl who would have named him the father. Still, I see his point. Whoring and drunk since he was twelve years old, what would he remember?”
“He was adamant he had no children.”
“That would make the little girl his sister.”
“Of course. He weeps for her.”
“I’m sure he does.”
“What happened to her?” Bell asked.
“Wait for me here,” the priest said. “I’ll only be a moment.” He entered a building and came out shortly. As they continued along the block, Father Jack said, “There are wicked men living in this community who live by stealing from poor, ignorant people. They’ll steal their money, and if they have no money they will steal their drink. If they have no drink, they’ll steal their children. Whatever the wicked can sell or use themselves. The child was kidnapped.”
“Billy’s sister?”
“Snatched from the street-no more than five years old-and never seen again. Surely she courses through Billy’s brain when he injects the morphine. Where was he when she was stolen? Where was he ever when the poor babe was needful? He looks back now and loves the idea of that wee child. More than he ever loved the child herself.”
The old priest shook his head in anger and disgust. “When I think of the nights I prayed for that child… and all the children like her.”
Bell waited, sensing a natural ebullience in the old man that would rise to the surface. And it did after a while. His expression brightened.
“In truth, it was Brian O’Shay who cared for that little girl.”
“Eyes O’Shay?”
“He looked after her when Billy and his shiftless parents were drunk.” Father Jack lowered his voice. “They say that O’Shay beat her father to death for sins against the child only the Devil could imagine. She was the only soul Brian O’Shay ever loved. It was a blessing that he never knew what happened to her.”
“Could Brian O’Shay have kidnapped her?”
“Never in this life! Even if he weren’t long gone to Hell.”
“But what if he was not killed when he vanished? What if he came back? Could he have kidnapped her?”
“He would never hurt her,” said the priest.
“Evil men do evil, Father. You’ve told me how wicked he was.”
“Even the most wicked man has a streak of God in him.” The priest took Bell’s arm. “If you remember that, you will be a better detective. And a better man. That wee child was Brian O’Shay’s streak of God.”
“Was her name Katherine?”
Father Jack looked at him curiously.
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t really know. But I’m asking you, was it?”
Father Jack started to answer. A pistol shot cracked from a tenement roof. The priest tumbled to the pavement. A second shot drilled the space Bell had occupied an instant before. He was already rolling across the sidewalk, drawing his Browning, snapping to his knees, raising his weapon to fire.
But all he could see were women and children screaming from their windows that their priest was murdered.
“I WANT A DIRECT telephone connection to the chief of the Baltimore office now!” Isaac Bell shouted as he stalked into Van Dorn headquarters. “Tell him to have his Katherine Dee file on his desk.”
It took an hour for Baltimore to telephone back. “Bell? Sorry I took so long. Raining like hell again, half the city’s flooded. You’ll get yours, it’s another nor’easter.”
“I want to know exactly who Katherine Dee is and I want to know now.”
“Well, as we reported, her father went back to Ireland with a boat-load of dough he made building schools for the diocese and took her with him.”
“I know that already. And when he died, she went to a convent school in Switzerland. What school?”
“Let me go through this while we’re talking. I’ve got it right here in front of me. The boys have brought it up-to-date since we sent our last report to New York… Takes so long back and forth to Dublin… Let’s see here… Well, I’ll be. No, no, no, that can’t be.”
“What?”
“Some damned fool got confused. Says the daughter died, too. That can’t be. We’ve got records of her at the school. Mr. Bell, let me get back to you on this.”
“Immediately,” said Bell, and hung up.
Archie walked in, still ruddy-faced with Indian war paint. “You look like death, Isaac.”
“Where’s Marion?”
“Upstairs.” Bell had rented a suite for the days she was in New York. “We got rained out again. Are you O.K.? What happened to you?”
“A priest was gunned down in front of my eyes. For talking to me.”
“The spy?”
“Who else? The block was swarming with cops, but he got clean away.”
An apprentice approached the grim-faced detectives warily. “Messenger left this at Reception, Mr. Bell.”
Bell tore it open. On Waldorf-Astoria stationery Erhard Riker had written:
FOUND IT!
PERFECTION FOR THE PERFECT FIANCÉE!!
I’ll be at Solomon Barlowe’s Jewelry Shop around three o’clock with a brilliant emerald, if this finds you in New York.
Best wishes,
Erhard Riker
49
BELL THREW RIKER’S NOTE ON THE DESK.
Archie picked it up and read it. “The ring for fair Marion?”
“It’ll keep.”
“Go.”
“I’m waiting to hear from Baltimore.”
Archie said, “Take an hour. Cool off. I’ll talk to Baltimore if they call before you’re back. Say, why don’t you take Marion with you? All this rain is making her stir-crazy. She’s raving about going to California to shoot movies in the sunshine. Neglecting to explain where she’d find the actors. Go! Let some steam off. You found Collins. You’ve got two hundred men looking for O’Shay. And the Navy and Harbor Squad hunting torpedoes. I’ll cover for you.”