Salvation in Death

  “Hector Ortiz?”

  “Yes. Lino respected my Poppy, I think, because of what he’d built, and my Poppy’s pride in the neighborhood. Lino left us alone.”

  She stopped braiding the second batch to look at Eve. “I don’t understand. Lino’s been gone for years and years. Do you think he’s involved with Father Flores—well, whoever he was—with his death?”

  “The man posing as Flores was Lino Martinez.”

  Rosa’s hands jerked away from the dough as she took a stumbling step back. “But no. No, that can’t be. I knew him. I would have known. I cooked for him, and cleaned, and . . .”

  “You knew him at seventeen, stayed out of his way, and he left you alone.”

  “Yes. Yes. But still, he would come into the restaurant, or I’d see him on the street. How could I not know him? Penny Soto! At the bodega next to the church. She was . . . they were—”

  “We know.”

  Rosa went back to her dough, but now her eyes were hard. “Why would he come back like this? Pretend all this time. And I can promise you, she knew—the one at the bodega. And they would have gone to bed. They would have had sex while he wore the collar. It would’ve excited her. Bitch. Puta.”

  She rolled her eyes, paused to cross herself. “I try not to swear in the rectory, but there are exceptions. And I can tell you this,” she continued, wound up. “If he was here like this, it wasn’t for good. However much he pretended, however much time he gave to the center, to the church, his reasons wouldn’t be for the good.”

  “He had friends here, old friends. But old enemies, too.”

  “Most he warred with are gone. I don’t know, and I’d tell you if I did, who would kill him if they’d known. Whatever he’d done, whatever he was doing or hoped to do, killing isn’t the answer. So I’d tell you.”

  “If you have any thoughts on it, I hope you’ll tell me that, too.”

  “I will.” She sighed, slowly turned the braid into a circle. “His mother, Teresa, she sent flowers to the funeral. I talk to her now and then, not as often as I should. Does she know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it all right if I talk to her? If I give her my condolences? He was her son. Nothing changes that.”

  “I imagine she’d like to hear from you. Can you tell us where we’d find either Father López or Father Freeman?”

  “Father Freeman is doing home visits. He’ll probably be back in an hour or so. Father López went to the youth center.”

  “Thanks. We’ll get out of your way. One last thing. Penny Soto, who does she run with? Sleep with?”

  “If she has friends, I don’t know them. And she has a reputation for sleeping with many. Her mother was a junkie, and her father was a dealer. He was killed when she was still a child, and her mother OD’d years ago.”

  Shaking her head, Rosa placed the second braided circle on the baking sheet, began to brush both with some sort of oil. “It was a hard life, hard beginnings, but she refused help from the Church, from the neighborhood, from everyone. She chose the gang instead. She chose her life.”

  Impressions?” Eve asked as she and Peabody started toward the youth center.

  “She’s a straight arrow, and one who’s kicking herself for not clueing in on Lino while she kept house for him. She’s going to think about all this, and think hard. If she comes up with anything, she’ll contact us.”

  “That’s how I read her, too. Now try this. Lino and company routinely attend the dance deal where the bombing took place. But they’re not there when it gets hit. Just Joe’s there, in what you could call the line of fire. And days later, right before Lino takes off, he and Joe argue. No arrests. The cops look hard at members of the Skulls, but they can’t tie them. Maybe because there was no tie.”

  “You think Lino was behind both? Wait a minute.” When they got out at the center, Peabody leaned on the vehicle, stared off into middle distance. “You want war, you want to be a hero—important. Retaliation’s sexier than unprovoked offense. The bombings kicked the level up from street fights. Bomb your own turf—school dance, plenty of innocents. Even people who don’t look kindly on you, on gangs, they’re worked up.”

  “Spread the word that you were the target. They came after you. Now you hit back, hit harder.”

  “Okay, but why leave?”

  “You leave important, your name on people’s lips. You make sure word goes that you’ve left so no more innocent people are killed when the Skulls try for you again. And you leave a body count behind.”

  Like Peabody, Eve leaned on the car. Across the street a woman swept her stoop, and beside it flowers made a colorful waterfall down a glossy white pot. The early morning rain still glittered on petals and leaves.

  “The cops can’t hassle you,” Eve continued, “not only because you aren’t there, but because evidence says you weren’t. He’s patient, the son of a bitch was patient. You’re going to come back one day, come back rolling in it. Could be he didn’t plan for it to take so long. You’re seventeen, and full of yourself. You think, I’ll score, big score, in a few months, go back, live like a king.”

  “Doesn’t work that way,” Peabody mused. “Plus, you’re seventeen, and you’re out of the box for the first time in your life. There’s a big world out there. You’re whoever you are, whenever you want to be. I like it.”

  “So do I. Might be half bullshit, but some of it’s got to play in.”

  They went into the center. Magda stood behind the counter making a ’link call. A couple of boys sat on bright yellow chairs, with expressions that indicated to Eve they were planning nefarious deeds. Another woman stood nearby, keeping an eagle eye on them.

  Magda held up a hand, two fingers indicating two minutes. “I know, Kippy, but this is the third fight in two weeks. That’s an automatic suspension. Both Wyatt and Luis need to be picked up as soon as possible. I’ve already contacted Luis’s dad. Yes, that’s fine. I’m really sorry. Oh, I know.” Magda rolled her gaze toward the two boys. “I absolutely know.”

  She clicked off. “Okay, sorry about that. One more second. Nita? Wyatt’s mother and Luis’s father are coming in. It’s going to take Kippy about an hour to arrange it. Can you hold them until then?”

  Nita, a sturdy-looking woman with her back to the desk, nodded. “I’ll stay here. Do you need me to man the desk?”

  “No, I—This won’t take long, will it?” she asked Eve, then angled back toward Nita. “Nita’s in charge of our six- to ten-year-olds, and our nurse. We’d be lost without her. Nita, this is Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody.” Magda gave the boys a meaningful look. “In case anybody around here needs to be arrested.”

  Nita turned slightly, a cold look in her eye. Eve started to speak, but the boys needed only that split second. They fell on each other like wolves.

  Even as Eve started forward, Nita waded in. Eve had to admire the way the woman grabbed both kids by the shirt collars and yanked them apart.

  “You there. You there.” She hauled them to chairs. “You think punching each other makes you strong? It makes you stupid. Fighting’s for those not smart enough to use their words.”

  Eve might have disagreed—she liked a good fight—but the lecture had the kids staring at the floor.

  “My partner and I can take them downtown,” Eve said casually. “Looks like a couple of assaults, disturbing the peace, and being general dumb-asses to me. Couple hours in a cage . . .” She let it trail off.

  Both boys stared at her, jaws on the toes of their skids, which had been the intention. Nita, however, stared holes through her, with no trace of humor, for an icy moment before turning her back again. “It’s for their parents to deal with.”

  “Sure. So . . .” She turned back to Magda. “I’m looking for Father López.”

  “Yes, he’s in the gym. Marc told me he ran into you this morning, that you said you had some leads.”

  “We’re working it. Gym?”

  “Through that door, straight down t
o the end of the corridor, turn left.”

  “Thanks. And, ah . . .” She jerked her head toward the boys. “Good luck.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “Nita doesn’t like cops,” Eve commented as she headed down the corridor with Peabody.

  “Either that or she took you seriously. If I didn’t know you, I’d have taken you seriously.”

  “I thought scaring kids out of being little assholes was SOP.”

  “Well . . . It’s a method.”

  “Did you see the kid on the right. Little bastard can take a punch.”

  And so, Eve noted when they went through the gym doors, could López. What looked like a portable sparring ring stood behind the center court line. A scatter of kids practiced on equipment on the other half, under the supervision of a couple of women in gym shorts. López—red boxing gloves, black face guard, black baggy shorts, and a white tee—sparred with Marc.

  And Marc snuck one in.

  Other kids grouped around the ring, called out encouragement. The gym rang with voices, the slap of feet, and the whop of padded gloves finding meat.

  Both men had worked up a sweat, and despite the age difference appeared evenly matched to the casual onlooker. But Eve saw López was quicker, and carried that innate boxer’s grace.

  An out-fighter, she noted, making his opponent come to him.

  He weaved, jabbed, danced right, hooked. Disciplined poetry in motion.

  Why, exactly, was fighting the answer of the weak and brainless? Eve wondered.

  She watched until the timer rang, and both men stepped back. She’d counted two hits for Marc, six for López. And the way Marc bent at the waist to catch his breath told her he was done.

  She walked forward. “Nice round.”

  Puffing, still bent over, Marc turned his head. “The guy kills me.”

  “You drop your right before you jab.”

  “So he tells me,” Marc said bitterly. “You want a shot at him?”

  Eve glanced up at López. “Wouldn’t mind, but I’ll rain-check. Have you got a few minutes now?” she asked López. “We have some questions.”

  “Of course.”

  “Outside maybe? We’ll wait for you on the blacktop.”

  “He’s built,” Peabody said when they walked out of the gym. “Who knew that under all the priest gear he was Father Seriously Ripped.”

  “Keeps in shape. And something’s up. Father Seriously Ripped had his sad eyes on, but there was more. There was dread.”

  “Really? I guess I wasn’t looking at his eyes. He could have heard about Lino by now. Word like that starts traveling fast. Since he’s the man in charge, he’s going to have to explain, I guess, why he didn’t realize a man like that was working under him. Everybody needs a fall guy, right? Maybe the church brass is aiming at him.”

  Since the blacktop was swarming with kids, Eve stayed at the side of the building. “Why aren’t these people in school?”

  “School’s out for the day, Dallas. On the technical end of things, it’s nearly end of shift.”

  “Oh. Maybe he’s worried about his career. Do priests have careers? But that wasn’t it. I know the look that says, ‘I don’t want to talk to the cops.’ That’s what he had in his eyes.”

  “You think he’s hiding something? He didn’t know Lino—as Lino. He’s only been in the parish for a few months.”

  “He’s been a priest a hell of a lot longer.” She thought of what Mira had predicted, and decided not to dance and jab, but to try for the knockout as soon as López came out.

  His hair was damp, and the sweat had his T-shirt clinging to his chest. Yeah, Eve mused, he kept in shape.

  She didn’t wait a beat. “The victim’s been officially identified as Lino Martinez. You know who killed him. You know,” Eve said, “because whoever did told you.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “What I know was told to me within the sanctity of the confessional.”

  “You’re protecting a murderer, and one who is indirectly responsible for a second death in Jimmy Jay Jenkins.”

  “I can’t break my vows, Lieutenant. I can’t betray my faith, or the laws of the Church.”

  “Render unto Caesar,” Peabody said, and had López shaking his head.

  “I can’t give to man’s law with one hand, and take from God’s with the other. Please, can we sit? The benches over there, away from the building. This needs to be very private.”

  Resentment bubbling, Eve walked over to where benches, their legs set into concrete, were facing the court. López sat, rested his hands on his knees.

  “I’ve prayed on this. I’ve prayed since I heard this confession. I can’t tell you what was told to me. It was told not to me, but to God through me. I received this confession as a minister to God.”

  “I’ll take the hearsay.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand, either of you.” He lifted his hands from his knees, palms up. Lowered them again. “You’re women of the world. Of the law. This person came to me to unburden their soul, their heart, their conscience, of this mortal sin.”

  “And you absolved them? Good deal for them.”

  “No, I did not. Cannot absolve them. I can’t unburden them, Lieutenant. I counseled, I instructed, I urged this person to go to you, to confess to you. Until this is done, there can be no forgiveness, no absolution. They will live with this sin, and die with it unless they repent it. I can’t do anything for you, for them. I can’t do anything.”

  “Did this individual know Lino Martinez?”

  “I can’t answer you.”

  “Is this person a member of your church?”

  “I can’t answer you.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “It makes me ill, but I can’t answer.”

  “I could put you in a cage. You’d get out. Your church will campaign, send their lawyers, but you’d do time first while we’re fighting it out.”

  “And still, I can’t answer. If I tell you, I’ll have broken my vows, betrayed them. I’ll be excommunicated. There are all kinds of cages, Lieutenant Dallas. Do you think I want this?” he demanded, with the first hint of heat. “To block your justice? I believe in your justice. I believe in the order of it as much as you. Do you think I want to stand by, knowing I can’t reach a wounded, angry soul? That my counsel may have turned it away instead of bringing it to God?”

  “They may come after you. You know who they are, what they did. I can take you into protective custody.”

  “They know I won’t break my vows. If you took me away, I’d have no chance to reach them, to try, to keep trying to persuade them to do true penance for the sin, to accept man’s law and God’s. Let me try.”

  She could all but feel herself beating her fists against the solid, the impenetrable wall of his faith. “Did you tell anyone? Father Freeman, your superiors?”

  “I can’t tell anyone what was said or who came to me. As long as they live with it, so do I.”

  “If this person kills again . . .” Peabody began.

  “They won’t. There’s no reason.”

  “It goes back to the bombings in 2043.”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “What do you know about them?”

  “Everyone in the parish knows of them. There’s a perpetual novena for the victims and their families. Every month a Mass is dedicated to them. To all of them, Lieutenant, not just the victim from El Barrio.”

  “Did you know that Lino selectively blackmailed some who came to him in confession?”

  López jerked as if struck with sudden, shocking pain. Rather than sorrow, it was fury that flashed into his eyes. “No. No, I didn’t know. Why didn’t any of them come to me for help?”

  “I doubt seriously they knew who was blackmailing them, or where the blackmailer got the information. And now I know whoever killed him wasn’t one of them.”

  Eve pushed to her feet. “I can’t force you to tell me what you know. I can’t make you tell me who used your church, your fa
ith, your ritual, your vows to murder. I could squeeze you, and sweat you, but you still wouldn’t tell me and then both of us would be pissed off. But I’ll tell you this: I’m going to find out who it was. Whatever kind of slime Lino was, I’m going to do my job, the same as you.”

  “I pray you will find them, and I pray that before you do, they come to you. I pray that God gives me the wisdom and the strength to show them the way.”

  “I guess we’ll see which one of us gets there first.”

  Eve left him sitting on the bench.

  “I get he’s doing what he thinks he has to,” Peabody said. “But I think we should be taking him in. You could break him in Interview.”

  “Not sure I could. He’s got titanium for faith. And even if . . . isn’t that going to make him one more victim? I break him, make him slip enough, and he’d never be the same. He wouldn’t be a priest anymore.”

  She remembered what she’d felt like when they’d taken her badge. How she’d felt empty, helpless. Like nothing, like no one.

  “I’m not doing that to him. Have I even got a right to do that to an innocent man? One who’s taken an oath pretty much the same as ours?”

  “Protect and serve.”

  “We do people, he does souls. I’m not going to sacrifice him to make my job easier. But I’ll tell you what we are going to do.” She got into the vehicle, switched on the engine. “We’re putting him under surveillance. We’re getting a warrant to monitor his communication devices. I’d put eyes and ears in the damn church if they’d clear it, but that’s not going to happen. We’re going to know where he goes, when, who he sees.”

  “Do you think the killer will go for him?”

  “He’s got that titanium faith, so he thinks not. Me? I’ve got faith that people mostly look out for their own ass. So we cover him—we protect—and we leave him out here as bait, hoping the sinner needs another shot at redemption. Put it in play, my authorization.”

  As Peabody started that ball, Eve glanced at the time. Thought, Shit. “One more stop. We’ll see if we can jangle anything out of Inez.”

  A woman answered this time, a looker with warm brown hair pulled back in a jaunty tail from a rose-and-cream face. Behind her, two little boys rammed miniature trucks together and made violent crashing noises.