Unholy Order Page 6

  “I understand that,” Devlin said. “Can you tell me why you’ve decided to do this?”

  The question seemed to throw Peter off stride. His eyes blinked rapidly, and he let out a long breath. “I guess because something’s wrong there. At the order, I mean.”

  “Can you give us an example?” It was Sharon this time.

  Peter shook his head, as if saying he could not. It was his way of fighting to get the words out. “Okay. The order is very big on religious artifacts: pictures, statues, even relics, all for use in the future when we open new centers. Right now they’re being stored in warehouses, but they’re not shipped there. They come to headquarters, and then numerarier are used to deliver them. We’re told they have to be checked first, to make sure they haven’t been damaged. But I’ve never seen any evidence that they’ve been opened after they arrive.”

  “Do they all go to the same place?” Devlin asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Peter’s fingers were dancing again. “I made three deliveries to a warehouse in Greenpoint. It was in a pretty seedy section, and it made me kind of nervous, you know? Well, I knew two other numerarier who were making deliveries, and I asked one of them how he liked going there—just making conversation, really. But he told me that wasn’t where he went. He was going to a place in lower Manhattan—I don’t know where; we’re not supposed to tell each other things like that. Well, anyway, I asked the third numerarier the same thing, and I found out he was going to a place on the Lower West Side, near the docks. We were all going to different places, you see, and that didn’t make sense to me. Then, on my last delivery, I passed by this trash container. And it was open, and I happened to look inside.” He stopped, drew a breath, and shook his head. “Inside were some broken religious statues and some picture frames that had been broken apart, and I could see they were hollow inside.” He stopped again, clenched his fists again. “I went back there about a week ago, on my own. I wanted to look in the container again, but the container was gone, and the warehouse was locked up. I looked in a window and it was empty. Like, everything had been moved out.”

  Peter hesitated and Devlin urged him on.

  “Well, then this thing happened with Sister Manuela, and we heard rumors….” Again he stopped, as if the next words were too painful, too unbelievable.

  “You heard about drugs,” Sharon said.

  Peter nodded. “Yeah.” He looked at her, his eyes pleading. “But that can’t be right. It just can’t.”

  “Where do these religious artifacts come from?” Devlin asked.

  Peter shook his head. “I don’t know about the first two deliveries. I never looked. But I did with the last one. It came from Bogotá.”

  Devlin looked at Brother Michael. His face was as cold as stone. “You think it’s possible?” he asked.

  “That the order is involved in shipping drugs?” He shook his head. “But I think it’s possible that someone inside the order may be. The order is rife with fanatics. And fanatics often become quite Machiavellian to further their goals.”

  “It fits,” Sharon said. “Drug warehouses don’t stay open for very long. They move around. They also don’t operate from just one location. They spread out, spread the risk.”

  “Oh, God.” It was Peter. His trembling fingers had gone to his face, hiding it.

  “How can we get inside your headquarters?” Devlin asked. “It’s the only way we’ll ever find out what is going on.”

  Peter shook his head. “You can’t. Not unless you’re a member. And then you’d have to live there.”

  “Can we get somebody in—as a member?” It was Sharon. She threw a quick glance at Brother Michael to see if she was stepping over boundaries that he had created.

  “Could you recruit someone?” Brother Michael asked. He inclined his head toward Devlin and Sharon. “Someone they picked?”

  “I’m not sure.” Peter hesitated. “I suppose I could. I’m ready to recommend the person I’ve been working with. No one else in the order has met him. They only know him by the number that’s been assigned to the reports I’ve submitted. It’s a way we have of keeping others in the order from knowing who we’re recruiting.” He shrugged. “Sometimes people get nosy, even though it’s frowned on.” He paused and thought about it. “I suppose I could substitute someone you picked, propose him as this probationary member. But to get inside headquarters, to live there right off, he’d have to be sort of special—someone they thought they could use right away.”

  Sharon leaned forward. “Do they have any special needs right now?”

  Peter mulled that over. “Well, the computer system’s a mess. It’s new, and the operating system keeps crashing. It’s causing all kinds of havoc, and the order won’t let anyone from outside in to work on it. And the people we have … well, they just don’t seem to be able to solve the problem.”

  Sharon glanced at Devlin. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Yeah, I believe I am,” Devlin said. “I’m thinking Detective Boom Boom Rivera.”

  Chapter Six

  The telephone roused Devlin at six-thirty the next morning, the frantic voice of the mayor’s top aide driving away any lingering drowsiness. He grabbed a pad and pen he kept on the nightstand.

  “Slow down and give me the address again.” He jotted down the address. “All right, tell the mayor I’m leaving forthwith.” Devlin listened. “What? What do you mean he’s not up yet? How is he assigning this case to me if he doesn’t even know about it yet?” Devlin listened again, shaking his head. “Okay, when he does wake up, tell him I’m already there.”

  He put the phone down and stretched his shoulders. Adrianna’s hand reached out, her fingers running along his back. He turned and looked down at her sleepy, sexy eyes.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “We’ve got another dead priest. This one’s out in Brooklyn. I’ve gotta get out there.”

  “I thought I heard you say the mayor was still asleep. How …?”

  “He left standing orders. A priest, a nun, a rabbi, whatever—one of them gets so much as a hangnail, the case is mine. Apparently Howie is very close to the panic button.”

  Adrianna’s fingers ran along his back again. “That’s too bad,” she said. “I had some very definite plans for you this morning.”

  Devlin looked down at her. Adrianna’s hair was tousled with sleep, her eyes clearly alluring; one very lovely breast peeked out from the covers. “You really know how to hurt a guy,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Go play cops and robbers. I’ll just have to call the plumber or that cute new delivery boy at the pizza place.”

  “You just be sure and be here when I get home.” He reached out, deliberately pulled the bedsheet up to her chin, and turned back to the phone. He called Ollie Pitts, filled him in, and told him to swing by the loft to pick him up.

  Adrianna’s voice stopped him as he headed for the bathroom. “If it was another woman I could understand—maybe. But Ollie Pitts?”

  Devlin turned back to her, grinning. “Please do me a favor. Call Sharon at home before she leaves for work and tell her what happened. We were supposed to meet two young women at a counseling center this morning. Tell her I may not be able to get there and she should see them alone.”

  Adrianna gave him a fake pout. “Now I’m not only rejected as a sex object, I’m relegated to playing secretary.”

  Devlin winked at her. “And you’re terrific at both jobs,” he said.

  Adrianna sat up in bed, allowing the sheet to fall away. “You be careful, buster. Or the plumber really will get the surprise of his life.”

  Saint Donato’s Church was in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, once home to Joey Gallo, a Mafia wannabe who headed a gang of improbable gangsters that a New York newspaper columnist once novelized in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Now Gallo was long dead, and the old-line neighborhood of Italian longshoremen that once lionized him was largely gone, replaced first by m
iddle-class gentry, then by the encroachment of poor Hispanics who laid claim to the neighborhood’s fringe.

  Devlin thought about those days of mob mayhem as he walked around the priest’s body. Corpses hanging from longshoremen’s hooks had not been uncommon. But never a priest. Especially not one hanging by his neck in the basement of his own church.

  He stepped back and looked up into the priest’s face, avoiding any physical contact that might contaminate the crime scene. Still, he could tell the body had been there a considerable time. The neck had begun to stretch grotesquely. The face had turned almost black from lividity above the ligature and in the visible parts of the priest’s extremities. And as the body slowly rotated on the rope around its neck, it appeared as stiff as the proverbial piece of lumber.

  Ollie Pitts came up beside Devlin and followed his gaze upward. “Well, we know he’s been dead at least twelve hours, because we got us full rigor here,” he offered. “But with the level of lividity, and the way the neck has begun to stretch, I’d guess it’s been longer. Maybe sixteen hours, maybe more.”

  “He was a heavy guy—two hundred and twenty, two hundred and thirty pounds,” Devlin countered. “And all of it packed on a short frame. That could have added to the stretching.” He considered the body again. “You’re right about full rigor, but lividity can be tricky in a hanging. I’d stick with twelve hours, at least for now.”

  “You figure suicide?” Pitts asked.

  Devlin shook his head.

  Pitts seemed surprised. “Why not?” He began to look for something he had missed. He glanced at the overturned chair lying next to the priest’s body, moved his eyes along the length of the body and along the rope that had been looped over a ceiling rafter before being tied off on a pipe that ran along one wall, and finally to the silent oil burner a few feet away. He shook his head. “I don’t get it. We got the chair, the rope, and all the privacy he wanted. Shit. I can’t think of a better place to bump yourself off in early September than the boiler room of a fucking church. Not much chance somebody might come along and stop you.”

  Devlin nodded. “All true. But also very hard to do if your feet don’t reach the chair.”

  Pitts eyed the overturned chair, visually measuring it, then did the same with the distance between the floor and the priest’s feet. “Son of a bitch,” he said. He took a small tape measure from his pocket and measured the length of one leg of the chair, then again from the floor to the bottom of the priest’s feet. He barked out a laugh. “He’s a good three inches too high, even with his neck stretched like a fucking giraffe.” He turned and grinned at Devlin. “I guess that’s why they pay inspectors the big bucks.”

  Devlin kept staring at the priest. “Look at the section of rope between the rafter and where it’s tied off on the pipe. A good four feet of it is chafed where it rubbed against the wood. Somebody hauled him up manually. And that was a helluva lot of work.” He shook his head. “What I can’t figure is why the perp went to so much trouble to make it look like a suicide. If you want to hide a murder, why fake a suicide when it’s easier to make a death look accidental?”

  “Hey, perps ain’t always the sharpest tacks in the box.”

  Devlin shook his head again. “Were you raised a Catholic, Ollie?”

  “No. I wasn’t raised as nothin’.”

  Devlin stepped back several paces to get a longer view of the corpse. “Suicide is a big deal with Catholics. It’s an unforgivable sin. It’s an act of despair, a rejection of God’s forgiveness, and according to the church it guarantees you a one-way ticket to hell. Because of that, suicides can’t be buried in consecrated ground. And for a priest that would be the ultimate disgrace.”

  “You think that’s maybe what the perp wanted?”

  “It’s something to look at.”

  “You think there’s a connection with the other priest? Maybe a copycat? Somebody saw how the first priest got offed, had some kind of grudge against this one, and decided he’d do it too?”

  “That’s the best-case scenario,” Devlin said.

  This time Ollie shook his head. “Naw, they can’t be connected more than that. The first one, there was no attempt to hide what it was. A straight slice job.” He drew his thumb across his throat. “No, I don’t buy it. The MO we got here, it’s too far out of whack.”

  “Unless somebody was trying to hide the fact that they were connected.” Devlin glanced at Ollie and shrugged. “But maybe you’re right. It’s pretty damned Byzantine.”

  Ollie raised his eyebrows at the word. “Yeah, whatever you say, boss.” He grinned at Devlin. “Hey, you spotted that business with the chair. So maybe I should just shut up and listen. I’ll ask around, find out if this priest was a left footer like the first one. Just in case.”

  Devlin returned the smile. “I’ll start it off when I talk to the pastor. You stay with the body until forensics and the ME are through with it.”

  Father Enrico Giuliani glared at him, his sallow complexion suddenly flushed with anger. The priest was in his early sixties, with thinning gray hair and a pinched face. He reminded Devlin of a long-dead pope, Pius ?II, the one who had turned his back on the Jews during World War II. The priest’s angry eyes continued to bore into Devlin. He had already explained that he had been pastor of Saint Donato’s for twenty-five years. There was little question about the proprietary feelings the man had for his parish.

  “Father, I’m not trying to suggest anything,” Devlin said. “Or in any way denigrate Father Falco or his priesthood. I’m trying to get at the truth.”

  The pastor’s dark-brown eyes still blazed. He was seated behind his desk in the small rectory office. Behind him a portrait of Jesus stared into the room, almost as if it were a party to all that was said there. “You don’t think it’s bad enough when a priest takes his own life? That’s not enough disgrace for you? Maybe you’d like to explain it to our parishioners.”

  “Father Falco didn’t commit suicide, Father. He was murdered.” Devlin let the statement sit there and watched as varying emotions moved across the old priest’s face. First came shock, then a slight but very clear sense of relief, and finally disbelief.

  He shook his body, as if trying to fight off all the conflicting emotions. “You’re certain?” he finally asked.

  “Yes, Father, I am. The question now is why?” Devlin leaned forward as though preparing to impart some secret that only they would share. “You read about the priest who was murdered in the Village?”

  Father Giuliani nodded numbly.

  “Well, that priest had been diagnosed with AIDS, Father. My concern here is the possibility of some connection between the two crimes. That’s one—only one—possibility. But it’s something I have to check.”

  The pastor’s face had visibly whitened. “Dear God,” he said. He folded his hands before his chest, prayerlike, and began to move them forward and back in a rocking gesture. “I was Father Peter’s confessor, so I cannot discuss this with you.” His eyes snapped up to Devlin. “I want to. Believe me, I very much want to. But it’s impossible.” The hands kept rocking. “I can tell you that he was seeing a physician, but that’s all I can say.”

  Devlin nodded, showing that he understood. “The autopsy will tell us whether or not he was infected with any disease. But you could save us some time if you know the doctor’s name.”

  The pastor nodded, still visibly shaken. “Of course. I hadn’t thought about the autopsy. And I do know the name of the doctor. Serious illnesses must be reported to the archdiocese for personnel purposes.” He hesitated, thinking about what he had just said. “I’m not sure the archdiocese would want me to give out that information. I should check with them first.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Father.” The priest seemed shocked by the suggestion, and Devlin hurried on. “If they refuse to give you permission, I’ll be forced to subpoena your records, and if I do that it will be very hard to keep it out of the newspapers. I think we would both like to see th
is kept as quiet as possible.”

  The priest jumped at the statement as though it were a lifeline. “Oh, yes! Yes, of course. And they might, you know. The archdiocese, I mean. They can become very secretive where scandal is concerned, and sometimes their secrecy only makes it worse in the end.” A pleading look came to his eyes. “Do you think it’s possible? To keep this matter out of public view?” He shook his head, as if imagining what might happen. “Our parishioners loved Father Peter, and this would be very hard for them to understand.”

  “We can try,” Devlin said. “Not the murder, of course.” He hesitated, thinking he could lie to the man, deciding it would be foolish in the long run. “A lot will depend on what comes out at a trial, but I’m sure the district attorney would be sensitive to the wishes of the archdiocese.” He smiled, trying to soften his words, and added, “But we’re still a long way from that. And keep in mind that many murder cases never go to trial. So I think there’s a fair chance none of the … difficult matters … will ever come out.”

  The priest closed his eyes. “Dear God, let it be so.” He drew a long breath and then stood abruptly, went to a file cabinet in the corner, and withdrew a small folder. Finding what he wanted, he wrote a name and address on a slip of paper. He handed it to Devlin with a weak smile. “Please keep this between us,” he said. “I would very much like to finish out my days in this parish.”

  “No one will know, Father. I give you my word.”

  They stood on the steps of the church, just outside the massive front doors. Devlin filled Ollie in on what the pastor had told him, and when he had finished Pitts let out a long low whistle. “You must of done something really bad in your life.”

  “Why’s that?” Devlin asked.

  “Well, first off you got these Opus Christi clowns in a possible drug scam. The archdiocese is gonna love that. Next you maybe got somebody running around bumping off gay priests, which, of course, don’t really exist, according to the black suits at Saint Patrick’s.” He shook his head and grinned. “If you’re really lucky, maybe we’ll find out the pope’s been diddling teenage girls, and you’ll have a hat trick.”