“Come with me, Señorita.” Enriqueto Romero led Mary through her store to a supply room out back. “You are American, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have traveled a long way to be here on this holiest of holies. The color of your hair is shared this evening by the skinny one, this is no coincidence. You are about to embark on a very special journey, am I right?”
“The man in my life, I need to know if he really desires me. I’ve been abandoned before—”
“—and you do not wish to be abandoned again. The most Holy Death can help in these regards. For this you must purchase a statue. The statue comes with a string knotted seven times. Cover the string with your beloved’s semen, place it around the skinny girl’s neck within its notch, then recite the ejaculatory prayer for nine consecutive nights. The Saint will make clear the intentions in your man’s heart.”
“And if he is lying to me?
“Then the Saint will be waiting for him… in Hell.”
Built in 1929, the eight-story, sixty-four-thousand-square-foot building had originally been a toy factory, the company’s big seller being the first electric football game. Today, the Toy Factory Lofts featured eleven-foot ceilings and wall-to-wall eight-foot-high windows.
Doug Nelson begrudgingly followed his wife and the building manager down the fourth-floor hallway to the last door on the right. “Kind of unusual for a landlord to hold an apartment open this long for a soldier.”
Joe Eddy Brown, known to the occupants of the Lofts as “the Brown-Man,” fumbled to find the right key. “Most of these apartments are condos. Mr. Shepherd bought his outright back in 2001.”
“What about his ex-wife? She ever come around?”
Brown paused before inserting the pass key in the lock, running a weathered palm over his cleanly shaved head. “Haven’t seen the missus around here for a while. Damn shame, she was easy on the eyes. Oh, well, you know what I always say, better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.”
“Actually, Tennyson said that,” Doug said. “And the man spent most of his life penniless and ended up in a sanitarium.”
Leigh shot her husband a chastising look.
The loft was small, composed of a six-hundred-square-foot living area, a bathroom, and several large storage closets. A modern kitchen faced a view of the Williamsburg Bridge. The queen-size bed was located in one corner of the room, the mattress on the floor, the blankets and sheets unmade. There were no photos or artwork on the walls, no decorations of any kind… as if the owner occupied the dwelling but never called it home.
“I know what you’re thinking — there’s not much to look at. Mr. Shepherd, he pretty much spent his days walking the streets. He’d come home late at night, oftentimes drunk. Found him on the stoop passed out on more than one occasion. We don’t tolerate that sort of behavior in Brown Town, but him being a war hero, I sort of let it slide. If he’s intending to move back—”
“Mr. Shepherd has no memory that this place even exists,” Leigh clarifies. “I’m only here because I found the address in his military file.”
“And I’m only here because my wife dragged me here on a Saturday night.” Doug met his wife’s glare with his own.
“Ten minutes, Doug. Stop being so selfish.”
“I’m being selfish?” He searches a magazine rack. Grabs an old issue of Sports Illustrated. “Let me know when you’re ready to leave. I’ll be in the bathroom.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Brown. Where’s that closet you mentioned on the phone?”
Leigh followed the building manager to a mirrored wall. Brown tapped it with two fingers, releasing the magnetic clasp. He pulled open the door, revealing a walk-in storage area.
There were a few collared shirts on hangers and a navy suit. The rest of Patrick Shepherd’s wardrobe was set in piles of dirty laundry. A whiff of alcohol-soaked denim, marinated with body odor before being aged, gravitated up from the polished wood floor.
The stacks of cardboard boxes appeared more enticing.
“Mr. Brown, I need a few minutes to go through my patient’s belongings.”
“Just pull the door closed when you leave. I’ll come back later to lock the dead bolt.”
“Thank you.” She waited until he left before rummaging through the first few boxes. Baseball gear. Grass-stained cleats and jerseys. Bundles of never-worn tee shirts with the words, boston strangler printed across the chest. She sorted through three more boxes, then found the foot locker buried beneath a pile of jackets.
Going down on one knee, she popped open the steel clasps and raised the lid.
Aged air, musky and filled with discarded memories escaped from the long-sealed container. She removed a woman’s hooded pink Rutgers University sweatshirt, then two toddler outfits, one a Yankees uniform, the larger one a Red Sox shirt. The three college textbooks, all dealing with European literature, were marked up and highlighted, the curvy penmanship clearly a woman’s handwriting. She searched in vain for a name, then saw the framed photo, the picture taken outside a college dormitory.
The girl was barely twenty, blond, and model-gorgeous, her long hair wavy and bowed. Her boyfriend was hugging her from behind. Boyishly handsome, he wore a cocky smile. Leigh stared at the image of Patrick Shepherd in his youth. Look at you. You had the world by the balls, and you walked away… just so you could crawl through hell.
“Leigh? You need to see this.”
Picture in hand, she joined her husband in the bathroom.
Doug pointed to the medicine cabinet. “I’d say your boy has some serious demons.”
The handwritten note, yellowed with age, is taped to the mirror.
Shep:
The voice telling you to kill yourself is Satan. Suicide is a mortal sin. For your family’s sake, suck it up and accept your punishment. Live today for them.
He’s worse than I thought… She opened the medicine cabinet, its narrow shelves filled with expired prescriptions. “Amoxapine. Thorazine, Haldol. Trifluoperazine, Triavil, Moban. There’s enough antidepressants and tranquilizers here to medicate the entire building.”
“Looks like he was suicidal long before he lost his arm. Bet you dinner he keeps a loaded gun beneath his pillow.” Doug left the bathroom and walked over to the bed, tossing the goose-down pillows aside. “What’s this?”
Leigh joins him. “Did you find a weapon?”
“Not exactly.” He held up the leather-bound book.
Dante’s Inferno.
Doug headed west on 34th Street, guiding the Range Rover into one of the three lanes heading to New Jersey via the Lincoln Tunnel. “You want to know why I’m mad? It’s because you spend more time with your soldier pal than you do with your own family.”
“That’s not true.”
“Why him, Leigh? What’s so special about this vet? Is it because he played baseball?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know.” She stared out the window, consciously trying not to breathe the carbon-monoxide fumes as their vehicle raced through the brightly lit tunnel. “At first, I was just afraid that he’d try to kill himself again. Then, when I saw how much he missed his wife, I was afraid he’d try to get back together with her too soon.”
“Thomas Stansbury again? Leigh, we’ve been through this a million times. He had a night terror. It was out of your control.”