I called Paul Obon, my friend in New York, and asked him to see what he could learn about the Black Sea Trading Company. Then I called Brasilia and found out my brother wasn’t working tonight. I tried him at home but got his answering machine. I didn’t bother leaving a message.
Searching for him would have been futile, so I drove to the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Hartford instead. I had been planning to visit with Father Yuri to see if he could help me. Now I had even more questions to ask him. When I arrived, the church was open. Nine people stood waiting in line across from the confessional. Father Yuri kept the church open the Friday night before Easter to provide a longer window for people to cleanse their souls. That he was still doing so didn’t surprise me. Sin was a perpetual growth industry.
Two banks of wooden pews faced a rich altar dressed in gold trim with colorful stained-glass windows above it. I dipped my right finger in a bowl of holy water resting on a sconce in the vestibule and crossed myself Eastern-style, thumb, index, and forefinger pressed together to represent the Holy Trinity. The openhanded gesture the Roman Catholics favored never made sense to me.
Tension melted from my body. The Church had been an emotional shelter where nothing could hurt me when I was a child. Time hadn’t erased its magic despite my prolonged absence. I considered getting in line for confession myself but I wasn’t prepared to bare my soul. Instead, I sat in a pew and waited half an hour for the church to empty and Father Yuri to emerge from the confessional.
Most priests looked older than their age, and the man who’d taught my catechism classes was no exception. The belt that encircled his waist could have secured a cargo container. He wore the toll of his profession on his body. Giant bags drooped beneath his eyes as he walked with a limp. When he saw me, he lit up. I smiled back but he screwed his face tight and nodded toward the exit instead. His frosty transformation filled me with dread.
I followed him outside. He looked around as he locked the church. I did the same. Cars lined both sides of the street, but they appeared as empty and harmless as the sidewalks.
“We have to talk,” Father Yuri said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to see the only altar girl I ever had, but we have to talk. Let’s go inside the rectory…” His gaze fell on my Porsche. “Is that yours?”
“What do we have to talk about?”
“Zero to sixty in what — six seconds?”
“No. Under five. What do we have to talk about?”
“By God, that’s better than sex. Especially for a man in my profession. Not that I’d know but even a priest has an imagination. Forget the rectory. We’ll talk in the car.”
“We will?”
He waddled toward the street. I hustled to catch up, still fixated on his prior sense of urgency to talk.
“I didn’t remember you to be a car guy, Father.”
“New hobby.”
“Since when?”
“Since now. Let’s take it on the highway and blow the doors off some minivans. They’re constantly leaving my hybrid in the dust. I must have my vengeance.”
“But I remember you preaching forgiveness from the time I was five years old.”
“They didn’t make minivans when you were five years old, child.”
Father Yuri climbed behind the wheel and pushed the seat back to accommodate his huge belly. He was known as the gourmet chef, one who also received weekly platters from devoted Ukrainian spinsters.
“The Women’s League has been spreading rumors about me,” he said. “They say I emerged from my mother’s womb with a Heineken in my right hand.”
“Well, we know they’re wrong about that. It was Lowenbrau. I always saw you drinking Lowenbrau at summer camp. Lowenbrau Dark, wasn’t it?”
“You scoundrel,” he said, laughing.
“Why did you say we have to talk?”
“Why do children remember what we wish they’d forget?” He pointed at the shifter, looking confused. “What is this thing?”
I couldn’t have cared less about my car at that moment, but I did value our lives. “Wait. You’ve never driven a car with a manual transmission?”
He frowned. “What’s a manual transmission?”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, I’m not kidding you. But how hard can it be?”
I stammered through an incoherent answer.
“Of course I’m kidding you,” he said. “Buckle up, Danica. I did the two-day course at Lime Rock. It was a gift from a parishioner. He supplies them with tires. Let me show you how this thing’s supposed to be driven.” He wiped the traces of good humor from his expression. “And then we’ll talk.”
Fifteen minutes and an equal number of hairpin turns later, I was almost searching for a sick bag. The engine wailed as we raced down I-91 toward New Haven, carving up every minivan in sight.
“And she’s on the cell phone too,” Father Yuri said, as he passed one of them, finger pointed at the driver.
I clung to the armrest on the passenger door.
“What a machine,” he said, as he slowed down to sixty-five. He merged into the right lane and blended with traffic. He took a deep breath and exhaled with satisfaction. “Thank you for that, Nadia.” Then he glanced at me with the look of a man who was used to standing in God’s place. “Now tell me, exactly what do you think you’re doing?”
His question knocked the breath out of me. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t play with me. This is your health and welfare we’re talking about. Why are you digging around into things that are none of your business?”
A shiver ran through me. “How do you know what I’m doing?”
“It’s an insular community, Nadia. You know that.”
“Who told you I was asking questions?”
He cocked his head at me as though I should have known better than to ask. The priest-penitent privilege protected any communication between Father Yuri and anyone who’d confided to him in confidence. He didn’t need to reveal what he knew to the police, and he certainly wasn’t going to share the source of his knowledge with me. I couldn’t even be sure it was only one person involved. There could be multiple degrees of separation between his source and one of the people who knew what I was doing.
“I presume you called me because you have some questions of me,” Father Yuri said. “I may know the answers to some of them. I may not be able to answer others. But I will not be party to putting your life at risk.”
I could hear my heart pounding as though someone had stuck a metronome behind my ear. “Is my life at risk?” I knew the answer, of course, but hearing someone else state the obvious was far more terrifying than believing it myself.
“Is Bohdan Angelovich using crutches?”
Father Yuri knew about Donnie Angel. He knew what I’d done to him, which meant he must have known that Donnie had kidnapped me. Only three people knew about that incident: Donnie, Roxy, and me. Except that was a guess. I had no idea how many people knew about it. Roxy, Donnie, the two guys in Donnie’s van, or their boss could have been the source. I couldn’t infer anything with certainty.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t seen him for a few days. Is my life at risk?”
“Didn’t your mother teach you to keep matches away from straw?”
“No. She sent me to PLAST camp where I learned how to put matches to birch bark. It burns just as fast.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Someone has to.”
“Nonsense. Prying into an unlikely death will not bring back the departed. Why do you care so much?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “I just know I have to follow this through to the end.”
“Nonsense. You have a choice. You can walk away now.”