Nina, who had always had a healthy skepticism balanced with respect for law enforcement, became embittered. She blamed the police and the slick and effective sting operation they had put in place for Sam’s death.
All they had to do, she’d said more than once, was come out and tell Sam what they’d wanted from him. Investigate him out in the open. But instead, they had gone undercover. Paid lip service to the idea of justice. And the shock of that, Nina said, was what did him in. And now she mistrusted the police as much as her husband ever had.
“What I want to know is how the hell did anyone get in here? Was your door locked?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I never lock my door.”
“When was the last time you were in here?”
“Yesterday, around five.”
“There were half-a-dozen groups here last night. That’s more than fifty people between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Someone could have slipped in without the receptionist noticing.”
“Belinda would have noticed,” I said.
“She wasn’t here last night. We had a temp on the front desk. Serena something. I don’t remember her last name.”
Nina walked over to the windows and tried first the one on the left and then the right. Only one of them was locked. My office was on the second floor. At night, in the dark, during the few hours when New York City’s residential neighborhoods really do go to sleep, it might have been possible for someone to climb up the stone wall and steal into the building.
“Do you lock the windows and the balcony door at night?”
I was searching, sifting through the papers, but I wasn’t focused. Was this the act of an angry ex-patient? Had someone broken into my office looking for valuable information that would allow them to destroy one of my patients?
“Yes, of course,” I said. But had I forgotten to?
“Do you have any idea which one of your patients might be at risk for blackmail?” Nina asked.
“Which one? It’s more like which ones. I have one patient who has finally decided to ask her husband for a separation. He’s been sexually abusing her and has even been here with her several times. I guess he might be angry enough to do something like this. He’d know the layout of the office. And he might have gotten in. Anyone might have gotten in with a temp at the front desk.”
“Who else?”
“There are dozens. I don’t even know where to start.” I felt overwhelmed by the mess and confusion everywhere I looked.
“I’m going to talk to the temp and look through the appointment books. There has to be a way to make sense of this.”
A half hour later, she was back in my office.
“Have you noticed anything missing?” she asked as she began picking up the books off the floor and putting them back on my shelves.
“No. But who knows? It could be one single sheet of paper with my notes on it. Did you find out anything?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. Too many options. We had sixtyfive people in here last night between single appointments and groups. Five first-timers. We also had someone from the phone company working here. And about five messengers delivered packages. Any one of them could have stayed behind in a bathroom. We’re going to have to keep track of all the new patients who came in yesterday but don’t come back.”
“That will only work if the person used his or her own name. If not, we might never be able to figure out who it was. Or what they wanted.” I smoothed the end pages of a book on Freud’s whore-madonna complex before I returned it to the shelf.
16
The stone spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral reached up only 330 feet, but despite being dwarfed by boxes of glass and steel, it exuded an importance those taller buildings didn’t have. From the minute its doors opened in the morning to when they shut each night, more than seven thousand people walked up the steps and through the doors to behold this magnificent Gothic house of worship. And no day was more crowded than a Saturday in the summer when people were visiting the city from all over the world.
That was why he had chosen that morning at 11:00 a.m.
It simply was the safest place for him to hide in all of New York. He could spend as long as he needed in the sanctuary, thinking out what he needed to do next without anyone paying attention to him. He never sat in the same pew two visits in a row. Never visited the same shrine more than once a month.
People who prayed sat under a shroud of invisibility. There was still the sense that it was wrong to stare at someone with their head bowed, eyes closed. And so that was the pose he struck when he needed to escape from the streets outside and the people who knew him and expected things of him.
This was his refuge. And today it was also his shopping mall. The tableau he’d constructed required simple black rosaries. And there was no safer place to buy them than in the gift shop of this holy edifice.
Commercialism had taken over the church with the same voracity as it had taken over the art world. For all the people who stood rapt in front of a van Gogh, there were two dozen who bought the coasters for sale in the museum’s store. For all the people who came to this grand cathedral to reach out to the Lord, hundreds more worshiped in the small shop buying medals, prayer cards, bottles of holy water and any one of the dozens of rosaries offered for sale.
No one would remember the man who purchased the black rosary. No one would think it odd that he had been there once a week for the past few weeks, each time buying the exact same prayer beads. And no one noticed that he managed not to touch the beads with his fingertips but held only the tag when he handed them to the saleswoman.
He chose black again. Because they were simple. Because he liked how they looked against ivory-colored skin. He chose the medium-size beads, with the silver roundels and Virgin medal and crucifix. The gold was ostentatious.
The act of handing over the money and taking the bag holding the rosary was an act of faith in itself. He was doing God’s work. He was bringing another woman into the fold. He was introducing Jesus to another lost soul. And if she did not appreciate him for it, if she did not understand what was happening in the moment, he was sure that her soul did.
The woman smiled at him as she gave him change. He smiled back. Easily. Without fear. Knowing that she would never remember just another man. He left the gift shop and walked into the apse of the church. He would go to the confessional and ask the priest behind the mesh window to bless these beads. Dozens of people made this request every day. Tourists in the house of the Lord who had no respect. Who took pictures. Who bought souvenirs. If he could push them all out, he would. If he could make the cathedral pure again, he would.
But then he would no longer be invisible. And until his job was done, until he’d completed his task, being seen, being recognized was not anything he could risk.
“Father, it has been one week since my last confession. I have taken the Lord God’s name in vain and coveted my neighbor’s wife. And I would like you to bless my rosary. Would you do that?”
“Yes, my son.”
17
The following Monday morning at eight-fifteen, Dulcie and I were in a taxi, heading downtown to her drama school.
“I wish I could go to this school all year long,” she said longingly.
As the cab worked its way through the traffic, she kept up a steady stream of chatter about how she liked the academy so much more than regular school and how her new friend, Gretchen, and she thought that the earlier you got started with your career, the better chance you had of making it as an actress.
I had not minded that Dulcie was going to spend the summer at the academy, instead of going to a sleep-away camp, although I would have preferred she spend the summer months outdoors, swimming and playing softball and tennis. Of all the things for her to be fascinated by, the theater was the last one I would have chosen for her. And not just because I’d seen what my mother’s early success as an actress, and then later failure, had done to her. How it had destroyed her. I just wanted Dulcie to enjoy her childhood and not face the pressure and rejections of an acting career before she had the coping mechanisms of an adult. It could be a cruel business no matter how old you were-and she was only twelve.