Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 6. Whole No. 778, June 2006

The Vigil by Terence Faherty

Copyright © 2006 Terence Faherty

Art by Mark Evans

Last year Terence Faherty’s story “The Widow of Slane” (EQMM 3/4-04) was nominated for the Edgar and Anthony awards and won the Macavity Award. The story, featuring P.I. Owen Keane, belongs to one of three series the author maintains. His latest book, In a Teapot, is set in the 1940s Hollywood of series character Scott Elliott, and here’s the latest in his Star Republic series...

That my editor’s parents loved Christmas was reflected in the name they gave their only child: Emanuel Noel. Their son’s feelings for the holiday might be deduced from his having used only his first two initials and his last name all his adult life: E.N. Boxleiter.

Those of us who worked for him at an Indianapolis daily called the Star Republic didn’t have to guess about Boxleiter’s opinion of Christmas. We were used to his temper growing shorter as December’s days did, used to him delegating anything to do with the holiday, used to his annual attempts to tone down and dry out the office Christmas parties, attempts that were frustrated by the family that owned the paper.

So I was a little surprised when Boxleiter called me into his office early one Christmas Eve and told me he had a special Christmas assignment for me.

“It’s that little girl who’s praying for the miracle roof. You know the one.”

I did. The little girl’s name was Tina Vasquez. She was a third-grader at St. Mary’s Catholic School, which belonged to an old parish of the same name located on the east side of downtown Indianapolis. Tina was the darling of the media for the second year in a row. Video of her kneeling before a statue of the Blessed Virgin in old St. Mary’s was running on local television stations almost every night. Sometimes she was alone, sometimes she was flanked by classmates, all of the girls dressed as they had for their First Communion ceremony, in white dresses and white veils.

They were praying for a Christmas present, and a large one: a new roof for the old church, a miracle roof, as Boxleiter had called it. It would have been an impossible long shot, except that, exactly one Christmas earlier, Tina had prayed up an entire automobile single-handed.

Or maybe not single-handed, since the Star Republic had played a small part. The pastor of St. Mary’s had called in the story. The priest had explained that Tina was the only child of a single mother and that the two of them were just getting by on welfare. The mother had a chance for a good job, but she needed a car. So Tina had begun a marathon prayer session before a statue of Mary, praying for a Christmas miracle.

And she’d gotten one. We’d run Tina’s picture and story two days before Christmas. On Christmas morning, the Vasquez family had awakened to find a late-model Saturn parked outside their double, its title and keys in their mailbox. The local television stations had made it one of the most videotaped cars in Indiana. The Star Republic, the paper that had launched the story, hadn’t published so much as a black-and-white photo.

“I was afraid last year that we’d created a monster,” Boxleiter was saying. “That’s why I killed the follow-up story, not that it did any good. Here the kid is, back again, praying away. St. Mary’s has already received thousands of dollars in contributions. At the rate the money’s coming in, they’ll be able to shingle that roof in five-dollar bills.”

I asked what was wrong with that.

“Nothing, if it’s all legitimate. If it’s a scam, it’s our fault for getting it started. I want you to check it out.”

There didn’t seem to me to be much to check out. The money was going directly to the parish, so the Vasquez family couldn’t be profiting.

When I pointed that out to Boxleiter, he snapped, “Even if this year’s money is going to a church, next year’s money might not. Some soppy idiot gives a car away, and who knows where it will lead?”

To get an additional rise out of him and to pay him back a little for sending me out into the cold on the day of the office Christmas parties, I asked if he was sure the Saturn hadn’t come from the Blessed Virgin.

He waved me out of his office. “Prove it did,” he said, “and you can have my Christmas bonus.”

The drive to St. Mary’s was so short my car heater never had a chance to heat. The church was one of downtown Indy’s most beautiful, a happy marriage of French Gothic architecture and Indiana limestone. As I parked in its shadow, I was struck for the hundredth time by the irony that the poorest parishes always had the oldest churches, the ones with the highest maintenance tabs. Luckily for St. Mary’s, it also had Tina Vasquez.

She was hard at it, a little girl in a white dress, her long brown hair partially hidden by a gauzy white veil. She was flanked by a girl and a boy, the boy in a white shirt and dark blue dress pants, surely the school uniform. Several other children sat in nearby pews with their parents, awaiting their shifts.

Tina knelt with a perfectly straight back, her tiny hands together but not interlocked. The day was overcast, and the church underlit. As a result, most of the light on Tina’s face came from banks of flickering candles before the statue of the Virgin. The candlelight emphasized the girl’s dominant feature, her very large, very dark eyes. Those eyes were fixed on the statue before her, which had Mary, in her traditional blue and white, standing on a blue globe that was covered in golden stars.

I’d walked all the way up the center aisle of the church, almost to the altar, so I could view the little girl’s face as unobtrusively as possible. That wasn’t unobtrusive enough for the priest, who intercepted me and asked me my business. When I showed him my press card, he ushered me into the sacristy, a little room off the altar, apologizing as we went.

“I’m sorry if I was rude, but we’ve been getting a lot of gawkers, thanks to the television coverage. This morning, a woman actually tried to get Tina’s autograph.”

I thought of pointing out that the parish was also getting a new roof thanks to the television coverage. Instead I asked how close they were to their goal.

“We’re almost there,” the priest, whose name was Marcelli, said. He was a young man with large, out-of-focus eyes and a tendency to draw certain words out as though he were chanting them. “It’s quite remarkable. We’re expecting an extra-large crowd for tonight’s midnight Mass, because Tina will be ending her vigil then. The collection should put us over the top.”

I asked him how long he had known the Vasquez family.

“I baptized Tina. It was just after I was assigned here to St. Mary’s. Tina’s mother, Marguerite, is a sweet woman, but she’s had more than her share of problems. It’s the old story, I’m afraid. She fell in love with a guy who promised her the world and only came through with a baby. After he’d gotten her pregnant, the guy, Tony Donica, hung around for a while. He and Marguerite lived together and there was talk of them getting married. Then Donica found another young woman who believed his line. They ran off together to Las Vegas. Something happened out there, an accident or something; I’m not sure of the details. And I know you didn’t come here to listen to old gossip.”

His unfocused eyes grew slightly sharper. “Exactly why have you come? I have to say that I’ve been a little disappointed with the Star Republic. I was the one who called the story in to you last year. You ran a nice little article about Tina before Christmas, but nothing after the car arrived. And nothing so far this year. I was sure you’d forsaken us.”

I paraphrased Boxleiter’s concerns about the potential for abuse in the phenomenon the Star Republic had gotten started.

“You needn’t be worried,” the priest assured me. “This is the last year for the vigil. Tina and her mother both told me that. Tina only did it this year as a thank-you for the car. The Blessed Virgin came through for Tina last year, so Tina wanted to do something in return. A new roof for Our Lady’s church is a pretty big something, but that’s the kind of special kid she is.”

I asked Marcelli if he really believed the car had come from the Virgin.

He laughed. “Not directly. I know it was some kind soul who read your paper’s article and felt a welling up of Christmas spirit. But who’s to say what caused that spirit to well up? Tina believes it was the intercession of Mary, and so do I.”

He suddenly took me by the arm. “Listen. The thing for you to do is to meet Marguerite. That will put your mind at rest. She’s just down the hall in the room the Altar Rosary Society uses. Her mother-in-law, Tina’s grandmother, is there, too. I know there was no marriage so there can’t really be a mother-in-law, but Marguerite calls Mrs. Donica that, so I do, too.”

He led me down a hallway whose wooden floor not only creaked but also cracked and popped. The women in the Altar Rosary room couldn’t help but be aware of our approach. There were two of them, seated at a card table that held coffee cups and a plate of Christmas cookies. The younger one, Marguerite, was a future portrait of Tina. She had the girl’s dark eyes and slightly upturned nose, though the effect of the eyes was diminished by a much fuller face. The older woman’s face was very spare, and her eyes were narrowed by a sceptical, put-upon expression. I hated to think of Tina ever looking at the world in that sharp, cynical way.

After he’d introduced us, Father Marcelli excused himself and left. The awkwardness that followed wasn’t lifted by the grandmother’s opening remark.

“So, your newspaper is finally interested in Tina again now that it’s sure she’ll make it. You didn’t have the faith to come a week ago even.”

I pointed out that we’d had faith enough to run the original story about Tina, and that led us into a discussion of the prior Christmas’s miracle, the car. Marguerite gave me the whole story again, speaking without a trace of the older woman’s accent. Her voice did get husky, though, when she mentioned Tina’s father. Oddly, Donica’s own mother was much less sentimental.

“That one,” she all but sneered. “He’d be alive today if he’d married you like he should have and stayed with you like he should have. He had a good job at the Methodist Hospital. He could have supported you and Tina. But no. He runs away to Las Vegas with some fat blonde, drives drunk, and gets them both killed.”

Mrs. Donica made the sign of the cross when she mentioned her son’s fatal accident. She’d performed the same ritual earlier in her tirade, when she’d used the words “he’d be alive today.”

Marguerite calmly ignored the older woman. “The car turned everything around for us. You should have seen it shining in the sun on Christmas morning. So pretty. When I found the title and the keys in my mailbox, I couldn’t believe it. I cried and cried. Thanks to my little Saturn, I have a good job. Tina and I have our own place and our own life.”

She went on to describe the color of the car — red — and its reliability and mileage — both miraculous. I was happy to dwell on the subject of the Saturn. As Father Marcelli had predicted, meeting Marguerite Vasquez had settled any doubts I’d inherited from my editor regarding the propriety of little Tina’s fundraising. But there remained the challenge Boxleiter had tossed me as I’d left his office: proving the car had come from the Blessed Mother.

I asked Marguerite if she remembered the name of the previous owner of the Saturn, which would have appeared above hers on the title document she’d found in her mailbox.

Mrs. Donica thrust herself across the table, her arm extended, her palm flat. “Don’t tell him,” she said. “Don’t say another word. He wants to tell people it wasn’t a miracle, that it wasn’t the Virgin Mary.”

I told Marguerite what the priest had told me, that identifying the human donor wouldn’t prove that Mary wasn’t behind the miracle. The donor might even confirm that she was. But it was a waste of my time. Her mother-in-law’s outstretched arm and upturned palm had sealed her lips. I would never hear another word from Marguerite Vasquez.

I thanked them for the interview and started to leave. Then I decided to test a little theory I’d come up with. I turned and said that it was a shame Tony Donica hadn’t lived to see the good his daughter was doing.

Marguerite only nodded sadly, but Mrs. Donica made the sign of the cross for the third time.

Once outside in the cold, I started my Chevy and we sat there shaking together. While the engine warmed, I placed a call to the Star Republic, to the cubicle of Eric Neuman, once an unpromising copyboy and now the paper’s specialist in computer research, legitimate and not-so.

“Where are you?” he asked before I could say more than my name. “The Christmas parties are starting up. The one in Home Delivery is going full-bore. They’ll be dancing on their desktops by two.”

I told him I was on a special assignment for Boxleiter and that I needed to find a man named Tony Donica. The theory I’d carried away from the Altar Rosary room was that Donica was still alive. That was my interpretation of Mrs. Donica’s habit of blessing herself every time someone mentioned her son’s death. She didn’t seem the type to be praying for the repose of that black sheep’s soul. So I’d started to wonder if her signs of the cross might be little acts of contrition for an ongoing lie.

“Have you got anything besides a name?” Neuman asked. “It’s a big country, and somebody spiked my eggnog.”

I related the little I knew of Donica: He’d supposedly been in an automobile accident in Las Vegas and he’d once worked at Methodist Hospital.

“Bingo,” Neuman said. “I’ve got a buddy over at Methodist. He can get me Donica’s Social Security number. With that, it’ll be easy. Give me twenty minutes.”

I bought lunch at a drive-through White Castle on South Street, thinking as I paid of all the free food I was missing at the office pitch-ins. Before I’d finished my last burger, my mobile rang.

“Got him,” Neuman said. “He’s receiving disability payments from Social Security. But I hope he’s not trying to live on what they’re sending him.”

I asked where in Nevada the checks were being delivered, though I was secretly hoping that his address was nearer to home.

“He’s back in Indiana. In Greenfield, of all places. Maybe he’s a James Whitcomb Riley fan.”

That Hoosier poet’s hometown was a thirty-minute drive east of Indianapolis. A short drive, in other words, but long enough for me to sketch out the rest of my Christmas story. I was seeing Donica as the mystery donor of the Saturn. How he’d managed it on his disability checks, I had no idea. Maybe he’d had some money left from an insurance settlement. I also didn’t know why he was pretending to be dead. The reasons I considered included Donica’s ongoing remorse over having deserted his wife and child and the possibility that he had been horribly disfigured in the accident. I was pulling for the remorse angle because the fairy-tale ending I saw for the story was a holiday reconciliation of Tony and Marguerite, brought about by the divine intercession of the Star Republic.

The address Neuman had given me belonged to an old building not far from Greenfield’s courthouse square. The structure resembled a two-story army barracks, though it had been covered in some kind of composite material intended by its manufacturer to look like shake shingles. Extremely large and extremely flat shake shingles. The building had a fire escape on each end and other indications that it was an apartment building, but no sign giving its name. The names of the tenants appeared on a row of rural mailboxes wired to a wooden fence. Tony Donica occupied apartment 1B.

Donica was in, but not receiving visitors. When I knocked on his door, it opened only as wide as its security chain would permit, which, luckily for me, wasn’t as wide as the muzzle of the Rott-weiler that tried to bull its way out. Behind the door, in the shadows, I could just see Donica, his face a little lower than my chest, the height of a man in a wheelchair.

“What the hell do you want?” he demanded, the words so slurred I knew he was as drunk as the revelers back at the Star Republic.

I identified myself and told him I wanted to talk about his daughter. He then offered to sell me an interview. Twenty dollars for five minutes. I passed the money in.

We talked in Donica’s combination living room, dining room, and bedroom, a dank, dirty place that made me glad I hadn’t sprung for the ten-minute interview. Donica had lost both legs above the knee, and the only clear spaces in the apartment were the pathways he used to wheel his chair from his unmade bed to his cluttered table or out to his bathroom or kitchenette.

“What about Tina?” he asked to get the clock running. “Something happen to her?”

I could see a trace of the good looks that had won the hearts of Marguerite and the ill-fated, unnamed blonde, though his chin was unshaved and his hair both unwashed and uncombed.

I told him I’d come about the car Tina had prayed for and gotten for Christmas. Donica’s expression conveyed as much comprehension as that of the dog seated beside him.

“Why would a little brat need a car?”

I told him it had been a present for her mother.

“That bitch,” Donica said. “What kind of car?” And, when I’d told him, “A piece of crap. I had a Trans Am.”

He pointed to a framed photo of a gleaming black car. I looked around for a picture of Tina, but didn’t spot one.

I started to tell him about the roof Tina was praying for.

Donica cut in with, “What do you care about some church in Milwaukee?”

It was my turn to look blank.

“Milwaukee,” Donica repeated, sounding out the word as though for a child. “Where that fireman Marguerite married took her and the brat. My mother told me all about it, so don’t think I don’t know.”

By then, I was starting to realize the extent of what Donica didn’t know. He didn’t know that Tina and Marguerite were still in Indianapolis. He didn’t know about last year’s Christmas miracle or this year’s. That didn’t seem possible after all the airtime the Indianapolis television stations had devoted to the story. Their signals carried to Greenfield easily. I gave the apartment a closer examination. There was no television in sight.

When I asked Donica about that, he said, “I hate television. People on television have legs.” He added, a little defensively, “I’ve got a great stereo. With satellite radio. No commercials.”

No local news, either. That left the original newspaper story about Tina, the one that had produced the car. The Star Republic sold a suburban edition in Greenfield. I asked Donica if he ever saw the paper.

“Waste of good beer money,” he said.

When I’d first heard that Donica had chosen to settle in little Greenfield, I’d thought it was part of his plan to pass himself off as dead. Now it seemed that the remote location had to be part of someone else’s plan. Donica confirmed that when I asked him about his apartment.

“My mom got me this place cheap. One of her old hen friends owns the building. If I had the money, I’d have a place in Indy. On South Meridian, where all the bars are. There isn’t a bar in this town worth wheeling myself to.”

So the same woman who had lied to her son about Marguerite marrying and moving north had tucked Donica away at a safe distance. That was to protect the lie she’d told him and the one she’d told Marguerite, namely that her son had died in Las Vegas. Without a television or a newspaper or a neighborhood bar, he was as isolated as he would have been on the moon. His mother could let her granddaughter have a week of celebrity without worrying too much about Donica finding out.

I was wondering how to break the truth to him when he said, “You never answered me. Why does your paper care about some church in Milwaukee? You said the brat’s praying for a roof. The little bitch. She’s a chip off the old bitch block, I bet. If she’s got an in with God, she should be praying for new legs for her old man. I’d shake them out of her if I could get my hands on her.

“You said you came here because of the car she prayed for. Why? You expect me to cry for you because I didn’t get one?”

My theory seemed ridiculous now, but I’d spent twenty bucks to confirm it, so I ran it by him.

Donica laughed himself into a hacking fit. “You think I bought that car for Marguerite? You think if I had the money for a car I’d waste it on that bitch? Is she here taking care of me like a woman’s supposed to? Hell no. She’s in Milwaukee, screwing some goddamn fireman. If only I’d married her like she begged me to. Me and Zeus would have that bitch walking around here on her knees.” He rubbed the dog’s head vigorously. “Wouldn’t we, boy?”

So much for my bright idea about the Saturn. That left the Christmas miracle I’d been contemplating, the reuniting of Tina and her mother with Donica. The thought that I’d almost done that, had almost blurted out to Donica that Marguerite believed him dead, literally made me dizzy. I felt as though I were standing on the edge of a cliff with one foot in the air.

Donica snapped me out of it by saying, “Your time’s up. Get out of here or I’ll have Zeus chase you out.”

I drove back downtown, intending to join the Star Republic’s Christmas parties, now well under way. But when I got off the interstate, I drove to St. Mary’s. I still wanted to find the person who had donated the car. More than that, I wanted to hear the person say that a vision of the Virgin or a surplus of Dickensian Christmas spirit had motivated the gift. I no longer cared what the motive was, as long as it was positive. I needed something to counteract the darkness I’d found in Greenfield. But to locate the mystery donor, I had to do something dark myself.

On my earlier visit, I’d left St. Mary’s by a back door very near the rectory. I tried that door now and found it unlocked. On my way to the Altar Rosary room I worked out strategies for separating Marguerite and Mrs. Donica, but I didn’t need one. The “mother-in-law” was seated alone in the little room, knitting.

It was a picture worthy of the front of a greeting card, but when the woman looked up and saw me, her expression instantly soured and the needles she held suddenly looked as dangerous as her son’s dog.

“What are you doing back here?” she demanded.

I told her I’d just been to Greenfield, and that was enough. She was out of her seat so fast she might have stabbed me before I’d raised a hand, if she’d headed for me and not the door.

“You can’t tell Marguerite,” she said when she had it safely closed. “You can’t. She’d run to him, and that would be the end of her and her better life. I know. I lived with Tony’s father for twenty years. And Tony’s worse.” She blessed herself again. “It isn’t just his legs. It’s him. I won’t let Marguerite sacrifice herself. I won’t let little Tina live like that, maybe grow up like that herself.”

I told Mrs. Donica that it might not be necessary for me to speak to Marguerite. I only wanted the name of the previous owner of the Saturn. Mrs. Donica could tell me that herself.

She understood the bargain at once: Give me the donor’s name and let the Star Republic take some of the glitter away from the original miracle, or I would tell Marguerite everything. It was a bluff, but she didn’t call it.

“It wasn’t a person,” she said, her voice flat and tired. “It was a company. Friendly Motors. In Terre Haute.”

Halfway to the door, I turned and asked her why she’d let Tina risk a second vigil. There was always the chance some friend of Donica’s might pass him the word.

“I didn’t want it to happen again,” she said. “But I could never say no to her.”

I thought she meant Tina. Then she glanced toward an old painting of a smiling woman in blue, and I was no longer sure.

Terre Haute was farther west of Indianapolis than Greenfield was east. I tried phoning Friendly Motors from my car, got a busy signal, and decided to make the drive. If my call had gone through, I never would have learned the truth, because the man who knew the answer, Marshall Henson, owner and manager of Friendly Motors, intended to take the secret to his grave.

Henson made that clear to me before he’d finished shaking my hand. “Swore I’d never tell a soul and I never will,” he said as he ushered me into his tiny office. He was an older gentleman whose white hair and dentures shared an identical yellow tinge.

“That’s the only Christmas miracle I’ve been involved with since I helped General Patton lift the siege of Bastogne in ’forty-four, and I’d hate to do anything to foul it up. Not that I don’t tell the story of that Saturn to folks,” he added, gesturing toward the wall to my right. “But I never tell the name of the man who bought the car.”

The wall Henson had indicated was so cluttered with sales awards and group photos of dealership-sponsored softball teams that it took me a moment to spot something connected to Tina Vasquez. That something was a framed newspaper article describing how Tina and her mother had found the Saturn. The story was dated December 26 and carried the Star Republic’s name at the top. It was the work of a reporter I knew very well, a frustrated novelist named Joan Johnson.

“I insisted that the buyer send me a copy of whatever the Indy paper ran about the car so I’d have a memento,” Henson said. “Tell you the truth, I asked for the clipping so I’d be sure the guy hadn’t been pulling my leg. I gave him a great deal on that car because of the story about the little girl — five thousand even for a really nice car — and I wanted to be sure he wasn’t ripping me off.

“Anyway, he kept his side of the bargain, so I have to keep mine. Sorry you drove all the way over here for nothing.”

I accepted his apology, even though my drive hadn’t been for nothing. I’d seen a very rare thing, a Xerox copy of a newspaper article that had never run. Boxleiter himself had told me earlier that day that he’d personally killed the Vasquez follow-up story.

I drove back a little faster than I’d driven out. On the way, I placed a call to Joan Johnson. It took awhile for the person who answered her phone to locate Joan. While I waited out the search, I listened to loud voices and laughter and even singing. I decided the office parties were reaching their zenith, which Joan confirmed when she finally came on the line.

“Where are you? You’re going to miss all the fun. In fact, you’ve missed most of it already.”

I told her I was on my way in and asked if she remembered writing the second Tina Vasquez story.

“One of my better efforts,” Joan said, “so of course it ended up in the trash. Boxleiter gave me the assignment himself, asked me to run him off a page proof. Then he told me he’d decided not to use it.”

I asked her if she’d ever gotten her proof back.

“Why would I have wanted that? Anytime I need scrap paper, I just tear off a page of my novel. Hurry up back here. People are starting to sneak out.”

I did hurry, but Joan had been right. By the time I reached the paper’s employee parking lot, half the spaces were empty.

I nearly ran on my way inside. Then I did run up the stairs to the third floor, where the offices of the credit union were located. The lights were still on and two of the clerks, Dee and Lois, were still on duty, though both looked as though they’d been at the Christmas cheer.

I walked in as casually as my shortness of breath would allow, wished them a happy holiday, and mentioned that someone in Accounting had brought in a male stripper. They asked me to watch the phones and left abruptly.

So abruptly that Dee forgot to sign off her computer terminal, a serious breach of security. I sat down at it, located the records of Emanuel Noel Boxleiter, and learned that he’d made a sizable withdrawal exactly one year before. A five-thousand-dollar withdrawal.

Boxleiter was still in his darkened office, looking out at the lights of the park beneath his windows.

When he noticed me standing there, he asked, “So?”

I knew the question referred to his real concern, his reason for risking his secret by sending me out on the story. He was afraid, as the Friendly Motors man had been, that his leg had been pulled.

I told him the Vasquez family was as honest and deserving as they came. And that this was their last year in the miracle business.

He swung his chair around to face me. “What about the car? Did it come from the Virgin Mary after all?”

I shook my head. I told him it had come from St. Joseph, the guy who stood in the background and never got much credit.

Boxleiter grunted and said, “Maybe he never wanted any credit. Maybe just being a small part of some special kid’s life was enough. Punch out and have a drink.”