Silent Mercy

TWENTY-SIX

“DOES Scully think you’re taking yourself off the case?” Mike asked. We decided to use my apartment as a command center for our team’s strategy session. It offered space, privacy, and a well-stocked bar.

“He didn’t wait around for an answer. He’s so damn used to getting his way.”

It was ten o’clock, and we had spread out the police reports and our notes on my dining-room table. Nan was on the phone ordering pizzas, Mike was fixing drinks, and I was opening a bottle of wine. Peterson had banded the four of us with another foursome assembled from different squads and, after a brief discussion with them about how to communicate in the morning, we left to regroup at my home.

“You see what he’s done, Coop. He’s silenced you, too,” Mike said. “First Battaglia clips your wings. Then Scully gives you the boot. Sitting behind the cash register in a restaurant in the south of France keeping count of every escargot the chef sells is looking more and more like your future. The glory days may be behind you.”

“Jack her up, Mr. Chapman,” Nan said. “Just what she needs.”

“I don’t want to be a lightning rod for anything that will affect the case.”

“Running scared.”

“Hardly. How about if I just fade into the background for the time being, let Nan take the lead, and we carry on as usual?”

I poured a glass of white wine for Nan and one for myself. “And I thought you were my pal,” she said. “I get to deal with Battaglia, the archdiocese, and the unhappy mobs. And you?”

“Whatever you need. I can do witness interviews—”

“Find me a frigging witness first, will you?” Mike said, clinking his glass full of vodka against my wine. “I smell what you’re up to. You’ll do everything except having to interface with the bosses. You get the fun part. And then I’ll get pounded when Scully finds out.”

“By Monday we’ll have a better sense of where this is going. I’ll poke my head out and test the waters.”

“Kind of like a groundhog, looking for his shadow,” Mike said. “But you’ll have to see Battaglia tomorrow morning. That won’t be pretty.”

“It’s Friday, and he’s got meetings in Washington all day. Probably took the last shuttle tonight,” I said. “To which I add a ‘hallelujah’ and let’s get to work.”

Nan had opened her laptop and begun her research on Ursula Hewitt. “What do you want to know?”

“I’m the wrong one to pass judgment on the idea of ordaining women. It seems smart to me.”

“Amen,” Mercer said. “Overdue by a millennium or two.”

“But then it’s not my church, so what I think doesn’t count for much.” I looked to Mike and then Nan, who were both practicing Catholics.

“Here’s the latest New York Times poll,” Nan said, Googling faster than we were talking. “For more than twenty years, a large majority of American Catholics favor allowing women to be ordained as priests, even though the church hierarchy is opposed. More than sixty-four percent think it’s a good idea. Another eighty-one percent support women as deacons.”

“Let me speak for my aunt Eunice,” Mike said, raising his glass in the air. “And my aunt Bridget and my sainted mother and the good ladies of St. Anselm’s of Bay Ridge. Not happening. Hellfire and damnation before they’d approve ordaining women. You want a poll? Poll my relatives.”

“Women are so often more judgmental about each other’s conduct than men,” I said.

“You can’t let Nan take the heat on this,” Mike said. “Don’t we have a kick-ass atheist on board who won’t care when crowds start picketing the courthouse?”

“I can deal,” Nan said.

“It’s like an ancient fraternity,” Mercer said. “Somebody needs to bring these guys in Rome into the modern world.”

“Men in dresses. That’s who’s in charge,” Mike said. “Men in dresses with more gold rings than even Coop’s got. Ought to be a signal right there. You want to make my mother crazy? Some days I tell her I think I was the only altar boy in town who wasn’t abused. I must have been homely as sin. Just ask her about that.”

“This is interesting,” Nan said. “There’s actually a formal organization with its own website. Roman Catholic Womenpriests. They claim that more than one hundred women have been given ordination ceremonies as priests or bishops or deacons.”

“There were women deacons till the ninth century, in case you girls didn’t know. St. Lydia, St. Phoebe, St. Tabitha.”

“It’s like celibacy, isn’t it?” Mercer asked. “I don’t believe priests were always celibate, were they? There were sure a bunch of popes who didn’t get that part right.”

“The first Lateran council required celibacy,” Mike said. “In 1123. It’s a discipline in the church, based on the way that Christ lived his life.”

“I’ve got quite a learning curve ahead,” I said. “I can spend the weekend doing an immersion course in religion.”

“About time.”

“What else do we know about Ursula Hewitt?” I asked.

“While Scully was dressing you down in the hallway,” Mercer said, “we were getting the rest of the facts, few as they are. Her uncle said she’d been staying with friends the last six months. All he had was her cell. He’ll get us the names and addresses by tomorrow.”

“Involved with any particular parish?”

“Certainly not officially. But still connected to the church, still hoping she and her sisters could effect change.” Mercer was reading from notes. “Deep and abiding faith. Believed that priests should look like the people they serve.”

“Can we talk to some of these other women?” I asked Nan.

“The site says that the movement started in Germany in 2002. The first women ordained were called the Danube Seven. The ceremony took place on a boat in the river. And it lists the names of all the women priests, including the seventy-five Americans.”

“So we split up those calls, starting tomorrow.”

“Hewitt was teaching too,” Mercer said. “According to her uncle. But he doesn’t know where.”

“Excommunication means she couldn’t teach in any Roman Catholic church or school. Even silencing her would have done that much,” Mike said.

The house phone rang and the doorman announced the food delivery.

“I’m up,” Mercer said, opening his wallet and going to the door. “Last thing I got was that she was working some other kind of job.”

“What?”

“He didn’t know.”

Nan was searching again. “There are an awful lot of Hewitts coming up.”

“Keep going. Ursula’s certainly not a common name.”

“All the hits are articles connected to her ordination and excommunication. The Boston Globe and the Irish Echo. Then a lot of women’s press outlets. I’m not getting much else.”

“Try this,” Mike said. “Plug her in again and add Naomi Gersh. Maybe their lives intersected at some point.”

“Peterson’s right, Mike,” Nan said as she typed. “You are totally outside the box today.”

She paused to grab the plate that I passed her with a slice of pepperoni pizza. “You’re going to faint if you don’t eat something.”

“A few things popping up on Gersh.” She had one hand on the keyboard and one held a slice of the pie. “Some articles on the protests with Naomi’s name. Then a Norman Gersh in real estate, a Norton Gersh hedge fund. Gersh and Hewitt — got it!”

“Pizza and cloth napkins? Too rich for my blood.” Mike was halfway through his first slice, circling the table to look over Nan’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“A short piece in a newsletter called On-and-Off-Broadway. January of this year. I’m skimming the article as quickly as I can.”

“Faster. And out loud.”

“‘… in a limited run of the controversial play entitled Double-Crossed, which was staged last month at the Chelsea Square Workshop, to coincide with the holiest time in the church calendar. The controversial piece about the Vatican’s attempts to punish American nuns for their social activism was staged by the feminist theologian Ursula Hewitt.’ ”

“There’s her day job,” Mercer said. “Directing an edgy play about the church.”

“What social activism?” I asked. “They’re after nuns now?”

“Talks about the playwright. ‘She was inspired to create the piece when Rome launched its investigation into the feminist work of communities of American nuns several years ago. In Washington State, for example, three groups were targeted. They include the Tacoma Dominicans, which consists of thirty women — average age, seventy — who have begun to shelter victims of human trafficking. Their untraditional ministries, such as social justice work, is viewed as inappropriate by the Vatican hierarchy. Even their refusal to wear robes is considered a form of rebellion.’ ”

“A seventy-year-old nun who’s willing to step out of her robe?” Mike said. “Give her a medal. If I could get my mother out of her housecoat once in a while, I’d say a few novenas.”

“What does it mention about Naomi Gersh?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“But that’s her in the photograph,” Mike said. “The image is grainy, but it sure looks like Naomi, doesn’t it?”

“Here’s the caption. ‘Director Ursula Hewitt, greeting several members of the audience — including an ordained minister and a nun — and Jewish activist Naomi Gersh.’ ”

“Nothing more in the article?”

“No.”

“Does the Chelsea Square Workshop mean anything to you?” I asked Mike as he flipped through his notepad.

“Yeah. That’s where Naomi’s brother was working this winter.”

“So Daniel Gersh,” Mercer said, “is the common denominator between our two victims. I’d call that fact into the PC’s office right now. Somebody better ramp up the effort to find him.”

We had set midnight as a time to quit.

Nan and I would work from our offices in the morning, trying to contact some of Ursula Hewitt’s colleagues and waiting for her uncle to give us the information needed to retrace her last steps. Nan would try to press Bellevue to speed up their record search. Mercer would tackle the Daniel Gersh piece of the case, going to the theater itself and expecting that the DCPI would have blasted the young man’s photo and information to the media. Mike was heading back to the Jewish Theological Seminary to try to talk to other students about Naomi Gersh.

“What time should we talk?” Mercer asked.

“Why don’t we check in with each other at nine? In case anything breaks overnight,” I said. “Then again at noon.”

“I hate to leave you with all this mess,” Nan said, carrying some of the glasses to the sink.

“Nothing to it.” I lifted the lids of the pizza boxes. “Mike was good for five slices. There’s not much garbage to deal with.”

“How are you going to handle Pat McKinney?” she asked. “What if Scully calls him?”

“Scully’s one of those boss-to-boss-only guys. If Rose tells him Battaglia’s out of town, and I sit there chained to my desk like an obedient dog, he’ll think I’ve seen the light and wait till Monday to confirm with the district attorney. Is Mercer driving you home?”

“Yes.”

Nan lived in Brooklyn, and it wasn’t far out of his way to drop her as he headed for Queens.

“Give my love to the prince,” I said, our nickname for Nan’s adorable, smart, long-on-patience husband. “And a kiss to the kids.”

“Will do. C’mon, guys,” Nan said. She had packed up her laptop and folders. “See you tomorrow, Alex.”

I closed the door and went inside to shut off the lights. Nan had stacked the napkins in a pile for my housekeeper to launder.

The last thing I wanted to wake up to was the smell of pizza crust and tomato sauce. I took the garbage with me and shuffled down the hallway, through the swinging door at the end, to throw the empty wine bottle in the recycling bin and the flat cardboard boxes in the incinerator.

I came out of the service area to return to my apartment.

The only thing between me and my front door, twenty-five feet away, was a tall stranger with his hands in the pockets of his black overcoat and a vicious expression on his face.