Step On A Crack

Chapter 55

THE BENNETTS STOPPED some NYC traffic again when we did our morning dash for the front doors of Holy Name half an hour later. A brunette model crawling out of a taxi in a sequined black dress, no doubt worn the night before, stopped at the curb, put her hand to her décolletage, and actually said, “Ohhhh!” at the cuteness of my family pageant. Even a passing metrosexual in a GQ camel-hair overcoat couldn’t help gaping open-mouthed at my crew as he exchanged his iPod earpiece for his ringing cell.

And far better than both of those reactions was the one I got from none other than Sister Sheilah.

“God bless you, Mr. Bennett,” she called with a smile, an actual smile, as she unhooked the door.

I was feeling pretty warm despite the cold when I got back into my van. I decided to sit for a minute. I lifted the Times I’d picked up from my doorstep to look at it for the first time.

The spark of holiday joy fizzled instantly in my chest when I looked at a picture of myself under the first lady caroline hopkins ’s funeral hijacked headline. “We Don’t Know Anything” was the cheerful caption under my picture. I looked at the byline of the hatchet job.

Cathy Calvin.

Who else?

I shook my head, and I felt my stomach filling with acid. She’d hamstrung me but good. Even the picture was bad. There was a pensive, searching expression to my face that could easily be misinterpreted as utter confusion. They must have snapped it when I was looking for the cathedral caretaker.

Thanks for my fifteen minutes of fame, Calvin, I thought. You really shouldn’t have. I couldn’t wait to see Commander Will Matthews. It was going to be such fun receiving the commendation for the top-notch PR job I had done with the Times.

And on that note-this case just kept getting better and better, didn’t it?-I violently hurled the paper over the seat and downshifted into drive.

Boy, oh, boy, was I glad to be in the white-hot center of this mess.