The Big Bad City

4.

The building Mary Vincent had lived in was on Yarrow Avenue, corner of Faber Street, not a mile from the hospital, a brief ten-minute ride by subway. Why she'd gone to Grover Park last Thursday instead of heading directly home was a question of some importance to the detectives. There was a good-size park alongside the hospital and bordering the River Dix. If she'd felt like taking the air, she could have gone there. Instead, on one of the hottest days of the year, she had walked seven long cross town blocks to the park the equivalent of fourteen uptown downtown blocks and then had walked the width of the park itself to a park bench on its farther side. Why? Carella met Brown downstairs at a quarter past two, told him the judge had dismissed Teddy's case ... "Yay," Brown said.

apologized for being late, and asked if Brown had located the super of the building yet. Brown said he'd just got there a minute ago himself, and they went to look for him together. They found him out back, trying to repair the pulley on a clothesline that had fallen down, dropping clean white sheets all over the backyard. The super was enormously uncomfortable in this humid heat. "I'm from Montana," he told them. "We get breezes there." It was unusual for people from Montana to end up in this city unless they were seeking fame and fortune in television or on the stage. You didn't get many building superintendents from Montana riding their horses in the streets here. Come to think of it, Carella had never met a single person from Montana in his entire life. Neither had Brown.

Carella wasn't even sure he knew where Montana was. Neither was Brown.

Nathan Harding was a man in his early sixties, they guessed, burly and balding, sweating profusely in a striped T-shirt and blue jeans. He had difficulty recalling exactly which of his tenants was Mary Vincent even though there were only twenty-four apartments in the entire building. When they pointed out that she was a nun working at St.

Margaret's Hospital, he said he didn't know where that was, which wasn't exactly answering the question. They told him Mary Vincent was twenty-seven years old, a nun in the Order of the Sisters of Christ's Mercy. He said he had three or four girls that age in the building, but he didn't remember any of them looking like nuns. Neither Carella nor Brown were enjoying this damn heat, either, and the man was beginning to give them a Monday afternoon pain in the ass.

"Haven't you got a tenant list someplace?" Brown asked.

"What's this about?" Harding asked. "It's about a murder," Carella said. Harding looked at him.

"Can we see that tenant list?" Brown said.

"Sure," Harding said, and led them into his apartment on the ground floor. The building was what they called a non-doorman walk-up, which meant there was no security and no elevator. Harding's apartment looked as if the Cambodian army had recently camped there. He rummaged around in a small desk in a small cluttered office just off the kitchen and found a typewritten list that showed a Mary Vincent living in apartment 6C.

"Want to open it for us?" Brown said.

"A nun killed somebody?" Harding said.

"The other way around," Carella said, and watched Harding's face.

Nothing showed there. The man merely nodded.

"Guess it'll be okay," he said.

It damn well better be, Brown thought, but did not say.

Both detectives were out of breath when they reached the sixth-floor landing. Harding was from Montana, he took the climb in stride. There were three other apartments on the floor, but this was two-thirty in the afternoon, and the building was virtually silent, almost all the tenants off to work.

"How long was she living here?" Carella asked. "She the one I think she is," Harding said, "she moved in around six months ago." He was searching his ring of keys for the one to 6C. "Live here alone?”

“I couldn't say.”

The detectives exchanged a glance. It was hotter here in the building than it was on the street outside, all of yesterday's heat contained in this narrow sixth-floor hallway just under the roof. They waited patiently. Brown was just about ready to snatch the goddamn ring away from him, when Harding finally found the key. He tried it on the keyway. It slid in easily. He twisted it, unlocked the door, and opened it wide. A wave of hotter air rolled heavily into the hallway. Carella went in first.

This was not a crime scene, but he pulled on a pair of cotton gloves, anyway, before opening one of the windows. Only slightly cooler air sifted in from the street outside. There was the sound of an ambulance siren bruising the comparative mid-morning stillness. "Studio?" he asked. Harding nodded.

This was a particularly small studio apartment. Single bed against one wall, phone on a night table beside it. On the other side of the room, there was a bookcase, an easy chair, a standing floor lamp, and an unpainted dresser. A locked window alongside the dresser opened onto a backyard fire escape. The kitchen was the size of a closet.

Refrigerator with two oranges in it, a container of skim milk, a loaf of seven-grain bread, a package of organic greens, and a tub of margarine. The freezer compartment contained six frozen yogurt bars and a bottle of vodka. The bathroom was small and immaculate. A glistening white tub, sink, and toilet bowl. Over the sink, there was a mirrored cabinet containing several prescription drugs that appeared to be antibiotics, and the usual array of over-the-counter pain and cough medications one could find in any medicine cabinet in this city.

That was it. Not a painting or a photograph anywhere. The place was featureless, colorless, drab, and depressing.

Brown opened the door to the single closet in the room. There were three skirts, four pairs of slacks, two dresses, a woolen winter coat, a raincoat, several pairs of sensible shoes. Carella opened the top dresser drawer. Cotton panties and bras.

White pantyhose. Socks. Darker pantyhose. Blouses in the middle drawer. Scarves. Sweaters in the bottom drawer. Not a piece of jewelry. Not a hint of anything truly personal.

In the night-table drawer, they found an address book, an appointment calendar, and a budget-aid spiral notebook.

"We'd like to take these with us," Carella said, leafing through the appointment calendar.

"Nope," Harding said.

Both detectives looked at him.

"We'll give you a receipt," Brown said.

"Nope," Harding said.

The detectives looked at each other.

"That stuff ain't mine," Harding said. "I got no right to let you take it.”

Carella gave the man a look that could have melted Greenland. He sat in the easy chair, took out his pad, and began copying Mary Vincent's appointments for the two weeks preceding her murder. Then he went back to the night table, put all three books into the drawer again, gave Harding another look, and said, "We'll be back.”

In the car again, Brown said, "Son of a bitch is forcing us to get a warrant.”

"Well, I guess he's right," Carella said. "Most people would've accepted a receipt.”

'People don't like cops, is what it is. We remind them of storm troopers.”

"You and me?”

"All of us.”

"He probably understands sheriffs better," Brown said.

"Probably.”

"Want to run downtown for it now?”

"Doctor said he'd be leaving at four.”

"We don't hurry, we may miss a judge," Brown said.

"Let's do the doctor and the priest, save the cowboy for last. What do you think?”

"Sure. Either way, we have to drive half an hour downtown, the son of a bitch.”

Neither of the men noticed the little green Honda following them some six car lengths behind.

The Doctor in charge of what was euphemistically called the Extensive Care Ward at St. Margaret's Hospital was named Winston Hall, which made him sound like a college dormitory. The detectives supposed he was somewhere in his forties, a tall, suntanned, angular man with an infectious smile and a pleasant, soft-spoken manner. He was wearing a rumpled wheat-colored linen jacket over sand-colored slacks, a pale blue shirt, and a delicately hued blue and-yellow-striped cotton tie.

Sitting behind his third-floor desk at a quarter past three that Monday afternoon, he seemed dressed more for a boat ride around the island than a day at the office.

He explained that there were forty beds on the floor, most of them occupied by patients who required long-term nursing, many of whom, in fact, belonged in nursing homes rather than a hospital.

"The homes 911 'em out to us the minute there's a serious problem, hoping we'll keep them forever. Sometimes we do, but with many of our patients forever is a short-term probability.”

"What kind of patients was Mary treating?”

"We've got all kinds on this floor Hall said.

"COPD, terminal cancer, Alzheimer's ...”

"What's COPD?”

"Chronic Obstructional Pulmonary Disease. Asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis. Most of them are on oxygen. We've also got a woman with Whipple's Disease, she's been dying for the past three years, refuses to let go. She's got a PEG tube sutured into her belly, that's how we feed her and administer medi ...”

“What's a peg tube?" Brown asked.

"P, E, G, all caps," Hall said. "It's an acronym for Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy. The woman with Whipple's has a PEG in her belly and a permanent catheter in her chest wall. She has no control of her extremities, no teeth, she's balding at the back of her head because no matter how many times we turn her, she ends up on her back.

She really should be a DNR, but she refuses to sign the permission forms.”

"What's that?" Brown asked.

"DNR? Do Not Resuscitate. Big sign at the foot of the bed, DNR.

Essentially, it means let 'em die.”

Carella was thinking he wouldn't do this kind of work for five million dollars.

"One of our patients has prostate cancer that metastasized to bone,”

Hall said. "Another has lung cancer that metastasized to bone and brain. We've got a bilateral amputee on the ward, he's incontinent of stool, his skin's broken down, and he's got a permanent trache tube in his throat.”

Not for ten million dollars, Carella thought. "This isn't a fun ward,”

Hall said. Mind reader, Carella thought.

"Mary began working for me six months ago. Transferred here from a hospice in San Diego, which is where her mother house is. I believe she spoke to the major superior there, who referred her to the director of ministry. I'm glad they sent her here, believe me. Quite often, as was the case with Mary, a woman religious can be more devoted than the most dedicated doctor.”

Carella, quick study that he was, figured that "woman religious" was the politically correct term for nun. Somehow, he preferred nun. Same way he preferred cop to police officer.

"We have a hundred and ten beds here at St. Margaret's," Hall said.

"Four hundred people on the staff, including the Christ's Mercy nuns.

The other hospital run by the order is even smaller. The government's cutting back on funds, you know, and some seventy percent of our patients are either welfare or Medicaid recipients. The sisters are just scraping by, but they're really committed to serving the poor.

Last year St. Margaret's had close to twenty-five hundred admissions.

There were twelve hundred clinic visits every month, nine hundred emergency room visits, four hundred outpatient surgeries. This is a poor neighborhood. We're much needed here. I'll miss Mary sorely, I can tell you that. She was a thorough professional, and a wonderful person.”

"Know anyone who may have felt otherwise?" Carella asked.

"Not a soul. I've worked with nuns for the past ten years now, and they're as different one from the other as any other women. I'm sure some of them may, in fact, be exactly like the childish little creatures or strict disciplinarians we see portrayed on television, giggling as they carry in the sheaves or snarling as they crack a ruler over the knuckles of a schoolboy. But I've never personally met a nun who fits the stereotype. For the most part, they are complex, intelligent women who share only one trait their complete devotion to God. Mary considered her work here a divinely inspired gift. The nuns call it charism, you know, the work chosen for them by God. Mary's work was particularly difficult. She labored for God tirelessly, dutifully, and cheerfully. I'd sometimes hear her ...”

His voice broke.

"She'd ... sometimes sing to the patients on the ward, she had a beautiful voice. There wasn't anyone who didn't feel enlightened and encouraged by her very presence. Everyone here will miss her.”

"Were you working here last Friday, Doctor?" Carella asked.

"Yes, I was.”

"Did Mary seem her usual self?”

"Yes, her same sweet self." He considered this a moment, nodded, and said, "We worked on and off together all through the day. I saw no difference in her behavior.”

"Nothing strange or. “

"Nothing at all. She was her usual sweet self. I'm sorry to keep using that word. "Sweet' can sometimes be misconstrued as insipid. But Mary had a manner that somehow soothed and at the same time cheered. A certain ... sweetness, yes. In her smile, in her eyes. She seemed to be a completely realized human being, and as such she spread joy as if it were an infection. I'm sorry," he said, and turned his face away for a moment. "I was very fond of her. We all were.”

He pulled a tissue from the box on his desk, dabbed at his eyes, blew his nose. The detectives waited. "I'm sorry," he said again.

"Dr. Hall," Brown said, "did she happen to mention where she might be going after work last Friday?”

“No, she didn't.”

"When was the last time you saw her that day?”

“Let me think." They waited.

"Just before the shift ended, I would suppose.”

“What time would that have been?”

Helen Daniels had told them she and Mary had left the hospital together at a little past three. They were merely attempting to verify this now.

"Two-thirty?" Hall said. "A quarter to three?”

“Leaving the hospital, did you say?”

"No, no. The shift ends at three. This would have been a little before then.”

"Where'd you see her?”

"Just outside the women's locker room. Talking to one of the nurses.”

"Which one? Would you remember?”

"I'm sorry," Hall said. "Her back was to me.”

"How many nurses were on that shift?" Brown asked.

"It varies from day to day.”

"Would you have a record of who was here?”

“Yes, certainly.”

"Could we have it, please? Doctors, tOO," Carella said.

Hall looked at him.

"Doctors, too, of course," he said.

What Sonny couldn't figure out was why Carella and his partner--he assumed the big black dude with him was his partner and not his goddamn chauffeur kept shuttling back and forth between St. Margaret's Hospital and all these places had to do with religion. Saturday it was the convent up there in Riverhead. Now, at four in the afternoon, it was this church here on Yarrow, not too distant from the walk-up apartment building they'd gone to. Our Lady of Flowers it said in the letters chiseled over the arched front doors.

You'd think the fuckin pope had got himself shot or something.

Father Frank Clemente was a man in his fifties, wearing a black cotton sweater over black slacks and a black T-shirt. He looked a lot like a priest, Carella supposed, but he could have passed as well for any cool dude enjoying a cappuccino at an outdoor table on Jefferson Avenue.

Instead, he and the two detectives sat on wrought-iron chairs as black as his attire, around a wide stone tabletop set on a stone pilaster, sipping lemonade the good father had himself made.

"Mary was here for mass last week," he said. "She ...”

"When last week?" Carella asked.

"Tuesday night.”

Three days before she was killed, Carella thought. "We had a drink together afterward.”

Bottle of vodka in her fridge, Brown thought.

"She seemed troubled," Father Frank said. "She was normally so cheerful and outgoing, but that night ...”

He finds her somehow distant on this Tuesday night, the eighteenth day of August. It's almost as if there's a weight on her shoulders she wishes to share and yet is reluctant to reveal. He has known her since she came to this city in February, a prayerful nun who comes to mass at his church at least once, sometimes twice a week. He knows of her difficult ministry at St. Margaret's, and he thinks at first she may have lost a patient today, so many of them are terminally ill. But no, it isn't that, she assures him everything is fine at the hospital, everything just fine, Frank, thank you for your concern.

Some nuns have drinking problems; some priests as welll for that matter. It is not an easy path they've chosen, and sometimes the hardships of the religious life can seem overwhelming. The church has programs for those unfortunates who need help, but Mary isn't one of them, and neither is he.

He keeps a bottle of twelve-year-old scotch in a cabinet in his study, and it is there that he mixes the drink for her. Two fingers of scotch in a tall Venetian glass Father Frank brought back from Italy when he had his audience with Pope John last summer. Three ice cubes. Fill the glass to the rim with soda. The same for himself. They carry the drinks out to the garden, and they sit here at this very same stone table he now shares with the detectives.

The summer insects are noisy tonight.

They listen to the night all around them.

"Is something troubling you?" he asks at last.

"No, Frank.”

"You seem ... I don't know. Withdrawn.”

"No, no.”

"If it's something, please tell me. Perhaps I can help.".

"Do you ever feel ... ?" she asks, and hesitates. He waits. He knows better than to press her. If she wishes to share whatever this is, she will of her own accord. He has heard her confession every week since she came to this city. She knows she can trust him. He waits. “

"That the past and the present ... ," she starts again, and again stops.

The noise of the insects seems suddenly deafening. He wishes there were a volume, control, wishes he could tune out the sounds of the universe and peer directly into Mary's mind, find there whatever it is that has cast this pall over her, help her to reveal it to him, reveal it to God for His understanding and mercy, His forgiveness if in fact there is anything to forgive. Yet he waits.

Takes another sip of his drink.

Waits.

The insects are rowdy.

"What I mean ... ," she says. "Frank, do you ever feel that the past is determined by the present?”

"You've got that reversed, haven't you?" he says.

"Not at all.”

"You're saying the present determines ... ?”

"Yes, the past. What we do today determines what already happened yesterday.”

"Are we about to get into a discussion of free will?”

“I hope not.”

"Determinism? Predestination?”

"That's not what ...”

"Double predestination? Calvinism? Am I back at the seminary?”

"I'm not joking, Frank.”

"How can you seriously suggest that the future determines... ?”

"Not the future. The present.”

"In the past, Mary, the present is the future.”

"Yes, but I'm talking about now. The immediate present.”

"Can you give me a concrete example?" he says, thinking that if he can move her from the abstract to the specific, then perhaps he can get her to talk about what's really troubling her. For surely, a metaphysical discussion isn't what she ... "Let's say, for example ...”

She sips slowly at the drink.

"Let's say we're sitting here enjoying our scotch ...”

“Which, in fact, we are doing.”

"Here in the present. This moment is the present.”

“It most certainly is.”

"I'm sorry you think this is funny, Frank.”

“Forgive me.”

"What I'm trying to say is ... do you think that our drinking this scotch, here and now in the present, somehow induced you to buy the scotch whenever you bought it?”

"No, I don't.”

"Why not?”

"Because I didn't buy it. It was a gift from Charles. He brought it back from Glasgow.”

"Then was his buying it, whenever that was ...”

“Three months ago.”

"Was his act influenced by our drinking the scotch right this minute? Did he somehow know back then, three months ago in Glasgow, that you and I would be sitting here in your garden tonight ... what's today's date?”

"The eighteenth.”

"July, June, May," she says, counting backward. "On May eighteenth, did Father Charles know, or discern, or even prognosticate that tonight we'd be drinking the scotch he was at that moment buying in Glasgow? Did the present ... tonight, August eighteenth, at ... what time is it?”

"Nine-thirty.”

"Did this hour and this minute in this garden on this night determine his buying this scotch three months ago?”

"I didn't think it was that strong," he says, and looks into his glass as if searching the drink for hidden potency.

"I'm serious, Frank. Suppose, for example ... well, just suppose a decision I made two Sundays ago ... here at mass, in fact ...”

"What decision was that?" he asks at once.

"It doesn't matter. A decision. Let's say a spiritual decision.”

"All right.”

"Do you feel my decision could have determined the contents on of a letter written the day after I'd made the decision?”

Frank looks at her.

"What letter?" he asks.

Even the insects seem suddenly still. "This is all supposition," she says. "I realize that. A letter from whom?”

“I told you. I'm theorizing.”

“Did you receive a letter, Mary?”

"This is all so silly, isn't it?" she says. "Let's talk about the real world, shall we?" The moment passes. The topic changes. He has lost her.

She leaves the church at a little before ten, thanking him for the drink and telling him she'll be here for mass again on Sunday.

"But, of course ... by Sunday, she was dead.”

The garden was as still now as it must have been last Tuesday, when she came so close to telling him what was troubling her.

"Had she really received a letter?" Carella asked. "I have no idea.”

This time, they went equipped with a court order authorizing them to seize Sister Mary Vincent's appointment calendar, her address book, and her budgeting notebook. The warrant also allowed them to search for and to similarly seize any correspondence addressed to her.

Harding was not happy to see them again.

He'd apparently been checking with a friend who was a cop or lawyer or merely a student, and he'd been informed that the nun's apartment was not a crime scene and the cops had no right bothering him every ten minutes to ask him to unlock the door for them.

"That's right," Carella said. "You want us to kick it in?”

"You got no right “

"Listen, mister, are you defying a court order?”

U “

Harding looked at him. "I'll take you p,. he said grudgingly.

Behind him, they labored up the steps to the sixth floor. Outside the door to 6C, they waited patiently while he fumbled with his key ring again. At last, he unlocked the door, opened it, and said, "Mind if I see that warrant you mentioned?”

Carella showed it to him. Harding read it carefully, word for word, and then handed it back, and stepped aside for the detectives to enter the apartment. Someone had beat them to it. The place was a shambles.

The refrigerator door was open, its contents swept out onto the kitchen floor. They could see into the bathroom, where the intruder had searched the medicine cabinet and the toilet tank, leaving the lid on the seat. The bed had been stripped. The closet door was open, Mary's meager belongings strewn everywhere. The dresser drawers ... "Window's open here," Brown said.

The window was on the wall beside the dresser. It was locked the last time they were here. Now it was wide open. Several clay pots of blooming flowers were of the fire escape outside. One of the pots had been overturned in the intruder's haste to leave.

"See anybody in the backyard late this afternoon?" Carella asked.

"Wasn't in the backyard late this afternoon," Harding said.

"Would've been sometime after three," Brown said. "Why then?”

"That's when we left here.”

"Didn't see anybody anytime cause I wasn't in the backyard after I fixed that pulley.”

"You got a hair across your ass, mister?" Brown said.

"I don't like cops shoving their weight around, that's all," Harding said.

"Maybe you'd like to come to the station house, answer some questions there," Brown said heatedly. "Would you like to do that, sir?”

"You got no reason to detain me," Harding said. "Try obstructing the progress of a murder investi ...”

“Let it go, Artie," Carella said.

"Man's beginning to annoy me! A woman's been killed here, he's acting like ...”

"Let it go," Carella said again. "Let's see if we can find that letter.”

Harding stood just inside the door while they searched, his arms folded across his chest, a smug look on his face. Brown wanted to smack the bastard. In the night-table drawer, they found the various books they'd tried to remove from the apartment earlier ... "We'll be taking these now," Carella said.

Harding nodded. but they did not find the letter Mary Vincent had mentioned to Father Clemente.

Or any letter at all, for that matter.

Not in the night table or anywhere else.

"If you're finished here," Harding said, "I got work to do.”

Brown was thinking of all the fire-department and building code violations he'd noticed on the arduous climb up to the sixth floor: the burnt-out lightbulb on the first-floor landing, the air shaft window painted shut on the third floor, the exposed electrical wiring on the fifth floor, the stacked cardboard cartons obstructing passage on the sixth floor.

He smiled like a Buddha.

If Mary Vincent's appointment calender was a true indicator of her social life, the nun had been fairly busy during the two weeks preceding her death. The calendar listed: August 11:6:30 P.M.

Felicia @ CM.

August 14:7:00 P.M.

Jenna and Rene Here.

August 15:7:30 '.M.

Michael @ Med August 18:6:00 '.M.

Frank @ OLF August 20:5:00 '.M.

Annette @ CM They had already talked to latlaer trane temcm at Our Lady of Flowers and Sister Annette Ryan at the Christ's Mercy convent. A check of first names in Mary's address book came up with the information that Felicia Locasta was a nun at Christ's Mercy, Jenna DiSalvo and Rene Schneider were both registered nurses at St. Margaret's, and Dr.

Michael Paine was a physician at the hospital.

It was still relatively early on Monday night. They hit the phones.