Greenwich (23 page)

“Thank you for coming, Sister Pat,” Sally said, almost formally, as if she were practicing to have each word correct. “It was very good of you. Please sit down,” indicating another chair. “You said yesterday that I could call you Sister Pat?” she said uncertainly.

“Or Pat, whichever you wish.”

“I never had a sister—or a brother.”

“That's a shame, isn't it? I'm sure you would have loved sisters and brothers. I have two brothers and a sister.”

“Are they like you?” Sally asked.

“They're not as fat as I am,” the little nun said, laughing.

“You're not fat.”

“Bless you.”

“I meant, do they work for the church, like you do?”

“No, Sally. My sister is married and has three children. One brother is a therapist and the other is still in college, still trying to get his Ph.D.”

“A therapist?”

“He works with people who are disturbed and need help.”

“Oh, I get disturbed.”

“We all do at times.”

Sally nodded. “At times like today. It's been a terrible day.”

“I know.”

“I'm better because I knew you'd come.”

“I'm happy to be here with you,” Sister Brody said.

“Thank you. The policeman, Mr. MacGregor, asked me did I want to call any friends or relatives, but I have no relatives and except for you and Ruth Sellig, I have no friends. Muffy, who was here last night, always pretends to be my friend. She wants to sleep with Richard, and she thinks I'm too stupid to see it. A lot of the women think I'm stupid because I don't play cards or golf or tennis and, I guess, the way their husbands look at me. That's why I don't use makeup or paint my nails, because Richard once said women use them as come-ons. And I hardly ever talk. I read. I only got to seventh grade, but I read a lot. Richard preferred television—Oh, my goodness, I never talked so much before.”

“I want you to talk,” Sister Brody told her. “And you're not stupid.”

“That's what Ruth Sellig says. She's a photographer, not with dirty pictures but faces for magazines and covers. She's Harold Sellig's wife. I invited both of them, but her father was having an operation, so she couldn't come.”

“Yes, I know. Her father passed away last night.”

Sally's face contracted with pain. “Dr. Ferguson. Oh, I'm so sorry! He was a dear man.” Tears came to her eyes. She reached for a tissue and wiped away the tears. “I'm frightened of death, and today has been full of death. Could I ask you a kind of personal question, Sister Pat?”

“Of course.”

“I had pneumonia last winter. That's when I met Dr. Ferguson, at the hospital. I had a very high temperature and I thought I was going to die, and I asked him.”

“But you didn't die. You got better.”

“Yes,” Sally said. “But I'm afraid, and that's what I want to ask you. What happens to people who die?”

“I don't know, my dear.”

“But you're a nun. Aren't you supposed to know?”

“I have my faith, and my faith tells me that God loves people, that we are his children, and that if we live good lives, we exist in another form after death.”

Sally shook her head. “I saw Richard this morning, lying there in his office in a pool of blood with his head smashed. It was the worst thing I had ever seen. How can I think he was alive or will be alive again? I want to, but I can't.”

“Did you love him, Sally?”

“That's the funny thing. I don't know if I did or not. I was a little afraid of him. My first husband beat me up, and I had to go to the hospital. My second husband never spoke to me. He showed me off, and then in bed he'd go at me. Richard was the first man who ever treated me decently. He never hit me. He bought me all kinds of things that I didn't even ask for, and he got into a real fight at the club with a man who called me a trophy wife. I wasn't a trophy wife. Richard had left his first wife years before I met him in Los Angeles. But now he's dead and gone forever.”

“Can I tell you a little story?” Sister Brody asked.

Sally nodded, and Sister Brody went on, “When I was a little girl, nine or ten years old, I asked my mother what would happen to me if I died. We weren't a Catholic family. I joined the church years later, but that's another story. This time, when I asked her that question, she took a glass of water and a box of salt. Then she put a spoonful of salt on a spoon. Do you see the salt and the water? she asked me. I said I did. Then she poured the salt from the spoon into the water and mixed it well. Where's the salt, Pat? she asked me. You put it into the water, I said; and she said, Do you see it? No, I said. But you saw me put it in, so you know the salt is there. I had to agree to that.

“Well, Sally, you know the salt was still there. But it had changed its form, and suddenly I realized what my mother was saying to me. Only the form of the salt had changed.”

Sally had listened to the story intently, her brow furrowed, and after Sister Brody had finished, Sally was silent for a long moment, and then, almost shyly, she smiled.

A beautiful smile, Sister Brody decided, wondering whether she, as a child, had smiled that same way when she first heard this explanation from her mother.

“It's only a story, Sally. But sometimes a story can open a whole new way of thinking.”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a little while, Sister Brody debating whether she should open the question of baptism once again. Sally had displayed no sense of being the heir to Castle's fortune. Now, very hesitantly, she asked Sister Brody, “Can I come to your church tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“When shall I come?”

“There's a mass at eleven o'clock in the morning, where Monsignor Donovan will deliver the homily.”

“What is a homily?”

“A sermon, more or less.”

“Oh, yes. I understand.” Sally hesitated.

Misunderstanding her hesitation, Sister Brody assured her that she would be under no obligation if she came. “Anyone can come, Sally. You don't have to be Catholic.”

“I know. It's something else, but I've taken so much of your time already.”

“I have all the time in the world.”

“Well, you know, now I have a lot of money. Richard told me that most of his estate would belong to me after his death, except for a trust fund for Dickie. He was very rich. Now I'm all alone in this big house, and when Dickie has his trust fund, he'll take off. He wants that desperately, and he talks about it all the time. I don't want all that money or this big house. I want to help people who don't have money or food. Will you be my friend? Will you help me with the money?”

“I will always be your friend,” Sister Brody said, putting the accent on the word
always.
“But as for the money, you are a mature woman, Sally. You have a lawyer. You will know what to do with your money—all in good time.”

Driving back to the church, Sister Brody sighed, thinking, Maybe I did it right, maybe not. I think I was right.

Forty

I
t was four o'clock in the afternoon when FBI Agent Gun-hill arrived at the Castle place, and with him was a Mr. Frillbee, of the Justice Department. Gunhill was a tall, gaunt man who appeared to see nothing in the world as amusing or odd. He was in his forties, Frillbee a decade older. Both wore suits of light twill and Panama-type straw hats. MacGregor introduced them to Sally, and both of them expressed formal regrets for the death of her husband.

“We'd like the use of your husband's study for the next hour or so,” MacGregor said, explaining, “There are certain matters of his work in Washington that we must clear up.”

“Of course. I can give you coffee and sandwiches.”

“That won't be necessary,” MacGregor said. “Very kind of you.”

“If you should change your mind, there's a hot and cold beverage dispenser in his study.”

“Thank you.”

Once seated in the study, Frillbee observed, “Castle lived well.”

“State of the art in this part of Greenwich,” MacGregor said.

“She's a beauty,” Gunhill said. His accusatory stare at Sally might have been beyond his control, MacGregor decided.

“What does she know?” Frillbee asked.

“Nothing, as far as I can determine. I pulled out of her the memory of once having heard Castle refer to Larry, as he called him, as a congressman.”

“That's disturbing.”

A cold chill came over MacGregor. Frillbee's round face reminded the policeman of Kenneth Starr.

“I hear you were a homicide lieutenant with the NYPD.”

MacGregor could have said that it was long enough to see everything in the way of dirt and deceit and corruption that any human being could see anywhere, but instead he simply replied, “I served my time and did my job and took my pension.”

Frillbee did most of the talking. “And now you are CID in Greenwich?”

“It's a quiet place.”

“We checked you out. You have a good record. Why didn't you make captain?”

“I didn't take,” MacGregor said.

“Never?”

MacGregor shrugged. “I don't want to sound saintly. I just covered my ass the only way I knew. I didn't take.”

“Do you know what we're up against?”

“Some. I can make some guesses. I'd rather hear it from you.”

“All right. Larry was the nickname of Latterbe Johnson. Evidently, he drove up here this morning to talk with Castle. Whether something went wrong in their talk or whether it was his plan all along or whether it was the result of being interrupted by the black woman, we don't know. Probably, we'll never know. However, this much we do know, that subpoenas have been issued for three men by a congressional subcommittee of the House, investigating the murder of six Jesuit priests and a Catholic bishop in El Salvador. It was a very dirty business. Castle's subpoena was to be served this afternoon. The two other subpoenas have been served in Washington, or service was attempted, I must say. They were to be served to Larry and a man named Hugh Drummond.

“Yesterday, Larry—we'll call him that—rented a suite in the Waldorf in New York. Drummond joined him there sometime today. Larry rented a car at seven this morning, with the identification of a CIA operative, stolen identification. Evidently, Larry had visited Castle a number of times in the past, and he had given Larry money. This time, Larry came away with a quarter of a million in cash. When Larry returned he met with Drummond at the Waldorf suite. They got into an argument, and they're both dead. As if that were not enough complication, Drummond, a former chief of staff at the White House and a powerful lawyer in Washington, had just announced his candidacy for governor of his state. So that's what we have—three subpoenas, three killings.”

The slightest of smiles crossed MacGregor's lips. “I thought I had seen everything,” MacGregor said softly.

“Nobody's seen everything, MacGregor. We have a pile of dirt at the worst possible time, with Clinton up to his neck in shit with his women. We had to make quick decisions. Drummond's body is on the way to Washington, and we have an undertaker there who'll cooperate.

“He died of a heart attack. Larry was shot by an intruder. It sliced his carotid artery, so there's enough blood to cover Drummond's bleeding. But the way it stands, the ball is in your court.”

And MacGregor thought, If I go along? I have a good wife, I have three kids, I have two grandchildren, and what happens if I don't go along? There are no more heroes. I paid my dues.

“And what are you asking for?”

“An open-end investigation. No perp. Some lunatic walked into that pool house and shot both of them. A simple robbery. Castle kept money in his pool-house office. Cash. Just a simple robbery, an investigation that goes on for a couple of years and then just fades away. You'll be doing a service to your country. If you need money—”

His thought was, Fuck you—both of you bastards!

But he said, “I go along with you—with one caveat.” MacGregor liked the word. A cop was supposed to be ignorant.

“What's that?”

“I'll take care of this end, and since you've been through my record, you know my word is good. Nothing happens to Castle's wife, Sally.”

“And if she talks?”

“I'll take care of that. She won't talk.”

The two government men looked at each other, and then Frillbee nodded. “We'll shake hands on that,” he said, wrinkling his lips thinly.

MacGregor responded to Frillbee's wrinkled lips. “Let me put it plainly,” MacGregor said. “I don't like this stinking dance of death, but I'll go along every step of the way. But if Sally Castle dies, accident or otherwise, I'll blow this whole pot of bullshit to hell. Is that understood?”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Frillbee said shortly, “Understood.”

Forty-one

U
nexpectedly, early on Saturday, Muffy's husband had returned from Brazil, and by noon, word of Castle's death was seeping through the Back Country of Greenwich. While Muffy was disappointed by the early and somewhat unexpected return of her husband, it was not an entirely unfavorable event. She shed no tears for Castle's death, but the only tears Muffy had shed since her marriage began were tears of utter frustration.

Her husband was five years older than Castle, and his libido had long been replaced by a fruitless lust for money. His earnings came to some two hundred thousand dollars a year, but with three children in good colleges, he was always in debt. He managed to pay the installments on the huge mortgage he carried on his house, but after leasing his two Mercedes, there was never enough money left to make a month in the black. He was an investment banker, as were so many of his neighbors, but he had neither the brains nor the personality of Richard Castle. The result was a sour and unhappy man.