Guilt (27 page)

Everyone sang. The girls clapped when Sophie blew out the candles in one puff. With her father flanking her on one side, her mother on the other, she closed her eyes tight to make a wish. Pearl snapped a photo. If you didn't know better, Annie thought, it was a picture-perfect image of the ideal American family.

Pearl brought the cake back into the kitchen. Annie cut pieces and set them onto paper plates that were ferried back into the dining room. Even Klevinski helped. The kids had all gotten their cake, and Annie was cutting Klevinski a piece when she noticed the matchbook on the counter. He must have left it there after lighting the candles. It was from Nasty Pete's, the Cambridge bar that showed up over and over in what was supposed to be Brenda Klevinski's credit card statement.

“Looks delicious,” Klevinski said, an obsequious smile on his smarmy face. “Are you the chef?”

Annie wanted to press the cake and ice cream into his face. Instead, she held the plate out to him. When he took hold of it, she didn't let go.

“You can fool your wife and you can charm your little girl,” she said under her breath, “but I just want you to know, I'm onto you. If anything happens to either of them, I'll get the police down your neck faster than you can say homicide investigation.”

He jerked his head around, looking to see if anyone had heard. Then he gave Annie a hard look. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Annie didn't bother to argue.

*   *   *

As she drove to the South End, Annie savored Joe Klevinksi's expression. She could see that she'd rattled him, but any satisfaction she felt evaporated as she contemplated him going home with Jackie and Sophie. Annie's stomach contracted. Men like that didn't have overnight transformations. She eased up on the gas. She'd been pushing ninety. The last thing she needed was to get stopped by the cops again.

Sunday traffic on the Pike was a breeze, and it took only minutes to get from Cambridge to the South End. She hit the Southeast Expressway and took the exit near the sentry tower of the Pine Street Inn, a refuge for the homeless, turned onto Berkeley Street, and made her way across. Parking spots on the street were all taken, and enterprising locals had set up hand-painted signs in the parking lots of local businesses: $20
EVENT PARKING
.

Two blocks from the cathedral, the street was nearly gridlocked.
Should've bladed over,
Annie thought. The car behind her honked. Boston drivers did that even when it was pointless.

Annie made her way down a side street, and lucked out when someone pulled out of a parking spot a few blocks away from the church. She locked the car and walked up Washington Street. Dilapidated apartment buildings and deserted factories gave way to renovated row houses. It was only in the last few years that this area had begun to blanch and chasten. On the corner across from the cathedral, where there'd once been an A&P, there was now a spanking fresh Foodies Urban Market.
ORGANIC PRODUCE
said a hand-lettered sign in the window.

The austere, granite, Gothic-style Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston's answer to New York's Saint Patrick's, loomed before her. The archbishop himself lived in a small rectory in the back.

She couldn't say why, every year, she let Chip talk her into going to this event for Boston's Catholic lawyers. It was always a media circus. She threaded her way through the picketers—this year there seemed to be even more than usual. One miscreant stood off to the side with a sign that slapped you in the face with the message
GOD HATES FAGS
. Another picket sign read
STATE'S RIGHTS
and in smaller print
NOT ONLY WHEN YOU AGREE
. Another proclaimed
GOD IS NOT A REPUBLICAN
. Oh yeah, the special guest this year was the U.S. attorney general.

There were police officers everywhere—among the picketers, in front and along the sides of the church. Some were stationed at the gate checking tickets and examining purses and briefcases. The street in front was closed to traffic, and a pair of black limousines with government plates were parked in front of the church.

As she walked into the shadow of the church, Annie recognized a familiar surge of guilt. When she was a kid, she'd gone to confession regularly. She'd had to name her sins in order to be forgiven. These days, this church that seemed to have so much difficulty naming its own sins was no longer
her
church. The ritual and the hoopla, the rules and righteousness and all the rest seemed irrelevant.

She found Chip waiting for her by one of the side doors with passes to get them in. The air vibrated with organ music as they entered the cavernous interior with its soaring ceiling and muted light filtered through the intense deep blues, reds, and greens of stained glass. Her head filled with the sweet aroma of incense, though she couldn't be sure if it was real or a phantom from her memory.

A sign on a stand at the top of the aisle said
PLEASE TURN OFF ALL CELL PHONES AND BEEPERS
. Annie did. Chip touched a finger to the holy water and crossed himself. When she was a little girl, she'd have felt compelled to do the same.

The cathedral was still half empty. They found seats near the front and settled in to wait. It would be another twenty minutes at least before the service began. The altar glowed as if lit from within.

In the shadowy side aisle stood the confessionals. She remembered kneeling every Saturday afternoon in the closed space.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …
She'd told Father McDonough how she lied to her mother, hit her sister. She never told him she'd let Billy Pfister touch her
there
and liked it, or how she'd thought about doing more, but still she felt the shame that had been bred into her. By then she realized that Father McDonough, who sometimes couldn't remember her name, wouldn't be offering her much enlightenment. Once, at a counseling session her mother made her attend, she'd asked hypothetically what should she do if she knew someone was hurting someone else? She was dying to confide in him, tell him about her friend Charlotte's parents. That week, Mrs. Florence had driven them to the movies. She'd been so sore, she'd needed Charlotte's help to get in and out of the car. She'd “fallen” down the stairs, Charlotte had told her. Again.

Was this, just hypothetically, a family member? Father McDonough had asked. She'd felt a surge of protectiveness toward her own parents. She backed away from the subject, or made something up to distract him, she couldn't remember which. In any event, she never got around to telling him, and it still bothered her that she'd never told anyone who might have brought the abuse into the sunlight. That's why it was so hard to watch Jackie Klevinski take Joe back into her life. This time, at least she was speaking up. She was hollering, even.

She closed her eyes and relaxed, yielding to the music that seemed to vibrate up through the seat of the wooden pew. Despite her ambivalence about the Church, there was something reassuring and familiar about being there.

28

P
ETER STUFFED
the last paper plate and cup into a black plastic garbage bag in his mother's kitchen. He went to the door and surveyed the apartment. The place looked as if it had been struck by a bomb. Streamers sagged from the ceilings; the living room carpet was awash in torn gift wrap, ribbon, and crumpled tissue paper; dining room chairs were overturned to form a sort of fort, littered with the balloons that Sophie and her sweet little friends had decided they'd rather detonate than take home. Mr. Kuppel and Peter's mother sat on the sofa looking wasted.

“And I thought I had it bad with boys,” Pearl said.

Coffee, that's what they needed. Peter started a pot. The coffee machine began to burble. He sat at the kitchen table and looked at the paper. The sketch of the A-bomber and a news update on the investigation were on page one. In the lower corner was an article about the annual Catholic service for lawyers that Annie and Chip were attending. Sounded like a big deal, what with the attorney general of the United States attending. There was a sidebar explaining its name. Apparently the Lord High Justices who celebrated the first one in England in the thirteenth century had worn scarlet robes, and ever since then it had been called the Red Mass.

Red
Mass.
Scarlet
robes. The words swam on the page.
Red segues to black.
Wasn't that what the A-bomber had said in his last message? And hadn't there been something earlier about red? Peter felt a chill roll down his back.

“I gotta go. Forgot I had something to do,” he told his mother, who was sprawled on the sofa, her eyes closed. Mr. Kuppel was massaging her feet. “Coffee'll be done in a minute.”

Peter let himself into his house next door. It seemed to take forever for his computer to boot up and let him into email. He found what he was looking for in one of the messages from CANARY911:

This purging must be finished. First the spawn. Then the workers. And now the drones where they sit, swollen and glowing scarlet with their own self-importance, obsequious parasites fawning over their Queen, or should I say King.

“Glowing scarlet,” that's what he'd remembered. Of course. The A-bomber wasn't targeting the State House and the governor. He had his sights set on the Red Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, and on the “King” of lawyers, the attorney general of the United States. This time collateral damage would include Chip and Annie.

Peter glanced down at the time in the corner of his screen. The mass would be just getting started. Was it already too late? He tried Annie on her cell phone. No answer. He swallowed the panic that rose in his throat.

As he raced out the door, he called MacRae. No answer there, either. He left an emergency page, started his car, and headed toward the river, going as fast as he dared on the narrow streets. He tried calling Neddleman. This time he left a voice message, tripping over his words as he tried to explain.

He approached the tolls for the Pike. There was a ten-car lineup in the lane that had a toll taker; the three automated lanes were empty. He kept meaning to get one of those damned transponders. What the hell. He zoomed through the automated lane setting off alarms. For once, he wished a police officer
were
lurking there, picking off scofflaws, so he could tell someone what was happening.

Sunday traffic was light, and already the Boston skyline rose out of the horizon before him. At least he could call 911. They always answered. As he was dialing, a black Corvette going about ninety in the right lane nearly sideswiped him. He veered to avoid being hit and the phone flew from his hand, landing somewhere under his feet. He groped for a moment, trying to keep the car steady, then gave up looking for it. He'd be in the South End in minutes.

Peter abandoned the car in front of a hydrant two blocks from the cathedral and ran the rest of the way, listening for explosions and dialing 911. He put away the phone when he saw the police officers standing guard by the yellow sawhorses that barricaded the street in front of the cathedral. Picketers milled across the street, and he tried to see if the phony Walter Waxman was among them. If he'd planted a bomb, Peter was sure of one thing—he'd hang around to see it go off.

Peter approached an officer whose eyes were shaded by the brim of his cap. Without preamble, he announced, “There's a bomb in there.” He wondered if the urgency in his voice sounded like hysteria. “You've got to evacuate the place.”

The officer didn't flinch. “Can I see some identification?”

“Didn't you hear me?” Peter said, his voice rising. “I said—”

“Calm down, sir.” The officer looked uncomfortable, his gaze shifting left and right like he was looking for backup. “Only authorized personnel and ticketed guests are allowed beyond this point. Everything is under control.”

“Under control my ass. There's a bomb planted in the cathedral. He's after the attorney general.”

The officer half-turned and took out his walkie-talkie. He cupped his hand so Peter couldn't hear as he spoke into it. Peter tried to push past him. He had to get inside, warn everyone. The officer grabbed him by the shoulder to pull him back. “I'm sorry, I can't let you—”

Peter broke free, ran to one of the massive doors and yanked it open. “Everyone needs to evacuate immediately! Stay calm.” His voice echoed into the interior. “GET OUT NOW!”

The officer was on him again, gripping him in a bear hug, pulling him away and out to the sidewalk. Peter didn't care. People were flowing out of the church now. He strained to see if Annie and Chip were among them.

From the other side, he felt dark shadows gather around him. He turned. Three large, scruffy-looking men were closing in. One wore a torn, stained T-shirt and jeans. His face was smeared with dirt. Another one wore baggy pants, a dirty overcoat, and had a heavy beard and dark skin. There was something vaguely familiar about him.

“What the hell is going on?” he said, starting to launch a protest, but his voice caught in his throat when he saw a chubby figure straddling a white motor scooter in a driveway diagonally across the street. It was the A-bomber, and he was watching Peter. When Peter locked eyes with him, the man pulled a jacket hood over his head, revved the scooter, and took off.

“There he is. There's your man!” Peter screamed, trying to break free of the officer's hold on him, unable to point. “He's over there. Across the street.”

The bearded man turned to look. Peter watched, dumbstruck, as the man whipped a walkie-talkie out of his overcoat pocket and started running toward the scooter, shouting and pointing as he went. His two buddies followed, weaving around churchgoers fleeing the cathedral.

There were sirens, and a police car screeched from an alleyway across from the cathedral, followed by two more. But they didn't get far, as they were quickly swallowed up in the crowd of people who'd emptied out of the cathedral and were milling about in the intersection. By the time a path was cleared, the scooter was gone.