A
t midnight in his office at police headquarters, Chief William O'Toole stared at the whirring tape recorder on the wall, his brain a chunk of polar ice. He pressed a button and the tape reversed. He pressed another button and he heard the blustering voice of his nephew Leo McBride.
If you ball him, I'll tell Bill O'Toole about the bearer bonds. You won't get out of this town alive.
A pause and then the silky, sullen voice of Melody Faithorne.
I believe we've shared that reward money more or less equally.
O'Toole stared at the $1,000 bill on his desk. He had been tapping every phone and house in Paradise Beach that might possibly have a connection with this remnant of Joey Zaccaro's million and a half dollars. He had found nothing even faintly resembling a lead. Instead, he had listened to Trai Nguyen Phac sob while her husband belted her around their trailer and their son, Suong, cried,
“Stop! Father! Please!” He had listened to Mick's heavy breathing and Jackie Chasen's gurgles of delight. He had listened to Desmond moaning to his wife about his slack member and his fear of the Mafia. He had listened to Billy Kilroy berate Richard O'Gorman and tell him who was running their sorry show. He had listened to Barbara Monahan O'Day telling the two-faced Irishman that she loved him.
How did a small-town police chief lay his hands on such sophisticated surveillance equipment? When Atlantic City surrendered to the mafiosi and the gamblersâlargely one and the sameâO'Toole had persuaded his nephew Leo McBride to persuade Congressman Mullen, the Appropriations Committee chairman, to come through with several million dollars for crime-fighting equipment to make sure the surrounding towns were not contaminated by this inundation of moral sleaze into South Jersey. Leo made sure that Bill O'Toole got his hands on a major slice of this cash. In Jersey City, tapping phones and bugging houses had been a way of life for the organization. O'Toole made it the leading edge of his crime counteroffensive.
There was not a motel room in Paradise Beach that did not have a connection to headquartersâor to a police car parked outside the place. Wilbur Gargan's Golden Shamrock had a half dozen booths with microphones in the table lamps that captured every word on tape recorders in the basement.
O'Toole rewound the tape and listened to Leo and his wife again. He put on a tape from the Golden Shamrock and heard Melody and O'Gorman discussing the existence of an English SIS agent in Paradise Beach. But that startling fact remained almost irrelevant in Bill O'Toole's rapidly thawing and soon seething brain. What mattered was Melody's confirmation that she had betrayed the bearer bonds. Not even her suggestion that O'Gorman eliminate her whining husband to guarantee the secret stirred outrage comparable to the thunderous fury that
consumed Bill O'Toole's soul when he realized how and why this righteous bitch had destroyed his inheritance.
Only one idea permeated his flesh: revenge. With shaking hands, O'Toole began loading his police .38. He would kill them both, now. He would kill Melody first, while whimpering Leo, the ultimate draft dodger, watched. Then he would blow him away. He did not care what they did to him afterward. The death penalty would be a pleasure. Nothing could alter the stupendous satisfaction of seeing them dead.
The telephone rang. O'Toole heard Tom Brannigan, the night sergeant, answer it. “You called his house, his wife said he was here? Just a minute.”
Brannigan's squat physique filled the doorway. “A guy named Nick Perella.”
The consigliere of the Giordano family. O'Toole had met him several times in Atlantic City. A lean, sallow face, hooded, angry eyes, a habit of clenching his back teeth as he talked, so his words seemed squeezed out of his mouth like toothpaste.
“Bill, how's it going?”
“Not bad, Nick. How's it going with you?”
“Okay, okay. Haven't seen you at the tables lately.”
“I'll get there one of these days.”
“I got a problem, Bill. He's named Joey Z.”
“Oh?”
“I keep thinkin' you could help me solve it. Tommy Giordano ain't heard from him in almost a week. Nothin' from his muscleman, Angie Scorsese, neither. They both walked off the planet, you know? There's big money missin' too.”
“How much?”
“A million and a half.”
“What am I supposed to know about this?”
“Joey said he had a deal with you and some Cubans to bring in a couple of hundred kilos of cocaine.”
“So?”
“Did it come off? Have you seen him? The last anyone
heard of him, he and Scorsese were on their way to your place.”
“I saw him. We clinched the deal. But the Cubans haven't shown up yet. I don't know where Joey went with the cash.”
“Bill, I hope you ain't lyin'. He's Tommy's only nephew. He ain't got no kids of his own.”
“Neither have I. You learn to live with that. You learn to live with a lot of things, Nick.”
“Bill, I'm startin' to sort of dislike your attitude, you know what I mean? You don't seem to give a shit what happened to Joey and the money. Where's the deal if the Cubans finally show up? You ain't stringin' together a good story, Bill. If you double-crossed Joey, I hate to think of what Tommy would do to youâand everyone else in your fuckin' family.”
“I can tell you one thing on my mother's grave, Nick. I didn't double-cross Joey.”
“But you know someone who did?”
“I don't know who did. I don't know what happened to the money either.”
“I think maybe you better come see Tommy for a talk. Face-to-face stuff, you know. He's not gonna believe anything else.”
“I'm pretty busy, Nick.”
“Bill, this is good advice. Very good advice. You know what I mean?”
“I'll think about it, Nick.”
“Think real hard, Bill. And fast. I'll call you tomorrow.”
Bill O'Toole sat staring at the loaded .38. He still wanted to drive to Desmond McBride's house and kill Melody Faithorne and her whining weasel husband. But other ideas were churning through his head now. Other ideas about Tommy Giordano and the possibility of doing the deal with the Cubans and laying his hands on his $200,000 slice of the action. A million and a half bucks could easily be replaced by Tommy Giordano. He would
drive a hard bargain, but O'Toole was not worried about that. All he wanted was his slice, his getaway wedge of happiness.
What about revenge? That could wait a day or two or three. Why commit suicide for itâwhen it might be possible to enjoy it and go cruising off into the sunset. Laughing all the way to some South American bank.
An even better idea occurred to Chief O'Toole. Why not go for more than his slice? All they had to do was mess up the heads of Kilroy and O'Gorman a little more. They were already threatening each other with gunfire. If they lost control and did something crazy, O'Toole could sell the cocaine to Giordano for a million and a half and let the IRA suck wind for the weapons.
O'Toole picked up the telephone and told Tom Brannigan to get Mick O'Day out of his squad car. In ten minutes Mick was in his office. O'Toole handed him the $1,000 bill. “I checked this out seven ways from Sunday. I've decided Tyrone Power or his little pal Kilroy stuck it in your glove compartment. I think they've got the goddamn money somewhere.”
Mick shook his head. “I don't get their angle.”
“Here it is. They figure we'll get another pile of stash from Tommy Giordano and go through with the deal. They walk away with a nice bonus.”
“How are we gonna get it from Tommy Giordano?” Mick said, his eyes widening. He had heard Bill O'Toole denounce Giordano as the worst slimeball in America.
“We're either gonna get it from himâor get something else. Something like this.”
O'Toole picked up his gun and placed it against his temple. For a moment he was tempted to pull the trigger. It would be easier than going to see Tommy Giordano. It would be easier than lying to Mick this way. Mickâthe substitute son who thought he could play it straight in Paradise Beach under Uncle Bill's guidance.
Revenge steadied O'Toole. He was not going to die until he had killed Melody Faithorne and Leo McBride.
“Here,” O'Toole said, handing Mick the $1,000 bill. “Take Kilroy to Atlantic City to get laid and work on him. Tell him how O'Gorman laughs at him behind his back. Treat him like a piece of shitâas if you think he's no more of a hero than Leo McBride. Get him drunk and see if he spills anything about where they've stashed the money.”
“What if it's some sort of Mafia double cross, Uncle Bill? They blow Joey away and we've got to cut a deal with them that will give them half the town.”
Mick was not stupid. Bill O'Toole kept forgetting that. Mick was troubled, depressed, unhappy, but he was not stupid. He saw exactly where they were going. But it was too late to worry about Mick. It was too late to worry about anything anymore. Bill O'Toole only wanted two things out of lifeâhis slice of happiness, and revenge. He was going to get both, no matter who got hurt on the way.
“If you get that shrimp to talk, we won't have to go near Tommy G. Do it tomorrow. That's an order.”
The haunted, hunted look was in Mick's eyes. Bill O'Toole was not the only one who thought about getting far far away from Paradise Beach and life with one big unhappy family. But Mick was still a marine. He obeyed orders even when they did not make sense. He grabbed the $1,000 and stalked out of headquarters. He all but stripped the squad car's gears as he pulled away.
O
ver the causeway into the Pines drove Father Dennis McAvoy, better known elsewhere as Captain Arthur Littlejohn. His position was more and more precarious and he knew it. There had to come a time when Father Hart would chat on the telephone to someone in diocesan headquarters in Trenton and casually mention how well Father McAvoy was coming along. They would inform him that Father McAvoy was an impostor. Hart would tell his friend O'Gorman and the guns would be on the table.
Yet the risk continued to be worth the chaos Littlejohn was sowing among the Paddys. Planting the $1,000 bill in the young cop's car was only the beginning. He wanted to turn them into a mare's nest of raging suspicion. Eventually they would start shooting each other, as the Irish were wont to do. After five centuries of informers betraying Ireland for British gold, every man was suspect.
Meanwhile, he had to pretend to be the eager collaborator with Father Hart in his pastoral tasks. He had begun
making calls on the housebound and bedriddenâmost of them old. He had listened to litanies of complaints against visiting nurses, overcharging doctors, absentee daughters and sons. He took their minds off their troubles by talking about Ireland. SIS had supplied him with dozens of Irish jokes. Many were drawn from newspaper clippings of pithy comments by public figures, such as the outspoken bishop of Galway, a fierce critic of the IRA, among other things.
Father Hart heaped praise on McAvoy's visits. Hart had received telephone calls telling him that the “little Irishman” was the best thing that had happened to St. Augustine's Parish in a decade. This unsought praise had a strange effect on Father Hart. He began to confess his deep feelings of inadequacy as a pastoral visitor. He was no good at making small talk. He had lost the Irish gift of gab. This morning Father McAvoy had received a more serious assignment. Hart had asked him to visit the Vietnamese woman who was being abused by her husband.
Littlejohn-McAvoy remembered that Desmond McBride had suggested the Vietnamese husband, Phac, as a crewman on the boat that was going to bring the guns ashore. Maybe he would find an opportunity to include him in the web of suspicion. Father McAvoy, aka Captain Littlejohn, had another $1,000 bill in his wallet.
Following Father Hart's directions, he found the mobile home in the trees without difficulty. But a knock, a second knock, a third knock, went unanswered. He walked around the house, if it deserved to be called thatâit looked more like an abandoned railroad carâand peered in a window. A Vietnamese woman was kneeling in the middle of a small room before a crucifix. The woman's arms were outstretched, her head flung back. Her oval face was blank with ecstasy.
Littlejohn-McAvoy stood there for at least five minutes, transfixed. St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the greatest mystics of the Catholic Church, had prayed that way.
Finally, almost embarrassed, he tapped on the window. The woman sprang up, saw him, and rushed to open the front door. “Good day, Father,” she said with an atrocious accent.
“Hello,” Littlejohn-McAvoy said. “I'm sorry to interrupt your prayers.”
“Oh, that not prayer. Please do not tell anyone about that, Father. My husband be ⦠angry.”
“Why should he be angry at you praying?”
“He say I too badâtoo unclean to pray. I only make God more angry against us. So I don't pray, Father. I close my eyes and say nothing, think nothing. Sometimes Jesus come to me and I ask him to ask God for mercy, forgiveness. I let him pray for me.”
“For what?”
“Oh, forgiveness for many sins, Father. Many bad sins. Come in.”
He found himself sitting in the minuscule kitchen while she fixed him a cup of tea. “You priestâfrom Catholic relief?”
“No. I'm from the parish. I'm a friend of Father Hart. Staying with him for a few weeks.”
She sat down and forced a smile. After another struggle, she managed a whopping lie. “Good, Father Hart. Good priest.”
“Oh, yes,” Littlejohn-McAvoy said, mentally adding,
good and stupid.
“Youâno like?”
Was she a mind reader? “No, no, he's been very kind to me. I'm ⦠a sinner too.”
Suddenly the words echoed as if he had shouted them in the middle of York Minster, the great cathedral in the city of his birth. I'MâAâSINNERâTOO. The echoes rolled out beyond the confines of the tiny kitchen, beyond the surrounding forest, beyond this strange American continent. They reverberated through vast reaches of outer space.
“Woman?” she asked. “In Quang Tri province, some priests ⦠have woman.”
“No,” he lied, trying to deny the prostitutes he had screwed in Dublin and Belfast on reconnaissance. That was not Captain Arthur Littlejohn RA who had done those things. That had been the other self he assumed in defense of the realm.
“In Binh Nghai, my village, our priestâgood. Father Nhu very good. Very angry against sinners like me.”
“What did you do?”
“OhâFather.” Across her face passed an expression that could only be described as totally feminine. “I was ⦠unclean. Like Mary MagâJesus' friend?”
“Mary Magdalene?”
“Yes. Like her.”
“Jesus loved her very much.”
“Yes. I hope he love me too.”
“He does.”
“Oh, no, Father. Not yet. I have much more pain to suffer. For my country, for Suong. For Phac.”
“Is that why you let him beat you?”
“I let him because I sin against my country. Against him and Suong. Phac was ⦠how you say ⦠patrit?”
“A patriot?”
“Yes. He fought communists. I foolish, stupid woman. I let loveâand obedience to fatherâruin my patrism.”
“You worked for the communists?”
“Yes. Now I see how bad that was, Father. I see what they do to my country. It was a bad sin, Father.”
“Why did Phac marry you?”
“Oh. After my father ⦠die, he marry me to show his good heart. To show he could rally me.”
“Rally?”
“Yes. That what government call it. To rally people against communists. You went for education. You heard how bad Viet Minh were. That when I see how bad I was, Father. That when I say, yes, I will marry Phac.”
“Why does he beat you?”
“Oh, I think his heart cannot love, Father. Before he came to Binh Nghai, Viet Minh kill his wife and three
sons. Only Suong escape. Alsoâanother reason.”
“What?”
“I save Phac, Father. I save him and Suong. That woundsâ”
She pointed to her heart. “If he saved me, all would be okay. But I save him. Unclean woman save him. I sinned to save him.”
Suddenly there were tears pouring down her face.
“You were one of the boat people?”
“Yes. Boat. Pirates capture us. I save him and Suong. I let them ⦠do me. This many, Father.” She held up the fingers of both hands. “They do me again and again. Before they finish, British boat come and shoot them.”
Littlejohn had heard such stories from one of his SIS friends who had become station chief in Singapore. They were all enraged by the bestialities inflicted on Vietnamese refugees on the high seas. But the Royal Navy had nothing east of Suez now except a few frigates at Hong Kong. The days when the British enforced law and order in the Pacific were gone, and the Americans, as usual, did nothing to fill the vacuum.
“Oh my dear,” he said, and took her hand. “And you went on loving Jesus.”
She looked at him with a new expression on her face. Was it condescension at his stupidity? The memory of her rape by the pirates had shattered her surface calm. She told him the truth now.
“Oh, no, Father. You no understand. Until thenâI hate him. I hate Jesus. I think he kill my father. I hate our priest, Father Nhu. I ⦠hate Phac. I marry him only because when Mick leave Binh Nghai, Phac will kill me. Only when pirates are doing ⦠to me ⦠Jesus came. He came into me, Father. I hear his voice and my father's voice whispering together. I hear their saying, âBy waters of Babylon. By waters of Babylon.' I don't know what it mean, Father. But it fill me with ⦠happiness, Father. Do you understand?”
“Yesâand no.” Littlejohn-McAvoy suddenly had an
overwhelming desire to fall to his knees and kiss the sandaled feet of this tiny, weeping woman. He wanted to cry out,
O Lord, I am not worthy.
He wanted her to lift him up in the name of Jesus and the Virgin and Mary Magdalene, in the name of all the impossible contradictions that lived together in the world's tormented heart.
“What âwaters of Babylon' mean, Father? Will they make me clean?”
“Yes. It's from a psalm of King David. About the Jews living in captivity in Babylon. He asks God how he will sing the Lord's song in a strange land.”
“What ⦠God answer?”
“He didn't answer. Later, much later, He destroyed Babylon. Maybe that was an answer.”
“Ah. God is ⦠angry, I think. Like Father Nhu.”
“Sometimes.”
“But Jesus, no. Jesus love, Father.”
“Yes. Yes. Trust in his love, Mrs. Phac.”
“Oh, Father. You understand. Will you explain to Father Hart?”
“Yes. I'll explain. Don't worry about it anymore.”
Littlejohn-McAvoy stumbled to his car and sat behind the wheel for a long time. He took out the $1,000 bill and stared at the portrait of some nineteenth-century American president in the center of it. It would have been simple to ask to use the bathroom and leave it there. Or to pretend an interest in her marooned railroad car and tuck it between the cushions of the couch while she was showing him around, then make an anonymous call to the police chief. Now it was impossible.
What was happening? Was she a precursor? Was she telling him that beyond the veil of tomorrow there was similar suffering, similar humiliation for him? Why else had he understood, why else had he seen the beauty of her soul? She had entered the kingdom that he had once dreamt of entering. A kingdom that his father with the voice of God had denied him, when he ordered him to join the army instead of the priesthood. Was she telling
him that the kingdom still awaited him? Or was she informing him that it was irremediably beyond him now?
Captain Littlejohn thought of Maeve Flanagan and Jackie Chasen spread-eagled on their beds. Why did that image fill his soul with dark pleasure? The same pleasure that bubbled like witch's brew when IRA men in Armagh cried no, no while the Chinese Type 64 silenced clicked death. Sullenly, bitterly, Littlejohn refused to disavow that pleasure, to exchange it for pain.
Trai Nguyen Phac had not sought the pain, of course. She had begged God to prevent it. But God had not listened. He had a hearing problem. He let Jesus take care of the suffering. Captain Littlejohn wasn't sure about Jesus. He was even less certain about Mary Magdalene and the Savior's enthusiasm for a woman of the streets. His soul was filled with angry doubt as he drove back over the causeway to Paradise Beach.
That night at dinner, Father Hart virtually levitated when Littlejohn-McAvoy told him that he had talked to Mrs. Phac and her husband, who happened to be at home, ill, and he had contritely promised not to abuse his wife anymore.
“You obviously have a gift when it comes to dealing with third world people like that,” Father Hart said. “I guess it comes from growing up in a simple world like theirs. In contrast to our overcommercialized, machine-made world, with a television set blaring nonsense in every room.”
“Perhaps,” Littlejohn said. One of the first things you learned in the intelligence business was to bear fools patiently.
“Have you read Gutierrez or the other liberation theologians?”
“I'm afraid not.”
“You should read them, Dennis. They're the hope of the world. They show how Marxism can be reconciled with Christianity. How Marx, in some views, may even be a reincarnation of Christ.”
“Doesn't that fellow Marx preach hatred instead of love?”
“Class hatred is not the same as personal hatred. Class hatred is really a hatred of injustice, which every Christian ought to have. Once you see the world from the viewpoint of the oppressed, all sorts of things change. There's no such thing as individual guilt, for instance. The poor don't sin. The revolutionary doesn't sin when he strikes at the oppressors. The sin is on the other side.”
“I see.”
“I've been thinking of volunteering for missionary work in South America. We send priests to several parishes in Guatemala and Brazil.”
“I admire your courage. I don't think my nerves could handle such a challenge, at present.”