Third Degree (16 page)

“He’s a tool.” Crawford is a man of few words but the ones he uses are usually right on the mark.

“I’ll say.”

“Did he give you a hard time?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t say that. I would just characterize him as exceptionally sarcastic.”

Crawford gave a little harrumph. “Well, charm isn’t really a prerequisite for a desk sergeant but he’s just a—”

“Tool?” I offered helpfully.

“A tool.” Crawford slowed down to pay the toll at the E-Z Pass machine and waited for the mechanical arm to rise. It didn’t. The cars behind us, stacked up during rush hour, began honking noisily. Crawford reached into his pants pocket, pulled out his badge, and held it aloft outside the car window in full view of most of the honkers. And a great silence befell the earth.

A uniformed cop rushed over and swiped something through the machine and the arm rose. “Sorry, Detective.”

I eyed Crawford as he sped through the lane. “Wow, that’s impressive. Where can I get one of those?”

“One of what?”

“One of
those,
” I said. “A gold shield. They’re like the keys to the city.”

“Well, I can’t get you one, but I can get you access to one,” he said. “You know, close enough, if you get my drift.”

I took a deep breath. “That’s why I came to see you.”

He remained silent. His expression told me that he already knew that.

“Listen, Crawford—”

“ ‘Listen, Crawford’ doesn’t exactly sound like a promising start to this conversation. Or any conversation, for that matter.”

He had a point.

We merged onto the West Side Highway. Once we passed the huge Fairway grocery store and its glaring neon sign advertising
FRESH-KILLED POULTRY
, he spoke again. “Let’s focus on one thing at a time.”

“One thing at a time?”

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s find Kevin first.” He took one hand off the wheel and put it over mine. “Let’s get through this month,” he said, his perception about my emotional state astounding me. I looked out the window. “Let’s find Kevin first,” he repeated.

“Thanks, Crawford,” I whispered, watching the scenery speed by, a blur of blue river and green trees.

He chuckled. “If we can’t find him, who’s going to marry us?”

Under normal circumstances, a line like that would bring on gastrointestinal distress, but the twinkle in Crawford’s eye, accompanied by his hand squeezing mine, made me think that the eventual conversation we would have to have might turn out better than I hoped. He knew. He had probably known all along. It was obvious to me that he knew the problem was not with him or my feelings for him, but with me and my complicated past, my emotional baggage, and a host of other things that he probably knew he’d have to put up with if—sorry,
when
—this marriage took place.

I knew I was lucky. The question was, why? The guy was a gem, but even guys like Crawford are likely to run out of patience. I decided to focus on his current good humor as well as the task at hand.

I pulled out the piece of paper that Crawford had handed me. Kevin had gotten two parking tickets—a day apart—in a trendy West Village neighborhood, leading Crawford to believe that our prodigal priest was staying somewhere in the vicinity of the poorly parked car. I had driven with Kevin long enough to know that
(a)
he’s a crappy driver and
(b)
an even crappier parker. He can’t parallel-park to save his life so once he got his car into a spot, he was probably going to leave it there. He can turn water into wine and bread into body, but get into a spot with his Honda Fit that would normally fit a Hummer? Not on your life.

And the West Village? Another curious clue in the story. Kevin only goes two places: the Food Emporium by St. Thomas and his mother’s house in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. There was nowhere else, in his world. So to think that we had to track him down in lower Manhattan was completely unbelievable to me. Crawford slid into a parking spot behind Kevin’s Fit that was semilegal and put his police credentials in the window. He turned to me and told me that we would just have to wait.

My growling stomach told me that this was not going to be easy, and given our environs—a bustling West Village street filled with bistros and trattorias—I mentioned to Crawford that it might be using our time more wisely if we got a snack while waiting. Or an appetizer. Or dinner.

He didn’t need much convincing. We were happily ensconced at a table at the Riviera Café and Sports Bar in seconds, across the street from his and Kevin’s parked cars. An extra five to the hostess got a seat at one of the tables that sat along a bank of almost floor-to-ceiling windows, affording us a perfect view of Kevin’s car and the apartment buildings near it. We decided that Crawford would sit facing the window and I would have my back to it, because as we all know, I’m easily distracted. But even better than our seats was that just two minutes after we had sat down I had a giant Ketel One martini in front of me with my requisite three olives. I decided that the Riviera Café was my new favorite restaurant. Things were back to the way I liked them, the Damoclean sword of the proposal not swinging over my head and threatening to impale me at every turn. I stuck my hand into my jeans pocket and pulled out the lavender-scented note card. “What do you make of this?” I asked.

Crawford read the note, his eyes growing wide. “When did you get this?”

“Today.” I popped an olive in my mouth. “It’s the third one of these that I’ve gotten. The first one encouraged me to ‘get up’ or ‘get it up’ or something like that. The second one was shorter but equally cryptic.” I looked around for the waitress. “We need bread,” I said to myself. I was starving.

“You’ve gotten three?”

“Yes,” I said, distracted. I couldn’t remember if our waitress was the actress-model who looked like Tyra Banks or the one who looked like Halle Berry. I finally grabbed a busboy and asked him for a basket of bread. “And butter!” I called after him.

“This is disturbing,” he said.

“It is,” I agreed, my mind on a completely different topic. “You’d think that they’d give you bread and butter automatically.”

“No, not the bread situation. The notes.” He flipped the note over. “Did you try this number?”

I looked at him as if to say, “what do you think?” “Nobody answers.”

“That’s weird.” He sat back in his seat. “This is concerning.”

I looked at Crawford and was momentarily stunned by just how adorable he really was. Especially when he was concerned about me. What in God’s name was wrong with me that I couldn’t commit to this guy? “You think?” I knew it was, but I was trying to downplay my reaction. I’ve been through a lot during my time with Crawford and I was loath to think of our relationship spiralling into one where I continually played the damsel in distress. This situation, I thought, called for practiced nonchalance.

“Uh, yes.” He downed a bit of the glass of merlot that he had ordered. “When did the first one come?”

I thought back. “A few days ago?”

“You’re not sure?”

“So much has happened, Crawford. I can’t remember a lot since Carter’s death. It’s been a blur.”

“What about the second one?” he asked. When I shrugged, he asked, “Did you tell Detective Madden about this?”

Thankfully, the busboy came back with a big basket of bread but only two pats of butter. I grabbed his arm. “We’re going to need more butter.”

Crawford waited before asking me again. “Did you tell Detective Madden about this?”

“No. I never want to see her again, let alone talk to her. I don’t think she needs to get involved.” I put forth my lavender-scented note card/good penmanship theory.

“I don’t agree. And I want to see the other notes.” Crawford looked around the restaurant before returning his gaze to the car across the street. “What else has happened since I entered my self-imposed exile from you?”

That was an interesting way to put it. “Not much.” I dug through the bread basket for a roll. “I went to Carter Wilmott’s memorial service. Ginny Miller was there.”

Crawford raised an eyebrow.

“She was actually in her car across the street, but she was looking for something. Or someone. I followed her to the Stop and Shop.”

Crawford didn’t take his eye off the window but his exasperation with me and my handling of the situation was palpable. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“I hope you didn’t try to buy cold cuts.”

“I didn’t. But I made quite a scene, if I do say so myself. And I prevented an old lady from knocking an entire display of Goya garbanzo beans to the ground.” I slathered some butter on my bread and shoved it in my mouth. “Good bread.”

Crawford stood up abruptly, knocking my drink into my lap. Now there was a first. I’m usually the one knocking things over. He ran from the restaurant and out onto the street, his long legs a blur as he ran across the street, against the light and toward Kevin, who stood on the other side by his sensible and energy-efficient Honda Fit.

In mufti, Kevin looked like a normal, everyday denizen of Greenwich Village. Even up close, nobody would have had any idea that he was a man of the cloth. In his baggy jeans, hipster T-shirt with a slightly ironic saying on it, and Puma sneakers, he could have passed for a bike messenger, barista, or young dot-com executive. But I knew the truth. And I also knew that if Kevin was under deep cover, as he appeared to be, something was seriously wrong. I exited the restaurant, promising the hostess that we would return, but probably with an extra diner in tow, and headed across the street.

Crawford graciously acknowledged my noninvolvement by not making an issue of it. “What’s going on, Father?”

We were back at our table at the Riviera, me starting my second martini, Crawford having switched to coffee, and Kevin with an untouched chardonnay in front of him. I had finished the basket of bread and was waiting for my entrée. I raised an eyebrow at Kevin, who remained silent. “Well?”

Kevin took a deep breath, seemingly marshaling his courage. “I’ve been accused of ‘inappropriate behavior’ toward a student.”

I was more comfortable with the “priest on the lam” charade that I had conjured up; in that fantasy, Kevin had gotten tired of the Catholic Church and pastoring to a bunch of uninterested college students and was living the life he had intended to live with a wife and twin sons. “Inappropriate behavior?” That was startling and discomfiting, to say the least.

Crawford was able to remain impassive, a gift we did not share upon hearing unsettling news. “Tell me what happened.”

And Kevin did. A sophomore whom Kevin would not name had been seeing him for counseling for several months for a problem he would also not name. Kevin had helped the student as best he could, but he could sense that the situation this student was in was worsening and that this person was in serious trouble. He wanted to alert the kid’s parents, the school, or anyone else who might be able to help further, but this suggestion sent the student into a rage that Kevin never anticipated.

“And the next thing I knew, I was in Etheridge’s office being put on notice and told that I had to vacate the premises immediately while the situation was under investigation.” He rolled up the end of the tablecloth and worried it between his fingers. “Remember, Alison? That was the day I saw you in your office.”

I did remember. What we thought was an innocuous meeting turned out to be much more. “They can’t do this to you, Kevin.”

He smiled at my naïveté. “They can, Alison. And they did.”

Crawford jotted a few notes into the notebook he kept in his jacket pocket at all times. “What can we do to help, Father?”

“Well, you can start by calling me Kevin.”

“Okay. Kevin.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do to help. I’m playing a waiting game right now and Etheridge holds the key to if and when I can return.” He looked at me beseechingly. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Alison.” He looked at Crawford, his eyes sunken beneath giant dark circles, then back at me. “You believe me, right?”

“Of course I do,” I said. I did. Kevin was a lot of things—terrible homilist, lover of all things Broadway, and shitty driver—but he was true blue. And he took his vows very seriously. I had once seen a fellow professor make a pseudopass at Kevin, but he had shut her down in the kindest and most delicate way possible. It was clear that he wasn’t interested and she got the message—loud and clear.

Crawford stretched his long legs to the side and reviewed his notes. “What else can you tell us?”

“Nothing,” Kevin said. “Well, I should say nothing without compromising this person’s privacy and my vows. What someone tells me in confidence remains in my confidence. You know I can’t reveal anything else, Bobby.”

Crawford nodded. He did know.

Our food arrived but I was the only one who dug in. Kevin pushed his French fries around on his plate, and Crawford only picked at his meat loaf. I came up for air and asked Kevin who he was staying with. He was vague. “A friend.”

“Anybody I know?” Realistically, I knew that Kevin must have other friends—I had actually met a few—but I liked to think that I was his only true friend.

“Somebody from the seminary.”

“And he lives down here?” I asked. “How come you can’t get a gig like that?”

Kevin smiled. “Long story.”

Without pouring on too much of the guilt, I asked Kevin why he didn’t let me know that he was leaving.

“Not enough time,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his hands over his eyes, exhausted.

Crawford gave me a tight smile that indicated that I was not to go any further with this line of questioning. I concentrated on my chicken and waited, hoping Kevin would take the conversation in a new direction. He didn’t. We sat silently, eating our dinners and trying desperately to pretend that we were just three friends out for a leisurely and enjoyable dinner. Although I ate, I felt as if I had a large pit in my stomach when I finished, and I declined the server’s offer of coffee or dessert.

Kevin looked at me suspiciously. “Are you all right?” He knew that I ended almost every meal with dessert so not having it was definitely a bad sign.

“I just don’t feel like it,” I said, the enormity of the situation coming down on me. I resisted the urge to cry; Kevin looked so dejected and I knew that this charge of impropriety was weighing heavily on him. His wan pallor telegraphed that he was dying inside. I leaned over and wrapped my arms around him. He leaned back in and a little sob escaped his throat. I held on to him a long time, until I was sure he had stopped crying and then held him at arm’s length. “You let me know what I can do to help.” I pushed his shaggy blond hair off his forehead. “And remember, Etheridge is a tool.”

Crawford signaled for the check. “You like that word, huh?”

“It seems like an appropriate designation for him. My other nicknames have never done him justice.”

We parted on Seventh Avenue South, Crawford promising Kevin that he would make the parking tickets go away if Kevin agreed to find a legal spot for the Fit in the next few hours. As we drove back to the Bronx, I asked Crawford if he had any thoughts on Kevin’s situation.

“It sounds pretty serious,” he said in his usual understated way.

“Yes, but do you think they can really let him go?” I asked, in no mood for understatement. I wanted Crawford’s emotional intensity in response to the situation to match my own and that just wasn’t going to happen, no matter how hard I pushed.

“If he’s guilty.”

“Well, he’s not guilty and you know that!” I said, a little louder than I intended. Crawford flinched slightly. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “He’s not guilty.”

“Right,” he said, pulling off at the exit for the precinct. “He’s not guilty.”

But he didn’t sound convinced and I was too tired to pursue the subject. I told him where my car was and he pulled up alongside it. He sighed. “You have a parking ticket, too.”

I got out and plucked it from under the windshield. Crawford opened his window and I dropped it in his lap. “Take care of this for me?”

He gave me a little salute. “You got it.”

I leaned in and gave him a long, lingering kiss on the mouth in full view of a pair of uniformed cops who were starting their shift and walking their beat. They gave Crawford a sidelong glance, one of them uttering a muffled, “You go, Detective.” Blushing, Crawford pulled back and told me to drive safely. I watched as he drove off down the street, waiting until he was out of sight before starting for home.

I checked my phone for messages when I got in the car and saw that I had a message from Max.
I need 2 talk 2 u soon
was all it said in typical cryptic, yet dramatic, Max fashion. I flipped my phone closed and threw it onto the passenger seat, making a mental note to carve out a piece of time during the evening to call her and find out what was so urgent.

My mood on the ride home fluctuated between overwhelming sadness and intense hatred toward Etheridge. How could he take the word of a student over that of Kevin, a trusted and loyal employee? It didn’t make sense to me. But once I regained my emotional equilibrium, it occurred to me that Kevin was in a “guilty until proven innocent” situation and nothing he could say at this point would change that fact. I pulled into my driveway feeling an urge to throttle Etheridge—a feeling I was well acquainted with—along with an urge to shout Kevin’s innocence from the rooftops, one that I suppressed.

I went around back and noticed, once again, that the screen was ripped. Max. I didn’t see a car, but that didn’t mean anything. For all I knew, she had taken the train and walked here from the station. She had left me the urgent message and had obviously come here to talk to me; not finding a way in, she used her usual mode of entry. In the darkness, I could make out a lawn chair parked under the window. It was pitch-dark now and I regretted not having put on the back light so that I could find my way into the house. I hadn’t anticipated being gone as long as I had and never guessed that it would be almost nine o’clock by the time I arrived home. As my anger flared in the form of a deep flush to my cheeks, I unlocked the back door, throwing it open and entering the kitchen in a full rage.

“Max!” I called. Upstairs, I heard Trixie’s muffled barks, coming from somewhere directly overhead, meaning that she was in the guest room. She rips the screen
and
she locks up my dog, I thought. I fumbled for the kitchen light preparing to lambaste Max as soon as I located her. But my next words were drowned out as a piece of tape was slapped across my mouth and a hood was thrown over my head. After that, I was flung over the shoulder of a very large man, I guessed by the cloying smell of musky aftershave and the size of his broad shoulders, who carried me out into the dark night.