“What sort of connections?”
“The sort that makes me think you got a hot spot, Detective.”
“Holy Name, huh?”
“It fits, Vince. Remember the letter referred to the cardinals’ hats? Holy Name has the hats of Chicago’s dead cardinals hanging from the ceiling.”
There was silence, then a sigh. “Fuck me. Send over the data, and I’l get a team down there. Hold on.” Rodriguez paused, then came back on the line. “Lawson wants everything the kid’s got sent to her computer. And she means everything, Kel y.”
Hubert tapped me on the shoulder and flipped his monitor around so I could see the screen of text he had pul ed up. I nodded and continued talking to the detective.
“Not a problem. Just one more favor to ask.” Then I told him what I needed.
“Why don’t we let the feds handle that?” Rodriguez said.
“Because I’m concerned the feds wil rol over and play dead.”
“And you’re going to go in there and bust bal s.”
“I’m going to go in there and explain the situation. Then I’m going to get the information I need.”
Rodriguez didn’t like it, but final y agreed to make the cal. “Just don’t piss this guy off.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Yeah, right. Head down that way and I’l cal you back.”
I hung up. The text Hubert had accessed stil glowed on his screen. It was a newspaper article. Page 3 from yesterday’s Trib. The headline read: CHICAGO ARCHDIOCESE SETTLES SEX CASES FOR $12.3 MILLION.
Hubert watched as I read, then offered up one word. “Motive.”
“Maybe.” I slipped my cel back in my pocket and picked up my coat. “I gotta go. Send everything you have to Lawson’s computer. Include whatever you found on the old train crash. Then just hang tight.” I looked around the flat. “You okay here?”
Hubert nodded. “I’m good.”
“You’re a little better than good, Hubert. You sniffed out what might be a chemical weapons attack against the city and gave us our best lead on this guy.”
“Guess that was pretty cool, huh?”
“Bet your ass. Keep it up. We’re getting close to something. I’l cal you in a couple of hours.”
And then I left the kid, alone in his apartment, tapping away at a mountain of information, fishing for a shark in little more than a rowboat.
CHAPTER 38
It’s cal ed the House of 19 Chimneys. I thought about trying to count them, but didn’t want to besmirch the romance of the place with anything as ordinary as fact. Instead, I got out of my car and walked a complicated path to the cardinal’s doorstep on North State Parkway. It had taken a couple of hours, but Rodriguez final y angled me the invite-not entirely surprising given the church’s desperate need to put a lid on whatever was brewing inside their whitewashed wal s. I was about to lift a heavy brass knocker when my cel phone buzzed. I stepped back to the sidewalk. It was Rodriguez again.
“You in yet?”
“On the precipice.”
“We just ran some field tests at Holy Name.”
“That was quick.”
“Our guys kept things quiet and went in as a cleaning crew. Got a preliminary positive for some sort of mustard agent. Fucker spiked the holy water.
”
I wasn’t surprised, but stil felt a chil. Strange days, indeed.
“Does the archdiocese know?” I said.
“Not yet. Lawson’s got the cisterns sealed off and wants to run some more tests first, so keep it to yourself.”
“Fine.”
“You real y think our guy’s an abuse victim?”
I looked up at the residence, swore I saw a curtain twitch, and, for just a moment, was back on the South Side. “I think it’s worth a conversation.”
“Guess it can’t hurt.”
“What about the press?” I said.
“What about them? They don’t know a thing about the letter or Holy Name.”
“What about Alvarez?”
“She’l be our mouthpiece. We get the story out the way we want, when we want. And she gets her exclusive.”
“So you got that handled?”
“You worry about the cardinal, Kel y. Let me worry about Alvarez. Cal me when you get done.”
“Okay.”
“And, Kel y…”
“What?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
I cut the line and walked back up the cardinal’s path. This time I picked up the brass knocker just as the door swung open. On the other side was a nun, dressed entirely in white and looking at me like she knew better. Behind her were three more nuns, hands tucked into their starched sleeves, faces cast in perpetual shade. The nun at the front door stepped aside without a word, and I walked in. The head of Chicago’s two mil ion Catholics swept around a corner with a smile and a handshake.
“Mr. Kel y.”
Even at seventy-three years old, Giovanni Cardinal Gianni was stil a bit of a rock star. On his seventieth birthday, Newsweek had dubbed the sturdy dark Italian “America’s Own Pope.” I wasn’t sure how wel that went over in Rome, but Gianni was here, smiling and, best I could tel, stil in one piece. He ushered me into what I guessed to be a study and gestured to an armchair wrapped in velvet. “Please, sit down.”
Like most Chicagoans, I’d driven by the cardinal’s residence and wondered what the elegant pile of red brick and sandstone might look like inside. It was about what I’d thought. Floors of polished wood interrupted by hal ways of polished marble. Large rooms cluttered with furniture no one used and pictures of saints no one knew. Bunches of flowers, bloodred and bone white, lurking in distant corners and sucking al the air out of the place. To my left and right, wal s of books. Most of them, I was betting, Bibles.
“Can I get you some coffee, Mr. Kel y?”
“Thanks, Your Eminence. That would be nice.”
Gianni raised a finger without turning his head. Somewhere behind him I heard some movement. A nun, I guessed, in search of a cup of joe. “We’ve already served lunch. But if you’re hungry, I’m sure the sisters would be happy…”
“No thanks,” I said. Gianni nodded and waited, one leg crossed over the other, dark face loose and relaxed, entirely empty of any sort of clue.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here?” I said.
Gianni spread his hands, palms up. “I spent most of the morning on the phone with the mayor and the FBI. They ask me to spend my afternoon with you, who am I to refuse?”
The cardinal’s stick-on smile mirrored my own. He got up and walked to a picture window that looked out over a half acre’s worth of bare trees and front lawn.
“So much for keeping things under wraps,” the cardinal said. I fol owed his gaze out the window. A TV truck had just pul ed up in front of the mansion. A camera crew scrambled out and began to shoot pictures. So much, also, for Rita Alvarez’s exclusive.
