“Like I said, things are different. Moros wasn’t assumed to be a sinner who needed a thrashing. His bishop didn’t try to minimize or hide the allegations. There’s policy. The bishop moved immediately to investigate; he called in the cops.”
“Ah.”
Malloy nodded. “It should be on file with Albuquerque PD. They talked to witnesses who had a different interpretation of the event and decided that the charge was groundless. The bishop was all for fighting in court if need be. But. .”
“The intangibles. The gossip.”
Malloy nodded again. “Maybe Moros didn’t want to wage a long battle to resurrect his reputation in what was an upscale Anglo parish. I think he left because he could never confront the racist whispering campaign. That’s only a personal gut read.”
“So how did he wind up here?”
Malloy pursed his lips. “Because God is a golfer. Moros’s bishop and my bishop play golf together in Florida. A favor was requested; a favor was granted. And we parked Moros out at St. Martin’s as an interim posting.”
Broker shook his head. “What’s the moral to this story? Don’t dust spilled chalk off a teenage girl’s blouse?”
The creases in Malloy’s face ran deeper than Broker cared to contemplate, through a system of consequences that receded back through centuries, millennia, past mystery into eternity.
“So,” Malloy said. “You may well have a sicko out there who has a twisted sense of humor. But, according to my information, the Saint’s victim profile doesn’t fit. We obviously have our share of bad apples, but Moros wasn’t one of them. Even so. .”
“Yeah,” Broker said. “The appearance of it is still going to be a huge damage-control problem.”
Malloy raised his hands, let them fall. “We brought it on ourselves. The sin of clericism, all the shady in-house solutions that are now coming out. The Church has taken a beating for six months on this; Cardinal Law running a protection racket for Shanley and Geoghan in Boston, Weakland resigning in Milwaukee. . our very own sequestered coven of monks and priests at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville who’ve been accused of or have admitted to abuse. It’s been. .”
“Hot.”
“Exactly. So-no leads at all?”
“We have a guy who lives next to the church who saw a woman go in before it happened. We’re keeping him under wraps for now. And there was some fresh graffiti on the church, a Satanist pentacle. But that could be just creeps acting out. There’s been a rash of church break-ins in Stillwater. .”
Malloy raised his eyebrows.
Broker shrugged. “But our witness has the suspect wearing a navy blue Saints baseball jacket.”
“That sort of puts it, like we used to say, right on front street. Okay, so what do I tell people?”
“Nothing for a couple of days. John has me working a long shot,” Broker said.
“Hail Mary,” Malloy said.
“Knock on wood,” Broker said as he stood up. “Could you get a transcript of the bishop’s investigation? It will be useful to have it in the file. I’ll get our guys in contact with the coppers in Albuquerque.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Malloy said. “But I’m not sure about this secrecy about the medallion. I understand the need to protect your investigation-but there’s a serious public safety question. Priests should be warned.”
“I’d think every priest in America is already pretty security conscious right now,” Broker said. “Like I said, John thinks we have a solid local angle. We might catch this guy before. .”
“He kills another priest.”
“Okay, you’re right; but if we go public and put priests on warning, you get the media storm. For right now, let’s keep St. Nicholas between you and me, under the seal as it were.”
They walked out into the hall and were silent for a few beats. “I guess no one is really ever safe, are they?” Malloy said.
Going down the stairs, Broker said, “I was wondering. Isn’t it unusual to have a Catholic church named after a guy named Martin? I mean after what happened in Wittenberg and all?”
Malloy shrugged. “The fact is, we have our own Martin on the books. He was bishop of Tours, in the fourth century. He was your kind of guy: the patron saint of the infantry. And horses and, ah, beggars and geese, I think.”
They shook hands in the vestibule, and Broker left the quietly lit, ordered sanctuary of Malloy’s living quarters behind, stepped back into the street, and walked toward the absurd mob of short, round cartoon characters in the park.
He put on his sunglasses, stared into the sun, and spoke aloud for no particular reason the first words to enter his mind: “Beggars and geese.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Broker paced back and forth on the top level of the Victory Ramp smoking a cigar and combing through his talk with Malloy. The ramp had been full, and he’d had to park the Crown Vic on the roof. There wasn’t a square inch of shade in sight.
Recalling the determined look on Sally Erbeck’s face, he figured the medallion would be outed within twenty- four hours, if not sooner. The Saint was going to stage a return whether or not Father Moros was deserving of his- or her-attentions.
It was time to check in with John in Seattle.
He punched in John’s cell number, got voice mail, and left his own cell number. Then he waited. Sweat stewed in his hair and trickled down his forehead. He made a note to get a hat.
Broker was getting down into the less tasty end of the cigar when his cell rang.
“So, where are we at?” John asked without preamble.
“Malloy says no way the priest was a child molester. But he was transferred from his last parish after he was cleared of
“But there’s the appearance that Moros was a child molester.”
“There it is,” Broker said. “And the only people who had that information, besides the church secretary, were in Investigations: Harry and whoever else saw the complaint.”
“I’ll call Mouse, get him to run the phone logs to see if anybody else got tipped about Moros. And I’ll have him liaison with Albuquerque. It’s long shot, but maybe somebody followed Moros to Minnesota. You get Harry to the hospital?” John said.
“Not yet; he’s still out there.”
“Is he giving you a hard time?”
“Oh yeah. A regular barrel of laughs and crazier than a shithouse mouse. But he’s hinting he knows something about the Saint.”
“Good. Good. So, how are the troops holding up?”
“Everybody knows about the medal, the whole damn building, patrol and detectives.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Which means any minute the press is going to have it. Seventy, eighty cops can’t stay mum on something like this.”
“Actually,” John said, “you might be surprised about that.”
“You may believe in that blue-code-of-silence bullshit, but I don’t,” Broker said. “Yesterday some wit wrote on the unit bulletin board, ‘The Saint lives: Harry 2, Pedophiles 0.’”
“So what? Gallows humor.”
“Goddamn Harry. He’s fencing with me.”
“Keep reeling him in; he’s the key.”
“What if he isn’t? Malloy has a point; if someone’s targeting priests, they should be warned.”
