It’s what Walter would do in my place, I think. He does care for people, but he hasn’t become Red Man by overindulging his mercy.
“Not an option, Walter.”
“She wouldn’t have to know you told.”
“But I would.”
We visit Alvin in the hospital, after the doctors are forced to amputate the arm. When he wakes, Mae takes his scarred hand so he’ll have something to do with it. That’s how we discover the other reason for Victor’s grisly hoodoo: there’s no such thing as one saint’s hand. The one that remains is just flesh. Alvin’s face twists the moment he realizes. Pain or anger, I think.
But it’s relief.
“It’s done,” he says. “I wasn’t worthy of them.”
“Of course you were, son,” Mae says. Her eyes are red, but dry as tinder. “None of this is your fault.”
I remember his cold recitation in the graveyard of sins uncountable. His profound lack of surprise. What would it do to a soul, to know the darkest kernel of every one it touched?
“We’re going to get you out of here and free, Alvin. I promise.”
No one in the room—all of whom are perfectly aware of what Mae has done—says anything to this. I wonder about Mae now. I wonder about the unfathomable force that gives our hands power and takes it away. If Mae had had that luck, the Bells of Little Easton would have met a sacred justice years ago. Even with her son under arrest, she hasn’t turned herself in.
Alvin meets my eyes. “Matthew 5:30.”
My heart’s so full it chokes me. Pea frowns. I bury my fingers in the tangled mass of her hair. “Do you regret it?” I ask him.
He takes a sharp breath. “Hell, no.”
The Little Easton river resort project is officially canceled after the surviving investors withdraw support. Six days later, the little they could scavenge of Craver’s remains are interred in a plot just outside the sacred grounds of the Lutheran cemetery in Hudson. The ceremony is well attended by the press and not many others. Seven days later, Alvin goes home.
Eight days later, the world forgets all about Little Easton and its lethal church politics. The Japanese have destroyed some naval base in Hawaii, news that feels at once inevitable and absurd. Congress hasn’t made the formal declaration of war yet, but everyone knows they will. I keep my radio tuned to the blustering outrage on the news, awaiting confirmation. A little past eight, I pull into the cold parking lot of the Albany PD headquarters. Every office light is still on, including Finn’s. His secretary lets me in without even asking my name.
He has been smoking the cheap cigarettes that his second wife hated. The pall lingers above his bare head. It tries to choke me as I sit down.
“You said you had an idea,” he says.
“You know I didn’t do this.”
“I don’t think you did, kid. But you’ve changed since those New York days. You could be capable of all sorts of things I don’t believe.”
“Benjamin Craver did it.”
“Couldn’t have done it all alone. He was half-dead himself.”
Now’s the moment. Spill on Mae, solve our problems. And a part of me—the part of me that still wishes I didn’t love Pea—would if I could.
“You know who helped him,” Finn says, after a moment. “Give them up. Or better yet, give up your old lady. Dewey would definitely settle for Victor’s angel.”
So many opportunities for salvation. But there are many turns on the wheel of rebirth. If we meet again, it won’t be as her traitor. I flex my hands. “You remember Erenhart?”
“The crooked cop? That your girlfriend killed?”
“You used to go to Lefty Manusco’s old place in the theater district, didn’t you? He’d lend you some chips on his account.”
Finn just stares.
“They say even Dewey went a few times. In the old days, before his big promotion to district attorney. Well, I wouldn’t know about that, but one way or another some weekends Manusco’s was half cops, wasn’t it? Funny, I remember back in ’35, after all the goods I gave you on Manusco’s prostitution ring you ended up putting everything on Lucky Luciano instead.”
“Get the boss first, kid. The bit players can wait.”
“That’s what everyone told me. All the same, Manusco had a good racket going before Finch had him bumped off … a few months ago, was it? I wonder who inherited Manusco’s little black books—he was famous for his record-keeping, that I remember. Now that I mention it, I don’t suppose that’s anything to do with Dewey’s sudden interest in bringing down Finch, is it?”
Finn just stares.
“I know a great deal,” I say, very carefully. “About a lot of people. I’ve kept quiet about it all until now. And I just need a small reason, a little bit of goodwill, to keep quiet forever.”
“Goodwill?” He tries to ash his cigarette in the tray, ends up knocking the mess to the floor. We cough. “If you spill even half of that, the only goodwill you’re likely to get is a sap to the back of the head.”
“Funny, but I wonder if Valentine would say so. He’s been commissioner for a long time. Longer than anyone else has managed to stomach the job. He’s famous enough, and ambitious. If Dewey can make a run for Albany, why not Valentine, eventually? He’d just have to wait his turn. That is, if he could maintain his reputation as the ‘world’s best cop.’ Nothing would put him on the hot seat quite like another Seabury commission, poking around the bank accounts of his reformed police force.”
Finn swallows. “All he’d have to do is send you straight to Sing Sing: another dirty cop exposed.”
“While the rest
