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  for

  William L. DeAndrea

  July 2, 1951–October 9, 1996

  PROLOGUE

  1

  Tommy Moradanyan was late.

  Tommy Moradanyan had been late all day, starting with breakfast, which wasn’t much of a nervous breakdown. These days, his mother expected him to be late. She said it had something to do with puberty.

  She meant it had something to do with Russ.

  The other parts of being late were more serious. He’d hitchhiked his way north this morning. He’d hit the highway well after rush hour. There were virtually no cars, and even fewer of them were willing to pick him up. That meant it had been five minutes into rush hour by the time he’d presented himself to the guard station. Then Russ had been Russ. It had been another ten minutes before he’d accepted the fact that Tommy wasn’t going to leave until they talked.

  Russ had been Russ.

  What a laugh.

  Pickles was standing on the counter, already tricked out in her green plastic raincoat. The veterinary nurse was named Kelsey. She was cooing like she had a real baby in front of her instead of a dachshund.

  “She’s so precious,” Kelsey said brightly. Kelsey said everything brightly. “I put her picture up on Facebook. Father Kasparian said I could. I put her picture up wearing her raincoat here. She’s so proud of her raincoat. People don’t realize how much of a difference it makes, when a dog gets rescued.”

  The phone went off in the pocket of his jacket. It was a Samsung Galaxy S10+. He’d been worried about it the whole time he was hitchhiking.

  Kelsey was putting on Pickles’s little plastic rain booties. Tommy turned his back to her and propped himself against the counter. Right across from him was the clinic’s plate-glass window. He could see the lights and the rain and the cars. It was after five o’clock.

  Tommy looked at the screen, but he didn’t have to. The ringtone was Beethoven’s Fifth. That was the one he had assigned to his mother.

  He took a deep breath.

  He was late, and she was going to be furious.

  “Yeah,” he said, picking up.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  He turned around and looked at Kelsey and Pickles. “I’m at the vet. Pickles is getting her booties on.”

  “You were supposed to be at St. Catherine’s half an hour ago.”

  “I know. I’ve been running late all day. I’m getting there.”

  “You’ve been running late all day.”

  “They didn’t have Pickles packaged up when I got here. There was a bunch of discussion about the wardrobe. They finally decided she needed a sweater under the raincoat. Then they had to dress her up. Then she’s got luggage.”

  “Luggage.”

  “It’s not going to help to repeat everything I say.”

  “I got a phone call.”

  “He said he was going to.”

  “Tommy—”

  “I’m standing in a waiting room. It’s crowded. Fifty million people are admiring the dog. If you want to yell at me, wait till I get to St. Catherine’s. Or wait till we all get home.”

  “Tommy—”

  “Stop,” Tommy said.

  Then he cut the line and turned his attention to Kelsey. Pickles was all dressed up, the plastic rain hood up over her head, the little umbrella attachment fastened to the hood. She looked as proud of herself as Vivien Leigh playing Scarlett O’Hara.

  “Here she is,” Kelsey said. “All ready to go.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tommy had already put Pickles’s little bag in his backpack. Now he fastened the leash to her collar and put her on the floor. She stretched and preened. Two middle-aged ladies with a cat came over to tell her how wonderful she was.

  Tommy headed for the door. He wasn’t a child. He was fourteen. He didn’t need a keeper. He didn’t need anything except to get some things figured out, which weren’t going to get figured out, because none of it made any sense.

  He stepped out onto the street. There was rain, almost sleet. There was cold. There were too many cars. He turned right, in the direction of St. Catherine’s.

  He should have taken Pickles with him up to the state prison this morning.

  That would have been a trip.

  2

  Marta Warkowski did not like going out alone in the dark. She had never liked going out alone in the dark, even when she was young, even when the neighborhood was still … normal.

  Marta had grown up in this neighborhood. She had been baptized at St. Catherine’s Church. She had made her First Holy Communion and her confirmation there. She had attended St. Catherine’s parochial school. She was seventy-two years old. She could remember Masses in Latin and nuns in habits. She could remember when the outrage in the world was over the fact that the Irish archdiocese insisted on calling the church St. Catherine’s instead of St. Katerina’s.

  These days, there was no help for it. She had to go out in the dark. And she had to go out alone. In her day, the old women went to Mass at seven in the morning. There were big clutches of them, most of them in black.

  Marta didn’t wear black. That would be coming right out and saying she was a widow. She had never married. She just wore her ordinary “weekday” clothes and carried her big pocketbook. In the pocketbook she carried exactly one dollar. She couldn’t be too careful.

  She carried her keys, too, of course—one key for the street door, one key for her apartment door. She had grown up in this apartment as well as in this neighborhood. She had laid out her mother in this very living room. The priest had come and blessed the wake.

  In English.

  The light was out in the vestibule. It always was. The lights were out on the stairs, too. Her knees hurt. It was getting harder and harder to climb.

  She saw Mr. Hernandez waiting for her on the landing. She supposed she should call him Señor Hernandez, but she didn’t want to.

  She brushed past him without saying hello. She did not put her key in the lock. She did not want this man coming into her apartment.

  Mr. Hernandez let out with a stream of Spanish. He knew she didn’t speak Spanish.

  “It’s not that I have to have an English Mass,” she said. “I grew up when the Masses were all in Latin. I didn’t understand that, either.”

  “Miss Warkowski, please.”

  “I want to go lie down now. I’m very tired.”

  “Miss Warkowski, please. We have to talk about the apartment.”

  “We don’t have to talk about the apartment.”

  “Miss Warkowski, please. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s a three-bedroom apartment. You’re all by yourself.”

  “I’ll be dead soon enough. That ought to make you happy.”

  “I could give you another apartment in the building. I’ve got a one bedroom on the first floor. You wouldn’t have to climb the stairs.”

  “I’m going to be laid out in my living room
when I go. Just like my parents were.”

  She stared at the key in her hand. Who would lay her out when she was dead? All her people were gone. Even the priest was gone. The priest at St. Catherine’s these days was Spanish, like the rest of them.

  “Miss Warkowski,” Mr. Hernandez said. “I have a family that needs an apartment. There are two parents and two aunts and four children. I can’t put them in a one-bedroom apartment. You have to see that. You have to see that you should—”

  “I should nothing,” Marta said. “You can’t tell me what I should do. You don’t own this building. You’re just the super.”

  “But there are children!”

  Then there was a stream of Spanish again, the sound of frustration. Marta waited for it to be over.

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” Marta said, when there was silence again. “I pay my rent on time. I have a lease. I don’t even deal with you. I bring my rent to the company downtown. I know you want me out of here.”

  “I only want to make sense.”

  “They think I don’t know,” Marta said. “They think because I don’t speak Spanish, I can’t tell what they’re saying about me. And those boys. Trying to lift up my dress. Trying to lift up my dress at my age.”

  “Miss Warkowski—”

  “I don’t want you here when I open this door. I want my privacy.”

  Mr. Hernandez stood, silent for a change. He was a short, muscular man with a tattoo on the side of his neck. The tattoo was of Our Lady of Guadalupe. They told you in church that there were Catholics all over the world, that all Catholics were Catholics together. It wasn’t true.

  “This is my home,” Marta said. She said it firmly. She wanted to believe it.

  Mr. Hernandez turned away from her and headed down the stairs.

  Marta put her key in the lock, and opened up, and went inside. Then she locked all four of her security locks, including both bolts. It wasn’t just lifting up her skirts, or shutting her inside a circle and chanting, or cheating her on the price of potatoes. Sometimes she thought her neighborhood had been invaded by space aliens. They hated her.

  She dropped her pocketbook on the couch. She went to her little shrine to the Virgin and lit the candle in front of it. Her mother had lit the candle in front of this same shrine and left it lit, day and night, whether anyone was home or not. Marta didn’t dare do that. Leaving a flame lit with nobody in the apartment might be some kind of “violation,” might be an excuse for forcing her out. Mrs. Gonzales kept hers lit day and night, but that was different. There were different rules for Mrs. Gonzales. She was one of their own.

  Marta closed her eyes. She was still both cold and damp. She wanted to die right where she was.

  No, that wasn’t true.

  She only wanted to spend one single hour feeling at home again.

  3

  Sister Margaret Mary had learned a lot of things since she was first posted to St. Catherine’s, but the most important thing was that there was no sense to be made out of it, ever.

  There were no solutions, either, but that was inevitable. If there was one thing the Church had taught consistently through the centuries, it was that the world was a mess whose only solution was Christ returned in glory. Christ did not seem to be returning any time soon.

  Now she stood in the doorway to St. Catherine’s School and looked across the asphalt playground to the street. It was dark, and cold, and miserable, but the boys were still out there. They clutched up in little groups and smoked cigarettes. Nobody bothered to tell them not to. Everybody knew they wouldn’t listen.

  The boys smoking cigarettes were nine and ten years old. When they got older than that, they would disappear. They would go into basements and abandoned buildings. Some of the girls would go with them. By then they would be finished with St. Catherine’s School and over at the high school across town.

  Next thing we should do is start a high school, she thought. She thought that often, even though she knew it couldn’t happen. Carmen Gonzales and Lara Esposito came running up the street, dressed in Junior Girl Scout uniforms, their vests festooned with badges and awards. It wasn’t a good idea to let young girls come out in the dark by themselves in this neighborhood, but they came anyway. The sisters had tried to talk to the mothers about going with them. The mothers had to work, or had three more children at home, or both.

  The boys in the clutches along the street called out things in Spanish Sister Margaret Mary was glad she didn’t understand. Carmen and Lara slowed down long enough to say hello and then raced inside, toward the back.

  Sister Margaret Mary stepped back into the foyer and closed the door. That should be the lot of them. Everyone had at least gotten here safely tonight. Maybe they could spare a couple of sisters to see some of them home.

  She heard the sound of steps on the stairs behind her and turned to see Sister Peter coming down.

  “Are the Girl Scouts all in?” Sister Peter asked. “They’re right underneath the Sodality Chapel. You wouldn’t believe the racket.”

  “They’re all in,” Sister Margaret Mary said. “I’m more worried about Javier. I found him in the church again, did you know that? Just sitting in the side chapel, watching the Virgin.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with dedication to the Virgin,” Sister Peter said. “Maybe he has a vocation.”

  “He doesn’t pray,” Sister Margaret Mary said. “He just stares. You’ve got to worry with these children. We’ve got no idea how much trauma he’s been through. We’ve got no idea what’s happened to him. This could be PTSD. Or something worse.”

  “Have you changed your mind about the Demarkians?”

  “No,” Sister Margaret Mary said. “I don’t know who we could have found who would be better than Bennis Hannaford. And that doesn’t even take into account that she’s got almost as much money as God, which means anything he needs he’s going to get. No. It’s just—things.”

  “Things?”

  Sister Margaret Mary looked back toward the door. “I must have stood out there for fifteen minutes. I’m a block of ice.”

  “And?”

  Sister Margaret Mary shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s the street. It’s the neighborhood. There weren’t any signs tonight. Of either one of them. I don’t think. There was a van.”

  “There are lots of vans. You’re getting paranoid.”

  “It kept circling around. Four times. A big black van. Brand new, too. That’s why I was out there for so long. I wanted to see if it would come back again. But it didn’t. Or at least it hadn’t yet.”

  “ICE isn’t usually that subtle, you know that, don’t you? They come screaming in with their initials on their vests in neon yellow and guns drawn. What they think they’re doing with the guns is beyond me. Somebody’s going to get hurt if they keep that up.”

  “People do get hurt,” Sister Margaret Mary said, “and the vultures can be subtle, and I wouldn’t put anything past them.”

  “I agree,” Sister Peter said, “but can Child Protective Services afford a brand-new van?”

  Sister Margaret Mary sighed. “I’d better go over there and collect Javier before the Demarkians get here. I hate to say it, but I’m not entirely sure it’s safe even in the church at night. And we’ve got to look out for Father Kasparian, too, and there’s supposed to be a dog. Tell me again we’re right to be doing this.”

  “We’re right to be doing this,” Sister Peter said. “Somebody has to. And you don’t have to worry about Javier being alone in the church. There’s a Forty Hours’ Devotion in progress. The place is full of old ladies who could give the evil eye to Satan himself.”

  “Right,” Sister Margaret Mary said.

  Sounds came drifting down the hall from the Girl Scout meeting.

  Sister Margaret Mary opened the front door again. “I’ll see you in a couple of minutes,” she said.

  Then she stepped all the way out into the rain and shut the door behind her.

  The street
was still the street. The boys were still the boys. The rain and sleet pounded against her veil like tiny bullets.

  There was no sign of the big black van anywhere, but somehow, that didn’t make Sister Margaret Mary feel any less apprehensive.

  4

  Meera Agerwal was so sick, she almost didn’t understand what she was seeing. She had a fever of 102. The girls in her office had taken it right before they had packed up to leave, right on time at five o’clock, like good little Americans. Americans made Meera furious. They didn’t expect to really work for anything. They started on time. They finished on time. Then they wanted everything, and if the company wouldn’t give it to them, they voted for stupid politicians who promised to make the company do it.

  Her body was freezing cold, but there was sweat running down the back of her neck. She’d ended up leaving work “on time” herself, because she couldn’t think straight with this fever. She came down out of the building and headed in the direction of her apartment. It was only five blocks away. The sleet was slick and sharp. It stung against her face. Then all of a sudden there was this hulking shape in front of her, this woman in a thick coat that fit as tightly as a sausage casing, just there, and she crashed right into her and fell.

  “Watch where you’re going,” the woman said, and stomped off.

  The sidewalk was hard and wet. People walked around her without stopping. She got on her hands and knees and tried to push herself up. Then a man did stop and held out his hand.

  “Are you all right? Can you get up? I could call 911.”

  Meera took one of his hands, and then the other. She pulled against him until she had one foot flat on the pavement. Then she pulled some more until the other foot came up. She was upright. She was also unsteady.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to call for some help? You don’t look too good.”

  “I will be fine. Thank you.”

  The man was black. Meera was never sure how to feel about American blacks. This man was extremely polite. He was also almost elderly. She took a deep breath. It hurt her to breathe.