“All right, actually. Seamus took him to Father Kenneth back in your old parish, and Father Kenneth helped him clean himself up. Wayne works at the church now.”

“He always had a pious streak in him.”

“He’s getting his life together.”

“Good for him,” said Kylie.

“Let’s talk some more about the money,” said Al.

“What are you, her agent?” said Gleason.

“Just a businessman trying to do some business.”

“And a hell of a successful businessman at that, I can tell,” said Gleason, waving his flashlight about the decrepit space.

“Turn out the light,” said Kylie. “I can’t talk when I can still see myself.”

“Will you tell us the story if we turn it out?”

“I don’t know it all,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what he did before, but he said it was bad.”

“Tell us what you do know.”

“He said he didn’t mean it, that it was an accident, that he was only trying to help her, not kill her. And that afterward he tried to make it right but the lawyer wouldn’t let him.”

“Is that why he got the trench coat?”

“He said the trench coat was like a cape the superheroes used to wear in the comic books. He decided that was what he was going to be, a superhero. That was how he was going to make it right.”

“For the accident, for killing that woman.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that why he fell back into drugs? Because of the guilt? Is that why he ended up in that crack house where he was murdered?”

“He was clean at the end,” said Kylie. “He didn’t come to the house for drugs. He came for me.”

“Damn cowboy,” said Gleason.

“If we turn out the light,” I said to her, “will you tell us the whole story?”

“I don’t know it all.”

“As much as you know.”

“Will you leave me alone after?” she said.

“If that’s what you want.”

“And the money,” said Al. “Don’t forget the money.”

“We won’t,” I said. “We’ll take care of both of you. All right, turn out the light.”

Gleason flashed the beam around to see if anyone was behind us, and then he clicked off the flashlight. Darkness fell over the clammy space like a fetid blanket. Something scurried in the corner, something wet fell from an overhead rafter, something in the distance moaned. We stood in the uneasy quiet of collapse and decay and waited, and waited some more.

And then Kylie began to talk.

It was early morning when finally we left that dank, stinking warehouse. Gleason and I had stood for a long time in the darkness, listening as Kylie told us her story, emotions overflowing in all of us, even Kylie, I could tell, despite the dead monotone of her voice. And when, at the end, Gleason turned the flashlight back on, the filth on her face had become streaked by her tears. Now, in the car again, we could see the first stirrings of dawn in the eastern sky as I drove us out of the rotting neighborhood. I drove east until I hit the expressway and then west to 676, east to 95, north again to the Aramingo Avenue exit and on to Fishtown.

They were waiting for us at the church, standing by the side entrance. Father Kenneth was leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets, the light from the fixture over the door falling like a blessing on his head and shoulders. Wayne was slapping at his arms as he walked back and forth along the street, back and forth, pacing as nervously as an expectant father in the maternity ward, waiting to hear if he would be embracing that morning a boy or a girl.

It was a girl.

75

I hadn’t slept yet when I banged loudly on the great wooden door. It was light out but still early enough that a gentle tap or a warning phone call might have been polite. But having heard what I heard from Kylie that very night, I wasn’t in the mood just then to be polite. So I banged. Loudly. And I banged again.

It took longer than I would have thought for the door to be answered, and what I encountered was not what I expected. Yes, it was Whit, my old mentor Whitney Robinson III, on whose front door I had been banging, but he was not dressed in his usual fastidious style, no handkerchief in his jacket pocket, no jacket to be precise, nor even a shirt. It was T-shirt and pajama pants, bare feet, unshaven jaw, gray hair mussed tragically, eyes haunted, pale lips trembling at the sight of me.

The last bit of which I could understand, being as I represented, in a way, the ghost of Whit’s past.

“Not a good time, I’m afraid, my boy,” he said.

“It will have to do.”

“Ah, the determined young man out to get to the bottom of it once and for all. I didn’t think you had it in you, Victor, and I must say I’m disappointed. Self-righteousness might be a pleasant enough vice for its holder, but it can be so wearying for those on the other side of its wrath.”

“What did he give you, Whit? What did he do for you that impelled you to ignore Seamus Dent’s confession and ensure François’s conviction?”

“He played God.”

“That seems to be his thing.”

“What happened to your face?”

“The dental hygienist.”

Whit’s eyes widened. “Quite a woman, that Tilda. I suppose you’ll be coming in whether I invite you or not.”

“You suppose right.”

“Then all I can do is welcome you again to my humble home. Come inside, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

As I followed him into the large stone house, I noticed how stooped and thin he was, how much the years had pressed their weight upon him. Without his upper-crust uniform, he appeared more fragile than I had ever imagined, less the highly polished product of the top tier of the American caste system and more the doddering old man, clutching feebly to whatever straw he could grab hold of in this life. I had admired him for years, and then feared him in the latter part of this case, but now, unaccountably, I felt sorry for him.

He led me through the faded hallway and then to the right, through the dining room that, even with its great oaken table and heavy crystal chandelier, felt like it had been abandoned years before. Whatever joyous occasions had been celebrated in that room, whatever festive dinners had been thrown or gracious toasts offered, were well in the past. This room was now just a passageway that led to another room at its far end, a room that in its heartbreak had clearly become the center of the house.

Guarding the entrance was the white-faced nurse whom I had seen through the window my last visit. Tall and gaunt, like a withered stalk of corn, she stared with an admixture of fear and disgust, her thin mouth twitching at the sight of me.

“Leave us some time alone, will you, Miss MacDhubshith.”

“The poor girl, she needs her rest,” said the nurse in a strong burr.

“Of course she does,” said Whit. “Take your break. I’ll stay with her.”

The woman gave me a final glare before stalking off. Toward a telephone, I presumed, to squeal on the two of us to you-know-who. When she left, Whit passed through the doorway, and I followed.

I found myself in an old sitting room, wood-lined, with bookshelves and fine stained-glass windows. It was a room that should have held red leather chairs and calfskin-bound volumes of Dickens and Thackeray, Tocqueville and Maupassant. The fireplace should have been roaring, the port decanted, a game of whist going on in the corner. And at one point I’m sure all of that had happened here, but not now and not, I could tell, for years. Now it had been turned into a shrine for the living dead.

“This is my daughter, Annabelle,” said Whit, gesturing to the hospital bed set into the middle of the room and the woman who lay uneasily upon it. He sat down in the chair placed by the bed, leaned over to his daughter, gently laid the back of his hand on her cheek.

She was seemingly young and pretty, her hair cut short, her skin shiny, her hands waxy and smooth with long, tapered nails. Her pale blue eyes were open and darting about the room as if she were trying to take it all in, but it became clear, after only a moment, that she was taking in nothing. And her body shook and contracted in on itself to some strange, unnatural rhythm. The only things that kept her on the bed were straps binding her arms to the bed frame.