Luke,
Thank you for a wonderful night. I have some stuff to do this morning. See you soon.
Katelyn
She has stuff to do? Of course. She’s looking for work. She told me when we first met. Mental note: check back in with Lois to see if that hosting position is a possibility. Does Katelyn know how to tend bar? Bartenders are always for hire in New York. Of course, maybe she wants a position with better hours than a restaurant or bar can provide. I can definitely see Katelyn sitting behind a desk doing important things. The things my father wishes I were doing. Or rather, wished I were doing ten years ago instead of what I ultimately chose.
Now the former is impossible.
Those days are gone forever.
I pour myself a cup of coffee and fry a few slices of bacon and two eggs. After my breakfast, I leave the building and hail a cab. Time to pay a visit to Anthony DeCarlo at prison.
“Who the fuck are you?” DeCarlo says into the phone on the other side of the plexiglass.
“Luke Johnson.”
“And I’m supposed to know you?”
“No. But we have mutual friends in common.”
“Like who?”
“Like the people you give information to, canary.”
DeCarlo narrows his eyes. Yup, that got him. I’ve never actually seen the man, but I know the name. He’s got a muscular build and brown eyes. His hair is shaved close to his head, and he’s wearing prison beige.
“This some kind of threat?”
“No. No threat. Just letting you know I’m aware of your situation. I’m also betting the reason your parole hearing was canceled wasn’t because of a fight you got in.”
He narrows his eyes further. “What the hell do you want?”
“I want to know exactly what you did to Katelyn Brooks. And why.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole.”
“You may want to stop the name-calling, DeCarlo. I promise I can make your life very difficult.”
“You? You’re nobody.”
He’s right. I am nobody. Or everybody. I’m supposed to blend in. I’m every man. A waiter in Manhattan who lives in a studio.
That’s me.
And that’s a million other people.
Except I have a past. A past that includes Anthony DeCarlo. A past he’s still involved in, even if I’m not.
“Let me rephrase that,” I say. “You tell me everything about Katelyn, and if you don’t, I’ll have the Raven take your head off.”
His eyes widen.
The Raven. Even now the words sound foreign. The Raven no longer exists. He never really existed. He was more of an idea than a person. Two words that struck fear in—and apparently still strike fear—in reckless criminal peons like Anthony DeCarlo.
“Now that I have your attention,” I say, “Katelyn. Go.”
“There’s not much to tell. I needed cash. My parish priest said he needed women to serve as nannies for his rich parishioners who didn’t want to use undocumented immigrants.”
“And that made sense to you? That a priest was so hard up to get young women to be nannies for rich people that he condoned drugging them and taking them?”
“He was a priest, man. Priests are on the up-and-up.”
I can’t speak for a moment. Really? He’s really going to stay with this fake narrative? “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t born yesterday, asshole. I’d like the truth now.”
“That is the fucking truth.”
I grit my teeth. “Try again.”
“What? It’s the truth, man. I swear to God.”
“You swear to God? Like the good Catholic boy you are, I assume?”
“Fuck you.”
Anger scratches at my neck like a bird’s talon. “I can have you shivved in your sleep, dickhead, so get moving on the real story. Now.”
“I mean it. It was the priest. Father Jim Wilkins. At St. Andrew’s in Manhattan. I was an altar boy.”
“Was he that kind of priest?”
“What the fuck?”
“You know what I’m talking about, DeCarlo. Did he molest you? The altar boys?”
“God, no!” DeCarlo swivels his neck and makes eye contact with a guard.
Shit. I’m nowhere near done with this conversation.
The guard comes forward, and DeCarlo covers the mouthpiece with his hand. I hear murmuring between them, but no discernible words.
As soon as the phone is back on his ear, I say, “Watch your step. We’re going to finish this conversation.”
“Right,” he says. “Yeah.”
“I know who owns that guard,” I lie, “so what you do is up to you. You may wake up with a knife in your back…if you wake up at all.”
He nods, a nervous tick making his lips twitch slightly.
I’ve learned to take notice of body language. It kept me alive for the last ten years.
“Now…the truth, please.”
“It is the truth. The priest said he needed women for nannies, that they wouldn’t be harmed, and that he’d pay a lot of fucking cash.”
“And you still expect me to believe that you trusted him? Believed this cockamamie story?”
“I was seventeen, man. Seventeen, and goons were threatening me on the daily.”