Salvation in Death Read online

  Coming home, Lino, or running away? That was a question that needed an answer. Did someone recognize you? Someone who lived here, or was visiting here? Someone who felt strongly enough, passionately enough to execute you in church?

  What did you do? Who’d you piss off, betray, hurt?

  And thus, having had long patience, he got the promise.

  What were you waiting for? What was the promise at the end of the wait?

  “It’s fake,” Roarke announced from the adjoining doorway.

  “Huh?”

  “The ID, it’s fake. Which you already knew so I don’t see why you had me spend all this time on it.”

  “Confirmation’s nice.”

  He gave her a cool look, then came over to sit on the corner of her desk. “Then you have it. It was good work, costly. Not the best, by far, but not a patch job either. A bit more than six years back. Flores reports his ID lost, applies for a new one.”

  “When, exactly?”

  “October of ’53.”

  “The month before he requests a transfer to St. Cristóbal’s.” She punched a fist against Roarke’s leg. “I knew it.”

  “As I said. A new photo was provided by the applicant, along with copies of all necessary data. It’s a common way to make the switch.”

  “Prints?”

  “Well then, that’s where the cost comes in. You’ll need to grease the right palms or have a skill with hacking, and an unregistered. So you’d be switching the fingerprints all the way back, replacing with your own. And that means transferring them from childhood on, if you want to be thorough—and he did. It’s the first change where the hitch is most easily tripped. After that, it’s you, isn’t it? In your new skin.”

  She frowned up at him. “How many forged IDs have you provided and/or used in your shady career?”

  He smiled. “It’s a good living for a young lad with certain skills and considerable discretion, but was hardly my life’s work.”

  “Hmm. Yeah, I ran the prints. They come up Flores, so he went deeper and hacked, or paid someone to hack, into the database to change them. The rest is pretty standard identity theft.”

  “To do otherwise, to save a few pennies, would be foolish.”

  “Having the face work though, that adds coin, time, trouble. That’s long haul.” She pushed away from her desk, to think on her feet, to move through it. “That’s major commitment.”

  “To go to those lengths, and for that amount of time, means you’d be giving up yourself, wouldn’t it? Your name, your face, the connections. You’d have to strip off your own skin to slip on someone else’s. A commitment, yes. Maybe your victim wanted a fresh start. A new life.”

  “He wanted more than that. I think he came back here, to New York, to that neighborhood specifically. He picked this place, so he knew this place. He was hiding, and needed to change the face—and he was patient.” She thought back, murmured, “ ‘And thus, having had long patience, he got the promise.’ ”

  “Is that so?”

  “I figure the patient get run over in Promiseland more than half the time, but the Bible says no. He had that passage highlighted in his. And this other one . . .” She had to walk back to her desk to look it up. “ ‘With me are riches and honor, enduring wealth and propriety.’ ”

  “A promise of money, respect, stature,” Roarke speculated. “Yeah, all of that fits, and for some all of that’s worth killing for, and waiting for. It’s nice to have familiar surroundings while you wait—and maybe you even get a charge out of seeing people you know, and knowing they don’t recognize you.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “People tell priests stuff, right? Intimate, personal stuff. That would be a kick, wouldn’t it?”

  “I had an acquaintance once who sometimes posed as a priest.”

  “Because?”

  “Cons. As you say, sins are confessed, which is handy for blackmail, and collection plates are passed regularly. I didn’t like the gambit myself.”

  “Because?”

  “Well, it’s rude, isn’t it?”

  She only shook her head. She knew the things he’d done, and yet understood he was the kind of man who’d find bilking sinners rude.

  “Maybe that’s part of it. Maybe he blackmailed one of the sinners, and he or she sent him to hell. It’s got a nice rhythm to it. Fake priest using collar to con marks, mark uses priest ritual to off fake priest.”

  She turned away from the desk, wandered around the room. “But I’m not going to get it, not going to get the thing, until I get him. Who was he? I need the tat. I need the lab to push through the reconstruct of the tattoo. That’s something. Figuring he had it removed and the face work done around six years ago, and getting a bead on where the actual Flores was last alive and well will give me an area to focus on.”

  She looked back at Roarke, who simply sat where he was, watching her. “There’s always echoes, right, always shadows? That’s what you e-geeks say about the hacking, the layering, the wiping data. And there’s always a way to get down to those echoes and shadows.”

  “Almost always,” Roarke replied.

  They wouldn’t find yours, Eve thought. But how many had Roarke’s resources or skill? “If he was as good as you, or could pay someone as good as you, he wouldn’t have been playing priest in Spanish Harlem. He’d have been hiding out and waiting for whatever it was on some balmy beach.”

  “I can’t fault your logic.”

  “It’s all speculation. It’s all projection. I don’t like working that way. I’ll get Feeny and EDD digging into this tomorrow.”

  “And you? What will you do tomorrow?”

  “I’m going back to church.”

  He rose, moved to her. “Well then, let’s go sin first.”

  “Even I know it’s not a sin if you’re married.”

  He leaned down, nipped her bottom lip. “What I have in mind might be.”

  “I’m still working here.”

  He flipped open the top button of her shirt as he backed her toward the elevator. “Me, too.” And the next as he nudged her inside the car. “I love my job,” he said, then brought his mouth down to hers.

  And he was good at it, she thought, as his hands got busy and her pulse jumped to gallop. She let the kiss take her under, and was already sunk deep when the elevator doors reopened and her shirt hit the floor.

  The cool air whisked over her bare skin; her eyes blinked open.

  He backed her toward the roof terrace where the open glass dome let in the night. “What—” Then his mouth took hers again, and she could all but feel her brain dissolving.

  “We had a walk outside, dined al fresco.” He pressed her back into the stone rail. “We’ll consider this a hat trick.”

  She slid her own hands down, found him hard. “Well, I see you brought your hockey stick.”

  With a laugh he flipped open her bra—the simple white cotton she preferred and that never failed to allure him—and toyed first with the fat diamond she wore on a chain. “Now I feel I should come up with something clever to say about your puck, but everything that occurs sounds crude.”

  He skimmed his hands over her breasts. Small and firm, with the diamond he’d given her gleaming between them. He felt the trip of her heart under smooth skin, and the warmth of her spread under his hands. However clear her eyes, however much humor in them, he knew she was already as aroused as he.

  He turned her, eased her down on the edge of a wide, padded chaise. “Boots,” he said, and lifted one of her feet. She leaned back on her elbows, watching as he stood in front of her pulling off one boot, then the other.

  Naked to the waist, her skin glowing a little in the pale light of the urban moon, the faint smirk on her face—irresistible. He sat beside her to take off his own shoes, shifting to meet her mouth again when she went to work on the buttons of his shirt. And she angled, straddled him, pressed herself to him.

  She dived now rather than sank. Into the heat, the need, the wonder they brought
to each other. Now, as ever, it was a shock to the system, a stunning, breathless rightness she’d never expected to know. Here. Him. Hers. That gorgeous mouth seduced and demanded at the same time, and those hands—so skilled—possessed. Just the feel of him against her—skin to skin—so familiar now could still dazzle her senses.

  He loved her, wanted her, needed her, just as impossibly as she loved, wanted, needed him. Miraculous.

  He murmured to her, first her name. Just Eve. Only Eve. Then in Irish. A grha. My love. His love. And the rest was lost as his hands guided her, as in a dance, and she bowed back for him.

  Those lips skimmed up her torso, a warm, gentle line, then his mouth took her breast with a quick, stunning hunger. Her sigh became a gasp that shuddered to a moan.

  Everything and all things. That was Eve for him. Nothing he’d ever dreamed of, even in secret in the dirty alleys of Dublin, approached the reality of her. Nothing he possessed could ever be as precious. The taste of her in the cool night, in the pale light, stirred a craving he understood would never be fully sated.

  He rose, lifting her with him, feeling that craving spike and tear when her mouth went wild on his. Once again he pressed her back to the stone, now dropping her to her feet as he yanked her trousers down. As she dragged at his.

  “Mine,” he said, clamping her hips, thrust into her.

  Yes, God, yes. The first orgasm burst through her, a reeling blow that left her dizzy, drunk, then desperate for more. She hooked a leg around him, opening so he would fill, and her hips pistoned, matching him stroke for frantic stroke.

  The cool stone at her back, the heat of him against her, in her, drove her up again as he took and took.

  When the need built again, when she felt herself about to fall into those wild blue eyes, she clamped around him. “Come with me, come with me, come with me.”

  The pleasure flashed, bright as that sizzling diamond, as they took the fall together.

  She didn’t know if she’d sinned, but she woke up the next morning pretty damn relaxed.

  It might have been the calm, uncluttered mind that had a fresh thought popping in as she showered. She chewed over it as she stepped into the drying tube, turned the angles while the warm air swirled. Distracted, she ignored the robe on the back of the door and walked back into the bedroom naked.

  “Darling.” Roarke smiled at her as he sat drinking coffee with the cat sprawled beside him. “You’re wearing my favorite outfit.”

  “Ha-ha. Question.” She moved to the dresser to hunt up underwear. Her hand stopped dead, then lifted a red bra with sparkling, and sharply abbreviated, cups. “Where did this come from?”

  “Hmm. The goddess of lingerie?” he suggested.

  “I can’t wear a tit-sling like this to work. Jesus, what if I had to strip off?”

  “You’re right, that bra would make you appear undignified when you’re standing half-naked on the job.”

  “Well, it would.” Since she didn’t wear one half the time, she pulled out one of her favored support tanks instead.

  He watched her drag on the unadorned, practical white. “Question?”

  “What? Oh, yeah. Question.” She stepped into equally unadorned, equally practical white panties.

  And he wondered why the look of her in the simple, the basic, stirred him as much as red lace or black satin.

  “If you had to go under awhile, potentially a number of years, would you tell a trusted friend?”

  “How much do I trust this friend?”

  “That’s a factor, but let’s say enough.”

  “For me, it would depend on the risks, and the consequences if someone drove me to the surface before I was ready.”

  She considered that as she strode to the closet. “Five years is a long time—a hell of a long time to be someone you’re not—and the highlighted stuff in the Bible makes me think it was something he intended to shed when the time was right. In five years, it would take a lot of willpower not to contact a friend, a relative, someone to dump some of the frustration on, or share the joke with. If New York was home for Fake Father Flores, odds are he had a friend or relation handy.”

  Absently, Roarke scratched Galahad between the ears and set the cat to purring like a jet engine. “On the other hand, he might have chosen New York because it was a good distance from anyone who knew him, and/or closer to what he was waiting for.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She scowled as she dragged on pants. “Yeah.” Then she shook her head. “No. He could have requested a position in the East, in New York or Jersey, say. But he specified that church. If all you want to do is get distance, you wouldn’t narrow options. But, on the yeah side again, it could be the place is connected to the what he was waiting for.”

  She thought of the youth center.

  “Maybe, maybe. I’ll check it out.”

  As she finished dressing, Roarke walked over to the AutoChef. Galahad unsprawled himself in ever-hopeful anticipation of another meal. Eve strapped on her weapon holster and eyed the plates Roarke carried back to the sitting area.

  “Pancakes?”

  “I want to have breakfast with my wife, and they’re a particular weakness of hers.” Roarke set the plates down, then pointed a finger at the cat as Galahad gathered himself to spring. The cat flopped down again, sneered, and turned his head away.

  “I think he just cursed you,” Eve commented.

  “That may be, but he’s not getting my pancakes.”

  To save time, Eve had Peabody meet her at the youth center. The five-story concrete building boasted a fenced, asphalt playground with the far end set up for half-court basketball. A handful of youths had a pickup game going, complete with trash rock, trash talk, and regular fouling. As she crossed the asphalt, several eyes slanted toward her, and in them she saw both nerves and sneers. Typical reaction, she thought, toward a cop.

  She homed in on the tallest of the bunch, a skinny, mixed-race kid of about thirteen wearing black baggies, ancient high-tops, and a red watch cap.

  “School holiday?”

  He snagged the ball, dribbled it in place. “Got twenty before bell. What? You a truant badge?”

  “Do I look like a truant badge?”

  “Nope.” He turned, executed a decent hook shot that kissed the rim. “Look like badge. Big, bad badge.” His singsong opinion elicited snorts and guffaws from his audience.

  “You’d be right. Did you know Father Flores?”

  “Everybody knows Father Miguel. He’s chill. Was.”

  “He show you that hook shot?”

  “He show me some moves. I show him some. So?”

  “You got a name?”

  “Everybody does.” He dismissed her by signaling for the ball. Eve pivoted, intercepted. After a couple of testing dribbles, she pivoted again. And her hook shot caught nothing but net.

  The boy’s eyebrows rose up under his cap as he gave her a cool-eyed stare. “Kiz.”

  “Okay, Kiz, did anybody have a hard-on for Flores?”

  Kiz shrugged. “Must be somebody did, ’cause he’s dead.”

  “You got me there. Do you know anybody who had a hard-on for him?”

  One of the others passed Kiz the ball. He dribbled it back a few feet, bagged a three-pointer. He curled a finger, received the ball again, passed it to Eve. “You do that?”

  Why not? She gauged her ground, set shot. Scored. Kiz nodded in approval, then sized her up. “Got any moves, Big Bad Badge?”

  She smiled, coolly. “Got an answer to my question?”

  “People liked Father Miguel. Like I say, he had the frost. Don’t go preaching every five, you know? Gets what it’s like in the world.”

  “What’s it like in the world?”

  Kiz retrieved the ball again, twirled it stylishly on the top of his index finger. “Lotta shit.”

  “Yeah, lotta shit. Who’d he hang with?”

  “Got moves?” Kiz repeated, shot the ball to her on a sharp one-bounce.

  “Got plenty, but not
in these boots. Which are the boots I wear to find killers.” Eve bounced the ball back to him. “Who’d he hang with?”

  “Other priests, I guess. Us ’round here, Marc and Magda.” He jerked his head toward the building. “They run the place, mostly. Some of the old guys who come ’round, pretending they can shoot the hoop.”

  “Did he argue with anyone recently?”

  “Don’t know. Didn’t see. Gotta make my bell.”

  “Okay.”

  Kiz shot her the ball one last time. “You get yourself some shoes, Badge, I’ll take you on.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  When Eve tucked the ball in the crook of her arm, Peabody shook her head. “I didn’t know you could do that. Shoot baskets and stuff.”

  “I have a wide range of hidden skills. Let’s go find Marc and Magda.”

  The place smelled like school, or any place groups of kids regularly gathered. Young sweat, candy, and something she could only define as kid that translated to a dusky, foresty scent to her—and was just a little creepy.

  A lot of babies and toddlers were being transported in and passed over by men and women who looked either harried, relieved, or unhappy. Drawings showing various degrees of skill along with scores of flyers and posters covered the industrial beige walls like some mad collage. In the midst of it, a pretty blonde stood behind a reception desk greeting both kids and what Eve assumed were their parents as the transfers were made.

  The sound of squeals, screams, crying, and high, piping voices zipped through the air like laser fire.

  The blonde had deep brown eyes, and a smile that appeared sincere and amused as the assault raged around her. Those brown eyes seemed clear, as did the cheerful voice. But Eve wasn’t ruling out chemical aides.

  The blonde spoke in Spanish to some, in English to others, then turned that warm welcome onto Eve and Peabody. “Good morning. How can I help you?”

  “Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody.” Eve drew out her badge. “We’re looking for Marc and Magda.”

  The warmth dropped instantly into sorrow. “This is about Father Miguel. I’m Magda. Could you give me just a few minutes? We run a day care and a preschool. You’ve hit a high-traffic zone just now. You could wait in the office. Just down that hall, first door on the left. I’ll get someone to cover for me as soon as I can.”