Command of Silence Read online

  Copyright © 2009 Paulette Callen

  Spinsters Ink

  P.O. Box 242

  Midway, Florida 32343

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  First Edition

  Editor: Katherine V. Forrest

  Cover designer: Linda Callaghan

  ISBN: 10-1-935226-08-8

  ISBN: 13-978-1-935226-08-6

  In memory of Greg Carstons, beloved critic.

  The Upper West Side of New York is a real and lovely place; however, the specific addresses, buildings and institutions mentioned are products of the author’s imagination, as are all of the characters, without exception.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks are due to the Every-Other-Monday-Night-Brilliants who, with good cheer, wit and critical eyes and ears, have tried to make me a better writer: Gary Reed, Suzanne Heath, Jonathan Fried and Mary Burns. Thank you, Susan Lycke, for the title. Covers don’t always make a book, but titles often do.

  Turning and turning in the widening gyre

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all convictions, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.

  from: “Second Coming” W. B. Yeats

  Prologue—Friday

  The day Hawk killed our father was not the first day I’d ever been locked up; it was just the first day I’d ever felt relief at being locked up. I say “our father,” not because she is my sister—she’s not—but because he begat us both as surely as a struck match begets fire. But why do I think of her now? Oh, yes, because I am confined here among these familiar strangers and feel no relief, only terror, and because, this time, she is not saving me.

  I feel the knife, see the smile dawning on Dora’s face and realize the bargain we made—not exactly a bargain—we engaged to play the game where she stabs me and I die. Too many realities for the mind to grasp come to a point in that smile as she cuts again, deeply this time—the killing cut, for the blood gurgles like muddy water up through the neck of a slim pipe, warm, spilling over my hands as I try to hold my abdomen together. I lose feeling in my feet, my head floats free from my body, as blank spots yawn and crescents shimmer in my visual field. I beg Ray, “Call an ambulance. Game over. I give up. I want to live. I’ll tell them I did it so you won’t be blamed.” And I think of the pain when they will move me and sew me, stick me and fill me with foreign fluids; I’ll feel the pain in every part of me, but I’ll live, and I feel myself going under and the medics will get here or they won’t; I’ll wake up in pain or I won’t wake up at all.

  People in robes, like medieval religious, gather, and someone lets a child run into the room. My bed is slick with blood. My blood, this time. The child screams and screams and runs back out. I am angry they have been so careless. My anger floats.

  I am still conscious, still not on a stretcher. No one is sewing me up. But I am now connected to an IV. Rose-colored fluid drips into my vein. Not enough to save me, just prolong things. Why bother with it? Now, Ray is angry. At me. The others watch, all smiling, smiling, watching me die.

  How did I come to this? At what moment did this become inevitable? Not with the well-kept priest’s deliberate smile and plea for help, “Two children are missing.” No, it has always been.

  (the previous) Wednesday

  Chapter 1

  “Two children are missing,” he said, and bells went off in the Company, echoing far back in the gyre. Was Ray serious about referring this guy to us? Voices clamored. Simmer down, Sugartime commanded so we could listen.

  The priest, whose name was O’Hagan, was observant. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I began with the standard question. “Was there a ransom demand?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you need me?”

  “The police are going to arrest an innocent person.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s the questions they ask, and how they keep coming back to—”

  “No. How do you know this person is innocent?”

  “She couldn’t be responsible.”

  I let it go and asked how he had come to me. Sent by a friend of a friend, he said. “Who is this friend of your friend?” I asked.

  “Ray Martinez.”

  Ah. The first cut—the razor so sharp, at the time I didn’t even feel it.

  I nodded to the chair in front of my desk. The priest hitched his trousers and sat. He fidgeted—a man unused to being unnerved.

  “Your fee will be generous.”

  Hester trilled, Oooh! How generous? at the same time as Olive inquired, What’s his definition of generous?

  He smoothed his wavy brown hair and checked his pocket again. In a moment he’d be biting those well-manicured nails and wouldn’t even know why. Ray says I have this effect on people when they meet me for the first time. She even coached me in small behaviors to alleviate their discomfort. “Shiloh, a little smile would go a long way toward making people feel more at ease.” I tried, but that only made her laugh. She said my smile is the kind a cat gets before she steals the liver off the counter. We tried a few other things, but in the end, she said, “Just be yourself. It’s better than the alternative.” And that was so funny, almost everybody laughed.

  I asked the fidgety priest, “Who’s paying this generous fee?”

  He explained the entire situation, talking on and on. He was handsome, in a tall Irish kind of way, and knew it. He made it part of his persuasiveness, but we had already decided. Still, we listened. Charlotte, a missing infant, and Anna, a missing threeyear-old. The baby’s mother was Claudia Keating, recently widowed. Anna was the daughter of Charlotte’s nanny, Miriam Stern, a Russian immigrant sponsored by the Keatings to work in this country and attend an American university.

  Only a small chance remained of finding the children alive, but I knew why Ray suggested me. I might be the only one able to exploit that one small chance. Police have their methods and with them, limitations. My methods are different.

  The priest reached into his inside pocket again. This time he drew out a check and placed it on the desk between us. It was already made out to me and was indeed generous. The check was drawn on the account of, and signed by, Claudia Keating.

  “Why is Mrs. Keating so worried about the nanny? She just lost her husband and her own child.”

  “She feels responsible. It happened here. In New York. Miriam and Anna were under her care, you know. Strangers in a strange land and all that. She wants to find the guilty party, and the police won’t do that if they settle on Miriam. She is sure Miriam is innocent. Mrs. Keating is a tough woman. You wouldn’t think it but...”

  He looked at the check and then at me. I didn’t care about the money. It was the children—the second cut. My own children wailed softly like little banshees from the mouth of the gyre. Couldn’t the gatekeeper keep them out of hearing of this conversation?

  “Will you help us?” The priest seemed worn out by his own restlessness and was finally still.

  I asked, “What do you know about Ray Martinez?”

  “Nothing. My friend just said he trusted her judgment, and I trust my friend.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Bishop Cassidy.”

  Ray socialized in rarefied circles, but I was surpri
sed she knew a Catholic bishop. “I work on my terms.”

  He nodded, somewhat eagerly. He had no idea.

  “Let me tell you about Ray,” I began.

  Chapter 2

  As soon as O’Hagan left my office, we dialed the phone. A pleasant female voice with a note of Latin music in it answered, “Dr. Martinez.”

  “Yo! Ray-Man-a-danna! Are you freakin’ nuts?”

  “Cootie! How nice to hear from you.”

  “So, you knew this is a missing kid case and you send the padre to us? I gotta tell you—the weepin’ and wailin’ and bawlin’—we couldn’t hardly think in here. Whaddaya doin’, girl?”

  Ray’s voice was calm.Her voice was always calm.“Sugartime kept you all clear, though? Isadora stayed conscious?”

  “Well, yeah. But—”

  “Then it will be all right. This is a case I think you can help on. Believe me, Cootie, I wouldn’t have suggested you if I had thought otherwise. I also thought you could use the fee.”

  “You are really so sure of us, Ray?”

  “Hello, Isadora. Yes, I am very sure of you. And you must be too, or you wouldn’t have taken the case. You did take it?”

  “Um-hm. I gave the priest permission to talk to you.”

  “How did he respond?”

  “Better than average. I think he’s had more than Psych 101.

  A little jarred, but he’ll get over it.”

  “Until he meets Hawk.”

  “Let’s hope he never does,” I said.

  Chapter 3

  The priest was to return in four hours to escort me to the Keating residence. He thought that would be enough time to bring the family together and brief them. How much he told them, I left to his discretion. In the meantime, I wanted a look at the police file.

  O’Hagan had been surprised to learn that I knew the lead officer on the case. It wasn’t such a big coincidence. Leo Gianetti is head of the mayor’s special task force on missing and abused child cases. At the time of its formation, Ray Martinez was already a prominent authority in the city on the most abhorrent forms of child abuse, so it was no surprise that she was asked to help educate this fledgling group of officers, handpicked from various precincts in the five boroughs. It was a coincidence that Gianetti was headquartered in my neighborhood stationhouse. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a coincidence is just a coincidence.

  I walked the four short blocks south and three long blocks east to the police station.

  I think you should deposit the check first. We need new clothes.

  “Our clothes are fine, Hester,” I muttered. “First things first.” One of the good things about New York City for a person like me is that everybody talks to themselves on the street. I’m not special.

  Never you mind about clothes, Missy, snapped Olive. We can pay the rent and the phone bill and put the rest in the bank for the next time we are between cases.

  You are always such a killjoy. Can’t we live a little?

  If it were left up to you we wouldn’t live at all. We’d be in debt up to our pierced lobes.

  I have learned to more or less tune Olive and Hester out when they go at each other, which is most of the time. None of us bothers to play peacemaker anymore.

  The air was cool, the trees just popping their buds. Jonquils bloomed on every patch of dirt: around trees, in the center islands along Broadway, in scattered beds throughout the parks. Alongside them, tiny crocuses valiantly displayed their deep purple. Hester loves flowers and will rhapsodize ad nauseam about yellow feeding the soul after a long, drab city winter. But Aurora, deaf and mute though she is, is more eloquent. After our sightings of the first signs of a New York spring, she will produce paintings of flowers or barely budded tree branches that will either take your breath away or soothe your soul. Sometimes both. Her style is deceptive in that at first it seems to be a realistic rendering, but on closer study, it is not. Her colors are alive, her plants seem to breathe and have sentience. I know nothing about painting, but I’m glad that, inexplicably, she does. The SoHo gallery that buys her work pays more of our bills than do SHILOH & Co.’s detective and consulting fees.

  “The two of you can it for awhile and give me some peace. That’s not a request.” When we are working, I’m in charge, no questions asked. That is in our contracts. I invoked my contractual privilege now as I crossed Amsterdam Avenue.

  The stationhouse was ahead of me in the middle of the block. I know where it is and still it always appears just before I expect it to. Tucked between brownstones, whose stairs rise to heavy wooden doors, the station’s street-level entrance has a cave-like feeling, its glass doors notwithstanding. The laminated poster of a blown-up letter from a local grade school thanking the police officers for their sacrifices during 9/11 has been hanging on the red brick front of the building so long it is tattered; so is the yellow banner expressing the precinct’s appreciation for the neighborhood’s support. The vestibule is tiny. Just an air lock to keep winter’s chill out and air-conditioned air in. Its only ornament is a poster commanding cheerfully: Get to know your local police force! depicting an absurdly handsome officer hand in hand with a worshipful child. Inside, the décor is standard New York Institutional Shabby. Our city is lucky to scrounge up enough money to pay the police and fire department—there’s nothing left over for interior decorators. In fact, the place hasn’t changed much from the first time I went there with Ray fifteen years ago. The same dusty green on the walls, the inadequate lighting. The rows of dark benches and metal chairs. What is here now that wasn’t back then is the bulletproof glass shielding the front desk.

  I don’t like it here. Why not, Bethy-June? The officers were always nice to us. It’s dark. It’s dark in here. Not that dark. Now quiet so Isadora can work. I’ll tell you a story.

  Lance began to speak, not sing, the lyrics to “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”

  Lance’s voice is like background music and doesn’t distract me. I needed him to keep Bethy-June quiet. She is too young for contracts. “Hello, Rudolfo.”

  Rudy is a long-term cop with a short neck and eyebrows that qualify as a fire hazard. He’s a cop who loves and excels at his desk job. Early in his career he was shot in the leg and instead of disability, he took the front desk. He looked up at me from some papers he was scribbling on. His eyes have a piercing, ice-blue brilliance. His mouth was full of gum and has been since he quit smoking two years ago. He grinned broadly, continuing to chew. “Shiloh! How’s it going?” He spoke loudly. He seemed to think he had to shout through the barrier although it was hardly soundproof.

  “Okay. How’re you?”

  “No complaints.” Chew, chew. “Here to see Gianetti?”

  I nodded.

  “I think he’s in but you never know with these guys. They like to sneak in and out the back.” There is nothing much that Rudy does not know about the goings-on in this precinct. He hasn’t sat in on any of my sessions, but he still knows all about me. He has always been kind, and never condescending.

  Grinning his full-faced grin, chewing ferociously, he picked up the receiver and punched in a couple numbers on his phone. “Yeah, Lieutenant, Shiloh’s here to see you. Right.” He nodded toward the back staircase.“Go on up.We got a new coffeemaker. It brews poison.” Chew chew.

  “Thanks, Rudy.”

  I took the steps two at a time up the stairway that spiraled inward so that as you disappeared from view to the first floor, you appeared with the railing on the other side on the second. I made my way to the back of the long narrow room through a clutter of desks, filing cabinets and chairs and the ambient noise of ringing phones, voices, shuffling papers and drawers opening and closing. A couple uniformed officers nodded in my direction. I nodded back.

  Gianetti was standing, waiting for me, at the back of the room. “Hey, Shiloh!” In the fifteen years since I first met him, Leo Gianetti has begun to show the effects of his job. The burdens of what he’s discovered about the dark side of human nature weigh
heavily all over him. He’s gained weight, his face is lined and starting to pouch. “What’s doin’?” He pointed to a metal chair that was orphaned in the aisle.

  I placed it squarely in front of his desk and sat down.“Couple of missing kids. Charlotte Keating and Anna Stern.”

  “Oh.” He sat down heavily. Hester teases him about his added weight sometimes,but we really are not amused.We don’t want to lose him to a heart attack or a stroke. He’s one of the good guys. Tough, not mean. I have watched him work his way up from a junior member of the task force to its head, guiding it from an experiment to an established and respected unit. He has seen us go from a quivering mass of fearful, sometimes hysterical amnesiac jelly to a functioning group with almost total collective memory. I’ve been consulted on a couple of cases, but only tangentially; Ray is the task force’s main resource. She is frequently called upon to interview victims and perps for the police and for the DA. She is often the expert witness in child abuse cases. Occasionally, she asks me to sit in on interviews. I have an uncanny knack for knowing when somebody is or is not telling the truth. Ray says I’m better than a polygraph because I don’t need a yes or no answer to spot a lie.

  Leo slid a file across the desk toward me. “You can look at it. You can’t take it with you.”

  We knew the drill and didn’t need to take it with us. Cootie has a photographic memory. Unfortunately, I have to let him out to read. “Man, this is heavy shit,” he said as he turned a page.

  “Cooterman! How you doin’?” Leo stuck out his hand and Cootie shook it. Cootie and Hester are the Company handshakers.

  “Okay, lawman. Doin’ okay! The chicks have got themselves into some shit, here, huh? The howlin’ earlier. Shee-it! You shoulda heard it!”