F Train (7 page)

They drove onto the Prospect Expressway, far from express under the onslaught of sleet and high winds, and the entire length of Ocean Parkway was no better, an ice run all the way out to their destination, a journey stretching to almost an hour before they turned into Avenue X, where the Priester family lived just off McDonald in a brick two-family house.

“Looks like the Reilly home in Bay Ridge,” Flo said.

“Marie Priester's mother owns the building, lives on the ground floor. Her place has the sign on the door.”

It wasn't a large sign, only a card, framed under glass:
SISTER JULIA. GOD'S GIFT TO HELP PEOPLE. HEALER & READER.

Flo rang the ground-floor apartment bell and the door opened at once.

An elderly woman in a black veil poked her head out. More quickly than the rotten weather and Flo's tired state of mind allowed her to move, the woman grabbed her arm and pulled her inside.

“God's peace to you, daughter. You're the police detective, I can tell. Come in, honey, this way. And you, sir…” She turned to Frank Murphy. “You wait in the sitting room there and help yourself to coffee, all you want. But I'm sorry, I can't work with more than one person at a time.”

Flo was startled, as much by what the woman said as by her appearance. Her face—creamy tan, as wrinkled as elephant hide, a spray of freckles across her cheekbones—was framed in a black cotton shawl with white trim, almost like an old-fashioned nun's habit but without the starchy white accessories, for Flo an appearance remarkably reminiscent of Mother Teresa. Except for the makeup. Sister Julia Priester was as painted as a Comanche on the warpath, her cosmetics right up to the job: eyes heavily rimmed with mascara, slanted eyes, dark brown, flecked yellow, limpid and alert as the eyes of a young cat: a lean and clever face, powdered party-rouge, lips that, for all her advanced years—mid-
seventies?—were
a slippery, glossy-vibrant, chorus girl scarlet, her hair pale reddish, almost rosy, a spry spray of wispy curls poking out from under her head wrap.

The old woman stood almost as tall as Frank Murphy, a couple of inches over Flo, and with considerably broader shoulders than both detectives. Her teeth were bright and still all hers, it appeared. Her handshake was strong, even when grasping Frank's rock of a hand.

“I'm Sister Julia, I help people.” The voice had a Caribbean lilt. “Yes, I'm Marie's mother, and I've been waiting for you. I didn't want to go calling you up and disturbing you, you got so much to do. No words can ever describe my loss, I swear it's beyond all human measure.”

Before Flo could respond, and as if Sister Julia already knew all the answers anyway, the healer gripped her arm, steering her into a dimly lighted room.

“My office. Please, Detective, do sit down.”

Flo sat on a metal folding chair beside a card table. On the table were two teacups and a black iron teapot. Sister Julia reclined on a chaise longue, and in the soft glow of an imitation Tiffany lamp her eyes appeared as shattered prisms, shards of broken glass.

“Thank you for coming, my dear, I appreciate the gesture. I'm grateful for whatever the police can do. Cooperation is always my guiding light. And now we can finally find out what's really the truth in all this. We can pray together for my daughter's soul. And for all their souls…. Won't you join me in prayer, my dear?”

The old woman reached across and squeezed Flo's arm as if to reassure her,
Everything will be all right, only listen to me
…

Flo slid forward in her chair, hesitantly like an intruder or an apostate returning to the fold after many years, uncertain now if she'd still be welcome.

“You have something silver, my dear?” As much a statement as a question.

Flo produced a silver Marine Corps key ring, a gift from Eddie. But she remained hesitant. This wasn't shaping up as any typical police questioning. If the
Post
's Terry Dangler—or that faker Howie Gerald—ever got a whiff of this, goodbye career in homicide
investigations,
hello squad-car night-duty patrol in Bushwick or somewhere equally forsaken.

“Please, cross my palm,” Sister Julia Priester said, and into the circle of light she extended her broad, open, heavily creased hand. “Go ahead, honey, just make a cross.”

“Mrs. Priester, we have a lot to talk about, I have questions about Marie—”

“So do I. Still first things first now, my dear, now let's do this right, if we want the right answers. If we want to get to the bottom of so much misfortune.”

And with the key ring, Flo sketched a cross on Sister Julia Priester's wrinkled palm.

“Now your hand, my dear.”

Flo, reluctant but growing more curious, wary of offending and determined to learn, held out her right hand and felt it grasped at once. The message:
Expect no hesitancy from me
.

“Look, my dear, right on this spot here, see?” Sister Julia pointed at a line on Flo's palm. “Many children over a long lifetime…but you don't, do you?”

“Just one daughter.”

“Your character is what it really means. You save so many lives even though you gave birth to only one. So in fact you're actually a mother to many more people than you think, the kind of mother who truly counts…” Sister Julia Priester nodded to herself. “See? Now you can relax, my dear, nothing but the truth here. I lost my daughter in the worst way possible, my only child. You know exactly what I mean. The flower of my life gone in the springtime of her life. Stick by me because together we got to stop all this killing. And we got to pay attention to everything, no matter what the spirits say, we have to listen closely. It's hard, I know, easier said than done. And you're not used to this, I can see. You're getting restless, I can see that. But we'll get there, you're determined, I can see that, too. Just stick by me.”

She held Flo's hand closer to her eyes. The healer was a first-class detective who might as well as have been frisking her, amassing data before picking out the right clues. Flo knew exactly how hard picking up clues could be. How difficult the search through facts to uncover character and motives, waiting for the heart of a matter to come slipping out.

Flo gambled: “What about the future, Sister, how's this going to work out—”

“Future? We've used up our future. Of course we can still pray. What we do—you and I, a detective, a healer and reader—it's all a form of prayer for us, isn't it? Always praying for something…”

Her voice trailed off, the silence unexpected and unnerving. Flo tugged her hand away. This wasn't at all how she had planned the day.
What an unusual collection of people we come to place trust in
…. You trust your doctor, lawyer (usually), priest (for some), and now she added to her homicide investigator's list…
Healer & Reader
.

“We have some questions, Sister, maybe it's time Detective Murphy and I got to work. You almost finished?”

“Soon, soon. You want to find my daughter's killers before they kill again. I can't talk about this in front of that other police officer, but with a woman, it's different, it's not as hard, and I'm suffering enough already. The killers aren't half as smart as they think they are. How could they mistake my daughter for someone worth killing? No, you don't have to answer that. I will—they couldn't tell one of us colored people from the other, that's how stupid they are. They were looking to kill someone else. It's that simple. And if they're so stupid, they leave traces, evidence, signs. So just go back and you'll find something. You know, I saw that dumb mayor of ours on TV yesterday. Talking about all this. He's a liar, that one, or maybe something worse. I don't like him at all. He has what my Italian clients call
malocchio
, the evil eye. And that
is
the worst. It's almost impossible to defend yourself against the evil eye. And he went right out there on TV and mentioned your name. Even I heard it. So they must have certainly heard. Now they know who you are. That's how they think, you know, people like them, it's in their twisted brains. I understand their kind, I had their sort as clients. But no more. I don't have to take sneaky business now. I was doing all right without that trash, until they got my daughter. So God bless you, my dear, may His peace be your peace, you'll stop them before they do this again to other poor people. Pray for me, honey, and I pray for you. You want a little hot soup? You got to eat. Get your partner there to join us.”

Sister Julia led Flo and Frank Murphy to the dining room table, expectantly set for a meal. She went to work serving them pea soup with ham, hot corn muffins, cold beer.

“You eat first. I can't go talking more on an empty stomach.”

When they finished the soup, Sister Julia Priester insisted on serving seconds. Brushing corn muffin crumbs into a tidy little pile by her bowl, she said, “You must have a good idea who the crazy ones are, the ones who did it. Don't you?”

“We're working on it,” Flo said, “with everything we have. Your prayers will help, I'm sure.”

“Grateful to hear that, dear, I truly am. So now what else you want to know from me? Besides what I already told you.”

“Did your daughter live here with you?” said Flo.

“Upstairs. She had her own apartment. Paid me rent from the day she started working. And I put it all into the mortgage. This whole place was supposed to be hers someday. She was the best daughter any mother could ever ask for.”

“Mrs.
Priester—Sister
Julia—did Marie have a man she was seeing?”

“They were engaged. In secret, since he was a lawyer at the firm where she worked. Close to making partner. And while there was no real rule against them going out together, the bosses weren't all that wild about lawyers hanging around with the help, you have to understand that. Moreover, he'd be the first person of color there ever to make partner.”

“He's also African American—”

“No, Chinese American. Born over there, prep school, college, and law school here. That's why they hired him. He's a very smart man, William, went to Harvard, and he speaks Chinese, which is what they like him for. He gets a lot of business for them over in China. In fact, he's still over there right now. When he heard what happened, when the firm told him, he sent me all these beautiful flowers.” She nodded at a large bouquet of white chrysanthemums that filled a bowl on the coffee table. “He can't come back from China in time for her funeral. Other people from the firm will come, lots of them. Marie was a well-liked person there. She was going to resign soon as William made partner and they got married. Start up a family.”

“William—”

“William Eng.”

“I see.” But Flo didn't really see. “Mrs. Priester, did your daughter often come home late from work?”

“Sometimes, but I didn't keep track of her coming and going. I'm not that kind of mother. Marie was independent, just the way I raised her, all by myself.”

Sister Julia went into the kitchen and returned with a coffeepot. She filled their cups.

“Marie and William, they told me they'd be looking for their own place soon. They wanted a shorter subway ride over to his office. Somewhere probably in Park Slope, since William could afford it once he made partner. And then their kids could have played up in the park over there. Could have, but won't now.”

Flo reached for her briefcase and removed an envelope. “So there were no other men in her life?”

Julia Priester's face hardened. “What do you mean, Officer, was she two-timing William? Now what got that in your mind?”

“Next to Marie on the subway was a man. His name was John James Reilly. We have reason to believe he knew Marie, and that's why they were sitting next to each other. So what we'd like to know, Mrs. Priester, did she ever mention his name to you? John James Reilly.”

“Never heard nor seen no John James Reilly. This is foolishness.”

Flo took a death scene photo from the envelope. “This man in the picture, you sure you've never seen him?”

“Of course I've seen him. Everybody has. In the newspaper. On TV. But that was the first time I ever saw him. I think he was just there on the subway, that's all, like all those other poor people in that car. Marie wasn't running around with other men, if that's what you're driving at, Officer, she was too smart for anything like that. Don't forget, I raised her.”

Flo put the photo back in the envelope. Often, after a tense situation revealed a key fact, she could feel her heart pounding, a prayer forming, that truth was on the brink of revealing itself.

“Do you think, Sister Julia, Marie and the man next to her, maybe they could have been friends from the office or somewhere?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I simply don't know is what I'm saying to you. I can't tell you a single thing more than I actually know. You have to come up with some different questions. Yes, I'm a reader and healer, but I can only tell what I see, what I hear, I don't go making things up that I don't know. Not me, never.”

“Do you know why she was out so late that night?”

“Like I said, I never asked. My daughter's business was her business. Sometimes she had to work late, and they paid her double, even triple time on weekends. Marie worked hard, she knew the real value of money. She was smart. Like I said, I raised her. No man around here.”

She shot a sideways glance at Frank Murphy. He showed the good sense to stay intent on drinking his coffee, grasping the cup in his large hands, silently avoiding the women's give-and-take.

Flo saw no margin in telling Julia Priester about the picture of her daughter tucked in John James Reilly's wallet along with his cash.

Or about the pictures of the two of them together that agent Reilly's widow said she'd found. Including the shot with the Chinese American man, who might or might not have been William Eng, Wall Street lawyer.