“Rhiannon and I fell in love with France when we were there this summer. I’m taking her back to Toulouse. I’ve found a wonderful school she can attend there. I don’t know what Teddy will do, because I don’t know what Global will do when they hear your report.”
She hesitated, then added, “I don’t want you to think I blame you in any way for—for—the collapse of my marriage. I think the time will come when I will be grateful that my eyes were opened, but right now I can’t feel much but pain. There’s something else you deserve to know. Teddy came home the night of Global’s television debut with the emblem missing from one of his Ferragamo loafers. Maybe it’s weak of me, but the day you asked about the emblem I went home and threw out the shoes.”
She left abruptly on that line. I didn’t think Regine Mauger needed to report any of that in her coy little phrases.
Mauger and some of the others continued to harangue me. Lotty came forward and announced that as my physician she was declaring an end to my stamina: I was recovering from serious injuries, in case they had forgotten. The group looked suitably abashed and packed up cassette recorders and other equipment. Morrell gave each person a copy of the videotape and slides. The two men sitting with Father Lou grunted and got up to escort the reporters out of the building.
“Now what?” Sal asked when they had gone.
“Now—” I shrugged. “Now I try to patch my business back together. Hope that enough people buy my version of events that some of the misery at Coolis will end, even if no one is ever arrested for Nicola Aguinaldo’s murder.”
“And what is Robbie going to do?” Sal asked.
I grinned. “Eleanor came to pick him up on Wednesday afternoon. He ran into the church screaming that he was claiming sanctuary, that he would chain himself to the altar and go on a hunger strike. That should have thrilled her, but it only made her angrier. She finally worked out a deal with Father Lou that Robbie could stay on as a boarder and go to St. Remigio’s. Father Lou said that for a donation to the St. Remigio scholarship fund and money to repair the damage to the altar, he was willing to tell the state to drop the trespassing charge against Baladine.”
Watching Father Lou blandly extort a fifty–thousand–dollar pledge from Eleanor Baladine had been one of the few joyous moments of the past few months. She had arrived at St. Remigio’s with her lawyer, convinced that she was going to browbeat the priest with threats of additional charges of kidnapping, as well as of assault against Baladine—man coming to claim his son is set on by dogs, rabid detectives, and other scum. She left without her son and with a signed undertaking to support him at the school. The sop to her pride was Father Lou’s grave statement that boxing would make Robbie a truly manly man, and that he, Father Lou, would personally oversee her son’s training.
“The funny thing is, Robbie actually wants to learn to box,” I told Sal. “This boy who couldn’t learn to swim or play tennis to please his parents runs wind sprints every morning after mass.”
I’d moved back home, of course, but for some reason I found myself getting up early every day and driving over to St. Remigio’s for the six o’clock mass. Robbie or one of the other St. Remigio boxers would serve. Father Lou gruffly announced I could read the lesson as long as I was there. All that week, as I made my way through the book of Job, I thought about the women at Coolis. If there was a God, had He delivered the women into the hands of Satan for a wager? And would He appear finally in the whirlwind and rescue them?
49 Scar Tissue
My vindication by the Chicago press was something of a nine–day wonder. Clients who’d left me for Carnifice called to say they’d never doubted me and they would have assignments for me as soon as I got off the disabled list. Old friends in the Chicago Police Department called, demanding to know why I hadn’t complained to them about Douglas Lemour; they would have fixed the problem for me. I didn’t try to argue with them about all the times in the past they’d told me to mind my own business and leave police work to them. And Mary Louise Neely showed up one morning, her face pinched with misery.