“I came to see you. Vega huffed. “I’d be lying if I said I came for the Mass.” His eyes settled on Delgado’s for an extra beat. “I visited Martha Torres this morning. At Sunnycrest.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Your mother would have been pleased.”
“I think so, too. But not for the same reasons.” Vega caught his breath. The cold air felt like crushed glass in his lungs. He spoke the Spanish words before he could attach to them their full meaning:
“Eres siempre mi ángel.”
Vega noticed a twitch in the folds beneath Delgado’s right eye. Vega waited.
Silence. Delgado stood very still. The gentle smile was gone.
“Do you recognize those words?” asked Vega.
Delgado met his gaze. The priest’s deep-set eyes looked more sunken than thoughtful. He’d always looked much younger than his nearly seventy years. Suddenly, with his white hair and shapeless black coat, he seemed thin and frail and not long for this world.
“Jimmy.” He exhaled the word. “Why are you asking me this?”
“I think you know.” Vega’s voice felt as frozen as the tips of his ears. “Tell me, are those the words of a priest to one of his parishioners?”
Delgado put a hand on Vega’s arm. “Maybe we should discuss this back in my office.”
Vega shook his arm away. “No! I want to know now! Were you in love with my mother? Did you kill her?”
“Dios mío, Jimmy! I would never hurt your mother! Never!”
“Martha Torres was lucid enough this afternoon to make me believe the person who killed my mother was someone she and my mother trusted,” said Vega. “You were at the apartment when the police arrived. You were covered in my mother’s blood. Ponce was covering up for somebody. That, I’m sure of. And that somebody was you.”
They were near the entrance to the D-line subway. Delgado gestured to the stairs. “Please, Jimmy. If you won’t come back to the church, then let’s at least not have this conversation on the street.”
Vega reluctantly followed Delgado down the steps into the subway tunnel. Stale, humid air rose to greet them, along with the vague scent of urine and fast food. On a Sunday afternoon, it was empty save for a homeless man in a shabby coat curled up sleeping beneath an advertisement for mattresses. Vega’s and Delgado’s steps echoed on the concrete. Delgado’s thick white hair looked as washed-out as a blank sheet of paper. His eyes had lost their sparkle.
“I did not kill your mother, Jimmy. I tried to save her life. I gave her CPR.”
Vega looked at him sharply. “You gave her more than that.”
“Yes.” Delgado exhaled. “I did.” He leaned against the grimy white tile wall of the station. He looked almost too feeble to stand. “I should have come forward a long time ago. I know that. I was weak and in my weakness, I caused a greater sin.” The old priest’s eyes turned watery when he met Vega’s. “She was the love of my life. But as God is my witness, I never once hurt her.”
“How long was this relationship between the two of you going on?”
“A long time.” Delgado closed his eyes. “I wanted to leave the priesthood over it at one point but she urged me to return to my vows. She believed this was what God had called me to do. She said if I left, I would always feel diminished in some way and she didn’t want that. So we kept our relationship platonic after that. But I never stopped loving her on an emotional level. Or spending time with her.” Delgado held Vega’s gaze. “Including on the day she died.”
“So how am I supposed to believe you didn’t kill her?”
“I was at a benefit dinner at the Holy Name Society when she died, Jimmy. A dozen priests saw me there. The police checked it out.”
Vega paced the grimy concrete. He wanted to haul off and hit the old priest for holding back all these years and maybe costing him a lead in her murder. “Ponce waited seventeen minutes before dialing nine-one-one,” said Vega. “Plus, he called you first. Why?”
“I really don’t know,” said Delgado. “I still think he panicked. But maybe it also had to do with the Chinese food.”
“The takeout food? That the police found on her dining table?”
“I bought it for your mother. She loved spareribs. Since I had a dinner engagement, I couldn’t stay.”
“So the missing receipt? The menu—?”
“Would have traced back to me.”
“That’s why you got rid of them.”
“No.” Delgado shook his head. “I would never do that. But maybe Hector did. He was not blind to what was going on between your mother and me. He saw me in the building all the time. I think he was trying to save me the embarrassment of the situation—save your mother as well. She wouldn’t have wanted it to come out, either.”
“He did more than destroy a receipt and menu for you,” said Vega.
“What do you mean?”
“He used those seventeen minutes before you arrived to disconnect the security camera in the front lobby and swap the recorded DVD for a blank one.”
“I didn’t ask him to do that! I never asked for any of this!”
“But you didn’t come forward, either,” Vega noted.