The Sixth Station, page 8
He smiled. “Okay, but remember, Jesus was a seditionist set up by the powers-that-be back then. The Jewish priests and their Roman rulers.”
“You can’t be serious. You’re buying into the conspiracy theorists’ nonsense? You?”
“No, but you have to wonder. Okay, back to reality. Your job and now your apartment. Are you sure they didn’t get anything?”
“Not sure. I ran outta there like my backside was on fire. I mean, it was terrifying. And the cops? Way too busy with a few million lunatics to investigate. I couldn’t even get to the precinct to make a report.
“The goons who broke in made a huge mess—trashed the place. It was like they wanted me to know that they’d been in there, whoever ‘they’ are.” Then I remembered the Wright-Lewis call and, switching gears, asked, “Can I use your phone? Mine is company-issue and I’m temporarily without visible means of communication.”
He answered by saying instead, “You really should find out if they got anything.…”
“I don’t really care right now.” The man was a real one-track-mind kind of guy, I thought, so I reached into my bag and pulled out my iPad. “All I care about is right here.”
He let out a breath and visibly relaxed. “Well, that’s a damned relief.”
“Right,” I said, trying to get him focused on my life crisis, of which the apartment break-in was only one part.
“And you’re still wearing that same scarf from yesterday, right? Nobody gave you a new one or anything, right?”
“What are you—the check-in guy at the airport?”
“It’s just that, I mean, as a reporter and all, you have to keep your stuff private. And maybe you can use that scarf someday for DNA evidence.”
I looked at him, puzzled. “It’s Father Hercule Poirot. Who knew?”
“Sorry, I guess I am playing private eye, but you never know about these things.”
“How about concerning yourself with this one instead: ben Yusef’s words to me were ‘Go forth for I am six.’ Do you know of any theological meaning to ‘I am six’?”
“Hmmm. As a priest, no. As a spiritualist, yes.”
I looked at him, cocked my head, and smirked. “Are you pulling one over on me?”
“No. I’m not so one-sided as my calm, handsome demeanor would indicate,” he joshed.
Then: “Well, six six six is the ‘number of the beast,’ or the Anti-christ, as you know. But the number six alone has a totally different meaning. Six is the number that is supposed to help a person unfold solutions to mysteries in a calm, rational way. It also means ‘enlightenment,’ or a light on the path to solving a spiritual dilemma. Like whether a lapsed Catholic should come back to Christ, perhaps?”
“‘Oy,’ as they say in Latin,” I joked back. “Forget I asked.”
He had another thought. “When you spoke of the Crusades—ever hear of the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars?”
“Who?”
“A Gnostic Christian sect that flourished in the Middle Ages. Historians divide the Albigensian crusade into six phases—if that means anything…”
“Talk about obscure. No, I don’t think so,” I said, my sarcasm dripping, even though he certainly didn’t deserve it.
Damn! Stop it—he’s a nice guy.
I dropped my attitude, pulled out the note I’d made with Wright-Lewis’s prepaid phone number, and looked at it instead.
“You ever hear of an area code like this?” I asked him as I handed him the paper.
“No, where is it?”
“Don’t know. But if I got it right, it’s the number of a woman named Maureen Wright-Lewis.”
“The spy?” he asked, visibly astonished.
“Yes, and how do you know that, and why do you look so shocked?”
“Do I look shocked,” he said, not as a question. “I’m a history buff.”
Right.
I looked at him, more confused than certain of what this guy was all about, and punched in the number, sure I’d written it down incorrectly anyway.
It picked up after one ring. Sadowski had moved to the edge of his seat in the chair directly across from me. He was trying to listen in, I was certain of it.
“Hello, Ms. Russo,” came the voice on the other end of the phone.
Jackpot! I had gotten the number right after all. “Ms. Wright-Lewis?” I wasn’t sure if it was her secretary or the woman herself.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“If I may ask where ‘here’ is?”
“Rhinebeck, New York.”
“I thought you—”
She cut me off. “Do you know Rhinebeck?”
“Yes, I do. About ninety miles north of the city up on the Taconic…”
It may as well have been in Europe if it meant getting out of this insanely cordoned-off city. How the hell was she in the USA?
“I’m in Rhinecliff, actually. Tiny little village next to Rhinebeck. You need to drive up to see me,” she commanded.
“Well, I’m in Midtown Manhattan right now,” I explained. “It’s like a city under siege. It is a city under siege actually.…”
“Yes. I know that,” she said quietly, her voice urgent. “Still, I need to see you. Today. It’s about ben Yusef. He’s not who you think he is, and he’s not the one who should be on trial. When can you be here?”
She left the reporter part of me no choice.
“I’ll try my best, Ms. Wright-Lewis. But besides the city being cordoned off, you know, ever since what happened to me yesterday, I’m kind of under siege myself. I can’t go anywhere without being mobbed or followed. But if it’s that important…”
“Yes, it is that important.” A pause. “Here’s the address. Have you a pen?”
“Hold on a sec,” I said, reaching for my pen. “What’s the address please?”
“It’s Twenty Grinnell Street, Rhinecliff, New York,” she answered. “When may I expect you, Ms. Russo?”
“Well, like I said, Midtown is cordoned off, and I can’t get to my car, which is parked in the garage under my apartment building, because my street is closed to traffic.…”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” she said.
Man! “I will certainly do my best,” I answered. “But I think I might be like a hippie trying to get to Woodstock back in the day.”
I don’t know if she heard that or not, because I realized that she was no longer on the line. Nonetheless I said, “Hello? Ms. Wright-Lewis? Hello?” Nothing.
“That’s odd,” I said to Father Sadowski. “She wants to see me and she wants me to drive to Rhinecliff. How in hell am I supposed to do that? I couldn’t get my car out of my building garage if I were Jesus Himself.”
“I have a car,” he offered, “but it’s parked in Harlem. Cheaper there.”
I thought about it a minute and said, “I guess I could take the subway to Harlem … but I’m sure the goons are waiting for me, though.…”
His eyes twinkled. “They aren’t waiting for a couple of priests walking on Forty-eighth and Lexington,” he said. “Sit tight a minute.”
Sadowski left me sitting there and went out the rectory door, which led, I presumed, into the Church of the Holy Family proper. He returned about a half hour later dressed in his blacks with starched clerical collar and requisite big black priest shoes.
He was holding a dry-cleaning bag in one hand and a beat-up shopping bag in the other.
“I figured the priest thing was too corny,” he offered, handing me the bag. “So I lifted one of the nun’s habits. Some of the young nuns like to dress up. Makes them feel more … I don’t know. Anyway, you can slip the whole habit over your regular clothes.”
“Me as a nun? The church might collapse,” I said.
“We should get a move on,” he urged, ignoring my quip.
I slipped the nun’s garment over my head and stepped into the bathroom, where I scrubbed my face clean, slipped on the black stacked heels, which were somehow exactly my size, then some black sheer panty hose (Isn’t panty hose how I got into this mess? I thought) and a pair of horrible no-prescription-lens granny sunglasses, and slipped my jeans back on. The last item I attempted was the starched wimple. I tried keeping the hard white vinyl headband in place on my forehead while I pulled on the veil, but then realized the veil came first. I tucked in all my hair and was happy to see Velcro tabs at the back that would keep the damned thing from falling off.
“Voilà!” I said, happily emerging from the bathroom with a curtsy.
“Dear God,” Sadowski said. “Put on your rosary, Sister!”
When I looked totally stumped as to how one would do such a thing, he stepped in and draped it for me. “Thanks, I almost hung myself trying to get this veil on.”
“Let’s go,” he said, handing me my red satchel. I put my Fryes and leather jacket into the shopping bag and then put a newspaper on top.
He looked me over and shook his head. “Hmmm. Not very nun-like, but too late to do anything about that.” We began to head toward the door that led to the stairs that led to the tunnel that led to Forty-eighth Street.
“Sadowski,” I said, pausing midstep, “why are you doing this? What do you care if I get an interview with someone who nobody’s heard about in decades who lives God-knows-where doing God-knows-what?”
“I’m living vicariously?”
“Right. Not to look a gift horse, and it’s a big gift—but, I mean, why have you rescued me from mad crowds both times I was in trouble, and now this? And the car and all.”
“I’m a priest. I help people,” he said, his hand on the knob of the door.
“Pardon my Latin, but bullshit.”
He opened the cellar door and flicked on the wall switch. “Guess the light’s broken,” he said, as I followed him through the door and down the pitch-black stairwell, beginning to think that maybe this wasn’t a great idea.
He must have picked up my concern, because he called back, “Don’t worry, God is on your side.”
Oh. “Next time he chooses up sides, you think I can be spared from His team?” I said, waiting for an answer that didn’t come.
“Eugene? Father Sadowski?” I heard him mount the stairs and open the door. Then I heard it slam shut.
10
I tried to feel my way along the wall. It was damp and felt cool-going-to-cold. Like a tomb. Like the tomb of Jesus Himself, I thought for no reason, and I suddenly had an overwhelming need to get out of there.
I felt my way along the damp walls and reached the stairs. I mounted a few steps, forgetting that I was wearing the damned habit, and caught a stacked heel on the hem. I fell backward probably six or so steps and hit my head against the rear stone wall. OK, I really, really need to get outta here, I thought, frantically rubbing the back of my head over the veil. Was I bleeding? I didn’t feel anything wet, so I stood back up carefully and felt for the stairs again.
I made my way back up and reached for the doorknob. Locked.
Panic hit in a way that I hadn’t experienced since I let go of my mom’s hand at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade when I was seven. The difference was on Thanksgiving my mom had reached through the crowd and grabbed me up in about ten seconds. There was no one to grab me now—although I feared that right outside that locked door there may well, in fact, be two people: one in Armani and one in a clerical collar. Was I simply having an anxiety attack, or were my reporter instincts taking over?
Be rational.
I moved back down the stairs and felt my way through the tunnel and up the opposite stairs to the rectory door. Locked again. Why would Eugene lock me in?
Just then I heard the other door opening on its old hinges. Sadowski called out, “Alessandra? Where are you? It’s safe. Come on, we don’t have time.”
In full anxiety attack mode now, I heard him climbing down the stairs.
“Oh, boy,” I heard him mutter. Then, “Alessandra! Dammit. Where are you? Alessandra!”
I was barely breathing, or trying my hardest not to, my heart pounding so hard I was sure it was echoing around the tunnel.
“Alessandra!” Ms. Russo, you don’t know what you’re dealing with.
He called out, “I had to check to see if there was anybody out there.”
At that, the lights came blazing back on, and there he was standing right at the bottom of the steps below me. Holding a gun.
I let out a cry, and he looked down and said, “Oh. This.”
I tried to make myself as small as possible as he started up the stairs. “I went back into the rectory to get it,” he said. “In case—”
“In case of what?” I whispered, my voice almost leaving me completely.
“In case the goons who trashed your place were out there.” He was three steps from me now.
“It’s all clear,” he said, holding out his free hand.
“No!” I said.
He seemed surprised. “I told you, there’s nobody out in the school or the yard. It’s okay. Really.”
“What do you want? Why are you doing this? You have a gun and you locked me in.”
“No,” he said, dragging out the word. “I locked them out, in case there was a them, that is. But there isn’t. Come on now … just step down toward me.…”
“No.”
“What choice do you have? You can trust me, or you can stay there until you get older than the wine.”
“Not funny.”
“But I think you have more important things to do.”
“What?”
“Alessandra, Alessandra, Alessandra,” he said more like a frustrated dad than a frustrated father. “Haven’t you started to figure anything out yet? Me? I think you’re the one who gets to tell the story.…”
“I don’t know what you mean!” I looked at him, one hand held out like a lifeline, while in the other he held a gun that could end my life.
When I didn’t move, he raised the hand with the gun, as I let out a groan. “Oh, God…”
“Here,” he said. “Take it.”
Was he going to fire the instant I grabbed the gun? Self-defense and all that? With no choice, I took the gun from him. Just like that.
He took my free hand. “Come on now, we don’t have much time.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Time? As of that morning, I either had too much time or none at all. I slipped the gun into my red bag and held on to his hand. Crazy? Definitely.
We walked through the church’s tunnel once more, came up the opposite stairs, and emerged into the same area we’d walked through the night before. School was not in session. The crowds made it too dangerous.
Sadowski and I walked through the play area, filled with the overflow crowd avoiding the construction site, onto Forty-eighth Street.
How can life go on normally when everything in yours is in upheaval?
For now we were just two clerics walking through. There was a full contingent of guards at the Libya House across the street where Gadhafi used to stay when he gave his rants at the United Nations.
If I’d thought that a press pass helped in parting the crowds, it was nothing compared to a nun’s habit. Nobody messed with the sisters. The sea of humans parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Sadowski chuckled at my reaction. I was starting to trust him again.
“There are some advantages to a life of celibacy,” he yelled above the noise of the protesters.
We managed to turn onto Second Avenue, push through the walls of people, and finally make it to Grand Central. There were police posted at every entrance. I boldly pushed forward and stood on the line to get in.
“Ah, you can’t pass through the metal detectors,” Sadowski reminded me. “The gun?”
“Oh. What now?”
I felt him reach into my bag and slip the gun out and under his cassock.
“How will you get on the subway with the gun?” I asked.
“Clearly, I won’t. You’re on your own. The parking garage is West 125th Street between Adam Clayton and Malcolm X. You can’t miss it. Well, you could, but most people wouldn’t.” He handed me a key and said, “It’s spot number G156—self-park.”
When I was near the front of the line, the priest handed me his iPhone. “Good luck. And remember, God is on your side!” In a second he was swallowed up by the crowd—just another cleric in a city full of them. I climbed down into the belly of the station until I got to the “7” train’s dirty platform, where I peered down the tracks for an oncoming train, and then back around the platform for—what?—I didn’t really know. The “German”?
The train finally roared into the station, and hundreds of passengers rushed out as an equal number rushed back in. It was beyond “SRO,” so I planted my fat stacked heels on the floor, grabbed a pole, and held on, making sure not to curse un-nun-like at anyone who would have dared to push me. But no one did. It was the habit. In fact, two people got up to offer me their seats. I took one, I’m ashamed to say.
I switched to the “D” train at the Bryant Park station. I was a nun—not a reporter. Don’t call attention to yourself, I kept repeating like a mantra.
Again several people who’d probably gone to Catholic school offered up their seats. The fear of nuns runs deep.
I exited at 125th Street, Harlem’s busiest, where fast-food chain restaurants thrive along with the local fried-chicken joints, coffee shops, and mom-and-pop clothing shops blaring old-school funk out of their exterior speakers.
I almost cried at the real life out there that had nothing to do with the unreality that my life had become.
I walked a couple of blocks in my nun’s habit noticing how people nodded and smiled and showed the kind of respect that New Yorkers just don’t give to people wearing normal clothes.
In the middle of the block, I saw the big illuminated plastic UPARKIT.COM sign mounted sideways to the building. A low-rent joint if ever I’d seen one. It would be safer to park on an abandoned street. Didn’t Sadowski ever watch TV? Everyone who walks into a parking garage on TV gets beaten, killed, and/or raped.
Luckily the G in G156 stood for “ground,” so at least I didn’t have to climb any stairwells.
Who’d rape a nun? Oh, right, Riverside, California, Chicago, and here in Harlem, when they left that nun carved up with twenty-seven crosses decades ago—case study Journalism 101. Don’t think about that now.…
