Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [133]
The door opened without so much as a tap, and an elderly man stepped inside. He was wearing a gray pinstriped suit, a white-on-white shirt, and a dark blue silk tie. He looked like a successful Beacon Hill lawyer or a businessman.
I knew that he was neither; he was Cardinal John Rooney of the Archdiocese of Boston, one of the most important religious leaders in the world, and a friend of mine.
“Hello, Annie,” he said, “nice to see you, even under the circumstances.”
“Nice to be seen, Eminence,” I said, and I smiled as I rose from my seat “You didn’t have to get all duded up to see me, though. What circumstances?”
“Oh, but I did,” Rooney said “I’m traveling incognito, you see Because of the circumstances.”
“I see. Nice threads. Very high WASP, which all us Catholics aspire to. Be careful, some chippie might try to pick you up. Come in. Please sit. It’s nearly six. Can I offer you something to drink, Eminence?”
“’John’ will do for tonight, Anne. Scotch if you have it. An old man’s drink for an old man. Getting older in a hurry.”
I fixed the cardinal a scotch, then got a Samuel Adams put of the minifridge for myself.
“’I’m honored. I think,” I added as I gave him his glass. “Here’s to—the circumstances of your visit,” I said and raised my beer.
“The perfect toast,” Rooney said and took a sip of his drink.
I have a rather complicated history with the Archdiocese of Boston, but most recently, I’ve worked several times with certain members as a private investigator. One case involved a teacher in Andover. She had been raped by a priest who taught at the same high school. Another case was about a fifteen-year-old who’d shot another boy in their church. None of the cases were happy experiences for either the cardinal or for me.
“Do you believe in God, Anne?” Rooney asked as he sat back in one of my comfy, slightly tattered armchairs.
I thought it an odd question, almost impertinent “Yes, I do. In my own, very unusual way.”
“Do you believe in God the Father, Jesus, the Blessed Mother?” the cardinal went on. He was making this very strange meeting even stranger.
I blinked a few times. “Yes. In my way.”
Cardinal Rooney then asked, “As a private investigator, are you licensed to carry a gun?”
I opened my desk drawer and showed him one of Smith & Wesson’s finest. I didn’t feel obliged to tell him that I had never fired it.
“You’re hired,” he said and knocked back the rest of his drink. “Can you leave for Los Angeles tonight? There’s something there I think you should see, Anne.”
Chapter 4
I WILL NEVER FORGET LOS ANGELES and what I found there, what I felt there.
I had first seen the graphic pictures of the terrible disease on CNN, and then on every other TV network. I had watched, cringed in horror, as the children of Los Angeles burst upon Cedars-Sinai Medical Center by the carload, all with aching joints and fever, with symptoms that could kill within days.
When I arrived at Cedars, the scene was more intense than what I had seen on TV. It was so very different to be there in the midst of the suffering and horror. I wanted to turn away from it all, and maybe I should have. Maybe I should have run into the Hollywood Hills and never come out.
The sound of chaos and fear was well over a hundred decibels inside the fabled hospital, which had been turned into a confused mess. The shouting of the emergency-room nurses and doctors, and the wailing of their young patients, ricocheted sharply off beige tile walls.
It was so sad, so ominous. A portent of the future?
A curly-haired boy of four or so in yellow pjs, was waiting to be intubated. I winked at him, and the boy managed to wink back. On another table, an adolescent girl was curled up in a fetal position around her stuffed sandy-haired bear. She was crying deep, heartrending sobs as doctors tried to straighten her contorted limbs. Other children were banked in a holding pattern along the perimeter of the room. Policemen, their radios squawking loudly, manned the doorways as best they could. They restrained desperate parents from their babies. The long linoleum