Bell said, “I am a private detective, Father, with the Van Dorn Agency. I would like to ask you some questions about people who used to live in your parish.”
“If you want to talk, you must walk. I have my rounds, and you will see that our people live in less bright places than their new church. Come along.” He set off with a surprisingly springy step for a man his age, turned a corner, and plunged into a neighborhood that felt miles, not yards, from his brand-new church.
“You’ve served here long, Father?”
“Since the Draft Riots.”
“That’s forty-five years ago.”
“Some things have changed in the district, most have not. We are still poor.”
The priest entered a tenement with an elaborate carved stone portal and started up a steep flight of rickety stairs. He was breathing hard by the third floor. At the sixth, he paused to catch his breath, and when the wheezing stopped he knocked on a door, and called, “Good morning! It is Father Jack.”
A girl with a baby in her arms opened the door. “Thank you for coming, Father.”
“And how is your mother?”
“Not good, Father, not good at all.”
He left Bell in the front room. A single window that looked onto a yard crisscrossed with clotheslines in the shade admitted the stench of a privy six stories below. Bell folded a wad of dollar bills in his hand and slipped it to the girl as they left.
At the bottom of the stairs, Father Jack caught his breath again. “Who are you inquiring about?”
“Brian O’Shay and Billy Collins.”
“Brian’s long gone from here.”
“Fifteen years, I’ve been told.”
“If God ever blessed this district, it was the day O’Shay disappeared. I would never say such a thing lightly, but Brian O’Shay was Satan’s right-hand man.”
“I’ve heard he’s back.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” the priest said bleakly, and he led Bell back into the street.
“I saw Billy Collins last night.”
Father Jack stopped and looked at the tall detective with sudden respect. “Did you really? Down in the hole?”
“You know he’s there?”
“Billy has, shall we say, hit bottom. Where else would he go?”
“Who is his little girl?”
“His little girl?”
“He kept referring to his little girl. But he claimed he had no children.”
“That’s a dubious claim considering the youth he led. In those years, it was rare I baptized a carroty-topped infant and didn’t wonder if Billy was the father.”
“I wondered if his hair was red. It seemed mostly gray in the dim light.”
“Though I suppose,” Father Jack added with a thin smile, “Billy could claim with a certain degree of truth that he is not aware he had any children. It would have been an unusually brave girl who would have named him the father. Still, I see his point. Whoring and drunk since he was twelve years old, what would he remember?”
“He was adamant he had no children.”
“That would make the little girl his sister.”