23

On Wednesday morning, after celebrating the seven-o’clock Mass, Fr. Aiden watched CNN news as he sipped a cup of coffee in the kitchen of the Friary. Deeply disturbed, he shook his head as the breaking news unfolded that Alexandra Moreland had kidnapped her own child. He watched as the camera showed the same young woman who had come into the Reconciliation Room Monday leave the Four Seasons Restaurant last night. She tried to hide her face when she was rushing into a cab past the reporters and photographers, but there was no mistaking her.

Then he saw the photos that seemed to be the unmistakable proof that she had abducted little Matthew.

“I am involved in an ongoing crime and I am unable to prevent a murder that is about to be committed,” she had said.

Was the ongoing crime the fact that Alexandra Moreland had taken her own son and lied to the authorities about his disappearance?

Fr. Aiden watched as the news anchorman spoke to June Langren, a nearby diner in the Four Seasons, about the shocking outburst by Ted Carpenter. “I honestly thought he was going to attack her,” Langren said, breathlessly. “My boyfriend jumped up to restrain him if necessary.”

In the fifty years he had been hearing confessions, Fr. Aiden thought he had heard virtually the full range of iniquities that the human spirit is capable of committing. Many years ago he had listened to the wrenching sobs of a young woman, little more than a girl herself, who had given birth to a child, and in fear of her parents had left it to die in a garbage bag in the Dumpster.

The saving mercy was that the child had not died, that a passerby had heard the cries of the wailing infant and saved it, he reflected.

This was different.

“A murder is about to be committed.”

She did not say, “I am going to commit a murder,” Fr. Aiden thought. She spoke of herself as an accomplice. Maybe now that those pictures have proven that she stole the child, whoever she is involved with will be frightened off. I can only pray that that will be the case.

Later that morning after he had reviewed the security tapes with Alvirah and she had gone home, Fr. Aiden opened his calendar. He had several dinner appointments in the next week with generous sponsors of the friars’ ongoing food and clothing charity who had become close personal friends. He wanted to verify the time he was meeting the Andersons this evening.

His memory was accurate: 6:30, at the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South. Right down the street from Alvirah and Willy, he thought. That’s perfect. I just realized I left my scarf in their apartment last night. I guess Alvirah didn’t notice it or she would have mentioned it when she was here. After dinner, I’ll give them a call and if they’re home, I’ll run over and get it. His sister, Veronica, had knitted that scarf for him, and if she noticed that he wasn’t wearing it on a cold day, he’d be in big trouble.

As he was leaving the Friary after lunch, Neil was coming out of the chapel, a dustcloth and can of furniture polish in his hands. “Father, did you see that the woman, I mean the one your friend recognized on our security tape, is the one who stole her own kid?”

“Yes, I did,” Fr. Aiden said abruptly, making it very clear to Neil that he did not wish to hear anything more about it.

Neil had been about to make the comment that when he had seen the tape it had jostled something in his mind. He’d been walking home to his apartment on Eighth Avenue Monday night around the time that Moreland woman had been caught on the security tape, but just as he got to the corner, a young woman who was walking ahead of him had darted out in traffic and hailed a cab. She damn near got hit by a car, he thought. I got a good look at her.

That was why he had gone back and run the security tape again, stopping it where Alvirah Meehan had recognized her friend. You’d swear the woman getting in the cab was the one who’s on the tape, he thought. But unless she can change clothes in the middle of the street, it can’t be the same person.

Neil shrugged. That was what he’d been about to tell Fr. Aiden, but it was clear Fr. Aiden didn’t want to hear it. None of my business anyhow, Neil decided. In his forty-one years, thanks to his drinking problem, Neil had run the gamut of jobs. The one he’d liked best was being a cop, but that had only lasted a few years. No matter how much you pleaded that you’d go on the wagon, getting drunk three times when you were on duty meant getting tossed out on your ear.

I had the makings of a good cop, Neil thought reflectively, as he headed for the utility closet. All the guys joked about me that I could see a mug shot once and pick the guy out of Times Square a year later. Wish I’d lasted in the department. Maybe by now I’d be the police commissioner!

But he hadn’t gone to AA then. Instead, after drifting from job to job, he’d ended up on the streets, begging for handouts and sleeping in shelters. Three years ago when he’d come here for food, one of the friars had sent him to the Inn at Graymoor where they had a rehab program for men like him, and there he’d finally kicked the booze.

Now, he liked working here. He liked staying sober. He liked the friends he’d made at the AA meetings. The friars called him their majordomo, a fancy way of saying handyman, but still, it had a certain dignity.

If Fr. Aiden did not want to talk about the Moreland woman, that’s the way it is, Neil decided. Mum’s the word. He probably wouldn’t care anyhow that I saw someone who looked just like her.

Why should he?