Part 36 (1/2)
Not just Virginia. Quantico. FBI headquarters. Matt wondered what the place had got its name from. ”I have something,” Frank announced.
He'd always boomed out sermons and homilies in the priesthood, hadn't allowed any mumbling among the altar boys. Nothing retiring about Father Frankenfurter.
”On . . . the woman.”
”On your persecutor. Kathleen O'Connor. No 'Kathy,' for her, at least not with the IRA.”
”I asked you to look into her months ago, and you didn't find anything.”
”Ah, Matt, me boyo. That was before nine-eleven and the IRA began playing ball-o with the English and American authorities. Can you believe it? The enormity of the World Trade Center attack gave the IRA pause. They'd been in peace negotiations anyway, then said publicly that the scale of the attack on the U.S. was so extreme that they would never bomb Britain again.”
”They're terrorists.”
”Yes. Who believed them? And of course they have their hard-nosed elements who will never give in or never give up mayhem. But, by and large, begorra, they've been as sincere as you can expect of reformed terrorists. And ... they're cooperating with the authorities, so this time I finally got some information on the bane of your block, Kathleen O'Connor.”
”She's dead.”
”What?”
”I just identified the body. A motorcycle accident.”
”And it was her, for certain?”
”I saw her face. It was sc.r.a.ped and bruised, but hers, no mistake. I identified her on the coroner's examining table.”
”Ouch. I don't like those places. They make you not quite believe in immortal souls, seeing all those mortal remains so still and shattered and such dead meat. So you're sure.”
”Yes, but I'd still like to know more about her.”
”I don't know much more. They admitted to knowing of her, but said that she had long ago become a rogue agent.”
”How do you become a rogue IRA terrorist?”
”You don't take orders, for one. The biggest no-no. That's true of any para-governmental agency.”
” 'Para-governmental agency'? We've got them too?”
”We've got everything we need in a modern, dangerous world. And sometimes it isn't enough. Anyway, Kathleen went off on her own years ago. Would send money home. They tagged her as working South America, the Irish-Latino community there, which is almost as big as the German-Latino community, aka the Hitler has-beens. She sent them money periodically. They didn't ask where it came from or where she was.”
”So she supported them, and followed her own agenda, unsupervised.”
”They didn't want to supervise her. Found her way too unstable for terrorism. A kind of Fury. Who's the mythological creature with the serpents for hair-? G.o.d, my memory. Methuselah doesn't sound right. Too Biblical.”
”Medusa. That's Greek.”
”Right. Miss O'Connor was a human Medusa to them. Every lock of her raven-black hair was sheer poison to touch. Apparently some of them tried.”
”Raven-black?”
”Yes. They say she was a beauty the way an honorable death is beautiful. A terrible beauty, to quote the poet. Were they right?”
”Maybe. Her eyes were plastic and her face was ... eroded . . . at the end. It wasn't a beautiful death.”
”Yes, we did use to say that in the church, didn't we? 'A beautiful death.' I don't see much of those in the FBI. I suppose one thinks of a very old person, fading away without pain and faithfully shriven. Does that much happen in our Alzheimer's, post-HMO world anymore, do you think?”
”No,” Matt said. ”Nothing much beautiful in the way of death happens out here in No Man's Land at all.”
”Extreme Unction we used to call it. I loved that phrase. It put Death in a caliph's tent with serving men and girls. Extreme. Unction. The Final Anointing. Extreme Unction. Now it's called Last Rites. Loses in the translation, doesn't it?”
”The church has lost a lot in the translation lately, including respect and dignity. Do you ... let on what you used to be?”
”Not recently. Everyone's eyebrows lift. 'One of those.' We were blind. I'm glad I left, and I'm glad you finally left, Matt. That you're out of all that scandal.”
”Not quite,” he said ruefully. At the shocked silence on the phone line, he added, quickly, ”Now I'm only suspected of adult heteros.e.xual misconduct. What a relief. It's all right, Frank. I'll survive.”
”Better than Kathleen O'Connor.”
”So there was no report of her operating in the U.S.”
”She disappeared on them, after all these years. And, frankly, they were just as happy to have such a loose cannon out of the way. I'll report her death, and your confirmation of it. She left no fingerprints anywhere, was just a rural County Clare girl who went north to Londonderry and found a cause. What made her so lethal, we'll never know.”
”No.”
Matt hung up, thinking that Kitty the Cutter was still pretty lethal to his circle of acquaintances.
An image of her body on the autopsy table flashed into his mind, including the spidery tattoo on her naked hip. No final anointing for her, except with the medical examiner's scalpel, and he probably used much more brutal instruments.
For a moment the official description of the sacrament of Extreme Unction flashed before Matt's eyes too; he'd looked it up again only recently: the anointing with oil specially blessed by the bishop of the organs of the five external senses (eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands), of the feet, and, for men, of the loins or reins; while saying ”Through this holy unction and His own most tender mercy may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed by sight, by hearing, smell, taste, touch, walking, carnal delectation.” Carnal delectation. The phrase had always stuck with him, even though anointing the loins is generally omitted in English-speaking countries. He never forgot the section ending: ”and it is of course everywhere forbidden in the case of women.”
Apparently anointing female loins was itself an occasion of sin. Now he would forever a.s.sociate a tattoo of the worm Ouroboros with ”carnal delectation.” He wondered if attending a woman's autopsy was a confessable sin.
Having delved his own possible weaknesses, he returned to the living room to minister to Max Kinsella, possible self-confessed murderer, but the sofa was empty ...
... except for Midnight Louie, who had taken Kinsella's place.
Matt stared at the big black cat and the big black cat stared right back at him.
Was Kinsella a shape-s.h.i.+fter?
Or was it Midnight Louie who pulled all their strings? The tomcat yawned, showing pearly whites.
Oh, the shark, dear, waits closer than you think.
Chapter 47.
Suitable for Mourning Max so seldom called ahead to advertise one of his patented surprise appearances that Temple couldn't help feeling a frisson of dread when she picked up the phone and it was not only Max speaking, but he was asking if he could come over.