Chapter 5 - The Rehearsal Dinner
The North End of Boston was cold enough on Friday evening to freeze the salt spray on the hull of the fishing trawlers tied up at Commercial Wharf.
At St. Leonard’s Church on Hanover Street, the heavy oak doors were propped open with brass stops to allow the florists to bring in the twenty-foot garlands of white boxwood and silver-tipped pine. Inside, the scent of frankincense and beeswax was completely overwhelmed by the sharp, greenhouse perfume of thousands of imported roses.
The rehearsal had been an exercise in military precision disguised as piety.
Father Thomas, an elderly Franciscan whose white beard was trimmed as neatly as a hedge and whose eyes had seen fifty years of Boston’s sins without ever registering surprise, stood by the communion rail with his hands folded in his wide wool sleeves. He watched Victoria Vance demonstrate to four bridesmaids precisely how they were to turn at the sixth pew to ensure that the silk ribbons on their bouquets did not drag against the kneeling cushions.
"Not so fast, Eleanor," Victoria snapped, her voice bouncing sharply off the marble arches of the nave. "This is a procession, not an evacuation. And keep the flowers at your waist, not your breastbone. We are not hiding our figures; we are framing them."
At the front of the altar, standing precisely where the groom was supposed to stand, was not Raphael Duca, but Julian Vance. The State Senator was fifty-eight, with silver hair styled to look distinguished on campaign billboards and a red, fleshy nose that betrayed his fondness for dry martinis before four o’clock.
"Julian, where on earth is he?" Victoria asked, spinning around on her four-inch heels, her green wool coat swirling around her ankles. "He was supposed to be here at five. It is nearly five-thirty. Even Raphael cannot expect Father Thomas to freeze in this draft all evening."
"He had business at the harbor, Victoria," Vance said smoothly, checking his gold Patek Philippe watch with an air of practiced calm. "The longshoremen’s dispute on Pier 44. It’s better he settles it tonight than tomorrow morning. A strike during the ceremony would be... politically awkward."
"Everything with him is the docks," she hissed, lowering her voice as she approached her father. "I am marrying a man whose entire family history belongs in a police blotter, Julian. The least he could do is arrive on time to practice the vows."
"You are marrying eight million dollars in cold liquidity and the endorsement of twelve wards, my dear," Vance whispered back, his smile never wavering for the benefit of the church staff watching from the transept. "Remember that when you are choosing the silver pattern for the Beacon Hill townhouse. In this town, blood is cheap, but votes are very, very dear."
From the shadows of the vestibule, Clara watched them.
She had not been invited to the rehearsal. She had been sent by Mrs. Dora with a heavy garment bag containing Raphael’s formal morning coat, which had been delivered to the Brookline house by mistake from the tailor in Back Bay. Clara had taken the subway to Haymarket and walked the four blocks through the freezing slush of Hanover Street, her canvas bag tucked beneath her arm, her ankle throbbing with every step on the icy cobbles.
She stood near the baptismal font, waiting for Milo or one of Raphael’s men to take the garment bag from her so she could return to Chelsea before the night buses stopped running.
Father Thomas stepped away from the altar, leaving the Senator and his daughter to debate the placement of the candelabras, and walked slowly toward the back of the church. His cassock made a dry, whispering sound against the marble floor.
He stopped beside Clara. His blue eyes, faded with age and cataract surgery, looked down at her damp boots, then up to her pale, exhausted face.
"You're cold, daughter," he said gently.
"A little, Father," Clara replied, shifting the heavy garment bag to her other arm.
"The heater in the sacristy is working, even if the church is like an icebox. Come inside. I’ll make a cup of chicory."
"Thank you, Father, but I have to deliver Mr. Duca’s coat to his driver."
Father Thomas paused. He looked down at the brass plate on the garment bag, which bore the initials *R.D.* in neat script. Then his eyes drifted to the canvas bag Clara held against her hip.
From the top of the canvas bag, protruding just enough to catch the light from the votive candles, was the corner of the rusted silver tin box.
Father Thomas’s face did not change, but his breath caught in his throat—a tiny, sharp intake of air that Clara would have missed had she not spent a lifetime watching the small movements of people who held power over her.
"Daughter," the priest said, his voice dropping into a register so low that even the choir loft could not have caught it. "Where did you get that box?"
Clara’s heart seized. She pulled the canvas bag closer to her body, her knuckles turning gray with pressure.
"It belonged to someone I knew," she whispered.
Father Thomas looked over his shoulder. The Senator and Victoria were at the altar, laughing with the wedding coordinator over the size of the unity candle.
"Come with me," the priest said firmly. "Now."
He did not wait for her answer. He turned and walked with a quick, purposeful stride toward the small arched door that led to the private offices behind the sacristy. Clara hesitated for only a fraction of a second before following him, her limp dragging her left foot across the marble tiles with a soft, scraping rhythm.
The office was small, smelling of old leather, lemon wax, and woodsmoke from a small iron stove that glowed dull red in the corner. Father Thomas shut the heavy door and slid the brass bolt into place.
He pointed to a horsehair armchair beside the stove. "Sit."
Clara remained standing. "Father, I have to go back. My daughter..."
"Your daughter," Father Thomas said, stepping to his desk and picking up a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. "Her name is Noel. She was born four years ago in Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital in Brighton. The birth certificate lists no father, but the hospital bill was paid in full, in cash, by an anonymous envelope delivered to the business office on the third morning after her delivery."
Clara felt the room spin. The heat from the iron stove seemed to rush into her face, suffocating her. She reached out and grabbed the back of the chair to keep from falling.
"Who are you?" she gasped.
"I am the man who baptized Raphael Duca," Father Thomas said softly, setting his glasses on his nose and looking at her with an expression of immense, ancient grief. "And I am the man who buried his brother."
The silence in the small office was broken only by the crackle of a spruce knot in the stove.
"Vincent," Clara whispered, the name tearing out of her throat like a ragged breath of air.
Father Thomas closed his eyes and crossed himself slowly. "Vincent. Raphael’s twin. The one who had his father’s eyes and none of his father’s stomach for the water."
The priest stepped around the desk and stood before Clara. He reached out his aged, trembling hand and touched the lid of the canvas bag.
"The box," he said. "Show it to me."
With shaking hands, Clara reached into the bag and lifted the rusted tin. She placed it on the desk between them. The silver plate gleamed faintly under the green shaded lamp.
Father Thomas did not open it. He simply looked at the engraved *V* on the lid, his eyes filling with tears that did not fall.
"Raphael gave that to him on their eighteenth birthday," the priest murmured. "There were two of them. Raphael had the one with the *R*. Vincent had the *V*. Inside was supposed to be the key to the family vault on Commercial Street."
"There is no key inside," Clara said, her voice shaking violently. "Only his ring. And a note."
"I know what the note says," Father Thomas whispered. "I was there when he wrote it. On the night he realized what Julian Vance was going to do."
Clara’s lungs locked. "Julian Vance?"
Father Thomas stepped toward the window, looking out through the small iron grille into the dark alleyway beside the church.
"Ten years ago, the Vance family did not own Beacon Hill," Father Thomas said, his voice bitter as gall. "Julian was an ambitious councilor with debts he couldn't pay to the Rossi family in East Boston. He needed the Duca docks to launder the campaign contributions from the transit unions. Raphael’s father refused. Old man Duca was a criminal, Clara, but he was a man of his word. He would not deal with Vance. He said Vance was a sewer rat dressed in an English suit."
The priest turned back to her, his face pale under the green light.
"Two weeks later, old man Duca was run down in the street by a car that had no plates. Raphael was nineteen. He took the scar on his jaw that night, trying to pull his father from under the chassis."
"And Vincent?" Clara whispered, her hands clutched against her breast.
"Vincent was the scholar. He wanted nothing to do with the docks. He was at Harvard, studying architecture. He met a girl from Fall River who was working in the college library." Father Thomas looked at Clara with profound tenderness. "A girl who looked at him without seeing the Duca name. A girl who made him want to walk away from everything his father had built."
Clara began to weep—silent, heavy tears that rolled down her cheeks and dropped onto the collar of her gray uniform.
"He told me we were going to Maine," she sobbed softly. "He told me he had bought three acres of land on the coast. He had the stones picked out... three stones for the foundation..."
"He never reached Maine," Father Thomas said. "Because three days before you were supposed to leave, Vincent discovered the audit. He found out that Julian Vance had not only ordered the hit on his father, but that Vance had used the Rossi family to do it. Vincent went to Vance’s office on Tremont Street to confront him. He thought the law would protect him. He thought being a Duca meant that men like Vance would fear him."
The priest lowered his head.
"They found Vincent’s car in the Charles River forty-eight hours later. The police called it an accident. They said he had been drinking at the Union Club and lost control on the icy bridge. But I prepared his body for the vault, Clara. A man does not break his own ribs and fracture his own wrists before his car hits the water."
Clara dropped into the chair, her face buried in her hands, her body shaking with an ancient, unhealed agony.
"Raphael... does Raphael know?"
"Raphael knows his brother died in the river," Father Thomas said, his voice dropping into a terrifying, solemn whisper. "He knows the car went off the bridge. But he believes it was an accident. Julian Vance was very careful. He spent ten years manufacturing the evidence that cleared his own name. He brought Raphael into the political circles, he offered him the harbor leases, and finally, he offered him his daughter."
The priest walked over and placed a heavy, comforting hand on Clara’s trembling shoulder.
"Julian Vance is not marrying his daughter to Raphael out of love or ambition, Clara. He is doing it because it is the only way he can ensure that Raphael never looks into the bottom of that river. A man does not dig up the grave of his wife’s family. Vance is building his own fortress out of Raphael’s blind spot."
Clara lifted her head, her face wet, her gray eyes burning with a sudden, fierce light that had nothing to do with fear.
"And Noel?" she whispered. "Why didn't you find us? Why did you leave us in Chelsea?"
"Vincent came to me two hours before he went to Vance’s office," Father Thomas said softly. "He gave me that box. He told me that if he didn't return, I was to find you and hide you. He knew what Raphael would do if he found out about you."
"Raphael would have protected us!"
"Raphael was twenty-four years old and mad with grief!" the priest hissed, his eyes wide. "He was drowning the city in blood to avenge his father! If he had known Vincent had a child with a girl from Fall River, he would have taken that baby and raised her in an iron fortress surrounded by guns and graves! Vincent wanted her to be free, Clara! He wanted her to have a mother who could walk in the sunlight, not an army of ghosts!"
The priest pointed to the silver tin on the desk.
"Vincent put an old tape recorder in Vance’s office that afternoon. A miniature Dictaphone he took from the Harvard law library. He had it running in his overcoat pocket. He left the tape in the safe deposit box at the Provident Institution for Savings, and he put the key inside the only thing he knew Vance couldn't touch."
Clara stared at the rusted tin. "The key isn't in there, Father. I looked. There is only the ring and the note."
Father Thomas reached out, picked up the heavy gold signet ring from inside the box, and held it to the green lamp. With his fingernail, he pressed the center link of the three engraved iron chains.
A tiny, razor-thin compartment in the bezel of the ring clicked open.
Inside, curled into a circle no larger than a dime, was a tiny piece of brass with three notched teeth.
"The Provident Institution doesn't exist anymore," Father Thomas said, his voice trembling with an old man’s awe. "It was bought by Fleet, then by Bank of America. But the vault beneath the old building on Temple Place remains. Box four-one-nine. The rental has been paid through twenty-thirty by an endowment Vincent established before he died."
A heavy knock sounded against the sacristy door.
"Father Thomas?" Julian Vance’s voice called through the oak, smooth, cultured, and impatient. "The organist has arrived. We need to run through the processional once more before the six o’clock bells."
Father Thomas looked at Clara. His blue eyes were fierce, burning with the righteous fury of an old shepherd whose flock had been invaded by wolves.
"Tomorrow at noon," the priest whispered, sliding the tiny brass key back into the ring and pressing it into Clara’s cold palm. "Before the Archbishop places the stole around their hands. If that ring touches Victoria Vance’s finger, the Duca family belongs to the man who murdered Vincent. And your daughter will spend the rest of her life hiding in the damp rooms of Chelsea while the man who killed her father sits in the Governor’s mansion."
Clara looked down at the gold ring in her palm. The metal was warm, holding the heat of the priest’s office.
For the first time in ten years, she did not count her heartbeats. She did not feel the dragging ache in her left ankle. She stood upright, her chin lifted, her gray eyes clear and steady as the winter sea.
"Where is the machine to play the tape, Father?" she asked.
Father Thomas reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a small, black plastic flip phone—an old Motorola with a cracked screen and an audio-jack adapter taped to its side.
"The recording was digitized three years ago by a friend of mine who works in the state police crime lab," Father Thomas said, his hands steady as he handed it to her. "He couldn't use it because the chain of custody was broken. But Raphael Duca doesn't need a chain of custody. He only needs to hear his brother’s voice."
The knock on the door came again, harder this time.
"Father Thomas! We haven't got all night!"
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"Coming, Julian!" the priest called out, his voice returning to its genial, doddering rumble. He looked at Clara one last time, crossing her forehead with his thumb in a silent, desperate benediction. "Go out through the crypt door behind the furnace, daughter. And pray that God gives your feet strength tomorrow."
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