Paper Cuts and Gun Metal - Chapter 4

 Paper Cuts and Gun Metal

Chapter 4

Donnelly didn’t meet me at his main office.

He had me come through a side entrance off the alley behind the warehouse on 47th. No secretary. No framed photographs of ribbon cuttings. Just a steel door, a narrow stairwell, and a second-floor back office with a desk too large for the room and a single lamp burning low.

Men choose rooms like that when they’re ready to stop pretending.  He was standing when I came in. Jacket off. Sleeves rolled. Tie loosened like he’d finally admitted he was human.

“You said this couldn’t wait,” he said.

“It can’t.”

He shut the door himself and turned the lock.  That was new.  The room smelled of stale coffee and wet wool. Outside, trucks idled in the yard, their engines rumbling like distant thunder.  I didn’t sit.

“Michael Ruiz,” I said.

The name hung between us.

Donnelly’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t look surprised.

“You found the clipping,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“And you went to his mother.”

“Yes.”

He nodded once, like a man marking a checklist.

“I wondered how long it would take you.”

“You knew about him,” I said.

“I knew of him.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”

He walked to the desk and opened the top drawer. He took out an envelope and held it for a moment, like it might bite him.

“This came three days ago,” he said.

He handed it to me.

Inside were copies. Photographs. Typed statements. Handwritten notes.

I spread them across the desk.

The first photograph stopped me cold.

A black-and-white image of the parish hall basement under renovation. Scaffolding. Crates of stone. A boy in the background near a stack of lumber.

The date stamped faintly in the corner: October 1936.

The second photograph was worse.

A close shot of a man bending toward the boy. The man’s face partially turned. Recognizable.

Anthony Bellomo.

The site supervisor from the invoices.

There was another image. Blurred. A third man in the background, hat low, profile sharp.

I looked up at Donnelly.

“Where did this come from?”

“Briggs delivered it. Not in person. It was left at my home.”

“Originals?”

“No.”

“Copies.”

“Yes.”

I picked up a typed page.

Statement of Daniel Mercer. USMC.

Dated November 1936.

The statement described being present at a parish fundraiser while on recruiting duty. It mentioned overhearing raised voices in the basement hallway. It mentioned seeing Bellomo and another man arguing with a boy.

It mentioned Donnelly’s father by name.

I felt my pulse slow in that strange way it does when the body knows something bad is coming.

“You believe this?” I asked.

Donnelly let out a breath.

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“Did your father know Bellomo?”

“Yes. He hired him.”

“Did your father know Ruiz?”

“He knew every family in the parish.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He rubbed his forehead.

“My father was… a powerful man in that neighborhood. He believed in discipline. Order.”

“And silence?”

He didn’t answer.

I picked up another page.

An affidavit, unsigned, alleging that Donnelly’s father had been informed of “an incident” in the parish hall and had instructed Bellomo to “handle it quietly.”

No dates. No official seal.

Just enough detail to sting.

“This isn’t rumor,” I said. “This is constructed.”

“Briggs told me if I didn’t continue payments, these would go to the press. And the police.”

“And the diocese.”

“Yes.”

I set the papers down.

“Why not go to the police first?” I asked.

He laughed once, humorless.

“And say what? That a man is extorting me with allegations about my dead father and a missing boy from twenty years ago?”

“That’s better than paying.”

“Is it?” he asked sharply. “You think the newspapers wouldn’t print the word ‘Donnelly’ in the same line as ‘altar boy’?”

The word hit the air like a dropped glass.

Altar boy.

I glanced at the photographs again.

“Why show me this now?” I asked.

“Because you asked about 1936.”

“You could have kept paying.”

“For how long?” he said. “Until they asked for something else?”

He stepped closer to the desk.

“They don’t want money, do they?”

“No.”

He swallowed.

“They want something else.”

“Yes.”

“What?”

I met his eyes.

“Leverage.”

He hesitated.

“They mentioned you.”

The word slid into the room like a knife.

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“In what way?”

“In the way that makes a man sweat.”

He went back to the drawer and pulled out a second envelope.

“Open it,” he said.

I did.

Inside was a copy of a military accident report.

North Carolina.

Private First Class Daniel Mercer.

Vehicle accident.

Fatal.

Investigating officer: Gunnery Sergeant Michael McKenna.

My signature at the bottom.

For a moment, the room tilted.

The paper in my hands felt heavier than it should have.

“Where did you get this?” I asked quietly.

“It came with the rest.”

“Briggs gave you a copy of a Marine accident report?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He stared at me.

“Because the statement attached to the photographs was written by Daniel Mercer in 1936. The same Daniel Mercer.”

I felt the old training kick in, trying to keep my face neutral.

“The Mercer in that statement was a corporal,” I said.

“The report you signed is for a private first class,” Donnelly replied.

“Men get demoted.”

“And they die in accidents.”

The engines outside rumbled again.

I looked back down at my own signature.

The date.

I remembered the night. Wet road. A car wrapped around a tree. Mercer’s body pulled from the wreckage. Blood on both seats. No second body.

I’d noted the discrepancies.

I’d written them down.

Then I’d filed the report as accident.

“You’re suggesting Mercer knew something in 1936,” I said slowly, “and that he was killed for it fifteen years later?”

“I’m suggesting someone wants me to believe that.”

“And you?”

He hesitated.

“I don’t know.”

I stared at the page.

“Did your father ever mention a Marine recruiter?” I asked.

“No.”

“Did he ever mention Mercer?”

“No.”

“But Briggs knew.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Donnelly’s face drained of what little color it had.

“He said,” Donnelly whispered, “that Mercer tried to speak up. That he told someone in authority. That he was transferred. That he wasn’t meant to survive.”

My jaw tightened.

“And that accident report,” Donnelly continued, “closed the matter.”

The words hit like a hammer.

Closed the matter.

I looked at the signature again.

My name in black ink.

“I didn’t bury a murder,” I said flatly.

“I didn’t say you did.”

“But my report sealed it.”

“Yes.”

We stood there in the dim light, the past laid out like evidence on a courtroom table.

“You think this is about my father,” Donnelly said. “But it’s not just him.”

“No.”

“It’s about you.”

The realization slid into place slowly, like a door swinging shut.

“They’re not squeezing you for money,” I said. “They’re squeezing you to make me step into the light.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because your signature makes the story complete.”

I felt the old anger stir. Not hot. Cold.

“You think I knowingly covered something up?”

“I think,” Donnelly said carefully, “that you were told it was an accident.”

“And I believed it.”

“Yes.”

I walked to the window and looked out at the yard.

The Marine Corps teaches you to trust chain of command. It teaches you that not every detail is yours to know. It teaches you to move when ordered.

It doesn’t teach you what to do when obedience becomes complicity.

“They have the report,” I said.

“Yes.”

“They have photographs tying Bellomo and possibly your father to Ruiz.”

“Yes.”

“They have a statement from Mercer.”

“Yes.”

“And they’ve given you enough to hang both of us.”

Donnelly nodded.

“Briggs said if I stopped paying, these would go public.”

“And if you keep paying?”

“He said the matter would remain… contained.”

Contained.

Like a spill.

I turned back to him.

“Did Briggs say what he wanted from me?”

“He said you would know.”

I felt something twist in my gut.

“They don’t want money,” I said again. “They want me.”

“Why?”

“Because if this explodes, I’m the hinge.”

“How?”

“The Marine who wrote the statement dies in an accident. I sign off. If it comes out that Mercer knew about Ruiz and died under questionable circumstances, my name is attached.”

“You could say you didn’t know.”

“Yes.”

“Would anyone believe you?”

I didn’t answer.

Donnelly stepped closer.

“I swear to you,” he said, “I did not know about any of this.”

“Your father?”

He hesitated.

“I don’t know what my father knew.”

Silence filled the room again.

“You’ve been paying,” I said. “For what?”

“For time.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m out of it.”

I folded the accident report carefully and placed it back in the envelope.

“Do you have the originals?” I asked.

“No.”

“Any indication where Briggs got them?”

“No.”

“Did he say anything else?”

Donnelly swallowed.

“He said the past doesn’t stay dead. It just waits for the right man to wake it.”

I felt the words settle like weight on my shoulders.

“I didn’t wake anything,” I said.

“No,” Donnelly replied. “But you signed it back to sleep.”

The line landed hard.

I stepped back from the desk.

“You understand something,” I said quietly. “If this goes public, you lose your business. I lose my name.”

“Yes.”

“And the Church loses its quiet.”

He nodded.

“And whoever’s running this machine gets to decide how the story’s told.”

“Yes.”

I picked up the photograph of Bellomo and Ruiz again.

“You think your father would have handled something quietly?” I asked.

Donnelly’s eyes flickered.

“My father believed in protecting the parish.”

“Even at the cost of truth?”

He didn’t answer.

I slid the photograph back into the envelope.

“Keep paying,” I said.

“For now?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“I’m going to find Briggs.”

“And then?”

I looked at my own signature one last time.

“Then we see who’s burying who.”

I unlocked the door and stepped into the stairwell.  The air outside was colder than it had been when I arrived.

As I reached the street, the bells of St. Brigid’s began to ring.  Not loud.  Measured.  Deliberate.  They rolled over the rooftops and settled into the cracks of the city.  For the first time in years, I felt the weight of my own name pressing back at me.  The streets didn’t feel empty anymore.

They felt like they were watching.