No Human Contact. Donald Ladew

      PROLOGUE

      SAN FRANCISCO WATERFRONT - 1949

      The Sisters of Mercy, Agnes and Catherine, scurried along the Embarcadero, their shoulders swaying like Emperor Penguins on a long journey to the sea. It was 3:00 AM in a bone-chilling fog and light rain; typically San Francisco in the Fall.

      It wasn’t a mission of mercy. Fifteen years at the Mary Magdalene Catholic Mission annihilated mercy. Working the mean hours of the night, witness to every kind of human misery, only habit and ritual remained.

      “Go to the Rubicon Boarding House; attend the dying woman,” the message said. Another variation on a theme of tragedy; the irony was lost on the Sisters. Their Rubicon had come and gone many years before.

      A single light above the entrance revealed the faded letters, R U B ...N’. They were met in the foyer by a grossly fat man in a greasy shirt and suspenders, four inches of hairy belly exposed where his sweat-stained shirt fell short. He jerked a thumb up and mumbled a room number.

      The stairs were littered with trash. The Sisters stepped around a rheumy-eyed drunk sprawled on the fourth floor landing. They showed neither distaste nor interest.

      The message said room 512. A single bare bulb, a broken dresser, a narrow bed in which a young woman lay dying. She lay with the utter stillness of the terminally ill. Her curly hair, matted by perspiration, made a stark contrast against unnaturally pale skin. The smells in the room were indescribable.

      The Sisters moved to the woman’s bed side and stared, showing no emotion, only impatience. A glance at each other, a shrug— indecipherable communication.

      Sister Agnes’s hand appeared, white, unadorned except for a simple gold band signifying that she was a bride of Christ; blue veins stark against pale flesh. She reached out to the woman on the bed and squeezed the sick woman’s shoulder.

      The woman on the bed opened her eyes immediately. They were large and dark blue. The Sisters did not see despair, pain and resignation. Who sees the ordinary?

      “What is your name, my child?” Sister Catherine asked.

      The ultimate irony from an arid eunuch only five years older than the woman on the bed. The religious equivalent of calling a middle-aged black man, boy; vast, thoughtless arrogance.

      “Mary...” a whisper.

      “Your full name, please?”

      Mary’s head turned feebly toward the other side of the bed..

      “...in the box...my baby.”

      Sister Catherine walked to the other side of the bed. On the floor next to the bed, a card board box stuffed with dirty blankets. Barely visible among the folds, a baby’s face: serious, silent, startlingly clean. The mother’s last act? The baby frowned. Did the tiny creature know what lay ahead?

      The child in the box finally produced a reaction from the sisters.

      “It’s a baby, Sister Agnes.”

      “Alive?” Sister Agnes asked.

      “Yes.”

      Sister Agnes knelt close to the woman in the bed. “Are you a Catholic, my child?”

      “Yes, Sister.”

      “Shall I send for a priest?”

      “No...no time.” She reached out, clutched Sister Agnes’s arm with unnatural strength.

      “Take my baby.” She panted with the effort. “His name is Vincent Andreas Vankelis.” She spelled the names slowly. “His father...”

      Her voice faded entirely. She shuddered and sank back on the bed, eyes closed.

      Sister Catherine hesitated, reached out and pulled the blanket away from the woman’s body. The Sisters stood mute, rigid, trying to comprehend.

      She wore nothing except cheap cotton briefs. Every inch of her pale, pale body had been beaten: narrow shoulders, flaccid breasts, scrawny ribs, slack belly, thighs, all covered with terrible yellow and black bruises. Some of the blows had broken the skin and still bled.

      While the Sisters stared in stunned silence, Mary, who would give no last name, loosed a faint sigh and stopped breathing. The nuns made no effort to intervene.

      Sister Catherine reached out and pulled the blanket over Mary’s body and face.

      “Better this way,” she murmured.

      The Sisters crossed themselves and muttered meaningless Latin phrases, rhythmic, and hypnotic. The creators of those phrases knew power and control the way Mesmer knew the flesh.

      Sister Agnes moved around the bed without a glance at the woman beneath the sheets. They stood together and looked down at the makeshift bassinet. Where was the humanity, the affection, the love women give so naturally to small babies?

      Sister Catherine and Sister Agnes hesitated. Who could know why? Who would want to know where their thoughts traveled, what internal arguments were brought to bear.

      Sister Agnes reached down and took the box in her arms. “We will take it to the orphanage. See if the woman has any papers, anything we should keep.”

      Their bloodless response made nothing of tragedy. Where were the dead woman’s people? A family, a father, someone? She was utterly alone. A terrible violence had been committed. Had she known love? Did she have a life? It didn’t matter. No one asked.

      Chapter

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