A vague sense of frustration rather than obligation prompted Lieutenant Tully to attend the wake for Helen Donovan.
There being no other surviving close relatives, Sister Joan Donovan had made all funeral arrangements. A central west side funeral home was selected, mostly because it was handy to St. Leo’s where the Mass of Resurrection would be offered.
Joan had expected some sort of opposition to her request for a Catholic burial. Helen’s Catholicism had been virtually nonexistent since she had escaped from parochial school. Joan was reasonably sure she’d be unable to locate anyone who had seen Helen inside a church—any sort of church—for a goodly number of years.
But the nun had been most pleasantly surprised and relieved when, far from official prohibition, retired bishop Lawrence Foley had assured her that he himself would celebrate the Mass. And that was doubly providential since St. Leo’s pastor was somewhere in Central America. Foley solved her problem of having to find a priest to fill in during the pastor’s absence.
Tully was unaware of all that Joan had feared and accomplished in the brief time since her sister’s murder. He was aware that Catholic Church law might deny Church burial under stated circumstances such as in the case of a lapsed Catholic or a suicide. But what sort of burial rites Helen Donovan was accorded did not concern him. What did bother him was the lack of progress in her homicide investigation.
The paraffin test had established nothing. The result was negative in the case of both Sister Joan and Henry Taylor. But then, in both instances, the time was marginal. If either had fired a handgun, proof might have surfaced in the test. On the other hand, so many hours had passed since the shooting that any trace on the subject’s hand could have faded from recognition. So in the end there was no proof of anything. The lapse of time might have ruled out a positive result.
Or it was just as possible that neither of them had fired a gun.
As it happened, there was no cause to further detain Taylor, Cautioned that he might be needed to answer more questions, he was released, to return to Toledo undoubtedly a chastened husband, firmly resolving never again to stray, Until the next sales trip.
Nor had there been any breakthrough in hunting down the johns listed in Helen’s book. Most of the men were easy enough to locate. Many of them were considered prominent in anyone’s roster of Detroit’s movers and shakers. Noted figures from the business, political, entertainment, and sports worlds had been among Helen’s clientele. Some members of Tully’s squad took special delight in any investigation that legitimately called for the grilling of powerful and pompous men. Gratification aside, the interrogation of all Helen’s clients had turned up nothing. Not even any additional likely leads.
Of course, that segment of the investigation was not yet complete. But with all these dead ends, hope dwindled that any breakthrough was in the cards, at least from that direction. So, uncertain of what he might accomplish, or even what he was looking for, Tully had come to the wake.
It was a small funeral parlor—too small. Tully had no idea why this mortuary had been selected. Whoever was responsible seemingly had not anticipated this mass of people.
Tully tried to study each individual he could isolate in the throng. The room was too congested for him to see everyone. In the far corner, clustered at the rear of the room, were five, maybe six women who shared Helen Donovan’s line of work. He knew them from his years on the vice squad. They spied him at about the same time he spotted them. They smiled and nodded recognition. Though Zoo was on the opposite side of the law, they were not hostile. In their dealings, Zoo, as they all knew him, was always fair, frequently even tolerant.
A good bit of the reason they had clustered together was the nature of this crowd. Most of the other mourners appeared to have some sort of religious affiliation. Many of the men wore clerical garb. Most of the women were attired in a hint of a habit. Many of those in civvies seemed so familiar with those in uniform it seemed safe to assume that nearly all of them had some sort of religious status.
In such a gathering, Tully was, for the most part, a stranger at the gates of paradise.
Then he saw him.
This room wherein Helen Donovan was lying was actually two rooms. The divider wall had been opened up. So there were two doorways. Standing just inside the other doorway was a priest Tully recognized. Koesler—Father Robert Koesler.
Tully and Koesler had been associated in a couple of previous investigations. Tully’s verdict on Koesler as a sleuth: not bad for an amateur. Tully’s guess for this moment: The guy must feel right at home in this crowd.
He did. Koesler knew just about everyone there, with the major exception of a small group of women at the rear of the room. Considering their clothing and makeup and given the fact they were much more likely to be friends of the deceased than of anyone else in the room, they had to be ladies of the evening and not ladies of the Rosary Altar Society.
As for the others, as far as he could tell without a program, nearly all—if not all—the archdiocesan department heads were here, along with many of their personnel. It figured they would be here in respect for Sister’s rank. As delegate for religious, she too was a department head. The nuns undoubtedly were friends from Joan’s religious order as well as from other orders who knew her through her office as delegate. Koesler didn’t know many of the nuns. He hadn’t expected to.
According to the obituary in today’s paper, the rosary was scheduled to be recited at 8:00 P.M., which, by Koesler’s ever-present watch, was just fifteen minutes away. He decided to wait until after the rosary to offer his condolences to Sister Joan. Meanwhile, he casually studied some in the crowd.
The first person he focused on was Larry Hoffer. Most likely, Koesler’s eye fixed on Hoffer because the gentleman was fidgeting. But then, Hoffer always fidgeted, usually jingling the coins in his left trouser pocket. Wherever Hoffer happened to be, his nervous habit always created the impression he wanted or needed to be somewhere else. So it was this evening.
Well, why not, thought Koesler. Hoffer’s burden of responsibility was great. He headed the Department of Finance and Administration, with ten subdepartments clustered in the archdiocese’s downtown headquarters, the Chancery Building.
Hoffer, seated just two rows behind Sister Joan, whispered periodically with a man Koesler didn’t recognize, probably one of Hoffer’s assistants.
“It just doesn’t make any sense, Pete,” Hoffer was saying, “no sense whatever.”
“Well, not any financial sense, I’ll grant you,” Pete Jackson replied. Jackson headed Parish Finances, one of Hoffer’s departments. “But you’ve got to consider the history.”
“Why? History is yesterday. We’re not living then. We’re living now.”
Jackson sighed. He didn’t want to get involved in a debate with his boss, but he’d been drawn into the discussion and now he was forced to differ with Hoffer. It wasn’t that Jackson was playing devil’s advocate; he spoke conscientiously. “Larry, history is real to the people who lived it. You can’t blame them for wanting to hold on to it. The people we’re talking about don’t have much else to hang on to.”
Hoffer’s leg was bouncing almost imperceptibly to the rhythm of an unheard nervous beat. He quieted the motion with the hand that had been jingling coins in his pocket. He turned slightly toward Jackson, his voice sufficiently muted that it blended into the low murmur in the room. “Do you know the actual financial condition of St. Leo’s?”
Jackson could have been offended. As director of parish finances, one of his jobs was to be current with regard to the status of parishes, particularly those in dire straits, such as St. Leo’s. However, for sake of the argument Hoffer’s question was couched in hyperbolic rhetoric. Jackson took no offense.
“Yeah, sure, I know,” he said. “They’re lucky to pull in a hundred dollars in the Sunday collection.”
“And they’ve got practically nothing in the bank.” The bank to which Hoffer referred was an archdiocesan facility. When the late Cardinal Edward Mooney had reluctantly accepted his appointment to Detroit, finances had been crippled by the great depression. Well-to-do parishes, such as St. Leo’s, were at that time lucky to pay the interest on their loans. There was little hope of reducing the principal. In perhaps his greatest coup, Mooney got his parishes out of the banks and into the chancery, thus unquestionably saving them from disastrous fiscal fates. To this day, the chancery is, in effect, the parochial bank for each parish.
“Plus,” Hoffer continued, “they have only a handful of parishioners. And the number dwindles every year.”
Jackson shrugged. “They die.”
“It’s a cinch they don’t move.” It had to be anyone’s guess how many Detroiters continued to live in the city for the sole reason that they lacked the resources to get out. But the percentage had to be high. “And those buildings! Those huge, massive buildings! They’ve got to be maintained, heated, repaired. With what? St. Leo’s hasn’t got enough money to make the repairs that are crying to be made. God! I wish these buildings had been built on wheels: We could roll them out to the suburbs where the people are.” The latter statement had been Cardinal Mooney’s oft-quoted wish.
Jackson knew that the problem, far from being as simplistic as his boss was making it, was actually quite complex and many-layered. He also knew that they were talking about St. Leo’s in particular only because Sister Joan lived there and was, as much as she was able, committed to the parish. And they were attending this wake service on her behalf. The two men could just as easily have been discussing any number of inner-city parishes.
There was a pause in their whispered dialogue while the two considered what had been said.
Finally, Jackson turned, “Larry, if this game were yours to call … if you didn’t have to answer to anyone else, what would you do? Would you really close all these parishes?”
“In a minute.”
They fell silent. But Jackson knew that this hypothetical question to his boss involved a condition contrary to fact.
Jackson—almost everyone in the archdiocesan administration—knew that the ultimate leader, Cardinal Mark Boyle, was doing all in his power to keep these troubled parishes open. And that, in this stance, he was meeting determined opposition, not only from Larry Hoffer but from many Catholic movers and shakers in the Detroit metropolitan area.
In the end, Jackson was confident that the Cardinal Archbishop would prevail. If only because everything the Catholic archdiocese of Detroit owned—land, edifices, facilities—was held, by civil as well as ecclesiastical law, in the name and person of the archbishop. So these troubled parishes probably would remain open.
Unless the Cardinal changed his mind.
Koesler was unsure whether it was his imagination, but he thought that from time to time he could hear the loose change rattle inside Larry Hoffer’s pocket.
A peculiar and somewhat annoying habit. Koesler wondered why no one ever seemed to bring it to Hoffer’s consciousness—see if the habit could be terminated. On the other hand, Hoffer was so high on the administrative ladder in this archdiocese, who would have the standing to correct him?
The Cardinal, of course. But he was such a gentleman—a gentle man; it would be completely out of character for him to be so personal.
Koesler had never met Hoffer’s wife. But surely, he thought, she must be aware of this peculiar habit—much imitated in jest by underlings. Why hadn’t she corrected it? Subservient to her lord and master? Afraid of him? Deaf? Maybe she rattled coins in her pocket.
Koesler’s attention was diverted by a person who had just entered the room, brushing by him as if he weren’t there. The newcomer marched—yes, that was the word for it—marched up the narrow center aisle to the fourth row from the front, where he took a sharp right and marched past a series of hastily withdrawn knees. He lowered himself into a folding chair that had obviously been saved for him by an assistant.
Father Cletus Bash, director of the Office of Communications.
The Office of Communications dispensed information, provided one asked the right question. It produced ambitious television programming—although reception depended on one’s TV set’s ability to pick up a less than powerful signal.
More than anything, the communications office was a public relations operation, and Father Cletus Bash was the designated official spokesperson for the archdiocese.
No such office had existed in the local Church until the 1960s. At that time, having been newly established, it took neither itself nor its function very seriously. While other major organizations, such as the auto companies, financial institutions, and the like, were very concerned about their public image, the Catholic Church, by and large, was content that God knew all was well. In a system where the Pope gave the word to the bishops, who passed it on to their priests, who preached it to the laity, who did what they were told, whatever image was projected by this efficient procedure just didn’t seem very important.
Then, once more due to the Second Vatican Council, things changed. Now, under regular siege not only by the ACLU but even by Catholics who could be and were critical, the Church began to get serious about its image problem. Accordingly, the Office of Communications steadily grew in importance. But the growth of the office was no match for the self-importance of its official spokesman, Father Cletus Bash.
He had two lay assistants who kept him informed and did menial tasks. They were made to understand that they were not to approach even the neighborhood of becoming spokespersons. In this department one alone talked to the media. One alone appeared in close-ups on TV newscasts. One alone spoke on the record for radio reporters.
It brought to mind one of Detroit’s most famous priests, Father Charles Coughlin, whose name in after-years was scarcely ever mentioned without the descriptive phrase, “Controversial radio priest of the thirties.” Now it was, “Father Cletus Bash, official spokesman of the Archdiocese of Detroit.”
If this distinction got to be a bit tiresome—and it did, for everyone but Bash—Father Koesler, a tolerant person, tended to understand and forgive. What he understood particularly were the difficult years Cletus Bash had spent as an army chaplain during the Korean War. And especially the injury he had suffered when, his group under fierce bombardment, a shell had exploded nearby. Of the men in that area, Bash alone had survived. In a series of operations, surgeons were able to form what, for that time, came close to being a bionic man. Still, he had little movement in his left arm. And he had lost the sight in his left eye.
But he came back. And if he was somewhat more macho than most of the other priests of his generation, he had, thought Koesler, some right to be.
Yet most of the other priests, as well as all who had to deal with Bash, would have agreed that Koesler understood and forgave a tad too much.
“Kind of warm in here, isn’t it?” Bob Meyer commented.
Bash nodded curtly. He looked around the room. “Too small. Way too small. That’s why it’s so hot. Too many people crammed in here. This whole affair has been badly run. Shows what happens when you let amateurs run things.”
“Amateurs?” Bob Meyer had been assistant director of communications for many years, through the terms of several directors. He had survived partly by keeping most negative opinions to himself.
“The nun,” Bash elaborated, “Sister Joan. She’s handled this thing badly from the beginning.”
Amateur? thought Meyer. My God, she’s the dead woman’s sister, the only close relative! Who else would anyone expect to make final arrangements?
That’s what Meyer thought. What he said was, “It is a small mortuary. Perhaps she should have picked one of the major parlors.”
Bash shook his head. “No, not a larger home. A smaller crowd.” Was he the only one who saw the big picture? Was there no one else who thought clearly?
He would have fired Meyer shortly after meeting him except for Meyer’s extended tenure, which gave the assistant a unique background. He knew where all the bodies were buried and whose closets the skeletons were in. He knew every inch of the maze of bureaus and departments in the archdiocese. Besides, Meyer was good at nitty-gritty and detail work. And Bash, dealing with the big picture, had little time to go around crossing t’s and dotting i’s.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Meyer said. “I thought you said the room—the funeral home—was too small.”
“It is too small—for this crowd. The thing is, the crowd shouldn’t be here. There shouldn’t be this much of a crowd.”
Not infrequently, Meyer found Bash confusing. This was such a time. “The crowd shouldn’t be here?”
“This whole story should have been buried. It doesn’t do the image any good to have a nun with a sister who’s a prostitute. And not just any nun: a department head.”
“Oh.”
“No one—or practically no one—knew Sister Joan even had a sister, let alone one who was a whore. Then she gets herself murdered and everything hits the fan. If this story had been killed, no one would have been the wiser. This would have been the proper size mortuary for this funeral because almost no one would be here.” There was exasperation in his tone. The tone of an irritated teacher dealing with a backward student.
Meyer’s more practical judgment told him to let the subject drop and to simply agree with his boss. His curiosity betrayed him. “But, Father, this was a homicide, with far-reaching complications. Helen Donovan wasn’t a streetwalker or an ordinary lady of the evening. Some of her clients are among the most prominent men in southeast Michigan. The police haven’t named any names, but the gossip columnists are having a field day with rumors and innuendo.”
“I could have killed the story!” Bash spoke so forcefully that, for a moment, the low murmurs stopped, and there was complete silence in the room. Heads turned toward Bash and Meyer. But only momentarily. Then the whooshing sound began again.
Bash’s statement startled Meyer. Partly because of its force, but more due to the presumptuousness and arrogance it revealed.
“The story should have been handled by us in the first place,” Bash said, returning to a semi-whisper. “Why didn’t we get the story?”
Meyer was tempted to just tell the truth: that this was not at any time an archdiocesan story. It was a homicide. It deserved to be where it had landed in the beginning—in the secular news media.
But the desire for longevity won out. “It just got away from us, I guess.”
“The nun,” Bash said. “She should have come to us at the outset. How in hell are we supposed to keep our fingers on everything newsworthy that happens in the diocese if we can’t even trust our own department heads to channel everything through us? How many times at staff meetings have I warned the department heads of what can happen when we are not on top of all media events!? Well, this is what happens! You can damn well bet your bottom dollar they’re going to hear about this incident as a prime example of how fouled up things can get.”
Meyer breathed a prayer of thanksgiving that assistants were not invited to staff meeetings. He wouldn’t have to witness Cletus Bash browbeating some pretty nice people. The ironic thing was that due partly to Bash’s pomposity and partly because the people he would be talking down to were some fundamentally decent human beings, they’d probably not challenge any of his ridiculous opinions.
Well, come to think of it, thought Meyer, I didn’t challenge him either. Never mind that Meyer studiously avoided confrontation in order to maintain financial security and a considerable investment in a retirement fund. In the end there was no question about it: Bash got away with too much—far too much.
Koesler, like the others in the room, had no idea of what Bash and Meyer had been discussing.
Meyer it was who had saved a place for his boss. This came as no surprise to Koesler, He had met Meyer often enough to know it was almost impossible to get a firm opinion from the man. He was all questions and very few answers. That he would arrive at a place like this early enough to save a seat for his boss was to be expected. Meyer had made a science of kowtowing. Koesler found that sad.
But, Koesler wondered, what could Clete Bash mean by saying he could have killed a story? What story?
No one who read the local papers, watched local TV, or listened to local radio could be unaware that Father Cletus Bash was, for starters, the official spokesman for the archdiocese of Detroit. Indeed, faidiful readers, viewers, and listeners could be forgiven for being fed up with Bash’s intrusion when it came to news stories. It was as if there could be no Catholic news or Catholic reaction to news unless Cletus Bash did it or said it.
But what could he have meant by saying that he could have killed a story? Surely not this story. He must have had reference to some other story.
Koesler dismissed the whole business.
He would have been distracted in any case by a sudden stirring in this overly crowded and overly warm room. Archbishop Lawrence Foley was making an entrance. There was no possible doubt about that whatever.
Foley had a distinct—nay, unique—way of clearing his throat. He would half bury his chin in his clerical collar, cover his mouth with a closed fist, and clear his throat with a series of rumbling sounds.
The cough was the result of a combination of causes, including nearly fifty years of cigarette smoking, inveterate tea drinking, and, eventually, sheer habit. While he had quit smoking some ten years ago, his hack sounded as authentic as if he had just walked off a tobacco plantation.
Five years ago he had retired as archbishop of Cincinnati. The stated reason for his retirement was his age—seventy—and ill health. Both reasons were real enough, but the more pressing issue was that in some Curial circles he was considered “soft” on such issues as homosexuality and abortion. Foley wasn’t really an advocate of either practice. He just loved everybody—including sinners and those considered by highly placed authorities to be sinners. The longer he lived, the more accepting and nonjudgmental he became—attributes not at all prized by the present administration in Rome. However, a few years before, Rome itself had been burned by the reaction of American bishops when a liberal West Coast bishop had his local authority shredded by some bureaucrats in Rome. Not wishing to be twice burned, yet not willing to endure any hint of doctrinal deviation, Rome had applied considerable pressure as Foley neared compulsory retirement age.
The archbishop, a loyal churchman despite his humanistic leanings, complied with Rome’s wishes. He retired, but stayed on in a private Cincinnati home as bishop-emeritus. However, despite his striving to maintain a very low profile, his popularity remained strong. He was invited to meetings of such fringe groups as former priests, and women who demanded ordination. Often, he attended. The good man had great difficulty refusing invitations, particularly those from people who were hurting.
Pressure was applied again: this time, to leave Cincinnati and the people with whom he’d built a long-standing, mutual love affair.
Obediently, he packed. But where to go? He prayed. His prayers were answered almost ideally by an invitation to reside in Detroit.
Detroit had become known throughout the country and the entire Catholic world as an “open” diocese. The Second Vatican Council had hit Detroit harder than any other U.S. diocese and certainly no less forcefully than any other diocese in the world.
Rome was not enthused by the Detroit Syndrome. But there were some substantial if subtle differences between Detroit and Cincinnati. Detroit’s archbishop, Mark Boyle, was a Cardinal, a “prince of the Church,” That, plus Boyle’s popularity among his confreres, had earned him the first elected presidency of the newly formed U.S. Bishops’ Conference. Even Rome had to take these facts into consideration.
There were also differences between Boyle and Foley.
Larry Foley’s conscience and conviction led him to more or less sympathize with the spirit of the fringe and outlawed groups with whom he dealt. Mark Boyle, on the other hand, seldom if ever swerved from the vera doctrina, the true doctrine as interpreted by Rome.
Boyle’s great virtue—or flaw, depending on which side of the fence one sat—was his ability to co-exist with those whose opinions he did not share. Without shouting, “Off with their heads!”
Thus Boyle got along with Foley as well or better than with just about any other bishop in captivity. They had been friends for years; it was only natural that Foley had considered Boyle’s invitation to reside in Detroit as heaven-sent.
With this background, Koesler understood why Archbishop Foley would receive mixed reviews from the people in this room. Many of them had the “bureaucratic mind” that disapproved of Foley as a maverick, while others appreciated him to the extent of loving him.
Among the latter was Sister Joan Donovan. While making no effort to conceal the details of her sister’s life and death, she had, with anxiety, let her wish be known that her sister receive a Catholic burial.
Archbishop Foley had been the first—and, actually, the foremost—to respond to her appeal. He told Joan it would be an honor for him to preside over the Mass of Resurrection and burial. Thus Sister Joan joined the long line of those beholden to him.
Foley was here to lead the rosary. To that purpose he now made his way toward the front of the room where a kneeler had been placed before the bier.
The archbishop gave new meaning to fragility. Thin as a pipe cleaner, he was slightly stooped. Although he bore a generally dour face topped by wispy white hair, it was his eyes that distinguished him. They were blue and danced with merriment.
Even the soft whispering gradually ceased as Foley shuffled to the front of the room. As he reached the casket, Sister Joan stepped forward and joined him. For several moments they stood gazing at the remains of Helen Donovan. Foley had spoken words of consolation at the time he’d agreed to preside at the funeral, so there was no need to go into that again.
“She was very beautiful,” Foley said finally. He had never met Helen Donovan in life.
Joan nodded, “She looks quite natural. I was told the bullet entered the rear of her head and didn’t come out. So I guess there was no extensive damage in the front to …” She choked back a heavy pressure in her throat.
“… repair?” Foley supplied.
“Yes, that’s right.”
Foley joined his hands as if in prayer. “Now that I’ve finally seen her, I am amazed how much she resembles you.”
“Oh, she was much prettier.”
“No, not really. She’s lovely, of course. But then, so are you.”
“Oh, come now!” Joan touched the bishop’s arm. It was as if she were holding naked bone.
“No, no. You are both lovely ladies. Now, if an old coot like me can’t get away with passing a compliment with no strings attached, who in God’s green world can?”
Joan smiled briefly. “You know, Bishop, she and I were never close. That surprises me now that I look back on it. We were the only children in our family, both girls. You’d think we would have appreciated each other, shared things. But aside of my hand-me-downs we shared almost nothing. I got excellent marks in school—that sort of challenged her. I did well in academics; she did not. But she did better in almost everything else.”
They fell silent for a few moments.
“Your sister is grateful to you now,” Foley said. “Grateful that you’ve gone to all this trouble to have her buried properly.”
“Oh, do you really think so? I’ve been wondering whether I’m doing all this for her or for myself. For a long, long time she couldn’t have cared less about the church or religion. What difference would this ceremony make to her now?”
“Well, m’dear, I’ve always thought that when we die, we will be judged by love. I am so very, desperately grateful that when I go, I will not be judged by any fellow human—no matter how understanding and forgiving that person may be. No, your sister’s been judged by the only one who goes on loving us no matter what we do. Keep in mind the words of St. John, ‘God is love and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.’ Forgive the sexist pronouns, m’dear.”
Strange, thought Joan, he hasn’t said anything I didn’t know. And yet I feel so much better, so very much better.
“And while we’re at it,” Foley added, “we might remember some other words from Scripture: ‘It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead.’ Will you join me on the kneeler? I promise I won’t get fresh.”
Joan almost laughed out loud.
As they knelt, most of those in the room followed suit. Archbishop Foley led the group in the glorious mysteries. To even slightly old-fashioned Catholics, the rosary, particularly in this setting, was a consolation. To others, the whole thing was a mystery—not joyful, not sorrowful, not glorious. Just a mystery.
The rosary completed, Foley creaked to his feet, said a few more words to Joan, patted her hand, and shuffled toward the exit.
The others waited, either out of genuine respect or in deference to his rank. Then nearly everyone participated in a mass exit. Koesler, intent on speaking to Joan, felt like a salmon swimming upstream.
By the time he reached the front of the room only a few people remained. They were clustered around Sister Joan. As he knelt briefly before the casket, he was struck by Helen’s resemblance to Joan. They were not twins, but they very definitely were look-alike sisters.
As he prayed that Helen be at peace with God, he wondered how two lives so joined in consanguinity could have developed so differently, as Helen and Joan had drifted apart in every conceivable way.
When he finished his prayer, he stood at the rear of the small group offering condolences to Joan. She noticed him standing there awkwardly and broke away long enough to thank him for attending. It was a perfunctory greeting. Koesler was certain that later Joan would not even remember his presence. But that was understandable. It was not at all uncommon for the bereaved to be distracted, even unaware of what was taking place. The death of a loved one may be the ultimate shock.
As Koesler turned to leave, none of the original crowd, outside of the few with Joan, remained—except the ladies who did not represent the Rosary Altar Society. They were in the doorway talking to a black man with an engaging smile.
Koesler knew the man from somewhere. As usual in such situations, he began reflecting on parishes he had served. Frequently, priests’ contacts with laity took place on the parochial level. This was an easy case to check; he had had relatively few black parishioners during his priestly ministry to date. He hoped to correct that imbalance through old St. Joseph’s parish.
But, if not a parish, then where? Of course: Lieutenant Tully. What was that nickname some used? Oh, yes: Zoo.
Koesler was tempted to classify their association as having “worked together” on a couple of cases. But that would be a somewhat grandiose description. Let’s keep things in perspective, he thought: Tully was the cop. And from what Koesler’s close friend Inspector Walter Koznicki had said, Tully was the inspector’s most valued officer in the Homicide Division. From the amateur’s point of view, Koesler would agree at least with the fact that Tully was totally dedicated to his work.
And Koesler? Over the past decade, Homicide had investigated some cases with decidedly Catholic angles. He had merely clarified some facets of Catholicism that had cleared the way for the police to do their job
In the periphery of his vision, Tully caught Koesler looking in his direction. He had been waiting for that. Graciously he terminated his conversation with the women and stepped forward into the nearly empty room toward Koesler. For Tully, Koesler represented an oasis of familiarity in a desert of foreign identities.
They greeted each other cordially but their mutual greeting was more pro forma than personal.
“For just a second there, Lieutenant”—Koesler’s sole use of nicknames was confined to colleagues who were friends from childhood—“I was surprised to see you here. Then I recalled that this is, after all, a murder investigation. So why wouldn’t you be here?”
“Uh-huh. Good to see you again, And you? Did you know the deceased?”
For just an instant, Koesler reacted as if he were being interrogated. “No, not at all.” Then he relaxed. “I do know her sister, Sister Joan. I was afraid there wouldn’t be many showing up for this wake so I was going to add my body to the few. Obviously”—Koesler’s gesture encompassed what had been a packed room—“I was mistaken.”
“You weren’t the only one surprised. What attracted this crowd?”
“Oh, I think certainly the fact that Sister Joan is the head of a department in the archdiocese. A few of the people here tonight are also department heads, and a lot of the others work in the various departments.”
That makes sense, thought Tully. “And you know all these people?”
Koesler nodded. “Most of them. Certainly all the department heads. Not everyone who works under them.”
“Interesting. The elderly gentleman, the one who led the prayers, he a department head?”
“No, he’s a bishop. An archbishop.” Koesler had had this perception many times before. There was no shorthand to explain the trappings of Catholicism—its law, doctrine, morality, liturgy, etc.—easily and simply. “He’s retired.”
“Retired? Then why’s he leading the prayers?”
Koesler didn’t immediately grasp the thrust of Tully’s question. “Leading prayers?” Then, “Oh, I see. Well, priests, bishops, even if they’re retired, don’t stop praying or even leading prayers. They can continue doing as much or as little as they wish and as the Church law allows, liturgically if not parochially. Most of them want to be rid of administrative work. But most of them still want to be with people—want to be of some service to people.”
“Makes sense, I guess.” Once again Tully felt overwhelmed with the amount of detail in Catholicism—in all of organized religion, for all he knew—and how little of it he understood or was aware of. At this point Koesler was his only guide to a vast unknown area that might be important to this case. He fervently hoped there was no connection. Mostly, he hoped this homicide was not a case of mistaken identity. For if the real intended victim was the nun, Tully could be drawn into this maze of Catholicism he so little understood. “You’re not goin’ on vacation anytime soon, are you?”
Koesler chuckled. “It seems as if I just got to my new parish,” he said. “No, I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere soon.”
“New parish?”
“St. Joseph’s—old St. Joseph’s downtown.”
“Near police headquarters?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Nice.”