2.

God Has Left the Building

I was scheduled to meet with Naples Police Chief Tom Sullivan in his office at eleven A.M. I had enough of getting up at zero-dark-thirty in the marines, and as a detective, so I always tried to not commit to anything more complicated than coffee and a shower before ten. The memory of my Parris Island drill instructor running into the squad bay at five A.M., banging two garbage can lids together, and shouting, “Okay scumbags, drop your cocks and grab your socks, the work day has begun!” was as fresh as a spring bouquet.

I was awakened at seven thirty by the drumming of a hard rain on Phoenix’s metal roof. Soon, the rainy season would end, replaced by winter drought and brushfires. It’s always something. I noticed that my roommate, Joe, was also awake. He was a stray cat named after my brother, a Chicago fireman who’d been killed trying to save a little boy’s dog from a burning tenement. The dog survived.

Joe the cat hopped aboard Phoenix one day four years ago while I was sitting on the deck, drinking a diet root beer and listening to a Tampa Bay Rays baseball game on the radio. He had the chewed ears and other battle scars of a street fighter. He stared at me, meowed, found a bit of shade, curled up, just like he owned the place, and went to sleep. We’ve been together ever since.

I got out of bed, padded barefoot into the galley, followed by Joe, started the Mr. Coffee machine, put a strawberry Pop-Tart into the toaster, and opened a can of tuna for Joe. Then I picked up a FedEx box lying on the counter, found a red pen in a drawer, took out the manuscript of Bill Stevens’s new novel, Stoney’s Downfall, sat at the galley table, and began to read.

I was confident that Jack Stoney would, in the end, avoid said downfall, because he needed to be around for Bill’s next book. Bill made his fictional detective taller, tougher, and a better marksman than I am. But I didn’t mind. The vagaries and doldrums of real life don’t sell books.

Chapter One of Stoney’s Downfall began this way:

Det. Lt. Jack Stoney sat with his feet up on his battered metal desk in the homicide squad room on a Monday morning, reading the Chicago Tribune, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup, and nibbling a powdered-sugar doughnut, the white residue snowing down onto his black shirt front.

Sweet Jumpin’ Jesus, Stoney said to himself as he read a page-one story bylined Bill Stevens. More people were shot and wounded or killed in the city over the hot summer weekend than all last month in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. We should get combat pay on top of the chump-change salary the city gives us to risk our lives every friggin’ day, he reflected.

It was common knowledge that a growing number of patrol officers wouldn’t even venture into certain neighborhoods on the South or West Sides of the city after dark, even in cruisers and wearing Kevlar vests, with shotguns and automatic rifles at the ready. Uparmored Humvees were what was needed, but there was no budget for that, Stoney knew, because the pols stole so much moola from the city coffers.

He noticed the captain in charge of the Detective Division’s Homicide Section, a guy named Tony Bryce, come out of his office holding a black loose-leaf notebook and head toward his desk. It was never good news when the captain came toward you holding a murder book. Bryce wasn’t that bad of a guy, truth be told, but if he was going to give you a murder book to work it meant someone else had already fucked it up. A new assignment came verbally, with no paperwork started yet.

“Sorry to interrupt you reading the comics pages, Jack, but I’ve got a matter needs your attention,” Bryce said.

He dropped the loose-leaf notebook onto Stoney’s desk with a plop.

“Haven’t gotten to the comics yet,” Stoney said. “Main news is funny enough, if you have a perverted sense of humor.”

“Got that right,” Bryce said. “Anyhow, you’ve heard about that priest from Holy Innocents Parish who was killed last month.”

“Yeah,” Stoney said. “He was an accused pedophile, found in the church rectory, cock cut off and stuffed into his mouth, premortem, they said, and shot in the heart.”

“The irony that a pedophile priest headed up a parish named Holy Innocents not being lost on us,” Bryce commented.

“I thought Kozlowski caught that case,” Stoney said, putting his feet down onto the floor.

He looked around the squad room. Koz wasn’t there or Bryce would have called Stoney into his office and closed the door.

“Stan was assigned to the case,” Bryce said. “Word just came down from on high that certain people have a problem with his investigation. Certain people including the mayor and the archbishop and, for all I know, the friggin’ Pope in Rome.”

Stoney knew that Bryce hated face-to-face confrontations. He probably called Koz at home that morning and gave him the news that he was off the case. Maybe Koz was having breakfast at The Baby Doll Polka Lounge, a favorite cop hangout, his usual breakfast being Black Jack neat with a beer back.

“Any suspects?” Stoney asked.

Bruce tapped the murder book. “It’s all in here.”

“Give me the executive summary.”

“The leading suspect is a guy whose son was allegedly abused by Father Sean Ferguson.”

“And the problem with that is?” Stoney asked.

“Is that the suspect is a prominent businessman and major donor to the Democratic party. So the brass wants someone else to have done it, if at all possible.”

I wasn’t surprised that Bill’s new story involved the sexual abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church worldwide. His sister’s son in Pittsburgh was one of the abuse victims. Bill told me about that during his last visit to Fort Myers Beach for some tarpon fishing. He said that, once the Pittsburgh priest was publicly identified, he would go there and kill him. Apparently by slicing off his dork, stuffing it into his pie hole, then shooting him in the ticker.

But, of course, Bill would never actually do that. Instead, he got his revenge by writing a book about it. I didn’t know for certain if the pen was mightier than the pruning shears the killer used on Father Sean Ferguson’s ding-dong, but I hoped the book would help shine the purifying rays of sunlight onto a church that had lost its moral authority by betraying its flock over so many past decades.

My family had always been steadfast Catholics, but I decided, after the first abuse scandal was uncovered by the Boston Globe, and more and more cases came to light, to never set foot in a church again, and I had not. You didn’t need to enter a building with an altar, rows of wooden pews, stained glass windows, and the aroma of burning incense wafting in the air to find God.

Maybe, in at least some churches around the world, God, like Elvis, had left the building.

Marisa attended Saint Leo’s every Sunday. “It’s my church too,” she once told me. “They can’t take it away from me.”

Without her knowing, I checked out the parish priest, Father Rafael Sandoval. I found out that he was a retired Marine Corps chaplain. I went to the church and introduced myself.

“Marisa has talked about you,” he said. “I completely understand why you don’t come here with her.”

“I appreciate that, Father,” I said. “I own a bar called The Drunken Parrot. I invite you to worship there whenever the Spirit moves you.”

After that conversation, the Spirit moved Father Sandoval every Sunday after his church services and whenever he wanted to watch a soccer game on our big-screen TVs. And sometimes when no game was on. On his first Sunday at the bar, I introduced him all around and Sam poured him a double shot of Jose Cuervo. He raised his glass in a toast: “May you be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.”

A good sentiment indeed.