Monday 8:22 P.M.
After he jammed on the brakes to avoid a bus at Congress and Dearborn Fenwick said, “You know what worries me?”
“That the brakes will fail?”
Fenwick snorted. “I don’t expect physical danger from these desperately sad old men, but I get an uneasy feeling when I’m around them.”
“They aren’t that much older than we are.”
“It’s like Drake did all that fist smashing on Molton’s desk, but the one I’d be worried about is Pelagius. Not a frontal assault, something sneaky, devious, and vicious.” He shook his head as he maneuvered around the bus. “Graffius is pretty old, but I mean they seem that way. They talk and act like they’re in their 90’s and from medieval times.”
“How did people talk in medieval times?” Turner asked.
“Like these guys.”
“You really worried about danger from them?”
Fenwick said, “Somebody got violently murdered and there’s all these pompous guys blubbering or blustering. You’d think they were Republicans. Anybody is capable of violence. One of them is a murderer. They could afford to hire minions. And Kappel seemed to have his own private minion.”
“Like the Spanish Inquisition?”
Fenwick emitted a grumble and a fart at the same time, a sure sign to Turner, who was all too aware of his partner’s peccadilloes, that Fenwick was upset. They took Wacker Drive to the Chicago River and crossed onto Orleans Street north toward the rectory.
Fenwick asked, “What real threat are these people to us or to each other?”
“Obviously someone was or there wouldn’t be someone violently dead.”
“No, I mean, sure you violate some ecclesiastical law, but who really cares?”
“Yeah, but we’re getting more than hints of scandal and money. Anyone can screw up either to cause a problem or take advantage of it. Maybe both perpetrator and victim were trying to or needed to cover up something or get away with something. A whole lot of time, as we both know, we’ve found money as a motive. Or maybe Kappel asked a whole bunch of waiters and busboys and hired help for sex and finally some homophobe beat him to death. It happens.”
“I know that.”
“We’re kind of testy with each other tonight.”
“These shits are lying to us. They’ve spent their whole lives lying to themselves, each other, and the world at large. I’ve met liars, but these guys are pros. I’m feeling out of my league and out of sorts.”
Fenwick turned left on Erie Street and pulled up to the rectory. A slight breeze off the lake annoyed the leaves in the gutters.
Fenwick adjusted his bulk in the seat and said, “At least I hope the lies we get from this guy are plausible.”
“You know we were followed here.”
Fenwick didn’t even bother looking in the rearview mirror. “Black town car, picked us up a block from the station, license SHBJO1, didn’t turn onto Erie Street with us? Didn’t notice a thing.”
Turner didn’t need to key in the acronym to recognize it was from the Sacred Heart of Bleeding Jesus Order. “Makes no sense. If they wanted to lure cops to a secret rendezvous to do us harm, just make a bogus call. Or maybe this was a bogus call.”
“Why follow a couple Chicago cops?” Fenwick answered his own question. “To see where we go. To set up a trap for us.”
“Like to a secret meeting at an old rectory.”
“Like that.”
“But then half the planet knows where we were going.”
“Setting up the guy at the rectory?”
“They think we’re that stupid and wouldn’t notice? It’s full daylight in a big city. And they’re tailing cops? Are they amateurs? They think there’s a point to it? They think we’re not on alert and being careful?”
“Never underestimate the stupidity of a criminal or the desperation of a killer.”
The short street ended in a half block where part of the old public housing project had been torn down. The urban renewers hadn’t rebuilt the area yet. Weeds and trash nestled comfortably in every leftover nook or cranny. The rectory was a two story Italianate villa, orange-stucco, red-tile roof edifice that would have been at home on a hillside in Tuscany.
A short man wearing a gray shirt with a Roman collar and black pants and black shoes answered the door. He held a drink in one hand. With the other he held onto the door. His bald head shown in a hall light.
Fenwick and Turner held out their IDs and introduced themselves.
“Ah gentlemen, do come in.” He spoke in deep, soft, mellifluous tones. “You are so kind to have responded to my summons.”
Turner said, “We were told you had information about Bishop Kappel.” The wrinkles and mottled spots on the man’s neck told Turner that the man might be in his eighties, possibly older.
The priest let go the door and held out his hand to them. “I’m Father Dere, please do come in.”
He led them deeper into the house. The front hall had a hardwood floor, pictures of saints in the process of being martyred hung on the walls. The one pierced with arrows Turner thought might be St. Sebastian. A woman going up in flames had to be Joan of Arc. None of the others jogged his memory of religion classes years ago.
The room the priest took them to was furnished as a plush den in the most exquisite mansion on Lake Shore Drive, deep brown leather chairs, antique side tables, brass lamps, a gigantic oak desk stained deep brown, two walls of books, on the two others exquisite paintings bathed with muted light showing scenes of pastoral repose, muted colors with trees and fields and reclining animals.
He led them to a sitting area of three chairs nesting on a deep purple Persian carpet. He offered them drinks. Turner and Fenwick declined. He poured liquid from several bottles into a tall glass, stirred with a crystal swizzle stick, tasted the concoction, added an amber drop from one tall thin bottle, tasted again, smiled. Then the old man subsided into a chair. When they were all seated he said, “I have a story to tell.”
Turner and Fenwick nodded.
“It goes back a long way.”
Turner said, “Anything you can tell us will be a help.”
Dere said, “At least you hope it will be.” He smiled. “I shall begin at the beginning.” He sipped from his drink and placed it on a lace doily worthy of Mrs. Talucci’s living room. “Timothy Kappel and Joshua Tresca have been looking over their shoulders since they were in the seminary.”
“Why?” Fenwick asked.
“Seminaries in general breed a culture of obedience and compliance. Those who sucked up and caused the least problems, tended to not get thrown out. You were evaluated constantly by everyone who was a priest and superior to you. If you asked questions, you came under suspicion. Compliance to authority and the goal of continuing the good thing they had were the most important things. Those in charge didn’t want boat rockers. Better to always keep someone uncertain about their future. And that works all the way up to Pope. Someone is always your superior. Someone can always judge you and find you wanting. Think of those modern contest shows in television.”
Fenwick said, “I’ve never watched one.”
Turner hadn’t either.
“But you know the idea. A board of overseers made up of people of varying degrees of competence passes judgment on you. Some know you well, others don’t.”
“Hell of a way to live,” Fenwick opined.
Dere shrugged. “It’s worked for hundreds and hundreds of years. For how much longer, I’m not sure. There are so few young priests or seminarians.” He covered his mouth and hacked as if both lungs were heavily congested. He wiped his mouth with a tissue he took from the end of his sleeve, took a sip from the tall glass he’d filled earlier, and resumed. “The important thing I have to tell you, and you must remember this and always keep it in mind, everything everyone has told you in this investigation up to this point is a lie.”
“You know everyone we’ve talked to?” Fenwick asked. “I find that a little hard to believe. We don’t make a list and publish it. Are you saying you have access to our squad room, our desks, our paperwork? You’d be noticed.”
“You want my help or not?”
He wasn’t used to being doubted.
“Why should we believe you instead of them?” Fenwick asked.
The priest smiled and kept silent.
Turner said, “We listen to a lot in investigations. Most of it is kind of useless and peripheral. Are you saying the facts we’ve gotten from people are wrong? Which facts? Which people?”
“Obviously you don’t want my help.”
This time it was Turner’s turn to smile. “Why would you lie for these people? What hold do they have on you?”
The old priest snarled, “I’m not lying.”
“Don’t be absurd. You couldn’t possibly know who we’ve interviewed. You might know who some of the priests were in the Order who we talked to, but then are you saying there is a vast network following us around? Or all the priests connected with your Order have this vast network of interconnection? Or you’re all madly twittering each other? Or have reported everything to the Abbot or the Cardinal? And then someone has a way of disseminating all that information instantaneously? And that someone is organizing all the lies and only you can stop them?”
“I’m trying to help.” He hesitated, took a long gulp from his drink. “I wish I could help.”
Turner asked, “What was your relationship with Kappel and Tresca all those years ago?”
The old priest smiled. “Forty years ago I was in charge of formation in the Chicago Province. I ran the seminary in the Chicago Province for many, many years.”
“So you knew them well,” Fenwick asked.
The old man’s smile got wider. He sipped from his drink, licked his lips, coughed. He looked them both in the eye and said, “Yes, I recruited them to the order from our high school. The two of them were quite the pair. Lovers back then, of course, as they are now.”
“You knew?” Fenwick asked.
Dere smiled. “I fucked both their tight little asses.” He glanced from one to the other of the detectives. “I haven’t shocked you?”
Turner said, “I think you might not have been able to inflict the injuries on Kappel that killed him. So I don’t think you’re a killer. Were they over eighteen?”
“Yes.”
“How does what happened then connect to the murder and catching the killer?”
“Well, our relationship benefited both of them. When it came time to evaluate them, I was always one of their champions. Some of the other priests who championed them were probably being honest. Some of them were for them for the same reason I was. We got satisfaction. They got to stay in the Order.”
Fenwick said, “Didn’t openly gay guys get thrown out of seminaries then and now?”
“Oh, my, yes. They were smart back then, very smart. So was I.”
Fenwick said, “You took advantage of them at a vulnerable time.” Turner who understood his partner well, heard the beginning of an outraged outburst rumbling under the question.
Dere smiled. “This was a college program. If I was still interested in sex, the image of what they and I did together would be what would bring me to orgasm. They were athletic and beautiful. We’d wrestle and horseplay in the halls and have sex in private.”
Fenwick snapped, “Are you bragging or complaining?”
The old man shook his head. “You may save your outrage. Back then if found out, I’d have been transferred so fast my head would have spun. But no one knew, or if they knew, they said nothing. The culture of silence and willful blindness, of protecting Holy Mother Church was paramount, is paramount, and will always be paramount. I tell you this gentlemen so you realize I’m not holding anything back. That I’m willing to be honest with you. No, there would be little loss to my old age. If there is a Maker, I shall meet him soon, and if there is hell to be paid, so to speak, I suppose I shall pay it.”
Fenwick asked, “You don’t believe?”
“You do?” the priest asked.
Fenwick said, “Not so much, but you’re a priest.”
“Which does not mean I am not human.” Again he sipped from his drink, coughed, and wiped his mouth. He placed the tissue back in his sleeve and said, “But you are right. You gentlemen came here for information that I do have. Not a history of past indiscretions. Yes, Kappel and Tresca were both excessively narcissistic and had a penchant for sex long ago and might still have had.”
“Who would want to kill him?” Turner asked.
“Bishop Kappel was the financial guy, investigation guy, the enforcer, the fixer, the time study engineer, the efficiency expert, and was an enemy to almost everyone.”
“Why would he want to be cast as such an asshole?” Fenwick asked.
Dere shrugged. “Maybe he enjoyed it. He was a bishop. He could indulge his vicious streak. If there were financial irregularities that needed to be investigated in a diocese, he was your man. But who you knew was always far more important than what you’d done. The personal and political were more important than your sins. Kappel was very, very smart. He was the best at navigating the minefields in the Church. If there was a problem, you sent him.”
“In the Order?” Turner asked.
“Bishop Kappel was trusted by the leaders of the Order in Rome and by the Vatican itself, by people very high up in the Vatican.”
“But isn’t Bruchard the head of the Order?”
“Well, yes, he is now. It’s been years of complicated back and forth.”
Turner said, “But we heard the Cardinal and the Abbot hated each other, but they both trusted Kappel?”
“Maybe he had the goods on both of them, on all of them.”
“What goods?”
“Graft, corruption, lies.”
“He had that kind of leverage even though he was living openly with another man?” Fenwick asked.
“Did they know he was gay? What difference would that make? Most of them are as well. He knew how to keep his sexuality quiet. The two of them never went out to dinner, rarely appeared in public together. They knew the rules.”
“So who was Kappel investigating?”
He gave them the list of financial chicanery, investigations, and duplicity about the diocese and the Order that they’d already heard. He finished with, “We’ve got it good. We all have cooks in these rectories. We all get the best foods. And parties! Every feast is celebrated: the anniversary of the founding of the Order, St. Charles of Avignon’s birthday, his feast day, the anniversary of his death, on and on. You saw that obscene picture of him which is replicated in rectories throughout the world. They pay for original copies painted by living artists. You see these decorations in here.” He pointed to the paintings on the walls. “These are original oil paintings, magnificently framed. All of this is on the parishioner’s dime.” He laughed, drank, coughed, and moved to the edge of his chair.
Turner half rose. The priest held out a hand. “I’m fine. Thank you.” He continued. “But that’s not the actual money scandal. I know these men. I know this diocese. I know this religious Order. Things are not right.” He sipped again from his drink, tipped the glass slightly toward them, and asked, “Are you sure you won’t have one?”
The detectives shook their heads no. Turner asked, “Was there an actual source on the financial irregularities in the Order?”
“The Abbot’s protégé. He thought the Abbot’s enemies were trying to destroy him. The idiot, the protégé thought by releasing secret documents, he’d boost the Abbot’s power. He almost destroyed it.”
“What happened to him?”
“He’s an assistant in a village outside of Palermo in Sicily. He hasn’t been heard from in years.”
Fenwick asked, “Why don’t these guys just quit?”
Dere shrugged. “It’s what they know.”
Turner asked, “Did Kappel rein in the rebel priests?”
“I heard there had been meetings where angry words were exchanged. Tempers ran high. I think all those involved are dead now. We’re an old bunch.” He took a sip of his drink.
Dere gave a railing cough that brought him out of his chair and to his knees. Turner and Fenwick hurried to him. Turner put his arms around the old man’s shoulders. “Should we call the paramedics?”
“No, no. I am dying of various kinds of cancer. It grows slowly at my age. No, this is not new. Sometimes I cough so hard I pass out.” He drew deep breaths. “It passes quickly. I’ve been to the doctors. They don’t believe me. They don’t think I can cough hard enough to pass out. They told me I was having a heart attack until all their machines said my heart was fine. They don’t know what’s wrong. The passing out doesn’t come from the cancer or a heart attack. It’s not something they know, so they say it’s all in my head.”
Turner helped him sit back down in his chair. Dere took three sips in a row from his drink. “Thank you.” He harrumphed. “Who you really should be afraid of is Bishop Pelagius. That man is frightening. Bad things happen when he’s around.”
“Like what?” Fenwick asked.
“He knows that Vern Drake. You know that politician who tied his fate to a condom?”
“Why should we be afraid of them?”
“I guess we’ve all learned to be frightened of them for so long. And no, we don’t leave the priesthood. We’re old. We have nowhere to go.”
Fenwick said, “I asked this the other day. They can’t excommunicate me or deny me communion. Even if I cared, I’m not Catholic. What am I supposed to be afraid of?” He snorted. “Haven’t they learned that they can’t cover up crimes here?”
“They have power within power, wheels within wheels. They will stop at nothing to destroy someone, including yourselves.”
“Wouldn’t you have to be a member of the church and at the same time take all this Roman power seriously? I repeat, I’m not a member of the church.”
“Timothy Kappel is dead, and he died violently. And no, I have no proof of who directly murdered him.”
As they were preparing to leave, Turner asked, “Who told you to lie to us?”
“The number of possibilities, like your suspects, is finite.”
“Why all the lies?” Fenwick asked.
“They’re afraid, we’re afraid of all that we’ve got being taken away. I told you about how the seminary works. All those fears never really go away, from any of us no matter how old we get.”
In the car Fenwick reiterated, “Was he confessing or bragging about his relationship with two hot young guys?”
“Both? Or he was lying about that as well.”
“Tresca and Kappel were sexual predators, stop the presses,” Fenwick said, “and this guy was too. He got what he wanted. Is that how those two became priests? They had a protector because they were willing to let him screw them?”
“It sounds like they were more than willing.”
“He was in a power position over them.”
“I’m not disputing the wrongness of it. I’m saying while in the middle of it, both sides were using each other.”
Fenwick grumbled. “I can actually understand Kappel and Tresca a little bit. They wanted to have sex whenever and with whomever they could. Sound like horny guys everywhere, straight or gay.”
“Talking about yourself?”
“Madge would kill me. And I’m too fat, old, and going bald, to even fantasize anymore.”
“Madge knows about your fantasies?”
“Madge knows all and sees all. It’s depressing. If she caught me with a stray thought, she’d cut my balls off.”
They were stopped on Orleans Street going south in heavy traffic snarled at the on and off ramps at Ohio and Ontario Streets ahead of them. Fenwick thumped the steering wheel. “I don’t get that part where he said they were excessively narcissistic with a penchant for sex. It sounds like a simplistic diagnosis by a third-rate therapist. It makes no sense.”
“Excessively narcissistic with a penchant for sex.” Turner shrugged. “Maybe it means they liked to beat off a lot in front of a mirror.”
Fenwick laughed so hard he had to pull over in the nearest bus stop. He didn’t start moving again until an angry bus driver leaned on his horn to get them to move.
Fenwick wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. “That was good.”
“Just trying to keep up with you.” But he found Fenwick’s laughter contagious and chuckled along with him.
A few minutes later, traffic unsnarling, and Fenwick reduced to occasional chortles as he drove, he glanced at Turner. “This guy didn’t really tell us much new.”
Fenwick said, “We’re not being followed.”
“Go two blocks east, one south, and come back around.”
They were in the River North area. A trendy, with-it part of town where Turner went to eat once with Ben on their anniversary. They found the portions skimpy, and the food burnt. They were told later this was ‘charred’ and was very with it and in. Turner thought maybe the chefs of the world were trying to make a virtue of not having an oven timer.
A few minutes later they turned back onto Erie Street. A black town car was parked in front of the rectory. No one was sitting in it.
“Well, well, well,” Fenwick said.
“Let’s stop in.” They got out of the car.