Chapter 26
“Where’s Alvin?” Ralph asked after a moment.
“In Alaska, I suppose.” Carpenter put away the folder. “Who gave you that information?”
“A fucking computer.”
Richard came over and squatted on his haunches to look at the pair of men under the table. “What can I get you gents? Gin? Scotch? Mop ’n’ Glo?”
Ralph and Carpenter crawled out and took their seats. “Hit me again,” Ralph said. To Carpenter: “You?”
“I don’t drink.”
“You ain’t no reporter!”
“Hold it down.” Carpenter ordered a Coke. When Richard left: “Are we talking or not? If not, I can use the thousand.”
“Who shot the bishop?” Ralph asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Who strangled Vinnie?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Who burned Lyla Dane?”
“I was going—”
Ralph raised the water pistol. “What do you know?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Their drinks came. Ralph waited until Richard was back behind the bar. “I got to know some things first. I figure I earned it.”
“Shoot.”
“Don’t tempt me.” He put down the water pistol. “I called a phone number I found in the rectory at St. Balthazar. Willard Newton answered. Know who he is?”
“The U.S. attorney general.”
“You’re the first one who got that right.”
“I should hope so. He’s the man the Post is investigating.”
“Investigating for what?”
“I’ll need to hear a lot more from you before I give that up.”
“When he found out I was calling from Detroit he said, ‘Carpenter, I told you never to call me here.’ Which Carpenter’s that, Alvin or Paul?”
“Peter.”
“Who’s Peter?”
“I’m Peter.”
“I thought you was Paul.”
“Paul’s my middle name.”
“I never had one.”
“Isaac,” Carpenter said.
“What?”
“Ralph Isaac Poteet. I looked you up. Why are you ashamed of it?”
“It ain’t the name, it’s the initials.” Ralph drank. “You was working for Willard Newton, not Bishop Steelcase.”
“I’m working for the Washington Post. I’m investigating Willard Newton.”
“Investigating for what?”
“What’s Lyla Dane to you?” Carpenter asked.
“Neighbor. She called me to get Monsignor Breame out of her bed.”
“But not before you took pictures.”
“That was my idea. Hookers got no imagination. You picked up the body for Bishop Steelcase, only you ain’t working for him.”
“Right. I’m a reporter.”
“What kind?”
“Investigative.”
“Investigating for what?”
“We did that twice.” Carpenter tapped the edge of his glass with the envelope full of bills. “Where are the pictures?”
“You didn’t buy no pictures. That money’s to talk.”
He flipped the envelope into the center of the table. When Ralph reached for it, Carpenter set his glass on top of it. Ralph sat back again.
“Let’s see what we got,” he said. “You ain’t working for Willard Newton, but he thinks you are. You wasn’t working for the bishop, but he thought you was. That’s why you picked up the body. But you didn’t rig Lyla Dane’s apartment to blow up in her face.”
“Right so far.”
“Who drugged me when I was at the bishop’s, you or Steelcase?”
“I did. At his orders.”
“You went through my pockets and dumped me at Mt. Elliott Cemetery?”
“Yes.”
“You went to toss my apartment, found Vinnie already doing that, and squiffed him?”
“No. That was somebody else.”
“Who?”
“Maybe I should keep this money,” Carpenter said. “I’ve done more for it than you have. Did you really take pictures, or was that a bluff to blackmail the bishop?”
“I took ’em. I ain’t handing ’em over for any lousy grand.”
“Do what you like with them. They’re only of peripheral interest.”
“Okay, I’ll just take my envelope and be on my way.” Ralph held out a hand.
“What’s your hurry?”
“I like to drink and I don’t jog. I figure I got twenty years to live if I don’t get shot first and I sure ain’t fixing to spend them here smelling Richard’s fucking dog.”
“So that’s what that is. I thought the wind was blowing up from Washington.”
“Junior, you sure don’t say much for somebody that’s paying to talk.”
“I’m paying to ask questions, not answer them.” Carpenter sipped his Coke and gazed in Andy’s direction. “Does he look like a government man to you?”
“The vice president, a little. Around the ass.”
“They’re always reading.”
“What’s Absolution?”
Carpenter stared at him. “Where’d you hear about Absolution?”
Ralph felt his grin returning. He sat back and belched juniper.
“Okay. I’m satisfied you’ve something to trade.” The reporter shifted in his seat. “You remember Abscam.”
“That thing where all them Democrats got caught with their hands up some camel jockey’s burnoose.”
“Close enough. In that one, FBI agents posing as Arab nationals induced a number of congressmen to accept bribes for voting their way on trade issues. The transactions were videotaped and used as evidence in court.”
“I got to get me one of them cameras,” Ralph mused.
“Absolution is the code name for a similar Justice Department operation that went sour.”
“What’d they do, run out of sheets?”
“This one was more elaborate, with different targets. The scam involved dressing field agents in clerical robes and placing them in confessionals in Catholic parishes believed to include high-ranking figures in organized crime. The plan was to finesse them into incriminating themselves with the use of hidden surveillance equipment.”
“You made that up.”
“We’re pretty sure Willard Newton did. It was his pet scheme.”
“It wouldn’t hold up in court.”
“That’s why it was abandoned a year ago. Also it was a disaster from a public relations viewpoint, mixing church and state and all. Not to mention the fact that a large percentage of the newer breed of crime bigwigs is Protestant.”
“Royal fuck-up.”
“A democratic one, actually. With a small d.”
“So what’s the beef now?”
“There’s no such thing as a bureaucratic secret. We had an informant whose conscience got the better of him finally. He contacted our Detroit bureau and they relayed the information to Washington.”
“Steelcase?”
“Hardly. We figure he was the one who panicked and called Newton when he got wind of the investigation. I don’t think I’ll tell you the name of our informant just yet.”
Ralph chewed on his swizzle in place of a matchstick. “What’d Newton do?”
“Something he shouldn’t have.”
“Huh.”
“The election’s next month. If Willard Newton is linked with a bonehead illegal operation that cost the taxpayers millions, he stands to do more than lose his job. He’ll take down the present administration and his entire party with him. So he hired a killer to eliminate the informant.”
“You.”
“That’s what he thinks. Government has nothing on the Post, Poteet; we’ve got deep-cover men in some impressive places. Our man in the Justice Department diverted Newton’s requisition to us. I got the job of posing as the killer. I’d rather not say why.”
“It ain’t necessary,” Ralph said.
Carpenter was solemn. “Willard Newton violated the First Amendment rights of every confessor who went into one of those booths looking to unburden his soul to someone he thought was a priest. The pilgrims didn’t come here for that. Speaking less Constitutionally, I had barely begun my investigation when someone murdered Monsignor Breame.”
Ralph had been about to signal Richard for another round. He lowered his hand.
“Breame was our informant,” Carpenter said. “You didn’t really think he died humping some cheap prostitute, did you?”
Ralph said, “A guy’d have to be pretty low to think a thing like that.”