The Visitor waited while Brother Krause settled himself in the armchair the Provincial had vacated when he moved to the chair behind his desk. “I read through your transcripts on the flight across the Atlantic, Brother Krause. Excellent job, I must say. Quite professional. I don’t suppose, by some chance, you left anything out?”
“Not that I’m aware of, Father. I’m sure I got it all down. Do you think I missed something?”
“My word, no!” said Father Fitzmaurice, flinging that thought away with a wave of his hand. “Indeed, not! Let’s just say that I think that somebody did.”
“I’m not sure I understand, Father.”
“Of course, so I had best explain what I found. Or rather, what I didn’t find in the Russian’s account of what Father Samozvanyetz experienced. It contained a good deal of specific detail. Am I correct that it all checked out?”
“That’s correct, Father. The geography, the times and places, everything that could be checked was verified by the government agents in Washington. What wasn’t verifiable was, at least, plausible. And all the Jesuit details checked out. Did you come across something that didn’t?”
“Actually, I found something that couldn’t be verified because it wasn’t there. Do you recall the Russian providing any details about his childhood?”
“Just what’s in the transcripts. He didn’t talk much about his childhood, Father. Just general stuff. Born in Detroit. Spoke Russian at home. Mom and Dad. Two sisters. Home address. Phone number. That sort of general information.”
“But nothing about childhood illnesses, playmates, favorite teachers? No family stories?”
“None of that ever came up, Father. Nobody asked him about his childhood and he didn’t volunteer anything about it.”
“Even though they would have made the impostor even more credible? You were a police officer, so I’ve been told, Brother Krause. What do you make of that omission?”
“The Russian didn’t give us any childhood stories because he didn’t have any. Most likely, the real Father Samozvanyetz never gave up any to his Russian interrogators or to the impostor.”
“Exactly!” said the Visitor. “A trained investigator from Detroit such as yourself may very well find something useful that the Russian woman who trained and now controls the impostor never discovered and probably still doesn’t know.”
“That was a good catch, Father.” Brother Krause shifted his weight. “I guess I should start packing for a trip to Detroit.”
“That would be my recommendation, if Father Novak can spare you for a few days.”
“Certainly,” said the Provincial. “But what should Brother Krause be looking for?”
“I do not have the slightest idea. But here is something I do know. The Russian woman has no way of knowing that her agent has confessed and is willing to help the FBI capture her, if we can protect his daughter in Russia. Is that correct? She is a hostage, in a way, to keep the impostor in line?”
“That’s what the impostor has told us,” said Father Novak.
“Very well, then. We have to find something to convince this Russian perfectionist that her perfect operation has unraveled because of her imperfect preparation. Find something she missed in preparing her agent, something to make her realize ‘Oh my God! I made a mistake !’ If she believes she’s been foiled, discovered and caught because it’s all her fault, not her agent’s, then there will be no reason for anyone to liquidate her hostage.”
“So I should look into the years Father Samozvanyetz spent in Detroit,” said Brother Krause. “It’s worth a try, Father. I know the area he grew up in and we may get lucky. We’ll see.”
“But before you leave, Brother, I want to ask you about the Russian’s interrogation or debriefing or whatever you call it. Before I meet this Russian agent myself, I would appreciate knowing how he struck you. You were obviously paying close attention. Were you completely taken in by him?”
“Not at first, I wasn’t, I was skeptical. It wasn’t that I thought he wasn’t telling the truth or anything like that.”
“I understand,” said Father Fitzmaurice. “You were thinking like a copper, correct? Don’t jump to conclusions, question everything, keep an open mind, etcetera, etcetera. Completely understandable and commendable.”
“Right. But the more I listened to the Russian tell his story, the more I believed him. To be honest about it, I guess I wanted his story to be true. And then, afterwards, everything checked out.”
“Did you notice how Father Beck was reacting to the Russian’s story?”
“Oh, Father Beck believed every word of what he was hearing. No doubt about it. He was deeply moved at the beginning and then he became concerned about his friend’s being pushed too hard by the Feds. But toward the end he seemed, well, puzzled.”
“Puzzled, you say?”
“That’s the best I can describe it, Father. Not like he didn’t believe what he was hearing, but like he was hearing something he didn’t quite understand. Yeah, he seemed puzzled.”
“Any idea of what puzzled Father Beck, Brother Krause?”
“Given what we know now, I could maybe speculate. But at the time, no. I had no idea then and I don’t really have any idea now. I doubt the two government guys noticed Father Beck’s puzzlement or whatever it was, but then they didn’t know Father Beck like I knew him.”
“So the Russian passed muster, Brother Krause. He even fooled you.”
“That he did, Father. And as far as I know, he never gave anyone any reason to think that he was anything other than the Jesuit priest he pretended to be.”
“He was that good, eh? Well, I’m certainly looking forward to meeting this fellow.”
Father Fitzmaurice turned to the Provincial.
“What can you tell me about the present situation at Milford, Father Novak?”
“Right now, nobody in the community knows anything about your existence, let alone the reason for your visit. Only the Rector, the Russian and Coogan the novice. All three have been obeying orders to carry on as if nothing unusual has happened. Successfully, the Rector assures me.”
“So far, so good. It’s imperative to keep the Milford community completely in the dark, at least until we resolve this crisis. And,” the Visitor added, “perhaps forever.”
“Right,” said Father Novak. “I had been considering declaring a First Class Feast Day to introduce you to the entire community—priests, brothers, juniors and novices—at a Solemn High Mass in the Main Chapel.”
“Oh, my! A bit showy, what?”
“Yes, I think so, also. I had thought there might be some way for me to sneak you into Milford. But, now that I have met you, I realize that would be futile.”
“Futile, indeed,” said Father Fitzmaurice. “So I suggest that you and I go to Milford and simply show up at the front door. Once inside, I will simply hide in plain sight.”
C H A P T E R • 14
Brother Krause rented a car at the airport and headed into Detroit. The closer he got to the city, the more he realized how much the city had changed from white to black since he left to join the Jesuits. His heart sank after he exited the freeways and entered the familiar territory he had once patrolled.
He followed Jefferson Avenue along the Detroit River past the Ambassador Bridge to Canada, past the entrance to the tunnel to Windsor, Ontario, past the bridge to Belle Isle and the enormous replica of a black coal stove that had stood near the bridge for as long as he could remember.
When he saw the wide green lawns of the Water Works Park, he realized he had gone too far. He made a U-turn and drove back past McClellan, Belvidere, Holcomb and Hibbard. Some things you don’t forget. He turned right on Crane, drove past Bruce and took a left.
Leach Street wasn’t much of a street now. Just four frame houses facing a dozen vacant lots overgrown with weeds, a dreary little street that ran only one short block from Crane to Fischer.
Maybe Leach Street had been a nice place to live, years before
. But there were no trees anymore and no lawns. Brother Krause climbed out of his car and walked up onto the front porch of the two-story house that had been the boyhood home of Father Alex Samozvanyetz, S.J.
Why had he even bothered to come here?
No one who could have known the Samozvanyetz family lived on Leach Street anymore. They were still in the old census records, but it was obvious that all of the neighbors Father Samozvanyetz had known were long gone to the suburbs or the cemeteries. He wouldn’t find the Sullivans or the Chauvins or Maggie Hughes and her daughter Mary who had lived next door.
“No,” said Wallace Drew, the elderly man who owned the house now, “you won’t find anybody around here that knew the people who used to live here. I bought this place in the early Fifties and most of the white folks was gone by then.
“The people I bought it from was white. Name of Daggett. From Kentucky, if I remember right. Trashy people. They had let the house go real bad. I had to take most all the walls down to the struts to get it back into any decent shape at all.”
“So there wouldn’t be any old papers or belongings from the original owners?”
“No, sir,” said Wallace Drew. “If ever there was, they got thrown out long ago. When I took the house, I got rid of everything that wasn’t part of the structure. But there wasn’t anything in the place that wasn’t junk or trash. Nothing in the place that you’d want to go through, believe you me.”
“I was just hoping there might be something left,” said Brother Krause.
“No, nothing left,” said Wallace Drew. “There used to be a garage out back, but I took it down before it fell down. Wasn’t much in it. Garden hose. Some old tools, all rusted up. A couple old license plates on the wall and a big puddle of oil on the dirt floor.”
“Well, I just thought I’d ask,” said Brother Krause as he looked around. “You sure did a lot of hard work on the old place, Mister Drew.”
“Yeah, that I did. My wife thought I was crazy for buying this house. You see, I thought the neighborhood was going to get better. But it didn’t. It just got worse and worse until it got like it is today.”
Wallace Drew sighed. “Maybe,” he said, “you could ask about the folks over at the Catholic church. It’s just a couple blocks away. It’s pretty empty on Sundays. There’s mostly Baptists and Methodists and Pentecostals around here nowadays, but maybe the Catholics have some old records that might be some help to you.”
“Thanks,” said Brother Krause. “I planned on going there. But I thought I’d drop by here first. I thank you for your time, Mister Drew.”
“You’re welcome,” said Wallace Drew, clasping Brother Krause’s outstretched hand. “I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.”
Brother Krause was sitting in his car jotting down his notes when he heard Wallace Drew call out to him. He watched the old man limp down from the porch and across what had once been a small front lawn. Brother Krause rolled down the window on the passenger side.
“I just remembered something,” said Wallace Drew, leaning in.
“About six or seven years ago, a couple of white women came by here. They was real interested in this house, I remember. They pulled up to the curb right out front here and they looked my house over real good. One of them took a couple pictures. From inside their car. Didn’t get out, though.”
“Six or seven years ago?” said Brother Krause.
“It was 1956,” said the man, nodding vigorously. “Sometime in June. The month my wife first went to the hospital. That was the beginning of a sad time for us.”
Wallace Drew bowed his head for a moment and then went on.
“A couple of the ladies from my church was visiting me. You know the way they do? They’d brought me some food to keep in the Frigidaire so I’d have something to eat until my wife came home. Well, we was all up on the porch there when that car pulled up to the curb.
“Mrs. Johnson, who was here, she said: ‘Good Lord, Mister Drew, those white women surely must be lost.’ And I said I’d go see if they needed any help or some directions on how to get home, you know? So I started on down from the porch to the car and they gunned the engine and took off. Darn near took that corner onto Fischer on two wheels, they was in such a hurry.
“I went back up on the porch and those church ladies was laughing fit to be tied. Mrs. Johnson said, ‘Wallace Drew, you scared those poor women half to death! What in the world did you say to them to make them run off like that?’
“Well, like I told the ladies, I didn’t say nothing. I was going to say ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ but I didn’t even get the chance to say that much, they lit out so fast.”
“No wonder you remember,” said Brother Krause.
Wallace Drew looked away.
“Yeah, well, not many white folks come to visit my house, I guess you understand. There was them and now there’s you. So it didn’t strain my brain none to remember that.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Annunciation Church, Brother Krause found, was less a place of worship and community than a memorial to the past. Pews empty, doors locked, it seemed to be a monumental irrelevance, a white church in a black neighborhood. But the adjacent parish grammar school was living in the present.
“The Diocese keeps making noises about closing us down,” the principal had said. “But we’re still here, for now.”
Thank God for nuns, thought Brother Krause. They hang on to things: old schools, old documents, old records, the names and addresses of old lay teachers.
What he found at the school led Brother Krause to a neat brick house on Yorkshire, a tree-lined street off East Warren. It stood in a neighborhood of modest red brick homes with small, neatly trimmed front lawns, not far from Grosse Pointe’s mansions, but not all that distant from Annunciation’s endangered grammar school.
“Ten years from now, this street will be all black,” said Emmett Madigan. “Mark my words, Brother Krause. They’re on their way, and there’s no stopping them.” It was Emmett Madigan’s day off and he was spending it making his tidy piece of property even tidier.
“I was just down in your mother’s old parish,” said Brother Krause. “At the school.”
“Annunciation?” said Madigan. “It’s just terrible down there, isn’t it?”
“I was hoping to get some information about one of the children your mother might have taught there.”
“Oh, Mom passed on almost ten years ago, God rest her soul. But she would have enjoyed talking to you, Brother. She just loved talking about the Sisters she worked with and the children she taught. Seemed like teaching at Annunciation was the best part of her life, to hear her tell about it. I hate to say it, but sometimes I did get tired of listening.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t have the chance to meet your mother. But maybe you can help me.”
“What was it you wanted to find out?”
“Nothing that important, really. I’m just trying to collect some information about one of our priests. Anything from when he was a little boy, you know? Report card, class picture, anything like that? Maybe a funny anecdote?”
“And surprise him with it? That’s always fun, isn’t it? It can be downright embarrassing for the guest of honor sometimes, but that makes it even more fun, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does,” said Brother Krause. “I thought I might find some things where he used to live. You know Leach Street? His family used to live on Leach Street.”
“Well, you wouldn’t find anything there nowadays. It’s all changed.”
“Yes, it has. And his family’s long gone.”
“Oh, I know how that is.”
“The sisters at the school thought one of the retired teachers might have kept something I could use. They gave me some names and addresses. Just a long shot, I know.”
“Well, you’re in luck! I do have some of Mom’s things stored away in the attic. You’re more than welcome to take a look, Brother.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Madig
an’s attic was the neatest, most orderly storage space Brother Krause had ever seen. Wooden shelves along the slanting walls held labeled cardboard boxes and Emmett Madigan quickly found his mother’s reliquary. He removed the box from its shelf and placed it on a card table.
“This is what Mom saved from her days teaching at Annunciation.”
He lifted the lid off the box and Brother Krause noticed that there was no dust on it. Or on the table top or, he’d bet, nowhere else in the attic. Inside the storage box, he saw the manila envelopes filled with the dead teacher’s memories that her good son Emmett had arranged in chronological order.
“She taught the third and fourth grades at Annunciation,” said Madigan as he handed him a pair of white cotton gloves. Brother Krause slipped on the gloves and removed the two most likely years. He looked first at the formal class photographs.
“The children’s names are on the back,” said Madigan. “Mom put them there so she wouldn’t forget. As if she could forget! She could remember the names of all those children right up until her dying day!”
Brother Krause took a deep breath. There in the second row of an assembled fourth grade was little Alex Samozvanyetz! There was no mistaking those eyes. It took Brother Krause a moment to realize that Madigan had not stopped talking.
“She would get those pictures out and look at them a lot. Especially toward the end. There are some snapshots, too. Mom loved to take pictures when she was a young woman. Some of them are pretty good, considering all she had was that little box camera over there.”
“A good old Kodak Brownie!” Smiling, Brother Krause turned it around in his gloved hands.
“Your folks had one, too, I guess.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Brother Krause, carefully putting the camera back where it belonged. “It sure brings back memories.”
The young teacher had devoted a lot of time to the children in her classes, Brother Krause discovered. Tucked away in Madigan’s attic, there were snapshots of her pupils riding the pony at the Belle Isle zoo, sitting at the wheel of an engine at a fire house and one of a grinning fourth grader in handcuffs posing with a stern, uniformed police officer at the entrance of the station house he’d worked out of once.
Red Army Spies and the Blackrobes Trilogy Page 45