Call No Man Father

by William X. Kienzle

  If she came totally unglued, she might feel compelled—an inner compulsion—to rat. He couldn’t sacrifice the guys. What a dilemma! Before he would let her harm him or his friends … well, the only way he might be able to stop her would be …

  But he loved Bonnie! How could he kill the one he loved? He tried to recall: There’d been something about that in school. He had almost been paying attention. For some reason, the words had stuck. What were they? Something about … you always hurt the thing you love, something like that.

  So somebody before him had had to think about the necessity of killing a loved one.

  Somehow the idea was not as threatening once he realized he was not alone in thinking such a terrible thought.

  He continued to stroke her arm. She stopped pulling away. That was a good sign. “Babe,” he said softly, “babe, say something. You’re scaring me. C’mon, what is it?”

  “Honey …” At last she spoke. “… you … you killed that old guy. You killed him. Why’d you do that?”

  “Is that all it is?” Rick’s relief was obvious. “Hell, he kept his hand in the register. You saw him. Or maybe ‘cause you stayed back by the door, maybe you didn’t see it. He wouldn’t take his hand outta the goddam till. He probably had a gun in there. You didn’t want him to get a shot off at me! At us! You didn’t, did you!”

  She seemed a bit calmer. “N … no. No.”

  “Well?”

  “You sure he had a gun in there?”

  Rick snorted. “I coulda asked him. ‘Excuse me, sir, but do you happen to have a gun in that register? And do you intend to shoot me and my loving companion?’”

  She smiled nervously.

  “I don’t know for sure. How could I know for sure? All I know is he wouldn’t take his hand out of the till so I could see his hands were empty. If he had raised his hands so I could see he didn’t have anything, he’d be eating ice cream now and telling his friends all about the exciting armed robbery he lived through. But … as it is …”

  Once again Rick tortured his rationalization to blame the victim for his own death.

  But once again it seemed to be working. “You gonna be okay, babe?”

  “Yes. I think so. But, honey, do I have to … you know … with the pope?”

  Rick grimaced. He had very definitely planned on her being with them all the way. What other reason could he possibly have had in taking her with him on their dangerous crime spree? But now, clearly, it was not to be. He could not possibly depend on her in an attack on the pope. “No, babe, you don’t have to do it. You sit this one out. Tell you what: I’ll bring you the pope’s head complete with white beanie.”

  The image sickened her. But she managed a smile.

  “Why don’t you sack out for a while? You look like you could use it. We’ll get busy with our plans.”

  Gratefully, she stretched out. Though she couldn’t imagine herself napping, let alone sleeping.

  Rick returned to the Golds. He was glad he did not need to kill Bonnie. Because now he knew he could if he had to.

  Zoo Tully was following developments very carefully.

  The link between the three crimes was tenuous at best. The three events shared only one element—a black, late-model Jaguar with a busted grill. The perpetrators were young people, but that was little to go on. Youth in this town had their own considerable corner on crime.

  But Tully had a gut feeling. And, with all his experience, he had learned to trust such feelings.

  Tully had reconstructed the events thusly:

  Sunday night some kids were out cruising, looking for thrills. There were several boys—different specimens of sperm were found on the woman. There may have been some girls also involved, cheering on their boyfriends—maybe masturbating them as they raped the woman. That was no flight of fancy; it was, indeed, a not unusual occurrence.

  Tully didn’t know why they had killed the woman, but if he had to guess—and he did—he assumed it was because they were afraid she might identify them later.

  From the condition of the woman’s car, the damage to her rear bumper, it looked to be a bump-and-attack scenario. So the perp’s car likely was damaged—a broken grill?

  The following morning, a deliberate hit-and-run—on Father Koesler, of all people. What a coincidence—if it was a coincidence. The best description of the car: a late-model black Jaguar with a damaged grill.

  In the car, two young people, male and female. Two of Sunday night’s group? Fantastic luck! With all those cops in that area of downtown, no police presence on that corner at that moment. Eyewitnesses, as usual, few and far between. No solid description of either occupant. And no one coming up with even a partial make on the license. Luck! Luck! Luck!

  Just minutes later: armed robbery at a small convenience store. Proprietor shot and killed, seemingly for no reason. Perpetrators masked, but identified by terrified customers as young man and young woman from voice and demeanor. Once again, black, late-model Jaguar with crippled grill.

  Luck holding.

  That just may be their undoing, thought Tully. By this time they may be counting heavily on that run of luck.

  None of the three crimes appeared to be planned, carefully or not. They were running on luck. Nobody could do that forever. They’d be back. Tully vowed he’d be ready for them.

  While he was thinking this through and making notes, Sergeant Angie Moore entered the squad room and sat at her desk, which abutted Tully’s. “You’re thinking about those kids and their Jaguar, aren’t you?”

  Tully wasn’t surprised. He’d grown used to her reliable intuition. He nodded.

  “They’re just achin’ to park it for life in the slammer.”

  “We gotta bring ’em in,” he said quietly.

  “I keep thinking of that poor woman,” Moore said. “What a horrible way to go! Humiliated to the dregs, then scared out of her wits, then a gun in her mouth. I mean, everything else they’ve done is bad enough, but …”

  “Yeah, ‘but.’ I keep thinking, it could’ve been Anne Marie.”

  “She went through something like this, didn’t she?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I don’t blame you for wanting them bad, Zoo. We’ll get ’em.”

  “Uh-huh. Damn right!”

  24

  It was a command performance. Decreed by Dietrich Cardinal Schinder.

  Schinder, in his late sixties, had been a very young man during Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. He had been conscripted into the German army. He never became a member of the Nazi party. He was in the Wehrmacht, the regular army. So he had no part in the monstrosities perpetuated by the Nazi high command. He participated neither in the Holocaust nor the execution of innocent civilians or enemy prisoners.

  He was just a functioning soldier, but not for long. He was captured early. Fortunately for him, he was taken prisoner by U.S. forces and, as a bright young man, subsequently held a series of trustee jobs.

  After the war, and once Germany began to recapture its peacetime purpose, Schinder entered the seminary, where he was evaluated as bright, talented, ambitious, and possessed of a piety that never got in the way of promotion.

  He studied in Rome and, after ordination, became chancellor of the archdiocese of Cologne. His rise was rapid: auxiliary bishop of Cologne, then archbishop of Berlin, then Cardinal archbishop of Berlin. Before long, he was called to the Vatican, where he became a most trusted eminence rouge.

  On a papal trip such as this one to Detroit, his was the ultimate responsibility for all things working as planned.

  However, all things very definitely were not going as planned. The prime problem lay in this symposium, which was supposed to function as a natural segue to the pope’s visit and his message. This symposium gave no indication that it was rigged. And it should have been. Something had gone wrong. Honest dissent was alive and well. It was supposed to be absent. Or at least that had been the plan.

  It was Tuesday evening. The command performance w
as being held at the Lark, arguably the finest dining establishment in the metro Detroit area. Partly because their reservation had been logged in time and partly because the owners were Catholic, Cardinal Schinder had a private room for his ten “guests.”

  The clergymen had dined extremely well. The meal was now over; dessert had been downed and liqueurs served. An attentive Mary Lark had seen to it that the notables had signed her guestbook. Now the Cardinal was determined to get things straightened away for the pope.

  The Cardinal tapped his glass with a spoon. Immediately silence reigned. Only the muted sounds of diners in other rooms could be heard. Even before Schinder had called for attention, there had been little conversation. While most of these priests had heard of each other, few of them had ever met.

  Present besides Schinder were the conservative participants of each of the major panels of the symposium. Representing dogma was Father John Selner, S.S.; moral, William Palmer; canon law, Stanley Moser.

  Also in attendance were the six moderators, including Father Koesler; and finally, representing the organizer, Monsignor Martin, was Father Paul Smith, who had eaten almost none of the excellent dinner. Nerves? Father Koesler wondered.

  Conspicuous by their absence were the conservative spokesmen of the nonvital panels, and, of course, all of the liberal panelists.

  Cardinal Schinder rose, very slowly. Since he was tall and he pulled himself erect so deliberately, it seemed he would just go on rising forever. It was the impression he wished to create.

  Schinder was an imposing figure with his perfectly pressed black silk suit, the white-on-white clerical collar with its Cardinal red patch, his pale-to-the-point-of-colorless complexion, the white hair and eyebrows, the lips that seemed created to embrace an umlaut, and the dark eyes that penetrated all upon whom they fell.

  “Gentlemen,” the Cardinal intoned, “I need not dwell on what is my prime concern. Obviously, this symposium, particularly the way it is shaping up, is not, I repeat, not doing the job for which it was programmed.”

  Schinder’s voice was deep. His English was perfect, with just the hint of a German accent. Clearly, any suggestion he might make would emerge as a command.

  His listeners sat perfectly still. His opening statement required no response and none was offered.

  “It is my understanding that the one in charge of organizing the symposium—particularly the one who invited the panelists—is not here this evening. Is that correct?”

  There was a lingering silence before Father Paul Smith replied, “Yes, that is correct, Your Eminence.”

  “And you are …?” It was impossible to ascertain the Cardinal’s mood. He might have a solicitous thought for the missing monsignor. Or he might be contemplating sending Martin to the guillotine.

  “I am Father Paul Smith.”

  “Oh, yes. I understand you assisted Monsignor Martin in setting up this symposium.”

  “Yes, I did, Eminence.”

  Schinder studied the floor.

  It was a safe guess that he really wanted Martin and that he wasn’t precisely sure of what to do with Smith. There was precious little he could do by way of punishing a retired priest. Organizing—or misorganizing—a symposium did not fall under any canonical law.

  Over the centuries the Church had devised three basic forms of punishment aimed at getting her sons and daughters to do what the Church wanted them to do.

  There was interdict, which affected a specific geographic or political region and denied sacraments to everyone in that district until the rulers or leaders of that area either did what they should or stopped doing what they shouldn’t do. The reasoning harbored the hope that the residents of the district would so long for a return of the sacraments that they would force their leader to submit to Mother Church. It was not unlike what George Bush hoped would happen in Iraq. Since the Gulf War did not flush Hussein, Bush hoped the people would rise up and topple his regime. That didn’t work nearly as well as interdict sometimes did.

  Excommunication is a punishment that may entail a “shunning”—wherein the miscreant is isolated and virtually abandoned. Or it may be a penalty attached to a sin such as abortion, the forgiveness of which is reserved to someone higher than a simple priest—a bishop or a pope.

  The object is to impress the “sinner” that this sin is so heinous that it cannot be forgiven in an ordinary confession to a priest. Eventually, of course, the person does go to a priest, since it is a matter of speculation whether bishops remember the formula for absolution. But it does impressively complicate matters.

  Then there is suspension. This affects priests only, and the punishment is that the priest may not celebrate any sacraments while the penalty of suspension is in effect.

  To attempt to suspend Paul Smith would be a bit redundant. He was retired, so he had no ordinary priestly duties. He had every Catholic’s duty to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, but he had no obligation of any sort to celebrate Mass, hear confessions, and so on. So for him suspension would be little more than an enforced vacation.

  Indeed, there was not all that much Schinder could do to Monsignor Martin either.

  Martin “belonged” to the archdiocese of Detroit. As such, he was the prime responsibility of Mark Cardinal Boyle. How far a Vatican functionary could go in meddling in diocesan affairs is, largely, unexplored territory. An earlier attempt to subdivide the authority and powers of Spokane’s Archbishop Hunthausen concluded in messy failure.

  Schinder and Boyle, as Cardinals, were prelates of equal rank whose unique function was to elect popes. As an archbishop and a Cardinal, Boyle presumably would answer to the pope alone. And the pope, of course, as far as ecclesial affairs were concerned, could do whatever he wanted.

  Nonetheless, these were tricky waters.

  For the moment, Schinder was in a bit of a bind. Disciplining Father Smith would serve only to highlight the Vatican’s displeasure with the symposium. Penalizing Monsignor Martin, besides incurring the identical bad press for the symposium, would set up an awkward collision with the priest’s local superior.

  The obvious tack would be to seek Cardinal Boyle’s cooperation. However, all the players in this power struggle knew what was going on. The pope sought to tweak Boyle for his intervention during the Council. Boyle, in his turn, was making the pope’s mission difficult by giving free rein to Martin and Smith in their effort to make this an honest conference.

  Clearly, Schinder would be more than able to block any further advancement for Martin, who would remain a mere monsignor into eternity.

  But that was the future, and this was the painful present.

  After weighing all these factors, Cardinal Schinder looked up and across the table at an attentive Father Smith. “Father Smith, this is the eleventh hour for the symposium. I would have thought Monsignor Martin would have cleared his calendar of whatever impediment to attending this meeting.”

  After a moment’s consideration, Smith replied, in an ambiguous tone, “So would I.”

  Several present stifled an urge to laugh.

  Schinder’s cheeks gave indication there was blood beneath their pale exterior. “You will see him,” Schinder said to Smith. Again, it was not a suggestion.

  “Yes, Eminence.”

  “Then please tell him that I wish to see him before this symposium is concluded.”

  “I will tell him, Your Eminence.”

  “Good. Then, Father Smith, you are excused.”

  Even though he had eaten next to nothing, Smith felt he should express his gratitude for an invitation to a restaurant that he never could have afforded. But, staring at the Cardinal’s fiery cheeks, he thought better of it. With no further remark, Smith left the room, gathered his hat and coat and departed. When he reached the isolation of his car, he laughed aloud.

  The Cardinal’s next words were for the six moderators. He noted that while the secular media very probably would give little coverage to the symposium’s proceedings, the symposium would b
e carefully watched in and by Rome.

  Without being overly specific, he implied that all the priest moderators were well aware of the “official” position of the Church in all the matters that would be discussed. He pointed out that these six priests as moderators would be well within their function to shift the balance of argumentation toward official and orthodox Church teachings.

  If the moderators were to be conscientious in this role, the Church surely would record this effort and, sooner than later, reward it.

  Koesler was disgusted that a responsible and distinguished churchman would stoop to not-so-subtle bribery.

  He understood that many of the other priest moderators felt a like revulsion. But he said nothing. Of course he intended to conduct his panel discussion fairly. The Church had given him his priesthood; as far as he was concerned, there was nothing more to give or to receive.

  The moderators were dismissed. They left without delay, saying nothing to each other. Koesler took this silence as a sign of embarrassment on the part of these men. He was proud of them.

  Having concluded the meeting for the others, Schinder now spoke words of encouragement to the last remaining group—Fathers Selner, Palmer, and Moser, the panelists for dogma, morals, and canon law respectively. Schinder knew the weaknesses in the official Church position in those fields; he had further arguments that could help officialdom.

  Having done all he could to shore up a bad turn of events, Schinder invited the remaining priests to share with him a nightcap. Selner, Palmer, and Moser pleaded exhaustion and, excusing themselves, left the Cardinal to drink up and pay up.

  The Cardinal’s lone consolation in this botched affair was that, in picking up the pieces, he was doing God’s Holy Will.

  Dave Wallace was not asleep. He hadn’t fallen asleep at all.

  He had arrived at Sally Forbes’s apartment precisely on time. Being on time was one of his compulsions.

  He’d brought some wine. It had been so long since he’d been invited to a woman’s apartment he wasn’t sure what to bring as a gift or, indeed, if any gift was expected.