Pontiff (A Thriller)

by Richard Bowker

They kept trying, but they got nowhere, and eventually Leahy prevailed. After they left he slammed the door shut behind them. He stood in the hall and glared at his shabby surroundings—the faded wallpaper, the cheap furniture. He thought about the minimum-wage job he had to go to later that night, Janet's endless complaints about money. "Turn that music off," he shouted in the direction of Conor's room. After a moment the sound was grudgingly reduced by a few decibels. His wife was cowering in their bedroom, he knew. And what was her role in all this? He would get to that later. Right now he needed to be alone; he needed to think.

  He stormed down to the basement, to his one refuge in the world, a tiny windowless office next to the washer and drier, with a metal desk and a bulletin board and a couple of small filing cabinets. He turned on the fluorescent light, shut the door, and closed his eyes.

  The policewoman and the priest were crazy. They didn't know what they were talking about. The pope wasn't involved in any of this. How could he be?

  Was it even conceivable that they weren't crazy?

  Leahy had Coulter's number. He could just pick up the phone and demand the truth. He started to dial the number, then hung up when he realized how stupid he was being. What if they were bugging his phone? What if this was all a trick? What if this had nothing to do with the pope, and they had come here in order to get him to make the phone call and lead them to Coulter?

  Jesus, only Son of God, help me to do the right thing.

  He'd had a hard time accepting the idea that Coulter might have murdered McAllister. What could Coulter be thinking about? What was going on? He needed to be focused on abortion and nothing else.

  Maybe, Leahy thought, he could make sure he wasn't being followed, and go visit Coulter in person. Then he could clear these things up.

  Or maybe he should get in touch with Glanville. That wasn't easy, and Glanville would not be happy about it; he was the one who got in touch with his followers, not the other way around. But what other option did he have? Coulter might have put them all in jeopardy.

  Leahy said another prayer as he sat behind the beat-up old desk. He needed to figure out what to do, and for that he needed God's help more than anyone else's.

  * * *

  It had started to rain. Morelli kept her eyes on the road and didn't turn on the radio; she was in no mood for music. She tried to think about the case, but it was hard. She was pretty sure Leahy had been lying—about knowing Bandini, at least. But oh, he was so sure of himself—so self-righteous, so secure in the justice of his cause. Those cold eyes, judging everyone else and finding them wanting. The rundown life that he forced his family to lead. He scarcely noticed it himself, she was sure. What did material goods matter, when judged against the eternal Truth he so proudly possessed?

  She should have expected this. Hurley had described the guy to her, after all. She should have known the memories would come storming over her defenses.

  "How do you think it went?" Hurley asked.

  "Fine. Great," she said.

  "But he really didn't give us any information," the priest pointed out. "What's the next step? How do we find out—"

  "Oh, would you please shut up?"

  Hurley stopped talking. But she could feel him looking at her. Damn him. She should never have brought him along. This whole thing had been a mistake.

  "Um, Lieutenant," he said softly, "is anything the matter?"

  "Nothing's the matter," she insisted, but she could hear her voice shaking.

  "Okay, but—if there's anything I can do..."

  And now she could feel a tear leak out of her eye and course down her cheek. This was so stupid. Why was she suddenly falling apart? Hadn't she built up any strength of character over the years? She ignored Hurley's offer and concentrated on her driving.

  But the tears kept coming. Hurley passed her his handkerchief, which she silently accepted. And he wouldn't leave her alone. "I know it's none of my business," he said. "Just tell me to lay off if I'm out of line. But did Dave Leahy remind you of your father?"

  And that was too much. "Who gave you the right to pry into my private life?" she demanded. "Who have you been talking to about me?"

  He raised his hands as if to ward off her attack. "No one, believe me, it was just a guess. Look, Kathleen—can I call you Kathleen? I'm a priest. It's my job to try to understand people. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, I understand. But if you do—it's also my job to know how to listen. Anyway, I think you should have turned left back there at the CITGO station."

  "Shit." Morelli banged a U-turn. Couldn't she drive right? "What kind of priestly intuition makes you think Leahy would remind me of my father?"

  "I don't know. Something in the way you looked at him, at his house. I got the feeling this wasn't new to you."

  "Well, my father was a hero," she said. "And we've got the medal to prove it."

  Hurley said nothing. The windshield wipers tick-tocked in the darkness. She felt him waiting patiently, ready for whatever she wanted to offer.

  This priest was exactly the wrong guy to be talking to about what was bothering her. But she had to talk, she couldn't just obsess about it in silence. If he gave her some bogus spiritual claptrap, she'd throw him out of the car. In any case, she never had to see him again after tonight.

  "He was a Boston police officer, like me," Morelli continued. "Killed in the line of duty. When I was fourteen."

  Still nothing from Hurley—no smarmy expression of sympathy, just his gaze fixed on her.

  "He was off-duty," she went on, "and he came across a street brawl outside a bar. So he tried to break it up. Meanwhile the on-duty police arrived. It was dark, it was confusing, they didn't recognize him. Somebody saw his gun, apparently, and fired. He was shot to death by a fellow officer.

  "Pretty tough, huh—losing your father when you're fourteen? Odd, though, in some ways it turned out well for me. I'm one of seven kids, okay? So college was going to be a long shot even with him alive. But they set up this fund after he died and we got all kinds of donations, and it turned out we didn't have to pay a thing. And then afterwards, when I decided to become a cop, they laid out the welcome mat for me in Boston." She fell silent. No sense going there.

  "Your father," Hurley said, "was not a hero at home."

  She glanced over at him. She wished she could get a better look at him in the darkness. Yes, he understood a lot. Not everything, though. He couldn't understand everything. "Did I mention that he was also a saint?" she asked. "Went to Mass every day. Made us say the rosary after supper in May—Mary's month. We fasted in Lent, even though the Church didn't say we had to."

  "I think I see the resemblance to Leahy," Hurley murmured.

  "They both lived their lives with the certainty of revealed truth," she said. "No matter what the cost to the people around them." She let the statement hang in the air between them before continuing. "I grew up in a rundown house just like Leahy's. With seven kids it was impossible to afford anything better. I grew up with a father we never dared question, who told us exactly what to believe and how to act at all times. I grew up with the consequences of having my life controlled by someone who just... wouldn't... bend. And I grew up with someone who threw everything away because he cared more about the truth than he did about his family. Just like our friend back there."

  They were on the Turnpike now, heading back toward Boston. Hurley was silent again, waiting. The rain had gotten heavier. Like the day of the funeral, with the long lines of blue-uniformed men marching under the leaden skies into the church to honor the fallen hero. "We should be so proud of him," her mother whispered. And how much did she know, how much remained hidden in her heart?

  Might as well finish it, Morelli thought. "When I joined the police department," she went on, "I guess I had this idea that I'd have to, you know, graciously turn down favors people would want to do for me, that I'd have to let everyone know that I wanted to make it on my own, not just because I was the great Bill Morelli's daught
er. The commissioner admired my father and took me under his wing, made me his pet project. It didn't take me long, though, to figure out that Bill Morelli was not everyone's idea of a hero.

  "Turned out that a lot of the old-timers in the department viewed my father as a prig and a snitch, or worse. You've heard of the code of silence—you know, a cop doesn't testify against a fellow cop? Well, not Bill Morelli. If he saw a cop doing something he thought was wrong, he was happy to turn him in to Internal Affairs, even if it was his best friend, even if everyone shunned him, even if they slashed his tires and sent him death threats. It was the right thing to do, you know? And Bill Morelli knew what was right.

  "And here's what I found out eventually—what was only whispered in the locker room or late at night in cruisers—that Bill Morelli's death was no accident, that someone shot him to shut him up, or maybe because they just couldn't stand the self-righteous son of a bitch. They found an opportunity during the street brawl, and they took it."

  She fell silent for a moment before continuing.

  "Another reason the commissioner likes me is because he likes my mother, who never sued the city, despite having every lawyer in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts offer to take on the case for her. It wasn't what her husband would have wanted, after all. And ordinary cops—well, a lot of them are okay, because they weren't around back then or they don't think it's right to blame me for my father's sins. But some of them treat me like dirt, because my father treated them like dirt. And they think I'm getting ahead in the department because I'm my father's daughter."

  "Is that the problem you had with Detective Lafferty?" Hurley asked.

  "Yeah, it was. Turns out my father almost wrecked Lafferty's career back when he was a patrolman and he used a bit too much force subduing some drunk. And, you know, maybe Lafferty's right about Leahy—he's investigated more murders than I've even read about in the newspapers, and he knows what matters and what doesn't, and he doesn't need some kid butting in and telling him how to do his job."

  "Why do you stay in a situation like this?" Hurley asked. "Why don't you get a job in another police department? Or just do something else?"

  Good questions. "Because I'm more like my father than I want to be," Morelli admitted. "I'm stubborn. I like being a cop, I like protecting people. And I want to think I can change some people's minds about my father and the Morelli family. It's stupid, I know. My mother hates it. She worries about me every minute—she's sure I'm going to end up like my father, bleeding to death outside a bar. And who's to say she's wrong? I seem to have made a lot of enemies without really trying."

  Morelli felt drained. She had needed to talk, but now the urge had passed. Maybe it had even helped, a little. Certainly Hurley hadn't been obnoxious about her story; she wondered why. "Aren't you going to defend the Church?" she asked. "Or offer me some consolation? Priests are good at offering consolation."

  Hurley shrugged. "I don't really believe the Church needs a defense—for what happened to you, anyway—and I think you know it," he replied. "It's not the creed, it's the person. Your father could have been a Baptist or a Muslim, for all the religion itself mattered. He would have found a religion that allowed him to be the way he wanted to be, or he would have made one up.

  "And as for consolation—hey, life sucks," he said cheerfully. "I don't have any consolation to offer if you don't buy into my premises. And converting you—reverting you, I guess—isn't a challenge I'm up for right now. I have a feeling I'd have to call in the pope for that one."

  Morelli glanced over at him. She was beginning to think she had misjudged him, somehow. Priests weren't all alike, she supposed, but still... "So what's your story, Father?" she asked. "How did you end up—you know—"

  "Trapped in Holy Orders?" Hurley suggested. "Doing a thirteenth-century job in the twenty-first century? It's strange how often I'm called upon to defend my career choice." He paused, as if considering how much to give back in return for her life story. "Well, to begin with," he said, "I was raised in what I'd call a relaxed Catholic family. Nothing like yours—which probably says a lot about how to bring up your kids if you want them to be religious. Anyway, we went to Mass on Sundays, but if we skipped it was no big deal, and we didn't bother with much else. I was mostly a jock growing up—football meant a lot more to me than God. I was a star in high school, got an athletic scholarship to Boston College, and then things sort of went downhill. I had some injuries, and maybe I wasn't quite as good as I thought I was, so I spent most of my varsity career as third-string quarterback, getting ready for an opportunity that never actually came.

  "But looking back, that was all to the good. Gave me a chance to think, to focus on the big picture. And the big picture, much to my surprise, didn't include football. I had pretty much decided in my senior year that I wanted to enter the seminary, and then I just had to put up with people—including my family—trying to talk me out of it."

  "But why?" Morelli persisted. "Why become a priest? I just don't get why anyone would want to do that nowadays."

  "Exactly what my family and friends said—and even quite a few of the priests I talked to. I felt like a freak. Perfect strangers would hear about my decision and feel compelled to come up to me and tell me I was making a big mistake. And this was at a Catholic college, right? So I'm a weak person and eventually I caved in. I graduated and I went to work on Wall Street for a few years—and, you know, I wasn't bad at it. I made a pot of money and my bosses told me I had a great future and I thought about applying to business school. I left religion for Sundays. All my friends breathed easier, as if they'd saved me from becoming a Moonie.

  "And it didn't take. I just couldn't get the priesthood out of my mind. Now you can keep asking me why, just like my family and friends, and I could give you answers that have to do with helping people and making a difference, but they wouldn't be the real story, because my reasons are beyond logic, beyond rational explanation. They call it a vocation—a calling. God called me. I have no idea why He called me instead of my roommate or the middle linebacker on the football team or that kid in Economics class who actually looked like a priest; but He did. I'm as sure of it as I'm sure I'm sitting in this car. So eventually I gave up trying to please everyone else and trying to kid myself, and I did what I knew I had to do. And here I am."

  Morelli took the Brighton exit off the Turnpike, and she made her way toward Hurley's apartment. What about sex? she wanted to ask him—wasn't that all anyone really wanted to know about a priest?—but she didn't. He still made her uncomfortable—even more so now, after she had heard his story, and she knew he wasn't some mama's boy who had been saying the rosary since he was three and never had a thought of living in the real world. He wasn't in the priesthood, apparently, to hide from life, or because he had some big problem to work out. He was just like everyone else—except he had chosen to be different.

  She decided to ask about something else. "So, with this calling of yours—does that mean you agree with all the Church's teachings? I'm really not trying to be obnoxious about this, Father. I just don't know how it works. I'm only used to one way of looking at things—my father's way."

  "First," Hurley said, "if you don't call me Joe, I'm going to jump out of the car."

  "Okay. Joe."

  "Thank you. Second, you don't check your brain or your conscience when you enter the seminary. At least, I didn't. This may sound stupid—all right, I know it'll sound stupid—but I think of it like being on a football team. You may not agree with the play the coach is calling, but he's the coach, and you know that the only way you can win is through discipline and sticking together. If you worry about why he's doing what he's doing, you're going to mess up. His job is to call the plays, and your job is to execute them."

  "But football is about winning," she pointed out. "Religion isn't about winning, it's about the truth."

  Hurley shook his head. "Religion isn't about anything," he responded. "It is. Religion is the sport, the gridiron, the
reason you're out there wearing pads and helmets and cleats and having three-hundred-pound men hurling you to the ground. It isn't about whether the coach calls a draw play when you think you should be running a play action. It isn't about punting instead of going for it on fourth down. Those are just... details. It's a mistake to get lost in the details."

  "That is totally sick, Joe. Those 'details' ruin people's lives, if they can't get access to birth control or a legal abortion."

  "What I mean is, yeah, they're important, but we shouldn't confuse them with the game—with religion itself, I mean. Um, I think my metaphor has gotten out of control."

  Morelli looked over at him, and he was grinning sheepishly, and she found herself grinning back, something she never expected to be doing when arguing religion with a priest.

  She parked in a handicapped space near Hurley's apartment building. Time to call it a night.

  "So, what's next?" he asked.

  "Well, I'd say we still need to track down Bandini, if we can."

  "How—the phone number?"

  "That's a start. We can trace it. I'll let you know what we come up with."

  "Thanks. I appreciate it," Hurley said. He reached over and touched her arm. "And I appreciate your telling me about yourself, Kathleen. Seriously. I hope you don't consider me the enemy. I don't want to be your enemy."

  Morelli could feel herself blushing. Her Jeep seemed far too small all of a sudden. Hurley seemed to realize his mistake, because he retreated immediately, smiling nervously, in perhaps his own version of a blush.

  "Of course you're not my enemy," she said. "But that doesn't mean the Church doesn't have a lot to answer for. Anyway, I hate football."

  "Maybe that's because you haven't played enough of it." He opened his door. "Goodnight, Kathleen."

  "Good night, Joe."

  * * *

  And what was that all about? Morelli pounded the steering wheel in frustration and confusion as she waited at a red light. She could still feel the pressure of Hurley's hand on her arm. Surely it wasn't sexual. He was probably a toucher—priests liked to touch people, pat children on the head, squeeze the hands of little old ladies after Mass.