by Mark Zubro
“Okay.”
“You guys did something you’re uncomfortable with now?”
Brian nodded.
“Was it consensual? Nobody forced anybody, right?”
“No. I’m not that way. He’s not.”
“You were both consenting. You’re both over eighteen. You didn’t stop him. He didn’t stop.”
“No.”
“Before it happened, did he ask you for a relationship?”
“Well, no.”
“Beforehand, did he talk about a commitment?”
“No.”
“So as far as you and he were concerned, as far as you know, it was just something happening for that moment?”
“Yeah.”
“The problem then seems to be the different meanings you and he attached to it afterwards.”
“Yeah.”
Paul asked, “Did the suicide note he left say it was your fault?”
“No.”
“And his parents read the note and they still called you a hero at the hospital?”
“Yeah.”
“So as far as you know, the note said nothing about you. In the love note he sent you, did he threaten suicide if you didn’t respond?”
“No, but I should have recognized something was wrong.”
“Why? How? You got a note that made you uncomfortable. You weren’t sure how to deal with a situation. You had a casual, fun moment and one of you took it for more of a commitment than it was. That happens to men and women, gay and straight. Your signals got crossed.”
“I should have talked to him.”
“There are a million things we should or could do in this world. If we lived by what we should have done, we’d probably be paralyzed. If we learn from what we wish we’d done, then maybe we’re closer to being better adults. Did you tell any of your buddies about any of this?”
“No, it was embarrassing.”
“So nobody could have teased him about being gay? About…aah…what happened after the party?”
“As far as I know, I’m the only one he offered to…do…what he did.” He paused. “You know, he never actually said he was gay. I just kind of assumed it.” He gave the briefest of smiles. “The notes and flowers afterwards were kind of a giveaway.”
“More than a big hint.”
The conversation paused as they both looked out at the night.
Brian asked, “Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“What did I do wrong?”
“I don’t think this falls into easy right and wrong categories. You both made choices and assumptions. You both have feelings and personalities. It’s something to think about and then decide if you want to make different choices in the future.”
“I should have talked to him.”
“Because of your actions, you still can.”
“Should I go over there tomorrow?”
“I’d call ahead, but why not?”
“I guess so.” Brian sighed. “I just didn’t know what to do. It was so kind of flattering and sweet and kind. I just freaked and I should know better. He was paying me a compliment. If I wasn’t into girls, I’d think about it, but that’s how I feel today. I wish I’d have figured this out earlier.”
“Because you’re a good, brave, and honest man you can still talk to him.”
They stood up.
Brian said, “Thanks, dad.”
“I love you, son.”
“Love you, too.”
FORTY-THREE
Wednesday 1:16 AM
In their room as Paul undressed, Ben turned on his side and leaned on his elbow and rested his head in his hand. Paul told him what Brian had revealed.
“Poor Brian,” Ben said when he finished. “I hope he’s going to be okay.”
“Well, the kid he saved is alive. I don’t want Brian to be haunted by this for the rest of his life. He didn’t do anything wrong or that can’t be fixed.”
“We’ll love him like we always do, as much as we can, no matter how many health food drinks he guzzles.”
Paul crawled into bed and leaned on his side and propped his head up the same as Ben.
Ben asked, “Anything special I need to do, we need to do?”
“I’m not sure. This is all new to me. I guess we watch and monitor and love him as best we can.”
“We may have another problem.”
Paul frowned.
“Our younger son may be in love. After Ardis and the gang left, he mooned around here. He barely actually got any work done on his chess helix.”
Paul smiled. “True love.” He clicked off the light on the bedside table, turned, and pulled Ben close.
FORTY-FOUR
Wednesday 4:17 A.M.
A crashing boom woke Turner out of a sound sleep. As he jumped out of bed he saw that it was four seventeen A.M. Ben was awake as well. They threw on jeans and rushed to the hall. There was another thunderous boom. Brian was out of his bedroom. The three of them hurried down the stairs, Paul in the lead. Jeff’s light was on, but he was still in bed.
“What’s going on, dad?”
“Don’t know. Brian, stay with your brother.”
Ben and Paul rushed outdoors. Porch lights were on throughout the neighborhood. People singly and in pairs emerged from homes.
The lights in Mrs. Talucci’s home blazed. Her porch light flicked on and several younger women emerged from the house. Last came Mrs. Talucci bearing her shotgun. She leaned on her youngest niece.
Paul and Ben hurried over. Wisps of smoke eddied from the gun barrel.
The men met Mrs. Talucci on the top step.
“What happened?” Paul asked.
“Some big son of a bitch tried to break in the back door. I heard his footsteps on the porch. I was in my room reading. He must not have seen my light. I guess not sleeping much is a blessing in old age after all. I heard the noise. Took out my gun from under my bed and headed to the kitchen.”
Paul remembered Mrs. Talucci’s kitchen from the million times he’d been inside. The red gingham curtains, the copper bottomed pots and pans hanging from above the island, the gray, granite-covered counters.
“He was opening the back door when I flicked on the lights and let fly with a blast of buckshot. He was lucky I was aiming over his head. He was even more lucky he jumped back and that I waited a few seconds to fire the second blast. Aimed right at the son of a bitch.”
Paul asked, “Did you recognize him?”
“Big, burly son of a bitch.”
“Bigger than Fenwick?” Paul asked.
Ben said, “The Cardinal is getting even.”
Mrs. Talucci harrumphed. “That’s his third mistake.” Mrs. Talucci did the ka-ching thing with the shotgun. “The first was screwing with you and the investigation. The second was thinking he could get even. The third was this attack.”
Her niece asked, “Are you sure it was the Cardinal’s order?”
Mrs. Talucci gave her a grim smile.
Turner examined the back porch and ordered a forensic team to examine it. He saw what looked like flecks of blood on the steps going down. Back in his house, he got the boys settled and sank into bed next to Ben.
FORTY-FIVE
Wednesday 6:53 A.M.
Before Brian came downstairs, Paul was helping Jeff make breakfast.
The youngster asked, “I heard you guys on the porch last night. Is Brian okay?”
“You were awake?”
“I heard you guys’ voices, but I couldn’t understand what you said. Is he okay?”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong?”
“That’s something for him to tell you if and when he’s ready, and it is not something for you to pester him about. Now or ever.”
Jeff looked at his dad. “It must be bad.”
“Your brother is a good man. He’s fine. I want you to drop it as of now. Okay?”
“Okay.”
When Brian came downstairs, he no longer looked
like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
FORTY-SIX
Wednesday 10:35 A.M.
Turner checked the local news on CLTV before he left the house. The news showed a herd of reporters and cameramen outside a nursing home. He turned up the sound. The reporter was saying, “The Cardinal’s mother is in a sub-standard nursing home. The word we have is he hasn’t visited his mother in years. Added to the Cardinal’s entertaining video from the other day, this news further tarnishes his reputation. His own mother…”
Turner smiled and turned off the television.
At Area Ten headquarters Fenwick greeted him with a grim smile. He’d seen the newscasts. “Do not fuck with Mrs. Talucci. I would not want to be Cardinal Duggan now and for the rest of his life.”
First Turner called Bruno, Keerkins, and Bernard whom they interviewed on Sunday and who had all promised to attempt to find someone that might be willing to talk to the detectives. All three reported failure.
The detectives stood at the vast monitor with all of its well-filled-in boxes. They scrolled and enlarged and rearranged and added.
They got to a column on the town car found at the scene. Turner double checked, “The town car on the street was registered to the Order?”
“Right.”
Turner scrolled to the finances and bills sections. “Yeah, well this says Kappel was paying the bills on a town car. Why is he paying for repairs on a car for the Order?”
“Why shouldn’t he?”
“Nah, that can’t be how it works. In any corporation the corporate cars get paid for from corporate funds.”
“Maybe he paid for it and was reimbursed.”
Turner rechecked the now vast spreadsheet. He looked up the car found abandoned on the street and checked the details. “The VIN number on the town car we found on the street does not match the VIN number of the car he paid for repairs on.”
“They keep VIN numbers on car repairs?”
“Ben does on all the cars he repairs. It’s all on computer. He can look up a car by VIN number, customer name, maybe the phases of the moon for all I know. It all comes up the same, a screen with all the information ever connected to that car. Ben has to with those expensive foreign jobs. He compares them all to stolen car lists. When I take my car into the dealer for servicing, they have everything all on computer.”
“So there’s another town car?”
“Apparently.”
“Where?”
They drove to the dealership where the repairs had taken place. They showed ID, explained what they needed, and gave the manager the VIN number. The records came up a few seconds later. “Problem with the car? It been stolen?”
“No,” Turner said. “The owner died. Thanks for the information.”
They headed for the address. On the way they talked about family and kids, this time mostly about Fenwick’s oldest daughter who was dating a boy he didn’t like, but about whom he was keeping his mouth shut. Fenwick explained, “As Madge put it, her dad hated me and look how well we turned out.”
“Why’d he hate you?”
“He just did. Still does.”
“Did you tell him the wrist joke?”
“No, I swear. Besides, he’s not the wrist joke type.”
“Would that were true of us all.”
It was a fine pleasant early May afternoon. The address was in a distant suburb an hour south and west. They took the Dan Ryan to Interstate 57 and then west on Interstate 80 past Joliet to the Morris exit. Using their GPS they found a town car with the matching license plate sitting in a driveway a mile north of the Interstate. It was a farmhouse in the middle of newly planted fields. A barn and two silos stood beyond the back of the house, which was a one story, brick ranch built probably in the late fifties or early sixties.
A big, burly guy answered their knock. He gasped and burst out crying.
He was half again as big as Fenwick. He wore a tent-sized flannel shirt, and jeans that bagged over sockless feet. Turner reached for the screen door, found it unlocked, and pulled it open. The man turned and slouched into the house. The detectives followed warily. They entered a living room with deep cushy chairs and matching couch. He subsided onto the sofa, put his head in his hands, and sobbed.
Turner looked at a man with red, blotchy skin, brush-cut short hair, and well-chewed fingernails.
When he’d calmed and wiped his face with a large red bandana, Turner asked, “What’s your name?”
He looked at them with deep gray eyes. “Joe Gorman.”
Turner said, “Bishop Kappel paid for the repairs on the town car in your driveway.”
“It’s in my name, but he paid for it, pays for the repairs.”
“Why’s that?” Turner asked.
“We’re lovers.”
Turner avoided looking at Fenwick but his partner blurted the obvious question. “You don’t strike me as his type.”
Gorman said, “I’m not anybody’s type, but we fell in love.”
Turner said, “We’re sorry for your loss.”
“You know how hard it is to love somebody, and they die, and they get murdered, and you can’t find out anything about what happened, and you can’t show anybody you’ve lost anyone because you’re not supposed to say anything about your relationship? That’s one of the reasons we had this house in the middle of nowhere. We had to hide. Him mostly.” He gulped and a few new tears escaped down his red cheeks.
“It’s difficult, not fair,” Turner said.
Fenwick said, “He was living with Tresca.”
“They were lovers years ago. They hadn’t been in a while. Timothy was waiting for the right time to tell him to move out, that it was over.”
“When was he going to do that?”
“I’m not sure.”
If Tresca’s love nest was going to be gone, that would give him motive for murder.
Gorman was continuing. “I can’t even find out if there’s going to be a service. I’d go. I wouldn’t make a scene. None of those people would know who I was anyway. I could cry in the back and say goodbye. Thank God the last thing I said to him was “I love you”.” More tears. The detectives waited for him to stop sobbing. What else was there to do? They weren’t going to be able to stop him, and Turner, for one, didn’t want to. The man was hurting, and he’d been unable to talk to anyone. Or so he claimed. Didn’t he have family of his own?
When he was calmer, Turner asked, “When did you see him last?”
“We spent Thursday night here together. We made love. And no don’t laugh. I know I’m a huge guy. He loved me. We made each other feel great. He was a great lover. Are you homophobic, prejudiced cops?”
Turner said, “We just want to find out who killed him. You know he hired call boys?”
“Yeah. Tim was human. I understood.” He patted his belly. “I know I’m not the most fit guy. A few times we shared guys, here, but that was all. We made love every time we saw each other, but he had needs.”
Turner asked, “Two guys at The Proletarian Workers Sandwich Works reported problems after Kappel had encounters with them.”
Gorman turned red. “They were mean to him. I got even for him. Tim was a good man. He didn’t deserve to be treated like they did him. I was supposed to protect him, and someone killed him. It’s my fault he’s dead.” He wept anew.
When he was again under control, Turner asked, “If he told Tresca it was over, and he was throwing him out, maybe he got angry and wanted to kill Tim.”
“Tresca doesn’t have the balls.”
“You know him?”
“Tim told me all about him. And all of them. Everything.”
“Is this your house or his?”
“It’s in my name. He’d give me money sometimes, always cash, for bills and things.” He gave them a defiant look. “I wasn’t a whore. He loved me.”
“Who do you think killed him?” Turner asked.
“I’m betting it was all of them. Tim was afra
id of Bruchard and Duggan. He had the goods on them. We used to laugh about it in bed. Sometime over the past weekend, he was supposed to meet with Duggan, Bruchard, and Tresca.”
“For what?” Turner asked.
“I think a pretty normal planning session. Normal for them.”
Turner wondered if that meeting had taken place and if so what the hell all these guys were up to.
“You were seen banging on the door of the condo last week.”
“I had a key for the parking garage, but not an up to date one for the condo. Besides, I could never be there when he wasn’t because Tresca might show up. I went that day because I was worried about him.”
“Why?”
“I think he was in danger from these people. The lock is like one of those in hotels. He had it changed periodically. He hadn’t gotten me my updated one by then.”
Fenwick asked, “Did he leave records of his investigations here?”
“Yeah. He was always careful. He didn’t trust those people. I never looked at the stuff, but I can show you.” Gorman reached in his pocket, came out with a zip drive, and handed it to him. “He made a copy for me. He didn’t trust Bruchard or Duggan. He was afraid of them. I warned him that those guys were dangerous. I tried to protect him.” He shook his head, pointed to the zip drive. “I think it’s all on there.”
Along with the new data, they took him back to the station. On the way, Gorman kept repeating, “It’s so good to finally have someone to talk to.”
In a rare interval when Gorman was not dithering and babbling, Turner wondered if Kappel was maybe planning to break up with Gorman, not Tresca, or maybe both of them.
At the station Turner tried the zip drive on his computer. It was password protected. Gorman didn’t know the password. Kappel had always told him, it was better he didn’t know. Not telling him was designed as a protection for Gorman from the wrath of any clerics who thought he might know some of Kappel’s secrets.
Fong worked his magic at Turner’s desk for half an hour while Fenwick and Turner filled in Molton, then called for take-out for Gorman, Fong, and themselves.
When Fong broke the password, data flooded out. Some they had. Lots of it came from investigations from years and years before. Gorman could confirm only some of the more recent items. They spent hours with him, going over everything he could remember and all the records Kappel had left with him. They included more names, dates, times, details. On the spreadsheet columns and rows were added and cells expanded. Not only did they now have complete records of his investigations, and with the stuff from Gorman, even more of his personal records as well. At times they had to revise what they had or new information caused connections to be posited between events that hadn’t been connected before.