“Should I be worried?” Grace asked, but she didn’t sound worried.
“No. Just careful. If anyone approaches you about Polozola, or Grubb, or Dr. Smith, you need to stall them until you talk to me.”
“Sounds like I should be worried,” she said, cool and self-contained as ever.
“No. And as for Jack, I have a lead I’m following in Los Angeles. Like I said—”
“Yes,” interjected Grace, “don’t worry, just be careful. Thanks, Jackson. I’ll just wait to hear from you. And I guess see you in two days.”
I called Beverly Hills to talk to my oldest and best friend, Dumpy Doyle. It had been a few years since we talked, and getting his voicemail, I left a message that I would be in town in a day or so. I did some research with my title company database and located a Ken Macdonald in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, but by then it was too late to look him up in person. I pulled a few tricks and lost the BMW tailing me before I made it back to my National City motel.
The next morning I drove up the coast and found the house Macdonald owned on Mozart Street. No one was tailing me. The sleepy Sunday morning was just turning to noon as the sun broke through the ocean fog. The man who answered my knock was somewhere in his sixties, tall, bald—and not happy to be found.
“Father Macdonald?”
“It’s not ‘Father’ anymore,” he said almost bitterly. “Who are you?” He looked past me and down the street.
I told him essentially what I had told Marisol. I was working with the Berkeley police to solve the murder of Father Cortez. I said the police and I had little to go on, and I was hoping he could give me some insight into Father Cortez, and who or what he’d been involved with that might have resulted in his murder.
“How did you find me?” he asked as I stood on his doorstep.
“I’m a detective. Finding people and things is what I do.”
“Nobody knows where I live,” he offered suspiciously.
“The county tax assessor does. I took a gamble that you still lived in San Diego County and looked up all the real estate transactions from the last two years with a Macdonald. It didn’t take me long.”
“I don’t know what help I can be, but come in.” He ushered me in reluctantly, then asked, “Does anyone else know you’re here?”
“What’s the matter, Father, are you hiding from an assassin from Opus Dei?”
“I told you before: it’s not ‘Father’ anymore.” His face was growing red and his tone icy. “Call me Ken or Mr. Macdonald. And as for hiding, I am hiding from no one. I happen to like my privacy, as well as need it for my writing. As for the remark about Opus Dei, if you are referring to that ridiculous, fractured fairytale, The Da Vinci Code, well that book isn’t just nonsense, it’s nonsense on steroids.”
I decided two things quickly: one, no more humor with Ken, and two, that he was hiding from someone or something.
His front room was austere to the point of being Spartan. Two chairs, a coffee table, and a magazine rack. He motioned for me to take one of the chairs.
He offered me coffee. While he prepared it, he told me that he was “sickened and disturbed” by the death of Jesus. They had worked together for two years and although he liked and respected his colleague, they had never been close. They were from two different generations and from two different cultures. Ken was thirty years Jesus’ senior and from the Midwest—not Mexico, like Jesus. Also, Ken was on his way out of the church; he was either going to be retired, excommunicated, or otherwise forced to leave the priesthood. He would not give up his writings, he said, and the church was suppressing them. As for Jesus, he’d been new and just starting. To further complicate matters, Jesus had seen his assignment to the predominantly first generation Mexican-American St. Martin’s Parish as a great opportunity to help his people, while Ken had looked upon his assignment there as a demotion. Once again he mentioned his writings, and indicated that was why he was on bad terms with the church and no longer a priest. I tucked away my questions about his writings, determined to get to them later.
“This is a delicate matter,” I said, having decided to get straight to the interview, “but we have evidence to support the fact that Father Cortez may have had a romance. A romance with a woman named Muriel.”
“I won’t respond to that,” Ken said flatly.
“All I want to—”
“I said I won’t respond to your question about Father Cortez having a romance with a woman. You will not make an end run around my refusal. If you broach the subject again I will ask you to leave. Are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
Was it the seal of confession that had made him stonewall me? If so, was he still bound by the seal of confession? Or was there some other reason? I could only guess and move on.
“In both his new parish and in St. Martin’s, there were rumors of miracles. More than one parishioner at either parish referred to him as a saint.” I let my statement hang in the air.
Macdonald gave a twisted smile. “Do you have any idea of the criteria for sainthood? The process, not to mention the politics? In any event, I hardly think our Father Cortez was another Mother Cabrini or Martin de Porres. As well as I knew him, I must say he was a good priest and a good man. He had charisma and was able to help his people. But a saint? No. As for miracles, both his parishes were made up of many illegals or first generation Mexican-Americans—a demographic that often only finds religion where it intersects with myth and superstition. These are people who believe that the Blessed Mother comes by and leaves things on their doorsteps. People who come from such abject poverty that most Americans cannot fathom it. To these people finding a twenty-dollar bill, or being able to find work two days in a row are supernatural events. I heard Father Cortez on the phone many times arranging medical or legal help for our parishioners. He would find jobs and ask landlords for forbearance. He cared very much about the plight of the people of our parish and was able to do a lot for them in the temporal world, but miracles?” He gave his twisted smile again. “No. What else?”
“One thing we haven’t been able to reconcile is that he didn’t go to the police the day he was killed, although he left me messages that he was in grave danger. Instead of the police he came to me. Would he have been afraid of the police?”
“I rather doubt it. Once a police detective I knew came by to interview Father Cortez. I asked the detective if Jesus was in trouble, and was told no, that it was just a routine matter. I also asked if it happened to be about a parishioner in trouble, and was also told no. You know how police are, they never tell you anything but what they want you to know. What made me so curious about this was that, as I say, I knew the detective, and knew that he was a homicide detective. When I asked Jesus about it, he dismissed it as a non-event. He said he’d been named as an alibi witness for someone, and the police just wanted him to confirm it. He seemed unperturbed. The detective told me that it would probably amount to nothing, and it apparently did. The police never came back, and I never heard any more about it.”
Macdonald offered me more coffee, and I refused.
“Do you recall the detective’s name?”
“Yes, in fact I saw him a few months ago at a function in Los Angeles. He’s retired now from the San Diego Police and he’s in your line of work in L.A. His name is Budd Rosselli. Since you’re so good at finding people, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding him.” Macdonald sipped some coffee. Then he said, “But you know, there was another incident with the police. That was when Father Cortez had gone off on ‘vacation’ for several days. His so-called vacation consisted of a three-day drinking binge. He got arrested, but it turned out one of the policemen at the precinct was a parishioner. They only had him for public drunkenness, so they called me and asked that I come get him—they didn’t want him in a cell with real criminals, and they wanted to save him the embarrassment of going to court. I went down and got him, and he was psychotically drunk. Delirious. Didn’t know who I was, but he kept spouting
something about being a fraud and a charlatan, and that everything about him was a fraud and a fake. It made no sense, but he kept repeating it all the way back to the rectory until I finally told him to shut up.”
“What did you make of it?” I asked.
“Father Cortez was an intellectual. The only things he and I ever really discussed were philosophy or theology. I assumed his ranting was just some existential angst. Those with great faith often have great despair. Myself, I spent thirty years tending a garden only to discover I had been in the wrong garden. I empathize all too well with the sin of despair.” He stood up. “Now, I think I’ve been all the help I can be; I have your card if I remember anything else.”
I wasn’t done with him. Perhaps if we started talking about his writing he’d tell me more.
“Is this what you are working on?” I inquired, pointing at the table where there rested a large manuscript entitled The Resignation of the Grand Inquisitor.
When Macdonald nodded yes, I asked, “Is this based on Pope Benedict XVI?”
“Yes,” he said, “do you know that our resigned pope’s previous title was Grand Inquisitor? Are you aware of the role and function of that position in the history of the Church?”
“Do you mean in such incidents as the Spanish Inquisition?” I said, trying to feign interest.
“Incident?” He laughed. “You know, not only is the church even more corrupt now than during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, it remains inscrutable and inexplicable. A good example was Father Cortez. On more than one occasion the cardinal’s office called to check in and see how he was doing. I found it strange, and at first I thought he had some juice with the hierarchy. Then I just assumed it was another slap in the face for me from the Church. Myself, I couldn’t get the assistant to the bishop to return my calls. Of course, I brought that on myself with my writings.”
The fact that you’re kind of an asshole might have had something to do with it, too, I thought.
Macdonald was quiet for a moment, then said, “I have work to do,” and ushered me to the front door.
“One question I have for you, Jackson,” he said, opening the door. “Jesus was a devout man, a true believer. You don’t strike me as a true believer; in fact, you don’t impress me as a believer at all.”
“I proclaim that I believe in nothing, and that everything is absurd,” I replied.
“L’homme révolté,” said Macdonald.
“Camus is my favorite philosopher.”
“If Albert Camus is your favorite philosopher,” he said in a condescending tone, “I am hesitant to ask who number two is. Dr. Phil, perhaps?” With that he gave me one last twisted smile and closed the door in my face.
Chapter Nineteen
It’s been said that there are two types of people in the world: those who think there are two types of people in the world, and those who don’t. Mickey Mahoney belongs to the former’s way of thinking in that there are people who owe Mickey, and people who Mickey owes. While other people figure their net worth in cash, stock, or real estate portfolios, Mickey’s goal is to be in the black by having more favors owed to him than he owes out. As his surrogate son, and the only person Mickey considers family, I am the exception.
I stopped for gas just outside of Cardiff-by-the-Sea when my cellphone rang and displayed Portland Police on the dial pad.
“Where the fuck are you?” asked Mickey Mahoney.
“No ‘hello, how are you are you?’ No ‘how’s it going, Jackson?’ ”
“Hello, how are you? How’s it going, Jackson, and where the fuck are you?”
“San Diego County. On my way north to Long Beach and L.A.”
“Are you under the impression that the Portland police’s closed case files, as well as our police crime lab, are at your disposal like the county library?”
“So you got my request.”
“Yeah. And the entire department dropped everything they were doing and cancelled their weekend plans to accommodate you,” groused Mickey.
“Look, this case that you referred me through Jonas Wiesel, this missing employee of his client, Grace Lowell, this vanishing realtor, and his investor client? Mickey, this case is hinkey.”
“How is it hinkey?”
“Remember you told me from the jump that there was probably a misdemeanor, if not a felony afoot with this case? Well, it seems you’re correct. I don’t know exactly what the scam is, or who all the players are, but I need to know if this guy John Q. Smith really is who he says he is.”
“I called in a favor and I’ve got the prints back. Smith’s file is on my desk.”
“Thanks.”
“Now listen: John Q. Smith is John Q.—the Q is just an initial that stands for nothing—Smith. Thirty years ago he shot his wife, Eve Marie Smith, to death out in Felony Flats. Remember that place?”
I told Mickey I did. It was, and I supposed still is, a trailer park in North Portland close to the Washington State line. It got its name because of the ex-convicts, drug dealers, career criminals, and other low-life residents the place attracted.
“So Smith, who had been popped for a domestic violence beef, and who everyone in a three-mile radius of their mobile home had heard threaten to kill his wife, goes ahead and does it. His two young kids are witnesses. He confesses, takes a plea, and does ten years in Salem. No record since then.”
“Did they ever find the gun? He told me his kids threw it in the river.”
“That’s what the record shows. Felony Flats is only about a mile from the Columbia. And you know how wide, deep, and fast the river is by the Vancouver Bridge. No, she was shot with a twenty-five, he had a twenty-five registered to him, and he confessed on the spot. Never spent much effort on looking for the gun. Hell, the current might have taken it out to the ocean.”
“So they didn’t investigate any further?” I asked.
“Why? If there is such a thing as open and shut, this was it. Why do you ask? What was his story?”
“Just the same as you laid it out. I guess it was that simple,” I said.
“Occasionally it is. The prints you sent are his, by the way. What else?”
“I guess that covers that.”
“Well, I got something for you. Remember Father Malcolm Dunphy?”
“Priest who got arrested for molesting one of his high school girl students?”
“Yeah, but once they found out that the girl was a virgin, they had to drop the charges down to some chickenshit misdemeanor. Not that the pederast cocksucker wasn’t guilty of playing slap and tickle with a number of other schoolgirls.”
“I thought he was your buddy. Didn’t you go to bat for him?” I asked.
“He’s never been my buddy. I graduated Central Catholic with him, we played ball together, but he was a douche bag then, he’s a douche bag now, and he’ll always be a douche bag. Chrissake, he’s a Catholic priest, so by definition he’s a douche bag.”
“Someday you’ll have to tell me why you hate priests so much.”
“And someday you’ll have to tell me why you don’t, but listen: Dunphy comes to me with his hat in his hand, about a year ago, sniveling about how he is being railroaded. So I look into it and despite any prior bad acts he never got busted on, he was getting railroaded on this one. Turns out the assistant DA handling the case owes me, so I step in. Dunphy cops to a misdemeanor, does community service, accepts counseling for a year, and quits teaching girl students. He’s teaching at a seminary now, and as long as the Church doesn’t allow women priests, we’re all safe; it’s a win-win for everyone. Anyhow, I bump into him the other day and it turns out he knew your little friend, Father Chimichanga, the dead Mexican priest.”
“Cortez. His name was Father Jesus Cortez.”
“Yeah, yeah. Listen up. Dunphy hears about the priest on the news and hears your name. You know they’re dragging up all that old shit on you.”
“Yeah, let ’em. It’ll go away once they find out who killed Cortez.”
/> “So Dunphy’s at a convention, or seminar, in San Francisco a year or two ago, and ends up in a discussion with this bright young Mexican priest. He finds this guy very scholarly and bright, and they get to talking and drinking.”
“Sounds like Father Cortez so far.”
“They end up closing the hotel bar—”
“That would be Jesus. Did he say what they were talking about?”
“No, but I gathered it was nothing more than the usual priestly horseshit. You know, eternal salvation, living the Gospel, why you need to kowtow to Rome. Like I say, the usual crock of shit. But here’s the interesting part: a couple of months ago Dunphy is in the Portland airport, and who does he see picking up his baggage, but his old buddy, Father Chimichanga.”
“Cortez, Mickey, his name was Cortez.” I pulled over to the side of the highway. Seagulls swooped in the noonday sun and cars whizzed past as I rolled up the windows to hear Mickey better.
“All right, Cortez. So they say hello, and Dunphy says where are you staying, and Cortez says he is only in town for a day to see a friend from his parish. Now he doesn’t say who the friend is, and when Dunphy asks where will you be saying mass, how can I reach you, Cortez is vague and changes the subject.”
“Once again, that sounds like Jesus.”
“But here’s the kicker. Your buddy is with a woman. According to Dunphy, to use his words, she is a well-dressed, refined looking, handsome woman. You know a guy is a pervert if he refers to a good-looking woman as handsome. Cortez said nice to see you, Father, and hustled off with the woman.”
“Did he give you a physical description?”
“Jackson, remember we’re talking about Father Dunphy here. Once a female gets to the age of consent he doesn’t pay too much attention. But I’ll have him give you a call—and he will call you.”
“He say anything else?”
“Just that he’s praying for me,” Mickey said, laughing.
“What did you say to that?”
“Just that I was praying for him, too. Praying that all his sons would become monsignors and all his daughters would grow up to become mother superiors.” Mickey was still laughing. “Actually, what I did tell him was that if he gets caught with his hand on the ass of a thirteen-year-old girl again, he’ll make me look like an asshole, and he will wish to fuck he never came to me for a favor in the first place. I think I made a Christian out of him.”
The Big Bitch Page 9