Now and Then, Amen

by Jon Cleary

  “Inspector Malone? I’m Father Luis Marquez.” He lifted the collar-peak of his open-necked shirt and showed the small cross he wore there. “I’d like to talk to you. I’m sorry to break in on you like this—”

  “What about?”

  “Sister Mary Magdalene.”

  Malone hesitated; he hated the intrusion of police work into his home. “Can’t it wait till tomorrow? At Homicide headquarters.”

  “Please, Inspector—”

  Malone hesitated again; then he unlocked the security door. He led the young priest through into the living-room and knew at once he had done the wrong thing when he saw Lisa’s remonstrating frown. “I’m sorry, darl. This is Father—?”

  “Marquez,” said the young man. “I’m Nicaraguan.”

  He was almost as tall as Malone, olive-skinned, with high cheekbones, a flat straight nose and black eyes. His hair, too, was black and lay on his long head like a pelt. He was handsome and on other occasions he might have been aware of it; but tonight he looked only worried, perhaps even afraid. Or worse: a priest who had run out of prayer.

  “Would you like a drink?” said Lisa. “Or coffee?” She prided herself on her coffee, being Dutch; she would offer it even to a Brazilian or a Colombian. “I make good coffee.”

  Marquez smiled; it was a handsome smile, one that would have been devastating in either pulpit or bedroom. “I haven’t had a good cup since I came to Australia.”

  “When was that?” said Malone as Lisa went out to the kitchen.

  “Well, I’m lying, really. My mother makes a good cup.” Again there was a flash of very white, straight teeth. I’m being worked on, Malone thought. The charm was like a bribe. “I came here fifteen years ago, when I was sixteen. My father had fought against the Somozas. As a young boy, fourteen years old, he fought with Augusto Cesar Sandino.” He paused, but Malone was unimpressed. He had never heard of Sandino. Then Marquez went on, “He went on fighting, after Sandino was killed. But finally his luck ran out and we had to leave Nicaragua. We came to Australia. My mother was tired of soldiers everywhere, she said she wanted a quiet country where the sun shone and no one was afraid of the soldiers. It was she who chose Australia.”

  “Is your father still alive?” Malone knew nothing of Nicaragua’s history other than what he occasionally read in the newspapers. But ignorance of the world is not a crime; if it were, 99 per cent of the world would be behind bars. Ignorance was not bliss, either: not when it was brought home to you in your own living-room. “Is he mixed up with Sister Mary Magdalene’s death?”

  “Mother of God, no!” The handsome face was suddenly strained. “He’s dead, he’s been dead three years. And my mother—she’s not mixed up in it! It’s just me—and all because of Mary Magdalene. Well, no, that’s not the truth—” He shook his head and his face slackened, seemed to age. “I think I was just waiting for my conscience to come alive.”

  “What parish do you belong to?”

  “I don’t belong to any, not a church parish. I’m one of the two R.C. chaplains on campus at the University of New South Wales. I’m supposed to look after the ethnic students.”

  “Are there any Nicaraguan students there?”

  “A couple, I think. There aren’t very many of us Central Americans in Sydney. They’re mostly South Americans—Chileans, Argentines, Uruguayans—most Australians think we all come out of the one pot, anyway. But I look after all of them, including the Mediterranean ethnics. Even the odd Catholic Turk—and they’re pretty odd, I can tell you.” He smiled again.

  “Have you been home to Nicaragua?”

  “Once, a couple of years ago.”

  “Are you a—what do they call them? A Sandista?” Like most of the natives, when he read a foreign word in a newspaper or book he usually ran all the letters together and came up with his own interpretation. It was a variation on the old English attitude: the foreigners of the world really should Anglicize themselves.

  “Sandinistas. They’re named after Augusto Cesar Sandino, the man my father fought with. No, I don’t belong to them. But I guess you could say I’m sympathetic to them. But I’m not rabid about them, not the way Mary Magdalene was.”

  Lisa came back with the coffee, sat down, became part of the interview. Malone didn’t mind, not this evening. Normally he tried to keep her well removed from any of his cases, but tonight he was glad she was there.

  “How did you meet Mary?”

  Father Marquez sipped the coffee, nodded appreciatively. “Very good.”

  “It’s Colombian,” said Lisa.

  “My mother always uses it. Nicaraguan coffee is pretty terrible. Everything in Nicaragua is pretty terrible these days. That was what Mary was always on about. She spent two years there, you know, up in the mountains. She was captured by the Contras, but managed to get them to release her. She came to the University to talk about it. That was how I met her.”

  “How did you know to come here?” said Malone. “And why?”

  “When I saw the news on TV tonight—” He stopped, stared at his hands for a moment. “I couldn’t believe it. Then I rang Mother Brendan at the convent. She said you were in charge of the case. She said your children went to the school and she gave me your address.”

  “She had a hide,” said Lisa. “You’d think private people like nuns would respect other people’s privacy.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Marquez, acutely embarrassed. “I should not have come. Mother Brendan was only trying to help.”

  Lisa poured herself a second cup of coffee, having drained the first in an angry gulp. She looked at Malone. “Do you want me to leave?”

  He grinned, not annoyed at her intervention; she had said only what he had thought. “No, stay. If Father Marquez is used to dealing with the odd Catholic Turk, he won’t be too upset by you. Now let’s get down to brass tacks, Father. Why are you here?”

  Marquez put down his coffee cup. “Because I think I may be next on their list.”

  Lisa sat very still and so did Malone; but it was an acquired habit with him, born of long practice in interviews such as this. “Whose list?”

  “I said there aren’t very many Nicaraguans in Sydney—that’s true. But there are some here, maybe a dozen or more, who are strong Contra supporters. When Mary came on to campus to talk to a group, they turned up out of nowhere and picketed her and abused her. It never got into the papers. Picketing is pretty common on campus and anyway the general public doesn’t seem very interested these days in what students are on about. But the Contra supporters got pretty nasty.”

  “Are you saying they could be her killers?”

  “No, not them. But the people behind them—yes.”

  “What people?”

  “I’m not sure. Two of the top Contra men came into Sydney about three weeks ago, from Miami, I believe. They got here about a week after Archbishop Hourigan arrived. He came from Miami, too.”

  “You’d better be careful here, Father. Are you saying the Archbishop is connected with the Contras?”

  “I have no proof. But Mary Magdalene was certain he was. I went with her one night to a meeting he was addressing and she stood up and charged him with it.”

  “I’m sorry she’s dead,” said Lisa, “but she sounds a real pain in the neck.”

  “Most true believers are,” said Father Marquez gently.

  “What did Archbishop Hourigan say?” Malone had never been a true believer in anything, though God knew he had tried.

  “He just ignored her. He’s so—so arrogant—it’s impossible to describe—”

  “I’ve met him.” But arrogance, like ignorance, is not a crime. If it were, certain Prime Ministers and State Premiers would have been declared habitual criminals. “So Mary Magdalene never had any real contact with him?”

  “Oh yes, several times. I don’t know how—”

  “She was his niece.”

  Marquez had put forward his cup at Lisa’s gesture of more coffee; both of them looked sharp
ly at Malone and the coffee spilled into the saucer. “She never mentioned that! Mother of God!” Marquez shook his head in wonder. “That was how she knew so much about him . . .”

  “How much did she know?”

  “She never told me everything—she always seemed to be holding something back. I don’t think she entirely trusted Australia or Australians. She said we were too smug, too suburban to care passionately about anything. Some of us might care about rain-forests and wetlands and the killing of kangaroos, but we didn’t care about people.”

  “She didn’t think of you as a Nicaraguan?”

  “She said I’d been here too long, I’d been brainwashed, that the sun and the beer had got to me. She was a bigot, in her own way.”

  “I’m beginning to dislike her,” said Lisa.

  “No, don’t,” said Marquez quickly. “She was just, I don’t know, too caring. I go to the convent occasionally, to talk to the classes. The girls in her classes adored her. She just had this, I suppose you’d call it Marxist, thing about Nicaragua.”

  “Are you a Marxist?”

  “Me? God, no! I’ve only voted twice in my life and both times for Malcolm Fraser—and I don’t think God has forgiven me.” Again there was the smile. The girls at the convent, Lisa thought, might adore him, too. “No, you can be for the Sandinistas without being a Marxist.”

  “What about the Archbishop?”

  Marquez laughed. “He’s even further to the right than Pius the Ninth.”

  “He was before my time.” Malone had always had difficulty in remembering popes’ names and their numbers. “Did Mary ever mention her grandfather, Fingal Hourigan?”

  Marquez shook his head. “The rich old guy—he’s her grandfather? God, he’s worth millions!”

  “He’s a billionaire,” said Lisa. “I’d mention my grandfather if he was in that bracket.”

  “No, she never said a word about him. She never said anything about her family at all. I really didn’t know her that well at all. I just liked her. And I think she liked me.” Then he looked at both of them defensively, as if they might have made the wrong inference. He’s aware of his looks and his appeal to women, Lisa thought. “I don’t mean there was anything like that . . .”

  “Who are the men you think might want to kill you?” said Malone.

  Marquez hesitated, then said, “I don’t know who they are, but I’m sure there are some ex-Somoza men here in Sydney. The Somoza dynasty ran Nicaragua as if they owned the whole country—which, I guess, they did in a way. The last President, Anastasio, is dead, but his gang still hang on, running the Contras and trying to raise money wherever they can. Mary thought that was why the two guys came in from Miami. Their names are Paredes Canto and Domecq Cruz.”

  Malone jotted down the names, asking for the correct spelling. “You think they are the ones threatening you?”

  “I don’t know, to be honest. I’ve had two phone calls, one last week after I’d been to the Archbishop’s talk with Mary, the second one this evening. The man spoke to me in Spanish. He had a Nicaraguan accent like my father’s—in Central America the accents are quite distinct. He mentioned my father—he knew all about him. He said they knew about my association with Mary Magdalene and just to forget her or I’d regret it.”

  “Are you afraid?” said Malone, testing him.

  “Yes,” said Marquez without hesitation or embarrassment. “I’m not a guerilla fighter, Mr. Malone. I was on Mary’s side, but I wasn’t carrying any gun for her. She knew that and sometimes she couldn’t understand it, especially since I was born in Nicaragua and what had happened to my father there. He was tortured by the Somoza National Guard . . . But we came out here to start a new life. I became a priest because I wanted to preach peace—I believe in a loving God, not a wrathful one . . .”

  “Are you asking for police protection? I don’t know that I can arrange that, not at this stage. How did you get here tonight?”

  “I have a motorbike.”

  “Were you followed?”

  Marquez looked surprised. “I don’t know. I didn’t think to look. I’m not used to this, Inspector—”

  “You’d better be more careful, for the time being anyway. You’re pretty vulnerable on a motorbike.”

  “University chaplains can’t afford cars. We’re the bottom end of the totem pole—I think we’re supposed to be symbols of poverty to the students.” He smiled again, bravely this time, Malone thought. He found himself liking the young priest and didn’t blame him for being afraid. Bravado was another form of heart disease.

  He showed Marquez to the door. “I’ll want to see you again—I’ll call you at the Uni. If you want to get in touch with me, if these blokes call you again, phone me at Homicide.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t phone me here.”

  “I understand, Inspector.” Marquez lowered his own voice. “I’m sorry I intruded. It won’t happen again.”

  Malone switched off the light in the hallway behind him and waited while Marquez went out to his motorbike, put on his helmet, started up the bike and rode away with a wave of his hand. Malone waited to see if any car pulled out from the kerb in the quiet street, but none did. He re-locked the security door, closed the front door and went back to the living-room.

  Lisa was waiting for him, the tray of coffee cups and the pot ready to be taken out to the kitchen. “It’s got worse, hasn’t it?”

  “Much worse,” he said, but didn’t tell her about the threat he had received just before Father Marquez had arrived.

  “How do these things ever start?”

  He grinned. “Original sin,” he said, but he doubted if even Father Marquez or Archbishop Hourigan believed that. “It may have started yesterday or it may have started years ago.”

  3

  I

  IT HAD indeed started years ago, in Chicago in 1929.

  Seamus (Jimmy) Mulligan chose a St. Valentine’s Day card from the rack in the drugstore. Mae, who had the same name as his boss’s wife, was a girl who was full of romance; she often told him that, lying on her back under humping customers, she dreamed she was being made love to by John Gilbert or Ronald Colman. It didn’t annoy Jimmy that she didn’t dream of him. He never dreamed of her.

  He pocketed the card and envelope without paying for it and went to the drugstore’s pay phone. He dialled a number and while he waited for it to be answered he looked out at the dreary afternoon. Snow was falling, looking as unreal as he always found it; like falling souls, his mother used to describe it and blessed herself with a flurry of fingers. He hated Chicago in the winter, but so far he had never made enough money to go south for the freezing season. He had money in the bank, but he was a careful man: he would never splurge it on a long vacation. Not unless he knew suckers at the vacation spot who would finance it.

  The ringing at the other end stopped and a rough voice said, “Yeah? Who’s dat?”

  “Jack O’Hare,” said Jimmy, who always used Irish aliases; he was not romantic, but he was superstitious. It was bad luck to deny your heritage: that son-of-a-bitch St. Patrick would send the snakes after you. “Is your boss there?”

  There was a grunt at the other end, then Moran came on the line. Jimmy in his mind’s eye, which had 20/20 vision, could see the big morose Irishman at the other end. The battered face, as intelligent-looking as a drummer’s travel-bag, would be screwed up as its owner tried to concentrate. George “Bugs” Moran hated talking on the phone, where he couldn’t glower at the other man.

  “What you got, Jack?”

  “Al Brown’s had another consignment of booze come in from Detroit. I got it right off the boat.”

  “Where’s it at?”

  “Ah, Mr. Moran, you know I never tell you that. I oughtna be telling you where I got it from, only I thought it’d make you feel better.” Moran hated the man from whom the liquor had been hijacked. “It’s all yours, Mr. Moran, a whole truck-load for fifty-seven bucks a case. Old Log Cabin label, the best. The Mayor himself drinks i
t.”

  Bugs Moran took his time, as he always did when asked to give any subject some thought. He had inherited the leadership of the Dion O’Banion gang by default. Vincent Drucci, who had taken over from O’Banion himself, who had died of a surfeit of bullets, had suffered that most ignominious death for a gangster: he had been shot by a single policeman, a travesty of justice in gangland’s eyes. Moran, with the mantle of leadership thrust upon him, had, like certain Vice Presidents in the same situation, stumbled around in the dark. When he had finally collected his thoughts, which weren’t many, he decided that bootleg hijacking would be the best way of using his talent, which was mostly muscle. He chose to hijack the shipments of the Capone gang, a decision that showed his Irish idea of logic.

  “Okay, I’ll take „em,” he said at last. “Bring the truck to the usual place tomorrow morning, ten-thirty.”

  “Cash on delivery?”

  “Ain’t it always?” said Moran, who prided himself on certain concessions to honesty.

  “You’ll be there? I don’t wanna deal with any of your stooges, Mr. Moran. You know me. It’s always between the principals.”

  “I’ll be there,” growled Moran and hung up.

  Jimmy Mulligan turned up the collar of his Irish tweed overcoat, the best that Donegal could weave, pulled down the brim of his grey Borsolino hat and went out into the grey, freezing day. He had never liked Chicago in any season, from the day he had been brought here as a six-months-old baby from Ballyseanduff in County Kerry; for the first five years of his life he had suffered from colds, croup, bronchitis, influenza and a constantly running nose that had earned him the nick-name at school of The Drip. But, as his father had told him, Chicago was where the money was to be made, so long as you didn’t worry about scruples.

  “Only the rich can afford scruples,” Paddy Mulligan had said, “and they had to be unscrupulous to get rich.”