Ash Wednesday

by Ralph McInerny

  “You’ve met Augie? Good. Come in, I want to tell you what I’ve been doing.”

  Amos was suitably impressed by the new offices—he had never seen the old, however—and even more impressed by the investment plans Carmela had drawn up. It was clear that Jason was in good hands. If only they had hit upon this arrangement years ago, how pleasant the lives of Carmela and Jason would have been.

  “So, you’re all settled in,” he said, when she closed the folder.

  “As you see.”

  “I meant personally.”

  “I am keeping the condo in Schaumburg for the present.”

  Amos went smoothly on. “You will find housing in Fox River much less expensive.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful that Madeline has that wonderful house?”

  “It is a wonderful house. Whether it is wonderful for Madeline remains to be seen.”

  Carmela thought about that, as if it had just occurred to her that the Burke house was far more than any unmarried woman could need, or use.

  “She’ll manage, Amos. Madeline always has.”

  Amos found this surprising. Of all those so tenuously related people, Amos had always thought of Madeline as a somewhat lost and bewildered woman. Well, doubtless Carmela knew her better than he did.

  “And how is Jason?” he asked.

  “Do you want me to clear this plan with him?”

  Amos considered the question. The pattern for the arrangement would be set now. There was no use pretending that Jason had veto power over what Carmela did with his money. Not that she had utter carte blanche. Amos considered himself the general overseer of her activities. Hence this visit.

  “That is up to you, of course.”

  “But you approve the plan?”

  “Certainly. I can understand the success you have had.”

  As he was leaving, Augie came out of his office to say good-bye to the distinguished visitor.

  “I wonder if I know your sister,” Amos said.

  “Amos,” Carmela cried, laughing. “Even I don’t know her.”

  Through the door the two of them went to Amos’s waiting car. She actually helped him in and then stood waving as the car pulled away.

  “Downtown, sir?”

  “No, Marvin. Let’s go to the mall.”

  “The mall?”

  “I want to see a store called the Foot Doctor.”

  Marvin nodded, and Amos settled back. He and Marvin had worked out a modus vivendi over the years. Amos was as democratic as the next man, but in the car he preferred silence and a chance to think. The visit to the Avanti Group provided much food for thought.

  There certainly had been no announcement to that effect, but Amos had assumed that his interpretation of Helen Burke’s will, giving control of Jason’s assets to Carmela, had brought the two together again—or would—but Carmela had given little credence to that view just now. Retaining her condo in Schaumburg. Doubtless it was unrealistic to expect that a couple that had gone through what Carmela and Jason had would find it easy to reconcile immediately. All in good time. Still, the smiling, too diffident Augie gave Amos pause. It was odd, too, that Carmela had shut off all inquiries into the man’s Fox River sister.

  * * *

  The satisfaction he had felt when Carmela outlined her investment plan for Jason’s assets was somewhat diminished by his disappointment that she seemed in no hurry to return to her husband. Well, who could blame her? Jason’s apparent reform was reassuring, but he had made such resolutions many times before. Now, in the absence of the suffocating presence of Helen, there seemed a chance that the resolution would stick.

  Amos sighed. How difficult it could be to acquit oneself of one’s duty to clients. Such a family. The tragic Nathaniel, who had insisted on his guilt when Florence died, who had been tried and sent to prison and now, released, seemed a mere shadow of himself. One did not have to be a lawyer to wonder at Nathaniel’s decision to frequent the senior center at St. Hilary’s, where Helen, his nemesis, was a constant presence. Surely he had not been surprised at her reaction to his coming there? And then the new will, drawn up by the ineffable Tuttle, and with dubious ethics announced to the world. Nathaniel’s subdued and distant air made it difficult to interpret this as a vindictive move, but surely it had that effect on Helen.

  Armed with what Cy Horvath had learned, however ambiguous, Amos had undertaken to relieve Nathaniel’s mind.

  “You didn’t do it, Nathaniel. You couldn’t have. The oxygen supply was cut off when the wall tap was turned. You know you didn’t do that.”

  “But I did. Can one intend to do what he did not do?” Nathaniel asked.

  Amos advised him to discuss that with Father Dowling. He was as certain as he could be that Nathaniel had confessed to a crime he had not committed and spent long years in jail unjustly. Nathaniel’s indifferent reception of this enabled Amos to see how infuriating Helen Burke had found her brother-in-law.

  And Natalie! All efforts to piece together the past of the man she was determined to marry had failed. The very fact that his past was a vast unknown should have been sufficient reason for Natalie to have second thoughts, but she was as excited as a girl at her impending nuptials, scheduled for the second week after Easter.

  Now, going on to the Foot Doctor, where he hoped to talk to Jason, Amos was oppressed by the seeming futility of his efforts. But how far did the writ of his responsibility run? It was no part of his task to make certain that everyone lived happily ever after. No, it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. Still, wouldn’t it be pleasant if at least someone emerged from all this happy?

  Marvin crept along the mall road when they got there and found the Foot Doctor. Amos asked him to park, but then he sat on in the back, wondering what the point of all this was. Well, now that he was here, he would go in. When Amos sat forward, Marvin got out, glided around the car, and opened the door.

  Before going in, Amos saw that there were half a dozen customers in the store. Doubtless they would be replaced by others when they left. He pushed at the door and a bell went off. No one looked at him. Amos glanced toward the back of the store, then went to an empty chair and sat, watching the clerk help people try on shoes, going back and forth to the stockroom.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute, sir,” he said as he went by Amos.

  Amos lifted a hand from the armrest. How long had it been since he had been in a shoe store?

  A woman who could not make up her mind was contemplating two different styles of shoe, one of each in either hand, her face a mask of indecision.

  “Maybe you should take both,” the clerk said, in a half-serious voice.

  Her face lit up. Of course. He had hit upon the solution. When the clerk finally came to him, Amos congratulated him on his Solomonian suggestion. The clerk—Eric by his name tag—smiled radiantly, but there was no comprehension in his eyes.

  Amos got out his wallet and gave a card to Eric. While waiting, he had been wondering if Jason would emerge from his office, thus shortening his time in the showroom. He had thought of just marching to the back and looking for Jason’s office, but, of course, he could not do that.

  “Would you tell Jason Burke I am here?”

  Eric threw up his hands. “You’ve been waiting all this time to see him?”

  Amos smiled and nodded.

  “But he isn’t here.” The clerk was whispering. “This is the second day he hasn’t come in.”

  Doubtless this confidence was inspired by Eric’s connection of Amos Cadbury with his employer. Unstated in the whispered confidence was that Jason had fallen back into his old habits.

  “You’ve called his home, of course.”

  “He doesn’t answer.”

  “Hmmm.”

  Amos asked for and got Jason’s address and telephone number, then rose. Eric came with him to the door, and Amos exited to the jingling of the bell.

  Madeline had said something to him about the way Jason lived, but as Marvin drove slowly among th
e decrepit buildings, searching for the address Eric had given, Amos felt his spirit sink. The development looked like the objective correlative of Jason’s years of irresponsibility.

  Marvin had come to a stop. His eyes in the rearview mirror were on Amos. “Would you like me to come with you, sir?”

  “That might be best.”

  They approached the doorway together, and as they did Amos saw that the door was not completely shut. He pushed it slightly more open and called, “Jason.”

  There was no sound from within. Amos went inside with Marvin beside him.

  The smell of alcohol was overpowering, as if it had been splashed around the room rather than drunk. The room, visible in the light from the open door, was a shambles. Marvin turned on a light, but that only made the scene more sordid.

  “Jason?” Amos called again. “It’s Amos Cadbury.”

  He went toward the bedroom, reaching in to turn on the light.

  A crumpled and bloody Jason lay on the floor beside the bed.

  Part Four

  Marvin called 911, and, while they waited for the arrival of the paramedics, Amos called Phil Keegan. He gave the captain of detectives a dispassionate description of the scene he and Marvin had come upon.

  “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  In the doorway of the bedroom, Marvin shook his head.

  “Apparently not, Captain.”

  “I’ll send Cy Horvath immediately. I don’t have to tell you not to touch anything.”

  Marvin kept vigil by the body, but Amos waited in the car for the arrival of officialdom. Birth and death and everything in between are private events that must concern the public—and where would the legal profession be if that were not the case? Soon the wail of a siren was heard, then another. People in the neighboring units had been showing curiosity about Amos’s car, but at the sound of sirens they withdrew behind closed doors. Amos got out of the car when the ambulance arrived; almost immediately, Cy Horvath was there. He nodded to Amos and followed the paramedics into the house.

  Agnes Lamb stayed with Amos. “You found a body.”

  “Jason Burke. My driver thinks he is still alive. He was brutally beaten. The place is a mess.”

  “I think it always is.”

  Amos was surprised.

  “We’ve been here before, in the line of duty. What brought you here today?”

  “I called at his store. He hadn’t been in for two days.” He looked at Agnes. “I wanted to make certain he was all right.”

  “As his lawyer?”

  Amos might have resented being reduced to a cipher in an investigation if he had not heard so many good things of this young officer.

  “There was no need for him to live like this.”

  Agnes looked around. “Some of the places have been fixed up.”

  She was right. Would Amos have noticed if she hadn’t pointed it out?

  “Yuppie slumming,” she said, an edge to her voice.

  She might have lapsed into a foreign language, or some jargon unknown to Amos. He said nothing.

  Jason was alive, but in serious condition. He seemed to have been beaten mercilessly and left to die by himself. Only that hadn’t happened, at least not yet. The imperative now was to get him to the hospital, and soon the paramedics, having done what they could on the spot, were carrying Jason to the waiting ambulance.

  Cy Horvath appeared in the doorway of Jason’s unit. “Where the hell are the lab people?”

  When the medical examiner and his team arrived, Cy gave the instructions as to what he wanted.

  “Yes, master,” said the butterball leader of the team, saluting sharply. Cy ignored this.

  He came to Amos then, and they sat in the car while Agnes was talking with Marvin.

  “A drunken brawl?” Amos said, but it was a question.

  “Booze has to be taken internally if you want to get drunk.”

  “But the smell of liquor, Cy.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “The poor fellow.”

  “God knows how long he’s been lying there. Well, Agnes and I will check out what the neighbors might have seen.” Cy then asked Amos exactly when he had arrived.

  Amos told him of the open door, of going in with Marvin, being appalled at the way Jason lived, and then finding the body on the floor beside the bed. “I talked with the clerk, Eric, at the store. When he said this was the second day Jason hadn’t been in, I thought the worst.”

  “We’ll see,” Cy said again.

  Agnes had finished with Marvin, and he returned imperturbably to the car and got behind the wheel.

  Cy got out. “Let’s talk to the neighbors, Agnes.”

  “I think we can go, Marvin,” Amos said.

  A nod, and then the engine started and the car moved slowly away from the scene of the crime.

  It was the following evening, dining with Father Dowling at the University Club, that Amos was made privy to what had happened to Jason. The man was in serious condition, a concussion inducing a coma from which he had yet to emerge.

  “There was no alcohol in the blood, Amos. So it wasn’t a relapse.”

  “The place reeked of liquor.”

  Father Dowling was silent for a moment. “Have you heard of the beer and liquor that had appeared at the Foot Doctor, Amos? Someone seems to have been anxious for Jason to have a relapse.”

  Someone. Almost immediately Amos thought of Carmela, but, of course, he said nothing. If he had, he would have gone on to express his reaction to Carmela’s partner, Augie Liberati. Partner in how many senses? That would have been sheer speculation and, moral considerations of calumny aside, the prudence of his profession kept Amos silent on that matter.

  “The squalor in which he lives, Father. Unbelievable.”

  “I would have thought Helen Burke would want him with her in that huge house.”

  “ She might have wanted that, yes.”

  “But not Jason?”

  “His mother was already too constant a presence in his life.”

  “Ah.”

  “Who knows if Jason’s marriage would not have survived without her constant interference in his life?”

  “What kind of interference?”

  “She always came to his aid when he failed at one thing or another.”

  Tetzel was intent on making what had happened to Jason a sequel to his recent story on the son and heir of Helen Burke. Menteur had just glared at him when he turned in the story on public reactions to the smoking ban. Saloons—Tetzel mentioned no particular places—were ignoring it. “I’m a bartender, not a cop,” one had growled to Tetzel. The man and woman in the street were equally opposed. If they weren’t, they didn’t make it into Tetzel’s story. His only stab in the direction of balance was to point out the Tribune’s adamant support of the prohibition.

  “That was dictated by you-know-who,” Menteur said.

  You-know-who was the absent proprietor, a billionaire who had bought up newspapers as if they had a future and from time to time spoke ex cathedra on the editorial pages of his many papers. Somehow he had heard of the proposal of a no-smoking ordinance in little Fox River and demanded that the full moral authority of the Tribune be placed in support of the ban. Moreover, he cast it into words that, with suitable editing and respect for the English language, duly appeared.

  “I’m told the SOB goes through two packs a day,” Menteur said.

  “Of gum?”

  “Get out of here, Tetzel. I’m thinking of reassigning you.”

  Tetzel got out of there, glancing at the poor devils who spent their day in the smoke-free city room. If it came to that, he would expose the hypocrisy of exempting the courthouse from the ban. That, though, could lead to the pressroom in the courthouse becoming as oppressive as the city room. Such a story might win him fame, but afterward he would die of fresh air. It was a true dilemma. He could postpone that evil day, but it was folly to think that Menteur did not long to have the injustic
e he suffered under shared by Tetzel. If he would not forget, at least he could be distracted. Therein lay the promise of the dreadful beating Jason Burke had taken.

  “What do we know?” he asked Tuttle.

  “Have you become a skeptic? Do you doubt your mental powers?”

  “What do we know about Jason Burke?” Tetzel emended patiently.

  “I can only tell you what I know.”

  Tuttle smacked his dry mouth and sighed. They went across the street, where, in a booth, Tuttle sipped his shandy while Tetzel got a grip on his bourbon and water.

  “He was beaten with a baseball bat,” Tuttle began. “His own. Apparently a memento of his healthy boyhood.”

  A lead sentence formed in Tetzel’s mind. “Go on.”

  “He was found bloody and beaten by Amos Cadbury. Found by, not beaten by.”

  “Is Cadbury his lawyer?”

  “Only indirectly, I believe.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He was Helen Burke’s lawyer.”

  “Any leads on his assailant?”

  “Just some unidentified prints on one of the liquor bottles.”

  “So he’d gone back to drinking.”

  “He might have dabbed a little behind his ears. There was no alcohol in the bloodstream. Whoever beat him went to a lot of trouble making it look like a relapse. Three bottles of booze were splashed around; Jason’s clothes were soaked with it.”

  “Splashed around?” Tetzel was shocked.

  “Of course they’re wondering if there is any connection with the case of scotch and month’s supply of beer someone left in the lunchroom at the Foot Doctor.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  Tuttle told him. A conspiracy formed itself in Tetzel’s mind. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “Not a friend,” Tuttle said.

  “So who were his enemies?”

  “I thought you were the reporter, Tetzel.”

  “Why do you think I’m talking with you? Tuttle, this could be big.” As he had so often in the past, Tetzel saw a possible story eclipsing all the actual ones he had ever written. “How is Jason now, by the way?”