“Where does he go?” I mused aloud.
“None of our business generally,” Frank said. “He could have a sick mother in a nursing home, or maybe he’s getting a little nooky on the side.”
“I thought priests weren’t supposed to have sex,” Scott said.
“They’re human,” Frank said, “no matter what the Vatican tries to tell us.”
He agreed to do some discreet checking into Father Sebastian’s death but didn’t promise anything.
At home there was a message from Neil on the answering machine to get back to him. I called, and he said we could meet with the Faith board of directors at five and then Neil wanted to see us himself. Scott spent the afternoon responding to letters from AIDS groups around the country asking him for help with fund-raisers. These are his priority now. As a star athlete he draws huge crowds, and he always appears free for AIDS groups. I spent the afternoon reading The Company We Keep by Wayne C. Booth.
I drove Scott’s Porsche to the city. I guess it’s juvenile, but I love its power and sexiness. My new gleaming black pickup with oversized tires and four-wheel drive has a certain sexual cachet, but his car is magic. For the forty-five-minute trip to Chicago, we took I-80 to I-57, up the Dan Ryan Expressway, and then over to Lake Shore Drive. The board met in an upstairs former dance studio on Clark Street, across from the Organic Theater. Fortunately, enough snow had melted so we found a parking space in less than fifteen minutes.
Upstairs, we entered a room that ran the length of the building. A large cluster of over a hundred metal folding chairs filled the half of the room closest to the windows overlooking Clark Street. A simple table draped with a white cloth waited for the congregation in a clear space in front of the chairs. The other three walls, including the back of the doorway, still had the floor-to-ceiling mirrors of its dance-studio days.
Neil got up and came over from the circle of people sitting in the far corner. His pink-and-purple-checked sweater vest hung over his paunch. It covered his faded blue-jeans shirt and the top third of his tentlike pants.
“You’re just in time. We just finished,” he said. He glanced around quickly at the group at the far end of the room, then whispered, “I’ve got to talk to you after this!” Everything is a crisis with Neil. His having to talk to us could concern something as simple as a hangnail or as heavy as a nuclear disaster. As he led us up to the group, he said, “I’ll introduce you; then you can ask questions.” Five people besides Neil sat in the circle. We pulled up folding chairs and joined them.
Neil introduced us. To my left sat Monica Verlaine, whom we already knew, dressed today in a black wool skirt, a red wool form-fitting jacket with black buttons down the front, black silk scarf splashed with red and white draped over the right shoulder of the suit jacket, black earrings, low-heeled suede boots, and matching purse. No cigarette holder or smoking for now.
Next to Monica sat a man in his seventies, at least, bald and smiling: Bartholomew Northridge, former accountant and treasurer of the organization. His hands shook sporadically. Every few minutes he’d hold them together in rigid stillness, only to have them wander apart moments later to shake again. He spent much of his time darting nervous glances at other members of the group.
Then came Father Larkin, who nodded pontifically.
I knew the next person from a bar we frequented: Prentice Dowalski, twenty-three or -four, part-time bartender and hustler, willowy thin, strikingly handsome face, smart-mouthed, who generally hid behind a string of rude or stupid comments. Several years ago I’d accidentally learned that Neil occasionally pimped for Prentice. This was only for exceptionally high-class clients who paid over $1,000 an hour. I couldn’t imagine what a hustler could do to earn that much an hour. Then again, maybe I didn’t really want to know. I hadn’t been around him for long enough stretches of time to know if his stupidity was congenital or an act. He and a Chicago cop used to be lovers, but they’d broken up a year ago over the hustling issue.
Between Prentice and Neil sat Brian Clayton: short hair and mustache, a hint of a paunch, desperate to look thirty while rapidly approaching forty. Secretary and chairman of the membership committee, he smiled warmly and fussed over Scott and his fame.
Neil cut him off. “We’ve agreed that we think somebody killed Father Sebastian, and we want Tom and Scott here to look into it.” Heads nodded. Neil continued, “We knew Father Sebastian best. Our insights might guide them to the truth.”
“What we need to know,” I said, “is the type of man you think Father Sebastian was, what you remember from that last day, if you noticed anything different in him lately, and where each of you were at the time of the murder.”
Their memories of the last day coincided fairly well. During the board meeting the week before, Father Sebastian had seemed as placid and calm as ever. Mass had been the usual. No one had noticed anything alarming or different in Father Sebastian’s sermon that Sunday.
After the service, the group had a social hour. Father Sebastian had gone downstairs to the sacristy, really more of a storage room for the group’s files and paraphernalia. That’s where they’d found his body. Except for Clayton, who found him, no one admitted leaving the dance room we sat in, but each would be hard pressed to prove their continued presence there. During social hour people mingled, formed groups, and dispersed as at any party.
“So any of the people present could be a suspect, which was how many?”
“Eighty-six,” Clayton said. “I always keep accurate count and seek out any new members to make them feel welcome, encourage them to join formally.”
“Anybody new this week?” I asked.
No strangers had shown up. It’d been a day of ice, snow, and rain just before the current thaw. The inclement weather kept the size of the group down.
I pointed out the impossibility of our questioning all those people with no official sanction. A collective look of helplessness was followed by silence. In the mirrors I watched them shift uncomfortably.
Neil spoke. “I know it’s tough, but our friend is dead. We have to do something.”
“Besides the police explanation of natural death and the possibility of someone at the Mass killing Father Sebastian, there’s always the stranger or tramp from the street solution,” I said. They fell silent.
“What the hell is this?” a voice snarled from the door. I turned to see a woman in a bright-red vinyl jacket, tight Levi’s jeans, and white high-top basketball sneakers advancing toward us.
Neil introduced her as Priscilla Kapustaglova, President of Faith Chicago. He explained why we were there, adding what Jerry had told us. “We think they can help,” he finished.
She snorted. “A macho two-bit jock and a schoolteacher?” Hair unkempt, anorexically thin, no makeup, and what I suspected as a perpetual sneer on her lips, she straddled her chair backward like a Western movie extra. “You don’t want much from a couple of amateurs.”
“They’re our best hope. Tom Mason is trusted everywhere in the gay community. If he asks questions, people will take to him,” Clayton said.
Priscilla pointed to Brian. “You’re drooling because you think they’re hot men.” Clayton turned slightly red. Priscilla continued. “Father Sebastian died. The cops questioned us. They said it was natural causes. No conspiracy. No murder.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to trust the cops.” Bartholomew alternately clutched the back of his head and twined his fingers together as he spoke.
“At least, one of them was a woman,” she snapped. “And yes, I trust the cops in this. I wouldn’t trust the fucking Cardinal if he swore on a stack of cathedrals. But a female cop? Sure.”
“Naïve.”
Monica uttered the one word, and Priscilla became slightly quieter but no less hostile. She asked, “Why was this decision made without me present?”
Neil spoke quickly. “You had another meeting today. This was urgent.”
After ten more minutes of squabbling, they declared a truce in their internal politics.
After we got the Father-Sebastian-was-a-saint litany, even from Priscilla, she said, “See? Nobody had a reason to kill him. Give up. Go home.”
“Not yet,” I said.
We talked about Sebastian’s mental state. More serene than ever was the consensus; nothing else different.
“Did he have a lover?” Scott asked.
“He took his commitment to celibacy very seriously,” Bartholomew said. He joined his hands together. “He always took time to chat with me after each Mass. He visited me each week. I live alone. I don’t go out much. But every Wednesday he came and spent a half hour. I appreciated it. He told me he hadn’t had a relationship since before he became a priest.” General hesitant nods at this.
“He was gay?” Scott asked.
“Of course,” Neil said.
Prentice spoke up. “I do know he met some guy every Sunday night at Roscoe’s. I don’t know if he was a lover or not, but I saw them once in the back on the couch looking secretive.”
Roscoe’s was one of the more popular gay bars in the city. Beyond seeing them, and drawing a possibly erroneous conclusion about their behavior, Prentice knew no more. It was something to check out later.
Other than these people, Father Sebastian had no close friends in the group. He met with them. Never had a fight with them, or with any member of Faith Chicago. They’d never heard him exchange a harsh word with anyone.
For the last ten minutes, stray group members had begun filling the space near the door, standing uncertainly, occasionally gawking at us.
The rest of our questions earned no further information. A few minutes later, as the others began moving away, I said to Monica, “We’ll have to talk to your source in the chancery.”
She looked disconcerted. “I’ll try to arrange it, but I don’t think he’ll agree to see you.”
The board of directors moved to their routines, places, and customs with the gathering crowd. I heard a few whispers of “Isn’t that Scott what’s-his-name?” as Neil led us down the stairs. We examined the storage closet, sacristy, office. We saw vestments, chalices, prayer books, crosses, and winebottles, all cluttered, jumbled, and cheerless, especially after a week of cops and Christians mucking about.
Back upstairs we grabbed our coats and were ready to leave. I reminded Neil about his wanting to talk privately.
Neil searched our eyes and glanced behind him at the rapidly filling chairs. “Fuck this church shit. Let’s get out.”
We walked up Clark to Belmont and over to Ann Sather’s Restaurant. Tonight it was a little less crowded than usual, and we managed to find a quiet corner where Scott could be pretty much out of the sight line of possible fans.
When Scott’s no-hitters in games five and seven of the World Series brought the championship to Chicago for the first time in decades, it became difficult for him to be in public without being mobbed. We’ve been forced to leave restaurant meals unfinished because of the adoring hordes. One oddity is that we’re more likely to be forced out of exclusive dining spots by obnoxious patrons than from popular neighborhood restaurants.
After we sat down, Neil started to prattle, but I held up a hand to stop him.
“Neil, I’d give up this whole shitload of trouble right now except for Jerry’s being involved. I care a great deal about him. Your group did not impress me.”
He began to speak. I stopped him again.
“Do you have any idea of what you’re asking?” I repeated the string of possible scenarios, then added. “The guy’s a saint. Nobody wants him dead. Everybody’s sad he’s gone. Priscilla’s a creep, but my impression is she’d act like a fool any time and being a fool isn’t a sign of murderous intentions. One pretty priest in the suburbs might have his ass in a sling for reasons I can’t begin to fathom. It’s bullshit.”
“Will you listen to me?” Neil asked indignantly.
I nodded.
“You can’t give up. I had suspicions before this about the chancery. Now, this suburban priest—what’s his name, Clarence—confirms it. Something’s up. Besides”—for one of the rare times since I’d known him he looked uncomfortable and evasive—“the whole truth hasn’t come out.”
3
We placed our order. I eyed Neil suspiciously. “What truth?” I asked.
“Let me tell this my own way,” he said.
I shrugged.
He began with gossip about the people we’d just met.
“You’ve heard of Monica Verlaine by reputation, of course. Her wealth and power go far beyond her gay newspapers. She owns real estate galore in this town. She has a stock portfolio that rivals mine.”
Neil’s riches started from a nearly bankrupt waste disposal company left to him by a sugar daddy years before, when dark-haired, slender, muscular Neil Spirakos commanded the highest price of any call boy in the city. He’d proved frugal in savings, clever in management, and smart in investment.
I raised an eyebrow about his knowledge. “Monica tells you a lot.”
“No. I have the same accountant. He tells me a great deal. He remembers the old days fondly. I still supply him with cute young things as his need arises.”
Neil explained that Priscilla Kapustaglova worked for Monica as managing editor of her local paper, the Gay Tribune. Priscilla kept the file on lesbian and gay political correctness in the city, reaching almost a gurulike status with the easily impressed. Neil thought Priscilla must have an ambivalent view of Monica. Probably envious of her money, jealous of her power, but so far desperate enough for a job to keep relatively quiet. Seems Priscilla had no newspaper training but only a year of junior college in Nowhere, Iowa.
“That was a fairly pussy-cat performance for Priscilla earlier,” Neil said.
“Why elect her head of Faith?” I asked.
“The woman can organize efficiently with a minimum of bullshit. She’ll work harder than any ten people.”
I nodded that I understood. I’d worked with far too many gay organizations with the same problem. Two of the fatal flaws of many of these groups were total inefficiency and a tolerance for useless bullshit unrivaled by any but the largest cattle herd on earth. After the passage of the gay civil rights bill in Chicago, I decided it wasn’t worth putting up with all the bullshit, so I became less active.
Priscilla had worked for Monica for two years. A number of years before that, Priscilla had shaved her head in protest over lesbians being excluded from power positions in Chicago’s gay community. Now there was Monica in what Neil suspected in a position that Priscilla thought was hers by right. Priscilla had struggled for gay and lesbian rights in Chicago from the day she arrived from Iowa fifteen years before. Monica established headquarters here two years ago and coopted all power and attention. At first Priscilla jumped on the bandwagon, thinking that lesbian power had arrived. Unwilling to admit she’d confused satisfying her ego with attaining power, and facing thirty, never having held a job longer than five months, she now rattled about the Gay Tribune office, monitoring whatever it was that politically correct people waste their time monitoring. Neil said Priscilla had been involved in a failed lesbian newspaper just before Monica stepped in with her money. He suspected a bailout or buy-out. He’d heard rumors of personal and corporate bankruptcy on Priscilla’s part.
Neil said, “She’s mixed up in that group, Lesbian Radicals from Hell.”
“That can’t be their real name,” I said.
“No. It’s the usual officious crap of humorless radicals. Maybe it’s Lesbians for Freedom in the Face of Oppression by Evil Non-Women. Who remembers?”
Neil began dunking one of the cinnamon rolls in his coffee. He took a bite, then continued. “I hate her. I knew Priscilla had another meeting today. It should have gone on until we were done. I hoped she wouldn’t show up at all. Her performance today was really rather mild. Of course, Monica does step in, but that doesn’t always work.”
Neil seemed somewhat in awe of Monica, although I suspected this might be simply
envy at her riches. According to Neil, both women had liked Father Sebastian. Priscilla viewed him as the closest thing to a politically correct male she knew, and it tickled her fancy to find him in the paternal Roman Catholic Church. And the priest had responded to Monica’s dignity. Neil guessed they shared an upper-class background. He couldn’t picture either woman with the slightest motive for murdering Sebastian.
Father Larkin constantly worried that his work with the Faith group would get him in trouble with the Cardinal. After the Cardinal threw the Faith group out of the Catholic Church, they usually had had to go outside the diocese to get priests to serve the community. Sebastian stuck with the group and didn’t worry about it. They’d imported Larkin from Milwaukee; Neil often wished he’d go back and stay there. The man pontificated at the drop of a moral issue. He thought Sebastian had tolerated the man, but could report no animosity.
“Why import priests?” Scott asked.
Neil sighed but paused before he spoke, swallowing, I suspected, most of a dumb jock crack. “Don’t you read the papers?” He knew Scott’d graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in engineering, but Neil had a college prestige streak in him. Less than an Ivy League certificate and you were suspect. My M.A. in English from the University of Chicago was barely acceptable.
“I don’t pay much attention to the gay Catholic stuff myself,” I said.
“You have no excuse,” Neil said.
“I promise if I ever get to pick teams, I’ll chose you first,” Scott said. This crack, I suspected, got to the heart of some very basic resentments. Neil had been a willowy wimp in his teen years. From what he’d told me I knew the slights of his youth still rankled.
Forestalling an eruption of hostilities, I got Neil involved in explaining. In late 1986 something called the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith sent out a letter supposedly approved by the Pope and signed by a Cardinal Ratzinger. Neil turned an ugly shade of purple, his voice steadily rising, fist banging the table, as he explained each point. “The homophobic bastards declared gays intrinsically evil and homosexuality an objective disorder, and they blamed us for our troubles because we stood up for our rights.”
The Only Good Priest Page 3