The Only Good Priest

by Mark Richard Zubro

  “I pointed out to most of the members that since we were all conspirators in a murder, whether accidental or deliberate, we’d go to jail just as surely as Prentice. So we decided to grab your nephew to stop you from snooping around.” Her tone was ingenuous, almost rueful. “Things got out of hand. Ultimately we didn’t know what to do with the kid. We didn’t tell the milktoasts in the group, but I couldn’t even convince Stephanie to have him killed.”

  Monica asked, “Why were the Gay Tribune offices trashed?”

  “Every time you wrote an editorial we disagreed with, the group voted to do it. But you never got the message.”

  “Why’d Prentice tell us so much about you the first time we talked to him?” I asked.

  “He’s a blabbermouth who wants to look big and feel important. He thought we were safe. Thinking is not Prentice’s strong suit. He figured he’d give you useless information, and you’d go away.”

  After a jolt from the van and a gasp from me, I managed to ask the next question. “Why’d you threaten Sebastian that Sunday?”

  “He talked about going to the police again. I was sick of his shit. I knew he’d be dead soon, and I didn’t think I’d be overheard.”

  She fell silent. I listened to the tires crunching over unplowed snow. I was shivering almost continuously now. I could turn my head just enough to look at Monica. She gave me an encouraging smile mixed with sympathy. As encumbered as I was, although without the pain, she couldn’t rescue us.

  Priscilla hummed to herself, a toneless sound almost of content and happiness. I dozed between jabs of pain, awakening to cold or heat, shivering and sweating.

  The next time I woke clearly, grayness penetrated the misted windows. Full morning. I glanced toward Monica. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open in sleep. My ribs ached, but almost bearably.

  “Where are we?” I asked the van at large.

  Stephanie’s voice sounded sleepy. “Pontiac.”

  “We’re stopped,” I said.

  “Accident ahead. Must have just happened.”

  “Go around,” Priscilla snapped.

  “We should stop to help,” Stephanie said.

  Priscilla and Sally spoke in unison. “No.”

  Priscilla said, “We almost hit them because we couldn’t see them. Probably nobody can see us from behind either. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  I heard the rumble as the driver down-shifted.

  “The shoulder’s not wide enough,” Stephanie said.

  “Yes, it is.” Sally again.

  I felt the van begin to tilt to the right as we inched along the road. The van slipped for a second, tilted more. Someone swore.

  “Easy,” Stephanie said.

  We moved forward, continuing to tilt. I looked over at Monica, now also awake. When disaster came, it took only seconds.

  11

  “Behind us!” someone screamed.

  “I’m trying!” came a frantic voice from up front.

  The van lurched forward and slid sideways. I heard the tires spinning. One of the horrible sounds of winter is tires refusing to catch hold. Next to the grinding of an engine refusing to start, it’s the most depressing sound of the cold.

  For an instant I saw a shadow loom behind us and heard the roar of an engine. Then I had a sensation of flying, then falling, and the van tumbled and rolled. The pain in my ribs awakened a thousandfold. I shut my eyes. My tied hands made it impossible to grip anything. Fortunately they’d wedged me among the blankets, clothes, and sleeping bags, which cushioned me from much of the impact. Even so, my tortured ribs caused pain to shoot throughout my body. The van came to rest on its side. Monica and I lay together, half out the now-open back door of the van. We gazed at each other a moment. I felt snow on my check.

  “I don’t think we’re dead,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  “No.” I said.

  Both still tied. Trying to keep me from pain as much as possible, Monica managed to inch us the rest of the way out of the van.

  Tentatively we stood outside in shin-deep snow gazing at the scene. The storm raged unabated. Snow slanted down in thick gusts. The van lay in a small hollow maybe fifty feet from the road. It had left a path of scrunched snow behind. Undoubtedly the snow had cushioned the impact. On the road I saw the back-up traffic at the original accident, a station wagon across two lanes of traffic, one tire at the horizontal. A jackknifed semi-trailer rested in the highway median strip. I turned back to the van. No one moved inside. We managed the untying clumsily. With me leaning on Monica’s arm and proceeding slowly, we made our way toward the highway. Several figures hurried down the slope toward us.

  Eventually I wound up on the passenger side of one of the cars caught in the jam. The driver, a teenage boy chewing gum at a machine-gun rate, kept the motor running. They’d wrapped extra blankets around me. The comforting warmth soon put me to sleep. I woke to movement.

  Out the front window I saw the back of an enormous snowplow. “Are you all right?” Monica’s voice asked from behind me. A comforting hand appeared on my shoulder.

  “Okay, I guess,” I mumbled.

  “Ambulances can’t get through,” she explained. I lost the rest of what she said in a pain-soaked doze.

  What felt like hours later, at a hospital that seemed to loom out of a vast snowfield, someone finally jammed some painkiller into me. The doctor said they didn’t need to keep me. They don’t even tape broken ribs any more. He told me to take it easy, rest a lot, and use the pain pills.

  Monica and I sat on a couch outside the emergency room waiting for Scott to come pick us up. Others from the various wrecks had been brought in with us, plus some people stranded in the storm. Monica had gotten the local police involved and called Chicago. Scott and Jerry were safe. Around two in the afternoon the storm let up. At four I took a couple of pain pills. Shortly after five Scott drove up in my truck.

  Heads turned as he walked toward us. He hugged me gently and tenderly.

  The cab of the truck held the three of us comfortably. “Any problems getting here?” I asked, watching the moonlight shine on the crisp, untrodden snow in the fields next to the road.

  He patted the dashboard. “Your magic machine can go through anything. I stopped a few times to help people; otherwise no problem.” He maneuvered the truck carefully around a family of five creeping down the half-cleared highway. “The Chicago cop, Paul Turner, wants to see us.”

  Monica and I told Scott all that happened and all Priscilla had confessed to. The last word I had in the hospital was that one of the women was dead; Stephanie was in intensive care, given a fifty-fifty chance of survival; Priscilla was well enough to be questioned; they were still operating on Sally.

  Two hours later I lay on a couch in Scott’s living room. I’d showered but not shaved. Scott suggested I not do so. The blue shadow of a day’s neglected growth of my beard turns him on.

  We dined on cans of soup and garlic bread thawed in the microwave. Afterward he sat on the floor by the couch I lay on. He held my hand and caressed my arm. We were waiting for Turner.

  On the way back from the hospital he’d told me what happened to him and Jerry. He’d stumbled to the room with the gaping hole in the floor. He’d leaped the opening, one foot landing safely, the other scraping on the edge. He had enough time to pull himself into a far corner, half-hidden by scaffolding and paint cans. Seconds later they’d flashed a light on the hole in the floor and quickly moved on. For many minutes Scott heard the frantic searching and internecine fighting. Silence followed. He waited, crazy with worry, for the two of us. Finally he heard stealthy creeping outside. A shadow appeared at the door. He didn’t think the searchers would come alone. He called Jerry’s name very softly. The boy almost rushed into the room. Scott stopped him in time, leaped into the corridor, and led the way to the exit. At the window they saw the van pulling away. They’d gotten out and called the police. Because of the snow, Glen and Jeannette had to take the train in from Riv
er’s Edge to get Jerry. Public transportation was the only thing running in the area at the time. Hours later, when he got Monica’s call from the hospital, the roads had been cleared enough for him to drive out.

  Turner came by at eight-fifteen. I sat up on the couch, the pain masked by a pill. He sat down alongside me. He wore a heavy winter coat over a three-piece suit. Most of the stuff I told him, he knew already from Scott, Jerry, and Monica. I talked about Priscilla’s confession.

  “I’ll never understand people like that,” I said

  “Desperate people pushed beyond their limits,” Scott said, shrugging. “They’re capable of anything.”

  Turner had remained quiet during my story, asking only an occasional question. When I finished, he got up off the couch and walked to the far end of the room. From the west window he gazed out at the snow-blanketed city. He turned back to us, hands in the pockets of his suit pants, and walked halfway across the room. He stopped at the trophy table and touched each one with the tips of his fingers.

  The only lights on in the room were two table lamps on either side of the couch. The light shone on his somber face. He was around five nine and heavily muscled, a wrestler or body builder rather than a swimmer. He smiled at the two of us. Scott was sitting on the couch next to me, our knees touching.

  “They didn’t kill him,” he said.

  We did shocked “Uh? What?”s.

  “It took some doing, but I tracked down the guy who did the toxicology report on Sebastian. He was scared, and he didn’t tell me all, but I got enough.”

  He strode over and sat on the white overstuffed couch facing us. “That crowd tried to poison him all right, but like most things Priscilla and the Lesbian Radicals from Hell did, it was ill planned, poorly executed, and half baked from the beginning. They managed to be politically correct but horribly stupid. Prentice opened a new bottle of wine and put poison in it, but Sebastian used wine from an already opened bottle.”

  “How’d he die?” Scott asked.

  “He never drank arsenic. None showed up in his system. Somebody else put cyanide in something Sebastian ate or drank. That’s what killed him.”

  “Couldn’t Priscilla and Prentice have used both poisons?”

  “I got a report just before I came over here from the cop who questioned Priscilla. She never mentioned cyanide. When the cop asked, she denied it. The cop believes her. She had no reason to lie to you and Monica in the car. For the moment we have no proof they did. We’re questioning everybody again. Those precious housekeepers would be in the city by now being interrogated if the snow hadn’t screwed things up. The River’s Edge cops are bringing them in. They prepared all his meals for the past ten years. I’m going over now. You can come along, but I ask the questions.”

  Mildred and Harriet Weber seemed glad to see us, while expressing fascinated interest in the nice young men around them. They didn’t seem in the least put out, bothered, or afraid. We stayed for the first half hour of questioning. They insisted they didn’t want a lawyer, twittered and nodded together in their usual fashion. Turner showed remarkable patience. He soon had them chattering away to him like old friends. We stepped out and drank a cup of coffee provided by one of the detectives. We talked baseball with him and two men who came in from duty.

  Turner came out of the room shaking his head. He beckoned us over. “If they did it, they’re better than any street member or hardened creep I’ve ever met. Everything they say sounds right. Practically rehearsed, it’s so good. My instinct tells me they’re innocent. We’ll question them a while longer. We’ve got men from the River’s Edge police department searching their house and the rectory.” He twisted his neck, rolled his head in an exercise loop, then shrugged. “Maybe Priscilla and her pals screwed it up and accidentally poisoned him correctly.”

  We expected Scott’s parents the next day, and we had a few last-minute preparations. I also felt the need for a pain pill coming on. In bed Scott held me gently for the longest time. I fell asleep in his arms.

  I awoke once in the night to take another pill. Returning from the kitchen, I stood over the bed, watching him sleep. In our king-size bed he lay on his side facing me. The famous right arm reached toward the empty spot I’d soon fill. He slept deeply. I crawled in and snuggled close to his warmth. I lay awake waiting for the pill to take effect, wondering who killed the only good priest.

  I woke stiff and sore around ten the next morning. Scott insisted I stay in bed. I took a pill, got up, and surrendered myself to a half-hour shower as hot as I could stand it. He has a gay cleaning service in once a week. He’d hired them for an extra few hours this week to make sure things were perfect for his parents.

  I haven’t cleaned for my parents in years. Of course, we see them all the time. My mother never mentions the dust or the fact that the kitchen floor usually needs scrubbing. She figures it’s my mess and doesn’t care as long as she doesn’t have to live with it. Scott is more fastidious. I’m pretty careful at his place, cleaning up after myself. I have one small room as a sort of den that I slob around in. Even this I cleaned today. He used to nag me about cleaning my house. The last time he nagged seven years ago, I got him a rag, sponge, dust mop, and pail. Told him if it bothered him so much, he was welcome to take care of it. We got pretty steamed at each other that night, but we reached a compromise that has lasted all these years.

  Scott’s Porsche and my truck were both too small for airport pickup duty. Scott hired a limousine to bring his parents to his place. We’d meet on our turf.

  During the day, Paul Turner called to say the searchers had found nothing at Mildred and Harriet’s or at the rectory. He also said that Stephanie and Sally would live, and that they’d arrested Prentice. They’d let Mildred and Harriet go. I fielded calls from Monica and Neil expressing concern, from Glen bubbling with thanks, and from Kurt announcing a settlement of the contract at school.

  Scott’s parents turned out to be fun. His father was as tall as Scott but thinner, slightly bald, with bright red cheeks and large hands. His mother might have been all of five feet tall. She hugged him fiercely and gave me a tentative smile. His dad shook my hand, seemed surprised I didn’t crumble under a handshake I think he meant to be bone crushing. His dad spent the first half hour inspecting Scott’s trophies. Scott only keeps out a few. When dad insisted, Scott dragged out all the others from a storeroom deep in the penthouse.

  Unknown to me, Scott also dragged out my high school trophies. I’d forgotten they were here. After seeing my senior year all-state fullback trophy, Mr. Carpenter found it hard to keep from beaming at me. If I was an athlete, I couldn’t be all bad. Usually, I resent it when my sports background makes my being gay acceptable to relentlessly straight people like Mr. Carpenter. However, one must learn to put up with a great deal from one’s in-laws.

  For dinner Mr. Carpenter wanted a good Chicago piece of beef. We took them to Lawry’s—The Prime Rib. He ate the Chicago cut, devouring all the sumptuous food in great gulps. Mrs. Carpenter oohed and aahed over the sites as we drove to the restaurant. She beamed with pride whenever somebody asked for Scott’s autograph and every time we caught the whisper of “There’s Scott Carpenter!” She barely touched her food.

  Scott’s dad loosened up enough to tell tales of Scott growing up. Baseball games and childhood mischief, learning to fix things, keeping watch for intruders at the old still, their first trip together to Atlanta to watch a Braves game, Scott vowing to be a pitcher when he grew up.

  “And my boy grew up to do just that.” He slapped Scott on the back with obvious pride in his accomplishment.

  I tried discreetly to pop a pain pill with my coffee after the meal, but Mrs. Carpenter caught the movement and asked what was wrong. Scott explained our adventures, giving them an edited version. After all, this was a family show. Mrs. Carpenter clucked sympathetically.

  We dropped them at the door of the Hyatt Regency on Wacker Drive. Scott’d hired the limousine for the duration of their stay.
Tomorrow he’d use it to take them around town.

  As we climbed out of our dress suits in the bedroom, I said, “I like your parents. I don’t think your dad views me as an alien out to destroy his son, although I don’t think we’re ready to be best friends either. Your mom is nice, sweet. Did you really do all those things your dad said when you were a kid?”

  I sat on my side of the bed in my Jockey shorts.

  “Yes,” he mumbled from the closet.

  I slipped my shorts off and sank into the comfortable bed. It was only ten, so I picked up the book I’d been reading from the nightstand, The Company We Keep. I pulled the covers up. He emerged naked from the closet and picked various pieces of clothing off the floor, depositing them in the proper receptacles. I admired the fluid grace of his muscles as he accomplished these mundane tasks. I felt the first stirrings of desire. He crawled into bed, turned off his light, and moved close to me.

  “You really kept watch at your dad’s still?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Only until I was six. The hollow we kept it in flooded that year and washed it all away. Wasn’t worth rebuilding. I used to help him out, fix the tubing, pour in the ingredients, help him bottle it. We even had this contraption to switch ingredients to get them in exact proportions. It never really worked very well.”

  I moved away and turned on the light.

  “What?” Scott said.

  “That’s the solution: switching ingredients! Was Sebastian taking AZT or anything else because he was HIV positive? Who knew he had AIDS and took medicine, and who had access to it?”

  He shrugged. “The police probably checked for all that stuff as a routine.”

  “No, they didn’t. Remember what Turner said? If they did get reports, they didn’t follow up. Who knew he had AIDS?”

  Scott sighed. He lay back on his pillow. “Neil, Monica, and Brian Clayton claimed they didn’t know.”

  “Priscilla and Prentice acted surprised at the news. The Weber sisters didn’t say anything about it.”

  “The therapist knew,” Scott said.