The Man Who Murdered God

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  Shirley shook her head in unison with Mattie, appalled at the injustice of it all. “So you think she queered the deal, huh?”

  Mattie took a sip of her coffee and scowled at it. “What the hell’s it mean when the guy says ‘We’ll have to think about it’?”

  “It means they want to go look at something else.”

  “You got it. This little braless twit just has to blink her eyes, and you need a horse blanket to wipe the drool from the guy’s mouth. Crazy the way some men can be led around by their dicks, isn’t it?”

  “Ain’t it the truth?” Shirley Finkle stood up to her full five-foot, one-inch height and removed her glasses. “Would you look at this?” she asked, holding the frames up for Mattie to inspect. “Had them, what? Two weeks? Cost me over a hundred bucks, and I’ve lost a rhinestone already.”

  “Aw shit, Shirley!” Mattie exploded.

  Shirley looked at her friend, wide-eyed and surprised. “What?” she asked innocently.

  “I’ve just lost a fifty-thousand dollar commission, and you’re pissed because a rhinestone falls out of your glasses!”

  “Gee, I was just making conversation,” Shirley said in a hurt, little-girl voice. “If you’re so upset about losing one sale—”

  “One sale?” Shirley edged for the door of the cubicle as Mattie’s voice jumped in tone and volume. Both women looked indignantly at each other. Before they could speak, Mattie’s telephone rang, and Shirley used the opportunity to slip back to her desk.

  Mattie watched her leave before answering the telephone. Empty-headed boob, she said to herself. God, who thought I’d wind up spending my day talking with women who think a sale at K-mart is a major social event? “Mattie O’Brien,” she said into the receiver.

  It was a man’s voice. “Hi, Mattie. It’s me. Frank.”

  Frank? Oh yeah. Frank. “Hello, Frank,” she said, trying her best to be polite. “Listen, you wouldn’t have a couple of million to spend on the Delisle estate, would you?”

  “Gee, no, I haven’t, Mattie,” Frank replied seriously. “If I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t be tending bar, that’s for sure.”

  Frank, you’re so damn slow, Mattie said silently, her eyes closed in exasperation. “Just kidding. What’s up?”

  “I was wondering how you were,” he said softly. “You were a little, uh, high last night, and I wanted to make sure you got home safely. Chris, he was pretty upset after you left. I mean, he laughed about it with the other guys. They thought it was funny, him getting caught like that. But I could tell he was upset, you know?”

  “I don’t give a sweet damn what Chris felt or did last night,” Mattie said angrily, “or even if he woke up this morning with his balls nailed to the bed. Which, incidentally, would be too good for him.”

  “Mattie, you shouldn’t talk that way. That’s not like you.”

  “Today it is. Today, that’s as good as I get.”

  “I’m sorry you’re having a bad day.”

  “Bad doesn’t cut it. Try disastrous, obnoxious, pathetic, atrocious. Wait a minute. Shitty. Yeah, that sums it up. Shitty’s it.”

  Frank tried to lighten the tone of his voice. “Gee, Mattie, if things are that bad, maybe you could use some company tonight. I could cook dinner for you again.”

  Mattie closed her eyes and asked silently for patience. “Frank, I’m sorry. The last time I ate one of your meals, my stomach felt like I’d swallowed a bicycle chain. With the bicycle still attached.” She opened her eyes suddenly, remembering. “Besides, I’ve got company at home.”

  Frank was silent for a moment. “Company?” he asked finally. Then, his voice full of hope, “Relatives? Your mother dropped in?”

  “I said my day was shitty. Not terminally fucked up. No, on the way home last night I picked up a guy. Nice-looking kid. About twenty years old. Blond hair, blue eyes. Body of an athlete. And sensitive too. Kid like that, makes an old broad my age come alive again, you know?” Christ, I sound convincing, she said to herself.

  “You took him home with you?” Frank sounded dismayed.

  What the hell, Mattie figured. “Sure did. Moved right in. Look, Frank, I’ve got to figure out a way to sell some property this month, or I can kiss this job goodbye. So if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea? I mean, bringing some young guy home you don’t know?”

  “It was a good idea at the time, and it’s not a bad idea yet. When it gets bad, I’ll come around and let you buy me a drink, okay?”

  “Sure,” Frank said. “Sure, you come around any time, and I’ll buy you a drink. You know that.”

  Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mattie thought. Now I’ve got guilt laid on me. Failure isn’t enough, is it? The hell. “Goodbye, Frank,” she said, and hung up without waiting for his reply.

  For the rest of the morning she reviewed property listings, made unproductive telephone calls and tried to avoid thinking what the sensitive young man might be doing at her house.

  Maybe he’s going through my lingerie right now, she speculated. Or my photographs. Or he could have a shoe fetish. Damn it, and I’ve got those new Italian pumps sitting right out there in the open.

  By eleven-thirty she persuaded herself to look at a new property listing on Mill Road, a mile from her home. As long as she was out that way, Mattie decided, it would be silly not to drop by and check the mail, make a sandwich for lunch, see what Bobby was up to.

  At noon she pulled into the driveway and walked casually to the side entrance leading into the kitchen.

  “Hello?” she called out, dropping her purse on the table. “Anybody here?”

  Bobby appeared, entering from the living room. “Hi,” he said shyly. “I didn’t think you would be home so soon.” He was holding a large white pad in front of him, a yellow pencil in one hand. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I found this pad of paper in your den and . . . well, look.” He turned the drawing pad to show her. “It’s not quite finished. I want to do some more with your hair.”

  Mattie’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. Looking back at her from the sheet of paper was a skillfully rendered pencil drawing of herself. She recognized the pose, the dated hairstyle, the look in her eyes, which had been there ten years earlier. But there was something else in the rendering, something she hadn’t seen before.

  Whatever it was, it reminded her of an incident from her college days. She had taken a fine-arts course that included a visit to a touring exhibition of Renaissance art, much of it consisting of charcoal and ink sketches by old Italian masters. She had been struck by the way the very best of them, such as da Vinci, had been able to make their subjects seem alive with only a few loosely drawn lines. “The genius of these masters is the way they make you realize these people actually lived and breathed and spoke,” her professor had stressed. Seeing the original sketches at a touring exhibition, she had understood and agreed.

  Now, looking at herself in Bobby’s sketch based on an old photograph, she recognized the same kind of talent. There were no wasted lines anywhere on the paper; the drawing of her was more alive than the photograph it had been based upon.

  “Do you like it?” Bobby asked quietly.

  She turned to him, her jaw still hanging slackly. “Did you . . . did you do this?”

  Bobby nodded. “I drew it from that picture of you in the living room,” he said. “You were very beautiful then. I mean, you’re very pretty now, too,” he added hastily.

  She touched him on the shoulder. “Forget it. I know what you mean. I used to be a model. I dropped out of college to go to New York. Spent over a year there doing the agency bit. That summer my face was on Times Square for the whole season. A billboard, pushing cosmetics.” She looked down at the sketch again. “But this . . . this is incredible. Where’d you go to art school?”

  “I didn’t. I took
art classes in high school. Then about a year ago I started all over again. I read a few books, learned some techniques and spent a lot of time working on them.”

  Mattie sat down at the kitchen table, her eyes still on the sketch. “How did you do it?” she asked. “How did you put more of me into a drawing than was in the photograph?” She pointed to the living room. “Do you know who took that picture? Avedon. Richard Avedon. I mean, he’s only a legend in the business. But you did something more with it.”

  Bobby sat down at the table with her. “I put you into it,” he said. “The camera was photographing your beauty. But it missed part of you that’s inside.”

  “You mean my soul? Is that how artists describe it? You went after the soul?”

  Bobby frowned. “I don’t know what a soul looks like,” he said. “No, that’s not what I mean. I guess I mean the way you are when you’re not posing. You were posing for the camera. Something happens to people’s faces when they pose. Something goes up in front of their face to protect them. I just tried to remove it in my sketch.” He smiled. “I’m glad you like it.”

  “Like it? It’s fantastic! I’m taking it back to the office with me and show—”

  “No. No, please,” he said, reaching across the table for the pad. “It’s not finished. I really want to do something more with it.”

  “What’s to do?” Mattie asked. She pulled the sketch away from him. “It’s perfect.”

  “Please,” he said. “I’m . . . I’m just not happy with it yet. Let me work on it some more this afternoon.”

  Mattie relented. “All right,” she said, letting him take away the pad. “I just want you to know that whatever you do with your life, keep up this art thing. Otherwise you’re wasting an incredible gift.” She stood up and walked to the cupboard. “You like ravioli? How about I open the can, and you make some toast?”

  After lunch Bobby insisted on clearing the table and washing the dishes. Mattie watched him carefully. The kid’s angelic, she decided. Positively angelic. “I’ll be at the office until about six,” she said, rising from the table. “What do you plan to do this afternoon? Paint The Last Supper?”

  “I thought I would make dinner for us,” he answered solemnly. “Would you mind?”

  “You mean you cook, too?” Mattie gasped. “My God, Bobby. You got any warts?”

  He looked at her, confused. “Warts?” he repeated.

  “I’m just trying to find a flaw,” she laughed. “Sure, I’d love it if you cooked dinner. But we don’t have a heck of a lot to eat here. I think there’s a dozen eggs in the fridge. . . .”

  “I’ll make a soufflé,” Bobby suggested. “Do you like soufflés?”

  Mattie’s eyes widened, and she shook her head in wonder, then nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Bobby. I love soufflés. You make soufflés?”

  Bobby ran hot water on the dishes and squirted some liquid detergent in the sink. “I like being creative,” he said. “I enjoy doing things that please people.”

  “You’re pleasing me, Bobby. Trust me. You’re doing a great job pleasing me.”

  As Mattie was leaving, she turned to look back at Bobby’s face, his eyes as blue as sapphires in the afternoon sun. “My God, I forgot all about your leg! How is it?”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It feels a little stiff, and the bruise is turning different colours. But it’s all right. Thank you for asking.”

  She drove back to the office, still shaking her head and smiling. God, what a prince, she told herself. What an absolute angel. She remembered his lithe, youthful frame, his unlined face, his shy and awkward grace. The kid seems so uncorrupted, she mused. What would happen if an experienced woman like me taught him a few things? She smiled and bit her lip at the thought. You horny old broad, she thought. You’re actually fantasizing about it.

  And getting a little excited too, she admitted.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Several police cars were waiting at the end of the residential street in Lexington when McGuire and Lipson arrived. The detectives introduced themselves to the uniformed officers and instructed two of them to watch the rear of the house in case one Robert Kennedy Griffin should try to escape.

  The house was a low ranch-style design, smaller and less impressive than its neighbours on the street, painted a robin’s-egg blue with white trim. A white picket fence ran around the perimeter of a lawn, which was succumbing to weeds.

  “The kid, you really think he’s going to be here?” Lipson asked as they mounted the flagstone steps. Lipson had withdrawn his .38 police special and was holding it discreetly at arm’s length by his side. The uniformed cops had unbuckled their holsters and stood at the base of the steps, their hands resting casually on the pistol grips, their eyes anything but casual as they watched the lace curtains in the windows.

  McGuire said no, he didn’t, but he placed his hand inside his jacket, lightly touching the grip of his own holstered revolver. With his other hand he reached out and rang the doorbell as Lipson stood to one side.

  Chimes echoed inside the home, and McGuire heard the click-click of high-heeled shoes from within.

  The door swung open, revealing a petite fair-haired woman in her forties, with sharp features beneath what used to be called a “sensible hair-do”—short and curly, neatly framing the high forehead and plucked and pencilled eyebrows. The nose was slim and turned-up, the eyes deep-set, the mouth a Cupid’s bow coloured with lipstick a shade too crimson.

  She wore a shirt-waist, red gingham dress and dainty, white sling-back shoes. She smiled uncertainly at McGuire, but there was no fear or tension in her voice.

  “Yes?” she asked. Her eyes found the two uniformed officers on her front yard and widened for a moment, but the smile remained.

  “Mrs. Griffin?” McGuire asked.

  “Yes?” Not just the same word as before; the same tone, the same inflection.

  “Do you have a son, Robert Kennedy Griffin?”

  In his years as a cop, including almost ten as a uniformed officer, McGuire had often been the bearer of disastrous news to parents and relatives. The procedure was unchanged: ask if the deceased lives at this address; ask if he or she is at home; when told they are not, ask to enter the home and break the news inside, beyond the gaze of neighbours and passersby.

  But the procedure was well known to civilians. Uniformed police enquiring about the whereabouts of a son or daughter are not bringing news of a lottery prize. They bring only tragedy and adversity, an advisement of arrest or a quiet request to proceed downtown and examine remains.

  McGuire expected the predictable response from the woman at the door, who seemed to be posing in a Donna Reed wardrobe, as though she were about to praise a laundry detergent. He waited for the hand to fly to the mouth, the eyes to open wide and begin to glisten, the chin to quiver, and the voice to rise in a wail of fear and panic.

  But there was none of these expected reactions. The smile remained as broad as ever. The voice was steady—too nasal to be attractive, but firm and precise. “Yes, I have,” she answered. “But Bobby’s not here at the moment.”

  McGuire felt Lipson relax beside him. “Would you know where we could find him?”

  She leaned slightly through the door to see Lipson’s bulk hovering near the door frame. The detective smiled and nodded silently. “Bobby hasn’t been well,” she replied. “He’s at a hospital in Boston.”

  “No, I’m sorry, he’s not,” McGuire said. He showed her his identification. “I’m Lieutenant McGuire, this is Lieutenant Lipson. May we come in and look around?”

  The smile never wavered. “Of course you may.” She stood aside and welcomed them in. Before entering, McGuire turned and nodded silently at the uniformed cops.

  The living room was filled with flounce and lace, flower-patterned slipcovers on overstuffed furniture, plastic flowers in coloured glass vases, stepped
end tables topped by figurine lamps, and sentimental pictures in cheap brass and wood frames. In the corner to his left McGuire noticed a small, inexpensive electric organ. To his right he heard water running and turned to see an artificial waterfall flowing over plastic rocks into a plastic pool surrounded by stiff, green plastic plants. Directly above the waterfall a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary raised its hand in blessing. Her bare feet projected from beneath the hem of her robe; the toenails had been painted red.

  “Mrs. Griffin,” McGuire said gently, “with your permission I would like to invite two of the Lexington police officers who are outside to come in and search the home for your son. I don’t have a warrant with me, but I can assure you I could have one here within the hour.”

  The smile remained maddeningly unchanged. “That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant,” she replied. “Please invite them in. My home is open to anyone. Incidentally, please call me Muriel. Why don’t I make us some coffee while they look?”

  McGuire glanced at Lipson, who shrugged, then returned to the front door and called to the officers.

  The kitchen was separated from the living and dining area by a low divider. While she filled the coffee pot, Muriel Griffin called across to McGuire, “Incidentally, what does all of this have to do with Bobby?”

  “We’d like to speak to him about the priest murders in Boston, Mrs. Griffin,” McGuire answered. He remained standing in the middle of the room, anticipating a shocked reaction. Facing him above the sofa was a photograph enlarged so much its details had become fuzzy and the texture rough and grainy. It was the picture of a man in his late twenties, wearing military dress. McGuire recognized him as the same man whose photograph he had seen in Bobby’s room at Lynwood Institute.