True Confessions

by John Gregory Dunne

  ’Telephone, Dad,” Em said later that day. “It’s Uncle Des.”

  “How are you, Des?” I said.

  “Carry me back to old Virginny,” Des said. “That’s where this old darky’s heart am long’d to go.”

  “I figured you’d be calling, Des.”

  6

  My brother Des. The Right Reverend Monsignor Desmond Spellacy. Once regarded as a comer, a future Prince of the Church. Once upon a time. Domestic prelate before thirty years of age. Former chancellor of the archdiocese. Toastmaster and scratch golfer. A regular at Del Mar and the Thursday night fights at the Olympic. Friend of Sam Goldwyn and Stan Musial. Spiritual advisor to Willie Pep, as well as Shake Hands McCarthy and Dan T. Campion and all those other papal knights who held the paper on the archdiocese. The man who introduced Brandt coin collectors and Record-O-Lopes to the Sunday collection. For the past twenty-eight years, pastor of Saint Mary’s of the Desert in Twenty-nine Palms. I guess that’s my fault, Des being in Twenty-nine all these years. That’s what they call Twenty-nine Palms. Twenty-nine. Imagine being in exile in a place where they’ve got to count the palm trees to give it a name. And make no mistake about it, Des was in exile and I was responsible.

  Me and Des. Des and I. Des and me.

  Des said there was something he wanted to talk to me about, so the following weekend I drove out to Twenty-nine Palms. There’s nothing much to say about Twenty-nine except there’s a lot of sand. And old people. From Chicago, Detroit, places like that. Guys retired off the assembly line at Magnavox or Chrysler and they moved to the desert on their UAW pension to take the waters and ease the arthritis. Old guys whose tattoos are all faded and whose wives wear hairnets and whose children don’t call much anymore. People from tough mick and Polack neighborhoods where old Monsignor Bukich would let them use the parish hall for their meetings on how to keep niggers out of the neighborhood. Some of them live in trailers now and some in cinderblock houses with tin foil crimped in the windows to keep out the heat. I used to wonder how Des got along with them. It was such a long way from the Cardinal’s three-story mansion on Fremont Place where Des had lived in the old days. The good days.

  Saint Mary’s of the Desert was a falling-down wood and cinder-block building with an imitation-gold cross rising out of what passed for the steeple on the roof. At one point it had been whitewashed, but the sun and sandstorms had stripped it down to nothing in particular. Stuck in the sand in front of the church was a wooden sign on which was painted a fund-raising thermometer, the faded reminder of a building fund drive for a new church that had failed more years ago than I care to remember.

  In the gravel driveway next to the rectory was an old two-tone Chrysler with the hood up, and under the hood, tinkering with the engine, I could see a man in blue jogging pants with red-and-white stripes down the seam to the ankle. I rang the rectory doorbell.

  ’The bell doesn’t work,” the jogger-mechanic said. “May I help you? I’m Father Duarte, the assistant pastor.”

  He seemed to be a new addition since I was last there. He was a young Mexican with curly black hair and over his jogging pants he wore a grease-stained T-shirt lettered “Chicano Power.” Just the thing, I thought, for a parish full of retired Polacks.

  “I’m here to see my brother.”

  “You’re the monsignor’s brother. It’s a very great honor.” He wiped his hands on the T-shirt. “Eduardo Duarte.”

  We shook hands.

  “I’m helping the monsignor out until he’s a hundred percent.” I hadn’t realized that Des wasn’t a hundred percent. “It’s a pleasure working for such a totally dedicated priest, Mr. Spellacy. Aware of the winds of change in our Church and yet a real Catholic of the old school.” I had never quite thought of Des in those terms, and I’m sure he hadn’t either. “Once I fix the carburetor on the car here, I’m going to repaint the thermometer. We’re going to get the building drive underway again. The new Saint Mary’s will be the flower of the desert, you mark my words.”

  The new Saint Mary’s. The flower of the desert.

  “I see an old Spanish mission of the type built by the late Father Junipero Serra. You are familiar with the late Father Serra, Mr. Spellacy?”

  It was like referring to the late Abe Lincoln. I nodded.

  “I think of him as the first Chicano.”

  I kept nodding.

  “I am taking your time, Mr. Spellacy, I am sorry. But when I think of the mission we will have here, I sometimes get carried away. The cactus flowers will be in bloom. We will have benediction in the sunset. A desert showplace for Catholics from the colder climes. And we must recognize the spirit of ecumenicism. We will have tours come up from Palm Springs. Are you aware of the Bob Hope Desert Classic?”

  “The golf tournament?” I wondered how it fit into Father Duarte’s plans.

  “In Palm Springs, yes, I plan to speak to Mr. Hope. I know I could convince him that the fans at his tournament would love to see the new Saint Mary’s. I’m sure he’d do a benefit. His wife’s a Catholic, you know. And one of my classmates at the seminary, Father Fabian Mancuso, is a curate at Saint Philip Neri in Palm Springs. Mrs. Hope’s church. You may have heard of Fabian Mancuso?”

  I shook my head.

  “He was on television in San Francisco. Tather Fabe, The Narco Priest.’ He worked wonders combatting the drug problem.”

  There was something mesmerizing about listening to Father Eduardo. I am sure that was what he would want to be called. Father Eduardo. Father Fabe. It was like listening to a murderer confess. You couldn’t break into the spiel. No wonder Des wasn’t a hundred percent. This mad Mexican was driving him crazy.

  “Tommy.”

  It was Des standing in the doorway of the rectory. He was holding a cigar and wearing a white polo shirt with a little blue alligator on the breast pocket. I left Father Eduardo to his faulty carburetor, the first step in the resurgence of the new Saint Mary’s, and went inside with Des.

  “Does he always talk like that?” I said. We were in what passed for Des’s study. An old desk, a few books, that morning’s newspaper folded to the obituary pages. It was cool in the study and so dark with the curtains drawn against the sun that I couldn’t get a good look at him.

  “It’s actually quite restful when you get used to it,” Des said. “Like tuning in to an FM station. You don’t have to listen very hard. Conversation to think by.”

  “Father Fabe . . .”

  “Oh, yes.” The old smile, softening his face. Des always could find a certain amount of levity in the priesthood, which I guess was a drawback in a priest. “He’s a good priest, Tommy. Doesn’t look upon the convent as a dating bureau, like some. Dedicated.”

  It was what Father Eduardo had said about Des. “How do the harps like him?”

  “Not much. He’s a Mexican. ‘It’s a well-known fact,’ Mrs. Gil-hooley told me, ‘that Mexicans have more hemorrhoids than other people.’ As if I should prepare a lethal dose of Preparation H for the poor man. But then when Father Stephanowski was my curate, Mrs. Gilhooley told me it was a well-known fact that the Polish had more midgets than other people. And if I ever have an Eskimo curate, she’d no doubt tell me that Eskimos get more blisters than other people. All that slipping around on the ice with their bare feet.”

  He always was good value, Des. The words came easy. “How are you, Des?” I said.

  The smile again. Which meant he wasn’t going to answer.

  “Let me see,” Des said. He pulled on his cigar. “This morning after mass, Mr. McHugh stopped in to see me. A nice man, Mr. McHugh, once you get past the palsy. But one thing you learn about being a pastor, Tommy, and that’s that no one ever rings your doorbell, even if it works, unlike mine, to tell you the whole family’s working and John’s on the wagon and the little ones are getting nothing but the highest marks in parochial school and so much money is rolling in they’ve got to stuff it in a mattress and they all received Holy Communion at the nine last Sunday. No. No
thing like that. If it’s not that Aunt Min wets her bed, it’s that Uncle Jim broke parole or that Little Jim, the famous used-car man, got a Catholic girl in trouble.

  “So when Mr. McHugh stopped by, I knew it wasn’t to tell me that he wants to be finance chairman of Father Eduardo’s building drive and that he knows Bing Crosby and Bing’s dying to lend a hand. Uh, uh. Mr. McHugh tells me that his niece, the Carmelite nun, is leaving the convent to become a professional bowler. Think of it. A professional bowler. I didn’t even know they had alleys in the convents these days. ‘Would you talk to her, Monsignor, please?’ What am I supposed to say to the poor girl? Give her advice on how to drill the holes in the balls for her fingers? So I told him I’d say a mass for her. Maybe it will help her bowl a perfect string.

  “And after Mr. McHugh, there was Pinky Heffernan with the latest status report on his bowels. He beat cancer of the rectum twenty years ago, Pinky, and now every time he flushes the toilet he’s on the phone calling me. Every movement a miracle. Do you remember when Eisenhower was in the hospital and you couldn’t pick up a newspaper that didn’t tell you how many times he went to the bathroom? Well, Pinky kept me filled in every day. ‘Himself had an enema today, Monsignor, did you see? In the Los Angeles Times. Ain’t that grand? He’ll soon be fit as a fiddle and ready for love. An enema a day keeps the cancer away.’”

  The effort of speaking had tired him out and all of a sudden I realized that Des had grown old. He was four years younger than me, and with all that tennis and golf he had played in his younger days as chancellor, always leaner and in better shape. But now he was slumped in his chair in this ruin of a parish and I knew why he had called me out to Twenty-nine Palms.

  “How are you, Des?” I said.

  “I’m going to die, Tommy,” my brother Des said.

  THEN

  One

  What Tom Spellacy remembered later was that it began as just another 187. One of 212 that year. One of 19 that month. One of two that day in April. The other homicide, the one that nobody ever remembered, was a shine killing over on Central Avenue. The newspapers, however, never bothered with dinge 187s. A colored girl, even one cut in two, the first thing the papers would say was, “A hooker,” and the second thing was, “Forget her.” The Express, especially. If it were only a shine, fuck her. Stick with the important things. Like, 2D MICKEY ROONEY MARRIAGE HITS ROCKS. If you were a smoke, the only way you’d ever make the Express was the day you celebrated your 142nd birthday, SAW A. LINCOLN, LOCAL MAN CLAIMS, was the way the Express would put it. Just underneath, BABY THRIVES ON SIX CUPS OF COFFEE A DAY.

  But he didn’t get the dinge.

  He got the other one.

  It was the day he won the office pool. In fact, the only good thing that happened that day was that he had the Dodgers and five runs in the Robbery-Homicide pool and Ed Head pitched a 5-0 no-hitter against the Boston Bees that was good for fifteen clams. That was it. The rest of the day was shit. He was tired and Fuqua was on his ass and he had ten investigations and Crotty was off buying a motel in Culver City. Cleaning up the fine print, Crotty said. He didn’t ask where Crotty got the down payment. I got Chinese partners, was all that Crotty would volunteer. Which meant as deputy watch commander he had to cover for Crotty while Frank was off with his Chinks in Culver City. On all ten investigations. The queer in Echo Park who had screwed a 300-watt light bulb up his boyfriend’s behind. The drunk off-duty patrolman from the Traffic Division who had tried to shoot a cockroach on the wall of his bedroom and killed an old lady walking her dog by his window. A triple homicide in Japan Town they wouldn’t crack in a million years. A funny suicide in North Hollywood. A ginney hit in Silver Lake. That one he didn’t like to think about. Memories. They had the hooker who had set it up. Here was one ginney getting his glass blown in the Silver Lake Motel and another ginney comes in and gives him three in the pump, a nice neat little triangle, and the girl doesn’t even get a powder burn. She’s got the John’s joint in her tonsils and she doesn’t remember a thing. Not the trick’s name. Not what the shooter looked like. Listen, Tom, I was occupied, I wasn’t looking at the door.

  It made him uncomfortable, the way she called him “Tom.” He knew she knew it would. They knew each other from the old days. In Wilshire Vice.

  And then there was Fuqua.

  Captain Fuqua.

  And his coffee pot.

  An ass-kissing clerk, Fuqua. Just the qualifications for chief of homicide. He had this way of doing things. The systems approach. The definite-patterns approach. Like the definite pattern in the absentee rate. That was Fuqua’s big score in the department, investigating the absentee pattern of the uniformed squad when he was in Personnel. He got all the rosters and broke them down. There was the Monday pattern and the post-payday pattern and the Christmas pattern. That was how he nailed Jim Quinn. with the Christmas pattern, and got the homicide job. Seven Christmases out of nine, Jim Quinn had turned in sick before the holiday. First it was the kidneys and then it was the ankle and then the kidneys again and then the gallbladder. The bad back was a favorite. What Jim Quinn was doing, it turned out, was running a Christmas-tree lot out in Inglewood. The Christmas pattern. And so Jim Quinn got suspended and then someone got the bright idea of applying the definite-pattern approach to the homicide detail. Probably Fuqua himself. And now he was chief of homicide and guardian of the coffee pot.

  “You been using my coffee pot, Spellacy,” Fuqua said on the morning of the 187 at 39th and Norton.

  “The plug on mine’s all fucked up, Fred.”

  “Regulations say you shouldn’t even have a coffee pot. The watch commander has a coffee pot and I got a coffee pot and those are the only two coffee pots we’re allowed.”

  “Says who?”

  “The TO&E, that’s who.”

  “I’m sorry, Fred.”

  “You want some jake, you use Crotty’s coffee pot.”

  “His office was locked, Fred, it was a long night with that hooker from Silver Lake there and we wanted some coffee.”

  “You want coffee so bad, you go to the cafeteria and get it, it’s open all night.”

  “It’s on First and Temple, the cafeteria, for Chrissake.”

  “You’re not in Vice anymore, Lieutenant, you’re in my division, and in my division, we go by the book.”

  “So I used your coffee pot, Captain, I’m sorry. I don’t see the harm in it, but I’m sorry.”

  “The harm is, you left it on all night and you burned a hole in my desk and the desk is city property and I got to make a report on how a desk that belongs to the taxpayers is all fucked up because an officer in my division used my coffee pot without my authorization. Is that clear enough for you?”

  “All that typing, Captain, you can get off on that, I bet. In triplicate.”

  “I’m putting you on report, Spellacy.”

  “For drinking coffee? I had a couple of sinkers, too, you want to throw the book at me.”

  “For gambling.”

  “When?” “You think I’m deaf, dumb and blind, I don’t know about you making book on the ball games.”

  “Making book? It’s a fucking baseball pool.”

  “This isn’t Wilshire Vice, Spellacy. I’m watching you. The way they should’ve in Wilshire Vice.”

  Wilshire Vice. There was always someone ready to bring up Wilshire Vice. Even though he had been on his best behavior since he came downtown to Robbery-Homicide from Wilshire Vice. It would be a long time before people forgot his tour as a night-watch lieutenant in Wilshire Vice. Especially the night he shot a hood named Lenny Lewis who had tried to stick him up when he was sitting in a parked car on Normandie. The problem was the car was registered to a woman named Brenda Samuels and Brenda Samuels ran three houses in his division and Lenny Lewis was making off with his wallet and eleven hundred dollars when Tom Spellacy dropped him. There were all sorts of questions about what he was doing in a car with Brenda Samuels and eleven hundred dollars in his wallet and the questio
ns were complicated by Lenny Lewis’s testimony that the girl in the car was giving the guy in the car a blow job when he stuck it up. Not that anyone took Lenny Lewis’s word over Tom Spellacy’s. Him with a daughter in the novitiate and a wife in Camarillo talking to the saints. The only rap against Tom Spellacy was that he was such a lousy shot. He was going to use his piece, he should’ve dropped Lenny Lewis for keeps. It would have saved a lot of trouble. Brenda didn’t say anything. She had too much to lose, with the girls and the tables and the private games. Tom Spellacy was the problem. Better to cool him off. Move him out of Wilshire Vice into Robbery-Homicide downtown. Forget the eleven hundred in his wallet, he had a good day at Del Mar, maybe. Give him a citation for stopping Lenny Lewis’s 211—armed robbery. Everybody was happy that way. Except Brenda, who lost everything, even though she kept her mouth shut. And except Lenny Lewis. He got three to eight in Q. Where a fairy cut off his dick and he hung himself with a wet bedsheet.

  Tom Spellacy thought, It was funny Lenny Lewis knowing that a wet bedsheet doesn’t tear. It was the sort of thing you picked up in the joint. A lot of things were funny. If Lenny Lewis hadn’t decided to stick up a parked car, he would still be in Wilshire Vice. The good life. No coffee pot. No Fuqua.

  No Code 3 from Bingo Mclnerney and Lorenzo Jones: a possible 187 at 39th and Norton.

  2

  “The butler did it,” Crotty said at 39th and Norton.

  Which means now we can get down to business, Tom Spellacy thought. Two years he had cased stiffs with Crotty and it was always the same from Frank: “The butler did it.” Even if it was an old lush with his throat cut in a mission downtown.