True Confessions

by John Gregory Dunne

  “I’m about as well off as a man can get,” Shopping Cart Johnson said without being asked. “Ain’t got no rent. I sleep in my pup tent off the road. Do my own cooking, my own laundry. Carve my targets and wash my own clothes every Saturday.”

  “Today must be Friday then,” Tom Spellacy said.

  “So it is,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “No bills, no taxes, no worries. Need a little money, can always sell a pint of blood. AB negative. Always in demand. Knew a fellow once, had a bleeding ulcer, wanted to keep me around. Hundred a week, three hots and a cot, and a shot at the nigger maid. ‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘don’t appeal to me. I like the wide open spaces.’ “

  Tom Spellacy had heard worse routines. It had been polished by constant repetition and he was sure that Shopping Cart Johnson could recite it at the first hint of a hot meal. It was the routine of a man used to paying for his supper by chopping wood or doing the chores or washing dishes.

  “Always on the go, seeing new spots, meeting new people,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “People know me from Crescent City to Calexico. Know a fellow in Crescent City, drives a Studebaker, XYL 468, ninety-one years young, married a pretty little thing, fourteen years old. Can’t keep a good man down, as the saying goes.”

  “Or up, as the saying also goes,” Tom Spellacy said. He knew it was no use pushing Shopping Cart Johnson. He would get to the point in his own time. In the meantime, enjoy the sun. It was a useless venture anyway.

  “So it does,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “What more can a man ask? Only expense is shoes. I go through a pair every two, three weeks. Only bother is ants and flies. But hell, everybody gets flies sometimes.”

  Tom Spellacy took a notebook from his pocket. “I better get this down, Frank. Fuqua’s the one I want to read it to.” He wrote the date and “Ocean Park” and “Shopping Cart Johnson” and “Crescent City to Calexico” and out loud he repeated, “ ‘But hell, everybody gets flies sometimes.’ “

  “Right,” Shopping Cart Johnson said.

  “Right,” Crotty said.

  “Saw your murderer,” Shopping Cart Johnson said.

  “That’d be a big help,” Tom Spellacy said.

  “Don’t want no reward,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “Got a reward, maybe I wouldn’t want to lead the outdoor life. The open road, that’s for me. No automobile. Had a Reo once. YNJ 021. I had a little trouble with the Mann Act in that automobile. Gave it up. The open road, the outdoor life. Hadn’t been living the outdoor life, wouldn’t’ve found your killer, right?”

  “Right,” Tom Spellacy said.

  “Out to the El Segundo Barracks there,” Shopping Cart Johnson said.

  “They’re abandoned,” Tom Spellacy said.

  “Since 19 and 44,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “First time I been that way since they had the antiaircraft stationed there. Nice boys. Used to give me their extra condoms. Sold them in a house down in Calexico. Used one myself. Sweet little Mexican thing with a gold tooth. Had a little flivver, NDS 465. Imagine a Mexican whore with a car.” He shook his head vigorously and grinned. The teeth that weren’t missing were green with decay. “Goddamn. That was the last time. Don’t get much opportunity on the open road. My age, don’t get the urge much anyway, you get my meaning.”

  “Fuqua won’t,” Crotty said.

  “I was nosing around the ash barrels out in El Segundo there, like I do, looking for salvage. There’s them that’d call it garbage, but I call it salvage. Never know what you’re going to find. Not that there was anything worth all that much. A teakettle with a hole in it, a Bible with all the pages tored out, for smokes, I guess, couple of burned-down candles, some empty cans the dogs already licked clean, a mousetrap with a little fella in it, neck snapped clean as a whistle. Nothing much more. I was just nosing around and this fella comes up so quiet I don’t hear him and he says to me, ‘Move it.’ I liked to jumped out of my skin. And I move around and I see he’s got a flat tire on his car, a shiny little ‘36 Ford, VOM 399, and I says to him, ‘I can patch tires like a son of a bitch, let me help you out, Pilgrim, with your flat.’ “

  Shopping Cart Johnson scratched vigorously at his shoulder, then reached inside his shirt and extracted a small insect that he held between two dirty fingers. “You know what he said?”

  Crotty shook his head, his eyes on the bug.

  “ ‘Move it.’”

  Tom Spellacy tapped his pencil against his palm. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Shopping Cart Johnson said, flipping the insect with his forefinger. “I bet I walked a hundred thousand miles in my life, and that’s the first man I ever met didn’t want help with his flat. You’re a judge of human nature like I am, you know a fellow like that’s got to be bad.”

  Tom Spellacy folded his notebook and clipped the pencil into his shirt pocket. “I ever get a flat, Shopping, I hope you’re in the neighborhood.”

  Shopping Cart Johnson said, “You wouldn’t have a smoke.”

  “Your shirt pocket,” Tom Spellacy said.

  True Confessions • 241

  “Right,” Shopping Cart Johnson said. “You want to buy some targets? You boys must have a range down at the police department.”

  Crotty handed him a five-dollar bill. “Stay downwind, Shopping.”

  Shopping Cart Johnson stuffed the bill into an old paper bag and began pushing his shopping cart down the boardwalk. Crotty watched him go. “What the hell,” he said finally, “a fellow doesn’t want his tire patched could be bad.”

  “You tell that to Fuqua, Frank, when you put in for the five.”

  Crotty shrugged. “As long as I’m out this way, I’ve got some business I should look into in Culver City.”

  Tom Spellacy wondered if Crotty’s Chinese partners were as suspicious of him as he was of them. He knew that Crotty went out to check the construction invoices at the motel every day. He would not have been surprised if Crotty had Shopping Cart Johnson snooping around Culver City, keeping an eye on the Chinese. That was one way to explain this useless trek.

  No. Probably not. They had not been getting anyplace and Shopping was as good as any lead they had. It would look good in the newspapers and that’s what Fuqua was interested in. 137 people questioned, 612 telephone leads followed up, 91 articles of clothing itemized and God knows how many thousands of man-hours put in. The numbers were what mattered, not that the leads led nowhere and the people questioned were all like Shopping Cart Johnson.

  Worthless.

  He walked out to the end of the pier. Crotty’s right, he thought. It’s no skin off my ass who took this girl out. Some nut. And one nut more or less isn’t going to make that much difference. There’s always someone standing in line to take the nut’s place.

  He wondered who to have dinner with. Even Des would be a good bet. Better than puttering around the Chester Hanrahan kitchen. With all the appliances I don’t know how to use.

  Des would beat being alone.

  He suddenly felt his pant leg becoming wet and looked down and saw the Cardinal’s tiny terrier pissing on his leg. Quickly he stamped on the dog’s trailing leash so that he could not get away. He picked it up and for a moment, he thought of throwing it into the ocean. The dog started to yelp and he clamped its muzzle shut and looked at the name tag on its collar. Trigger. What a stupid goddamn name for a dog.

  The Cardinal was still sitting alone on the bench. “Needless to say,” Hugh Danaher said, holding the dog’s leash at arm’s length, “I didn’t expect to meet you this way, Lieutenant.” He looked at Tom Spellacy’s damp trouser leg, and in spite of himself, began to laugh. “I don’t expect you meet many people who laugh at policemen.”

  Tom Spellacy shook his head.

  “It’s the privilege of great age and a red hat.” The Cardinal’s laugh rumbled into a cough that bent him over. Immediately the Mother Superior was at his side and she asked Tom Spellacy to leave. Hugh Danaher waved her away. “Mother Bernadette is a good woman,” he said when he reg
ained his composure. “But she thinks that if I died on the annual outing of the Sisters of Mercy, the Pope would excommunicate her.” He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. “It takes a certain self-absorption to be in the convent.”

  “My daughter is a nun.”

  “Your brother has never mentioned that. I hope you don’t take offense.”

  “No.” How could I. Moira always thought that when she received, the world was in a state of sanctifying grace.

  “It was indiscreet. The sort of remark I make to Monsignor Spellacy.” He stared at Tom Spellacy. “Which must mean you’re very much alike.”

  “I keep hearing that.” Altogether too fucking much.

  “Oddly enough, I like these outings. I like being with the nuns. They’re simple souls, but they’re enthusiastic Catholics. In a way, a day like this is like running a parish again. The barter system operates, not high finance. The sisters have a good time and I’m able to persuade our more fortunate lay brethren to ... retire the mortgage, say.”

  “You got to scratch their back, too, I bet.”

  The Cardinal was silent for a moment. “You’re more unambiguous than your brother.”

  “It’s the way of the world.”

  “But you both arrive at the same conclusions.” The Cardinal gingerly touched the sunburned area of his forehead. “Do you play golf?”

  “No.”

  “A strange game. Those that want something playing with those that have something.”

  He wasn’t talking about par or putting, that was one thing Tom Spellacy was sure of. He wondered what the Cardinal was getting at.

  “He plays that game good, Des.”

  “Yes.”

  Tom Spellacy took a deep breath. “I imagine you do, too.”

  Hugh Danaher smiled. “I don’t play.”

  “Not with the golf sticks, maybe.” He returned the Cardinal’s stare. It was as if Hugh Danaher was daring him to continue. “But the other game you play.”

  The Cardinal surveyed him for a long time before he spoke. “Perhaps not as well as your brother.”

  “Your Eminence, you’ve never drawn a breath when you believed that.”

  The Cardinal threw back his head and laughed. “You’re more impertinent than Monsignor Spellacy. I suppose I’ll have to put up with it, seeing as my dog made a display on your trousers.”

  The terrier was licking the Cardinal’s shoes.

  “He’s a present from the priests in the archdiocese,” Hugh Danaher said. “On the occasion of my fiftieth anniversary in the priesthood.”

  In other words the subject of Des is closed, Tom Spellacy thought. “I’d kick anyone gave me a dog.”

  “Ahh,” the Cardinal said. “Unfortunately a solution not feasible for a man of my age or station.” He made a pass at tickling the dog with his foot. “His name is Trigger. Like Roy Rogers’s horse.”

  “Yes, Your Eminence.”

  “A revolting name.”

  Tom Spellacy nodded.

  “Leo Sweeney named him. Father Sweeney. The pastor at Church of the Redeemer. He knows Roy, apparently.” The Cardinal turned the dog over with his toe. “And Dale.”

  Trigger sniffed at the cuff of the Cardinal’s pants. “Leo Sweeney once wanted to parachute the Baltimore Catechism into Russia, like leaflets. Tor the peasants,’ he said. ‘Do they read English?’ I said. ‘Almighty God will find a way,’ he said. ‘Perhaps with a Berlitz course,’ I said. ‘We can parachute the records in with the catechisms.’ ‘A grand idea,’ Leo said. ‘I’ll pray to Saint Leo every night.’ “ The Cardinal regarded his pet with distaste. “Apparently Saint Leo told him to turn his attention to dogs. Trigger was the name of Saint Leo’s cocker spaniel, I am told.”

  No wonder he comes out to Ocean Park, Tom Spellacy thought. He’s got the dummies on the one hand and the operators playing golf on the other. They give him a little peace, the sisters. They never heard of par and they don’t know Roy Rogers, and Dale.

  “I have a confession to make,” the Cardinal said. “Murder is a secret vice of mine. It’s one of the reasons I’ve wanted to meet you. Do you read Chesterton?”

  Tom Spellacy shook his head. The Cardinal was full of surprises.

  “The Father Brown stories, not the theology. His theology is unreadable.” The Cardinal fanned himself with his homburg. “Indeed I think if I had my life to live over, I’d still devote it to the Church. But I’d gladly give up my red hat to be Father Brown.” He turned to Tom Spellacy. “He’s a detective.”

  “So am I. I figured that out.”

  “I’m sorry, that was patronizing.”

  Tom Spellacy smiled. He liked the old bastard. And he was sure he could be a bastard. But all in all better him as a boss than Fuqua. “Why do you want to be a detective?”

  “A priest-detective,” the Cardinal corrected. “Sleuthing after vespers. Sex and money, the human frailties denied a priest, but open, vicariously at least, to the priest-detective.”

  “It’s not like real life, detective stories,” Tom Spellacy said. He doubted that Father Brown would ever meet anyone like Shopping Cart Johnson. Or run into a victim with a votive candle shoved up her vagina. “I don’t run into many stiffs in the rectory.”

  “And Father Brown never calls a body a stiff.”

  “So there you are.”

  A group of nuns hurried down the boardwalk toward the Cardinal. He sighed and placed his homburg firmly on his head.

  “I have a feeling you’d be impertinent, Lieutenant Spellacy, even if Trigger hadn’t misbehaved.”

  “I’m glad he did, Your Eminence.”

  The Cardinal stood up. The nuns held back, not wanting to interrupt. The two men shook hands. “May I ask what you were doing here today?” the Cardinal said.

  Tom Spellacy told him.

  “That poor girl,” the Cardinal said. “I read in the newspaper that she was eating Chinese food before she died.”

  “Egg rolls.”

  “Father Brown would appreciate that.”

  “It’s about the only thing he would in this one.”

  “It’s a clue, then.”

  “So far, the best we’ve got.”

  When Hugh Danaher left, Tom Spellacy realized that he had not knelt and kissed his ring.

  Nor had the Cardinal held it out.

  Seventeen

  Hugh Danaher settled into the back seat of his car and closed his eyes. He was glad to be alone. The ride in the roller coaster had nearly killed him. He placed his hand over his heart. It had actually stopped beating for several seconds during the ride. A smile spread slowly across his long thin face as he tried to imagine the apostolic delegate explaining to the Holy Father how he had died. All those years in the Vatican’s service would not have prepared the apostolic delegate to diagram a roller coaster. For a fleeting second, the Cardinal visualized the Pope and the apostolic delegate in a loop-the-loop. The Danaher Heresy, he thought, banish it from the mind.

  Think croquet. A sedentary game. He played it once a week with Samuel Goldwyn. A quiet game, just the two of them. The big games, the money games with David Niven and Gary Cooper, Goldwyn held on Sunday, but the Cardinal usually had an ordination on Sunday, or a confirmation. In any case, he was never quite sure who David Niven was. “The Scarlet Pimpernel, Danaher, The Scarlet Pimpernel/’ Samuel Goldwyn said, “four million domestic, that’s who David Pimpernel is.” It amused the Cardinal that the two men called each other Goldwyn and Danaher. No one had called him Danaher to his face in nearly sixty years, and he was damned if he was going to put a Mister before Goldwyn’s name. Especially seeing as he could beat Goldwyn regularly at croquet. A silly game, the golf that Monsignor Spellacy played. A game for the shifty elements. Not so croquet. A prince of the Church head to head with a pharaoh of film. Krakow to croquet in two generations. Kerry to croquet, for that matter. That was one way of looking at it. Two old men at ease in the sun was another. And increasingly the way the Cardinal felt. Old friends dead and
dying, the next generation obsequious before the red hat. The prince and the pharaoh. Two old men playing croquet.

  “I’ve registered The ʽVirgin Tramp’ as a title,” Samuel Goldwyn had said the week before. “What do you think of that, Dana-her?”

  “I’ll have the Legion of Decency on you,” the Cardinal said.

  “’The Innocent Tramp,’ I’ve registered that, too,” Samuel Goldwyn said. “And ʽInnocence.“

  “Better, Goldwyn, better,” the Cardinal said. “The names these days. It’s the war that did it, I think. You can’t pick up a newspaper today without reading about a ‘sexpot.’”

  “ ‘Mexican Spitfire,’ that’s another type you’re always reading about,” Samuel Goldwyn said.

  The Cardinal stared out the car window at an office building under construction on Olympic Boulevard. Another ugly box. There were so many changes to assimilate. Ugly buildings, ugly cars, ugly people. He picked up the newspaper his driver had neatly folded for him on the back seat. More changes. The Express was even advertising “HORMONES—Male and Female—Genuine Testosterone—Free Literature—THE HORMONE PHARMACY.” My God, what sort of person would go to the Hormone Pharmacy.

  The Fazenda story was still on the front page.

  Sources close to the investigation revealed exclusively to the Herald-Express that Miss Fazenda was a “romance seeker” who used her innocent beauty to drive her dozens of men friends into what the sources called “a frenzy.”

  Not the sort of thing Father Brown would run up against. In a happier time the poor girl would have been called something like The Lilac Delilah. The Virgin Tramp. The name made him shudder. As did her description. Every mole. Every scar. Every wart. “One large wart center of back of neck about even with shoulder line, two small warts one inch to the right of this, one small wart to right of above about one-half inch higher, two warts to left of midline of neck on shoulder, one wart on back about one inch to right of medial line.” The Cardinal wondered who would notice or remember or even care about the pattern of the warts. He crossed himself quickly. One of the men driven into a frenzy, of course. Who would also remember, “Hair shaved on legs below knees. Hair shaved under arms. All fingernails chewed down to quick.”