Prodigal Father

by Ralph McInerny

  5

  For they have consulted together with one consent.

  —Psalm 83

  Tuttle had been booked as a material witness and bail was set. Hazel Barnes came down to get him out. Tuttle felt like refusing. There were worse things than jail. Hazel stood with the bail bondsman, an inscrutable smile on her face, looking again like the angel of judgment. It was a moment that might have been covered with glee by his friends in the pressroom, but only Hazel and Crawford the bondsman were present.

  “Where is everybody?”

  Hazel snorted. “You were expecting a brass band? What a sight you are.”

  Tuttle still couldn’t believe that this was a private event. If Tetzel were in his spot, he would have been here to enjoy the occasion. And then the sergeant told him that Stanley Morgan had confessed.

  “To murdering Charlotte Priebe?”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Hazel said. “The man was locked up when that happened. It’s too bad you weren’t. Honestly, you need someone to look after you.”

  “Run away, Tuttle,” Crawford said, slapping him on the arm. “I could use the money.”

  “How much is this costing?”

  “She beat me down,” Crawford said. “A fraction of a fraction. But she promised me free legal representation besides.”

  “So go get in trouble,” Hazel said, grabbing Tuttle by the arm and leading him out to her SUV. Getting into it used muscles that atrophied in civilized society, but Tuttle was happy to clamber aboard.

  “I suppose you want to go to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate.”

  What could he say? Hazel was his misfortune cookie and she seemed impossible to get rid of.

  Farniente was at the Great Wall and he invited them to join him. Hazel pulled on Tuttle’s arm, but this was one time he was too strong for her. He slipped into the chair across from Farniente. When Hazel sat, she said, “Take off that stupid hat.”

  Hazel lectured with her mouth full or empty and the two professionals ignored her, or tried to. Her words came to Tuttle as those of people disgustedly tearing up their tickets after the last race has run, of people wanting a divorce and to whom he had sometimes listened before refusing their custom—he lived by a rigid if eclectic code—of losers everywhere, of Saliari being wheeled through the nuthouse, bestowing a blessing on mediocrity. How long, O Lord, how long?

  “I could use a secretary,” Farniente mumbled through a mouthful of egg roll.

  “What you could use would make up a long list.”

  For a moment, hope had flared. Even Farniente would look like a better bet than himself. He had had plenty of time in that damnable cell to think of the big one that had gotten away. Where had things gone wrong? He had the client of a lifetime, he had inspired Tetzel to write a series that might win him a prize, unimaginable fees were within his reach, and then, poof! The goose was gone before a golden egg could be laid. Leo Corbett had dropped him without telling him, had gone off with Charlotte Priebe, no doubt to form an alliance with Anderson Ltd. that excluded Tuttle. He had thought of his vigil outside the building in which Charlotte Priebe lived once the perfidious Matilda had described the man living with Charlotte in a way that matched Leo. He remembered following Leo to the hotel where he took a room, and then camping out in the lobby. What was lost had been found. He was sure that he could shame Leo into loyalty. And then without warning the roof had fallen in on him. He had no doubt that it had been his clone in the tweed hat behind the counter who had blown the whistle on him. Leo appeared, his moment had arrived, and the next thing he knew, he was in Horvath’s custody, and Leo had slipped away.

  That sequence of events, to suspicious eyes, had been sufficient to land him in the cooler. While he was being questioned, he tried to piece together what in the minds of Horvath and Keegan had happened to Charlotte Priebe. She had drowned in her bathtub.

  “What did you do with the bottle for the sleeping pills?” he had been asked during the third round of questioning.

  So that was what had happened. The young woman had been put into a drugged sleep and then into her bathtub and held beneath the surface of the water. He had not done that. So who had? This was a question he would like to put to Leo Corbett. Tuttle paused in his eating, completely deaf now to Hazel’s continuing lamentation. That question gave him the leverage he needed to get Leo back under his thumb. He sat back and rubbed his middle.

  “Well, that hit the spot.”

  “Tasty,” Farniente agreed.

  Tuttle stood, announcing a call of nature, and catching Farniente’s eye tipped his tweed in the direction of the john.

  “Look,” Tuttle said, when Farniente came into the men’s room. “Get rid of her, will you? There’s something I have to do.”

  “Me, too,” Farniente said, stepping up to one of the baby shower-style urinals.

  Tuttle positioned himself at the adjoining one. “Will you do it?”

  “Tuttle, I can’t tell you how glad I was to see you walk in that door tonight. It’s a travesty that a man with your background should be held in jail.” Farniente glanced at him. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”

  “If I ever kill a woman, it will be Hazel.”

  Farniente shook his head. “She reminds me of my first wife.”

  “Are you divorced?”

  “No.”

  Tuttle debated with himself the wisdom of letting Farniente in on the epiphany he had had at the table. He won the debate. Farniente was not a good luck charm.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me why I was so glad to see you, Tuttle?”

  Tuttle stepped away, zipped, and went to the washbasin, trying to be patient. Farniente was getting to be like Hazel, always interrupting. Next to him, Farniente turned a faucet, and then danced away from an errant splash.

  “You remember Solomon, the retired cop? He is now doing security at the Wackham Building, nights. He called me on my cell phone just as I sat down to eat. Something’s going on over there and he wanted me to know.”

  “Why?”

  “He wishes he had become a PI instead of a cop.” Farniente looked shy. “You wouldn’t believe what an exciting life he thinks I lead. It’s all those paperbacks he reads on duty.”

  “Why did he call you?”

  “Cy Horvath and Pippen the coroner’s assistant had just showed up and asked to be taken to the basement.”

  “So?”

  “They were carrying some kind of electronic equipment.”

  “No kidding.”

  Tuttle’s father had worked on the construction crew when that building went up. And the builder had been Lars Anderson, early in his career. He weighed the possibility of finding Leo Corbett tonight and checking out the Wackham. There was time to do both.

  “Solomon said it was all hush-hush.”

  The basement of the Wackham did not sound like a rendezvous to Tuttle. Horvath was sweet on Pippen like everyone else; but this had to be something important.

  “We have to get rid of Hazel,” he said.

  “There’s a back door.”

  “But the bill?”

  Farniente smiled wickedly. “I think you paid for your supper just listening to her.”

  “My hat is at the table.”

  “Get it later.”

  He would feel like Samson shorn, but he made a reluctant decision. A moment later, he and Farniente were stealing through the odorous kitchen and slipping out the back door into the parking lot.

  6

  My days are like a shadow that lengthens.

  —Psalm 102

  Horvath carried the little case, slung over his shoulder, when he and Pippen entered the Wackham Building and approached the desk where Bill Solomon was engrossed in a paperback. Solomon hadn’t heard them come in so either what he was reading was fascinating or his ears were worse than they had been when he was on the force.

  “That elevator go to the basement?”

  The watchman levitated and lost his grip on his paperback. “Cy! How
are you?” Solomon looked at Pippen, then pushed his glasses to the tip of his nose for a better look.

  All over town, former cops were supplementing their pensions with jobs like this—security at the mall, at supermarkets, in schools, in downtown buildings. Soft duty, but what good was retirement if you went on working? He felt a sudden compassion for Solomon, bored to death through the night hours, driven to cheap novels to keep his mind from working, he might have been a symbol of Christmas future. He repeated his question.

  “That depends on what you mean by basement.”

  Pippen said, “What does the word mean to you?”

  “There are two basements,” Solomon said brightly, happy to acquaint the uninitiated with the lore of the Wackham. “The basement and the subbasement.”

  “We’ll start with the subbasement,” Cy said.

  “Start what?”

  Cy hunched over the desk and fixed Solomon’s eye. “Remember when you were sworn in as a police officer, Bill? That oath still stands. We’re on a very confidential mission. If anyone hears of this, it will be because you told them. I don’t have to tell you what would happen then.”

  Solomon seemed to want to know, but Cy stood. “Come on,” he said to Pippen, and started for the elevator.

  “It won’t work without this key,” Solomon called after them.

  Cy returned to the table with his hand out. Solomon reluctantly removed a key from a large ring of keys that swung from his belt when he stood.

  “This could mean my head, Horvath.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “How long will this take?” he asked Pippen when they were in the elevator and he pushed SB.

  “The ride down?” Radiant smile, great green eyes, auburn hair pulled back and gathered in a ponytail. She was wearing a long skirt and an open jacket that hung below her hips. Their presence together in this intimate, enclosed space constituted what the nuns had called a proximate occasion of sin. But all they had ever done is innocently flirt with one another. And that is all they would ever do. Virtue is a habit hard to break.

  The subbasement was a great rectangle with rough concrete walls and hooded lamps dangling from the ceiling. In its center, enclosed by a screen fence, was what looked like a generator. Otherwise the space was empty. Cy unslung the case. Pippen opened it and withdrew what looked like a stethoscope. There were dials set in the top of the instrument.

  “No headset?”

  “The dials do it.”

  Carrying the case, Cy picked a wall at random and Pippen began to move the detecting device along the concrete, her eye on the dials. The wall was maybe seven feet high.

  “Why don’t I do that and you watch the dials.”

  As she could not, he could hold the porous disk that spoke to the dials to the top of the wall. But if what they were looking for was here, chances are it would not be up very high. Probably more in the middle. It was a dull task, made interesting by the presence of Pippen, and the knowledge that they were together on a job.

  “Isn’t this fun?” she said, when one wall had been traversed without results.

  “A barrel of laughs.”

  They had worked silently up to then, but now she began to talk. Sometimes she wished she were a detective rather than coroner. She was just a year married and Cy would have asked what she planned to do when the children came, but there are questions one does not ask of professional women. Not that he thought of Pippen as one of a type. However efficient she was in her job, she seemed miscast to Cy. He saw her bouncing babies on her knee, a Renaissance Madonna, the essence of womanhood.

  She had reviewed her girlhood, college, medical school, her family, the awful men she might have married and how lucky she was to have found the husband she had, and there was one wall left. A wall they might have started with. They had been in the subbasement two hours when the elevator door opened and Tuttle and Farniente emerged.

  “Horvath! I heard you were down here.”

  Horvath thought of what he would do to Solomon. Obviously the security man had gotten on the phone to spread the news. But Farniente and Tuttle? He would have expected the rat to call Tetzel. Too late, he remembered that Solomon had frequently been under a cloud when he was on active duty, leaking to the press everything he knew, which was never much, but it did not endear him to his colleagues. He should have brought Solomon with them.

  “Glad you could come,” Cy said. “You know Dr. Pippen.”

  Farniente was ogling the coroner with undisguised admiration.

  “You remind me of my first wife.”

  “What are we doing?” Tuttle asked.

  Cy ignored him, starting on the remaining wall. Tuttle and Farniente fell silent, moving along with him and Pippen as they sounded the wall.

  “Something in there?”

  “You ever read Edgar Allan Poe?” Pippen asked him.

  “Does he write for the Sun-Times?”

  “Nevermore.”

  With the arrival of Tuttle and Farniente, the futile became farcical. Cy no longer expected that Pippen’s gizmo would detect the remains of the late and unlamented Beamish. Charlotte Priebe had taken some sick boasting seriously. Lars Anderson had not made a pile because he was dumb enough to confide in a young woman something that could have caused him real trouble. He reached the corner and looked at Pippen.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Well, now we know.”

  He had told her only that they had been given information about a body buried in the concrete.

  “Could it be in the basement?”

  They headed for the elevator, with Tuttle and Farniente at their heels. The four rose a level to the basement. It was the same dimensions as the subbasement but had a claustrophobically low ceiling. Pippen suggested they switch roles. They did, and she began making great swift arcs with the detector, moving much more quickly than he had. The dials did nothing.

  “We going to do all twenty floors?” Tuttle asked.

  “As many as we can get to,” Cy said.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Promise you won’t tell?”

  Both Tuttle and Farniente raised their lying hands.

  “I made the same promise.”

  It was three in the morning when they packed up the equipment and headed for the elevator. A sullen Tuttle and Farniente grumbled as they rose to the lobby.

  “Look at it this way, Tuttle. You might still be in jail.”

  “They threatened me,” Solomon whined when Cy stopped at his desk.

  “I thought I did that.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Get you reinstated. You’d make a good partner for Peanuts Pianone.”

  “Sorry,” Cy said, when he and Pippen pulled away.

  “Sorry that we didn’t find a body?”

  “Thanks for helping.”

  “Hey, what are the long night hours for?”

  “Where’s Mr. Pippen?” he asked. She had retained her name after her marriage.

  She laughed. “Dr. Foley is attending a medical convention in Seattle.”

  They stopped for coffee, they ordered ham and eggs. “You never talk about yourself, Cy.”

  “Not when I’m on duty.”

  She might have taken it as a rebuff, but it was his shield against temptation. And it was tempting to think of them as a couple out on the town, ending up here with platters full of bacon and eggs and coffee so hot it would have gotten McDonald’s a lawsuit. He took the printout of Charlotte Priebe’s file from his pocket and showed it to her. She read it while removing egg from the corner of her mouth with a long-nailed little finger. Her brows rose.

  “Wow.”

  “We just disproved it.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t tell me before. I thought it was the confession of some convict at Joliet or something.”

  “That’s about what it was worth.”

  “But you had to know.”

  Even negative information is a gai
n. One possible explanation of the death of Charlotte Priebe could be dismissed. Cy was almost sad. It would have been something to present Robertson with a question of conscience, not that he had one. Sometimes he dreamed of Keegan being named chief and the department being made over to his image. It would never happen. Okay. If not Anderson, Tuttle? That was ridiculous. They had just been teaching the lawyer a lesson. A process of elimination went on in Horvath’s mind.

  “You’re thinking.”

  And he was. First thing in the morning he would scare up Leo Corbett.

  7

  The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”

  —Psalm 14

  Father Dowling awoke at five in the morning, tried to regain sleep first on one side, then the other, then on his back. Perhaps sleep would have come again, if he had not started thinking. He put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling in the first dawn and made his morning offering. Then, with great concentration, he said an Our Father. That done, he reviewed the events of the past week. They almost seemed to have begun with his retreat at the Athanasians. Something in Father Boniface’s valedictory air had touched his own soul, not altogether bad when on retreat, but it would not do as one’s natural attitude, as Boniface himself had come to see. Mortality was a fact, death would come, and a retreat offered the opportunity to think on the life that led to that definitive moment. As he rarely did, he thought of his early life as a priest, a member of the archdiocesan marriage tribunal, widely regarded as a man on his way up the ecclesiastical ladder. And then he had been brought low, suffering a humiliating debility that altered forever his prospects. His assignment to St. Hilary’s had seemed to seal his fate. So thought others, so at first thought he. But with time he came to see in this apparent reversal a providential reordering of his life.

  He thanked God for this parish, for his pastoral work, for his friends. A bonus had been the renewal of an old acquaintance with Phil Keegan, once a lower-classman at Quigley who had washed out because the intricacies of Latin escaped him. Roger Dowling had the vaguest of memories of Phil as a boy, but to Phil he had been an upperclassman and thus more noticeable. Phil’s wife had died, he was a widower who tried to make his work as captain of detectives the whole of his life, and the St. Hilary rectory soon became almost a second home to him. Thus Father Dowling had learned more than he might have wanted to of the seamy side of the city in which he lived.