Clarisse turned from the newsstand as three suburban teenagers stormed up the concrete steps from the subway, as if determined not to lose a minute’s pleasure in the heart of the city. They collided with her, and she stumbled backward, only catching herself from falling by dropping all the packages at once.
The Filene’s Basement bag split open, bottom to top, and fifteen pairs of patterned socks spilled out on the sidewalk. Three pairs of shoes from Lane Bryant fell out of their boxes and got mixed up with the socks. The four mystery novels she’d bought at Waldenbooks slid out of the plastic bag and were stepped on before she could gather them up. Dessert from the most expensive bakery on the street she gave up on altogether and kicked the chocolate Napoleon down the subway steps. Her Capezio leotard alone remained intact.
“Have I got everything?” she asked herself aloud, mentally checking off the packages.
“No,” said a man’s voice behind her.
She turned, and exclaimed, “Father!”
Father Cornelius McKimmon was holding her maroon purse out to her.
“Oh, thank God,” she said, and extended a hand through the tattered remnant of the packages she held. Father McKimmon gave her the purse, and it disappeared into the pyramid again.
The priest wore black slacks and no suit coat but a short-sleeved black shirt with his white collar in place. His hair had been recently trimmed and was neatly combed. He was silent for a few moments but seemed disposed to linger, as if there were something he wanted to say to her.
Awkwardly shifting the packages in her arms once more, Clarisse asked, “What brings you into Boston today? Have you been to the men’s shelter on Pine Street?”
“No,” he replied. As he did, Clarisse surreptitiously breathed in and found not the slightest scent of liquor on his breath. “An old friend of mine died, and before he went, he asked me to officiate at his funeral mass. I’m on my way over to the shrine on Arch Street now.” He made a gesture toward the opposite end of the pedestrian mall.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“So am I. I’d planned to go up to Gloucester with a friend for the afternoon.”
“I see,” said Clarisse, taken aback for a moment. “Well, death does have a way of interfering with one’s plans.”
Father McKimmon took no apparent note of the irony in her voice. “The man who died wasn’t a close friend,” he explained. “Hardly a friend at all, really.” He lowered his voice and said confidentially, “In fact, I couldn’t stand him.” He sighed. “But priests can’t go through life ignoring last requests, can they?”
“I guess not,” Clarisse said uncertainly as she rearranged her bundles once more and began to take her leave. “Niobe is expecting me any minute, Father, and—”
“Give her my best,” he said quickly and with unexpected earnestness. “I haven’t seen her lately, you know. I’ve been away.”
Clarisse said nothing. She somehow had the feeling that she was going to find out where the priest had been whether she wanted to know or not. She was right.
“I was in Vermont. An old priory up there. Very quiet and peaceful, and compared to the city this time of year, very cool.”
“Yes,” said Clarisse. “I have a vague memory of what it was like to get away in the summer. Very vague.”
“It wasn’t a vacation. I was drying out,” he added proudly. “The order that used to be in the priory disbanded some years ago. It’s been turned into a center for the treatment of priests with alcoholic problems. The sisters have a place in New Hampshire.”
Although surprised by Father McKimmon’s casual revelation, Clarisse could not help asking, “Are there a lot of alcoholic nuns?” Her curiosity had overcome her desire to get to a place where she could put down the packages, which had begun to sag and slip in her perspiring hands.
“I’ve been up there for weeks,” said the priest. “And I’ll probably be going back. I’m really only in town for a couple of days. So give Niobe my best. Tell her I miss Slate.”
“Thank you,” said Clarisse with a sigh. “I wish I could say you’re the only regular customer who’s stopped coming to the bar.”
“The murders?” he asked quietly, and Clarisse nodded. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said, “but I have to run now and send Tim’s soul on its merry little way.”
Now Father McKimmon seemed as anxious to be away from Clarisse as a moment ago he had seemed disposed to linger.
“Don’t keep Tim waiting on my account,” she said, unable to make anything of his sudden mood shift.
Father McKimmon smiled—distractedly, Clarisse thought—and turned off suddenly into the crowd.
“I want the story,” said Clarisse to Newt. They were sitting with Niobe at the bar in Slate. “The real story on Father McKimmon.” She took a sip of her wine cooler. The purchases she’d made at Downtown Crossing were stacked on the bar to her right. She picked idly at one torn bag. “There was something very odd about him today. He really went out of his way to tell me that he had gone to Vermont to dry out.”
“It’s part of the therapy,” said Niobe definitely. “You tell everybody you’re an alcoholic and that you’ve gone on the wagon so that the embarrassment factor works in your favor.”
“The embarrassment factor?” echoed Clarisse.
“Yeah, when everybody knows you’re giving it up, you’re too embarrassed to be seen drinking,” said Newt. “Pretty standard stuff.”
“We’re talking about the Roman Catholic church,” said Clarisse. “They really encourage their priests to go around and announce to virtual strangers that they’re alcoholic?”
“You’re a bartender,” said Niobe smoothly. “Father McKimmon was warning you that if he ever got desperate and comes in here, you’re to tell him no and encourage him to get out of harm’s way.”
“I see,” Clarisse said.
“You two think this is the only bar he knows about?” Newt smirked. “I’ve watched Father McKimmon hop up onto the wagon and then tumble off again like he was doing circus tricks. Don’t get your hopes up. Believe me, soon enough you’ll be sweeping him off the steps in the morning. He’ll be going through the trash, swilling the dregs out of the bottles you toss out.”
“You always dredge up the worst things to say about him,” Clarisse said. “Why do you dislike the man so much?”
Newt turned back toward the bar. “I don’t dislike Father McKimmon,” he said quietly, feigning innocence.
“He loathes him,” Niobe corrected.
“Yes, but why?” Clarisse asked.
Newt didn’t answer, but took a swallow of his beer. “Come on, give over, kid.”
Newt sighed. “Are you really in the mood for human drama on such a hot afternoon?”
“If it’s sordid enough,” said Clarisse, brightening.
“Newt grew up in Malden,” Niobe erupted with full verbal animation. “The product of a broken home. His father deserted hearth and home when Newt was nine years old, leaving him in the clutches of an alcoholic strumpet who went by the name of Mother. Malden, as you know, Clarisse, is the very same town where Father McKimmon’s parish rests.”
“Niobe!” Newt protested. “You’re making it sound like ‘This Is Your Life.’ I don’t think Clarisse wants to hear about my puberty.”
Niobe stood up, offended. “I’m so sorry,” she said huffily. Two overweight workmen wearing hard hats entered the bar and signaled to her for two Schlitzes.
“I went to parochial schools,” Newt went on. “Kindergarten through high school. Boring. I was very athletic—basketball, soccer, gymnastics, etcetera. I went out for all sports because I was good at them and because it kept me away from home and Mommie Dearest and because I liked locker rooms. When I was a senior in high school, this new priest, Father Fiore, was assigned to the parish. He coached soccer, and he was also my academic adviser. He took a genuine interest in me. He tried to straighten my mother out. He came over to the house to have a talk with her, but she was soused and tried to
slap the make on him.”
He took a long swallow of beer, finishing off his can. Clarisse reached over the bar and snagged another one out of the cooler for him. “Go on,” she said as she popped it open.
“Midterm of my senior year, a third priest was assigned to the parish. He was also attached to the high school as vice-principal. That third priest was Father Cornelius McKimmon. He was going to change the way things were done. He tried to ride herd over everyone—staff and students. No tact at all.”
“So what happened?”
“McKimmon was jealous of Fiore because he was so well liked. McKimmon, by the way, was also a closet queen. I picked that up right away. One night, when I was leaving basketball practice, I ran into him. He’d been drinking. He made a pass. I rejected him. The next week somebody made a couple of anonymous phone calls to the Cardinal’s residence in Brookline. This caller accused Father Fiore of sexual misconduct with some of the school athletes. His Eminence the Cardinal managed to keep it pretty much under wraps, but a scandal is a scandal, and we were all dragged in and given the third degree. Jesuits invented the third degree, you know. Then suddenly one day Father Fiore was gone. Eventually he left the church.”
“You think Father McKimmon made those calls?”
“No,” Newt returned flatly. “There was this kid who hadn’t rejected McKimmon’s advances—he did it. McKimmon put him up to it.”
“How do you know that, Newt?”
“The kid told me—after I beat him to a pulp.”
“Did you say anything to anybody?”
“I tried,” said Newt bitterly. “But of course they went directly to Corny about it, and you know what Corny said? He said that I was the main one that Fiore had corrupted. So then I got thrown out of school, too. Three weeks before graduation. Totally turned me off education. That’s why I never went to college.”
“Had you…?”
“Had sex with Father Fiore?” Newt shook his head. “The man wasn’t gay; that’s one thing that made it so awful for him. I told you, he was a friend and was just trying to help me out.”
Clarisse digested this a moment, then asked, “What’s happened to McKimmon since then?”
“He’s managed to rub everybody the wrong way. He was ambitious, but he drank too much. There were plenty of rumors about him, too, but nobody wanted another scandal linked to the parish, so they let him advance only up to a point. When he couldn’t advance any more, he started to slide. He ended up getting work no one else wanted, like saying mass at the men’s shelters. His parish now is fourth-rate and in the worst part of Malden.”
“Okay, Newt,” Clarisse said, “what happened back then was despicable, but that was nearly—what?—ten years ago?”
Newt turned on his stool and faced her. “Father McKimmon’s a low-down son of a bitch. I know some guys he’s managed to lure into bed—with money I’ll bet comes out of the poor box—and then these guys have lost their jobs. Some somebody called the places they worked and made insinuations and lies about their sexual habits.”
“Why would Father McKimmon do that?”
“So he won’t feel so ashamed about having to get drunk and pay somebody to have sex with. He turns things around and convinces himself his trick is the one who did something wrong. He erases his own guilt by screwing up other people’s lives.”
“Are you sure, Newt? Do you have proof?”
“I don’t have tapes of the telephone calls, if that’s what you mean. But every one of those guys I know who lost their jobs had one thing in common—they’d carried on with Corny McKimmon and taken his money.” Newt swiveled back to the bar and rested his elbow on the edge. “Every single one of them.”
“These men,” Clarisse said after a reflective moment, “who slept with Father McKimmon—”
“I didn’t say they slept with him. They were just ‘with’ him, that’s all.”
“They were good friends of yours?”
“Some.”
“Would I know any of them? I mean, are they still in Boston?”
“Most of ’em.”
“Customers who come in here?”
“Some of them do; some of them did.”
Clarisse looked at him sharply. “What do you mean— did?”
“Until they were murdered.”
Clarisse’s brow furrowed. “Who?”
“Jed Black. He took money from Corny for sex a couple of times.”
“What?” Clarisse blurted. “Jed took money?”
“It was five or six years ago, when Jed was a student and living in this slummy rooming house on the wrong side of Beacon Hill.”
“I see. Who else?”
“Remember the Shrimp? The smallest cowboy in the world with the nastiest mouth?”
“He fooled around with Father McKimmon?”
Newt shrugged. “He bragged about it. Said it was kinky to do it with a priest. He didn’t even get paid.”
“You’re making all this up, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not,” said Newt staunchly.
“You realize what you’re implying, don’t you—about Father McKimmon and the necktie murders, I mean?”
“I’d be a fool not to realize it.”
“Have you told any of this to the police?”
“You know what they’d say? First thing they’d say is, he’s a priest and priests don’t commit murder. Second thing they’d say is ‘You’re trying to get back at him because he had you thrown out of school.’ Third thing they’d say is ‘Hey, you knew all these dead guys, and you went to bed with ’em, didn’t you?’”
“Did you?” asked Clarisse.
“Unfortunately,” he said quietly.
“The number of men in this town that Newt hasn’t gone to bed with,” said Niobe, passing by on her way to the cash register, “you could count on the fingers of one maimed hand.”
Clarisse was silent a moment. Then she asked, “How does McKimmon manage not to get defrocked?”
Newt grunted a laugh. “Like I said, Father McKimmon is one sneaky son of a bitch. Until now, didn’t you think he was just this harmless priest right out of some Forties Bing Crosby movie who just happened to have a little drinking problem?”
Clarisse admitted he was right.
“He had you fooled, too.”
“Whatever happened to your mother?” she asked suddenly.
Newt averted his eyes and said quietly, “My mother committed suicide.”
“Oh, Newt,” Clarisse said, greatly distressed. “I—”
“That is not true!” Niobe cried indignantly, on her way back to the hard hats with change. “Clarisse, Newt’s mother runs a broken-down chicken ranch in the backwoods of Appalachia! Nine years ago she just woke up one day, drew all her money out of the bank, bought a used camper, and just drove away. She ended up in Kentucky, and that’s where she is today.” Niobe swiped at Newt’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “You stop telling people your mother offed herself!” She shot a sidewise glance at Clarisse, still swiping at a now dodging Newt. “Honestly, he’ll make up a story about anything, and it all sounds real!”
PART THREE
July Fourth
Chapter Thirteen
AT A QUARTER TO EIGHT on the evening of July Fourth, a taxi pulled to a stop mid-block on Beacon Street between Exeter and Fairfield streets. The back door banged open, and Clarisse, struggling with an enormous glass bowl covered with plastic wrap, lurched up out of the backseat. She angled her hip smartly against the door and slammed it shut. Giving a toss of her hair to get a wayward wave out of one eye, she took a breath and dashed through a break in traffic across to the Charles River side of the street. She collided with a group of laughing young women carrying blankets, radios, and six-packs, regained her precarious balance, and hurried up the stoop of a brownstone. She carefully backed through the outside door into the foyer.
Clarisse balanced the chilled bowl precariously in the crook of one arm while she used her free hand to punch the
button under the end mailbox. The identifying label on the mailbox read: “N. Feng— not Newton.” The mailbox next to it was labeled “Newt Newton.” On the day after a marital rift noticeably more violent than the one that had preceded it, Niobe had announced in a voice of doom she was moving out of the apartment and Newt’s life forever. She made a great production of bag packing and immediate division of property. The next day, Niobe kept her promise and moved out—into the apartment directly above. Newt claimed that she caused the fight just because she wanted a better view and a whole bathroom for herself, but Niobe claimed that the apartment coming available that morning was a fluke of fate. Although friends of the couple repeatedly pointed out to her that her action could hardly be construed as a true separation, Niobe claimed that the politics of her action far outweighed its illogicality.
As Clarisse awaited a reply over the house intercom, she looked up and down Beacon Street. Knots of people with blankets and picnic baskets and plastic coolers were making their way toward the Esplanade. At sundown the Boston Pops would begin its annual Independence Day concert on the banks of the Charles River. As usual, the crowd was predicted to be in the hundreds of thousands. Soft twilight deepened the shadows between the elms and lindens bordering the sidewalks. Amplified music, rock mostly, underscored the parties in progress up and down both sides of the street. Exploding firecrackers echoed every few seconds, and an occasional Roman candle, launched from a rooftop, made a bright streak in the slowly darkening sky.
“That better be Clarisse with the lobster salad,” came Niobe’s voice over the intercom. “Confucius say: No eat/No greet.”
“Clarisse say: If you think that I spent two hours murdering innocent crustaceans so that I could make small talk over an intercom, you’ve got another think coming, sister. It doesn’t rhyme, but I trust you get the message.”
The latch buzzed immediately, and Clarisse pushed her way through the heavy oak door. She trudged up the stairs to the sixth floor, realizing for the first time in her life just how heavy a bowl of lobster salad could be.
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