Thy Brother's Wife

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed. “She’s out. I’ll have to carry her.” He lifted her up and was surprised at how light she was, nothing but an innocent and bedraggled little child. He staggered toward the doorway and heard the crackle of flames in the corridor.

  Then he was in the Reservoir again and the Chinese were attacking. He heard not the wail of the fire sirens but the screaming of the charging enemy. He saw not the wall of the room glowing red, before it burst into flames, but the flares breaking the night darkness above the cold waters of the Reservoir.

  In his terrified imagination he saw himself running down the stairwell with a naked drugged-out nineteen-year-old girl in his arms. It would be the end of everything, everything he had worked for all his life.

  Without any hesitation he threw the unconscious girl back on her bed, wrapped the towels around his face, yanked open the door of room 1510, and, body bent over, ran desperately for the stairs as the flames seemed to race along the corridor in pursuit of him.

  On the fourteenth floor, people were emerging from their rooms, frightened, confused, uncertain what to do, and already beginning to cough from the smoke. Congressman Cronin took charge of the fourteenth floor, since many members of his staff were on it, and with cool efficiency organized its evacuation.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  1976

  At seven o’clock in the morning Nora was awakened in her bedroom at Oakland Beach by the telephone. “What’s wrong?” she asked when she heard Paul’s voice. She was suddenly tense.

  “Everything’s all right,” he reassured her. “I wanted to call you before someone else did or before you heard it on the news. There was a fire here at the hotel last night. The upper six stories were burned out. They managed to evacuate everyone and there don’t seem to be any fatalities—some people in the hospital with smoke inhalation, that’s all.”

  “You’re sure everyone’s all right?” Nora was shaking her head to make sure she really was awake.

  “Everyone’s fine. They even think I’m a hero. The floor I was on was the one that was in the most danger. I helped get everybody out.”

  “Oh, Paul, I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “Well, I am too,” he said. “I’ll call you again later and let you know how things are.”

  The seven-thirty news on the Today Show showed pictures of the upper stories of the Barrington Hotel, blazing red against the Caribbean sky. It also carried interviews with a number of guests in the hotel, most of them union leaders and their families, praising Congressman Paul Cronin for his quick thinking and his cool nerve under pressure. Thank God I wasn’t there, Nora said to herself. I’m sure I would have panicked.

  She was making herself a second cup of coffee when Eileen, deathly pale, joined her in the kitchen.

  “Nothing to worry about, Eileen,” Nora said. “Dad’s all right. He just called. Everyone escaped from the hotel alive.”

  “Not everyone, Mom. I just heard a special report. They found Nicole’s body in a room on the fifteenth floor.”

  The evening news showed a grief-stricken Congressman Cronin discussing the tragedy of Nicole Shields’ death. “She was so young, so energetic, she had such a wonderful future. I can’t help but hold myself in some way responsible for her death.”

  Then the anchorman was on the television screen looking like a slightly prosperous undertaker. “Late word from San Juan indicates a probable reason why Nicole Shields did not escape from her room on the fifteenth floor. The medical examiner reports that she had taken a heavy dose of cocaine and amphetamines and was unconscious when the fire engulfed her room. The fifteenth floor of the Barrington Hotel was almost entirely unoccupied. The only other person with a room on that floor was another member of Congressman Cronin’s campaign staff, who was fortunately in the coffee shop at the time of the fire.”

  * * *

  Tears came easily to Paul at Nicole’s funeral, although he did not bother to ask himself for what he was weeping. It was too bad Nicole had to die, but so far everything else had gone well. He had been the first to notice that Nicole was missing after the sun rose over the Caribbean. He had raced up to her room with one of the San Juan Police Department inspectors. Together they had discovered the body lying on what was left of the bed in the smoke-blackened room. Paul’s nausea at the stench and smell were authentic enough. He had insisted on staying with the body while the police inspector went downstairs for medical personnel. This gave him time to look around the room for the one article of clothing he had forgotten the night before. He found his necktie half under the chair cushion, stuffed it into his pocket, and waited for the police to return.

  The only things that unnerved him during the difficult day were the presence of Chris Waverly at the press conferences and the strange expression on Helen Colter’s face. Chris had come to the convention to cover his speech. Her presence always unsettled him, and he was shaken by her whispered comment. “You’re a hero again, huh, lover boy? Whenever you’re a hero, other people seem to die.”

  Helen was harder to figure out. She seemed to be watching him uncertainly, as though wondering if he knew something more about Nicole’s death. Well, she could not prove that he had ever been in Nicole’s room at all, much less that he had stayed there until the fire had spread. Still, she had seen him on the fifteenth floor. If she should take a notion to talk to anyone.…

  * * *

  The grand ballroom of the Midland Hotel in Chicago was filled with a laughing, expectant crowd. It was obvious to Sean that everyone knew Congressman Paul Cronin would win an overwhelming victory. The totals on the giant blackboard on the stage showed a lead that was increasing every minute. The prediction of a 450,000-vote victory now seemed reasonable.

  Sean did not want to be on the platform with the Senator-elect and his family. The suggestion of a union between Church and State in such a tableau did not seem appropriate. He was happy, nonetheless, about Paul’s victory, happy especially for Nora and the kids, who had worked hard during the final six weeks of the campaign.

  Nora’s preoccupation with the election did not deter her from her new project of rehabilitating Sean. He grinned wryly—discreetly tailored suits ordered for him by Nora, lunch once a week, a new-style haircut about which he was given little choice.

  Superficially, he felt more at ease, but his deep bafflement was not resolved. He was drifting closer to resigning from the priesthood. Yet he laughed more and slept better and found that a smile came more quickly to his lips. Not only Jimmy McGuire but the younger priests on the chancery office staff kidded him when he became moody and melancholy. “Isn’t it about time you had lunch with Nora again?” one of them would say.

  Sean recalled the occasion when, during his last visit to Rome for a meeting of the Ecumenical Committee to which, for some obscure reason he did not comprehend, he had been appointed, he had supped with the Alessandrinis. They were as handsome as ever with their jet-black hair, now dusted with fine white snowflakes. “Can you imagine, càro mio,” protested the Principessa, “I now have two daughters in their late teens who wear jeans and T-shirts and chew gum and listen to rock and roll and talk like Americans?”

  “Black nobility who talk like Americans!” said Sean. He was trying to get used once again to Campari and soda.

  “You will, of course, be the next Archbishop of Chicago. Everyone in Rome says it. There is no doubt about it.”

  “I will not be the next Archbishop of Chicago,” he said forcefully. “In fact, I’m probably going to leave the priesthood.”

  Francésco seemed dismayed, but Angèlica merely smiled knowingly. “You and Montini will do so on the same day, càro mio.”

  The thought had become more precise and more demanding in the months since that quiet evening off the Piazza Farnese. He had no idea what he would do after he left the priesthood, but resignation seemed to be the only way out of the agonizing dilemma that now beset him. Nora’s kindness had opened to him the possibility of a life free
from the burden that he had known since ordination. There were other things a man could do besides mediate conflicts between pastors and curates, attend insipid committee meetings, and screen stacks of complaining letters that seemed to get higher every day. Sean demanded a sign. If one didn’t come quickly, he would leave the priesthood. Indeed, if they tried to force the archbishopric upon him, that would be enough of a negative sign and he would certainly leave.

  * * *

  There was a tumultuous ovation as Senator-elect Paul Cronin emerged on the platform with his family.

  Chris Waverly listened to Paul’s victory statement with wry amusement. Her resentment toward the new Senator had long since ebbed. Chris could carry a grudge for longer than most people, but living for vengeance was ridiculous. She occasionally hung around the Cronin campaign because of a vague, unspecified hunch that there was something just a little bit missing in Paul Cronin. There was no substance at the center of him. Someday he might provide a story. As the senatorial campaign progressed, however, Chris wondered if perhaps she was wrong. Paul Cronin had matured and run a careful, intelligent, neatly calculated campaign. His response to the tragedy in the Barrington Hotel had been, in fact, precisely the proper mixture of grace and sadness. Yet there was a tiny pinprick of doubt that would not go away.

  “One final word,” said the handsome, triumphant Senator-elect from the podium. “There is one person not here today whom we all miss and who should share the credit for our victory. I’m sure that in that land of happiness to which we all hope to go, Nicole Shields is celebrating with the rest of us.”

  The applause was again enthusiastic. As Chris turned to leave the ballroom, she noticed one of the young women on the Senator’s staff. The girl’s face was taut with a mixture of grief and anger. Tears were flowing down her cheeks.

  “Something wrong, kid?” asked Chris sympathetically.

  “The hypocritical sonofabitch,” Helen Colter said. “He was in bed with Nicole when that fire started.”

  * * *

  Tom Shields had agreed to see Chris Waverly only because she insisted she had something of personal importance to tell him. His hands trembled as he read the typed copy of her interview with Helen Colter that she had handed him without a word. “He killed them both,” he said faintly. “He killed my wife and my daughter.”

  “Your wife too?”

  “My wife too. He used Maggie as a convenience and broke her heart in the process. She attempted suicide more to gain his attention than anything else. The last time she left a note, not for me but for him.”

  Chris’s head was whirling. “Do you have that note, Dr. Shields?” she asked gently.

  “No.” His response was bitter. “I gave it to his brother, Bishop Cronin, and he destroyed it.”

  “I see. How can you be sure then that they had an affair?”

  Shields walked over to the wall, shoved aside the picture, spun the combination on a wall safe, and took out a leather-bound book. “She kept a diary. I found it among her things long after the funeral. Just like Maggie to forget about the diary. It records in very considerable detail her escapades with Paul Cronin.”

  “I see.” Chris asked to see the diary.

  “It’s all yours,” Tom Shields said. “Here, take the damn thing, do whatever you want with it.”

  “Are you sure, Dr. Shields? You and your wife and your other children might get hurt.”

  “I don’t give a goddamn,” Tom exploded. “I’m sick of Paul Cronin. It’s time somebody exposed him for what he is.”

  * * *

  The night he was sworn in as a member of the United States Senate, Paul Cronin woke up screaming. Nora put her arms around him and crooned softly and sweetly. Her power to exorcise Paul’s terrible nightmares seemed to be waning. Now the Chinese attack at the Reservoir and the burning of the Barrington Hotel had blended into one nightmare, and the pain of the imagined Chinese bayonet in his stomach haunted him during the day as well as at night.

  It took Paul a long time to calm down. And then, exhausted and breathing heavily, he finally relaxed in her embrace. “God, it’s terrible, Nora,” he whimpered.

  “I don’t understand it, Paul. Both in Korea and in San Juan you saved people’s lives. Why do you have the nightmares? Maybe you ought to see someone.”

  “That wouldn’t do any good.” He laughed weakly. “There isn’t all that much difference between a hero and a coward, you know. It would have been so easy to panic in both those situations.”

  “The dreams are an alternate scenario?” she asked.

  “Something like that.”

  Nora was worried about Paul’s dreams. If he wouldn’t go for help, maybe she should.

  * * *

  “You’re suggesting, Mr. Connors,” Chris Waverly said, “that Senator Cronin may have ordered the execution of Joe Makuch?”

  Chris had spent an exhausting few weeks tracking down Paul Cronin’s old Marine Corps buddies. After reading Maggie’s diary and interviewing Helen Colter, it was a short jump to the conclusion that the nightmares Paul used to have about Korea could be related to yet another skeleton hiding in his rapidly filling closet. It had not been hard for her to find Steven Connors in Atlanta and to check out his background and credentials.

  Now, sitting in the cool, crisp, modern office of the Connors Construction Company, she knew she had hit the jackpot.

  “I knew Makuch was blackmailing Paul,” the handsome black man said. “He bragged to me about it. I didn’t approve, mind you, but it was none of my business. Anyway, I figured that Cronin owed somebody something after running out on us at the Reservoir and then getting a Medal of Honor for it.”

  “That doesn’t prove that he had Makuch killed. The autopsy showed that he died of a heart attack.”

  “I can’t prove it, exactly. But Makuch called me the morning he died and said he was sure there were people following him. He said there had been a strange look in Paul’s eyes the last time he paid the blackmail money to him.”

  “Are you willing to testify that Makuch told you that Senator Cronin had paid blackmail to him for twenty years?”

  “Yes, I’m willing to say that,” said Steven Connors. “I’m reluctant to do it. I don’t want the publicity. But if Paul has his eye on the presidency … he’s a coward, a phony, a hypocrite. I could not—I simply will not let him preside over a country in which my children and grandchildren must live.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Connors. You’re a brave man.”

  “Or a coward for waiting so long. You will get him, Miss Waverly?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll get him, all right.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  1977

  On a Friday in the middle of Lent in 1977, Bishop Sean Cronin granted an off-the-record interview to Chris Waverly. He had no particular desire to see her. Her reputation was that of an able but acid-penned investigative reporter. Sean was afraid that she might have somehow found out about him and Nora and intended to use that information to embarrass Paul. Moreover, the tension of waiting for the appointment of a new archbishop—long delayed—was beginning to tell on his nerves and that of all the priests in the chancery and the diocese.

  “Yes, Miss Waverly,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  Chris Waverly’s hair had obviously been touched up to keep it blond. She was a hard-looking woman, yet still attractive. “I’ll be blunt, Bishop. I have enough information about your brother to have him expelled from the United States Senate. Moreover, I have information that you have cooperated with him in at least one of his escapades, sufficient information, I should tell you, to frustrate any plans you might have of becoming the next Archbishop of Chicago.”

  “I believe that’s a technique used by investigative reporters called ‘intimidate them with the first question.’ I don’t intimidate, Miss Waverly.”

  “Intimidation or not, Bishop, I can destroy you.”

  “No, you can’t. Nothing can destroy me. I
am not interested in being Archbishop of Chicago. I intend to refuse the appointment if it’s offered to me. If it is forced on me, I will resign from the priesthood. Now where does your intimidation get you?”

  Chris Waverly regarded Sean intently. “Do you deny that you persuaded Dr. Thomas Shields to give you the farewell letter his wife wrote to your brother? Do you deny you destroyed that letter?”

  “Of course I don’t deny it. Why should I? It was an embarrassing letter for all concerned. Tom didn’t have the heart to destroy it, so I did it for him.”

  “Do you deny that your brother had an affair with Maggie Shields?”

  “I am not privy, Miss Waverly, to my brother’s sex life. I don’t believe a word of what you say, but I certainly have no proof that it’s not true.”

  “Do you deny that your brother was in bed with Nicole Shields when the fire in the Barrington Hotel started? And that he paid blackmail for twenty years to a man named Makuch who knew he had been a coward and not a hero in Korea?”

  “That’s absurd. Let’s end this interview, Miss Waverly.” Sean stood up. “I can see no useful purpose in continuing it.”

  “You’re different from Paul, Bishop,” Chris said. “You may be an honorable man and be telling the truth. I’m not sure. But your precious brother is in very hot water, and unless you’re careful you’re going to be in hot water with him.” She extended a business card. “Here’s my card. Please call me if you change your mind.”

  “Get out,” Sean said quietly. Chris Waverly shrugged and dropped the card on the floor as she left his office.

  Seething with anger, Sean picked up the card, tore it in two, and threw it in the wastebasket. Then, after a few moments of brooding anger, he fished the pieces out of the basket, stared at them grimly, and put them together with Scotch tape.

  “Jimmy.” He buzzed the chancellor’s office. “See if you can keep the world away from me for a few hours. I have to make a trip to Washington. And, by the way, it has nothing to do with who will be your next archbishop.”