The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  “So that was due process of law,” he murmured, gazing out the car window at the mean shops along Washington Street. Anger at Strana-han’s stupidity flared once more, then lost its heat in a cooler tide of reflection. Julia Splaine’s question, “Why should my Jimmy be so bad, and my Jemmy so good?” provided more meditative fare. Sons of the same parents; products of the same environment—and here was Jemmy heading for the priesthood and Jimmy heading for the penitentiary. If you threw Jeremy Splaine overboard in mid-ocean, he’d strike out for heaven’s beach—and make it, too. Whereas if you tossed Jimmy into a horsepond he’d sink without a struggle into the muck at the bottom.

  Strange.

  Along Washington Street, bums with a dime were already gathering in gaslit speakeasies, and bums without a dime were standing in hallways or shuffling along on snowy sidewalks. This was the South End, the terrain of down-and-outers, the irrevocably lost. At the stop nearest the Cathedral, the trolley halted to take on a passenger. Ding-ding. As the conductor gave his go-ahead signal to the motorman, George Fermoyle saw his sister Mona standing on the steps of the Cathedral. By the sputtering blue glitter of a street lamp, he could see that she was coatless, hatless, pregnant. And she was holding out her hands to catch a flake of falling snow.

  George plunged through the crowded aisle, shouting, “Stop the car!” By the time the conductor pulled his bell rope, the trolley had traveled fifty yards. George raced back to the Cathedral where he had seen his sister standing in the snow. She was gone.

  “Mona, Mona,” he shouted. “Where are you?” He dashed into the church, ran irreverently up and down the aisles, then found himself again on the steps of the Cathedral. At the corner he saw a shop bearing the sign, “Farmacia Espanola.” He burst through the door and interrupted the proprietor in the act of compounding a prescription.

  “Have you seen a girl—a woman with black hair—no coat or hat—around here?”

  Mr. Hernandez remembered the girl. “Fifteen, twenty minutes ago, she had a hot chocolate here. But her hair was not black.”

  George accepted the correction. “Blond, then?”

  “Say half and half. At the tips blond, at the roots black.”

  “Do you know which way she went? Where she lives?”

  The pharmacist’s shrug said, “One knows nothing about such matters in South End. Excuse me, Señor—my customers.”

  Mona’s nearness had the almost palpable quality of a person seen in a dream. By closing his eyes George could feel her presence; opening them was to grasp at shadows. And he fumbled among these shadows until he struck the solid idea:

  Call Stuffy.

  From Hernandez’ pay station he phoned the Cardinal’s residence, asked for Father Fermoyle. A clerically modulated voice said: “Father Fermoyle has just left his office. You’ll be able to reach him at the Cathedral rectory before dinner.”

  George caught Stephen entering the rectory, looking very handsome in a white muffler, black overcoat, and suède gloves. “Salve, advocate!” cried Steve. “But prithee why so pale, young sinner?”

  George laid an arresting hand on his brother’s arm. “Stuff, I’ve just seen Mona.”

  Stephen’s forward motion ceased. “Where?”

  “On the steps of the Cathedral, standing in the snow. I caught a glimpse of her from the trolley car. She had no coat on, and she’s pregnant.”

  Stephen pulled his brother into the reception room. “Begin at the beginning—tell me everything.” George told the whole story, ending with Hernandez’ comment on Mona’s partly bleached hair.

  “That clinches it, George. It’s Mona, all right. We’ll find her if we have to knock on every door in the South End.”

  STEPHEN’S FIRST MOVE was to request the Cardinal for a leave of absence, and he decided to make the request in person. He found Glennon finishing a solitary dinner of pressed duck and a bottle of his favorite Chateau Cos d’Estournel. The Cardinal was in one of his lonely moods. “Join me in a thimbleful of this,” he said, pointing to the vintage bottle. “It’s the last of its kind. There’ll never be another red Graves year like ’81.”

  “I’m afraid it would be wasted on me, Your Eminence.”

  “A sip of port then. Try a glass of that Alto Douro on the sideboard. Product of Portugal. Tawny, very dry. … What’s the trouble, my boy?”

  Stephen had not intended to drag His Eminence into the domestic affairs of the Fermoyles. He had hoped that the simple explanation “family crisis” would be enough. But Glennon’s lonely mood drew him in, and while the Cardinal finished off his wine, Stephen recounted Mona’s unfortunate history.

  “How do you propose to locate her?” asked Glennon.

  “My two brothers and I will make a house-to-house canvass of the South End. She’s hiding there, frightened and ashamed. We’ll knock on every door between Tremont Street and the New Haven tracks till we find her.”

  The Cardinal shook his head with “that-won’t-do” emphasis. “I’m afraid you don’t know the South End, Stephen. It’s a Sargasso Sea—stagnant, chartless. In half an hour you’d get lost among its alleys and dead-end courts.” Large sympathy was in Glennon’s hazel eyes. “Why not call in the police?”

  “I wanted to keep the matter as quiet as possible. Can’t you imagine the headlines: ‘Sister of Cardinal’s Secretary Sought by Police’?”

  “Discretion is an excellent medicine, Stephen. But don’t take an overdose of it. I suggest that we get in touch with my friend Inspector Shea. Phone him at police headquarters and say that the Cardinal would like to see him at once.”

  The Flemish clock in the front hall was bonging eight when Hugh Shea, hard hat across his knees, sat down on a gilt chair in the Cardinal’s music room. He heard Father Fermoyle’s story, then massaged the nap of his derby before venturing comment.

  “Searching for your sister in the South End,” he began, “will be like trying to find the proverbial needle’s eye. A mixed metaphor, you’ll say, but it’s exactly what I mean. There are forty thousand people down there—floaters and drifters most of them—as nameless, faceless a population as ever slipped through the fingers of the law.” Shea rubbed up his hat as though currying a fine horse. “The region is a jungle of abortion mills, out-of-bound apothecaries, and fake doctors, all operating together. The drugstores sell morphine, cocaine, ergot, and cantharides—the latter, begging Your Lordship’s pardon, better known to the trade as ‘Spanish fly.’”

  “A pharmaceutic dangerous to health as well as morals,” observed Glennon.

  Hugh Shea affirmed the Cardinal’s opinion with a vigorous rub at his derby. “But the drug traffic is merely a twig on the tree, Your Eminence. The phony doctors are the root we’re striking at. With neither diploma nor license they practice their murderous trade on ignorant girls drawn from the brothels and cheap dance halls in the neighborhood.”

  Stephen shuddered at the Inspector’s unconscious description of Mona. Shea went on. “The Mayor has given orders to crack down on the whole business, and I’ve detailed six of my best men to the task of collecting evidence. Much of it will be petty stuff, but if we could lay our hands on the rascal who calls himself Dr. Panfilo Echavarria”—the professional man hunter’s glint lighted Shea’s eye—”I’d feel that the campaign was a success. He’s the prince of tomcats … the master abortionist of them all. Police from Richmond to Montreal are looking for the knave, but he travels fast and has a bagful of aliases.” Shea exhaled fervently. “I’d give a year off my pension to nab the fellow.”

  The Inspector rose from the edge of his gilt chair and turned to Stephen. “Rest easy, Father. I’ll instruct my men to keep an eye peeled for your sister. We’ll search till we find her.”

  “Thank you, Inspector,” said Stephen. “You won’t object if my brothers and I make our own search at the same time?”

  Hugh Shea permitted himself a policeman’s paraphrase of St. Paul: “ The harvest is large, but the workers are few.’ If you had a hundred brothers, F
ather Fermoyle, they wouldn’t be too many. … Keep in touch with me for the next few days.”

  With lay piety Shea began a genuflection—an obeisance that Glennon staved off with a man-to-man handshake. “Thanks, Hugh,” he said gratefully. “Do what you can in this matter. It is close to my heart.”

  With the Cardinal’s blessing on his back, Stephen went straight to the Cathedral rectory, where George and Bernie awaited him. In the bare reception room they mapped out their campaign. Dividing the South End into three roughly equal parts, they each took a section and pledged themselves to make searching inquiries at every house in their district. The rectory was to be field headquarters, and the brothers agreed to meet there every four hours for interim reports and conferences.

  “Don’t you think we should cross Hernandez’ palm with silver?” suggested George. “Mona might show up there again. If she does, our Spanish friend might get her address or even detain her.”

  “We’ve got to stop thinking of Hernandez as a friend,” said Stephen. “From what Inspector Shea tells me, none of these Spanish pharmacies are above suspicion. Still, you’ve got a point there, George. A five-dollar bill might keep him on our side.”

  It was ten o’clock on the evening of January 18 when the three brothers plunged into the tideless swamp of Boston’s South End. Stephen took the area between Canton and West Concord Streets—a sieve through which a mixed population of Spaniards, Puerto Ricans, and Negroes drained into an anonymous sewer of poverty. He knocked on the doors of fifty-cent lodginghouses and basement speakeasies, always asking the same question: “Have you seen a young woman, twenty-two years old, about to have a baby, around here?”

  Five hundred assorted negatives answered his query. Along wretched streets, up and down unlighted stairways, he tramped for two days and nights. Of drunks, derelicts, panderers, prostitutes, stew bums, and panhandlers he saw thousands. But never a trace of Mona.

  George and Bernie were equally luckless; faithful as retrievers, they combed their districts and turned up not a single clue. Nor did Shea’s men do any better. They dragged in a dozen girls, some far gone in pregnancy, but none of them was Mona Fermoyle.

  “We need a break,” said the Inspector to Stephen. “And I define a break as something that comes after you’ve sawed through ninety-nine strands in the hundred-wired cable of difficulty. Let’s keep on sawing.” Shea assigned another half-dozen detectives and twenty extra patrolmen to the district, while he himself concentrated on the illegal traffic in abortion-inducing drugs. Three pharmacists were arrested in the act of selling ergot without a prescription, and seven phony doctors were rounded up. All of which enhanced Inspector Shea’s reputation and provided several heartening columns in the Boston papers—without turning up a single trace of Mona Fermoyle.

  STEPHEN’S LEAVE OF ABSENCE had been twice extended. On the fourth night of the search he decided that in fairness to the Cardinal he could not remain away from his secretarial post much longer. He was a haggard, discouraged priest as he finished a midnight cup of coffee with George and Bernie. Red-eyed with fatigue, George was scanning the Globe.

  “Your friend Orselli sails tomorrow at eleven A.M.,” he reported.

  Orselli! Was the Italian Captain still in the world? “I forgot all about him,” said Steve listlessly. “I didn’t even phone him. His Florentine pride will be hurt, I’m afraid.”

  “His Florentine intelligence will understand when you tell him what you’ve been doing,” said George. “Well, men, I’m going to get my daily dose of ‘No news, Senor’ at Hernandez’ drugstore. Anybody coming?”

  They walked along Washington Street to the Spanish Pharmacy. “I need a pack of cigarettes,” said Bernie. “I’ll go in with you.”

  Weary to exhaustion, Stephen leaned against the corner lamppost. Bones, muscles, and brain cried out for rest. He was in the act of making a solemn vow to the Blessed Virgin that he would abstain from meat for a year if he could find Mona, when Bernie joggled his elbow.

  “Hey, Steve … Take a peek through the window. A friend of ours is inside.”

  Peering through the dirty pane of Hernandez’ drugstore, Stephen saw Ramón Gongaro. High-heeled, wax-mustached, very spruce in his chesterfield and velvet fedora, the dancer was engaged in confidential business with the proprietor. A doctor’s instrument bag lay on the showcase beside him. Stephen watched Gongaro stuff some phials into the bag, pass Hernandez some money. Then with a caballero farewell, Gongaro started for the door of the pharmacy.

  Literally he walked into the arms of the three brothers waiting at the door.

  Stephen laid a hand on the shoulder of the dancing man’s chesterfield. “We want to talk to you, Gongaro. You’d better come quietly.”

  Gongaro put up a show of indignation. “Let me go … I’ll tell the police.”

  “You’ll tell us first,” said Stephen.

  They led the terrified dancer down a side street and turned into an alley near the railroad tracks. George and Bernie pinned his wrists and shoulders to the brick wall of a warehouse. Stephen did the talking.

  “Where’s Mona?” he began.

  The Spaniard’s teeth chattered like dice in a cup. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since two months.”

  “Where did you see her last?”

  “In Troy. We—separated there.”

  “You mean you abandoned her because she was going to have a baby.”

  Hidalgo honor stiffened Gongaro. “I asked her to have an abortion.” His professional vanity betrayed him. “I offered to do it myself.”

  George Fermoyle’s arm went back at full cock. “You bastard!” His fist exploded against the Spaniard’s jaw. The blow bounced Gongaro’s head off the wall, and he slumped to the ground.

  “A pretty business,” said Stephen. “Our chief witness is now out cold.”

  At the entrance to the alley, silhouetted against the arc light, appeared the bulky form of a patrolman, night stick raised.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Stephen stepped forward, all his teeth in a smile, his Roman collar gleaming. “Our friend is a bit under the weather, Officer. You know how it is—spirit willing, flesh weak.”

  At the sight of Stephen’s Roman collar, the cop grinned. “Some can take it, Father; some can’t. Could I be getting your friend a cab?”

  “That would be kind of you, Officer.”

  The patrolman was turning away when he remembered something. “I suppose you’ve heard the news?”

  “What news?”

  “The Pope is dead. Passed away an hour ago. May his soul rest in heaven tonight.”

  Above the patrolman’s pieties, Stephen could hear Glennon roaring: “Where’s Father Fermoyle? The Pope dies, Peter’s throne stands empty, cardinals from all over the world start their journeys to Rome. Bags must be packed, steamship tickets bought—and my secretary is lally-gagging around the South End. Fetch him, I say. Bring him here within the hour.”

  Angels and ministers of grace defend me! thought Stephen. But I must find Mona first. …

  He ran back to his brothers standing helplessly over the unconscious dancer. “Search him,” said Stephen. “He may have papers that will tell us something.”

  George thrust his hand into the inner pocket of Gongaro’s coat and drew out a wallet and a small red address book. In the wallet were some obscene photographs, several hundred dollars, and a collection of business cards. Among the latter Stephen found a dozen bearing the legend:

  DR. PANFILO ECHAVARRÍA

  SPECIALIST

  (By Appointment Only)

  Ramón Gongaro and Panfilo Echavarria were the same man! “Poor Mona.”

  George was examining the red notebook containing names and addresses from all parts of the country. “It would take six months to check these,” he said gloomily.

  “Look through his bag. There may be something there.”

  The professional bag was stuffed with gaudy shirts and neckties, some unmarked phials of m
edicine, and a mixed clutter of surgical instruments. Shea would be glad to have them as evidence, but they were valueless to the brothers Fermoyle.

  “Here’s a letter,” cried Bernie. “I found it in his overcoat pocket, all crumpled up as though he meant to throw it away. It’s written in some foreign language.”

  Under the arc light Stephen read the illiterate scrawl: “No puedo darle comida a la paloma si no manda veinte pesos” The letter was signed “G. Lasquez.”

  “What does it say, Steve?”

  Stephen translated: “I cannot feed the pigeon any more corn unless you send me twenty dollars.”

  “A pigeon-fancier,” said George disgustedly.

  “Pigeon!” Excitement mounted in Steve’s voice. “That was Gongaro’s pet name for Mona. I heard him call her ‘pigeon’ in the dance hall. Was this letter in an envelope, Bernie?”

  “Yes.” Bernie handed his brother an envelope addressed to Dr. Panfilo Echavarria, General Delivery, Boston. Hopefully Stephen looked for a return address on the back flap. Not a line. The writer of the letter had been too shrewd for such an obvious giveaway.

  “Another dead end,” said Stephen. “Extract of nothingness, triply compounded.”

  “Wait a minute, Stuff.” George was piecing together the tags of evidence in his hand. “That pigeon letter was signed ‘G. Lasquez.’ Now if we could only find a ‘G. Lasquez’ in the red address book …” His finger ran down the L’s. “‘Labbiano, Albany, New York … Langenstein, Richmond, Virginia …’ holy mackerel, here’s a Lasquez, first name ‘Guiomir.’”

  “Any address?”

  George snapped the book shut. “5 Stanhope Lane … Boston! It’s a chance, Stuffy.”