Death Wears a Red Hat

by William X. Kienzle

  “You did not bring a specimen with you?”

  Diane shook her head. A look of impatience crossed the woman’s face.

  “Take this,” she said, handing Diane the bottle, then indicating by glancing at a door, “and go in there. Once you’ve put your specimen in this bottle—you do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  Diane nodded.

  “—bring it back to me.”

  Diane entered the other room. Like the reception room, its walls were stark white unrelieved by a single work of art. In the room were four gurneys, each bearing a woman draped with a white sheet. This had to be either the waiting or the recovery room. Diane felt a sense of an assembly line.

  There were no curtain separations or modesty shields. There were two toilets, in separate open cubicles. In these surroundings, it took Diane a while to produce a specimen. She did so awkwardly, spilling a small amount of urine on the outside of the bottle. Only then did she notice the empty tissue roll. There was nothing to dry either the bottle or herself.

  She returned to the reception area and handed the bottle to the receptionist, who received it with evident disgust, adding immeasurably to Diane’s embarrassment.

  “When will you know?” Diane asked softly.

  “We’ll call you in a day or so,” the woman said in her matter-of-fact tone.

  “I’d rather you didn’t. I’ll be glad to call you.”

  “Then call late tomorrow.”

  Thoroughly mortified, Diane left the clinic.

  That’s odd, she thought, nobody once mentioned the possibility that I might not be pregnant.

  Sacred Heart Seminary is an enormous basically Gothic structure in west central Detroit. It is very near the area that suffered the greatest destruction during the 1967 riot. Fundamentally, the seminary is built in the form of a square. In the central courtyard is the chapel. At each of the four corners is an added wing. At one, residence halls; at another, a gym and recreation facility; at a third, an auditorium, and at a fourth, a nuns’ residence and infirmary.

  Only a few nuns still lived at the seminary. They were all elderly and did little but help prepare the meals, mend and iron the seminarians’ clothing when it returned from the laundry, and pray.

  Many sections of the rambling building were used for nonseminary purposes or simply closed off. There were not many candidates for the priesthood in this college seminary.

  At one time, some twenty years before, the walls had bulged with seminarians.

  Now, late this Tuesday afternoon, four seminarians had just completed a vigorous game of handball and were preparing for dinner. All four were college freshmen and, like all the seminarians, were residents of the institution.

  “I have my own theory about those Red Hat Murders,” said Vito Lombardo. He stood naked before a small mirror. The towel he had used to dry himself after the shower was draped over his shoulders. He was carefully combing his thick black hair.

  “What’s that?” asked Joe Smolenski, getting into his underwear.

  “Į figure it’s a religiously oriented sociopath with homicidal tendencies.” Lombardo fancied himself a budding psychologist. He had read two textbooks on psychotherapy.

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Vito,” said Dick Kiefer, struggling into trousers that fit like a glove. “My pastor says it’s probably members of the mob rubbing each other out.”

  “What about the Catholic churches?” asked Kevin Dunne, tying his shoelaces.

  “The Mafia,” Kiefer clarified. “Italian gangsters.”

  “Watch that!” Lombardo warned.

  “I’ve been been meaning to ask you, Vito,” said Smolenski, “why is it the first thing you do after a shower is comb your hair?”

  “In case of fire,” Lombardo replied.

  “Well, I think,” said Dunne, “that it’s somebody on a lower level of the criminal community of Detroit who is simply clearing the way to the top for himself.”

  “Why the churches?” asked Smolenski.

  Dunne glanced at Lombardo. “Irish Catholics,” he said.

  “Will you look at this?” cried Kiefer. “This takes the cake!” He had taken a white, long-sleeved shirt from his laundry box.

  He now held it by the collar and let it hang out. “Remember last week?” he demanded. “Remember I had just one button left right here in the middle?”

  The others nodded.

  “Well, it’s gone,” Kiefer declared. “And look what those crazy old nuns did: they sewed up all the buttonholes!”

  It was true. Each buttonhole had been stitched shut with white thread.

  “That,” said Dunne, “is the bad news. “This,” he said, holding up a pair of undershorts, “is the good news.”

  It was anyone’s guess whether the exhibited undershorts contained any of the original cloth. They had been patched that often.

  “Personally,” Smolenski said, “I tend to agree with Vito. It’s got to be a religious fanatic.”

  “Vito,” said Dunne, pointing at an article of athletic garb hanging in Lombardo’s locker, “why in hell don’t you wash that jockstrap? If it had legs it would walk away.”

  “Yeah,” Kiefer echoed, “that thing might spread jock itch to all of us by osmosis.”

  They laughed.

  “Man,” explained the macho Lombardo, “was not made to wash clothes.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been wondering,” Smolenski mused, “why we’re not supposed to send our jockstraps in the laundry with the rest of our clothes.”

  “It’s the nuns,” Dunne explained.

  “The nuns?” Smolenski asked.

  “Yeah,” said Dunne, “the nuns don’t know what a jockstrap is for.”

  “And,” Lombardo added, “Holy Mother Church don’t want ’em to find out.”

  They laughed, closed their lockers, and headed for a dinner whose piece de resistance would be bread and peanut butter.

  “Was it because I got it right and you didn’t?” Pat Lennon asked.

  Joe Cox had returned to the apartment late Monday evening. Lennon decided it was time to bury the hatchet.

  “No, no! Hell, no!” Cox replied. “It wasn’t that. I wasn’t jealous. And it wasn’t because you got it right. Good for you for getting it right. No, it was because I got it wrong. I was just sore at myself for blowing it.”

  “Excuse the lack of modesty,” Lennon moved into the kitchen to put a couple of frozen dinners in the oven, “but without my formula for putting the heads and the hat and the statues together, you couldn’t have gotten it right. It appeared to be another Red Hat Murder and the cops didn’t call their news conference until it was too late to catch the first edition.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Cox called out more loudly so he could be heard in the kitchen. “It was the angle I took in that first edition. Claiming there was no rhyme or reason to the selection because Cabrini’s statue was too new to be part of any long-range planning. That’s what I got upset about.”

  “It wasn’t too bad, Joe.” Lennon returned to the living room and sat near Cox on the sofa. “It was only in the first edition.”

  Cox shook his head. “You haven’t been listening to the radio, watching TV, or even reading your own paper, have you?”

  “What do you mean?” She was genuinely surprised.

  “They’re not going to let me—or the Free Press—forget it. The prize-winning boy blew a big one.”

  “You’ll get over it, Joe. You’ll ride it through. You’re too good not to.”

  “That’s not all. Not only did I have a lost weekend, I didn’t do a damn thing today. Just went through the motions, nursing the all-time winningest hangover I’ve ever had.”

  “Pretty well gone now?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Well, maybe I’ll get lucky tomorrow.”

  Pat leaned toward him and winked. “Maybe you’ll get lucky tonight.”

  Colleen Farrell wound up her fictional tale of broken marriages and Catholic backgrounds.
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  Father Fred Dolson made a few more notations on his pad and slowly shook his head.

  “I fail to see any canonical reason to question the validity of either of your marriages,” Dolson concluded.

  “But Father,” Farrell protested, “my husband was almost never home. And when he did come home he beat me. My God, the marriage—if you could call it that—lasted only a few months.”

  “And my wife,” said Charlie Papkin, entering into the spirit of things, “drank, refused to care for the kids, and went out with other men. It’s a miracle we stayed together as long as we did. And we did that only for the sake of the kids.”

  “Now, you see,” Dolson used his most conciliatory tone, “you still refer to these people as your ‘husband’ and your ‘wife.’”

  “Semantics!” Farrell interjected ruefully.

  “Isn’t there some way of getting you all back together again?” asked Dolson.

  “No way whatsoever,” said Papkin. “We’re in love and we want to be married.”

  Dolson tapped his pen against the desk top for a few moments. He was uncomfortable. He did not like to be in the company of people with terminal illness or people with insoluble problems.

  “Why don’t you go talk to your own pastors?” Dolson temporized.

  “We did,” said Farrell, “but they said they couldn’t help us. Then someone told us about you and recommended we see you.”

  That, thought Dolson, is unique. No one had ever been referred to him for help by anyone.

  “Well,” Dolson tried to bring this unpleasantness to an end, “I’m afraid I’m in the same position as your pastors. I’m unable to do anything. The canon law on this is quite clear. Drunks and adulterers can contract valid marriages,” he said to Papkin, then, turning toward Farrell, “as well as wife-beaters and deserters.”

  “Thank you for your trouble, Father,” said Farrell, rising and starting toward the door.

  “Not at all, “ said Dolson, ushering them out. “I’ll keep you in my prayers.”

  Papkin and Farrell paused on the sidewalk outside Blessed Sacrament Cathedral rectory.

  “We can forget about him,” said Farrell. “That’s Mr. Noninvolvement.”

  “Yeah,” Papkin agreed, “pretty rigid on the law, too.”

  “That’s not at all unusual among priests,” Farrell said, “at least among the ones who are left. But the man we’re looking for, I’m convinced, would be willing to bend, or even break this canonical barrier to true love.” She smiled self-consciously.

  “Well, there’s one nice thing,” said Papkin as they got into his car.

  “What’s that?”

  “Father Dolson will pray for us.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Farrell.

  The faculty dining room in Sacred Heart Seminary had formerly been an open porch at the rear of the building’s second floor. Meals, of average quality, were served cafeteria-style in the now glassed-in and remodeled room.

  The faculty, once entirely clerical, was now about equally divided between priests and laypersons. Usually, nearly all the faculty and staff were present for luncheons. Such was the case today.

  There was no seating prearrangement. Faculty and staff filled the tables in the order of their arrival. Today, at lunch, three priests happened to be seated at the same table as the rector, Monsignor Albert Martin.

  “I just don’t know about this new kid,” commented Father Donald Osborn, registrar, and professor of Greek.

  “Who’s that?” asked Father Paul Burk, professor of philosophy.

  “Vito Lombardo,” said Osborn. “He looks to me as if he’ll be a troublemaker.”

  “Probably nothing wrong with the kid,” said Burk, whose premature baldness had been arrested by hair transplants. “He probably just needs a tin can tied to his tail and every time he stops running, somebody should drop-kick it.” Burk laughed in spasms, as was his fashion.

  “I tend to agree with you, Don,” said Father Ed Harkins, professor of English and director of vocations for the archdiocese. “He doesn’t show much respect for The Rule.”

  “Keep The Rule,” Martin intoned, “and The Rule will keep you.”

  “Remember the kid we expelled last year?” asked Harkins. “The one who ran a hose up three flights and attached it to a water sprinkler that he put on top of the dormitory stalls and then at midnight turned on the water?”

  “That kid showed a lot of spirit and imagination,” Burk remonstrated.

  “Well,” Harkins continued, ignoring Burk, “Lombardo reminds me of him.”

  “What’s the lad accomplished so far?” asked Martin, adding, “the season’s young.”

  “The other night,” Osborn warmed to his story as he buttered a slice of bread, “Lombardo decided to scare his buddy, Smolenski. So, while the boys were washing up before bed, he waited till Smolenski was shaving. Then he climbed up on his sink, peered over the partition, and whooped at Smolenski.”

  Burk began to laugh.

  “Did Smolenski cut himself?” Martin asked.

  “You know,” Osborn confessed, “I didn’t think to ask. But, you know, Lombardo is a pretty big kid. So, the sink gave way. Ripped right off the wall. Water everywhere.”

  Burk was about to say something when Harkins touched his arm.

  “That,” Harkins reminded, “didn’t take much imagination.”

  “By the time the janitor arrived with a wrench, all Lombardo could say was, ‘My ass is in a sling!’”

  “I trust it was,” said Martin.

  “It was,” said Osborn.

  “You know, if we’re not careful,” said Burk, “all we’ll send out into the world as priests will be automatons. They won’t have any spirit or leadership qualities.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” Martin said, “but if it were possible to produce automatons, I think Archbishop Boyle would be grateful.”

  “You know,” said Burk very seriously, “I don’t think he would.”

  “You may be right,” Martin admitted, “maybe the Archbishop can live with a measure of ambivalence. Maybe I can’t.”

  The checkout clerk requested and received a fifteen-minute relief.

  Wearing her A&P uniform, she left the Highland Park supermarket and walked quickly to the pay phone near Second Avenue. She looked in all directions before entering the booth. No one seemed to notice her. She consulted a card, then dialed.

  “Services, Incorporated,” an emotionless voice announced.

  “Is this the nurse?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Diane Garson. I was in to see you yesterday. You said I could call today—about my test.”

  “Oh, yes. Just a moment.”

  There was a pause while the nurse consulted her files.

  “Yes, Miss Garson,” she stressed the ‘Miss.’ “Your test turned out positive. You are pregnant,” she lied.

  Diane said nothing. It was as if her world had come to an end.

  “Miss Garson? Miss Garson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to have that taken care of? I can schedule you for tomorrow.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “For someone in your condition and age, not long. A couple of hours. If you can arrange to take the morning off …”

  Diane thought of all those women in the reception office and the four in the next room, and mentally placed herself in the lineup. It was not a pleasant prospect.

  “Miss Garson? Miss Garson?”

  “All right. What time do you want me there?”

  “The earlier the better. We open at seven.”

  Diane silently vowed she’d be there when the doors opened. “One more thing . ..” She hesitated.

  “What?” The nurse’s tone left no doubt she wanted this conversation concluded.

  “Is … is it really safe?”

  “You have nothing to worry about.”

  Colleen Farrell and Charles Papkin sat opposite Father Joseph
Sheehan in his Spartan office in the Gabriel Richard Building.

  It was late in the afternoon and Farrell and Papkin, for the second time that day, had told a priest every lurid detail of their made-up marriages. Marriages that could be described only as unqualified disasters for both.

  Early in her narration, Sheehan had busily taken notes. About halfway through her delivery, he had stopped writing and simply leaned back and listened.

  Now he leaned forward, elbows on the desk.

  “My gracious,” he exclaimed, “you people have been to hell and back, haven’t you? I suppose the divorces were messy?”

  A bit taken aback by the priest’s sincere sympathy, both Papkin and Farrell agreed that yes, their divorces had indeed been messy.

  “I’m afraid the Church is not going to be much help to you now, either. You haven’t got a prayer before the Church court. After all you’ve gone through, I wouldn’t want to send you to the Tribunal. It would be messy, costly, almost interminable, and in the end futile.

  “But that’s neither here nor there. You intend to get married anyway, don’t you?”

  They nodded that, yes, that was their intention.

  “Well then, why don’t you? Your consciences tell you your previous attempts at marriage were nice tries but no good. Your consciences tell you you are free to marry, right?”

  They nodded.

  “Then get married in some appropriate fashion. A minister, a judge. Then, if you wish, just continue living as Catholics. Go to Mass, communion, the works. You may be tempted to mention your civil marriage in confession—just to clear the decks. Don’t! It’s not a sin if you follow your conscience. And that’s what you’re doing.”

  “And that’s it?” Papkin asked.

  “That’s it,” said Sheehan, “unless you want to stay to dinner. If you do that, you may meet the Archbishop. And that has a habit of stifling conversation at table.”

  “No, no,” said Papkin as they all rose, “thank you ever so much.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d say a prayer for me,” Sheehan said as Papkin and Farrell left his office.

  “I think we’ve got a hot prospect,” Papkin said as he and Farrell walked up Michigan Avenue toward the parking lot.