Chameleon fk-13

by William X. Kienzle

  All the other thousands of pronouncements by Popes and Popes-with-bishops fall into the category of the ordinary magisterium, or ordinary teaching office of the Church. What to do with that?

  Liberal Catholics tend to regard papal pronouncements as being extremely important messages from a unique and well informed source. Only for a most serious reason would such a Catholic eventually disagree with the Pope. But such disagreement is possible.

  Not so in the eyes of CUF, or, for that matter, Church law. In effect, if a Catholic disagrees with the ordinary magisterium, he’s not excommunicated; he’s just wrong. And he is advised to go away and pray a while until he sees the light.

  Arnold Carson gave CUF a shot and found it inadequate. All very well to write letters to newspapers, call radio talk shows, and argue at meetings. But Carson found such comparative inaction frustrating. He had always believed one had to hit something to get its attention.

  So Carson joined the Tridentine Society, so-named for the Latin word for Trent, as in the Council of Trent, Catholicism’s legislative response to the Reformation. Trent (A.D. 1545–1563) was the precursor to Vatican I.

  The Tridentines were so much in sync with Carson’s makeup that in no time he became their leader. Under him they became, though small, yet, as they say in sports parlance, a force to be reckoned with.

  Arnie Carson was not the type of general to position himself at the rear of the troops and send orders to the front. He was always in the vanguard-as he had been this evening at the funeral home.

  On short notice, only Carson and his two most faithful lieutenants, Dwight Morgan and Angelo Luca, were able to assemble less than peaceably outside the Ubly Funeral Home, wherein Helen Donovan’s wake was to be held.

  The Tridentines had carried hastily and crudely made signs communicating the general theme that the archdiocese of Detroit equated whores and nuns. And that Cardinal Boyle’s message to his flock was to “Live it up and whore.”

  They had done their very best to be obnoxious to the clergy and religious, who tried without much success to ignore them. Father Cletus Bash had phoned his civic counterpart, the spokesman for Maynard Cobb, mayor of Detroit. That intercession had attracted several blue-and-white police cars whose officers had orders to find some lawful way of moving the troublemakers out.

  Thus when the small contingent of hookers arrived and gave as good as they got, the Tridentines-mainly Carson-transformed picketing to a contact sport, in which the police joined. The result: Morgan and Luca heeded the police invitation to “Drag ass outta here!” Carson chose to challenge the order and thus capped the evening in Detroit Memorial Hospital with a banged-up cheek and a cut lip.

  Carson had been stitched up and left in the cubicle for a while to make certain there were no unforeseen complications. He now sat on the gurney, feet dangling over the side, as his companions offered moral support.

  Carson moved gingerly, stretching his legs to touch the floor.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be getting off the bed so soon, Arnie,” Morgan said.

  “Yeah, there’s no hurry; why don’t you wait a while?” Luca agreed.

  Carson slid back onto the gurney. “Maybe I will wait just a couple more minutes or so. You know, if I get a concussion or something like that, I will sue. Did you get the badge number of that cop that hit me with his nightstick?”

  “Geez, no, Arnie,” Morgan said. “I couldn’t get close to him. The other cops were holding me down.”

  Actually, Morgan and Luca had obeyed promptly each and every police order and thus had been nowhere near Carson, who had conducted a doomed offensive against a superior force.

  “It’s okay,” Carson said. “I remember the creep. I could identify him if I have to. And if I end up with any kind of serious injury, you can bet I will.”

  “You were great, Arnie,” Luca said.

  “We did okay. The big thing is you can’t let these people get away with stuff like this.”

  “Yeah,” Luca agreed. “They say-and of course it wasn’t in the obituary-that this hooker hadn’t been to church in ages. No way she should get a Church burial. She’s just an unrepentant whore who is roasting in hell now. But her sister’s a nun. And a big shot in the diocese. So all the rules be damned; the whore gets a Church burial.”

  “By a bishop, on top of everything else,” Morgan added.

  Carson started to shake his head. Then he thought better of further scrambling his facial wounds, and gently massaged his temples instead. “Yeah, a bishop!” He almost spat the word. “A retired old geezer who should be dead already. Instead, he finds a comfortable home in Detroit.”

  “It’s Cardinal Boyle’s fault,” Morgan said.

  “Uh-huh. The Red Cardinal,” Carson said. It was a pun popular with Detroit conservatives, particularly the Tridentines. The color peculiar to a Cardinal is the most brilliant red imaginable. But when traditionalists called Boyle, “the Red Cardinal,” they meant “red” as a synonym for Communist. That Boyle was nowhere near in the neighborhood of being a Communist would not deter Carson, who could think of no more entrenched enemy than the godless Communist.

  “He should go back to Russia,” Luca said.

  “Do you think it was Boyle who gave permission for the whore’s funeral?” Morgan asked.

  “Good question,” Carson observed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it went right to the top with all that publicity. That’s a very good question. Dwight,” he turned to Morgan, “why don’t you draft a letter to the Holy Father and tell him that a known prostitute who hasn’t seen the inside of a church since she was a kid gets a Christian burial in Detroit with a bishop presiding.”

  “Oh, boy!” Morgan brightened. “That’s a great idea.”

  “We’ve done it before and nothing happened,” Luca groused. “I don’t think even the Holy Father is gonna get tough with a Cardinal.”

  “Don’t sell the Holy Father short-not this Holy Father,” Carson said. “If we keep him advised about what’s going on in Detroit, eventually he’ll act. I’m positive he will.”

  “What’s he gonna do,” Luca asked, “excommunicate a Cardinal?”

  “Maybe not,” Carson admitted, “but how about if he kicks him upstairs?”

  “Huh?”

  “Calls him to Rome,” Carson explained, “Puts him in charge of something not so important-ceremonies or something. Especially after that goddam council, there’s gotta be a lot of Curia offices that don’t do much anymore. It would serve Boyle right. After all, he had a lot to do with the council. Let him stew in his own juice.”

  “I still don’t think it’ll work,” Luca repeated.

  Carson stretched out a hand and let it drop on Luca’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Angelo, something is going to happen very soon that will make you very happy. In fact, it’s already in the works. And we won’t have to wait for Rome to act.”

  Luca looked into Carson’s eyes hopefully. “What? What, Arnie?”

  “I can’t tell you, Angelo. I can’t tell anybody. But when it happens-or when it keeps on happening-remember, you heard it here first.”

  Morgan’s curiosity also was piqued. “What are you talking about, Arnie?”

  “Yeah,” Luca said, “for God’s sake, if you can’t tell us who can you tell?”

  “We’re with you, Arnie,” Morgan said. “You know that. Is it you who’s doing whatever it is you’re talking about? You need help. Who else could help you like we could? We want to help!”

  Carson smiled smugly. “All in good time. As far as you guys are concerned, pretend I didn’t say anything at all. And you keep what I said to yourselves … got it?”

  “Got it,” Morgan said. “But …” His brow furrowed. “… we don’t know what you said.”

  “Keep it that way! Swear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  An attendant leaned into the cubicle. “You okay now?”

  “I think so,” Carson said.

  “Then yo
u better go on home. We need the space.”

  They left, Carson wondering if he had said too much.

  6

  Sister Joan was the last to leave the funeral home. She had waited until all who lingered after the rosary had offered condolences. The funeral director had assured her that all would be ready for the 9:30 prayer service tomorrow morning at the funeral home followed by the fifteen-minute drive to St. Leo’s for the 10:00 A.M. Mass. She donned her coat and boots and started the drive home. The drive that would be repeated tomorrow morning with her sister as the main attraction, the star of the show.

  Helen would like that. She had always conducted herself as the star performer in whatever was going on. It could be sports or amateur theater or dating, whatever: Unbashful Helen was the whole show. And so it would be tomorrow. For the last time, thought Joan, and choked on the unspoken word last.

  She must get her mind off Helen and her horrible sudden death. She tried to pay attention to the neighborhood through which she was now driving.

  This was easy. She was traveling up Trumbull past Tiger Stadium, whose one and only remaining attraction was the Detroit Tigers baseball team. Once upon a time, the Detroit Lions football team had played here also. The footballers had moved out to Pontiac.

  This spot marked the site of professional baseball from shortly after its inception in Detroit before the turn of the century. It was almost hallowed ground. To the baseball purist it was holy ground. Here Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and Ted Williams and Al Kaline had all excelled in this game that they loved so well.

  Sister Joan was not a baseball aficionado, nor was she particularly drawn to sports, but she could appreciate the historical distinction of this stadium.

  It was eerie to drive these brightly lit streets, now so barren and deserted. The snow, while it still covered the sidewalks, had been mashed into slush in the streets. In another four months these streets would be alive with people participating in the national pastime in Detroit. Trumbull Avenue and Michigan Avenue and Kaline Drive and Cochrane Street would be teeming with happy folks doing a happy thing.

  But that would be later. Right now it was difficult to focus on a happy thought. Her mind was filled with the image of her only sister in a casket. And Helen’s soul …? Joan tried to focus on the words Archbishop Foley had spoken. Words of hope and promise and understanding and forgiveness in a judgment of love.

  As she thought back on the events of this evening at the funeral home, she recalled the voice that had spoken so loudly, jarringly. What was it he had said-something to the effect that he could have killed the story?

  She hadn’t had to turn around to know whose voice it was. Cletus Bash. She’d heard Father Bash often enough at meetings to recognize the voice and the arrogance it contained. She assumed Bash did not approve of the publicity resulting from her sister’s murder. She was at a loss to know how it possibly could have been handled any differently. Regardless, she was convinced that the primary cause of Bash’s irritation was that he’d been denied yet another opportunity to be featured on camera for the evening news. She was sure she and the others would hear about this again and again in memos and at staff meetings. She could barely wait.

  The thought of Bash brought up another memory of this evening-at the very end of the wake service. She could visualize the scene as if she were a third party looking on at the event.

  She had been standing with a small group of her nun friends when someone approached to talk to her. It was hard now to place who this person was. But Something told her she should remember.

  Of course: It was Father Koesler. And she had greeted him almost as if he were a stranger. She winced. How could she have been so thoughtless! She had to blame it on exhaustion, distraction, preoccupation-the whole darn thing.

  She would make it a point the next time their paths crossed to apologize and explain why she had been so distant. She was sure he would understand.

  She was home, or very nearly there. Fortunately, she didn’t have to get out of the car to open the garage door. One of the very few luxuries of St. Leo’s was an automatic garage door opener. She pulled in through the open door, parked the car, got out, and exited the garage, starting the door on its downward path as she did so. Pulling her coat collar up tight, she started on the short walk around the corner to the front door.

  As she reached the center of the metal fence and angled to take the next few steps to the front door, she recalled that this was exactly what her sister had done just a couple of nights ago. Helen had gotten out of the taxi at this very spot and taken these same steps. The last short walk of her life.

  Joan shivered. It was only partly due to the cold.

  The streetlights cast shadows everywhere. She tried to quiet her imagination. It was playing tricks. She thought she saw shapes that, as she approached them, dissolved. Her pace quickened.

  She was halfway up the steps when it happened. She knew: This was not a phantom of her mind.

  Someone was in the bushes behind her. She distinctly heard the snapping branch. She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye.

  She froze, not knowing what to do. Hurry toward the door? She’d never make it before he did whatever he wanted. Turn and confront him? Beg? Plead? What good would any of that do? All this took only a fraction of time to pass through her mind.

  Next it was a voice. A voice shouting.

  Later, asked what the voice had said, she could remember, but was embarrassed to repeat it. Suffice that it got the job done.

  No sooner had the young man stepped from the bushes than, from behind one of the statues of the shrine, Sergeant Phil Mangiapane shouted a warning in the universal language of the street.

  As he explained later, had the youth not at least lowered me gun immediately, Mangiapane would have fired. But the young man was so startled that instead of his lowering or dropping the gun, it flew out of his hand as if it had wings and a mind of its own.

  In seconds, the sergeant had the man cuffed.

  After trying to calm the nun, Mangiapane removed the keys from her trembling hand, opened the door, shoved his prisoner into the convent, and phoned for assistance.

  It was hours before Sister Joan was able to bring her shuddering and shaking under some sort of control. Sleep was not even a remote possibility.

  But it was less than half an hour before Mangiapane had the man at headquarters, with his rights read, and in the process of being booked on charges of assault with intent to commit murder and suspicion of murder in the first degree.

  7

  This was different and Sergeant Phil Mangiapane decided he liked it. Frequently he was the butt of many of the jokes cracked by members of his squad if not of others in the Homicide Division. The jokesters were lucky Mangiapane had an active sense of humor and was able, to some degree, to take a joke. For the sergeant was a big man who worked out with weights as part of a general fitness regimen.

  Now, the morning after his dramatic arrest of the man who almost shot Sister Joan Donovan, Mangiapane was the toast of the division. By actual count-the sergeant was keeping track-at least one officer from each of the other six Homicide squads had dropped by to congratulate him. Heady stuff.

  But something was wrong. Something was missing. Mangiapane hadn’t pinpointed it but Sergeant Angie Moore had. She noted that Zoo Tully hadn’t been in yet. She knew he was in me building. At least he had been when she got in this morning, just before she’d learned that it was Mangiapane who’d become a hero. On her way to work she’d heard the news on her radio that the nun had been saved by “courageous and daring” police work. Somehow she had never connected those adjectives to the big Italian with whom she worked.

  As far as the media were concerned, the apprehension of the man who tried to kill Sister Joan had effectively solved the mystery of who had killed her sister Helen. Clearly it had been a case of mistaken identity. He had meant to kill the nun but got her sister instead. The killer had returned to the scene last night, tri
ed to correct his mistake, and was foiled by “courageous and daring” police work. To cap the climax, the police said the perpetrator had confessed to both crimes.

  When she entered headquarters, she passed Tully in the corridor. They exchanged greetings, as they normally did. Then when she reached the squadroom she found that she was sharing space with a celebrity.

  She was genuinely happy for Mangiapane as his fellow officers congratulated him. She too had been quietly tabulating the visitors. Her mental toteboard tallied with Phil’s: at least one from every squad in Homicide.

  Indeed, it was as a result of her keeping tabs that she became aware of a significant absence: Tully.

  That was strange. Zoo always took proprietary interest in his squad. Whenever there was merit to be recognized, usually Zoo Tully was the first to offer praise. But so far he was a no-show.

  Evidently, it had not yet registered with Mangiapane that his boss had not joined the happy group. Moore was not going to bring it up. If the absence augured something negative, there was no point in prematurely raining on Phil’s parade.

  Not long after Moore concluded that there was something ominous in Tully’s nonappearance, in he came.

  He deposited some files on his desk, looked around the room, smiled, and said, “Congratulations, Phil. Can I see you a minute?” With that, he walked out of the room.

  Mangiapane’s elated demeanor was tempered by doubt as he followed Tully into one of the interrogation rooms. Moore’s suspicion of she-knew-not-what deepened.

  “Sit down, Manj,” Tully said.

  Mangiapane sat. Tully remained standing, “Tell me about it.”