The Confession of Joe Cullen

by Howard Fast

  The white-haired man interrupted at this point with a question: “Why didn’t you take Cullen out at this point?”

  “Yes, sir. Very stupid on our part. He disappeared — that is, for a few hours. We had a man on him, but we should have had two. He walked down to the river and out on an old pier, and he sat there for hours. Our man had to piss, and the damn fool went into one of those portable toilets that had been set up for repair work on the pier. When he stepped out, Cullen was gone. He swears that Cullen had no notion that he was being tailed, and I’d guess that was the case. That’s how he came to walk into that West Side precinct without our knowledge.”

  “And when did you pick him up again?”

  “Not until the district attorney had the tape. He didn’t go home and he didn’t turn up at his apartment. He went to his bank and cashed a check for nine hundred dollars, most of it in fifty-dollar bills. We should have thought of the bank, but we didn’t. Remember, sir; at this point he hadn’t made the tape and we felt that we could control the situation until we had some exchange with you and Mr. Lester. We also wished to get a proper handle on the death of Father O’Healey. That was something I did not learn about until a few days ago.”

  “Not only stupid but sloppy.”

  “Yes, sir,” Monty agreed. “I admit that, sir.”

  The white-haired man then said, “It presents us with an untenable problem and possibly an impossible one.”

  “Nothing is impossible,” Fred Lester said, smiling, the first smile since they had come together in the room. “Son, you got the money and the clout, and nothing is impossible. You got impediments, remove them. That’s the way I see it.”

  “Impediments,” the white-haired man said softly.

  “Spell it out,” Perez said to Monty. “Put it on the table. We will see what we have.”

  “We have problems,” Monty said. “At the precinct where the tape was made, we have five men: Lieutenant Freedman, three detectives — Jones, a black man, Leary, a fat old Irish cop, and Ramos, Hispanic, probably Puerto Rican. Then there’s a young uniformed cop, Lefty O’Neal, who ran the tape. Thought is that they’ve been close as hell about this, but who knows? Five New York cops present a problem. Unique.”

  “Are any for sale?”

  “We don’t know yet. We’ll know by tomorrow or the next day.”

  “On the other hand,” the white-haired man said, “New York cops take all the shit that’s coming down, and nothing surprises them.” The word shit came oddly, wrongly, from the elegant, soft-voiced man, whose speech, like his dress, was impeccable. “They’ve passed this along to Timberman, and I understand that Timberman has been told that this is a most delicate federal matter, and that it will be handled as such.”

  “He has two assistants who also saw the tape.”

  “Did he tell the cops that this is an absolutely top-secret matter?”

  “Well, we must think about this. I would prefer that there be some way of handling that end without violence.”

  “I don’t know.” Monty waited a long moment before he continued. “Two of his top people saw the tape, bureau chiefs. Names of Morton Cohen and Virginia Selby. They are old pros and, as I hear it, smart. On the other hand, I am told that no lawyer with drive and ambition remains with the DA’s office for more than a few years.”

  “Which adds up to what?” the general asked.

  “Possibly to the fact that we have here two defeated people who have given up on what every good American wants most.”

  “For sale?”

  “Who knows?”

  “The DA warned them to keep their mouths shut?”

  “As I understand it.”

  “Which leaves Harold Timberman. Tell me something about him, Monty.”

  It was a thing of Monty’s that he never referred to notes. A lifetime of training had given him a mind like a computer filled with softwear, and it was said that he had burdened his brain with so many facts that there was never room for art or philosophy, although he knew a good many artists and writers through their files in the reference rooms of his organization. He felt that he was properly equipped for his work, and that both guilt and conscience were what Fred Lester referred to as impediments. If he questioned himself, it was to tell himself that, like any other scientist, he dealt with facts.

  He spelled out the facts concerning Harold Timberman. “German-Jewish background, fifth generation in America, father and grandfather in public service, plentiful old money out of cotton mills and finance in the 1880s, nominally religious, attends Temple Emanu-El in New York, Park Avenue address, and a reputation for being unreachable.”

  “Which is the trouble with the goddamn old money,” Fred Lester said. “They’ve lost ambition.”

  “No man is unreachable,” the white-haired man said. “Where is he vulnerable?”

  “He has three children, five grandchildren.”

  “Worth considering. Now, tell me, Monty, is there a duplicate of the tape?”

  “Absolutely not. We’ve checked that every which way. There is no duplicate.”

  “The tape must be destroyed immediately.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And Cullen must be taken out immediately.”

  “Oh, yes. Certainly.”

  “And Kovach?”

  Here, the general intervened with a snort of disagreement. “Hold on! Pilots do not grow on trees.”

  “No, they don’t,” Monty agreed. “Kovach should not be eliminated; he should be involved.”

  “And how do you bring that about?”

  “There are ways.”

  “We’ll leave that in Monty’s hands,” the white-haired man said. “The Feds?”

  “I trust you, sir. They have known about the operation for months now, and indeed they were involved, very deeply involved.”

  “Nevertheless, we will be thorough. I want no documents here. Shred whatever you have — except …” He left the thought unspoken, but it was communicated. Any document that provided a connection with a person of power was a source for blackmail, and blackmail, after money, was the most useful weapon. The white-haired man, like Monty, was not given to panic. He was not flustered, and Monty could follow his thoughts without difficulty. Everyone had a past, and in everyone’s past was something that would not bear scrutiny.

  “Meanwhile,” the white-haired man said, “the operation must continue. I do not often invoke patriotism, but the contras must be supported and maintained.”

  “Yes. Agreed.”

  There was a chorus of agreement.

  “We need a navigator,” Monty said. “If he’s a good pilot, so much the better, but our plane can’t go out with one man in the driver’s seat. Actually, we need two men.”

  “I have a lad working for me who says he’s a first-rate navigator. Air force trained, dishonorable discharge, rape and theft. He has some brains and no damn common sense, but he knows that if he fucks me, I’d put him down without a quiver. Mostly his problem is women. If the colonel here” — turning to Perez — “can provide women …”

  “No problem, Mr. Lester.”

  Lester chuckled. “For want of a hooker, a war was lost. We can’t have that, can we, sir?”

  “We need another pilot.”

  “I can provide that,” Colonel Perez said. “The man I have in mind is an army officer and dangerous. When the operation is completed, he must be taken out.”

  “Agreed,” Monty said.

  “What in hell do you mean — when the operation is finished?” Lester demanded.

  “When the contras have taken over the government.”

  “Hell, man,” Lester said, “that ain’t anything we’re going to see in the near future, and as for patriotism” — turning to the white-haired man — “you got your ideas and I got mine. I go along with old Cal Coolidge, who said that the business of America is business. I don’t see a hell of a lot of difference between drinking yourself into an early grave and making shit out of your life and
your family’s life, or smoking something that sure as hell’s going to give you lung cancer, or sniffing a harmless white powder that puts a piece of joy into the lousy pisspot that life is for most folk. I got almost thirty million dollars in this operation. I bought the protection you give me, and I’m sure as hell not going to fold my tent like an Arab and silently steal away.”

  The white-haired man smiled and said, “You’re quite a character, Mr. Lester. I would not be perturbed, if I were you. I’m sure we look forward to a long and prosperous business relationship.”

  “Good. Now if there’s no loose ends to pick up, the general and I have a plane to catch at Dulles.”

  “There are always loose ends,” Monty said comfortably. “Trust me to find them.”

  “Son, I always trusted you,” Lester said.

  Father Immelman

  LIEUTENANT FREEDMAN’S lean figure accentuated his height. He was six feet under curling orange hair and a high-bridged nose that suggested a bird of prey. He had pale blue eyes behind glasses, and often a look of anger when he was not angry at all. He was not an angry man. Frustrated, often annoyed at the shortcomings of the men who worked with him, but not angry, lonely and in love — all of that made a better picture of the man than the simple declaration that he might have been more if he had not become a cop. Born in 1946, son of a semi-invalid soldier and a mother who whined and whimpered her way through a short life that ended with cancer fifteen years after his birth, he had not exactly been overwhelmed with opportunity. He finished high school with high marks, served a stretch as a medic in Vietnam, came home whole, went to City College, fought his way through two years of it washing dishes and waiting tables and doing whatever else might keep body and soul together, and then gave it up to be a cop.

  Along the way he met Sheila, and the alternate phases of heaven and hell began. Now he had entered a phase of moderate Eden. She was tolerating him again, and this might last for a day, a week, or a month. It served to make him, who had no real religion aside from being born Jewish, more tolerant of everything Catholic — since Sheila was such, though hardly in good standing — and ready to listen to Father Paul White, a young priest from the Church of Saint Peter the Rock. Under other circumstances, he might well have turned Father White over to Leary, good Catholic that Leary was, and let him deal with whatever had to be dealt with — which in this case was rather far-fetched.

  Father White, very young and pink-cheeked, admitted that he did not have very much to go on. “Not much more than a feeling here,” touching his chest. “The thing is, Lieutenant, that I was with Father Immelman when we went over to Saint Vincent’s for our physicals. Well, they made such a fuss over the old man. They said that at seventy-three he had the heart and circulatory system of a man half his age. And you know, he didn’t do much exercise. Dr. Kelly, who examined him, called in two of his colleagues, Dr. Levy and Dr. Hotsinger. I mean not for consultation, but simply to check the condition of a man who did not exercise and ate everything bad for him — he loved junk food, hamburgers, frankfurters, that sort of thing. And sweets — oh, yes, he loved sweets. And then, two weeks later, he dies of a heart attack. I simply don’t understand it. I don’t believe it.”

  Thinking about the little church, only a few blocks away, that had come to their attention once before when the poor box was robbed, Freedman nodded sympathetically and asked whether Immelman had been under some sudden stress.

  “No. Oh, no. You know, he was such a gentle person. One of those old-fashioned priests, almost saintly.”

  “Where did this happen? In his sleep?”

  “No. At the altar. He was in prayer, very relaxed.”

  “And, of course, the doctors agreed?”

  “The ambulance took him to Saint Vincent’s. I insisted that he be examined there.”

  “Why did you insist?” Freedman asked curiously.

  “Because the whole thing disturbed me so. Not simply his death. Of course that was a dreadful shock, but he had lived his years and he was a good man … and …” He went off into his own thoughts. “I don’t truly know how to put it, Lieutenant.”

  “You mean you have no reason to say he was murdered, and if you do say it, you’ll feel like a fool coming here with no more than a gut feeling. But I would guess you have something else. What is it?”

  “Well, a few days ago he asked me an odd question. He had heard a confession, and it troubled him. I could see that. In some ways, he was childlike, in the sense of innocence, and the question he asked me was this: Could a person truly know whether or not that person believed in God? Then he put it another way: Was not belief in God an absolute in every person’s being? For him, this was an astonishingly radical thought and outside our teaching. You’re not Catholic, of course?”

  “Jewish,” Freedman said.

  “Ah, yes. Well, I don’t think such a construct exists in Jewish theology either, but coming from Father Immelman, it was absolutely amazing. I probed at it. I should have left it with him, but I was intrigued, and then he told me of the confession he had heard that day. Now you understand, Lieutenant, that the contents of a confession are sacred, so he told me nothing of them; but he did say that the man in the booth desired absolution desperately yet refused to admit a belief in God. This troubled Father Immelman, because he had to deny the man absolution. It occurred to me that if I had heard the confession, I would have reasoned with the man that only a belief in God could have brought him to our church in search of absolution, but Immelman was rather rigid in that respect.”

  “Tell me,” Freedman said, “how do you see this absolution? I mean, I understand the word, but how do you think of this in your religion?”

  “We think of no sin that cannot be forgiven. This is in our doctrine of the soul. The priest acts as the vicar, the spokesman of Christ, and it is Christ, as the merciful Son of God, Who grants forgiveness.”

  “Even of murder?”

  “Yes, of course, if the humility and sense of sin are present.”

  “Then why on earth,” Freedman wondered, “would a man who doesn’t believe in God confess and desire absolution?”

  The priest shrugged. “Thus the question.”

  “Did Father Immelman say anything about this man — age, size, appearance, black, white?”

  “He could not. It’s forbidden.”

  “Did anyone else see the man? It was a man?”

  “Yes, a man. Well, I don’t know. Now, there’s only myself and Mrs. Dougherty, who is the rectory housekeeper and happened to be in the church.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “No, it never occurred to me.”

  “Then let’s go over there and ask her. And by the way, did they perform an autopsy on Father Immelman?”

  “I asked them to. They found nothing to suggest that he had died of anything but a heart attack.”

  Downstairs in the precinct house, Ramos was making time with a pretty blond cop by the name of Thelma Grady. Freedman pulled him away and introduced him to Father White, and while they walked the few blocks to the church, he gave Ramos the few facts they had concerning Father Immelman’s death.

  “How thorough was the autopsy?” Ramos asked. “Did they test for poison? Pinpricks, injections — that sort of thing?”

  “Oh, come on,” Freedman said. “That’s far-fetched crap, and if you set out to kill an old man, there are easier ways to simulate a heart attack.”

  The street had trees. It was one of those streets where the owners of the old Chelsea brownstones had taken up the city’s offer to plant trees, and while it was November, the trees still held a few brown leaves. It moved Freedman to reflect on the intensity with which living things clung to life, even in this strange, throbbing, bursting, and agonizing city. It was a sharp, chilling day, and already a homeless man was stretched out over a grate, but his thinking would have to change, and the man was no longer the bum in the simple manner of his childhood but someone homeless, poverty-stricken, and often enough crazy
— schizophrenic, paranoid — or conceivably dying of AIDS; and here he was, Jewish, following a young priest to a church that was mostly an empty shell, because an old priest had died of a heart attack — which the young priest doubted. His thoughts kept returning to Cullen, and possibly it was his listening to Cullen’s confession that prevented him from telling White to go home and let the dead rest in peace.

  “Easier ways?” Father White asked. Murder shocked and horrified him. He had come out without a coat, and now he drew his thin jacket tighter. Some wise teacher at the seminary had told him that reality was not only more wonderful for one who believed in God, but more terrible. Infinitely more terrible, he might have added.

  “A pillow will do it. Hold it over the victim’s face until he suffocates. It will pass as a heart attack.”

  “I don’t know,” Ramos said. “I mean, Lieutenant, if they were looking for something at the autopsy, they might think about the condition of the heart. Look, Father,” he explained to the priest, “even if first-rate doctors at Saint Vincent really loved you and the old man, they wouldn’t have done the autopsy. It would be done downstairs in the pathology room.”

  Freedman shrugged. It made no damn sense whatsoever for someone to engage in a sophisticated hit to take out an old priest, yet once inside the church, he could not help noticing how handy several pillows were. If the priest had been kneeling in prayer, it would have been simple for the killer to pick up a small cushion from a front pew and get the old man from behind.

  “I’ll find Mrs. Dougherty,” the priest said. “Will you wait here?”

  The church was empty except for a single old woman who sat silently on one of the rear pews. It was warmer inside than outside. “At least it’s a place they can sit and warm up,” Ramos said. “It begins to fill up as the winter sets in.”

  Father White returned from the rectory with the housekeeper, a small, gray-haired woman in her late sixties, nervous, full of the feeling of having done something wrong.