Shadow of Death fk-5

by William X. Kienzle

  “Here, let me help you, Father. Can you just step down from the examination table and sit in this wheelchair?”

  “I think so.”

  Koesler stood gingerly and felt pain in muscles he hadn’t known he had. “Oh, yes; I think a little rest might do me a lot of good.”

  The doctor was alert. “And we’ll give you something for that pain, too.”

  As Koesler took the couple of steps to the wheelchair, he caught sight of himself in a mirror. Then he knew the ugly reality of those euphemisms: abrasions, contusions, and hematomas. He looked as if he had been the big loser in a very tough fight.

  “Oh, yes,” he eased himself carefully into the wheelchair, “a little rest is definitely called for.”

  10.

  Patrick Joseph O’Flynn tipped his head to one side. He gave every indication of seeing something he found difficult to believe. He watched wordlessly as a uniformed Garda assisted an obviously battered Father Koesler into Teach Murray.

  Until the arrival of the walking wounded, O’Flynn had had the pub to himself. Tom Murray was out back hanging up some bar cloths. O’Flynn was patiently awaiting the hour of ten, when he would start nursing his first pint of the day.

  On catching sight of Koesler, O’Flynn had respectfully snapped to his feet, meanwhile snatching his cap from his head, leaving his fine brown hair pointing in every direction.

  Then he noticed Koesler’s obvious distress and was unsure whether to go to the priest’s aid or await developments. He decided to remain at the table, especially since Koesler and his human crutch seemed headed in O’Flynn’s direction.

  Koesler lowered himself gingerly, wincing as his back met the unpadded chair. The Garda tipped his cap, excused himself, and retreated to the rear of the pub whence, on earlier orders from Superintendent O’Reardon, he continued to watch over Koesler. O’Flynn sat down opposite the priest.

  “I suppose you’re wondering what happened,” said Koesler, after a brief but pregnant silence.

  “Well, now, the thought did occur.” O’Flynn jammed the cap back on his head. “Y’ve been gone only a day! Meanin’ no irreverence.”

  “My car . . . that is, the car I was driving, was forced off the road. In the Burren. I crashed. The car’s a total wreck.”

  Pause.

  “Well,” said O’Flynn, “ya might try lookin’ at the bright side of it.”

  “The bright side of it?” Koesler fixed O’Flynn with a quizzical gaze. “What could possibly be the bright side of this?”

  “Arra,” O’Flynn stuck pipe in mouth, “it could have happened to ya in England.” It was said with great conviction.

  Koesler made no reply. His mind, recovering from a goodly amount of pain-killing drugs administered yesterday and this morning, attempted to compare the benefit of being nearly killed in Ireland with suffering the same fate in England. He was not doing well.

  “Wait now!” O’Flynn almost shouted. “Was it forced off the road ya were?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now who would do a shameful thing like that? To a priest! In Ireland!”

  “I don’t know. But it’s the same one who shot a policeman from Detroit and one of the ones who will try to murder the Archbishop of Detroit this Saturday in St. Patrick’s in Dublin.”

  Normally, though gregarious, Koesler was not garrulous. However, the combination of the events of the preceding week and the cumulative affect of the drugs caused him to be more talkative than usual.

  O’Flynn sucked in his breath sharply. “Ya don’t say! Arra, the wonder of it! Why, nothin’ in Ireland’s happened the likes of that since . . . well, since the days of the Tans.”

  “The Tans?”

  “Surely, y’ve heard of the Black and Tans, Father.”

  “Well, yes, but I don’t know much about them.”

  “Much about them, is it? My, oh my, oh my!” O’Flynn had worked a wad of tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and began the ritual of lighting it. Between efforts to draw the flame into the tobacco, O’Flynn reminisced about the Black and Tans. For he had lived through those days, though he had been a young boy at the time.

  “It was back in ’20 and ’21 when the Brits tried one more time to wipe from the face of the map the IRA—that’d be the Irish Republican Army.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, the Tans were recruited from many of the British troops as had just finished combat in World War One, and then, later, from among the dregs of England—criminals, thugs, and hoodlums. They were called Black and Tans because they were such a ragtag bunch they had to wear makeshift uniforms of khaki tunics and trousers of the military, with the black-green caps and belts of the police.” O’Flynn paused to puff on his pipe in an attempt to waken the embers.

  “Black and Tan,” Koesler mused. “Speaking of black and tan, that black man was lying after all. I wonder what he hoped to gain? He couldn’t have thought we would drop all security just on his word that there were no Rastafarians in Ireland so there’d be no attack on the Cardinal. And if they weren’t going to make an attempt on the Cardinal’s life, then why bother taking Inspector Koznicki off the board? Strange . . .”

  Koesler drifted off into his own reverie which would continue undisturbed by O’Flynn’s continued commentary.

  “They were sent here in ’20 with orders to ‘make Ireland hell for the rebels.’ Well, what with one thing and another, they did their damndest—if you’ll pardon the irreverence. Father—to make Ireland hell for all the Irish.

  “Arra,” O’Flynn sucked in his breath, “those were the days, and especially the nights, of terror. Ye’d hear the rumble of the lorry, racin’ as fast as the horses could carry it. Then when the lorry stopped, ye’d hold yer breath. Especially if it stopped near yer own house. Then there’d be the bangin’ on the door. And the Tans’d go runnin’ through the house lookin’ for a rebel but mad enough so’s they wouldn’t leave empty-handed. There was times a man’d be shot dead before the eyes of his missus and the little ones.”

  He puffed again on his pipe. “One night, they made a surprise attack: surrounded the barracks just up the street there.” He tilted his head toward the east. “Well, the lads weren’t goin’ to take that lyin’ down, so a shootin’ match started.” He looked at Koesler. “It isn’t a barracks now; it’s the doctor’s house . . . but you can still see the bullet marks.”

  “There’s something wrong,” said Koesler, continuing his soliloquy, now more audibly.

  “Wrong?” O’Flynn, concerned, looked at the priest intently. “What’s wrong, Father? Are ya not feelin’ all that well? Would ya like to lie down or somethin’? Is there anything I can get fer ya?”

  O’Flynn started to stand, but Koesler almost absentmindedly waved him back in his chair.

  “. . . something wrong with the scenario. It doesn’t fit assumption is it’s a Rastafarian plot to eliminate the papabili . . . discourage them all from becoming Pope . . . and thus do away with the Papacy itself.

  “All well and good, as bizarre as the scheme is, when they actually attack prominent Cardinals. But then they attack Ramon and then the Inspector.

  “Still all well and good . . . since those two have proven themselves effective guardians of Cardinal Boyle.

  “But why me? How do I possibly fit into this scenario? Can they possibly believe I could be a hindrance? If so, then how? And then there were the black fists that changed to black hands . . .”

  Koesler returned to his mulling. O’Flynn had listened politely to the priest’s ramblings, while understanding none of them.

  After what he felt was an appropriate period of silence, O’Flynn resumed. “Arra, it was the Tans all right! They’re the ones who shot prisoners, destroyed property, burned creameries. A bad lot altogether. Young Kevin Barry, saints preserve us, they tortured the lad and then hanged him—and he no more than eighteen years!” O’Flynn sucked in his breath sharply.

  “And who could forget Terence MacSwiney? Died aft
er seventy-four days on hunger strike in an English prison, he did. ‘It’s not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most who will conquer,’ he said. Brings to mind Jaysus’ sermons: ‘The meek shall inherit the earth,’ doesn’t it? Arra, but then,” he looked at Koesler with sly eyes, “Jaysus didn’t have to contend with the Black and Tans, did he?”

  Seemingly satisfied that his rhetorical question neither called for nor was about to receive a reply from his preoccupied table-mate, Patrick Joseph O’Flynn went on. “Then there was the time they caught the six Volunteers near Cork and when the bodies were found, the heart had been cut from one, the tongue from another, the nose from another, the skull of another had been battered in, and the bodies of the other two were identifiable only by their clothing. And in the west,” O’Flynn jabbed the air with his pipe stem, as he gathered verbal momentum, “the bodies of two brothers were found in a bog, tied together and their legs partially roasted away.” And thus O’Flynn continued his gory litany as he had so many times in the past. It was not often these days that he found fresh ears for his resolute recital.

  “So, is it yer opinion, Father, that it was the Tans come back? Who else, I ask ya, would do such a thing to a holy priest of God?” He looked at Koesler quizzically.

  “But what if it’s the wrong grouping?” Koesler’s question was right in line with his thoughts, though a non sequitur to O’Flynn’s. “I certainly don’t fit in with the Cardinals—for any reason.” His voice rose and fell in correspondence with the strength of his conclusions. “But then, the link between the Cardinals and Toussaint isn’t that strong either. And what connection could Ramon and the Inspector possibly have with me? That doesn’t seem to make much sense either.”

  O’Flynn decided to go with the flow. If Koesler would not participate in O’Flynn’s monologue, then courtesy demanded that the little Irishman join Koesler’s stream of consciousness.

  “Well, now,” said O’Flynn, “not knowin’ the other two gentlemen y’ve mentioned, I must admit I’m hard put to draw a connection between them and yerself.”

  “But then” —Koesler obviously needed to develop his hypothesis aloud— “it may be, as my dentist once put it, that we have more than one thing going on here. Of course he was referring to an abscess along with a root canal. Here we would have two things going on that would be related in only one direction. Is that possible?”

  “Oh, indeed it is,” O’Flynn responded. “I well remember old Tillie O’Flynn, my sainted aunt, a maiden lady her whole life long. How she suffered the heart palpitations in her later years from the stress of bein’ impoverished. Bad off, she was! Worried constantly about endin’ up in the poorhouse. Which, as it turns out, was a worthy worry, for it was just there that she did indeed end. But, in any case, that is what the doctor said took her—the stress of worryin’ about bein’ poor. And bein’ poor caused the dear woman’s stress. So, ya see, it was all connected up.”

  “Of course!” Koesler slapped the tabletop. “That would explain the sequence of events! It would explain the illusive symbolism. It would explain the whole thing!

  “Paddy!” For the first time, he focused on O’Flynn. “I’ve got to get home!”

  “Home, is it?”

  “To Detroit!”

  “Ya can’t get there from here.”

  “Can you help me get back to Dublin?” Koesler started to rise from his chair. He was joined in this maneuver by O’Flynn, as well as the Garda who had accompanied Koesler on his return to Gurteen.

  “Sure and it’ll be a pleasure, Father. Meself and, I expect, this fine young Garda here, ’ll get ya back to Dublin’s fair city, alive alive-o.” And, offering some measure of support to the battered priest, escort Patrick Joseph O’Flynn convoyed Koesler off to the strains of “Molly Malone.”

  DETROIT

  “Don Louis,” the petite, attractive receptionist spoke into the intercom, “there is a gentleman—a priest—to see you. His name is,” she glanced at her notepad, “Father Robert Koesler. He does not have an appointment.”

  Silence.

  “In a moment,” came a sepulchral voice.

  “It’ll be a little while, Father,” the receptionist relayed. “Do you wish to be seated?”

  “I think,” said Koesler, “I’ll take a chance on your being right about that ‘little while’ and stay standing. I don’t want to move needlessly.”

  The receptionist noted several nasty bruises on Koesler’s face and hands. The rest of him was covered by a black suit and clerical collar. But from the stiff and awkward way in which he had entered the office and, indeed was now standing, she surmised that much of the rest of his body was similarly bruised.

  In the inner office, a smallish dapper man sat behind an extremely large desk. Perhaps in his late fifties or early sixties, with salt-and-pepper hair and bushy black eyebrows, the man, in immaculate blue pinstripe, with contrasting tie and pocket kerchief, was clearly a very important person.

  He smiled, revealing perfect teeth, as he turned to the two rather large men seated to the right of the desk. “The fly comes to be caught in the spider’s web.” He spoke in Italian.

  The two chuckled, but not pleasantly.

  The man pressed a button on the intercom. “Angela, show the good Father in.”

  As Koesler came through the door, on which was affixed the sign, “Louis Licata, President,” the two large men were there to intercept him. One began to check the priest for weapons. As his sides were being patted down, Koesler winced noticeably, and let out a barely audible groan.

  “Go easy,” Licata directed, “the good Father seems to have had an accident recently.”

  The two laughed again, mirthlessly.

  “Vacante,” announced the searcher.

  “Very well,” said Licata. “Leave us.”

  The two exited, leaving Licata and Koesler alone. Licata motioned Koesler to a comfortably upholstered chair in front of the desk. The priest gingerly eased himself into it.

  “What brings you to me, Padre?” Licata leaned back and gazed at Koesler through the upper half of bifocals.

  “I thought I’d better pay you a visit before you paid me another one.

  “You are mistaken, Padre.” There was a hint of amused smile. “In my memory, we have never met before this day.”

  “Perhaps not you personally, Don Louis. Perhaps it was your men, your friends,” Koesler emphasized the word to indicate he understood its Mafia connotation, “or those you hired. But it was at your command we were visited.”

  “‘We’?”

  “My friends—Ramon Toussaint and Inspector Koznicki—and myself.”

  “Interesting.” Licata’s fingers formed a steeple touching his lips. “I did not know a simple parish priest could have such an overactive imagination. Tell me, how did you arrive at this preposterous conclusion.”

  His smile told Koesler that Licata was toying with him. Nevertheless, the priest persisted.

  “I had no trouble believing the Rastafarian plot to kill papabili, bizarre as it was. But I began having doubts when the black fist symbol was found at each location where a Cardinal was attacked. The Rastafarians have no history or reputation of leaving a symbolic calling card.

  “But we were dealing, quite obviously, with a group that must have almost worldwide capabilities of action. This was a plot, after all, that demanded the capability of striking against Princes of the Church in widely scattered areas of the world. Among those organizations that have that sort of capability is the Mafia. Wherever the Mafia is not present in force, they have sufficient contacts to issue . . . I believe it is called a contract. In addition, one of the early symbols used by the Mafia was the black hand.”

  “Fascinating.” Licata’s smile had narrowed and frozen. “But very—how is it called in the courts?—circumstantial. The Mafia has no . . . uh . . . patent on any symbol. A black fist is the symbol of the Black Power movement. There is every reason to expect a group like the Ra
stafarians to adopt it. What are they if not believers in black power? Besides, what reason would the Mafia have to be involved in a plot against the Princes of the Church? Sicilians, after all,” he spread his arms wide, “are Catholics.”

  “Precisely.” Koesler, so absorbed in his exposition that he had, in effect, self-hypnotized himself against his pain, leaned forward. “But what if, with your excellent contacts, you learned of the Rastafarian plot early on? Learned that one of their targets was a man—a Cardinal—from whose assassination you could spin off and, under the guise of an attack against him, be able to settle an old score.”

  “An old score?” The smile had vanished.

  “Yes, an old score. I may have had my doubts when it came to linking the clenched black hand with the Rastafarians, but I could have lived with those doubts. Then, attempts were made on Ramon and the Inspector . . . and my doubts grew. Up till then, only Cardinals had been attacked. Now a deacon? And a police officer? The only explanation was that they had been attacked because they were protecting the established target, Cardinal Boyle. Still, I thought it a pretty thin explanation.

  “But once I was attacked, that explanation evaporated, I didn’t fit into this picture—unless the scenario was divided differently. What if I were to group Cardinals Claret, Gattari, and Boyle together as targets of the Rastafarians? Targets in whose attacks you participated by placing the symbolic black fist at the scene of the crime, so the police would think all the attacks were linked.

  “But, suppose I group Toussaint, Koznicki, and myself in a separate bracket. What is it that could possibly link the three of us, I asked myself. Only the incident several years ago, when some of Detroit’s crime figures were murdered and their heads found on statues in Catholic churches. The first and most notorious of those victims was Rudy Ruggiero, the reputed Detroit Mafia leader.

  “And, among those suspected of involvement in those killings was one Ramon Toussaint—although he was never charged with the crimes. Responsible for the homicide investigation, which concluded with the matter being placed in the unsolved cases file, was Walter Koznicki. Also involved—and perhaps the closest confidante of Toussaint—was myself.