Marked for Murder

by William Kienzle

  Spurred on by the silence, “Arnold Bush . . . from the examiner’s office. We had lunch today.”

  “Of course.”

  “I hope this isn’t too late to call.”

  “No . . . no.” Depending on why he was calling, this could easily be too late for a call.

  “I want to invite you over for dinner.”

  It was too late for a call. “That’s very kind of you, Arnold, but I’m pretty busy just now. Maybe in a month or so . . .” Koesler recognized that this was the type of invitation that would eventually have to be accepted. He had the feeling that Arnold Bush was determined.

  “But I need you now.”

  “What’s the matter, Arnold?”

  “I can’t tell you over the phone. I got to see you.”

  “And it’s really urgent?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  Koesler consulted the calendar on the desk before him. “Well, if it’s really an emergency . . .” There was a parish council meeting tomorrow evening. Under the circumstances, he could be late for it and probably not miss a thing of great importance. “How would tomorrow evening be?”

  “That would be perfect.”

  “Six-thirty be all right?”

  “Fine.”

  Bush gave Koesler the address and offered directions. Even though the street name was not familiar, Koesler knew the general area and knew he could find it.

  When he returned to the living room, Sister Therese was putting on her coat. The remainder of tonight’s schedule, at least, would remain intact.

  At the door, they promised to keep in touch in their all-out effort to clear Dick Kramer.

  Koesler finished his drink and got into bed. His last conscious thought was about Arnold Bush. What could be so important that it demanded a face-to-face meeting? After all, they had just met today. He couldn’t imagine what it might be. So he put it out of his mind.

  Still, there was something—as yet indefinable—about Arnold Bush. Something that nagged at Koesler. But he couldn’t put his finger on it. That troubled him. Maybe at the meeting tomorrow night. Maybe then.

  37

  The neighborhood was familiar enough. But Koesler could not recall ever having been there socially.

  The area was best known for its principal structure, the massive Masonic Temple, which had once housed the annual week-long visit of the Metropolitan Opera. Now the Met no longer played in Detroit and not that many other events were booked in the overly large auditorium. Just down the street, at the opposite end of Cass Park, stood Cass Tech, easily Detroit’s premier public high school.

  Father Koesler recalled many memorable occasions at the Masonic Temple. Among them were concerts by outstanding artists; operatic performances, including his first experience, Carmen; a superlative Porgy and Bess; Yul Brynner’s The King and I.

  None of that was going on tonight. The neighborhood was shrouded in snow, and bitterly cold. The streets were practically deserted. He searched carefully for a parking space that would be in a well-lit area and at the same time not too far from his destination— an apartment building at the corner of Fourth and Temple.

  He found a near ideal spot. Its only drawback, common to much of the city, was the number of drifts that had piled up over many snowstorms and, short of a warm spell, would not be removed. He slid into the tracks of previous cars and offered a silent prayer that he would be able to extricate himself when the time came.

  The time of departure was essential to his strategy for the evening. He intended to return to his rectory for at least some of the parish council meeting. On the one hand, he really ought to at least make an appearance at part of that meeting and on the other; he did feel somewhat queasy about this dinner invitation.

  One thing, and one thing alone, had brought him to this point: his too often indulged inability to say no. It had been an element of Koesler’s personality so long as to be immemorial. And it was so ingrained that he knew it was foolishly futile to resolve to change.

  This invitation had come without warning. And it wasn’t that this evening had actually been free of any other engagement. There was the council meeting. Also, he wanted to devote every possible moment to the cause of freeing Father Kramer. Besides, he would much rather have had his routine meal at the rectory—a little wine and no surprises.

  But here he was at the desolate corner of Fourth and Temple on the mostly uninhabitable fringe of downtown Detroit. And here was the apartment building, down-at-the-heels as expected, that housed Arnold Bush, Koesler’s host for the evening.

  There was no difficulty in entering the building. It had no security system whatsoever. Koesler had no reason to expect any guard. But if he’d had his druthers, he would have been extremely grateful for at least a semblance of security.

  He climbed the rickety stairs to the second floor and easily located Bush’s apartment. In addition to having the number on the door, it alone among the second-floor apartments had a thin line of light shining out from beneath the door. Additionally there was the pungent odor of cabbage cooking.

  Koesler braced himself and knocked on the door. It was opened almost immediately. A smiling Arnold Bush greeted him, took hat and coat, and draped them over the single shaft of ancient wood that served as a clothes tree. Koesler had brought no wine or other gift. Priests, as a singular class, generally considered their presence gift enough.

  “Thank you for coming. Thank you very much.” Bush—for Bush—was effusive.

  “Not at all.” Koesler was not sure what he had expected, but it certainly was not this one-room efficiency. A table, two straight-back chairs, a bed—more a cot, actually—and a hot plate that appeared to have four burners, two of which were being used to cook dinner. The unmistakable odor promised cabbage and something. The odor, strong as it was, was unable to mask the pervasive nicotine smell that seemed to have permeated everything in the room. Several strategically placed ashtrays were full to overflowing.

  But by far the most outstanding feature was the walls. All four walls were filled with pictures. One, the wall next to the bed, held a series of syrupy religious art. The other three walls were covered with photos that appeared to be the same as or similar to the horrors he had viewed yesterday at the medical examiner’s office.

  Bush noticed Koesler’s observance of the photos. “Interesting pictures,” Bush remarked.

  Koesler managed to close his mouth. “To say the least.” Outside of Moellmann’s office, he’d never seen anything comparable, and was uncertain how to react. The only safe avenue, he decided, was to focus on the religious art. He stepped close to the wall next to the bed and appeared to study those pictures. There wasn’t one he hadn’t seen previously at one time or another. Nor was there one he didn’t dislike.

  “Did you notice, I got one of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and one of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” There was a touch of pride in Bush’s voice.

  Koesler quickly scanned the wall and located the cited works near the center of the collection. “So you do.” Jesus was portrayed as a wimp, Mary as a bland woman who’d never had either a thought or a human experience. Each was gesturing toward a heart-shaped organ, such as one might find on a valentine, which was positioned roughly where one would expect to find a human heart, but outside the body.

  “You don’t find pictures like that much nowadays,” Bush opined. “Well, certainly not this many.” Koesler guessed that Bush had not been in many traditional, or even nontraditional Catholic homes lately. A multitude of Sacred Heart, Infant of Prague, and the like, were still venerated in many Catholic homes. Taken one at a time, they could at best be tolerated, at worst ignored. In this number, they were overwhelming.

  Bush gave Koesler a few more minutes to savor the religious spirit that these pictures could generate. “The other pictures”—Bush indicated the remaining three walls—“are from my work. At the morgue,” he added needlessly.

  Without getting too close to them, Koesler looked just long enough to co
nfirm that they were the after-death photos of those three poor women. Short of a more intense study, he couldn’t tell whether these were the same as the pictures Dr. Moellmann had showed him yesterday morning. But they seemed at a glance to be duplicates.

  It was commendable, Koesler supposed, to take a certain measure of pride in one’s work. But really! “Where did you get all these pictures, Mr. Bush? Are they the same as the ones in the medical examiner’s office?”

  “Arnold,” Bush insisted. “Yeah, they’re mostly the same. The tech is a friend of mine. I got them from him.” Bush neglected to specify that the technician didn’t give the photos. He sold them. Nor did Bush intend to confess that he had removed porno magazine shots from one wall just to put up the photos of Mae Dixon.

  While trying to block out the content of the pictures themselves, Koesler did observe that each picture, clinical as well as religious, was framed. And each frame appeared to be formed by a similar or identical mold.

  “Interesting frames, Arnold. Where did you manage to get so many different sizes in the same design?”

  “Made them myself,” with evident pride.

  “Yourself?” Koesler looked around the room, the unspoken question obvious.

  “Oh, not here. There’s a bump shop a little north of here. I know the owner. I work there two, three nights a week. Help him some. Do some work on my own. He’s got all the tools, everything.”

  Oh, yes; Koesler recalled that Bush had mentioned his hobby at lunch yesterday. It hadn’t occurred to Koesler then, but now it did: Bush and Father Kramer had the same hobby. And both had easy access to a supply of professional tools. Interesting coincidence.

  “But, dinner is ready,” said Bush. “Come on; sit down.”

  Bush obviously had done his best to prepare what, for him, was an outstanding meal. He served Mogen David wine. Koesler was at the opposite end of the spectrum from a sommelier, but with one sip he knew this was more a garden variety grape juice than a choice wine.

  His worst fears were realized when he discovered that the companion to the cabbage that was being cooked over the other burner was corned beef. The latter ranked near the bottom of the few foods not relished by Koesler. This would not stand up as a gastronomically memorable evening, except in a negative way. But he would sip the wine, nibble at the corned beef, and fill up on cabbage.

  Koesler, at Bush’s invitation, offered a traditional prayer before meals. As they prepared to eat, Koesler said, “By the way, Arnold, last night on the phone you said that this was an urgent matter. You haven’t mentioned just what this emergency is.”

  “I didn’t say urgent. You said urgent. It was your word.”

  Koesler tried to recall the conversation in detail, but he couldn’t. However, he’d had the definite impression that this was a matter of urgency, no matter who had used the word. “You seem to remember our conversation better than I, Arnold. What was it that was said?”

  “I told you I needed you. Now. You were the one used the word ‘urgent.’”

  “You needed me now.” Koesler required only a moment to consider the implications. “Sounds like an urgent matter to me.”

  “Maybe. But I didn’t say it.”

  This was a strange one . . . possibly the strangest person he’d ever met. The literal-mindedness. And the pictures! “Very well, Arnold; you needed me. For what?”

  “It’s hard to say.”

  “Try. Think: You said you needed me . . . what made you think you needed me?”

  “Because you didn’t get mad at me.”

  “Get mad at you?”

  “In the restaurant. After what that bitch, Agnes Blondell, said about me. Well, I was kind of testing you when we had lunch afterward. I told you some of the bad things I did during my life. And you didn’t get mad. Like priests do. You want some more corned beef?”

  “No, no, thanks. Maybe a little more cabbage . . . that is, if you’ve got any extra.”

  “Sure thing, Father.” Arnold heaped more cabbage on Koesler’s plate, quite burying the slice of corned beef that the priest had barely touched.

  Maybe, thought Koesler, it was the quality or grade of corned beef to which he’d been exposed; but tonight’s offering certainly ranked with the worst he’d ever tried. It was heavily marbled. And as far as he could recall, that was the sort of corned beef he’d always been served. Perhaps there was a far leaner beef that might make the difference.

  In any case, he would have no struggle making do with the cabbage. There was almost no way he knew of spoiling cabbage.

  “Have you had all that much trouble, Arnold? I mean with priests who get mad at you?”

  Bush nodded. He had a mouthful of food, which he chewed and swallowed before speaking. Koesler was grateful.

  “In confession, mostly. But sometimes I’d go in the priests’ house and try to talk to one of them. And sooner or later they’d get mad and start yelling at me.”

  Koesler shook his head. “You’ve had spectacularly bad luck, Arnold. Most priests aren’t like that.” Even as he spoke, Koesler could recall a whole string of priests he’d known while growing up who’d been exactly like that. He liked to think the ranks of the hellfire-and-brimstone gang had been thinned by now.

  “Well, the ones I’ve met were. You were the first one who seemed sort of understanding. And I didn’t even tell you the worst of it.”

  Koesler toyed with a small slice of corned beef. “But you’re going to now, aren’t you Arnold.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind.”

  “That’s what you had in mind when you said you needed me . . . right?”

  “Yeah. Is it okay? I mean, if you get mad, it will be all right. It’ll just mean I made a mistake and you’re like all the rest.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Okay. I wasn’t confirmed.”

  “That’s it?!”

  “See, I thought you’d get mad.”

  “Arnold, I’m not angry. Just very surprised. What’s so horrible about not having been confirmed? Besides, you can be confirmed any time.”

  “That’s just the beginning.”

  “Oh.” Koesler poured more Mogen David into his glass. Maybe he could get to like the stuff.

  “See, I didn’t get confirmed because I didn’t have any real home. See, I was an orphan. At least that’s what they told me. But I did a little checking on my own. I got no idea at all who my father was. He was gone right after he got my mother pregnant. She was a Catholic. That’s why she had me baptized. But then she dumped me.”

  “She abandoned you?”

  “She put me in an orphan asylum. A Catholic place, because she was a Catholic. Then I went into a series of foster homes. Mostly Catholic because the agency who had charge of me was Catholic . . . or at least knew I was a Catholic. That’s why I got to make my First Holy Communion. But when it came time to get confirmed I was in another foster home and they didn’t let me get confirmed because you had to have a new suit. And there wasn’t no way they was going to buy me a new suit.”

  “They wouldn’t enroll you in a confirmation class because—well, that’s outrageous. I don’t know whether it was worse for them to keep you out of the class or worse for the parish to require new clothing. What did they dress you in, for God’s sake?”

  “Well, every once in a while we’d go down to the St. Vincent de Paul clothing store and get second- or third-hand clothes for just some change. Sometimes for free. But—now, this is the bad part— this couple I was living with then, they had to hit the road. The law was after them for bad checks.

  “So they took the kids—I mean the ones who were their real kids— and left the state. But there was no way they was gonna take me with them. They had enough to handle with their three.”

  “So she turned you over to the agency again?”

  “No. And it’s okay if you get mad now. The woman turned me over to her sister who ran a cathouse.”

  “A cathouse? A house of prostitution. What happened to t
he agency?”

  “I sort of slipped between the cracks.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Twelve.”

  “You poor kid.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “At you? No. Maybe at the system. Maybe at your foster mother. But certainly not at you.”

  “See, I was right: You don’t get mad. But now that bad stuff starts.”

  Bush launched into a monologue, an autobiographical sketch of life in a brothel as seen through the eyes of a growing boy going through an extremely painful and unusual adolescence.

  Koesler listened. He listened so intently his mouth became dry from hanging open. As he listened he found himself comparing his boyhood to the aberration that was forced upon a hitherto innocent youth.

  Bush had begun bordello life as a curiosity. Chances are there might have been in that house the traditional hooker with a heart of gold—some kind woman who might have protected and mothered him. But Bush bucked odds all his life. Instead of being sheltered and protected, he was treated as a joke. Upon arrival at the house, he was introduced to each and every fact of life by a series of the inhabitants. He was encouraged to—or at least no one seemed to mind if he did—surreptitiously watch from hiding places as the girls plied their trade. He knew what a condom was before he was able to spell the word.

  While the parents of other children his age were insisting on the completion of homework, Arnold was running errands for the women as well as for their customers. As a final obscenity, Arnold was taught how to satisfy clients who preferred boys as sexual partners. He was allowed to keep a small percentage of what he earned.

  At a comparable age and at almost the same time, Koesler was a seventh grader in a parochial school. He had loving parents who lavished attention on him. He had older sisters who included him in their lives. He lived in a protective cocoon.

  At about the time Bush was learning how to turn a trick with a John, Koesler was in a seminary, further insulated from the world, the flesh, and the devil.