Three Marys

by Glenn Cooper

  ‘Hey partner,’ she said, ‘you’re as handsome as your online photos.’

  ‘Good to hear. I’d hate to start our relationship by disappointing you.’

  This had the potential to be a big scoop so Pittinger had pulled out all the stops and got approval from the paper’s publisher to hire a private jet from Houston to Wilbarger County Airport where a charter helicopter was waiting to take them plus a Chronicle photographer further on.

  ‘You been here before?’ Pittinger asked the helicopter pilot, showing him the paperwork.

  ‘Can’t say as I have, but I know where the ranch is at.’

  ‘ETA?’ she asked.

  ‘Not long, maybe fifteen minutes. We’re not putting down, right?’

  ‘Can we?’ Cal asked.

  ‘I don’t know, mister. Not if it’s private property. Now if you’ve got permission, that’s another thing.’

  ‘No permission,’ Pittinger said. ‘We’ll just circle around and take some photos.’

  The land was flat, featureless and a patchwork of tan prairie land and green, irrigated cotton farms. Flying in from the north the pilot saw it first from a distance of maybe five miles. The sun was low in the western sky and its reflection in the panels of glass hit his eyes through polarized sunglasses.

  ‘There it is,’ he said, and the photographer started working two cameras, shooting stills and video.

  The money shot wasn’t the cathedral. The earlier video broadcast had told that tale. It was what surrounded it. There was an enormous red-brick mansion house and a large stables complex. Horses grazing in a paddock. The vast stretch of surrounding cattle land, brown, non-irrigated, with herds of long-horns grazing in far-flung tracts.

  ‘That’s the house where I met the girls,’ Cal told Pittinger.

  ‘Big-ass ranch,’ the pilot said. ‘Got to be over two thousand acres judging by the boundary fences. Who’d you say owns it?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Pittinger said. ‘It’s registered as the Diamond Bit Ranch. I’m still trying to pierce its ownership structure. It’s wrapped up in shell companies. The newspaper’s lawyers are working on it.’

  ‘From the name, I’d guess your owner’s into oil and gas exploration. What else do you want to see before sunset?’

  Then the photographer pointed to something going on at one of the outbuildings. A bunch of men were getting into a row of white SUVs and driving toward the mansion house. There they got out and began pointing rifles toward the sky. The photographer aimed back at them with his long lens.

  ‘Shit,’ the pilot said, ‘they’re getting a bead on us.’

  ‘This isn’t a restricted area, is it?’ Pittinger said.

  ‘We’re legal but this is west Texas, lady.’

  They heard the rifle blasts. Tracer rounds streaked into the darkening sky.

  ‘Fuck me!’ the pilot shouted. ‘Those were warning shots and I am duly warned.’

  He pitched down, throttled up, and beat a hasty retreat.

  Back at the Wilbarger County Airport they bid adieu to the rattled pilot and headed to the waiting jet for the trip back to Houston.

  ‘I’m not going,’ Cal announced.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Pittinger said, using her wicked smile again.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ Cal answered.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said, then told the photographer to upload the pictures to the photo editor and enjoy the solo flight home.

  They waited at the tiny terminal for a local rental company from Vernon to deliver a car and got some soda and pretzels from a vending machine. There, Pittinger bore down on him like he was the subject of one of her stories. By the time the car arrived she knew his life history including the fact that he’d never been married and was decidedly heterosexual.

  While he drove toward the ranch, in the interest of parity, she told him about herself. Her first marriage had lasted all of two months but she’d been nineteen so, as she put it, that one didn’t count. The second one lasted twelve years and that one counted big-time because she still had two years on the spousal support she was paying.

  ‘I don’t want to sound sexist,’ Cal said, ‘but you’re paying him?’

  ‘I most certainly am. The situation arose because I have something called a job and he has something called laziness. The State of Texas is gender blind to the particulars. My advice to you is never get married or, if you do, marry a gal who’s richer than you are.’

  ‘I’ll stick with the latter.’

  Eventually she asked the question he’d been waiting for. ‘So why is it that you’re on this crusade? I’ve known a fair number of university-types but not many of them crawl out of their ivory tower and get their hands dirty.’

  They were getting close to the ranch and she was the one with the map open on her phone. It was dark now. The land was flat and featureless and he doubted there would be any signs.

  ‘Tell me when to turn,’ he said. ‘Look, I don’t pretend to know how these girls got pregnant but they’re just girls. It makes me mad as hell that they’re being exploited. They want to go home and I want to help them get there. It’s not complicated.’

  ‘Man alive,’ she said, blinking at him incredulously. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to consider getting a pre-nup?’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because I so want to marry you.’

  Pittinger was hoping the turnoff from the highway would get them to the cathedral and at the end of a long, unmarked road a guard house manned by a couple of armed men seemed to confirm they were in the right place.

  Cal lowered his window.

  ‘Hey, good evening. My name is Professor Cal Donovan. I was here a little while ago. I wanted to see George Pole.’

  The nearest guard leaned out the window and said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, there’s no one by that name here.’

  ‘All right, how about Lidia Torres or Sue Gibney?’

  The two guards looked at each other and the one hanging out the window gave the same answer. These people weren’t there either.

  ‘Look, I know the score, fellows, and I know the three girls, the three Marys are here and that Torres and Gibney are here too. George Pole invited me up to the ranch and there’s going to be hell to pay when your people find out that you turned me away tonight.’

  After the guards exchanged more glances Cal was told to shut off his vehicle and wait. Ten minutes went by and a pickup truck rolled up. A large man with alligator-hide boots, a big lone-star belt buckle and a cream-colored cowboy hat got out and loped over to the rental car. Clay Carling was the director of security at the facility, an ex-Texas Ranger who wore a serious case of swagger on his sleeve.

  ‘Howdy. My name’s Carling. I’m the head of security here. What can I do for you?’

  Cal repeated what he’d told the guards.

  ‘I know who you are, Mr Donovan. We didn’t meet the day you flew in but I was advised about the visit. No one’s advised me about this one.’

  ‘It was on the spontaneous side,’ Cal said.

  ‘And who are you, Miss?’

  ‘I’m just a friend of his along for the ride.’

  ‘I see. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you but we’re not going to be able to let you on to the property this evening.’

  ‘George Pole might not like your decision very much,’ Cal said. ‘Could you call him?’

  ‘Already did. He suggests you write him a letter and he’ll be sure to send you a reply.’

  ‘I don’t have his address. Could I get it from you?’

  ‘I don’t have it either. Now if you’ll turn your car around and go back the way you came, that would be fine. Otherwise I’ll have to call the sheriff and have you folks arrested for trespass.’

  Heading back to Vernon, Pittinger said that she could see how disappointed Cal was. She told him that as a journalist she was used to getting the door slammed in her face.

  ‘Maybe we could try to find another way in.’

 
‘If we do those boys will light us up like a Christmas tree. I’m not real interested in dying out here, if you must know.’

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘Well, it’s one helluva drive back to Houston. What do you say we do it in the morning?’

  ‘If that’s what you want, sure.’

  ‘I also want a good steak.’

  ‘I can handle that.’

  ‘Then I want us to check into a motel with a bottle of excellent booze and we’ll see what happens after that.’

  ‘I can handle that too.’

  Randall Anning was up before sunrise working out at the private gym at his Houston headquarters. His personal trainer was stretching him out when he got a call from his chief of staff.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen today’s Chronicle,’ his aide said.

  ‘What’s it say?’

  ‘It ties you to Pole, the cathedral, the girls, you name it.’

  ‘They didn’t get the location, did they?’

  ‘Yes they did, complete with their own fly-over photos.’

  ‘Damn it to hell. We’re a week away from releasing that. OK, end of workout, beginning of shitstorm. Let me know when President Griffith calls.’

  ‘Are you expecting a call?’

  ‘I am now.’

  ‘Randy, you are one sly fox,’ Griffith said.

  Anning was getting out of the elevator when the White House rang.

  ‘I thought it was best you didn’t know before the fact, Mr President.’

  ‘That’s what everybody tells me when they don’t want me to know something. Plausible deniability. Well, that ship has sailed. How long have you been planning this?’

  ‘Pretty much as soon as I heard about the girls. I’m old enough that I didn’t expect to see another miracle like this in my lifetime.’

  ‘You worked with George Pole on it?’

  ‘From the beginning.’

  There followed a giddy torrent. ‘I had a feeling George had something lined up when he resigned. He’s a genius. The guy traded up from cardinal to pope! And not just any pope. Pope Peter! Can you imagine what the hell’s going on inside that motel room that Celestine calls his office?’

  ‘You saw the Vatican statement, I’m sure. It was fairly reserved. He’s keeping his powder dry, to see if our venture gets traction.’

  ‘Well count me in – unofficially of course. I don’t want to lose too many Old Catholic votes. God, I love the name: the New Catholic Church. Was that you leaking to the papers?’

  ‘Actually no. It’s going to complicate life. We weren’t planning for crowds at the ranch for another week but we’ll adapt.’

  ‘Hell, Randy, just throw some more money at it. One of these days you’ve got to tell me how much a cathedral costs.’

  His hand forced by the Houston Chronicle, Anning had to move up his public announcement. The hastily issued press release provided the salient details. In ten days time, Pope Peter of the New Catholic Church would celebrate Mass at the Cathedral of the Blessed New Virgin Marys at Miracle Ranch in Wilbarger County, Texas. All were welcome. Eight hundred people could be accommodated within the cathedral. Overflow crowds could watch the Mass on big screens inside event tents. The press release provided directions from Interstates 40 and 44 and GPS map coordinates.

  Not six hours after the press release hit the wires, the first vehicle approached the security gate at the ranch. A guard at the checkpoint radioed to the security headquarters located in the basement of the mansion house.

  Clay Carling had his cowboy boots up on his desk, watching an array of screens.

  ‘What you got?’ he asked. He knew full well what the guard had. He could see the minivan and its passengers.

  ‘Appears to be a load of nuns,’ the guard radioed back.

  ‘Well, why don’t you ask them where they’re from and what they want?’

  The guard leaned his head in, had a chat, and got back to Carling.

  ‘They’re from Oklahoma City. They’re – what is it – Caramel nuns – sorry, they corrected me – Carmelite nuns – who wanted to make sure they got seats in the cathedral for the service. They want to see the girls and the babies. They’ve got food and water with them. Say they won’t be any trouble.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Carling said, picking up his phone. ‘Gotta make a call.’

  The guard bided his time engaging in chit-chat with the driver, a woman in her sixties who was the youngest of the five. As a non-Catholic, the young man was nervous around nuns and the best topics he could come up involved questions like, did their clothes got too hot in the summer?

  Finally, his radio crackled to life. ‘Mr Anning says it’s OK to let them in.’

  ‘To the tent village?’ the guard asked.

  ‘Send them up to the big house.’

  Torres was waiting at the portico of the mansion.

  ‘Hello, my name is Mrs Torres,’ she said to the minivan driver.

  ‘I’m Sister Anika. Bless you for letting us in.’

  ‘I expect you’d like to meet the Marys.’

  Anika and some of the others began to cry. ‘It’s like a dream.’

  ‘It’s not a dream,’ Torres said. ‘Please follow me inside.’

  It wasn’t long before the next car arrived. Then the next. And the next. None of them would get the same star treatment as the minivan of nuns but they would all be let in and shunted toward the tent and RV city, a proto-village that within a day became a proto-town on the way toward becoming a proto-city. It helped to have a billionaire behind the venture. Anning spared no expense providing for electricity, water, and even sewer hookups. For those without their own (or enough) provisions a local superstore was rushing to set up shop in a warehouse-sized building on ranch premises to sell everything from food to propane. The ranch was so vast that the budding community wasn’t even within eyeshot of the mansion although the spire of the cathedral was visible to all. On the day of the Mass, if people couldn’t walk the mile, a fleet of shuttle buses would provide transport to the church and the overflow crowd could stay in the village to watch the proceedings on stadium-sized projection screens.

  At the mansion, Torres took the nuns by elevator to the third floor. She neglected to tell the girls of the visit, which in retrospect, she admitted, had been a bad idea.

  Each girl had her own reason for becoming upset at the sight of five nuns shuffling down the hall. For Maria Aquino, it was because the nuns at her school often beat her and her classmates for all manner of transgressions. For Maria Mollo, nuns would visit her slum to take away unwanted children for adoption to wealthy families in Lima, Arequipa, and Trujillo. For Mary Riordan, it was because she simply didn’t like them. They annoyed her for reasons she probably couldn’t articulate arising from her father’s categorical denigration of authority figures.

  When the girls scurried away like cockroaches fleeing a switched-on light, Torres called out, ‘Sue, go get them and bring them to the lounge. Why are they hiding?’

  ‘They weren’t expecting visitors,’ Sue said. ‘They haven’t had any since they arrived. Maybe that’s why.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know the sisters were coming either. They wanted them to meet the girls.’

  They again. The concept of they and them, the people behind the curtain, grated on Sue. Now that this man, George Pole, had surfaced, she assumed he was one of them. After her first brief encounter with him at the mansion the day Cal Donovan arrived, she had seen him again while the cathedral video was being filmed and he’d given her the willies. She didn’t like smarmy men and he, with his oppressive cloud of aftershave and painted-on smile, was smarmy as hell. Even worse, he hadn’t showed a dot of interest in her as a person. She was a mere servant.

  Torres took the nuns into the lounge while Sue negotiated. The girls were a unified front in their opposition to a command performance. Not only were they against seeing the penguins – Mary’s term – but their babies were napping and they wanted a rest. They
conferred among themselves for a minute in the combination of a bit of English, a bit of Spanish, sign language, and the facial expressions that they had developed as a way of communicating and then Mary Riordan took the fore as designated negotiator.

  ‘We’ll do it under certain conditions,’ she told Sue.

  ‘I’m happy to relay your terms to Mrs Torres,’ Sue said, feigning gravity.

  ‘First, we want double puddings for the next three days,’ Mary said.

  ‘Noted.’

  ‘Second, we want to go horseback riding in the morning.’

  ‘Check,’ Sue said.

  ‘And third, we don’t want to go to Mass next Sunday.’

  Sue set her ponytail shaking. ‘Number three is going to be tough. In fact, from what I’ve been hearing from Mrs Torres, it’ll be impossible. This is supposed to be your big coming-out party.’

  ‘It’s a bloody Mass, not a party,’ Mary said.

  ‘Figure of speech. Still, forget number three.’

  ‘We don’t want to be stage props for this creepy pope-guy. Did you smell him? I think he was wearing perfume.’

  ‘I hear you but forget number three. Believe me.’

  Mary huddled with the others and came back to the negotiating table. ‘Minion and Eeyore are with me on this. We’ll do it for double puddings for a week and horseback riding every morning for a week too.’

  ‘I’ll run it up the flagpole,’ Sue said.

  She buttonholed Torres, pulling her away from the nuns to discuss the deal.

  ‘Look, Sue, I think it’s a bad idea to give them concessions. It will simply embolden them to make more demands in the future.’

  ‘These are small things,’ Sue said. ‘I got them to back off their demand to skip Mass.’

  ‘My God. That would be a disaster.’

  ‘The girls are captives and they know it. They’re getting rebellious. It’s understandable. Give them a little control over their environments and you’ll see the benefits.’

  After a sharp inhale/exhale Torres said, ‘Tell them yes and bring them and the babies to the lounge.’

  The girls marched into their audience with the geriatric nuns like prisoners to their inquisitors with their eyes cast downward at the infants in their arms. The nuns fell to their knees as if felled by lightning and began praying in adulation. Sister Anika seemed quite agile but as to the three septuagenarians – particularly the especially fat one – and the frail octogenarian, Sue suspected she’d have to help them up.