Cecilian Vespers (32 page)

“Maybe it would be best for everyone if Savo caught the perpetrator,” I suggested. “Justice would be swift under his hand, I suspect!”

“Or mercy perhaps. He caught one of his staff members embezzling money. When discovered, the man claimed he needed it for his disabled son. Further investigation, however, revealed that the little boy had died years before, and the father had been using him as an excuse. But Gino Savo forgave him and kept him on. That’s the priest in Gino. He tried to hush it up, but word got out.”

“Commendable, but it gives rise to the suspicion that Gino may be hoping to cover up another crime, the one committed here.”

“Kind of hard to do, unless he manages to fool the police along with everyone else.”

She looked up. “Ah, the baby! Isn’t he a dote!” Maura had returned to the living room with the bawling infant and busied herself with him in the corner. “Poor little thing; he can’t understand why we don’t know what he’s miserable about!”

“Do you come from a big family yourself, Kitty?” Michael O’Flaherty asked.

“Seven brothers and sisters, Michael, and there’s a tale about every single one of them.”

“Don’t leave out a word!” he urged her.

I left them to it, poured myself a ginger ale, and joined Fred Mills and Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre. “Brennan seems a little subdued this evening,” Fred remarked.

“Well, it’s not as if bubbly hyperactivity is his usual demeanour,” I replied.

“No, there’s something troubling him.”

“He has been quiet since his travels,” Enrico said. “Perhaps he fell in love in Italy! Tell us, Monty. Did he? Did you?”

I shrugged and started to issue a denial, but I was interrupted by Father Savo, who had joined us. He stated flatly: “Brennan is not a boy. It would take more than a glance at a pretty face, or even a night in the arms of a woman, to throw him off course, so …” His voice trailed off. I followed his gaze across the room, where Brennan was standing with a drink in his hand, listening to something Maura was saying. I stared at her. Lamplight bathed her face in a warm glow; despite a smear of something on her cheek, she looked beautiful. The baby was lying across her legs. No longer crying, he was all smiles, his big dark eyes on Brennan, his little legs kicking and hands reaching out to the tall man in front of him. The only move Brennan made was to lift his drink to his lips and down it. I did the same.

The scene receded from my mind with the arrival of Billy Logan and Babs. The former priest walked in just as Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre positioned himself before the fireplace and burst into song. He opened with an Italian folk number I thought I recognized from the Trattoria Benelli, then segued into “E lucevan le stelle,” in which a man awaiting his own execution declares that he has never loved life so much as now. Enrico had a magnificent voice, and the party gathered around him, abandoning small talk and giving itself over to the music. All except Father Savo, who regarded Enrico stonily from the other end of the room.

“Brennan, join me!” Enrico urged. Burke waved him off. But the Italian was not to be denied, and Burke was half-corked by this time, so soon the two of them were singing opera in antiphonal mode, one doing one stanza and the other taking over. The showstopper, “Caruso,” was a number written in honour of another operatic Italian who spent time in America. The song captured the embraces between
a woman and a man who sees the end of his life approaching. Passions run high in the aria, and our performers rose to the occasion.

The audience applauded wildly. My wife fanned her face with her hand, and demanded of the duo: “That chorus means what, exactly? Let me guess: ‘We can sing better than other men ’cause our testicles are bigger.’” This earned a hoot of laughter from Sister Curran.

Brennan seemed to have something caught in his throat.

A handsome and flushed Fred Mills tore his eyes away from Brennan, made a beeline for the bar, cracked open a beer, and chugged it.

But it was William Logan who notched things up to a higher operatic pitch. “Why don’t you guys just fuck off and get over yourselves?”

The casually dressed Burke and the elaborately caped Italian turned towards Logan in astonishment. Before either of them could come up with a rejoinder, Logan launched himself out of the house. His wife gave everyone a mortified glance and stumbled after him.

I was shocked into immobility for a few seconds, then I decided to follow Logan and find out what his problem really was. I saw them down the street, standing by their station wagon. Babs was fumbling with the key, and Logan started in on her. “How long have we had this freaking car, Babs? Five months, and you still can’t figure out the key turns counter-clockwise on the driver’s side and clockwise on the passenger side!”

“Well, that’s because it’s never me driving it. It’s always you.”

“And it’s going to be me now. I told you I’m fine to drive, so give me that key!”

“No, William, you’re not driving. And it wasn’t very nice what you said to Brennan and that other guy. Imagine what they think of you.”

“What they think of
me
? I don’t give a shit what they think. And I especially don’t give a shit about that Euro-trash priest in the million-dollar cassock! It’s Burke who sticks in my craw. That conceited prick. He’s got it all and he rubs everybody’s nose in it!”

“What are you talking about, Billy? For heaven’s sake.”

“He’s got that voice, he gets people from all over the world to his choir school, he composes a Mass, he says he’s going to write an oratorio, he speaks how many languages … Before he entered the sem he was getting more sex than Mick Jagger. Now he doesn’t need it,
doesn’t need a woman, doesn’t need a family. Doesn’t need the United States of America! He’s still a goddamn Irishman! His father was run out of Ireland because he pissed off his fellow terrorists in the IRA, he shoved his family onto a boat to New York when Brennan was ten years old, and the kid refused to give up his Irish citizenship, or he got it back, or he’s a dual citizen, or something. So he lived in the U.S. but never became Americanized. He sneers at our government and our culture and the first chance he gets, he’s off to Rome and all these other parts of the world. He’s never even been to Florida! He’s a fucking European! Now he’s up here in this little Scottish outpost, loving every minute of it. Yeah, he’s got it all. And to top it off, he still gets to celebrate Mass every day. In public. Unlike some of us. Now, give me that key!”

“Billy! You’re not saying you wish you were still a priest! You wouldn’t have met
me
if you’d stayed with that! You wouldn’t have your kids.”

“I don’t have my kids, Babs. All I have is alimony payments and visits once a month. Remember?”

“But what about me?”

“It’s not you, Babs. Obviously. It’s just that nobody tried to talk me into staying. In the priesthood. Know what I mean? All these priests and nuns were leaving, and it was just so goddamn easy to get out. And it didn’t matter because we were all Christ’s holy priesthood anyway, Holy Orders or not. This all happened when the church went to hell in a handcart after Vatican II. Nobody was leaving when the church was strict, when being a Catholic meant something. Being a priest meant something. Back then, you told your bishop you were having doubts, he’d just tell you to get down on your knees and pray harder, then get your ass back on the job. And you did.”

“Well … Brennan obviously still thinks it means something.”

“He and God are singing in each other’s ear. I don’t want to hear another word about him. Get in — I’m driving!”

I melted into the shadows and returned to the party.

Chapter 13

Now therefore be ye not scoffers, lest your bonds be made strong,
For a decree of destruction have I heard from the Lord.
— Isaiah 28:22

Logan’s harangue played over and over in my mind until I fell asleep, but it was his car that was in my thoughts when I awoke on Saturday morning. One of the few bits of information we had gleaned froma witness was that, right around the time of the murder, there was a car near Stella Maris Church with its wipers going on a sunny afternoon. Which suggested the driver was not used to the controls. Surely I was not alone in having that experience in a vehicle I was not accustomed to. A new car or a ental. Go for the light switch and you get the wipers. Or vice versa. Perhaps somebody had been in the parking lot near the murder scene in a car that was unfamiliar to him or her. I now knew William and Babs Logan had bought a car a few months ago, and she was unfamiliar with its locks because, she said, she never got to drive it. Lou Petrucci had come to town in his own car. Whether it was new or old, he would have had lots of time to get used to it on the drive from New Jersey. Kurt Bleier had a rental car. Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre had taken a car out for a test drive. It should be easy enough to determine whether the witness, the woman with the little dog, had noticed American plates, or a snazzy British auto, or
maybe a car with a rental sticker in the parking lot that day.

I made a quick trip to my office and pulled out the notes of my interview with Clara MacIntyre. All I had was that she nearly got hit by a car with its wipers going in the bright sunshine. The car was nice and clean and did not appear to need its windshield wiped. Nothing about the kind of car or the driver. I hadn’t pressed it, I remembered, because I hadn’t been interested in the car. The near-collision was incidental to what I had questioned her about: voices she might have heard coming from the church. It was time to pay another call on Mrs. MacIntyre. I gathered up my photos of our suspects and called her number. “Come right over,” she said.

But she put a damper on things right away when I told her what I was after.

“I don’t know one car from another, Mr. Collins,” she said, stroking Dewey’s tawny head as he slept beside her on the chesterfield. “Last car I had was a Plymouth Valiant.”

“They haven’t made those in a while.”

“No.”

“Do you know what an Aston Martin looks like?”

“That’s an English car. My husband didn’t hold with English cars.”

“One more thing and I’ll leave you in peace, Mrs. MacIntyre.”

“Oh, I don’t mind at all, Mr. Collins. Dewey and I enjoy company.”

“Can you remember anything about the driver?”

“I couldn’t see a face at all. Not that I really looked. I just wanted to avoid getting hit. But the sun was blinding on the windshield. The driver could have been King Kong for all I know.”

“That’s fine. I understand. Here are the photos anyway, in case you saw one of these people lurking around the church.”

She peered at the pictures, reached for a pair of reading glasses, and tried again. “No, no. Oh, I did see this fellow, I think.”

My heart missed a beat. “Which one?”

She pointed to the photograph. Fred Mills. “It was either him or someone who looked a heck of a lot like him. But he wasn’t as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed that day as he looks in this picture.”

“You saw this man when you were walking Dewey on Friday, November 22?”

“I think so. No. No, it was the day before.”

“He was at Stella Maris Church the day before the — on the Thursday?”

“No, not at the church.”

I took a deep breath and willed myself to stay patient and calm.

“Just tell me in your own words, Mrs. MacIntyre.”

“Dewey and I had a walk at Seaview Park, which as you know is right there on the water, some distance east of Stella Maris, but you can see the church plain as day from the park. We walked around the park on Thursday until that man with the unruly Rottweilers showed up. The same rough owner and his dogs were there again on Friday, which is why Dewey and I decided to go to Stella Maris instead that day. But it was on the Thursday that we saw the young man in the picture. He was sitting on a bench looking at the church. Then he just sat there staring down at his feet. He was pale and shaky, looked as if he were about to be sick. In a way I wanted to ask if he needed help. But you never know — he could have been on drugs or something. Dewey ran up to him and sniffed his legs. He reached down and patted Dewey’s ears but it was obvious his heart wasn’t in it. He was unwell or upset, or had other things on his mind. Dewey left him alone. Then the fellow got up from the bench and headed for the parking lot. I never gave him another thought until now.”

Monday morning it was minus twelve outside, with a wind chill of minus thirty. Every muscle in my body contracted in protest when I sat in my frozen car. The heater finally afforded some relief just before I got to the choir school. I went inside and found Fred Mills, but he wasn’t alone. He and Kurt Bleier were deep in conversation outside one of the classrooms.

“Achtung, Kolonel!”
I turned just in time to see William Logan click his heels together and stand at attention facing Bleier. “Herr general wants to see you.
Schnell!
He says zere iss a large wall crumbling behind the compound and comrades are escaping to the West! Zere iss no discipline in the Fatherland anymore!”

Bleier looked up at Logan and replied in a deadpan voice: “Yes,
many are scrambling to the West today. In America they are giving away free assault rifles to the first million people over the age of ten who eat the most wieners and answer a skill-testing question. The question is: ‘Who is the guy who is not on TV?’”

“You’ve got some nerve laughing at American society!”

“It was you who started the conversation, on a decidedly offensive note, Mr. Logan. Until you burst upon us, I was having a courteous conversation with a very dedicated American priest, Father Mills here. But you gave all that up, didn’t you? Couldn’t bear the
discipline
of such a life, perhaps.”

“How can you sit here and listen to this guy, Freddy?”

“Oh, give it a rest, Bill!” “Father Mills is very well-informed about world history, unlike many of your fellow citizens, Mr. Logan. I think I have him persuaded to visit my country when I return.”

“Maybe that should be
if
you return to your country. You could end up spending the rest of your life in jail here. Don’t sit there and lap up all his propaganda, Freddy. German history of some kind probably accounts for the murder of Reinhold Schellenberg. You’re probably thinking how spiffy Colonel Bleier would look in a tight-fitting leather trench coat with shiny boots and a great big stick but —”