It was now 11:00 P.M. Tuesday. The vigil service was long over. The boys had gathered in a couple of the large rooms on the first floor of Ste. Anne’s rectory. Clerical collars and vestments had been put aside.
It was customary when a significant number of priests gathered that they would engage in shop talk, friendly conversation, and a bit of clerical gossip. And when the opportunity presented itself, someone was likely to break out the cards and poker chips.
And so it was tonight. The only thing different from the days of yore, some twenty-or-so years before, was that now the rooms were rarely smoke-filled and the stakes were generally not as high.
The game was going on in the large dining room. The smaller room was given over more to conversation, plus, in one corner, Bishop Kowalzki was playing chess with Father Dempsey. Standing near the chess players, only vaguely interested in the game, were Fathers Dorr and Koesler.
“Does this sort of give you the creeps?” Dorr asked.
“What?”
“Being so close to where Diego was killed.”
“I hadn’t thought of it … until now. I wish you hadn’t mentioned it,” Koesler added. “I guess I just got lost in having the gang around. But, okay, now that you brought it up, yeah, it is creepy being just a few rooms away from a murder scene. I don’t think I want to think about it.”
“I suppose Don Carleson is upstairs in his room.” Dorr’s eyes lifted in the general direction of the second-floor bedrooms.
Koesler turned a trifle edgy. “Any particular reason why you want to connect the fact that Don’s room is not all that far from Diego’s office?”
“No, no …” Dorr was patently apologetic. “I was just wondering how he can sleep.”
“You mean with his conscience?”
“No, with all the noise going on down here. You’re getting awfully defensive, aren’t you, Bob?”
“Maybe. But I have it from your own lips that you think he did it. Maybe even in a conspiracy with Ernie Bell!” It was obvious that Koesler considered both theories preposterous.
Their attention was drawn to the chess game. Bishop Kowalzki was telling a story while continuing to move his players. And when the bishop told a story, he expected others to listen.
“I think you were there-at Jimmy Welch’s retirement party.…” The bishop was speaking to Dempsey, his opponent in the chess game.
“That was back in September!” Dempsey wondered about the odor of a story that old.
“Yes, it was,” the bishop acknowledged, “but if you haven’t heard it yet, you should. You remember it was very warm that day.”
“Not really.”
“You didn’t think it was warm?”
“No, I don’t remember.”
“Well, it was warm, unseasonably warm,” the bishop said. “I remember because I was just in shirtsleeves, no clerical collar. When I came up to the back door of the rectory, who gets there at the same moment but Irene Casey, the editor of the Detroit Catholic. Well, anyway, the housekeeper is waiting at the back door to welcome the guests. For a moment no one says anything. Then I remember I’m not wearing anything that would show I’m a clergyman. But I figure the housekeeper will recognize my name. So I just say, ‘Kowalzki.’ And the housekeeper smiles and says, ‘The party is downstairs. You can go right down, Mr. and Mrs. Kowalzki.’”
“Checkmate.”
“What?”
“Checkmate.” Dempsey indicated the chessboard now almost emptied of the bishop’s men, with Kowalzki’s king decidedly mated.
The bishop smiled and swept his king from the board. “Another game?”
“I don’t think so. Thanks,” Dempsey said. “It’s getting kind of late. I should be heading back soon.” Dempsey stood and joined Koesler and Dorr. He yawned elaborately, striving for a convincing indication that he was indeed tired. The truth was that he didn’t want to go through another game with the bishop.
The bishop, receiving no takers, left the room and prepared to depart the party.
“Nice enough guy,” Dempsey said, “but he plays chess like a member of the hierarchy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Koesler asked.
“Sort of a full-court press …”
“To mix metaphors.”
“Yes. Well, he just comes at you with everything he’s got. Tries to overwhelm you. It works only if he catches you unprepared. It’s sort of strange seeing everything used like a pawn. Knights, rooks, bishops-anything but the queen-and sometimes even her. It’s an interesting maneuver the first couple of times you see it. After that, it gets dull in a hurry.”
“But he’s a nice guy,” Dorr said.
“I said that,” Dempsey said.
“And he conducted a sensitive, touching vigil service, I thought,” Koesler said.
“Yeah, I thought so too,” Dorr agreed.
“And he had determined opposition,” Dempsey said.
“Huh?”
“Those Hollywood freaks who’re doing the movie. They were about as intrusive as they could get. Cameras and those bright lights right in the bishop’s face. I swear, I don’t know how he kept from telling them to get the hell out of there.”
“For the life of me,” Koesler said, “I can’t figure out how they can make a movie out of this when no one knows for sure or how it’s going to end.”
“They’ll probably film the guilty party from a great distance,” Dempsey said.
They all laughed.
“Did you see how they had good news and bad news in the paper today?” Dorr asked.
“The movie company?” Koesler said. “No.”
“They lost Chris Noth.”
“The detective from ‘Law and Order’?”
“Yeah. He was supposed to play a Detroit Homicide detective in this movie.”
“I assume that was the bad news,” Koesler said. “What’s the good?”
“Charles Durning is supposed to play Bishop Diego,” Dorr said.
“Charles Durning as a Hispanic bishop!” Koesler said.
“He can do anything,” Dorr affirmed. “There goes somebody who could play himself.”
“Huh?”
Dorr inclined his head toward the window. Koesler and Dempsey followed his gaze.
Clearly visible just outside the rectory was someone bundled up in a black overcoat and black hat. He was entering an automobile. There was no doubt who it was. It was Father Donald Carleson.
The car moved slowly down St. Antoine. Not so slowly that it would attract attention, just well within the speed limit.
It was close to midnight and bitterly cold. The actual temperature was fifteen above zero. The wind coming off the river chilled the skin to ten below.
Encountering another car was an infrequent event. People out driving at this hour in this area and in this weather were going to night jobs, or coming home from a party, or were cops, or criminals pushing women or dope or stealing cars or parts of cars. And there were few of any of the above.
The car slowed as it approached Detroit’s Receiving Hospital. There was no thought of parking on the street. Odds heavily favored the vehicle’s disappearance before the owner’s return.
Instead, the car glided down the drive to the parking garage. A parking stub jumped halfway out of the machine. The ticket was plucked; the bar lifted. At this hour there were few other cars. The driver pulled into the nearest empty space.
He got out, paused, and looked about. He could see no one.
He turned and retraced his direction. He walked toward the Emergency receiving area. He paused and looked through the glass exterior of the Emergency Department. A nurse and an intern looked up from their preparation of an empty gurney. They looked in his direction for a few seconds and waved.
He proceeded past the Emergency Department and entered the hospital proper.
The attendant at the information desk near the far wall looked up with drowsy eyes and nodded at the visitor.
He took an elevator to the third floor. He was the only occupant.
When the elevator doors opened at the third floor, he leaned out into the corridor; finding it empty, he left the elevator and walked at a normal pace down the hall.
The lighting was dim and restful. Soft sounds came from rooms as he passed. In a few, television told bedtime stories. The low hum of hospital machines and monitors was a backdrop to sounds of misery and pain, fitful moans and sporadic sharp cries.
He halted. At the end of the corridor, some fifteen or twenty yards away, was a brightly lit nursing station, the nerve center of this floor full of illness and affliction.
He stood motionless. The nurse at her station looked up. She was startled to see him. She would have been startled to see anyone at this hour. She recognized him. Reassured, her head bent again to her task.
He entered a room. It was a double room, but only one bed was occupied.
He approached the occupied bed. For several moments, he stood looking down at the patient wordlessly.
In the dim light, the patient was almost indistinguishable from the white sheets and blanket.
He felt along the patient’s neck for the carotid artery. There was a pulse. A very, very weak pulse.
His hand moved across the patient’s face. There was no oxygen tube in the nostrils.
He carefully removed the pillow from behind the patient’s head and placed it over the patient’s face.
He held the pillow tight down over the patient’s face. There was no resistance. The patient’s fingers moved as if reflecting distress.
There was no change in the position of either person for several minutes.
Finally he removed the pillow and felt once more for the carotid artery. This time there was no throb. He checked carefully. No pulse.
He lifted the patient’s head and carefully replaced the pillow, resting the dead patient’s head on it. He stood for a moment with head bowed. Then he left the room and, without looking back, went directly to the elevator.
On the main floor, he exited the elevator and walked briskly out of the foyer.
He stopped the car at the exit attendant’s booth, handed him the parking ticket, paid the fee, stuck the receipt in his pocket, and drove off into the night.
As he headed away from the hospital, he shuddered. He turned the car’s heater on full blast.