by James A Ross
“I can’t believe she never said anything.”
“It’s not the kind of thing you’d talk about to the new boyfriend. But it’s not hard to see why she might help Hassad, if he had a chance to even the score. Or at least why she wouldn’t turn him in.”
“I don’t think he told her his real plan. I think he fed her some line about helping his little country get an equalizer, so they wouldn’t get pushed around, and that she bought it.”
“Maybe. It’s sure not the end of the world crap they’re running on TV. I don’t know if the feds are buying the high school revenge angle. But that’s the story Hassad’s sticking to.”
“And I suppose we’re not to share any of this with anyone.” Tom gestured again at the muted television.
“Johnsen told me to remind you.”
“Or else?” Tom doubted the bunch he’d met in the Coldwater motel room would leave it as a simple reminder.
“He said something about Mom and Al Capone.”
“Income tax evasion?”
“There’s half a dozen accountants and investigators sniffing around town, Tommy. How much you think they’re going to miss? They had the story about the money in Dad’s coat on day one. They promised not to share it with Grogan, if I play ball.”
“So Johnsen and company keep the cameras and headlines and we keep our mouths shut?”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know, a parade or something? Peck on the cheek from the President? Don’t the heroic Morgan brothers get anything?”
“One gets to keep his job and maybe a new patrol boat, if he keeps being helpful. I don’t know how things work in your world, brother. But that’s how they work in mine.
* * *
There was one more thing Johnsen wanted Joe to check out.
“That’s right, Sister. It’s Sheriff Morgan calling Monsignor Marchetti about Father Gauss.” Joe clamped the phone between his shoulder and ear and dumped the contents of a manila envelope onto his desk. “I’m sure you’ve given him my messages, Sister.” He picked up a photograph and held it in front of his face. “Here’s another one. I’ve got a pack of reporters outside my office snarling for meat on that terrorist the State Troopers caught making bio-weapons in Coldwater. If the Monsignor wants to keep his pansy priest out of it, he should come to the phone and give me a good reason.”
* * *
Tom lay in bed mulling Joe’s query. That’s how things work in my world, brother. How do they work in yours? Stifling the temptation to come up with a snappy punch line, he turned his thoughts to the question of what cops and lawyers had in common. Answers came swiftly: bias to action, power, status, the choice to be a wolf rather than a sheep. Fear of losing that power—or worse, being ousted from the pack.
Keep asking questions.
How do cops and lawyers react to opportunities to get what they want? How do they react to threats to what they have? Answer: the same way everyone else does—pursue the opportunities and neutralize the threats using the tools at hand. He looked at his bandaged appendages. What tools do you have left, Tommy?
When the candy striper came by, he asked her to help him dial the Coldwater Gazette. She placed the phone in his hand while it rang. Thompson answered. “Gazette. Wha-da-ya got for me?”
“A Pulitzer. If you’re interested.”
“Morgan?” The newspaper owner sounded harried and breathless. “Can I get back to you on Monday? All hell’s been breaking loose around here this week. I’ve got ten extra pages to get to the printer before midnight.”
“Fairy tales of terrorists foiled? How about an exclusive on the real story?”
He could hear Thompson’s breath. “Look Morgan, you don’t strike me as a nut. But, like I said, all hell’s breaking loose right now. I haven’t got time…”
“Coldwater Hospital, room 203. You want that Pulitzer? Come get it. Otherwise I’m giving it to the Times. They don’t need one more. But they’ll know how to run a story like this so they get one.”
Thompson growled, “This better be for real.”
“It is.”
“Let me just put this edition to bed, then I’ll get over there. 203’s the ICU, right? Who’ve they got there?”
“Me.”
* * *
Thompson’s eyes were bloodshot from pulling all-nighters all week, and his skin was the color of frozen fish belly. “My god, what happened to you?” he asked.
“Sit,” said Tom. “Start taking notes.” While the owner, publisher and everything else of the Coldwater Gazette scribbled furiously on a yellow pad, Tom sketched the theme: foreign exchange student brutalized by racist local toughs grows up to attempt revenge on a town that looked the other way. He added details on who, what, when and where and then presented his terms for an exclusive: “The Gazette holds the story until I give you the green light, probably no more than a few days. When you run the story, you leave the Morgan brothers out of it. Let the state police keep the credit, but for solving a revenge crime, not a terrorist one.”
“Suppose I run the story right now?” asked Thompson.
“You’re a weekly, Jack, and I know where you print. Try to screw me and I’ll give it to the Times. They’ll break it online and print it in the morning. You’ll wind up with bupkis. Play ball with me and you’re a lock for a Pulitzer.”
“You think of everything don’t you?”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks, Jack.”
His next call was to Silverstein. Miraculously, he got through to the busy litigator on the first try.
“The elusive Tom Morgan!” boomed the deep, radio-announcer voice, as entrancing to juries as it was irritating to prosecutors and everyone else. “For a man who’s in serious need of my kind of help, you’re ridiculously hard to get hold of.”
“I’ve been busy on some family business, Moe.”
“Life and death?” asked Silverstein, bluntly. “What could be more important than keeping your butt from sharing a cell with Bubba?”
Tom moved the phone a defensive inch away from his ear. “I’ve got some ideas on that.”
“Good. We’ll be spending a lot of time together over the next year or so. A fresh perspective can’t hurt.”
“Actually, I’m not sure we need to meet at all.”
There was a moment of silence, then, “Tom, this isn’t bullshit. I mean it is…but if we don’t put up a first class defense, starting last week, you’re going to end up broke and behind bars. Let me be brutally honest.”
“Where I don’t want to be. Agreed.”
“It’s up to you, Tom. But you’ve got to get into the game, or they’re just going to steamroller you. They’ve already started.”
“I know. So let me explain how we stop them.” Tom moved the phone back to his ear. “Have you got a television in your office?”
“What? Look, this can wait…”
“The terrorist stories from upstate New York,” he interrupted. “Have you been watching them?”
“From that Coldwater place? Sure. Tanner mentioned you were up there. But listen…”
“Good. I’m going to give you some information that hasn’t been on the news, and then the phone number of a guy named Johnsen from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
“Never heard of it.”
“There’s a reason for that. Now hear me out. When I’m done, I want you to call this guy and explain how we can be of assistance to his agency. And how they can help us.”
“What’s this…?”
“Just listen, Moe.”
* * *
A pale, young seminarian ushered Joe into the Chancery’s wood paneled conference room where the fugitive priest sat waiting at the end of a polished conference table.
Gauss blew a lungful of smoke toward the full-length portrait of Pope Pius XII that dominated the room. “He didn’t know what to do either, when he came face to face with evil. He dithered—and six million people died.”
Jo
e threw a folder onto the table and took a seat across from the priest. “I didn’t come here to talk about a bunch of Keystone rag-heads, Father. I came here for the truth about Billy Pearce.” He took a sheaf of papers from a manila envelope and laid them on the table. “The state police have come up with a log of calls to and from Billy Pearce’s cell phone in the months before he was murdered. It seems like you and he had a lot to chat about.”
Gauss looked thoughtful. “You’re friendly with the authorities now? I’d heard you were something of a pariah where they were concerned.”
“We’re trading favors.”
Gauss waited.
“Gay clergy and Islamic terrorists?” Joe elaborated. “Hard to wrap the flag around that one. The powers that be are hoping that this is just a case of recreational fiddling and not some retro-radical priest thing. They’ve asked me to find out. Discreetly.”
Gauss hauled on the cigarette and stared out the Chancery window. “In exchange for what, I wonder?”
“I’ve got what your Bishop’s has. Plus what your housekeeper says she didn’t tell the Bishop’s gopher, Marchetti. Plus phone records that show you were one of the last people Billy Pearce spoke to before he was murdered. So talk, Father. What was it? Slumming? Or have you been building bio-weapons in the church basement?”
“I wasn’t referring to terrorists, Sheriff.”
“When?”
Gauss waved the back of his hand at the portrait of the wartime Pope. “The paralyzing effect of evil. I was referring to Billy Pearce.”
“I’m listening.”
“Good.” Gauss stubbed out a cigarette and lit another. “Do you believe in a personal God, Sheriff?”
Joe shrugged.
“The personification of evil?”
“The what?”
“Satan.”
“I’ve seen people do nasty enough without supernatural help.”
“Billy Pearce was evil,” said Gauss. “Pure evil.”
“I kind of doubt that, Father. His rag-head pals, maybe. Pearce was just screwed-up from being odd man out in a family of tight-assed geniuses.”
“You’re wrong, Sheriff. Dr. Hassad and his colleagues may be religious fanatics. Modern day Crusaders, if you will. That makes them misguided, not evil. But no one misguided Billy Pearce. His actions were entirely self-directed and his ambition was unequivocally evil.”
“What ambition was that?”
“To lead young men into temptation and to destroy their souls.”
“You want to be more specific?”
Gauss lit a cigarette from the stub in his hand. “Has your brother ever spoken to you of our association?”
“Are you going to tell me he’s a Marlboro man, too?” Joe snorted.
“I’m going to tell you that when I first met your brother he was poised on the same path that you seem to have taken. Smart boy. Fundamentally decent, but not particularly moral. Surrounded by the world’s temptations and with no inclination other than to go with the flow.”
“And you took him in hand…”
“Your brother took himself in hand. I encouraged him… showed him some tools… validated his instinct to be something more than what others expected of him.”
“And then he went to Wall Street and made a pile of money. Nice work, Father. He should give you a cut.”
“Then he took up with the Pearce family. And all his efforts and mine came undone.”
Joe laughed. “I kind of doubt he sees it that way, Father. But what’s the connection to Billy’s ‘leading young men into temptation? ’ or to bombs in the church basement?”
“Do you really think I had something to do with Billy Pearce’s death?”
“I’ve got photos, Father—letters, phone records and a gossipy housekeeper all pointing me in that direction. If you can turn me around, you ought to give it a try. I’m giving you a chance.”
Gauss stood and walked toward the Chancery window, flicking the stub of his cigarette into the courtyard below. “Miss Pearce led your brother down a familiar, hedonistic path. A spiritual dead end. Empty, but not evil. I’m sure she genuinely cared for him.
“Her brother on the other hand was a predator. He chose young men who had started on the path toward something better and did his best to turn them aside toward self-destruction. He enjoyed it.”
Joe clasped his hands behind his head. “What makes you think you know what made Billy tick?”
“There was a boy…”
“I might have guessed.”
“Much like your brother. Smart but unfocused. Parents self-absorbed in their own ambitions and not paying much attention to him. I took an interest and tried to help him find his direction. That’s what I do, Sheriff. My real vocation, you might say. Billy Pearce became aware of that vocation—probably through one of my failed efforts—and decided to make it his vocation to foil mine. The jealousy of evil in the presence of good, if you will. Sadly, evil won this time. It happens. The boy dropped out of school, got involved in drugs and disappeared. I heard about Pearce’s involvement from another of my vocational projects. Also that Pearce seemed to be using me as a sort of talent scout.
“I confronted him. Hence the phone calls. Threatened him with hell and damnation. That amused him. No, that’s too innocent. It inspired him.”
Joe folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “These phone records have calls going both ways, Father. Some of them go on for quite a while.”
“Pearce would call to gloat. To update me on his progress and conquests. I shouldn’t have listened, I suppose. But I told myself that I might get something from the contact that I could use. Know thy enemy and so forth. I didn’t help. I’m afraid I was just mesmerized by the hiss of the snake.”
“And the last call?”
“The boy I mentioned. There was a rumor that he had died. I’d been quite upset. But then Pearce called to say he was alive and claimed to know the address of some crack house in the city where the boy might be living. He told me to come over and that he would tell me where it was.”
“Well, well…”
“I knew he was lying. He sounded stoned. But how could I say no? It’s like the old joke about second marriages—‘the triumph of hope over experience. ’ In any event, Pearce was gone by the time I got there.”
Joe returned his chair legs to the floor and retrieved a sheet of scribbled notes from his folder. “Mrs. Flynn says she found a bunch of wet clothes in the rectory laundry the morning Billy’s body was fished out of the lake. You want to explain that?”
Gauss smiled. “It wouldn’t have been a good idea to be seen driving up to Pearce’s hovel in the church station wagon, Sheriff. I rowed there in my skiff.”
“Did you fall out?”
“Very nearly. Some maniac in a speed boat practically cut me in two as I came into Wilson Cove.”
Joe watched Gauss light another cigarette—his fourth in ten minutes. “Too bad Billy was gone when you got there. You might have saved him.”
“He was beyond redemption, Sheriff.”
“Did he leave a note, or anything to explain why he wasn’t there or when he might be back?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“Did you notice anything at all? Anything unusual?”
“Just that he was supposed to be there and wasn’t. Though in itself, that wasn’t unusual—Billy Pearce telling an untruth.”
Joe removed a sheaf of photographs from a manila envelope and handed one to the priest. “Does anything in this picture look familiar to you?”
Gauss examined the photo and moved his head from side to side. “No.”
“Do you notice anything unusual in it?”
“It looks like the rumpus room of a frat house after an all-night party, if that’s what you mean.”
“But you don’t recognize the room or anything of its contents?”
“Should I?”
He put the photo back in the envelope. “Okay, Father. You can quit fan dancing
now. You just screwed up.”
Gauss inhaled a lung full of smoke and ignored the invitation to respond.
“That photo was taken in Billy Pearce’s boathouse loft a few hours after his body was pulled from the lake. If you were there when you say you were, that picture is what his room looked like.”
Gauss opened his mouth to speak.
Joe cut him off. “Don’t say a word. Just listen.”
Gauss drew a lung full of smoke and waited.
“You never made it to the boathouse. The boat you say almost swamped you was hauling Billy Pearce, trussed up in a sleeping bag. Only it wasn’t going fast enough to cut anything in two. It was just put-putting slowly through Wilson Cove, like any other boat going through that rock garden in the dark. Then along came the Coldwater Patrol Boat—me—and the boat with Billy turned off its engine and lights. If you were there in your rowboat, it may even have floated right up to you. You would have heard voices and seen Billy’s sister shove his head over the side to keep him quiet.”
Joe eyeballed his quarry. “When I turned on the patrol boat spotlight, you would have seen Billy clearly, hanging over the side. And he would have seen you in your little rowboat, if that’s where you were. Maybe that’s why he started to struggle and make noise.
“When I pulled the patrol boat alongside the Pearce’s Chris Craft, I heard a thud and then a few seconds later a splash. If the splash was Billy going into the water, then the thud was him hitting something first. It was a long couple of seconds between the thud and the splash, Father.”
Gauss opened his mouth. Joe held up his hand.
“The way I piece it together, Billy Pearce fell right out of that boat and into your lap.”
Gauss stubbed out his cigarette, started to light another and then seeing it was the last in the pack, put it back. “Then what?” he asked, sarcastically. “Am I supposed to have muttered a brief prayer before helping my adversary on to his final resting place?”
Joe gestured at the portrait of Pius XII. “You said that Pope missed his chance when he had it. That he froze in the face of evil. I figure that’s another way of saying that you think you’d act differently, if you had the chance. I think you did. I think you had that chance and you acted.”
