EQMM, Sep-Oct 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "If the new guy runs the Black Chapel anything like Black Luke, I'll be doin’ great business. And that's the only reason I'm lettin’ you keep working, Shea."

  "You're not letting me do anything. I'm here till the job's done."

  "Dawg, you keep crowdin’ me, you could be here a lot longer than that. Like forever. Now you'd best get steppin', the both of ya, before I change my mind."

  * * * *

  Work was already under way at the Chapel when Shea got back. Lydia was waiting anxiously for him in the office.

  "Are you all right? I expected you to come back for help."

  "I had help, the Ryans went with me."

  "Two old men for backup?"

  "Actually, Sam was pretty damn good. I don't think we'll have any more trespassers in the bell tower. What are you doing?"

  "Keeping busy to keep from worrying myself crazy. I want you to take a look at something. That picture, the one of Pastor Black ranting, where the windows look like a row of tombstones? It's not just an optical illusion. I realized that what made it seem so real were these shadow lines across the last two."

  "Yeah, they almost look like names."

  "They are names, or one of them is. I enlarged it. The windows are partly open and what we're seeing is the reflection of a name. Gretchen Hurlburt. Not a common name, probably German. But the only record I could find of a Gretchen Hurlburt was an on-line obituary in the Castle Library genealogy section. She died in Saginaw in nineteen-oh-eight. Her funeral and interment were at St. Denis."

  "So?"

  "Dan, a hundred years ago, the Black Chapel was St. Denis. According to her obituary, she was buried here."

  "Here? Where?"

  "Apparently somewhere near that window since her stone's reflected in it."

  "Could the name be etched on the glass? Sometimes donors’ names are etched on windows or on wall plaques."

  "I thought of that, but it's slanted the wrong way. No, I think it's the reflection of a real gravestone."

  "You're talking about a cemetery, then. She wouldn't be alone. But if there was a graveyard, it should be on the original blueprints, right?"

  "That's another problem. There aren't any drawings. Not even at City Hall."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. According to the logbooks, the Chapel blueprints disappeared around the time of Reverend Black's death. Maybe a reporter was doing research and didn't return them, who knows? But they're definitely gone. I got most of my data from photographs and old articles I found in the Saginaw News morgue."

  "Do any of the photographs show a cemetery?"

  "None I could find. But most of them are wedding pictures or christenings, taken on the church steps or inside. No one takes pictures of a parking lot."

  "Maybe not, but I know just the man to ask."

  * * * *

  "A graveyard?” Sam Ryan said, surprised. “Where?"

  "We think there may have been one behind the Chapel where the parking lot is now,” Lydia said. “Do you remember it?"

  "No, I—wait a minute. I believe there was a cemetery there back in the day. Small one, years ago. The Dazers moved it to make room for parking when they first took over the Chapel. Do you remember when that was, Morrie? Mid ‘fifties, wasn't it?"

  His brother nodded.

  "The ‘fifties?” Lydia echoed doubtfully. “Are you sure?"

  "Yeah, ‘fifty-five or -six, I think. Dug up the old graves, leveled the lot, and paved it over. Put up the baskets later on for neighborhood kids. Only decent thing Luke ever did. Why? Restoration doesn't mean you gotta bring the old cemetery back, does it?"

  "No, we're just trying to learn as much about the building as possible."

  "To make it what it was, you mean? Personally, I think you're making a mistake. People love to talk about the good ol’ days, but lady, the only days that place had were bad and worse."

  * * * *

  "How does one move a cemetery?” Lydia asked as they crossed the street to the Chapel. “What's involved?"

  "It's complicated. First you need a disinterment permit from the Health Department, then a licensed vault company has to open the graves. They recover the caskets or remains, seal them in new vaults for reburial, then the Health Department inspects the site and certifies it for use."

  "Very impressive. How do you know all that?"

  "When family farms are broken up into subdivisions we often find old burial plots on the property. They have to be moved."

  "Well, this cemetery may have been moved, but not when Sam said it was."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I have crime-scene photos on file, taken at the time of Luke's murder. A few show police cars parked on the side streets. The lot isn't visible, but the stone walls clearly weren't there then. Since the walls are set in the parking lot concrete, both jobs must have been done at the same time. The lot was paved after Black Luke's death, not before."

  "After? But it went into receivership afterward. Nobody owned it."

  "Nevertheless, that's when it was done. Sam must have the date wrong."

  "Maybe, but I doubt it,” Shea said, frowning. “That old man may have a few glitches brought on by the years, but I don't think a bad memory's one of them."

  As Shea worked through the afternoon, his eye strayed to the stone wall every time he crossed the lot. A crude mortaring job. Nothing like the Chapel's expert craftsmanship. He promised himself to take a closer look at it when he had a few minutes.

  But his time ran out.

  * * * *

  After work, Shea hurried to his motel room to shower and change clothes before returning to the Chapel for the night watch.

  But on the return trip, he had to pull over twice to let police and fire trucks pass. As he turned onto Johnstone, the streets in front of the Chapel were clogged with police cars and fire engines. Parking at Paddy Ryan's, he spotted one of the Saginaw cops who'd braced him the first day. Boyko. He trotted over.

  "Jeez, Shea, who did you guys tick off? Osama Bin Laden?"

  "Why? What happened?"

  "A bomb is what happened. Couple of fair-sized blasts."

  "Was anyone hurt?"

  "Not out here. We haven't been inside yet, the bomb squad's coming, but—hey! Come back here!"

  Dashing up the steps to the nave, Shea checked the office first. No damage, no one inside. Even in the chaos of the nave, the blast sites were obvious, one explosion in each corner of—Only in three corners.

  Trotting to the fourth corner on the west side of the room, he found a fist-sized glob of putty loose on the floor. C-4, plastic explosive. Military, not industrial. Crudely fused, a lace job, probably snuffed out by one of the other blasts. Looked like somebody just threw them into the room like firecrackers. An amateur. If the plastique had been tamped tightly in the corners, the whole building could have come down.

  When three armored officers of the bomb squad showed up, Shea explained who he was and what he'd found. They told him to get the hell out of the building and stay out.

  Yes, sir.

  Outside, he found Puck. None of his crew had been injured. Everybody was gone for the day. Good.

  Shea spent the next twenty minutes circling the Chapel, scanning the masonry for cracks or bulges. Nothing major. Some bricks shaken loose from the concussion, but no serious structural damage.

  Except to the stone walls that lined the parking lot. The blast had cracked the mortar on the end near the building, knocking several of the stacked stones loose. Picking up one of the pieces to replace it, Shea noticed a number engraved on its surface. Nine, zero, three. There'd been letters above it at one time but they'd been obliterated by time or the blast.

  He stared down at the stone, trying to understand its message. Then wheeled and pushed through the crowd lining the sidewalk, and headed across the street to Paddy Ryan's.

  "Dan! Wait for me!” Lydia called, hurrying after him, catching him in the middle of the street. “What's wrong? Where are you
going?"

  "Wait here. There could be trouble."

  "I'll take my chances,” she said, falling in step beside him. “And to quote one of my heroes, when you start signing my paycheck, you can tell me what to do."

  "Mr. Shea?” Sam said as Dan pushed through the door with Lydia right behind him. “We heard one helluva bang. What happened?"

  "Kid stuff,” Shea said. “Somebody set off a couple of blasts in the Chapel. Rough neighborhood you've got here."

  "Told you that the first day."

  "So you did. Funny how the Chapel's gone to wrack and ruin, local shacks are falling down, yet your place still looks great. A bit rich for this neighborhood, isn't it?"

  "The ‘hood wasn't always like this,” Sam said cautiously. “Years ago, it was different."

  "Yeah, like Dodge City, you said. Must have been wild."

  "We were pretty wild ourselves, those days."

  "I believe you. When you backed me against Razor, he seemed to respect you. Not a lot, but some. I think maybe you still scare him a little."

  Sam shrugged. “We're a couple of tough old Micks. You live in the Chapel district, you pick up a few tricks."

  "Tricks might explain how you survived here all these years, Sam, but not why. You're the last white faces around, the neighborhood's falling apart. So why are you still here?"

  Without a word, Morrie got up from his stool, limped to the door, and locked it. When he turned around, he had the Army .45 in his fist. He waved it toward the counter.

  "My brother wants you to sit down, Mr. Shea. Do it. And put your hands flat on the counter. And then you'd better tell me what you think you know."

  "I don't know anything for sure,” Shea said, doing as he was ordered, with Lydia beside him. “But I've got some questions. Know what this is?” He tossed the shard of stone on the counter. Numbers-side up.

  "It's your rock, you tell me."

  "The blast knocked it loose from the wall across the parking lot. Looks like a piece of a gravestone to me. And there are a lot more pieces just like it cemented into that wall. How do you suppose broken gravestones ended up there?"

  "Maybe when the Dazers moved the old cemetery—"

  "The End Days Brethren never moved that cemetery, Sam, and you damn well know it. It was still there when Black Luke was killed. Maybe it's why he was killed, I don't know. That's something the law can sort out. What I do know is that after the murder, somebody smashed up the stones and paved over that cemetery. Maybe the same two Micks who bombed the place tonight."

  "You've got that all wrong,” Sam snapped.

  "Then you've got thirty seconds to set me straight. I owe you that much for backing me against Razor, but no more. And tell Morrie to put that gun away. He's not gonna shoot anybody with an army of cops across the street."

  "All right, all right! Hell, even when we were ganged up we never killed anybody and we're not about to start."

  "You were gangsters?” Lydia asked.

  "Not exactly, but we worked for ‘em. Everybody did in the old days. The Five Families owned this side of the river. You had to join up to survive. We were strictly small-time but the Families were the real thing. People that crossed them disappeared. And that's where we came in."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Know what the tough part of a murder is, miss? The body. Without a corpse it's difficult to make a case. And we came up with a perfect place to lose bodies, the last place anyone would look. A ghetto cemetery that nobody used anymore."

  "And Reverend Black found out about it?"

  "Found out, hell. Luke was on our payroll for years. A nice little scam, kind of a midnight mortuary service. Until Luke got too deep into the booze and started believing all that crap he was preaching."

  "What did he preach, exactly?” Lydia asked.

  "About the End Days coming and him being the new messiah. All of a sudden he got these big plans, started talking about expanding the Black Chapel. Told us to get the stiffs off his holy ground or he'd blow the whistle. Took himself way too seriously. And didn't take the people we worked for seriously enough."

  "They killed him, didn't they? His death wasn't a murder/suicide."

  "I wouldn't know,” Sam said carefully. “A coroner's inquest returned that verdict all legal and proper and it doesn't matter anyway. It was a long time ago."

  "Yes, it was. So why are you still here?"

  "Black Luke's curse,” the old man spat. “We're stuck. Luke's death solved one problem but dropped a bigger one in our laps. The banks foreclosed on the Chapel and put it on the market. We were afraid new owners might want to move the cemetery so we brought in a crew one night, busted up the stones, made a wall out of them, and paved the whole thing over. Put up the basketball nets for camouflage. Locals figured the banks did it, but those people never came down here, never even noticed. To them the Chapel was just another rundown property in a rough part of town. We figured we'd wait for things to settle down, then move on."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "Progress, Mr. Shea. They kept inventin’ new ways to identify bodies. Blood types, dental records, DNA. If they turn them stiffs up now, they'll be able to identify some of them, maybe all of them. Won't take ‘em long to figure out how they got here. So we're stuck guarding the place, like old junkyard dogs. Not much of a life, but better than life in prison."

  "You didn't set off those blasts, did you?” Shea said slowly.

  "Hell no! Your project is our last hope. With the church open again and the cemetery forgotten, we can walk away. But now, if the walls are damaged and they find the stones ... well. You found us, didn't you?"

  "What are you going to do with us?” Lydia asked.

  "Nothin', miss. We're amateur undertakers, not killers. I've always known this day would come. The penalty for livin’ too long. But if you figure you owe us anything, Shea, we could use a few days to get clear. We've served our time here. I don't want Morrie to die in jail. Please. Just a few days."

  * * * *

  "What are we going to do?” Lydia asked as they walked back to the turmoil around the Chapel.

  "Go to the police,” Shea said. “What else can we do?"

  "After all these years? Would it be so wrong to just ... let them go?"

  "What about the people they helped bury? Do we forget them, too?"

  As they approached the police lines, Reverend Arroyo pushed through the crowd, his creamy suit smudged, tie askew. “We need to talk, over here,” he said nervously, leading them to the lee of his Cadillac.

  "What's wrong?” Lydia asked.

  "I have to make a statement to the press in a minute and we need to be on the same page. Obviously, the bombing will force us to close down the project for a time—"

  "Hold on,” Shea said. “I've been inside and the damage appears pretty superficial. Once the police finish their investigation, we could be up and running in a few days."

  "Even if you're right, the hatred revealed by this attack has caused me to reconsider the entire project. Our intent was to help this neighborhood, but since so many locals clearly object to our restoration project, perhaps we need a new plan. One so ambitious that they'll rejoice in it."

  "How ambitious?” Lydia asked.

  "Instead of trying to recreate the past, we'll embrace the future. Rebuild the whole block into a marvelous new community centered around a newly expanded church with a state-of-the-art broadcast facility. Four hundred apartments instead of the sixty we planned. A parking structure across the street joined by an overhead walkway. It will take a massive fund-raising effort, but I'm sure my flock will open their hearts and purses to continue God's work here on an even greater scale. We can go over the details later, right now we just need a joint statement for the press."

  "If you want me to say the damage is too serious to continue the project, I can't do that,” Shea said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's not true. The blasts barely scratched the Chapel."

  "Th
e damage may be more serious than you think, Mr. Shea. In any case, I'm shutting down the project tonight, and that's the announcement I intend to make. If you feel you can't endorse it, perhaps you should withdraw from the team."

  "I either back your story or I'm fired? Is that it?"

  "I wouldn't put it that way, but since the project is going on hiatus, I'll understand if you wish to seek other employment. It's my fault. I shouldn't have hired such a small firm for the job."

  Lydia started to protest, but Shea waved her off. “The blasts went off an hour ago and you've already got a whole new project in mind? That's quick thinking. Maybe too quick."

  "What are you implying?"

  "That it's not a new plan. It was your plan all along. You got grant money to restore a historical structure but now this very convenient blast makes the project impossible. Since you didn't mention returning any cash, I assume you plan to keep it and raise even more for a bigger project, one nobody would have green-lighted in the beginning."

  "You're mistaken, Mr. Shea, and I warn you, if you carry any part of this fantasy to the authorities, my ministry will sue you for slander, incompetence, and anything else our lawyers can come up with."

  "You'd better not,” Lydia said. “I'll back his story all the way."

  "Then we'll sue you as well,” Arroyo said. “Win or lose, you'll both spend years in court defending yourselves at a thousand an hour. Perhaps you can afford it, Mrs. Ford, but I doubt Mr. Shea can. So why don't we settle this like reasonable people? Here and now?"

  "What do you have in mind?” Shea asked.

  "I'll announce that the project's shutting down. You'll pull out quietly with no public statement. In return, I'll see that you and your men collect the full value of your contract."

  "So I take the money and run? And keep my mouth shut?"

  "That's a bit crude, but not inaccurate."

  "Of all the incredible gall—” Lydia began.

  "Deal,” Shea said.

  "What?” Lydia gasped. “You can't be serious!"

  "I have no choice, Lydia. He's right, I can't afford a long court fight. I've got a crew to feed."