The Guardian

by Konvitz, Jeffrey;

  “And I with you,” McGuire responded. “Where can we be alone?”

  Ben wiped his face with a towel and led the priest into an empty card room.

  They sat down across from each other at a poker table. Ben took a cigar from the pocket of his warm-up jacket and offered one to McGuire, who declined.

  “I want you to answer some questions,” McGuire began, after gruffly clearing his throat.

  Ben rapped his fists on the table. “No! You’re going to answer the questions. If not, you can go paddle your wares elsewhere.”

  “Ben…”

  “Forget the bullshit, Father.”

  McGuire sat back, tugging at the sleeves of his jacket.

  “You’ve been part of this damn thing since the beginning!” Ben declared.

  “Yes,” McGuire replied.

  “That’s why you were on the ship.”

  “Yes.”

  Ben leaned across the table, staring icily. “You left the crucifix!”

  “Yes.”

  “And if Franchino hadn’t died, you wouldn’t have come forward.”

  “I can’t answer that. I did what I was told. I took no initiatives.”

  Ben leaned on his elbows. “I saw you outside the park. Hailing a taxi.”

  “I know,” McGuire said stoically. “Franchino told me.”

  Ben puffed deeply on the cigar, blowing a billow of smoke up toward the ceiling. “How did Franchino die?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit! I repeat: How did Franchino die?”

  McGuire’s expression changed. “Don’t overreact, Ben,” he said curtly. “I’m answering your questions because I want to. I’m trying to show good faith, to gain your confidence. I am no longer a pawn in Franchino’s hands. Nor do I have the luxury of Franchino’s presence. His duties are my duties. And I will execute them without fear for my life and without countenancing any interference.”

  Ben was dumbstruck. He swallowed hard, then continued, though less aggressively. “Where have you been? Why didn’t you contact me after Franchino’s death?”

  “I was unable to. There were things that had to be done. But it matters little. Other than my ascension to Franchino’s role, nothing has changed.”

  “Then Faye is still to be the next Sentinel.”

  “Yes.”

  “But Franchino told me there was an alternative, a way to alter her fate.”

  McGuire nodded. “And I’m sure he told you that in order to accomplish that, you would have to do as he…and now I…say. Without question. Without regard for the consequences.”

  “Yes…I understood that.”

  “Good,” McGuire said, standing. He walked to the window, then turned. “Where was Joey Burdett born?”

  “I don’t…”

  “Where was your son born?”

  Ben looked off into a void of space. McGuire watched the reaction; he’d hit a chord. He waited.

  Ben refocused on McGuire. “In Manhattan.”

  “In which hospital?”

  “Presbyterian. At the Columbia Medical Center.”

  “Who was the obstetrician’?”

  “Dr. Herb Raefelson.”

  “How can I contact him?”

  “You can’t. He died of a heart attack three months ago.”

  Very clever, McGuire thought. “And his files?”

  Ben threw his cigar on the floor. “How would I know? I wasn’t his secretary.” He stood and approached the priest. “Look, Father. I don’t know what you’re after. But I have nothing to hide. My son was born in Presbyterian Hospital; Raefelson delivered him.”

  McGuire smiled. “We checked the hospital records. There’s no trace of a Joey Burdett. Or an admission record for Faye Burdett. Or a payment receipt in your name or your wife’s.”

  “Then that’s the hospital’s fault. I’m not responsible for their inefficiency. The baby was born there and that’s all there is to it!”

  McGuire nodded ever so slightly. “Ben, are you telling me the truth?”

  Ben exploded. “You’re goddamn right I am. And what of it? What does it matter where the baby was born? And why are you wasting your time, when my wife’s life is in danger?”

  McGuire grabbed Ben by the shoulder. “Why am I wasting my time?” he asked. “I think you know the answer to that!”

  “There’s no way that Chazen can be the baby!”

  “Perhaps. But there’s a reason why you’re lying to me.” He released his grip, then walked to the door and turned, staring angrily. “Call me if you intend to tell me the truth. If not, I’m going to find out for myself. Then God help you!”

  Consumed by an increasing spiral of frustration, McGuire went to the Archdiocese, secluding himself behind the locked doors of what had been Monsignor Franchino’s office. Fortunately, he had Biroc. If anyone could unravel the truth and discover the reason for Ben Burdett’s intransigence, it was the giant Slav. But that might take time, and there was little time to spare, as the transition was to take place on Friday, six days away.

  He adjusted the desk lamp and rubbed his eyes. The windows behind him were closed, covered by a corroded venetian blind, admitting no light.

  Turning, he opened a small double-locked cabinet that stood behind the left wing of the desk. Inside were files, arranged chronologically, each partitioned into two sections and marked along the borders.

  He pulled out the first two, Allison Parker/Sister Therese and William O’Rourke/Father Halliran. The O’Rourke file contained the resume of the man Father Halliran had been before he was conscripted. Then it segued into a second file, containing the manufactured identity of Father Halliran, attributing to him the pastorship of the Church of Heaven’s Angels in Flushing, Queens, a congregation disbanded more than two decades before.

  He read the file, then examined the Allison Parker/Sister Therese material, the detailed treatment of Allison Parker’s life, the bogus background to support her assumed ecclesiastic identity.

  And then it began to grip him, a sense of horror wrought by the unbelievable charade in which he was a part.

  He replaced both files and removed a third double-sectioned envelope, which he placed under the light. Turning over the flap of the first, he reviewed the documents, focusing finally on a psychiatrists report, written by Dr. Martin Abrams. It described his patient’s psychoses, delving into the death of the patient’s mother and the attempted suicide by the patient, concluding with a detailed analysis of the patient’s repression.

  This was the most significant document, the key to the selection of the patient as the next Sentinel, the explanation of why the next Sentinel had no knowledge of his past.

  McGuire flipped over both sections, the first labeled Father Bellofontaine, the second Ben Burdett.

  Ben Burdett…he next Sentinel.

  Had it really made it easier for them that Burdett, through a sequence of unbelievable coincidences, had become convinced that Faye was the chosen?

  In retrospect, he was sure that it had. Certainly, it had allowed them to manipulate Ben Burdett more completely.

  Shutting off the desk light, he replaced the files and left the office.

  On Monday morning, Biroc called Father McGuire, told him that he’d uncovered additional information and that it was imperative that they meet at once.

  McGuire arrived at 81 West Eighty-ninth shortly before ten o’clock. Biroc appeared ten minutes later.

  “What is it?” McGuire asked, his pulse already racing.

  Biroc sat on the basement couch and rolled the pipe that Ben and Faye had given him between his fingers. McGuire sat next to him.

  “I double-checked the information I’d received from Presbyterian,” Biroc began, speaking soberly. “All of it was accurate. The child wasn’t born there. I also followed up on Rae
felson. He did treat Faye Burdett, although the nature of the treatments were unspecified. Nevertheless, he wasn’t an obstetrician, and there’s no indication he’d delivered their baby. I started to check every hospital in New York and up the New England coast. And I found what we wanted.”

  McGuire tensed, his curiosity nourished by the morbid train of events.

  “Joey Burdett was born in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston,” Biroc continued. “And Faye Burdett is not his natural mother. The real mother lives in Concord, New Hampshire. Her name is Burrero. The baby was put up for adoption two days after its birth by the hospital service, and was claimed by Ben and Faye Burdett on July 22.”

  McGuire wove the venomous information through his mind.

  “As you requested,” Biroc continued, “I also verified our information on Ben Burdett. In my opinion his entire background was fabricated.”

  “What do you mean?” McGuire asked.

  “The file is wrong about his whole childhood. More important, both his parents died of coronary heart disease. There was never a case of cancer in the immediate family, and certainly his mother didn’t die of the disease. Likewise, there’s not even the slightest doubt that the mother died of natural causes. Ben Burdett did not kill her, and he never attempted suicide.”

  McGuire was stunned. “That’s impossible. Franchino could not have made such mistakes.”

  “Franchino or no Franchino, the mistakes were made. I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life”

  “Is there anything else?” McGuire asked, so confused he could hardly think clearly.

  “Yes,” Biroc replied.

  “What.”

  “There’s a lead.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I kept coming across the name Arthur Seligson. Arthur Seligson had something to do with Ben Burdett. I checked further and found a man named Charlie Kellerman, who may have known Seligson. I haven’t spoken to Kellerman, but I have his address.”

  “Can he help us?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s the only lead we have.”

  “Where can I find this man?”

  “In the Village.” Biroc handed McGuire a slip of paper with the address. “The address of his apartment.”

  McGuire glanced at the paper, folded it in quarters, and placed it in his pocket.

  Charlie Kellerman looked up from the cot and laughed, a peculiar chortle interspersed with strident wheezes and rasps.

  “Sit down, Father,” he said, forming the sounds with his lips, tongue, and palate. “I ain’t got no voice box, so it ain’t easy to talk, and it’s none too easy for people to understand. They had to remove it. Cancer.” He pointed. “There, pull up the seat.”

  McGuire grabbed the chicken crate that Kellerman had indicated; it creaked under his weight.

  “So you want to talk to me, eh?” Kellerman asked.

  “Yes,” McGuire replied. “But first I’d like to put on a light, perhaps open the windows, too.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you don’t. Light hurts my eyes, and sunglasses don’t do no good no more. You know what I mean?”

  McGuire looked at the man’s body. The veins on his forearms were crusted with scabs. His right wrist looked gangrenous. His pupils were hugely dilated, and his ankles, which extended beyond the base of his djellaba, were bloated with water and discolored. Not only was Kellerman a mainliner, but he’d obviously been one for a very long time.

  “You like my place?” Kellerman asked, sweeping his arms across the expanse of the one-room garret.

  “Yes,” McGuire said, trying to remain cheerful by ignoring the stench, the piles of clothes, broken dishes, and the inch-deep layer of dust that covered everything in sight.

  “I’ve lived here about five years,” Kellerman said. “Since my gay club, the Soiree, closed. I was making a lot of bread then. I had a big duplex on Third Avenue and Twentieth. All the drugs I needed. Broads. Fags. Orgies. It was happening. But that was a long time ago. So now I’m in SoHo. There ain’t no money no more. Blew it on coke and heroin. And couldn’t get a new club open. The SLA wouldn’t give me a liquor license, because I’d been busted for selling dope.” He wet his lips and shifted into a more comfortable position. “But I dig the way things turned out. I’m easy, man. I live on a cloud. Way up in the sky in the shadow of God. I got my astral self. Even the Big C couldn’t beat me.”

  McGuire shook his head, pitying the man, his emaciated body, his distorted view of the world, wrought by his heavy doses of narcotics.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Kellerman?”

  “Well, now that you ask. Yeah. You want something from me? Information? Okay. Then I need something from you.”

  “What?”

  “The green. I need cash to make my connections. I can’t deal no more. And I can’t scam the streets. So I got to hope that the good fairy comes to visit me.” He paused, juggling the many moods of his face, then beamed. “And here you are, Mr. Fairy.”

  McGuire took a fifty-dollar bill form his pocket and laid it on the edge of Kellerman’s pillow.

  “That ain’t enough,” Kellerman warned.

  McGuire placed another fifty on top of the first.

  Kellerman grabbed the bills and stuffed them under the blanket. “The next fix is on Jesus, Father.”

  McGuire waited while the addict convulsed with laughter, rising and falling on the bed, rapidly exhausting himself.

  “Might we talk?” McGuire finally suggested.

  “Of course, Father.” Kellerman replied, brushing a cockroach off his blanket. “You want to ask questions? I got this urge to answer.”

  “Does the name Arthur Seligson mean anything to you?”

  Kellerman strained to remember. “I’m not sure,” he said. “The name sounds familiar.”

  “It should,” the priest prompted.

  Kellerman withdrew into himself, mumbling incoherently, moving his festered arms to his sides. Several times he started to say something, then stopped, rejecting the thought, moving elsewhere in time and place. McGuire sat rigid, watching Kellerman struggle with himself, trying to resurrect memories.

  After ten minutes of silence, Kellerman hoisted himself up on his pillow. He asked McGuire to get him a cigarette from a nearby ashtray. The priest fetched it…it was only a butt…and stuck it into the man’s mouth, lighting it.

  The tobacco was stale; the odor made McGuire wince.

  “Yeah, I remember him,” Kellerman said, proud of his accomplishment. “He used to come into the Soiree. Became kind of a regular. Once or twice a week. He was attractive. Sexy.”

  “Describe him!”

  “Dark hair. Medium height. Good-sized jewels.”

  “Jewels?”

  Kellerman giggled. “You know. Jewels. Cock and balls. I’d give them a squeeze every once in a while, though I did it on the Q.T., ’cause Seligson’s lover was a jealous bastard.”

  “Who was his lover?”

  “A queen named Jack Cooper.”

  McGuire pulled a notepad from his pocket and jotted the name.

  “So, as I was saying,” Kellerman continued, “he used to come in a couple of times a week to see Cooper, who worked for me.”

  “How long did this continue?”

  “About a year or so. Then, suddenly, Seligson disappeared. Never came in again. Never saw him again.”

  “Is that all you know about him?”

  “Yes. But what’s there to know? Listen, Father, back in the mid-sixties, most queens had not come into the open. Some were still hanging in closets. Others just laid low, inhabiting the bars and bathhouses. A lot of guys had two identities. The false one they showed the real world. The real one they showed the gay world. You dig? So, if you wanted to operate a successful joint, you didn’t ask no questions. As long as the customers paid
their tabs, I didn’t give a flying fuck. Sure, I know about my friends, but the general customers, like Arthur Seligson…no way. They came and went. Sooner or later, every one of them disappeared. Some moved into new territory. Some left town. Some straightened out and got married, though I can tell you, the ones that did were few and far between. Some hit the mainline. And others just died. There’s hardly a one that I know anything about anymore. And who cares! Fuck ’em. They were all a bunch of assholes anyway.”

  “What happened to Jack Cooper?”

  Kellerman lay back in the pillow, puffing the butt. “I don’t know. He came to see me one day and said he was leaving town. I didn’t ask where he was going.”

  “Where was Arthur Seligson when Cooper left?”

  “God knows. Seligson had already been gone over a year. In fact, Jack told me he’d lost track of Seligson, too. You see, Seligson was bisexual. All the time he was getting it on with Jack, he was living with a girl. Most likely he decided he’d had it with the gay trip and married the broad. He’s probably got five kids now, a nine-to-five job, lots of bills, and the trauma of ten years of connubial bliss to massage the piles in his ass.”

  “And Jack Cooper?”

  “He’s probably dead, the callous bastard, and it wouldn’t bother me none.”

  “Do you know the name of the girl Seligson lived with?”

  Kellerman laughed. “Father, you got to be kidding. It took me long enough to remember Seligson’s name and who he was. How the hell would you expect me to remember the moniker of a broad so many years later, especially since I’d maybe only heard her mentioned by name once or twice.”

  McGuire straightened. “Of course.”

  Kellerman shrugged, constricting his gaunt, emaciated frame.

  McGuire stood and balanced himself against one of the garret’s open rafters. “You’re sure that’s all you remember?”

  “As sure as I need a fix.”

  McGuire took out the notepad and scrawled a phone number, which he handed to Kellerman.

  “If you think of anything else in the next day or so, call me. It’s important.”

  Kellerman smiled. “Be happy to do that.”

  McGuire buttoned his coat. “Thank you again,” he said, turning to the door.