Requiem for Moses

by William Kienzle

  Bradley moved from the mike and stood to one side. He wanted to be ready to step in and head off any repeat of this morning’s fiasco.

  Father Grimes approached the mike almost bashfully. From force of habit, he tapped it several times, to make sure it was on and projecting.

  Bradley moved forward. “It’s okay, Father. Just speak in a conversational tone.”

  “Yes,” Grimes said. “Well, we were able to visit with the Zabola family and Mrs. Zabola’s sister, Theresa Waleski.”

  There was a murmur among the reporters. Waleski was a good sidebar. But they wanted to get into the main event: the resurrection of Moses Green.

  Bradley raised a quieting hand.

  Grimes continued as if nothing had happened or threatened to happen. “We ascertained that Theresa has been unable to use her legs since her sister’s wedding. She has been a paraplegic. She has had good medical care. Yet with all of this, the doctors have agreed in their diagnosis that there is no physical cause for her paraplegic state. In their collective and unanimous opinion, Theresa’s illness is psychosomatic.

  “We are dependent on medical science to tell us what is going on. We are not physicians. We represent the Church … or, more specifically, the Church in the archdiocese of Detroit.

  “The physicians also are unanimous on the prognosis of Theresa’s condition. Since her illness seems to be, in popular expression, all in her mind, a deeply moving emotional trauma could remove the internal blocks that cause her paralysis, and she would be cured.

  “That is what we believe happened.” And Grimes turned and took his seat.

  “There’s more,” Bradley said. “But before we move on, are there any questions? Yes, Andy ….”

  “Unless I missed something in all the briefing we’ve had, doesn’t time have something to do with this?”

  Monsignor McKeever moved toward the microphone as the question continued.

  “I mean,” the reporter specified, “somebody said that for an authentic miracle the recovery couldn’t be reversible. I mean, if all the other criteria were met, you’d still have to wait a very long while to make sure the illness didn’t come back. Well, what if this woman, Theresa Waleski, what if her crippled condition never returns? Wouldn’t that count?”

  “No,” McKeever stated succinctly. “It doesn’t make any difference how long the woman stays healthy. As long as the official diagnosis is psychosomatic, the apparent cure will never be recognized as a miracle. Suppose a person says she doesn’t feel good. And then she says she does. There is no way to measure feeling. And an imagined illness is not the substance of a miracle.” Monsignor McKeever more marched than walked to his chair and sat.

  “Anything else?” Bradley asked.

  A couple of hands toyed with being raised. But those reporters quickly got the message that the majority did not want to diddle with the sidebar. Not when there was a chance for something new on the resurrection story.

  “Very well,” Bradley said. “I’ll just ask Father Ralph Shuler to bring us up to speed on the committee’s investigation into the Dr. Green matter.”

  The proverbial pin-drop could have been heard.

  Father Shuler squinted into the bright lights. “There’s really not much of a substantive report to give. As of now we still have not been able to see Dr. Green, let alone interview him. Nor, I take it, has anyone but the doctor’s wife and his personal physician been granted access to him.

  “This situation must, of course, change. The time will come when the doctor will appear in public. I have no idea whether he will be cooperative with this ecclesial investigation. Only time will tell. The one admonition we must give most emphatically is that in doubtful cases such as this, the presumption favors nature and the increasing wonders of medical science.

  “The conclusion of all this is that until the opposite is proven beyond any doubt, we presume nothing miraculous has occurred in St. Joseph’s Church over the past several days.”

  Father Shuler took a half step away from the mike and Ned Bradley took a half step toward the mike to ask if there were any questions, when, from somewhere in the midst of the reporters, a loud voice rang out in a furious tone.

  “This is a disgrace! How can you thwart God’s will! What right do you have to reduce the obvious intercession of Almighty God!”

  All turned toward the speaker. Bradley tried to identify him. From where Koesler was seated, he could just about make out the shouter. But he didn’t need to; Koesler easily recognized the voice. Probably because he had heard it so often recently.

  Father Dan Reichert was cooking on all burners.

  “These are miracles,” Reichert said. “God is preparing to speak to us. He is readying us for His message. He is showing us His power. And you—priests!—are busy quoting arcane rules! How dare you! Just ask Father Koesler. He knows the truth. God has selected him to provide the forum for the presence of the Lord!”

  Bradley pivoted toward Koesler, his posture and demeanor wordlessly inquiring tentatively whether Koesler wished to respond to the irate priest. Reichert was considerably more than Koesler had bargained for. Nonetheless, he slowly nodded, got up and approached the mike.

  At first, it seemed that Koesler would not have to take any sort of stand at all. Reichert continued to castigate the committee’s findings, conclusions, and lack of faith in the power of God. For Koesler’s sponsorship of these “miraculous” events, however, Reichert had only praise.

  With friends like Reichert, thought Koesler, who needs enemies? His second thought was that in a moment or two, the media people were going to have another feeding frenzy. This morning they’d about torn a physician to bits. This afternoon the fodder would be the lack of harmony among the clergy on this matter. His third thought was that, once more, Ned Bradley had lost control of a news conference. His final thought before being forced into the spotlight was that Cardinal Boyle was not going to be pleased.

  When, eventually, he was able to break into Reichert’s monologue, Koesler attempted to spread some oil on the roiling waters. He discovered again that straddling the fence was as ineffective as it was uncomfortable.

  In the end, he found himself back on Dan Reichert’s list of undesirables.

  The good news was that, with one thing and another, the media centered in on Reichert and Monsignor McKeever. The latter had reentered combat as soon as he could, with some decency, displace Koesler at the mike.

  Bradley tried and failed to pinpoint where things had taken a wrong turn both this morning and this afternoon. After all, he was no neophyte; he had attended many news conferences in his years as a working journalist.

  Bradley had loved the thrust and parry of give and take. Now he wished only that this would all go away.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was almost time for him to leave for the service station. It was almost time for her to leave for Carl’s Chop House. Both had drawn late shifts. At least they’d been able to spend some time together this afternoon.

  Claire McNern and Stan Lacki had slept until nearly 3 P.M. They awakened slowly, playfully. They made love, which made them feel as if they inhabited a continuum, since they had fallen asleep just after making love.

  Claire stretched out, taking far more than her side of the bed. Stan sat propped against a pillow at the headboard. He lit a cigarette. Claire overreacted, vigorously waving the smoke away. He had sworn several times to quit cold turkey on their wedding day. That promise was the one and only hesitation he had about marrying Claire.

  Claire wore a satisfied smile and nothing else.

  “Whatcha thinkin’?” he asked.

  “About marrying you.”

  Stan matched her smile. “It won’t be an awful lot different.”

  “Sure it will. We’ll have our own home.” Presently, each rented an apartment. They got together at whichever place was more convenient. “And we can have a garden. We can decorate the place any way we want.”

  Stan was swept up i
n her musings. “And we can have friends in. We can have parties. And we’ll have a big driveway so I can repair cars on the side.”

  “Don’t go crazy over that now. We don’t want the place to look like a junkyard.”

  “Hey, go easy on that junkyard bit. My repair work is how we both got dependable used cars. You’ll never have to worry that some clunker will give out on you. That’s why I drove the tow truck—I’m going in early so I can take your care in and fix it. You’ll have to take a cab to work. That way I’ll rest easy that you’re safe.”

  She slapped him lightly on the thigh. “You don’t have to worry about me, sweetie; I can take care of myself.”

  “I do worry. There’s nothing much going on around Carl’s. The area is almost deserted—like whole chunks of the city.”

  “Silly! I always park in the lot. And we have valet parking, so there’s always somebody there. So—nothing to worry about.”

  After a double drag on the cigarette, he snuffed it in the ashtray, which was near to overflowing.

  “Honey,” she said, “don’t you think you ought to start quitting now? Enough things are going to change once we get married without you trying to go cold turkey.”

  “I can do it. Besides, there aren’t that many new things that will be happening.” He grinned. “It’s not like we’ll have to get used to what we want in sex. I don’t think there’s much more we can learn.”

  “I’d like to try.”

  “If you think you can try something new, I’m game. You been reading some sex book?”

  “Would that be all bad? We could learn some new things. We always can learn more.”

  “I guess.”

  Stan shook another cigarette out of the pack and tapped the filtered end against the night tabletop. The tobacco firmly set, he lit the cigarette with his dependable Zippo.

  “Another one?” she groaned.

  “Claire, get off my case, okay? I told you: once we’re married. Until then, let me smoke in peace.”

  “Rest in peace!”

  “Claire!”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s talk about the house some more.”

  “You sure you wouldn’t rather get a quick nap? We’re gonna be working late tonight—real late.”

  “What do you mean ‘real late’? I’m getting off at the usual time. And that’s not real late. What’s cookin’?”

  “Gerry’s not going to relieve me. He got called away. His mother in Charleston got real sick. He’s got to go there. The boss asked me to cover for him. It’s triple time, hon.”

  “You’ll be alone practically all night!”

  “I’m like you, honey; I can take care of myself.”

  She frowned. She was serious and he was being flippant. “Not when somebody’s got a gun,” she protested. “And here, everybody’s got a gun.”

  “I’m behind bullet-proof glass. And if anybody finds some way of getting through that, we’ve got our orders: Give ‘em the money. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “But I do.”

  “Triple time! ‘Cause it’s not my shift and I’m staying overtime.”

  “The hell with triple time!” In some sort of protest, she pulled the sheet up over herself.

  “The money’s good, Claire.”

  “We could use it; we don’t need it. It’s not like we’re going to have kids. We don’t have to put anything aside for their clothes or food or education. Other couples have to do that. Other couples lead ordinary lives!”

  “We talked about this before.” He crushed the cigarette into oblivion. “We can adopt; we can have children.”

  “I don’t know ….” She turned on her side, back toward him. “Any kid we adopted wouldn’t be our own kid. Somebody’s castoff. We drive used cars and we raise used kids? I don’t know ….”

  She turned to look at him. “It’s that damned Green! I felt so good when he was dead. Why did he do that to me, Stan? Why?” It was almost a wail.

  He felt exactly as she did about Green. But he always tried to soft-pedal his genuine emotion so as not to further upset her. “I don’t know. I suppose I can understand why he would take your baby. I mean, it was his, too. And he sure as shit didn’t want it. So that’s the part that makes some sort of twisted sense: He wanted an abortion and he did it.

  “But, hell, it was in your body! You’d think you’d’ve had something to say about it.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m mad as hell about it. I could kill him for that. But he took my uterus too. He told me it had to go. At first, I was grateful he took it. I mean if it was cancerous, I was lucky to lose it. But from what that nurse said there was nothing wrong with the uterus. He took out a perfectly healthy uterus. Perfectly healthy! And now I can never have a baby!” Her body shook as she sobbed silently.

  He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “That one’s got all hell beat.”

  “And then he dumped me. How can anybody put that together? He takes my healthy baby. He takes my healthy uterus. And then he dumps me. Why? Why? Why?”

  Stan shook his head. “I guess he just raises meanness to a science.”

  “And the bastard isn’t even dead!”

  With an unusual hardness in his voice, Stan said, “If I could—if I could get close to him, I’d kill him for you. I’d kill him for me,” he added almost as if to himself.

  “You would?”

  “I never even thought of killing anything but maybe an animal. Not a human being. But if I could get close to Green, I’d think of what he did to you, and then I could kill him. I know I could.”

  She looked at him unblinkingly. She was utterly serious. “I was ashamed to tell you … but … after I called him and he just laughed and hung up on me … well, I actually started to plan on how to get to him. I mean, I know I can get through to him on the phone. I think I could arrange to meet him someplace. Then, with nobody else around, I’d kill him.”

  Stan was shocked. “You could do that? You would do that?”

  “As long as I didn’t get caught. I’d have to plan it very carefully, but …” She shrugged. “Then I think maybe I’m daydreaming. But if it’s a daydream, at least it seems to help. I think of killing him. I think of him dead. And I feel better.”

  “Maybe …” Stan said, “maybe we could do it together.”

  “What?”

  “Together. Maybe we could do it together. If you can arrange to be alone with him, maybe you could arrange for me to be there too. Maybe together we could do it.”

  “You’re … you’re serious!”

  “I think I am. I’d just have to keep thinking of what he did to you.”

  “This is dangerous.”

  “I know. We’d have to plan it carefully … very carefully. So we wouldn’t get caught. We don’t want to spend the rest of our lives in jail—separated.”

  “That too. But … actually killing somebody? We’d have to search deep inside to see if we could really do it. Once we get him alone, that’s no time to wonder whether we could do it.” Her chin was firmly set. “I could do it as easy as stepping on a bug.”

  They both laughed.

  She started to stroke him. He smiled as he slid down into the bed alongside her.

  Foreplay seemed unnecessary. They discovered that murder could be an aphrodisiac. “One for the road,” he whispered.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I really think,” Betsy Dorsey said, “that the problem of Detroit is in the neighborhoods. The city administration should work from one neighborhood to the next—one area at a time. Paint and repair each house— or if the house is beyond rehab, tear it down. Fix the sidewalks, repave the streets, plant some trees. It’s the only logical way of doing it as far as I can see.”

  Jake Cameron wiggled, trying to get comfortable. He was bored.

  Betsy read … a lot. That had been established during the hot and cold hors d’oeuvre course. Through the pièce de résistance the fact that she could hold—nay, preferred—an intell
igent conversation on just about any topic was evident.

  This disturbed Jake. It wasn’t that Jake wasn’t up on current affairs. Actually, he had an opinion on the rehabilitation of Detroit that was antithetical to Betsy’s. It was Jake’s conviction that clearing the city neighborhood by neighborhood was like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. Push them out of one ‘hood and the bums would land in the next. Much earlier, the city had tried something like that in cleaning up Michigan Avenue downtown. That created the slums in Second and Third Streets and Cass Corridor.

  Jake was perturbed. Betsy was a woman; it was unseemly that she be intelligent and well read. In his life, he’d had only one intelligent mistress—Margie. And that hadn’t worked out well at all. He was going to do his very best to bed Betsy ere this night was finished. He thought it rather incongruous to expect a couple to move directly from capital gains taxes to pillow talk. And what sort of foreplay is Tudor architecture and interior design, anyway?

  “Is this a great restaurant or what?” he nonsequitured.

  Betsy looked about, seemingly for the first time. Actually, she had done a quick study of the place the moment they’d entered. “It is, indeed, Mr.— uh, Jake. I had no idea this was here. I mean in the city of Pontiac!”

  “Yeah, this Pike Street Restaurant is one of the best in this whole area. Sometimes people don’t even consider it ‘cause it’s in Pontiac. But, just you wait, Betsy: Pontiac is on the way back. This place is gonna be jumpin’ one of these days.”

  “I couldn’t argue with you, Jake.”

  Somehow her agreeing with him made Jake a bit more sure of himself. He’d have to watch that; after all, she was only a broad.

  “In fact,” he said, “I just nailed down some property here. Someday it’s gonna be Virago III.”

  “No! What a marvelous idea!”

  Her enthusiasm was invigorating. No doubt about it; he almost felt like going out and laying the cornerstone right now. He’d have to get a rein on this stuff.

  He had finished his Delmonico steak. She toyed with the remains of her baked salmon.