For the nonce, Neal settled for being wooed by Pendant.
“You all use the same arguments, Nick.”
“Who you been talking to?”
“I never kiss and tell.”
“I’ll top any offer, Neal. I mean it.”
“I’ll remember.”
“Don’t sign with anyone without talking to me.”
“I promise.”
Lulu was unimpressed by the possibility. “The web? Come on.”
“It may be the future, Lulu.”
She was as baffled by talk of podcasts, YouTube, and all the rest as he was. Once journalism had been simply a matter of putting words on paper and shooting them off to the printer. Now news was immediate and sent out in ways that only kids seemed to understand. For all that, Neal used a laptop now and could zing his column off as an e-mail attachment to the syndicate and that was that. But in the end, his stuff appeared in print, as it always had. If newsprint was evanescent, what could be said of what appeared on a computer screen?
“I’d rather be a dinosaur,” Lulu said.
“Your skin’s too smooth.”
She snatched her hand away when he covered it with his own. A good sign, if a good sign was what he wanted. A pliant Lulu was an oxymoron. Two more drinks arrived and Lulu took one, poured what was left of her previous drink in it, and lifted the glass in a toast.
“To the pope,” Neal said.
“To the pope.” She drank deeply. “I haven’t had this much to drink in I don’t know how long.”
“It’s only a venial sin.”
“Drinking?”
“Not drinking.”
She put her hand on his. Her left hand. The rings were gone. Were they really back to square one again?
“I just did a piece on the rosary crusade,” Lulu said.
The crusade, announced on EWTN, was the idea of Miriam Dickinson, an ageless Catholic apologist, alleged descendant of the poet.
“How can you be a descendant of the Maid of Amherst?”
“Obliquely.”
“Indeed.”
The crusade had caught on; several bishops had blessed the idea. Storm heaven with prayer so that the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe would be restored unharmed to its shrine.
“Neal, what if it is never recovered?”
“Say your rosary.”
“I do.”
He believed her. Lulu was the most delicate arrangement of appetite and piety. Her hand still lay on his. He pushed his knees against hers, and she turned sideways in her chair.
“Watch your knees.”
“I’d have to bend over. Did I tell you of my replacement?”
“Really?”
“No.”
She made a face, a cute face. Her knees came back into contact with his.
On the various television sets around the bar a large man with a florid face appeared.
“Halvorson,” Lulu groaned.
There were cries of “Turn it up” from bar stools and tables. Something like a hush fell and the fruity tones of Halvorson, a minister, but one of the guardians of the separation of church and state, filled the bar.
“We have no dog in this fight,” Halvorson intoned. “The might of the United States of America cannot be engaged in a religious quarrel of no interest to the mass of Americans. I know that some of our fellow citizens share the beliefs of those who do homage to this picture, and that is their right and I will fight for it to the death. But it is a private right, not a public matter.”
Halvorson had been galvanized by a bipartisan group in Congress demanding that the president send troops to the border. The governor of Louisiana had called up the National Guard, merely a gesture; there was no border of that state that was plagued with immigrants. But the idea that federal troops would be involved in what was now happening on our southern border filled Halvorson with righteous rage.
The argument of the bipartisan group was that armed foreigners were threatening to invade. So far, the Minutemen had kept them pinned down, but they did not have enough forces to both defend the border and handle the rear-guard action mounted by those stirred up by Miguel Arroyo.
The image of Halvorson faded; the television sets were muted; serious drinking resumed.
Neal said, “Prayer is fine, but Ignatius Hannan has the right idea.”
V
What does it all mean?
Those who come out of modest backgrounds and then find themselves wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice react in various ways. One is to mimic the life of a late Roman emperor or former president, cater to the flesh, make an ass out of oneself, pile up possessions—houses, cars, horses—and marry or at least mate regularly. Professional athletes, the affluent gladiators of the age, are often drawn to this path. But if money and earthly goods cannot fully satisfy the heart, the flesh does little better. Drugs and the oblivion they offer are only a desperate last resort.
Another path is political, advocating government policies and bankrolling the politicians who promise to enact them, policies that are often aimed at the economic status of the donor; hence the huge number of zillionaire liberals. “Soak the rich” is a slogan that exercises an almost mystic attraction on the affluent. Accountants with an eye for loopholes and shrewd financial advisers can of course cushion the blow.
A third path is less frequently traveled. Once unlimited wealth has revealed its limitations, thoughts turn to the questions posed to rich and poor alike. What does it all mean? What is the purpose of life? Or, more relevantly, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his own soul?” Out of this questioning religious conversion can come, with the added blessing that one is able to contribute to all kinds of worthy causes. Huge unpublicized benefactions soothe the soul and one returns enthusiastically to the religious practices of his youth. The last was the path that Ignatius Hannan had taken.
Even as a boy he had found the computer no more mystifying than an abacus. In his early teens, he was already a tester of beta programs, and he was soon hired by an electronics company at a salary that dazzled his parents. But he remained immune to money as money. For some years, the sheer fun of devising new programs was sufficient for him; eventually, in his twenties, he founded Empedocles, and before he was thirty he was listed among the twenty-five richest men in the country. When his head touched the ceiling of the Crystal Palace of wealth, something happened. One sleepless night, surfing the channels of distraction, he came upon EWTN, where Mother Angelica seemed to be speaking directly to him with the simplicity of his sainted mother. He was overwhelmed. He flew to Birmingham, where he confessed his sins, the minor sins of an overly busy man, and vowed to change his life.
He did. He found again the devotion to the Blessed Virgin that he had learned at his mother’s knee. He resolved to put his wealth at the service of the Catholic Church. On the grounds of Empedocles he had an exact replica of the grotto at Lourdes erected. And he had remained single, a species of eunuch for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. Ignatius Hannan was stunned by the outrage perpetrated in Mexico City.
“They’ll find it,” Ray Whipple, his right-hand man, insisted.
“Of course they will,” said Laura. Her status would have required him to have two right hands.
“There’s no of course about it. What is being done?”
“We won’t know until it’s over.”
Hannan seemed not to have heard. “Get hold of that fellow Traeger.”
“Nate, he’s retired.”
“I’ll bring him out of retirement. I like that man.”
Traeger had been the key to the recovery of the third secret of Fatima and in the process had been betrayed by his old associates in the intelligence community.
Laura promised to get hold of Traeger and summon him to New Hampshire.
This proved to be a promise impossible to keep. There was no answer at the phone numbers Laura had for Traeger. Then she remembered Dortmund and succeeded in putting throu
gh a call to him.
“He’s on assignment,” the old voice said.
“Mr. Hannan wants to hire him to recover the stolen image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
A long pause. “Tell Mr. Hannan that things are under way.”
“I don’t believe it,” Hannan said when Laura reported to him. “That’s government double-talk. If the administration was serious they would . . .”
He wasn’t sure what he expected them to do. But then he was neither a politician nor an operative like Traeger. He believed in relying on people who knew things he did not.
“If not Traeger, someone like him.”
Ray Whipple said he would see what he could do.
And that was how Will Crosby came to Empedocles, flown in from the Boston airport on a company helicopter, and coming crouched under the still whirling blades toward a waiting Ignatius Hannan.
Crosby had turned his background into a successful investigation agency. He had come on the assumption that Hannan had some problem with competitors, the sort of problem Crosby had built a reputation on handling. His eyes rounded when he learned what was expected of him.
“That’s not in my usual line.”
“It’s not in anyone’s usual line. I’ve heard good things of you.”
“Your grotto reminds me of Lourdes.”
“It ought to. It’s an exact replica. Have you been to Lourdes?”
“I took my mother there in her last illness.”
“And?”
“She died in peace.”
Crosby’s mention of his mother reminded Hannan of his own. It seemed to form a bond between them. And when they got down to the theft of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, it was clear that Crosby and Hannan were kindred spirits indeed. Crosby wanted time to think. He went out to the grotto and sat there telling his beads. When he came back, he said, “I’ll do my best.”
It was then that Ignatius Hannan revealed that he planned a two-pronged attack. The efforts of Crosby would of course be kept from the public. What everyone would know was that Ignatius Hannan was offering one million dollars for the safe return of the sacred image.
“Anyone who would steal that picture will give it up for money.”
“You may be right,” Crosby said.
“Within a week, I will double the amount.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“They’ll wait to see what you’ll offer the following week.”
Will Crosby was a large man, over six feet tall, his face an arrangement of planes that did not reveal his mind. He was in excellent physical shape, and he had a wife and grown children, one at Notre Dame; one at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia; and a daughter at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California. Ray Whipple had listed the man’s feats in the CIA, any one of which recommended him for the task Hannan now hired him to undertake. After starting his own agency, he single-handedly rescued a senator’s daughter, still intact, from kidnappers who were negotiating with a Saudi sheik for her purchase; that alone would have recommended him to Hannan. The rescued girl had subsequently written a book about her ordeal, one that was banned by various libraries around the country for its alleged Islamophobia.
“You’ll start immediately?”
“I have associates who can take care of lesser matters.”
The two men shook hands; the helicopter lifted, dipped once, seemingly toward the grotto, and then rose gracefully and disappeared over a tree-covered hill. Hannan turned to Laura.
“Prepare a statement about the reward.”
VI
When I was hungry, you fed me.
George Worth was appalled by Miguel Arroyo’s call to arms. Pacifism was a central tenet of the Catholic Worker movement and in recent years the plight of immigrant workers had become a dominant concern. No wonder. The center in Palo Alto, and others across the Southwest, all the way to Houston, provided refuge and aid to the Latinos who had learned that the utopia they had sought gave them at best an equivocal welcome. Their labor was welcomed but now, with the federal crackdown, many were being rounded up as they emerged from work. Employers were first warned, then fined. The party, it seemed, was over.
George missed Clare. At first he had considered his attraction to her to be a weakness. She was beautiful, but Dorothy Day had been beautiful at Clare’s age. She was a child of privilege, but who was not? George’s family lived in affluence in Winnetka. When he admitted this to Clare, it was meant to indicate that they were more alike than different. He understood her reaction to the poverty in which he and the guests lived. It had taken him a long time to overcome it himself. Now that he was more or less used to it, he almost missed the aversion he had felt at first. But his conversations with Clare had seldom alluded to what he was sure explained her going.
“George, if this country is as bad as you think, why should you want to protect the illegals coming into it?”
“Don’t call them illegals.”
“What should I call them?”
“Brothers. Sisters.” He smiled. “Jesus.” How many guests bore the name Jesú?
“They’re exploited here, you say so yourself.”
“They will have an effect on the injustices they suffer.”
Dorothy Day had spoken of the plight of nonunionized workers, the sweatshops, the bullying bosses, but all that now seemed a bygone world. American workers were now members of the bourgeoisie, comfortable, well paid, materialistic.
“What changes?”
“They’ll keep jobs in the country.”
The fact was that the big unions now backed globalization, even at the manifest expense of their members, with jobs out-sourced from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, everywhere, and whole industries packing up and resettling in Taiwan, Latin America, wherever they were able to lower their wages and increase their profits.
Once immigrants had been farmworkers for the most part, harvesting the crops of the country, glad for the grueling labor that enabled them to send money home, or return with it when the season was over. In college, George had been a volunteer, spurred on by Campus Ministry to devote his summers to the cause of the farm workers. The poverty they lived in rivaled that from which they had fled, although some farmers provided decent housing. George had never thought of this as political action. Radicalizing immigrant farm workers had always seemed to him a misunderstanding. Oh, he had lifted his voice in protest against the plague of industrial farming, with whole counties, it seemed, under the thumb of the giants in the food industry. Of course that kind of farming was more efficient, but it could be done with a few men on machines. His second summer, he had joined the workers in the field.
Agriculture exercises a mystic attraction on the city boy, particularly one from the affluent suburbs. To nurture and eventually harvest the fruits of the earth seemed a religious experience. The caprices of nature—frosts, flood, and drought—contributed to the sense that farming could only succeed with the help of God. Moving through the rows of ripe tomatoes, filling his basket like the others, George felt the endless sweaty, exhausting task seemed a form of prayer. But he learned not to voice such lofty thoughts to his companions when they gathered in the evenings. The local bishop appointed a priest to the immigrants and they were grateful for the Mass he said for them each Sunday, but their religion was one of practice, not discussion. On a wall in every shack was the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe with, at night, a candle burning before it.
In senior year, he read the autobiography of Dorothy Day; he subscribed to the Houston Catholic Worker; he found his destiny.
“A soup kitchen?” his father had asked, trying to keep calm. The summers spent with the farmworkers had seemed a harmless romantic notion next to this. At least George hadn’t gone to Cuba to cut sugarcane for Fidel.
“We will provide food, of course. And lodging.”
“Do you know how many of these people have gotten into the country?”
Georg
e knew.
“So tell me how one soup kitchen can help them all.”
“I will help those I can.”
Of course his father opposed government programs to help the poor. His contempt for the “nanny state” was total. Universal health care, ever-rising minimum wages, regulation after regulation—all that interfered with the fundamental law of economics. Supply and demand and a firm eye on the bottom line. A rising tide lifts all boats. His father knew that all a man had to do was lift himself by his own bootstraps. He had done it himself.
“I don’t believe in political solutions, Dad.”
“Good!”
His father thought he had won an argument. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was once interviewed by Malcolm Muggeridge, who had marveled at her efforts to collect and comfort the dying. It was, perhaps, the beginning of his conversion. But at the time he had asked the old nun why she didn’t agitate for a social, a political, remedy for such poverty.
“And let others do it?”
It was watching that interview over and over that had converted George to the religion he already professed. To living it. Blessed are the poor. And the companion of that was, the poor you will always have with you. There was no “solution” to poverty any more than there was a solution to original sin. This was a vale of tears, even in Winnetka. One on one, person to person. The Good Samaritan hadn’t troubled himself with the fact that he could not simultaneously help every wretch beside the road. He was here; this wretch was here; he did what he did. That was the answer.
“A drop in the bucket,” his father said.
“Not if everyone did the same.”
“But not everyone will.”
“That doesn’t take away my obligation.”
They had agreed to disagree. His father had listened impatiently when George told him how the fathers of the modern economy, and later Marxists, had opposed alleviating the plight of the poor. The former had thought that, eventually, all would benefit from industrialization; the latter had counted on a revolutionary uprising to bring down the system.
“I am not a Marxist, George.”
Relic of Time Page 4
