Relic of Time

by Ralph McInerny

  Coeds sauntered by, showing their bellies in front and tattoos on their caboose. The mandatory backpacks made them walk with a forward tilt. Lowry tried unsuccessfully to remember what concupiscence had felt like. He would leave that to George. Would George finally succumb to the lure of Clare Ibanez and set aside the dreams of his youth? The poor devil reacted to the primal desire as if it were a temptation of the most sordid sort. George was not cut out for poverty if only because he had chosen it. The vow of poverty was another thing. Did you ever see a thin Franciscan? Poverty weighed no more heavily on most friars’ shoulders than the two other vows had on some. Ah, how the media had lapped up all those clerical scandals. Imagine those hypocritical degenerates doing what everyone else was urged to do! Or presumed to be doing already. Someone sat beside him.

  “I was just about to go inside when I saw you here,” Traeger said.

  “How goes the battle?”

  “You got another of those?”

  Lowry handed him the pack of Basics. “You look like hell.”

  “Tell me about Arroyo.”

  “I saw him do his Zola on television. J’accuse! Pretty impressive.”

  “The son of a bitch.”

  “Does he have a mother?”

  “I have to get some sleep. Then we can talk.”

  “You can use George’s office. There’s a cot there.”

  “I could sleep on the floor.”

  “To do penance?”

  “I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  “How about some soup?”

  When they rose from the bench, Lowry asked, “Where are you parked?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s a stolen car.”

  So they walked back to the Catholic Worker house, where Lowry scrambled some eggs and fried some sausage. The smell coming from the kitchen roused several guests who were dozing in the common room. Lowry turned on both vents over the stove.

  “Better have this in George’s office,” he said, carrying the platter under his apron. Traeger opened the door and they went into the office. Seated at the desk, Traeger finished the eggs and sausage in minutes.

  “You were hungry.”

  “I didn’t dare stop. Except to change cars.”

  “Grow a beard.”

  “I just shaved it off.”

  “The sunglasses are a little obvious.”

  Traeger seemed to have forgotten he was wearing them. He pushed them to the top of his head. His eyes were bloodshot, his face drawn.

  “Get some sleep.”

  It was many hours and two meals later when Traeger came out of the office. He was hungry again. This time it was bacon and eggs.

  “We have a limited menu.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  “It would be even if it weren’t.”

  Traeger just looked at him. “Arroyo tried to kill Don Ibanez. Why?”

  It wasn’t that Traeger thought Lowry had the answer to the question; he needed to talk about the mess he was in. He had been accused on television of attacking the venerable Don Ibanez, who was still in a coma. The killing of Jason Phelps had been added to the accusation. But it was the attempt to palm off a copy of the picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe that had galvanized the California constabulary, state and local.

  “My old buddies are after me, too.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “I prefer improvisation.”

  A sound came from Traeger’s shirt pocket. His cell phone. He answered it.

  “Crosby! Where are you?”

  III

  “It makes no sense.”

  Some of Nate Hannan’s nutty ideas had their attractions and Laura stifled her critical sense.

  “Good idea,” she said when Nate suggested she go to Rome and consult with her brother John. Ray looked at her with surprise.

  “In what way?”

  It didn’t matter. The creator and head honcho of Empedocles had made up his mind and that was that.

  “You want me to go along?”

  “Ray,” Nate cried. “I can’t have you both gone at once.”

  “Call it a trial separation,” Laura said sweetly.

  Not smart that. Nate looked as if he might have second thoughts. What did he think married life was like? “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” she added and Nate nodded. When do clichés fail to click?

  Twelve hours after that conversation, Laura was looking across an outside table at John, one of many just plunked down in the street opposite the Vatican’s Saint Anne’s Gate by the trattorie and ristoranti that flanked the narrow thoroughfare in the Borgo Pio. It made more sense for tourists to just take a chair and order than try to maneuver through the tables.

  “Is Traeger working for Hannan?” John asked.

  “He was. It’s hard firing someone you can’t find.”

  Even so, Nate had hired Crosby again. Memories of the pay packet he had received the first time did not make Crosby reluctant to sign on again.

  “You want me to find Traeger? Then what?”

  “If you find him you’ll find that missing picture.”

  “Everybody’s looking for him now,” Crosby had said.

  “Not everybody knows him as well as you do.”

  Once Crosby was on his way, Nate had come up with the idea that Laura should consult John. “And here I am,” she had said brightly as they started across Saint Peter’s Square. He was in cassock and collar and thin as a rail.

  “Laura, what help can I be?”

  “Well, you can help me order.”

  She had the cannelloni and a salad. She wrinkled her nose when she tasted the wine.

  “It’s just the house wine, Laura.”

  The back house?

  “It’s not much worse than what we drink at the Domus.” The Domus Sanctae Marthae, the residence inside the Vatican walls where John had his rooms. As director of the Vatican Library he had a penthouse on its roof, but that had been the scene of so much violence he still preferred the Domus. He refilled her water glass.

  It was over dessert that John hit on a way to help. Maybe. Hector Padilla, native of Mexico, now a member of the Congregation for Bishops. “He’s a Benedictine. He was a member of the community that looks after the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe before he became a bishop.”

  “When can we see him?”

  John looked at his watch. “Later. It’s siesta time.”

  “Do you take a nap?”

  “Is the pope German?”

  That made it easier to admit that she herself was sleepy. John walked with her to the entrance of her hotel, the Columbus on the Via della Conciliazione, and didn’t kiss her good-bye. Who would know they were brother and sister? The elevator held one passenger comfortably; with two, it was intimate. She remembered being in it with Ray. Already she missed him.

  Bishop Padilla looked like stout Cortés when he extended his hand. Laura took it and he lifted it. Kiss his ring? Well, why not? They were in a parlor in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where the furniture was baronial, with high uncomfortable chairs and a table on which two vases of roses flanked a dramatic crucifix. It looked like an altar. Above it hung a reproduction of Our Lady of Guadalupe, eyes cast modestly down. Was that why John had chosen this parlor?

  They sat and John told the bishop why his sister was here. A pained look came upon the episcopal face.

  “My poor community,” he said. “They all feel to blame, particularly the abbot.”

  It was from his fellow monks at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe that he had heard the story, supplementing the media reports.

  “And all this rioting and shooting and God knows what else. I suppose that was the motive for the theft. If it was, it worked all too well. And they thought that replacing the image with a copy was shrewd. I would have opposed sending the painting off to Napa Valley if I were there.”

  Spiriting the image off to a replica of the shrine in California did seem stupid, if only because it had led to a real theft.<
br />
  “Do you know Don Ibanez, Bishop?”

  “He was a regular visitor to the shrine. A very devout man. How is he?”

  “Still in a coma.”

  “Poor man. I’ll say a Mass for him. He is a great benefactor of ours. And he provided a refuge for Leone.”

  “Frater Leone?”

  Padilla smiled. “Not everyone is meant to live in a community. For a monk that is a great defect.” He stopped. “I should talk, but I miss monastic life. Leone would be happier as a hermit.”

  Of course Bishop Padilla had heard all about the reaction in Mexico City when the package had been opened and proved to contain only another copy. His eyes drifted to the picture on the wall.

  “What I don’t understand is what happened at the other end, in California.”

  “No one does,” Laura said.

  She told him what they had pieced together when she and Ray and Nate had flown out to learn how the great plan had gone wrong. Don Ibanez had assured them that the original had been put into the foam box. Frater Leone had done that himself, taping it shut after he did so. Of course it was the second foam package that interested him. The one that contained the copy that had previously hung in Don Ibanez’s little basilica.

  “The man who had kept it for him was murdered.”

  “Dear God.”

  And Traeger, who had been hired by Nate Hannan, was accused of the murder, and of the attack on Don Ibanez.

  “He is the man who recovered the third secret of Fatima,” John reminded the bishop.

  “Why would he do these things?”

  Laura shrugged.

  “It makes no sense. He was accused of trying to deceive us with a copy of the image. Surely he must have known—anyone would have known—that such a deception was impossible. And he is being sought because he had somehow retained the original? Why would he take a trip to Mexico City and attempt such a hoax if he did have the original?”

  “You can see why we’re anxious to ask him such questions.”

  But Padilla was not finished. “And then return to California and murder one man and nearly murder another. What possible motivation would he have?” Padilla might have been talking to himself as he posed these questions. He shook his head. “No, someone else is responsible. Someone for whom Don Ibanez and his neighbor represented a danger.”

  “Do you know Miguel Arroyo, Bishop?”

  Padilla frowned and rubbed his face. “I cannot believe the community entrusted the sacred image to that man. But they did.”

  “And he brought it safely to Don Ibanez.”

  Bishop Padilla nodded. “I suppose that was why he was there when the painting was readied for its return.”

  Later Laura said to John, “Well, he wasn’t much help.”

  “I wonder.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “He didn’t quite say it, of course, but it’s clear he suspects that Miguel Arroyo is the explanation of all these mysteries.”

  IV

  “No more questions?”

  Even though his way had been smoothed by Laura, Crosby was not welcomed with open arms when he arrived at Don Ibanez’s hacienda. Clare reminded him of one of his own daughters, the one who was most like her mother. She had a sweet dignity that was more effective than a bum’s rush. You would have thought she was already in mourning.

  “How is your father?”

  “Thank you.”

  For asking, apparently, but what was the answer? “Is he still in a coma?”

  The man behind her made a face and gestured with his head. Ah. “Perhaps I should talk with your brother.”

  Her laughter came as such a surprise that Crosby took a step back. She was still laughing when she introduced George Worth. Well, at least the ice was broken. Worth led him through a huge living room with beamed ceilings and what looked like a walk-in fireplace. The motif was Spanish, though Crosby could not have said what he meant by that. They were no sooner settled than a girl came out with olives and wine and glasses.

  “Thank you, Carlotta. Vino de la casa,” Worth said to Crosby, pouring. The label on the bottle read “Juan Diego.”

  “Is that his name?”

  Worth looked up at him as if now he was going to break out laughing. “House wine?”

  “I meant the label.”

  “Juan Diego is the name of the saint to whom Mary appeared. Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

  “Of course.” Well, he knew it now.

  “What does Mr. Hannan expect you to do?” Worth sipped his wine and Crosby did, too.

  “Good wine,” Crosby said, and it was. “He wants me to find Traeger.”

  Worth’s eyebrows lifted. “A lot of people are trying to do that.”

  “I know.”

  “What will you do if you find him?”

  “Traeger and I are old friends, from agency days.”

  “CIA?”

  “That was a long time ago. Hannan hired me before he hired Traeger.”

  “Were you fired?”

  “I have a business to run.”

  “But you have time for this?”

  “As I said, Traeger and I are old friends. I don’t think he did these things.”

  “You’ll have to come up with a substitute.”

  “First things first.”

  “How will you find him?”

  “That’s a trade secret. What I want to do first is just look around here, get the lay of the land. Who all lives here?”

  “Clare is all alone now. Her father is in the hospital, of course. He is out of intensive care, though. Frater Leone never leaves his bedside.”

  “Frater Leone?”

  “A priest. A Benedictine. He received permission from his community to live here.”

  “Is he the chaplain?”

  Worth liked that. “That’s a good description. He says his Mass in the basilica. Lately he’s been saying it at the hospital.”

  “And the girl?”

  He had to think. “Oh, that’s Carlotta.”

  “What do you call her?”

  “She takes care of the house. Her father is the gardener. Carlos.”

  “Is that everyone?”

  “Tomas, the driver, lives over the garages. And I’m staying here, too, of course. To be with Clare.”

  “Pleasant duty.”

  Worth seemed actually embarrassed. “Clare and I were students together at Stanford. I run the Catholic Worker house in Palo Alto.”

  “What’s that?”

  He thought a bit. “Call it a homeless center.”

  Clare didn’t join them and, after they’d had their wine, Worth took him out to see the basilica. The scene of the crime, as he did not call it. As they walked toward the church, Worth explained that it was an exact replica of the shrine in Mexico City, only on a smaller scale. Crosby knew that, but wanted Worth to tell him even things he already knew. Worth had stopped.

  “This is where we found Don Ibanez,” he said.

  They stood there as if they were commemorating the event. “What’s that over there?”

  “That’s where Jason Phelps lives. Lived. Don Ibanez sold him the property for his retirement home.”

  “Were they friends?”

  Worth smiled. “They were as opposite as you can imagine.”

  “Enemies?”

  “Hardly that. Jason Phelps was a notorious atheist. I thought you knew.”

  Crosby had known. There seemed to be a little path connecting the two properties. They went into the basilica then. Worth blessed himself and genuflected. Crosby followed suit.

  “The Blessed Sacrament is reserved here.” There was a red lamp glowing in the dark basilica. Then Crosby noticed the man. He was kneeling on the floor, arms extended, immobile. Worth said, “Carlos.”

  “Ah.”

  When they were outside again, Crosby said he would just look around, if that was okay.

  “Of course.”

  “Do Carlos and his daughter live in the house?”
>
  “Carlotta does. Her father has a little house out back.”

  “I’ll just go when I’m through. Thanks.”

  “No more questions?”

  “Do you have more answers?”

  “I’d have to hear the questions.”

  “I just want to see where it all happened.”

  They shook hands and Worth went off to the house. Crosby circled the circular basilica and saw a little cottage fifty yards off. Adobe brick, tile roof, flower beds, trimmed bushes. It looked like a house in a fairy tale. He thought of the old man kneeling on the floor of the basilica, his arms flung out as if he were on a cross.

  Down by the garages, where Crosby had parked, there was a shedlike addition to the far side of the building. It was where trash was kept before it was picked up. He ducked his head and went in. Flies, the odor of garbage. In the far barrel a huge white piece of plastic was visible. No, foam. He ran his hand over the pebbled material and his fingers touched something. He pulled the plastic half out of the barrel. There was a small crucifix embedded in the material, with Scotch tape over it.

  He was about to get into his car but didn’t. He passed the hacienda and went out toward the basilica again. Carlos came blinking into the light. He looked at Crosby but kept on going around the basilica. Crosby wanted to take a look at the path that connected these beautifully kept grounds with the place next door.

  When he emerged from the tree-lined path, he saw two women standing on the lawn. One was holding a spade. They were silent. He thought of himself and Worth standing at the spot where Don Ibanez had been found. He cleared his throat as he neared the women. They turned their heads; one looked at him angrily, the other with an expression he would not have told his wife about.

  “My name is Crosby.”

  He told them why he was here. The flirty one said her name was Catherine.

  “Find him!” the angry one, Myrna, said.

  V

  “Jason never called me that.”

  When Catherine called to tell her what had happened to Jason Phelps, Myrna must already have been on her way. Of course the death of the famous anthropologist would have been in the news across the now divided nation, but less because he was a scientist than because of his notorious criticisms of the Catholic religion and all its works and pomps. The phrase had sounded familiar and Catherine had asked Jason why.