Ash Wednesday

by Ralph McInerny

“Good. So we have fifteen minutes, maybe a little more. Where is the restroom?”

  “I don’t believe this,” Green said, shaking his head,

  “How many times have you confessed to murder? This is just routine. Come, show me where the restroom is.”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I want to know what it is I’m believing.”

  Green didn’t want to help. He just wanted to be hanged, and as quickly as possible. He was learning it wouldn’t be quite that easy.

  Cy had clocked Green on the way to the restroom and back, maybe a minute each way, adjusting for a hurried going and more leisurely return. Give him a few minutes to do his business. That was when Cy told Green he had been observed going toward the restroom at maybe 2:10. No need to tell him it was just a maybe identification.

  It had taken a while to get used to the gradations among the staff, doctors, nurses, nurse’s aides, various helpers of a lesser sort, some voluntary, janitors. The grades seemed color coded. It was a volunteer wearing one of the off-blue pajama-like outfits who had answered Cy’s routine question with the statement that she had seen Green going off to the restroom at maybe 2:10.

  “That’s pretty pinpoint,” Cy had said to the woman. For answer she displayed an enormous wristwatch. “I was taking magazines around. I do this wing at two o’clock.”

  “Do you suppose anyone else saw him at that time?” Cy asked.

  “Is this important?”

  “I doubt it.”

  The point of routine is that you don’t decide about importance before the fact. For all the apparent fuss he had made about it, Nathaniel Green’s trip to the restroom before the plug was pulled on his wife, and the exact time of each, dissolved into vagueness. Yet sitting here again in the creepy waiting room brought it all back. Of course, he was consulting his old notes as he sat here.

  He had been less informative with Father Dowling. Remembering all those years ago, all the questions he had asked, noting them down, writing it up when he went downtown, all that recorded trivia retained somewhere in the great maw of police records, he had a fleeting sense of the futility of detective work. By and large. What difference did it make to establish as precise a timeline as he could to determine when a man who was eager to be punished had killed his wife? Cy had sat through the trial in the courtroom. Jacuzzi the prosecutor had asked him to, on the off-chance he might need his testimony. He didn’t. How many hours had he sat in courtrooms for no eventual reason? He had almost longed to be questioned by Tuttle.

  Cy realized too late that he was responsible for Green’s choosing Tuttle. The little lawyer had slipped what looked like a used business card into Green’s hand, and Green had asked Cy about him.

  “Not a fastball pitcher,” Cy said carefully.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That you could do better with anyone else.”

  That had amounted to a recommendation. After all, Green hadn’t wanted a lawyer at all; he thought he could go into court, tell the judge he was guilty, and be sentenced then and there. If he had to have a lawyer, he didn’t want a fastball pitcher. Cy should have realized that. Tuttle, to give him credit, had tried. Mercy killing. Well, it probably saved Green from the far longer sentence he deserved.

  “They destroyed him,” Jerome Paxon, the parole officer, said to Cy. “They broke his spirit. He’s like a zombie. His only interest is in writing a will and leaving everything to his sister-in-law.”

  “Helen Burke?”

  Paxon nodded vigorously. “His nemesis. The harridan. Madame Defarge. What a virago.” Paxon might have been consulting a book of synonyms. But he was right about Helen. She had acted as if Florence Green were in the pink of health and Nathaniel had cut her off in the bloom of youth. Cy felt that he himself had been consulting a book of clichés.

  “It sounds as if her grudge is with death, not her brother-in-law,” Father Dowling had commented when Cy gave him a short version of those long-ago events.

  “You may be right. Every doctor called to testify said that Florence had been dying, that nothing could save her.”

  “Then why would her husband kill her?” Father Dowling reasonably asked.

  None of Nathaniel Green’s explanations made sense. He wanted to save her further suffering, but she was already in a coma. To which he had replied that she might come out of it. Why hadn’t he waited to see if that would happen? An oddity of the circumstances was that the oxygen petcock on the wall had been turned off. Green had been annoyed when Cy pointed this out. Then he made a face and said he had done that after he took the mask from his dying wife’s. Lest oxygen be wasted? Green asked Cy if he had ever sat by a deathbed. A rhetorical question, but Cy could have answeredyes. He had stood by his father’s bed when he breathed his last breath; he had been holding his mother’s hand when her eyes widened, her grip tightened and he watched her wondering eyes dim as she slipped into eternity.

  “What ever happened to the nephew?” Cy asked Paxon.

  “Jason?” Paxon shrugged. “At least he tried to get his mother to shut up.”

  “How does Nathaniel Green spend his time?”

  “Do you know the senior center at St. Hilary’s?”

  Yes, Cy already knew of Nathaniel’s persistent attendance there, despite the shunning engineered by Helen. His nemesis, his Madame whatchamacallit. The virago. Paxon was contagious.

  When he left the parole officer’s cluttered quarters, Cy thought he might see if Jason was still in town. It was a slow period in the Fox River detective bureau.

  Herman the German was surprised that Eugene Schmidt had never been in Joliet or a place like it in another state. Eugene said that he had moved to Illinois from Michigan, but he seemed to have lived in lots of places, if you could believe him, something about which Herman was not sure. The guy reminded him of several in the place, bunco artists, con men, sure they were smarter than everyone else until finally they were outsmarted themselves. Herman thought of Wendel, who had sold forged lottery tickets and thought that nickel-and-dime operation put him in the big time. Well, it put him in Joliet, where he spent all the time he could trying to apprentice himself to real con men.

  “Wendel, think of it. They’re here. Why do you think they’re smart?”

  “A fluke. Do you know how much McGough made before he got caught?”

  “A lot of good that does him now.”

  Wendel leaned toward Herman, his whisper emerging with exhaled smoke. “He stashed it. It’ll be waiting for him when he gets out.”

  Oh, the stories one heard. Listening to Eugene Schmidt, Herman was reminded of all those guys, mad to make money any way but honestly, for whom a term at Joliet was just a bump on their road to unheard-of wealth. One stay in Joliet was all Herman wanted, which was why he had jumped at this job at St. Hilary’s.

  “So what did you do before you retired?” he asked Schmidt, making conversation.

  Eugene liked to come down to Herman’s apartment for a smoke, and up to a point Herman enjoyed his company. If only to find out what made him tick.

  “Who said I’m retired?”

  “Come on. You’re here every day.”

  “Ah, these widows.” Eugene rolled his eyes and sent a series of perfectly formed smoke rings across the room.

  Herman laughed.

  “A cat among the pigeons, Herman.” He frowned at his own remark. “I’m kidding, of course. The luck I’ve had with women, I should join the monastery.”

  “Pretty bad?”

  “A trail of broken dreams.”

  The guy talked that way, half shutting his eyes, looking sad, but his eyes never lost their twinkle.

  “Tell me about Nathaniel Green, Herman.”

  “It’s all in the papers.”

  “Did you know him …” Eugene delicately left the question unfinished.

  “Not really. You don’t really get to know anyone in a place like that.”

  “Cellmates.”

  “Cellmates least
of all. Most of them are trying to rob you blind.”

  “What did you have to steal?”

  You couldn’t explain it to an outsider. Stuff that wouldn’t mean a thing anywhere else loomed large behind those walls, and thieves never lost their habit of wanting what they did not have.

  “Tell me about the widows,” Herman suggested, wanting to get off that subject.

  Eugene developed his theory for Herman. People grow older, sure, but they never grow up. Particularly women. Good-looking women, and not only the good-looking ones, never got rid of the idea that they were women. And what do women want? A man. That never stops.

  “I’ll tell you what this place is, Herman. We’re in a school, right? Outside is a playground. Okay, we’re all kids again. The women think they’re girls. They can’t help it.”

  “And you’re a boy?”

  A boyish grin. “That’s what they tell me.”

  Already Eugene and Natalie were the talk of the place, either chuckled over or envied or both. Herman had to admit that Natalie was a fine-looking woman, that silver-gray hair, that unlined face, the nose with a little hump in the bridge. He felt half in love with her himself. That was why he kept an eye on Eugene, to see what progress he was making.

  “Everything’s on schedule,” Eugene said. “She’s interested in my soul.”

  “You don’t have one.”

  “That’s what I told her. She’s determined to save me.”

  “From what?”

  “We haven’t gotten around to that yet.”

  What a guy. Just like some at Joliet, Eugene found anywhere he was a stage on which to perform. The senior center at St. Hilary’s wouldn’t attract many men Eugene’s age, but, as he said, here he was a cat among the pigeons. Herman couldn’t believe that Natalie Armstrong didn’t see him for the little con man he was.

  “You play them like a fish, Herman. Why am I down here? Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Keep them off balance, that’s the thing.”

  Herman felt like a snitch when he asked Edna Hospers what she thought of Eugene.

  “Everyone seems to like him.”

  “A real ladies’ man.”

  She laughed when he said it. Well, if she wasn’t worried, why should Herman be?

  After a couple of hours’ effort in the courthouse pressroom, Tetzel got an opening paragraph that he liked and went down to the paper to get a go-ahead from Menteur the features editor. It would take a little digging and footwork to do the piece on Nathaniel Green, and Tetzel was unwilling to undertake it without assurance that it would be used.

  “Who would be interested?” Menteur asked. He must have had a full package of gum in his mouth, which he chewed ferociously in the now smoke-free premises of the Fox River Tribune.

  “I’ll make them interested,” Tetzel said.

  “All this took place, what, eight, ten years ago?”

  “The story is his release. The past as prologue.”

  “That’s catchy,” Menteur said with weary sarcasm. He was always finding clichés in other people’s prose.

  “The Return of Nathaniel Green.” Tetzel might have been reading the headline off the ceiling above them.

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “You see? You’re curious. What does a man who killed his wife do when he gets out of prison?”

  “Remarry?” More sarcasm. You had to know Mrs. Menteur to understand the features editor. “Any other Pulitzer possibilities, Gerry?”

  “Is that no?” Tetzel asked, annoyed.

  Menteur chewed his cud, then shrugged. “Write it. But it better be good.”

  “With me, that’s second nature.”

  Heads turned throughout the room at the unfamiliar sound of Menteur laughing.

  The laughter stopped abruptly when Menteur screamed, “Don’t light that!” Tetzel had unthinkingly plucked a cigarette from one pocket and a plastic lighter from the other. “We can’t smoke here anymore.”

  “Just chew gum?”

  Menteur shook his head and hunched over his desk. “I never thought I’d live so long. Honest to God, I think Prohibition will be back before I die.”

  “We can smoke in the courthouse,” Tetzel said.

  Menteur lurched into an upright position. “But it was the city council that passed the ordinance!”

  “They exempted the courthouse.”

  Menteur fell back, his open mouth revealing the pink wad of gum. He turned and spat it into a wastebasket.

  “Write that up, Tetzel. Skewer the hypocrites.”

  “Watch your language,” Tetzel said.

  “I mean it, damn it. I want a piece on the danger of secondhand smoke to anyone who enters the courthouse.”

  Tetzel rose. “Good idea. Right after I do the Nathaniel Green story.”

  “Skewer them, Tetzel. Skewer them.”

  Wondering eyes followed his departure, Menteur’s vindictive commission ringing in his ears. Fat chance he would complain about being allowed to smoke in the courthouse pressroom. That would be like fouling his own nest. He wondered if they let the inmates at Joliet smoke. He would put the question to Nathaniel Green.

  For two days, Tetzel pursued his project furtively, lest Rebecca learn what he was working on and steal his thunder. Not for the first time, he felt that he had hit on a story that would captivate his readers and make his name a household word among the dwindling subscribers to the Fox River Tribune. The one story that would never run in the Tribune was the paper’s falling circulation. Menteur might see the demise of newsprint before he saw Prohibition return.

  In the pressroom, Tetzel angled the screen of his computer so others would not see that he was consulting decade-old issues of the Tribune. He had been a callow youth in those days, and sitting in traffic court and other courtrooms was part of the apprenticeship. So it was that he had sat through the trial of Nathaniel Green, his unattributed reports moving from the front page to page two, then three, always heavily edited, until the verdict came and he was briefly back on page one, and above the fold.

  He read his youthful prose with the eyes of the craftsman he felt he had become, and found it good. Not that there wasn’t a lot of Menteur in it. Even so, the story on the verdict bore his name, Gearhart Tetzel. It was the first time other reporters learned what “Gerry” stood for, and he was teased mercilessly. “What is the heart of a gear, Gerry?” That sort of thing. He brushed this minor assault aside. He knew jealousy when he saw it in others. Now an older, less naive Tetzel read his early story with a moist eye. By God, he’d been good.

  It was reading his magnanimous tribute to Tuttle’s efforts on Nathaniel Green’s behalf that sent Tetzel now to the little lawyer’s office.

  At the building, he wasted five minutes punching the button for the elevator before giving up and mounting the stairs to the door bearing the legend TUTTLE & TUTTLE, ATTORNEY AT LAW. He pushed through, and a bosomy Amazon turned from her computer, her face radiant with expectation.

  “Is Tuttle in?” the reporter asked.

  “Do you have an appointment?” Sweet but firm.

  “I’m Tetzel of the Tribune.”

  Her radiance increased. “The Chicago Tribune?”

  Tetzel did not correct her. “Just tell Tuttle I dropped by.”

  An inner door opened, and an unmistakable tweed hat was visible in the crack. Then the door opened completely, and Tetzel was looking into the wary gaze of the little lawyer.

  “Got a minute, Tuttle?”

  “Mr. Tetzel is from the Chicago Tribune,” the receptionist gushed.

  “Thank you, Hazel. No calls. Come in, Gerry.”

  The inner office was unbelievably chaotic. Presumably there was a desk beneath the debris over which the now seated Tuttle regarded his caller; the floor was littered with open law books, newspapers, magazines, and old Styrofoam containers.

  “I like a neat office,” Tetzel said, having sat on a container that had once held fried rice. He threw it into a corner, spread his h
andkerchief on the chair, and sat.

  “E pluribus unum,” Tuttle said mysteriously. “As the poet says.”

  “I want to talk about Nathaniel Green,” Tetzel said.

  Tuttle pushed back from the desk, and his chair continued to the wall. When they collided, Tuttle grabbed his hat and managed to stay in the chair. He put the hat on again. “You, too?”

  “What do you mean?” It was Tetzel’s turn to be surprised. Although how could other reporters fail to see the human interest in the Nathaniel Green story? Tetzel looked abjectly at Tuttle. “Who else?”

  “Cy Horvath,” the little lawyer said.

  Relief flooded through Tetzel. Cops didn’t write for newspapers. Then second thoughts brought back anxiety.

  “What’s Horvath up to?” he asked.

  “A little nostalgia, I think. He was young when he worked on that case. Maybe he’s trying to regain his youth.”

  “Since when did you become a counselor, Tuttle?”

  “What else is a lawyer?”

  “Don’t get me started. Tell me about Horvath.”

  “He wanted to talk about the trial. He wondered if I had a transcript. I was lucky to find one for him.” Tuttle looked benevolently around his office.

  “What would he want with that?” Tetzel asked, excited.

  “I suspect that law students study my defense in that trial.”

  “You say Horvath was on that case?”

  “He never missed a day in court,” Tuttle said, as if cherishing a fond memory of better days.

  “I don’t remember seeing him there,” Tetzel said.

  “You would have been concentrating on what was going on in the front of the courtroom. Of course, Horvath had to be there on call,” Tuttle conceded.

  “Why would the detective division still care about a case like that? The guy was guilty from the word go.”

  “So it seemed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tuttle tipped back his hat and then, with great carefulness, his chair. He clasped his hands behind his head. “It was all circumstantial evidence.”

  “Circumstantial evidence!” Tetzel cried. “He was sitting there with the tubes in his hand, he said he did it, no one else could have done it.”