Ash Wednesday

by Ralph McInerny

  Madeline! “Do you see her often?”

  “It’s a way of getting news of you.”

  Carmela smiled. “And she keeps me up to date about you.”

  “We could just talk to one another.”

  “Well, here we are talking,” she said brightly.

  “You know what I mean?”

  Did she? It had been a long time since she had thought that Jason could change his stripes. Still, if his shoe store was flourishing … The thought of Helen Burke brought Carmela back to earth.

  “We can have lunch. Sometime.”

  “Lunch.”

  “You know, the midday meal.”

  Her phone rang, it was a client, and she had to take it. Jason started to rise when she picked up the phone, but she waved him back into his chair. He looked around the office while she talked, but she knew he was aware of the rapid-fire advice she was giving her client. What the client needed was an okay. He got it. “I’ll take care of it immediately.” She hung up. “Sorry.”

  “If I had money I would put it in your hands.”

  “The day will come when you will have plenty. I read about Nathaniel’s new will.”

  “It’s driving my mother crazy. It didn’t help when I told her Nathaniel might outlive her.”

  Are there omens in such everyday exchanges? The mention of the money he would inherit, his mother’s assumption that she would outlive the brother-in-law who had left everything to her …

  She was walking to the door with Jason when Emily hailed her. Another phone call.

  “Get the number. I’ll call back in a minute.”

  She went outside with Jason and stood beside his car while he got behind the wheel. The motor took a while to start. “Like me in the morning,” he said, grinning at her.

  For a moment, everything she had ever felt for him came rushing back, and it was all she could do not to kiss him. She turned and hurried back to her office.

  The call had been from Madeline. Carmela had Emily dial the number.

  “Carmela? Awful news. Helen is dead.”

  Taking the phone with her, Carmela ran into the outer office, but Jason’s car was gone.

  “Did you hear me?” Madeline asked.

  “I was just seeing if I could stop Jason. He just left here. Tell me what happened.”

  Madeline’s description of the auto accident was hurried, and then, “Did you say Jason was there?”

  “My husband,” Carmela said.

  Part Three

  Agnes Lamb was angry, a mood she might have described more graphically. John Thomas, the pizza delivery man found in the river in his half-submerged car, had died violently, and when they talked to his wife it was clear that he had been threatened.

  “I thought you were interested in the break-in at the Foot Doctor,” she said to Cy. It might have been an apology.

  “Because he’s connected with John Thomas.”

  “You think Jason did away with the man when he didn’t bring the pizza?”

  “Agnes. I think someone did away with him before he brought the pizza.”

  “It’s always best to get clear on the timeline.”

  She knew that Cy was kidding with her because he didn’t find it a damned bit funny himself. He knew what she thought explained the body in the river; he would think it himself. But all he could do was try to kid it away.

  When they had responded to the alarm Eric had put out about a break-in, they hadn’t pursued what brought them to the mall in the first place. They were agreed that for some reason Jason denied that there had been a break-in. He was sloppy, sure, but his office looked vandalized, not messy. Just like that, though, Cy seemed to have lost all interest in the the Foot Doctor.

  Agnes hadn’t. If she weren’t saved, thanks to the exhortations of the Reverend Jones and total immersion right up there in front of the whole congregation, she would have said that she was damned if she would let John Thomas and his wife fade into the oblivion of unsolved mysteries. Many of them were unsolved because of possible connection with the Pianones. Both Cy and Captain Philip Keegan had explained to her that, hot as any trail that led to the local Family might be, it was cold to them.

  “Agnes, Jacuzzi wouldn’t touch it, and even if he did, one of the Pianone judges would make sure it ended in acquittal.”

  “When was the last time you tried?”

  “Look, Agnes. Let’s keep to things we can handle. You want to reform local politics, the police department isn’t the means.”

  The detective bureau, to which thank God she had been assigned, was, Agnes came to see, the one division of the department that was not infested with Pianone influence. Peanuts? Even the Pianones must have seen that he was a joke, but the thought occurred to her that he was in a way their insurance policy, giving the illusion that the influence of the Pianones extended even into the detective division.

  So Agnes came to understand the restriction under which the division worked. That didn’t mean that she agreed. Which is why she took a day of her sick leave and went back to the mall.

  “Did you complain when your pizza didn’t arrive?” Agnes asked Jason.

  He was big in a soft way, bald on top but not on the sides, the belly of an umpire, and seemed puzzled by the question. Here in his office at the Foot Doctor, it was difficult to think of him living in a unit in the development that Agnes’s family had managed to free themselves from.

  “I didn’t order any pizza. Pizza? If I want food brought in, it’ll be Chinese.”

  “You never ordered a pizza from …” Agnes read off the name from her pad. “John Thomas Pasta.”

  “Never heard of it,” Jason said.

  “I did.”

  It was the clerk, Eric, looking into the office.

  “You ordered a pizza?” Agnes asked him. For the first time Jason seemed interested.

  “How did you hear about John Thomas Pasta?” Agnes had looked in the yellow pages. There was no ad for John Thomas Pasta, nor was it listed in the column of addresses and numbers squeezed between the ads.

  “Their flyer,” Eric said. “They distributed flyers around the mall.”

  “You still have it?”

  “Geez, I don’t know. I could look.”

  Agnes went away with him, into the little room with the table and folding chairs and the little fridge. Some customers came in, and Jason excused himself and went into the showroom.

  Eric found the flyer in the wastebasket in a corner of the little back room. Agnes took it into Jason’s office. Smoothing it out, she was reminded of that poor woman making pizzas in her own kitchen so her husband could pay off debts he was no longer held legally responsible for. The flyer had been done on a computer, several changes of font, one color. Not even a picture of a pizza.

  “Why did you call them?” she asked Eric.

  “Look at those prices.”

  “They’re low?”

  If these flyers were their only means of attracting customers, the Thomases would starve to death. No, they could always eat pizza.

  The tinkle of the bell announced more customers, and Eric left her. Agnes looked around Jason’s office. The chair had been righted and the file cabinets closed, but the debris that had been dumped on the desk was now back in the wastebasket. Feeling like a bag lady, Agnes rummaged around in the contents of the basket. Most of it looked like lottery tickets of various levels, attempts at the jackpot and then down through the lesser layers of hopefulness. Why would a man with a nice little business like the Foot Doctor waste time on the lottery? The lottery was for losers. There were also tabs from the tops of cans. Soda, beer, how could you tell? It had to be soda, with all these tabs.

  She went again into the little room in back and opened the fridge. It was so full of beer one of the bottles started to roll, and she slammed the door shut.

  “Have one, if you’d like.”

  Jason smiled in the doorway.

  “Not while I’m on duty.”

  “I keep th
ose for visitors.”

  He said it dismissively, but Agnes knew what drinkers were like, and, even if she hadn’t seen how he lived, she would have pegged Jason as a drinker.

  Outside, she sat in her car and told herself this was a stupid way to spend a day off. Of course, she had called in sick, and maybe she was. Sick in the head. Her interest was in John Thomas and his wife, and it was pretty clear the explanation of that was not to be found at the Foot Doctor.

  The door of the store opened, and out came Jason, wearing a jacket that flapped as he walked. Of course, he couldn’t have buttoned it if he tried. He seemed to be coming right toward her, and Agnes wondered if he had thought of something he wanted to tell her, but he walked right past the passenger side of the car to the clunker in the row behind. Agnes heard the complaint of the starter, and it brought back memories of the first vehicle her dad had brought home, proud as punch. The starter had sounded like that at first, but her dad had it fixed. Jason apparently was willing to take the chance that his car would start. Well, he was a gambler. This time he won.

  When he pulled out of his space and headed for an exit, Agnes followed. Call it her crazy day.

  She couldn’t believe it when Jason got onto the interstate with his bucket of bolts. I-90 had been designed for motorized lemmings heading pell-mell for the Loop, changing lanes, all of them at least twenty miles over the speed limit, wearing the crazed look of Luddites with only their cars as tools of destruction. There was no lane for slower drivers, and Jason settled into the lane farthest to the left and kept it at forty-five miles an hour. When he wasn’t nearly run over by the irate drivers behind, he was cut off when they passed, swooping in ahead of the clunker, nearly taking off its fender. Agnes took a lot of flak herself, trying to keep behind him.

  Then Jason entered the express lane! Agnes was two cars behind him. Soon there were a hundred cars behind him, their drivers furious to be kept to the speed that Jason set. They couldn’t get around him in this express lane, which was like a chute, narrow and bordered by concrete barriers four feet high. Agnes turned on the radio to drown out the sound of infuriated horns.

  As they approached the Schaumburg exit, Jason’s signal lights went on. His right turn signal. He got onto the regular lanes, and the signal kept flashing. He was going to have to cross six lanes of traffic to get to the exit. Somehow he did it, just edging over at his infuriating forty-five miles per hour, seemingly impervious to the chaos he was creating. Following him, Agnes felt some of the fury of the other drivers, but at the same time she admired his guts. Forty-five was the minimum speed limit, and Jason kept religiously to it. Maybe he couldn’t exceed it.

  Once they were on the exit ramp, Agnes felt the tension drain from her. Schaumburg was spread over what had once been choice Illinois farmland and was still growing like corn in July. Jason’s speed, or lack of it, was less of a problem now. Agnes wondered where they were going.

  Jason’s turn signal went on, the left one, and he crossed a lane of cars going in the opposite direction and entered a driveway. Agnes went on by, entered a large parking area, drove through it, exited, and returned the way she had come. When she turned in where Jason had, she could see his parked car. It stood out among the other sleek expensive vehicles.

  Agnes didn’t smoke. She didn’t even chew gum. She began to wonder if there was a restroom she could use in the Avanti Group. But she couldn’t take the risk of running into Jason. This madness was between herself and God.

  There was a sign in front of the building, and after a while Agnes changed parking places, wanting to get nearer so she could read it. Under the legend THE AVANTI GROUP, in smaller letters was, FINANCIAL ADVISORS, and then three names.

  Financial advisers. She could have kicked herself. According to Cy, Jason was loaded. At least his mother was, and he was the son and heir. The thought that she had followed him all this way so he could check up on his investments stirred her proletarian soul. What a bundle of contradictions the man was.

  He lived in a squalor few could tolerate, but he had a nice little business. So he gambled and drank; he could afford it. Agnes sat there trying to despise him, but it was herself she was angry with. After all, she was the one who had decided to waste a day off following Jason Burke around on the off chance that she would discover something that would cast light on the murder of John Thomas. Now she was sitting like a dope in her parked car in a lot in Schaumburg reading the sign of the Avanti Group. If she weren’t so stubborn, she would have taken off, got on the interstate, and barreled back to Fox River at an appropriately maniacal speed. Instead she was still sitting in her car, God knew how much later, when Jason emerged. With a woman.

  They stood for a moment outside the door, and it did not seem just a business relationship to Agnes. The woman came with Jason to the clunker. Agnes had rolled down the window, and their voices came to her, audible but not intelligible. Tilting her side mirror, she could watch them. After Jason got behind the wheel, the woman looked about to give him a kiss, but she didn’t. When she walked back to the entrance of the Avanti Group, she no longer gave the impression of the levelheaded businesswoman her outfit suggested.

  Jason pulled out, and Agnes let him go. She wasn’t going to follow him anymore. Then the woman burst out the door again, a phone in her hand, looking desperately in the direction that Jason had gone. She slumped, and then, talking into the phone, went back inside.

  On the way back to Fox River, Agnes got their police band on her radio. That was how she learned of the death of Helen Burke.

  Edna called the rectory, relaying a cell phone message from Kevin Brown, who had been on the shuttle bus, and Father Dowling, grabbing the oils, ran out to his car. This took him through the kitchen, and Marie came to the back door and called after him, “Where are you going?”

  He just waved at her. Minutes could mean everything. Once he got going, he brought the old Toyota up to almost maximum speed, roaring along Dirksen Boulevard. Where is a cop when you need one? He could have used a police escort. He went through several yellow lights—at least, they were yellow when he approached the intersections, but as he shot through cars were coming at him from left to right. He commended himself to St. Anthony of Padua and kept the accelerator depressed. At last he could see the flashing lights of an ambulance as he approached the accident scene.

  The effort to extricate Helen Burke from behind the wheel of her car was still under way when Father Dowling came up. The firemen paused and let Father Dowling through. The engine of the car had been driven into the front seat, pushing it back. The steering wheel seemed embedded in the woman’s chest. It was Helen Burke. Father Dowling lifted his hand to bless her and absolve her from her sins. The eyes fluttered open. Could she see him? He continued with the blessing, and despite the still-growling sirens, the flashing lights, the general pandemonium of the scene, Father Dowling heard Helen sigh. It was more than a sigh. It was her last breath. But he had uncapped the oils now, and he traced a cross on her forehead, her half open eyes, her mouth …

  He stood then and stepped back so that the grim and now pointless rescue could continue.

  The parish center shuttle bus had careened onto the shoulder of the road and had come to a stop, slightly tipped. Its passengers now huddled in a horrified group beside it, looking toward the demolished car. As Father Dowling went to them, Kevin Brown came forward.

  “I called the center, Father.”

  “Thank God you did. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Is she still…”

  He shook his head.

  “Then it was too late?”

  “Just in time, Kevin. Just in time.”

  Kevin seemed relieved. “I only hope someone does as much for me.”

  Father Dowling decided not to ask Kevin what had happened. Eugene Schmidt was talking with a police officer. When Father Dowling came up, Schmidt turned and stared at the priest.

  “I was driving, Father. Some guy just swerved in front of me. I don’t
know how it happened.”

  Father Dowling looked at the officer, an expressionless young man he didn’t know. He took Father Dowling aside.

  “How did it happen, Officer?”

  “He says someone swung into his lane and forced him over.” And that in turn had forced Helen from the lane?

  Schmidt had come along with them. “I didn’t see her in the mirror, Father. I didn’t have time. Oh my God.”

  Out of a dozen fragmentary and incoherent remarks, something that had taken seconds in the occurrence was pieced together. It came down to the fact that the shuttle bus had forced Helen to swerve, and that had taken her into the bridge abutment and her death.

  “Why wasn’t she in the bus?”

  “She insisted on showing me the way,” Schmidt said. “She never rode in the shuttle bus.” The object of the trip had been a park overlooking the river. In the bus were the baskets packed with the lunch they had meant to have there. Schmidt tagged along with Father Dowling, keeping to his side, as if anxious to hear how the others would describe what had happened. Monica Garvey had been seated in the center of the bus, on the right side, and had seen it all.

  “I tried to call out, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t make a sound.”

  Everyone had his or her account, what they had or had not seen, emphasizing the reaction of the speaker. Few had realized what had happened when it did. Most spoke of the terror they had felt when the bus left the road and bumped to a stop on the shoulder, twenty-five yards from Helen’s demolished car.

  Encircled by the seniors, Father Dowling suggested that they say a prayer for Helen.

  “Is she …”

  “Yes.” And he began the Hail Mary. They were asking that Helen’s and the souls of all the faithful departed might rest in peace when Father Dowling saw Cy Horvath. He was with the group by the car, where an acetylene torch was being used to gain access to the body. Father Dowling hesitated. The old people should be taken back to the center. But how? In the bus? He doubted that many would care to board it now. He beckoned to Kevin.