Ash Wednesday

by Ralph McInerny

“I think Rebecca’s point was that they should be allowed to smoke more than seven cigarettes a day.”

  Envying the prisoners, Menteur chomped on his gum, studying Tetzel. “How is your story going?”

  “Maybe I should just write a letter first. To get the ball rolling.”

  “Get out of here.”

  Gladly. Rebecca’s story was featured on the Tribune’s Web site, of course. It probably had more readers there than in the print edition. He should have said as much to Menteur. Of course, that sword hung over them all. How long would newspapers grind up the forests of the continent, providing increasingly abbreviated accounts to compete with the kaleidoscopic fare of the Internet? Menteur was like the captain of the Titanic, oblivious of disaster ahead. Tetzel had a fleeting image of himself as Leonardo DiCaprio, disporting himself with Kate Winslet on the bow. If he had any sense, he would finish his novel.

  The reference was to a file on his computer, largely notes, for the opus of which Tetzel had dreamed for years while tastes in fiction altered into directions he did not comprehend. His hero was a reporter, what else? Write of what you know. It occurred to him that his story should be of a gifted man wasting his sweetness in a doomed profession. The Last Reporter? He liked it. He picked up his pace as he returned to the pressroom in the courthouse.

  By the time he got there, his novel was forgotten and his mind was once more full of the story he was writing on Jason Burke. He saw it as a prince-and-the-pauper story, from shoe store to golden slippers. Well, something like that.

  When he entered the pressroom, Rebecca cried out. She was staring at the screen of her computer, an idiot smile on her face.

  “What?” he asked reluctantly.

  “My Web site, Gerry. My God, the response.”

  Tetzel stood beside her. Web site? REBECCA FARMER in a huge font ran along the top of the screen, below it an image of Rebecca that might have been her high school graduation picture. She scrolled down for Tetzel’s benefit. Message after message.

  “Any complaints about smoking in the jail?”

  If Rebecca heard him, she ignored it. Tetzel went to his desk, flicked on his computer, and waited. If he had any principles at all, he would go back to a typewriter. Rebecca’s continued squeals grated on his nerves. How could he work here? He took his tape recorder from a drawer, dumped it into his shoulder bag, and rose. Rebecca did not notice him leave.

  He took a cab to the mall. He could charge it to the paper. When he got out, he paid, got a receipt, and stood looking at the facade of the Foot Doctor. He walked past it several times, waiting until there were no customers, then went in to the jangling of the bell over the door. The clerk greeted him with a smile that faded. Did he think Tetzel was returning the loafers?

  “The boss in?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’d like to look around.” He flashed his ID at the clerk.

  “You’re from the Tribune?”

  There was awe and reverence in Eric’s voice. Tetzel got out a pad. “Let me get your name down.”

  Eric Fleischhaecker. With two h‘s. Tetzel nodded.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Since the store opened.”

  Almost a year. Tetzel nodded approvingly at such stability of place. “Show me around, would you?”

  In the stockroom in back, Eric explained the arrangement of the shoes. “I come back here, I want to be able to grab what I want and get back to the customer. Never keep a customer waiting.”

  The bell jangled, and Eric looked out. A customer. Tetzel was left alone. Next to the stockroom was a smaller room, a table, some chairs, a little fridge. He opened it. Chock-full of beer. Guinness! Tetzel took a bottle and slipped it into his shoulder bag as he left the room. He stood and smiled sardonically at the sign hanging from the knob of a closed door. DOCTOR IS IN. Not according to Eric. Tetzel pushed open the door, waited, then went inside the office. He stood, taking in the scene, as he described it in his mind. Here, the disinherited son had pursued his honest entrepreneurial labors, little expecting that a tragic accident would propel him into affluence. The clerk had said that Jason intended to go on with the Foot Doctor. Why should he? You work to make money, and if you have money, why work? What would life be like if you never had to work? The bell in the showroom jangled again, but Tetzel was lost in meditation.

  “Can I help you?”

  Tetzel swung around and faced a man who could only be Jason Burke. He didn’t seem angry to find someone in his office.

  “Tetzel of the Tribune.” He flashed his ID.

  Jason Burke went past him and was about to sit in the Barcalounger but thought better of it. He took the chair behind the desk instead. “I already have a subscription.”

  “Ho-ho. Mr. Burke, yours is a fascinating story, and I want to tell it.”

  Jason shook his head. “No story.”

  Tetzel smiled. He would write this reluctance into his portrait of Jason. “Your clerk tells me you’ll be keeping this store.”

  “How you fixed for shoes?”

  “I bought a pair the other day. I had hoped to talk with you then.”

  “Okay, sit down. Let’s get it over with.”

  Tetzel took the lounge chair, keeping it at ninety degrees. He got out his tape recorder and without thinking plucked a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket. He looked at Jason. “Is it all right if I smoke?”

  “Go ahead.”

  All the odds and ends Tetzel had been picking up since the accident in which Helen Burke died began to fit together. But what he wanted was background, and he got it. All the schools, the rich young kid, and then the navy!

  “You were in the navy?”

  “I wasn’t fat in those days.”

  “Just an enlisted man?”

  “Seaman first class.”

  “Just give me the high points.”

  “Well, I served ten days in the brig once.” He had been drinking beer with guys from his barracks. “It was the first time I was ever drunk. Just for the hell of it, I smashed a window in the barracks door. Destruction of government property. Ten days in the brig.”

  It might have been the beginning of the downward spiral. Jason was happy to talk about all his failed businesses, the lawn service, babysitting pets. He had even been a nurse’s aide in St. Mary’s Hospital. That hadn’t lasted long, either.

  “All this was after you were disinherited?”

  “Disinherited?”

  “Cut off by your family. On your own.”

  “My mother always set me up in business. I wasn’t cut off. Don’t say that.”

  Tetzel’s grunt might have been taken for agreement. “Okay. Now, Mrs. Burke.”

  “My mother was a fine woman.”

  “I meant your wife.”

  “I don’t want to talk about her.”

  “Trouble?”

  “No. No trouble. That’s all over.”

  Jason pushed back from the desk and stood. He waited until Tetzel got up and packed up his equipment.

  It hadn’t been much, but with a little imagination Tetzel could work it into a dramatic exchange. Funny how he had clammed up when it came to his wife.

  Carmela let Augie’s calls accumulate on her cell phone without answering them. The past week had turned her life upside down, and through it all she had felt two-faced. She could see that everyone looked on her as the estranged wife returned, especially Jason. Would he have agreed to the provisions of the will if he didn’t think that was the price he had to pay to get his wife back?

  When Amos Cadbury had explained the provision to her, Carmela had been astounded. “Helen wanted me to look after the money?”

  “She didn’t specify a name,” Amos had said carefully.

  Of course, she had come to know this eminent lawyer over the years, thanks to the money he had been given on which she could draw as needed. It was a point of pride not to ask for it, but from time to time Amos had asked her to stop by, and she was happy to le
t him know how things were going with her.

  He had nodded in approbation. “You have enough ambition for two.”

  She had shaken her head. “Things are better as they are.”

  So they had been. Amos had resisted at first when she suggested that she take over investing the money Helen had deposited for her with Amos, but eventually he had agreed and been suitably impressed by the results. It occurred to her later that she had been auditioning for the role that Amos proposed.

  He had taken her aside after Helen’s burial and said he wanted a word with her. They sat in the backseat of his huge car, the window between them and the driver closed, while he laid it out for her. It was pretty clear to Carmela that Helen must have thought that it would be Amos who would have control over Jason’s money. Of course, it must have seemed only a remote possibility. Surely she couldn’t have imagined that she would die before Amos.

  “Are we agreed?” he asked when he had finished explaining.

  “Jason will never agree.”

  “The arrangement is not contingent on his agreement.”

  It was like taking on another client. That was what she told herself in the car and again when she got out and joined the others. How easy it would be to fall in with what they all assumed. Carmela was back. The great obstacle to her marriage was at last removed. Without Helen’s smothering interference, she and Jason could finally make a life for themselves. How proud he had been when he told her of the success of the Foot Doctor.

  “I’ve stopped drinking, Carmela.”

  “Good.” How often had he said that in the past?

  “I haven’t been in a casino for months. All that is over.”

  Despite herself, she believed him. It was Madeline’s wariness that tipped the scales so that what would have seemed a return to the heartbreak her marriage had been began to alter to a possible future. When Amos responded to her question as to what conditions there were on her if she fell in with his interpretation of Helen’s desire that Jason not have control over the money he would inherit, Amos had been careful, but the answer, although oblique, was clear. She could go on just as she was and still fulfill that role. There was no need to bring her separation from Jason to an end. Given Jason’s response at the reading of the will, it was clear that he thought that now at last they could begin—but how many times in the past had they begun again? She told herself that she could not risk it, she did not have to go back to him, but surrounded by relatives, confronted by a clearly altered Jason, she wavered. She did not take Augie’s calls.

  “You and Jason should have the house,” Madeline said.

  “Madeline, it was left to you.”

  “What am I going to do with such a house?”

  Sell it? Of course, Carmela knew that Madeline had retained her long-term cousin’s crush on Jason. Whenever they met, Madeline’s talk had been mainly of him. It might have been a not too subtle effort to bring wife and husband together again, but certainly that wasn’t the whole of it. Once Madeline had spoken dreamily of how, when they were all old, the three of them could pool resources and live together. The huge Burke mansion could have provided the staging for such an odd trio. Clearly Madeline thought that the usual relationship between male and female was behind them now and they could be brother and sisters together. Madeline had always been a dreamer.

  “Tell me about your work at the senior center.”

  Madeline gave a little wave of her hand. “I won’t bore you with that.”

  It was clear Madeline wasn’t bored by it, though. Talking with her, Carmela thought how odd it was that it was she, whose life had crumbled again and again, who felt on top of the world and Madeline, who had taught school for years, retired early, and was now helping out at the St. Hilary senior center, who seemed one of life’s casualties.

  “Carmela, the first thing you have to do is move Jason out of that dreadful place he lives in.”

  “I am not his keeper, Mad.”

  She got a little knowing smile in answer to that.

  When she finally had a chance to get back to her office in Schaumburg, Carmela had no idea what she intended to do. She had made no promises, but she had allowed assumptions to be made. The closer she got to the offices of the Avanti Group, the more she thought of the assumptions she had allowed Augie to make.

  “Get a divorce,” he suggested.

  “Augie, I’m Catholic.”

  “So am I. Sort of. Apply for an annulment.”

  “I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Okay, we can just live in sin together.”

  That’s what it was, of course. She told herself that no one could blame her, God couldn’t blame her, an estranged wife whose marriage had been hell, alone, still young enough, successful, and admired by Augie. More than admired. How could she not think what her life would have been if she had met him long ago? She began to pretend that was what was happening, that she was free and Augie loved her and …

  After the first time, she went to confession in Barrington. She could hardly form the words. “Father, I committed adultery.” She knelt in dread of the scolding she would now receive, but after a pause, the priest said, “Avoid the occasion of sin. For your penance say a decade of Our Lady’s rosary.”

  Afterward she knelt, trying to pray the rosary but feeling that she had received a reprieve, almost permission. After that, it hadn’t seemed necessary to confess it when, aglow with wine and a good dinner, enthralled by Augie’s chatter, she had let him gather her into his arms. If only he wasn’t such a swashbuckler with his clients’ money.

  * * *

  Even before she told him what had happened in Fox River, he was giving her his bad news. He had lost half his clients.

  “I’ll be lucky if they don’t sue me.” He tried to smile. “Baxter is going back to teaching. He says he finds theory easier than practice.”

  She had warned them. Well, not warned them exactly, but showed her disapproval. She took chances, every financial advisor took chances, but there were chances and chances. It occurred to her that she was the only successful partner in the Avanti Group.

  The circumstances weren’t ideal, but she had to tell him of her own great turn of fortune.

  “You’re going back to your drinking husband?”

  Later she would realize that was the moment when she could have done unequivocally what she had thought of doing while in Fox River, what everyone there assumed she would do. She could have told Augie that, yes, she was going back to her husband. Everything was changed now. Everything was different. Instead, what she said was “I think we should move our offices to Fox River. You’ll find new clients there.”

  She did not resist when he took her in his arms.

  Cy Horvath kept running into Maxwell, and when he wasn’t running into him he was made aware that the investigator seemed to have been everywhere he was. Maxwell had talked with Herman at St. Hilary’s; he had talked with Edna Hospers; he had examined the accident report that involved the shuttle bus. Cy came upon Maxwell lolling on a bench along one of the parish walks. He sat down beside him, upwind from Maxwell’s cigar.

  “Long time no see.”

  “Ah, Horvath.”

  “You thinking of spending time here at the senior center?”

  Maxwell looked like the insurance man he had been until he became fascinated by the investigators who looked into questionable claims. He took a paralegal course, got a license, and then landed Amos Cadbury’s firm as a client, a first fish that led to many more. If he was prospering, though, it was not evident in the neat but nondescript clothing he wore. A sport coat off the rack, open shirt, tan slacks, shoes with soles several inches thick. The cigar seemed a prop.

  “What are we working on, Maxwell?”

  “We?”

  “I keep tripping over you.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “Eugene Schmidt.”

  Maxwell extended a little finger, and Cy locked it in his.

&nb
sp; “He just went by with his lady love to church,” Maxwell said.

  “Want to have lunch?”

  At a nice little place several blocks away, Maxwell ordered a Greek salad and iced tea. Cy asked for a cheeseburger and Coke. Maxwell told Cy what he had learned of Schmidt, some of it news to Cy.

  “I wonder if that’s his real name, Cy. He came here by Amtrak three months ago and at first took a room in the Pelican Motel.” Maxwell’s brows danced. “Then he moved into the parish.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He asked around about where people his age hung out and was told about the center here. You know he’s a ladies’ man.”

  “In Detroit?”

  “He lived off a widow there for a year, until the family ran him out, probably dashing his plans. Funny thing. He apparently has babbled to Herman about all his conquests.”

  “You figure he’s on the prowl again?”

  “Natalie Armstrong.”

  “Even before she came into big money?”

  Maxwell nodded. “Herman says Schmidt is taking instructions from the priest.”

  “Is he eligible?”

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  “I meant for marriage.”

  “I’ve found no marriages involving Eugene Schmidt. Of course, marriage records are a mess. Not many states have centralized them. County by county.” Maxwell sighed. “He gave Herman the impression that he has been married several times.”

  “I suppose Amos Cadbury will warn Natalie Armstrong.”

  “By the look on her face when they went by, I don’t think she’ll believe him.”

  Cy wondered whether Amos would act on what Maxwell could give him. A widow in Detroit hardly looked like a federal case.

  Maxwell wanted to talk about the accident when Schmidt had been driving the shuttle bus that had forced Helen Burke into the bridge abutment.

  “He said he was forced into her lane,” Cy said.

  “Anyone else see that?”

  Cy shook his head.

  “I suppose the bus was examined.”

  “Earl Hospers, Edna’s husband, looked it over. The parish bought it secondhand from a car rental agency. It was pretty battered at the time. There’s a dent on the left front fender that may be recent, but Earl wouldn’t swear to it. Schmidt kept insisting it was all his fault.”