“How—” The woman reached for her kid, then stopped. The lack of noise eased everybody’s tension. Clarence turned off the TV and invited us to sit. He looked like the young executive at home for the evening, in pre-faded designer jeans cut to fit his slender figure. He might work out a day or two a week at a health club. Short hair cut fashionably correct. The apartment had white walls with a few framed posters. All pictured cats in varying stages of cuteness. Burning them would be my first act if it were my place. I can live without cats. The furniture felt comfortable in an overstuffed K-mart way.
We pushed Clarence for answers and information. For fifteen minutes he fended us off.
Finally, frustrated and feeling rotten about doing it, I used the threat of telling about his liaison with the woman and child to get him to talk to us.
At that he rose and stomped about the room, raging at us. I felt guilt, but I wanted information.
He finally sat down, red and puffing. I waited a few minutes and began again. “You’re a priest.”
His shoulders slumped. He spoke in a dull monotone. “We’re married,” he said.
“Huh?” I managed.
The woman took his hand and held it gently. “We’re in love,” she said.
“Who are you?” I said.
“Mrs. Clarence Rogers.”
I saw doubt and worry in his look.
“I always wondered what I’d do if this ever happened,” he said, more to himself than to us. He looked from Scott to me. “I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done.”
Clarence told us they’d been married five years. She had been a parishioner in his first parish. He didn’t feel bound by the outdated precepts of dried-up old men in Rome. “I do a great deal of good as a priest. I won’t give it up. I won’t give up my sexuality either.”
“How does this work?” Scott asked.
“I stay at the rectory only when necessary. I leave after working hours and get back before early Mass. We’re very discreet here.”
I found the hypocrisy of his lifestyle fascinating.
“Father Sebastian knew all about it. Covered for me numerous times with the chancery. A good guy, but very out of step with the times. When I learned he performed fag masses—”
I interrupted. “Don’t say fag.”
“You don’t like it, complain to the Vatican,” he snapped.
“I don’t like it, and I’ll beat the living shit out of you and mail you to the Vatican if you say it again,” Scott said.
Clarence opened his mouth, I thought to make a smart comeback. He stared from one to the other of us. His wife patted his arm and said, “Clare, please.”
“What if you’re caught?” Scott said.
“They don’t burn people at the stake anymore,” Clarence said, “as I’m sure you two appreciate. A gay couple or a priest led astray by a woman a few centuries ago might have caused executions. Today, who cares?”
Figuring out we’re a gay couple after our comments was not a major trick. We spent fifteen minutes arguing the merits of what my nephew overheard. He continued to insist that Jerry had misunderstood. His wife wanted to know why we wouldn’t believe him.
I let it go and switched to asking if he knew anything about Sebastian’s private life. “Especially if he had a lover. Any hints at all. Maybe odd phone calls.”
“I never paid much attention to the old guy. You get odd phone calls in a rectory all the time,” he said.
I thought our presence would be a threat enough to Clarence’s lifestyle to get him to open up. Not a chance. After the initial worry he remained as cool and arrogant as if the pope had performed his marriage. I asked if he’d at least let us look around Sebastian’s room. He refused, saying the diocese took care of that. He told us nothing helpful.
“Arrogant snot,” Scott said in the car.
As we walked to my house from the garage I heard the phone ringing. I hurried in, expecting it to be Bartholomew. Instead, Neil announced that the Faith building had burned to the ground. Worse, they couldn’t find Bartholomew. He’d told several people he needed to stop by the Faith offices. He’d borrowed the key from Neil.
We rushed to the city. We found Neil in a cluster of people at the corner of School Street and Clark. He saw us and hurried over. “They found a body,” he announced. “I’m afraid. I tried calling his place. No one answered.” We hurried to Bartholomew’s apartment. We got the bartender to give us the key again.
In the kitchen the few dishes and glasses were carefully arranged in the cupboards. In the refrigerator everything had frozen. Neil explained that Bartholomew had continuous battles with his landlord about fixing things in his apartment. The landlord refused to believe the refrigerator froze everything. Bartholomew took the milk out every night so it would thaw in time for him to put it on his cereal in the morning. The freezer compartment contained five Weight Watchers spaghetti dinners, bought on sale at a Jewel Grocery Store. His windows looked out on garbage cans in an alley.
“I thought accountants made decent money,” Scott said.
Neil laughed harshly. “Bartholomew was a victim of history.” Neil explained that the man we feared dead in the fire had been dishonorably discharged from the Navy during World War II, caught by an ensign giving blow jobs to half the crew on a submarine. Then he had been unlucky enough in the early fifties to be entrapped by a cop in a Lincoln Park washroom. “A bitter and lonely man, shit on by society, with every right to scream in agony. Mercifully, he never served in prison. With an arrest record and dishonorable discharge, he found it hard to get work. You know, he watched the gay pride parade every year. Each time, I tried to get him to be in it. He always refused, but every year he stood at the corner of Surf and Broadway, clapping and cheering for every group, float, whatever. It became a sort of joke over the years. He stood and clapped as the world passed him by.”
“Why was he there tonight?” Scott asked.
“I don’t know,” Neil said. “It wasn’t unusual for him to ask for the keys. He was always forgetting something, his hat, gloves.” Neil sighed. “When I got there the whole place was engulfed in flames. The only thing I could get a cop to tell me was that the fire spread awful fast.”
“Arson,” I said.
5
We returned to the fire scene.
The charred embers and smoke added a murky smell to the neighborhood. The crowd began to drift away. I watched the firefighters sifting through the debris.
I watched Neil and Monica talking to a fire captain. As I turned to make a comment to Scott, I saw Priscilla glance furtively in every direction and then slip around the corner of the LakeView Learning Center, cross the parking lot, and head west on School Street.
I nudged Scott. “Come on.” I quickly asked Neil to meet us for dinner the next day, then sped after Priscilla. I explained as we went that I wanted to follow her. I didn’t like or trust her. She was too good to be a true as a suspect. Maybe she was up to something tonight. I hoped so. I peered carefully around the building. Walking rapidly, she’d already reached the el tracks. Slipping through shadows we followed her. With only an occasional glance back she hurried six blocks straight west. We paused in the shadow of the Woolworth’s doorway on the southwest corner where Lincoln, School, and Marshfield meet. Farther west we traveled to the Northwestern Railroad tracks. Ravenswood Avenue ran north on the east side of the tracks and then south on the west side of the tracks. On the east side it’s less than a street but more than an alley, filled with bushes and barbed wire to keep people off the tracks. North we crept past Henderson Avenue, with its grassy parkway down the middle. Then a quick movement under the tracks to the area of town called Roscoe Village, then up the west side of the railroad tracks. Just past Cornelia we lost her. In the shadow cast by the Ravenswood el tracks, crossing high above to soar across the Northwestern tracks, we halted to search the darkness ahead.
We waited several heartbeats, then dashed for the opening she’d passed moments before. I peered aroun
d the corner. Nobody in sight, only occasional shadows and silence. Ahead and to the left, numerous semi-trailer trucks lay nestled into loading bays. Mostly we saw the backs of small businesses and one-story factories. On the right, recently repaired barbed wire rose to a height of six feet or more. Feeble light drifted into the darkness in small doses, not enough to cure the urban murk.
Priscilla had either spotted us, and lay hidden, or had entered one of the surrounding doorways. I couldn’t see to the far end of the alley. I couldn’t tell if it was sealed at the end or even if paths ran along it, providing an escape.
“Stay here,” I murmured to Scott and hurried cautiously forward before he could object.
I crept down the left side of the alley, feeling more secure among the crannies and crevices of back yards, garages, and garbage pails than crawling amid the trucks, unhitched trailers, and open bays. From what I could make out in the dim light, most of the delivery bays gaped emptily, stripped of merchandise before giving ideas to nighttime marauders. The distant lights glinted off random truck windows. I’d entered a muffled world of scurrying rats, crumbling concrete, and lurking darkness. Occasionally the sounds of traffic on distant streets drifted into the eerie gloom. The empty windows of the backs of silent factories stared darkly down at me as I eased from one shadow to the next. Training in the Vietnam jungles as a Marine years ago made my senses keenly alert, aware of my surroundings and where possible dangers might lurk.
The slither of tumbling pebbles stopped me. In front or behind, I couldn’t tell. I melted into a deeper shadow next to a crumbling wood fence. The boards of the rickety structure creaked as I crouched against them. I snatched glimpses of the buildings around me, my sight obscured by my crouched position, and listened intently for the recurrence of noise.
Faintly, I heard the whisper of cloth against cloth, definitely behind me. I strained to look over my shoulder, turning only my head, but my shoulder moved and tapped an eighth of an inch of heavy jacket against a loose board. With a whoosh the whole damn fence pitched over. Fortunately the cacophony when it hit the ground made less noise than fireworks in Grant Park on the Fourth of July, but not much less. Anyone listening would think a tank battalion had chosen this moment to rumble up the alley. Still crouched and trying to stop the boards and noise I had unleashed, I bashed my knee against a trash can, which tipped over, spilled its contents, and began rolling away from me.
An instant after silence finally fell, I sensed movement behind me. I whirled in time to see a vast form looming up. Swinging awkwardly from my cramped and crouched position, I managed to land a fist in a midsection. My attacker gave a loud “Oof!” that rang a dim, distant bell. “Scott?” I muttered.
“Motherfucker,” he gasped.
He’d fallen toward the light. He sat gasping for breath. I inched over to position myself protectively over him.
“You should have stayed back,” I whispered.
“Look, general,” he said between pants, “Vietnam was a long time ago. You can give commands to your kids at school, but I’m not waiting out there for you to be beaten to smithereens in here. You don’t make my choices.”
But for us, the alley remained silent. “I didn’t want you in danger,” I said.
“Fuck that shit. We’re in this together.”
“Sorry I hit you,” I whispered.
With a final gulp, regular breathing fully restored, he said, “Now what?”
I let my eyes rove around the darkness. “We could try to explore the rest of the alley,” I suggested.
He got to his feet and walked boldly to the middle of the alley. “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.
In a normal voice he said, “Half the universe could have heard us already. If they didn’t hear, they’re too far away. If they did, they ran.”
“Or they could be waiting in ambush,” I said.
“Look, Jungle Jim,” he said, “I respect all your expertise, but let’s cut the shit. We explore the alley without killing each other and then we go home.”
“Quietly,” I said.
We proceeded, slower than a walk but faster than a patrol through the nighttime jungle. At the end of the alley a twelve-foot chain-link fence blocked our way. To the right, building and fence joined. Between the last building on our left and the fence, a foot-wide path led into further darkness.
Priscilla had either snuck into a building behind us, found a hiding place, or taken a path. I pointed toward the opening. Scott glanced behind us, then toward the deeper darkness of the new opening.
“Let’s go back to the street where there’s light and see where it comes out at the other end.”
A truck started behind us. Headlights snapped on. The cab of an eighteen-wheeler lumbered into the center of the alley and turned toward us.
We both swore.
I heard gears shift. The truck leaped toward us. Heedless of noise, we rushed to the opening. Trash cans flew, along with other unknown obstacles as we kicked them out of our path. The path twisted and turned. With so little light we bumped and stumbled into each other and numerous nameless obstructions. We heard harsh laughter behind us. A final plunge through thick evergreens brought us out onto a sidewalk and busy street.
“Where the hell are we?” I asked.
“I think this is Addison,” Scott said.
It was useless to go back, so we trudged over to Clark Street and the car.
We stayed at Scott’s Lake Shore Drive penthouse that night. In the morning, after barely four hours’ sleep, I sipped coffee in the breakfast nook of the kitchen and watched the early dawn light ease its way over Lake Michigan.
I drove to school for my morning picket duty. The negotiations team members had separate shifts. A few kids showed up to cheer us on. The temperature hovered in the low thirties. Only a few lumps of black-encrusted snow, huddled in the shadows of the school building, reminded us of the storms of December. At eight, two teachers crossed the picket line. Kurt Campbell, our union president, always on duty, remained impassive as we watched them move into the buildings like shamed criminals avoiding the TV news cameras. I boiled with unreasoning fury, which surprised me. Secretly I guess I had told myself all along that this union stuff was peripheral. After all, I had a lover with a fabulous income. Others in the picket line screamed bitter hate at the scabs. For most of my colleagues on the picket line this was their only income, and these people crossing the line threatened their livelihood. It hit me deeply. I had it easy, but I found I cared. All our hard work, and those fools lost their nerve. Kurt had to be impassive. He’d feel responsible about violence, I knew, and he’d see their side, but he didn’t try to stop our people from shouting their fury. For his sake I held my tongue. The parents’ Strike Support Committee brought us coffee and rolls around nine. The temperature kept us moving and grumbling as we traded places between warm cars parked across the street and the line in front of the school.
At one point late in the morning Kurt thanked me for keeping my cool when the scabs appeared. We sat in my pickup truck and talked over strategy. He’d tried talking to the superintendent of schools informally. No dice. “They’re hoping for a below-zero cold wave to break the strike,” Kurt said. He sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “Bastards better not underestimate us.”
At three my relief showed up. Scott had a photo shoot all day for a fashion magazine. I picked him up on Michigan Avenue in front of the Art Institute.
At five we met Neil for dinner at Genesee Depot. First I asked Neil about Lesbians for Freedom and Dignity, the group Priscilla had mentioned.
He said they were women who’d formed a sort of street gang. Years ago, tired of wimpy men not taking back the streets from rapists and gay bashers, they started patrolling. At first it was three or four of them coming to people’s rescue. Over the years they’d grown more and more violent. “Lesbian Radicals from Hell.” He snorted. “I don’t care what they call themselves, that’s what they are, and as humorous as the name sounds,
they’re dangerous.” Police suspected them of bombing church rectories in which pro-life activists held meetings. You heard about the bombing at the chancery a few weeks ago?” Neil asked.
We nodded our heads. A security guard had died in the explosion.
“I have no proof,” Neil said, “but I think they were behind it.” He’d suspected Priscilla of being one of the guiding lights of the group for some time.
We asked about the break-ins at the Gay Tribune. He said there’d been three in the past year, each more destructive than the last. Neil believed Priscilla or Monica or both knew who was doing it, but he had no proof.
We speculated on what information Bartholomew might have had for us. Over dessert I pressed him for more information about Priscilla and the Lesbians for Freedom and Dignity.
“Publicly they disrupt things, but only on a sporadic basis. You’ve met Priscilla at close to her tamest. You can’t imagine a roomful of such women.”
He explained that the group might not surface for months at a time. Then, for several weeks, five or six would show up at every community meeting or service, demanding equal representation for women and all minority groups, being horrified if your meeting wasn’t wheelchair accessible, insisting that pro-choice and the ERA be put on the agenda, demanding liaisons with the feminist community, asking for co-chairpersonships, co-treasurers, co-secretaries, two for every office, male and female, on down the line.
“Why not say yes?” I asked after he finished his litany.
I got puzzled looks from both of them. I said, “Put them on every board and committee. No one could possibly attend all those meetings and do all that work.”
Neil laughed. “They wouldn’t do the work even if they did show up.”
“They’re nuts,” Scott said.
I watched Neil wince in unaccustomed agreement with Scott. “That, and they’re dangerous.”
“Surely only to themselves if their keepers give them sharp objects,” I said.
The Only Good Priest Page 7
