The Fundamentals of Murder
William F. Love
© William F. Love 1991
William F. Love has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1991 by Donald I. Fine.
This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
To the late Dan Kavanaugh,
whose wit and sense of humor I try,
not always successfully, to emulate in my books
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
Epilogue
1
If I hadn’t been so irritated at the Bishop that Wednesday before Halloween, we’d have never even met Jerry Fanning. Funny, isn’t it, how lives can get turned upside down over something as trivial as a fit of spite? Not that I didn’t have good cause.
It all started with a phone call from Father Luke Barry, president of the Catholic Biblical Association. I was skimming the Times’s latest story on the efforts of New York’s Finest to locate and incarcerate some bozo who was knocking off prostitutes when the call came in at about 9:30 that morning. I knew Barry a little from earlier phone conversations, but had never heard him so nervous. He had to speak to the Bishop and right now. I switched on my tact and delicacy, two of the many sterling qualities I possess that the Bishop doesn’t appreciate nearly as much as he should.
“Sorry, Father. Bishop Regan won’t be down from his prayers till eleven, and he doesn’t permit interruptions.”
“Yes, yes, I know, Mr. Goldman. The trouble is — well, maybe I can tell you. Then you can decide whether or not this is an exception.”
So the man explained. And explained. I got to learn everything I never wanted to know about the CBA’s upcoming conference — “The Perils of Fundamentalism” — and how they were in sudden desperate need of a speaker for Saturday night, after a cancellation.
“The devil of it is, Mr. Goldman, the printer has agreed to insert the change into the program, but he’s absolutely got to have the copy by noon. If I wait till eleven for the Bishop and then he turns me down, I won’t have time to call someone else. See the problem?”
I calculated the odds. Not the odds that the Bishop would accept (being a paraplegic, he normally goes to great lengths to avoid leaving the mansion at all, let alone going to Philly where the conference was being held), but that I’d be able to get rid of Barry without at least talking to Regan first. I decided the odds were low so I told the priest I’d go interrupt the Bishop at his prayers and ask. After I got the automatic turndown I’d phone him back.
So I went to the third-floor chapel. Third time in my life I’d ever been up there. Being a Jew (and an atheist), I’m not all that intrigued by Catholic chapels.
Oh, it’s an interesting room, I’ll give it that. Takes up all of what used to be the third and fourth floors of the mansion. No pews, only a few scattered chairs. Dark. Kind of spooky. But beautiful, in a weird sort of way.
Regan, impressive in purple robe and skullcap, was in his wheelchair right in front of the altar, reading his breviary, I think it’s called.
He made no attempt to hide his irritation at being interrupted. Didn’t faze me. If I ran for cover every time he got irritated, I’d be one of those endangered species he occasionally rants about.
“Sorry,” I said, not meaning it, “this’ll just take a second. I’m only doing a favor for your friend, Father Luke Barry.”
That got at least part of his attention. I briefly told him Barry’s problem.
Regan removed his skullcap and scratched his head, rumpling his shock of white hair even more than usual. He squinted at nothing for five seconds.
“Look,” I prompted, “no need to agonize over it. I’ll just run down and tell him no. Why waste your time —?”
Regan interrupted, “Call Father back and tell him yes. We’ll drive over on Saturday, return Sunday. Make arrangements.” Boom, boom. Just like that.
I’d blown it. Badly. I hadn’t thought through — a bad habit of mine, not thinking things through — what it would mean if Regan did accept. Namely, he won’t go a block in anything but his black Seville, chauffeured by me.
Stupid. That Saturday was the Delancey Street Irregulars’ annual Halloween Night on the Town and I was taking Sally Castle. The Irregulars are a bunch of golfers I pal around with. Sally is my non-irregular girlfriend.
He was back in his book. I was dismissed, he thought. “Oh, no you don’t!” I said. “You can’t do this to me! I’ve got a date with Sally Castle — that Halloween party with the Irregulars. I put it on your calendar over a month ago.”
Regan shook his head without looking up. “I’m sorry, David, but this is an emergency. You will have to cancel your plans.”
I looked around for something to hit him with. The heavy gold candlesticks on the altar looked tempting. Nope. That could do permanent damage. To the candlesticks.
I gritted my teeth. “Will you please look at me? We need to talk! If you think I’m going to cancel something I’ve been planning for months just because some —”
“David!” He whipped off his glasses and tilted his face at me, green eyes blazing. “We can discuss this at eleven o’clock! Go phone my acceptance. Please!” He returned to the book. I stood there glaring down at him, but he ignored me. I went down the stairs fuming.
I’d definitely blown it. I should have remembered the conversation we’d had a couple of months previously when the announcement about the conference first arrived. The Bishop had taken an inordinate amount of time dithering over whether or not to go.
The thing is, he’s absolutely loony on the subject of fundamentalism. But he finally told me to send his regrets.
“Absent my constitutional preference to sleep in my own bed, I’d go,” he told me. “My aversion to fundamentalism is profound, and I’d have enjoyed sharing horror stories with my fellow scholars.”
“So what’s your problem with fundamentalists?” I asked idly, licking the envelope. “I thought you were one. Isn’t that somebody that believes in the New Testament?”
Regan gave me a long, careful look. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” I gave him back my wide-eyed innocent look.
He shook his head. “No, David, I am most emphatically not a fundamentalist.
“Fundamentalism, for your information, is a misguided and simplistic reaction to nineteenth-century theological liberalism. It seeks refuge from modern science in the Bible, in which it claims to find not merely the inspired word of God, but the final answer to every human dilemma.” He paused for a breath, but before I could say “Sorry I asked,” he was off again.
“Worse yet, it condemns legitimate biblical scholarship. The word of God, it opines, must be patent to e
very reader, however naive. Accordingly, it forbids any scientific inquiry into the Scriptures. Outrageous and ludicrous.
“But worst of all are the infernal, ubiquitous door-to-door salesfolk, rushing about, forcing their shallow biblical interpretations upon the unwary of every faith.
“I once permitted one into my office, thinking he might be amenable to some civilized discourse on matters theological. This was years ago, but the memory lingers on.”
Regan shuddered and glared at me, which was unfair: I’m no fundamentalist. The Bible in my room — Jewish, of course — has been gathering dust for years.
“I spent the most exasperating hour of my life debating, of all things, Darwinian evolutionary theory with a self-righteous dunderhead whose ignorance of science was rivaled only by his misunderstanding of the Bible. Particularly aggravating was my utter inability to pierce the armor of nescience in which he had cloaked himself.”
Oh.
As you can see, those fundies really get to him. Regardless, he’d finally decided to pass up the Conference. Until this morning. And now I had a problem.
I could see four options: (a) try to talk Regan out of it; (b) lie to Barry, tell him Regan said no; (c) quit; or (d) just cave in, do as the Bishop instructed, and cancel my date with Sally, probably ending what had been a long and interesting, if sometimes stormy, relationship.
Not a good set of options. At first glance, (d) was unpalatable, (b) was overly risky and (a) looked impossible. That put (c) at the top of the list, which wouldn’t have been as drastic as you might think. Both Regan and I know, though he’d never admit it, that any quitting I do (or firing he does) is temporary. Fact is, he needs someone with the weird combination of talents I happen to possess: typing and shorthand capability; the strength to deadlift 165 pounds (for when he totals his wheelchair in one of his famous racing turns); and a hide thick enough to overlook his more-than-occasional rages.
Sister Ernestine, our housekeeper and cook, is a fine lady, and we’d play hell trying to get along without her, but she doesn’t do shorthand. Furthermore, at seventy-two, she’s not much into heavy lifting.
So the Bishop and I go through a temporary parting of the ways about twice a year. These usually last about a day, and both of us feel better about each other afterwards. Cathartic, he once called it.
So that looked like the ticket — at first. But back in my office, cooling off, I realized it wasn’t — not this time. The Bishop would see my quitting as a ploy to make him change his plans, which wasn’t the message I wanted to get across.
With much grinding of teeth, I decided (d) was the best of a bad lot.
I called Barry and gave him the good news. He couldn’t have been happier.
“Fantastic, Mr. Goldman! I can’t thank you enough! Magnificent job of persuasion! I know how hard it is to get the Bishop to change his mind once he’s made it up.”
He probably wondered why I snarled and hung up.
I dreaded the next call — to Sally — but there was no way out. I won’t go into the gory details, beyond saying it ended with our relationship somewhere in the general vicinity of limbo. By the time we hung up, about the only thing we still agreed on was that Regan wasn’t going to get either of our votes for this year’s Most Admired American.
Just imagine my frame of mind when at five to eleven, hard on the heels of my possibly final conversation with Sally, the doorbell chimed.
The sight that greeted me through the glass of the front door didn’t change my mood any: a string bean in his early twenties in overalls and a John Deere baseball cap.
Probably, I figured, a mope looking for a handout. We get several of those a week, guys who figure — wrongly — that a church establishment must be an easy touch. My first reaction was to tell him to get the hell off the stoop and back in the street where he belonged. And if he didn’t like that idea, a little physical persuasion would have been nice, just to soothe my ruffled disposition.
But I didn’t yield to temptation. Opening the door, I fed him my standard “May I help you?”
Like lightning, a Bible appeared from wherever he’d been concealing it. If he’d been some revenge-seeking perp I’d once put behind bars, and the Bible his weapon, I’d have been dead meat. His smile was almost as quick.
“Ah’ve gawt good news fer yew, Bishop,” he said, tapping the book with his finger, “’N it’s awl raht here n this yere Bobble! It’s bout Jesus, ’n’ what he c’n dew fer yew.”
Relieved to see it was only a Bible, I pulled myself together. “Sorry. The Bishop sees visitors only by appoint —” I stopped. An idea began to take shape.
“Umm, you say you have a message for the Bishop?”
“Yessir. And it’s rale important. Ah’d lahk to —”
“Excuse me. Maybe we can work you in. I just need to know one thing: are you a fundamentalist?”
The young man’s gaze was steady. “Dern tootin’. Proud of it, too. Why?”
“No reason,” I beamed. “Come right in.”
2
The Bishop always comes down from his prayers at eleven. I had just enough time to invite the newcomer into the office (the Bishop’s, of course, not mine), and to get some vital statistics.
Name: Jerry Fanning. Recent background: arrived two weeks before, with wife and baby, via Greyhound. Point of origin: Ada, Oklahoma.
Before I could learn more, the elevator door in the kitchen clanked open and the Bishop’s wheelchair pounded down the hall to the office. He likes to run that hall at about eight miles an hour.
Doesn’t sound so fast?
Take it from a guy that lives there and risks getting creamed every time he goes through a door without looking both ways: it’s excessive and a definite safety hazard.
Sister Ernestine nags him about it constantly, but Regan’s never been much of a listener, especially to criticism of his behavior. Me, I’ve learned the hard way. The less you criticize him, the better your chances of getting him to behave. So I grit my teeth and try to ignore it. Which, I’ve got to admit, has gotten us no farther than has Ernie’s nagging.
About a second and a half from the first sound of the wheelchair, Regan came spinning into the office, head hunched forward with exertion, hands pumping the wheels.
Sensing an alien presence, his head flew up. He brought the chair to a screeching halt just before it reached the Karastan rug. His eyes flickered to me, then to Fanning, studying him. Then they returned to the usual suspect.
Missing from his expression were any of the warmth, sympathy and human understanding you’d expect after five hours of praying. And his voice was just as cold.
“Mr. Goldman. I was not aware of any appointment. An explanation, please?”
Yeah, he was mad. Regan loves routine and hates surprises. The drapes on the south window were open wide, and he wanted to wheel over there as usual, adjust them a little and admire the view. No matter that it consisted primarily of Mrs. Mueller’s garbage awaiting tomorrow morning’s pickup.
He’d want to verify that the IBM personal computer over on the west wall, the huge Webster’s Unabridged on its low stand to the left of it, and the table with the antique chess set on the right had all been nicely dusted by Ernestine. And, if in the mood, he might spend a moment or two contemplating one of the Renoir or Van Gogh prints on the east and west walls. Or the crucifix over the door.
And finally he would get to his correspondence piled on his desk where I always leave it after culling out the items he refuses to be bothered with.
Instead, he was confronted with a strange individual, sitting there, John Deere cap in hand, occupying space and time he’d made no provision for. His morning lay about him in shambles. So the boss was good and mad. Though not, I trusted, as mad as he’d be in about two seconds when he learned he was in for another wrangle with a fundie.
I stifled a grin. “Well, it came up suddenly, Bishop. This gentleman has a serious matter to discuss with you. So serious that I’m convinced
nothing on your calendar can possibly be any more important.”
I gave Fanning, now standing, a bright smile. “Bishop Regan,” I said politely. “Jerry Fanning. Mr. Fanning, Bishop Regan.”
Fanning looked back and forth from Regan to me. He was beginning to realize he’d just been drafted into World War III as a foot soldier. And if you’re thinking I was being unfair to the guy, you’re probably right. Tossing an earnest young Bible-pounder into the ring with an internationally renowned scripture scholar — yeah, that’s unfair. Well, them’s the breaks when you go a-Bible-pounding.
But fairness to Fanning was the last thing on my mind. Way, way ahead of that were thoughts of revenge.
“God bless you, brother!” said the Okie in his down-home accent, swallowing and extending his right hand to the Bishop. “I got some good news for you, and it’s all right here in this Bible.”
Regan stared at him for a moment, trying to decode what he’d just heard. Then, realizing Bobble meant Bibley and that he was in for a homily from this ill-spoken rube, his head slowly swiveled and he gave me a long look through slitted eyes. As he stared, his eyes changed. Outrage shifted subtly to something else, something mean and crafty. Something I didn’t like.
He turned and took the fundie’s proffered hand, baring his teeth in what he probably thought was a pleasant smile. “Welcome, Mr. Fanning. You have something to tell us about the Bible, have you? How very interesting. Please, sit down and be comfortable.”
Regan’s syrupy tone added further menace to the look I’d seen. What was he up to?
“Pull up a chair, please, David. I think we should both hear what Mr. Fanning has to say.”
So that was it. I’d broken a house rule and had to pay the piper, even if the piper had to suffer along with me. That’s the trouble with working for someone whose I.Q. is twice yours — they’ve got twice as many ways to turn the tables.
“In fact,” Regan went on smugly, tightening the screws another notch, “if Mr. Fanning’s message is of the urgency you suggest, we daren’t entrust it to my feeble memory. You will need to take notes. Verbatim, David.”
The Fundamentals of Murder (Davey Goldman Series Book 2) Page 1
