Ice Cap: A Mystery (Jackie Swaitkowski Mysteries)

by Chris Knopf

“Hi there, UB (hope you don’t mind the abbreviation), I really would like some help,” I wrote. “I don’t know what time zone you’re in, but I’m in for the night now. Love to hear from you.”

  About a half hour later, she came back.

  “I’m in your time zone. I like UB, it’s kind of cute. Never thought of it myself. You speak Polish?”

  “Nie,” I replied. “And that’s about the only word I know. That and Tak.” Meaning yes. “The last name’s from my late husband. I was born Jacqueline O’Dwyer.”

  “Let’s take this to IM,” she wrote, meaning instant messaging, which would facilitate the back-and-forth. She gave me an IM site and instructions for reaching her.

  “Same handle. Just ask for UB45JK.”

  When we made the connection she asked, “So what’s the caper?”

  “I want to do a background check on a woman whose maiden name is Katarzina Malonowski. She was born, and I guess raised, in Kraków. She’s thirty-two years old. Her nickname is Zina and she claims to have a degree in economics. Her parents were Godek and Halina, also native-born Poles, I assume. They’re dead. That’s about all I know.”

  “Do you have a picture?”

  I realized with some disappointment in myself that I didn’t. I asked her to hold on and opened up Google to search for images of Katarzina Buczek. A slew of Eastern Europeans popped up, but only one was my Katarzina, which was all I needed. She had actually gone to a fund-raiser, which in the Hamptons can put you in the crosshairs of a party photographer. There was no sign of Tad, no surprise. I copied the image, and after opening a separate e-mail, sent it to UB.

  “Wow, she’s really pretty. Those Mongol eyes. Probably descended from Kublai Khan. Are those lashes real?”

  That’s when I was fairly sure UB was a woman. I testified to their authenticity.

  “She’s better-looking in real life. Do you think you could get more on her?” I asked.

  “Without a doubt. I have lots of BFFs in Kraków. But I can do a lot on my own.”

  “That’s extremely good of you,” I wrote.

  “Happy to help any friend of Gyro’s. I don’t care if he’s a dwarf. I’m definitely not a shortist. Is that the right word? English is a very difficult language.”

  Oh no, I thought. Another moral dilemma for our times. I knew damn well Randall was the opposite of a dwarf, but was she only referring to the avatar? What could I tell UB about Randall that didn’t violate his privacy? Would he want me to anyway, to facilitate a better romantic connection? Luckily, she didn’t ask.

  “He thanks you back,” I wrote. “Where do you live, anyway? I’m just curious.”

  “New Britain, Connecticut,” she wrote back. “Throw a rock in any direction and you hit a Pole.”

  “So why not New Warsaw?” I wrote back.

  “Good question. I’ll take it up at the next town meeting.”

  We went back and forth for at least another hour, her comparing her life in the States with life in Poland, me rhapsodizing over Polish food, her complaining that her countrymen were too shy about touting Poland’s international accomplishments, me agreeing, but attributing this reluctance to historical persecution and arbitrarily throwing in a dollop of complaint over the treatment of the Irish, her admitting she coveted the skin of an Irish friend of hers, me reflecting wistfully over the loss of my size 4 sometime early in college (I’m still a generous 6, for the record) and so on. All in all, we had a great time, and for all I knew, she was just an automatic-rifle-toting, computer-generated elf in futuristic combat gear.

  After we signed off, I felt an odd mixture of loss and relief. Glad for the conversation, intimidated by the implications. I was only in my late thirties, and yet it felt like the world was whizzing by me into the future and I was already in its wake. And yet I had no fear of catching up. It wasn’t that hard, if you wanted to try.

  And that was the crux. If you wanted to try.

  15

  The concept of a memorial service for Tad Buczek was so incongruous that I was taken by surprise when I read the announcement on the bulletin board inside the front door of the church. It was going to happen in a few hours. Though officially called Our Lady of Poland Roman Catholic Church, it was naturally favored by the Polish community, but also people of other ethnic stripes who would never feel comfortable in the other, much bigger Catholic church across town frequented by our wealthier brethren.

  I was there to see Father Dent, a man whose capacity for unheralded imposition passeth all understanding. I had an ambivalent relationship with God. I hadn’t been to church since my father died, which left no one else to make me go, my mother being a declared but uncommitted atheist. Father Dent never once told me I should. In fact, he never told me to do anything. Never scolded or criticized or even chided me. Yet for some reason, I always knew where he stood on things. I’d been intruding on him since the first time we chatted, at my mother’s funeral. My father had already gone kicking and screaming into that good night, leaving my mother in a state of shattered exhaustion from which she never recovered, dying shortly thereafter herself. I didn’t think this was fair of God, and I told Father Dent just that.

  “God might have different ways of regarding the word ‘fair,’” he said to me, “though I’m sure He’d find yours among the approved definitions.” And we’d been confabulating ever since.

  “I think I might come to Tad’s funeral mass today,” I said to the Father, who was up on the altar leaning over a table filled with folded fabric.

  “I have a terrible feeling that not all of the church’s altar linens have found their way back from the kind women who offered to do the month’s cleaning and pressing,” he said.

  “A carpenter friend of mine calls that ‘growing little legs.’”

  “I like the image if not the implications,” he said with his soft, heavily Brooklyn–inflected voice.

  “Did you know Tad?” I asked.

  He stood up from the table and shook his head. “Never had the honor. Though I welcome his first visit to our church.” I filled in the blanks—Stay away if you want, young lady, we’ll get you eventually.

  “I’m defending the man accused of his murder,” I said. “The prosecution has a pretty compelling case.”

  “Though surely you’re prepared with convincing alternatives.”

  I looked around at the wainscoting along the white walls and the stained-glass, gold-leafed altar and coffered ceiling, and felt the divine weightlessness of the place.

  “I’m not. There aren’t any.”

  “Can’t win ’em all,” he said, smiling kindly.

  “Maybe some shouldn’t be won,” I said.

  “I’m not entirely up on the legal system, but isn’t that a judgment outside your purview as defense attorney?”

  “Maybe not as a human being,” I said.

  “Ah. So we’re inside my territory.”

  “And that is?”

  “Crises of faith.”

  Man, we got there fast, I thought, not ready to admit my complicity in that. It was easier to just think of Father Dent as unusually gifted at getting to the point. Can’t spend all day in the little wooden booths hemming and hawing.

  “I guess I’m lucky,” I said. “All my other guilty clients were unambiguously so, and my job was to simply make the consequences as endurable as possible. Parole in lieu of sentence, plea bargains, petitions for prisons close to the family, that kind of thing.”

  “So you’re sure he’s guilty,” he said.

  “No. I have my doubts. But they’re hardly reasonable.”

  “So what are they based upon?”

  I admit the answer didn’t come as quickly as it should have.

  “Faith?” I said.

  He smiled. “If you still believe something deep in your heart, in the total absence of demonstrable fact, this is what faith is. Do you think it’s an accident that everyone has these feelings?”

  I looked at his small head, his delicate featur
es, and his short-cropped white hair contrasting nicely with the black priest’s shirt, and realized I had no idea how old he was. I didn’t know what his past was like, why he became a priest, if he had a family, played sports in high school, or ever spent a night in jail. I knew absolutely nothing about him. I’d never asked.

  “Father Dent, you’re such a pisser, if I’m allowed to say that in a House of God.”

  “We maintain a wide latitude.”

  He went back to examining the table full of embroidered cloth.

  “I’ll be back. For the service,” I said.

  “I’ll be here. Performing it.”

  “Do you care how I’m dressed?”

  He looked over at me. “Everyone looks like an Eskimo these days. You’ll fit right in.”

  * * *

  I killed the next few hours at the nice restaurant on Main Street. I sat at the big U-shaped bar and ate lunch, washed down with ice water and green tea. No wine. I wasn’t going to make my first appearance at the Polish church in years with half a buzz on.

  The bartender was a friend of mine, a transported Brit named Geordie who’d failed to shed much of his Britishness.

  “So we’ve taken the pledge, have we?” he said when I placed my order.

  “I knew you were going to say that,” I said.

  “You did?”

  “People who conspire in my routines always notice deviations,” I said.

  “Does that make them deviants?”

  “Don’t try that rubbish on a sober girl. Drunks aren’t the only ones with a sense of humor.”

  “Then I’m doomed,” he said, his evanescent smile belying the thought and proving it at the same time.

  * * *

  The church was filling up quickly when I got back. This part didn’t surprise me. My time with Pete felt like a blur of huge family gatherings—all the official American holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, but also notable events like the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph’s Day were all occasions for hordes of people, including swarms of children, to descend on one homestead or the other—often Tad’s, the size of his property trumping the contentiousness of his personality. At first it was unsettling being thrust into intimate closeness with all these people I didn’t know, but after a while, I grew to like it. I liked the instinctive sense of family unity, the strongest brand of community. I was sure the century and a half of immigrant struggle, and ethnic prejudice, played its part. You had to know which of your neighbors to truly trust, who would come to your aid without hesitation or hope of recompense.

  I recognized most of them, usually remembering their names. My greatest worry was that I was now back on the outside, no longer a trusted member of the clan. Worse, I was the one defending the guy accused of killing the family member lying in the coffin in front of the altar. But those fears were unwarranted. I got nothing of the sort. In fact, all I got were warm handshakes and bright smiles.

  I sat in the back pew and suffered through the service, fighting off distressing associations with my own family at church, a far tinier group that nonetheless managed to optimize the least engaging aspects of the religious experience.

  I perked up when Father Dent walked down from the altar and stood next to the coffin to say a few words about our departed.

  “Since everyone in this room knew our brother Tadzio Buczek, there’s no need to gloss over the fact that he wasn’t always an easy man to deal with. From what you all have told me over the years, his passions burned brightly, and a lot of people got caught in the flames.” He paused for a moment and looked down, then looked up again, and said in his thickest Brooklynese, “But you got to admit, the man was never dull.”

  A soft murmur of laughter rippled through the congregation.

  “It’s been my experience that most people are good-hearted, hardworking, compassionate, and steadfast. All of you fall into that category.” Another pause. “Most of the time,” he added with a warm smile.

  Another titter ran through the church.

  “These are fine qualities, and we wouldn’t have a civilization without them. But there’s a certain consistency that settles into a community of the responsible. Too much of a good thing can round over the corners, dampen the creative spirit. Maybe this is why God invented guys like Tad. To keep the edge on the blade. To poke our essentially conformist sensibilities once in a while. So we don’t get too comfortable.”

  The deepest quiet descended over the gathering. Hundreds of men, women, and children, and not a sound.

  “If this is a calling God assigns to some of us, then let’s celebrate the fact that Tad carried out his mission darn well.”

  I remember at that point him looking directly at me, but I’m sure everyone there felt the same way.

  * * *

  Like all good Catholic funerals we had another robust round of ritual and commentary at the cemetery, where some of Tad’s family bequests had been used to thaw out a sizeable piece of ground, his last chance to meddle with the earth. This was another place I thoroughly enjoyed spending a little time in, as necrophiliac as that sounds. Since the monuments were organized by size and extravagance, it was a person’s last and best opportunity to jump social status, assuming he or she could scrape up the funds. My favorite was a grim, rough-hewn cross, in front of which was a white marble statue of an angel with wings spread as if just landing or about to take off.

  And the names: Karvoski, Waskiewicz, Trzcilnski, Kochanowicz, Wasik. Sturdy, serious names to go with the owners—muscular, resilient men and women whose ingenuity and forbearance will never be fully known.

  I became so engrossed looking at the gravestones that I wandered away from the funeral party. Being alone, it was that much more bizarre to come across another big memorial, this one with four names chiseled into the granite, including Peter Swaitkowski, beloved son lost too early.

  There was no one there to hear the cry of shock that started in my chest and became much more one of sorrow by the time it left my lips. I’d shoved so much of that time out of my memory that even his spot within this community of the departed had been lost.

  I knew then why I was drawn to Father Dent, but never into his church. It was far too fraught with poignant associations. It reminded me that people close to me had a hard time sticking around. I was only seven when my older brother was whisked into an oblivion as everlasting as death. I’d barely made it out of law school when my father suddenly disintegrated, forcing me back to the East End to stand by my beleaguered mother, who only lasted long enough to see my father dead and buried.

  And then Pete hits that tree a half mile from our house, leaving a huge gash that I have to watch heal into a burled scar. See what happens, Harry, I said to myself, when people get close to me?

  I looked back at the congregation, which seemed to be breaking up, with couples and small groups moving slowly back to the long lineup of cars. Tears had found their way into my eyes, but I wasn’t really crying. It was all too enormous and awful and unfathomable. So I just mopped the wetness off my cheeks and walked back to join the caravan while it was still possible to be absorbed into the collective grief.

  * * *

  The last stop of the day was the senior center behind the church. Though run by the Town of Southampton, it was built on church property and the parish was its greatest patron. Partly to assure a ready facility for these kinds of events.

  I got a chance to catch up with some of the family members I’d grown closest to, and finally had that deferred glass of wine. Even though I knew the welcome I received was genuine, I soon realized why defending Franco was a nonissue. They all thought I’d taken the gig to make sure some other lawyer from outside the family wouldn’t get him off. They all assumed with me at the helm the bastard would fry for sure.

  That put an interesting spin on my prior conversation with Father Dent.

  I eventually worked my way around to members of the Buczek household once the lion’s share of the family had
had a chance to convey condolences. Zina was gracious and dignified throughout. She looked like a million bucks in her classic, conservatively cut black suit. Whatever the family ultimately thought of her, none of that ugly slander was then on display.

  Holding to form, Fred and Saline were off in a deep corner next to a table full of food, avoiding eye contact by concentrating on little plates piled high with golobki—cabbages stuffed with some kind of spicy meat—almost as delectable as paluszki. I approached anyway.

  “Hi, folks,” I said. “How’re we doing?”

  “We’re fine,” said Fred. Saline said nothing.

  I spent the next ten minutes or so trying to spark a legitimate conversation, and in return got a lesson on how to convey thoughts one syllable at a time. But they didn’t know who they were dealing with. Persistence is my long suit.

  The real break came when Fred was recruited by some other men to help set up tables for dinner, as if the endless flow of Polish soul food was insufficient sustenance. He left me with Saline.

  “Got a job to do? Don’t worry, Fred’ll get it done,” she surprised me by saying.

  “Nice to be counted on,” I said, not sure where she was going with that.

  “That’s what I call him. Fred’llgetitdone. Like it’s all one word.”

  “Sounds like a handy guy to have around the house.”

  “You bet. My house, Zina’s house, most of the houses these people live in. The family house servant.”

  Okay, I thought, now I get it.

  “What’s it been like with Tad gone?” I said. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

  She used a piece of celery to stab a golobki and shoved it into her mouth. “It’s harder for Fred. I was already stuck with Zina most of the time. To be honest with you, it’s easier to deal with her without Tad around. They weren’t exactly Mr. and Mrs. Compatibility. He had his ways of doing things, she had hers. Now it’s all hers. With Fred, after being told what to do for twenty years, you can’t expect him to always know what to do on his own. I’ve said ‘What would Tad do?’ probably a million times since he died.”

  Saline the taciturn and put-upon had apparently been replaced by an entirely different version, freed from her silence by the departure of her husband.