Dead Wrong

by William Kienzle

  “Yes, but—”

  “What you don’t see,” Nash continued as if Koesler had not spoken, “is that when this masquerade is over, Teddy is gonna be left impotent in every which way.

  “And then … and then …”—Nash seemed to be unwinding like a tired spring—”my whole empire, everything I worked for, everything I built, is gonna be nothin’. All my enemies, all my competitors that’ve been snapping at my heels all these years, they’re gonna be all over Nash Enterprises. And there ain’t gonna be anything left of it. It’ll be gone. Everything.”

  Koesler thought he saw a tear trickle from Nash’s eye. There was no way of being certain; if it was a tear, it vanished in one of the many wrinkles.

  Ah, so that was it! Koesler now thought he understood. This had absolutely nothing to do with religion, God, the sacraments—any sort of consolation or hope that Koesler could and was prepared to deliver. Nash couldn’t have cared less about the state of anybody’s soul: not his, not his son’s—certainly not about the soul of his son’s paramour. It was simply business as usual. Or, rather, keeping the business thriving as usual.

  Not for nothing had Ted Nash created this image of himself as super-Catholic. Apparently and against all odds he saw himself as God’s embodiment of the One True Church—although how he was able to accomplish this, given his private life, Koesler had great difficulty imagining.

  Charlie Nash could perceive, even predict, the outcome of this charade. Teddy would be unmasked—probably sooner rather than later. And when that happened, when his feet of clay were exposed, he would not have the bravura to tough it out, laugh it off.

  And with Teddy frozen and vulnerable, the vultures would gather and devour about the only thing Charlie Nash valued in this life or the next: Nash Enterprises, Inc. And the news media—the news media! What a field day they would enjoy lampooning this holier-than-thou fraud! Not only would he be stripped of his every Catholic costume, but his girl-on-the-side would be revealed as an employee of the Church.

  Among the avenues open to Charlie Nash to avert this catastrophe was the one he was now pursuing: Get to Father Koesler and convince him to in turn convince his cousin to break off her liaison with Ted.

  So far, it did not seem to Nash that he was accomplishing his mission.

  “Look …” If Nash had been a less formidable individual, one could almost have taken his tone as pleading. “It can’t be that hard. You can talk to your cousin—all right, your foster cousin. She got at least some Catholic school training; Maureen saw to that. She’s gotta know this is wrong. Besides, what kinda future is this for her? What’s she gonna get outta it? Teddy is not gonna leave Melissa and the kids. They’re his respectability. Brenda’s got hold of the short end of this stick and it isn’t gonna get any better. You’d be doing Brenda a favor—a very big favor.”

  “And if I do,” Koesler said, “and if Brenda denies that there’s anything going on between her and Ted …?”

  “But it’s true, dammit! It’s true!”

  “I’m not some sort of private investigator, nor did I ever want to be. If … if I were to bring it up with Brenda and she denied it, that would be that as far as I was concerned.”

  They sat in silence regarding each other for a few moments. Nash seemed markedly drained by the intensity of his effort to convince Koesler.

  Finally, in a declining effort, he shrugged. “Okay, let’s do it your way for now. You go think it over. But remember …” He smiled faintly. “You could save her soul. Remember? ‘The value of one immortal soul.’”

  Koesler nodded.

  Nash pushed a button on the arm of the wheelchair. Instantly, the young man in white appeared and piloted the chair and its occupant from the room.

  In a few moments, the man returned to usher Koesler to the elevator. Koesler would ponder this morning’s extraordinary conversation not only on the elevator but all the way on his drive home.

  The nearest he could come to a resolution of the situation was to pursue the matter in as nonconfrontational a way as possible. Perhaps he could find an opportunity to speak with Maureen about it. Or maybe with one of her sisters …

  It couldn’t hurt.

  And it might save one immortal soul.

  C H A P T E R

  3

  AT 7:00 P.M. it was a bit late for rush hour traffic. Yet traffic on 1-75 northbound was moving at a crawl.

  Ordinarily, Ted Nash would have been extremely irritated. Not tonight. Too many things had broken for him today. So he was able to scrunch into the generous upholstery of his half-million-dollar custom Jaguar and enjoy the wraparound sound of Mozart coming from the CD player.

  Today’s major conquest had been over that ragtag group of environmentalists. He and they had been at each other with increasing frequency. So often, indeed, that he was becoming familiar with their names, their fields of expertise, even their odors.

  The latest battle had been over Ford Park. The group argued that Ford’s acres represented the final vestige of wetland within the corporate limits of the city of Detroit.

  Ted Nash needed that land. Translated into a large strip mall it could attract the patronage of one of the last best neighborhoods in the city. He had already secured Mayor Maynard Cobb’s assurance that the city would offer one sweetheart deal after another, including nonmetered parking.

  Of course the parking would not actually be free. Parking costs would be reflected in higher office rents or higher retail prices. But that was not Nash’s concern.

  The group’s arguments were the same tired complaints they always advanced. The animals, the birds, the fish, the trees—all endangered, all precious, all entitled to protection.

  They did not know their Bible.

  Why, in the very first chapter of Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, it said, “God created man in his image: in the divine image he created him: male and female he created them. God blessed them, saying: ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.’”

  These crazy nature lovers had it all backward.

  According to their interpretation of Scripture, the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all living things that move on the earth have equality with man. Why, if that were even partly true, most of the marvelous accomplishments of Nash Enterprises would have been some sort of crime against nature, since, after all, nature had been pushed aside for the sake of all the malls, shopping centers, highrises, and residential developments that constituted Nash Enterprises.

  Such considerations had never bothered his father, Charlie Nash, in the least. Progress, for the old man, was a case of damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

  Ted’s conscience, however, had always been a much more tender instrument of judgment and punishment. If he had not had his unique facility for making moral decisions armed not only with Scripture and tradition but with a healthy dose of reason, logic, and pragmatism, why, Nash Enterprises would have disintegrated in the wake of old Charlie’s retirement.

  Of course Ted had to admit that his rationalization was aided and supported by the spiritual direction of Father Art.

  Good old Father Art.

  In the beginning there was Father Charles E. Coughlin, controversial Detroit radio priest of the thirties.

  Little Teddy Nash was a teenager during the years of the Second Vatican Council. Looking back at that event now, Ted realized that his dad had paid absolutely no attention to the council—which had been a considerable media happening, even for the secular media.

  Charlie Nash’s parish church was lucky if he darkened its door even twice a year. So Charlie had been mildly surprised one Christmas when the service was held totally in English. The priest was no longer muttering in Latin. But the mild surprise was quickly displaced in his mind by plans to acquire land in Bloomfield Hills.

  It was left to Teddy’s mother to plant the seeds of religious conserv
atism in Ted’s psyche. Mother also led him to the hero worship of Father Coughlin, who never did release his hold on the preconciliar Church.

  With the passing of Coughlin in 1979, the mantle of leadership fell on the willing shoulders of Father Arthur Deutsch.

  Later, Father Art had been able to retire to Boca Raton in a splendid place he had prepared for himself. He would probably have joined Opus Dei, a reactionary conservative subculture of the Catholic Church, except for Teddy Nash’s having made him an offer he could scarcely refuse.

  As virtual court chaplain for Teddy, Father Art could stay in harness and be far more influential by the continuing formation of the young man’s conscience than ever he could have been in retirement.

  Ford Park was a case in point. Instinctively, Ted Nash had known that it was financially imperative that the animals inhabiting the park be ousted for the sake of progress. After all, there were plenty of other habitats to which they could migrate. Besides, relocation to a pristine environment in some other state would be good for them. Breathe cleaner air. And if those ground animals that couldn’t fly away got run over by cars and trucks, that was just part of the “dominion” that God wanted man to exercise over nature.

  The latter argument had been supplied by Father Art.

  Of course, none of these arguments came close to influencing the crazy environmentalists. But then again, they did have their own interpretation of Scripture.

  What mattered was that Nash Enterprises had won. It had cost the company under the table, but that’s the way things moved along in the real world. The company had Ford Park. All was right with the world.

  Thus Teddy, even mired in crawling traffic, was a happy man.

  Adding to his euphoria was the anticipation of a leisurely weekend with Brenda. His wife and children were off to Palm Springs, so he was relieved of having to concoct some excuse for spending yet more time away from home.

  Ted had never regretted marrying Melissa Dwyer. She had been just what the doctor ordered. Her family was yin to his family’s yang. Hers was Old Money. His was nouveau riche. While his parents had been invited to most of high society’s doings after Charlie had struck it rich, they had never really been accepted into anything resembling the elite …

  Melissa’s family, on the other hand, went back to the original families that had settled Detroit. In marrying Melissa, he had wed respectability. God was good.

  Teddy didn’t even mind the children. It was difficult to be bothered by them. He hardly ever saw them.

  Ted and Melissa had three children in four years. As far as Ted was concerned, it would have been very acceptable to have ten in ten years—or twenty in twenty. However, Melissa was not amused. Eventually, one night several years ago, she had announced, “We’ve got to talk!”

  To Ted’s surprise, Melissa didn’t want to have a baby every year for the rest of her fertile life. Ted said he would discuss the matter with Father Art and see what the official Church position was on a hysterectomy when the organs in question were perfectly healthy.

  Melissa, when she recovered from astonishment at Ted’s imperious presumption, declared she didn’t really give a damn what current Church teaching was, but if he was going to check out anything, let it be the present stance on vasectomy, again when the operation involved not only healthy but robust plumbing.

  Ted very definitely was having none of that, no matter what the Church taught.

  They argued for quite a while until both came to realize that neither “ectomy” was going to take place.

  They debated noninvasive methods of birth control … until they came to the conclusion that while Melissa, on the one hand, had no intention of depending on unreliable methods, Ted, on the other hand (citing the papal encyclical “Humanae Vitae” as definitively condemning any form of artificial birth control), had no intention of utilizing any such thing.

  By this time, neither thought it productive to mention the rhythm method. In the end, both could have sung “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”

  All things considered, Melissa figured she could do without sex at least until such time as it would be worthwhile to divorce Ted—certainly not until the children were grown—or until she chanced on a safe affair of the heart.

  Ted was not nearly as tranquil with the arrangement. It was perfectly acceptable for women to be continent; abstinence came naturally to them. And of course priests freely chose to be celibate and chaste. But he felt no call whatsoever to lead a temperate existence.

  And then, like a miracle, Brenda came into his life. God was good.

  THEY MET AT A Marygrove College Christmas celebration, at which he was the guest of honor. She was a graduate of what had been a Catholic college for women. It was now coed, and Ted Nash was one of its benefactors.

  The timing was perfect. He’d been barred from Melissa’s bed just long enough to build up a smoldering hunger. He certainly could not bring himself to seek relief either with a prostitute or by himself.

  Had Ted not been the honoree, he would never have considered attending the party. It was neither his kind of party nor his sort of group.

  It was held in a huge room with a vaulted ceiling. In the center of the room were tables holding trays of finger sandwiches and hors d’oeuvres. Other tables against the walls held liquor and generic wine. A student choral group was singing carols.

  Bored, Ted was eager to leave, when he spotted her, as the song had it, across a crowded room.

  She was tall—easily his height, slender, and dressed in what for some reason was his favorite color scheme—black and white. He caught her looking at him. But when he returned the gaze, she quickly turned her head.

  He approved such modesty.

  Who can say why one person is attracted to another? There can be countless reasons, many of them intangible. But something ignited between them.

  He crossed to her and introduced himself. She blushed and acknowledged that she as well as everyone else in the room knew who, he was. She introduced herself. Brenda Monahan.

  Irish. He liked that too.

  When he discovered where she worked—the chancery of the archdiocese of Detroit—their conversation would not suffer an awkward silence for the rest of that evening, nor for all the evenings to come. With his abiding interest in Catholicism—on his terms—he was fascinated with the inner workings of what was in effect headquarters.

  Ted did not particularly cotton to Detroit’s Catholic hierarchy. Far too liberal. He felt that was a just charge to make against Detroit’s archbishop, Cardinal Mark Boyle. And of course the archbishop set the tone for the entire archdiocese.

  Not that every priest marched in lockstep to the official drummer. There was Father Art for one, and many who agreed with him.

  But there just wasn’t much one could do to an archbishop, especially when he happened to be a Cardinal as well. Only the Pope could rein in a Prince of the Church. And even the Pope would be hesitant to meddle, particularly publicly.

  Nonetheless, Ted was always curious about what made the ecclesiastical wheels grind. Even the redoubtable Father Art could not hold forth very authoritatively on that subject. Oh, sure, Father Art had his pet theories about what went on behind Chancery doors on the highest local levels. Such theories might be accurate or not; at best they were informed guesses.

  Now, here was this young woman sent not only as a relief for his concupiscence, but also as an instrument of inside expertise that could satisfy his curiosity about the chancery.

  God was indeed good.

  And here he was, on his way home, as it were, to Brenda.

  C H A P T E R

  4

  TED NASH turned off the CD and Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and began to softly whistle Camelot. More and more this Sterling Heights high rise reminded him of King Arthur’s redoubtable fortress. And it also reminded him of God, since God had directed him, just as He had guided Arthur, to all the fortress contained. Not the least of this bounty was Guinevere—Br
enda.

  The structure was christened Nebo, after the mountain from which Moses had viewed the Promised Land. Ted’s suite in this building was his promised land. The building was Ted’s baby. In erecting it he had avoided some earlier mistakes, from which he had learned. Measured by the standards of the 1990s, it was about as perfect as a condominium building could be. There were few if any complaints from the resident-owners.

  But most of all, with unwonted prescience, Ted had incorporated into Nebo his unassailable nest.

  The idea had first occurred to him when, many years before, he had read of the French king who had built into his palace a double staircase leading to his chambers, the configuration of which made it impossible for his wife to encounter any of his mistresses coming or going.

  Although at the time Nebo was planned and built, Ted had had no practical need for such a protective hideaway—relations with Melissa were then at least adequate—still and all there might come a time when he would require utter seclusion. So he had tucked into Nebo a mazelike retreat. Now he needed it, had it, and used it.

  He pulled into the ramp adjoining Nebo, drove up two levels, pressed the automatic door opener, and entered the ramp’s only garage. In effect, it was a garage within a garage.

  From there, he took a private elevator to the eleventh floor, exited, and took another private elevator—which masqueraded as a janitor’s closet and required a special key for entry—and arrived at the twenty-first floor, one floor below the penthouse.

  Besides Brenda and himself, only two others knew of this ultra-private suite, and only one of those two had access to the apartment.

  Ted’s architect was the draftsman of the entire building, including the Nash retreat. The architect’s financial future was linked to the Nash fortune. Thus the architect could be trusted. And he, in turn, had involved so many subcontractors in the construction of the suite that no one of them knew the entire configuration.