Death Wears a Red Hat

by William X. Kienzle

  They laughed.

  “I’ve always wondered,” Koesler remarked, “why Marek’s ecclesiastical career didn’t bloom earlier.”

  “Imagine,” said Curley, “how Mooney would have felt if he had known his hat was going to be worn by the biggest hood in town.”

  The waiter came. Their orders were taken. There would be no more free drinks. Nor would the dinners be complimentary. Mario’s food was dependably good. Tonight it would be perfect.

  “I wonder,” McNiff said, “why it is that these murders and decapitations all take place in the city. Nothing like that has happened in any of the suburbs.”

  “It’s a good point, Pat,” said Koesler.

  “Don’t get me started,” Thomas protested, wagging a bread stick, “on the inner city and inner-city priests!”

  “Why?” asked Curley, “what did they ever do to you?”

  “They don’t use his Tribunal,” said Koesler, smiling and looking directly at Thomas.

  “Damn right!” said Thomas. “They think they’re above the law. Why, hell, I know that just about all those inner-city people are involved in multiple marriages. But when one of them wants to become Catholic, do you think the marriage case is sent to the Tribunal?”

  “No,” said Curley, who enjoyed volunteering answers to rhetorical questions.

  “No!” emphasized Thomas. “About the only cases we ever get down there are Defectus Formae—the easiest of ’em all.”

  “Defectus what?” Curley had nothing for or against the Church’s marriage legislation. He just didn’t pay much attention to Latin.

  “Defectus Formae, Don,” explained Koesler, who had a working knowledge of, and an active dislike for, most of the 2,414 laws in the Code of Canon Law. “A defect in the form of marriage. Like when a Catholic gets married but not by a priest. The marriage is considered invalid.”

  “And the worst offender of them all,” averred Thomas, “is that black deacon, what’s-his-name, over at St. Cecilia’s.”

  “Ramon Toussaint,” Koesler supplied.

  “He’s been there,” Thomas resumed, “for what—five, six years. He’s performed plenty of weddings. He’s never sent us a single case. Can you believe that? Not one case. One of these days I’ll get the bastard!”

  “And then what?” asked Curley. “Nothing’s going to happen to him. Everybody knows Boyle doesn’t want to be told what’s going on in the inner city.”

  “But,” Koesler cut in, “that’s reverse discrimination. Bad Church law can be discarded in the inner city but it has to be enforced in the suburbs.”

  “Bad law! Bad law!” shouted Thomas. The voices at the table had grown louder as the argument progressed. Many diners at neighboring tables had stopped talking and were listening to the priests. “Bad law!” Thomas repeated.

  “Yes, bad law,” Koesler returned. “Canon law is the only remaining reform ordered by Vatican II that hasn’t been touched. If it was pronounced bad law more than a decade ago, it’s got to be even worse now.”

  “Wait a minute, Koesler,” said McNiff, “the Pope has told us we’ve got to use the present canon law until the revision is completed and approved.”

  “That’s his opinion,” said Koesler.

  “His opinion! His opinion!” McNiff, his napkin crumpled in passion, almost rose from his chair. “What I want to know, Koesler, is, do you or do you not believe in the Holy Pope of God!”

  “Sometimes,” Koesler murmured.

  “Sometimes! SOMETIMES!” McNiff, his voice crescendoing, was almost beside himself.

  A man at an adjacent table leaned over and tapped Curley on the shoulder. “You know,” he said, “if you guys talked like this on Sundays, I would seriously consider going back to church.”

  Harris was headed toward his far eastside apartment. This had been a long and mostly fruitless day. The only positive accomplishment had been the news conference, during which he had gotten the word out that due to one discovery in The Red Hat Murders, it had been determined that both decapitations had been perpetrated by the same subject. The Free Press’ Joe Cox had fired several questions trying to get at the clue. But Harris had evaded every attempt. Outside of that one effective episode, Squad Six had spent the day exploring blind alleys.

  Harris let the details of the case filter through his mind as he drove somewhat absently up Gratiot.

  Gradually, he became aware that the black ’54 Ford ahead of him was weaving ever so slightly. Not enough to cross lanes, but enough to suggest the driver might be having a problem. It could be a drunk driver.

  Harris called dispatch, giving the license number and asking for a wants-warrants-and-registration check. Seconds later, his police radio crackled with the information on the hit-and-run, robbery, and murder. The suspects were considered armed and dangerous.

  Harris asked for backup. He placed the portable flasher on the roof of his car, activated it and pulled alongside the Ford.

  Willie Monroe, sweating profusely in the early stages of drug withdrawal, looked to his left, saw the flashing red light and the black driver holding up his police ID and pointing to the curb.

  Monroe floored the accelerator. The Ford leaped ahead, weaving through the sparse traffic, followed closely by Harris, who had now activated his siren.

  Monroe ran the red light at Van Dyke, forcing Harris to do the same. This was not the way either of them had hoped to end the day. Harris stayed on the radio, tracing their course so the backup cars could keep track.

  Abruptly, Monroe swung the Ford down the entrance ramp of the Edsel Ford Expressway and headed northeast.

  Harris’ siren was useless now. He was far past the point at which the siren’s sound had been overridden by the car’s velocity.

  On the expressway, drivers who saw Harris’ flasher in the rear-view mirrors pulled their vehicles to one side, the occupants watching fascinated as the two cars wove through the remaining traffic at speeds up to ninety miles an hour.

  “Willie,” Harvey Murphy pleaded, “face it, we bought it! I don’ wanna be dead. Pull over.”

  “No way! I gotsa murder one with that guy in the drugstore. I ain’t goin’ down for that.”

  “But Willie, even if you can lose this guy, he’s gotta called for help and he’s givin’ ’em directions now. Pretty soon we gonna have most of the Detroit cops on our ass.”

  Monroe thought that one over. “O.K.,” he decided, “we’re gonna cut out the middle man and I’m gonna waste me a black pig.”

  The Ford abruptly headed off the expressway at the Moross ramp. Harris almost missed the exit, but at the last second, veered onto the ramp. At the top of the ramp, Monroe slammed on his brakes and skidded sideways to a stop in the middle of Moross Road.

  Taken by surprise, Harris hit his brakes even harder than Monroe had. His car spun out of control across Moross and stopped as it thudded into a street light.

  Harris, stunned but still alert, was able to open his door and tumble out, drawing his service revolver as he fell.

  He looked up to see Monroe standing beside the Ford, his gun pointed at Harris. Monroe fired. If Monroe’s hands had not been trembling, Harris would have been hit. The bullet pierced the car door just to the left of his head. Monroe would not have another chance. Harris fired once. Monroe’s body jerked backward as if he were a puppet whose string had been pulled. The bullet had passed through his heart. Never again would he go through the agonies of withdrawal.

  Murphy, on the other side of the car, was on his knees, begging for his life.

  Harris radioed for an ambulance and began to assess the damage. It was considerable.

  Cox and Lennon had just arrived at their apartment. They were elated. Cox had two copies of the initial page proofs of their story on The Red Hat Murders. This was the first time the two had co-bylined a story. It would run in tomorrow’s editions on page one. Cox had insisted Lennon’s name should precede his. More than a chivalrous gesture, it was an acknowledgement that the story was more
Lennon’s work than his. Most of the ideas and leads had been hers.

  They did not know what the headline would say; that was not their department. But the story was prefaced, “By Patricia Lennon and Joe Cox, Free Press Staff Writers.”

  Cox had done most of the actual writing, which was evidenced to the professional eye by the lean prose.

  The lead began with Lieutenant Harris’ announcement of the probability that both decapitations had been performed by the same person and that further details were being withheld. Other police were quoted as strongly assuming the deaths themselves each could have been caused by a different person. The very importance of the victims and the substantial protection they normally had seemed to indicate a gang effort that had to have been meticulously planned. The only explanation—and it was no more than a guess—for the church-related placement of the heads was that the killer—or killers—might be a religious fanatic.

  Lennon had interviewed Dr. Joseph Markham of St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. Markham was easily Detroit’s leading expert on the phenomenon of post-death experiences related by people who return to life after apparent death. Indeed, Markham taught a class on Thanatology at Wayne State University.

  Regarding the look of terror on the faces of both heads, Markham pointed out that not all post-death experiences are delightful. Some of those who returned related experiences that could quite literally scare the hell out of you. Perhaps this might have been the case with these rather prominent if reputed criminals. Lennon, in writing this section, had managed to capture a sense of the macabre.

  All in all, it was an excellent news analysis. The completed story had even triggered that rare event, Nelson Kane’s publicly expressed pleasure.

  Cox and Lennon finished reading the proofs and looked at each other with a mixture of pride, pleasure, and desire. They decided to treat each other to dinner at the London Chop House, the most expensive if not the poshest restaurant in town. But first, they would save on energy and shower together.

  While Rudy Ruggiero was still among the living, there might have been some doubt about it. But now, everyone, from the law enforcement agencies to the depths of the underworld, was willing to admit tíiat Dutch Strauss was kingpin of Detroit’s drug empire.

  A native Detroiter, Strauss came from a middle-class family on Detroit’s southwest side. After graduating from Holy Redeemer High School, Strauss, never a very involved Catholic, had made a simple discovery that was to evolve into his raison d’être: entrepreneurs are the guys who give the other guys ulcers. A further prescient discovery was that drugs would soon cease to be an escape used almost solely by some of the black population. Strauss had been among the first to bring illicit drugs to the little white kids of Detroit and its suburbs. Ruthlessly, he had fought his way to the top of the drug market. He was now a millionaire many times over.

  Surrounded by four bodyguards, Dutch now stood in the doorway of a room in which twelve nude women were cutting heroin with lesser drugs preparatory to street sale. The women were unclothed simply to insure that none of the stuff would leave with them.

  Strauss was satisfied. The four men left the run-down apartment building on the corner of Clairmount and Byron. Strauss owned the building. Strauss owned the entire block.

  It had been a busy day. Tomorrow, Strauss reflected, another dollar. Or maybe, he smiled, a hundred thousand.

  Father Koesler had found the note when he returned to St. Anselm’s that evening after his day off. Lieutenant Ned Harris would like his phone call returned. From experience, Koesler knew that when the police phoned, they did not do so without good reason. He had tried to call Harris several times, but the Lieutenant had left the station, and by the time Koesler retired near midnight there was still no answer at Harris’ apartment.

  Mornings were never kind to Koesler. He functioned through the early hours of the day, but not at his best. Given the opportunity to offer Mass in mid-morning, afternoon, or especially evening, Koesler was quite good at it. But in early morning, a satisfactory performance demanded an intense effort.

  This morning, as he made his way from the rectory to the church, he was intercepted by Sister Marie Richard, who reminded him that the second graders would be attending this 8 A.M. Mass. They were preparing to receive their first holy communion, did he remember? Yes. And would he speak to that question? He would try.

  For twelve years, Koesler had been editor of the Detroit Catholic. For most of his nearly twenty-five years as a priest, he had dealt mostly with adults. He felt a particular sense of inadequacy when dealing with children on a formal basis.

  The Mass began with a scattering of adults in the rear of the church and the small bodies of second graders needlessly packed like sardines in the front two pews. The children were singing something Koesler had not heard before. It didn’t seem to be a hymn. Ah, the new, plastic church! Whatever seems relevant.

  The inevitable moment for the homily came. Koesler began to speak to the children about communion and how they should prepare themselves for the event. Several minutes into the sermon, he knew he was going clear over the children’s heads. In mid-homily, he switched to a few dozen words on the hylomorphic theory of matter and form. He decided as long as he was going over their heads, he would aim high.

  Oddly, the children seemed to be paying attention. He could think of no reason they should.

  Concluding his remarks, he asked if anyone had a question.

  Oddly, again, one small boy raised his hand. Koesler could not imagine what possible question could come from his delivery. However …

  “Yes?” Koesler invited.

  “Father,” asked the lad, standing, “what makes you so tall?”

  The adults in attendance were rewarded with an unanticipated laugh.

  After Mass, Koesler returned to the rectory. In the kitchen, he poured a glass of milk. As he returned the carton to the refrigerator, the phone rang.

  “St. Anselm’s.”

  “Father Koesler, please.”

  “This is he.”

  “Lieutenant Harris, Homicide.” There was something different in Harris’ voice, a quaver Koesler had not noted before.

  “I was wondering, Father, if it would be convenient for you to drop in and see me today.”

  His was a far different approach from that of Inspector Koznicki, Koesler reflected. Koznicki’s invitation was a command; when Koznicki wanted you, Koznicki got you.

  “Sure, Lieutenant. I have a couple of communion calls, but I can come down in an hour or two.”

  “Fine. Thanks. You know where we are?”

  “Headquarters, fifth floor, right?”

  “Right. Ask for Squad Six.”

  As Koesler returned the phone to its receiver, he began to wonder what the Homicide Division could possibly want with him.

  Karl Lowell’s head was filled with divergent thoughts. He didn’t even notice the petite brunette who entered the elevator with him on the main floor of the Free Press Building.

  They rode in silence. As the doors opened at the third floor, his fellow occupant asked, “What’s the big bad wolf going to do today?”

  Startled, Lowell experienced a rare indecisive moment. Should he exit at this, his floor, or light into her? He decided he was already behind in today’s schedule. He shrugged and walked briskly toward his tastefully decorated office at the city room’s far eastern end.

  Who is she, he wondered. Familiar face. He’d seen her at meetings. Oh, yes; in the Women’s Department. No, she’s the head of it. Editor of the Women’s Department. Now that he remembered her, he also remembered how, when their eyes met, she never looked away as most others did. He had to admire her fearless impudence.

  He removed his black pinstripe suit jacket, tugged his vest down over his flat stomach, shot his French cuffs, smoothed his wavy black hair, and sat down at his large desk.

  He swung his meticulously polished shoes up and rested his feet on the long credenza. He opened the morning edition of the Fr
ee Press.

  He scanned the front page and immediately caught the headline, “RED HAT MURDERS LINKED,” and the bug-line, “Police Hold Secret Clue.” And below the headline, “By Patricia Lennon and Joe Cox, Free Press Staff Writers.”

  Lowell clutched the paper so fiercely he almost tore it in half.

  His feet hit the floor. He jerked the phone’s receiver to his ear and punched two numbers.

  “Kane!” he snapped, “I want you in here!” He slammed the receiver down.

  In the city room, Nelson Kane’s shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly. He had half-expected this.

  The rest of Homicide Squad Six was out doing what detective work was all about—tracking down leads that regularly led to dead ends.

  Lieutenant Harris, Inspector Koznicki, and Father Koesler sat in the otherwise unoccupied squad room. There was enough room for the three large men, never enough room for the complement of Squad Six.

  Harris had asked Koznicki to sit in on this initial briefing of Koesler.

  They reviewed their earlier association.

  “... and so, Father,” Koznicki was concluding, “because you were of such great help to us during that case and because the remains of these victims have been found in Catholic churches under most peculiar circumstances, we wondered if you might consent to assist again on a more formal consultative basis.”

  “It is even possible to arrange for a consultation fee,” added Harris.

  Koesler shook his head. “No, I don’t want any money. For one thing, I don’t need any money. And for another, if I were to accept a fee, I would feel bound to spend an allotted amount of time on the case. And I can’t promise that.”