by Chuck Logan
“Hi, I’m Sally Erbeck, with the Pioneer Press. You’re Broker, special assignment on the dead priest, right? “
“Excuse me, you’re in the way.” Broker put his head down and walked toward his car.
“Hey, you. . you’ve got a dead priest. I’m going with a lead that says he died Tuesday night in his confessional and foul play is suspected. You want to comment?”
“Better show me some ID,” Broker said, still walking. He was halfway to the car.
“Hey you, wait-I’m the Washington County reporter for the Pioneer Press.” She whipped a laminated card from her purse.
“Never heard of you.” Broker kept walking swiftly. He nodded at her identification. “And you can get one of those faked up anywhere. I saw it on the Learning Channel. If you’re really a reporter, get a letter of introduction from your editor.” Broker opened the car door and climbed in.
“If I was a guy, you wouldn’t pull this shit! I’m gonna remember this,” Sally yelled.
Broker popped the ignition and raced the engine. He cupped his left hand to his ear and leaned slightly out of the driver’s-side window. “What?”
Then he rolled up the windows, cranked up the air-conditioning, stepped on the gas, and fishtailed toward the exit, leaving Sally Erbeck in a patch of burned rubber.
Chapter Twenty-two
As Broker drove west on Interstate 94, a bright migraine blue sky burned through the haze while, up ahead, the skyline of St. Paul levitated in a heat island bonfire. Crouched over the wheel in his air-conditioned bubble, he exited the freeway and drove into the downtown loop.
Holy Redeemer was just off Kellogg Boulevard, overlooking the river bluff, in the shadow of the Landmark Center. In keeping with Minnesota’s basic law of nature-there are two seasons: winter and road construction-Kellogg was torn up for blocks in either direction. A maze of chain-link barriers and yellow tape blocked the adjacent streets. Broker had to park in a ramp and circle back through the west end of the downtown loop.
So he found himself on foot in the new St. Paul walking across snug, newly laid cobblestone streets. He passed by Hmong women in traditional embroidered tunics and Somali women wearing the hijab who had laid out vegetables and fresh flowers in outdoor stalls. He walked past caffeine addicts bent over their laptops outside cafes.
He tried to count the rings pierced into the ears of a youth on a scooter with orange buzzed hair. And he stared at slices of tanned bare midriffs decorated with navel rings as they swung by. Tattoos were on parade; they circled arms, they climbed bare calves like clinging vines.
As he walked across Rice Park, he discovered that the tarnished bronze statue of St. Paul icon F. Scott Fitzgerald had been surrounded by a lynch mob of bulbous, vacantly grinning cartoon sculptures: Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Snoopy. Charles Shultz was being celebrated as St. Paul’s new favorite son. Charlie Brown was in; Nick Carraway was out.
But some things never change.
Up ahead, past the silly cartoon characters, Holy Redeemer’s gray stone shoulders hunkered down between the face-lifted building and the commercial finery like a Roman linebacker-strictly playing defense these days.
Broker walked past the church and up the steps to the rectory, rang the bell, and introduced himself to the secretary who answered the door. The interior of the rectory was low lit, gray, and musty. Crossing the threshold, Broker felt like he was entering an American catacomb. When the door closed behind him, he was standing in 1956, and God was in his heaven, and the cars were still made out of steel.
“Father Malloy will be with you in a moment,” said the secretary, a middle-aged woman whose dress and demeanor matched the quiet decor.
Broker sat on a hardwood chair flanked by large amber glass ashtrays set in metal pedestals. The carpets, walls, furniture yielded an underscent of cigar smoke.
“Hello, Broker,” said Jack Malloy, coming into the vestibule, right hand outstretched. Broker rose, and they shook hands. In his youth, Malloy had evaded his calling to the ministry by hiding in the St. Paul Police Department. He and Broker had met in the patrol division.
Malloy’s golf shirt stretched taut over his flat stomach. His grip was strong, his blue eyes direct. “You want some coffee?”
“Sure.”
Malloy walked back into the rectory kitchen and returned with two mismatched coffee cups. He handed one to Broker.
“Do you really think the Saint has reappeared?” Malloy asked as he led Broker up a flight of carpeted stairs, down a hall, and into a study.
“We don’t know. So we’re taking it real quiet until John gets back in town. He had to go to Seattle. Death in the family,” Broker said.
“I’m sorry to hear it; give him my regards.” Malloy pointed to a pair of stuffed leather chairs. They sat and sipped their coffee for a moment.
Malloy’s eyes became a little tight, the muscles working in his cheeks. “So the hysteria has arrived in Minnesota and killed a priest,” he said.
Along with the 1950s decor and the tincture of tobacco, the rectory had sluggish, ancient air-conditioning. Malloy’s words were floaters in the sodden air.
“You tell me. Did you know Moros?” Broker said.
Malloy shook his head. “No. But it’s obvious that St. Martin’s was not an ideal post. There was bound to be talk about any priest moved quickly into an obscure cranny of the Church these days.”
“Right now WashCo is totally stalling the press on this,” Broker said. “When they have to give up some information, they’ll feather their way into it-tell them we’re handling it as a burglary gone bad. Which is true up to a point since they’re investigating along that track.”
“So you think someone might call in to take credit?”
Broker shook his head. “I don’t know. That wasn’t the Saint’s style.”
“No, it wasn’t. The Saint didn’t leave a trace, as I recall,” Malloy said.
“So, you can see. .,” Broker said.
“Exactly. The imagery is irresistible: Saint returns to clean house when the bishops won’t. Once you add the medallion to the mix, an entire scenario falls into place. High carnival on the archdiocese,” Malloy said.
Broker put down his coffee cup. “Jack, somebody from Moros’s parish in Albuquerque called in an anonymous tip. They told the secretary at St. Martin’s he’d assaulted a girl.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You knew?” Broker leaned forward.
Malloy held up his hand. “Slow down. I did some checking last night. I have a buddy in the archbishop’s office. We were classmates together in Rome, so we’re pretty tight. He expedited Moros’s transfer from Albuquerque. If the Saint is active again, he got the wrong guy. Moros comes up clean.”
“Tell me.”
Malloy nodded. “I don’t have documentation. But I can get it. And so can you. This is what happened. Moros dabbled in painting. Murals mainly, but he was competent enough in other mediums to teach classes, which he did on a regular basis at his parish in New Mexico.
“Last April there was an incident in one of his classes. The students were junior high kids, and this particular day they were working in pastel chalk. At the end of class, they were putting their sketches away.” Malloy paused. “You know anything about pastels?”
Broker shrugged. He thought vaguely of sherbet colors.
“Well,” Malloy said, “they’re real powdery. Unless you zap them good with fixative, they get all over everything. One of the students, who happened to be a teenage girl very mature in the physical department, tipped her sketch as she was putting it on a shelf. The chalk dusted down the front of her blouse and jeans. So Moros was standing there, and without thinking he goes-‘Oops, look out.’”
Malloy pantomimed sweeping his hand across Broker’s chest. “Moros goes like this, to wipe away the chalk. There were witnesses who said it was pure reflex, like shooing a fly.”
Broker winced, seeing it coming.
“Exactly,” Malloy said. “The
girl blushes, sobs, and runs from the room.”
“Oh boy,” Broker said.
Malloy nodded. “The next morning, the parents and their lawyer come banging on the bishop’s door and it’s, ‘What’s this Mexican Rasputin doing molesting my lily-white daughter?’”
Broker felt a wrinkle of sadness. He remembered the tape outline of the shape Victor Moros’s body left on the carpet in the confessional. He had not even seen the crime scene photos yet. He did not know what Moros looked like. He could not put a face to the name.
Malloy continued. “So we have this great window into the current state of our culture-we have issues of hair-trigger litigiousness, of parental hysteria. And there’s a robust serpent of racism slithering through the whole business.”
“How’d he move out so fast?”
“Like I said, things are different. Moros wasn’t assumed to be a sinner who needed a thrashing. His bishop didn’t try to minimize or hide the allegations. There’s policy. The bishop moved immediately to investigate; he called in the cops.”
“Ah.”
Malloy nodded. “It should be on file with Albuquerque PD. They talked to witnesses who had a different interpretation of the event and decided that the charge was groundless. The bishop was all for fighting in court if need be. But. .”
“The intangibles. The gossip.”
Malloy nodded again. “Maybe Moros didn’t want to wage a long battle to resurrect his reputation in what was an upscale Anglo parish. I think he left because he could never confront the racist whispering campaign. That’s only a personal gut read.”
“So how did he wind up here?”
Malloy pursed his lips. “Because God is a golfer. Moros’s bishop and my bishop play golf together in Florida. A favor was requested; a favor was granted. And we parked Moros out at St. Martin’s as an interim posting.”
Broker shook his head. “What’s the moral to this story? Don’t dust spilled chalk off a teenage girl’s blouse?”
The creases in Malloy’s face ran deeper than Broker cared to contemplate, through a system of consequences that receded back through centuries, millennia, past mystery into eternity.
“So,” Malloy said. “You may well have a sicko out there who has a twisted sense of humor. But, according to my information, the Saint’s victim profile doesn’t fit. We obviously have our share of bad apples, but Moros wasn’t one of them. Even so. .”
“Yeah,” Broker said. “The appearance of it is still going to be a huge damage-control problem.”
Malloy raised his hands, let them fall. “We brought it on ourselves. The sin of clericism, all the shady in-house solutions that are now coming out. The Church has taken a beating for six months on this; Cardinal Law running a protection racket for Shanley and Geoghan in Boston, Weakland resigning in Milwaukee. . our very own sequestered coven of monks and priests at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville who’ve been accused of or have admitted to abuse. It’s been. .”
“Hot.”
“Exactly. So-no leads at all?”
“We have a guy who lives next to the church who saw a woman go in before it happened. We’re keeping him under wraps for now. And there was some fresh graffiti on the church, a Satanist pentacle. But that could be just creeps acting out. There’s been a rash of church break-ins in Stillwater. .”
Malloy raised his eyebrows.
Broker shrugged. “But our witness has the suspect wearing a navy blue Saints baseball jacket.”
“That sort of puts it, like we used to say, right on front street. Okay, so what do I tell people?”
“Nothing for a couple of days. John has me working a long shot,” Broker said.
“Hail Mary,” Malloy said.
“Knock on wood,” Broker said as he stood up. “Could you get a transcript of the bishop’s investigation? It will be useful to have it in the file. I’ll get our guys in contact with the coppers in Albuquerque.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Malloy said. “But I’m not sure about this secrecy about the medallion. I understand the need to protect your investigation-but there’s a serious public safety question. Priests should be warned.”
“I’d think every priest in America is already pretty security conscious right now,” Broker said. “Like I said, John thinks we have a solid local angle. We might catch this guy before. .”
“He kills another priest.”
“Okay, you’re right; but if we go public and put priests on warning, you get the media storm. For right now, let’s keep St. Nicholas between you and me, under the seal as it were.”
They walked out into the hall and were silent for a few beats. “I guess no one is really ever safe, are they?” Malloy said.
Going down the stairs, Broker said, “I was wondering. Isn’t it unusual to have a Catholic church named after a guy named Martin? I mean after what happened in Wittenberg and all?”
Malloy shrugged. “The fact is, we have our own Martin on the books. He was bishop of Tours, in the fourth century. He was your kind of guy: the patron saint of the infantry. And horses and, ah, beggars and geese, I think.”
They shook hands in the vestibule, and Broker left the quietly lit, ordered sanctuary of Malloy’s living quarters behind, stepped back into the street, and walked toward the absurd mob of short, round cartoon characters in the park.
He put on his sunglasses, stared into the sun, and spoke aloud for no particular reason the first words to enter his mind: “Beggars and geese.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Broker paced back and forth on the top level of the Victory Ramp smoking a cigar and combing through his talk with Malloy. The ramp had been full, and he’d had to park the Crown Vic on the roof. There wasn’t a square inch of shade in sight.
Recalling the determined look on Sally Erbeck’s face, he figured the medallion would be outed within twenty-four hours, if not sooner. The Saint was going to stage a return whether or not Father Moros was deserving of his-or her-attentions.
It was time to check in with John in Seattle.
He punched in John’s cell number, got voice mail, and left his own cell number. Then he waited. Sweat stewed in his hair and trickled down his forehead. He made a note to get a hat.
Broker was getting down into the less tasty end of the cigar when his cell rang.
“So, where are we at?” John asked without preamble.
“Malloy says no way the priest was a child molester. But he was transferred from his last parish after he was cleared of allegations of child abuse. Malloy says the Albuquerque cops ran the investigation.”
“But there’s the appearance that Moros was a child molester.”
“There it is,” Broker said. “And the only people who had that information, besides the church secretary, were in Investigations: Harry and whoever else saw the complaint.”
“I’ll call Mouse, get him to run the phone logs to see if anybody else got tipped about Moros. And I’ll have him liaison with Albuquerque. It’s long shot, but maybe somebody followed Moros to Minnesota. You get Harry to the hospital?” John said.
“Not yet; he’s still out there.”
“Is he giving you a hard time?”
“Oh yeah. A regular barrel of laughs and crazier than a shithouse mouse. But he’s hinting he knows something about the Saint.”
“Good. Good. So, how are the troops holding up?”
“Everybody knows about the medal, the whole damn building, patrol and detectives.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Which means any minute the press is going to have it. Seventy, eighty cops can’t stay mum on something like this.”
“Actually,” John said, “you might be surprised about that.”
“You may believe in that blue-code-of-silence bullshit, but I don’t,” Broker said. “Yesterday some wit wrote on the unit bulletin board, ‘The Saint lives: Harry 2, Pedophiles 0.’”
“So what? Gallows humor.”
“Goddamn Harry. He’s fencing with me.”
“What if he isn’t? Malloy has a point; if someone’s targeting priests, they should be warned.”
“It’s local. It’s in our shop. I’m not going to panic the whole state.”
Broker thought for a few beats and said, “I don’t think panic is the right word; more like sensation. If the Saint comes out of the closet people will come out in those baseball jackets cheering him on. So if you think you have a cop who is going around killing suspected child molesters, I wish you’d tell me.”
“Who said it has to be a cop?”
“Say some names, John.”
“I’d prefer to hear them from you.”
“When the fuck did you start talking like Bill Clinton?” Broker said loudly.
“Push Harry, push him hard,” John said and hung up.
Broker dug Mouse’s phone number out of his wallet and punched it in. He got the voice mail. Goddamn, he hated talking to machines.
“Mouse, it’s Broker. I talked to Malloy. I’m on my way in, about twenty minutes out.”
Ten minutes later, Broker’s cell rang. He flipped it open and hit the button. Not Mouse. Harry Cantrell sounded like he was calling from inside a pinball machine. Broker heard lots of electronic bells and jingles going off.
“So what do you think of Sally Erbeck, neat chick, huh?” Harry said.
“You put her on to me?” Broker said.
“Au contraire. I’d never rat a brother officer out to the yellow press, not me,” Harry said with elaborate seriousness.
“Where are you?” Broker said. But he thought he knew; the electronic calliope music he heard in the background sounded like the intersection of five hundred slot machines.
