Death Wears a Red Hat Page 18

  “No, we haven’t,” Farrell said, shaking her head. “He’s just not the technical bastard that Dolson is. He handled it perfectly. That’s the ‘Pastoral Solution’ where everything is kept in the internal forum.”

  “The what?”

  “In a person’s conscience. Catholic teaching is that everybody must form his or her own conscience and then follow it. That’s what Father Sheehan just told us to do. It’s the way most smart priests, at least the ones who want to stay priests, handle canon law now.”

  It was Papkin’s turn to shake his head. “God, Coll, I’m a born-and-raised Catholic and I didn’t know that. You ought to be a priest.”

  “No, I’m content to be a police officer. Besides, they’ll get around to letting women be priests about the same time they revise canon law—or better, get rid of it.”

  They reached the parking lot.

  “There’s one thing I’m going to do before I go to sleep tonight,” declared Papkin.

  “What’s that?”

  He smiled charmingly. “I’m going to say a prayer for that guy.”

  Wednesday morning at seven sharp she was at the entrance to Services, Inc. Still, Diane Garson was seventh in line.

  She sat for about an hour in the reception room. She tried to get interested in an old copy of Sports Illustrated but was too distracted. From time to time, a small voice within urged her to leave, but she could not.

  For one thing, the nurse already had her hundred dollars. That had been paid even before she had removed her coat. And besides, there was no possible way she could care for a child. Since she was pregnant, an abortion would have to be performed sometime. Better that it be done now, early in the term.

  There was no conversation among the waiting women. By now, all the chairs were filled; and two women stood leaning against the wall. No one looked very pregnant. The law required that after fourteen weeks, abortions be performed in hospitals. Even Services, Inc. observed that law.

  “Garson!”

  Finally. Diane rose and approached the receptionist’s desk. The woman simply pointed with her pen to the door leading to the room wherein Garson had been so embarrassed two days before.

  Inside, Diane encountered another nurse, who seemed slightly more human than the receptionist.

  She was told to remove all her clothing and given a carton in which to store her things. The nurse handed her a medical gown and told her to lie on the room’s one empty gurney. Both the gown and the sheeting bore numerous bloodstains that repeated washings had not entirely removed.

  The nurse went into another room. “The Garson girl is waiting, Dr. Schmitt,” she announced. “She’s the one who isn’t pregnant. Do you want to just go through the motions?”

  Schmitt thought for a moment and stubbed out a cigarette as he sat down at the desk in his office. “Hell, no. She’s paid her hundred dollars, hasn’t she? Let’s give her a bit of a show. Something for her money. We’ll use the saline solution.” He sat back and rested his feet on the desk.

  The nurse registered surprise momentarily but quickly recovered her professional mien. “Yes, Doctor.”

  She returned to Diane with a tray on which was a lather mug, a brush and a straight razor.

  “I’m going to have to prep you,” she said.

  Quickly, she lathered and began to shave Diane’s pubic hair.

  “Do you have to do this?” Diane pleaded.

  “Yes. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”

  “Father Brown would have solved it by now,” said Sister Clotilde.

  The three other nuns chuckled at her insistence.

  The Sisters, all assigned to Sacred Heart Seminary, were engaging in their “recreation”—mending the clean laundry before returning it to the seminarians.

  Sister Clotilde, in her eighties, had been a teenager when the legendary Father Brown was created in 1911 by G. K. Chesterton. She had grown up with Father Brown mysteries during her early career in the convent. Later, she had occasionally read other mystery heroes such as Nero Wolfe and especially Philip Marlowe. She considered Raymond Chandler’s writing to be nearly as careful as Chesterton’s. She never touched Mickey Spillane.

  When a murder affected the Catholic community in any way, as The Red Hat Murders surely had, Sister Clotilde entered into the investigation from her armchair position.

  “Now, Sister,” Sister Dulcilia chided, “you know it’s too early in the book for Father Brown to come up with one of his elaborate solutions.”

  Sister Dulcilia, sixty-five, had been searching assiduously for a button to replace one missing from a brown shirt. Not finding a suitable button, she began sewing shut the buttonhole.

  “Not at all. Not at all,” Sister Clotilde. “The case is closed.”

  “Closed?” Sister Mary George seemed surprised. “How in the world would you know a thing like that?”

  Sister Mary George, having first inserted a darning egg, was darning a black sock. At sixty-three, she still could dance the Charleston, if anyone asked. People who knew, regularly did ask.

  “Why, my dear,” said Sister Clotilde, “because the gentleman who killed those three poor souls did so on Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday. Every other day, you see.” She looked up from the laundry tag she was repairing. Her companions appeared to be paying attention. “Well, you see, too much time has passed since the last killing. If he were going to have killed anyone else, he would have done so last Friday, and so on.

  “Have you told the police all this?” Sister Paulita asked seriously.

  Sister Paulita was patching a T-shirt that was a study in patches. It was beginning to resemble Joseph’s coat of many colors. From time to time, Sister Paulita looked in the laundry basket, adjusted her glasses and studied an article of clothing.

  Sister Clotilde laughed softly. “Oh, the police don’t need any help from a little old lady.”

  “Do you think there is any chance that the killer could be a Catholic boy?” asked Sister Dulcilia. Having failed to find yet another appropriate button, she was stitching up yet another buttonhole.

  “Oh,” exclaimed Sister Clotilde, “I’d be very surprised if he were not a Catholic!”

  “Why is that?” asked Sister Mary George.

  “Did any of you read that article on the murders in Sunday’s News?” She checked her companions. None seemed to have read it. “Well, it explained how carefully the red hat and these statues have been selected to match, in significance, the alleged occupations of the victims. I’m sure only a Catholic would establish that M.O.”

  “Oh, dear,” sighed Sister Dulcilia.

  Sister Paulita peered again into the laundry basket. She seemed puzzled. She reached into the basket and extracted a spanking clean athletic supporter. She studied the laundry number. “Who has laundry number 302?” she asked.

  Sister Clotilde consulted her list. “Vito Lombardo.”

  Sister Paulita sighed, took the athletic supporter to the board and ironed it. Before placing it in the laundry bag marked 302, she pinned a note to the supporter.

  The note read, “This pair of undershorts is beyond repair.”

  For the third time in two days, Colleen Farrell was spilling forth the gruesome details of her and Charlie Papkin’s make-believe marriages. Details replete with abuse, infidelity, and chemical dependency.

  Farrell and Papkin sat in the Reverend Mr. Ramon Toussaint’s office at St. Cecilia’s rectory.

  Toussaint listened silently to Farrell’s tale of woe. He took no notes. He barely moved. Papkin became aware of the deep penetration of his eyes. It was almost as if he could see into one’s soul.

  Farrell finished her story. There were a few moments of silence.

  “I am sorry. I am unable to help you,” said Toussaint, as he rose and opened his office door. “And I am unable to think of anyone who could help you.”

  Before they knew what had happened, Farrell and Papkin found themselves standing outside the rectory. It was as if they
had been struck by a black tornado.

  Papkin agitatedly jiggled the change in his pocket. “Well,” he said, “that was fast.”

  Farrell shook her head. “Charlie,” she said, “we had to find someone who was willing to say, ‘The hell with Church law,’ and marry us. I really thought Toussaint would be the one.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “Crushed.”

  “You know what, Coll? I think we’ve been the victims of reverse discrimination.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Joe Cox as he hung up the phone.

  Cox inhaled deeply, held his breath for a few seconds, then exhaled. He glanced over at Nelson Kane, who was editing copy. Kane’s blue pencil flashed over the page. Cox moved to Kane’s desk and seated himself in the chair beside it. The chair was known by those in the city room as ‘the hot seat.’ And rightly so.

  Cox waited until Kane’s pencil slowed and the editor looked up-

  “I don’t think you’re going to like this, Nellie, but this story shows every possibility of becoming another of those ‘on-the-other-hand’ features.”

  Kane looked at Cox uncomprehendingly. His lack of comprehension was a silent demand for clarification.

  “The Community and Economic Development Department story,” Cox said. “There aren’t any good guys or bad guys, just lots of halftones.”

  Kane seemed disappointed. One thing that always contributed to a gloomy atmosphere in the city room was a disappointed Nelson Kane. Staff writers tried sedulously to preclude this state of affairs.

  “This Willoughby guy who heads the C&EDD seems like a good man and competent. He’s no token black, by any standard. But he’s the obvious target when projects don’t get off the ground or lie uncompleted for a long time.

  “The problem is the red tape—all the bases that have to be touched. And the red tape is the result of well-founded precautions. The city didn’t want to create a monster. So, when it created the position of head of the C&EDD it surrounded that position with red tape so the city wouldn’t get ripped off.

  “I don’t think Willoughby is the sort to rip off the city, but how do you know you’re going to find a Willoughby before you find him?”

  Throughout the explanation, Kane had listened impassively.

  “Dammit, Cox,” he said, matter-of-factly, “there’s never a time when there’s not a bad guy. There are poor people who should have better housing and don’t; there are poor neighborhoods that should have parks and don’t. If the system is the reason everything is happening the day after tomorrow, then the system is the bad guy. Write it that way.”

  Kane returned to his editing. The matter of how to approach the C&EDD story had been concluded.

  Cox rose, but instead of returning to his desk, he crossed over to Dennis McNaught’s desk.

  “How’s it goin’, Denny?”

  A startled McNaught looked up. “Oh, pretty good, Joe.” He had rolled paper into his typewriter God knows how long before. As regularly happens with professional writers, he had been staring at the paper waiting for inspiration but lost in a permissive fugue.

  “How’s the Red Hat case coming?”

  “ ’bout the same as it was when you asked me this time yesterday, Joe. I think the cops are trying to mop up the investigation. And I get the impression they don’t have many leads. They may even have a timetable for closing it for good.”

  “Looks like they figure it’s all over?”

  “Yeah. I can’t say I blame them. Why spend years trying to find a guy when if you caught him the mayor would probably be pressured to give him the keys to the city?”

  They laughed. Cox started back to his desk.

  Now this, he thought, was a story wherein there were good guys and bad guys, albeit in somewhat reversed roles. Unless it were true there had been some paid assassin who’d wasted three of Detroit’s top hoods, there had to be someone who, thinking he had the best of reasons, had rid the city of its worst filth.

  The nice thing about working on a murder story, he thought, was that the heart of the story was solid. Somebody’s life ended early. And somebody else ended it. Having bodies, even heads, around was much better than the study of a beleaguered bureaucrat hopelessly enmeshed in sticky red tape.

  Those in a position to know claim there are 400,000 manuscripts submitted to publishers in the United States each year. Of these, some 40,000 become published books.

  Donna Halliday of the Free Press sometimes musingly considered the possibility that all 40,000 were sent to her and were, indeed, on one of her two desks. The book editor’s present contemplation of stacks of books was interrupted by a ringing phone.

  Answering it, she then rolled her chair a couple of feet north to get sight of film critic and Anonymous Gourmet Larry Delaney.

  “Larry,” Halliday said, covering the mouthpiece, “this is the manager of the Summit. He wants to know when you’re going to publish your critique of his restaurant.”

  Delaney had been studying the Pontchartrain Wine Cellars’ menu, trying to recall every aspect of the meal he and his companions had enjoyed there. It took some moments for the question to register.

  “Sometime after I eat there.”

  She relayed that information.

  “He says you ate there just last week.”

  “Tell him he’s out of his—wait a minute …” Delaney recalled the mysterious call from Mario’s. “Ask him what I look like.”

  Halliday returned to the phone.

  “He says you were disguised as a priest. You’re tall, bald, a bit overweight, and you wear glasses.”

  Delaney ran his hand through his full head of hair with its Mondale forelock, looked with unspectacled eyes at his trim waist, and mentally acknowledged he was tall.

  “Who was I with?”

  “You were with two other men also dressed as priests.”

  “Did the manager extend me and my party any particular courtesies?”

  “He had your table changed to one with a better view.

  “He wants to know why you don’t remember any of this.”

  Delaney smiled and shook his head. Some tall, bald, paunchy myopic priest was engaged in a little pious fraud. There wasn’t anything he could do about it. Besides, he was planning to visit the Summit.

  “Tell him there’ll be a review soon.”

  Halliday returned to the contemplation of books.

  It did not occur to her to wonder why calls for the Anonymous Gourmet came to her desk. If it had, and if she had investigated, she would have learned that the switchboard crew had concluded that she was the Anonymous Gourmet.

  “The trouble is, Miss,” explained the uniformed officer from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, “the damn thing— excuse me, Miss—the thing is twenty-seven miles long.”

  The thing to which the lawman referred was the Middle Rouge Parkway. Most people called it Hines Park because Edward Hines Drive curled through the park, following the course of the Middle Rouge River.

  The tree-lined parkway could be breathtakingly beautiful. Lately, one’s breath was taken by fumes from motorcycles, the sickening sweetness of smoldering dope, and the smell of beer. After some particularly active evenings, it was difficult to see the grass for empty beer cans and other debris.

  Officer George Elliott was trying to explain to Pat Lennon why conditions here were so out of control that even residents whose property bordered on the parkway traveled many miles away from home to picnic elsewhere.

  Lennon had difficulty concentrating on what Elliott was saying. Carloads of young people raced by, horns blowing, and shouting obscenities. Periodically, a phalanx of motorcycles roared by, their riders resembling zombies on their way to creating a master race.

  The News’ crack photographer, Don Carlson, was busily snapping shots, mostly of the parade of American youth. Some of them would point proudly to their pictures in the News. Some of their parents who hardly ever saw their children would wince at seeing them in the paper.<
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  “Trouble is, Miss,” Elliott said, “this park is like a long thin balloon. You squeeze one trouble spot down and it bulges out somewhere else along the line. This is like one long free-swinging singles club.”

  “You mean there’s nothing you can do about it?” Lennon peripherally noticed a late-model Lincoln move swiftly by. Bare buttocks protruded from a rear window. Somebody was mooning.

  The little dears, Lennon thought; they’re not deprived, they’re depraved.

  “Miss,” answered Elliott, “it would take a small army to control an area this size.”

  “Don’t the citizens in this area complain?”

  “Constantly.”

  “What do you do about it?”

  “Just as I’ve indicated, Miss. We go in and squeeze off the area being complained about and trouble springs up in three other areas.”

  “Isn’t there any plan for improving the situation?”

  “Just one, Miss. We’re going to start making arrests. Giving out tickets has no effect. They pay their fines, if they show up in court at all, and forget about it. We’ll just see if spending some time locked up reaches them.”

  Just then, from an open convertible, a full can of beer arched in their direction. It smashed into the camera Carlson was using, pushing it into his face. The photographer reeled backward, nose bleeding profusely.

  It was a fluke, but whoever threw the can had to be responsible for the damage and injury.

  “Now that,” said Elliott, “is too much!”

  He slid behind the wheel of his patrol car, hit the flasher and siren and gave chase.

  Diane Garson did not go from the clinic to her job at the A&P.

  She had spent an hour in the recovery area of Services, Inc. After the first half-hour, she had been regularly urged by the receptionist to get up and leave. After an hour, she had been ordered to leave. In more pain than she’d ever experienced, she drove directly, if unsteadily, home.