Call No Man Father Read online

  Finally, he retrieved the black-on-yellow sign—OUT OF ORDER/TEMPORARILY CLOSED—from just outside the men’s room, where he’d placed it before entering. He placed the sign in front of the locked stall.

  Now dressed as a priest, he left the men’s room, carrying the valise and the duffel bag. He went directly to an outside bin he knew would be emptied within the hour.

  Twenty minutes later his flight was called. The security people had no problem with his carry-on valise, nor with the contents of his pockets. The forged passport passed muster.

  He found his seat in the tourist section, loosened his clerical collar, and settled in for the first leg of his twelve-hour trip to Detroit. By the time he had mentally run through his agenda for the next few days, lunch was being served. Later when the movie began, he took a cassette from his pocket, inserted it into a compact player, and connected the earphone. It was a book being read by an actor with Midwest American roots. He shut his eyes and, as he had done so many times before, silently moved his lips as he practiced an accent that was not his.

  Sometime later he drifted off to sleep.

  He needed the rest. He had business in Detroit.

  2

  The body was discovered late that afternoon.

  The maintenance man was puzzled when he saw the OUT OF ORDER sign in front of the stall. A defective toilet was not on his repair list. But there it was. He would have to try to fix it.

  The next puzzler was the locked door. Why would anyone lock a stall door from the inside, whether the toilet was working or not?

  Crawling beneath the door, he glimpsed the body grotesquely positioned on the toilet. With a quick intake of breath, he scrambled awkwardly back.

  Nor would he reenter. When the Gardai arrived, one of the officers had to climb into the stall and unlock the door. This was not the United States; the Gardai were shocked at what they found.

  Soon, homicide detectives arrived, along with technicians. The crime scene was studied, recorded, and analyzed with great care.

  Standing at the rear of the gents’ room somewhat apart from the immediate action were Sean O’Reardon, Superintendent Garda Siochana from the headquarters in Phoenix Park, and his chief detective, Sergeant Thomas Carty.

  O’Reardon warmed his hands on the still-hot bowl of his pipe. Out of consideration for the others in this restricted space, he would not puff. “Well, then,” he said, “quite a sight.”

  Carty rubbed his fingers over his chin stubble. “It is.” He cleared his throat. “Can’t say that I’ve ever laid eyes … maybe in the north …”

  O’Reardon’s eyebrows lifted.

  Carty hesitated. He didn’t want to seem to be lecturing. “Um, you know, the symbolic sort of thing. Kneecapping … uh … like that. Sort of a significant punishment short of death. Like what God might do to you for a venial sin—short of a mortal sin.”

  “Ummm.” O’Reardon pondered that. “So, that’s what you’re thinking, Tom. Then what do you suppose it is somebody’s trying to tell us with this caper?”

  Carty dug a little deeper in his stubble. “Damned if I can guess it, Sean.”

  “Nor I. If it’s the Provos, they surely ought to make themselves more clear. In this case, they should’ve written it out in detail and attached it to the poor man’s forehead. Do you know, did they find the clothing?”

  “Not yet. We’re going over the whole terminal. Nothing so far. We’re checking the pickup schedule. Maybe something will turn up.”

  “Well, he didn’t walk in here naked.” Pause. “Did he?”

  Carty smiled. “Nothing out of the ordinary today. And there’s plenty would notice a man walkin’ around with no clothes on. That’s one puzzle we won’t have to solve, please God. No, he lost his britches in here. And that’s for certain and sure.”

  “Ah,” O’Reardon agreed, “and more than his britches. Everything! Even his drawers. Who the hell would want his drawers?!”

  Recognizing the question as rhetorical, Carty merely shook his head. “‘Then the hobo drooped his weary head/And breathed his last refrain/His comrade swiped his shoes and socks/And hopped an east-bound train—’”

  A deferential young Garda interrupted the sotto voce solo. “The coroner is finished, Super. He says the man’s neck was broken. And that’d be the cause of death … at least until they get at a complete autopsy.”

  O’Reardon nodded. The Garda returned to his duties.

  O’Reardon and Carty approached the corpse that now had been stretched out on the lavatory floor preparatory to being inserted in a body bag. “The boys?” O’Reardon wondered softly.

  Carty shrugged. “Sort of depends on who the victim is. I can’t place him. You?”

  O’Reardon shook his head. “Rings no bells with me. Got a bit of stubble there on his chin.”

  “Could be a tramp. Maybe the song rings true … the part about the comrade swiping his shoes and socks—and, in this case, his drawers as well—and skipped.”

  O’Reardon said nothing. Then, “There’s something … something that makes me think he was more than a tramp … although I couldn’t say what. Any one of us naked and dead would be reduced to common clay. But there’s something …

  “What do you think about the cause of death?”

  “What?”

  “Broken neck.”

  “Odd, yes …”

  “No blood anywhere. Looks as if there was no struggle … like somebody just up and broke the poor sod’s neck.”

  “Have to be pretty strong, wouldn’t he …”

  “And,” O’Reardon added, “confident of his own strength.”

  “Right. If the first twist doesn’t do the job, the killer’s in for a fight, sure enough.”

  O’Reardon flexed his shoulders and nodded to the Gardai. They removed the body and began packing their equipment.

  “Well,” O’Reardon said as the two detectives left the men’s lavatory and walked through the terminal, “it’s a small country. Somebody must know him. If, indeed, he’s from here. Maybe we can get an IdentiKit picture on tonight’s late news. Maybe somebody will identify him.”

  “I’ll see to that,” Carty said. He had to force himself to slow his pace. Normally, by this time, he would’ve been far ahead of his colleague. O’Reardon seemed almost totally lost in thought.

  “The who’s important, all right,” O’Reardon mused. “And then we’ve got all those why’s. Why the air terminal? Why the broken neck? Why remove all the clothing? Lots and lots of questions.”

  “One thing: There won’t be much pressure.”

  “Hmm?”

  “The type of crime,” Carty said, “that attracts some popular attention for just a bit, then they move on to something else. They’ll probably think the nakedness a bit crude. In a few days the public’ll lose interest entirely. And, once the public loses interest, so does the media. And when the media loses interest, so does the government. So … the pressure on us is not going to be very intense, I’ll bet.”

  “There’s a good bit of truth in what you say, Tom. But I won’t forget this one soon. There are just too many odd little things to bug me. I can see it coming. We’re going to need a lot of luck—or guidance from above.” O’Reardon tried to hide a pixieish smile. “No doubt about it, Tom: We’ll need help from the good Lord. And did you remember to go to Mass today?”

  “I did not.”

  “Oh? Herself didn’t grab you by the ear and drag you off to church?”

  “No. In point of fact, she didn’t go at all.”

  “Mary? Mary didn’t go? Of a Sunday, she didn’t go to Mass? She’s not ill, now, is she?”

  Carty stopped and turned to his superintendent. “In ainm an Athar agus n Mhic agus and Spioraid Naoimah.” It was the sign of the cross.

  O’Reardon chuckled. “Said Mass in the Irish, did he?”

  Carty nodded. “And what with the missus waitin’ for the return of the Latin, it’s all too much for her, I’m afraid.”

&n
bsp; “His Reverence had better not pull that again. If I can’t count on you—and I can’t—I’ve got to depend on Mary’s prayers.”

  3

  This was Wanda’s “once-a-year day.”

  Each year, just before Christmas, Inspector and Mrs. Koznicki hosted a small dinner party for a few of their closest friends. Traditionally, as was the case tonight, the entrée was standing rib roast—a treat normally considered somewhat beyond their ordinary budget.

  Wanda very much enjoyed cooking these meals and she gave their preparation exquisite care. As she put the finishing touches on the meat, the potatoes and the gravy, the vegetables and salad, her husband was attending to their guests: Father Robert Koesler and Father Paul Smith, Lieutenant Alonzo Tully (known to his confreres as “Zoo”), and his recent bride, Anne Marie.

  Tully and Koznicki worked together in the Homicide Division of the Detroit Police Department. Father Koesler was pastor of “Old” St. Joseph’s parish in downtown Detroit. From time to time in the past when a measure of expertise in Catholicism was needed in a police investigation, Koznicki and Tully had called upon Koesler.

  It was December 11, the third Sunday of Advent—earlier than usual for the Koznicki Christmas dinner. But an unusual and momentous event was about to occur in Detroit. It would have been awkward this year to schedule their holiday dinner at its customary time, for it would have conflicted with the pope’s visit to Detroit.

  The Koznicki home was located in a once-wealthy neighborhood of Detroit no longer populated by hoi aristoi but still a well-kept area. The house was large, though since their children were adults and out on their own, mostly empty. But the kids and the grandchildren would soon be home for the holidays and the house would again be happily filled.

  Koznicki and Tully, with their long history of police work, had countless interesting if occasionally grisly stories to tell. But neither was close to being garrulous. So the priests, whose peculiar lifestyle was a story in itself, carried the brunt of tonight’s conversational ball, with an occasional assist from Anne Marie, who taught in a Detroit public school.

  Father Paul Smith, officially retired, or, “given the status of senior priest,” helped out in the parish the Koznickis attended. Smith’s oval face, rimmed by thick glasses, was crowned by a bald head that reflected the chandelier’s light. A tall man, Smith seemed a mere shadow of the vigorous priest that Koesler had known in past years.

  Father Smith was concluding a story about a funeral he had presided over. As he related the details of the wake, he described how the deep faith of the bereaved family was able to transcend the sorrow of the loss of a husband and father. At one point, the widow called her children together in the viewing area of the funeral home. She wanted to make sure that they realized that their father lived on in eternity and that the body in the casket was now merely the empty shell that once had housed his soul.

  “Remember,” she said to her children as she gestured toward the bier, “that is not your father.” One of her daughters, gifted with a high level of black humor, replied, “Gee, it’s a dead ringer for him!”

  Everyone laughed. Smith gave Koesler an it’s-your-turn-to-carry-on glance. With all the experiences logged by these two clergymen, it was not difficult to pick up the flow in the wake of each other’s stream of consciousness.

  Koznicki added a quartered log and some kindling to the fading fire. Those seated nearest the fireplace felt the increased warmth as new flames sprang to life.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t had any spritely funerals lately,” Koesler said. “But one of our priests—a seminary professor—did mention one he had recently that might fit the category. It seems he was called to help out at one of the inner city parishes—St. Patrick’s, near Orchestra Hall.”

  His listeners nodded. Actually, Father Smith was the only one who knew exactly where St. Patrick’s was. But everyone was familiar with “acoustically perfect Orchestra Hall” as it was routinely described on WQRS-FM, Detroit’s classical musical station.

  “The pastor,” Koesler continued, “was in one of those dilemmas where the only solution was bilocation. So he asked the priest-professor to take the funeral.

  “Funerals and weddings,” Koesler explained, for the benefit of his lay listeners, “are particularly hazardous to a pinchhitter. These are rather intimate occasions, and it doesn’t help if the presiding priest doesn’t know anyone in the assembly.

  “On top of that, the pastor asked this priest to try to involve the mourners in the eulogy.

  “Now, some priests can carry off such a liturgy. Unfortunately, the seminary prof was one of those not at ease enough to generate an atmosphere where this sort of audience participation might work. But, to help out the pastor, he said he would try.

  “The deceased was a woman in her mid-nineties. Added to that, St. Patrick’s is in the middle of Cass Corridor. What with her advanced age, and the deterioration of the neighborhood, there were few mourners. When it came time for the eulogy, the priest tried, really tried—perhaps too hard—to get someone—anyone—to say something—anything—about the deceased.

  “But they all just sat and looked at him. He kept telling himself that it might take time for someone to loosen up. Seconds crept into minutes. Finally, in response to his now almost desperate urging, an elderly woman stood. ‘Well, for God’s sake, I thought the old fart died ten years ago.’”

  The laughter was interrupted by Wanda’s announcement of dinner.

  The group filed into the dining room, where the table almost groaned under steaming dishes.

  Tully moved to seat Anne Marie, then realized that the others had remained standing for the grace—which Father Smith, after a nod from Koesler, led.

  “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord.” Which was followed by a resounding “Amen.”

  The next several minutes were occupied with serving dishes being passed from one to another, and murmured appreciation as plates were filled.

  As he helped himself to each dish passed, Koesler reflected on the personalities of those gathered for this feast.

  Wanda Koznicki. Hers was a marriage made in heaven. The word was hardly ever used nowadays, but Wanda was the perfect “helpmate.” She had borne the inspector’s children and had done more than her share in raising them. She was totally content to make this home her sanctuary and Walt’s castle. Her cooking was not Cordon Bleu, but, then, neither her husband nor their children were gourmet eaters. And no one had ever been served a poor meal at the Koznickis.

  Walter Koznicki. Inspector, in charge of the Detroit Police Department’s Homicide Division—one of the busiest in the nation, if not the world. A thorough investigator and a competent officer, well able to instill confidence in his staff.

  Koesler and Koznicki’s paths had first crossed almost twenty years before, during an investigation into the serial murders of priests and nuns in Detroit. Purely by chance, Koesler had discovered one of the bodies, was drawn into the case, and had been instrumental in solving the crimes. As a result, two things had happened: Koesler’s acquaintance with Inspector Koznicki had grown into a deep friendship as the years passed; and Koesler had been called on to lend his expertise in a number of succeeding murder cases involving the Catholic community.

  Alonzo Tully. Lieutenant in charge of one of the seven Homicide squads, he had entered Koesler’s life a few years ago, in much the same fortuitous manner as had been the case with Koznicki. Though Koesler had no way of gauging Tully’s professional standing, it was clear that Koznicki had complete confidence in the lieutenant’s ability and competence as an investigator and leader.

  Koesler had been vaguely aware that Tully’s previous marriage had ended in divorce, and that his ex-wife had remarried and, with their children, lived in Chicago. Koesler was also aware that the sole cause of the divorce was Tully’s total dedication to his work. The same held true for the breakup of Tully’s more recent signif
icant relationship with a social worker. In the face of these failures, hope was not high in Koesler for this second marriage.

  Anne Marie Tully. Koesler as yet knew her only slightly. It was his understanding that she came from Cleveland and that she had not been previously married. Tully surely would test her patience and forbearance. Anne Marie was a teacher and, more interesting to Koesler, a Catholic. In view of Tully’s previous marriage, Koesler wondered what, if any, accommodation might have been made. It was always possible that Tully had been granted a declaration of nullity. Or maybe someone other than a priest had witnessed the second Tully nuptials. In which case, the Catholic Church would not recognize it as a valid marriage.

  In any case, Koesler would never intrude. He would, if requested, try to help. Maybe Anne Marie would answer some of Tully’s questions concerning Catholicism, should any arise. On the other hand, questions concerning Catholicism could be so complex that even experts often needed help.

  Finally, Father Paul Smith. At age seventy, Smith was about five years older than Koesler and, as such, he was in a bit of a time warp. Perhaps in all of Christian history, Catholic priests had never retired as a matter of course. Then came the Second Vatican Council and it seemed right and proper to the hierarchy to join the rest of civilized society and permit—even encourage—priestly retirement. The initial reaction among elderly priests was to resist any sort of retirement, particularly compulsory. Then, following the Council, the drastic changes, initiated mostly by young priests who were formed by Vatican II, soured many older clerics. In effect the seniors were saying, “Okay, it’s your Church now. You can run with it. I’m out of here.”

  The third and current development brought another—apparently unavoidable—option: The Church found itself running out of priests. Those leaving the priesthood surely were part of the problem. Much more significant was the near-empty-seminary syndrome. And while parishes tried to make do with a fraction of the priests that had once staffed rectories and schools, there were all these healthy and experienced priests marking time in retirement. So, those “retired” priests were now encouraged to help as much as they could or would.