Shadow of Death fk-5 Page 2

  “It’s the times,” Father MacNeil reflected. “We live in violent times, Maurice. But the Cardinal . . .” He shook his head. “Why would anyone want to attack him? Such a good man!”

  Two men with the same and similar questions on their minds approached the clergymen.

  “Inspector Hughes, RCMP.” One of the men proffered his identification in a manner which seemed to demand that each priest examine it carefully.

  “You would be,” Hughes consulted his notepad, “Fathers Ouellet” —Ouellet nodded— “and MacNeil.”

  “How did you know?”

  “We were at the church.”

  “The cathedral.”

  “Yes.” The Inspector accepted the correction impassively. “Which of you was standing near the Cardinal when he was attacked?”

  “I was,” said Ouellet.

  “I see.” Both the Inspector and his associate were taking notes. “Can you describe the assailant?”

  “Let’s see. I think it was the third or fourth person to receive communion from the Cardinal . . .”

  “Talk about a Judas,” MacNeil interjected.

  “Yes, it was the third.” Ouellet was positive.

  “Male or female?” This was one of those times, Hughes determined, when information would have to be pulled out piecemeal.

  “Male.” Ouellet was surprised by the question. It would never have occurred to him that a woman would be capable of such a wanton attack.

  “Height?”

  “Let’s see. I was standing one step up and the man’s head was about the same height as my shoulder. I would guess about six feet, give or take an inch.”

  “Weight?”

  “I have no idea. Not fat. Not thin. Perhaps 190 pounds.”

  “Race?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “White, black, Oriental, Hispanic, dark, light?”

  “Oh . . . black, very dark.”

  “Any distinguishing marks?”

  “Marks? Uh . . . oh, yes; his hair, It was, uh, what do you call it, uh—”

  “Natural?”

  “Yes, I guess that’s it.” Ouellet could see the outside doors to the waiting room. A group of newcomers was entering hurriedly. They looked about as if searching for something or someone. “Are those the Metropolitan Toronto Police?”

  Hughes glanced over his shoulder. “No, those are newspaper reporters. They will be followed shortly by the TV people.”

  He returned to his task. “How did the assailant strike?”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “But you were standing right next to the Cardinal?”

  “Yes, but . . . well, you see, I was holding the paten under the man’s chin, so I couldn’t see what he was doing with his hands.”

  “Neither could the Cardinal, then, eh?”

  “That’s right.”

  A doctor emerged from the inner sanctum. Everyone looked at him expectantly, each hoping for information about his or her loved one.

  The doctor looked around. Noticing the two clergymen, he started toward them. He reached them at about the same moment as the reporters.

  “I’m sorry.” The doctor shook his head. “We did all that was possible. At first it didn’t seem to be a major wound. It was an abdominal cut approximately an inch and a half long. There was minimal tenderness.”

  The doctor was elaborating more than was necessary for the two priests. But the media people, as well as the RCMP representatives, were taking notes.

  “We probed the wound. There was an upper angle toward the left shoulder. At that point, I ordered an X-ray. We were looking specifically for air and shadows. Of course an IV was started as soon as the Cardinal was admitted.”

  “Did the Cardinal regain consciousness at any time?” a reporter asked.

  “No, not really. At one point, he tried to sit up. We were struck by his grayish coloring and intense perspiration. But he said nothing.

  “At about the time we discovered that the Cardinal’s spleen had been ruptured, he slipped into deep shock. We immediately started closed chest massage, gave him blood, and attempted to restore his blood pressure. But we couldn’t control his internal bleeding. Irreversible shock set in and at that point, he expired. I believe it was a combination of his age and the shock. I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t believe it.” A most rare tear wound its way through the furrows of MacNeil’s face. “Adrian is gone. I was talking to him—joking with him—just minutes ago.” He paused. “He was a good man.”

  “Who could have done this to a man like Cardinal Claret?” asked Ouellet of no one in particular. “Why would anyone do it?”

  “If we can discover the ‘why’ Father,” Inspector Hughes said, “we may very well find the ‘who.’”

  3.

  “Death to da Pope! Death to da Pope! Death to da Pope!” He accompanied his chant by banging on a steel drum.

  The noise was absorbed easily in the cacophony of Yonge Street outside.

  The room in which the men had gathered was large and relatively bare. A table, a few chairs. Most of the men lounged on the floor or squatted against the wall. Several shuffled to the drum’s rhythm. The room was not unlike a hall hired and furnished by neo-Nazis, except that where one might expect to find a picture of Adolf Hitler, there hung a portrait of Haile Selassie, the late Emperor of Ethiopia.

  If one did not already know, it would have been almost impossible to make out whose likeness it was, due to the nearly impenetrable smoke that almost literally filled the room. Those who were not puffing their own massive spliff of marijuana—ganja—were passing a chillum pipe filled with the drug.

  Most of the men—all of them black—wore their hair in long, tight ringlets.

  Resting on a small stand, with several powerful lights focused on it, was a large menacing knife. The bloodstains had not been wiped from it.

  “Death to da Pope! Death to da Pope!”

  “Bredren!” An imposing figure of a man raised his arm.

  The group fell silent. They continued to draw on their ganja as they looked at the standing man through half-closed eyes and thick smoke.

  “Bredren!” he repeated. “Dis day, I and I go up to da church and do da job. I and I strike for Jah. Jah happy now. Da prince of Babylon been striked down. Dis day we do our job.”

  “Good Rasta man!” they responded.

  “Everyting Irie. It be perfect. I and I strike down de son of Satan. We done done our job. Jah be pleased.”

  “Good Rasta man!”

  The speaker took a long draw on his enormous, self-rolled spliff. Heavy smoke billowed from his nostrils. He held the spliff high in the air. “Ganja!” he announced.

  “Jah be praised! Haile Selassie I be praised! Bless de Lion of Juda!”

  The speaker leaned back against the wall and was silent for some moments. A smile played at his lips. Whatever his vision, he was enjoying it in the privacy of his imagination.

  “Now, bredren,” the speaker resumed, “it be up to Rastas in de udder parts of de world to take up de knife and strike down de bad satans of Babylon.”

  “Good dreads! Good Rastas!”

  “Bredren, we be in dis togedder?” The question was rhetorical.

  “We be in dis togedder!” They responded with fervor.

  “Den pay mind to what I and I gonna do!”

  The speaker unsheathed a knife only slightly less formidable than the one on the stand. He approached the stand and stood so near it his head and shoulders caught the full glare of the spotlights. The rest of his body was in shadow. Deliberately, he made a small incision in his wrist and mingled the ensuing blood with that already caked on the larger knife. One by one, each man in the room approached and silently followed suit.

  When the ritual was complete, the speaker again raised his hand, although there was no sound to silence.

  “Bredren,” he said, “now it be time for de Rastas of de world to strike down Babylon one by one. And den we go home. And den
we go wit de Lion of Juda!”

  With that, the speaker approached the now blood-saturated stand and slowly turned the knife until it pointed in a southeasterly direction.

  The drummer resumed his rhythmic chant. Some joined in the ensuing symbolic dance. All contributed to the dense ganja smoke.

  The macabre ritual, at least in its Toronto phase, had been concluded. But, somewhere else, it would begin again.

  4.

  “Some suite!”

  “It’s Canada!”

  Don Louis Licata merely smiled. They had been waiting a long time. Too long for the limited patience of his two soldiers. “Now, now, boys,” he said, “this is the Windsor Arms. One of the most prestigious hotels in Toronto. Why, Pierre Elliot Trudeau dines here when he is in town.”

  “Maybe we should try the food.” One of the soldiers winked.

  “And,” Licata continued, “they say Marlene Dietrich stays here when she comes to Toronto.”

  “Now that would change things.”

  “What?”

  “If a dame like Marlene Dietrich was in this suite.”

  “Ha!” The second soldier chortled. “That’s what you need, a villuta!”

  “Marlene Dietrich is no prostitute!”

  “You don’t need a certain woman. Any one will do.” He laughed again.

  “Boys, boys!” Licata raised a hand. “Hold it down. I want to think before the others get here.”

  The sitting room held six chairs. Just enough. Three with their backs to the window were occupied by the visitors from Detroit. The three near the door would be occupied by the Torontonians whose arrival was not scheduled for another half hour.

  The silence was broken by a noise from the adjoining bedroom.

  Each soldier drew a snubnosed revolver from his shoulder holster. Licata cautiously eased the bedroom door open, then stood back as the two men preceded him into the other room.

  No one made a sound as the two began checking behind wall pictures, under the bed, through the dresser drawers, in the closet. The sound occurred again. It seemed to come from the wastebasket, across the top of which was lying a telephone directory. One of the men nudged the basket with his foot. The sound was repeated. Warily, he eased the directory off the basket. Weapons at the ready, both men leaned forward to peer into the receptacle.

  “A mouse!”

  Relieved laughter rang through the room.

  “In the Windsor Arms!”

  “So much for the prime minister and Dietrich!”

  “Now, boys, this is an old hotel. And old hotels are entitled to their mice.”

  “What do you want us to do with it, boss?”

  Licata shrugged. “It’s not our problem. It’s the hotel’s problem. Call the desk.”

  There couldn’t have been that many mice in the Windsor Arms’ recent history. No one seemed proficient in the animal’s removal. First came a maid, who took one look at the small creature, shrieked, and ran from the room to the laughter of the three men. Next came a porter, an Asian who spoke English haltingly. He tried several methods of entrapment before chancing upon a plastic laundry bag, which he pulled over the basket. He then inverted the basket and, with the triumphant visage of a successful lion tamer, exited the room with a large plastic bag containing a very small, frightened mouse.

  “Think he’ll kill it?”

  “Naw. If he doesn’t eat it, he’ll probably let it out in the alley.”

  “Then if the mouse remembers how it got up here in the first place, it’ll probably be back.”

  “Whaddya think, boss ... if it comes back, we shoot it?”

  “Let’s hope we’ll be gone by then.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  One of the soldiers opened the door just enough to see who was in the hall. Instantly, he flung the door open. Three men, one in advance of the other two, entered.

  “Don Vittorio!” Licata embraced the lead man.

  “Don Louis!” The other returned the embrace.

  The two pairs of soldiers appraised each other at a glance. Then all six seated themselves. The two dons sat close together facing each other. Their guards positioned themselves on either side and slightly to the rear of their respective dons.

  “Our condolences on the recent loss to the Catholic community of Toronto,” said Licata.

  “It was a great loss. Cardinal Claret, while not compatriota, might have been Papa. There was talk . . .” Vittorio Gigante’s voice trailed off, as though the others would understand what was left unspoken. “The astutatu was an eminent man in many ways.”

  “Is there any progress on the identity of the astutaturi?”

  Gigante shook his head sadly. “Nothing more than was in the paper. Black. Probably from off the street. No motive. Possibly high on dope. We’ve been on the streets, but . . . nothing.”

  “What will happen now?”

  “We’re considering putting out a contract.”

  “Ah, as in New York.”

  “Yes, with the poor nun. Raped, tortured, twenty-seven crosses carved into her flesh. Only thirty-one years old. The police could do nothing. But when our brothers put out the word, those bastards knew they were dead men. It didn’t take them long to turn themselves in. They were safer in jail than they were on the streets.”

  Don Vittorio chuckled at the thought of all that power. He was echoed by the others.

  “How much?” Licata inquired.

  “Twenty-five Gs.”

  “Same as New York.”

  “Yes. Five times the usual.”

  “That is why we have come, Don Vittorio. And, it seems, just in time.”

  “You have news of the astutaturi?” For the first time, animation entered Don Vittorio’s voice.

  “We, too, have been on the streets. As you know, Don Vittorio, not much separates Toronto from Detroit.”

  “Sister cities.”

  “Yes. And we have been able to get some information. Not all. But some.” Licata shifted in his chair and drew himself closer to Gigante. “We are certain it is not the work of one. It is a conspiracy.”

  “A conspiracy!” Now there was a concept Gigante found familiar.

  “Yes. A conspiracy. And one that we in Detroit are most interested in. So, before you put out your contract, we would like you to consider what we have to propose.”

  Gigante spread his hands. “But of course. We are brothers. Your cause is our cause.”

  5.

  Peculiar to the Catholic priesthood of the Latin rite, as compared with any other vocation in Western civilization, is that upon death there are no direct descendants. Often there are not even immediate survivors. The priest leaves neither wife nor child. At most, a few parishioners or consanguines make up the mourners. Seldom does a mourner at a priest’s funeral need to be assisted from the scene overcome by grief.

  This is even more true in the case of a deceased bishop. Not only does the bishop rarely leave any close kin, but he has been buffered from the laity by layers of clerical bureaucracy.

  The funeral of a bishop, then, as far as the laity is concerned, is usually marked by one-tenth sorrow and nine-tenths curiosity. On the part of the visiting, concelebrating clergy, it is largely a social function wherein old but seldom-visited confreres bring each other up to date.

  Then, too, as far as the clergy are concerned, theirs is a strong and active faith in an eternal life after death. So it is quite natural, even supernatural, that a priest’s funeral can truly be said to be celebrated.

  In any case, there were no moist eyes as the faithful gathered for the Mass of Resurrection for His Eminence Adrian Cardinal Claret.

  The laity—by invitation only—were already in their places in the cathedral. The congregation included most of the movers and shakers of Toronto, Catholic and non. But the clergy would occupy the majority of places in the cathedral. It was a notable cast of clerics.

  The Apostolic Pro-Nuncio, Archbishop Tito Fulmo, would represent the Vatican. Can
ada’s only other Cardinal, Andrew Audette of Quebec, would be principal concelebrant of the Mass. Ten of the thirteen American Cardinals were present to concelebrate, as well as hundreds of Canadian bishops and priests, along with a few from the United States. Of the latter, most would be from Buffalo and Detroit.

  Bishops were vesting in the cathedral rectory, while the priests vested in the school across the street.

  Detroit’s Archbishop Mark Boyle found himself in a peculiar hierarchical position. His elevation to the Cardinalate had recently been announced. But he had not yet been to Rome for the ceremonies that would make him a Cardinal. So, while he vested with the other archbishops, several Cardinals stopped by to say a few words to their new brother in this extremely limited, exclusive, and august club.

  “I believe,” Boyle was saying to Archbishop Leo Bernard of Cincinnati, “that the vocation crisis in the Archdiocese of Detroit could correctly be described as catastrophic.”

  “Congratulations, Eminence,” said a passing Cardinal.

  “Thank you, Eminence.”

  “It’s not much better in Cincinnati,” Bernard replied. “I don’t know what we’re going to do for priests in the near future. I read an article the other day by some priest who claims the problem is rectory life. That you can’t expect men of different ages, experiences, and tastes to live together without tension, friction, and eventually, a great deal of stress.”

  “I read that article too. It ran in our paper, the Detroit Catholic. If you ask me, it is nonsense. Priests need priests. Once you have priests living in apartments, alone, you have created a fraught situation—”

  “Ad multos annos, Eminence,” said a passing Cardinal.

  “Thank you, Eminence.

  “As far back as any of us can remember, and more,” Boyle continued, as he tied his cincture and adjusted the alb at his ankles, “rectory life has proven not only practical but desirable. Without rectory life, where would the priest be when the faithful need him in an emergency?”

  “I fully agree, Mark. And in addition to what you noted, what could we possibly do with all those rectories? There are few families who would consider buying a building that had been built as a combination home and office. And, speaking of buildings, what are you doing with that huge minor seminary of yours? What is it . . . Sacred Heart?”