Death Wears a Red Hat Read online

  “Not really, Your Excellency,” Sheehan had replied. “But if you’ll look at the street signs and read them off to me, I may find something familiar.”

  While Sheehan had not won the secretarial position, he had been appointed to head the Catholic Youth Organization.

  Today, as Archbishop Boyle took his seat and carefully draped a napkin across his lap, he looked across the table to see the unpredictable Father Sheehan.

  “Well, Father Sheehan,” Boyle opened, “what is new at the Catholic Youth Organization?”

  Sheehan looked Boyle straight in the eyes. “We’ve begun a program in coeducational judo.”

  Boyle shook his head and coughed.

  Meanwhile, in the lobby, Father Thomas McInerny, pastor of St. Aloysius, paced among the seemingly endless racks of pamphlets. He noticed a woman who had just come out of the church. She looked extremely angry. He approached her.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “is there something wrong?”

  She looked at him furiously. “I will never again go to confession in this church!”

  “Why, what’s the matter?”

  “The priest, that’s what’s the matter. He gave me two thousand Hail Marys to say as a penance!”

  “Two thousand Hail Marys!” McInerny repeated, dumbfounded. Then a thought occurred to him. “Wait a minute; there aren’t any confessions scheduled now—”

  Father McInerny moved quickly inside the church and looked at the confessional to the right of the main altar. Sure enough, the little red light above the central of three compartments was lit, indicating a priest was within prepared to hear confessions.

  Puzzled, McInerny walked swiftly down the aisle and swung open the confessional door. There, smiling smugly, sat a derelict from Michigan Avenue.

  St. Aloysius was one of Detroit’s more interesting parishes.

  “I gotsa git a fix!” Willie Monroe perspired profusely as he cruised along Riopelle in the direction of East State Fair. On the steering wheel of the ’54 Ford, Monroe’s hands trembled. It had been too long since he’d had his needed dose of heroin.

  “Ain’t you got no bread at all, man?” his partner, Harvey Murphy, asked.

  “No, man. I got about enough to get me a Twinkie.”

  Monroe drove slowly, looking for something, anything, that would lead to money. Some victim. He knew from experience that he was in no condition to try to rob a store. He was too jittery. Either he would fumble such an effort badly or very probably he would shoot someone. He’d already done time for both such mistakes. In fact, most of his twenty-two years had been spent in prisons of one sort or another.

  “Maybe we ought to knock over that supermarket up the street, man,” suggested Murphy.

  “No, man. This ain’t the right time for that kinda scene. We gotsa hit on somebody—and soon.”

  Several more minutes passed as the old Ford crossed East State Fair and cruised the quiet changing neighborhood.

  It was Murphy who first spotted him. “Hey, looka that!” he said, pointing to a rather well-dressed man who had just come out of one of the old homes on Riopelle and was walking toward his car parked at the curb.

  “That’s the man,” Monroe agreed.

  He coaxed the Ford along the street. In this sort of endeavor, timing was everything. Just as the man came around his car to approach the door on the driver’s side, Monroe gunned the old Ford. It shot ahead, the right fender hooking the man and catapulting him over the hood of his own car.

  Monroe and Murphy leaped from their car and ran to the prostrate motionless victim.

  “Lordee,” Murphy whistled low. “Now you done it. Look at that collar: That’s a priest you just wasted!”

  “What’s done’s done,” Monroe replied. “What’s he got?”

  Quickly, Monroe dug out a battered wallet.

  “Five bucks! A lousy five bucks!”

  “C’mon, man,” Murphy urged. “We gotsa git outta here. The man gonna be on our ass for wasting a priest.”

  “Yeah, let’s move it.”

  They quickly returned to the still running Ford, Monroe clutching the wallet containing little money and a couple of credit cards. Clearly, they were headed for a busy day if each of their victims carried so little cash.

  As they sped away, the elderly lady the priest had just visited took down their license number. First she called the ambulance, then the police.

  The office of the Homicide Inspector resembled the proverbial jam-packed sardine can. Inspector Koznicki and Lieutenant Harris sat opposite each other in the room’s only two chairs. One got the impression that if both had stood simultaneously, one of them would have been forced either through a wall or out the window.

  “Can’t you get any handle on this thing, Ned?” Koznicki asked, not without concern.

  “No, dammit,” said Harris. Every lead has gone nowhere. I mean—” He tried to stretch a leg and succeeded only in barking his shin against the desk. “Damn!” he intoned softly. “I mean, it is within the realm of reality that the king of vice gets murdered by the king of pimps. And that the family of the king of vice then reciprocates. But, according to Moellmann, they were both wasted by the same guy—or at least both decapitated by the same guy. Now how do you figure that?”

  Koznicki shrugged. “Maybe they don’t know it. Maybe the killer is an out-of-town freelancer. Maybe the two gangs contact him independently. Then the only one who knows that he is playing both sides of the fence is the killer. It is his private joke.”

  Harris thought a moment. “That theory has possibilities. I mean, I’ve seen sicker dogs live. But Walt, what a coincidence! Can you imagine the odds against it?”

  “I well can.” Koznicki stretched his huge frame. Obviously, he was more acquainted with the confining dimensions of his office. “But it is nonetheless a possibility. And if true, the killer may end up wasting one hood after another alternately. If he was, say the top gun in Chicago, it’s possible the odds against the killer’s being the same man might drop a little.”

  Each allowed himself a small smile.

  “You know, Walt, it’s very tempting to step aside from this affair and let ’em go loose at the O.K. Corral. Certainly would clean up Detroit nicely.”

  “Hell, Ned, I know it’s tempting. But you don’t get law and order by looking the other way when law and order is violated. “

  Harris smiled again. “I know, Walt, I know. I just had to get it off my chest with you so I could stay serious with the squad. It’s hard to keep ’em enthusiastic when they know they’re trying to solve a killing which, if they fail to solve, probably would at least diminish the city’s crime rate.”

  “Are they holding well?”

  “Yeah. They’re a good bunch.”

  “By the way,” Koznicki moved forward and so, naturally, did his desk, giving Harris even less room, “have you decided to call Father Koesler in for some consultation?”

  “Yeah. This is his day off, but I’ve got a call in for him. Who knows, maybe he’s got some idea of why we find one head inside a Cardinal’s hat and another on top a saint’s statue. None of us has a clue to that one.”

  “O.K., Ned. I’m glad you’re calling him in. He has a fine, logical mind. And besides,” Koznicki winked at Harris, “he does love playing detective.”

  Harris laughed, banging his hand against the table, and rose to leave.

  “One more thing, Ned: Make sure the news media know we have evidence that indicates these two killings were perpetrated by the same person. If our theory is correct, this will seriously complicate the position of our hired gun. Even if our assumption is incorrect, the news should shake up Detroit’s criminal world. And there’s nothing we want more than a badly disturbed criminal world.”

  “But we keep to ourselves how we know—the bent handsaw, the powerful man.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Walt, you show promise.”

  In the emergency room of Saratoga General Hospital, Father Alfred Dalton,
pastor of St. Rita’s, lay on a gurney. It was covered with blood—his blood. Though his eyes were open, it wasn’t clear whether he was sentient. He had been given a pain-killer. Preparations for his examination continued.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the medical profession,” he suddenly intoned, to everyone’s surprise, “you have just cut away $195 worth of clothing and carefully removed a two-dollar pair of Jockey shorts.” He was precisely correct.

  “He’s in shock,” Dr. Sommerfelt diagnosed.

  “No,” Dalton responded, thoughtfully, “it puts me in mind of an incident that happened while I was bosun’s mate in the U.S. Navy.”

  “His right leg is broken in three places.” Sommerfelt continued his exploration.

  “Well,” Dalton resumed, his speech slightly slurred due to the analgesic, but clear enough to be understood, “we had this CPO who had a vocabulary of obscenities that just wouldn’t quit. He could carry on for a full hour and more of pure vulgarity and never repeat himself.”

  “His left leg is shattered,” said Sommerfelt, hardly daring to touch it.

  “One day,” persisted Dalton, “we had this drill. We were lowering a lifeboat filled with seamen over the side. I was working the davit at one end when the Chief shouted an order. I thought he meant to hold, whereas what he actually meant was that we should speed up. As it turned out, I was responsible for dumping a lot of sailors into the ocean.”

  “I think his lung is punctured, “ monotoned Sommerfelt.

  “Well, sirs, that CPO looked long at that scene and finally said, ‘Oh, dear!’ It was so awful that nothing in his vocabulary of vulgarity was adequate.”

  “We’d better just try to keep him alive and see what starts healing first,” Sommerfelt concluded.

  “Well, sirs, that’s just about how I feel now. To quote my CPO, Oh, dear!” Dalton’s eyes rolled back as he mercifully passed out.

  Against his previous better judgment, Willie Monroe was about to rob a pharmacy. He needed drugs, money, or both. But he had been without the former too long. Not far from the agonies of withdrawal, he was not able to think clearly.

  He and Harvey Murphy had selected a pharmacy tucked into a small shopping mall near Lafayette Towers. There were always clusters of shoppers in the area, which made escape slightly more certain.

  Murphy, whose need was not nearly as advanced as was Monroe’s, would keep watch outside the pharmacy while Monroe would carry out the actual robbery.

  “You sure you don’t want me to tap the man?” asked a worried Murphy.

  “No, man. This is all downhill. They ain’t nobody in this place hardly.” Monroe was trembling, though not badly.

  “O.K. But make it fast.”

  Monroe entered casually, fingering the small-caliber revolver in his jacket pocket. He moved slowly but deliberately toward the rear of the store.

  The pharmacist pretended not to notice him. Actually, he never took his eyes off Monroe. Young and black, Monroe fit well enough into this racially mixed neighborhood, but there was something in his manner that, to the pharmacist’s practiced eye, bore watching.

  On his path down the left side aisle, Monroe picked up a number of items idly, handling each in turn, then replacing it. Finally, he reached the pharmacy’s raised counter at the rear of the store.

  It all happened quickly.

  As Monroe ducked behind the counter, he pulled out his Saturday Night Special and aimed it at the pharmacist.

  “Gimmee—” was as far as he got.

  The man’s right hand hit a button beneath the counter’s ledge. A loud bell sounded both in and outside the store.

  Murphy swung the front door open and shouted, “Man, move!”

  Monroe fired three times, hitting the pharmacist twice in the abdomen and once in the chest.

  As his victim slumped to the floor, Monroe ran through the store and joined Murphy in a race to the car.

  The store’s single customer, a middle-aged nurse, nose coolly pressed to the glass door, took note of the auto’s make and license number. Then she phoned the police.

  Within a very short time, Willie Monroe and Harvey Murphy would be wanted by the law for felonious driving, assault with intent to do great bodily harm, robbery, attempted robbery, and murder. And an all-points-bulletin would alert the entire Detroit Police Department to be on the lookout for them.

  Willie Monroe had badly injured one man and killed another. He still had neither money nor drugs.

  The busboy was pouring ice water into the last empty glass on the table when Father Donald Curley stage-whispered to his three companions, “Now don’t any of you let on that I’m the Free Press’ Anonymous Gourmet!”

  The busboy overfilled the glass, fumbled through an apology and retreated for a cloth to blot up the spill. The other three priests looked at Curley incredulously.

  As the busboy left, Father Koesler said, “Don, are you out of your mind? You don’t write a restaurant review column for the Free Press. You don’t write anything for the Free Press!”

  “I know, I know,” Curley said, conspiratorially shushing him, “but watch what happens. Don’t any of you look at the busboy now, but I can see him and I’ll tell you what he’s doing. He’s gone directly to Mario, he’s telling Mario something with a good bit of animation, and he’s gesturing toward our table.”

  “O.K., O.K.,” said Father Patrick McNiff, “but what’s the idea?”

  “The idea, my dear McNiff, is this: Suppose you owned a restaurant and you knew that someone who writes restaurant reviews for one of the town’s major publications was eating in your place. Don’t you suppose you’d go to a few extra pains to make sure everything was perfect?”

  “Clever, damned clever!” said Monsignor Al Thomas. Thomas was head of the Tribunal, Detroit’s Catholic marriage court. Of average height and slightly overweight, he had straight jet-black hair and a magnificent bass voice.

  “Dishonest!” McNiff decided.

  “Cute,” said Koesler, “but how often do you try it?”

  “Oh, not often. I keep track of which restaurants the Anonymous Gourmet has reviewed. It’d be disastrous to try this in a place that had recently been written up. And I pretend to be the Anonymous Gourmet only in the better places. Whoever he is, the Gourmet is not going to review a greasy spoon.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said McNiff, “but I do know you’re not going to eat in a greasy spoon!”

  At that moment, the busboy returned and wordlessly mopped up the spill. He was followed by a majestic, dark-suited waiter. Mario’s, on Second Avenue, was a still fashionable eatery in an otherwise decaying neighborhood. All Mario’s waiters were first, men and second, showmen.

  “Fathers,” the smiling waiter bowed slightly, “Mario himself would like to buy you a drink.”

  The smile on Curley’s face was beatific. McNiff looked at him disapprovingly. Thomas decided Curley would have done well with a career in canon law. Koesler shook his head. It works, he thought, but you’d have to be a seller of snake oil to carry it off.

  “Say,” Koesler said, after the drink orders were taken and the waiter had left, “did any of you hear what happened to Al Dalton?”

  No one had.

  “Hit by a car,” Koesler announced. “Heard it on the radio on my way here. He’s in Saratoga. Pretty serious.”

  “Accident?” asked McNiff.

  “No.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Thomas, “I hope this isn’t open season on priests and nuns again.”

  “No,” said Koesler, “not that either. Some kid hit him on purpose, but the motive was robbery. Stole his wallet.”

  “Some hop-headed kid,” said McNiff, correctly. “Probably wanted the money to get high on dope.”

  The drinks were delivered, but the foursome did not order. Curley had advised the delay to see if another complimentary round would be offered.

  “I can’t help it,” said Thomas, “ever since those Rosary Murders, every time some Detroit pr
iest or nun is even injured, I’m worried that it’s starting all over again.”

  “That was two years ago, Al,” said Koesler, “and it was such a special case it could never happen again.”

  “I don’t know,” countered Thomas. “There’s those heads they’ve been finding in our churches. I just think it’s peculiar that it’s always the Catholic community that suffers.”

  “Now you know how the Jews have felt all these centuries,” said Koesler. “But, yes, these latest incidents have certainly been strange. I haven’t the foggiest idea of what it all means.”

  “Maybe,” suggested McNiff, stirring his martini, “it’s somebody’s idea of a pun. You know, caput is Latin for ‘head.’ So you find a head in a hat and another on a statue where the head should be. Maybe it’s a way of saying these guys committed capital crimes. See: capital—caput—head.”

  It made more sense to Koesler than anything he’d heard to date.

  “I think it’s hilarious,” said Curley, who could not bear to be out of a conversation very long.

  “You would!” said McNiff.

  “Well, I mean,” Curley continued, “you guys are all old enough to remember how fastidious Cardinal Mooney was. If you’ll recall, those were the days of The Uniform. Diamond Ed Mooney dressed correctly and, by damn, so did his clergy.” After a sip of his gin and tonic, Curley went on. “Remember the day Joe Marek went downtown all dressed in his clericals but without a hat? And as luck would have it, he bumped into Mooney outside the chancery.”

  The others nodded. They did not remember.

  Curley warmed to his story. “Well, Mooney read Marek the riot act about how a gentleman always wears a hat and by an Act of God all priests are supposed to be gentlemen. So, in one of Mooney’s grand gestures, he told Marek to go buy himself a hat and charge it to him, Mooney. So,” Curley began to chuckle, “Marek goes right down Washington Boulevard into old A.J. Hickey’s—the most expensive store on the street—and buys the most expensive hat in the place and charges it to Mooney!”