Relic of Time Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART I - Holy Heist

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  PART II - Holy Hoax

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  PART III - Holy Hermano

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  EPILOGUE

  ALSO FROM RALPH MCINERNY

  A Faithful Departing . . .

  Some commotion began at the front of the church. There were shouts, screaming. And then gunfire. Lloyd sat frozen on his bench. What in the name of God was going on? Pilgrims were scattering from behind the altar and then a ladder was lifted; more gunfire sounded, and, incredibly, the image disappeared. Guards had arrived and there was more gunfire. Some terrible desecration was in progress. Lloyd rose to his feet and ran toward the front of the church. Whatever was happening had to be stopped.

  He was almost to the altar when a gunman with something pulled over his face emerged, followed by others like himself carrying something. The first man came running toward Lloyd and he planted himself in the aisle. The masked man turned his weapon on him.

  The first shot missed him, and there was a scream at the back of the church. The second shot ripped into his chest. He was shot again as he fell, and then shot once more. But he was beyond feeling by then.

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  RELIC OF TIME

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with Tekno Books

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove mass-market edition / November 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Tekno Books.

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  For Michael Baxter

  Septem dierum cursibus nunc tempus omne ducitur; octavus ille ultimus dies erit iudicii.

  —LITURGIA HORARUM

  PROLOGUE

  I

  He was fifty-six years old and nervous as a boy.

  It was the three days in Chicago with Catherine that decided him to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico.

  In a corner of the lobby, to the left of the desk where the concierge sat importantly, Japanese tourists had stacked their luggage and, having checked out, were milling around the small area, awaiting their transportation to O’Hare. Lloyd had gone into a far room off the lobby, which few guests ever discovered, and stood at the window, anxiously awaiting the arrival of Catherine’s taxi. Each time one swooped to the curb, he moved nearer the window, expecting her to step out. Her plane from Minneapolis had landed an hour earlier and she had called him from the baggage area.

  “I’m here.”

  “I should have met you there.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I booked your room.”

  A small silence, but it was a big announcement. They would have separate rooms. It seemed a denial of what they both understood this reunion meant.

  “Good.”

  Ever since her call, he had been on the lookout for her cab. Stupid, of course. It was a long ride from the airport and with any traffic at all . . .

  He was fifty-six years old and nervous as a boy. Catherine had heard of Monica’s death a year after the event and written him, expressing her sympathy. She hadn’t known Monica. Lloyd hadn’t seen or heard from Catherine since they were kids. His own grief had become familiar by the time her note arrived and he was ready for the more pleasant memories it brought. It had been months before he could bring himself to take Monica’s clothes to Saint Vincent de Paul. He enrolled her in several perpetual Mass societies, and he prayed for her every day. How perfect their marriage seemed now that she was gone, the long illness over; the house, so full in the days before her funeral, now empty, just himself and his memories. He felt almost unfaithful to Monica when he answered Catherine’s letter. And then she telephoned, the start of a habit. Once a week at first, then several times a week, they had lengthy telephone conversations.

  “I have the advantage of you, Lloyd. I know what you look like now.”

  The photograph on the dust jacket of his most recent book.

  “That picture is ten years old.”

  “And have you changed so much since it was taken?”

  Changed? He wanted to tell her of the agony of Monica’s illness, of the long hours nursing her, keeping her at home, as she had wanted, of his feeling of being an amputee when at last she died.

  “Send me a picture,” he said.

  “If I can find one ten years old.”

  When the photograph arrived, just a snapshot, tucked into a greeting card—how had she known it was his birthday?—he put the photograph on the refrigerator door, in among those of Monica and himself, their kids, the grandchild. When they talked on the phone, he would wander into the kitchen and address Catherine’s photograph.

  “You’re still beautiful.”

  “Ha.”

  II

  “Want to mess around?”

  They had lived in south Minneapolis, her family’s house just across Minnehaha Creek from the Kaisers’. Lloyd’s mother had cleared her throat and looked suspicious when Catherine would go by with her cocker spaniel, Amos. No leash was needed; they were inseparable. Lloyd had liked the deliberate pigeon-toed way she walked and the tomboy look of her.

&nbs
p; “There she goes again,” his mother would say.

  “She’s on her way to visit Peggy Lindsey.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  What did his mother have against Catherine? Lloyd never understood her disapproval, but it effectively chilled any interest he might have had in Catherine. But then, at first by accident, they would meet near the creek in the evening and follow it toward Lake Hiawatha where there was a bench on a hill overlooking the lake. During the walk, Amos loping along beside them, they never held hands; their conversation was about anything but the fact that they were walking together. But when they got to the bench, she sat very close to him and when she looked up at him, her expression inviting, he had leaned toward her and felt her lips on his. His arms went around her and she held him tightly. They might have been auditioning for Rodin.

  Afterward, she would lay her head on his shoulder and they’d look at the lake. From time to time, she would lift her head and look up at him and again he kissed her. That was all. He could feel her breasts against him, but he would never have dared touch them. Then one night she asked him to come home with her when they returned from sitting by the lake. As soon as they were inside, it was clear there was no one else at home. She led him to the couch as if it were their bench. Their kisses grew passionate; he fondled her; he moved his hand beneath her skirt. She groaned and then abruptly pulled away, jumping to her feet.

  “No, no, no,” she said, as if talking to herself.

  He agreed. He was frightened by what he had done. He had never touched a girl before as he had Catherine. The memory of her empty house and what they had nearly done on the couch seemed to confirm all of his mother’s suspicions. It helped to think that it was Catherine who had led him on.

  He stopped going down to the creek in the evening, unless his father was practicing seven-iron shots on the great stretch of grass that ran along the northern bank. One night Catherine was there with Amos and came over to talk. Lloyd’s father obviously liked her. He liked her dog, Amos, too. She asked what club he was using.

  “Want to try it?”

  She did. She addressed the ball his father tossed her. She stood over it, very still, and then with great deliberation drew back the club. Her follow-through was perfect. The ball lifted in an arc and came to ground a hundred and fifty yards away. Lloyd joined in when his father applauded. But Catherine was looking at the club head. It was an old Wright & Ditson with the desired yardage engraved on it.

  “That wasn’t one seventy-five,” she said. Did she consider her perfect shot a failure? His father wisely chose not to hit any more balls and soon they were on their way home, and Catherine and Amos were crossing the bridge, going in the opposite direction.

  “Do you think it was a lucky shot?” his father asked.

  “You should have asked her to hit another.”

  He thought about it, then shook his head. “She probably would have gotten a hundred seventy-five with the second shot.” Smiling, he shook his head. “Not bad looking either.”

  Lloyd mumbled something.

  “Are you friends?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Just don’t take her out golfing.”

  A lifetime had gone by since that summer interlude with Catherine. But it had apparently always been there, in his memory, and her letter brought it all vividly back. The snapshot she had sent was of someone still identifiable as the girl she had been, hair still worn short, the same sardonic smile. But what would she look like in the flesh?

  In the Whitehall Hotel, Lloyd was distracted by the efforts of the concierge to sell some tickets to a pair of reluctant tourists. He had just turned again to the window when someone spoke beside him.

  “Lloyd?”

  He was startled and that helped, all his rehearsing gone for naught; here they were facing one another. She lifted her cheek for his kiss.

  “I hope it’s a smoking room,” she said when he took her to the receptionist.

  It wasn’t. There were no more smoking rooms available. “I must have got the last one,” Lloyd said.

  “Then that’s all right. One’s enough.”

  He waited in the lobby when she went upstairs to unpack. Catherine was still lithe and agile, a slightly older girl, a woman. A woman who had flown to Chicago to spend a few days with him, a reunion after all these years. How natural it had been to kiss her cheek.

  When she came down, they went into the bar and had a glass of wine, and then another. Afterward they went out and strolled along the Miracle Mile. He told her they would go to Navy Pier tomorrow. They ate in the hotel restaurant and then settled down again in the bar, where smoking was still permitted. More wine and pointless, pleasant chatter. Of course they did not talk of Monica. Not directly.

  “You’re still wearing your wedding ring.”

  He looked at his hand as if surprised to see the golden band that Monica had slipped on his finger so many years ago.

  Catherine said, “I got rid of mine before I got rid of him.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was a son of a bitch. Of course, I compared him and every other man with you.”

  “Come on.”

  She looked at him steadily. “It’s true.”

  What she had said couldn’t possibly be true, but it was pleasant to think she meant it. It was after eleven when they went up. Their rooms were on the same floor.

  “That’s convenient,” she said. “I can come over for a smoke.”

  She opened the door of her room and he looked it over, as if to make sure it was worthy of her. This time when she lifted her face he kissed her on the lips. Then she pushed him away.

  “I’ll come by later. For a cigarette.”

  When she came she was in pajamas but with the robe the hotel supplied over it. Lighting a cigarette, his hands were unsteady. She looked up at him, took his hand, and brought the flame to her cigarette.

  “Two on a match,” she murmured.

  Within ten minutes they were two on a bed. They had talked about their walks along the creek; he remembered kissing her; he remembered the evening when they sat on the couch in her parents’ living room.

  “Want to mess around?” he asked.

  The words emerged as if with a will of their own. They had always been his overture to Monica.

  “I thought you’d never ask.” She went to the bed, got out of the robe, and then, incredibly, took off her pajamas as well. His eyes were on her as he stripped off his clothes. She had sat at the end of the bed and now fell backward onto it.

  They spent most of their three days together in bed, going out seldom; the swift visit to Navy Pier seemed a little penance to justify fleeing back to the hotel. They alternated rooms; they lay together spent and content.

  “I’ve always loved you, Lloyd.”

  He did not know what to say. “Me, too.”

  “Narcissus.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Say it.”

  He said it. But even as he said it, he knew he did not mean it, that he could never mean it. Her very availability, the things she did when they were in bed together, overwhelmed him, and, when he was alone, his conscience started up.

  “What medal is that?” Catherine asked. She was straddling him at the time and she lifted the medal from his chest.

  “My mother gave it to me.”

  “Awww.”

  “It’s a miraculous medal.”

  “It sure is,” she said, tweaking him.

  She had let whatever faith she had slip away long ago.

  “You still believe it all?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He didn’t want to talk religion with her. Not like this. Not ever. He wished she hadn’t noticed the medal. His mother had given it to him, when he made his First Communion, at the age of ten. He had worn it ever since, taking it off only on the rarest of occasions; for example, when he had a chest X-ray. He should have taken it off before he got into bed with Catherine, but there had never been ti
me.

  “All of it?”

  She meant Catholicism. He nodded.

  “Including that it’s a sin for us to be in bed together?”

  “Maybe that’s why it feels so good.”

  Ho ho, big joke, but it wasn’t any joke for Lloyd. For several days he had managed to avoid reflective thought, but Catherine’s teasing about his medal and what they were doing made the voice of conscience roar within him. He enjoyed every minute of their time together and yet longed to put her in a cab for the airport. As soon as she was gone, he would go over to Saint Peter’s on Madison Avenue, where confessions were heard from morning to night, so the priests must be used to hearing every variety of sin.

  Her plane left at 11:30 so they had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel. Catherine leaned toward him. “Every couple here looks illicit.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “They look as innocent as we do.”

  “I’ll take you to the airport, Catherine.”

  “You will not. But you can help me pack.”

  But when they got to her room it was obvious she had already packed. She came into his arms and then her hand was on him.

  “There isn’t time,” he said gruffly.

  “There is for this.”

  On the way down in the elevator, he decided he hated her. He couldn’t wait to put her in a cab and hurry to Saint Peter’s and confess her out of his system. For a woman who had been divorced nearly twenty years she seemed a very practiced lover. And he didn’t like it. Oh, he had enjoyed it, but he didn’t like it.

  After her cab had pulled away, her hand fluttering good-bye from a back window, Lloyd started immediately up the street. Saint Peter’s was blocks away, miles, on Madison, but he would walk. He crossed the river and strode on; not taking a cab seemed already a kind of penance for what he had done. He was ashamed of himself. He drove out thoughts of Monica. It was remorse rather than shame that he should feel. He had offended God, he had gone to bed with a woman not his wife, and they had done things he had never done with Monica. Catherine had acted like a courtesan. No, he mustn’t blame her. He had sinned; that was the point.