The Prudence of the Flesh Read online

  “Could I speak to the faithful pastor of St. Hilary’s?” One classmate after another called, asked this question, and then congratulated him for running that ad in the Tribune.

  Roger took his punishment like a man, not least because it was undeserved. Beneath the kidding they detected that no one was more amused and bemused by the article than the Reverend Roger Dowling, the faithful pastor of St. Hilary’s. It was the accompanying photographs that drew the most attention, though. In one, Father Dowling was coming down the hallway, a look of astonishment on his face. The other was a studio portrait taken while he was still on the archdiocesan marriage court.

  “Is that your ordination picture, Roger?” His classmate Holt grinned when he said this.

  He was almost sorry he hadn’t let the photographer have his way and get some current shots.

  “What can I say?” Marie said abjectly.

  “It would be best if you took a vow of silence.”

  “He plans to write a book about the priest scandal.”

  “Good Lord.”

  “It’s about time. And that was the point of the article, to show what most priests are like.”

  “I can’t believe he could write a readable book.”

  “People eat up scandal, you know that.”

  “I was thinking of his prose.”

  “Well, you’re a better judge of that than I am.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I had no idea you had become such a magnet for aspiring writers.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  Ned Bunting called several times, but Marie told him it probably would be best not to talk to Father Dowling.

  “What a response I’ve gotten,” Ned enthused.

  “That’s his complaint.”

  “Of course, he’s being modest.”

  “He commented on your style.”

  “Did he? Well, well. Just pass on my appreciation, Marie. I hope I haven’t got you in trouble.”

  “Trouble? Me? By the way, who is that older woman I’ve seen you with at Mass?”

  “Older?” He laughed, almost a giggle. “It’s just that I seem much younger than I am.”

  “Hmph.”

  “Her name is Gloria, Gloria Daley.”

  12

  Ned Bunting was in seventh heaven. After years of drought, his first published piece had caused a mild sensation. Thank God, he had Gloria with whom to savor this belated recognition.

  “There should have been a picture of you as well,” she said.

  Ned would have accepted any terms Quirk of the Tribune had offered, short of asking that he use a pen name. All the years of dreaming, those awful times when he had paid through the nose for nothing, the demeaning interview with Zubiri at the writers’ conference, faded into insignificance. He sought parallels in the life of other writers, those who after years of rejection had finally broken into print. Of course, his dream had been to write fiction, and this was a report on an actual person, but he had employed the fictional techniques he had learned, however imperfectly, dramatizing the life of the reclusive Roger Dowling.

  “I’ll bet Monsignor Sledz is eating his heart out,” Gloria said. “Not that you could have made much of his day-to-day life.”

  Ned felt awash with magnanimity. His opponents of yore were now enveloped in the sense of triumph that suffused him.

  “Ned, now you have to write that book.”

  A sobering reminder. It was one thing to put together a few pages from the conversation with Marie Murkin he had recorded, but a book suggested an extended effort, and in his heart of hearts the worm of doubt entered. When he compared the printed version of his story with the file on his computer, he realized that much editorial discretion had been exercised in preparing the printed version. He sought in vain for unaltered sentences from his original. He did not find the altered versions an improvement. There was a lesson there. The prospect of publication had made him docile to a fault. As long as his name appeared on the result, he would be satisfied. Not that he put it so baldly even to himself.

  “We seldom run things by freelance writers,” Quirk had said.

  “This is special.”

  “Oh, we want it. Who helped you with it?”

  “Helped me?”

  “It reads as if it were translated from the Portuguese.”

  “I was trying for an impersonal style.”

  “We’ll clean it up.”

  A writer with a record, anyone with a sense of self-esteem, would have reacted negatively to that condescension, but Ned had been ready to kiss the hand that edited his prose. In the event, the sentences Gloria singled out for praise had not figured in his original version. Prudence suggested silence. Praise had been so long coming, he was not likely to protest.

  Then came the call from Henry Drummond.

  “Who hired you to write that crap, the cardinal?”

  This was the first sentence Ned heard when he answered the phone, and he didn’t like the tone or the message. He hung up. Caller identification told him that the person who persisted in trying to get through to him was Henry Drummond. He called Gloria.

  “Drummond’s a crank. Maddie has told me all about him.”

  So Ned talked with Madeline.

  “He’s not interested in me at all, Ned. This whole scandal means nothing to him except that he was fired by the archdiocese and wants to give them as much trouble as he can.”

  “Fired?”

  “He’s an accountant.”

  It sounded like an indictable offense.

  “He has been in contact with you?”

  “On advice of counsel I have stopped taking his calls.”

  “Counsel.”

  “My lawyer.”

  “And who is that?”

  “I just became his client. Tuttle. Of Tuttle and Tuttle.”

  13

  Who is to say when the main chance may come? Tuttle had practiced law in several senses of the term, never getting very good at it, but what he lacked in knowledge was more than made up for by perseverance. He was on a mission from his father, the other Tuttle in the name of the firm, currently playing a harp in the next world. Tuttle’s devotion to his paternal parent was Chinese in its proportions. He did not have an effigy of his father before which he burned incense, but a photograph of Tuttle père hung on his office wall, and his apartment was filled with framed snapshots of the couple that had borne and raised and nurtured him. When his mother died, his father redoubled his efforts to get Tuttle settled in life. Through the long agony of law school, when Tuttle had taken each course at least twice before achieving a passing grade, through graduation and then the longer agony of trying to pass the bar exams, his father had been his mainstay. No doubt had ever crossed the paternal mind. Tuttle fed on his father’s trust. Finally, not without sleeves full of notes, he had passed the bar exams. Like Moses viewing the promised land but destined never to enter it, Tuttle senior almost immediately went to his reward. The duplication of his name in the title of the firm was Tuttle’s perpetual remembrance of the father who had never lost confidence in him.

  A troubled life is not the worst preparation for the practice of law. Tuttle had learned to think that those who came to him—to him, the least of the local bar—had unstated reasons for their choice. So it had been with Gregory Barrett. One lead led to another, and before long Tuttle knew that his secretive client had once been a priest of the Chicago archdiocese. He had been laicized in an orderly way, nothing wrong there, and then had gone south to Cairo, where over time a small but prestigious involvement in public radio had begun. There seemed to be few books that Barrett had not read, and he had the charming faculty of liking most of them. His book chats were soon popular; the local station got him national syndication. Can any good come out of Cairo? Many thought so. It was pleasant to listen to his oral essays on the authors he had enjoyed, and not only the authors and their editors were appreciative. Eventually he was invited to relocate to Chicago, where an even wider audience
for his program could be had.

  So what was such a man doing seeking help from Tuttle? The question had dictated checking out Gregory Barrett—not the name he had used when he came to Tuttle’s office. It was not long before Tuttle knew that the Madeline he had been asked to look into—there was no suggestion that the assignment was to dig up dirt on Barrett’s nemesis—was pointing the finger, after all these years, at the onetime Father Barrett. The case was unique in the current burgeoning scandal. Barrett had been laicized for nearly a quarter of a century; he had a wife and family; he had built a small but prestigious career, translating his bookishness into a program with wide appeal.

  No one could become even superficially interested in the local version of the clerical scandal without becoming aware of Henry Drummond. Tuttle’s soul would not perhaps survive close scrutiny, but he found himself torn between seeking to represent Drummond and riding Madeline Murphy’s complaints to profit and glory. As it happened, he went first to Drummond.

  There are drinkers and drinkers, but it was hard to know into which category Henry Drummond fell. Tuttle came upon him in a place called the Montenegro Internet Café, where the aggrieved former employee of the archdiocese of Chicago was scanning a monitor with what might have been an eight-ounce glass of pure scotch at his elbow. He merely grunted when Tuttle tried to interrupt him. Then, like someone on a cell phone, Drummond began to talk. It was some time before Tuttle realized that his addressee was the universe or anyone within hearing range.

  “Have you read this piece of crap?”

  “I’d have to know more before I answered that.”

  Drummond swung in his chair, gripping its arms as if fearful of losing his balance, and sought some lens in his glasses that would enable him to see Tuttle clearly. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Someone who has yet to read that piece of crap.”

  “Good man. I’ll print it out.”

  As it happened, Tuttle had already read it. The article on Father Dowling did not read much better as a downloaded text than it had in the Tribune. Drummond sipped and watched Tuttle closely as he perused the pages.

  “You see what they’re doing, don’t you?”

  The words arrived on clouds of boozy breath, and Tuttle involuntarily backed away. “My name is Tuttle.”

  “And mine is Henry Drummond.”

  “I know that.”

  “But do you know that my life was ruined by the Archdiocese of Chicago? Do you know that in middle life I was put penniless on the streets under a cloud such that no one would dream of employing me? I have sought redress in the courts . . .”

  “Who represents you?”

  It was Drummond’s turn to back away. He studied Tuttle, a frown coming and going on his brow, and then a smile. “You’re a lawyer. I’ve seen you around the courthouse.”

  “No doubt.” Tuttle adopted the expression of a man busy about many things. “Who has been representing you?”

  “Misrepresenting, you mean.”

  “I meant your lawyer.”

  “So did I. I fired the bastard. I think he was in league with my enemies.”

  Tuttle said nothing. Conspiracies of this sort largely take place in the minds and imaginations of their supposed victims. It would be impossible to find Henry Drummond prepossessing, but then he had been put through the wringer in the past several years.

  “Do you drink?” he suddenly demanded of Tuttle.

  “No.” Is there a secondary effect of liquor as well as of smoke? The fragrance of Henry Drummond’s breath made abstinence seem overwhelmingly attractive.

  “Good. Never trust a lawyer who drinks.” Somehow the glass he held was empty, and he lifted it high, signaling the bartender. “But come, let us get out of traffic.” Drummond rose and walked carefully among the empty tables and chairs to a corner table. The sound of the chair on the granite floor when he pulled it free from the table caused him to cry out. He sat and put his face in his hands. He opened them, peekaboo, and said, “If they wanted to break me, all they would have to do is drag such chairs across such a floor. That sound pierces my soul.”

  Tuttle sat. “Fingernails on a blackboard.”

  “Not even close.” He banged on the table. “Cameriere. Mosso. Garçon.”

  “The same?” asked a voice.

  “Toujours la même chose. Yes, my good man.”

  A woman put a glass before him and glanced at Tuttle. “You want anything?”

  “Not at the moment, no.”

  “He’s a lawyer,” Drummond said piously.

  “Tell me about your case.”

  How lucid the man was when he got on his grievance. In his telling of it, the accusation against him, peculation, had never been documented. He was confronted with the charge, told that his employment was terminated, and, as he put it, was on the street. The matter received no publicity until Drummond decided to make it a cause célèbre, but the result had been simply to discredit himself. Since no public charge had been made against him, libel seemed out of the question. Drummond’s lawyer had asked the archdiocese for a letter of recommendation. He received one—matter-of-fact, a simple recounting of his time with them, ending with the date of his resignation. No reason given. His lawyer advised him to use the letter and get another position. Drummond laughed, and his eyes narrowed in shrewdness. “They would do it by word of mouth, don’t you see? A call from a prospective employer, an ambiguous remark from my erstwhile boss, all of it beyond the reach of the law.”

  “What are you living on?” Drummond was well dressed, kempt, and thin—but then, his caloric intake was probably mainly liquid. He was clean shaven. Take away the smell of booze and he might have been a respectable accountant.

  “Hope! And a little something from my father.”

  “Ah.” A man who spoke well of his father was a man after Tuttle’s own heart. “How much did you think of demanding from the archdiocese?”

  “Money? It is not a question of money! It is they who think in terms of money, twisting a pardonable mistake in calculation into an effort to despoil the archdiocese. Nonsense.”

  The priest scandal had seemed to Drummond his great opportunity.

  “Their main weapon does not even need stating. Enormous prestige locally. But that prestige has been wounded, mortally wounded. It is they who are in the dock now. It is time to strike.”

  “We must plan our strategy carefully.”

  Drummond did not object to the personal pronoun. Tuttle thought of asking for a retainer but decided to settle for a handshake.

  “God bless you, Tuttle,” Drummond called after him.

  Covering his bets, he went next to Madeline Murphy.

  “Have you read the piece by Ned Bunting?”

  “I’ve met him,” she said carefully.

  How easily he gained entrance to the house. She was not alone. A sullen lad looked out from what must be the kitchen, chewing on a sandwich.

  “This is my son, Marvin.”

  Tuttle was trying to remember whether she was married, not that marriage was any longer considered a must for parenthood. He doffed his tweed hat, and the boy disappeared. Tuttle sat and began to praise the article Ned Bunting had written.

  “I couldn’t read it. You understand.”

  “And now I suppose he will write about you.”

  “I suppose. He understands that it is not a question of money. Lawyers seem to think that money solves everything.”

  “They themselves get a good portion of the settlement, of course.”

  “Is that true?”

  “I am a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer!”

  “We are not all so bad.”

  “And why should I consider myself just one of an army of plaintiffs? My case is unique.”

  “Tell me how the memory came back to you.”

  “Oh, that was just a ruse. Do you think I could have forgotten a thing like that? I kept quiet about it, of course.”

  “That might weaken your case.”


  She smiled. “Oh, no. I always have Marvin.”

  Someone to fall back on in defeat? Marvin had once again appeared in the kitchen door. The lad seemed a slender reed to lean on.

  “Marvin is his son, you see.”

  Tuttle’s mind was not slow—when his own advantage was involved, he could think with astonishing rapidity—but now his mind seemed to slip into neutral. He looked at Madeline, at her sad, sweet, knowing smile. Over her shoulder, the slouching Marvin still chewed on his sandwich. The son of Gregory Barrett?

  “We must hold that back, for maximum effect.”

  They shook hands solemnly. Before leaving he advised her to have nothing to do with Henry Drummond. No need for clients to meet one another.

  14

  “Perhaps you saw my story on Father Dowling in the Tribune?”

  “You wrote that?” Gregory Barrett looked at his visitor. Ned Bunting seemed of average intelligence, was certainly of more than average height, and wore an expectant smile.

  “It was a labor of love.”

  Good Lord. Someone should have translated it into English. “I know Father Dowling.”

  “I understand you were classmates.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “Why would he? But you see the connection between what I wrote of him and what I could write about you. Schoolmates, for a time priests together, and then a parting of the ways . . .”

  “You will write no story about me, Mr. Bunting.”

  “Yes. I will. The choice is whether I do it with or without your cooperation. Of course I know the charge that has been brought against you.”

  Once Gregory Barrett’s life had been lived under the sign of Christian charity—every person was beloved of God and should be treated as such—but in recent years he had adopted the canons of civility as sufficient for his dealings with others. This had involved no outward change. In either case, striking a man would have been ruled out. When Madeline Murphy had made her accusation, he had felt a sudden surge of anger, but it had no target, certainly not that pathetic woman. He stood and for a moment was certain he would strike Bunting. What he did was come around his desk, take his visitor by the elbow, and escort him into the hallway. When he let go he gave a little push, and Ned Bunting staggered away, his expression one of disbelief. Then, noticing something over Barrett’s shoulder, he reeled and crashed to the floor. Barrett turned to face Sinclair, the station manager.