The Prudence of the Flesh Read online

  “It was done for me, Bishop.”

  Hennessy’s ring had been given him by Pope John Paul II when he was consecrated, a ring identical to the pope’s. The episcopal hand now held a cigar, an indulgence encouraged by the nuns.

  “I think they fear I’ll get religion.”

  Even so, they sat in the courtyard of the convent so that the cigar smoke would drift away in the April air. Inevitably they talked of the burgeoning clerical scandals.

  “Cardinal Law has become a monster in the press, Roger, but I understand the man. When a scandal happens in a family, the impulse is to keep it quiet. Is that ignoble?”

  It was a generous estimate, and would have been more deserved if the cardinal had not simply reassigned priests whose conduct warranted punishment rather than another parish. Hennessy had been the auxiliary in charge of laicization when requests had been in their flood.

  “Of course, I was criticized for making it too easy for men to leave, but what was the alternative? Send them off to a monastery to think it over? Many of them were already involved with women. Even when they weren’t, I came to see that by the time they came to me their minds were made up. So let those go who wanted to go. Delaying them might have led to scandal. Now I wish that more had gone, these poor devils we’re reading about now.”

  “They couldn’t do legitimately what they’re accused of even if they were out of the priesthood.”

  “True. Yet dropping celibacy is the only solution some have. That’s like making polygamy the remedy for adultery.”

  Roger laughed, however much the analogy limped. “Do you remember Gregory Barrett?”

  “Oh, yes. I was genuinely sad to see him go. I couldn’t say that of many of the others.”

  “He came to see me recently.”

  “What has he been doing with himself?”

  “Teaching at Loyola, for one thing.”

  Hennessy groaned. “And what does he say when he runs into people who knew him as a priest?” The old bishop had another analogy. Spouses who divorced had once avoided the friends they had made in their married days. What were laypeople to make of a priest who got out of the priesthood? “It must make marriage seem equally escapable when things get tough.”

  “He also has a radio program, discussions of books. It’s quite good. He developed it when he was living downstate, and its success led to the invitation that he broadcast it from Chicago.”

  “What does it matter where he does the program?”

  “A program from Chicago has a greater chance of being picked up elsewhere. But there’s more. A woman has accused him of improper conduct while he was a priest.”

  “Was a priest? Tu es sacerdos in aeternum.”

  “When he was in the active priesthood. She claims he took advantage of her when she went to him for counsel.”

  “Dear God. Have you ever read Rabelais?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t. Very gamy stuff, and Rabelais himself was a priest.”

  “The woman got in touch with the archdiocese as they were ready to buy her off, but she refused.”

  “What does she want?”

  “That’s unclear.”

  “Does she think he will marry her?”

  “Barrett already has a wife. And a son.”

  “I do remember Barrett, Roger. I can’t believe he would have been mixed up in such a thing.”

  “Should I suggest to him that he come see you?”

  Hennessy thought about it. “Does he smoke?”

  Roger rose to go, and the bishop asked for his blessing. He gave it, and received the bishop’s in his turn.

  “What I could never understand in those who left, Roger, was how they could face a future in which they would no longer say Mass.”

  Part Two

  1

  Against his inclinations and against his habit, Captain Philip Keegan had taken a vacation this year. Oh, he always took several weeks, usually in the winter, but he did not leave Fox River, just tried to be lazy, sleeping late, sometimes until nine in the morning, if he had sat up late watching television and drinking beer the night before. And he would spend more time with Father Dowling. All along he was sustained by the thought that he was easily within reach if anything important came up. Just to make sure, he would call Cy Horvath once a day to hear how things were going in his absence. But this year had been different.

  For years, his married daughters had pleaded in vain for him to visit. He resisted because they lived on opposite ends of the country, and visiting neither could be presented as evenhandedness. Now, though, his granddaughter Nell, named for her grandmother, was to make her first communion in Charleston. Cecilia, his daughter, insisted that he must come.

  “And don’t say you’re afraid of hurting Norah’s feelings. She and Oliver and little Jimmy will be here, too. Dad, it will be a family reunion.”

  It was an invitation he could not refuse, and so he accepted. A family reunion. He had been alone now for seven years, but he still dreamt of his wife and sometimes came awake at the call of her voice. In the wee hours of the morning, the hard-nosed captain of the Fox River police sometimes wept himself back to sleep.

  So he had gone to Charleston, and there had been a family reunion with both his daughters and their families. He even got along fairly well with his sons-in-law, though one was a Democrat and the other something worse, a pacifist and against the death penalty besides.

  “Of course, it’s simply the Catholic position now,” Oliver said smugly.

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  His son-in-law Ronald asked if he didn’t still see a lot of his priest friend Roger Dowling. He said he did, hoping it would change the subject.

  “Ask him,” Oliver said. “He’ll tell you.”

  Keegan let it go. His daughters loved their husbands, and that was good enough for him.

  Little Nell looked like an angel in her white dress and veil, her hands clasped over her brand-new prayer book. If only her grandmother could see her.

  “I’m sure she does,” said Norah, and Cecilia agreed. He hugged and kissed them both.

  From Charleston, he went on to Sarasota and the condo on Siesta Key he had rented for two weeks. Two weeks. It seemed a sentence he must serve. Oliver thought life imprisonment was the answer to capital punishment, but then his certitudes were grounded firmly in inexperience. Phil telephoned Roger Dowling from Florida and reported on the first communion.

  “Get lots of sun, Phil.”

  “Sure. Roger, someone tried to tell me that a Catholic can’t be in favor of capital punishment.”

  “I’ve heard the same thing.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Why don’t we talk about it when you get back? I don’t want to run up your phone bill.”

  “I’d rather be hung myself.”

  “Than run up your phone bill?”

  “Than spend the rest of my life in prison.”

  “Are you under arrest?”

  “I’ll be home in two weeks.”

  “Marie misses you.”

  “Haven’t you fired her yet?”

  A pause. “Then you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Nothing, nothing. It can wait until you get home.”

  He couldn’t get any more out of Roger. After the call, he walked along the shore with the waves endlessly rolling in, the water spangled with sunlight, the beach full of vacationers in various states of undress offering themselves to the sun.

  When he got back to his condo, he called Cy Horvath, who said he didn’t have any idea what Roger Dowling was talking about. It sounded like a lie.

  There were places he could buy the Chicago papers, but asking for the Fox River Tribune was pointless. Finally, timing his call when Roger would be saying the noon Mass, he got hold of Marie Murkin.

  “So you’re still there?” he asked.

  “Where else would I be? You forgot there’s a time difference. Father is saying Mass.”

  �
��I talked to him a few days ago. I got the impression something was going on.”

  “Of course something is going on. We can’t all run away to Florida and sit in the sun.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “Well, thanks a lot.”

  He tried to let that call erase the effects of the previous one. If something was amiss, he could count on Cy and Marie and Roger to let him know. He went out on a charter fishing boat and, with help from Captain Jack, brought in a fair-sized marlin. He felt like an idiot being photographed with the thing. Then he had it dressed, frozen, and sent to Marie Murkin.

  The trouble with doing nothing is that you get used to it. These were days when there was absolutely nothing he had to do, but still he developed a kind of schedule and kept to it. One night he got nearly drunk and decided to lay off drinking until he got home. Each day he x-ed out the date on the calendar. He got to the Sarasota airport three hours before his plane was due to leave.

  He had the cab from O’Hare take him straight to his office—not the smartest idea, because showing up with the tan he had acquired invited comment. His secretary had made three piles on his desk, the third pile personal, so he got to that last. That was the first he knew of the article on Roger Dowling that had appeared in the Fox River paper. He winced as he read the piece. It had Marie Murkin’s fingerprints all over it.

  Cy came in while he was reading. “I heard you were back.”

  “Did you read this, Cy?”

  His Hungarian lieutenant nodded. “That’s what we’re working on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The man who wrote that? Ned Bunting. He’s dead. Fished out of the Fox River early this morning.”

  2

  On the western bank of the Fox River, there is a parking area to which young lovers repair, and some not so young. It was here that Pasquali had driven Gloria a week ago, turning in with a nervous laugh.

  “Lovers’ lane,” he said.

  “Is that the fast track?”

  “I’ve never been here before.”

  “That’s funny, I thought I recognized you.”

  Their friendship had waxed as hers with Ned Bunting waned, spurred by Pasquali’s one-eighty on the quality of Gloria’s paintings. They had been moved out of the staff lunchroom and were once more distributed about the reading areas and public places of the Benjamin Harrison branch of the Fox River library.

  “They take getting used to.”

  “So did Picasso’s.”

  “Tell me about your painting.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to see my etchings?”

  Pasquali was of the type known in pop psychology as anal—that is, tight assed—and Gloria found this conducive to face-tiousness. He seemed not to know what to do in reaction to her provocative remarks, but it was clear he loved them. His nervous laugh said it all.

  “Tell me about Mrs. Pasquali.”

  “She is no more.”

  “Aww.”

  “One day I came home and found a note telling me she had gone. I read it over and over. I wept. And then I realized that she had done what one or the other of us should have done years ago.”

  “How many years?”

  “Enough.”

  She had noticed that with her he kept his shoulders back and pulled in his midsection, the better to conceal his pot. Short curly hair formed around a tonsure on his pate.

  “Tonsure?” he said. “I’m no monk.”

  “What’s your sign?”

  “Go?”

  “Let’s try amber for a while.” But her arm pressed against his in the front seat of his Toyota. It had a glass roof that slid back, and she asked him to open it. Nice. Above them, weeping willows moved in the wind. “That must be nice at night.”

  “It’s not so bad right now.”

  He was allegedly at a meeting in the Loop. Gloria had told Ned that she was going on a one-day retreat. It was her third date with Pasquali, if that was the right word for it, and counting the time when she had disarmed him by making a gift of her paintings. When Maddie went back to her post, Gloria had sat on with Pasquali in his office. He seemed to be seeing her for the first time. For the matter of that, she had never really noticed him before, either.

  The next day, he telephoned to express the library’s thanks for her generous gift. “Of course, I have written a letter to that effect. You can claim it as a donation on your income tax.”

  “That will help.”

  “I could hand deliver it.”

  “On foot?”

  She liked his nervous laugh. Some primal prudence suggested that she not have him come to the house. Ned had a bad habit of just dropping by. It occurred to her that the hapless writer was taking her for granted. Besides, she was a little tired of his lofty ambitions. The book he had given her to read was unreadable. When she told Maddie about it, she learned that Ned was not the author.

  “Harry Austin just pours out fiction, all pretty much alike, all pretty bad. But people like it.”

  Gloria filed the information away under the heading “potential ammunition.” And she thought Maddie was right to want to put an end to the crusade about her treatment by Gregory Barrett.

  “What if I’m wrong, Gloria?”

  “Then you’ll be sorry you didn’t take the money when it was offered.”

  “Would you have?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  So she said to Pasquali, “Why don’t we meet at the Wahoo?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A bar.”

  “I’m AA.”

  “It sounds like a battery. How about Bridgeman’s?”

  So they sat over ice cream like a couple of teenagers, her knee shoved against his. He didn’t drink, but he smoked, so it wasn’t all bad.

  He said, “I haven’t gone with anyone since Estelle left.”

  “Estelle.”

  “My wife.”

  “Maybe she’ll come back.”

  “I divorced her. In absentia. For absentia.” He had made a joke. Maybe it was contagious.

  “Maybe you ought to.”

  “What?”

  “Go with someone.”

  “Is that an offer?”

  “We’ll see. But I can’t call you Louis.”

  “Why should you? My name’s Fred.”

  “Mine’s Daley.” They shook hands.

  When he drove her back to her place, Ned’s car was parked at the curb. She was going to tell Fred to keep going, but what the hell, this could be fun.

  “Come on and meet my usher.”

  Ned was half a head taller than Pasquali when they stood facing one another.

  “Ned, this is Fred. The librarian.”

  “Did you have an overdue book?”

  “No. I had a hot fudge sundae, and he had a banana split.”

  “I’ve been waiting here a half hour.”

  “Let’s all go inside.”

  “Maybe Fred has an appointment,” Ned said angrily.

  “He does. With me.” She put her arm through Fred’s and sauntered to the door. Ned didn’t follow. When she turned in the doorway, he was standing beside his car. He shook his fist at her.

  “That man frightens me,” she said as she let them in. “Now for my etchings.”

  She showed him her studio, and he stood openmouthed at the sight of so many paintings.

  “Do you ever do anything else?”

  “Only when asked.”

  He was uneasy in the confines of her house, she realized, and she found she wanted to play him like a fish. A fish she could learn to like.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “I have a meeting in Chicago in the afternoon.”

  “We’ll have lunch first.”

  She went to the door with him and saw that Ned was still out there, standing by his car. Gloria watched as Fred marched out to his. Ned advanced on him, mad as a wet hen, or rooster. Fred just looked at him calmly. Ned put a hand on his arm and
then, in a trice, Fred had taken it, twisted it, turned, and slammed Ned to the ground. He then went to his car, got in, and drove away. Gloria locked the door and went to a window. Ned managed to get to his feet, looked furtively at the house, then slunk to his car. After he drove away, Gloria heard music. She was singing, “They try to tell us we’re too young.”

  The next day she and Fred had lunch, after which they drove to lovers’ lane. “It’s not that important a meeting.”

  While Gloria was looking up at the weeping willows, she felt his arm go around her shoulders.

  “Why don’t we walk?” she suggested.

  They got out and walked. Paths led from the parking area to the river, and they took one of them. Fred was throwing stones in the water when Gloria noticed the body. She screamed. She backed away from the water, filled with dread. Fred went tentatively toward the body. Then he was running toward her. He took her by the arm and propelled her up the path.

  “Was he . . .”

  “Yes.”

  In the car, he got out his cell phone and punched at it. “Nine-one-one? There is a body in the river on the west bank.” He hung up. “We don’t want to be involved.”

  “No!”

  “Did you see who it was?” he asked as he started the car. She looked at him with horror. “Your friend. The tall fellow. Ned Bunting.”

  3

  Suicide? Ned Bunting’s car was found illegally parked along the river road, as if he had stopped, crossed the road, and thrown himself into the river. The body had traveled some distance from the presumed spot from which he had jumped, but the reconstruction seemed obvious. In the trunk of the car were a portable computer and a tape recorder. They were impounded with the car. In the backseat were several writers’ magazines, seemingly flung there.

  “He just stopped to jump in the river?”

  The medical examiner turned to look at Cy Horvath. “All this is just guesswork, of course.”

  But Cy’s phlegmatic remark brought the guessing game to a close.

  It was the plea of Gloria Daley, self-described particular friend of the deceased, that had initiated the search for Bunting.